The right to study, and the right to know

THIS report appeared in The Independent a week ago:

A Palestinian student has been handcuffed, blindfolded and forcibly expelled to the Gaza Strip by Israeli troops just two months before she was due to graduate from university.

Berlanty Azzam, 21, who was studying for a business degree at Bethlehem University, said she was coming home in a shared taxi from a job interview in Ramallah on Wednesday when soldiers at the "Container" checkpoint took her identity card and that of another passenger with a Gaza address.

After six hours of waiting, soldiers told her she would be taken to a detention centre in the southern West Bank, and she was handcuffed and blindfolded, she said.

"The driving took longer than it should have and I started to think something was wrong. I started to wonder, what are they doing to me?" After the car stopped and the blindfold was lifted, Ms Azzam saw she was at the Erez crossing to Gaza.

It was the sixth known forced return to Gaza of Palestinians stopped at the "Container" checkpoint – which is between Bethlehem and Abu Dis – in 10 days, according to the Israeli human rights group Gisha. Israel has also been preventing family reunifications in the West Bank for Palestinians with relatives living in Gaza, in effect forcing people to relocate to the Strip.

The steps are part of an Israeli policy of treating Gaza and the West Bank as two separate entities, thereby undermining the coherence of Palestinian claims for a state encompassing both territories. The 1993 Oslo agreement stipulates that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are to be treated as one territorial unit.

Major Guy Inbar, an Israeli defense ministry official, said the reason for Ms Azzam's deportation was that she was "staying illegally" in the West Bank.

"We are talking about a Gaza citizen who requested permission to study in the area of Judea and Samaria and received a negative answer," he said.

"In 2005, she was given a permit to visit Jerusalem for four days and she remained afterwards [in the West Bank] without any permit. Her entire period as a student was based on deceit and was against the law."

Sari Bashi, head of the Israeli Gisha human rights group, who tried to intervene on Ms Azzam's behalf, said she was assured by military lawyers on Wednesday that the student would not be deported to Gaza and that the rights group could seek a judicial review in the morning.

"The military misled us," Ms Bashi said. "There is a violation here of the right to access education, the right to freedom of movement and the right to choose one's place of residence within one's own territory."

The army did not respond to a request for comment.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/student-expelled-to-gaza-strip-by-force-1811730.html

http://matthewkalman.blogspot.com/

While some people here still talk as though the biggest danger facing Palestinians is the prospect of "two states" in Israel/Palestine, others still seek to persuade us that a peace based on two states would be just around the corner if only it were accepted by those awful Palestinians. Whenever they feel confident of winning on the other hand, many Zionists assure Jewish audiences at least that there are "no such people as Palestinians", just Arabs with no claim to the land who can be 'ethnically cleansed' whenever Israel can get away with it. Meantime the reality experienced by Palestinians is that Israel claims for itself the right to two states - one which it presents as "the only democracy in the Middle East" and the other, its rule over the Palestinians. Only that too is divided into two - so you have one state, Israel, and two reservations, to which access is controlled, and people can be confined or sent back, by Israel.

There have been some protests to the Israeli authorities over Berlanty Azzam's case, by Bethlehem University and by some civil rights campaigners in Israel. It has been taken up by someone as far away as Australia, and by those campaigning within British academia for a boycott of Israel.

But I would hope those who argue that a boycott is not the way to help, and insisting it infringes academic freedom, will also be raising their voices in this case.

While they are at it, they might also consider this news reported last week by Robyn Rosen in the Jewish Chronicle:

Lectures cancelled after Zionist campaign
report by Robyn Rosen, Jewish Chronicle October 29,

Two lectures by Israeli-based charity Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-I) were cancelled after a Zionist organisation told hospitals holding the talks that they were “anti-Israel”.

Miri Weingarten from PHR-I was due to give a lecture, entitled The Right to Health in a Conflict Zone, to three hospitals in Manchester, Liverpool and Bury last week. But just hours before the lecture, the Manchester Royal Infirmary and Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool cancelled the event.

Karen Solomon, director of the Zionist Central Council in Manchester, sent more than 200 emails to members urging them to contact the hospitals.
Ms Solomon said that the original plan was to send members to the meeting to dispute some of the topics.

She said: “We felt the talk was political and hospitals should not be seen to be political or hold political events. The group is blatantly anti-Israel and so we asked people to write in to say what we felt.”

A spokeswoman from the Manchester Royal Infirmary said that they had received complaints from the Jewish community and that the event was cancelled for security reasons. She said: “It was gaining quite a lot of negative feeling and it was felt that it might attract people turning up that would be against the meeting.”

Louise Shepherd, chief executive at Alder Hey Hospital, said: “It came to our attention that what was intended as a private meeting had in fact become public knowledge and was being trailed on various websites as a political issue. “This was augmented by accompanying display boards which arrived earlier that week and which contained explicit political content. “Alder Hey is, and will continue to be, apolitical and has a proud heritage of actively promoting a culture of equality and diversity. For these reasons a decision was taken to cancel Ms Weingarten’s visit to the Trust.”

Ms Weingarten, PHR-I’s director of advocacy, said she was “shocked” at the decision and surprised to be called anti-Israel. She vehemently denied that PHR-I was anti-Zionist. She said: “My organisation finds it shocking that communities that are so outspoken against the growing calls for a boycott of Israeli bodies could use the same tactics themselves in order to stifle debate.

“If the people behind this had come to the debate and challenged the content of my talk that would have been an important contribution. The decision to silence us — and the debate — completely is incomprehensible to us, and unacceptable.”

A consultant at Fairfield Hospital in Bury, where the lecture went ahead, said: “The whole idea that PHR-I is antisemitic or even anti-Israel is ludicrous given that the organisation is overwhelmingly comprised of Jewish Israelis, of whom Miri is one.”

Denial of the first Holocaust

IT was Winston Churchill who used the word "Holocaust" to describe the killing of Armenians in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire. But it was Adolf Hitler who reputedly reassured his generals, on the eve of the invasion of Poland, that they would get away with war crimes, with the remark "Who today remembers the Armenians?"

It seems the British Foreign Office has been more inclined to follow Hitler's cynical advice in this respect.

Back in July I noted in this blog that BAE Systems (ex-British Aerospace) was among big companies lobbying the US Congress against recognition of the Armenian genocide. Looking at the kind of contracts these companies might be bidding for, it seemed fairly obvious why they might want to butter up the Turkish military and government.

A report this week suggests there has been no need for lobbying in Britain, because the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has engaged in what QC Geoffrey Robertson calls "genocide denial", under both Tory and Labour governments. Robertson, who was commissioned by Armenian groups in London to review the official files, said in his report that "Parliament has been routinely misinformed by ministers who have recited FCO briefs without questioning their accuracy".

The report says there is no doubt that "in 1915 the Ottoman government ordered the deportation of up to two million Armenians - hundreds of thousands died en route from starvation, disease and armed attack".

But despite agreement among scholars and most European parliaments that what happened was genocide, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has stuck to the line that there is "insufficiently unequivocal evidence".

More honestly, a 1999 briefing acknowledged that the British government "is open to criticism in terms of the ethical dimension", but explained: "The current line is the only feasible option", owing to "the importance of our relations(political, strategic and commercial) with Turkey." It said "Recognising the genocide would provide no practical benefit to the UK".

Whatever the reasons for modern Turkish governments to remain in denial over a crime almost a century ago, some Turks have been braver than the British Foreign Office in standing for truth. Nobel prize-winning writer Orhan Pamuk was charged with "insulting Turkishness" for referring to the genocide, in 2005, though the trial was stopped. Several scholars and journalists have signed a petition referring to "the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915".

The Armenian issue could be used by those European Union governments which want to block Turkish entry. But right-wing elements in Turkey and among diaspora Turks are belligerently against anything which might weaken chauvinist attitudes today.

As for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, its respect for truth, and which Turks it chooses to support, business is business. Who today remembers the late Robin Cook and his idea that there should be an "ethical dimension" to foreign policy?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/03/armenia-genocide-denial-britain

http://hyemedia.com/2009/11/03/doughty-street-chambers-published-a-legal-opinion-by-geoffrey-robertson-on-armenian-genocide/

Hands off Heaton Park!

MANY of the happiest memories of my childhood are located on Heaton Park, to the north of Manchester.
I remember the hot summer afternoon when a bunch of us backstreet kids were taken by our mums to discover the joys of paddling in cool water that flowed over a gentle series of steps.

The Sunday mornings, when my Dad taught me to row on Heaton Park lake.

The ascent to the Observatory on the hill, around which you could walk in a circle looking at the view. Then the descent into a quiet area of woods, long grass and green weed-covered pond beyond.

The grotto-like rocky tunnel that gave onto the olde worlde formal gardens. Or walking through the grand millstone grit pillars that stood like a mysteriously isolated remnant of Classical antiquity above the path behind the boating lake. I later learned this had once been the facade of the old Manchester town hall.

I remember the commando games with my mates, for which the Park's varied scenery played backcloth, including the time we made our way up a long culvert for concealment, and after storming the Observatory, we crawled under a barbed-wire fence into the "enemy base" to plant sticks, supposedly dynamite, at the base of their radio mast. That was before the Manchester Police radio station acquired a concrete-clad telecomms tower (obviously they were not going to give us a second chance).

I remember the first time me and my pal took refuge from a shower in Heaton Hall, with its 18th century drawing rooms, old musical instruments, and - nude ladies in stone! This was well before page 3 days. We returned with I-Spy Antiques, learning to tell a Sheraton from a Chippendale, and a spinet from a harpsichord. Barry's dad was a furniture craftsman, so he took pride in becoming knowledgable even though he was to become a chemist.

If anyone took more delight than me in Heaton Park it was Our Dog. Besides participating in our games, he had his own trick, disappearing suddenly into dense bush to nose around among dead leaves and emerge triumphantly with a golf or tennis ball that someone had lost. I don't think I ever had to buy a ball while Rover was alive.

I also remember the Winter day when, dodging school, I went into Heaton Park, crossing it from Middleton Road to Heaton Park village, tramping through clean white snow and admiring its tracery on the branches. If you grew up like me in sooty streets without a tree in sight you'll understand.

I may as well also recall the Sunday morning football game, near St.Margaret's Gate, when our side lost 11-2, and my own role was so distinguished that in the second half the other side was shouting "Give the ball to Charlie!"

On my last visit to Heaton Park, when I had been living away from Manchester for some time, I was pleased to see the council had made some innovations, such as introducing Highlnnd Cattle. Behind the thick wild red hair and fierce horns the one I passed the time of day with seemed quite amiable, and I dare say might have vouched the same for me (I didn't have horns, but did have red hair). They had some foxes too, behind a wire enclosure. The one who greeted me hopefully, playing arond a post, might have thought I'd come to help him escape, but I suppose they got their food, and were not hunted, and in those days as a city kid you might not get to see a fox otherwise.

Anyway, by now you are wondering what brought on this flood of reminiscence, and the answer is another threatened innovation, and it has to do with balls, again, and goals, though not like those scored or conceded in the fairly innocent days of my youth. Rover won't be able to find balls in the undergrowth, and kids won't have so many opportunities to get mud on their knees if the council proceeds with plans drawn up with Goals Soccer Centres which wants to place a large chunk of parkland under 12 synthetic surface soccer pitches, six tennis and netball courts, a skate park and climbing wall, a cage for "extreme football", and a licensed bar.

The quiet area where I strolled one pleasant evening after work with my Mum, and we sat and read our library books, will be turned into a floodlit complex behind a high wire fence. OK, Heaton Park is a big park, and maybe there'll still be space for kids and parents to enjoy freely. But Manchester has owned this park since 1902, we grew up enjoying and appreciating its space to play and explore, not expecting to see yet more of our public space fenced off as private, our pleasures something to pay for. "Sanctuary from the city" is what an official website promises.

Are there no more areas of waste land and dereliction in Greater Manchester which Goals could purchase and develop if it wants to provide claimed benefits to the public? Or would that be less profitable than taking park land off a hard-up council?

The move began under the Tories to introduce children young to the Wonderful World of Money, that nothing was worth having unless it cost you plenty, nobody worth respect unless they had plenty to spend (how they acquired it was another issue), and that without it you were enitled to nothing. We had the attempt to turn museums into money-making businesses, the swimming pools that had once been a cheap place for the kids to spend school holidays turned into pricey "leisure complexes". Football -well. The national game evolved into something else. It's astronomical sums make it a world of its own.

Commercialised pitches are an offshoot, and artificial surfaces an improvement on those we used to know, made of cinders. But what happens when the keenness goes into decline, and what is now profitable becomes no longer so? What are you left with?

If I am being sentimental about keeping the park and the grass, it seems I am not alone. There is a campaign to save Heaton Park from this development, and I hope the campaigners succeed, for future generations to enjoy at least the free space we did.

http://www.heatonpark.org.uk/HeatonPark/
http://www.saveheatonpark.org.uk/
http://manchester.diarystar.co.uk/heaton-park-hall/

http://www.bradlander.com/

BRAD LANDER with partner Meg Barnette and their children, Marek and Rosa.

NEXT Tuesday, November 3, sees New York citizens voting for their mayor, and also for local councillors, and I'm interested in one of the candidates, if only because I know him. Brad Lander, who has worked for the Pratt Centre for Community Development for six years, and campaigned for better housing provision and the rights of low-paid agency workers, won the Democratic Party nomination for Council District 39 in Brooklyn.


We're often given the impression that American politics is all about personalities, PR image, and who gets how much from which vested interests, and that's just by those who'd have us remodel our politics the American way, so it is refreshing to see Lander's election literature being 'old-fashioned' enough to talk about

"The Issues

Preserving Liveable Neighborhoods

New York City has the power to preserve and strengthen the common quality of life of the neighborhoods we love. It's time we started to use it.Keeping Housing Affordable for New Yorkers

I'm proud of my work to preserve and create affordable homes for New Yorkers. I can't wait to get to the City Council to do even more. "

Standing up for Public Education

As a public school parent, I see every day what makes a great school: small classes, an excellent principal, dedicated teachers, and active parents. Every child deserves no less.

Creating good jobs and a fair economy

I've been fighting to create good jobs in Brooklyn for more than a decade - and today that fight is more important than ever.

Creating a more sustainable city

The importance of thinking globally and acting locally has never been more apparent. I want to apply my experience with sustainable development to build a greener future for our city.

Strengthening Public transportation and liveable streets

A better public transportation system is key to sustainable growth for our community, and for the city and region as a whole. With more frequent subways and buses, with safer and more better-planned streets, we can have both a metropolis that really works, and neighborhoods that are more livable for our day-to-day walks to the grocery store or the park.

Restoring confidence and participation in government

My work with communities in Brooklyn and throughout New York has shown that democratic participation keeps public servants accountable to the public. That is why I want to shine sunlight on city contracts and budgeting, eliminate the culture of pay-to-play and respect the will of voters on term limits.

Promoting public safety and justice

I will work with communities to ensure that our streets remain safe, that our businesses can operate securely, and that our families can thrive and live without fear.

Equal treatment for the LGBT community

Brad is a longtime supporter of LGBT equality and will be a forthright ally in the City Council. Brad will not stand for discrimination in our laws, and will fight to protect civil liberties of all members of our community.

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Vote 'Row E' to send a message of support for sick pay

Today, over a million working New Yorkers have no paid so sick days. Many work in places where disease is most likely to spread -- one survey showed that 84% of restaurant workers have no paid sick days, and more than half report going to work sick. Its bad for workers, bad for families, and bad for public health. The New York City Council is currently considering a bill that would allow employees to earn up to 9 paid sick days a year (up to 5 days for small business employees). The Paid Sick Days bill is begin championed by the Working Families Party. One way to show your support is to vote for me (and other Democratic candidates) on Row E, the WFP line. It counts the same, and sends a message in support of progressive public policy.

>Honor Julian Brennan by Helping Build Schools in Afghanistan

Marine Lance Corporal Julian Brennan, who grew up on 15th Street in Park Slope, was 25 when he was killed in Afghanistan on January 24, 2009. In a remarkable act of compassion, his parents Bill and Thya Brennan are asking us to make contributions to the Central Asia Institute, which builds schools in Afghanistan.'

Of course, when Brad Lander tells us proudly his children are at public schools, he isn't using the misnomer we get in England for private schools, he means public, state schools.

Brad's website bears the proud statement:
"Not paid for by PACs, corporate lobbyists or developers"

So that's two assurances from this Democrat that you would not get from Tony Blair and New Labour!

I met Brad Lander some years back when he was studying at University College London. If I was to endorse his campaign now it would mean I was supporting a bourgeois party, and my name would not do him any good. Fortunately he does not need it, being able to list a host of supporters, notably union districts and locals.

But popular as Brad's stands on jobs and housing, equality and the environment, might be, his candidature has not pleased everybody. A pseudonymous blogger calling themself "Chaim Yankel", for instance, is concerned not with Brad's election literature or speeches, but with some things he said at his son's brith (circumcision and naming ceremony:

Your last name is your mother’s -- a non-Jewish one -- by the fact of which you are ineligible for the nationalist privilege of automatic Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. We believe that law confuses the wonderful and painful inheritance of identity with unearned advantages -- legal, political, and financial -- granted by a militarized state over other people, including so many it oppresses daily….

…We pray fervently that by the time you read this, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the settlements, the house demolitions, the violence will be history. But even then, we hope you will appreciate this absence of nationalist privilege in your inscribed identity. We hope you will work for a world where identity is explored, nurtured, critiqued, celebrated, and protected -- but not the basis for privilege, for discrimination, for money, for power.”

http://www.r8ny.com/blog/chaim_yankel/my_brad_lander_problem_and_israels.html

At a time when Israel is not only the strongest military power in the Middle East, but has an aggressively right-wing government sticking up two fingers to the UN and paying little heed to its US backers, it is thrilling to think that it may face a problem with the 39th district of Brooklyn and what a would-be councillor said at his son's brith! In fact, Brad Lander has not introduced the Israel question or anti-Zionism to his election campaign. On the contrary he has even reportedly joined the America-Israel Public Affairs Council(AIPAC), for whatever tactical reasons. But at a local Jewish community event honouring Holocaust survivors he spoke about the Bundist socialist Marek Edelman, a leader of the Warsaw ghetto revolt. He also commented afterwards on the way his opponents - including Mayor Bloomberg and former mayor Rudi Giuliano - were abusing the occasion to raise racially divisive politics.

The Bund had an expression, doikeit, here-ness, meaning fight for what's right where you are, rather than tie yourself to the Zionist project. It also upheld a much older adage: "If I am not for myself, who is for me?; but if I am only for myself, what (good) am I? And if not now, then when?" Brad Lander is a director of Jewish Funds for Justice, which has channelled help to a variety of deserving causes, such as victims of Hurricane Katrina. In 2007 it also brought together more than 20 Jewish organizations in an attempt to focus the attention of the 2008 American presidential candidates on the domestic priorities of American Jews. The coalition produced an online survey, which received nearly 9,000 responses, and which identified health care as the top domestic concern of American Jews.

That must be a change from candidates vying to be 100 per cent or 200 per cent "for Israel"

Recent articles in the Jewish Daily Forward have suggested that the "Jewish Vote" is no longer what it was in NewYork, either in numbers or cohesion. Different groups were moving different ways, Orthodox for instance dbeing conservative, unlike the liberal middle class, on family and social issues. But it also noted: "Observers say that New York’s ultra-Orthodox communities, with their large and often poor families, tend to vote for whomever will deliver the most government dollars and resources — and they like to go with a winner. And Lander, who before running for office was director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, has led the crowded primary field in money and endorsements from elected officials".

http://www.forward.com/articles/117312/
An Odd Political Alliance of Left and Right Walks the Streets of BrooklynBy Gal Beckermanhttp://www.forward.com/articles/112467/
I don't know how far Brad Lander can go, as a Democrat, in meeting the expectations he has raised on issues like jobs and housing. But I am sure he will have a good try, and wish him every possible success. I think he has already done a good job in raising social and political awareness, and showing that New York politics need not be hopeless.

New York, New York

NEW YORKERS are to vote for their mayor on November 3. It's a real executive position, not just for show. The mayor's office at City Hall wields a $50 billion a year budget, biggest of any US city, and employs a quarter of a million people. The city collects $27 billion in taxes, and receives $14 billion from federal and state funds.

When we think of New York we may think of Wall Street, and world capitalism. Maybe that's what the attack on the World Trade Centre was supposed to be about. But like the majority of victims there, the majority of New Yorkers are workers. What's more, this other New York has a history of struggles and hopes that were not always content to be lulled by the "American Dream".

In 1914, Meyer London, a Socialist, was elected to Congress with backing from labour unions and the poor immigrant workers of New York's Lower East Side. London opposed America's entry to the World War, and though once it was in the war he fell in line, he opposed measures like the 1917 Espionage Act of 1917 and the 1918 Sedition Act, which made criticism of the president or the war a crime

In the summer of 1917, with patriotic pro-war sentiment sweeping America, Morris Hillquit ran for Mayor of New York on an anti-war platform, combined with commitment to public services. Socialists, liberals and opponents of the war and repressive legislation rallied to Hillquit's side, and he obtained 22 per cent of the vote.

Anti-war sentiment and working class militancy were not necessarily united. But besides Irish Americans and of course German Americans' reluctance to side with Britain, many American Jews, particularly those immigrant workers, would take some persuasion to endorse an alliance with Czarist Russia, whose oppression and pogroms they had fled. This was one factor in the British government's decision to adopt its Balfour Declaration, supporting the Zionists' project for a Jewish 'National Home', in Palestine. Perhaps British leaders had been sold an exagerated view of Zionist influence on Jews, as well as of Jewish influence in both American politics and Russian Revolution.

But it worked. In 1918, the Zionists asked Meyer London to introduce a resolution in Congress endorsing the Balfour declaration. London did not share the Zionist dreams. “Let us stop pretending about the Jewish past and let us stop making fools of ourselves about the Jewish future,” he said. When he refused to introduce the resolution, the Zionists decided to defeat him. They were joined by Orthodox rabbis who opposed London because he was not religious; and by rich and powerful capitalists who obviously opposed London as a socialist. Jewish leaders and influential figures like Jacob Schiff, Louis Marshall, Nathan Strauss, and Rabbi Stephen S.Wise urged Jews to redeem themselves by rejecting London. He narrowly lost re-election in 1918.

It wasn't the end for London (he was re-elected in 1920), nor for New York labour radicalism. In 1932, still feeling the 1929 Crash and great depression, 200,000 New Yorkers voted for the Socialist Party candidates in city council elections. In 1936, major unions backed formation of an American Labour Party, seemingly following the British model, though it was as much to counter the Socialists and those further left, and channel union backing to Roosevelt.

In the absence of real class politics and tradition, competition and ugly, violent conflict can break out between different minorities fighting each other for the ear of corrupt politicians, access to resources and a place on the ladder, rather than uniting for justice and equality for all. That way those at the top can look down safely on those scrambling for crumbs below. I don't go for conspiracy theory, but I do find it interesting to read that both Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defence League (and later Israel's racist Kach party), and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, notorious for his anti-Jewish utterances, were on the FBI payroll.

US, and New York politics, also see what, to a simple Brit, are some strange alliances. Even the pre-war labour union support for Roosevelt had to go through backing New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia and attorney Thomas Dewey, both Republicans, presumably to sidestep conservative elements in Roosevelt's own Democrat Party.

But one of the most bizarre alliances has taken shape in New York under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who besides his job at City Hall is founder and main owner of Bloomberg LP, a financial software company, and the eighth richest man in the United States. If you think the shadowy Socialist Action team of advisors who gathered around Ken Livingstone was a bit much, or have remarked on Tory Mayor Boris' recruitment of a woman out of a think-tank said to have been associated with the late and unlamented "Living Marxism" magazine ..You ain't seen nothing!

Back in the 1970s, probably the dodgiest character to have emerged from the American Left, Lyndon LaRouche, led his supporters into a campaign of violence against other left-wing orgnisations, called "Operation Mop-Up". Shortly afterwards LaRouche was joined by a psycho-therapist called Fred Newman. The two didn't stay together long, apparently Newman found LaRouche too authoritarian, and LaRouche did not approve of Newman's personal lifestyle. Nowadays, LaRouche is generally regarded as a far-Right cult leader, whose organisations in the United States and Europe seem well-funded and remarkably protected. A young student from Britain, Jeremiah Duggan, was found dead by a roadisde outside Wiesbaden, in Germany, after going to a supposed 'anti-war' conference the LaRouchites had organised. Jerry Duggan's family are still trying to get his death properly investigated.

Fred Newman meanwhile led an 'International Workers Party', which officially dissolved into a New Alliance Party (NAP), and he also founded the New York Institute of Social Therapy. A woman.called Leonora Fulani (born Leonora Branch), also a Ipsycho-therapist, liked his theory of social therapy which is supposed to lead to "the dictatorship of the proletarian ego". Fulani joined the NAP, and ran for President in 1988, then in 1990 she ran for New York governor, with endorsement for Louis Farrakhan. Then in 2000, Newman and Fulani endorsed ultra-conservative Pat Buchanan - whose Catholic-influenced opposition to gay rights should afford interesting discussions with Newman - on record for "polymorphous sexuality" and "Man-boy" relationships.

In 2001, having moved into the Independence Party(originally followers of Ross Perot), Newman and Fulami swung its New York voters behind Republicam Mike Bloomberg for the mayoralty. They helped him get in, and whatever people say about virtue being its own reward, their reward was more than virtual. n 2005 New York's Department of Youth and Community Services gave a $215,000 grant to Newman and Fulani to run an after-school project for high school students. That was only a taster. Bloomberg saw to it that a $8.7 million municipal bond went to Newman and Fulani for a new headquarters.

In 2007, Bloomberg announced he was quitting the Republicans, to be an independent, and this time last year he got through a change in the city's law, enabling him to stand for a third term in office. The Newman-Fulani outfit have come in for attack from various critics. There have been concerns about the way the "All Stars" youth programme was run, and whether they were fit people to run it. Newman, despite being Jewish, was accused of "hate-filled antisemitic diatribes" by the Anti-Defamation League, and to be fair though his target might have been Israel, his reference to "the Jew" sounds like someone imitating Farrakhan, and the language he used suggest more someone in need of therapy, rather than a practitioner dispensing it. Derek Seratte, a trade unionist who quit the New Alliance Party says the "therapy" practised within it might not have set anybody right, but was "effective in terms of controlling a lot of people to do the kinds of things that were asked of them". Christopher Hitchens sayst “the Newman-Fulani group is a fascistic zombie cult ..."

So far as the pro-Zionist organisations go, their tide of criticism seems to have ebbed, and might not lap up up against Bloomberg.

But what has the mayor's record been like for New Yorkers hit by recession and even before that, repossessions?
"Clearly his tactics, which have included cutting off homeless New Yorkers from federal housing assistance, cutting funding to eviction prevention programmes, closing down shelters and drop-in centres and, most recently, kicking people out of shelters for breaking rules such as missing curfews, are not working. Since Bloomberg took office in 2002 homelessness has increased at a rate of 45% each year."
America's Most Unwanted
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/26/homelessness-us-economy-new-york-las-vegas

Still, never mind, if they have nowhere to live the chances are they will have nowhere to vote, assuming they wanted to.

Whereas some supporters have not lost their enthusiasm:
Bloomberg, Lenora Fulani, Fred Newman -- Rally for Victory!

By Tom Robbins in Featured, Mayoral Race 2009, Tom Robbins

Tuesday, Jun. 2 2009 @ 8:42AM

Be there or Be Square! Lenora Fulani, Fred Newman, and all the wonderfully zany leaders of the city's Independence Party kick off their big push to reelect Mike Bloomberg Thursday evening at a rally in Harlem.

Bloomberg is listed as an "invited speaker" for the event at First A.M.E. Bethel Church on 132^nd Street at 6.P.M., according to an ad on the Independence Party (New York City wing) website.

There's a recorded pitch for the big night on a voice zipper on the site in which Fulani credits a "new alliance" of blacks and independent voters with electing America's "two most independent leaders" -- Bloomberg and Barack Obama, (while defeating "the Clinton machine" along the way). Here's Fulani:

"Four years ago, a new political coalition put itself on the map; 47 percent of black voters and 60 percent of independents reelected Mayor Mike Bloomberg giving him a mandate for nonpartisan government. That black and independent alliance scored again in 2008 when it carried Barack Obama to victory, defeating the Clinton machine in the primaries and then the Republican machine in November. As part of this new alliance, we have elected the country's two most independent leaders, Barack Obama and Mike Bloomberg. . . . New York City, in all its diversity, has gone independent and we cannot turn back now".

........................................................

* For a website dedicated to the pursuit of LaRouche and the Newman-Fulani outfit, see
http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/

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Electric company "shocked and stunned" - :-)

BRITAIN'S electricity supply industry used to be state-owned, but then and since it was privatised, the companies seem to have carried on behaving as though they own the state. Now one of them has tripped, trying to use the anti-terrorism laws.

This piece of news reached me care of Bristol Unite union activist and socialist Jerry Hicks, though I'm particularly pleased because it concerns a brother from my own section of Unite, and what's more best known in the Manchester area where I hail from. Anyway, as Jerry says, introducing this item, "It's great to win one! and then maybe another?"


High Court defeat leaves Scottish & Southern Energy

‘Shocked and stunned’

The High Court yesterday (Wed 21st October) rejected an injunction against a building worker which had been brought against him under Terrorism legislation.

Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) had sought the injunction against Steve Acheson claiming his actions were a potential threat to the National Grid and national security. Even though he has never attempted to enter the power station, or disrupt generation, or block the entrance to the site since his unfair dismissal by contractors in December 2008.

Mr Acheson, an electrician is a Unite union member, who has been peacefully protesting against his dismissal and subsequent denial of a grievance process from the Fiddlers Ferry power station in Warrington,

The dispute at the power station started in December 2008, when Steve Acheson was dismissed from the project. Steve complained that he was deliberately being victimised because he was an active trade union member and began to picket the site to regain his job.

In March 2009, the Information Commissioner uncovered an illegal blacklist operating in the construction industry on behalf of 44 of the largest construction companies. After receiving his own file, documentary evidence now fully supports Steve Acheson's claim of deliberate blacklisting from the site. But rather than admitting their obvious guilt and re-employing Steve, SSE unsuccessfully tried to stifle his protest.

At the High Court on Wednesday a legal representative for SSE made a various vague references to Mr Acheson posing a danger to the National Grid! Stretching even the most vivid of imaginations

During his summary, Lord Justice Mann used somewhat dramatic language when he described the SSE legal case as "lacking any evidence at all" and as "fanciful bordering on paranoid". Lord Justice Mann when rejecting the injunction awarded full costs against SSE.

Jerry Hicks who along with many others was at the hearing to support Mr Acheson said. "This would be laughable if it was not so serious. SSE were totally humiliated, their case was ludicrous but it proves the lengths employers will go in their attacks on union members".

And argues that there should be a demand that all the contractors implicated in the blacklisting scandal should be banned themselves from tendering for any government contracts until they offer jobs to the 3000 constructions workers who have been blacklisted.

The very real threat are the big contractors who, by blacklisting trade unionists are ruining workers lives and those of their families. It should be the construction companies in court.

After his victory Steve told supporters: "I have been boosted by the support I have received from so many people. If this Injunction had gone through it would have had a devastating impact upon trade unions ability to organise This is a defeat for corporate bullies and a victory for peaceful protest. Tomorrow I will be back at Fiddlers Ferry, fighting the blacklist and fighting to get my job back"

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For more background on this ongoing fight see:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/06/blacklist-trade-union-members
http://www.socialist.net/victory-against-the-blacklist.htm
http://www.labournet.net/ukunion/0501/cowboy1.html



My Unite branch,whose members came, like Steve Acheson, via the Electrical and Plumbing Industries Union(EPIU), has followed and supported the Manchester members in their fight against victimisation and blacklisting, and admired their determination and fortitude..But I'm sure we will not be alone in being thrilled and delighted with this setback for the employers, and wishing strength and success to Steve in his ongoing fight.

Whom they broadcast, and what they don't

THAT'S how I like to see fascists, with BOTH hands up!
Nick Griffin is second from left, and next to him and third from left
is former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

WELL, the British National Party leader Nick Griffin has had his night on BBC Question Time, and by way of gratitude he says he will complain that he was sibjected to a "lynch mob". Oh dear. I don't normally watch the programme, and last night ws no exception, but I read in the papers that some members of the audience - one of them black, and another Jewish - asked Mr.Griffin some awkward questions. Some even jeered and laughed at him. Diddums.

Maybe we should sympathise with him over this unpleasant experience, but...the reports did not mention any crowd in pointy white hoods waiting with a noose for Mr. Griffin. Now that is what I would call a lynch mob, and I'd be sorry if I'd missed it, indeed not been part of it. But then, I am sure that Griffin, whose party has ran a fund raising operation among white supremacists in the 'States , does not need telling what a lynch mob is. As David Dimbleby reminded the BNP leader last night, he met former KKK leader David Duke on one of his Transatlantic trips.

But that won't stop Griffin making his complaint. One thing the fascists have never been short of is chutzpah. Audacity, as their Italian originals used to say. Getting on Question Time, regardless of performance, was bound to encourage them.

BBC bosses said before last night's programme that not inviting the BNP leader would have amounted to "censorship", and this was not the BBC's job. Really? It may have slipped my memory, but how much coverage did the BBC give the long Liverpool docks struggle, before Robbie Fowler upset commentators by revealing his tee shirt supporting the dockers, in front of the 'Match of the Day' cameras?. Then there was Labour MP John McDonnell's campaign with a view to challenging Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership. The MP got well-attended public meetings wherever he went, with enthusiastic backing from trades unionists. but so far as the news on BBC television went, he did not exist, to the extent that Michael Meacher's abortive stand was treated as the first entry to the jousts, without mentioning McDonnel's campaign let alone giving him a platform on TV.

But we must not accuse the BBC of responding to pressure for censorship on that occasion. After all, they showd themselves perfectly capable of deciding what to keep off the air when it came to the Gaza charities appeal. That wasn't censorship?

When it comes to the BNP, intentionally or otherwise, some BBC reporting gives the BNP and its arguments a chance which isn't afforded other points of view. We hear about the "white working class" feeling betrayed by Labour, but not about the working class without that colour label, which is entitled to feel betrayed. A report on Barking and Dagenham gave voice to those blaming immigrants for decline, and intending to vote BNP, but not a word against two particular groups of foreigners who did damage the areas - Cape Asbestos, whose Barking factory left a legacy of asbestos-related diseases, and Ford Motor Co. who pulled the rug from under employment at Dagenham.

Then there's the publicity which the Beeb and other media don't give to the BNP. Take the 'war on terror'. When two Asian Muslim men in Forest Gate, east London, were arrested for what proved a non-existent terror plot, their homes were turned over by search teams and nothing was found, but for a week or more local people had a job getting home past police cordons and without tripping over television cables. But last year when police found the largest cache of explosives seen in years up in Lancashire in a former BNP candidate's shed, the story somehow didn't make national news.

I commented on this at the time, but Independent columnist Johann Hari, though he thinks the BBC was right to give Griffin the chance to expose himself, looks at this wider picture:

Exactly a decade ago, a 22-year-old member of the British National Party called David Copeland planted bombs in Brixton, Brick Lane (where I live), and a gay pub in Old Compton Street. He managed to lodge a nail deep in a baby's skull, and to murder a pregnant woman, her gay best friend, and his partner. He bragged: "My aim was political. It was to cause a racial war in this country. There'd be a backlash from the ethnic minorities, then all the white people would go out and vote BNP."

Last year, a 43-year-old man called Neil Lewington was arrested "on the cusp" of waging a "terror campaign", it emerged at his trial. He had built a bomb factory in his parents' house which he planned to use to launch attacks against people he considered to be "non-British". He was only caught by chance: he picked a panicked fight with a train conductor, and the police who turned up found he was laden with explosives.

The list of far right-wingers who have been busted for planning violence has spiked up in the past few years. In the home of a BNP election candidate called Robert Cottage in 2008, the police discovered "the largest amount of chemical explosives ever found in this country", they said.

The same year, a thug called Martyn Gilleard was caught with a huge stash of nail bombs, and rage-filled letters in which he declared: "I am so sick of hearing nationalists talk of killing Muslims, of blowing up mosques, of fighting back, only to see these acts of resistance fail to appear. The time has come to stop the talk and start to act." He was only caught by fluke: the police busted him for distributing child porn.

It's not hard to get in on this act. There are dozens of far-right websites that explain – with handy video links – how to make bombs, and then urge you to head to the nearest mosque, synagogue or gay club.

But as the New Statesman's Mehdi Hassan has pointed out, as far as public debate goes, it's as if these crimes never happened. While planned attacks by jihadis (rightly) dominate the news agenda for days, these remarkably similar plans pass unmentioned and unnoticed.

This disjunction exposes a rash of hypocrisy. The parts of the right that gleefully blame all Muslims for the actions of a tiny minority are mysteriously reluctant to apply the same arguments to themselves. If Martin Amis was consistent, he should now declare: "The white community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation. Strip-searching people who look like they're from Hampshire or from Surrey ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children."

The Looming Threat of Terror that comes from the far Right, Johann Hari, Independent, October 14

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-looming-threat-of-terror-that-comes-from-the-far-right-1802167.html

Amis is the well-known writer and well over-paid guest lecturer at Manchester University, a reminder that though Nick Griffin might not have made intellectual respectability, there are quite a few intellects and Establishment-types around pushing their right-wing views in the media and academe. They can affect to despise Griffin, just as he can whenever necessary distance himself from the convicted thugs and nail-bomb nutters of the Far Right.

If reason and ridicule were enough to defeat the fascists, neither Mussolini nor Hitler would have ever made it to power. Nick Griffin is not up to either, not even to Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose French TV appearances were cited as a worrying precedent. But while others can worry themselves about 'free speech' and quote Voltaire, we might as well quote Griffin. When the BNP won a council seat in Millwall, he spoke about about the value of "well-directed boots and fists" - : "When the crunch comes, power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate.”

You can't argue with that.