Friday, 29 April 2011
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
LETTER TO THE GRIME SCENE FROM YOUTH FOR SMILEY CULTURE
Facebook event page HERE
Brother Akala, Durrty Goodz and sister Roxxxan are all CONFIRMED for this event
TO OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE GRIME SCENE
A Call for Justice for Smiley Culture
Dear Brothers and Sisters
We are writing to you as the torch bearers of our inter-generational struggle in this country to be accepted for who we are, not what the system wants us to be.
Smiley Culture’s cultural legacy in his MCing/toasting and tracks were important victories for us to forge our own proud Black, working class identity in the face of the racist education system, the judiciary, the police and media.
We are writing to you because you are the continuation of the struggle of Smiley Culture to forge our own rights here in this land, which is now our homes.
Smiley Culture was another victim of the racist attack on all of us. We write to you to generally join the campaign for justice for Smiley Culture and all those killed in police custody. But also we invite you to come and perform and share your thoughts at the ‘Youth for Smiley Culture’ event taking place on Saturday 7th May in central London, organised with the support of the Smiley Culture family.
This will be an event which will celebrate our achievements culturally in this country, Smiley Culture’s role in this our common story, and also to seek the truth, demand justice and organise ourselves so the powers that be know they cannot hold down our culture, be it Reggae or Grime, and we will raise our voices for justice loud and clear.
If you are up for performing and supporting this event, please contact Asad Raja on incyte1@gmail.com
In Unity,
Sukant Chandan,
Sons of Malcolm
sonsofmalcolm.com
07854 147 868
sukant.chandan@gmail.com
Monday, 18 April 2011
Saturday, 16 April 2011
WHY DID IT TAKE 2 MONTHS FOR BROTHER PILGER TO SAY THE OBVIOUS ON LIBYA?
David Cameron's gift of war and racism, to them and us
[source]
The Euro-American attack on Libya has nothing to do with protecting anyone; only the terminally naive believe such nonsense. It is the West’s response to popular uprisings in strategic, resource-rich regions of the world and the beginning of a war of attrition against the new imperial rival, China.
President Barack Obama’s historical distinction is now guaranteed. He is America’s first black president to invade Africa. His assault on Libya is run by the US Africa Command, which was set up in 2007 to secure the continent’s lucrative natural resources from Africa’s impoverished people and the rapidly spreading commercial influence of China. Libya, along with Angola and Nigeria, is China’s principal source of oil. As American, British and French planes currently incinerate both “bad” and “good” Libyans, the evacuation of 30,000 Chinese workers is under way, perhaps permanently. Statements by western officials and media that a “deranged and criminal Colonel Gaddafi” is planning “genocide” against his own people still await evidence. This is reminiscent of fraudulent claims that required “humanitarian intervention” in Kosovo, the final dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the biggest US military base in Europe.
The detail is also familiar. The Libyan “pro-democracy rebels” are reportedly commanded by Colonel Khalifa Haftar who, according to a study by the US Jamestown Foundation, set up the Libyan National Army in 1988 “with strong backing from the Central Intelligence Agency”. For the past 20 years, Colonel Haftar has been living not far from Langley, Virginia, home of the CIA, which also provides him with a training camp. The Mujihadeen, which produced al-Qaida, and the Iraqi National Congress, which scripted the Bush/Blair lies about Iraq, were sponsored in the same time-honoured way, in leafy Langley.
Libya’s other “rebel” leaders include Mustafa Abdul Jalil, Gaddafi’s justice minister until February, and General Abdel-Fattah Younes, who ran Gaddafi’s interior ministry: both with formidable reputations for savagely putting down dissent. There is a civil and tribal war in Libya, which includes popular outrage against Gaddafi’s human rights record. However, it is Libya’s independence, not the nature of its regime, that is intolerable to the west in a region of vassals; and this hostility has barely changed in the 42 years since Gaddafi overthrew the feudal king Idris, one the more odious tyrants backed by the west. With his Bedouin hyperbole and bizarre ways, Gaddafi has long made an ideal “mad dog” (Daily Mirror), now requiring heroic US, French and British pilots to bomb urban areas in Tripoli, including a maternity hospital and a cardiac centre. The last US bombing in 1986 managed to kill his adopted daughter.
What the US, British and French hope to achieve is the opposite of a people’s liberation. In undermining efforts Libya’s genuine democrats and nationalists to free their country from both a dictator and those corrupted by foreign demands, the sound and fury from Washington, London and Paris has succeeded in dimming the memory of January’s days of hope in Tunis and Cairo and distracted many, who had taken heart, from the task of ensuring that their gains are not stolen quietly. On 23 March, the US-backed Egyptian military issued a decree barring all strikes and protests. This was barely reported in the west. With Gaddafi now the accredited demon, Israel, the real canker, can continue its wholesale land theft and expulsions. Facebook has come under Zionist pressure to remove a page calling for a full scale Palestinian uprising - a “Third Intifada” - on 15 May.
None of this should surprise. History suggests nothing less than the kind of machination revealed by two senior diplomats at the United Nations, who spoke to the Asia Times. Demanding to know why the UN never ordered a fact-finding mission to Libya instead of an attack, they were told that a deal had been done between the White House and Saudi Arabia. A US “coalition” would “take out” the recalcitrant Gaddafi if the Saudis put down the popular uprising in Bahrain. The latter has been accomplished, and the bloodied King of Bahrain will be a guest at the Royal Wedding in London.
The embodiment of this reaction is David Cameron, whose only real job has been as PR man to the television industry’s asset stripper, Michael Green. Cameron was in the Gulf selling arms to the British-invented tyrannies when people rose up against Yemen’s Abdullah Saleh; on 18 March, Saleh’s regime murdered 52 demonstrators. Cameron said nothing of value. Yemen is “one of ours”, as the British Foreign Office likes to say. In February, Cameron revealed himself in an attack on what he called “state multi-culturalism” - the code for Muslims. He said, “We need a lot less of the past tolerance of recent years.” He was applauded by Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s fascist National Front. “It is exactly this kind of statement that has barred us from public life for 30 years,” she told the Financial Times. “I can only congratulate him.”
At its most rapacious, the British empire produced David Camerons in job lots. Unlike many of the Victorian “civilisers”, today’s sedentary Westminster warriors - throw in William Hague, Liam Fox and the treacherous Nick Clegg - have never been touched by the suffering and bloodshed which, at remove in culture and distance, are the consequences of their utterances and actions. With their faintly trivial, always contemptuous air, they are cowards abroad, as they are at home. War and racism and the destruction of Britain’s hard-won social democracy are their gift. Remember that when you next take to the streets in your hundreds of thousands, as you must.
Friday, 15 April 2011
BROTHER SIZZLA; NO SELL-OUT
Sizzla refuses to condemn Mugabe
[source]
ZIMBABWE – HARARE – REGGAE superstar, Sizzla Kalonji, has insisted he will not condemn President Mugabe and describes the veteran leader as one of the “fathers of Africa.”
Sizzla was in Zimbabwe early last year and performed at the 21st February Movement during celebrations marking President Mugabe’s birthday.
His visit sparked anger among Zimbabwe’s detractors who thought the musician should not have performed here. “I see him as one of my fathers from Africa,” Sizzla told the international media about President Mugabe recently.
“He’s part of my nation, the black nation. In all that he’s done – whether it’s good or bad – I hope and pray that it’s for the betterment of the people.”
Mugabe attracted many enemies because of his black economic empowerment policies that include land reform programme and the requirement that all foreignowned companies should sell at least 51 percent of their shareholding to locals.
A black empowerment lobbyist, Sizzla is an admirer of Mugabe, as he also sings about his desire for black emancipation and empowerment in his country and the world at large.
He dismissed claims that the Government of Zimbabwe gave him land during his visit to Zimbabwe. “Honestly, the Government didn’t give me land,” Sizzla said. “For me, going to Africa isn’t just about going to claim land. It was citizens of Zimbabwe that offered me land – they were like, ‘Sizzla, welcome home. Makes use of this land.’
“And I think it’s important that we do that. Zimbabwe is beautiful but it does need a lot of help and that requires people to get involved with farming and also to build on the land to keep the country beautiful and prosperous for future generations.
“(Mugabe) is the ruler right now and he’s an elder to me, so I’m not going to discriminate the president. I believe in repatriation and he must know what is best to make his country a better place. I just hope he continues to do what he believes is best for the people.”
The Jamaican artist did not hide his love for Zimbabwe and the rest of the continent. “Zimbabwe is beautiful, man. I want the world to see how beautiful all of Africa is. When I see some of the buildings and the designs and the architecture there is in Africa, it excites me to think of the beautiful future the continent could have.”
Sizzla’s passion for the motherland suggested that he plans to make his future stay in Zimbabwe a more permanent one.
“Africa is my home. Jamaica is beautiful but you only have to look at our history to know that black people are from Africa. It’s only because of slavery and of course migration that we’ve ended up all over the world,” he says.
“But our ancestral roots lie in Africa. So it’s important to me to tell the people of the world about Africa and also to spend time in the Motherland.”
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
A RESPONSE TO A EUROCENTRIC POSTURING RADICAL ON LIBYA
Reflections on the Equality Movement’s Libya Discussion
We have an information gap regarding the beginning of the Libyan uprising. For a few days, the east of the country was destabilised. The eastern peoples and tribes believed that a new dawn had emerged and Gaddafi years were over. To many (whether the majority or not still remains unknown) this led to elation. However, this (mass) eruption was momentary, for Gaddafi’s crackdown looked to be ending all potentialities of change. Gaddafi seemed to be on course for a complete reclamation of power. The only thing standing in his way was the “International Community”. The imperial intervention is the only reason the armed conflict perpetuates. It is for this reason that the leaders of the rebels continue to reject the terms of ceasefire – for they know their only hope of power is shot from NATO planes.
The topic of discussion “Imperial Adventure or Humanitarian Intervention?” was inherently misleading, a false dichotomy and allowed the cancerous moral ambiguity to take hold of the room. Three of the panellists disagreed on the actions our government should have taken. Oliver advocated intervention, Ahmed supported it as the forces he is intimately connected with required intervention to continue to hope for change and Richard thought diplomatic routes could have been tried before intervention, which is never right.
[Ghadafi and Fidel Castro]
Sukant Chandan took the position that needed to be taken; our problem is with the UK government, solely, and we must meet discuss, plan and act on how to stop their imperial aggression from the inside. As Andy Higginbottom, Ethesham Haque, myself and Fiona Edwards echoed from the floor – we must focus our attention on our governments and “get serious about British imperialism”. In case anyone missed it, the forum was the Equality Movement. A place where we collectively come to understand how we are living in the belly of imperialism and educate ourselves about our government’s machinations before we even begin to politicise about others. As this seemed to elude the majority of the room, one can only conclude that the equality movement, as it stands, is a forum for anti-imperialism at a time when the people it speaks to and with are not anti-imperialist. The moral supremacy of those who prescribe to the ideals of the West makes a straw man of the anti-imperialist position, so allow me to restate it.
Gaddafi is opposed on many levels and for many reasons. Libyan society has its own internal dynamics that only Libyans can truly know and overcome – it is not for us (i.e. those in the belly of the beast) to speak of their struggle to justify our own governments action, implicitly or explicitly. As most can see only too clearly – the pointing of the finger towards the third world is a diversion away from the brutality of our world, at this very moment in Bahrain, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq… Moreover and most importantly, the fingerprints of our intelligence services are all over the murder scene that is Libya. Let us unite in opposition against the perpetuators of these crimes.
While one may feel that Sukant Chandan, like Ortega, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Louis Farrakhan, Mumia Abu Jamal and many others have bent the stick too far in supporting Gaddafi, their general attempt to re-humanise the de-humanised is necessary. Anti-imperialist integrity demands relentless focus on the perpetrators of the current global order and the denial of their right to decide who is and is not human. One should never make other country’s leaders accountable to our government and our constructed and decrepit ethics of “human rights”, by proxy. Cries for “dignity”, “democracy” and “equality” sufficed to find consensus within the room on Friday. However, it was fundamentally problematic as it was predicated not on rational argument – but emotion. Areas of disagreement were contested with screams from the floor. Two of the panelists (Ahmed and then Richard) demanded that Sukant “shut up!”, while Oliver constantly harassed Lowkey to stop him from talking. With such a departure from reasoned discussion, a basic and always banal point was missed.
[Ghadafi and Chavez]
The CIA employs people in Langley whose sole function in life is to work out ways of maintaining power. The most obvious conclusion, therefore, is that empire’s interests were in both Gaddafi’s basket and the bitter tribes of eastern Libya. This is not to say that the governments determine the cause of history. Rather it is consistent and well known policy to build diplomatic dams to ensure that any radical sentiment can be contained with reforms that conserve the general order and/or make strategic gains. Effective strategies are contingent upon planning and a feasible transitional power structure, such conditions require years of meticulous planning and negotiations.
There is now a mountain of evidence that French, US and British intelligence services were in play from the very beginning. So, we must posit the hidden fist that precipitates the market’s hand. As I have argued elsewhere, morality is never the catalyst for military force and to even humour the possibility is to fall into the realms of ideology. Likewise, as Sukant argued from the platform, imperial intervention is not engaged upon on a whim. The decision to engage in Libya was taken by our government not on the basis of caprice, but strategy. If one refuses to accept this, then it is a legitimate question to ask “how do you consider yourself anti-imperialist?”
If one holds that our government invaded the sovereign territory of Libya on the basis of unverified and unsubstantiated claims of “massacres” to prevent a “greater massacre”, then one accepts that our government is at war for reasons that include morality, compassion and a form of internationalism. Advocates of such a position, are, as far as I am concerned, are liberal. The fundamental lesson of Iraq has not be learnt – don’t believe the words of leaders and embedded correspondents.
[Ghadafi and Daniel Ortega, revolutionary leader and President of Nicaragua]
Holding such a position does not entail that the Libyan people are represented by those who seek to negotiate terms with imperialism. Never did Sukant or anyone undermine the legitimate grievances of the Libyan people, who are not all “contras”. The masses should not be forgotten, neglected or spoke past. The reason the anti-imperialist position is taken is not tokenist, foolish support for old leadership, it is because we must understand the liberation of the world’s people requires a true break with 500 years of imperial rule from the North European peoples and their settler colonies. We must also pay homage where it is due, for all Gaddafi’s faults (and, yes, there are many) he did fund, support and facilitate anti-imperialist struggles throughout the world. The Libyan crowd who attended the meeting and heckled Sukant non-stop exposed that they’ve little care for what Gaddafi does internationally, as they have such grievances with him domestically. Such a position is understandable, for a Libyan. Not supposed Internationalists.
The Libyan people stand in an intolerable situation. Once again, collective punishment is being administered by the forces of empire against the mass population for the power of their leadership. As I write this, the people are being bombed with depleted uranium infused rockets by a conglomerate of Western governments and their neo-colonial client states. Libya has tribal conflict grounds enough for civil war – and it is a battle of structural elites one ruled by a variable who the West hate (especially the tories), the others trusted figures who know how to do business. In between all of this are the Libyan masses – who lack proper representation and are stranded between a rock and a hard place.
The rebel’s leadership are strongly neo-liberal and represent sections of Libyan society, bitter at Gaddafi’s stifling of their interests, economic and otherwise. The “Interim Government” has been recognised by the French, Qatari, Italian and Portugese government and have begun a process of privatising the nationalised Central Bank and Oil industries. Just like in Iraq, the destabilisation of the regime is followed by the seizing of the countries assets through a scheme of privitisation. The language is more complex, the procedure more beauracratic, but the will remains colonial, and the architects remain Western.
There was nothing new in the build up to this war – anyone who is a serious about anti-imperialism did not fall into the trap of moral ambiguity. There is not a case of Western interventionism that was engaged in for compassionate reasons. The state cannot operate on such a level, to humour it is deeply naive. Seymour himself recognises this, as he sees the state as a structure composed of the interests of capital – neocons just call it realism. We call it empire and empire works to further its interests continuously.
However, empire’s time is coming to an end; it is freefalling and will have hit the ground before the end of our lifetimes. While hurtling towards the ground, austerity budget in hand, it is prone to lash out and attempt to reclaim its losses. We must not take our eyes off it and make sure the beast dies its long overdue death. The Libyan intervention is the containment of the Arab Spring, an attempt from empire to stifle third world momentum. It is an ill conceived plan to make strategic gains. It could be a disaster, let us hope it is and that the Libyan people unite to slice the fingers off the imperial forces. Though, one at the moment must admit, the West may have a dream come true if the world remains enchanted. As Gideon Rachman articulated in the Financial Times other day:
“policymakers in Washington…have a dream. In this, the governments of Syria and Iran are toppled and replaced by much more moderate regimes. The Israelis, reassured by the disappearance of their biggest foes, agree to the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Egypt stabilises and becomes a prosperous democracy. Colonel Gaddafi is defeated and the grateful Libyans hail the west as heroes. A new and legitimate Yemeni government takes up the fight against al-Qaeda. The Saudi government embraces reforms that defuse its internal crisis, and keep the oil flowing.”
The invasion was got through on the basis of an information gap, filled by international media and a diasporic Libyan community. Diplomacy was not extended, just arms. Now the imperial airforce controls the skies of another Arab country, bombs its people at will and our radicals want to perpetuate the moral ambiguity that this thrived upon. It is just like Iraq in this respect. Think about the amount of people queueing up to assassinate Saddam, both literally and metaphorically. When the time came to invade, there were thousands of Iraqis ready to sing to the tune of empire to kill their foe. With Libya it is no different. With the destruction of Iraq witnessed by all, one would think the world would have learnt a lesson, especially the world’s self-professed radicals. Instead, they deliver talks substantiated with moral ambiguity. As far as I am concerned, it is not possible at this moment in history to be neutral between forces – it is clear what the terms of this conflict now are and those who take the side of the rebellion, side with the imperialists. This goes some way to explaining why Richard Seymour has “far more in common” with a neo-conservative follower of Irving Kristol than a third-worldist.
[Cynthia McKinney's statement on Libya HERE]
Monday, 11 April 2011
LIBYA PEACE MISSION UPDATE: DELEGATION ARRIVES IN TRIPOLI, LIBYA
British Civilians for Peace update #2, Mon April 11 2011
British Peace Mission Arrives in Libya; Met By Angry and then Welcoming Refugees in Libya
The Civilians for Peace delegation arrived in Tripoli late last night after crossing the Tunisian land border of Ras Ejder.
There was a moment of panic when the delegations vehicles were attacked with bricks and clubs by a mob of refugee migrant workers who had fled Libya during the fighting and have been temporarily housed in swarming tent villages just inside the Tunisian border. The vehicles retreated to the safety of Tunisian military positions until the migrant workers could be notified that the vehicles contained delegates of a humanitarian mission for peace, whereupon the displaced workers welcomed and actively encouraged the mission on it's way.
The thousands of migrant workers now living in these squalid, makeshift camps are the residual victims in this conflict. Refugees of a war that is not their own, they now find themselves neglected by their countries of origin and pariahs in the desert of no mans land.
As the mission raced to Tripoli it passed through towns such as Zawara and Zawia where the buildings bore the brutal scars of war, shops reduced to rubble and residential buildings sprayed with the familiar polker dot calling card of automatic gunfire. After passing checkpoint after checkpoint manned by heavily armed soldiers the delegation finally made it to Tripoli at just after Midnight.
The African Union mediators, headed by South African President Jacob Zuma, are also in the capital. There seems to be no NATO air strikes during the African Union's mission.
No doubt the delegates dreams will be of peace, for in the morning the real work begins.
[Part of the peace mission delegation leaving Heathrow, London. Sat 09 April. 2011]
[end]
SPOKESPERSON for British Civilians for Peace in Libya:
Sukant Chandan
sukant.chandan@gmail.com
BRITISH PEACE MISSION TO LIBYA UPDATE: DELEGATE STEALS GROUP BRIEFCASE AND FLEES TO US EMBASSY
One Delegate steals Delegation Briefcase and seeks Refuge at the US Embassy
Thirteen delegates on the British Civilians for Peace mission to Libya arrived safely in Tunis on Saturday the 9 April.
One of the delegates, a Mr Paul Gordon Hancock, left the delegation at 3am on the Sun 10 April.
British Civilians for Peace can confirm that Mr Hancock sought refuge at the US embassy in Tunis, and he has subsequently admitted to the delegation taking of one of the briefcases belonging to a leading delegate of the group.
It is believed he stole the briefcase as he felt the content may contain material which prejudiced the mission. It has been confirmed to us by the organiser whose case was stolen, that the content of the case were files and receipts belonging to Libyan Airways that were being delivered by hand to the Libyan Airways office in Tripoli.
A request has been put through to the US Embassy in Tunisia to return the stolen briefcase to Libyan Airways. More information about this case will be reported in due course.
[end]
SPOKESPERSON for British Civilians for Peace in Libya: Sukant Chandan
sukant.chandan@gmail.com
Sunday, 10 April 2011
GOES OUT TO ALL THOSE SILLY WHITE BOYS MESSING ABOUT IN RADICAL POLITICS GETTING SHOOK BY SONS OF MALCOLM
...
I got you stuck off the realness, we be the infamous
you heard of us
official Queensbridge murderers
the Mobb comes equipped with warfare, beware
of my crime family who got nuff shots to share
for all of those who wanna profile and pose
rock you in your face, stab your brain wit' your nosebone
you all alone in these streets, cousin
every man for theirself in this land we be gunnin'
and keep them shook crews runnin'
like they supposed to
they come around but they never come close to
I can see it inside your face
you're in the wrong place
cowards like you just get they're whole body laced up
with bullet holes and such
speak the wrong words man and you will get touched
you can put your whole army against my team and
I guarantee you it'll be your very last time breathin'
your simple words just don't move me
you're minor, we're major
you all up in the game and don't deserve to be a player
don't make me have to call your name out
your crew is featherweight
my gunshots'll make you levitate
…
[Chorus:]
Son, they shook...
'cause ain't no such things as halfway crooks
scared to death, scared to look
they shook
'cause ain't no such things as halfway crooks
scared to death, scared to look
livin' the live that of diamonds and guns
there's numerous ways you can choose to earn funds...earn funds
some of 'em get shot, locked down and turn nuns
cowardly hearts end straight up shook ones...shook ones
he ain't a crook son, he's just a shook one...shook one
Saturday, 9 April 2011
FILM: ON OMAR AL-MUKTHAR, MUJAHID FATHER OF THE NATION & LIBYAN ANTI-IMPERIALIST HISTORY, 'LION OF THE DESERT'
The great Libyan martyr, Omar Al--Mukhtar - *fought* against the imperialists, and did not beg empire to come and bomb Libya, unlike the current Libyan rebels/contras who are begging NATO to bomb their nation
video: SONS OF MALCOLM WITH BRITISH CIVILIAN PEACE MISSION TO LIBYA
PRESS RELEASE
CIVILIANS FOR PEACE
7th April, 2011 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BRITISH PEACE DELEGATION HEADS FOR LIBYA TO CALL FOR AN END
TO THE KILLING
LONDON - ENGLAND
A twenty-five person peace delegation made up of academics,
lawyers, journalists and professionals will be departing
for Libya on 9th April, to call for an immediate ceasefire
in Libya and an end to all hostilities. This is the first
half of a two stage process that will involve
reconciliation talks with tribal leaders, government
officials and key opposition figures. After almost three
weeks of continual bombing by Coalition forces and heavy
fighting in key cities, countless civilians have lost their
lives and there appears to be no end in sight to the untold
suffering of the people. An immediate end to the conflict
and the protection of civilian lives is the aim of this
mission.
The Civilians for Peace Delegation will be meeting with key
officials and parties to the conflict and calling for:
1. An immediate ceasefire and an end to hostilities from
all sides, including NATO.
2. Immediate peace talks between representatives of
government and the opposition.
3. Fair and honest arbitration between the opposing forces.
4. The immediate positioning of credible and impartial
International Observers to monitor a possible ceasefire.
5. Humanitarian corridors to provide Medical assistance,
food and water to civilians in the affected areas.
In addition, the Civilians for Peace delegation will be
calling on the African Union to take a lead role in
arbitrating peace and for the United Nations to call an
immediate meeting of the General Assembly to discuss the
Libyan situation and the broadening crisis in the region.
The delegation will be leaving on Saturday 9th April @
5.45pm from Terminal 4, Heathrow Airport. There will be a
press statement made from Terminal 4 @ 2.30pm and members
of the public are encouraged to attend and to support the
delegation.
FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
DELEGATION REPRESENTATIVE: David Paul Roberts - Tel: (+44
7980631255)
SPOKESPERSON: Sukant Chandan - Tel: (+44 7854147868)
MEDIA: Ishmahil Blagrove - Tel: (+44 7958287687)
Thursday, 7 April 2011
SONS OF MALCOLM GOING TO LIBYA ON PEACE DELEGATION
PRESS RELEASE
CIVILIANS FOR PEACE
7th April, 2011 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BRITISH PEACE DELEGATION HEADS FOR LIBYA TO CALL FOR AN END
TO THE KILLING
LONDON - ENGLAND
A twenty-five person peace delegation made up of academics,
lawyers, journalists and professionals will be departing
for Libya on 9th April, to call for an immediate ceasefire
in Libya and an end to all hostilities. This is the first
half of a two stage process that will involve
reconciliation talks with tribal leaders, government
officials and key opposition figures. After almost three
weeks of continual bombing by Coalition forces and heavy
fighting in key cities, countless civilians have lost their
lives and there appears to be no end in sight to the untold
suffering of the people. An immediate end to the conflict
and the protection of civilian lives is the aim of this
mission.
The Civilians for Peace Delegation will be meeting with key
officials and parties to the conflict and calling for:
1. An immediate ceasefire and an end to hostilities from
all sides, including NATO.
2. Immediate peace talks between representatives of
government and the opposition.
3. Fair and honest arbitration between the opposing forces.
4. The immediate positioning of credible and impartial
International Observers to monitor a possible ceasefire.
5. Humanitarian corridors to provide Medical assistance,
food and water to civilians in the affected areas.
In addition, the Civilians for Peace delegation will be
calling on the African Union to take a lead role in
arbitrating peace and for the United Nations to call an
immediate meeting of the General Assembly to discuss the
Libyan situation and the broadening crisis in the region.
The delegation will be leaving on Saturday 9th April @
5.45pm from Terminal 4, Heathrow Airport. There will be a
press statement made from Terminal 4 @ 2.30pm and members
of the public are encouraged to attend and to support the
delegation.
FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
DELEGATION REPRESENTATIVE: David Paul Roberts - Tel: (+44
7980631255)
SPOKESPERSON: Sukant Chandan - Tel: (+44 7854147868)
MEDIA: Ishmahil Blagrove - Tel: (+44 7958287687)
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
IS EMPIRE's WISH FOR THE 'MIDDLE EAST' COMING TRUE?
[source]
"While turmoil in Saudi Arabia and a strengthening of al-Qaeda or Iran are America’s nightmares, policymakers in Washington also have a dream. In this, the governments of Syria and Iran are toppled and replaced by much more moderate regimes. The Israelis, reassured by the disappearance of their biggest foes, agree to the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Egypt stabilises and becomes a prosperous democracy. Colonel Gaddafi is defeated and the grateful Libyans hail the west as heroes. A new and legitimate Yemeni government takes up the fight against al-Qaeda. The Saudi government embraces reforms that defuse its internal crisis, and keep the oil flowing."
Monday, 4 April 2011
2 ARTICLES ON CIA TIES TO LIBYAN CONTRAS/REBELS
Libya's Blood for Oil: The Vampire War
[source]
Who are we kidding? The United States, Britain and NATO don’t care about bombing civilians to contain rebellion. Their militaries bomb civilians every day without mercy. They have destroyed most of the community infrastructure of Iraq and Afghanistan before turning their sights on Libya. So what’s really going on here?
According to the CIA, the following never happened…
Last October, US oil giants— Chevron and Occidental Petroleum— made a surprising decision to pull out of Libya, while China, Germany and Italy stayed on, signing major contracts with Gadhaffi’s government. As the U.S. Asset who started negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial with Libyan diplomats, I had close ties to Libya’s U.N. Mission from 1995 to 2003.
Given my long involvement in the Lockerbie saga, I have continued to enjoy special access to high level intelligence gossip on Libya.
Last summer that gossip got juicy!
About July, I started hearing that Gadhaffi was exerting heavy pressure on U.S. and British oil companies to cough up special fees and kick backs to cover the costs of Libya’s reimbursement to the families of Pan Am 103. Payment of damages for the Lockerbie bombing had been one of the chief conditions for ending U.N. sanctions on Libya that ran from 1992 until 2003. And of course the United Nations forced Gadhaffi to hand over two Libyan men for a special trial at The Hague, though everybody credible was fully conscious of Libya’s innocence in the Lockerbie affair. (Only ignorant politicians trying to score publicity points say otherwise.)
Knowing Gadhaffi as well as I do, I was convinced that he’d done it. He’d bided his time until he could extort compensation from U.S. oil companies. He’s a crafty bastard, extremely intelligent and canny. That’s exactly how he operates. And now he was taking his revenge. As expected, the U.S. was hopping mad about it. Gadhaffi wasn’t playing the game the way the Oil Bloodsuckers wanted.
The Vampire of our age—the Oil Industry—roams the earth, sucking the life out of every nation to feed its thirst for profits. Only when they got to Libya, Gadhaffi took on the role of a modern-day Robin Hood, who insisted on replenishing his people for the costs they’d suffered under U.N. sanctions.
Backing up a year earlier, in August 2009 the lone Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people, Abdelbasset Megrahi, won a compassionate release from Scottish prison. Ostensibly, the British government and Scottish Courts granted Megrahi’s request to die at home with dignity from advance stage cancer—in exchange for dropping a legal appeal packed with embarrassments for the European Courts.
The decision to free Megrahi followed shocking revelations of corruption at the special Court of The Hague that handled the Lockerbie Trial. Prosecution witnesses confessed to receiving payments of $4 million each from the United States, in exchange for testimony against Megrahi, a mind-blowing allegation of judicial corruption.
The Lockerbie conviction was full of holes to begin with. Anybody who knows anything about terrorism in the 1980s knows the CIA got mixed up in heroin trafficking out of the Bekaa Valley during the hostage crisis in Lebanon. The Lockerbie conspiracy had been a false flag operation to kill off a joint CIA and Defense Intelligence investigation into kick backs from Islamic Jihad, in exchange for protecting the heroin transit network.
According to my own CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz, who’d been stationed in Lebanon and Syria at the time, the CIA had established a protected drug route from Lebanon to Europe and on to the United States. His statements support other sources that “Operation Corea” allowed Syrian drug dealers led by Monzer al-Kassar (also linked to Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal) to ship heroin to the U.S. ON Pan Am flights, in exchange for intelligence on the hostages’ whereabouts in Lebanon.
The CIA allegedly made sure that suitcases carrying heroin were not searched at customs. Nicknamed the “Godfather of Terror,” Al Kassar is now serving a prison sentence for conspiring with Colombian drug cartels to assassinate U.S. nationals.
Building up to Lockerbie, the Defense Intelligence team in Beirut, led by Maj. Charles Dennis McKee and Matthew Gannon, suspected that CIA infiltration of the heroin network might be prolonging the hostage crisis. If so, the consequence was severe. AP Reporter Terry Anderson got chained in a basement for 7 years, while 96 other high profile western hostages suffered beatings, mock executions and overall trauma. McKee’s team raised the alarms in Washington that a CIA double agent profiting from the narco-dollars might be warning the hostage takers whenever their dragnet closed in.
Washington sent a fact-finding team to Lebanon to gather evidence.
On the day it was blown out of the sky, Pan Am 103 was carrying that team of CIA and FBI investigators, the CIA’s Deputy Chief assigned to Beirut, and three Defense Intelligence officers, including McKee and Gannon, on their way to Washington to deliver a report on the CIA’s role in heroin trafficking, and the impact on terrorist financing and the hostage crisis. In short, everyone with direct knowledge of CIA kickbacks from heroin trafficking died on Pan Am 103. A suitcase packed with $500,000 worth of heroin was found in the wreckage. It belonged to investigators, as proof of the corruption.
The punch line was that the U.S. State Department issued an internal travel advisory, warning that government officials should get off that specific flight on that specific day, because Pan Am 103 was expected to get bombed. That’s right, folks! The U.S. had prior knowledge of the attack.
Unforgivably, nobody told Charles McKee or Matthew Gannon. But other military officials and diplomats got pulled off the flight—making room for a group of students from Syracuse University traveling stand by for the Christmas holidays.
It was a monstrous act! But condemning Megrahi to cover up the CIA’s role in heroin trafficking has struck many Lockerbie afficiandos as grossly unjust. Add the corruption of purchased testimony– $4 million a pop— and Megrahi’s life sentence struck a nerve of obscenity.
It struck Gadhaffi as grievously offensive, as well—The United Nations had forced Libya to fork over $2.7 billion in damages to the Lockerbie families, a rate of $10 million for every death. Once it became clear the U.S. paid two key witnesses $4 million each to commit perjury, spook gossip throughout the summer was rife that Gadhaffi had taken bold action to demand compensation from U.S. (and probably British) oil corporations operating in Libya. More than likely, Libya’s demands for kick backs and compensation extended to other European oil conglomerates as well—particularly France and Italy—who are now spearheading attacks on Libya.
I knew last summer there would be trouble. Payback would be a b—tch on both sides. You don’t lock an innocent man in prison for 10 years on bogus charges of terrorism, and expect forgiveness. The United States and Britain had behaved with remarkable selfishness. You’ve got to admit that Gadhaffi’s attempt to balance the scales of justice demonstrated a flair of righteous nationalism.
Alas, Gadhaffi was playing with fire, no matter how justified his complaint. You don’t strike a tyrant without expecting a tyrant to strike back.
And that’s exactly what’s happening today.
Don’t kid yourself. This is an oil war, and it smacks of imperialist double standards. Two articles by Prof. Chossudovsky at the Global Research Centre are must reading: “Operation Libya and the Battle for Oil: Redrawing the Map of Africa” and “Insurrection and Military Intervention: The US-NATO Attempted Coup d’Etat in Libya?”
There is simply no justification for U.S. or NATO action against Libya. The U.N. charter acknowledges the rights of sovereign nations to put down rebellions against their own governments. Moreover, many observers have commented that plans for military intervention appear to have been much more advanced than U.S. and European leaders want to admit.
For myself, I know in my gut that war planning started months before the democratization movement kicked off throughout the Arab world—a lucky cover for U.S. and European oil policy. Perhaps too lucky.
As Chossudovsky writes, “Hundreds of US, British and French military advisers arrived in Cyrenaica, Libya’s eastern breakaway province” on February 23 and 24— seven (7) days after the start of Gadhaffi’s domestic rebellion. “The advisers, including intelligence officers, were dropped from warships and missile boats at the coastal towns of Benghazi and Tobruk.” (DEBKAfile, US military advisers in Cyrenaica, Feb. 25, 2011) Special forces on the ground in Eastern Libya provided covert support to the rebels.” Eight British Special Forces commandos were arrested in the Benghazi region, while acting as military advisers to opposition forces, according to the Times of London.
We’re supposed to believe the United States, Britain and Europe planned, coordinated and executed a full military intervention in 7 short days— from the start of the Libyan rebellion in mid-February until military advisers appeared on the ground in Libya on February 23-24!
That’s strategically impossible.
Nothing can persuade me that Gadhaffi’s fate wasn’t decided months ago, when Chevron and Occidental Petroleum took their whining to Capitol Hill, complaining that Gadhaffi’s nationalism interfered with their oil profiteering. From that moment, military intervention was on the drawing board as surely as the Patriot Act got stuck in a drawer waiting for 9/11.
The message is simple: Challenge the oil corporations and your government and your people will pay the ultimate price: Give us your oil as cheaply as possible. Or die.
Don’t kid yourself. Nobody gives a damn about suffering in Libya or Iraq. You don’t bomb a village to save it. The U.S., Britain and NATO are the bullies of the neighborhood. The enforcers for Big Oil.
Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan have something in common. They have vast and extraordinary oil and mineral riches. As such, they are all victims of what I call the Vampire Wars. The Arab Princes get paid off, while the bloodsuckers pull the life blood out of the people. They’re scarcely able to survive in their own wealthy societies. The people and the domestic economy are kept alive to uphold the social order, but they are depleted of the nourishment of their own national wealth.
The democratization movements are sending a warning that I don’t think Big Oil, or their protectors in the U.S. and British governments understand or have figured out how to control. The Arab people are finished with this cycle of victimization. They’ve got their stakes out, and they’re starting to figure out how to strike into the heart of these Vampires, sucking the life blood out of their nations.
And woe to the wicked when they do!
This article may be reprinted in full or part with attribution to the author.
Former U.S. Intelligence Asset, Susan Lindauer covered Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria/Hezbollah from 1993 to 2003. She is the author of “Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq.”?
[end]
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Mounting evidence of CIA ties to Libyan rebels
[source]
Numerous press reports over the weekend add to the evidence that the Libyan rebels fighting the regime of Muammar Gaddafi are under the direction of American intelligence agencies. Despite the repeated claims by Obama administration officials that the rebels are a largely unknown quantity, it is becoming increasingly clear that key military leaders of the anti-Gaddafi campaign are well known to the US government and have longstanding relations with the CIA.
For better than two weeks there had been a virtual ban in the US media on reporting the name of Khalifa Haftar, the long-time CIA collaborator who was appointed chief rebel commander March 17, on the eve of the US-NATO bombing campaign against Libya. Only the regional McClatchy Newspapers chain reported Haftar’s appointment, and ABC News ran a brief interview with him on March 27. Otherwise, silence prevailed.
This de facto censorship abruptly ended April 1, when a right-wing US think tank, the Jamestown Foundation, published a lengthy study of Haftar’s background and record, which was cited extensively by Reuters news service, and then more widely in the US and British media.
The Jamestown Foundation report declared: “Today as Colonel Haftar finally returns to the battlefields of North Africa with the objective of toppling Gaddafi, his former co-conspirator from Libya’s 1969 coup, he may stand as the best liaison for the United States and allied NATO forces in dealing with Libya’s unruly rebels.”
The Jamestown study noted Haftar’s role in organizing the Libyan National Army (LNA), which he founded “on June 21, 1988 with strong backing from the Central Intelligence Agency,” and cites a 1991 interview with him “conducted in an LNA camp in rural Virginia.” Not only did the CIA sponsor and fund the LNA, it engineered the entry of LNA officers and men into the United States where they established a training camp.
Reuters added, using a variant spelling of the name, that it has “repeatedly asked for an interview with Hefta but he could not immediately be contacted.” The news service added, “The CIA declined to comment” on its relationship to the former Libyan military leader.
Other references to Haftar’s role appeared in the online blog of the New Yorker magazine, in Africa Confidential, on National Public Radio, the British daily Guardian, and in the Independent on Sunday, another British newspaper.
The Independent column, headlined “The Shady Men Backed by the West to Displace Gaddafi,” described the Libyan rebel commanders as follows: “The careers of several make them sound like characters out of the more sinister Graham Greene novels. They include men such as Colonel Khalifa Haftar, former commander of the Libyan army in Chad who was captured and changed sides in 1988, setting up the anti-Gaddafi Libyan National Army reportedly with CIA and Saudi backing. For the last 20 years, he has been living quietly in Virginia before returning to Benghazi to lead the fight against Gaddafi.”
Finally, the Washington Post’s Sunday edition carried several references to Haftar, including a front-page article profiling the divisions within the rebel military leadership. “Khalifa Haftar, a former army colonel who recently returned to Libya after living for many years in Falls Church, was initially hailed by the Transitional National Council as a leader who could help discipline the new army and train its largely volunteer ranks,” Post reporter Tara Bahrampour wrote.
She then quoted TNC and rebel military spokesmen giving conflicting accounts, one saying Haftar had been removed from command, the other saying he remained in control of the military. A spokesman for the TNC, asked to explain the conflict in light of its earlier announcement of Haftar’s appointment, said, “This is the position of the council today. The situation is fluid.... The political viewpoints change frequently.”
Walter Pincus, the Post’s long-time reporter on intelligence activities, himself a former CIA informer in the National Student Association, described Haftar as “a former Libyan army colonel who for years commanded the Libyan National Army (LNA), an anti-Gaddafi group.” The article said Haftar had “established the LNA, allegedly with backing from the CIA and Saudi elements.” It continued: “In 1996, he was reported to have been behind an alleged uprising in eastern Libya. By that time, he was already settled with his family in Falls Church.”
According to Pincus, “a senior intelligence official,” asked about the Libyan commander’s connection to the CIA, “said it was policy not to discuss such issues.”
The informal blackout on Haftar’s identity and CIA connections still continues on the American television networks and in the pages of the New York Times—a newspaper that openly admits its subservience to the US military/intelligence apparatus. But the significance of the weekend press reports is unmistakable: the Libyan rebel military is not the independent organ of a popular uprising against the Gaddafi dictatorship, but rather the creature of American imperialism, the most reactionary political force on the planet.
The dubious character of the Libyan rebels was further underscored in a remarkable profile published Saturday by the Wall Street Journal of three Libyans who had fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and were now playing major roles in the rebel military effort. Two of the three had been in US custody as alleged Al Qaeda operatives and one spent six years at Guantanamo Bay before being turned over to the Gaddafi regime in 2007. The three men are:
* Abdel Hakim al-Hasady, described as “an influential Islamic preacher and high school teacher who spent five years at a training camp in eastern Afghanistan” and now “oversees the recruitment, training and deployment of about 300 rebel fighters from Darna,” a city in eastern Libya
* Salah al-Barrani, “a former fighter from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG,” who is Hasady’s field commander
* Sufyan Ben Qumu, “a Libyan army veteran who worked for Osama bin Laden’s holding company in Sudan and later for an al Qaeda-linked charity in Afghanistan,” and who “is training many of the city’s rebel recruits.”
Hasady and Ben Qumu were arrested by Pakistani security after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and turned over to the US. Hasady was transferred to Libyan custody two months later, while Ben Qumu was moved to Guantanamo and held there until 2007, when he, too, was sent to a Libyan prison. The Gaddafi regime released both men in 2008, at a time when US-Libya collaboration in the “war on terror” was at its height. Such an action would certainly have been checked with Washington.
The former Al Qaeda warrior was quite willing to speak to the leading US business newspaper, which reported, “his discourse has become dramatically more pro-American.” He told the Journal, “If we hated the Americans 100 percent, today it is less than 50 percent. They have started to redeem themselves for their past mistakes.…”
Whether these individuals are Al Qaeda operatives who were “turned” by their American captors or have simply changed allegiance under changed circumstances is unclear. But their role in the Libyan opposition further undermines the longstanding propaganda of the US government about the supposedly unbridgeable gulf between Al Qaeda and American imperialism.
For a decade, the US government, under Bush and now Obama, has used the terrorist actions of Al Qaeda and its alleged supporters as a pretext for one military intervention after another in the Muslim world—Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, the Philippines, Indonesia and now Libya.
There has long been reason to doubt the “war on terror” narrative, not least the fact that Al Qaeda was effectively created by the CIA through its activities in recruiting and mobilizing radical Islamists to go to Afghanistan in the 1980s and join the mujaheddin guerrillas fighting the Soviet army there. Many of the 9/11 suicide hijackers were known to the CIA as Al Qaeda operatives, and in some cases under active surveillance, but were nonetheless allowed to enter the country, receive training at US flight schools and carry out the terrorist attacks.
An incident during a hearing Thursday before the House Armed Services Committee demonstrates the sensitivity of the US government concerning the links between US intelligence services and Al Qaeda. Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman questioned a witness, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, about the role of Abdel Hakim al-Hasady. Steinberg refused to discuss the matter, suggesting it could be taken up only in a closed-door session where US covert operations are regularly reviewed.
GHADAFI's HELP TO THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE ('PROVISIONAL') IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY
[source]
For almost 25 years, virtually every bomb constructed by the Provisional IRA and the groups that splintered off it has contained Semtex from a Libyan shipment unloaded at an Irish pier in 1986.
The arrangements for the biggest arms consignment ever received by the IRA had been made between Thomas "Slab" Murphy, a 36–year–old pig farmer from South Armagh, and Nasser Ali Ashour, a diplomat and Libyan intelligence officer.
Ashour, five years older than Murphy, was believed by MI6 to have been an acolyte of Moussa Koussa, who later became Col Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence chief. It took 30 Libyans two nights in October 1986 to load the Villa, a converted Swedish oil rig replenisher, with 80 tons of arms.
The cargo, landed near Clogga Strand, Co Wicklow, included seven rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), 10 surface–to–air (SAM) missiles and, most significantly, a ton of Semtex–H plastic explosive.
Manufactured at Pardubice, 90 miles from Prague, more than 1,000 tons of Semtex had been exported to Libya from communist Czechoslovakia.
Odourless and not detectable by X–rays, Semtex does not explode even when exposed to a naked flame. When used with a detonator, however, it can produce a blast many times more powerful than a fertiliser–based explosive. The Villa shipment was to transform the IRA's ability to wage war against the British state.
Col Gaddafi had long sought to boost his revolutionary credentials by assisting terrorist groups bent on destabilising Western governments. His determination to help the IRA intensified when the British allowed bases at Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire to be used by the American F–111s that bombed Tripoli in April 1986.
Murphy had been among the IRA men who trained in Libya in the 1970s. He was chosen by Joe Cahill, a veteran IRA leader who had been arrested in 1973 on board the Claudia with a cargo of Libyan arms, to re–establish contacts with the Gaddafi regime.
The first vessel used was the Casamara, a British–registered 65ft yacht, that set sail from Malta in August 6 1985. Its 10–ton cargo was taken on board during a rendezvous with the Libyan ship Samra Africa off the Mediterranean island of Gozo.
That cargo yielded 300 boxes of weaponry including AK–47s, Taurus automatic pistols from Brazil, seven Soviet–made RPG–7s and three Russian DShK 12.7mm heavy machineguns.
Another shipment, again picking up 10 tons of arms off Gozo and landing them at Clogga Strand, was arranged for October 1985.
The following year, Murphy made at least seven trips to the Mediterranean to meet Libyan officials.
On April 28 1986, he flew to Athens on a false passport to see three senior IRA men. Murphy boarded another plane the next day for a meeting with Ashour. Sitting on a boat off a Greek island, they discussed a third shipment of 14 tons, later landed at Clogga Strand.
For the fourth shipment, a new vessel, the Villa, was chosen. It was too large to anchor off Clogga Strand so its cargo was landed at nearby Roadstone Pier.
Adrian Hopkins, a Wicklow man who was the boat skipper for all four shipments, told the French police: "The delivery of the load went off smoothly. On land there were two trucks which brought the cargo to another place unknown to me. Tom told me several times that nothing would be circulated until we had delivered the whole stock."
Hopkins said he was paid $500,000 given to him in plastic bags handed over in the White Horse pub in north Dublin.
Many of the arms contained in the Libyan shipments were of little practical use for the predominantly urban campaign the IRA was fighting. Murphy was intent on bringing down British helicopters near his border farm but the size and complexity of the Libyan anti–aircraft weapons meant this was never achieved.
The fifth shipment was to be even bigger and Murphy was keen to show the IRA's gratitude. "At the preparatory meetings with Tom, the latter insisted I should buy a German shepherd dog and offer it to Nasser from Joe Cahill," Hopkins said.
Murphy also authorised the purchase of a double bed, a large clock and two cans of olive oil, which were picked up at a factory near Valletta, as gifts for Nasser. The gifts, including the dog, were transported to Tripoli on board the Eksund, an ageing 237–ton freighter.
Fifty Libyan soldiers were on the jetty at Tripoli to help load 130 tons of weaponry over two nights. Hopkins later recalled: "According to the agreed code, I transmitted a message to Tom via a shipping company in London. I used the code word Stockholm which indicated the unloading date, October 29 1987."
Murphy had been given the code name "Halliday" while Hopkins was "Pender". But as the Eksund left Libya, it was being monitored by MI6 and the French intelligence services and tracked by a Royal Navy hunter–killer submarine.
When the crew saw a spotter plane overhead as the vessel was five miles off Roscoff, Hopkins messaged Murphy: "Pender to Halliday. The unloading of cargo date plus 17." This was the prearranged code stating that the Eksund and its cargo were about to be scuttled.
Two tons of Semtex, 1,000 Romanianmade AK–47s, 1,000 mortars, 600 Soviet F1 grenades, 120 RPG–7s, 20 SAM–7s, 10 DShKs, 2,000 electric detonators, 4,700 fuses and more than a million rounds of ammunition were found in the hold of the Eksund. Hopkins and four IRA men were arrested, convicted and jailed.
Murphy flew into Split in Yugoslavia to meet Ashour on May 28 1989, to discuss more shipments but it was eventually judged too risky to attempt them.
One of his fomer allies, the IRA quartermaster Michael McKevitt (since convicted of IRA offences) defected to the Real IRA in 1997, taking large amounts of Semtex and other IRA weaponry.
The IRA's Libyan connection was detailed in Toby Harnden's book Bandit Country: the IRA and South Armagh (Hodder & Stoughton 1999
For almost 25 years, virtually every bomb constructed by the Provisional IRA and the groups that splintered off it has contained Semtex from a Libyan shipment unloaded at an Irish pier in 1986.
The arrangements for the biggest arms consignment ever received by the IRA had been made between Thomas "Slab" Murphy, a 36–year–old pig farmer from South Armagh, and Nasser Ali Ashour, a diplomat and Libyan intelligence officer.
Ashour, five years older than Murphy, was believed by MI6 to have been an acolyte of Moussa Koussa, who later became Col Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence chief. It took 30 Libyans two nights in October 1986 to load the Villa, a converted Swedish oil rig replenisher, with 80 tons of arms.
The cargo, landed near Clogga Strand, Co Wicklow, included seven rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), 10 surface–to–air (SAM) missiles and, most significantly, a ton of Semtex–H plastic explosive.
Manufactured at Pardubice, 90 miles from Prague, more than 1,000 tons of Semtex had been exported to Libya from communist Czechoslovakia.
Odourless and not detectable by X–rays, Semtex does not explode even when exposed to a naked flame. When used with a detonator, however, it can produce a blast many times more powerful than a fertiliser–based explosive. The Villa shipment was to transform the IRA's ability to wage war against the British state.
Col Gaddafi had long sought to boost his revolutionary credentials by assisting terrorist groups bent on destabilising Western governments. His determination to help the IRA intensified when the British allowed bases at Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire to be used by the American F–111s that bombed Tripoli in April 1986.
Murphy had been among the IRA men who trained in Libya in the 1970s. He was chosen by Joe Cahill, a veteran IRA leader who had been arrested in 1973 on board the Claudia with a cargo of Libyan arms, to re–establish contacts with the Gaddafi regime.
The first vessel used was the Casamara, a British–registered 65ft yacht, that set sail from Malta in August 6 1985. Its 10–ton cargo was taken on board during a rendezvous with the Libyan ship Samra Africa off the Mediterranean island of Gozo.
That cargo yielded 300 boxes of weaponry including AK–47s, Taurus automatic pistols from Brazil, seven Soviet–made RPG–7s and three Russian DShK 12.7mm heavy machineguns.
Another shipment, again picking up 10 tons of arms off Gozo and landing them at Clogga Strand, was arranged for October 1985.
The following year, Murphy made at least seven trips to the Mediterranean to meet Libyan officials.
On April 28 1986, he flew to Athens on a false passport to see three senior IRA men. Murphy boarded another plane the next day for a meeting with Ashour. Sitting on a boat off a Greek island, they discussed a third shipment of 14 tons, later landed at Clogga Strand.
For the fourth shipment, a new vessel, the Villa, was chosen. It was too large to anchor off Clogga Strand so its cargo was landed at nearby Roadstone Pier.
Adrian Hopkins, a Wicklow man who was the boat skipper for all four shipments, told the French police: "The delivery of the load went off smoothly. On land there were two trucks which brought the cargo to another place unknown to me. Tom told me several times that nothing would be circulated until we had delivered the whole stock."
Hopkins said he was paid $500,000 given to him in plastic bags handed over in the White Horse pub in north Dublin.
Many of the arms contained in the Libyan shipments were of little practical use for the predominantly urban campaign the IRA was fighting. Murphy was intent on bringing down British helicopters near his border farm but the size and complexity of the Libyan anti–aircraft weapons meant this was never achieved.
The fifth shipment was to be even bigger and Murphy was keen to show the IRA's gratitude. "At the preparatory meetings with Tom, the latter insisted I should buy a German shepherd dog and offer it to Nasser from Joe Cahill," Hopkins said.
Murphy also authorised the purchase of a double bed, a large clock and two cans of olive oil, which were picked up at a factory near Valletta, as gifts for Nasser. The gifts, including the dog, were transported to Tripoli on board the Eksund, an ageing 237–ton freighter.
Fifty Libyan soldiers were on the jetty at Tripoli to help load 130 tons of weaponry over two nights. Hopkins later recalled: "According to the agreed code, I transmitted a message to Tom via a shipping company in London. I used the code word Stockholm which indicated the unloading date, October 29 1987."
Murphy had been given the code name "Halliday" while Hopkins was "Pender". But as the Eksund left Libya, it was being monitored by MI6 and the French intelligence services and tracked by a Royal Navy hunter–killer submarine.
When the crew saw a spotter plane overhead as the vessel was five miles off Roscoff, Hopkins messaged Murphy: "Pender to Halliday. The unloading of cargo date plus 17." This was the prearranged code stating that the Eksund and its cargo were about to be scuttled.
Two tons of Semtex, 1,000 Romanianmade AK–47s, 1,000 mortars, 600 Soviet F1 grenades, 120 RPG–7s, 20 SAM–7s, 10 DShKs, 2,000 electric detonators, 4,700 fuses and more than a million rounds of ammunition were found in the hold of the Eksund. Hopkins and four IRA men were arrested, convicted and jailed.
Murphy flew into Split in Yugoslavia to meet Ashour on May 28 1989, to discuss more shipments but it was eventually judged too risky to attempt them.
One of his fomer allies, the IRA quartermaster Michael McKevitt (since convicted of IRA offences) defected to the Real IRA in 1997, taking large amounts of Semtex and other IRA weaponry.
The IRA's Libyan connection was detailed in Toby Harnden's book Bandit Country: the IRA and South Armagh (Hodder & Stoughton 1999
Sunday, 3 April 2011
PANTHER FOUNDER, HUEY NEWTON, ON THE CHURCH AND COMMUNITY
On the Relevance of the Church
May 19, 1971
By Dr. Huey P. Newton
Since 1966 the Black Panther Party has gone through many changes; it has been transformed. I would like to talk to you about that and contradictions. I would also like to talk about the Black Panther Party’s relationship with the community as a whole and with the church in particular.
Some time ago when the Party started, Bobby and I were interested in strengthening the Black community–rather its comprehensive set of institutions because if there’s one thing we lack it is community. We do have one institution that has been around for some time and that is the church. After a short harmonious relationship with the church, in fact a very good relationship, we were divorced from the church, and shortly after that found ourselves out of favor with the whole Black community.
We found ourselves in somewhat of a void, alienated from the whole Black community. We had no way of being effective as far as developing the community was concerned. The only way we could aid in that process of revolution–and revolution is a process rather than conclusion or a set of principles, or any particular action–was by raising the consciousness of the community. Any conclusion or particular action that we think is revolutionary is really reaction, for revolution is a developmental process. It has a forward thrust which goes higher and higher as man becomes freer and freer. As man becomes freer he knows more about the universe, he tends to control more and he therefore gains more control over himself. That is what freedom is all about.
I want now to talk about the mistakes that were made. I hate to call them mistakes because maybe they were necessary to bring about change in the Party, the needed transformation. I am sure that we will have other kinds of contradictions in the future, some that we don’t know about now. I am sure they will build up and hurl us into a new thing.
But the church also has been going through phases of development. It too has found itself somewhat isolated from the community. Today, the church is striving to get back into favor with the community. Like the church the Black Panther Party is also trying to reinstate itself with the community.
A short time ago there was an article in the Black Panther paper called “The Defection of Eldridge Cleaver from the Black Panther Party and the Defection of the Black Panther Party from the Black Community.” I would like to concentrate now upon the defection of the Party. That is, the larger unity. I hate to place blame upon individuals in our Party particularly since they are always governed by a collective called the Central Committee. Even when I disagree with the Central Committee (and I did much disagreeing and arguing when I was in prison, but I was outvoted), after the vote I supported the position of the Party until the next meeting.
I think, at first, that we have to have some organized apparatus in order to bring about the necessary change. The only time we leave our political machine or our institution altogether is when we feel that we cannot bring about the necessary change through the machine, and the very posture of the organization or the institution will strip us of our individual dignity. I felt that this was true of the Party, and although it could be argued, I personally thought that the Party should still be held together. I knew if I left we would have to form a new Party, a new institution, in order to be that spur or that guiding light in the community. Also, I would have to contend with new contradictions.
We always say that contradictions are the ruling principle of the universe. I use that word time and time again because I think that it is responsible for much suffering. When things collide, they hurt, but collision is also responsible for development. Without contradictions everything would be stagnant. Everything has an internal contradiction, including the church.
Contradiction, or the strain of the lesser to subdue that which controls it, gives motion to matter. We see this throughout the universe in the physical as well as the biological world. We also see this in cultures.
Development comes with the phenomenon we call acculturation. That is, two societies meet and when their cultures collide because they have a contradiction, both are modified. The stronger shows less change and the weaker more change. All the time the weaker is attempting to gain dominance over the stronger. But something happens, they both will never be the same again because they have reached a degree of synthesis. In other words, it is all working toward the truth of the trinity: thesis, antitheses, synthesis. This principle of contradiction, this striving for harmony, operates in all of our disciplines.
The Black Panther Party was formed because we wanted to oppose the evil in our community. Some of the members in the Party were not refined. We were grasping for organization. It wasn’t a college campus organization; it was basically an organization of the grass roots, and any time we organize the most victimized of the victims we run into a problem. To have a Party or a church or any kind of institution, whether we like it or not, we have to have administrators. How an institution, organization, or the Party in this case, functions, as well as how effective it is, depends upon how knowledgeable and advanced in thinking the administrators are. We attempt to apply the administrative skills of our grass-roots organization to the problems that are most frequently heard in the community.
History shows that most of the parties that have led people out of their difficulties have had administrators with what we sometimes call the traits of the bourgeoisie or de-classed intellectuals. They are the people who have gone through the established institutions, rejected them, and then applied their skills to the community. In applying them to the community, their skills are no longer bourgeoisie skills but people’s skills, which are transformed through the contradiction of applying what is usually bourgeoisie to the oppressed. That itself is a kind of transformation.
In our Party we are not so blessed. History does not repeat itself; it goes on also transforming itself through its dialectical process. We see that the administrators of our Party are victims who have not received that bourgeois training. So I will not apologize for our mistakes, our lack of a scientific approach to use and put into practice. It was a matter of not knowing, of learning, but also of starting out with a loss–a disadvantage that history has seldom seen. That is, a group attempting to influence and change the society so much while its own administrators were as much in the dark much of the time as the people that they were trying to change. In our Party we have now what we call the Ideological Institute, where we are teaching these skills, and we also invite those people who have received a bourgeois education to come and help us. However, we let them know that they will, by their contribution, make their need to exist, as they exist now, null and void. In other words, after we learn the skills their bourgeois status will evaporate once the skills have been applied.
As far as the church was concerned, the Black Panther Party and other community groups emphasized the political and criticized the spiritual. We said the church is only a ritual, it is irrelevant, and therefore we will have nothing to do with it. We said this in the context of the whole community being involved with the church on one level or another. That is one way of defecting from the community, and that is exactly what we did. Once we stepped outside of the church with that criticism, we stepped outside of the whole thing that the community was involved in and we said, “You follow our example; your reality is not true and you don’t need it.”
Now, without judging whether the church is operating in a total reality, I will venture to say that if we judge whether the church is relevant to the total community we would all agree that it is not. That is why it develops new programs to become more relevant so the pews will be filled on Sunday.
The church is in its developmental process, and we believe it needs to exist. We believe this as a result of our new direction (which is an old direction as far as I am concerned, but we’ll call it new because there has been a reversal in the dominance in the Central Committee of our Party for reasons that you probably know about). So we do go to church, are involved in the church, and not in any hypocritical way. Religion, perhaps, is a thing that man needs at this time because scientists cannot answer all of the questions. As far as I am concerned, when all of the questions are not answered, when the extraordinary is not explained, when the unknown is not known, then there is room for God because the unexplained and the unknown is God. We know nothing about God, really, and that is why as soon as the scientist develops or points out a new way of controlling a part of the universe, that aspect of the universe is no longer God. In other words, once when the thunder crashed it was God clapping his hands together. As soon as we found out that thunder was not God, we said that God has other attributes but not that one. In that way we took for ourselves what was his before. But we still haven’t answered all of the questions, so he still exists. And those scientists who say they can answer all of them are dishonest.
We go into the church realizing that we cannot answer the questions at this time, that the answers will be delivered eventually, and we feel that when they are delivered they will be explained in a way that we can understand and control.
I went to church for years. My father is a minister and I spent 15 years in the church; this was my life as a child. When I was going to church I used to hear that God within us and is, therefore, some part of us: that part of us that is mystical. And as man develops and understands more, he will approach God, and finally reach heaven and merge with the universe. I’ve never heard one preacher say that there is a need for the church in heaven; the church would negate itself. As man approaches his development and becomes larger and larger, the church therefore becomes smaller and smaller because it is not needed any longer. Then, if we had ministers who would deal with the social realities that cause misery so that we can change them, man will become larger and larger. At that time, the God within will come out, and we can merge with him. Then we will be one with the universe.
So I think it was rather arrogant of my Party to criticize the community for trying to discover answers to spiritual questions. The only thing we will criticize in the future is when the church does not act upon the evils that cause man to get on his knees and humble himself in awe at that large force which he cannot control. But as man becomes stronger and stronger, and his understanding greater and greater, he will have “a closer walk with Thee.” Note the song says walk–not crawl.
So along with the church we will all start again to control our lives and communities. Even with the Black church we have to create a community spirit. We say that the church is an institution, but it is not a community. The sociological definition of a community is a comprehensive collection of institutions that delivers our whole life, and within which we can reach most of our goals. We create it in order to carry out our desires and it serves us. In the Black community the church is an institution that we created (that we were allowed to create). The White church warred against us, but finally we won the compromise to worship as a unit, as a people, concerned with satisfying our own needs. The White church was not satisfying our needs in human terms because it felt that we were not human beings. So we formed our own. Through that negative thing a positive thing evolved. We started to organize fraternities, anti-lynching groups, and so forth, but they still would not let our community exist. We came here in chains and I guess they thought we were meant to stay in chains. But we have begun to organize a political machine, to develop a community so that we can have an apparatus to fight back. You cannot fight back individually against an organized machine. We will work with the church to establish a community, which will satisfy most of our needs so that we can live and operate as a group.
The Black Panther Party, with its survival programs, plans to develop the institutions in the community. We have a clothing factory we are just erecting on Third Street, where we will soon give away about three hundred to four hundred new articles of clothing each month. And we can do this by robbing Peter to pay Paul. What we will do is start to make golfing bags under contract of a company, and with the surplus we will buy material to make free clothes. Our members will do this. We will have no overhead because of our collective (we’ll exploit” our collective by making them work free). We will do this not just to satisfy ourselves, like the philanthropist, or to serve, or to save someone from going without shoes, even though this is part of the cause of our problem, but to help the people make the revolution. We will give the process a forward thrust. If we suffer genocide, we won’t be around to change things. So in this way our survival program is very practical.
What we are concerned with is the larger problem. Therefore we will be honest and say that we will do like the churches—we will negate our necessity for existing. After we accomplish our goals the Black Panther Party will not need to exist because we will have already created our heaven right here on earth. What we are going to do is administer to the community the things they need in order to get their attention, in order to organize them into a political machine. The community will then look to the Party and look to those people who are serving their needs in order to give them guidance and direction, whether it is political, whether it is judicial, or whether it is economic.
Our real thing is to organize across the country. We have thirty-eight chapters and branches and I would like to inform you that the so-called split is only a myth that it does not exist. We lost two chapters in that so-called split and I will tell you that the burden is off my shoulders. I was glad to lose them because it was a yoke for me; I was frozen. Even though I couldn’t make a move I wouldn’t get out of the whole thing then because certain people had such an influence over the Party. For me to have taken that stand would have been individualism. Now we’re about three years behind in our five-year plan, but we will now move to organize the community around the survival programs.
We have a shoe factory that we’re opening up on fourteenth and Jefferson. The machines and everything else were donated. We’ll use it to get inmates out of prison because most of us learned how to make shoes in prison. So it will serve two purposes: we can make positions in the shoe factory available and thereby get somebody out on parole; and since the parolees must agree to give a certain amount of shoes away each week, we will have a “right to wear shoes” program. We’ll point out that everyone in the society should have shoes and we should not have a situation like the one in Beaufort County, South Carolina, where 70 percent of the children suffer brain damage because of malnutrition. They have malnutrition because of the combination of not enough food and parasites in the stomach. The worms eat up half the food that the children take in. Why? Because the ground is infested with the eggs of the worms and the children don’t have shoes to wear. So as soon as we send a doctor there to cure the illness, they get the parasites again. We think that the shoe program is a very relevant thing, first to help them stay alive, then to create conditions in which they can grow up and work out a plan to change things. If they have brain damage, they will never be revolutionists because they will have already been killed. That is genocide in itself.
We will inform this government, this social order, that it must administer to its people because it is supposed to be a representative government which serves the needs of the people. Then serve them. If it does not do this then it should be criticized. What we will not do in the future is jump too far ahead and say that the system absolutely cannot give us anything. That is not true; the system can correct itself to a certain extent. What we are interested in is its correcting itself as much as it can. After that, if it doesn’t do everything that the people think is necessary, then we’ll think about reorganizing things.
To be very honest I think there is great doubt whether the present system can do this. But until the people feel the same way I feel then I would be rather arrogant to say dump the whole thing, just as we were arrogant to say dump the church. Let’s give it a chance, let’s work with it in order to squeeze as many contributions and compromises out of all the institutions as possible, and then criticize them after the fact. We’ll know when that time comes, when the people tell us so.
We have a program attempting to get the people to do all they will do. It is too much to ask the people to do all they can do even though they can do everything. But that is not the point. The point is how do we get them to do all they will do until they eventually get to the place where they will have to be doing all they can.
We organized the Party when we saw that out of the Movement was what was called a cultural cult group. We defined a cultural cult group as an organization that disguised itself as a political organization, but was really more interested in the cultural rituals of Africa in the 1100’s before contact with the Europeans. Instead of administering to the community and organizing it, they would rather wear bubas, get African names and demand that the community do the same, and do nothing about the survival of the community. Sometimes they say, “Well, if we get our culture back then all things will be solved.” This is like saying to be regenerated and born again is to solve everything. We know that this is not true.
Then the Party became just as closed as the cultural cultist group. Many churches are very reactionary and can be described as religious cults. They go through many rituals, but they’re divorced from reality. Even though we have many things in common with them, we say they isolate themselves from reality because they’re so miserable and reality is so hard to take. We know that operating within reality does not mean that we accept it; we’re operating within it so that the reality can be changed. For what we did as revolutionists was abstract, and the people are always real. But we know that reality is changing all the time, and what we want to do is harness those forces that are causing the change to direct them to a desirable goal. In other words, developments will continue, but we have no guarantee that they will be developments that allow man to live. We have no guarantee that the bomb won’t be dropped, but we know that there are certain ways that we can plan for the new reality. In order to do this we have to take some control over the present. So the people who withdraw, like the religious cultist group, do the same thing as the cultural cultist group.
These are words that we have coined. The Panthers are always coining words because we have to keep defining the new reality, the new phenomena. The old words confuse us sometimes because things have changed so much. So we try to stay abreast by developing or stipulating definitions. The old lexical definitions become so outdated after the qualitative leap (the transformation) that it does not match at all what we are talking about now.
One new word related to what we have been talking about describes something I was guilty of. I was guilty of this when I offered the Black troops to Vietnam. I won’t talk about whether it was morally right or wrong, but I will say that anything said or done by a revolutionist that does not spur or give the forward thrust to the process (of revolution) is wrong. Remember that the people are the makers of history, the people make everything in their society. They are the architects of the society and if you don’t spur them on, then I don’t care what phrases you use or whether they are political or religious, you cannot be classified as being relevant to that process. If you know you’re wrong and do certain things anyway, then you’re reactionary because you are very guilty. Some of us didn’t know. I keep searching myself to see whether I know we were going wrong. O couldn’t influence the Central Committee and maybe I should have risked being charged with an individual violation and said that they didn’t know. I think most of them didn’t know, so they’re not as guilty as I am. I’m probable more guilty than anyone. But anyway, the new word that describes what we went into for a short length of time— a couple of years—is revolutionary cultism.
The revolutionary cultist uses words of social change; he uses words about being interested in the development of society. He uses that terminology, you see; but these actions are so far divorced from the process of revolution and organizing the community that he is living in a fantasy world. So we talk to each other on the campuses, or we talk to each other in the secrecy of the night, concentrating upon weapons, thinking these things will produce change without the people themselves. Of course people do courageous things and call themselves the vanguard, but the people who do things like that are either heroes or criminals. They are not the vanguard because the vanguard means spearhead, and the spearhead has to spearhead something. If nothing is behind it, then it is divorced from the masses and is not the vanguard.’
I am going to be heavily criticized now by the revolutionary cultists and probably criticized even more in the future because I view the process as going in stages. I fell that we can’t jump from A to Z, and we have to go through all of the development. So even though I see a thing is not the answer, I don’t think it’s dishonest to involve myself in it for the simple reason that the people tend to take not one step higher; they take a half step higher. Then they hang onto what they view as the reality because they can’t see that reality is constantly changing. When they finally see the changes (qualitatively) they don’t know why or how it happened. Part of the reason reality changes around them is because they are there; they participate whether they like it or not.
What we will do now is involve ourselves in anything or any stage to introduce some insight into it. Then we will work very hard with the people in the community and with this institution so that it can negate itself. We will be honest about this and we hope they are honest too and realize that everything is negated eventually; this is how we go on to higher levels.
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