Gerard 'Jock' Davison: GAA and church step back from 'tribute' to murdered ex-PROVO IRA leader
BY SARA NEILL – 13 MAY 2015 The GAA has distanced itself from a message of support for former IRA commander Gerard 'Jock' Davison, who was gunned down last week.
A Catholic church also sought to disassociate itself from a youth club based on its premises that also signed up to the tribute.
A full page tribute to the 47-year-old appeared in Saturday's edition of The Irish News. Signed by 63 groups, it paid tribute to the "highly esteemed" father-of-three.
Mr Davison was shot dead while walking in the Markets area of Belfast last Tuesday morning. Police are still hunting the killer. Davison was a leading republican and was linked to the murder of Robert McCartney outside Magennis's bar 10 years ago - claims he always denied. It is claimed he was ousted from the IRA following the brutal killing, and he became well-known as a community worker in the area.
The advert in the paper claimed it had been written to do "justice to the memory" of Jock Davison.
The statement said: "They say that the hardest thing for a man to do is change with the times. Jock not only managed and adapted but managed to thrive in difficult circumstances, without compromising an iota of his deeply held principles."
St Malachy's GAC joined other organisations, including residents' associations, women's groups and youth projects in putting their name below the message.
Mr Davison was a senior figure at the club, and a spokesman for the GAA said it was "not uncommon" for clubs to take out death notices for members.
He said: "This decision was entirely up to the discretion of the committee of the club. The tribute is community-orientated. I think this individual was involved in the club and he's being remembered in his capacity at the club."
He added that the page-long tribute was in "recognition of the deceased".
"The club has nothing to do with anything [Mr Davison] does away from it. When people cross the door of a GAA club they leave their past outside."
When asked if he agreed with St Malachy's decision to lend its support to the page, the GAA spokesman said: "St Malachy's hasn't breached any GAA rule."
A Catholic church also declined to put its full weight behind the tribute while Clonard Monastery Youth Centre also appears on the list supporting Mr Davison.
A spokesman for Clonard Monastery said: "The signatory was acting in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the management of the youth centre. The Clonard Monastery Youth Centre is a voluntary youth centre governed by a management committee."
PPS urged to explain why it didn't prosecute Gerry Adams for withholding paedophile brother information
Gerry Adams
BY SUZANNE BREEN – 12 MAY 2015 Former Health Minister Edwin Poots is demanding that the Public Prosecution Service immediately publishes a report into its decision not to prosecute Gerry Adams for withholding information about his paedophile brother, Liam.
Mr Poots said that the PPS "risked losing public confidence" if it didn't quickly release the material which has been in its possession for around a year.
"This is the gravest possible matter, it concerns the safety and welfare of children, and a senior politician disgracefully not passing on vital information in an abuse case for nine long years," he added.
He said the PPS's previous reason for not publishing the report - Liam Adams' outstanding appeal - no longer held as he lost his appeal last week.
The DUP MLA said he would be raising the issue as "very urgent business" at Thursday's Justice Committee meeting in Stormont.
A PPS spokeswoman last night said: "We are committed to publishing the report and it will be announced shortly."
After Liam Adams' conviction in 2013 for raping his daughter Aine, the Attorney General John Larkin began a review of the PPS's decision not to prosecute Gerry Adams for withholding information in the case.
Gerry Adams said that his brother confessed to him in 2000 that he had sexually abused Aine. But the Sinn Fein President did not report this to police for nine years.
Liam Adams was sentenced to 16 years in prison for raping and sexually abusing Aine from 1977 to 1983 from when she was four years old until she was nine.
Mr Poots said: "Liam Adams has been found guilty of the most serious child abuse at both his original trial and now appeal.
"There is grave public concern that Gerry Adams had information that could have brought this evil paedophile to justice years ago.
"Instead, the police were deprived of information which could have seen Liam Adams behind bars a lot sooner.
"We must immediately have access to the Attorney General's findings on the PPS's decision not to prosecute Gerry Adams.
"The PPS had previously indicated that it couldn't publish the report because of any impact it might have on Liam Adams' appeal of his conviction.
"Liam Adams lost his appeal last week. His legal proceedings have now concluded and there are no possible reasons for the PPS to continue letting dust gather on this report."
The Belfast Telegraph understands that the Attorney General's findings and a number of recommendations were forwarded to the PPS around a year ago.
Gerry Adams gave evidence for the prosecution during his brother's first trial in April 2013.
Untruths and evasions in Mr Adams' account of his dealings with his brother Liam were exposed under cross-examination.
That trial collapsed for unconnected legal reasons.
The prosecution decided not to call Gerry Adams as a witness during the second trial.
After four hours' deliberations, the jury found Liam Adams guilty of all 10 counts of sexual abuse by a majority of 11 to one.
Liam Adams did not appear in court for his appeal verdict last week but watched proceedings via video link from Maghaberry.
Neither he, nor his wife Bronagh who was in the public gallery, showed any emotion as his appeal was refused.
In their judgment, Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan, Lord Justice Gillen and Lord Justice Coghlin said: "The court has not been persuaded that the verdict of the jury was unsafe and, consequently, the appeal must be dismissed."
A Transportation Security Administration sign at Los Angeles’ main rail terminal, Union Station, urges that suspicious activities be reported to authorities. It declares, “If You See Something Say Something.” (AP / Damian Dovarganes)
May 11, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "Truthdig" - A totalitarian state is only as strong as its informants. And the United States has a lot of them. They read our emails. They listen to, download and store our phone calls. They photograph us on street corners, on subway platforms, in stores, on highways and in public and private buildings. They track us through our electronic devices. They infiltrate our organizations. They entice and facilitate “acts of terrorism” by Muslims, radical environmentalists, activists and Black Bloc anarchists, framing these hapless dissidents and sending them off to prison for years. They have amassed detailed profiles of our habits, our tastes, our peculiar proclivities, our medical and financial records, our sexual orientations, our employment histories, our shopping habits and our criminal records. They store this information in government computers. It sits there, waiting like a time bomb, for the moment when the state decides to criminalize us. Totalitarian states record even the most banal of our activities so that when it comes time to lock us up they can invest these activities with subversive or criminal intent. And citizens who know, because of the courage of Edward Snowden, that they are being watched but naively believe they “have done nothing wrong” do not grasp this dark and terrifying logic. Tyranny is always welded together by subterranean networks of informants. These informants keep a populace in a state of fear. They perpetuate constant anxiety and enforce isolation through distrust. The state uses wholesale surveillance and spying to break down trust and deny us the privacy to think and speak freely. A state security and surveillance apparatus, at the same time, conditions all citizens to become informants. In airports and train, subway and bus stations the recruitment campaign is relentless. We are fed lurid government videos and other messages warning us to be vigilant and report anything suspicious. The videos, on endless loops broadcast through mounted television screens, have the prerequisite ominous music, the shady-looking criminal types, the alert citizen calling the authorities and in some cases the apprehended evildoer being led away in handcuffs. The message to be hypervigilant and help the state ferret out dangerous internal enemies is at the same time disseminated throughout government agencies, the mass media, the press and the entertainment industry. “If you see something say something,” goes the chorus. In any Amtrak station, waiting passengers are told to tell authorities—some of whom often can be found walking among us with dogs—about anyone who “looks like they are in an unauthorized area,” who is “loitering, staring or watching employees and customers,” who is “expressing an unusual level of interest in operations, equipment, and personnel,” who is “dressed inappropriately for the weather conditions, such as a bulky coat in summer,” who “is acting extremely nervous or anxious,” who is “restricting an individual’s freedom of movement” or who is “being coached on what to say to law enforcement or immigration officials.” What is especially disturbing about this constant call to become a citizen informant is that it directs our eyes away from what we should see—the death of our democracy, the growing presence and omnipotence of the police state, and the evisceration, in the name of our security, of our most basic civil liberties. Manufactured fear engenders self-doubt. It makes us, often unconsciously, conform in our outward and inward behavior. It conditions us to relate to those around us with suspicion. It destroys the possibility of organizing, community and dissent. We have built what Robert Gellately calls a “culture of denunciation.” Snitches in prisons, the quintessential totalitarian system, are the glue that allows prison authorities to maintain control and keep prisoners divided and weak. Snitches also populate the courts, where the police make secret deals to drop or mitigate charges against them in exchange for their selling out individuals targeted by the state. Our prisons are filled with people serving long sentences based on false statements that informants provided in exchange for leniency. There are no rules in this dirty game. Police, like prison officials, can offer snitches deals that lack judicial oversight or control. (Deals sometimes involve something as trivial as allowing a prisoner access to food like cheeseburgers.) Snitches allow the state to skirt what is left of our legal protections. Snitches can obtain information for the authorities and do not have to give their targets a Miranda warning. And because of the desperation of most who are recruited to snitch, informants will do almost anything asked of them by authorities. Just as infected as the prisons and the courts are poor neighborhoods, which abound with snitches, many of them low-level drug dealers allowed to sell on the streets in exchange for information. And from there our culture of snitches spirals upward into the headquarters of the National Security Agency, Homeland Security and the FBI. Systems of police and military authority are ruthless when their own, such as Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning, become informants on behalf of the common good. The power structure imposes walls of silence and harsh forms of retribution within its ranks in an effort to make sure no one speaks. Power understands that once it is divided, once those inside its walls become snitches, it becomes as weak and vulnerable as those it subjugates. We will not be able to reclaim our democracy and free ourselves from tyranny until the informants and the vast networks that sustain them are banished. As long as we are watched 24 hours a day we cannot use the word “liberty.” This is the relationship of a master and a slave. Any prisoner understands this. Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his masterpiece “The Gulag Archipelago,” which chronicles his time in Josef Stalin’s gulags and is a brilliant reflection of the nature of oppression and tyranny, describes a moment when an influx of western Ukrainians who had been soldiers during World War II arrived at his camp, at Ekibastuz. The Ukrainians, he wrote, “were horrified by the apathy and slavery they saw, and reached for their knives.” They began to murder the informants. Solzhenitsyn continued:
“Kill the stoolie!” That was it, the vital link! A knife in the heart of the stoolie! Make knives and cut the stoolie’s throats—that was it! Now as I write this chapter, rows of humane books frown down at me from the walls, the tarnished gilt on their well-worn spines glinting reproachfully like stars through the cloud. Nothing in the world should be sought through violence! By taking up the sword, the knife, the rifle, we quickly put ourselves on the level of tormentors and persecutors. And there will be no end to it. … There will be no end. … Here, at my desk, in a warm place, I agree completely. If you ever get twenty-five years for nothing, if you find yourself wearing four number patches on your clothes, holding your hands permanently behind your back, submitting to searches morning and evening, working until you are utterly exhausted, dragged into the cooler whenever someone denounces you, trodden deeper and deeper into the ground—from the hole you’re in, the fine words of the great humanists will sound like the chatter of the well-fed and free. There will be no end of it! ... But will there be a beginning? Will there be a ray of hope in our lives or not? The oppressed at least concluded that evil cannot be cast out by good.
The eradication of some snitches and intimidation of others transformed the camp. It was, Solzhenitsyn admits, an imperfect justice since there was no “documentary confirmation that a man was an informer.” But, he noted, even this “improperly constituted, illegal, and invisible court was much more acute in its judgments, much less often mistaken, than any of the tribunals, panels of three, courts-martial, or Special Boards with which we are familiar.” “Of the five thousand men about a dozen were killed, but with every stroke of the knife more and more of the clinging, twining tentacles fell away,” he wrote. “A remarkable fresh breeze was blowing! On the surface we were prisoners living in a camp just as before, but in reality we had become free—free because for the very first time in our lives we had started saying openly and aloud all that we thought! No one who has not experienced this transition can imagine what it is like! And the informers … stopped informing.” The camp bosses, he wrote “were suddenly blind and deaf. To all appearances, the tubby major, his equally tubby second in command, Captain Prokofiev, and all the wardens walked freely about the camp, where nothing threatened them; moved among us, watched us—and yet saw nothing! Because a man in uniform sees and hears nothing without stoolies.” The system of internal control in the camp broke down. Prisoners no longer would serve as foremen on work details. Prisoners organized their own self-governing council. Guards began to move about the camp in fear and no longer treated prisoners like cattle. Pilfering and theft among prisoners stopped. “The old camp mentality—you die first, I’ll wait a bit; there is no justice so forget it; that’s the way it was, and that’s the way it will be—also began to disappear.” Solzhenitsyn concluded this chapter, “Behind the Wire the Ground Is Burning,” in Volume 3 of his book, with this reflection.
Purged of human filth, delivered from spies and eavesdroppers we looked about and saw, wide-eyed that … we were thousands! That we were … politicals!That we could resist! We had chosen well; the chain would snap if we tugged at this link—the stoolies, the talebearers and traitors! Our own kind had made our lives impossible. As on some ancient sacrificial altar, their blood had been shed that we might be freed from the curse that hung over us. The revolution was gathering strength. The wind that seemed to have subsided had sprung up again in a hurricane to fill our eager lungs.
Later in the book Solzhenitsyn would write, “Our little island had experienced an earthquake—and ceased to belong to the Archipelago.” Freedom demands the destruction of the security and surveillance organs and the disempowering of the millions of informants who work for the state. This is not a call to murder our own stoolies—although some of the 2.3 million prisoners in cages in America’s own gulags would perhaps rightly accuse me of writing this from a position of privilege and comfort and not understanding the brutal dynamics of oppression – but instead to accept that unless these informants on the streets, in the prisons and manning our massive, government data-collection centers are disarmed we will never achieve liberty. I do not have quick and simple suggestions for how this is to be accomplished. But I know it must.
Get off your knees you grovelling bastards This is Oliver twist pissing over Britannia 200 years of Tin Pan Alley I learned good from a king thief mentor Newgate, Broadstreet, Langdales Distillery Papist threats and no popery It's a beautiful night again So paint the wall white again Brutality for the kids Oliver Twist
There was this gang who I used to run with Ragamuffins, urchin scum, spivs Looking good comes in handy When you're dipping in the pockets of a dandy And there's treason in the air, it's just a leap of faith There's murder in the air at Rillington Place A Christie lives in Soho This is the Oliver Twist Manifesto Totality for the kids Oliver Twist _
Neoliberalism? Neocons? These are the fraudulent names, $hame Fein operate under, while still claiming the Republican tag, as they administer the merger of state and corporate power, from a still sectarian Stormont in Occupied Ireland.. Mussolini called it "Fascism." It is now impossible to know in either parts of Ireland, where the corporations end or the government begins, with privatization and if people believe voting for Provisional $inn Fein will change that, the proof that they are in reality, old wine in new bottles, can be seen in their Stormont Administration. They have lost every shred of republican ideology and enforced Nazism, with street gangs and mafia law of the Baggot/Kray Twin variety, in collaboration, with British, political policing of the RUC/psni. The German Nazi party lived the high life and so do $inn Fein, with their padded, expense accounts. Their opulent lifestyle, is supported by British menial labour, that results in deprivation, in most of their scum state. Twenty years after they grovelled to the Bad Friday Agreement, on the backs of dead Freedom Fighters, it is time we stopped using obscure terms, like Neocon, Neoliberal, for these collaborators and their Blueshirt cousins in the south, and use the commonly understood name of Nazis.
The proof of their Mafia Law of street gangs, can be found in the graveyards of Belfast, Derry and South Armagh. The proof of their political policing and internment of Community Activists in Maghaberry, and their censorship of alternative voices in their manipulation and dirty tricks of social media and murdered victims of their mafia. Once again we have another Stormont ragime, sowing another bitter harvest. Their mantra of claiming to be forced to adminster Tory cuts, will simply not wash. Their predecessors the SDLP, had the politcal principles to boycott the monstrosity of Stormont, on these issues, along with political internment. You will find no principles, among the fat cats of unprincipled $hame Fein, who simply pad their bank accounts and blame dissident tactical voting, for their decline and loss of seats. If these dissident voices are as a scarce, as they claimed a few months ago, how come the SDLP, now have almost the same number or that they failed in North Belfast and Fermanagh/South Tyrone, where they campaigned, on a sectarian majority headcount and sectarian politics, that violate every non-sectraian traditional Irish Republican Principle. In so doing so, they have demonstrated in plain view, their opportunist, unprincipled, populist, self-serving, grovelling nature, in their lust for power at all costs, with a sociopathic zeal, that puts Hitler in the shade.
Almost fifty yeara ago, the Civil Rights Movement, exercised their right to march on Irish Occupied streets, along with exercising their right to Free Speech. Even those two Civil rights have now been removed from the people by the $inn Fein Administration. The people marched for equality and against Internment. Almost fifty years later, those demands have not been met. They were shot off the streets of Derry and Ballymurphy and as result, Freedom Fighters fought for the freedom of Irish citizens, who still remain British commoners, at her Majesty's service, courtesy of $inn Fein collaboration with the Orange Order. The ideals of freedom loving people, have been betrayed by collaborators, fascists with their mafia goons of enforccement. People of no property, will be forced to march again, to restore their birthright, Power to the People. The $inn Fein Stormont Junta excuses, of blaming the Tories or the Dissidents, will simply not wash anymore. They have utterly failed, to take the responsibilities of elected office, and in so doing enabled the rape of Irish children and the material rape of their communities. They are now, once again failing, with their blame games in the face of draconian cuts of basic services of any civilized society.
The dire conditions of deprivation, almost thirty years after election, in their constiuencies of West Belfast, Derry and Newry, are testament, to their utter failure in elected office. Neither have the grovelling bastards, inpressed the Unionist tradition, as the recent election demonstrates. Their justifcation of persuasion, for Bad Friday, has no credibilty, whatsoever with Unioniosts, who watch their mix of grovelling brown nosing, coupled with sectarian headcounts, in utter disgust . Whether one calls it the Stocholm Syndrome, Gombeenism or Slave Mentality, they exhibit all the qualities of inter-generational paedophillia or poacher turned game-keeper. They are neither Republican or Socialist b +y any measure. They are in reality Nazi, who blindly follow their Fuerher. Irish people will soon be confronted with this monster. We must call out it's activites for what they actually are, before it is too late, and get back on the street for our Civil Rights and Birth Rights!
The Inhuman Failure of ‘Austerity’
By David William Pear
May 09, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "Consortium News" - Close your eyes and imagine an affluent society with subsonic trains crisscrossing the continent. One that produces unlimited clean energy. Provides basic healthcare for everyone. Values education for its own sake. Cultivates the arts and research to discover beauty and the unknown. An affluent society that responds with compassion to natural disaster. Conserves natural resources and protects the environment. And enjoys more leisure time. Cares about eliminating poverty and illiteracy. That ends racism and prejudice.Does the affluent society seem like a dream? Is it an impossible goal? The neoliberals think it is. They imagine a world of austerity and a new Gilded Age. The neoliberals are prisoners of the Eighteenth Century. They have not advanced since the neo-feudal teachings of Adam Smith (1723-1790). Smith is the godfather of economics and wrote the “bible” of capitalism, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith was among the first to give much thought about economics. In Eighteenth Century Great Britain, half the population lived in poverty. They survived, if they did, with disease, famine, illiteracy, lack of sanitation and in slums. It was normal then. Things had always been that way. They thought the poor, starving and ignorant mass of people would always be among them. They thought their society was according to the law of nature. Smith was a charitable man. He fretted about poverty, and gave a great deal of thought about wages. With a large pool of the unemployed, the new industrial class only had to pay subsistence wages. Smith tried to tell the industrialists that people were like cattle. He said if one gave their cows more grass, then they would produce more milk. The industrialists said that if they gave their workers higher wages, then it would come out of profits, and the workers would just produce more children with mouths to feed, leading to greater starvation. The neoliberals still think this way. Every progressive social project the neoliberals call it socialism, as if that is an obscene word. The only government projects they like are those that benefit the private sector, corporations and the wealthy. Almost every modern democracy has done better than the US at providing good government for its people. All the evidence proves it. The US consistently ranks far below more progressive countries on the United Nations Human Development Index that measures health, education and equality of income. On the Social Progress Index, which measures “Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellness, and Opportunity” (see interactive map); the US is ranked sixteenth, and well behind other developed democratic nations. Those countries doing better have not degenerated into totalitarianism, as the neoliberals predict. The neoliberals see Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin behind every government social program. In the 1940s the neoliberal’s idol, Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992) wrote a thesis called The Road to Serfdom. It is a simple book in its Eighteenth Century theories about government and freedom. There is a comic book version, courtesy of General Motors. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for it. John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) and Hayek were colleagues at the London School of Economics. They had a long-running debate for years over the role of government. Keynes realized that government was important, that it has an active role in the economy. He said the government could do “good” and manage the economy well. Hayek said it was the road to serfdom. Keynes was an economic advisor for the British government during World War I. He also advised the British during the Treaty of Versailles to negotiate Germany’s surrender. Keynes resigned from his position at Versailles in disgust, saying the harsh austerity the Allies were demanding of Germany and Austria would cause massive poverty and starvation. He said it was inhumane and would result in the rise of fascism and war. He proved to be right. He was not awarded the Nobel Prize. In the Twenty-first Century, the European Union is imposing harsh austerity on its weaker members. The neoliberals are dismantling Europe’s progressive social programs. We are seeing the rise of fascism again too. So which is more likely to cause fascism and war: Austerity for the people, or progressive government social programs? Hayek said he did not mind a dictatorship, as long as it is neoliberal. The neoliberals like right-wing dictators. During the Great Depression (1929-1939), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned to Keynes for advice about the Great Depression. Keynes wrote a letter to Roosevelt advising him on the need for government social programs to stimulate the economy. Keynes further warned FDR that lowering interest rates and increasing the money supply alone would only bailout speculators, but would not sustain economic recovery. By contrast, President Barack Obama took the neoliberal advice in the Great Recession and bailed out the speculators. Keynes would have predicted that the result would be anemic economic recovery. He would have been right. Keynes gave worthy advice that would do the American people well in the Twenty-first Century. The neoliberals keep sabotaging good advice from past sages. Their sabotage is well-funded by corporations, foundations, foreign governments and the wealthy. John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) was a genius with Twenty-first Century ideas. Galbraith served as an economic advisor to both FDR and John F. Kennedy. His most famous book isThe Affluent Society (1958), a popular book during the 1960s. During the Stagflation of the 1970s, the neoliberals allied with the religious-right and racists to purge Keynes’s and Galbraith’s teachings. In the 1980s, the Reagan-Thatcher revolution established neoliberals, corporate hegemony and right-wing extremists in the halls of power. The first experiment of the neoliberals was in Chile during the 1970s. It led to the rise of Pinochet, fascism and crimes against humanity. Hayek said in a 1978 letter to the Times of London that he personally approved of Pinochet, preferring a dictator to a democratic government without neoliberalism. Hayek made one excuse after another for Pinochet. He was not even faithful to his own principles, and said Pinochet’s firing squads would transition to democracy. Those on the wrong end of Pinochet’s firing squads would not live to see that miracle. The neoliberals never take responsibility, admit they are wrong, or say they are sorry. (See example, here.) Galbraith’s discarded ideas had some excellent questions and answers to ponder in the Twenty-first Century. What is our obsession with economic growth and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), when an affluent society already produces all the private goods and services needed, Galbraith asked? And, shouldn’t we be more concerned about what is produced instead of how much? He said there is a “problem with social balance … private affluence and public squalor … as well as related environmental, aesthetic, and cultural concerns.” He was a man for the Twenty-first Century. Neoliberals are not against fascist and corporate planning of the economy. Fascists use the firing squad as their economic planning tool. Corporations use monopoly power, public relations departments and political graft. Corporations are hierarchical organizations that meet in secret to decide what to produce and the price people will pay. They spend billions of dollars on advertising to change consumer preferences and move their products off the shelves. Their propaganda has created a privatized culture of consumerism, materialism and gluttony. The corporations are dictating government programs too. Their oligarchies have taken over governments globally at all levels. They plan the government and the economy for their own profit and greed. Corporate oligarchies and neoliberals attack every social program for the public. They impose austerity on the public sector and the people. The impoverished public sector is in dire need of investment. Education could use a tsunami of new investment. The lack of investment for education, especially in poor neighborhoods, is glaring. The neoliberals blame “bad teachers.” They want to privatize public schools and hire proctors that will work for the minimum wage, so their hedge funds can make billions of dollars in profits that should be going to education. Higher education is failing too. Students are condemned to indentured servitude to payoff student loans. Young people have been indoctrinated that the value of education is to learn how to work for corporations and the military. College graduates discover that there are no jobs for their qualifications. Neoliberals stuck in the Eighteenth Century say the answer is that not everybody needs an education to be a widget or carry a gun. They want other people’s students to enroll in online schools pushed by their hedge funds, while their kids go to Harvard, Yale and MIT. An affluent society needs educated people. There is a cadre of potential teachers, healthcare workers, nutritionists, scientists, sociologists, historians, artists, engineers and administrators now working at meaningless minimum wage jobs. There is an abundance of opportunity for college graduates in an affluent society. New community centers could staff professionals to enrich the lives of seniors, teens and children. With people living longer, retired seniors could improve their lives and social activity by taking courses and enjoying the arts. Teens could have tutoring, learn to play chess, take music lessons, cooking classes, creative writing, languages, and have supervised sports. The possibilities for public investments and to improve the quality of life, and provide meaningful jobs are endless. Neoliberals want everybody to sit alone at home and watch TV. Malnourished and neglected children are unacceptable in an affluent society. The problem is not a lack of resources. It is because of unequal distribution. There is a shameful lack of prenatal care. As a result, infant mortality in the US is higher than every developed nation. It is 30 percent higher than even Cuba, which the neoliberals constantly chastise about its human rights. New parents could get healthcare, infant care and education in an affluent society. Instead, Eighteenth Century neoliberals want to kill Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid; and they want to privatize the Veterans Administration. Their greed is insatiable. Obama promised single-payer healthcare. The public got excited and wanted it. The Eighteenth Century neoliberals killed it in the womb. Long-term health care and homecare goes uncovered by any public insurance. Neoliberals let the old and disabled go without and die, as if those people are just useless eaters. Instead an affluent society would treat the old and disabled humanely; and single-payer healthcare would create more careers and professional jobs. Twice a day every workday the highways are in gridlock with automobiles idling, burning fossil fuel and polluting the air. Clean, fast and comfortable light-rail and motor coaches would be quicker, more comfortable and use less energy. Building and operating a Twenty-first Century mass transportation industry would make commuting time productive and leisurely; and create more skilled jobs. An affluent society should not neglect the unemployed. The public sector has the responsibility of full-employment and providing for those unemployed. Employees did not volunteer to be the risk-takers of capitalism. They should not be condemned to their fate because they were unlucky and chose the wrong industry or employer years ago. Society must also face the reality that some people are permanently unable to work because of social, emotional and health reasons. The unemployed need treatment, counseling, education and care; which would also create more jobs. These are just a few ideas, some from Galbraith’s The Affluent Society. As Galbraith said in 1958, the private sector is a king; the public sector is a pauper. They can both be royalty. The neoliberals and their alter-ego, the neocons, do not have any good ideas for the Twenty-first Century. They have caused financial disasters and endless wars, and they tell us not to expect better. Part of the public sector that is not a pauper but should be is the military. The military-industrial complex is wasting vast resources making machines of death. Society is spending trillions of dollars to send armies to invade other countries. We spend trillions of dollars in order to protect us from imaginary enemies and those that our wars have created. It does not make us any safer. The jobs that it creates do not add any value. The Eighteen Century neoliberals and the neoconservatives say that government economic planning will destroy our freedom, while they plan the economy for war and financial speculation. The neocons say the American people must give up the Bill of Rights in exchange for safety. The neoliberals say that austerity will bring prosperity. Instead we are less free and more poor. They are leading us down the road to fascism and serfdom. Let’s open our eyes and stop listening to the neoliberals.
By Craig Murray May 10, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - The almost total blackout on broadcast media of the police attack on the popular protest by thousands outside Downing Street – with 30 injured and 17 arrests – is in stark contrast to the wall to wall coverage of the staged fake “riot” in Glasgow in which 6 people were slightly rude to Jim Murphy with no arrests and no injuries. Thanks to the UK’s appalling electoral system, we now have a seriously right wing government with absolute power from an absolute parliamentary majority, but which 63% of voters voted against, and which was supported by only 23% of those eligible to vote. Many of the 38% who did not vote at all, were not apathetic but actively disgusted by a corrupt political system which offers little meaningful choice in most of the UK. Legitimacy is a different question to legality. The government is undoubtedly legal under the current rotten system, but its legitimacy is a different question entirely. Legitimacy lies on the popular consent of the governed. With an extreme government supported by only 23% of the population, actively planning to inflict actual harm on many more than 23% of the population, there are legitimate philosophical questions to be asked about the right of the government to rule. With so many, particularly but not exclusively young people, now reading sources like this one and not being enthralled by the mainstream media, today’s protest is but a start. Time Bomb in Cameron Government. A Future “Little Britain”, separated from Scotland, subservient to America, outside the EU?
The Irreconcilable opposition of SNP to CFI lobby as well as Trident
By Anthony BellchambersMay 10, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "GR" - A future Little Britain: separated from Scotland, subservient to America, outside the European Union and beholden to the conflicting agendas of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) lobby and the SNP is a frightening prospect. A government expenditure of £100 billion to replace the Trident nuclear deterrent would be about as protective to Britain as writing a powerful computer virus which if used would permanently damage our own entire communications infrastructure leaving all state security systems disabled. The Trident weapon of mass destruction has no legitimate purpose: its use would be impossible as huge numbers of civilians, including millions of British citizens, would be unavoidable victims. The plain facts are that: ‘international terrorism, cyber-attacks and natural hazards as greater threats than nuclear war. The cost of replacing Trident would be enough to fully fund A&E services in UK for 40 years, employ 150,000 new nurses, build 1.5 million affordable homes, build 30,000 new primary schools, or cover tuition fees for 4 million students.’ The Trident so-called deterrent is for status reasons only. It should be scrapped and Britain’s defence infrastructure should be rebuilt without nuclear or chemical weapons of mass destruction and without any collaboration from Israeli-owned arms suppliers. Britain’s defence should not be compromised by the use of equipment sourced from outside the EU or NATO. To do so, potentially places us, in Britain, all in danger in the event of any future conflict. The Conservative government’s current defence policy is dangerously flawed and with an isolated Britain divorced from Scotland and outside the EU – would be an easy target for international terrorism.
How Big Money and Big Brother won the British Elections By Nafeez Ahmed
May 10, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - The Conservatives have won the 2015 elections with a slim majority. Labour and the Liberal Democrats suffered unexpected crushing defeats, prompting their leaders, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, to resign. And despite winning a significant percentage of votes, UKIP only managed to win one seat, with its leader Nigel Farage also resigning after losing to a Tory MP.
But the Tory victory reveals precisely why British democracy is broken.
The ultimate determinant of which party won the elections was the money behind their political campaigns — the winning and losing parties correlate directly with the quantity of funding received. Yet there is also compelling evidence of another factor — interference from Britain’s security services.
The best democracy money can buy
As of the end of last year, the Electoral Commission found that the Tories received the largest amount of donations, at £8,345,687, the bulk of which came from financiers associated with banks, the hedge fund industry, and big business. Two million pounds worth of donations were associated with hedge funds, and a further £4 million with people attending private dinners hosted by senior Tories.
Next up in donations was Labour at £7,163,988, much of which came from trade unions, as well as corporate donors like PricewaterhouseCoopers, a major proponent of corporate tax avoidance; then the Liberal Democrats with £3,038,500, UKIP with £1,505,055, and the Green Party with £248,520.
That was last year. This year, donations continued to come in. In the final week of the campaign, the Tories managed to raise 10 times more donations than Labour — a total of a further £1.36 million — once again largely from hedge fund managers, property tycoons, and a telecoms firm that has avoided paying corporation tax in the UK since 2007.
Political parties appear to have achieved electoral success in direct proportion to the amount of money received to fund their political campaigns, indicating that the most important precondition for victory in Britain’s broken democracy is the party’s subservience to corporate power.
Oligarchy
The role of party donors in determining election outcomes — by determining the effectiveness and reach of national public relations campaigns — has consistently been overlooked by the main parties, despite some obligatory lipservice that has gone nowhere tangible.
Over the last five years, 41% of all individual and corporate donations to British party political-related causes have come from just 76 extremely wealthy people, including City financiers, corporate moguls, and owners of multi-million pound businesses.
Public relations spin has increasingly played a critical function in permitting corporate power to translate its wealth into political power.
In their study of the subject, A Century of Spin (2007), Prof. David Miller and Dr. William Dinan, sociologists and directors of the public interest investigations body, Spinwatch, show how the corporate co-optation of PR has been used to subordinate liberal democracies to corporate rule, and to limit the scope of populist grassroots movements to influence the political party system.
Under a climate of economic uncertainty and lack of independent sources of news and information, public opinion has become evermore vulnerable to slick partisan campaigns that mobilise wealth to create highly effective media spin by which to manipulate voters.
The Tory-UKIP money machine
While UKIP has positioned itself as an independent counterweight to the ‘establishment’ parties, standing up for swathes of under-represented working people, the truth is the opposite.
A large bulk of UKIP’s funding boost came from former Tory donors, millionaire bankers, and corporate executives, pushing the fringe party to receive the third largest percentage of the vote.
But not all these former Tory donors are former Tory donors.
‘Former’ Tory donor Robin Birley, for instance, who owns a Mayfair nightclub and who is one of UKIP’s biggest donors, had also bankrolled the campaign of Tory MP Michael Gove, government chief whip.
Another major former Tory donor, Growth Financial Services, switched to UKIP in 2014, giving the party £90,000 before switching back to fund the re-election campaigns of two prominent Tory MPs, Amber Rudd and Mark Field, who sits on the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee.
Similarly, hedge fund millionaire Crispin Odey donated to UKIP in 2014, but in late March 2015 provided funds to support the re-election of Tory MP and climate denier Jacob Rees-Mogg.
In other words, a number of major Tory donors plugged into the heart of the Conservative Party establishment were funding both UKIP and Tory political opponents.
Days before the elections, Tory-UKIP funder Robin Birley told pro-Tory newspaperThe Telegraph that UKIP supporters should strategically vote Conservative in seats that UKIP could not win — which was most of them. In seats that Tories were unlikely to win, he urged Tory supporters to vote UKIP.
This Tory-UKIP switch strategy, he said, would “stop Britain being left with a government being formed by a hard left rabble of parties.”
Ironically, Birley’s recommendations for UKIP supporters to vote tactically for the Tories were vehemently opposed by Nigel Farage, the very leader of the party he had funded.
But the idea of a Tory-UKIP strategic voting bloc had also been endorsed just days before Birley’s announcement by the Bow Group, the oldest conservative think-tank in Britain.
Chaired by Ben Harris-Quinney, who has worked on foreign policy issues for the Conservative Party in the UK and EU parliaments, the Bow Group includes on its board of patrons several senior Tory figures, such as Lord Norman Lamont, Lord Michael Heseltine, Lord Michael Howard, and Lord Earl Howe — who as of 2010 was appointed by David Cameron as Department of Health minister.
MI5 and The Bow Group
The Bow Group’s Conservative Party patrons had all served in senior Cabinet positions, under either Margaret Thatcher or John Major. All four of them made a point of publicly distancing themselves from their chairman’s exhortations to vote UKIP, which were published by The Telegraph.
But also on the board of patrons is renowned philosopher, Prof. Roger Scruton, who has been connected to dubious anti-left intelligence information operations. Unlike his colleagues in the Tory party, Scruton was silent throughout this affair.
In the 1980s, Scruton was a member of the neoconservative Hillgate Group, a network of British academics who coordinated various policy publications to influence government. Their focus was hyping up the threat of Marxist, leftwing or “radical” infiltration of British universities and schools. Scruton admitted to historian David Callaghan, however, that the Group’s policy reports were “quietly encouraged by 10 Downing Street to concoct an outside pressure group to influence policy.”
Scruton’s Hillgate Group was run by Baroness Caroline Cox, another senior Conservative Party figure with a history of political agitation on behalf of British intelligence. In 1977, Cox was part of a study group behind a report on how leftwing “radical minorities” were subverting “capitalist, free market civilisation.” The report was published by the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC), a “think tank” created jointly by the British and American intelligence services, specifically the CIA, an MI5-MI6 linked intelligence unit in the Cabinet Office, and the Foreign Office.
The Bow Group’s role in promoting the Tory-UKIP voting strategy was therefore not a curious aberration. Rather, it reflected a strategy being explored by senior elements in the Tory establishment and its elite support-base in the corporate oligarchy.
Scruton’s role in the Bow Group further raises questions about the role of Downing Street and Britain’s intelligence services in the use of UKIP to ramp up pro-Tory votes.
Roger Scruton could not be reached for comment.
MI5 and UKIP
Unbeknown to many, UKIP too had early roots in Britain’s intelligence services.
In 2001, former Conservative Party chairman Norman Tebbit called for an independent inquiry into revelations that UKIP had been infiltrated by MI5. In a televised interview on BBC News, Tebbit said:
“A chap came to me and said UKIP had been infiltrated by the British intelligence services and then he gave me two names of people and from various ways I came to the conclusion that I was absolutely and completely certain that these people — although they had left the service and the Foreign Office some years earlier — in fact had been intelligence agents.”
As Tebbit explained in a Spectatorarticle that even Douglas Murray recently endorsed, he “half-heartedly” made his “own inquiries” after a source inside UKIP raised the concerns with him, “and unexpectedly struck gold… I am perfectly sure that the individuals had been active agents, although both would claim to have retired some years ago.”
Tebbit had not suggested that UKIP’s leadership was aware of the intelligence operation. At the time, Nigel Farage admitted that he could not discount Tebbit’s allegations.
It eventually turned out that the two people identified by Tebbit — Heather Conyngham and Christopher Skeate — had indeed been former MI6 officers, who had worked together at one time in Latin America. They were also both senior figures in the now defunct Referendum Party, Skeate as a candidate in 1997.
Robin Birley, the major Tory-UKIP donor who had urged a Tory-UKIP mutual tactical voting strategy, was at that time operations director of the Referendum Party, a Eurosceptic party similar to UKIP. Both Conyngham and Skeate had transferred their allegiance to UKIP after the death of Referendum Party founder, Sir James Goldsmith (Birley’s stepfather).
Birley and his Referendum Party also had a wider relationship to Latin America, specifically Chile. In 1998, Birley had recruited Referendum’s communications director, Patrick Robertson, to work with his campaign group, ‘Chilean Supporters Abroad,’ in support of notorious dictator Chilean General Pinochet, who had been supported by Margaret Thatcher herself.
The late Pinochet had been installed in a brutal military coup in 1973, which had been planned and backed by the CIA and MI6 since the democratic elections that brought leftwing nationalist President Salvador Allende to power in 1970. Birley’s ‘Chilean Supporters Abroad’ published a pro-Pinochet pamphlet that promulgated a range of MI6 and CIA disinformation about Allende.
Senior Tory pro-Pinochet apologists Norman Lamont and Michael Howard are today senior patrons of the Bow Group.
It later transpired that Tebbit’s original informant was then UKIP press officer Chris Jones, who months earlier had written a formal letter to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Tribunal about his “allegation, based on detailed circumstantional [sic] evidence gathered over 5 months that UKIP has been penetrated and is largely controlled by British Intelligence agents.”
The letter requested that the Tribunal:
“… call upon files on UKIP: myself: Dr R AE North: G Franklyn-Ryan: Nigel Farage MEP: Heather Coyningham a former FCO official; Christopher Skeate also FCO: Tony Stone: Mark Daniel (alias): Janet Girsman and G Lance Watkins.”
The curious overlap of MI5-MI6 officers with the Referendum, UKIP and Tory parties, and the movement of donors between all three parties, raises questions about the manipulation of the popular vote by a nexus of powerful British interests encompassing a network of corporate elites and Whitehall officials
MI5 and SNP
The Tory-UKIP nexus is not the only instance offering disturbing evidence of the interference of British intelligence in our national elections.
Last month, The Telegraph — which had also promoted the Tory-UKIP strategy put out by the Bow Group and Robin Birley — published an ‘exclusive’ about a leaked FCO memo, which purportedly recorded Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon telling the French Ambassador she would prefer a Tory government.
But as former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan and longtime Foreign Office (FCO) official, Craig Murray, remarked about the alleged memo, “both sides of the alleged conversation categorically deny it was said. Nicola Sturgeon denies she said it and the French Embassy deny she said it.”
Supposedly, the confidential contents of Sturgeon’s meeting with the French Ambassador had been passed to the Foreign Office and transcribed by a Whitehall official as a matter of FCO protocol.
“The extraordinary thing is, this is just a lie,” said Murray.
“As someone who worked in the FCO for over twenty years and was an Ambassador myself, I can assure you there is absolutely no protocol requirement on the French Ambassador to give the FCO the content of the meetings she, her Consul-General or anybody else from the French Embassy held in Edinburgh. That claim is absolute nonsense.”
Even more bizarrely, it turned out that the Foreign Office itself denied being the source of the alleged ‘leaked memo.’
Drawing on the example of the MI6-forged Zinoviev letter ‘leaked’ to the Daily Mail in 1924, which triggered the fall of the Labour government, Murray concluded: “The fake FCO memo has MI5 written all over it. This is the worst example of British security services influencing an election campaign since the Zinoviev letter.”
“I have been warning the SNP that we are going to be the target of active subversion by the UK and US security services. We are seen as a danger to the British state and thus a legitimate target,” the former Ambassador added.
“That the attempt to destabilise Nicola Sturgeon originates with the UK government and the Telegraph should give everyone pause. It is very obviously a security service effort. How otherwise is an account which the French Embassy says is completely false, contained in an official memo to be leaked? This episode raises very serious questions. But they are not questions about Nicola Sturgeon. They are questions about the subversion of democracy by the security services, and the willing complicity of the corporate media.”
There is thus alarming evidence that not just Big Money, but Big Brother, made a concerted effort to disrupt the SNP and co-opt UKIP, as a mechanism to sideline what Birnley characterised as a “hard left rabble of parties,” cementing a Tory parliamentary majority.
The next five years promises more of what we have already seen over the last five years: austerity, corporate empowerment, privatisation of public services widening inequality, continued obfuscation on climate change, subservience to Big Oil and nuclear lobbies, and a return of the snoopers’ charter — previously blocked by the Lib Dems — that would enshrine excessively intrusive surveillance powers into law.
So we should make no mistake. This is not a victory for British democracy. It is a victory for Britain’s increasingly draconian corporate-security complex.
Lessons of the Tory Victory
By Jonathan Cook May 10, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - There’s much that could be said about the Conservative party’s victory today in Britain’s election. Not least David Cameron has emerged stronger: he now has a small but absolute majority in parliament, compared to his last government, in which he had to share power, a little of it anyway, with his minor coalition partners, the Lib Dems.
According to the rules of the British system, he has won a supposed mandate to carry out all his party’s policies, even though the Tories gained the support of slightly less than 25% of the total electorate, and little more than a third of those who actually voted. That in itself should be enough to discredit the idea that Britain is a democracy in any meaningful sense. But I want to focus on two issues that this particular election highlighted. Although this refers to the British election, the lessons apply equally to US elections. The first is a debate that gripped some on the far left after Russell Brand interviewed Labour leader Ed Miliband and subsequently gave Miliband his backing. This was quite a surprise – and disappointment – given that Brand had shaken up British politics over the previous 18 months by arguing that the whole political system was inherently flawed and undemocratic. He had called on people not to vote as a way to show that the system had no popular legitimacy, and invest their energies instead in a different kind of grassroots politics. Britain’s two main parties, Brand and others argued, represented the interests of the big corporations that now dominate Britain and much of the globe. The labels of Conservative and Labour are the misleading vestiges of a time when there was some sort of class politics in Britain: the Tories representing the unalloyed interests of the capitalist class, and Labour the interests of organised labour. But the Tories under Margaret Thatcher long ago destroyed the power of the trade unions. Labour became a shell of its former self, its finances and ability to organise workers crumbled as the corporations entrenched their power, assisted by the Tories. Under a power-hungry Tony Blair, Labour allowed itself to be captured by those same corporations, famously illustrated by his Faustian pact with media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. Labour sold what was left of its soul, becoming a Tory-lite party, and winning the support of Murdoch and his media empire as a result. Brand seemed to understand this, arguing that what we needed was to turn our back on sham elections every five years between two parties representing the interests of the 1%. Instead the people needed to foment a non-violent political revolution, and take back power. How did voting for Miliband, a man who had largely adopted the Blair credo, make sense in the light of Brand’s earlier claims? Brand justified his change of mind using a familiar argument. He admitted Miliband was far from perfect but was still the preferable choice because he was prepared to listen to the people, unlike Cameron’s Conservatives. He was the “lesser evil” choice. The problem with his logic – aside from its faith-based component – was that the same argument could have been used about any recent British election. It was an excuse to avoid engaging in real politics. Supporters of Tony Blair, even after he committed the supreme war crime by invading Iraq, could have argued quite convincingly that the Tories too would have invaded Iraq – plus they would have done worse things at home, inflicting greater damage on the health and education systems. Thus, on the lesser-evil argument, it was legitimate to vote for the war criminal Blair. A man like Blair could destroy another nation, cause suffering on a scale unimaginable to most of us, and yet still claim the moral high ground because the alternative would be even worse. The faulty logic of the lesser-evil argument is apparent the moment we consider the Blair case. If there is no political cost for committing the ultimate war crime, because the other guys are worse, what real leverage can the electorate ever have on the political system. The “left” vote will always gravitate to the slightly less nasty party of capital. No change is really possible. In fact, over time the political centre of gravity is likely to shift – as has in fact happened – ever more to the right, as the corporations accrete ever greater power. Further, where does Brand’s logic take us now that Miliband has lost. If we were supposed to have faith that Miliband would have listened had he achieved power, then why not extend that faith to his successor? If we are satisfied by the lesser-evil argument, why not wait till the next election to see if we can get another slightly less nasty candidate into Downing Street? We can defer the choice to demand real change indefinitely. The second point is that the programme of extreme austerity at the heart of Cameron’s manifesto has been fully discredited by most economists over the past few years. Not only does it penalise the overwhelming majority of the population by redistributing wealth away from the working and middles classes to the financial elite, but it also inflicts great damage on the long term health of the economy. In other words, British voters look like supreme masochists. They voted to seriously harm their own, and their country’s, interests. Are Britons collectively insane? Of course, not. So how can we explain their insane choice this week? The answer is staring us in the face. In fact, Blair showed us what was required to win a British election. A party hoping to win power needed first to seduce the corporations, and their media divisions. Without most of the media on your side, no party stands a chance of winning because the media subtly controls the narrative of the election: what count as “the issues”, how the leaders and their platforms are presented, what and who is considered credible. Miliband’s failure was that, unlike Blair, he looked a little half-hearted about his desire to be the 1%’s mouthpiece in parliament and Downing Street. Maybe what seduced Brand about Miliband was the sliver of humanity that was still just visible below the surface of the corporate employee the Labour party had groomed their leader to become. The revolution that we need in Britain and the US has to start with a disengagement from the mainstream media’s representation of events. We have to discard their narratives. Even more important than an overhauled electoral system, one that fairly reflects the electorate’s preferences, we need a grassroots media that is free of the control of fabulously wealthy proprietors and major corporations, that does not depend on the massive subsidies of corporations (in the form of advertising), and that does not rely, like the BBC, on funding from government. We need independent journalists, and we need to demand a new funding model for the media. And we need to do all this while the mainstream media entirely control the narrative about what a free media is. It is a huge challenge – and one that reflects the extent of our own ideological confinement. Just like the political parties, we have been captured by the 1%. We cannot imagine a different world, a different economic system, a different media landscape, because our intellectual horizons have been so totally restricted by the media conglomerates that control our newspapers, our TV and radio stations, the films we watch, the video games we play, the music we listen to. We are so imaginatively confined we cannot even see the narrow walls within which our minds are allowed to wander. As long as the media represent the span of interests of the 1% – from the psychopathic Murdoch empire to the capitalism with a little heart of the Guardian Media Group – our politicians will range from the Blue Tories of the Conservative party to the Red Tories of the Labour party. And we will remain enslaved.
