DERRY PARTY CONFERENCE OF ANTI-SINN FEIN SOCIETY

One of the principal reasons, that I resigned as chairperson fo Newry Sinn Fein and later from Sinn Fein itself, was that I suspected a considerable proportion of my colleagues, at that time, were spies and British informers. However as with a good friend or comrade, whom we would give the benefit of the doubt, I was not going to shout it from the rooftops, for obvious reasons. Again when the Bad Friday Agreement was signed, and discussing it later with colleagues, I disagreed, but for the sake of giving peace a chance, I was prepared to wait and see. It is now 20 years since it was signed, and there is far greater clarity, around all of these matters, with solid proof that all of my suspicions were not simply paranoia.


The British Dirty War in Occupied Ireland is still ongoing, in all it' s subtle guise, since 1970, with varying degrees of intensity, in almost every part of British administration in Ireland. Gerry Adams is credited with masterminding the resistance, known as the long war, which is utter rubbish. Knowing this man at close quarters for almost 35 years, believe me, he does not have the intellectual capacity or vision for such an endeavour. However, he does have the manipulative skills, learned, surviving an abusive home, to orchestrate it. The end result of both the British Dirty War and the Long War, was that they both synchronized, to enable collaborators, to rise in the ranks of the Republican Movement, to become the leadership of Provisional Sinn Fein, now known as Sinn Fein, or more accurately in reality, as John Borgonovo termed it, the Anti-Sinn Fein Society.


The proof of this, is that in the last couple of months, we have had Martin McGuinness, the right hand man of it's President, declaring publicly, that his politcal work is inspired by the Queen of England, something any republican child, will tell you is the total antithesis of republicanism, world wide. We also had Gerry Kelly, the chief enforcer of the Bad Friday Agreement on the ground, calling on Irish people to become informers and spies for British Occupation Forces in Ireland. We also had Conor Murphy, their MP from South Armagh, also calling on Irish people to become spies and informers, while a young lad who voiced opposition to the Murphy's, was battered to death, in true fascist fashion, for simply voicing opposition to the Murphys in South Armagh.


During the party’s annual conference, currently being held in Derry, they passed a pro-choice policy on abortion and the party has also enabled a gay rights agenda, which have given it a liberal veneer for the electorate. However, like their Blueshirt fellow travellers in the south, their core policy is Neo-Liberal or Corporate fascism, mirroring the steel fist, in a velvet glove, of Thateherite policies of austerity from the British Tory Party. Deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, tried to disguise this yesterday, in a deceirful speech to the conference, trying to rationalize Sinn Féin opposing austerity cuts in the south of Ireland, shile it was implementing draconian austerity policies from the Stormont Junta. Meanwhile Gerry Adams the President of the 'Anti-Sinn Fein Society' has confessed recently, that he spends his free time, cavorting naked with his dog on a trampoline, while also making love to trees, which are all meant to divert Irish people with"Cuddly Eccentric Gerry,"from  the fascist core of his party's neoliberal deception.

Irish Blog believes that under these circumstances, resistance must continue against the British Dirty War in all of its elements within the fascist, sectarian, Orange State and organize the defence of Irish working class people. It needs to be a resistance, that takes extreme care, to avoid at all costs, innocent civilian casualties, to enable the agitation, education and organization of the Irish people, to create the masses on the street of the Civil Rights Campaign. This is what is needed to fundamentally change, this dysfunctional society and gain freedom for our people. Only militant, mass action, will force the conditions necessary, for a total closedown of industry. The principle problem in Ireland is partition, not just north/south but also the sectarianism, that divides working people and the people of no property, by British Occupation Forces, with the help of the 'Anti-Sinn Fein Society,' who as political collaborators, are part of the problem, not the solution, enabling the widening gap, between rich and poor all over the island. 

While opposing the British Occupation, we also need to fight the EU state in the south and its various corporate fascist, entities like Irish Water. The Ireland worth fighting for, is the Ireland, for the people of no property, to be materially free in fraternity with every other Irish person. We must become self-supporting through our own contribution and labour of love, for all our people, in liberty, equality and fraternity. The way to Freedom is using the natural resources of Ireland, her land and sea, first for the ordinary people of Ireland and later bartered transparently, with other free people, who have earned their freedom. This is the price and way of freedom, there are no shortcuts. The alternative, is at best, the impending Orwellian nightmare, that extinguishes the Spirit of Freedom or worse, the fascist, nuclear, holocaust, aggression of Imperialism.

SPIES, INFORMERS AND THE ‘ANTI-SINN FEIN SOCIETY': THE INTELLIGENCE WAR IN CORK CITY, 1919-1921

John Borgonovo’s Spies, Informers and the ‘Anti-Sinn Fein Society': The Intelligence War in Cork City, 1919-1921

John Borgonovo is among a handful of international historians to have studied Ireland’s War of Independence with the focus on a specific part of the conflict, in this case the crucial Intelligence struggle in the south-western region of the country, notably in Cork City and County. This revealing new account shines a bright light on this dark and murky covert world of espionage and counter-espionage, of competing spy-rings and networks, and examines in detail the belligerent role played by sections of the British Unionist minority in Ireland, in particular through active collaboration with the British Occupation Forces both as spies and counter-insurgents. With many tens of thousands of Irishmen having served in the British military and paramilitary police forces, both in Ireland and overseas, and with the Unionist minority in Ireland reliant on continuing British rule in order to maintain their `colonial’ privileges, it is hardly surprising that the British found a rich vein of sympathy and co-operation within this frequently militant population, as they struggled to control the majority of the Irish people and their support for Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), mandated as both were by a string of electoral landslides – which of course the British refused to recognise.

Borgonovo’s book will be a revelation to many readers unaware of the activities of the broad Unionist community in `southern’ Ireland during the 1916-1923 Revolution, in stark contrast to their more obviously violent and infamously anti-democratic `northern’ compatriots. While Unionist terrorist organisations like the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) are well known and documented their counterparts in other parts of the country are largely forgotten, and Borgonovo looks at the `Anti-Sinn Fein Society’ as well as several other shadowy groups linked to the British Forces (plus numerous individual informers, traitors and collaborators). Their wide range of counter-insurgent activities, spying, kidnapping, torture, assassinations, house burnings and multiple murders, are presented in detail and with a great degree of fairness and contextual placement. Borgovono goes out of his way to present all arguments, often giving the benefit of the doubt to individuals where circumstantial evidence alone would point to guilt. His use of original source materials is scrupulously detailed and no statement or claim is made without solid backing. Where tentative suggestions are made, or facts remain unclear, he does not hide the fact but rather draws attention to it, clearly leaving it up to the reader to decide themselves based upon the evidence. This kind of academic honesty is highly refreshing and is one of the real strengths of the book.

Borgonovo also addresses the case made by others, most notably the controversial right-wing writer Peter Hart in several of his more infamous publications, that there was a sectarian and racist element to the Irish Revolution in the Cork region, and that the IRA deliberately targeted civilian members of the British Unionist minority in the area. This claim has been taken up by a number of British Neo-Colonial historians in support of Britain’s case that it had the right to rule Ireland, to the benefit of the Irish people, and has been described by them as a campaign of `ethnic cleansing against Protestants’. To Borgonovo’s lasting credit he methodically demolishes this particularly nasty and insidious web of anti-Irish propaganda, stripping it of all pretence to academic integrity, and showing it to be the politically motivated counter-factual history that most rational people know it to be. For taking on the lunatic fringe of British apologist historians, and their Irish offspring, and showing the false and worthless nature of their conspiracy theories we should be eternally grateful to Borgonovo.

We need more studies like this.

For those wanting to know more about the particularly bitter struggle in the Cork region between the Irish Republican Army and the British Occupation Forces during the War of Independence, Meda Ryan’s award-winning ‘Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter’ is an excellent place to start.

Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter

Catholics Quitting PSNI






Catholics are leaving the PSNI police in numbers and fewer are applying to join, new figures have shown.

The latest statistics show that, although the population of the Six Counties is 48 per cent Protestant, more than two in three of the current PSNI membership are now from that community.

Three in ten are Catholics, but the rate should be 50% higher than that according to the Patten reforms which converted the old RUC into the current PSNI.

Recruits to the force are once again disproportionately Protestant. after 50:50 recruitment system was scrapped four years ago following sustained criticism by unionists that it “discriminated” against Protestants.

The rebalancing of the PSNI workforce had been a key factor leading to the SDLP, and later Sinn Fein, supporting the new PSNI. At one point, just 8 per cent of RUC officers were Catholic.

SDLP Policing Board member Dolores Kelly said the drop off in Catholic PSNI is worrying.

“It is a matter of great concern that after all the work done to encourage young Catholics to join the police,” she said. “We want exit interviews. We want to know why everyone is leaving, what their reasons are.”

Unionist Policing Board member Ross Hussey has suggested that the flight of Catholics from the PSNI is due to the threat of “republican violence”.

“As was the case with the RUC, any disincentive for Catholics to join the PSNI is due in large part to the ongoing campaign of republican violence and in particular the active targeting of police officers from a Catholic community background,” he said.

“We believe that the best person for the job should be appointed to a job, regardless of colour, class, creed or gender.”

But there is a growing sense that the PSNI remains “a cold house” for northern nationalists. It was revealed this week that plans are afoot to remove the Patten-era requirement for PSNI members to declare membership of the Orange Order and other secret anti-Catholic organisations.

The Orange Order has said a PSNI review of the rule came after “continual and extensive lobbying” by senior Orangemen. The order’s monthly paper, the Orange Standard, also said it believes membership of the GAA (Gaelic sports association) and other ‘nationalist’ signifiers should have to be declared under the present policy.

A spokesman for Sinn Fein said: “The requirement to declare a belonging to a set number of organisations for PSNI officers it is still as relevant today as it was when this was first enacted.”

BOYCOTT

There have been other signs of declining nationalist confidence in the force recently.

A meeting of the Magherafelt Policing and Community Safety Partnership had to be cancelled this week after it was boycotted by nationalist representatives.

The ‘watchdog’ body - one of 26 across the north - has been at the centre of controversy since the family of murdered GAA official Sean Brown, urged elected representatives not to attend in protest at the PSNI’s handling of his inquest.

And in south Armagh, a sizable protest took place last weekend at the rise of “criminality” in the area and the failure of the PSNI to engage in local policing. Sinn Fein Policing spokesperson Gerry Kelly said he had raised the issue at a meeting of the Policing Board.

He said he also ‘quizzed’ the PSNI about unacceptable delays to coroners’ inquests and stalling tactics in the case of police informer Gary Haggarty.

“I will be demanding answers to these issues from the senior management of the PSNI and will continue to hold them to account until these matters are satisfactorily resolved.”

Arthurs Attacks SF Leadership

One of the most senior ex-Provisional IRA figures in the North has said that the nationalist community should not pass on information or “collaborate in any way” with the PSNI.


In an interview with the Sunday Tribune, Brian Arthurs, a former commander of the Tyrone Brigade, said Sinn Fein and “other constitutional nationalist parties” were wrong to say that the PSNI should be supported.

Arthurs, who once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, said he had supported the Good Friday Agreement but had become very disillusioned with the failure to progress towards Irish unity.

Similar comments were voiced by Peter McCaughey, another former senior Provisional IRA member from County Tyrone. Both men disclosed that they had left Sinn Fein two years ago after a major split in the republican movement in Tyrone.

Five Sinn Fein cumainn, and 90% of the East Tyrone brigade, left in the move. Arthurs said: “No one can deny that there have been changes in the North but it is an equality agenda being pursued. People did not die, they did not take up arms, for equality. They did so for Irish freedom.

“Yet a huge 100 million pound MI5 building has been built in the North and 5,000 British soldiers remain here. A special British military intelligence unit has just been deployed in Derry.

“David Cameron told the Tory party conference that he was prime minister of Britain and Northern Ireland. He stressed the importance of the union and said, ‘together is how we must remain’. Republicans cannot see Irish unity in any of this. It should be remembered that, as republicans, we were committed to fight on until Britain made a declaration of intent to withdraw from Ireland.”

Arthurs and McCaughey both come from prominent republican families. Arthurs’ brother Declan was one of eight IRA men shot dead by the SAS in Loughall in 1987. McCaughey’s brother Martin, and another IRA member Dessie Grew, were killed on active service by the SAS in 1990.

A number of independent republican societies - named after the 1916 leaders and other republican martyrs - have now been formed in Tyrone. “We have six societies with around 200 members and we are in the process of forming another six,” Arthurs stated.

He said the societies were “committed to upholding the ideals of the 1916 Proclamation and Irish national self-determination” and were made up of new young members and veteran republican activists.

The societies held a rally, attended by 1,500 people, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Martin McCaughey and Dessie Grew earlier this month. Peter McCaughey said he was “extremely disappointed” with Sinn Fein’s condemnation of those who remain involved in ‘armed struggle’.

After the Real IRA bomb attack on the Ulster Bank in Derry, Martin McGuinness called those responsible “conflict junkies” and “neanderthals”. After the murder of two British soldiers at Massereene last year, he condemned the killers as “traitors to the island of Ireland”.

Peter McCaughey said: “Was my brother a ‘conflict junkie’, a ‘neanderthal’ or a ‘traitor to the island of Ireland’? That is what Martin McGuinness would call him if he was killed on active service today. My brother was a freedom fighter. He fought for a united Ireland. That goal is still there and remains deeply cherished by republicans in Tyrone.

“We were disgusted when Martin McGuinness stood at the gates of Stormont with the chief constable of the PSNI after Massereene and demonised republicans. He did not speak for us.”

Brian Arthurs said the nationalist community should not “pass on information or collaborate with the PSNI” as Sinn Fein and the SDLP urged: “Young people now, just like young people during the previous phase of conflict, will continue to be attracted to the republican struggle.

“It can be argued that an armed campaign is not advisable at this point in time but it will never be right to inform on those who decide otherwise. Informing on republicans will lead to their families being oppressed by the state. It will lead to the arrest and incarceration of volunteers and, at worst, to their death.

“It was wrong to pass information to the police 20 or 30 years ago and it is wrong now. The graveyards are full of young republicans put there because a small minority of the nationalist community passed information to the British forces.”

Arthurs said the independent republican societies in Tyrone were “non-party political” and were not linked to Republican Sinn Fein, the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, or eirigi.

Arthurs and McCaughey said that, despite long-standing reservations about the direction of Sinn Fein’s strategy, they and others had remained loyal to the leadership because they didn’t want to split the movement.

“Two years ago, it reached the point that we couldn’t stay,” McCaughey said. “We were told at a meeting in Tyrone that Sinn Fein’s support for the PSNI wasn’t just a written policy, we had to implement the strategy in full or leave. So we left.”

McCaughey had been a Sinn Fein member for over 20 years. He served four years in the H-Blocks for possession of weapons. Arthurs is a former election agent for Sinn Fein MP Michelle Gildernew. In 1995, he was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment for possession of explosives. He was released five years later under the Good Friday Agreement. He was arrested in connection with the 2004 Northern Bank robbery and released without charge.

In 2007, he was charged with obtaining money fraudulently in relation to a mortgage application. He was acquitted. He is currently facing the same charges again and has pleaded not guilty. His request to be tried by a jury, rather than a Diplock court, was refused. He is appealing that decision to the House of Lords.

THE SINN FEIN NEO-LIBERAL DECEPTION

Much of Sinn Fein's money, comes from foreign corporate donations. Such money to political parties, is outlawed, in other democratic countries, as it should always be outlawed in Ireland. The old Irish saying, "He who pays the piper calls the tune" has already been clearly demonstrated, in Blueshirt policies, in the south. Proper oversight or limits on these donations, does not exist in Ireland. These massive donations, will dictate Sinn Fein's neo-liberal policies, as a juniot partner with Fine Gael, after the nest election and will refect itself, in even further austerity for ordinary Irish people, to facilitate the corporations, with a cheap hungry workforce. British Sinn Fein have already signed, as junior partners in the Stormont Junta, to a Tory scorched earth policy, in the north, after the next British election. Today British Sinn fein delegates in Derry, voted not to join either a Fine Gael or Fianna Fail coalition, which has as much credibilty, as the neo-liberal deception, described in the article below.

The Neo-Liberal Deception and the New World Order

By Lionel Reynolds

Global Research,

Beginning in earnest in the late Seventies, a sustained and pervasive ideological attack was mounted against the role of the State in managing economic affairs. The terms of the attack ranged from ethical and philosophical arguments about individual liberty and property rights to more pragmatic arguments about the supposed economic advantages of private ownership, deregulation of capital and flattened fiscal regimes. Alternative visions of the role of the State were marginalised and discounted as either economically misguided or politically totalitarian.

The emerging consensus became known as Neo-Liberalism, or Economic Rationalism. It had its intellectual progenitors – Adam Smith, the Austrian and Chicago Schools, Ayn Rand; its political trail-blazers – Pinochet, Thatcher and Reagan, and its demons – Socialists, Marxists and Keynesians. When the Berlin Wall came down, and the ‘evil empire’ collapsed, it seemed that the ideological battle had been won – the deprived masses of the Socialist bloc had overthrown their Orwellian masters and would readily embrace the new credo. Ahead lay a brave, new, unipolar world in which largely unregulated markets would constitute the bedrock of a free, dynamic and innovative global economic order in which social wealth would be maximised.

In due course, after some initial resistance, the centre-left caved in to the Neo-Liberal gospel, especially in the Anglosphere, always the geopolitical fulcrum of the Neo-Liberal order. By the mid 90′s the centre-left in the UK, USA and Australia were committed to an economic program that was virtually indistinguishable from the Reagan/Thatcher platform of the previous decade, all be it dressed up in a more progressive social liberalism.
The reason that so many ‘social-democrats’ and ‘socialists’ embraced the Neo-Liberal revolution is that they came to accept its core claim that not only is capitalism the most effective way of generating wealth but that, contrary to now supposedly outmoded Keynesian and socialist views, it is also the best way of actually spreading the benefits of that wealth as widely as possible.

There are no losers – everyone’s a winner. The view is that governments don’t create wealth – they just spend it on coercing people and distorting market mechanisms that would otherwise produce greater social utility. By extracting the State from economic activity and allowing a more lightly regulated capitalism to structure production, distribution, exchange and finance, everyone is actually better off. The market mechanism can even play a positive role in improving social services like health and education, and providing essential infrastructure like transport, communications and energy – all with minimal regulatory regimes.

Under cover of this ideological offensive, the entire post-war Bretton-Woods economic order was dismantled. Capital controls were removed, public assets and infrastructure privatised and markets deregulated. Manufacturing and back-office functions were offshored. Organised labour was suppressed by legislation and by exporting traditional unionised industries to low-cost non-unionised labour markets. In addition to the huge profits to be made from deploying capital to low-wage economies, this also made it possible for capital to significantly increase the rate of surplus value extraction in the developed economies. The monetary value of what labour was making began to grow much more quickly than the monetary wage cost of the labour itself. Now that most consumer goods – for example clothing, electronic goods and household items – were produced cheaply in low-cost markets, the living costs of the developed economy worker were kept low, alleviating pressure on wages. It was a win/win for capital.

Consequently, for 40 years real wages in the developed world have been virtually stagnant – especially in the USA. In fact, income as a share of GDP has been in steady decline in many developed economies. Labour was producing more commodities than it had the monetary means to purchase, because an increasing share of the monetised value of commodities was being realised as capital, not wages. Inequality between capital and labour was further exacerbated by huge cuts in marginal tax rates and corporate taxes.

This is where the financial system stepped in to eliminate potential under-consumption. By leveraging capital sourced from expanding corporate profits and the personal wealth of the super-rich, the banks began to sell huge quantities of lucrative debt to the working class, enabling the latter to buy back the product of its own labour and keep capital accumulation ticking over.

Credit controls were relaxed leading to massive asset bubbles in property and consumer spending, which in turn spawned a parasitic, multi-trillion dollar shadow banking economy of ‘collateralised debt obligations’ (CDO’s) – tranched securities built from bundles of debt. These in turn spawned another equally large market in ‘credit default swaps’ (CDS’s) in which entities offered to ‘insure’ securities, even though the ‘insurance-buyer’ was often not even the owner of the reference assets, and the ‘insurance provider’ was not able to underwrite the debt ‘insured’. It wasn’t actually called ‘insurance’, so it didn’t fall under any insurance regulatory regime. In fact, most of the trade in CDO’s and CDS’s was wholly unregulated, taking place ‘over the counter’ rather than in organised exchanges.

As if the bankers were not getting rich enough from buying and selling consumer and property debt, they also branched out into buying and selling student debt – a new concept for most of Europe, which had previously operated under the assumption that tertiary education should be publically funded.

The property asset bubble, limitless personal credit lines, and the market in low cost consumer goods kept the developed world working class largely integated into the capitalist order. Real wages were stagnant and labour was being deprived of an increasing share of the value it created, but as long as property values were rising and credit card limits expanding there was always a source of liquidity to make up the difference. If you didn’t own a property, the answer was to work harder and longer and borrow the money to buy one – to ‘get on the property ladder’.

In 2007/8, the massive Ponzi scheme collapsed. Trillions of dollars were wiped off the market. The immediate cause of the collapse was over-leveraged household debt. Working class homebuyers in the USA began to foreclose. They had been sold mortgages on ‘teaser’ interest rates by brokers making a living flipping mortgages to CDO funds. The homeowners on teaser rates couldn’t actually afford the mortgage repayments at the market rate – they were relying on property values increasing so they could refinance once the teaser rate expired. As foreclosures spread, property values actually dropped, leading to more foreclosures, leading to further drops.

Suddenly, trillions of dollars of CDO’s began to lose value across the board as debts went toxic, debt repayment flows dried up and asset values collapsed. When large numbers of CDO holders tried to cash in their CDS’s the underwritten cash sums simply didn’t exist – the money wasn’t there. Exit AIG, the largest insurance company in the world. Banks stopped lending to each other because they all knew how heavily leveraged they were, and they all knew that the leveraged debt was going toxic. The financial system was deadlocked.

It then became clear that when the Neo-Liberals said that government interference in the economy is a bad thing, what they really meant to say is that it is a bad thing when it is for the benefit of labour. It turns out that it is in fact a very good thing when it is done in order to save the capitalist system from falling on its own sword. That would appear to be the only explanation for what followed – the biggest government bail out in modern economic history. All the money that hadn’t been available for manufacturing, for healthcare, for education, for infrastructure – suddenly became available to save the banking system.

The Federal Reserve, Bank of England and European Central Bank have, in the last 6 years, created trillions of dollars and handed them straight to the bankers. The process is called quantitative easing. The central banks create money via a digital book entry, and then use the money to purchase commercial paper from the banking sector – typically government and corporate bonds, but also CDO’s. This does two things. Firstly, it means that governments and corporations can raise credit cheaply, because the buyer of the debt knows they can flip it to the central bank and earn a return. This keeps interest rates low. Secondly, it injects liquidity into the banking system and keeps the business cycle going.

In the meantime, it’s austerity for the rest of us, as costs are driven down to encourage business investment and governments cut back on social programs in order to finance their ever growing debts.

It will be recalled that the ‘useful idiots’ of Neo-Liberalism – the centre-left that abandoned not just socialism but any semblance of Keynesianism – bought into the idea that privatisation, deregulation and flattened fiscal regimes were all consistent with traditional centre-left values of economic justice and equity. As it happens, there is overwhelming evidence that they were completely wrong.

In January of this year, Oxfam published a briefing paper called ‘Working for the Few’ (http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-en.pdf ). The paper was released to coincide with the 2014 World Economic Forum at Davos, the premier public social event for self-respecting members of the global elite. The paper is based on the tactical idea that the World Economic Forum is part of the solution, which rather flies in the face of the commonplace historical observation that, with some notable individual exceptions, the rich and powerful are not given to fundamentally questioning the structures that support their wealth and power.

Having said that, the report is a stunning indictment of the Neo-Liberal deception.

In the opening executive summary the reader is informed that:
Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population.
The wealth of the one percent richest people in the world amounts to $110 trillion. That’s 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.
The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world.
Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years.
The richest one percent increased their share of income in 24 out of 26 countries for which we have data between 1980 and 2012.
In the US, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer.

In the ‘People’s Republic’ of China, now firmly established as an integral component of the world capitalist order, supplying cheap consumer goods to the US/EU economies and using its massive US dollar foreign exchange reserves to help bankroll the US/NATO war machine, the report states that the richest 1% have more than doubled their share of national income since 1980.

The report reveals the stunning fact that 18.5 trillion dollars – a sum greater than total US GDP, is held unrecorded and offshore in tax havens – the lion’s share held in a network of current and former British possessions – Hong Kong, The Cayman Islands, Singapore, Jersey, Bermuda and Guernsey.

As for the distribution of wealth, 10% of the global population control 86% of total global assets, whilst the bottom 70% control just 3%.

Regarding the increased rate of surplus value extraction from developed economy labour, and its relationship to the offshoring of manufacturing and anti-union leglislation, the report explains that:


A report from the International Labour Organization (ILO) shows that between 1989 and 2005, union density (a measure of the membership of trade unions which represents union membership in relation to the total labor force) mostly declined in countries for which data are available, and that union density is negatively correlated with income inequality. Power relations between owners of capital and workers have changed dramatically in the past three decades in many countries, mostly as economies have moved from manufacturing to services, and as globalization has allowed for outsourcing of jobs. This is reflected in the decreasing share of income going to labor: over the past three decades, wages, salaries and benefits represent a smaller share of national income in nearly all ILO member countries.

There is, however, one region that is bucking the trend and that just happens to be the region of the world in which significant elements have bucked the trend to Neo-Liberalism and are turning to the Left – Latin America. The report explains that:


growth of tax revenues in Latin America has been the fastest in the world, and this growth has translated to higher spending to reduce inequality. For instance, between 2002 and 2011, income inequality dropped in 14 of the 17 countries where there is comparable data.During this period, approximately 50 million people moved into the middle class, meaning that for the first time ever, more people in the region belong to the middle class than are living in poverty.

The report continues:


By some estimates, social spending as a percentage of GDP across Latin American countries increased by 66 percent over the past twenty years. The impact is noticeable, given that not long ago the region had among the lowest public spending levels in the world. Increased spending on health and education has had the greatest impact on inequality reduction.

The report concludes with a set of recommendations, including:


• Stronger regulation of markets;
• Curbing the power of the rich to influence political processes and policies that best suit their interests.
• Cracking down on financial secrecy and tax dodging;
• Redistributive transfers; and strengthening of social protection schemes;
• Investment in universal access to free healthcare and education;
• Progressive taxation;
• Strengthening wage floors and worker rights;

This is, of course, the complete opposite of the Neo-Liberal prescriptions that have seduced significant elements of the so-called ‘left’ for the last 20 years.

The fact is that ‘we’ allowed the global super-rich to screw us, and then we bailed them out when the system that made them rich was in danger of collapsing. They got richer and richer, while we were bought off with the illusion of increasing wealth, when the reality is that we have been getting a declining share of the wealth we actually produce.

For years we have been told there was no money for social programs, and that our children had to pay to go to university, while trillions were spent on USA/NATO imperial wars and capitalist banker bailouts, and further trillions were hidden away in largely British-connected tax havens.

We should all be very angry with the Neo-Liberals
Tariq Ali: The Time Is Right for a Palace Revolution

By Chris Hedges

March 06, 2015 "ICH" - "Truthdig" - Tariq Ali is part of the royalty of the left. His more than 20 books on politics and history, his seven novels, his screenplays and plays and his journalism in the Black Dwarf newspaper, the New Left Review and other publications have made him one of the most trenchant critics of corporate capitalism. He hurls rhetorical thunderbolts and searing critiques at the oily speculators and corporate oligarchs who manipulate global finance and the useful idiots in the press, the political system and the academy who support them. The history of the late part of the 20th century and the early part of the 21st century has proved Ali, an Oxford-educated intellectual and longtime gadfly who once stood as a Trotskyist candidate for Parliament in Britain, to be stunningly prophetic.
The Pakistani-born Ali, who holds Pakistani and British citizenships, was already an icon of the left during the convulsions of the 1960s. Mick Jagger is said to have written “Street Fighting Man” after he attended an anti-war rally in Grosvenor Square on March 17, 1968, led by Ali, Vanessa Redgrave and others outside the U.S. Embassy in London. Some 8,000 protesters hurled mud, stones and smoke bombs at riot police. Mounted police charged the crowd. Over 200 people were arrested.

Ali, when we met last week shortly before he delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Princeton University, praised the street clashes and open, sustained protests against the state that erupted during the Vietnam War. He lamented the loss of the radicalism that was nurtured by the 1960s counterculture, saying it was “unprecedented in imperial history” and produced the “most hopeful period” in the United States, “intellectually, culturally and politically.”

“I cannot think of an example of any other imperial war in history, and not just in the history of the American empire but in the history of the British and French empires, where you had tens of thousands of former GIs and sometimes serving GIs marching outside the Pentagon and saying they wanted the Vietnamese to win,” he said. “That is a unique event in the annals of empire. That is what frightened and scared the living daylights out of them [those in power]. If the heart of our apparatus is becoming infected, [they asked] what the hell are we going to do?”

This defiance found expression even within the halls of the Establishment. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings about the Vietnam War openly challenged and defied those who were orchestrating the bloodshed. “The way that questioning was conducted educated a large segment of the population,” Ali said of the hearings, led by liberals such as J. William Fulbright. Ali then added sadly that “such hearings could never happen again.”

“That [spirit is what the ruling elite] had to roll back, and that they did quite successfully,” he said. “That rollback was completed by the implosion of the Soviet Union. They sat down and said, ‘Great, now we can do whatever we want. There is nothing abroad, and what we have at home—kids protesting about South America and Nicaragua and the contras—is peanuts. Gradually the dissent decreased.” By the start of the Iraq War, demonstrations, although large, were usually “one-day affairs.”

“It was an attempt to stop a war. Once they couldn’t stop it, that was the end,” he said about the marches opposing the Iraq War. “It was a spasm. They [authorities] made people feel there was nothing they could do; that whatever people did, those in power would do what they wanted. It was the first realization that democracy itself had been weakened and was under threat.”

The devolution of the political system through the infusion of corporate money, the rewriting of laws and regulations to remove checks on corporate power, the seizure of the press, especially the electronic press, by a handful of corporations to silence dissent, and the rise of the wholesale security and surveillance state have led to “the death of the party system” and the emergence of what Ali called “an extreme center.” Working people are being ruthlessly sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit—a scenario dramatically on display in Greece. And there is no mechanism or institution left within the structures of the capitalist system to halt or mitigate the reconfiguration of the global economy into merciless neofeudalism, a world of masters and serfs.

“This extreme center, it does not matter which party it is, effectively acts in collusion with the giant corporations, sorts out their interests and makes wars all over the world,” Ali said. “This extreme center extends throughout the Western world. This is why more and more young people are washing their hands of the democratic system as it exists. All this is a direct result of saying to people after the collapse of the Soviet Union, ‘There is no alternative.’ ”

The battle between popular will and the demands of corporate oligarchs, as they plunge greater and greater numbers of people around the globe into poverty and despair, is becoming increasingly volatile. Ali noted that even those leaders with an understanding of the destructive force of unfettered capitalism—such as the new, left-wing prime minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras—remain intimidated by the economic and military power at the disposal of the corporate elites. This is largely why Tsipras and his finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, bowed to the demands of European banks for a four-month extension of the current $272 billion bailout for Greece. The Greek leaders were forced to promise to commit to more punishing economic reforms and to walk back from the pre-election promise of Tsipras’ ruling Syriza party to write off a large part of Greece’s sovereign debt. Greece’s debt is 175 percent of its GDP. This four-month deal, as Ali pointed out, is a delaying tactic, one that threatens to weaken widespread Greek support for Syriza. Greece cannot sustain its debt obligations. Greece and European authorities will have to collide. And this collision could trigger a financial meltdown in Greece, see it break free from the eurozone, and spawn popular upheavals in Spain, Portugal and Italy.

The cost of open defiance, which, Ali pointed out, is our only escape route from corporate tyranny, will at least at first be painful. Our corporate masters do not intend to release their death grip without a brutal fight.

Ali recalled that even his late friend Hugo Chavez, the firebrand socialist president of Venezuela, was not untouched by intimidation from Establishment forces. “I remember talking to Chavez many times and saying, ‘Comandante, why do you stop there?’ ” Ali said. “He said it is not realistic to do it at the present time. We can regulate them, make life difficult for capitalism, use oil money for the poor, but we can’t topple the system.”

Ali added, “The Greeks and the Spanish are saying the same.”

“I don’t know what Syriza thought,” he said. “If it thought we can divide the European elite, we can make a big propaganda campaign in Europe and they will be forced to make concessions, that was foolish. This European elite, led by the Germans, doesn’t crack easily. They have walked all over the Greeks. The Greek leaders should have said to their own people, ‘We are going to try and get the best possible conditions—if not we will report to you what has happened and what we need to do.’ Instead, they fell into the European trap. The Europeans made virtually no concessions that mattered.”

The clash between the Greeks and the corporate elites that dominate Europe, Ali said, is “not economic.”

The European Union is “prepared to pour billions into fighting Russians in the Ukraine,” he said. “It’s not a question of the money. They can throw away the bloody money, as they are preparing to do and are doing in the Ukraine. With the Greeks they pretend it is economic, but it’s political. They are fearful that if the Greeks pull it off, the disease will spread. There are elections in December in Spain. If Podemos [Spain’s left-wing party] wins with Greece already having won and proceeding, however modestly, on a different path, the Spanish will say the Greeks have done it. And then there is the Irish waiting patiently with their progressive parties, saying, ‘Why can’t we do what Syriza has done? Why can’t we unite and take on our extreme center?’ ”

Ali said he was “shocked and angry about all the hopes that were invested in Obama by the left.” He lambasted what he called the American “obsession with identity.” Barack Obama, he said, “is an imperial president and behaves like one, regardless of the color of his skin.” Ali despaired of the gender politics that are fueling a possible run for the White House by Hillary Clinton, who would be the first woman president.

“My reply is, ‘So bloody what?’ ” he said. “If she is going to bomb countries and put drones over whole continents, what difference does her gender make if her politics are the same? That is the key. The political has been devalued and debased under neoliberalism. People retreat into religion or identity. It’s disastrous. I wonder if it is even possible to create something on a national scale in the United States. I wonder if it would be better to concentrate on big cities and states to develop some movements where they can have an influence in Los Angeles, New York or in states such as Vermont. It may be wiser to concentrate on three or four things to show that it can be done. I can’t see the old way of reproducing a political party of the left, modeled on the Republican and Democratic structures, as working. These people only work with money. They do not even speak with very many ordinary people. It is credit-card democracy. The left cannot and should not emulate this. America is the hardest nut to crack, but unless it is cracked we are doomed.”

Ali said he fears that should Americans become politically conscious and resist, the corporate state will impose naked forms of militarized repression. Government’s reaction to the 2013 bombings at the Boston Marathon stunned him. Authorities “closed down an entire city with the support of the population.” He said that the virtual declaration of martial law in Boston was “a dress rehearsal.”

“If they can do it in Boston they can do it in other cities,” he said. “They needed to try it on in Boston to see if it would work. That frightened me.”

“The manufacturing of threats manufactures fear,” he said. “It creates sleepwalking citizens. They [officials] never tried to do this on this scale when they were fighting the Soviet Union and the communist enemy, which was supposed to be the worst, most dangerous threat ever. Now they do it over a handful of bloody terrorists.”

Groups such as Black Lives Matter, he said, offer some hope.

“Just as the traditional left parties have been wiped out all over the world, so has the radical segment of the African-American population and their organizations,” he said. “They were physically wiped out. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, some of the most gifted leaders, were assassinated. The Black Panthers were destroyed. Areas where blacks lived on the West Coast were flooded with drugs. It was a well-planned assault. But the young people who came out in Black Lives Matter have this older spirit. When Jesse Jackson went to Ferguson and engaged in demagogy he was heckled. They did the same on the East Coast with [Al] Sharpton. These black leaders, bought off, are being seen for what they are.”

Ali’s deep concern is that organizations such as Black Lives Matter too often react to events and “don’t totally grasp that dealing with this problem of continuous state violence against the citizenry requires political movements.” He worries that Americans lack an understanding of their own history and that very few are literate in basic revolutionary theory, from Karl Marx to Rosa Luxemburg. This illiteracy, he said, means that opposition movements are often unable to effectively analyze the structures and mechanisms of capitalist power and cannot formulate a sophisticated political response.

“Why didn’t the American working class produce a Labour Party or a proper Communist Party?” he asked. “Repression. If you look at … what happened in America in the early decades of the 20th century and the last decade of the 19th century you see that private mercenaries were hired to stop it [political organizing]. This is a history that is not emphasized. This wretched neoliberalism has downgraded the teaching of history. It is the one subject they really hate. Politics they can take up because they use anti-communism. But history is a huge problem. You can’t understand the emergence of Syriza without understanding the Second World War, the role of the partisans, the role of the Communist Party that organized the partisans and how at one point 75 percent of the country was controlled by these partisans. Then the West came and fought a new war, Churchill did it with Truman’s backing, to defeat these people.”

“I was sympathetic to the Occupy movement, but not to the business of not having any demands,” he said. “They should have had a charter demanding a free health service, an end to the pharmaceuticals and insurance companies’ control of the health service, a free education at every level for all Americans. The notion, promoted by anarchists such as John Holloway, that you can change the world without taking power is useless. I have a lot of respect for the anarchists that mobilize and fight for immigrant rights. But I am critical of those who theorize a politics that is not political. You have to have a political program. The anarchists of yore, in Spain, for example, had a real political program. This new type of anarchism achieves nothing. And probably half of these groups are infiltrated. We have the figures of how many FBI people were in the Communist Party and their Trotskyist offspring. There were huge numbers. FBI people were making key decisions.”

Ali said that the failure on the part of citizens to build mass movements to dismantle wholesale surveillance in the wake of the revelations by Edward Snowden was an example of our collective self-delusion and our complicity in our own oppression. The cult of the self, a product of neoliberal corporate propaganda, infects every aspect of society and culture and leads to paralysis.

“Hollywood gave an Oscar to “Citizenfour” and that is as far as it goes,” he said. “As if that matters. That is what is frightening. No civil rights movement has sprung up uniting the citizens against mass surveillance. Neoliberalism has effectively destroyed solidarity and empathy, helped by new technology. It is a culture of narcissism.”

Ali predicted that the current global speculation would result in another catastrophic financial crash. This new crash will give birth to “movements and people who will say, ‘Enough.’ ” If these movements build radical political programs with an alternative socialist vision for society, our “authoritarian capitalism” can be battled, but if this vision is absent, if revolt is simply reactive, things will get worse. The epicenter of this struggle, he said, will be in the United States.

“If nothing happens in the United States, if nothing new is created to challenge systemic excesses and empire, it will be a bad situation for all of us,” he said. “One is doomed if nothing happens in the U.S.”

For information about Tariq Ali’s new book, “The Extreme Centre: A Warning,” click here.

© 2015 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.

CROSSMAGLEN POLE DANCING

The main purpose of free speech, is to fight an authoritarian state peacefully. Currently, there is rampant censorship in Ireland, justified on the basis "that it's only purpose, is to offend." The Orange Order State has the veto on all freedom, so do battle against authoritarianism peacefully often requires the unorthodox. Now metaphorically speaking, the fiefdom of Conor Murphy, MP/Warlord of South Armagh is a good example of this. Everyone knows free speech is not allowed in South Armagh, after the execution of Paul Quinn, who tried to exercise that right, in opposition to the Murphys. 


So an Irish Blog reporter, took a trip over to a secret shebeen in Mullaghbawn, to investigate for himself, what the reality was, in the wake of all of the pole-dancing controversies there. Now as an Irishman from a Lily white background, the moment, he walked in the door, Jesus, Mary and Joseph he was mortified. There was a woman on stage called Orange Lily, pole dancing almost nude in her oily skin. The place was full and it was clear that everyone was from all over Ulster. He was going to to ask them, how many pence on the price of a litre of petrol, people were prepared to pay, in order see Orange Lily but thought better of it.

When she finished her gig, he made an appointment with her for an interview, for which she demanded a hundred pounds sterling, for her services for two hours. Now the place was full of the fumes of the people's duty-free whiskey, as opposed to the British Governments, pricey tainted stuff, which Murphy is currently protecting. It was unavoidable to inhale the ether of the wacky baccy, that engulfed the place. When he mentioned this to a fellow guest, he was reminded, that he did not have the right to demand, that South Armagh, throw away the principles of enlightenment, to kowtow to the outrageous, arrogant and risible demands of British Occupation and was politely asked, if I didn't like freedom of speech and it's practice, why he had I gone there in the first place? Fortunately at that point, Orange Lily arrived for her appointment and they retired to her chambers.


Her boudoir was well perfumed, with a very large bed. She ordered him to strip, shower and basically told him to roll onto his back and expose his genitals. While she worked on his resurrection, h interviewed her. She told him that Orange Lily, was not in fact her real name. It was in fact Lily Frazer, as baptized by the Pentecostal Church and that she had learned her pole-dancing in London's West End. She had been invited to return to South Armagh by Provo politicians, who used her services in London, when they came over to claim expenses, as MPs of the House of Commoners, and she was promised protection. She worked as a professional lobbyist by day and as a part-time pole dancer by night, in both London and South Armagh. She said most of the Provo politicians used her services in their extensive free time as a result of a point of principle, while not attending the House of Commoners, officially. She confided, that after the Queen's banquet for compliant Irish politicians, she had developed many new professional relationships in Ireland.


Asked if Gerry engaged her services, she replied, that he preferred his dog and tree show. When asked, if Marty engaged her services, she replied, that he was inspired by certain fetishes with royalty. So as he continued to ask her specific questions, the picture emerged, that most of theIrish establishment, used her services, which was perfectly legal, in her capacity as a lobbyist. Asked, if the British Secret Services employed her, she refused to comment, other than to say that she had a stick and carrot approach, with regard to the Irish establishment and that they were all feeding from the same trough in London. Lily said most of them were gobshites, who generally paid her for permission to lick her. 


Now at this point, our reporter being a paradigm of virtue, was forthright and asked her, if she had an assistant, explaining he preferred a sandwich. She told him, that unfortunately, she hadn't but she would be travelling up the Sinn Fein Party conference in Derry and would bring her assistant, if he cared to avail of their services, there. At this point, they were rudely interrupted by two heavies, wearing balaclavas, who apparently were listening, with some bugs in the bed. He was told, to pack his bags and fuck off. To which he replied, grow a pair and take off the balaclavas, or words to that effect. Now at this point, I must add, that our friend did not intend offence, to the fascist feminists, for the phrase 'grow a pair,' who regard it as misogynistic,  but our colleague was under stress.


The current situation in South Armagh, for most people, is horrendous and miserable, thanks to a bunch, of vile fascists political administrators, mentored by British Military intelligence, to extend Her Majesty's writ over South Armagh and collect taxes, from the Irish on the artificial, British border, they created. South Armagh today is much the same as it was 50 years ago. The people of South Armagh are regularly beaten, jailed and murdered for daring to express, differing opinions, in what is clearly a pseudo, peace process, environment. 


The majority of decisions in Ireland, whether in Stormont ot Leinster House, are made by a small group of people, who censor the views of large parts of the population. This is how the repressive Stormont Junta administers corrupt law and state-sponsored violence for the British. What protects people’s rights to say things objectionable, are precisely what protects the right to object. The “assassin’s veto, is the ultimate threat of murder, to silence any of those with whom we disagree. The attack and murder of Paul Quinn in South Armagh, was the ultimate censorship, by fascist hands, not republican ones. Censoring all debate, free expression, for one or the other, based on the absence of offence, results, not in less offensive speech, but no speech at all. It is the same intolerant Blueshirt fascism, that murdered more than 80 brave Irish republicans, overtly in the south of Ireland and approximately 50 covertly, in the north, during this phase of Struggle. British heavy weaponry, used by Blueshirts, bombarded the four courts in Dublin, starting the Irish Civil War in the south. Incidents like Loughgall, were used, in what the British term, "to sanitize" the republican movement, which in reality, was eliminating any opposition, to a neoliberal agenda, that facilitates Corporate Fascism.


What The BRICS Plus Germany Are Really Up To?

By Pepe Escobar

March 05, 2015 "ICH" - "RT" - Winston Churchill once said, “I feel lonely without a war.” He also badly missed the loss of empire. Churchill’s successor – the ‘Empire of Chaos’ – now faces the same quandary. Some wars – as in Ukraine, by proxy – are not going so well.

And the loss of empire increasingly manifests itself in myriad moves by selected players aiming towards a multipolar world.

So no wonder US ‘Think Tankland’ is going bonkers, releasing wacky CIA-tinted“forecasts” where Russia is bound to disintegrate, and China is turning into a communist dictatorship. So much (imperial) wishful thinking, so little time to prolong hegemony.

The acronym that all these “forecasts” dare not reveal is BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). BRICS is worse than the plague as far as the ‘Masters of the Universe’ that really control the current - rigged - world system are concerned. True, the BRICS are facing multiple problems. Brazil at the moment is totally paralyzed; a long, complex, self-defeating process, now coupled with intimations of regime change by local ‘Empire of Chaos’ minions. It will take time, but Brazil will rebound.

That leaves the “RIC” – Russia, India and China - in BRICS as the key drivers of change. For all their interlocking discrepancies, they all agree they don’t need to challenge the hegemon directly while aiming for a new multipolar order.

The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) – a key alternative to the IMF enabling developing nations to get rid of the US dollar as a reserve currency – will be operative by the end of this year. The NDB will finance infrastructure and sustainable development projects not only in the BRICS nations but other developing nations. Forget about the Western-controlled World Bank, whose capital and lending capacity are never increased by the so-called Western “powers.” The NDB will be an open institution. BRICS nations will keep 55 percent of the voting power, and outside their domain no country will be allowed more than 7 percent of votes. But crucially, developing nations may also become partners and receive loans.

Damn those communists

A tripartite entente cordiale is also in the making. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in China next May – and ‘Chindia’ will certainly engage in a breakthrough concerning their bitter territorial disputes. As much as Delhi has a lot to benefit from China’s massive capital investment and exports, Beijing wants to profit from India’s vast market and technology savvy. In parallel, Beijing has already volunteered economic help to Russia – if Moscow asks for it – on top of their evolving strategic partnership.

The US “pivoting to Asia” – launched at the Pentagon – is all dressed up with no place to go. Bullying Southeast Asia, South Asia and, for that matter, East Asia as a whole into becoming mere ‘Empire of Chaos’ vassals – and on top of it confronting China - was always a non-starter. Not to mention believing in the fairy tale of a remilitarized Japan able to “contain” China.

Isolating the “communist dictatorship” won’t fly. Just watch, for instance, the imminent high-speed rail link between Kunming, in Yunnan province, and Singapore, traversing a key chunk of a Southeast Asia which for Washington would never qualify to be more than a bunch of client states. The emerging 21st century Asia is all about interconnection; and the inexorable sun in this galaxy is China.

As China has embarked in an extremely complex tweaking of its economic development model, as I outlined here, China’s monopoly of low-end manufacturing – its previous industrial base – is migrating across the developing world, especially around the Indian Ocean basin. Good news for the Global South – and that includes everyone from African nations such as Kenya and Tanzania to parts of Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Of course the ‘Empire of Chaos’, business-wise, won’t be thrown out of Asia. But its days as an Asian hegemon, or a geopolitical Mob offering “protection”, are over.

The Chinese remix of Go West, Young Man – in fact go everywhere – started as early as 1999. Of the top 10 biggest container ports in the world, no less than 7 are in China (the others are Singapore, Rotterdam, and Pusan in South Korea). As far as the 12th Chinese 5-year plan – whose last year is 2015 – is concerned, most of the goals of the seven technology areas China wanted to be in the leading positions have been achieved, and in some cases even superseded.

The Bank of China will increasingly let the yuan move more freely against the US dollar. It will be dumping a lot of US dollars every once in a while. The 20-year old US dollar peg will gradually fade. The biggest trading nation on the planet, and the second largest economy simply cannot be anchored to a single currency. And Beijing knows very well how a dollar peg magnifies any external shocks to the Chinese economy.

Sykes-Picot is us

A parallel process in Southwest Asia will also be developing; the dismantling of the nation-state in the Middle East – as in remixing the Sykes-Picot agreement of a hundred years ago. What a stark contrast to the return of the nation-state in Europe.

There have been rumblings that the remixed Sykes is Obama and the remixed Picot is Putin. Not really. It’s the ‘Empire of Chaos’ that is actually acting as the new Sykes-Picot, directly and indirectly reconfiguring the “Greater Middle East.” Former NATO capo Gen. Wesley Clark has recently “revealed” what everyone already knew; the ISIS/ISIL/Daesh fake Caliphate is financed by “close allies of the United States,” as in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel. Compare that with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon admitting that ISIS “does not represent a threat to Israeli interests.” Daesh does the unraveling of Sykes-Picot for the US.

The ‘Empire of Chaos’ actively sought the disintegration of Iraq, Syria and especially Libya. And now, leading the House of Saud, “our” bastard in charge King Salman is none other than the former, choice jihad recruiter for Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the Afghan Salafist who was the brains behind both Osama bin Laden and alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.

This is classic ‘Empire of Chaos’ in motion (exceptionalists don’t do nation building, just nation splintering). And there will be plenty of nasty, nation-shattering sequels, from the Central Asian stans to Xinjiang in China, not to mention festering, Ukraine, a.k.a Nulandistan.

Parts of Af-Pak could well turn into a branch of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh right on the borders of Russia, India, China, and Iran. From an ‘Empire of Chaos’ perspective, this potential bloodbath in the “Eurasian Balkans” – to quote eminent Russophobe Dr. Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski – is the famous “offer you can’t refuse.”

Russia and China, meanwhile, will keep betting on Eurasian integration; strengthening the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and their own internal coordination inside the BRICS; and using plenty of intel resources to go after The Caliph’s goons.

And as much as the Obama administration may be desperate for a final nuclear deal with Iran, Russia and China got to Tehran first. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi was in Tehran two weeks ago; stressing Iran is one of China’s “foreign policy priorities” and of great “strategic importance.” Sooner rather than later Iran will be a member of the SCO. China already does plenty of roaring trade with Iran, and so does Russia, selling weapons and building nuclear plants.

Berlin-Moscow-Beijing?

And then there’s the German question.

Germany now exports 50 percent of its GDP. It used to be only 24 percent in 1990. For the past 10 years, half of German growth depended on exports. Translation: this is a giant economy that badly needs global markets to keep expanding. An ailing EU, by definition, does not fit the bill.

German exports are changing their recipient address. Only 40 percent - and going down – now goes to the EU; the real growth is in Asia. So Germany, in practice, is moving away from the eurozone. That does not entail Germany breaking up the euro; that would be interpreted as a nasty betrayal of the much-lauded “European project.”

What the trade picture unveils is the reason for Germany’s hardball with Greece: either you surrender, completely, or you leave the euro. What Germany wants is to keep a partnership with France and dominate Eastern Europe as an economic satellite, relying on Poland. So expect Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy to face a German wall of intransigence. So much for European “integration,” it works as long as Germany dictates all the rules.

The spanner in the works is that the double fiasco Greece + Ukraine has been exposing. Berlin as an extremely flawed European hegemon – and that’s quite an understatement. Berlin suddenly woke up to the real, nightmarish possibility of a full blown, American-instigated war in Europe’s eastern borderlands against Russia. No wonder Angela Merkel had to fly to Moscow in a hurry.

Moscow – diplomatically – was the winner. And Russia won again when Turkey – fed up with trying to join the EU and being constantly blocked by, who else, Germany and France – decided to pivot to Eurasia for good, ignoring NATO and amplifying relations with both Russia and China.

That happened in the framework of a major ‘Pipelineistan’ game-changer. After Moscow cleverly negotiated the realignment of South Stream towards Turk Stream, right up to the Greek border, Putin and Greek Prime Minister Tsipras also agreed to a pipeline extension from the Turkish border across Greece to southern Europe. So Gazprom will be firmly implanted not only in Turkey but also Greece, which in itself will become mightily strategic in European ‘Pipelineistan’.

So Germany, sooner or later, must answer a categorical imperative - how to keep running massive trade surpluses while dumping their euro trade partners. The only possible answer is more trade with Russia, China and East Asia. It will take quite a while, and there will be many bumps on the road, but a Berlin-Moscow-Beijing trade/commercial axis – or the “RC” in BRICS meet Germany - is all but inevitable.

And no, you won’t read that in any wacky US ‘Think Tankland’ “forecast.”Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.



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SCHIZO SINN FEIN KITSCH

Britain's Dirty War in Ireland started in 1970, with the arrival of former Aide-De-Campe to the Queen, Frank Kitson, who formed British death squads, that run amok in all parts of Ireland. That war continues to the present day, with varying degrees of intensity. Kitson wrote the modern day manual for such dirty wars, all over the world, which includes, employing the use of politicians, police, media, courts, prison service and any Government agency, fit for purpose. One of the first facts of life, any child learns in this conflict zone, is that the price of being a 'Tout,'(informer   singular A person whom the government pay to snitch on people) is death. I have explained in previous posts, my own personal experience, with regard of this matter. To look your own Irish people and community in the eye, and betray them to British Occupation forces, is something I personally could not do, and I was prepared to take a bullet, rather than engage in this activity. I call it crossing the rubicon and it is an extremely fine line in reality, which must be explained with absolute clarity, by any Irish Republican, who claims any leadership status. It is not for me to judge Gerry Kelly, one of provisional Sinn Fein's most senior leaders but bearing in mind, its critical role in the history of his party, I do believe he has crossed the rubicon, calling on all Irish people to become informers to British Occupation forces, which certainly includes the PSNI<RUC, despite his qualities of courage. 

Young children in Occupied Ireland, after 45 years of Britain's Dirty War, deserve better leadership than this. The photograph and excellent video above, not for the first time, portray an irresponsible leadership of schizophrenia, as far as I am concerned and does not have credibility, as presented thus far. It is the result of a populist, reformist, party politic, that not alone betrays young teenagers, like the young lad, featured in the article below, but also all of the volunteers, who sacrificed so much, for the Cause of Ireland over the last 45 years and beyond. Irish politicians at the highest levels in all parties, continue to exhibit a considerable lack of compassion and responsibility to both the young and the vulnerable, to a neo-fascist extent, with consistency. Schizo Sinn Fein under the microscope, exhibit all the same, sell out bacteria of Me Fein, that seems to be the consistent factor of bearers of this tag, generation after generation. I would be overjoyed, to be proven wrong, but for people, with a couple of brain cells, who have evolved over 45 years, observing the schizo, neanderthal, butcher of Derry, its a no brainer.

Below is an article from Ciarán MacAirt, that I borrowed from somewhere or other,to explain the Dirty War a little more.

Digging for documents in the Britains' Dirty war National Arin Kew, London, at the start of the year, a “personal and confidential” letter dated 30th December 1971 caught my eye.

It was from Howard Smith, Whitehall’s UK Representative in Northern Ireland, to leading civil servant, Philip Woodfield CBE, head of the Northern Ireland department at the Home Office. It began:


“I think you will you will be interested to see the enclosed copy of a paper written by Frank Kitson”

I was very interested as Brigadier Frank Kitson is a renowned author and counter-insurgency expert who was commander of the British Army in Belfast at that time. The impact of his short tenure here is still debated by historians as I discussed in my book, The McGurk’s Bar Bombing: Collusion, Cover-Up and a Campaign for Truth.

I argued though that he laid the foundations for the British military strategy in the north of Ireland for years thereafter, especially with regards to armed contact with Britain’s enemy and the management of information. On our streets, this meant he oversaw Britain’s deployment of in-depth interrogation techniques, psychological operations, pseudo-gangs and covert Special Force units who murdered civilians with impunity.

The Military Reaction Force (MRF) (1) was one of Kitson’s creations and he actually records the importance of this covert death squad in the paper which is dated the 4th December 1971, the day of the McGurk’s Bar massacre. The paper is entitled Future Developments in Belfast:


“The main interest of the paper”, Howard Smith writes, “is that it shows how the man on the ground is feeling the lack of policy guidance on matters going wider than the redevelopment of Belfast… You will also see that the first paragraph expresses a cautious view about the prospects of success in dealing with the IRA”.

The main body of the paper draws on Kitson’s experience of counter-insurgency and community relations in the likes of Cyprus. Whilst he warns that his analysis is a “gross over simplification”, he can be insightful – if not at times prescient – as the problems he highlighted continue to blight us today: sectarian housing, segregation, the acceptability of policing and the lack of political direction. Nevertheless, it is this first paragraph of Kitson’s paper that I find most resonant. The very first sentence gives his – and by inference, the British Army’s – mission with regards to Internment:


“Operations in Belfast since 9th August have been carried out on the basis of so weakening the IRA that a future political initiative can be launched under favourable circumstances”

What a mess that turned out to be. Kitson recognised the “clumsiness of the Security Force machine” and that any success it had enjoyed in the months after Internment was “largely because both wings of the IRA were also clumsy, and indeed much too big for the purpose for which they were designed to fulfil”. The counter-insurgency theorist was mindful though that a slicker, leaner IRA would prove problematic for a lumbering British Army but he had prepared to develop just like his enemy:


“It is likely that having fined down the enemy organizations to the extent we have done, future successes will be increasingly hard to achieve from an operational point of view, unless we are able to make our own organization very much more efficient.”

Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military strategist, wrote hundreds of years before the birth of Christ “To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy”. Kitson may have had this in mind when he wrote:


“As you know we are taking steps to do this in terms of building up and developing the MRF and we are also steadily improving the capability of Special Branch… by building up Special Branch’s records with Int Corps Sections.”

Armed contact and information gathering are the foundations of Kitson’s low intensity counter-insurgency theory, and this is evident in this very sentence. So too is the importance of the MRF in his future plans. This is the earliest record of the MRF which I have found and here written by Frank Kitson on the day of my grandmother’s murder.

It may have been a ghost force for generations but the MRF was evidently the spearhead of Kitson’s campaign to eliminate the IRA. Indeed military reaction and military reconnaissance represented the two masked faces of the MRF – contact and information. We now know from this letter and paper too that the top brass of the British Army and the cream of Britain’s political class in the north of Ireland at the time also knew of its development and importance. Therefore, they cannot shirk the responsibility for the crimes the MRF carried out with impunity and in Britain’s name.

Lawyers representing the families of civilians murdered by the MRF, such as Daniel Rooney and Patrick McVeigh, should demand that the PSNI question 88 year old Brigadier Frank Kitson as the police have done elderly suspects of Loyalist and Republican killings carried out at the same time. Frank Kitson is allegedly as much a director of terrorism as any paramilitary leader as he records here the development of a clandestine unit at the cutting edge of British military plans which killed ordinary civilians.

As one former member of the MRF admitted to journalist John Ware in a recent Panorama programme:


“We were not there to act like an army unit. We were there to act like a terror group.” (2)

If the Police Service of Northern Ireland is truly impartial, Frank Kitson would be arrested and interrogated about these taped allegations. The PSNI may even take this paper as proof that he was instrumental in the initial development and direction of this death squad.

Unfortunately, though, we know that the PSNI does not deal with our past impartially. The police refusal to investigate filmed allegations of MRF criminality proved that.

Then again, none of these old soldiers – Frank Kitson included – have ever needed to go on the run or worry about amnesty, so why should police inaction surprise any of us.

Further Information:

Read the archive Future Developments in Belfast by Commander 39 Airportable Brigade (PDF 3MB)

Read more about the book The McGurk’s Bar Bombing

Download for free: From Belfast to Palestine: Post-War Counterinsurgency… A Very British Family Affair

Footnotes: (1) The MRF is also recorded as Military Reconnaissance Force but both may be correct as reconnaissance and reaction are two sides of the Kitson coin: information and contact; one section for each.

(2) Reported in the online Irish Times, 21 Nov 2013 (subscription link)






Ciarán MacAirt is an Irish writer and author of The McGurk’s Bar Bombing: Collusion, Cover-Up and a Campaign for Truth.
He also manages Paper Trail, an innovative social enterprise which offers legacy archive research services and helps families unearth the truth hidden in public records.

Boy agent reveals frame-up plot

A vulnerable teenager in west Belfast was recruited by the PSNI as an informer and then put under pressure to plant explosives and weapons on his neighbours, it has emerged.


The terrified nineteen-year-old Thomas Boyle, who has a history of self-harm, came forward to the media with a shocking account of PSNI abuse and illegality.

He said he was recruited last year after being arrested for shoplifting. He was then forced to plant tracking devices under the cars of prominent ‘dissident’ republicans at the behest of PSNI Special Branch and was even asked to plant a gun in a neighbour’s car and Semtex explosive in another neighbour’s shed.

Boyle confessed to his activities alter becoming afraid that he was “in over his head”.

Security sources are reported to have confirmed that Boyle had been working for the PSNI since last year.

The west Belfast teenager said he was prompted to confess after becoming afraid he was being coerced into carrying out ever more dangerous activities by his police handlers.

“They told me they wanted me to break into a car of a man who lived near me and plant a gun under the driver seat,” he said

“They said smash the side window and make it look like I was trying to steal [the car] and then leave the gun so they would find it when investigating the break-in.

“I met one man a few times at the top of the Whiterock [Road]. He gave me money and mobile phone SIM cards.

“He told me they were going to give me Semtex and wanted me to put it the garden shed of a man.

“If I didn’t they said I was going to be done with making hoax bomb calls and would get seven years [in prison]. They said they could pin other charges on me any time they wanted.

“It just all got too much and I told my ma about what had been happening.”

He was also ordered to try and join the dissident group Oglaigh na hEireann so he could report back on their activities. In return, the PSNI promised him thousands of pounds -- although he was only ever paid fifty pounds.

Oglaigh na hEireann said it had interrogated Boyle and released him over the weekend. PSNI and British army helicopters had been visible over west and north Belfast as they undertook a massive search for their teenage informant.

In a statement the group said the teenager had contacted them willingly.

“He is alive to tell his tale for a number of specific reasons, including the fact that he is quite plainly vulnerable and has fully admitted his covert activities,” it said.

The breakaway IRA group warned other informers to come forward.

“If we discover other agents in the future then the penalty will be death,” its statement read.

Sinn Fein Policing Board member Alex Maskey said that any use of informers against republicans should be ‘open to thorough scrutiny’.

“Using informers would be standard practice for police services the world over,” he said.

“However, we obviously have a polluted history of politicised activity which has often seen the use of agents provocateurs.

“I have no knowledge of this particular case but there has to be proper protocol and any allegations such as this need to be scrutinised,”he said.

Suicide prevention campaigner Phil McTaggart said the use of vulnerable young people as informants by the PSNI was a “disgrace”.

“When you have a young person who is already vulnerable and at a low ebb and put them under this type of enormous pressure then you leave them with very limited options.”

He advised any young person who is in a similar predicament as Boyle to seek help.

Carl Reilly of the Republican Network for Unity warned that people may have been charged by the PSNI on the back of evidence planted by an informer.

“Once again the re-branded RUC has destroyed its carefully contrived facade of normal civil policing by manipulating a young person to become an Informer and spearhead a British dirty tricks campaign in an attempt to whip up anti-republican hysteria in Belfast,” he said.

Throughout the recent conflict, the RUC and MI5 had blackmailed “scores” of agents to undermine working-class communities and the republican struggle, he said,

“This disturbing affair highlights the nefarious tactics used by Crown Forces to set up Irish Republicans for arrest, imprisonment or worse.”

He called for an independent investigation.

“Given the above revelations, the Republican Network for Unity ask nationalists and republicans to re-examine their support for the re-branded RUC, as it is clear they are not capable of the changes many believed were possible.”

ICC RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL WAR CRIME JUSTICE

The Palestinian Authority learned from it's mistakes, that it wasted too many years, trying to get justice at the UN, and within the various attempted accords with Israel. We Irish need to learn the same lessons, without wasting more time and energy, where it will not happen. The only place Ireland will get justice, is in the Hague, at the International Criminal Court. It is the responsibility of the Irish Authority of Elders, to execute this process immediately, before others start taking matters into their own hands. 

Careerist politicians in the north will not do this, they have vested interests elsewhere. Britain is buying time for all witnesses, to these events to pass on. Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them or have their children repeat them. The legacy of not dealing with our inherited British genocide in Ireland, is generations of more bloodshed. 
Anyone who cares to research this, will find  ample evidence. 

It is the responsibility of elders and leadership in Ireland and indeed in 'Britain,' to ensure this happens, in a timely manner in an objective Court, with a mandate to prosecute and restitute. That place is the ICC and the International Court of Arbitration, if need be thereafter. The names of the elders suggested by Irish Blog, are in a recent previous post, please notify them.


In the absence of a Press Release, the following are comments of People, who Marched for Justice, on the Bloody Sunday Commemoration, in Derry yesterday.

Anonymous A

Bloody Sunday march was a credit to the organisers, the video they showed was absolutely fantastic. Clare Daly speaking blew me away, she is awesome for a politician lol the lady from USA Patrice was brilliant and her chant was the highlight of the day. plenty of photos taken with a few suspect people paying particular attention to me, who needs the special branch eh? A great march all in all and a testament to the hard work and determination the committee put in every year

AboNymous B

It was great hope the Families get their Justice soon...

Anonymous C

 Brilliant...

Anonymous D

Stalkers lol take it as a compliment. Bless their hearts...

Anonymous E

 The love one another and release the shackles chant def got to me.....

Truth about the past is withheld

Posted on October 18, 2014 by JimAdmin

Journalist and Civil Rights Campaigner Eamonn McCann

by Eamonn McCann

On Thursday, Oct 2, 2014 Eamon McCann wrote an opinion column in the Irish Times.

He started:

“At the Tory party conference in Birmingham last Sunday, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Theresa Villiers said she was hopeful talks aimed at resolving problems to do with public spending, flags, parades and the past would begin within weeks and conclude before the end of the year.

One of the reasons this won’t happen is that the government of which she is part has no intention of allowing the truth to be told about its forces’ role in the Troubles.

The chances of loyalist or republican paramilitary groups making a clean breast of it are slim at best. The chances of the British government owning up are zero.”

Posted in News Tagged with: Bloody Sunday, Government, McCann

Rundown of inquiry Denounced

Posted on October 4, 2014 by JimAdmin

Rundown of Inquiry Denounced by Families

The run-down of the police inquiry into the Bloody Sunday murders is just the latest episode in the British State’s avoidance of the truth about its own role in the Troubles.

The new investigation was supposed to be stand-alone. But now it’s to take by far the biggest hit in the cut-backs in policing. That’s a political decision, not a cost-cutting measure. It shows what a low priority is being placed on bringing those responsible for Bloody Sunday to justice.

The report of the Bloody Sunday Tribunal was political. Lord Saville gave all British politicians and the army top brass a clean bill of health. All the blame was put on one middle-rank officer and nine rank and file paras. That finding did not follow from the evidence. But it followed the usual pattern of official inquiries.

accepted no blame

That was the reason David Cameron was able to give his apology at Westminster. He apologised for the murders, but put it all down to rogue soldiers. He accepted no blame on behalf of the government, the British Army or the Parachute Regiment.

In light of this new decision, making the police inquiry meaningless, the double-talk and hypocrisy of Cameron’s apology is even more glaring.

If the powers-that-be were truly sorry for Bloody Sunday, there would be no question of scaling the investigation back. What hope is there now for truth and justice for the families of those shot down by the paras in Ballymurphy six months before Bloody Sunday or the families of the two men murdered by paras on the Shankill eight months afterwards?

 latest chapter in a cover-up

What we have here is the latest chapter in a cover-up which was under way before the smoke had cleared from Rossville Street. It’s the same cover-up strategy seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, anywhere that soldiers from major powers are exposed for killing innocent civilians.

The PSNI inquiry had been making painfully slow progress. Now it has effectively been brought to a standstill. This decision was ostensibly made by the PSNI. But there is no doubt whose interests are ultimately served. To whom is Chief Constable George Hamilton accountable in relation to this decision.

 think again

If the Westminster Government or police chiefs in the North think that we don’t have the energy or determination to keep on campaigning until we get full truth and justice, they have another think coming.  Those who believe that there’s nothing left to march for in relation to Bloody Sunday should also think again.

not a narrow issue

This is not a narrow issue relevant only to one community in the North. It is relevant to everyone everywhere who believes that when the State kills its citizens it must be made accountable. The Bloody Sunday issue remains a key test of democracy.