Category: UK

Resistance is fertile

John Berger’s experience at the National Gallery highlights the zeitgeist of the age of GWOT.

The novelist and art critic recalls an Easter visit to the National Gallery and a strange and violent encounter with an attendant

I was in London on Good Friday, 2008. And I decided, early in the morning, to go to the National Gallery and look at the Crucifixion by Antonello da Messina. It’s the most solitary painting of the scene that I know. The least allegorical.

In Antonello’s work – and there are fewer than 40 paintings which are indisputably his – there’s a special Sicilian sense of thereness which is without measure, which refuses moderation or self-protection. You can hear the same thing in these words spoken by a fisherman from the coast near Palermo, and recorded by Danilo Dolci a few decades ago in Sicilian Lives (1981):

“There’s times I see the stars at night, especially when we’re out for eels, and I get thinking in my brain. ‘The world is it really real?’ Me, I can’t believe that. If I get calm, I can believe in Jesus. Badmouth Jesus Christ and I’ll kill you. But there’s times I won’t believe, not even in God. ‘If God really exists, why doesn’t He give me a break and a job?’”

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De Menezes taught the Met nothing

Duncan Campbell argues that footage of the police assaulting the late Ian Tomlinson, a bystander at the G20 protests, suggests we should be rather less trusting of power. The incident exposes the docile complicity of the mainstream British media.

The last thing either the government or the Metropolitan police wanted, on the day that Britain played host to the G20 leaders last week, was a death during the demonstrations being staged simultaneously in the City of London. So perhaps it should be no surprise that initially the fate of Ian Tomlinson, the man who died in the midst of the main protest close to the Bank of England, was barely noted.

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Paris liberation made ‘whites only’

‘Papers unearthed by the BBC reveal that British and American commanders ensured that the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944 was seen as a “whites only” victory,’ writes Mike Thomson. Yes, that was the ‘good war’ that allegedly defeated institutionalized racism.

French troops march through Paris, 18 June 1945, pic credit: Eric Deroo
Many of the “French” division which led the liberation of Paris were Spanis

Papers unearthed by the BBC reveal that British and American commanders ensured that the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944 was seen as a “whites only” victory.

Many who fought Nazi Germany during World War II did so to defeat the vicious racism that left millions of Jews dead.

Yet the BBC’s Document programme has seen evidence that black colonial soldiers – who made up around two-thirds of Free French forces – were deliberately removed from the unit that led the Allied advance into the French capital.

By the time France fell in June 1940, 17,000 of its black, mainly West African colonial troops, known as the Tirailleurs Senegalais, lay dead.

Many of them were simply shot where they stood soon after surrendering to German troops who often regarded them as sub-human savages.

Their chance for revenge came in August 1944 as Allied troops prepared to retake Paris. But despite their overwhelming numbers, they were not to get it.

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Israeli exports hit by European boycotts

The Guardian reports that “A fifth of Israeli exporters report drop in demand as footage of Gaza attacks changes behaviour of consumers and investors.”

Israeli companies are feeling the impact of boycott moves in Europe, according to surveys, amid growing concern within the Israeli business sector over organised campaigns following the recent attack on Gaza.

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This counter-terror plan is in ruins. Try one that works

Seumas Milne writes that “ministers want Muslims to accept shared values. Luckily they already do, including opposition to wars of aggression.”

The British government’s brand new counter-terrorism strategy is already in disarray – and ministers have only themselves to blame. The souped-up plan to fight al-Qaida, confound dirty bombers, halt suicide attacks and confront “extremism” in the country’s Muslim community was unveiled by the prime minister with much fanfare on Tuesday. But even before the 175-page “Contest 2” document had been launched, the credibility of its promise to engage with the Muslim mainstream had been thrown into question by the decision of Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, to cut all links with the Muslim Council of Britain.

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Tom Hurndall: A brave man who stood alone

Tom Hurndall was murdered by the IDF in Gaza.   Mr Hurndall’s father described a “culture of impunity” saying “they just lied continuously … it was a case of them shooting civilians and then making up a story. And they were not used to being challenged.”  Now as Hurndall’s journals are to be published Robert Fisk writes “I wish I had met Tom Hurndall, a remarkable man of remarkable principle.”

I don’t know if I met Tom Hurndall. He was one of a bunch of “human shields” who turned up in Baghdad just before the Anglo-American invasion in 2003, the kind of folk we professional reporters make fun of. Tree huggers, that kind of thing. Now I wish I had met him because – looking back over the history of that terrible war – Hurndall’s journals (soon to be published) show a remarkable man of remarkable principle. “I may not be a human shield,” he wrote at 10.26 on 17 March from his Amman hotel. “And I may not adhere to the beliefs of those I have travelled with, but the way Britain and America plan to take Iraq is unnecessary and puts soldiers’ lives above those of civilians. For that I hope that Bush and Blair stand trial for war crimes.”

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Terrorist Children

‘Police identify 200 children as potential terrorists’, the Independent reports. Orwell could not have imagined this. This is Labour Party’s Britain, where a child can be criminalized for adopting “bad attitudes towards ‘the West'”! Soon enough, even infancy won’t protect you from the long hands of the state. Blair was more forthright. He had once told an interviewer that criminal behavior should be monitored even before birth (implying it is genetic). And now we got the bovine home secretary giving the most imaginative dystopians a run for their money. Notice the tone of the reporter (Mark Hughes, Crime correspondent). He treats this news as if he were reporting on a lost umbrella. Pathetic.

Drastic new tactics to prevent school pupils as young as 13 falling into extremism

Two hundred schoolchildren in Britain, some as young as 13, have been identified as potential terrorists by a police scheme that aims to spot youngsters who are “vulnerable” to Islamic radicalisation.

The number was revealed to The Independent by Sir Norman Bettison, the chief constable of West Yorkshire Police and Britain’s most senior officer in charge of terror prevention.

He said the “Channel project” had intervened in the cases of at least 200 children who were thought to be at risk of extremism, since it began 18 months ago. The number has leapt from 10 children identified by June 2008.

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Intimidating Muslims

Brian Whitaker writes a good article on New Labour’s intimidatory tactics against British Muslims. And here is an unusually excellent editorial from the Guardian. The branding of the Istanbul Declaration as extremist is designed to ensure that nobody engages with it, and it deserves to be engaged with. Although I don’t identify with the religious language myself, or like the globalising flourish at the end, I don’t see anything terribly objectionable about the declaration, which is posted after the Whitaker article.

Following the recent muddle over Hezbollah, the British government continues to dig itself deeper into the mire with its “anti-extremism” policy.

Hazel Blears, secretary of state for communities and local government, is trying to engineer the resignation of Daud Abdullah, deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain. She may not like Abdullah or agree with his views but, frankly, it’s none of her business. The MCB is not a government body and can appoint whoever it wants as its deputy secretary general.

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Galloway faces the ‘Jewish Defence League’

George Galloway on Channel 4 News (UK) facing the national director of the ‘Jewish Defence League’ (JDL) of Canada, Meir Weinstein, on Galloway’s banning from Canada.

Looking at the JDL Canada website we find the group was established “in the late 1960s to confront and fight anti-Semitism.”  One might wonder why they are interested in blocking Galloway from entering Canada; the story was originally that he was banned for his views on Canada’s military presence in Afghanistan.  Perhaps it is their first principle, ‘Ahavat Yisroel’, Love of Israel, and Galloway’s recent aid convoy to Gaza that is the real problem.  I was surprised to see Weinstein on Channel Four, as he considers helping the starving people of Gaza a crime, you’d expect to see him on the BBC.

Also worth noting is that the JDL was described as a violent extremist Jewish organization in an FBI 2000/2001 Terrorism report.

UK economic links with Israeli settlements

A new comprehensive report by the Dutch research group Profundo – prepared for the Sir Joseph Hotung Programme for Law, Human Rights and Peace Building in the Middle East, SOAS – details the economic ties of a long list of British companies to Israeli settlements and other breaches of international law committed by the Israeli state. An indespensable resource for those engaged in the BDS campaign. Here is the edited summary of the full report:

Since June 1967, Israel has occupied the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. These territories are beyond the “Green Line,” which is accepted as the provisional, de facto border of Israel, until the successful conclusion of the Middle East peace process confirms its permanent international frontiers. Israel has established civilian settlements in these occupied territories, which is illegal according to international law. The creation of these settlements is in violation of Israel’s obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 which was adopted to protect civilians during armed conflict. This was known by Israel in 1967 when the then-Israeli government first considered establishing civilian settlements in the territories it had captured during the 1967 War. Israel’s settlements in the Gaza Strip were dismantled in August 2005. In the West Bank and the Golan Heights, however, settlements are expanding and new ones are being established in breach of international law and, in relation to the West Bank, the Road Map.

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