Obituary: Sa'adia Marciano, founder of Israel's Black Panther Party.

The establishment of Israel's Black Panthers in the early 1970s had a radicalizing effect on Israeli society, its founders were inspired by the US Civil Rights movement and especially the Black Panther Party led by Bobby Seal, Huey Newton and Eldridge
Clever. It was originally formed by young unemployed workers like Sa'adia Marciano and Charlie Biton, when the latter was asked what motivated him he said, "We felt and were being oppression and resented it. We didn’t even know who the oppressors were and how they oppressed us. Only through struggle were we to understood who steps over us and why they do so." Biton's words will be recognizable today by millions of young people who live in the worlds economically deprived communities.

Up until that time Israeli politicians claimed it was impossible to fight social oppression as the security of the State had to come before all else. This left a large part of the economically poorest section of the population living in appalling conditions. As Marciano was to later say, "We raised the social struggle flag in spite of the difficult security conditions. Moshe Dayan argued that you can’t wave both flags of security and social affairs simultaneously. But we strongly believed that a weak society could never be strong in it’s security."

Of course like its US counterpart there were many weaknesses in the Israeli Panthers ideology or what passed for it; and some of them went on to become mainstream politicians, but there is no doubt that like the explosion of US and European left politics that took place in the 1960s early 70s the world is a better place for having had the Israeli Black Panthers.


Sa'adia Marciano

Israeli pioneer of direct action protest movement

By Lawrence Joffe


The Moroccan-born social campaigner Sa'adia Marciano, who has died in a Jerusalem hospital, aged 57, was the founder and public face of Israel's Black Panthers protest movement, and one of the most charismatic, if tragic, figures in Israeli society. He battled ceaselessly for Israel's poorer Sephardim and Mizrahim (Jews of Spanish and oriental origin) and at his death was still campaigning to provide food and heating for Jerusalem's needy.

Sa'adia was a lanky, long-haired 20-year-old when he first galvanized unemployed youths in the rundown Jerusalem neighbourhood of Musrara in 1971. The Panther moniker was an echo of the African-American group: "Golda Meir was aware of [their] reputation, and we wanted to scare her."

The rebels took to the streets, accusing Israel's European-origin Ashkenazi establishment of betraying their community. The Sephardim were a small minority when the state of Israel came into being in 1948, but by 1971, after immigration from the Middle East and north Africa, they represented almost 60% of all Israeli Jews. However, only 3% of top official posts and a fifth of parliamentary members were Sephardi.
The Panthers attacked the ruling Labour party for housing Sephardi immigrants in substandard ma'abarot (transit camps) and "development towns", and denigrating Arabic-Jewish culture. A spontaneous uprising soon turned into protests outside Jerusalem town hall. They bore coffins to symbolise the death of social equality, and stole milk bottles from outside middle-class homes to redistribute in disadvantaged areas.

The Panthers won attention after Marciano's face, bruised by police batons, appeared on television. In 1971 Golda Meir called them "not nice boys", and a month later 20 were wounded and 74 arrested when they clashed with police. But they forced her to call an inquiry and increase social budgets.

Marciano's group challenged two sacrosanct ideas of Israeli society: that Jews constituted one, indivisible bloc, and that social concerns had to wait until peace arrived. They also claimed common cause with Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the occupied territories, and were among the first Israelis to meet Yasser Arafat in 1972.

In September 1973, the Panthers won several seats in the Histadrut labour federation, but in the wake of the Yom Kippur war that October most Sephardim disagreed when the Panthers blamed Zionism for engendering social rifts.

In 1977 Marciano entered the Knesset (parliament) for the leftwing Sheli party. Three years later he formed the one-man Equality in Israel-Panthers party, but failed to pass the 1% election threshold in 1981. He then founded a drug rehabilitation centre, organised concerts and dabbled in film production. He later joined the Labour party, though he never stood for election again.

Despite their failures, the Panthers set a model for direct action in Israel, which has been followed by the leftwing Peace Now, Yesh Gvul and Four Mothers, and pro-settler rightist groups such as Gush Emunim and Zo Artzeinu. They also put social issues on the national table. The ruling Likud party launched projects to revive development towns; culturally, Mizrahi music has entered mainstream pop; and restaurants sell more bourekas, shwarma and hummus than bagels, schnitzels and gefilte fish. Since 1971 Israel has had two Mizrahi presidents and many government ministers. Sa'adia's cousin became chief aide to the Moroccan-born Amir Peretz, who was elected Labour's second Mizrahi leader in late 2005.

Marciano was born the sixth of 11 children in Oujda, a town on the Moroccan-Algerian border. He emigrated to Israel in 1950 after violence between local Arabs and Jews. He is survived by his wife Vicky; they had a son.

· Sa'adia Marciano, campaigner, born May 1 1950; died December 21 2007

Is it surprising British politicians are becoming increasingly corrupt, when Thatcher and Blair set such an appalling example.

Historically British Prime Ministers have not been know for being economically corrupt, indeed former Labour Prime Ministers Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan on leaving office lived comparatively modest life styles which would have been recognizable to most middle class English people of the day. If they had no private wealth of their own, Conservative PMs were usually looked after on leaving office by a number of rich businessmen donating a sum of money and setting up some sort of trust fund. Winston Churchill who enjoyed living high on the hog was the beneficiary of such charity on more than one occasion.

This all changed with Margaret Thatcher, who learnt early on in her Prime Ministership that it pays handsomely to become anointed the US President’s most favored foreigner. Once a British Prime Minister was comfortably perched in this position brown envelopes where for lesser mortals, for they could look forward to being looked after on leaving office by Corporate America, in much the same way as US Presidents have been since the beginning of the 20th Century if not before.

Thus on leaving office the retirement pension plan that has been available since the 1970s to all former British PMs was regarded by Thatcher and her successors in 10 Downing St as small change, and in return for acting whilst in office as the US Presidents gofer in Europe, on leaving office the British PM would be placed on to a US Conglomerates executive jet to tour the USA giving the CEO’s of multi national corporations the benefit of their wisdom. Although most CEOs of these multi national corporations have better things to do than spend their time listening to an ex-politico whose power is spent. So these speaking engagements are filled with junior executives sent along to pad the audience to help keep the speakers ego intact. However all concerned are only to well aware the real purpose of these ‘speaking engagements’ is to present the former servant of corporate America with a not inconsiderable supply of executive embossed envelopes stuffed to the gills with greenback bills.

Since he stepped down as Prime Minister and resigned from Parliament, Tony Blair like Margaret Thatcher and John Major before him, has spent his first year on leaving office touring the USA and other far flung countries turning the markers he accumulated whilst in office into hard currency.

Of course unlike a Mafia don Blair cannot simply send a couple of his henchmen down to Wall Street to collect a suitcase stuffed with dollar bills, there are niceties to be observed. First he signed a million dollar plus book contract with Random House, a subsidiary of the multi-national corporation Bertelsmann AG, the outcome of which will be a book that few people will actually read.

Next came an offer from a major US Corporation, best if it is a Bank as there is money to be laundered. In Blair’s case J.P. Morgan stepped into the breach and signed him up for a non existent job; It is entirely a coincidence that this bunch of financial sharks have recently signed a massive and very lucrative contract to run the Trade Bank of Iraq.

This ‘appointment’ was followed by what is called ‘the speaking tour’ which is a peach in itself. According to the Sunday Times Blair has just returned from a trip to North America from which he is likely to have made as much as £500,000 in the US and Canada for making three speeches in four days. One can get an idea of the standard of his scintillating oratory that we in the UK came to hate and despise from the following quote taken from a speech he made in Canada.

“Europe is not a question of Left or Right, but a question of the future or the past, of strength or weakness”

To conclude his first year in office Blair has signed yet another sweetheart contract with a multi national, having become an an expert on creating global warming when he polluted Iraq with weapons tipped uranium, the Zurich Insurance Companies have just made him their expert on Global warming. [I know you could not make this up]

Thus before his first year on leaving office is out, Blair will have received approximately £7 million pounds for doing nowt; and that is without the serialization rights to his memoirs, for it has become a post Thatcher tradition for the British newspaper industry to give former prime ministers a lucrative send off by publishing their appalling ghost written memoirs, despite there not being a single word in them that is not already in the public domain.

Obituary: George Habash;[Al Hakim] Revolutionary, Palestinian and internationalist.

George Habash, the Palestinian revolutionary and founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has died of heart failure in Beruit. Habash was a firm believer in propaganda by deed; and it could be claimed that he and his comrades in the PFLP, by initiating a series of hijackings of international civil aircraft in the early 1970s put the Palestinian Diaspora and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip firmly on the worlds political and media agenda.

To his credit unlike Arafat, Habash stood firm against the Oslo Accords and refused to give it his blessing. Understanding that like the north of Ireland's Good Friday Agreement, the Oslo Accords were designed to coral and demoralize revolutionary and progressive movements by gradually forcing them to compromise their core beliefs whilst the governments they had opposed maintain their status-quo.





George Habash died poor and in exile, but his lessons remain vital for Arab unity and liberation

By Karma Nabulsi


'His very name scatters fire through ice,' wrote Byron of an 18th-century revolutionary leader, and so it has always been with the name of that extraordinary Palestinian George Habash. For those in anti-colonial movements across the world who learned and trained under him, his name embodies that inextinguishable human demand for justice and freedom. His exhilarating emancipatory model of resistance to injustice, his radical optimism and, above all, his tight political organisation scorched the consciousness of young people across the Arab world, mobilised masses and inspired a huge wave of talented artists and intellectuals.
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One doesn't have to be a Marxist to appreciate the value of his extraordinary force. For 60 years Habash engaged in a non-stop struggle for Arab unity, human progress, women's rights, liberation and equality. By founding the anti-colonial Arab Nationalist Movement, he lit a fuse throughout the region, from Yemen, where forces he trained and organised liberated the country from British rule, through the battle for Egyptian-Syrian unity, and Kuwait - which only has a parliament thanks to the movement's impact - to the founding of trade unions across much of the Gulf.
Habash, who founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, died this weekend, an impoverished refugee in enforced exile in Amman. What can this revolutionary of a bygone area, archetype of the heroic medic with the free clinic in the refugee camp, virtuoso intellectual rhetorician, with his charismatic grin, perpetual cigarette and black leather jacket, give us to address today's bleak geopolitical predicament? His contribution offers powerful solutions in arenas where the collective imagination is in complete disarray. In an era of unprecedented Arab disunity and reactionary conservatism, and at the zenith of what seems to be unstoppable Israeli expansionism and Palestinian political fragmentation, his model of combining universal principles with popular mobilisation remains the key to progress.

Currently portrayed as the architect of the tactic of aeroplane hijackings, which was never his (and over which he expelled Wadie Haddad from the PFLP), Habash was instead responsible for introducing a much bolder blueprint for international action. From the ANC to the Nicaraguans, he was the pivotal internationalist who made the fight for independence possible: training, encouraging and giving material assistance. This most basic of progressive principles - mobilising to assist those who are risking all for their freedom against undemocratic tyranny - is never more relevant than today. Citizens who have obtained their political rights understand well that they are a crucial force in pressuring their own governments to help others to achieve theirs, from Pakistan and Burma to Palestine.

A witness to the ethnic cleansing of his home town in 1948, he was transformed for ever by a determination to serve his people, and the lesson for Palestinians is essential. The flourishing of several political parties in the national arena remains not only the guarantor of democracy, but also the proven engine for achieving independence, as long as parties are driven by principle and not simply by desire for power. Just before his death, Habash was told how young Palestinians from a different political party had audaciously destroyed the walls of Gaza, setting free its people. Habash smiled and said: "You see, the day will come when these borders will fall and Arab unity will be achieved." Lucretius celebrated these unforgettable "vitai lampada", the torch-bearers who bring hope in each generation, "like runners passing on the lamp of life".

The United States smash and grab raid on Iraq is almost completed.

In the article below, which I republish from the Morning Star,* Liz Davies warns that the withdrawal of US/UK troops from Iraq, whilst vitally important, by itself is not enough, as the purpose of the military occupation of Iraq was to lay the foundations for the long term political and economic control of that Nation by the USA. The Neo-conservatives who originated this wicked war and occupation have demonstrated by building a new US Embassy in Baghdad, [see photo] which will house over 4000 employees, that the USA has long term strategic and economic reasons for remaining in Iraq; and Liz deals with this matter in some detail in this piece, It is well worth a read.


What now for Iraq?
By Liz Davies.

Half the population of Iraq is aged 16 or under. These children have lived their lives experiencing aggressive assaults on their country by the US and Britain. First, economic sanctions and then military invasion and occupation. Their parents grew up during the Iran-Iraq war when the West funded Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons, which he used on the battlefield against Iran and against the Kurds, and lived through the aborted invasion of Iraq following Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. Saddam's dictatorship was the product of the US-backed Ba'athist coup in 1968. If ever a country were entitled to reparations, Iraq is it.

The US-British occupation is starting to look politically untenable in the US and Britain. Gordon Brown is pulling the troops out of Basra. The Democratic presidential candidates broadly support phased withdrawals. Opinion polls show that a majority of US citizens want a full withdrawal of troops in the next year.

From the occupiers' point of view, much of their work has been done.

The purpose of the military occupation was to lay the foundations for continued political and economic control of Iraq. The presence of the new US embassy in Baghdad - the world's largest embassy, costing $600 million (£305m) and housing 4,000 staff, half of whom will be working in the areas of security and intelligence - is a message to the Iraqi people that the US intends long-term political domination of their country.

Multinational corporations are queuing up to rob Iraq of its oil resources through production-sharing agreements. The growth of sectarian conflict, systematically encouraged by the occupiers, has divided the political process along sectarian lines. And the brutality of the occupation, following years of brutal dictatorship, has resulted in a level of eve-ryday violence and criminality that is horrifying and unparalleled.

So it seems that the neocons had a plan for the future of Iraq and are carrying it through. They wouldn't admit that sectarian conflict and the appalling reality of everyday life for Iraqis was part of the plan, but it sure helps.

It allows the US and Britain to obtain some fat contracts providing weapons and training to the Iraqi government post-withdrawal. It prevents the organisation of grass-roots civil society, stops Iraqis from leading normal lives and thus reduces engagement in the political process, particularly for women. It allows the US and Britain to cherrypick so-called representative political parties, organised along sectarian lines. It reduces the possibility of Iraqis organising against the exploitation of their economic resources, rebuilding their shattered infrastructure or defining their own political priori-ties.

The millions of us who were opposed to the invasion have found thinking about a post-occupation Iraq difficult.

The peace movement has concentrated on the basic point that continued military occupation of Iraq is the problem, not the solution. The first and absolutely necessary solution is to withdraw all occupying troops and privatised military contractors and for Iraqis to rebuild their own country. Rightly, we've said this again and again in response to the argument that troops should stay to sort out the mess that the invasion and occupation created. We've also been motivated by the principle that the West and, in particular, the US and Britain, should not be telling Iraqis how to rebuild their country.

But the US and Britain are responsible, both in international law and morally.

Sanctions are estimated to have killed around one million Iraqis who would otherwise be alive today. By 2003, child malnutrition rates were 19 per cent and only 50 per cent of Iraqis had access to adequate water supplies. By 2007, the rate for child malnutrition had risen to 28 per cent and 70 per cent of Iraqis had no access to adequate water. Half the population are estimated to be out of work. Some 40 per cent of public servants are thought to have left the country. Two million Iraqis have fled to Syria or Jordan. Another two million are internally displaced.

After the first Gulf war, Iraq was made to pay reparations of $350 billion (£178bn) for Saddam's invasion of Ku-wait. The money was deducted from the oil-for-food programme, reducing it by one-third. If ordinary Iraqis had to pay for a short-lived military adventure by their unelected leader, shouldn't the US and British governments start to pay something for the devastation of Iraq carried out by our elected leaders?

In that context, a very useful 10-point plan has been put forward by the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (TFF), whose board member Hans von Sponeck was UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq before he resigned in protest at the effects of the sanctions.

Its Towards Peace In and With Iraq strategy refers to a similar 12-point plan from Dennis Kucinich, who is a left candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for president. TFF insists first on the withdrawal of foreign troops, mercenaries and bases.

Without withdrawal, nothing can happen. But civil society in Iraq has collapsed so much that concrete actions are needed to help the Iraqi people rebuild their country - a clean-up of military waste, including depleted uranium and cluster bombs which are littering Iraq; political withdrawal, including the closure of the US embassy; cancellation of Saddam Hussein's debt; compensation and reparations; retention of all oil resources and revenues; a truth and reconciliation process, including a public apology from the US and British governments to the Iraqi people; and assisting civil society exchanges giving opportunities for Iraqi students or allowing Western professionals to work in Iraq under the direction of Iraqi organisations etc.

TFF is very clear that the rebuilding of Iraq has international implications. It calls for the whole Middle East to be-come free of weapons of mass destruction - specifically, that Israel should disarm its nuclear arsenal - and for a long-term regional conference working toward a comprehensive settlement for the entire region, including the two core con-flicts of Iraq/the US-Britain and Palestine/Israel.

The most controversial proposal as far as the left is concerned is for an international peace-building mission for Iraq under UN leadership.

TFF is not calling for continued military occupation under another name. It specifies that no military personnel should be drawn from countries that have been occupiers, that there should be a low percentage of staff from Western-Christian parts of the world, that the UN should be working in partnership with the Arab League and the militarised element should be no more than 15 per cent.

Nevertheless, the UN oversaw sanctions, so even such a carefully designed UN mission would have a lot of bridge-building to do before Iraqis can feel that it is on their side.

Ultimately, whether or not any of these proposals are the right way forward will depend on the views of the Iraqi people. They have voted with their feet - and their lives - against the military occupation. If the Iraqi people oppose a UN-led semi-military mission, it will fail. On the other hand, sectarian conflict once created and encouraged by occupiers acquires a momentum of its own. Many on the left felt that the UN let down the Rwandan people when it refused to intervene in 1994. If the Iraqi people accept such a mission, it might help.

In Britain, Iraq Occupation Focus has been working on similar proposals to help support justice for Iraq. The TFF proposals form a useful discussion point. We need some of the radical NGOs, the peace movement, international soli-darity campaigns, women's groups etc, to come together to work through what we should be demanding from our gov-ernment.

Hands Off Iraqi Oil is already leading the way in its campaign against the privatisation of Iraq's resources.

Obviously, the two preconditions for any campaign for justice for Iraq must be that justice will never be achieved under occupation and that it is for the Iraqi people to tell the British people what they require by way of reparation.

But focusing just on withdrawal is not enough. The US and Britain remain responsible for the devastation inflicted on Iraq and cannot be allowed to withdraw and forget.

Liz Davies is a barrister and political activist. She is chairwoman of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers and active in Iraq Occupation Focus. She writes this column in a personal capacity.

Hands Off Iraqi Oil is mounting a day of action to End the Military and Economic Occupation on February 23. Meet at 12.30pm at Bond Street Tube, London.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index2.php/ex/examples
www.transnational.org
www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk
www.handsoffiraqioil.org.

Obituary: Jim Reddell, Seaman, soldier, local councillor, trade unionist and community activist.

I have included an obituary of Jim Reddell for a number of reasons, he was a dying breed in the British Labour Party, working class, trade unionist, absolutely loyal to the Party and Country through thick and thin, conservative with a small c, yet well to the left of most of todays Labour MPs. The likes of Jim were to be found in almost every Constituency LP in the land, up until Tony Blair became leader that is. Hard working, first rate local councillors who new the people they represented like the back of their hand, in their time they sorted out more personal problems than the average CAB advisor of today. Yet Blair and his ilk had no use for them and moved them aside to make way for middle class New Labour wide-boys/girls who were passing through and had no interest in the people that Labour had been founded to represent. Indeed alongside the demise of the likes of Jim Reddell came the demise of the British Labour Party as a vehicle for progressive change

I will also admit to a personal connection with Jim in that he lived in a village not far from where I now live and he was a member of the AEU which was the for-runner of my own Trade Union. For many years he was the only LP member of Brentwood Council, which in those days was a bastion of bourgeois snobbishness, and when he was named a Freeman of Brentwood, the first since 1040, we can only imagine the delight this brought to Brother Reddell when he accepted this offer, as he was working class, a trade unionist and proud of it.

Jim Reddell
By
Gordon Reddell

Seaman, soldier, local councillor, trade unionist and community activist Jim Reddell, who has died aged 97, made a difference to many people's lives. Born north of Oxford Street, London, he was placed in a children's home when he was 10 because his mother could not afford to keep him. At 12, he was apprenticed at a car factory, leaving to go to sea and qualifying as a ship's cook. A brief period of civilian employment followed before he joined the Essex regiment in 1932, going with them to the Saar region on the borders of France and Germany to help police the 1935 plebiscite. The following year, he married Edith McMurchie, who supported him in all his activities.

Earning stripes through his ability - and regularly losing them through his rebellious streak - Jim remained in Britain until D-day, when he went ashore with his regiment. After demobilisation, he got a fitter's job with Howard Rotovators in West Horndon, and joined the AEU.

Then began his activism. He became involved in the British Legion campaign to persuade local councils to rehouse returning soldiers. His love of sport saw him play cricket and football for the works teams, and he became a local councillor in Brentwood, Essex, often its only Labour representative. He was also a governor at Hedley Walter school, all the time assisting people with their problems.

Brentwood made him an honorary freeman in 1999, an honour, he was delighted to tell everyone, that had not been awarded since 1040. He became a Chelsea pensioner, proudly wearing the scarlet, and a visit to Hedley Walter school was a pleasure when they named a new technology block after him. Seeing the old republican squirm with delight in his wheelchair, when meeting the Queen at a Remembrance Day event, was almost embarrassing.

Jim died quickly and quietly, alert to the last. Edith predeceased him, in 1998, as did their daughter Evelyn, in 1997. He is survived by me, his son, six grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren and countless friends.

Operation Gladio and the Turkish deep State: arrests made.

For years Turkish civil liberties groups, writers, journalists, left-wing and islamic political activists and others have demanded of various governments that they expose the ‘deep state’ that at times of crises operates in conjunction with elements within the government bureaucracy, the armed forces, the police and the judiciary. At various time in recent history, when ever the Turkish government have been about to introduce progressive legislation, for example by making concessions to the Kurdish minority which would enable their democratic rights, the country has been rocked by a wave of bombings and/or politically motivated violence which have destabilized the government of the day.

Many Leftists, academics and political analysts have come to believe the membership of this ‘Deep State’ originated in the cold war period when the US security services and military organized ‘stay behind’ units of paramilitary organizations within most Nato countries, under a program called Operation Gladio. There purpose was to attack and work against the occupying forces of the USSR if the Red Army ever overran western Europe and Turkey. The blow back from such stay behind groups originally came to light in Italy, where a scandal erupted over Operation Gladio when it was thought it had been used to undermine Italian democracy in the 1970s when the Italian Communist Party looked like it might gain a share of power.*

Many people believe the Turkish ‘Deep State’ is linked to this clandestine phenomenon and functions similarly to Operation Gladio. In fact, many analysts believe such networks of groups in Turkey, which are referred to as the "deep state," are remnants of the Turkish arm of the actual Gladio.

After it became pretty clear the ‘Deep State’ in Turkey was working against the present AK Party government led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, he instigated an enquiry into these groups. It came to fruition this week when Erdogan announced the enquiry had resulted in the police arresting dozens of people, including ex senior army officers and lawyers. Only time will tell whether Erdoğan has the determination to flush out the ‘Deep State’ and in the process bring an end the Turkish state being linked to criminal-military gangs.

So far the suspects arrested have not been charged, but most who have knowledge of how the deep state operates agree that the thirty-three people arrested are members of a nationalist group, Ergenekon and are part of a shadowy network that has masterminded many violent attacks in Turkey.

The discovery is not the first of its kind, in the past two years the country's security forces have unearthed a number of clandestine gangs countrywide. These groups, known to the public by names such as Atabeyler, Sauna and Ümraniye and now Ergenekon, have apparently tried to create chaos in the country at crucial times such as last year's presidential election. However, despite the fact that all of these organizations were uncovered, with many of their members being publicly named, no significant punishment has yet been imposed on the members of these criminal organizations.

Professor Cengiz Aktar, of İstanbul's Bahçeşehir University, told Reuters "All democrats in Turkey have been looking forward to this sort of action by the government, Everybody is now hoping something will happen but people remain very suspicious."
"This is a very important test for the government, they will be judged by this. If these people are guilty and are convicted, it will be very good for Turkish democracy as well as for our efforts to join the European Union."

Despite İstanbul's chief prosecutor announcing that earlier bans on reporting about the investigation remained in place, all Turkish newspapers, with the exception of a few ultra-nationalist ones, covered the operation. "Never gone this deep before," read the newspaper Yeni Şafak's headline yesterday. "The state takes on the deep state," Sabah said in one of its headlines. "A deep blow to a deep gang," said the Star. "Operation against coup supporters," said Radikal, highlighting the military ties of the group.

The Deep State is also suspected of involvement in a number of violent attacks in recent years, including the killing of an Italian priest in 2006, the assassination a year ago of Armenian political activist and journalist Hrant Dink and the murder of three Christians in the city of Malatya last year.

The suspects were detained in İstanbul and other regions of Turkey in dawn raids on Tuesday, the culmination of an eight-month operation, the police spokesperson said. “The police have been observing the actions of the suspects for over eight months as part of an investigation into a house full of explosives and ammunition found in İstanbul's Ümraniye district eight months ago.”

Meanwhile, four more people were taken into custody yesterday in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır, as part of the same operation. Among the four, at least two are members of the ultra-nationalist Association for the Union of Patriotic Forces (VKGB), whose leaders are already under arrest facing several charges for crimes ranging from theft, felony, blackmail, and extortion. These arrest’s may be relevant as it is thought some of the recent bombings in Turkey which have been laid at the door of the Kurdish PKK may have been the work of the ‘deep state’.

Amongst the the thirty three people taken into custody are Veli Küçük, a retired major general who is also the alleged founder of an illegal intelligence unit in the Gendarmerie, the existence of which is denied by officials; the controversial ultranationalist lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz, who filed countless suits against Turkish writers and intellectuals like Orhan Pamuk; Fikret Karadağ, a retired army colonel; Güler Kömürcü, a columnist for the leading daily newspaper Akşam ; and Sami Hoştan, a key figure in an investigation launched after a notorious car accident in 1996, in which a senior policeman, a convicted hitman who was a fugitive, a member of Parliament and a well-known gangster were all killed whilst traveling in the same car. Ali Yasak, linked to the figures in the Susurluk car crash was also detained in the operation on Tuesday as was Fuat Turgut, the lawyer of a key suspect in the Hrant Dink murder.

The operation also allegedly revealed that the Ergenekon group was preparing for attacks and assassinations directed at political figures. Documents obtained by the police during the raid confirm that in the past two years the group seriously considered assassinating Osman Baydemir, a leading member of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) who is currently mayor of the mainly Kurdish southeastern province Diyarbakır.

The information for this blog came from Radikal, Zaman and Hurriyet.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

Israeli State perpetrating grave crimes in Gaza.

It is high time the world woke up to the crimes the Israeli government is committing against the people who live in the blockaded Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. When those who are party to these crimes are eventually brought to book, none us will be able to say we new nothing about the crimes the Israeli government are perpetrating in Gaza, as they have filled our TV screens nightly and make no mistake crimes they are, as to cut off vital supplies of electricity and fuel (and therefore water, since the pumps cannot work), as well as essential foodstuffs, medicines and other humanitarian supplies amounts to a collective punishment, which under the Fourth Geneva Convention constitutes a clear and unequivocal war crime.*

This situation is made far worse by the fact that the government of the USA has actively encourage Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip and those governments who make up the EU Nations have acquiesced to this war crime, which the Israeli administration has taken as being given a green light.

That some Jewish people are participating in what amounts to having created a massive ghetto for the Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip cannot but break your heart, for the Jews themselves know more than most the suffering that is inflicted by corralling and containing people by force of arms within a small confined geographical space.** It is time the whole world demanded that this abominable injustice and crime is brought to an end. No matter how small we all have a part we can play in ending a blockade and occupation that shames us all.

Below are three URL’s
1/ The Fourth Geneva Convention that sets out in law that collective punishment is a crime.
2/ A call by a group of Israelis for Urgent Action to be taken to end the blockade of the Gaza Strip.
3/ An article by Karen Koning AbuZayd, commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, in which she writes about the desperate plight of the people of the Gaza Strip and clearly states that they are victims of a war crime.

Ken Livingstone: British media smear London's mayor

A recent Channel 4 Dispatches TV program which was presented by Martin Bright, of the left of centre weekly magazine the New Statesman, was little more than a crude attempt to smear London’s left-wing Mayor Ken Livingstone. Bright’s accusations were straight out of a 1980s Thatcherite ‘smear a lefty’ handbook. All that was different in Bright’s program was that he had replaced being in hoch to the Soviet Union with a tiny cabal of Trotskyites, and thrown in Hugo Chavez for good measure. The accusations Bright makes about Socialist Action would be laughable if Livingstone were not facing re-election this May, for the days when Trotskyists sent a chill down the ruling elites spines are long gone.

Bright and Channel 4’s pathetic attempt to claim the Dispatches program was fair and balanced reporting came unstuck when on the day the program was due to be aired, the London Evening Standard published an article by Martin Bright which called on “all Londoners with a progressive bone in their bodies not to vote for Ken Livingstone in the forthcoming mayoral elections”.* To see just how unbalanced Mr Brights opinion of Livingstone is it is worth quoting the paragraph in full,

“I now believe Ken Livingstone is a disgrace to his office and not fit to be Mayor of London. Any Londoner with a progressive bone in his or her body should not consider voting for him in the forthcoming mayoral elections. Black, white or Asian, gay or straight, Muslim, Christian or none of the above: this is not a man who deserves your support. Writing as the political editor of Britain's leading Left-leaning magazine, I believe the time has come for the Labour Party to drop him as its candidate.”

Whilst it is perfectly proper for a left of centre journalist to criticize a prominent left wing politician, indeed at times it is a duty, but when doing so if they wish to maintain their political credibility they must take into account who might gain from any criticism they may make. With the 1st of May 2008 London Mayoral election campaign about to begin and to-date as Ken Livingstone is the only left-wing candidate in the field, one must question Martin Bright’s motives in going public at this time with his criticism of Livingstone.

At one point Brights criticism of Livingstone in the Program were not dissimilar to a Monty Python type sketch about a group of middle class bores chatting over a whiskey in the 19th hole. Not only would this fragment have left Churchill spinning in his urn, it also made the program maker look a complete hypocrite when he went on to claim that Livingstone’s gofers were smearing people.

As to Brights claims about the deal that Livingstone cut over oil with Hugo Chavez I feel Tim Oxon best summed this up in a post to the indie e-list,

“The partnership with Chávez is a stunt but the cost to the people
of Venezuela is neither here nor there. They have the satisfaction of
 knowing that Londoners have gone cap in hand to them for handouts. Also it
 is good for us to know that we are in debt to a third-world country for 
alleviating the lot of some metropolitan old people in a way in which our 
own government has failed to achieve. And it was good for Chávez to know 
that he has friends in London in high places”.

To sum up, Ken Livingstone is a career politician who has always put himself first, however to his credit on most of the big political issues that have arisen in the last 35 years he has come down on the side of the dispossessed and the economically poor. On issues like the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the troubles in the north of Ireland he has been to the fore in condemning UK governments policies and there are not many many mainstream politicos one can say that about these days.

Although when Ken decided on purple as his campaign color in his first bid to become London’s mayor, I new he had no intention of becoming a beacon for political change in the UK nor a lighting rod for a new Left Party, as it became clear his priority was always re-admittance to the Labour Party, for underneath Ken is a very conservative fellow and he is well aware that it is this which makes millions of working class people identify with him.  

Never the less it is impossible to see how the working class people of London will benefit by the main opposition candidate Boris Johnson being elected Mayor on May 1st. He is a member of the reactionary and elitist clique of ex public schoolboys who have congregated around the Tory leader David Cameron. In the not to distant past Johnson claimed he had difficulty in understanding why people were “stunned” when he made insulting remarks about the working classes of Liverpool and he acted in a similar manner after making racist comments about the people of Papua New Guinea.


* http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23433325-details/I+now+believe+Ken+is+a+disgrace+to+his+office/article.do

Bobby Fischer, his Mum and the Grunwick picket line.

Like many people I am an avid reader of the 'letters pages' which are published in the daily newspapers, I especially like the Guardian and Daily Telegraph's. I often marvel at a letter that cuts to the core of its subject matter in a single paragraph, sheer class. Then there are those like the example I republish below from Graham Taylor which reinforces one's own opinion, yet in the process manages to tell us something new and interesting.


Monday January 21, 2008
The Guardian

Your reporter Stephen Moss (Death of a madman driven sane by chess, January 19) mentions that Bobby Fischer's mother was "an immensely strong-willed woman". In 1977, standing on the Grunwick picket line in north-west London, I recognised Regina Fischer and introduced myself. "Ah yes," she said grimly, "you're the one who writes all those horrible things about Bobby." I explained that I would be delighted to learn that Bobby's alleged views on the inferiority of women, the evils of socialism and the duplicity of the Jews had been totally misrepresented, and I would be sure to get published whatever she told me.

She considered this offer carefully. After some thought, she handed me a slice of the orange she was eating and said: "I forgive you." She added some words on the significance of vegetarianism and the meaningfulness of giving fruit. "But now," she said with absolute conviction, "I will stop this bus."
For months, hundreds of pickets, including Arthur Scargill and the Yorkshire miners, had tried to stop the strike-breaking Grunwick bus from crossing the picket line, but without success, for massed police lines held back the pickets as the bus drove through the factory gates at speed. Some time later the bus appeared, as it did every day, cleaving its way through the enraged crowd. As it reached the gate, Regina threw herself in front of its wheels. Braking sharply, it ground to a halt. This was the only time during the historic Grunwick strike that the infamous bus was stopped by a demonstrator.


Graham Taylor

London

Blogging the Qur'an: Is religion still the Opium of the People.

The Guardian Unlimited section, Comment is Free, has just started a year long project in which each week, writer, broadcaster and cultural critic Ziauddin Sardar will blog a different verse or theme of the Qur'an. Guardian columnist Madeleine Bunting will help frame the debate and whilst readers cannot directly blog questions and opinions, they can email questions, their queries, etc.*

We are only at the beginning of this project and it has already stalled somewhat and rightly so in my view, as Mr Sardar is refusing to engage with those of us who have raised what he clearly regards as prickly issues and by doing so has partially negated the whole point of the exercise.

My own bone of contention with Mr Sardar has been over his claim that if it is to be understood perfectly, the Qur’an must be read in its original language. However if one takes into account the Qur’an was written in ancient Arabic, the vast majority of Muslims will be excluded from reading the book as they cannot understand nor speak that language. Incidentally this does explain why in most Madrases the Qur’an is learnt to memory by rota. I also raised the point with Mr Sadar that in countries in which Arabic is not spoken, few Muslims even understand the call to pray beyond what they have been told, as it is broadcast in Arabic, ancient or modern I know not.**

Whilst there are serious theological question to be asked about the claim that the Qur'an can only be properly understood in ancient Arabic, that is for others. My own gripe is as there are no official translations of the Qur'an, indeed translation is positively discouraged by Islamic scholars and religious authorities, This places immense power in the hands of the aforementioned people and those they serve on earth. For to leave all interpretation of the Qur’an in such a comparatively small group of individuals hands, cannot but keep the masses in ignorance, for every word from within the Qur’an, a book many hold dear, comes to them second hand and more often than not from what I would regard as a tainted source due to their additional agendas.

Indeed what Blogging the Qur’an has done to date is to lay out starkly just why progressive socialists and atheists should actively oppose organized religion. I am not suggesting here we should refuse to work with people who have a religious faith, far from it, nor should we act like a bull in a china shop, but we should put our point polity as to why we believe that religion is still the opium of the people.


* http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/quran/

** Emails to Blogging the Qur’an, http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/quran/2008/01/your_say_1.html

***Emails to Blogging the Qur’an, http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/quran/2008/01/your_say_5.html

Capital Punishment: Those who advocate it search for a "humane" way to kill courtesy of the BBC.

By chance I watched a TV program the other night which cut me cold as I found it not only distasteful, admittedly not unusual these days, but it was also a warning from the past that we ignore at our peril, although I am sure it was not intended to be so. The former right-wing Tory politician and now Media luvvie Michael Portillo, fronted a program in the Horizon series entitled How To kill a Human Being. * However this was not to be any human being, but those unfortunate souls who make up the populations of the Death Rows that shamefully exist in those countries that still carry out capital punishment.

Mr Portillo supports capital punishment, so it was hardly surprising that the film totally ignored the morality of the State taking the lives of its citizens when it is pretty obvious to most thinking beings that the criminal justice system, by its very nature is far from infallible, thus if capital punishment exists, amongst the guilty innocent people will also be executed.

Although Portillo never said it, I could not help thinking the search he was engaged in had been partially motivated by the fact that a number of US States who previously favored Capital punishment, have halted it because their judiciary regarded the current methods of execution as being unconstitutionally cruel and unusual barbarous, thus against the US Constitution.

Thus if Capital Punishment is to continue in the USA a more ‘humane’ [Portillo’s word not mine] and less painful method of killing people must be found which will be acceptable to those Supreme Court Justices who interpret the US Constitution. In the program we saw Portillo trooping around various research establishments in which scientists were engaged in scientific endeavors to find a painless and humane’ [that word again] way to kill living beings. Of course in reality none can exist where capital punishment is concerned as the individual about to be executed is well aware of the fate that awaits them.

Even animals when facing death seem to instinctively know their fate, as I learnt when a child living in a small village in which there was a slaughter house situated, from which cattle regularly used to bolt for freedom and rampage up the main street.

Watching the scientists in these research establishments discussing their work coldly whilst Portillo showed clips of them experimenting with poison gas on helpless animals, it suddenly hit me that the scientists who worked for I.G. Farben must have behaved in a similar manner when the German chemical industry was asked to provide a gas which could be used to kill people in the extermination chambers of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. I.G. Farben’s Scientists eventual produced Zyklon B which the company sold to the German State at a hefty profit.

At the end of the war none of I.G. Farben’s scientists where brought before the Nuremberg war crimes court and tried for producing Zyklon B and whilst the companies senior directors were brought before the Court it was not for selling Zyklon B to the Nazi State. ’They were only doing their jobs’ I presume was used as a justification for allowing these scientists to get away with conspiring to mass murder. Looking back it seems to me that this was a grave mistake on the part of the Allies, for if these people had been prosecuted, todays generation of scientists might be much more reluctant to be engaged in research which amounts to much the same thing, but on a lesser scale.

As to Portillo and his new career as a TV personality, if this film is any thing to go by, I can only presume it is a version of the brown envelope that these days all loyal gofers of Capital are awarded on retiring from their day job as a tool of big business; and Portillo's new career should be looked at in the same manner as most of us view Tony Blair’s recent employment by J P Morgan, i.e. with absolute contempt for both the individual concerned and the Corporation that offers them the back hander.

*BBC 2 Horizon 15.01.08]

Obituary: Himie Bernadt, freedom fighter who used his degree in the law as his Armalite.

Obituary: Himie Bernadt
By
Denis Herbstein

Himie Bernadt, the attorney who protected Nelson Mandela from the vicious prison regime on Robben Island, has died, aged 98. By the time he was forced to retire in 2001, no longer able to drive into his Cape Town office, he had become South Africa's longest-serving lawyer.

A man of good sense and few words, always softly spoken, Bernadt was born into an immigrant family in Pretoria, the son of a struggling baker. At eight, he endured jibes of "Jood, Jood" (Jew boy) from Afrikaner classmates, until one day he lashed out and was thereafter left alone. After his mother died, the family migrated to Cape Town, and Bernadt moved in with a better-off uncle. He flourished at South African College school before qualifying as a lawyer in 1931.

To begin with his practice covered the rough and tumble of African life - from company law to illicit diamond buying. The first trade union he worked for was a Muslim women's association. He appeared regularly - and often pro bono - for migrant workers arrested for not having a pass. From the early 1960s, the security chief Colonel Roussouw was forever trying to nail Bernadt. But he was never arrested, or, worse, banned under the Suppression of Communism Act, which would have ended his right to practice. He was too independent to join a political party, although his wife Jean, a member of the South African Communist party, was detained during the state of emergency that followed the Sharpeville shootings in 1960.
The civil rights advocate (and now South African judge) Albie Sachs said that Bernadt worked day in and day out for those in the underground and under banning orders, giving of his best whether for unknown migrant workers or well-known white students. When, in 1964, Sachs himself was detained under the 90-day law, Bernadt succeeded in breaking through the web of isolation with a morale-boosting court application that allowed the detainee reading and writing materials.

In 1963, against the odds, Bernadt secured an inquest into the death of Looksmart Ngudle, the first known ANC guerrilla fighter to die in a police cell. Another battle in 1969 resulted in an inquest for Imam Abdullah Haron, a Pan-Africanist Congress member also murdered in detention.

After the 1964 Rivonia trial, at which Mandela was among those jailed for life, his attorney Joel Joffe (now Lord Joffe of Liddington) asked Bernadt to handle his client's affairs on Robben island. At first the prisoners were almost totally isolated, enduring strict censorship and with little family contact. Bernadt's firm represented Mandela when he was charged with breaking prison regulations and again when the Law Society of South Africa attempted to strike the ANC leader, also a lawyer, off the roll. "You were with us in those days," Mandela reminded Bernadt after his release.

Despite the political traumas of South Africa, the Bernadts, who had married in 1940, managed a lively social round. It was at their home in Kenilworth, near Cape Town, that I listened to Himie describe a visit to Mandela, by then transferred to Pollsmoor prison, during which Afrikaner warders had stood up when the prisoner entered the room - leaving no doubt that a new era loomed for South Africa. Albie Sachs said: "One reason we have a marvellous constitution today is that people like Himie Bernadt kept alive the legality of the law in the most terrible circumstances."

Bernadt is survived by Jean and their children, Marian, Ian and Morris.

· Himan 'Himie' Bernadt, civil rights lawyer, born December 21 1909; died December 25 2007

The dead cry out for justice; The UK government must answer for its crimes in Ireland.

Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission

Mick Hall • A version of this article was first published in The Blanket 14.01.08.*

It has become increasingly clear ever since the Democratic Unionist Party led administration was established at Stormont, that there is no political will within the leading political parties of the United Kingdom and Ireland to work towards establishing a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission that would look at the north of Irelands 'dirty war', especially the criminal collusion that took place between United Kingdom’s Security Forces and Irish para-militaries.

For the Westminster based political parties, scrutiny of the British 'secret state' as exemplified by the security services has always been out of bounds. At best a Parliamentary committee will periodically look at the work of the security services. The members of this Committee are selected due to their longevity as parliamentarians, past links with the military, or worse, the very security services they are tasked to investigate. Thus no one is surprised when the members of this committee merely tinker around the edges and offer up a report that give the boys and girls at Spook Central an 'A+'.

If one takes into account that the UK Security Services down the years failed to see the threat the Argentine military posed to the UK Protectorate the Falkland Islands; ‘allegedly’ reported wrongly to the British Prime Minister Tony Blair that Saddam Hussein's regime had WMDs and that British troops would be welcomed as liberators if they became part of GW Bush’s invasion force; plus if one then factors in at one time the head of the MI6 counter-espionage department which worked against the Soviet Union was Kim Philby, who went on to end his career as a KGB General and holder of the Order of Lenin. One might have thought at the very least a little more diligence would have been more appropriate when overseeing the security services. But such is the obscure Byzantine ways of the class ridden British Establishment.

As to the north of Ireland's political parties, many of whom represent politically the victims of UK State collusion, they are little better. The Unionists secretly regard any collusion in criminality that took place as being a necessary price to be paid for defeating and bringing to heel the Provisional Republican Movement, indeed to a man they secretly support such blatant breaking of the law whilst publicly proclaiming they are the guardians of the rule of law.

The SDLP is far too timid to go out on a limb over this matter as it is not how they operate, still believing after all that has happened in the north of Ireland that back channels are the way to conduct 'civilized' political business when dealing with the UK State, which is sadly something that has also infected the upper echelons of SF.

As to Sinn Fein, whilst I have no doubt the majority of its membership wish to see the British murder machine in Ireland exposed and brought to account, their leaders, having signed the GFA, are like a fly caught on an old fashioned fly-paper, believing they have no option but to concede this one to the British State, as they are fearful of what might be revealed about contacts between the security services and leading Republicans if any TJ@RC was to seriously look into the dirty war. When periodically SF leaders fail to restrain themselves due to pressure from below and start making public statements about the need for a collusion enquiry, the British Government quickly swat them down by retaliating with a leak to some opportunist or insane Unionist politico, who then threatens to name some unfortunate Sinner as a long time British security force informer.

So does this mean a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission is dead in the water as many commentators now claim? Not at all. What the aforementioned means is that the responsibility for bringing any TJ&RC into being rests where it always has, with civil society, both in Ireland, the UK, EU and USA. My friend Anthony McIntyre is mistaken when he wrote in a recent Blanket article that

"It is hard to see how the issue of truth is going to be resolved. The stark answer is that it won't be. The current British government would need to be of the same mind as the present Argentinean government which has taken a strong stand against the record of the 1976-83 military junta and is demonstrably prepared to grasp the nettle of state murder and torture".

For what Anthony failed to mention was that previous Argentinean Governments were just as hostile when it came to looking at the dark years of the Military Junta in Argentina as the current British government is to a TJ&RC. It was only continuous pressure from Argentine Civil Society that brought about a change in government policy, beginning with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who three decades ago began their protest in Buenos Aires in support of the victims of the Junta's dirty war.

Are those who have been the victims of UK State collusion in criminality any less worthy than their Argentine counterparts? Of course not, nor should we underestimate the great reluctance and hostility any campaign for TJ&RC will face from the UK State and its Irish political acolytes. But the struggle for human rights and state accountability has never been easy and has always been paved with governmental mantraps and diversions.

But by mentioning the Argentine example Anthony McIntyre has done us a service, for what it shows is solidarity, persistence and bloody mindedness can achieve progress if not tiny miracles. For time and again the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo were told by the nay-sayers that they could never succeed, and they were threatened and bullied by the representatives of the Argentinean State and various political parties who were complicit in the Military Junta's dirty war. But succeed they did.

We should also not over look the fact that like its Argentinean counterpart, the campaign for an Irish TJ&RC may well take time to achieve its aims and during that period many of the politicians who are currently placing road blocks in its path will gradually be leaving the political stage. This leaves the way open for others, possibly more opened minded and less tainted by the past, to take their place and thus it is essential that when this generational change occurs, a strong, vocal TJ&RC Campaign comes knocking on their door.

The struggle for a TJ&RC is part of the broader struggle for the United Democratic Socialist Republic. For with the GFA, the British State is doing all it can to turn the clock back and rewrite its brutal history in the six counties. An ongoing campaign to expose the levels of UK collusion in criminality during the long war is necessary to expose those who choose to acquiesce to the revisionist historical viewpoint. There are those who will and do claim that the military occupation of the six counties during the long war was all about enforcing the rule of law. The very presence of an active TJ&RC campaign and the British State's refusal to establish such a Commission will tell the world that British claims about being the guardians of the rule of law in Ireland are nothing less than historical hogwash designed to conceal the real truth.

* http://lark.phoblacht.net/

A list of the national security and foreign policy advisers to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Below is a list of those who advise the two leader Democratic Party Presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on national security and foreign policy. What it proves is what a small pond presidential candidates fish in when it comes to foreign policy and national security advisers. I could be mistaken but all of the individuals appear to come from within the US foreign policy establishment; and if one were to be looking for radical alternatives or solutions to the problems the incoming President will undoubtedly face, none of these people are likely to provide him/her with them.*


HILLARY CLINTON

Madeleine K. Albright, President Clinton’s secretary of state and now chairperson of the National Democratic Institute, foreign policy adviser

Samuel R. Berger, President Clinton’s national security adviser and now a principal at business consultancy Stonebridge, foreign policy adviser

Lt. Gen. Daniel William Christman, a former West Point superintendent and now senior vice president for international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, foreign policy adviser

Gen. Wesley K. Clark, President Clinton’s Kosovo commander and now a Democratic fundraiser, endorsed Sen. Clinton Sept. 15

John H. Dalton, President Clinton’s Navy secretary and now president of the Financial Services Roundtable’s Housing Policy Council, veterans and military retirees for Hillary

Lee Feinstein, a deputy in President Clinton’s State Department, national security coordinator.

Leslie H. Gelb; president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former New York Times correspondent and a former State and Defense Department official, informal adviser

Richard C. Holbrooke, President Clinton’s UN ambassador and broker of the Dayton Peace Accords (and now a Washington Post columnist), foreign policy adviser.

Martin S. Indyk, President Clinton’s ambassador to Israel and now director of Brookings’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, foreign policy adviser.

Gen. John M. ("Jack") Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff who co-crafted the Iraq "surge" and is now a military analyst (sometimes for ABC news), military issues adviser.

Lt. Gen. Claudia J. Kennedy, former deputy chief of staff for intelligence, veterans and military retirees for Hillary
Lt. Gen. Donald L. Kerrick, President Clinton’s deputy national security adviser, organizes meetings of retired officers
Col. Andrew F. Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, briefed Hillary Clinton as well as Sen. John McCain and Gov. Bill Richardson.

Vali Nasr, Naval Postgraduate School professor, Middle East adviser.

Michael O'Hanlon, Brookings senior fellow and former Congressional Budget Office defense and foreign policy analyst, supporter Rep. (and retired Vice Adm.) Joseph Sestak, veterans and military retirees for Hillary.

Andrew Shapiro, Sen. Clinton’s Senate foreign policy staffer.

Jeffrey H. Smith, former CIA general counsel and now a partner leading the public policy and government contracts group of law firm Arnold & Porter, national security adviser.

Strobe Talbott, Brookings president, informal adviser.

Togo D. West, President Clinton’s secretary for veterans affairs and former secretary of the Army, veterans and military retirees for Hillary.

Former Amb. Joseph C. Wilson IV, the half of the Plamegate couple who criticized the administration for using questionable evidence to promote the Iraq war, endorsed Sen. Clinton July 16.

BARACK OBAMA

Former Amb. Jeffrey Bader, President Clinton’s National Security Council Asia specialist and now head of Brookings’s China center, national security adviser.

Mark Brzezinski, President Clinton’s National Security Council Southeast Europe specialist and now a partner at law firm McGuireWoods, national security adviser.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser and now a Center for Strategic and International Studies counselor and trustee and frequent guest on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, foreign policy adviser.

Richard A. Clarke, President Clinton and President George W. Bush’s counterterrorism czar and now head of Good Harbor Consulting and an ABC News contributor, sometimes Obama adviser.

Gregory B. Craig, State Department director of policy planning under President Clinton and now a partner at law firm Williams & Connolly, foreign policy adviser.

Roger W. Cressey, former National Security Council counterterrorism staffer and now Good Harbor Consulting president and NBC News consultant, has advised Obama but says not exclusive.

Ivo H. Daalder, National Security Council director for European affairs during President Clinton’s administration and now a Brookings senior fellow, foreign policy adviser.

Richard Danzig, President Clinton’s Navy secretary and now a Center for Strategic and International Analysis fellow, national security adviser.

Philip H. Gordon, President Clinton’s National Security Council staffer for Europe and now a Brookings senior fellow, national security adviser.

Maj. Gen. J. (Jonathan) Scott Gration, a 32-year Air Force veteran and now CEO of Africa anti-poverty effort Millennium Villages, national security adviser and surrogate.

Lawrence J. Korb, assistant secretary of defense from 1981-1985 and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, informal foreign policy adviser.

W. Anthony Lake, President Clinton’s national security adviser and now a professor at Georgetown’s school of foreign service, foreign policy adviser.

James M. Ludes, former defense and foreign policy adviser to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and now executive director of the American Security Project, national security adviser.

Robert Malley, President Clinton’s Middle East envoy and now International Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa program director, national security adviser.

Gen. Merrill A. ("Tony") McPeak, former Air Force chief of staff and now a business consultant, national security adviser.

Denis McDonough, Center for American Progress senior fellow and former policy adviser to then-Senate Democratic Leader.

Tom Daschle, foreign policy coordinator.

Samantha Power, Harvard-based human rights scholar and Pulitzer Prize winning writer, foreign policy adviser.

Susan E. Rice, President Clinton’s Africa specialist at the State Department and National Security Council and now a Brookings senior fellow, foreign policy adviser.

Bruce O. Riedel, former CIA officer and National Security Council staffer for Near East and Asian affairs and now a Brookings senior fellow, national security adviser.

Dennis B. Ross, President Clinton’s Middle East negotiator and now a Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow, Middle East adviser.

Sarah Sewall, deputy assistant secretary of defense for peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance during President Clinton’s administration and now director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, national security adviser.

Daniel B. Shapiro, National Security Council director for legislative affairs during President Clinton’s administration and now a lobbyist with Timmons & Company, Middle East adviser.

Mona Sutphen, former aide to President Clinton’s National Security adviser Samuel R. Berger and to United Nations ambassador Bill Richardson and now managing director of business consultancy Stonebridge, national security adviser.

* http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/documents/the-war-over-the-wonks.html

Socialist activist receives public apology from the Times and columnist David Aaronovitch.

I was especially pleased that Tony Greenstein, who is a tenacious fighter for the rights of the unemployed and the Palestinians, has managed to force an apology out of the London Times and its columnist David Aaronovitch . Both played a part in an attempt to smear Tony as a racist and anti semite when they allowed Aaronovitch’s Times Blog to be used as the vehicle for derogatory and untrue remarks about Tony Greenstein. Unfortunately for them Greenstein noticed the Blog was moderated thus the offensive comments in question could not have appeared on the Times web site without it being authorized by either Aaronovtch or a Times employee who had been delegated to moderate the blog. Hence Tony put to good use the legal degree he was awarded long ago but had kept in his back pocket for situations when the gofers of Capital forget their manners.

The funny thing is I myself had a similar incident only this week when someone posted a comment on the excellent Cedar Lounge Revolution* blog claiming I had published racist comment on Organized Rage. Fortunately for me the blog master at CLR immediately checked out whether there was any truth in this individuals claim and when he found there was not he removed the offensive comments forthwith.

However I understand Tony’s plight and congratulate him for not letting the matter lie, not least because I have noticed a tendency by some of the left’s political opponents to smear leftists in the comment sections of blogs, in the full knowledge that these comments will go into the internet archive and gain a life of their own. Neil Clarke** has fought successfully a running battle with right wingers who made an attempt to smear him with his employers etc. This type of behavior is especially prevalent amongst the more disreputable Zionist organizations and as Tony is as I have said a tenacious battler alongside the Palestinians he would undoubtedly have come within their sights. As the leftist slogan goes a victory for one is a victory for us all.

David Aaronovitch public apology to Tony Greenstein,

“ At the beginning of July, an item was posted on my weblog which stated that Tony Greenstein had been "intimidating" or "harassing Jew s' at NUS conferences for 30 years. Tony Greenstein believed that this accused him of committing an offense of incitement to racial hatred under s.3A of the Race Relations Act 1976 and that it also implied that he is anti-Semitic.
While Tony Greenstein and I have had our differences, notably at NUS conferences, neither I nor The Times meant to suggest that he has been breaking the law for thirty years or that he is anti-Semitic. Our apologies for any embarrassment caused.”

* http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/
** http://neilclark66.blogspot.com/

Obituary: Philip Agee, international socialist, revolutionary, political activist and former CIA officer.

The death of Philip Agee, international socialist, revolutionary, political activist and former CIA officer in the field saddened me greatly, as Agee has for many years been a great hero of mine not least because he epitomized two of my basic beliefs, that given the opportunity people can change no matter what their education and upbringing and those sons of the middle class who side with the dispossessed are often amongst the finest people who walk the earth.

Agee came from a well off middle class Florida family, whilst at the USA’s most prominent Roman Catholic University Notre Dame, he was head hunted by someone in the faculty who acted as a spotter for the US Central Intelligence agency. [CIA] Thus his future career path was well marked out, approximately two decades in the field and then back to Langley Virginia as a well paid, powerful spook bureaucrat. He turned his back on this world when in his own words he, “fell in love with a woman who thought Che Guevara was the most wonderful man in the world." It was this mixture of commitment and romance, which often characterizes the best of revolutionaries, which led Agee to break from his class background and set him on the road that led to a lifetime of struggle against exploitation and oppression. Which just goes to show how the direction people take in their lives often depends on chance meetings.

After Philip left the CIA, by writing his book ‘Inside the Company’ he set the benchmark for all spooks who claim to have left the security services and crossed over to the side of the ‘wretched of the earth’. For in his book Agee names in chronological order every CIA agent, imformer and assets of influence he had ever come across in South and Central America, at CIA headquarters in Langley and across the wider world. He was adamant that the best weapon the left had against organizations like the CIA was to have trust in the masses and act openly at all times. He lived up to this by refusing to pass the information he held to intelligence services who were sympathetic to his plight and instead insisted on placing this information within the public domain for all to read.

Ever since Agree broke with the CIA and acted in this manner there have been a number of Western intelligence service employees who have claimed to have done likewise. However the overwhelming majority have refused to act in the same principled manner as Agee and make public the names of their former colleagues and the assets they ran. Which cannot but throw doubt about there legitimacy, for Philip had set the gold standard when it comes to spooks going over the wall.


For this act he paid a considerable price, not since Leon Trotsky was forced by Stalin into exile has an individual been hounded across the planet in the same manner as Philip Agee was. He could have found sanctuary within the Soviet Block but he was determined not to, as he understood clearly that this was the CIAs greatest wish, as it would have allowed it to portray him as a traitor in the pay of the Russians.

Agee eventually came to England in the hope that with a Labour government in power he might find a safe haven. He was mistaken as the Callaghan Labour Government hounded and in the end deported him, although not before his case became a cause-celeb which enabled Agee and his supporters to place the CIA firmly in the dock of public opinion, both in the UK and the USA.

I remember to this day where I was when I first read the news that Philip Agee had been deported, I was on a London tube train traveling back home from a morning on the Grunwick picket line. I found it a bitter pill to swallow, although without knowing it, it was to be the first of many as right wing Labourism was replaced by Thatcherism. Agee after being deported from the UK made a number of attempts to find sanctuary in Western Europe, he eventually married Giselle Roberge which gave him the right to remain in Germany. He spent the last years of his life between Hamburg and Cuba from where he continue to rage against the Great Satan’s foreign policy and never once doubted he had made the correct decision when he broke from the CIA and exposed its evil doings. Philip Agee, a real working class hero.

A full biography of Philip Agee can be found here,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2238063,00.html

Barack Obama: A candidate straight out of Wall Street central casting

It is to early in the campaign for me to get to excited about the 2008 US Presidential election, but it is interesting how the worlds media seems to be wetting itself over Barack Obama, which in itself should be a bit of a wake up call for all progressives. In my opinion Obama lacks political gravitas and seems to me to be in the mould of the European clean skin politicians that have emerged in the last decade, such as Angela Merkel, Tony Blair and David Cameron, Obama’s language is also very similar, slick but meaningless politically. I noticed he has refused to come out in favor of universal health care free at the point of need. If one takes into account that for many US families, health care costs is one if not the most pressing problem they face, then his stance is cowardly to say the least, the more so when one takes into account that the private health care industry is the most powerful political lobby in the USA.

I also noticed that when US members of the Republican Party based in London were asked by the BBC who they would choose if they were voting in the Democrat Primaries, they unanimously opted for Obama. It should also not be over looked that European reactionaries have nothing but kind words to say about Obama, the UK Tory Party leader David Cameron put it on record that he “hugely admired” Barack Obama.

So who is Barack Obama, for me he comes straight out of Wall Street central casting, a clone of the type of black President’s who are portrayed in movies and hit TV shows like 24. His politics are conservative without any hint of a connection with the radical US Afro American struggle for equality and civil rights. He is physically good looking, with a pretty wife and two beautiful children, who are still young enough to avoid the gaze of the tabloids and thus land his campaign in trouble. His close association with the US TV tycoon Oprah Winfrey is very revealing, for although she partially came to prominence on the backs of Black America, her actual wealth and fame came about courtesy of the US Multi National Corporations via middle-American TV viewers.

In many ways Barack is an ideal candidate for Corporate America, as the color of his skin hints at the prospect of great change, when in reality an Obama Presidency would mean business as usual, even in Iraq, in other words no change at all.

Forget Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson, these people have never been on Obama’s political radar, nor did he ever emphasize with them and theirs. His soul mates within the Black Community can be found on Wall Street, in the media and the big multi national legal corporations; his role models are reactionaries such as Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, who incidentally whilst a Republican himself and a one time gofer for both of the Bush Presidencies, has said he is pleased by Barack Obama's success, which I would suggest tells one a great deal about this candidates politics. As to Obama’s skin color, it is relevant only in that it it will act as a hook to reel in the more gullible middle class liberal voters. It is no accident that he has been able to build up a massive war chest much of which has come from Corporate America.

Just as Powell and Rice gave the Bush administration an ethnic face, if elected Obama will give Corporate America a progressive glint. If any one seriously believes Barack Obama will withdraw the US military from Iraq and Afghanistan and will help create a fairer more equitable society in the USA, then they are in for a shock. For Barack Obama represents more of the same although perhaps with a slightly more human ‘media’ face. To misquote Hermann Göring, if a US Presidential candidate tells the electorate that they intend to bring about change, reach for your revolver, for the only change such people will initiate is reactionary change.

Obituary: Peggie Preston: An advocate of peace, aid and development

When I came across this obituary of Peggie Preston, what struck was she had lived the type of life which should have ensured her a prominent obituary in the national press, instead of her becoming an after thought in the Guardians 'Other Lives' section. The one place were class prejudice still rules supreme in all its arrogance is on the Obituary Pages of the British Press. Few working class people appear on these pages whether it be in the Times, Guardian, Independent or Telegraph, although to be fair the latter is more liberal than most as they always have space for the odd non commissioned officer who committed heroic deeds when serving in the military and rightly so.

However in the main the obituary pages are overwhelmingly made up of the so called great and good, people who come from the 'right type of background' with a sprinkling of authors and artists etc who had made their peace with the British establishment. Of course there are exceptions but they are few and far between. In many ways that most of the broadsheets recently carried an obituary of Andrew Glyn [Eton and Oxbridge] is an example of this class prejudice, for I doubt very much if a revolutionary Marxist from a working class background would have found themselves on the obituary pages.

Mick


Peggie Preston
By
Jonathan Fryer and Denis Herbstein

Rather as the camp followers of old traipsed around Europe tending to the needs of weary armies, so the veteran peace campaigner and occupational therapist Peggie Preston, who has died aged 84, ministered to those suffering in conflicts.
I first met her in Saigon, in the summer of 1969, when she was living in hiding (her visa having expired) at a children's home at Phu Mi. She spent five years in south Vietnam, at the height of the war, with a British medical team, living with local people and working for local rates. She was useful to journalists, as she had excellent contacts among radical Buddhist monks and other government opponents, but she also knew how to harangue. She burned with fury against injustice and the might of what she called US imperialism. Though a Quaker, she did not think that silence was always appropriate.

Peggie had been born in Assam, the daughter of a tea planter, but from the age of four she had grown up with an aunt in Dollar, Clackmannanshire. As a young woman in the second world war, she served in the WAAF, spending six years as a bomber command radio-operator at Coningsby, Lincolnshire. But henceforth, her life was devoted to the intertwined causes of peace, aid and development. Before Vietnam, she had been in South Africa, treating victims of apartheid. Working at the huge Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, she dealt with casualties of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre. She identified with the cause of oppressed peoples, including, later, Palestinians.

In early 1991, Peggie Preston was among peacemakers from 15 countries who pitched their tents at a pilgrims' resting place just inside Iraq. The idea was to interpose a non-violent presence between the warring forces and so focus attention on the looming Gulf War. The American peace campaigner Kathy Kelly recalls an evening when "Peggie urged us to hold an event in which each of us would offer a representation of our country's culture. It was a bit surreal as the bombers flew overhead, but I remember how grateful people were for her tenacious encouragement." Cut off from the rest of the world, with food and water in short supply, they were reluctantly evacuated to a possibly more dangerous Baghdad. Preston returned to Iraq a decade later to view the destructive effects of international sanctions on the people of Iraq.

By now she had become the veteran among the family of peacemakers. She might almost be seen as the inverse image of the Victorian soldier Sir Garnet Wolseley, who in a long life of warring saw action in four continents. The much-travelled Peggie Preston continued her missions for peace – to Sarajevo and to Croatian-controlled Bosnia during the wars in the Balkans. She was arrested at a demonstration near Ramallah, trying to heal wounds in Palestine. After the second Gulf War she resigned from the Labour Party and destroyed her Labour party card. She could be heard on the loudspeaker at Parliament Square voicing support for the peace protester Brian Haw and spent Christmas Day 2006 there with him. A Molesworth base demonstration outside the Ministry of Defence in London led to her gaining a criminal record. "We held hands and had to kneel, but with my arthritis I couldn't get down." She was bound over for a year to keep the peace.

This February, aged 83, Peggie Preston hobbled along Downing Street with the mothers of soldiers killed in Iraq to hand in a petition to Tony Blair. It was her final public act.

Latterly, Peggie suffered from ill health. Painful legs made it difficult to move far from her council flat in Covent Garden. She became a habitue of the crypt cafe at St Martin-in-the-Fields, conveniently placed for demonstrations and rallies in Trafalgar Square.

Peter Hain MP: A Chamberlainite and proud of it.

“What a bloody disgrace! Says it all about the Tories and Labour. Instead of 
saying 'dirty rotten bastards attacking some of the poorest and most 
vulnerable' , Labour say 'Oh I think you'll find that we thought of this first, in 
fact you are stealing our ideas'! Scum"
Regards
Dave

I received the email above from a friend of mine at the weekend; and I agree with its sentiments entirely, on reading it my first thought beyond rage was if a supposedly Left-wing Labour Party Government Minister like Peter Hain acts in the despicable way that my friend describes in his email, then surly it is time to ask in whose interest does the UK Labour Party continue to serve.

My friend was enraged as any solid socialist would be when the Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain responded to the announcement by the Tory Party leader David Cameron, that a government led by him would introduce legislation which would viciously attack those who are sick and disabled and are currently claiming Invalidity Benefit. The changes Cameron said he would introduce if he gained office, would mean that some claimants who receive IB will be removed from that Benefit against the advice of their doctors and placed on Job Seekers Allowance, which would result in their benefit being reduced by roughly £20 per week, a not inconsiderable sum when you are living on £79 per week.

Instead of condemning the Conservative proposals outright, Hain simply condemned the Tories for: "plagiarizing plans already announced by the Labour Government before Christmas and seeking to present them as their own.” Indeed it seems for Peter Hain and his Ministerial colleagues the only differences they have with the Tories is over who thought up the idea to further reduce the incomes of people who are already living on a sum of money which places them within their own government’s criteria for those living in poverty.

We have become used to Labour and the Conservative parties fighting amongst themselves to see whose policies are the most reactionary and right wing, what with both giving their support to GW Bush’s administrations insane military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now they are squabbling amongst themselves as to who was first with the idea to hit the economically poor the hardest.

Never mind that the type of 'Welfare to Work with a big stick' programs as practiced in US States like Wisconsin have been proved to have been very expensive failures. Which have resulted in tens of thousands of decent people being pushed into desperate poverty and as with much of the privatization of societal infrastructure the only beneficiaries of the welfare to work schemes have been the multi national corporations who were contracted to run them. Many of whom have been recently eyeing up the British ‘market’ and have been spotted crossing the Atlantic to whine and dine government Ministers and their political advisors.

What really gets to me about the likes of Hain, Brown and Cameron is their abject political cowardice, they are always up for attacking those who are least able to defend themselves such as the sick and disabled, but when it comes to actually making hard choices such as saying no to Bush when he demanded that the UK support his wicked invasion and occupation of Iraq, or refusing when the City came calling to pore £28 billion of tax payers money into a black hole to prop up the Northern Bank, they roll over like bunny rabbits, and act like a Chamberlain.