AGENDA

Building for OUR own Peoples Charter and leaflet

Sharing info/ideas for a Tyne & Wear version of the National Peoples Charter to use in local campaigns. Please bring your local borough information.

On Thursday 25th March. 7pm-9pm

At: St John’s Church, Grainger St, Newcastle(Nr Central Station).

Contact Tel: 2894241 or 2650906

E mail: appleinyoureye@googlemail.com

Blog: tynewearleftunity.wordpress.com and facebook(ta to ed)

For reports on Gaza Freedom March see:

http://alanxgoodman.blogspot.com/

This sunday at 11.30 meet at Chichester metro station
will be door knocking in South Shields with campaign material on the metro privatisation.
was very successful last sunday when 5 of us went out.
hope to see you.
regards vicki--if weather dodgy call 07753137399

I didn’t have very high hopes of this conference: we knew in advance there would be no resolutions, and we had the experience of the previous conferences not delivering very much of concrete value. In the event, I came away quite cheered.

The conference was very platform heavy with 8 platform speakers and very little time for contributions from the floor, especially in the afternoon session where there was a mere 20 minutes for floor speakers. However, the floor speakers did give a very interesting sense of the mood around.

I was the first speaker called – was at the front and a woman in a very heavily male-dominated conference. I spoke about unity meaning not just unity of left grouplets, across political difference, but in the sense of the working class not just being those in work in trade unions. I have now acquire3d a pensioner fan club! I was more thinking of less ‘popular’ sections of the class: benefit claimants and migrant workers and refugees. I raised quite mild criticisms of NO2EU in relation to the free movement of labour. I have been much sharper on this list and within the Socialist Alliance. I didn’t want to bring down the mood.

People have said to me after that my contribution helped to focus the discussion, with all the platform speakers coming back and emphasising that by the working class they did mean all those that Marx called the proletariat, who have nothing but their labour power and their children. I had heard in advance that the first session was going to be a post-mortem on NO2EU, but fortunately this didn’t turn out to be the case. Apart from the dire John Foster, an anti-EU obsessive, speakers, both from the platform and the floor, wanted to talk about the future and how we need to take things forward.

What was heartening was that all the floor speakers – except the Socialist Party (more of that below) – saying that they were not waiting for the ‘leaders’ to get together: that local candidates and agreements would be worked out for the May council elections and the general election. Speakers from Tyne & Wear, Portsmouth, Cambridge, Scotland – and I have heard from other areas, where people didn’t get in to speak (Wigan, Middlesboro, Lewisham) – all stressed that time was running out for getting together a working class socialist alternative to New Labour/Tory/ Lib Dems. Most forceful was an RMT branch secretary from Portsmouth (didn’t catch his name, Richard H?) who challenged Bob Crow directly: are you going to take the next step?

I am a bit puzzled by the attitude of the Socialist Party. I had a report from the coalition Steering committee (the successor to no2eu) that it was the SP who blocked discussion of a name and policies for the Coalition, despite the fact that working groups had been working for months and we ready to present their report. Joe Higgins, Socialist Party MEP for Dublin, drew strong support when he said don’t leave it to the last minute to draw up an electoral challenge. But the SP members who spoke from England and Wales were much more cautious. Does anyone have any insight into what is going on with the SP? Is it just fear of going out on a limb, and not being able to bring the unions with them, or is heir some deep division within their ranks? Dave Nellist, whom I have a lot of respect for, stressed the Coalition was not the launch of a new party and that the original Labour Representation Committee took 40 years to establish the Labour Party, and by implication a new workers party would be a similarly long-term prospect. I genuinely seek enlightenment on this point.

Overall, I came away quite optimistic. The ‘homeless left’, as my Tyneside comrades call it, outnumbers those in groups by many times, and it seems to me that the prospect of some kind of loose alliance of local left unity projects, like Tyne & Wear Left Unity, may be on. Of course, an agreement on one electoral name would give us the advantage of tv coverage, but that is no substitute for building a base and putting in the footwork on the ground.

President Obama -- the man of peace -- has approved a military budget
exceeding that of any year since the end of the Second World War. John
Pilger thinks it's not just for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and
Pakistan: Obama has Latin America in his sights too.

By John Pilger
www.johnpilger.com
16 October 2009

Barack Obama, winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, is planning
another war to add to his impressive record. In Afghanistan, his
agents routinely extinguish wedding parties, farmers and construction
workers with weapons such as the innovative Hellfire missile, which
sucks the air out of your lungs. According to the UN, 338,000 Afghan
infants are dying under the Obama-led alliance, which permits only $29
per head annually to be spent on medical care.
US attacks Latin America

Within weeks of his inauguration, Obama started a new war in Pakistan,
causing more than a million people to flee their homes. In threatening
Iran – which his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said she was
prepared to "obliterate" – Obama lied that the Iranians were covering
up a "secret nuclear facility", knowing that it had already been
reported to the International Atomic Energy Authority.

In colluding with the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East, he
bribed the Palestinian Authority to suppress a UN judgment that Israel
had committed crimes against humanity in its assault on Gaza – crim
es
made possible with US weapons whose shipment Obama secretly approved
before his inauguration.

At home, the man of peace has approved a military budget exceeding
that of any year since the end of the Second World War while presiding
over a new kind of domestic repression.

During the recent G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, hosted by Obama,
militarised police attacked peaceful protesters with something called
the Long-Range Acoustic Device, not seen before on US streets. Mounted
in the turret of a small tank, it blasted a piercing noise as tear gas
and pepper gas were fired indiscriminately. It is part of a new
arsenal of "crowd-control munitions" supplied by military contractors
such as Ray theon.

In Obama's Pentagon-controlled "national security state", the
concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, which he promised to close,
remains open, and "rendition", secret assassinations and torture
continue.

Secret

The Nobel Peace Prize-winner's latest war is largely secret. On 15
July, Washington finalised a deal with Colombia that gives the US
seven giant military bases. "The idea," reported the Associated Press,
"is to make Colombia a regional hub for Pentagon operations . . .
nearly half the continent can be covered by a C-17 [military
transport] without refuelling", which "helps achieve the regional
engagement strategy".

Translated, this means Obama is planning a "rollback" of the
independence and democracy that the people of Bolivia, Venezuela,
Ecuador and Paraguay have achieved against the odds, along with a
historic regional co-operation that rejects the notion of a US "sphere
of influence". The Colombian regime, which backs death squads and has
the continent's worst human rights record, has received US military
support second in scale only to Israel. Britain provides military
training. Guided by US military satellites, Colombian paramilitaries
now infiltrate Venezuela with the goal of overthrowing the democratic
government of Hugo Chávez, which George W Bush failed to do in 2002.

Obama's war on peace and democracy in Latin America follows a style he
has demonstrated since the coup against the democratic president of
Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, in June. Zelaya had increased the minimum
wage, granted subsidies to small farmers, cut back interest rates and
reduced poverty. He planned to break a US pharmaceutical monopoly and
manufacture cheap generic drugs.

Although Obama has called for Zelaya's reinstatement, he refuses to
condemn the coup-makers and to recall the US ambassador or the US
troops who train the Honduran forces determined to crush a popular
resistance. Zelaya has been repeatedly refused a meeting with Obama,
who has approved an IMF loan of $164m to the illegal regime. The
message is clear and familiar: thugs can act with impunity on behalf
of the US.

Leadership

Obama, the smooth operator from Chicago via Harvard, was enlisted to
restore what he calls "leadership" throughout the world. The Nobel
Prize committee's decision is the kind of cloying reverse racism that
has beatified the man for no reason other than he is a member of a
minority and attractive to liberal sensibilities, if not to the Afghan
children he kills. This is the Call of Obama. It is not unlike a dog
whistle: inaudible to most, irresistible to the besotted and
boneheaded. "When Obama walks into a room," gushed George Clooney,
"you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere."

The great voice of black liberation Frantz Fanon understood this. In
The Wretched of the Earth, he described the "intermediary [whose]
mission has nothing to do with transforming the nation: it consists,
prosaically, of being the transmission line between the nation and a
capitalism, rampant though camouflaged". Because political debate has
become so debased in our media monoculture – Blair or Brown; Brown
or
Cameron – race, gender and class can be used as seductive tools of
propaganda and diversion.

In Obama's case, what matters, as Fanon pointed out in an earlier era,
is not the intermediary's "historic" elevation, but the class he
serves. After all, Bush's inner circle was probably the most
multiracial in presidential history. There was Condoleezza Rice, Colin
Powell, Clarence Thomas, all dutifully serving an extreme and
dangerous power.

Britain has seen its own Obama-like mysticism. The day after Blair was
elected in 1997, the Observer predicted that he would create "new
worldwide rules on human rights" while the Guardian rejoiced at the
"breathless pace [as] the floodgates of change burst open". When Obama
was elected last November, Denis MacShane MP, a devotee of Blair's
bloodbaths, unwittingly warned us: "I shut my eyes when I listen to
this guy and it could be Tony. He is doing the same thing that we did
in 1997."

--
--
If you think you are too small to make a difference - try sleeping
with a
mosquito!
--
Katz' Law:
Man and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have
been exhausted.
_____________________________________________________________________

Hello all
over 60 comrades from across the left attended the joint TSF/NESSN mtg at RSH 15th July and agreed need for planning mtg. i have booked St John's Church Hall Grainger St N/cle for Thursday September 3rd 7.p.m.
as this was date most opted for. replies so far are very positive.

however we need to give some thought on how the different parties on the left can work together in ways that construct a stronger polemic while retaining their own integrity. Each should gain from this. working together on issues is fine and would have been the best way to begin - and avoid the problems of Socialist Alliance - but i fear events are going to overtake us as the unions we do have are up for a fight. Trusting each other is another thorn and very difficult with all the disparity and loyalty to the small group we are each in. On a positive note, a similar unification process is taking place in Wigan, Leigh and Makerpiece.

I’ve
been following this since the first outbreak at posh DULWICH COLLEGE
then it’s spread through innumerable private schools till it’s arrival
at Eton  – currently 32 cases at Eton. Of course other schools have
been infected but the incidence at public schools is way above what
would be expected. I’ve hestitated to raise the question of whether
SWINE FLU IN THE UK HAS MUTATED INTO  A CLASS CONSCIOUS VIRUS before in
case I imediately get struck down with it thus providing merriment to
my foes. Also it might encourage the lazier class warriors amongt you
to rest on your laurels declaiming ‘ leave it to the virus to sort
out’. But seriously folks – check it out – its the public schools who
are copping it. ….why is no one else noticing this…I thinkwe should be
told! In the meantime I rename SWINE FLU – TOFF FLU…….or TOFFLU for
short!

From: http://ianbone.wordpress.com/

***Tues 21 April 5:30 pm
England's greatest radical? Gerrard Winstanley, "the Digger". Public lecture at
Curtis Autitorium, Newcastle University. Free

Earlier today Lib Dem MP David Howarth held a meeting in Westminster to present a highly disturbing and potentially explosive report on the way police in the UK are criminalising legitimate protest.

The report,produced by the Climate Camp's legal support team and entitled Policing of the Kingsnorth Climate Camp: Preventing Disorder or Preventing Protest?, is devastating for the police. It documents a concerted campaign by police to deter, smear, intimidate, harass, and criminalise UK citizens who did nothing more than attempt to exercise their right to peaceful protest in the name of an important cause.

The following film accompanies the report and fully conveys the extent of the scandal.

http://britcit.co.uk/content/archives/2009/03/kingsnorth-report-reveals-shocking-police-campaign-of-intimidation-against-protesters.html

If you're still convinced by Jack Straw's denial that we are in a "Police State" have a look at this:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/03/manchester-man-arres.html