seren

14/10/2007

Che's killer given sight back by Cuban doctors

Unrepentant Communist has an interesting post about Che Guevara's killer.

Cuban doctors working in Bolivia have saved the sight of the man who executed revolutionary leader Che Guevara in 1967, Cuban official media report. Mario Teran, a Bolivian army sergeant, shot dead Che Guevara after he was captured in Bolivia's eastern lowlands. Cuban media reported news of the surgery ahead of the 40th anniversary of Che's death on 9 October.
Mr Teran had cataracts removed under a Cuban programme to offer free eye treatment across Latin America. The operation on Mr Teran took place last year and was first revealed when his son wrote to a Bolivian newspaper to thank the Cuban doctors for restoring his father's sight.
But Cuban media took up the story at the weekend as the island prepares for commemorations to mark Che Guevara's death 40 years ago. "Four decades after Mario Teran attempted to destroy a dream and an idea, Che returns to win yet another battle," the Communist Party's official newspaper Granma proclaimed. "Now an old man, he [Teran] can once again appreciate the colours of the sky and the forest, enjoy the smiles of his grandchildren and watch football games." Wounded Che Guevara, who played a key role in the Cuban revolution of 1959, travelled to Bolivia in 1966 to start a socialist revolution. But in October 1967, the Bolivian army, with assistance from the CIA, captured Guevara and his remaining fighters.
Che Guevara, wounded in the fighting, was taken to a schoolhouse in the village of La Higuera on 8 October where the soldiers debated what to do with him. Mario Teran is reported to have drawn the short straw and been ordered to execute the captured guerrilla. Che Guevara was killed on 9 October and his body taken to a hospital in nearby Vallegrande, where his corpse was paraded before the world's media.
In 1997 his remains were discovered, exhumed and returned to Cuba, where he was reburied. Surely the fact that doctors from socialist Cuba helped improve the sight of Che's executioner, demonstrates most eloquently, that you may persecute socialism and reverse it in places, but you can not kill the ideas of socialism, which represent the most exalted aspirations of humanity, an exalted humanity which Che Guevara exemplified.

It's often said of Che that he survives as an icon because he died young and because he was photogenic, but I think it's more complex than that. Firstly Che achieved power through the Cuban revolution. He could have chewed on a cigar in the Ministry of Industry and grown fat and corrupt but he chose not to - he chose to spread the revolution. He stayed true to his socialist beliefs to the bitter end.
Secondly, he was as motivated by his emotions as much as by abstract theory. His most famous quote is "at the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that a true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love."
That love for others, rather than envy or hatred, should be our motivating force. And that's probably why the Cuban doctors restored that man's eyesight.

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10/10/2007

The ultimate privatisation

"I was a high-class muscleman for big business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism"
That's how decorated US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler once defined his military role in his 1935 book War Is A Racket.
State armies have been used to further multinationals' goals in the past - whether the United Fruit Company-sponsored coup in Guatemala in 1954 or the various oil companies reaping the rewards of US invasion in Iraq today.
But now even this role is being privatised with PMCs (Private Military Companies) carrying out a dubious legal role in Iraq.
Last month's shootings of 11 Iraqi civilians by employees of Blackwater USA has cast a rare official spotlight on the activities of PMCs in Iraq.
The proliferation of PMCs since the Cold War is part of a new trend, in which private military contractors provide an attractive alternative to international corporations for a range of quasi-military services, from bodyguard and facilities protection, to the provision of military training and weapons to foreign armies.
Such services have often been required by multinationals such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, and De Beers in conflict zones that overlap with the extraction of oil, gas, diamonds and other raw materials.
In Colombia, British Petroleum hired the British private contractor Defence Systems Limited (DSL) to protect its oil rigs from left-wing guerrillas - a task that DSL fulfilled with the help of Colombian military officers linked to right-wing death squads.
In Equatorial Guinea, the US company MPRI has helped the thuggish dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema establish a coastguard to protect the oil exploration undertaken by ExxonMobil off its coast. MPRI has also provided military training to the Nigerian army, whose forces have been engaged in suppressing local tribal protests against the exploitation of their resources by international oil companies.
Not surprisingly, the need for PMCs has increased as a result of the 'war on terror', whose frontlines invariably intersect with areas containing raw materials and the routes of oil and gas pipelines.
From Georgia, Chechnya and Iraq and Azerbaijan to Afghanistan, PMCs from various countries are engaged in an array of activities that impact directly on the emerging 'great game' in the Middle East and Central Asia, whether it is protecting oil pipelines, training the Saudi national guard or providing security protection to the Afghan president.
Some PMCs, like Blackwater and MPRI, have amassed formidable military forces in their own right, whose members include top-ranking former military officers.
At the same time PMCs have themselves become like corporations. Where mercenaries and their recruiters were once regarded with contempt, PMCs have attempted to reverse the 'dogs of war' image with slick corporate packaging.
PMC execs such as the millionaire owner of Blackwater Erik Prince and Aegis director Tim Spicer like to use the rhetoric of the war on terror and talk about bringing stability and democracy to a troubled world.
But this agenda has also brought record profits to their own companies, not to mention other corporations that could not have gained access to Iraq without the support of private military companies.
In an age when the Western public is generally reluctant to fight wars of choice, PMCs constitute a new international force patrolling the frontiers of the 'war on terror' for whoever pays. Just as the East India Company once did, corporations will pay for their own armies to fight their own wars and bypass national governments altogether.

Adapted from The First Posthttp://

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15/03/2007

The East Argyll Question

You'll have heard about the West Lothian Question, what about the East Argyll* Question?

Which is - how can it be right that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown can push through a generation of taxation to pay for Trident 2 against the wishes of the Scottish people and with the help of a Tory Party that has been utterly rejected in Scotland for decades?

Scotland is a country that has been militarised by the British State. The amount of land the MoD currently controls in Scotland is four times greater than at any point during the Cold War. In 1980, the MoD owned or leased only 24.8 thousand hectares in Scotland. Yet by 2003, land available to the MoD had risen over four times to 115.2 thousand hectares. The military presence in Scotland also includes:

· Britain’s largest base for (cluster bomb carrying) Tornado war planes, at Lossiemouth on the Moray Firth

· The UK’s only outdoor depleted uranium weapon range at Dundrennan on the Solway Firth

· Europe’s largest live-firing range at Cape Wrath, the only place in Europe where NATO air-forces can drop live 1,000lb bombs

The solution to the East Argyll Question comes on May 3rd.

* Faslane is based in East Argyll

[thanks to www.1820.org.uk]

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08/03/2007

Last of the Mojitos

Black vultures circle Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion, where Fidel Castro has in the past spoken to millions of Cubans. Today it's empty save for a few tourists and looks like a sprawling car park.
The only buildings of note are the Che bronze outline on a nearby block and the José Marti column made of marble that towers above.
But Castro's extended absence from the leadership following a serious illness doesn't seem to have stopped the warmth and friendliness of the Cuban people.
Anyone expecting to find a workers' paradise is in for a shock. The rural east of Holguin Province, for example, is still agricultural and you're as likely to see oxen or horses drawing carts as private cars on the pot-holed roads. Hitch-hiking is popular and it's almost obligatory to stop if you're in a car - a long-gone phenomenon here.The tourism boom has been largely contained in all-inclusive resorts owned by state companies - ours was only three years old and there was little opportunity to make contact with people beyond the gates. The housing is primitive.
The area's main tourist attraction is Naranja Bay's aquarium, where you can swim with dolphins in the sea. It's a world away from the commercialised Florida experience because the aquarium is on a tiny island in the centre of the bay - just a few dozen people visit at a time via speed boats and the emphasis is on the environment rather cashing in on tourists. The complex where we stayed was built in the middle of a tropical jungle with bananas flowering beneath the balcony and sting rays and tropical fish swimming in the coral reef offshore. In the nearby mangrove swamp lurked crayfish and land crabs - great for inquisitive kids.
If you've ever got fed up of forking out for kids on holiday, this is the place. Cuba's tourism industry has a refreshing lack of commercialism - no inflatables in the hotel shop but plenty of Che t-shirts (more on which later).
What effect the tourism boom is hard to estimate - tourists must pay for everything in convertible pesos, which are set at a national rate and cost about 10 times the local peso. So a convertible peso (maybe 70p) is worth far more to a Cuban barman, taxi driver or waiter and there was evidence that people were taking up these jobs for the tips. Others, like Sammy, was working on the beach at the hotel and was delighted to see a Wrexham shirt. He'd worked a Continental Can on the industrial estate - it's small world!

Food is rationed in Cuba as a result of the ongoing economic blockade from the US. The monthly ration allows, for example, for just five eggs a person but a generous five kilos of sugar! A taxi driver said that petrol for him was free and his monthly electricity bill was just a peso, less than a pound. Health and education are famously well provided - so much so that literacy rates and life expectancy in Cuba is higher than in the USA. So although there isn't much spare cash around a lot of the essential needs are provided by the state.
The blockade - imposed after the 1959 revolution - is so extensive that a Cuban delegation was recently barred from staying in a Norwegian hotel because it was owned by a US chain. Bush has tightened the restrictions but it does have one bonus of keeping out US tourists - a fact much appreciated by the planeloads of Canadians who flock to the Caribbean beaches!
Havana is a stunning city. It's obviously more affluent than the rural east and was once the richest city in the Caribbean but many locals seem to be living in what are little more than ruins of grand old colonial buildings. In fairness to the government, there are hundreds of building projects under way in Habana Vieja (Old Havana) to restore buildings to their former grandeur. Some streets and plazas have already been done up are stunning.

The Museo de la Revolucion is a must see - sited in the stunning former palace of the dictator Batista, it's a reminder of what Fidel and Che were overthrowing. Cuba in the 50s had become a Mafia-dominated society of massive inequality and the rebels who fought the revolutionary struggle won support in both countryside and city because of their commitment to equality. The museum is a moving reminder of the various revolutionaries who made their sacrifices - Frank Pais of Holguin was shot by the state and now has an airport named after him.

Che Guevara's image is everywhere and it's no surprise - even Mrs Seren commented that he was a good-looking lad. The youthful bravado of the revolutionaries, with their handmade weapons (on show at the museum) and almost Dad's Army like motor division, is captured in that image of defiance that plaster t-shirts and posters.
If you wear a Che t-shirt, be prepared for more attention in the streets. People sidle up to you and offer you three-peso notes or coins (both have Che's image on them). One Che lookalike complete with beret and fatigues was offering to have his photo taken - but the hassle is low-key and easy going.
It feels safe and relaxed unlike most other Caribbean cities and the mixture of races was very noticeable. Cuba has more white immigrants than most other islands and, although blacks did have an inferior status pre-revolution, that does not seem to be the case now.
Cubans like a good time - the place is famous for its cocktails, dancing and music after all. Every bar seems to have a band knocking out tunes that get people dancing and some streets of Habana Vieja are reminiscent of New Orleans's French Quarter before the deluge.
The architecture takes your breath away - even when the buildings are falling down. Likewise the great old Chevys and Dodges are a throwback to a different era - some have lasted better than others but all give the place a really different feel. It may not be a workers' paradise but it seems a damn sight better than what was here before and Cuban socialism certainly has a human face and very Caribbean style.
Top tips - buy some vintage rum (a litre bottle costs about £4), cigars if you know anyone who smokes (not cheap, unless you buy the inferior ones off the street) and spend some time in the Museo de Chocolate. If you think you've ever had hot chocolate, try the cafe there! And spend an afternoon people watching in one of the squares over a long cool Mojito or Cuba Libre cocktail.
I drank the last of the Mojitos (sorry!) on a rooftop bar overlooking the city. Suddenly a flock swallows swooped down to gulp at the hotel pool's water, a magical surreal moment that was completely in keeping with this magical city. A more appropriate a symbol of this surprising city than the black vultures circling.

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12/02/2007

US prepares for Iran invasion

With the insatiable cravings of an addict, the US prepares to justify an invasion of Iran.

It claims, in anonymous briefings naturally, that the Iranian government is supplying weaponry to the Iraqi resistance.

Which sounds like the US supplying weaponry to Saddam in the 1980-88 war against Iran, then...

But these anonymous sources at the Pentagon are unaware of the irony. They are simply looking to soften up the American public for yet another hare-brained assault on a Middle Eastern country rich in oil and unafraid to stand up to US imperialism.

The allegations have about as much credence as the "incontrovertible proof" that existed for Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction. The home-made roadside bombs being used with devastating effect on US and UK troops are just that - home made.

More bizarre still, the Sunni insurgents are totally at odds with the Shia regime in Iran. They are far more likely to be getting support - if any is needed - from Syria (no doubt Syria is next in line to be bombed back to the Stone Age if Iran falls).

The US has no exit strategy from Iraq except to escalate war in the region, possibly involving Israel in what could develop into a Third World War if we're not careful. Iran is no Iraq - it is larger, has a far better infrastructure and there are few dissidents that will welcome the toppling of a democratically elected regime by the "Great Satan".

Rather than planning another military adventure based on oil greed and imperialism, the US and UK have to pull out of the Middle East now.

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19/12/2006

What has the US and Afghanistan got in common?

Bizarre as it may seem, the most obvious thing the USA and Afghanistan have in common is that their main cash crop is drugs.

In Afghanistan, the fall of the Taliban has seen opium production for heroin soar. In the USA, the government's own figures now show that cannabis is the main cash crop.

This morning's Independent reveals the scale of the trade:

Decades of government efforts to crack down on both the cultivation and consumption of pot have had a counter-productive effect, since even the most conservative government estimates suggest domestic marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past 25 years. It is the leading cash crop in 12 states, and one of the top five crops in 39 states.

The report's author, Jon Gettman, says it is "larger than cotton in Alabama, larger than grapes, vegetables and hay in California, larger than peanuts in Georgia, and larger than tobacco in South and North Carolina".

California accounts for almost a third of all US production. It is a major economic force in the state, especially in the redwood forests in the north, where the smell of weed wafts unmistakably down the streets of several towns.

Marijuana remains popular with the baby boomer generation, which first experimented with it in the 1950s and 1960s. And its use is booming among teenagers and young adults, especially as alcohol cannot be sold to under 21s. US marijuana cultivation is worth more than $35bn (£18bn) per year. And that is a conservative estimate, based on government price surveys, Mr Gettman says.

Corn, the largest legitimate crop, is worth just over $23bn and soybeans around $17bn. "Despite years of effort by law enforcement, they're not getting rid of it," Mr Gettman told the Los Angeles Times ahead of his report's publication yesterday in The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform. "Not only is the problem worse in terms of magnitude of cultivation, but production has spread all around the country. To say the genie is out of the bottle is a profound understatement."

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14/12/2006

Was Litvinenko selling Polonium?

The Polonium poisoning of Andrei Litvinenko may have been straight out of James Bond. The finger of blame has been pointed at Putin and his KGB contacts. Secret services usually mean red herrings and lots of dead ends, which is why most sane people steer clear of trying to explain the whole episode.

But there may be a simple explanation, as suggested in the classic Richard Rhodes book The making of the atomic bomb . This has interesting stuff about polonium, which was and probably still is a vital part of the initiator of all atomic weapons because its a particularly strong alpha emitter.

Apparently it's such a strong emitter that it ionises the air around it so permanently appears to glow blue. Particularly relevant is the paragraph about shipping the Polonium to the US nuclear facility at Los Alamos on page 579:

Thomas shipped the Po on platinum foil in sealed containers, but another nasty characteristic of polonium caused shipping troubles; for reasons never satisfactorily explained by experiment, the metal migrates from place to place and can quickly contaminate large areas. 'This isotope has been observed to migrate upstream against a current of air,' notes a postwar British report on polonium, 'and to translocate under conditions where it would appear to be doing so of its own accord.' Chemists at los Alamos learned to look for it embedded in the walls of the shipping containers when Thomas's shipments came up short.

This explains why polonium keeps getting found in unexpected places. But it does also suggest Litvinenko might have been trying to sell some polonium, but was unaware of its strange properties and a bit too mucht migrated into his body.

(much of this was nicked wholesale from www.timhunkin.com - my CSE in Chemistry isn't up to doing much more than chucking iron filings into bunsen burners and admiring the effect)

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The privatised war

One consequence of the various ongoing US and UK military adventures is the increasing use of mercenaries in what is becoming a privatised war. There are reckoned to be 50,000 mercenaries in Iraq, compared with 7,000 UK military personnel.

For oil firms and other companies profiting from the chaos in Iraq, security firms run by ex-military men (often on the same stratified class lines as the Army - officers taking the glory, squaddies taking the bullets) are in great demand.
The rewards are huge - $12,000 a month tax-free pay - but the risks, as outlined in this story are huge.

Schnews, as ever, has a better analysis of this phenomenon.

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18/11/2006

Palestinian protest closes Cardiff castle

Three peace protesters have occupied the keep at Cardiff Castle in a demonstration over the 'occupation of land in Palestine'.

The three got into the keep after buying a ticket for a castle tour and used a bar to block the entrance.

D Murphy, Bob Cotterill and Keith Ross said they plan to stay for a while, possibly days, and have stressed they have no wish to damage the castle.

A negotiator from South Wales Police is at the scene.

The protesters said the action was to make the point about the occupation of land in Palestine which they claimed was being ignored by the public and the media.

Here's a short video on the occupation from Undercurrents.

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14/11/2006

Welsh arrests at anti-nuke protest

On Monday November 13th 2006 11 peace activists from South and Mid-Wales were arrested for blockading the Trident nuclear submarine base at Faslane in Scotland. Another eight from North Wales were arrested this
morning. Those arrested over the two days are of all ages and backgrounds, and include South Wales
Labour councillor and veteran peace campaigner Ray Davies.

About 100 campaigners from Wales are present this morning, a rainy day at Faslane enlivened by the presence of a large red dragon and protest songs performed by Dafydd Iwan. Plaid Cymru Euro MP and CND Cymru chair Jill Evans, was among those who visited the base yesterday to join the protests.

Many of the northern contingent are dressed as Merched Beca/ the Daughters of Rebecca, the C19th men and women who took direct action to protest against social injustice. Costs for Trident replacement have been estimated at £25 to £75 billion.

The protest is part of a year-long blockade at Faslane which began six weeks ago.

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31/08/2006

Scottish independence petition

Supporters of Independence First are submitting a petition to the Scottish Parliament calling for a referendum on Scottish Independence to be organised at the earliest opportunity. Sign the e-petition - http://epetitions.scottish.parliament.uk/view_petition.asp?PetitionID=123
Please take the time to pass on this e-petition to everyone and anyone in your address book who is interested in democracy for Scotland.

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28/08/2006

Can he fight back against holiday homes? Corsican

Corsicans are fighting back against the "holiday-home colonisation" of their island home. Just 260,000 live on the Mediterranean island, which is being colonised by wealthy French people - causing rising prices and forcing more and more Corsicans to leave for the mainland. Sounds familiar?

Read more at http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,1859736,00.html

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21/08/2006

Viva la revolucion!

¡VIVA LA REVOLUCION!
A celebration of solidarity with Latin America
Theatr Clwyd, Mold, North Wales
Saturday, 7 October

12.00 - 1.00 pm Arrival/Registration (Coffee and tea available)
An opportunity to socialise and see the photographic exhibition “Last Rights”, the story of Guatemala’s Mayan communities as they emerge from a genocidal 35 year civil war and their struggle for justice. Plus stalls and displays of supportive organisations.

1.00 Introduction to the Conference
Branwen Niclas (Christian Aid Youth Coordinator for Wales)
1.15 Cuba - A vision of another world.
Zelmys Dominguez Cortina (Political Councillor at the Cuban Embassy)
1.45 Building Solidarity - Sharing experience and hope.
Dr Julia Buxton (University of Bradford)
2.15 Bolivarism at work in Latin America
Dr.Francisco Dominguez (University of Middlesex)
3.00 Questions and Answers
3.30 Break (Coffee and tea available)
4.00 Furthering Wales’ contribution to International Solidarity.
Discussion led by Leanne Wood AM (National Assembly of Wales)
6.00 INTERLUDE
6.30 Films: “The Agronomist” from Haiti and “The Take” from Argentina will be shown in the Haydn Rees Room (Duration approximately 2 hours)
The theatre restaurant is open until 7 pm.
8.30 SOLIDARITY SALSA Live music from Cuba (Doors open 8.00 pm)
Omar Puente’s “Cubania” Tickets £10 (£7 unwaged)

The conference is free to all those who want to learn more about the developing situation in Latin America but any contributions towards costs are welcomed. It is highly advisable to buy tickets for the salsa event beforehand.

Wales-Latin America Solidarity in north Wales
The conference has been jointly organised by Wales Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign, The Clwyd Latin America Human Rights Group and Cymru Cuba. The three organisations are well established and have worked closely
together over the years.

Contact: santa_gordo@yahoo.co.uk; benica@gn.apc.org.

Accommodation: Mold Tourist Information Centre - 01352 759331, e-mail: mold@nwtic.com

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23/07/2006

Fizzy pop and music

This is taken from www.redpepper.org.uk, a left-wing monthly magazine. The Super Furries turned down a million quid in the name of politics...

Gruff Rhys, lead singer and guitarist for the Super Furry Animals, writes a diary from Colombia


Day 1: Bogota
In the late morning, Guto (our bassist) and I visit the rundown offices of Colombian food workers’ union Sinaltrainal. A downbeat meeting of Coca Cola workers is taking place downstairs. We are taken to an upstairs office to wait.

A knock on the door and Limberto Carranza, a union rep in his fifties, is ushered in. His quiet testimony moves us like no other. He has worked for Coca Cola for over 25 years, and as conditions worsened he joined the Sinaltrainal trade union. From that day onwards he and his family were targeted by paramilitaries employed by the bottling plant manager. His 15-year-old son was beaten close to death and thrown in a river. He was forced to send his psychologically scarred children to live with relatives far away from home and now barely sees them. At this point Limberto bursts into tears, much to his own embarrassment. He couldn’t apologise enough afterwards in this most macho of countries.


Last year the Super Furry Animals turned down a seven-figure offer by an advertising agency for the use of our song ‘Hello Sunshine’ in a Coca Cola commercial. We thought long and hard. We have never been a big selling band, but when it came to the crunch, we felt we couldn’t justify endorsing a product that may have had a part in violently suppressing some of its workers. For a moment, sitting in the Sinaltrainal office, I thought that we could have done the advert and donated the money for their campaign for justice. Yet the thought of having to hear our song used to sell anything that exploits anyone for the worse turns my stomach.

Day 3: Cali
We’re backstage at Concierto Por La Vida (‘Concert For Life’), a music festival in a barren looking park, waiting for a sound check. Hanging from a nearby tree is a banner in memory of Jonhy Silva, a crippled 21-year-old student shot and killed by ESMAD, the Colombian riot police, in September 2005. This festival is dedicated to his memory.

After the heavy, high-altitude atmosphere of Bogota, Cali, lying lower down at a thousand metres, is surprisingly relaxed. Its reputation as a cocaine capital seems the least of its worries. When we flew in on Wednesday night, the Vaca Loca (Mad Cow) Carnival was in full flow – every 50 yards a different sound system was blaring out loud salsa music and people were dancing in the street.

In the throng of the crowd we meet Sintraemcali representative Berenice. She is dancing watchfully in a doorway. She needs to be careful: she is on the leaked hit list of Operation Dragon, an assassination campaign run by active and retired Colombian army personnel. Last year she was sent an invitation to her own funeral. Defiantly, she dances to the music.


Day 4: Buena Ventura
Twenty-seven hours later I’m sitting in a deserted thatch-roofed bar. The air is heavy with tropical dark clouds and the hum and racket of giant US-built military helicopters. Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse Of The Heart implausibly spins on the video jukebox. A few ill-looking palm trees punctuate the mist occasionally to remind you of the potentially exotic location.

The Colombian Army’s ‘Plan Colombia’, sponsored by the US, aims to clear all the coca plantations in this region. This has fed into Colombia’s decades-long and brutal civil war as the state tries to claw back territory from the left-wing guerrilla fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The ton upon ton of poison dropped on to Colombian soil to kill the coca weed has failed to reduce the volume of narco-trafficking, and has led to severe pollution of the water table.

Villages in these areas are targeted by both sides of the war. They are targeted by the FARC, who fear informers, and their food is often rationed by government forces who are worried that they are feeding the guerrillas or hiding them. This has led to a series of massacres and clearances in the region. And it has left around three million people displaced throughout Colombia.

These are the observations of a light entertainer, displaced for a week in a country that is, in all except name, engulfed in a brutal civil war. I’m not an expert on Colombia, but it is clear from this visit that international corporations, and military schemes funded by the US (and UK) government, are contributing to this mess – supported in part by my taxes and supermarket spending power, in my name.
(Adopting a Lee Hazelwood-style singing voice) – Call me Shame!

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18/07/2006

Fortress Israel - it's bananas

Twenty five years is a long time in politics.

A quarter of a century ago I was picking bananas on an Israeli kibbutz, at a time of rare peace in the country. It was an idyllic place for an 18-year-old to be on the shores of Lake Tiberius amid 50 or so "volunteers" from Denmark, Finland, the USA and Sweden. Lugging great bunches of bananas through the plantations in the mornings wasn't too difficult when you had the lake-side company of nubile young Scandinavians in the afternoons.

But we were just passing through. The kibbutz was a permanent home to about 450 people from all over the world - Jews who had moved to Israel from Rumania, Tunisia, Germany, the USA. None were religious, in the orthodox sense, but there was a real sense of community built on a shared experience of immigration and co-operation.

But, despite the democratic veneer, to work at Kibbutz Ein Gev you couldn't be a Palestinian. The Palestinians were, and remain, non-people in the Israeli state never mind the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip. The Israeli state wanted to write them out of history because the Palestinians were, and remain, an awkward reminder that the Israeli state stole Palestinian land and houses to build Fortress Israel.

I left Israel before the invasion of Lebanon, the massacre of refugees at Shatilla camp and the continued military attacks on Palestinian civilians. In the meantime, the islamist Hamas movement that Israeli intelligence supported as a counter-balance to the radical more left-wing movements of the PFLP has taken centre stage, winning the support of the Palestinian people. As with the US-backed Taliban in Afghanistan, my enemy's enemy is not always my friend.

Fortress Israel has become a caricature of the Jewish homeland it purported to be. It is dependent on US military aid for its existence, it engages in ever-more extreme acts of retribution against its neighbours.

That is why George Bush is so wrong when he reveals that the latest assault on Lebanon could be halted if Syria could "get Hizbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over."

The same mindset believes that Iran is pulling Hizbollah's strings because it supplies missiles to the group. By the same token, it's fair to say that the USA is complicit in Israel's state terrorism because it supplies arms for Fortress Israel.

The Israelis claim they are retaliating against terrorist attacks. But they forget what drives people to desperate suicide bombings, they forget that an entire people was driven from their homes into refugee camps that have become breeding grounds for resistance.

Israel, the US and the UK - the colonial power - cannot be allowed to forget that the Palestinian issue cannot be willed away by bombs or rhetoric, by the ritual condemnations and blaming of other powers.

Twenty five years ago, I picked bananas that were sold to (indirectly) prop up the Israeli state. Today, somewhat older and hopefully wiser, I won't buy Israeli goods. For the sake of peace and justice we need to see a united Palestine where Jews, Moslems and Christians (as well as us atheists) can live together without war.

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19/06/2006

Sweet Catalonia

Catalans have voted for a greater degree of independence from the Spanish state - the latest step towards a peaceful independence settlement. When that happens it will be the first Western European nation to gain independence since 1944, when Iceland gained its freedom from Denmark.

Results show that around 75% of voters backed the autonomy plans in a referendum. The plan includes giving Catalans more tax revenues and a greater say in how that money is spent, as well as more control over airports and immigration.

The Left Republican party (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya - ERC) is part of the Catalan government and is pushing for complete independence.

This, together with the expected gains for pro-independence parties in Scotland in next year's Parliamentary elections, puts the issue of small nations' sovereignty at the top of the European agenda. This, more than the Catalan vote, will provide fresh impetus for greater autonomy for Wales.

But the final impetus may yet come from the English right. Tories like Michael Portillo (writing in his newspaper column yesterday) are finally saying the unsayable: England would be better off without Scotland. Wales, typically, doesn't merit a mention. What Portillo has finally grasped is that Tory rule could be re-established in England if Scotland was given its freedom and power is all the Tories crave.

He also argues: "The loss of one-twelfth of our population in a region that drags down our national performance could not harm us. Our hydrocarbons are less of an issue now that they are being exhausted."

The failure of the colonies to support the English football team also rankles: Portillo rails against "wearisome whingeing" and the Scottish First Minister's support for Trinidad and Tobago against England in last week's match was "a display of offensive and undignified chippiness". He said: "Perhaps McConnell needs reminding his population lives as well as it does thanks to subsidies extorted from English taxpayers."

Perhaps Portillo and his like would be surprised at the subsidies the "Home Counties" enjoy in terms of government spending on public transport, roads, scientific and military research as well as tax breaks for the rich.

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15/06/2006

How the US taps into your e-mails

Conspiracy theorists never imagined it was this bad.

In an extraordinary - but little reported - court case, it emerges that US telecomms giant AT&T has been systematically monitoring e-mails across the US and the rest of the world. Unsurprisingly, the firm was working on this warrant-less wiretapping on behalf of the US Government.

A whistleblower's evidence of this activity was taken up by Wired News, which now faces legal action for its brave journalism.

AT&T are claiming commercial confidentiality as a defence to suppress further information coming out. The US Government's National Security Agency has a legal defence straight out Catch-22:

The government told the judge that the surveillance is lawful, but "the evidence we need to demonstrate to you that it is lawful cannot be disclosed without that process itself causing grave harm to United States national security," according to The New York Times. The American Civil Liberties' Union argued that the judge needs no extra classified evidence to find the administration's warrantless wiretapping of Americans illegal.

For more information see http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71146-0.html

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13/03/2006

How Cuba survived its oil crisis

"Try to image an airplane suddenly losing its engines. It was really a crash" - this is how Jorge Mario, a Cuban economist, explains the period when Cuba lost 80% of its oil after the Soviet Union collapsed.
It was a crash that put Cuba into a state of shock. There were frequent blackouts in its oil-fed electric power grid, up to 16 hours per day. The average daily caloric intake in Cuba dropped by a third.
Read more on this fascinating grassroots recovery on www.socialistunitynetwork.co.uk/voices/peakoil.htm

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13/02/2006

Same old British Army

There's one constant about the British Army in "occupation mode" - its brutality and brutalisation of the people they're occupying. That's the only logical conclusion of seeing the sickening footage of assaults on young boys in southern Iraq.

Whether it's the Fuzzy Wuzzies, Micks or Towelheads, the people of the countries they occupy become sub-humans to the squaddies. In many cases, from Basra to Belfast, the British Army was welcomed as providing some much-needed relief. But with monotonous regularity, this welcome turns to bitter hatred as the true nature of the British Army comes to the fore.

The brutality of the occupying forces in Iraq has only become known because new technology makes it easy for soldiers to film what they've been doing for years. Had there been mobile phones and digital cameras in the North of Ireland 30 years ago, we would have seen much the same brutality and casual violence against the local population.

Of course, military "analysts" and the good old BBC will wheel out the hoary excuse of the pressures these soldiers are under. Nobody talks of the trauma and pressure an occupied people feel when their streets are patrolled by armed foreigners who see it as their right to abuse, torture and kill innocent civilians.

And then they wonder why the armed resistance grows. Do they ever stop to think what those young boys will do when they get home? What their brothers and friends will do? They have learned none of the lessons of Bloody Sunday and all the other atrocities that litter imperialist history. As a result, they are condemned to repeat them - until the British Army is no more. It can't come a moment too soon.

The only concern is that the violent squaddies in Iraq are the "happy slappers" on the streets back home.

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19/01/2006

Franco's shadow over Catalunya

It seems the shadow of Franco's fascist dictatorship is still looming large over the Catalans' fight for freedom.

On January 7, Lieutenant-General Jose Mena Aguado, the commander of Spain's 50,000 ground troops, threatened military intervention should the Socialist Party (PSOE) government pass a statute giving the Catalan autonomous government status as a "nation" together with control over the region‚s taxes and the judicial system. Mena denounced the Catalan Statute as a threat to Spain's territorial integrity.

His words could only be interpreted as a threat of military invasion of Catalonia or a coup against the PSOE government.

Mena's threats are not the words of an isolated soldier - he articulates the views of an alliance of far-right extremists He threatened: "The armed forces have a mission to guarantee the sovereignty and independence of Spain.... The constitution establishes a series of impassable limits for any statute of autonomy. But if those limits are crossed, which fortunately seems unthinkable at present, it would be necessary to apply Article 8 of the constitution.

Article 8 was the very provision cited by the authors of the abortive military coup of February 23, 1981.

Mena's speech was denounced as a breach of Article 7 of the Armed Forces disciplinary law that states that military personnel are "duty bound to be neutral to political points of view."

In response, he insisted that he spoke for a sizeable constituency in the army: "In my visits to different units in recent months, I have noticed that the two major concerns of commanders are terrorism and the future unity of Spain.... The concern about the unity of Spain has been brought about by the Catalan Statute."

The fact that he is openly challenging the democratic decision of the Catalan government and the Spanish government seems to have escaped him.

At the same time that Mena gave his speech, PSOE Defence Minister José Bono was speaking alongside King Juan Carlos, declaring that in the post-Franco transition from fascism to parliamentary rule the "times of the military rattling its swords have ended."

Or not, as now seems to be the case.

The speech echoed an incident last summer involving Colonel José Maria Manrique. Manrique sent an email to thousands of his military colleagues urging soldiers "to serve Spain until death by defending its unity against the threat of Basque and Catalan separatism."

It continued, "God, do not allow us to witness the dismemberment of Spain without being able to do anything about it. God save Spain."

It seems that the right has decided that the answer to the democratic wishes of the Catalan and Basque peoples is the bullet and bayonet.

Strangely, opposition from the Catalans and Basques has been muted, as if they want to play the threat down rather than inflame the situation. Who can blame them, given that a similar move for autonomy in the 1930s led to military intervention to uphold the unity of Spain.

Indeed General Mena referred to the Catalan plans to expand its powers as a repetition of pre-civil war history - he seems to have learned the lessons of history even if the left has not. The Republican-PSOE coalition was elected in April 1931 on a wave of mass political radicalisation that forced the right to concede elections. It promised a democratic constitution and to introduce a social welfare policy to relieve the suffering of the industrial working class and the agricultural workers.

However, in the face of resistance from the right, it abandoned any democratic pretensions. The government rejected the redistribution of the land to the peasantry and the separation of the Church from the state. It refused to free Spain's remaining colonies in Morocco. Most significantly, it did not break up the reactionary caste of officers that had been the main counterrevolutionary force throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It feared the working class and its revolutionary demands far more than the forces of the right.

The coalition government, after being elected on the basis of a militant mass movement, carried out the programme of the right, paving the way for its return to power in 1934. Before the July 1936 military-fascist uprising of General Franco, the Popular Front government censored workers‚ newspapers to suppress warnings that Franco was preparing a coup.

Will we see the military resume its role as the torch bearers of Spanish centralism and reaction? Franco's shadow looms large over Catalunya.

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11/01/2006

Sharon's legacy of hatred

Ariel Sharon is being lauded as a man of peace as he lies in a hospital - a luxury not afforded many of his victims across the Middle East.

He was known in Israel before his election for the advice he gave to the occupying forces for dealing with Palestinian
demonstrators, "Cut off their testicles!" (Yediot Ahronot, 29/12/82) He also said that "the only good Arab is a dead Arab." (Maariv, 18/02/83)

Sharon should be remembered in the same way that we recall Milosevic, General Franco, Pinochet and the like. He
believed in the language of terror and blood. His creed was racism and never-ending ethnic cleansing.

Sharon's life was an unending struggle against the precepts of the Geneva Conventions and any minimum standards of international law: A few examples:

• 1953 he led Unit 101 that murdered 69 civilians in their houses in the Palestinian village of Qibya.

• 1971: he bulldozed hundreds of Palestinian homes in Gaza under the flimsiest pretext of 'security' (Zionists think the uttering of this word gives them a licence to murder and despoil.)

• 1982: he invaded Lebanon, killing more than 15,000 Lebanese civilians. With sick humour, Sharon's military started one of the many days of mass murder by commencing their daily shelling at precisely 2.42 and again at 3.38pm on July 26th, "a touch of humour with a slight hint" whose timing "was not accidental" according to the Israeli paper Davar two days later. UN resolutions 242 and 338 deal with the rights of Palestinian refugees.

• 1982: he provided the floodlights and military protection for his Phalange (fascist) militia allies to massacre up to 3000 unarmed refugees in Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps after the Americans had negotiated the departure of the Palestinian fighters and a 'truce'. An Israeli Commission of Enquiry found him "personally responsible" and ruled that he was too dirty even for the politics of the state founded on the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of a mere
generation earlier, in 1948

• 1990-92: as Israel's housing minister, he organised the rapid expansion of Israeli colonies on Palestinian land, which is illegal under international law.

• 2000: Sharon provoked the second intifada by taking thousands of Israeli security personnel into the Al-Aqsa mosque .

• 2003: he started building the massive ghetto system for the Palestinian people, surrounded by a truly disgusting 8-metre wall which, on completion, will be 750 km long, stealing large tracts of Palestinian land in the process. The International Court of Justice ruled that the wall was illegal; Sharon naturally thumbed his nose at the Court. The Court ruling enjoined every signatory government to actively work to bring down this illegal wall: the UK has done nothing whatsoever to obey this ruling of Court.

• 2005: Sharon boycotted the London meeting on Middle East peace. Naturally.

Sharon has always organised extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian leaders, the bombings of Palestinian residential areas, and a host of other activities illegal under international law. He has always refused to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency any access to Isrel's nuclear facilities, revealed to the world by the heroic Mordechai Vanunu.

Sharon's decision - praised to the skies by Blair and Straw - to remove Israeli settlers from Gaza accompanied the parallel expansion of Israeli colonies in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Although the indomitable resistance of the people of Gaza Prison was a factor in Sharon's tactical move, the Israeli armed forces continue to kill Gazans at will and patrol the borders around, and air above, those brave people.

Sharon refused to accept even Bush's Road Map. When they rise to praise a killer, one who was unrepentant even as he slipped into a coma, Blair and Straw try to align British people with the crime and rub salt in the wounds of the innocent victims of a bloody and ruthless nuclear-armed regime. To achieve a durable peace in which Jews, Arabs
and others in the region can live in security, the foul work of Sharon and all the other ethnic cleansers will have to be undone, and the political supremacy of Jews over Arabs, of any group over another, will need to be named for
what it is - apartheid - and become a nightmare memory like its deformed twin in South Africa. The occupation must end and Israel and Britain must recognise the right of the ethnically cleansed refugees to return.

The death of one particlarly brutal thug will not, by itself, mean that the Palestinians can avoid the doom that the Israeli junta and its state has in store for them. Only worldwide solidarity can achieve that. It is going to need mass boycotts, institutional disinvestment, international sanctions against Israel to halt the ongoing violation of the people of Palestine.

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02/01/2006

Russia, Ukraine and all that gas

Russia's decision to increase gas prices to the Ukraine by 460% could be the opening salvo in the long-predicted Energy Wars that are likely to dominate this new century. There may be localised reasons for the price-hike - wanting to undermine a pro-Western government and an old rival - but the knock-on effects for European states reliant on Russian gas supplies has not gone unnoticed elsewhere.

Bush's regime has already warned against creating instability and the Western powers must be concerned that the balance of power - in terms of energy and wealth creation - is shifting further east. Russia is becoming a key player in terms of gas and oil supplies while China's internally dynamic economy is only matched by its attempts to win influence in lesser developed nations with energy supplies.

As the oil runs out, the scramble for energy supplies is starting to resemble the colonialist scramble for Africa in the late 19th Century. New imperialist power blocks are shaping up - eerily reminiscent of Orwell's 1984 model.

The Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute could get far more intense now that the Ukraine is being accused of syphoning off Russian supplies destined for Austria and Hungary. Whether it's a local flare-up or the prelude to a far more serious conflict is debatable.

What is inevitable is that this economic imperialism and capitalism's free-market mania will lead to massive world tensions unless a "21st Century socialism" (to quote Venezuela's Hugo Chavez) emerges. A turn away from fossil fuels and towards renewables has to be a key part of that new thinking.

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18/12/2005

The obscenity of Israel's apartheid wall

Israel was established in 1948 partly as a response to the Holocaust and the terrible suffering of Jews in Europe during the Second World War. It was also partly a concession to Jewish armed struggle, in the form of Irgun and the Stern Gang. Today, this kind of armed struggle against the British colonial occupier would be called terrorism, not least by the Israeli state itself.

The Israeli state has now constructed a modern obscenity in the form of an apartheid Wall to keep out what it terms as terrorism - the suicide bombers of the Palestinian resistance.

This wall, which is still under construction, ostensibly separates Israel proper from the Palestinian West Bank. But, in fact, it is far more subtle and menacing than that. It divides Palestinians from their land, olive groves and water supplies. It protects illegal Jewish settlements of extreme Zionists and criss crosses the Palestinian land with a network of roads and perimeters that only Israelis can use. The Palestinians, nominally in control of their own homeland, are in fact being squeezed out of existence by this wall.

It is an obscenity on a par with the totalitarian Berlin Wall. It stands 30 foot high, a concrete divide between peoples that only reinforces the problem rather than solving it. It has machine gun turrets that can only remind you of concentration camps.

It is an obscenity that has echoes of the Holocaust.

Graffiti surrealist Banksy has his own take on this - www.banksy.co.uk/outdoors/05.5.html

Find out more... visit the Electronic Intifada to find out more about this forgotten conflict - http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/maps/351.shtml

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01/12/2005

Remembering Rosa Parks

50 years ago today Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus because the law said she had the wrong skin colour. The greatest moments in history are made up of scores of these singular acts by ordinary, everyday people who could no longer tolerate the nonsense of those in charge.

Today, whether it is a student who holds a sit-in to get the army recruiters off his campus, or the mother of a dead soldier who refuses to allow her son's life to be wasted, brave people risk ridicule and rejection but end up turning huge tides of public opinion in the direction of a better world. We owe them enormous debts of gratitude. It is not easy to stand up for what is right, especially when everyone else is afraid to leave the comfortable path of conformity.

Rosa Parks may have been alone on that bus at the moment of her arrest but she wasn't alone for long. The old order was shaken, the world was upended and, as a people, we were given a chance for a bit of redemption.

Fifty years later, the bus we're on could use a few more people simply saying, "No. I'm sorry. I've had enough. I'm not going to take it anymore."

www.michaelmoore.com

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30/11/2005

Venezuelan revolution comes to Wales

Wrexham Socialist Forum hosted a fascinating discussion about the revolution in Venezuela last night by Ramon Samblas, of Hands off Venezuela (www.handsoffvenezuela.org).

The Bolivarian revolution continues to develop - with communities taking control of their neighbourhoods, workers taking control of factories and offices and a steady development of self-management or co-management across key industries like oil.

Perhaps the key to this "socialism for the 21st Century" is the democratic way President Hugo Chavez is allowing even the most reactionary media to flourish in Venezuela. It's also based on an interesting relationship between the charismatic president, a native indian like many of the working class, and the broader mass of people.

Another key is that this is a revolution that delivers - people are being treated in gleaming new clinics by Cuban doctors and emerging with their sight restored; illiteracy has been abolished by a mass campaign that saw one million copies of Don Quixote handed out by the government, a university for barrio (slum) kids has been established for free. Even if the revolution stopped today, it has made real differences to the lives of millions.

Coupled with this is the economic clout that the state-owned oil industry gives Chavez. This is a revolution in a developed industrial nation, unlike Cuba, and has the potential to spread the message throughout the continent arm in arm with Cuba's pioneering medical teams.

Local socialists are to encourage the Assembly to establish trade links with Venezuela - a bit of cheap oil might even keep the bloody farmers happy!

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23/11/2005

Bish-bosh-Bush

Are the wheels finally coming off the monkey's trailer?

George W Bush has led a charmed life as president. He stole the presidency in 2000 with the help of brother Jeb in Florida. He was massively unpopular before 9/11 took place, was frozen with panic when 9/11 took place and resurrected his image along with the help of the firefighters and other heroes of the hour.

Since his lucky re-election, things haven't quite panned out for monkey boy... Katrina showed up his panicky tendency to freeze in the face of crisis and disaster. The Iraqi war is becoming a second Vietnam with the body bags mounting alongside the anti-war opposition. A majority of US voters now want the troops out.

Today comes stunning news that Bush knew just 10 days after 9/11 that there was no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. His President's Daily Briefing told him so, but the administration won't release its details to journalists.

On top of that a UK civil servant is now facing trial under the Official Secrets Act for leaking a Whitehall document that reveals that Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera television station's HQ in Qatar because he believed they were the propaganda arm of Osama Bin Laden. The truth is that Bush's family has rather more connection with Bin Laden than Al Jazeera does. The idea that a building full of journalists and technicians on neutral soil could be targetted by the US president suggests that the man is either an idiot or completely oblivious to the damage US imperialism is doing in the Middle East.

To cap off a great week for US foreign adventurism, news emerges that the CIA is actively considering a coup against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. It's that simple - Chavez is a threat to US imperialism's hold in Latin America and offers a real alternative to neo-liberalism, so he has to go. Bugger democracy, bugger Operation Iraqi Freedom. He's got our oil!

If people like Bush didn't exist, you'd have to invent them...

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21/11/2005

Tony's crony exposed

Labour's biggest financial donor took a battering on tonight's expose by John Sweeney. "The Irresistable rise of Tony's crony" looked into the murky world of bio-tech millionaire Paul Drayson, who has given Blair's party £1.1m. In a totally unconnected series of events he has received a Labour lordship, a job as minister for arms procurement (with a budget of £6 billion) as well as securing vast contracts for his vaccine company. As Sweenery dead-panned with delight... totally unconnected.

But this wasn't just a rant against croneyism. Sweeney also exposed the incredible failures of Drayson's company to report faults in their vaccines. Under the FOI Act, researchers showed that some BCG vaccines were known to be less than effective but still passed on. Other jabs were found to be contaminated - in one terrible case, by the HIV virus.

Drayson sold his company just before it provoked a major alert in the USA, where half the nation's flu vaccines were withdrawn due to contamination fears. Bush himself was quoted as blaming a company based in England - Blair has had no such qualms about giving an unelected millionaire donor with a dodgy track record a place at the top table of UK politics.

It was an awesome expose, spoilt only by the ineffective doorstep by Sweeney. He failed to ask the killer question about the contaminated vaccine - instead he allowed Drayson to deny any link between the donations and the good fortune he'd enjoyed thanks to Neo Labour. Well he would, wouldn't he?

Labour got elected by a landslide in 1997 partly because people were sick of Tory sleaze. Can anyone spot the difference any more?

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13/11/2005

Socialism for the 21st Century

Socialism - the idea that the people who create the wealth of the world should be in control of their own future - has had a rough old time of late.
Battered by association with Stalinism in Eastern Europe, a very loose association with Labourite cretins like Kinnock and the antics of the left sects - it's not easy calling yourself a socialist in 21st Century Wales.
Then along comes Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela.
The left-wing president of the oil-rich South American republic has had a rough ride - he was briefly deposed in a US-backed military coup, the middle classes tried to stage a strike against him and a Bushite Christian fundamentalist has called for his execution. But he has mobilised millions of Venezuela's poorest people to fight back, invoking the spirit of Simon Bolivar (the 19th Century liberator of much of Latin America from Spanish colonial rule) and looking for material help from Cuba.
Thousands of Cuban doctors have made a real difference to the barrios and the Venezuela government has handed out one million free copies of Don Quixote as part of the adult literacy programme.
Chavez is calling his revolution "socialism for the 21st Century" - it certainly feels like it.
Find out more about this by coming to "Eyewitness to revolution" with guest speaker Ramon Samblas at the Wrexham Socialist Forum at 7.30pm on Tuesday, November 29 at the Miners' Institute, Grosvenor Rd, Wrexham.

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19/10/2005

Troops out now

It seems British troops are voting with their feet over Iraq and quitting the military rather than fight an illegal and ongoing war. Recruitment in traditionally strong areas such as Wales has plummeted, according to anecdotal evidence, with the effect of the Military Families Against War campaign particularly effective.

This from The Independent, 18 October 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article320343.ece


Army sources are warning that the mood among soldiers of all ranks is at its gloomiest since the invasion in March 2003. The outlook has become darker as the war proves increasingly intractable and much more dangerous than troops had expected.

A string of incidents in the past week has contributed to the sense of crisis:

* The Ministry of Defence has launched an inquiry into the apparent suicide of Captain Ken Masters, a military police investigator who was found hanged at his barracks in Basra.

* A decision by Private Troy Samuels, who was awarded a Military Cross seven months ago for his bravery under fire in Iraq, to abandon the military rather than return for another tour of duty.

* Seventy soldiers from Private Samuels' battalion, the Princess of Wales Regiment (1PWRR), have also decided to leave the Army during the past year rather than return to Iraq

* An RAF officer, Flt-Lt Malcolm Kendall-Smith, said he was prepared to face jail rather than serve in Iraq, in a war he considers to be illegal. He is to be court-martialled for "refusing to obey a lawful command" and is the first British officer to face criminal charges for challenging the legality of the war.

The increasingly desperate position of British troops in southern Iraq was highlighted last night by the former cabinet minister Clare Short. "The Government are putting the armed forces into an impossible position," she said. "It is obviously affecting morale."

Ms Short, who resigned over the war, is introducing a Bill on Friday to compel the Government to seek parliamentary approval before going to war again. She added: "An army officer stopped me in the street in Whitehall and said his job was talking to parents of those who had been killed in Iraq. He said he supported what I was doing. He said
that his job was unbearable. I think the time has come to get a negotiated timetable for an end to the occupation."

Such a move seems unlikely, however. Recent comments by the ForeignSecretary, Jack Straw, that British forces might have to stay in anincreasingly volatile conflict for up to 10 more years have exacerbated fears among British forces that the conflict in which they are engaged is open-ended and lacking a credible exit strategy.
There are currently 8,500 British troops in Iraq, most serving a six-month tour of duty. Claims have been made that many of those being sent out feel they do not have the experience to cope with the pressures.

According to Combat Stress, the military charity dedicated to helpingsoldiers suffering psychological problems, the seemingly indefinite struggle has created the greatest crisis of morale among British troops for decades.

Commodore Toby Elliott, the chief executive of Combat Stress, told TheIndependent that many soldiers were leaving the Army early in the hope that its psychological effects - flashbacks, nightmares and guilt that they had survived while colleagues had not - would abate. Commodore Elliot said: "The effects of the Iraq situation are comparable to serving in Northern Ireland during the worst of the Troubles when they were subjected to car-bomb attacks."

The incidents are symptomatic of a general malaise. One corporal said: "This has been a hard, hard tour. I would be glad not to be back in Iraq for a while." Another NCO added: "Mr Blair keeps on saying that everything is getting better here. Perhaps he would care to come and see for himself. He is pretty good at sending other people's sons to Iraq."

Pte Samuels' decision to leave the Army may be a particularly significant landmark. A war hero, he was decorated for saving lives during the ambush which earned his comrade Pte Johnson Beharry a Victoria Cross. But he told The Independent yesterday that he decided to leave the moment he was told his unit would be returning to Iraq.

"I couldn't do that," he said, "Not straight away like that. It would be different if they were sending me to somewhere like Afghanistan - but not Iraq, right now. The stress for the guys out there is immense. They are seeing so much bad stuff. I owed it to my family to call it a day."

The current intensity of day-to-day combat is evident in the recent incident logs for Pte Samuel's regiment which show that soldiers have faced 109 individual attacks in a single day. Capt Masters, 40, with 24 years' experience, had been involved in investigations of alleged mistreatment of detainees by British soldiers. Army sources have reported that the stress of investigating colleagues may have contributed to his death.

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27/09/2005

New Orleans mayor and police chief lied

This is an excellent, if v long, report from the New Orleans Times-Picayne newspaper about the lies told by the authorities to hype up the impression that NO was a war zone controlled by armed thugs and rapists. For anyone interested in media management, it's a lesson in how to shift blame onto the victims rather than those in power.
The roles of both the mayor and police chief in spreading unsubstantiated rumours of rape and murder in the Superdome and Convention Centre are shameful, although it seems they will stay in office.
The media was kept away from these places, in part, by the rumours thus making it impossible to check out the facts. Nevertheless they reported them as facts.
What does emerge from the horror of Hurricane Katrina is the mutual support and self-organisation of devastated communities and desperate people - despite the best efforts of the various authorities to abandon them.


Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated
Widely reported attacks false or unsubstantiated

6 bodies found at Dome; 4 at Convention Center


By Brian Thevenot
and Gordon Russell
Staff writers


After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.


Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies were recovered, despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials.

That the nation's front-line emergency management believed the body count would resemble that of a bloody battle in a war is but one of scores of examples of myths about the Dome and the Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials, including the mayor and police superintendent. As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has cleared, the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.

"I think 99 percent of it is bulls---," said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. "Don't get me wrong, bad things happened, but I didn't see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything. ... Ninety-nine percent of the people in the Dome were very well-behaved."

Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state Health and Human Services Department administrator overseeing the body recovery operation, said his teams were inundated with false reports about the Dome and Convention Center.

"We swept both buildings several times, because we kept getting reports of more bodies there," Cataldie said. "But it just wasn't the case."

Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina - making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year. Jordan expressed outrage at reports from many national media outlets that suffering flood victims had turned into mobs of unchecked savages.

"I had the impression that at least 40 or 50 murders had occurred at the two sites," he said. "It's unfortunate we saw these kinds of stories saying crime had taken place on a massive scale when that wasn't the case. And they (national media outlets) have done nothing to follow up on any of these cases, they just accepted what people (on the street) told them. ... It's not consistent with the highest standards of journalism."

As floodwaters forced tens of thousands of evacuees into the Dome and Convention Center, news of unspeakable acts poured out of the nation's media: evacuees firing at helicopters trying to save them; women, children and even babies raped with abandon; people killed for food and water; a 7-year-old raped and killed at the Convention Center. Police, according to their chief, Eddie Compass, found themselves in multiple shootouts inside both shelters, and were forced to race toward muzzle flashes through the dark to disarm the criminals; snipers supposedly fired at doctors and soldiers from downtown high-rises.

In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of "babies," and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of "hundreds of armed gang members" killing and raping people inside the Dome. Unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies, "we couldn't count."

The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them. Nagin told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an "almost animalistic state."

Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines say that although anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened.

Military, law enforcement and medical workers agree that the flood of evacuees - about 30,000 at the Dome and an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 at the Convention Center - overwhelmed their security personnel. The 400 to 500 soldiers in the Dome could have been easily overrun by increasingly agitated crowds, but that never happened, said Col. James Knotts, a midlevel commander there. Security was nonexistent at the Convention Center, which was never designated as a shelter. Authorities provided no food, water or medical care until troops secured the building the Friday after the storm.

While the Convention Center saw plenty of mischief, including massive looting and isolated gunfire, and many inside cowered in fear, the hordes of evacuees for the most part did not resort to violence, as legend has it.

"Everything was embellished, everything was exaggerated," said Deputy Police Superintendent Warren Riley. "If one guy said he saw six bodies, then another guy the same six, and another guy saw them - then that became 18."


Soldier shot - by himself


Inside the Dome, where National Guardsmen performed rigorous security checks before allowing anyone inside, only one shooting has been verified. Even that incident, in which Louisiana Guardsman Chris Watt of the 527th Engineer Battalion was injured, has been widely misreported, said Maj. David Baldwin, who led the team of soldiers who arrested a suspect.

Watt was attacked inside one of the Dome's locker rooms, which he entered with another soldier. In the darkness, as he walked through about six inches of water, Watt was attacked with a metal rod, a piece of a cot. But the bullet that penetrated Watt's leg came from his own gun - he accidentally shot himself in the commotion. The attacker never took his gun from him, Baldwin said. New Orleans police investigated the matter fully and sent the suspect to jail in Breaux Bridge, Baldwin said.

As for other shootings, Baldwin said, "We actively patrolled 24 hours a day, and nobody heard another shot."

Doug Thornton, regional vice president of SMG, which manages the Dome, walked the complex from before the storm until the final evacuation and kept a meticulous journal. In a Sept. 9 interview, he said he heard reports of rapes and killings, but they were unconfirmed and came from evacuees and security officials.

"We walked through the facility every day, and we didn't see all this that was being reported," said Thornton, one of about 35 Dome employees who rode out Katrina in the building and lived there in the days after the storm hit. "We never felt threatened. It's hard to determine what's real and what's not real."


No victims


Inside the Convention Center, the rumors of widespread violence have proved hard to substantiate, as well, though the masses of evacuees endured terrifying and inhumane conditions.

Jimmie Fore, vice president of the state authority that runs the Convention Center, stayed in the building with a core group of 35 employees until Sept. 1, the Thursday after Katrina. He was appalled by what he saw. Thugs hotwired 75 forklifts and electric carts and looted food and booze from every room in the building, but he said he never saw any violent crimes committed, and neither did any of his employees. Some, however, did report seeing armed men roaming the building, and Fore said he heard gunshots in the distance on at about six occasions.

NOPD Capt. Jeff Winn's 20-member SWAT team responded on about 10 occasions to calls from the Convention Center, usually after reports of shots being fired. The group found people huddled in the fetal position, lying flat on the ground to avoid bullets or running for the exits. They also heard stories of gang rapes, armed robberies and other violent crimes, but no victims ever came forward while his officers were in the building, he said.

"What's true and what's not, we don't really know," he said.

Rumors of rampant violence at the Convention Center prompted Louisiana National Guard Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux put together a 1,000-man force of soldiers and police in full battle gear to secure the center Sept. 2 at about noon.

It took only 20 minutes to take control, and soldiers met no resistance, Thibodeaux said. What the soldiers found - elderly people and infants near death without food, water and medicine; crowds living in filth - shocked them more than anything they'd seen in combat zones overseas. But they found no evidence, witnesses or victims of any killings, rapes or beatings, Thibodeaux said.

Another commander at the scene, Lt. Col. John Edwards of the Arkansas National Guard, said the crowd welcomed the soldiers. "It reminded me of the liberation of France in World War II. There were people cheering; one boy even saluted," he said. "We never - never once - encountered any hostility."

One widely circulated tale, told to The Times-Picayune by a slew of evacuees and two Arkansas National Guardsmen, held that "30 or 40 bodies" were stored in a Convention Center freezer. But a formal Arkansas Guard review of the matter later found that no soldier had actually seen the corpses, and that the information came from rumors in the food line for military, police and rescue workers in front of Harrah's New Orleans Casino, said Edwards, who conducted the review.

It's possible more than four people died at the Convention Center. Fore, the center's vice president, said he saw another body outside the building early in the first week after the storm, covered in a shroud on the pavement along Julia Street, near the back of the Convention Center. It's unclear whether that body ended up in the nearby food service entrance, where the four confirmed bodies were found later.

Also, several news organizations reported the body of 91-year-old Booker T. Harris, which sat covered in a chair on Convention Center Boulevard for several days after he died on the back of a truck while being evacuated.

Just one of the dead appeared to be the victim of foul play, said Winn, one of few law enforcement officers who spent any time patrolling the Convention Center before it was secured. Winn, who did the final sweep of the building, said one body appeared to have stab wounds, but he could not be sure. Baldwin also said only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, apparently referring to the same body as Winn described. Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the Department of Health and Hospitals, also confirmed just one suspected homicide at the Convention Center, though he said the victim had been shot, not stabbed.

A Washington Post report quoted another soldier who concluded that three of the four people appeared to have been beaten to death, including an older woman in a wheelchair.

But Spc. Mikel Brooks, an Arkansas Guardsman who said he wheeled the woman's dead body into the food service entrance, said she appeared to have died of natural causes. Brooks went on to say that the woman had expired sitting next to her husband, who shocked him by asking him to bring the wheelchair back.

The Post also cited evacuee Tony Cash and three other unnamed sources saying a young boy died of an asthma attack, but multiple officials could not confirm that death.


One attack thwarted


Reports of dozens of rapes at both facilities - many allegedly involving small children - may forever remain a question mark. Rape is a notoriously underreported crime under ideal circumstances, and tracking down evidence at this point, with evacuees spread all over the country, would be nearly impossible. The same goes for reports of armed robberies at both sites.

Numerous people told The Times-Picayune that they had witnessed rapes, in particular attacks on two young girls in the Superdome ladies room and the killing of one of them, but police and military officials said they know nothing of such an incident.

Soldiers and police did confirm at least one attempted rape of a child. Riley said a man tried to sexually assault a young girl, but was "beaten up" by civilians and apprehended by police. It was unclear if that incident was the one that gained wide currency among evacuees.

Baldwin, the National Guard commander of a special reaction team patrolling the Dome, also said he knew of only one attempted sexual assault of a child - but the details of his story, while similar, differed somewhat from that of Riley. It was unclear last