Now Is the Time For Non-Violent
Earth Revolution

By Glen Barry

25 September, 2007
Earth Meanders Blog

Now is time for non-violent Earth Revolution.That begins by stopping ancient forest logging, ending burning of coal and reducing aviation.

There are times in human history where obligations to truth, humanity and being take precedent over personal safety, consumption and comfort. Now is one such moment. The time has come for non-violent, direct societal and personal revolutionary action to save the Earth.

For the Earth, humanity and our sister species to survive and flourish; awareness raising and reformist greenwashing must give way to wide scale civil disobedience adequate to peacefully bring about sufficient social change to save the Earth and all being. This meander calls for all bright green environmentalists to emphasize aggressive ecological truth telling, non-violent direct action and a life of rich voluntary simplicity.

These are not new ideas. The world is rife with small groups strategically placing their minds and bodies between faltering ecosystems and predatory Earth destroyers -- sitting in trees, occupying and shutting down coal plants, aggressively and truthfully petitioning and confronting governments, and taking other meaningful and effective direct actions. These must be built upon and intensified to actually end Earth destroying activities with long and damaging histories.

I propose that an initial revolutionary strategy to save the Earth, and maintain ecological patterns and processes required for all life, should focus upon protecting and restoring ancient natural ecosystems, ending the use of coal, and stopping the growth in aviation. These actions are needed as a minimum urgent response to avoid cataclysmic global ecological collapse.

Tactics at this point should be based upon non-violent direct mass action. More specifically, the Earth revolution must initially seek with all haste to stop all ancient forest logging, prevent the construction of new coal plants that emit into the atmosphere, and close down the private jet business. This is not to suggest that there are not other shifts in policy required to live sustainably within the biosphere’s constraints, or that these alone are sufficient. However, use of coal and loss of forests are the two greatest historical causes of climate change and ecological decline, and aviation the fastest growing.

As you peacefully battle for the Earth, prepare yourselves and loved ones for the difficult times of ecological collapse and desired regeneration ahead. Even as you commit your being physically to defending Gaia, buy a remote piece of land to love and be one with. Educate yourself and begin to practice homesteading, permaculture, animal husbandry, composting, organic gardening, ecological restoration, agrarian democracy and more.

Oh Goracle, lead us into action. Oh Titanic play actor, demonstrate sacrifice. I am speaking truthfully to you in a manner that these well informed leaders ensconced in climate changing luxury will not: to the streets in disciplined direct action, as you live well and simply, sacrificing for the Earth!

As the pendulum naturally swings and the climate and forest destruction apologists temporarily regain the upper hand, now is the time to re-intensify our efforts. Tremendous inroads have been made by Mr. Gore, Greenpeace and other establishment reformists; yet the momentum has stalled because they are unwilling to fully speak and personally act upon inconvenient truths. There are too many of us, consuming too much, that will need to sacrifice and dramatically change our ways of living if there is to be a future Earth for our children.

This personal essayist has previously considered and rejected revolutionary violence at this time in the struggle for Earth being. Upon reflection, I do not believe that such an approach would now be effective and indeed may be counter-productive. Mass non-violent action must first be given a real chance. Should this fail, other options may later be necessary.

Our era lacks meaning beyond oneself, close family and friends, and our immediate experiences and consumption. I believe this is why we see such high levels of personal and Earth destructive activities. How much stuff is enough? Virtuous global citizens that truly understand and incorporate into their life the urgency of the global ecological crisis are called upon to make sacrifices including living more simply and risking their physical selves to resist ecocide.

Let the media remain impartial in the face of planetary death. Let the politicians putz and whine as they feed themselves from the fossil fuel industry’s trough. Given the failure of existing institutions and leaders to sufficiently respond to the ginormous global ecological crisis, let’s you and I and our brothers and sisters join together to do what must be done to stop the Earth destroying growth machine and return to oneness with the Earth’s land, air, water and sea. I implore you to be the change required for planetary survival.

from Countercurrents

Rory's Comment: While agreeing with this writer that there is now an urgent need for what he calls non-violent revolution I must point out that Glen Barry, like many Americans, is totally ignorant about the meaning of revolution and how they come about. Historically, most revolutions were not violent or, if violence occurred it did so on a relatively small scale.

Where revolutions are brought about by peoples' movements rather than military juntas (in which case they are not revolutions) they are invariably peaceful. Violence is invariably caused by the reaction of the ruling status quo which responds violently as it did against the peaceful demonstrators outside the Czar's palace in 1905. Another case of similar violence was the Amritsar Massacre where the British General Dyer opened fire on a group of 20,000 Indians demonstrating peacefully.

The British did it again in Derry on Bloody Sunday only thirty years ago and, as I write, the Burmese military junta are firing on unarmed crowds. The other classic dirty trick governments use and for which the British are notorious (eg Operation Banner in Ireland) is to use their secret services to cause Black Ops atrocities and then blame them on the other side. After WWII, a US-led NATO implemented Operation Gladio in Europe to commit similar atrocities in friendly countries like Italy and blame them on the Red Brigade.

There is good reason to believe that western governments continue to use Black Ops and entrapment to conduct atrocities against their people and to blame them on the current enemy, Islam. Major examples of these are 911 in New York, 77 in London, the Madrid Bombings and recently, Glasgow. These are accompanied by a series of show-trials, the latest being in Scotland against Mohammed Siddique.

Similar bombings go on daily in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, caused by USUK secret services or those working for them.

The best example of a phony terrorist organisation, created by the West and blamed on an equally phony Bin Laden is, of course, Al Qaeda (the Database) which was historically created by the CIA. Britain's then Foreign Minister, Robin Cook, who resigned over Blair's decision to drag Britain into the Iraq military adventure died mysteriously "of a heart attack" while hill-climbing on Ministry of Defence land in the Scottish Highlands ... just after revealing to the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was a CIA creation.

Glen Barry should be reminded that the greatest terrorists of all are our own governments which, as the anarchists correctly identified, in the guise of the state is the enemy of the people.

Exposing the West's racist ignorance about Islam

DAILY TIMES

VIEW: Questioning history —Farish A Noor

It would be farcical to claim that the European Enlightenment was merely an auto-generated case of isolated genius, for we all know that European civilisation developed by interaction with Muslim civilisation; as did Muslim civilisation develop in relation with and to the Chinese, Indian and Persian civilisations

It is interesting to reflect on the asinine times we live in, particularly if like me, you are involved in that nebulous thing called ‘inter-cultural dialogue’. Over the past four weeks, I have been engaged in numerous rounds of dialogues between Western Europeans and Muslim migrant communities in Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin; and in every single one of these encounters, I came across stereotypes of Muslims and Islam that were so shallow and puerile that I am almost embarrassed to recount them here. Worst still, these pedestrian musings on Islam and Muslims were not the offerings of everyday punters, but those who claimed to be well-known and admired scholars and historians.

In one of these exchanges, I was told the following: that “Islam is a fascist, woman-hating, Christian-killing, gay-bashing macho male ideology of hatred that was built on fourteen centuries of conquest and bloodshed, murder and rape. That is why there cannot be integration of Muslims into Europe, because the Muslims that we have here are the savages of the Arab world who are barbaric, violent and brutal. They do not believe in reason and the Enlightenment and Islamic civilisation has not produced anything scientific, rational or humane.” Try substituting the word ‘Muslim’ for ‘blacks’ and one would see how far-fetched and racist such claims really are.

Now why is it that whenever we speak of Islam and Muslims today, some of us think they have the license to drop their IQ level by a hundred points or so? Is discussion on Islam a license to say anything dumb, offensive and provocative just for the sake of riling up the masses and grabbing a few headlines? A politician in Holland has even stated that there should be a ban on any reading of the Quran, on the grounds that it can be compared to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Others claim that all Muslims are determined primarily by their religion which happens to be irrational, unscientific and anti-Enlightenment.

I was struck by the wilful blindness of these so-called ‘liberal’ and ‘rational’ Europeans themselves, and their inability to put things in relative perspective and to interrogate their own presuppositions about themselves. In my own work as an academic-activist, I have tried to deconstruct the grand narratives of official history, be it on the level of the state or religion. I am also aware of the fact that the writing of history is a contested process, and that more often than not the writing of history is done by the victors and not the defeated marginalised voices of any community. Is it a surprise then that the history of the West has been only a history of white, male, middle-class voices? Where is the history of women and women’s participation in politics, economics and nation-building? Only recently, with the advances made by feminist historiography and deconstructive history by the likes of Simon Schama, have we seen the writing of history that is inclusive, plural and popular.

Now the conscious historian will inform you that there were (and remain) counter-currents to such dominant grand narratives all along, both in the West and in the Muslim world (as there are liberal progressive counter-currents against orthodox conservative Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism.). Furthermore, all civilisations and cultures exist in relational terms and develop in relation with and to others: It would be farcical to claim that the European Enlightenment was merely an auto-generated case of isolated genius, for we all know that European civilisation developed by interaction with Muslim civilisation; as did Muslim civilisation develop in relation with and to the Chinese, Indian and Persian civilisations.

Of course today, Muslims the world over are hostage to a history that is determined either by ruling elites or their conservative lackeys such as the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. From the pens of these conservative sectarians, we get only a static account of Muslim history that is told from the point of view of kings, sultans and dictators — such as the history of Iraq that was written during the time of Saddam Hussein, or the skewered history of Arabia written by the pro-establishment Wahhabis. But here again, the question needs to be raised: how was this historical erasure made possible, and who were the agents behind such erasure? Unfortunately the finger of blame also points to the ‘enlightened’ West which regarded dictators like Saddam Hussein and the Saudi royal family as their strategic allies.

The rise of conservative, fundamentalist, sectarian and violent Islam was aided and abetted by Western states during the Cold War, leading to the rise of men like Saddam Hussein, the anti-Soviet Mujahideen and later the Taliban, who have done so much to destroy the plural legacy of the Muslim world. Yet today, Western liberals accuse Muslims of either having no history or a history of violence. Where is the enlightened spirit of auto-critique and self-awareness here? Surely liberals in the West should not be surprised to see the rise of fundamentalist Muslim regimes the world over when it has been their own Western governments that have supported those very anti-Christian, anti-women, anti-gay regimes in the first place; ostensibly for the sake of strategic alliances but fundamentally to safeguard the West’s much-needed supply of oil?

I am by no means excusing fundamentalist conservative Muslims here, for there are indeed right-wing Muslims who can only be described as fascist in the real sense of the word. But in the same way that Muslims today need to get out of their shell and stare reality in the face, so do Europeans who claim to be ever so enlightened and liberal. Europe’s Enlightenment project created not only its own discontents but also anomalies.

To suggest that every single European today is the product of this historical process would be so simplistic as to beggar belief, and borders on the ridiculous. For should that be the case, then perhaps we can ask how enlightened the Europeans were when they colonised Asia and Africa. Look at the world map and see how so many patches of the earth today — ranging from North America to Australia — are reminders of a colonial expansion that was motivated by irrational greed, irrational racism, irrational hatred for the Other, and not the values of reason or universal humanism. Tell me, was it Kant or Descartes who told the colonisers to invade and occupy Australia, and exterminate the aborigines of Tasmania and then hang their heads as trophies? Or skin the bodies of North American Indians to make boots and tobacco pouches? Where was the European Enlightenment then? Asleep?

Dr. Farish A Noor is a political scientist and historian at the Zentrum Moderner Orient and guest Professor at Sunan Kalijaga Islamic University, Jogjakarta. He is also one of the founders of the research site www.othermalaysia.org

Pro-Democracy means anti-Fascism

Read it here

Why would They want to hurt Me?



In the eternal War against Terrorism we all need to be vigilant and observe the variety of ways the Enemy approaches to attack us.

In the service of that War, we highlight and contrast these two videos and bring them to the attention of our viewers, both American and other, to emphasise that you can never be too vigilant, too jealous of the freedoms that are now at stake.

Why would They want to hurt Me? Pt II


(With thanks to Stef Zucconi for bringing them to my attention)

Rory's Warning: Just in case you hadn't noticed, the above article was written in the spirit of irony and sarcasm, the point being that the first video is laughable and the second a description of the all-too-real police state that, thanks to the dumbed-down dummies described below, the fake 'War on Terror' has helped to create.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: Promoters of Bigotry, Race Hate and Violence



A petition has been started to ban the RSS, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, in the United Kingdom.

The RSS, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is a Hindu terror organization which has massacred millions of Sikhs, Muslims and Christians across India. They take their inspiration from Hitler as a UK Channel 4 programme, Pure Hindu Nation, showed.

They want a Hindu super-state.

Hindutva is their aim, Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan. If no one fits into that category they don't belong in India!

If people do not convert, the RSS is known to carry out mass murder like the Muslim massacre in Gujarat and Sikh Massacres after 1984. Anyone who opposes them is a target. Most of their funding comes from the UK and in order to attack their evil Nazi ideology and stop the spread of terror, the Petition urges the UK Prime Minister to ban the RSS, freeze their assets and freeze their funding.

THIS IS A REAL PETITION ON A GOVERNMENT SITE AND WE URGE ALL WHO RESIDE IN THE U.K TO SIGN IT AND PASS IT ON:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/bantherss/#detail

Rory's Comment: 'Hindu Unity', which is part of the nebulous network of European race-hate groups currently spreading its poison about the so-called 'Islamisation' of Europe is an enthusiastic supporter of the murderous RSS.

Protecting the West from Islamisation



Charles Firth asks the people of the U.S. their opinion.

Link

Rory's Comment: Oh, why not just demand that all Muslims should wear armbands just like the Jews had to in Nazi Germany?!

With dumb Yanquis like this mouthing such inanities it's no wonder that the USA has been turned into a fascist state! And it's no wonder that Yanks are now so heartily despised, even hated, by folk all over the rest of the Planet starting in Canada and Mexico. Even the people of its most faithful poodle, Britain, now view 'America' with alarm if not downright distaste.

This is a real shame, not just for the world but for 'America' because it reflects badly on all the 'good Americans' of which there are more than a few. But a countryful of people that allowed two presidential elections to be stolen by a gang of common criminals, headed by that cretin Bush Jr, must take the responsibility for what resulted from that grand larceny.

As Cuban Foreign Minister Roque said, quite correctly, Bush has no morality authority to condemn other countries. And, through association, neither has the US or its hangers-on in Britain, France etc. Are you listening, George Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy?

When I hear dumb comments by proles, as in the video above, I begin to despise the human race for its propensity to create such brainless monsters. Why allow such creatures to vote? Disenfranchise them and send them to long-term re-education camps, I say.

But they're just what the capitalist system wants.

In the 'seventies the ghastly Samuel Huntington, ex-CIA and MI6 and more recently the architect behind the Neocons' fabricated 'War of Civilastions', published a Task Force paper for the Trilateral Commission in which he argued that too much education for the proles was a bad thing because it led to even greater discontent.

To prove his point, he turned to the Civil Rights struggle of the 'sixties, the Anti-Vietnam War Movement and the Haight-Ashbury riots. He conveniently left out the brutal acts of Mayor Daly at the Chicago '68 Democrats' Convention which left some students dead and hundreds wounded.

From Huntington's paper to the Trilats came the idea of dumbing-down the media and education and the systematic dismantling of social welfare and free education. If any should be tried for grand crimes against the human race it is those such as Huntington.

Instead, of course, they are Capital's heroes.

So don't forget, my readers. Don't allow yourselves to be brainwashed by the toxic Mainstream Media. The MSM, including our darling Aunty BBC, is nothing more than the new Aristocracy talking to itself.

I repeat, is nothing more than the new Aristocracy talking to itself.

This is a phrase worth memorising and repeating in every future conversation you might have about why, through its complicity, the MSM is responsible for wars in Iraq and the one being planned against Iran.

Down with the new Aristocracy! Long live the World Revolution which will, one day, remove it from power!

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque

Cubans walk out during Bush U.N. speech

Tue Sep 25, 2:00 PM ET

YAHOO News

Cuba's foreign minister walked out of the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday in protest of President Bush's speech in which he said the "long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing its end" on the communist island.

The Cuban delegation issued a statement saying the decision by Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque to leave was a "sign of profound rejection of the arrogant and mediocre statement by President Bush."

In his speech, Bush looked ahead to a Cuba no longer ruled by Fidel Castro, the ailing 81-year-old leader who has not appeared in public in more than a year, since ceding power to a provisional government headed by his brother Raul.

"In Cuba, the long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing its end," Bush said. "The Cuban people are ready for their freedom. And as that nation enters a period of transition, the United Nations must insist on free speech, free assembly and, ultimately, free and competitive elections."

Cuba's U.N. Mission said the American president had no moral standing to criticize anyone.

It accused Bush of responsibility "for the murder of over 600,000 civilians in Iraq" and for "the torture of prisoners" at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where more than 300 men are being held on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

"He is a criminal and has no moral authority or credibility to judge any other country," the mission's statement said. "Cuba condemns and rejects every letter of his infamous tirade."

The one pledge I'd like to hear from the podium this afternoon

As he delivers his first speech to conference as prime minister, will Gordon Brown make an ambitious statement?

Monday September 24, 2007
The GUARDIAN

Tariq Ramadan
Fight all kinds of racism

Gordon Brown should pledge to reconsider the policies that divide the communities that make up British society. If we are serious about British values of democracy, freedom, equality and fairness, it is crucial to start by trying to be consistent in our domestic policies.

It means fighting all kinds of racism, the old (anti-semitism) as well as the new one (against Muslims).

It also means stopping connecting terrorism with integration: the generalisation on this topic sheds suspicion on a whole segment of the British population, while Muslims are already integrated and contribute a great deal to the richness of this country.

And finally, it means having the courage to say that the government has to reassess its involvement in Iraq: it was and remains a great mistake.

Gordon Brown will get immense recognition, nationally and internationally, if he dares to set a new independent policy for the UK, stop listening to the lies of the current US administration and take the leadership for a new, just and reasonable policy in the Middle East, and especially towards Iran.

· Tariq Ramadan is president of the thinktank European Muslim Network

Breaking News: European race-hate groups planning anti-'Islamisation' Demo in London, 26 October 2007

I have received news that various European extremist groups are planning an anti-'Islamisation' demo to be held on Friday, 26 October 2007 in London.

This is planned to coincide with an anti-'Islamo-fascism' Week in the USA, 22-26 October 2007.

http://sioeengland.blogspot.com/2007/09/islamo-fascism-awareness-week.html

The London demo is, as presently planned, to be held the day before an anti-EU demonstration the next day, Saturday.

The Mayor of London has been notified that the organisers are using the cover of a protest against "the persecution of Armenians, Copts and Hindus" by Islam (sic) to promote religious and cultural hate against Muslims in Britain.

All socialist, anti-fascist and democratic organisations are asked to campaign against such a Demo and, if necessary to demand a counter-demonstration against it. This writer will continue to supply news of this demonstration as it is received.

French readers should also refer to Manipulations.fr and Liberté de Penser for further updates.

Emails of complaint, with your name and telephone number, demanding this demo be banned should be sent Mayor Ken Livingstone at

mayor@london.gov.uk

_________________________

Demonstration in London on October 26
The next planned demonstration will take place in London on October 26.
It will have as an aim Islamic persecutions, in particular against the Armenians, Coptes, Hindus, etc…

It will coincide with:
- the week of the awakening on islamo-Fascism in the USA, from the 22 to October 26
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Ar...14CCA6F09,
- the rally pro-referendum on October 27
http://www.proreferendumrally.co.uk/

http://stopislamisationdesesprits.blogspot.com/2007/09/manifestation-londres-le-26-octobre.html

Manifestation à Londres le 26 octobre La prochaine manifestation planifiée aura lieu à Londres le 26 octobre. Elle aura pour objet les persécutions islamiques, notamment contre les Arméniens, Coptes, Hindus, etc...

Elle coïncidera avec :
- la semaine de la prise de conscience sur l'islamo-fascisme aux USA , du 22 au 26 octobre
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Ar...14CCA6F09,
- le rally pro-referendum le 27 octobre
http://www.proreferendumrally.co.uk/

http://stopislamisationdesesprits.blogspot.com/2007/09/manifestation-londres-le-26-octobre.html

Ol' Macky's back in Town

Resulting, no doubt, directly from a vituperative and abusive style deliberately intended to intimidate and defame any opposition to the deranged ramblings of the person or persons calling themselves 'Imam Grouik-Grouik' (IGG) the mainstream media in France and Belgium has at last taken notice and identified IGG's nauseating sites (most of which continue to be hosted by Blogger despite a flood of complaints made to them that IGG preaches a litany of religious and race hatred in direct contravention of Blogger's Contents Policy).



Though initially ambivalent in her feelings towards the banning of the IGG-backed demo last 11 September in Brussels, an article by Marie-Cécile Royen of Belgium's weekly, Le Vif, correctly identified IGG's Blog Cochon du Halal to be on the extreme-right and though while not ostensibly supported by the 'big names' of France and Belgium's extremists is still part of a highly-active network of European sites preaching division, religious (and by association racial) intolerance between white Europeans and mainly North African immigrants from the Maghreb.

IGG's blog is part of a wider, racist spectrum with blatantly pro-Hitlerian and white supremacist groups like Stormfront, Blood and Honour at one polarity extending through others like Udo Ulfkotte's Pax Europa and SIOE (Stop Islamization of Europe), Anders Gravers' Danish SIAD Party, Forum Mot Islamisering (FOMI), the Dutch No Sharia Here, the German Akte Islam, the Irish Centre for Vigilance Freedom, the Italian Lysistrata, the Hindutva Hindu Unity, to minority race extremist parties like the Flemish Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), the opportunist Bruno Mégret's so-called Mouvement National Républicain (MNR), the chauvinist Chrétienté-Solidarité, the Opus Dei-like Europae Gentes and the more 'accepted' end including Le Pen's Front Nationale and other mainstream European politicians such as Holland's Geert Wilders (article below) who are busily cashing-in on a wave of media-driven Islamophobia in Europe.

Somewhere along this ominous front are Britain's own extreme-right, racist parties including the BNP, National Front and smaller, virulently anti-Muslim groups such as God Help Britain. Fomenting collective hysteria and calculatedly promoting wildly distorted caricatures of their chosen victims these groups, like vultures, feed off the carrion of discontent left behind by the capitalist, mainstream political status quo.

We have seen how the inevitable rise of disaffection and seething anger caused in the poorer sectors of society, the politically marginalised, by New Labour's 'neo-liberal' monetarist policies has led to traditional Labour supporters voting BNP and National Front as a protest and a call to be heard by politicians comfortably ensconced in a new managerial aristocracy which, knowing very well how to look after its own interests, scorns and abuses the very people its positions of privilege depend upon.

Cushioned by wealth and insulated from the rest of society this new Aristocracy has created for itself a bubble of consensus thought and behaviour which, while entirely real to the apparatchiks within it, is completely alien to all those who are the victims it preys upon, beginning with the millions of innocents its military-industrial machine kills daily in its imperialistic adventures abroad to the poor and disadvantaged living directly outside its gated residences back home.

With the calculated and cynical purpose of self-preservation at all costs this new Aristocracy was responsible for fabricating and promoting an entirely phony 'War on Terrorism' in which the fostering of Islamophobia through national, tribalistic xenophobia played a major role. Using refined methods of promoting the Goebbels Big Lie technique, seven days a week, year in year out, using the vast array of media outlets available, this new Aristocracy fomented fear, loathing and hatred throughout its controlled communities across the planet.

Leading to the entirely fake 'War of Cultures' which the new Aristocracy along with its secret services has brought us where the more deranged elements of white, cultural supremacy described above play a significant part promoting an ugliness ostensibly denied by the Aristocracy but fostered by it all the while. This is precisely what the German playwright, Bertholt Brecht, warned us about over seventy years ago when predicting that with the collapse of the capitalist system would be unleashed from its chest of horrors the fascists and the Nazis who, while pretending to listen to popular discontent, would continue to promote capitalism in a more virulent and bellicose form.

Brecht's song, Mack the Knife, was a satire written around the return of the extremist right into mainstream politics. And, guess what folks, while the left, socialist and Marxist poseurs were playing with their favourite toy train sets Macky came back in style among what used to be called the working classes before it was made jobless and unwaged.

While even the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP) of the 'seventies had the political nous to create an anti-Nazi League and send the National Front back under the stones from which it had crept, today there's no sign of it, the SWP having moved onto pastures new to prey on what is jokingly called the anti-War movement.

Today, there are few socialists fighting the new fascists and Nazis of another generation although, of course, there remain many honourable individuals just as committed to that struggle as ever. But the old lesson that Brecht taught an earlier generation, that as long as capitalism exists so will fascism, imperialism and racism, seems to be lost on the contemporary armchair Left who while dwelling on the nostalgia of the Battle of Cable Street over seventy years ago appear singularly incapable of removing themselves from their computer screens for any real social action. So shall they reap the whirlwind whence, through a dereliction of political duty and human obligation, they scattered their seeds so carelessly.

And characteristic of the blinkered, Little Englanderism which has been and still is rife through all sectors of British society even the apparently organised Muslim groups on the Internet appear totally uninterested in the storm of race hate that is brewing and building like a pressure cooker in continental Europe and which will inevitably blow over onto this island. In trying to promote the appearance of moderation and the approval of their patrons on the BBC's Heaven and Earth show these Muslim Uncle Toms are their own worst enemy, interested primarily it seems in their own self-promotion.

What, finally, will it take to get the message across to all these sleep-walkers that Macky's back in town?

*********

The Legacy of Cable Street



The Battle of Cable Street



London's East End: A Cradle of Immigration

L'extrême droite s'avance masquée

Pour lire, cliquer ici

This onslaught risks turning into a racist witch-hunt

The renewed anti-Muslim media campaign is partly driven by a political agenda which seeks to justify war

Seumas Milne
Thursday September 20, 2007
The Guardian

Britons are now more suspicious of Muslims than are Americans or citizens of any other major western European country, including France.

According to an international Harris poll last month, nearly 30% of British people believe it's impossible to be both a Muslim and a Briton (compared with 14% who think you can't be French and a Muslim); 38% think the presence of Muslims in the country is a threat to national security (compared with 21% in the US); and 46% believe that Muslims have too much political power in Britain, far above the level of any other surveyed country. You might think that these findings, reported in the Financial Times, would have been the occasion for some soul-searching about where British society is going, the state of community relations, and a new self-restraint in the way Muslim stories are covered in the media.

Not a bit of it. The fact that a large minority of Britons have some of the most Islamophobic attitudes in the western world has passed without comment. Instead, we have since been treated to a renewed barrage of lurid and hostile stories about Muslims which can only have further inflamed anti-Muslim opinion and the community's own sense of being under permanent siege. This isn't just a problem of hate-filled tabloid rants, such as the Express's denunciation of Muslims' "alien and threatening outfits", or Richard Littlejohn's Muslim-baiting in the Mail. For the past three weeks, there has been a stream of hostile coverage in the heavyweight press and on TV current affairs programmes.

This week it is was an hour-long Channel 4 Dispatches about attacks on Muslim converts to Christianity; last week it was the BBC Newsnight programme's 20-minute interview with the latest defector from the non-violent Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir; the week before that it was a Newsnight special on radical Islamist books in east London libraries, complete with sinister music and a round-table debate.

The same week there was a Times front-page splash about the "hardline takeover of British mosques", focused on the deeply conservative Deobandi religious movement which has long had a strong presence among British Muslims of Pakistani origin. For both Newsnight programmes, it was apparently felt that Patrick Mercer - the Tory MP sacked by David Cameron for making racially inflammatory remarks and appointed a security adviser by Gordon Brown - was the ideal person to comment on Muslim issues. Meanwhile, the novelist Martin Amis denounced "liberal relativist appeasers" of a "racist, misogynist, homophobic, totalitarian, inquisitorial, imperialist and genocidal" doctrine.

The problem isn't necessarily with the stories themselves. There are obviously legitimate issues to report about jihadist or anti-Jewish strains within the Deobandi school, the agenda of a group like Hizb ut-Tahrir that the government originally wanted to ban, or intimidation of converts to any religion. But in a climate of anti-Muslim prejudice, their disproportionate and sensationalist treatment can only feed ethnic tensions ("Christians in Britain are under attack", this week's Dispatches programme began, even if the numbers were tiny). Nor is the record of these kinds of reports impressive - an earlier Dispatches programme on the preaching of hate in British mosques was recently found by the police and Crown Prosecution Service to have "completely distorted" what speakers had said.

The level of Islamophobia highlighted by the Harris poll is obviously partly a response to the July 2005 bombings and later failed terror attacks. But given the fact that most British people have little contact with Muslims, some are bound to be swayed by the media campaigns of the past couple of years - which have not only focused on jihadist groups but also the niqab and multiculturalism. What has given the anti-Muslim onslaught particular force is that many secular liberals have convinced themselves that since Islam is an ideology rather than an ethnicity - and because they see themselves as defending liberal values - they are on the righteous side of racism. In reality, of course, religion isn't only about beliefs, it's also about culture and identity and, as the British National party has worked out, Islam has become a toxic racial proxy.

The relentless public invective against Muslims and Islamism is also clearly fuelled by a political agenda, which seeks to demonstrate that jihadist violence is driven, as Tony Blair and the US neoconservatives always insisted, by a socially disconnected ideology rather than decades of western invasion, occupation and support for dictatorships across the Muslim world. That is certainly the view of Richard Watson, the reporter behind Newsnight's Muslim coverage, who recently wrote that extreme Islamism and terror are the product of a "seductive cult", not western foreign policy, and demanded that British Muslims find new leaders. And the co-author of the thinktank report which formed the basis of Newsnight's programme on Islamist books in Tower Hamlets libraries is the self-proclaimed neocon Douglas Murray.

Gordon Brown is said to want to mimic the clandestine methods used by the CIA against communism during the cold war in the cultural field to win Muslim hearts and minds. If the government's sponsorship of the pliant Sufi Muslim Council is any indication of the way he wants to go, that won't work - nor will any approach that tries to load responsibility for jihadist violence on to the Muslim community while refusing to take responsibility for the government's own role in fanning the flames by supporting aggression and occupation in the Muslim world.

None of this is an argument for refraining from criticising Muslims or their organisations - but it does highlight the need for context and sensitivity in a climate in which Muslims are under a crude assault that would simply not be accepted if targeted on any other community. The relentless media onslaught in Britain on Muslims, their culture and institutions risks turning into a racist witch-hunt. On the ground, it translates into violent attacks - and Crown Prosecution Service figures show that 82% of convictions for identified religiously aggravated offences last year involved attacks on Muslims. Those attacks reportedly spike not only after terrorist incidents but also in response to media feeding frenzies. Some pro-war liberals like to argue that Islamophobia doesn't exist - try telling that to those at the sharp end.

s.milne@guardian.co.uk

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Rory's Note: The English version of this article at Granma International is presently being blocked by a 404 notice. Very likely the US Government behind this.

America Is No More
By Paul Craig Roberts
19 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org

Naïve Americans who think they live in a free society should watch this video filmed by students at a John Kerry speech September 17, Constitution Day, at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

At the conclusion of Kerry’s speech, Andrew Meyer, a 21-year old journalism student was selected by Senator Kerry to ask a question. Meyer held up a copy of BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast’s book, Armed Madhouse, and asked if Kerry was aware that Palast’s investigations determined that Kerry had actually won the election. Why, Meyer asked, had Kerry conceded the election so quickly when there were so many obvious examples of vote fraud? Why, Meyer, went on to ask, was Kerry refusing to consider Bush’s impeachment when Bush was about to initiate another act of military aggression, this time against Iran?

At this point the public’s protectors—the police—decided that Meyer had said too much. They grabbed Meyer and began dragging him off. Meyer said repeatedly, “I have done nothing wrong,” which under our laws he had not. He threatened no one and assaulted no one.

But the police decided that Meyer, an American citizen, had no right to free speech and no constitutional protection. They threw him to the floor and tasered him right in front of Senator Kerry and the large student audience, who captured on video the unquestionable act of police brutality. Meyer was carted off and jailed on a phony charge of “disrupting a public event.”

The question we should all ask is why did a United States Senator just stand there while Gestapo goons violated the constitutional rights of a student participating in a public event, brutalized him in full view of everyone, and then took him off to jail on phony charges?

Kerry’s meekness not only in the face of electoral fraud, not only in the face of Bush’s wars that are crimes under the Nuremberg standard, but also in the face of police goons trampling the constitutional rights of American citizens makes it completely clear that he was not fit to be president, and he is not fit to be a US senator.

Usually when police violate constitutional rights and commit acts of police brutality they do it when they believe no one is watching, not in front of a large audience. Clearly, the police have become more audacious in their abuse of rights and citizens. What explains the new fearlessness of police to violate rights and brutalize citizens without cause?

The answer is that police, most of whom have authoritarian personalities, have seen that constitutional rights are no longer protected. President Bush does not protect our constitutional rights. Neither does Vice President Cheney, nor the Attorney General, nor the US Congress. Just as Kerry allowed Meyer’s rights to be tasered out of him, Congress has enabled Bush to strip people, including American citizens, of constitutional protection and incarcerate them without presenting evidence.

How long before Kerry himself or some other senator will be dragged from his podium and tasered?

The Bush Republicans with complicit Democrats have essentially brought government accountability to an end in the US. The US government has 80,000 people, including ordinary American citizens, on its “no-fly list.” No one knows why they are on the list, and no one on the list can find out how to get off it. An unaccountable act by the Bush administration put them there.

Airport Security harasses and abuses people who do not fit any known definition of terrorist. Nalini Ghuman, a British-born citizen and music professor at Mills College in California was met on her return from a trip to England by armed guards at the airplane door and escorted away. A Gestapo goon squad tore up her US visa, defaced her British passport, body searched her, and told her she could leave immediately for England or be sent to a detention center.

Professor Ghuman, an Oxford University graduate with a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, says she feels like the character in Kafka’s book, The Trial. “I don’t know why it’s happened, what I’m accused of. There’s no opportunity to defend myself. One is just completely powerless.” Over one year later there is still no answer.

The Bush Republicans and their Democratic toadies have, in the name of “security,” made all of us powerless. While Senator John Kerry and his Democratic colleagues stand silently, the Bush administration has stolen our country from us and turned us into subjects.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.



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Damaging relations with the Muslim community

"Relations between Muslims and police in central Scotland have been battered by the country's first al-Qaeda-linked terrorist case, with community leaders claiming the investigation has created mistrust and 'left a bad taste in the mouth'. They are angry at the way Mohammed Atif Siddique's family was treated. His parents, brothers – one of whom was 13 – and 15-year-old sister were shackled by police who raided the family home in Alva, Clackmannanshire."

Scotsman, 19 September 2007

Note the casual reference to Mohammed Atif Siddique as an "al-Qaeda-linked terrorist", which takes things to a new level of absurdity – and demonstrates that the police are not exactly alone in damaging relations with Scotland's Muslim community.

Posted on Wednesday, September 19, 2007

from ISLAMOPHOBIA WATCH

Rory's Note: This whole episode shows just how racist the Scottish Police are when treating Pakistanis like animals, shackling innocent folk etc.

Similarly, the jury which convicted this innocent young man whose so called "terrorist" activities amounted to nothing more than computer fantasies.

The latest I have is that there is a very strong likelihood that Siddique was the victim of entrapment, groomed by a member of the British secret services.

A reference was made in court about a shadowy third party but his identification was witheld! The jury tamely accepted that as justifiable for "legal reasons" and did as they were told.

My conclusion: no justice for Muslims of colour in racist Scotland.

The Terrorism Act 2006 covers another of Siddique’s offences—encouraging terrorism by distributing terrorist publications on web sites. Originally intended to outlaw the “glorification” of terrorism, it carries a maximum seven-year sentence.

The Kafka-esque charges relating to the Terrorism acts 2000 and 2006 under which Siddique has been convicted, as well as the preposterous “crime” of boasting to be in Al Qaeda, represent a threat to the democratic and civil rights of all workers and youth in the UK. Reflecting both the lack of support for basic democratic rights in the ruling elite and the heightened “anti-terror” atmosphere whipped up in the aftermath of the attempted terror bombings in London and Glasgow in June this year, there has been no opposition in the media to a conviction that is based on virtual police-state measures. Instead newspapers have echoed the inflammatory statement of the prosecution that Siddique was a “wannabe suicide bomber.”

Siddique is due to be sentenced on October 23.

The Boot that Grinds down on Your Face

After the, rather predictable, travesty of justice meted out against a Scots Muslim student, Mohammed Atif Siddique, the message the British state sends out is very clear: if you're a Muslim and a person of colour then watch out, you are a potential victim.

If you own a personal computer you are risking arrest, conviction and incarceration if you store any of these items on your hard disk: articles that may, in any way, be considered to be of a terrorist nature (this covers a wide area, from anything relating to organisations designated as terrorist to, well, anything that is strongly critical of the British or US Governments); links to same (you'll need special software to remove all evidence of such links from your hard disk); pornography (in your case, any pornography found on your hard disk is instantly incriminating, especially in Presbyterian Scotland); any other evidence such as emails sent to friends and relatives expressing your concern and outrage at the government-sponsored persecution of Muslims of colour presently being conducted by George Bush and his flunkies in the Brown government.

If you are non-Muslim and white, you'd better watch it too.

The current persecution against Muslims of colour in the Anglo-Saxon countries is just the beginning and should be treated as the canary-in-the-cage. You're next, that is to say, if you dare raise your voice in dissent against the Government.

You are already being spied-on through the Net and telecom services. You can safely assume that. Both the US snooping services at places like Menwith Hill and the British GCHQ have, for decades, used snooping methods that effectively surveil hundreds of thousands of communications as would a vacuum-cleaner, homing-in on any key-words detected.

This blog is definitely under watch. Our own amateur intelligence methods have detected that time and time again. Being a blog that consistently defends the rights of Muslims as well as being one of dissent which considers the state to be its enemy it is, straightaway, singled out for special attention.

In fact, any blogger who speaks the truth rather than regurgitate the mediocre lies and propaganda of corrupt politicians and the State is automatically suspect.

I will say it until I can say it no longer: what is being done to Muslims of colour today is only the beginning. Twenty-first century capitalism is at siege with Mother Earth herself. Hence everything must be totally controlled and totalitarianized. If white non-Muslims cannot see the writing on the wall now, then they are probably so hopelessly stupid that they will never see it until their turn comes to feel the heavy boot of the State grinding down on their faces.

In the name of all that is holy and precious to you, for God's sake, wake up now and fight the new fascism!

Another miscarriage of justice or another terrorist locked away?

Another miscarriage of justice or another terrorist locked away?

Justice4the poor

A Scottish Muslim student has been convicted on charges of terrorism. If the circumstances described by his lawyer are correct, this is a major miscarriage of justice as well as being against the principles of individual freedom and liberty. The laughable level of evidence included him 'growing a beard' and discussing suicide bombing with fellow students at college when he was 18.

Apparently this guy had in his possession some CDs and DVDs. How you can use CDs and DVDs for terrorism, I don't know. Perhaps they were made with TNT. Apparently viewing a beheading or desecration of a dead US soldier's body is enough to make you worse than a paedophile. It surely is no worse than the dozens of US based Internet users that come to this blog looking for pictures of dead bodies, dead Iraqis and dead kids.

He also set up up a website with links to an ISRAELI website complete with links. The Israeli website is apparently a Mossad site and makes available links to bomb making material for anybody to download. The site has not been removed and apparently has the blessing of the Israeli establishment. Apparently even the BBC have featured the site, so I reckon that should make them terrorists too. The Israeli government are terrorists and are making material available for the BBC to distribute. Not far from the truth really.

In fact in this case no actual evidence was found of terrorism:

'in media briefings before the trial, senior officers admitted that they had not found any evidence that Siddique himself was planning to carry out an attack.

Instead, prosecutors tried to convince the jury that the material found on Siddique's computer and websites he owned was intended to encourage others to carry out attacks.

But the biggest problem facing them was that most of the videos stored on Siddique's computer could easily be found by using internet search engines like Google.

Indeed, footage of Osama Bin Laden urging Jihad against the West was little different from the one issued by the al-Qaeda figurehead which was broadcast by the mainstream media, including the BBC, on the anniversary of 9/11.'

There you have it. An admission from the BBC of its guilt, M'lud. They go on:

'The court heard, for example, that Siddique told a college classmate he had actually met Bin Laden.

Siddique had visited several hardline Islamist websites, some of which preached anti-Semitism and encouraged young Muslims to martyr themselves as suicide bombers.

However, officers discovered that Siddique had also surfed pornography sites. He had played online poker and registered a team in an internet football manager game.'

That's right folks. This fundamentalist was also a porn surfer and gambler too. These things were not at all against his religious beliefs. Remember Forest Gate and the allegations of paedophile porn?

So the upshot is that if you are a Muslim fantasist with a few DVDs featuring say Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood, or if you have downloaded the odd beheading video from youtube, then you are likely to be locked up for dozens of years. However, if you are white supremacist fantasist from Nelson with chemicals, explosives and weapons, then you can get away with it.

SEE Article below

Press Release from Scotland Against Criminalising Communities

Tuesday 18 September

Siddique trial was a travesty of justice

The media this morning are asking "Guilty.. But is Siddique really a terrorist?"

Of course Mohammed Atif Siddique isn't a terrorist. With a prosecution case that sought to manipulate the emotions of the jury, and terrorism laws so ill-drafted that it seems they can mean anything at all, the jury can hardly be blamed for getting it wrong. But even under our Kafka-esque laws it makes no sense to call this young man a terrorist, and it is to be hoped that the argument will be taken successfully to the appeal court.

The case has been a travesty of justice from start to finish.

It was bad enough that his family home was raided by armed police in April last year just because the police didn't like what they had found on Mohammed's computer when they questioned him at Glasgow Airport. Never mind that the family were law-abiding citizens who had been in contact with the police ever since Mohammed had missed his flight as a result of being questioned.

It was bad enough that Mohammed should be held on remand and brought before the High Court for, in the words of solicitor Aamer Anwaar, "doing what millions of young people do every day, looking for answers on the internet."

It was bad enough that the trial began just after the terrorism incident at Glasgow airport and ended on the anniversary of 9/11.

It's bad enough that Mohammed should be facing many years in jail for utterly insignificant actions that have harmed no one.

But last night it got worse. Anonymous sources in the security services told the media that Siddique had been preparing to become involved in a terrorist attack in Canada. No evidence about this had been presented during the month-long trial. So what was the point of the trial if Siddique is to be convicted ex judice of far more serious offences?

The hounding of Mohammed Atif Siddique should be a wake-up call to us all. It's time for Parliament to change the laws that allow cases like this to be brought to the courts. The current terrorism laws have created a culture of un-reason that treats terrorism as a kind of witchcraft. Terrorism is supposed to be a contagion - a contagion to which Muslims are uniquely susceptible. It is supposed to be carried on the breath, in printed words and images, in digits flowing across cyberspace. If you accept this lunacy, it makes perfect sense to see Siddique as a dangerous vector for the disease.

The lunacy has penetrated our police forces so thoroughly that officers feel able to tick all the boxes of anti-racism and diversity while persecuting the Muslim community relentlessly in their hunt for the terrorism bug.

If non-Muslims are inclined to think "thank God it's not us" they need to think again. What will happen when the counter-terrorism industry starts to produce briefings saying that, after all, the disease can sometimes be carried by non-Muslims, that the danger is very great, that it's better to be safe than sorry? And what will happen when police officers begin to worry about the racism built into their terrorism policies and try to keep themselves out of the dock by hunting for the disease without regard to creed or colour?

This kind of un-reason doesn't protect us from terrorism. It creates the climate that terrorism needs if it is to flourish. The only things it protects are the jobs of government ministers, the wars our government is conducting in Aghanistan and Iraq and the new war the US is threatening in Iran.

We're on the road to becoming a police state and journey's end is coming up very fast. It's time for a change of direction.

In the meantime, SACC sends its sympathy and its very best wishes to Mohammed Atif Siddique and to all his friends and family.

More information:

• Student Guilty of Terrorism - http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6928193,00.html
• Muslim Student Guilty of Terror charges - http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1488832007
• Terror Scot may have been planning attack in Canada http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1492372007
• SACC statement 25 April 2006 http://www.sacc.org.uk/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=230&catid=27&Itemid=41
• SACC report 24 April 2006 http://www.sacc.org.uk/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=226&catid=35&Itemid=43
• SACC report 15 April 2006 http://www.sacc.org.uk/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=227&catid=35&Itemid=43