Harry's Place

The Conservative Party has released a YouTube video on Webcameron attacking Labour’s record. It is a piece of political distraction as the only interesting thing about it is its timing.

The video begins with dark skies and stark piano notes and the line: “To our successors we leave no money only waste, debut and the deepest cuts of modern times.”

Will those will be the cuts that the coalition government is implementing then? The same cuts that are driven not by simple economic austerity but by an ideological zeal that the recent Fabian/Landman Economics study said would hit the poor six times harder than the very richest.

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Stephen Bates writes at The Guardian:

Uncharacteristic reticence from George Galloway, who has declined an invitation to appear on the BBC World Service this evening because he claims he would be “genuinely afraid” to be in the presence of its presenter, John Sweeney. The former MP claims Sweeney, who once famously lost his temper on film after being harassed by the Church of Scientology, is “now officially, probably unbalanced”. Obviously it could not possibly have anything to do with Sweeney wanting to interview Galloway about his work for Press TV, the Iranian state-sponsored channel that broadcast confessions by the regime’s opponents extracted under torture. Galloway says he has been a trenchant critic of Iran, just like he was of Saddam Hussein.

We eagerly await the broadcast of Galloway’s Press TV interview with President Ahmadinejad, in which he relentlessly interrogates the Iranian leader about the brutal and bloody suppression of the Green Movement, the rape and torture and murder of political opponents, the closure of opposition newspapers and websites, the persecution of homosexuals, the executions for “adultery,” the imprisonment of trade unionists, etc., until he is dragged away by the Revolutionary Guard, still shouting questions.

This is a Cross Post from the OneVoice Movement

New York, August 10, 2010−OneVoice Palestine (OVP) recently coordinated a workshop in the West Bank city of Hebron with over 40 youth activists who will be forming a new OneVoice chapter.

H2’s group will be the third new chapter for OVP in the past month after recently adding groups in Jenin and Bethlehem with over 47 new activists. Speaking to members of the H2 community, an area under Israel control, was challenging as the audience was skeptical at first of OneVoice’s work fearing that joining the movement would mean giving up the 1967 borders and possibly more rights. Mohammed Assedeh, head of the OVP youth council, delivered OneVoice’s message giving background information about OVP’s youth initiatives and training programs.

Hebron is divided into H1 and H2, and the H2 area is under the control of the Israeli military and subject to extended curfews, restrictions on movement, and security checkpoints. H1 is under Palestinian jurisdiction and already has an OVP chapter, represented by youth council member Bashar Shweiki. The new H2 chapter will begin its own initiatives targeting a new audience in their community and working toward peace and the two-state solution, hoping to eventually unite Hebron.

The workshop, we formed the new H2 chapter, comprised youth who participate in local grassroots activities such as painting murals in their city and creating their ‘Count to 10’ project that discusses the benefits of thinking before reacting.

“We are a group full of energy to work for the sake of Palestine, and together with OneVoice we can achieve the unachievable in the H2 area,” said Abd Alrahman Abu Hadeed, one of the workshop’s attendees.

Community members from the H2 area of Hebron listen to OneVoice Palestine's message.

In 1990 Alex Callinicos wrote a review of Tariq Ali’s novel Redemption for Socialist Worker Review. Below I copy an extract.

Political Suicide Note

Alex Callinicos

Socialist Worker Review, November 1990, p.33.

Redemption, Tariq Ali, Chatto & Windus £13.99

…. Redemption is supposed to be a comic novel, but it’s as unfunny as its basic idea: Ali has always been a rather poor writer, wooden and pompous, and his style isn’t much improved by this essay in fiction….

Ali heaps on his characters … the most malicious slanders and innuendo.

There isn’t a male character, with [one] exception… who doesn’t have the most vile, usually sexual, motives ascribed to him.

It is hard to convey the sheer nastiness and pettiness of Ali’s malice….

What is especially odious about the book is the way in which Ali seeks to offer political justification for his scurrilous gossip….

The political reality behind this grubby little novel is Ali’s experience…

Why the vitriol? What sort of novel could have had someone such as Alex Callinicos spitting blood? The answer is that Tariq Ali knows the character traits and an awful lot of anecdotes about various people on the Trotskyist left.  The leading fictionalised characters in Redemption are from the Trotskyist left and anyone with some knowledge of these organisations can easily work out who Ali based his characters upon. For example Ezra Einstein is obviously based upon Ernest Mandel; Frank Hood, the leader of the Hoodlums, is obviously based on Gerry Healy; Jimmy Rock (real name Chaim Bernstein) is Tony Cliff (real name Yigael Gluckstein), and so on. Particularly amusing is the name Ali gives to his fictional representation of the American SWP: the Proletarian International Socialist Party of American Workers, known by its acronym, PISPAW.

In the novel, Jimmy Rock’s party is known as the Rockers Workers Party (RWP), obviously based upon the British Socialist Workers Party, and their weekly newspaper, known as the Rocker’s Gazette, is edited by Nutty Shardman, a character based upon Chris Harman. The former editor of the Gazette had been Alex Mango, the public school educated, party intellectual, who still writes a weekly column for the Gazette and is viewed by Nutty to be “Soft as shit.” Far be it from me to guess who Ali based Alex Mango upon, but I do wonder if this character could explain Alex Callinicos’s particularly hostile review.

Below I copy an extract from page 189 of Redemption where Ali writes about Alex Mango:

Mango, an extremely talented polemicist, made sure that he preserved his best material for the national press and the literary journals. He was the leading representative of Rockism with a human face, and his own features were extremely pleasing, even thought the hair which covered his forehead and came down to his shoulders was by now completely grey. This only enhanced his attractiveness to the young middle-class housewives in the north-western districts of the capital. His appetite was legendary. It was said that Alex used to disguise himself as a milkman and service most of North London in a day; but this was probably a vile slander spread with somebody less well endowed with bottle. Someone like Nutty, who needed Alex but also loathed him.

A sophisticated and cultured public speaker, Mango was responsible for winning over many young people to the Rocker ranks. Few stayed long, but that was hardly Mango’s fault. Like a smartly dressed doorman outside the façade of an imposing looking mansion, Mango bowed slightly and opened the door with a smile. It was only after the unwitting new recruit had passed through the revolving door that he or she realized that inside it there was no roof, no walls, no building, nothing but a cellarful of second-hand furniture, and beneath it the abyss.

Acknowledgement

It was a blog post by Marko Attila Hoare that brought Callinicos’s review to my attention. Marko also kindly provided me with a copy of the review in order to save me a trip to the vaults.

Join us in opposing the Pope’s intolerant policies

Thursday 12 August
7.30pm
Richmond Library, Old Town Hall
Whittaker Ave
Richmond, TW9 1TP
(nearest station: Richmond underground and national rail)

All welcome.

The Pope’s first event in London, on the 17 September, will be at St Mary’s University College in Twickenham, south west London. The pontiff will talk about his views on education, which have included his support for separate faith schools and the right of these schools to discriminate in their admissions policy and their recruitment of staff. .

“The Protest the Pope campaign rejects the promotion of religiously segregated education. We believe in the right of all children to an unbiased education, where school admission policies are non-discriminatory and where there is no discrimination in recruitment and employment,” said Protest the Pope spokesperson, the human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.

“Protest the Pope is supporting a coalition of local groups and people, based in south west London, who have organised a public meeting to express their disagreement with Pope Benedict’s opposition to women’s rights, gay equality, fertility treatment for childless couples, embryonic stem cell research and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV,” added Mr Tatchell.

It will start at 7.30pm, with speeches from spokespersons for the Protest the Pope campaign, followed by a Q and A.

The meeting is open to the public. All welcome. 

The speakers are:

David Pollock, President of the European Humanist Federation, will talk about the Catholic Church’s influence at European level as a result of the Lisbon treaty.

Keith Porteous Wood, Chief Executive of the National Secular Society, will talk about the pressure growing at the United Nations on the Vatican, which is failing to produce a report on child protection…

Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, will talk about the “Protest the Pope” Campaign and the six main reasons why we are against against honouring Joseph Ratzinger with a State Visit.

Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner, will talk about Catholic dissent from the Pope’s hardline, intolerant opposition to liberation theology, women’s rights, gay equality, contraception, fertility treatment, embryonic stem cell research and the Pope’s collusion with Holocaust deniers and appeasers.

This is a guest post by Fariba Amini

A few days ago, I attended the memorial service for Shapour Bakhtiar and Soroush Katibeh at the famous cemetery of Montparnasse in Paris.

On August 6,  1991, Dr Bakhtiar, whose government lasted 37 days after the Iranian Revolution,  and his assistant Mr. Katibeh were murdered in Paris ( having their throats slashed) by agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran.  This was 19 years ago.  Only three months ago, one of his murderers,, Ali Vakili Rad,, was released from jail In France, supposedly having terminated his jail term.  In reality however, he was exchanged for Clothilde Reiss, the French student who had been arrested in the summer of 2009 and held in Evin accused of spying for the French government.    We know how that works, the IRI slams foreigners or Iranians with the spy label and no one can prove his/her innocence since there is no due process in Iran.

Justice is a one way street under the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In the meantime, Vakili Rad, the killer of Bakhtiar, was given a hero’s welcome in Tehran, showered with flowers around his neck. He told the news media that he did not regret his action.

In 1998, Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar, an elderly couple who were both opponents of the Shah’s regime and that of the Islamic regime, were stabbed to death in their home in Tehran. A few days later, the bodies of members of the Writers Association of Iran were found strangled to death, in what came to be known as the serial murders of autumn 1998.   A few rogue agents of the Ministry of Intelligence were arrested under the Khatami government. There was a trial but none of the accused was sentenced or given jail terms.  In fact, when the daughter of the Forouhars, Parastou and the family’s lawyer asked to see the file on her parents, the request was denied.

In the summer of 1988, mass executions took place in several prisons including Evin.  The families were only notified after the fact. They neither saw their loved ones nor had a chance to hire lawyers or have their day in court.  As customary, the judicial system in Iran brands everyone with “working against national security.”  This is a broad accusation that can embody many things. In the case of prisoners of the summer of 1988, they were labeled ”mohareb ba khoda” which means enmity towards God.  The sentence was swift as was the execution of nearly 5000 political prisoners according to a report by Amnesty International. Read more »

The Taliban has executed hundreds of people it had accused of collaborating with coalition forces or the Afghan government.

Maverick bean-spillers, Wikileaks, recklessly published classified military documents relating to the war in Afghanistan without thoroughly editing out the names of civilian individuals helping the fight against the Taliban. The Taliban has pledged to track down and murder these people.

Wikileaks owner, Julian Assange, defended his actions by claiming that: “All the material is over seven months old so is of no current operational consequence, even though it may be of very significant investigative consequence.”

This is absurd, since there is clearly no time-limit on the names or details of civilians who have provided information about the Taliban to the US forces.

However, despite widespread criticism – and horror – Wikileaks has been slow to remedy the situation and instead, bizarrely, has blamed the US military for failing to cooperate with them in publishing the documents.

Now, reports the BBC, several concerned Human Rights organisations, including Amnesty International, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, the Open Society Institute and the International Crisis Group have written to Assange urging him to remove the names.

Nader Nadery of  the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission stated bluntly:

“There was no consideration about civilian lives… We said that in the future the names should be redacted and the ones that are already there need to be taken down. Even though it is late, it still worth doing.”

They have received no response to their urgent request.

I fear that this sort of behaviour will become typical of aloof, ego-driven and sensationalist Internet reporting. Arguably the media has always been like this. But in the past they didn’t have the technology to cause this much harm at the touch of a button. The war cry of the Internet ‘citizen journalist’ is that “information wants to be free.” But what does this mean for human freedom?

Raheel Raza, author of Their Jihad, Not My Jihad: a Muslim Canadian Woman Speaks Out, gives her view on the Ground Zero mosque question. Be warned, she says she has no time for ‘bleeding heart white liberals’ or ‘political correctness’.

And here she is on ‘Islamophobia’:

Let’s take a moment to debunk Islamophobia. The term was first coined in the 1980s but gained momentum after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

In 1997, Britain’s Runnymede Trust think tank defined Islamophobia as the “dread or hatred of Islam and therefore … the fear and dislike of all Muslims.” It also refers, said the trust, to the practice of discriminating against Muslims by excluding them from the economic, social and public life of a nation.

But many Muslims in the West use Islamophobia as a penalty card against free speech whenever there is criticism of Muslims. This reactionary response is stifling dialogue, debate and discussion — all signs of a healthy thriving democracy.

As he does on most of the issues he deals with, Jeffrey Goldberg takes precisely the right stand on the controversy over building a mosque and community center near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.

Sarah Palin called on “peace-seeking” Muslims to “refudiate”– yes, she wrote “refudiate”– the plans for the mosque, which would be built by the Cordoba Initiative, the very model of a moderate Muslim organization.

Goldberg, an Atlantic writer whose blog is one of my daily (at least) must-reads, is an unapologetic Zionist, a sometimes-critical defender of Israel (where he lived and served in the IDF) and a strong opponent of Islamic extremism.

He writes:

I know the people who run the initiative; they are, for lack of a better term, “peace-seeking Muslims.” I spoke at a program co-sponsored by Cordoba last year, and I came to understand that the organization is interested mainly in battling extremism within Islam, and in building bridges to non-Muslim faiths. It seems to me that its mission makes Cordoba an appropriate fit for Ground Zero. One of the ways to prevent future Ground Zeroes is to encourage moderation within Islam, and to treat Muslim moderates differently than we treat Muslim extremists. The campaign against this mosque treats all Muslims as perpetrators. This is a terrible mistake, for moral and strategic reasons. I’m afraid that Sarah Palin, if she were ever to become President, would help create what Muslim extremists have so far unsuccesssfully sought to provoke: an all-out clash of civilizations.

And Goldberg was right to criticize the Anti-Defamation League’s wrong-headed and baffling opposition to building the mosque.

Opposing the construction seems to have become a cause celebre for Republicans; joining Palin in opposition are other possible GOP candidates for president in 2012– Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty.

Goldberg, however, cites the words of another Republican whose attitude toward the peaceful vast majority of American Muslims was one of inclusiveness rather than politically-motivated mistrust and fearfulness.

America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.

Women who cover their heads in this country must feel comfortable going outside their homes. Moms who wear cover must be not intimidated in America. That’s not the America I know. That’s not the America I value.

I’ve been told that some fear to leave; some don’t want to go shopping for their families; some don’t want to go about their ordinary daily routines because, by wearing cover, they’re afraid they’ll be intimidated. That should not and that will not stand in America.

Those, of course, were the words of President George W. Bush, speaking at the Washington Islamic Center a few days after 9/11.

Yes, the current crop of “leading” Republicans makes me long for the tolerance of George W. Bush.

Update: As is often the case, The Daily Show has one of the best takes on the matter. (May be unavailable to readers outside the US.)

Lee John Barnes LLB (Hons), well known for being not only the BNP’s ‘Legal Director/Officer/Adviser’ but also one of its most consistently fanatical supporters, has left the party. You can read his rambling ‘Formal Resignation Letter’ in full here. Highlights include:

Over the last few years since the arrival of Jim Dowson into the party, Nick Griffin and Jim Dowson have repeatedly chosen to break the most obvious of laws including such debacles as ;

1) The Marmite Case

2) The unlawful use of stock images from a photoshop company during the European Elections

3) The EHRC court cases

4) The unlawful sacking of Michaele Mackenzie

5) The illegal suspension of Peter Mullins and many others

All of these were done under the orders of both Nick Griffin and Jim Dowson.

Regardless of how much income the party has had over the last few years, hundreds of thousands of pounds have been squandered on avoidable court cases.

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