Hat-tip to Alan...

"Six months ago, Tony Benn opened the Labour Representation Committee's National Conference and AGM in London. The theme of his address to this gathering of Labour Party socialists committed to strengthening the link between their party and the trade unions, was "The Future of the Left".

As ever with the veteran left-winger, he looked back over a lifetime of political struggles to illuminate and to set in a historical perspective the struggles facing today's generation of socialists. The main thrust of his argument was how, in these times of great economic crisis, it was necessary to give working people confidence and hope that socialism did have answers to the many problems besetting them on all sides.

It was vintage Tony Benn except for one passage where he suddenly turned to denounce what he termed as "sectarian socialism". It was here that he lost his usual clarity and objectivity. He singled out the then recent result of the Glenrothes by-election, claiming that Tommy Sheridan had polled just 87 votes and the SSP 212 votes. Here, he argued, was conclusive evidence that there was absolutely no future in trying to produce a "pure socialist party", no future in trying to challenge Labour from the left.

He ended with a joke about his favourite left sectarian newspaper, the Workers' Weekly. On page one it called for socialist unity, while on the following five pages it denounced every other socialist and left-wing group that dared to disagree with it. His Labour Party audience erupted in laughter at his caricature of the loony left lost in its own political extremism and irrelevant to the struggles of workers in the real world.

When I came across his speech on the internet, I was initially angry and upset. While still in the Labour Party, I had backed Tony Benn in all his campaigns against the Old Labour right and the New Labour neo-liberals. I had fought for many years beside him in the Campaign Group of socialist Labour MPs. Now, here he was heaping ridicule on me and the tens of thousands of other socialists who had taken their fight for socialism outside of the narrow limits of New Labour and the British Road to Socialism." Read more here.

1. Is corrupt to its core

2. that after 10 years of New Labour presides over inequalities that are worse than they were under the Tories.

3. Wants to site all its nuclear weapons in our waters despite this being overhwlemingly opposed by Scottish civil society, our parliament, our churches and our elected Govt...

Our deference is terminal and seemingly inexhaustible. We are lied to routinely. So far, the only ones we have had glaringly and unequivocally exposed as deliberate falsifications are:

Lie 1 There was no police contact with Mr Tomlinson
Lie 2 Mr Tomlinson died of a heart attack
Lie 3 Protestors rained missiles at police rescuing and treating Mr Tomlinson
Lie 4 There were no CCTV cameras covering the assault on Mr Tomlinson
Lie 5 There were CCTV cameras, but they were not working

The question is to what extent these, like the Mendezes debacle was an organised cover-up rather than mass incompetence and reflex response to being exposed?
Even the notoriously compromised Ken Livingstone is being forced out of his foxhole and now a third case is emerging. How many more?

Note the design feature of covers to cover up badge numbers. Who designed this?

As Craig Murray says, at the very least:

1) The government pathologist who carried out the original post mortem must be charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. He must also be struck off by the General Medical Council.

2) The police spokesmen who told the lies that there was no police contact with Mr Tomlinson, and that protestors threw missiles at police treating Mr Tomlinson, must be charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice.

3) The senior police officers in charge of devising the "kettling" tactics and cordons at the G20 must be charged with manslaughter.

4) The responsible minister, Jacqui Smith, should resign.

Expect nothing.

"The question over the deaths of the last six hunger strikers still remains. The debate has moved on since the publication of Richard O'Rawe's Blanketmen, which raised the point that the prisoners had accepted an offer from the British which the outside Republican leadership overruled. When his book first came out, denials from the Sinn Fein camp abounded: there was no offer, there was no deal, there was no conversation, O'Rawe made it all up to sell books. Since then, however, more and more information and confirmation has come out that supports O'Rawe's contention, and the SF position has moved from total denial to one of agreeing that there was a back channel with Mi6 via the 'Mountain Climber' and Brendan Duddy, and that an offer was made and conveyed to the prisoners. But the question still hangs - what happened with the prisoners' acceptance of that offer/deal?"

I have a friend in Ireland who teaches Scots as a language to kids. Yes, you read correctly. That is in Ireland, in Scotland we are still told it is wrong. We are told to mend our pronunciation and speak in the 'queen's english'." Read the full thing here.

A brief precis of the story may be required before launching you into the world of Bloggerheads. The Scottish Sunday Express boasted about 'an exclusive' which seems to have involved peering in on former pupils from Dunblane and making out that they were involved in 'disgraceful behaviour'. You can read the dross here. This seems to be worthy of the 'How Shit is Your Media' series on at least four counts. 1) It's lazy useless journalism. Who cares if some young people get drunk and chat to their mates on facebook? That's your exclusive?!? With us careering towards an economic depression that's your fu***ng story???? 2) It's totally exploitative, sensationalist and uncaring. 3) Nobody else in the media has picked up on this, presumably because its precisely the sort of journalism they are invoived in. 4) It's prying into peoples private lives for no good reason. Oh and fifth, and I think this is Tims main point, its totally hypocrictical. Anyway for the full story got to Bloggerheads.

You can read Part 5 here.

This is the start of a new weekly mini-series 'This Weeks Top 3 Reasons for Independence'. Your suggestions are welcome...here's mine....

1. This is a police state. This isn't conspoiracy theory this is run-of-the-mill everday reality. It's time to end the British State.

2. Britain colludes with Torture. Scotland should have nothing to do with this shameful policy - which the British army and secret state honed for decades in Ireland.

3. This is a Secret State. As evidence grows of a different culture North and South of the Border, its time to leave this failed Union and develop an open society and a genuine democracy.

Will President Obama pull this deal as part of his 'move towards a "nuclear free world" through bilateral and multilateral disarmament'? If he did - a very big 'if' indeed with Washington power-broking still unfettered and the jobs, finance and international relations at stake - should he not then look at America's 'special relationship' with the nuclear poodle on this side of the Atlantic?

If Obama is at all serious about 'bilateral and multilateral' moves towards nuclear disarmament then a fitting beginning to this new strategy would surely necessitate the cessation of the shipment of vital bomb components by US weapons makers to the United Kingdom, historically sanctioned by US presidents, thus bringing about the end of the folly of Trident on the Clyde. Gordon Brown doesn't have the intestinal fortitude of his youthful self to bring about the demise of nukes in these islands, perhaps it's down to his beloved America to do it for him

As America, recession mired, enters the hope-inspired age of Barack Obama, a silent but fateful struggle for the soul of capitalism is being waged. Can the market system finally be made to serve us? Or will we continue to serve it? George W. Bush argued that the crisis is "not a failure of the free-market system, and the answer is not to try to reinvent that system." But while it is going too far to declare that capitalism is dead, George Soros is right when he says that "there is something fundamentally wrong" with the market theory that stands behind the global economy, a "defect" that is "inherent in the system."

Is this the death of capitalism? Barber says no, buts its the death of a kind of capitalism.

1: Deceit and conspiracy for war, and providing false news to incite passions for war, causing in the order of one million deaths, 4 million refugees, countless maimings and traumas.

2: Employing radioactive ammunition causing long-term destruction of the planetary habitat.

3: Causing the breakdown of civil administration, with consequent lawlessness, especially looting, kidnapping, and violence, and consequent breakdown of womens' rights, of religious freedom, and child and adult education.

4: Failing to maintain the medical needs of the populace.

5: Despoliation of the cultural heritage of the country.

6: Supporting an ally that employs 'waterboarding' and other tortures.

7: Seizing the assets of Iraq.

8: Using inhumane restraints on prisoners, including dogs, hoods, and cable ties.

9: Using Aggressive Patrolling indiscriminately, traumatising women and children and wrecking homes and property.

10: Marking bodies of prisoners with numbers, writing, faeces and other degrading treatment.

11: The use of cluster bombs and other indiscriminate weapons including white phosphorous on "shake and bake" missions.

12: Supporting indiscriminate rocket attacks from F16 fighter planes on women and children in Fallujah in Nov 2004

13: Supporting the shooting up of ambulances and medical personnel in Fallujah in Nov 2004

14: Supporting the expulsion of the entire population of Fallujah save for young men of military age, for a reprisal attack on that city in Nov 2004.

Copy to the Secretary General of The United Nations, Ban Ki-moon

Issued by secretaries to Foundation: David Halpin, MB, FRCS and Nicholas Wood MA, RIBA, FRGS
PO BOX 64656 NW3 9NG (UK)
Email: blairfoundation@yahoo.co.uk

"The number one weapon of 20th century imperialism is zionist dollarism, and one of the main bases for this weapon is Zionist Israel....The Zionist armies that now occupy Palestine claim their ancient Jewish prophets predicted that in the "last days of this world" their own God would raise them up a "messiah" who would lead them to their promised land, and they would set up their own "divine" government in this newly-gained land, this "divine" government would enable them to "rule all other nations with a rod of iron."

If the Israeli Zionists believe their present occupation of Arab Palestine is the fulfillment of predictions made by their Jewish prophets, then they also religiously believe that Israel must fulfill its "divine" mission to rule all other nations with a rod of irons, which only means a different form of iron-like rule, more firmly entrenched even, than that of the former European Colonial Powers.

These Israeli Zionists religiously believe their Jewish God has chosen them to replace the outdated European colonialism with a new form of colonialism, so well disguised that it will enable them to deceive the African masses into submitting willingly to their "divine" authority and guidance, without the African masses being aware that they are still colonized."

Read the full piece here...

STATEMENT OF JOEL KOVEL REGARDING HIS TERMINATION BY BARD COLLEGE: "In January, 1988, I was appointed to the Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies at Bard College. As this was a Presidential appointment outside the tenure system, I have served under a series of contracts. The last of these was half-time (one semester on, one off, with half salary and full benefits year-round), effective from July 1, 2004, to June 30, 2009. On February 7 I received a letter from Michèle Dominy, Dean of the College, informing me that my contract would not be renewed this July 1 and that I would be moved to emeritus status as of that day. She wrote that this decision was made by President Botstein, Executive Vice-President Papadimitriou and herself, in consultation with members of the Faculty Senate.

This document argues that this termination of service is prejudicial and motivated neither by intellectual nor pedagogic considerations, but by political values, principally stemming from differences between myself and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism. There is of course much more to my years at Bard than this, including another controversial subject, my work on ecosocialism (The Enemy of Nature). However, the evidence shows a pattern of conflict over Zionism only too reminiscent of innumerable instances in this country in which critics of Israel have been made to pay, often with their careers, for speaking out. In this instance the process culminated in a deeply flawed evaluation process which was used to justify my termination from the faculty.

• 2002. This was the first year I spoke out nationally about Zionism. In October, my article, "Zionism's Bad Conscience," appeared in Tikkun. Three or four weeks later, I was called into President Leon Botstein's office, to be told my Hiss Chair was being taken away. Botstein said that he had nothing to do with the decision, then gratuitously added that it had not been made because of what I had just published about Zionism, and hastened to tell me that his views were diametrically opposed to mine.

• 2003. In January I published a second article in Tikkun, "'Left-Anti-Semitism' and the Special Status of Israel," which argued for a One-State solution to the dilemmas posed by Zionism. A few weeks later, I received a phone call at home from Dean Dominy, who suggested, on behalf of Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitriou, that perhaps it was time for me to retire from Bard. I declined. The result of this was an evaluation of my work and the inception, in 2004, of the current half-time contract as "Distinguished Professor."