Taking responsibility on another planet
The Early Day Motion on Biological and Toxin Weapons has been promoted by that old ILP fellow traveller Harry Barnes. He attracted a number of signatures beyond the traditional left including Phil Willis, Colin Challen, Sir Teddy Taylor and dear old John Battle. In the case of John perhaps this is part of a turn towards his long standing commitment to the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.
The resolution is quite detailed, building on revelations from Senator Robert Bird that Umbrella has previously covered. However John, Harry and even Colin might want to focus their fire on Hoon. He has been awarded the Distinguished Public Service Award, the Pentagon's highest civilian honour, for sending ill-equipped British soldiers to their deaths in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld gave out the reward to his faithful lackey.
A couple of weeks before Hoon was honoured, more details were published over Rumsfeld's personal dealings with Saddam Hussein. Previously unpublished secret documents prove that he went to Iraq to show America's support despite the regime's use of chemical weapons.
Even after the gassing of civilians at Halabja in 1988, American and British support for the Hussein dictatorship continued. The Tory government increased its export credits from £175 million to £340 million between 1987 and 1988. The US government approved the export of virus cultures and a $1 billion dollar contract to design and build a petrochemical plant that could be used to make mustard gas. The toxins sold to Iraq by the US after 1988 include anthrax, nerve gas, and West Nile fever germs.
If the signatories of this resolution are serious they would call for a public inquiry into those in Britain and the US who materially assisted Hussein throughout the years of his brutal dictatorship. This would of necessity mean that Saddam Hussein's trial has to be conducted by an international tribunal.
The chances of such a bold initiative are unfortunately very slim. When there are large demonstrations calling for democratic elections in Iraq the British government keeps quiet. Increasingly the British and American armies are being treated as a hostile occupying force. The Americans have lost 500 of their troops in the war plus tens of thousands wounded. This is more than they lost in the first four years of the Vietnam War.
Hoon, whose frequent trips to the US make him look more and more like US equivalent of the Manchurian candidate, is determined not to be a Rhode Island Red over the death of Dr Kelly. He has snapped back that Dr Kelly was no "martyr". And more importantly Hoon is not going to become one.
I thought that Hoon was being left to take the bullet for Blair over the Hutton inquiry; however his US handlers are trying hard to get him off the hook. There will be an attempt to blame Dr Kelly's death on procedures, an unfortunate accident. Lord Hutton was chosen by Blair as safe pair of hands who has a tendency to blame systems rather than people. But if the push comes to shove Blair will sacrifice Hoon to save his own skin. Hoon would then project himself as doing a noble thing in order to be ennobled and perhaps to become the leader of NATO.
All the New Labour signatures of the Early Day resolution know the above facts. But they are hoping that impact of the Hutton inquiry will do their job for them. They have spent too long in the House of Commons bars. In politics it pays to get your blow in first so you can strike a second time.
Meanwhile in Iraq
Alan Slater, 68, a Canadian member of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) in Iraq started a liquids-only fast on January 8th at the Iraqi Assistance Center (IAC) in Baghdad.
Slater is fasting to draw attention to the struggle many Iraqis face to regain their property confiscated during Coalition house raids.
After U.S. military personnel closed the IAC an hour early on Thursday, January 8 (while twenty-four Iraqis in the office were still awaiting help) Slater announced he would refuse to leave the building until the soldiers helped the people.
CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) officials have failed to follow through on promises to return money, documents, and other property taken on September 30th from an Iraqi farmer and his two workers at his farm 40 km north of Baghdad.
Coalition forces imprisoned the three men at Ba'quba for three days, but released them when US personnel admitted that the house raid had been a mistake.
Slater has worked with the three men, trying to regain their property, since he arrived in Iraq in mid-October. "I have lost all trust in this process" the farmer has told CPTers. Slater says that he will fast until the CPA addresses the problem.
When the dictator Saddam Hussein was found by US forces many commentated that it was it was bit too neat. There were rumours printed that Hussein was found as a result of deal with Kurdish forces, a story which has re-emerged in a story reprinted by Leeds Coalition Against the War from a DEBKA news report. This report draws attention to the circumstances surrounding Hussein's capture. These include:
- The length and state of his hair indicated he had not seen a barber or even had a shampoo for several weeks.
- The wild state of his beard indicated he had not shaved for the same period.
- The hole dug in the floor of a cellar in a farm compound near Tikrit was primitive indeed - 6ft by 8ft across with minimal sanitary arrangements - a far cry from his opulent palaces.
- Saddam looked beaten and hungry.
- Detained with him were two unidentified men, two AK-47 assault guns and a pistol, none of which were used.
- The hole had only one opening. It was not only camouflaged with mud and bricks - it was blocked. He could not have climbed out without someone on the outside removing the covering.
- And most important, $750,000 in 100-dollar notes were found with him - but no communications equipment of any kind, whether cell phone or even a carrier pigeon for contacting the outside world.
According to DEBKAfile analysts, these seven anomalies point to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein was not in hiding; he was a prisoner.
The US administration however has muddied the water in order to gain the political credit for Bush. It is highly likely the $25 million reward has been paid out but it will not appear in the President's election expenses.
And in Yorkshire
The US airforce dropped a practice bomb on the East Yorkshire countryside. Luckily it did not contain any explosives and just left a small hole in a farmer's field.
But in Scotland
MORE than 2,000 residents of Skye and Wester Ross are being issued with anti-radiation pills to counter any hazards from nuclear submarines mooring in their area. Potassium iodate tablets will be sent to every household within a 2km radius of the Ministry of Defence emergency submarine moorings in Wester Ross, and Skye.
A recent risk assessment required NHS Highland and the Highland Council to put in place appropriate plans and counter-measures to offset any potential hazards. The council's previous plans relied on the police and council employees to distribute the pills in an emergency. This is no longer considered reliable.
The Council spokesman said: "The council wish to stress that there is no increased risk of a nuclear accident at any of the three Highland sites, which have been in use for 20 years.
A local action group has attacked the plan, Wester Ross Against Radiation (WAR), which says not enough is known about the impact of a potential accident or the effectiveness of the anti-radiation pills. Gordon Harrison, a member of the group, said: "The number of local people who are concerned about the emergency planning, and the way it is being foisted on the communities affected, is fostering a growing sense of anger.
"I have noticed how every letter or press release from the authorities always use the phrases 'extremely unlikely' and 'there is no increased risk'. Extremely unlikely things happen all the time all over the world, so that assurance is worthless."
And in Leeds
New Labour continues to implode in Leeds. The crisis at Leeds United is reflected in the semi-collapse of the New Labour group.
After the last local elections New Labour were left with 52 councillors out of 99. However one of them, Neil Taggart, became Lord Mayor and the former Lord Mayor, Brian North, has made a rapid, but apparently carefully planned, exit to Spain. They have also suspended one member, Lee Benson, in order that he can investigated for alleged misuse of council computer systems and at least one member is too ill to attend meetings. This means that New Labour no longer have effective control of the council. However at the last Council meeting they managed to win the key votes by about 47 to 45. This shows that the opposition has still not got its act together. It also means that the smaller groups on the Council such as the Green Party and the independent Morley councillors can wield some power.
A number of well-known councillors failed to get into the wards of their choice. This was due to supporters of one group of councillors mobilising enough votes from their original ward to dominate the new ward. So in the new City and Hunslet ward the old Hunslet councillors Geoff Driver, Judy Blake and John Erskine (none of whom live in the area they represented) were defeated by the councillors from the old City and Holbeck ward Liz Nash, Mohammed Iqbal and Patrick Davey (again none live in the ward).
However Geoff Driver and Judith Blake were selected along with Stuart Bruce for the new Middleton Park ward. They defeated two councillors who lived relatively locally, David Langham and Jack Dunn.
The phenomenon was repeated in the new Burmantofts and Richmond Hill ward where Mick and Marlene Lyons (from the Richmond Hill side) were not reselected. Ron Grahame (from the Burmantofts side) was selected after a magnificent speech emphasising his socialist principals. However John Garvani (from Burmantofts), the most left-wing Councillor after the saintly Patrick Hall, was not selected.
So what are the politics behind what is the biggest shake up of Leeds' ruling party since 1980? The answer is not much. None of the changes are about politics or principle but about how many friends a councillor has made inside their ward. None of them presented an alternative vision to slavishly following their London masters. The separation between where the councillor lives and the ward he or she represents continues. This lays them open to attack.
More dangerously at a city level they look as they are incapable for developing a vision for Leeds in the 21st century. They have stopped thinking. It will need some kind of miracle for them to hold on to power until June 10th. If there was a half decent opposition they would last long. However the two main opposition parties are so ingrained as oppositionists they too look as though they will never run Leeds. Yet more reasons for joining the Alliance for Green Socialism.
Round the world. The 80 year war on drugs
In the same hysterical tones and with about the same amount of accuracy as they did over the discredited research on Ecstasy, the press has been denouncing cannabis. Their main theme is that it isn't really the cannabis of the sixties but a super new strain that's very dangerous. No scientific evidence is presented for this. In essence the press campaign is designed to support Blunkett's draconian measures against cannabis suppliers. Blunkett's measures are deliberately framed to allow the damaging illegal drug trade to continue. How much more sensible are the Alliance for Green Socialism proposals for the decriminalisation of cannabis and the dealing with the dangers of drugs as a medical problem.
The UK and US invasion of Afghanistan has lead to a 90% increase in heroin production. The country supplies the majority of heroin in the UK and the USA. The deals with the warlords in Afghanistan and the removal of the Taliban predictably lead to the huge increase. The Taliban, a nasty anti women religious regime, prevented thousands of drug related deaths each year. The US and UK troops in Afghanistan are turning a blind eye to the problem. The question must be asked who is paying them?
Kevin Nelson, of the US AlterNet http://www.alternet.org deals with the massive success of the American's War 90 year war on drugs by outlining some the top stories from Drug War 2003:
- Afghanistan is now the world's leading supplier of opium for the heroin trade. Under the Taliban regime, which banned opium, annual production bottomed out at 77 tons in 2001, produced only in areas controlled by the Northern Alliance. American military, as part of its "War on Terror," allied with Northern Alliance warlords to overthrow the Taliban regime and keep Al Qaeda at bay. Afghan opium production has since skyrocketed to about 3,600 tons of opium this year, or 75 percent of global production. This will cause more deaths than the evil attack on the twins each year. Early in December 2003, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld travelled to Afghanistan and publicly embraced warlords Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ustad Attas Mohammed, for calling off armed struggle with the fragile government in Kabul headed by Hamid Karzai. Abdul Rashid Dostum was rewarded by being named Deputy Secretary of Defense for the Karzai government. Dostum has been described as a "war criminal" by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, for killing thousands of civilians in the Afghan civil wars of the 1990s and for his merciless treatment of prisoners and, occasionally, his own soldiers.
- While the United States declared war on Iraq for supposedly harbouring biological weapons, the US-funded War on Drugs in Colombia plans to use an untested pathogenic fungus - fusarium oxysporum - to wipe out coca. Critics say the plan proposes illegal acts of biological warfare, poses major ecological risks to Colombia - one of the world's most bio-diverse countries - and will increase suffering, by wreaking havoc with human health, water quality and food crops.
- On February 12, a federal jury in Philadelphia awarded $1.5 million in compensation to two narcotics agents - John McLaughlin and Charles Micewski - who claimed their boss - the Pennsylvania attorney general - retaliated against them because they uncovered a drug-trafficking ring that diverted profits to a CIA-backed Dominican presidential candidate. Pittsburgh's Tribune Review reports: McLaughlin and Micewski said they had uncovered a Dominican drug-trafficking ring operating in Philadelphia, New York and other Eastern cities that funnelled drug profits to the Dominican Revolutionary Party, which they claimed was supported by the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department.
- Switzerland's Addiction Research Institute calls tobacco the number one killer addiction, responsible for 71 percent, or 4.9 million of the world's 7 million annual drug-related deaths. About 1.8 million deaths, or 26 percent, were attributed to the use of alcohol, while illicit drugs caused about 223,000, or 3 percent, of all worldwide drug-related deaths.
- The FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report reveals that police arrested an estimated 697,082 persons for marijuana violations in 2002, or nearly half of all drug arrests in the United States. This amounts to one marijuana-related arrest every 45 seconds. The total number of marijuana arrests far exceeded the total number of arrests for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault. Of those charged with marijuana violations, 88 percent were charged with possession only. The remaining 12 percent were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes cultivation for personal and medical use.
- Two of America's leading conservative moralist pundits, William Bennett and Rush Limbaugh, are chastened by the exposure of their secret habits. Former chain-smoking Drug "Czar" and puritanical author of The Book of Virtues, Bennett was exposed for gambling away millions of dollars of his family's fortune in Las Vegas casinos in the past decade. Limbaugh, America's Number One conservative radio talk show host, has rarely missed an opportunity to vilify drug addicts, even calling for an increase in the incarceration of white drug users to offset the nation's massive racial disparity in prison. He is currently under investigation for illegally obtaining up to 30,000 narcotic painkillers from his housekeeper and from doctor shopping. In his defence, (Ultra-Conservative) Limbaugh has retained the services of (Ultra-Liberal) defence attorney Roy Black.
- Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, Washington's most stalwart ally in South America, is living in exile in the United States after being toppled in mid-October by a popular uprising, a potentially crippling blow to US anti-drug policy in the Andean region. Last year, Lozada asked President Bush for more money to ease the impact on displaced coca farmers. Otherwise, Lozada explained, "I may be back here in a year, this time seeking political asylum." The coca problem is intimately tied to issues of poverty and disenfranchisement. In Bolivia the backlash has strengthened the hand of the political figure regarded by Washington as its main enemy: Evo Morales, head of the coca growers' federation, who finished second in the presidential election last year.
- RAID! On May 16, New York City police tossed a stun grenade into the home of 57-year-old Alberta Spruill, city worker and church volunteer, who died from a heart attack during the mistaken drug raid. On May 23, NYC police accidentally raid the home of teacher Joe Celcis. Police smashed open the door, handcuffed several people, pointed a gun in the face of a 12-year old girl and ransacked the house for 90 minutes before realising they had the wrong address. On Nov. 5, cops in a Charleston, SC, suburb burst into the mostly white Stratford High School at 6:45 a.m. with guns drawn and ordered mostly black students to get down on the floor while cops searched lockers and book bags for marijuana; students who didn't move fast enough were handcuffed. No drugs were found in the 45-minute raid. Seventeen of the students are suing the school district.
EVENTS
31st January: European Day of Action against Refugee Detention and for Migrant Rights!
Meet 12 Noon @ Tyrham Hall Hotel, South Yorkshire A614 South of Hatfield Woodhouse
Saturday 31st January is a Europe Wide Day of Action against Refugee Detention and for Migrant Rights. There will be actions at Refugee Detention Centres throughout Britain. As part of this day there will be a noise demo outside Lindholme Refugee Detention Centre.
Why A Noise Demo?
The government's "detention estate" is a horrible human rights abuse. People are imprisoned without charge, time limit or trial, with no proper reason given. It is part of a climate of racism and persecution of "immigrants" that is making human beings "illegal". Detention is used to try and intimidate migrants into accepting deportation and to put people off coming to Britain at all. By taking our protests to the gates of detention centres we can communicate with the people inside, sending messages of support that can break through the fences erected to keep people isolated.
Why Lindholme?
Lindholme Detention Centre is a wing of HMP Lindholme, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, run by the prison service. It holds up to 112 men aged 21 and over. A prison inspectors' report in April 2003 revealed that staff routinely imposed random strip-searches after visits. Detainees are also strip-searched on admission to the detention centre as a matter of routine, without any reason given. Staff at this former prison treat detainees as offenders, rather than recognising that they have not been convicted of any crime. There is a prison atmosphere with detainees being made to wear prison clothes. Their own money is withheld from them and channelled into prison-like 'incentive schemes'. The report describes poor food, heating and healthcare, and intimidation and hostility. Detainees there do not feel safe
Directions:
M18 Eastbound Junction 5, M180 Eastbound Junction 1, A18 towards Hatfield, Take the A614 on the left towards Hatfield Woodhouse. Tyrham Hall Hotel is on left-hand side after Hatfield Woodhouse
3-27 February: Hiroshima Nagasaki A-Bomb Exhibition Comes to Manchester
The internationally renowned Hiroshima Nagasaki A-Bomb Exhibition will be shown in the Sculpture Hall, Manchester Town Hall and the Central Library from February 3rd to 27th 2004. This multimedia exhibition includes photographs, atomic bomb survivor's drawings and paintings information, artefacts from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in 1945, documentary film footage from the time and information the global effort for nuclear disarmament and peace.
The Imperial War Museum North will be holding a Seminar: Nuclear Weapons: Past and Future, on the 11th February to coincide with this exhibition and offering special tours in the main Museum exhibition space every Thursday in February between 3.00pm and 3.30pm.
Opening times:
Sculpture Hall, Manchester Town Hall, Monday to Friday 9.00am-5.00pm Central Library Monday to Thursday 10.00am-8.00 pm, Friday and Saturday 10.00am-5.00pm
Tuesday 3 February: The Future of Leeds United
Dr Bill Gerrad, expert on football finances and Leeds United fan will be speaking at the Chapel Allerton Alliance for Green Socialism meeting on Tuesday 3 February at 7.30 pm.
19th March: Block the Base
For one day, let's disrupt the military machine.
Non-violent blockade and demonstration @ Menwith Hill, North Yorkshire, Early, Friday 19th March 2004 part of an international weekend of action against US militarism
Join the e-mail list and download the info pack, legal briefing, bust cards and publicity at www.blockthebase.org.uk or contact Yorkshire CND.
Organised by Yorkshire CND - 01274 730795 - info@yorkshirecnd.org.uk supported by Trident Ploughshares and CND.
Block the Base is a non-violent blockade and demonstration. Those taking part in direct action are asked to respect the non-violent nature of the event The event is a demonstration as well as a blockade and those not able or willing to risk arrest are encouraged to attend to support the event and to oppose the base.
Menwith Hill: the world's largest military spy base - Award-winning role in modern warfare, including both gulf wars - An unaccountable, undemocratic, illegal US Air force base - Key to US Star Wars plans - Key to US plans to dominate space * Without Menwith Hill, modern warfighting would be totally different ...
And of course every Tuesday at 6 p.m. you can join the Campaign Against American Bases at Menwith. Those super energetic members of the Alliance for Green Socialists join them every third Tuesday in the month.
-- Half-Celestial Khan
