I'll be running these briefs from Northern Ireland as I receive them from Daithi McKay while I continue the Oread Daily's time out until Sept. 1. After that I will simply include them in the regular Oread Daily. Daithí is the Sinn Féin councilor on Ballymoney Borough Council - Bann Valley elected in 2005.
Rasharkin Sinn Féin Councillor, Daithí McKay, has challenged Mervyn Storey to prove his assertion that the majority of people living in Rasharkin have no problem with the Ballymaconnelly Parade.
Cllr McKay said:
“What residents in Rasharkin witnessed here tonight was nothing more than a sectarian triumphalist display from those participating in the parade. We saw numerous paramilitary flags, bands named after dead UVF members, the Sash played nearly 20 times in front of the protestors and comments were also made by members of a band from Tyrone toward protestors regarding ‘No Pope’ - so this clearly shows people the calibre of the bands marching through Rasharkin tonight.
“Moneydig band, who were involved in an assault on a Rasharkin resident last year, were also allowed to march through the village again, and again they were not taken to task for carrying loyalist paramilitary flags.
“Supporters of the bands also took tricolours into the middle of the street and burned them, and even the stewards provided by Ballymaconnelly couldn’t prevent the mob they had invited into the village from acting like dangerous bigots.
“The ignorance of members of the PSNI when residents voiced their concerns has also been noted, and their numbers will all be passed on to the Police Ombudsman tomorrow morning.
“Mervyn Storey said tonight that the majority of people living in Rasharkin have no problem with this sectarian coat-trailing exercise. Well I would ask him to back up his allegations. At the moment the Residents Association are carrying out a survey of residents of the village, which I expect will show that the majority of residents are opposed to the parade. If Cllr Storey, as expected, rejects these results then why not get the Parades Commission or a neutral group to distribute questionnaires to residents for a second opinion on the matter. As far as I’m concerned its about time he put his money where his mouth is.”
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Friday, August 19, 2005
News Brief From Northern Ireland
I'm still on "vacation", but this just came to me from Northern Ireland...
Rasharkin Sinn Féin Councillor, Daithí McKay, has condemned the attacks on 3 properties in Rasharkin in the early hours of Friday morning. The attacks come just before a contentious parade in the nationalist village, which will see over 40 loyalist bands march through the village.
Cllr McKay said:
"These attacks are just the latest in a concerted campaign against nationalists in North Antrim, and people are genuinely fearful of what trouble the loyalist parade through the village may bring tonight.
"A lot of residents are very angry about this and have told me that they will be protesting against the loyalist paramilitary presence in Rasharkin tonight. On the other hand, however, many residents are going to leave the village and take their families away from their homes for the night - and who can blame them?
"As we all know the DUP have been to the forefront in defending this parade through Rasharkin tonight and this will be a litmus test on their position on loyalist paramilitary attacks in North Antrim. Given the present environment of sectarian attacks on Catholics and Nationalists in North Antrim are the DUP seriously going to support pushing UVF and UDA bands through a predominantly nationalist village?"
Rasharkin Sinn Féin Councillor, Daithí McKay, has condemned the attacks on 3 properties in Rasharkin in the early hours of Friday morning. The attacks come just before a contentious parade in the nationalist village, which will see over 40 loyalist bands march through the village.
Cllr McKay said:
"These attacks are just the latest in a concerted campaign against nationalists in North Antrim, and people are genuinely fearful of what trouble the loyalist parade through the village may bring tonight.
"A lot of residents are very angry about this and have told me that they will be protesting against the loyalist paramilitary presence in Rasharkin tonight. On the other hand, however, many residents are going to leave the village and take their families away from their homes for the night - and who can blame them?
"As we all know the DUP have been to the forefront in defending this parade through Rasharkin tonight and this will be a litmus test on their position on loyalist paramilitary attacks in North Antrim. Given the present environment of sectarian attacks on Catholics and Nationalists in North Antrim are the DUP seriously going to support pushing UVF and UDA bands through a predominantly nationalist village?"
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Sinn Féin launch dossier on unionist paramilitary activity
Although the Oread Daily remains on a break until September, I'm reproducing this piece from Sinn Fein News today.
Sinn Féin launch dossier on unionist paramilitary activity
Sinn Féin Assembly members Gerry Kelly and Philip McGuigan were today joined by party councillors Carol niCuillan and Billy Leonard as Sinn Féin launched a report detailing 85 unionist paramilitary activity since June 2005.
The dossier can be downloaded at http://www.sinnfein.ie/news/detail/10780
The report details unionist paramilitary activity since the beginning of June. It details over 85 instances of unionist paramilitary activity, including five murders in a period of just over two months. Although by no means comprehensive, due to the fact that many attacks and acts of intimidation go unreported, it offers a chilling picture of a campaign of orchestrated sectarian intimidation, particularly in areas where there is a vulnerable nationalist minority.
The report paints a picture of a sustained and organised campaign of violence and intimidation. It shows very clearly where the threat to the peace process lies.
Speaking at the press conference Mr Kelly said: "This report should also act as a wake up call to unionist political leaders and in particular to the DUP. Both of the main unionist parties and the Orange Order sit on Forums and Commissions with the leaderships of the UVF and UDA. They undoubtedly have influence with these organisations.
"People have a right to know have they raised this ongoing campaign during these meetings. What are the DUP and UUP doing to end attacks on Catholics? What are they doing to end the ongoing feuding amongst the unionist paramilitaries?
"Sinn Féin is demanding that the leadership of the DUP and UUP tackle the issue of unionist paramilitary violence. Pretending that it is a reaction to the IRA or that it is 'tit for tat' is no longer tenable. It is time for the unionist parties to demonstrate to the entire community that they are serious about building a shared future.
"Part of that process must also be to respect the democratic mandate of Sinn Fein and sit down and engage in a constructive fashion and plan out the next steps in the wider peace process. The failure of the DUP to respect the mandate of Sinn Féin sends out a very clear message to those involved in this campaign that nationalists are not to be treated as equals.
"The current unionist paramilitary campaign must be tackled and addressed. A heavy burden of responsibility for this rests with Ian Paisley and the DUP as the largest unionist party."
Unionist views on paramilitary violence
"Catholic homes caught fire because they were loaded with petrol bombs; Catholic churches were attacked and burned because they were arsenals and priests handed out sub-machine guns to parishioners" Ian Paisley DUP Leader, 1968
"We should make it clear that force means death and fighting, and whoever gets in our way, whether Republicans or those sent by the British government, there would be killings," John Taylor UUP, Tobermore, October 1972
"There is in particular amongst the Catholic community now, increasing fear of paramilitary activities. And in a perverse way, this is something which may be helpful because they are now beginning to appreciate more clearly the fear that has existed within the Protestant community for the past 20 years." John Taylor UUP
"My men are ready to be recruited under the crown to destroy the vermin of the IRA. But if they refuse to recruit them, then we will have no other decision to make but to destroy the IRA ourselves!...We will exterminate the IRA!" Ian Paisley DUP leader, Nov. 1981
"If the British government force us down the road to a united Ireland we will fight to the death...This could come to hand to hand fighting in every street in Northern Ireland. We are on the verge of civil war...We are asking people to be ready for the worst and I will lead them." Ian Paisley 1985 Ulster Clubs Rally Larne
"Taxpayers money would be better spent on an incinerator and burning the whole lot of them. The priests should be thrown in and burned as well." DUP Cllr. George Seawright 1984
"Ulster Resistance is not for the faint or half hearted and we will use all means which are deemed necessary to defeat the Agreement." Ian Paisley, November 1986 Ulster Resistance Rally, Belfast
"The Orange Order is a very broad church and it's not my responsibility to say to people they can't be members of various organisations," Belfast County Grand Master Dawson Bailie, August 2000 when asked about Orange Order members involvement with unionist paramilitaries
"They are on our side. We might not agree with everything they do but they have been helpful to brethren in north and west Belfast, and continued to defend Orange Order refusal to talk to residents." Orange Order Belfast Deputy Grand Master McMurdie, July 2005, when asked about Orange Order links to unionist paramilitaries.
Introduction
The following dossier details attacks carried out by unionist paramilitary gangs in the period since June 2005(As reported in the media). Although by no means comprehensive, due to the fact that so many attacks go unreported it offers a chilling picture of orchestrated sectarian intimidation, particularly in areas where there is a vulnerable nationalist minority.
Throughout this period it is very clearly established that unionist paramilitaries have been engaged in ongoing sectarian attacks on Catholics, their homes, churches and businesses in addition to the well publicised feud between the UVF and LVF.
This dossier will be sent to both the British and Irish Governments.
The response from unionist politicians to this ongoing campaign has been typical. They have continued to hide behind anti-republican rhetoric even after the historic statement from the IRA committing that organisation to peaceful and democratic programmes in the future.
They have failed to grasp the reality that the biggest threat to this process at this time comes from violent unionism.
It must be remembered that at a time when the DUP in particular are continuing to ignore the democratic mandate of Sinn Féin and are continuing to stall efforts to put the political process back on track, both they and the UUP sit on Forums and Commissions with the leaderships of the UDA, UVF and Red Hand Commando.
Sinn Féin is demanding that unionist political leaderships tackle the issue of unionist paramilitary violence. Pretending that it is a reaction to the IRA or that it is not happening at all is no longer tenable. Unionist parties need to prove to the broad nationalist community that they are serious about respecting basic rights and entitlements. That they are serious about treating people with equality in the future.
JUNE 2005
2nd June - Blast bombs thrown at two homes in Ahorey, Richill in a racist attack on Eastern European workers.
3rd June - Loyalist feud erupts in violence inside the Belfast court complex.
4th June - Two catholic owned cars set on fire and sectarian slogans daubed in East Belfast
4th June - 7 catholic homes in Coleraine attacked.
5th June - Names of Sinn Féin election workers posted on walls in Coleraine.
5th June - Pipe Bombs thrown at the homes of migrant workers in racist attack in Loughgall.
6th June - 27 year old attacked by masked gang wielding baseball bats in his Ballyclare home.
6th June - Car set on fire in racist attack in Loughgall.
7th June - Catholic homes and a car petrol bombed in Coleraine.
10th June - 56 year old woman attacked in her Ballymoney home and given 24 hours to leave.
16th June - 28 year old shot in Greenland Park, Lurgan.
16th June - Four masked men attack a man at his home in Ballyree Drive, Bangor.
17th June - Elderly catholic woman left hospitalised after attack on her Kerrera Street home in Ardoyne.
19th June - Two nationalists assaulted by loyalist mob in Ballymena
20th June - Three Catholic homes at Old Throne Park, North Belfast destroyed after sectarian arson attack. Eight children including a small baby lucky to escape alive.
22nd June - Ballymena man jailed after UVF gun running plot exposed.
23rd June - Arson attack on St. John's Catholic Church in Portadown.
28th June - 20 year old shot in the legs in Bangor.
28th June - Loyalist flags erected outside PSNI barracks in mixed Dunmurray village.
29th June - Loyalist flags erected in mixed Lisburn Road area.
29th June - Petrol bomb attack the home of a 19 year old woman, Braeside Grove, Castlereagh.
29th June - 17 year old shot, Carrickmannin Gardens, Bangor.
JULY 2005
1st July - Loyalist mob led by PUP member Billy McCaughey disrupt DPP meeting in Clough, Co.Antrim. SDLP Councillor force to be escorted from the meeting by the PSNI.
1st July - Jameson Lockhart shot dead by UVF, Newtownards Road, East Belfast.
5th July - Catholic homes on Mountpottinger Road Attacked by loyalist gang.
6th July - 30 year old shot, Carlingford Street, Creaggh Road.
9th July - Catholic home on the Crumlin Road firebombed.
10th July - Gun attack linked to the LVF on a home in the Silverstream Road area of North Belfast.
11th July - Craig McCausland shot dead by the UVF, Dhu Varren, North Belfast.
11th July - Man forced to flee home in Woodvale Pass as masked and armed gang burst in.
11th July Man shot and seriously injured on the Crumlin Road in an attacked linked to the LVF.
11th July - Catholic woman forced to flee her Ahoghill home after 50 years due to attacks.
11th July - Catholic taxi driver and passengers attacked in Blacks Road area of West Belfast.
11th July - PSNI patrol attacked in East Belfast and weapon stolen.
11th July - Business premises on Creaggh Road burned down in arson attack.
11th July - UVF firing party appear at Belfast City Council backed bonfire on the Newtownards Road.
11th July - UDA firing party appear at bonfire in the Westlands area.
11th July - Harryville Church in Ballymena daubed with sectarian slogans.
11th July - Attempt to abduct nationalist in Portstewart.
12th July - UVF and UDA figures join Orange Parade through Ardoyne, Mountainview and the Dales in North Belfast.
12th July - Loyalist protest outside St. Matthews Catholic Church, East Belfast.
12th Nationalist residents in Lower Ormeau attacked by stone throwing loyalists taking part in
12th parade.
13th July - Catholic homes in Clandeboye Gardens in the Short Strand area attacked.
15th July - Sinn Féin member in Coleraine told of threat to his life.
15th July - Four nationalists in Coleraine told of unionist paramilitary threat to their lives
16th July - Petrol Bomb attack on the Diamond Bar, Ahoghill, Co. Antrim
16th July - Blast bomb explodes inside Catholic woman‚s home, Mountainview Gardens.
16th July - Catholic homes in the Short Strand once again come under attack.
17th July - Blast bomb thrown into a house at Schomberg Court, Carrickfergus.
17th July - Three nationalist homes in Coleraine attacked
18th July - UVF carry out gun attack on house at Victoria Road, East Belfast.
20th July - Shots fired at house in Avonorr Drive, East Belfast.
20th July - Woman in Coleraine has home petrol bombed
21st July - Petrol Bomb attack on Half Way House bar in Broughshane, Co.Antrim
23rd July - Sectarian slogans daubed on Catholic properties in Garvagh, Co.Derry.
23rd July - Several nationalists in Dunloy Co. Antrim visited by the PSNI and warned that they are under threat from unionist paramilitaries.
23rd July - Holy Cross Church in Ardoyne petrol bombed.
23rd July - Device left on Dublin rail line to disrupt travel to the GAA Ulster Final in Dublin.
24th July - Man in his 40s shot in the Shankill Road area.
25th July - Hundreds of UVF members invade Garnerville estate in the East Belfast and force LVF linked families to flee in full view of the PSNI and British Army.
25th July - Taxi Depot in the Ballysillan area destroyed in arson attack linked to loyalist feud.
25th July - Leading republican Martin Meehan advised by the PSNI that his life is under threat from unionist paramilitaries.
25th July - Another paint bomb attack on Harryville Church in Ballymena.
25th July - Two men shot in Tynedale Grove in North Belfast.
26th July - Two Catholic churches in Ballymena attacked.
26th July - Catholic owned bar in Martinstown, Co. Antrim firebombed.
26th July - Catholic owned bar in Rasharkin, Co. Antrim firebombed.
26th July - 10 shots fired at a house in Station Road, Newtownabby.
26th July - A woman and two children escape after petrol bomb attack on their home in Silverstream Gardens.
27th July - Nationalist home in Coleraine has windows broken
30th July - Stephen Paul shot dead by the UVF Wheatfield Crescent, North Belfast.
31st July - UDA linked to the shooting of a 38 year old in the Westland area.
AUGUST 2005
1st August - PSNI Attacked by loyalist gang Palmer Street in the Woodvale area.
1st August - Bomb left outside home in Knockeen Crescent, Ballymena.
1st August - Shots fired into a house in Randalstown, Co. Antrim.
1st August - Petrol bomb attack on Catholic home in Laurel Park, Ahoghill.
2nd August - Petrol Bomb attack on home at Redwood, Dunmurry.
4th August - Loyalist paramilitaries orchestrate riot on the Crumlin Road in North Belfast.
5th August - Further rioting on the Crumlin Road.
6th August - Catholic man attacked in Coleraine shop
7th August - Man shot seriously injured Glenside Park. Victim believed to be leading LVF figure.
7th August - Device left at Brookfield Mill, North Belfast
8th August - Three houses in Cloughmills, Co.Antrim attacked with pipe bombs
9th August - Fire Blankets issues to Catholic families in Ahoghill, Co. Antrim
9th August - The Banbridge Home of Sinn Féin Councillor Dessie Ward petrol bombed.
9th August - Harryville Catholic Church in Ballymena paint bombed.
9th August - Catholic home in Ballymena has windows smashed.
9th August - Masked loyalist protesters are joined by DUP politicians for illegal protest in Ballymena.
10th August - St. Patrick‚s Catholic Church in Lisburn daubed with sectarian slogans
10th August - 15 year old Thomas Devlin murdered in North Belfast attack, attributed in the media to the UVF.
12th August - Catholic homes in the Waterside area of Derry attacked.
12th August - Leading LVF figure Gordon Hutchinson shot and seriously injured in Lurgan.
12th August - Two flats in Rathcoole come under pipe bomb attack
12 August - Pipe bomb left outside republican home in Beechmount Ave, West Belfast
13th August - 30 year old shot in the legs in Newtownabby
14th August - Newsagents shop on the Antrim Road in Belfast set fire in arson attack.
14th August - 15 year old tied to a lamp post and covered in paint on the Donegal Road
15th August - Catholic home in Kilrea attacked
15th August - Catholic home in Ahoghill, Co.Antrim paint bombed
15th August - Michael Greene an LVF associate shot dead in the Sandy Row area of South Belfast
16th August - St. Josephs Catholic Primary School, Ahoghill paint bombed
16th August - St. Mary's Catholic Church, Ahoghill paint bombed
16th August - Pipe bomb left outside home, Windslow, Carrickfergus
Sinn Féin launch dossier on unionist paramilitary activity
Sinn Féin Assembly members Gerry Kelly and Philip McGuigan were today joined by party councillors Carol niCuillan and Billy Leonard as Sinn Féin launched a report detailing 85 unionist paramilitary activity since June 2005.
The dossier can be downloaded at http://www.sinnfein.ie/news/detail/10780
The report details unionist paramilitary activity since the beginning of June. It details over 85 instances of unionist paramilitary activity, including five murders in a period of just over two months. Although by no means comprehensive, due to the fact that many attacks and acts of intimidation go unreported, it offers a chilling picture of a campaign of orchestrated sectarian intimidation, particularly in areas where there is a vulnerable nationalist minority.
The report paints a picture of a sustained and organised campaign of violence and intimidation. It shows very clearly where the threat to the peace process lies.
Speaking at the press conference Mr Kelly said: "This report should also act as a wake up call to unionist political leaders and in particular to the DUP. Both of the main unionist parties and the Orange Order sit on Forums and Commissions with the leaderships of the UVF and UDA. They undoubtedly have influence with these organisations.
"People have a right to know have they raised this ongoing campaign during these meetings. What are the DUP and UUP doing to end attacks on Catholics? What are they doing to end the ongoing feuding amongst the unionist paramilitaries?
"Sinn Féin is demanding that the leadership of the DUP and UUP tackle the issue of unionist paramilitary violence. Pretending that it is a reaction to the IRA or that it is 'tit for tat' is no longer tenable. It is time for the unionist parties to demonstrate to the entire community that they are serious about building a shared future.
"Part of that process must also be to respect the democratic mandate of Sinn Fein and sit down and engage in a constructive fashion and plan out the next steps in the wider peace process. The failure of the DUP to respect the mandate of Sinn Féin sends out a very clear message to those involved in this campaign that nationalists are not to be treated as equals.
"The current unionist paramilitary campaign must be tackled and addressed. A heavy burden of responsibility for this rests with Ian Paisley and the DUP as the largest unionist party."
Unionist views on paramilitary violence
"Catholic homes caught fire because they were loaded with petrol bombs; Catholic churches were attacked and burned because they were arsenals and priests handed out sub-machine guns to parishioners" Ian Paisley DUP Leader, 1968
"We should make it clear that force means death and fighting, and whoever gets in our way, whether Republicans or those sent by the British government, there would be killings," John Taylor UUP, Tobermore, October 1972
"There is in particular amongst the Catholic community now, increasing fear of paramilitary activities. And in a perverse way, this is something which may be helpful because they are now beginning to appreciate more clearly the fear that has existed within the Protestant community for the past 20 years." John Taylor UUP
"My men are ready to be recruited under the crown to destroy the vermin of the IRA. But if they refuse to recruit them, then we will have no other decision to make but to destroy the IRA ourselves!...We will exterminate the IRA!" Ian Paisley DUP leader, Nov. 1981
"If the British government force us down the road to a united Ireland we will fight to the death...This could come to hand to hand fighting in every street in Northern Ireland. We are on the verge of civil war...We are asking people to be ready for the worst and I will lead them." Ian Paisley 1985 Ulster Clubs Rally Larne
"Taxpayers money would be better spent on an incinerator and burning the whole lot of them. The priests should be thrown in and burned as well." DUP Cllr. George Seawright 1984
"Ulster Resistance is not for the faint or half hearted and we will use all means which are deemed necessary to defeat the Agreement." Ian Paisley, November 1986 Ulster Resistance Rally, Belfast
"The Orange Order is a very broad church and it's not my responsibility to say to people they can't be members of various organisations," Belfast County Grand Master Dawson Bailie, August 2000 when asked about Orange Order members involvement with unionist paramilitaries
"They are on our side. We might not agree with everything they do but they have been helpful to brethren in north and west Belfast, and continued to defend Orange Order refusal to talk to residents." Orange Order Belfast Deputy Grand Master McMurdie, July 2005, when asked about Orange Order links to unionist paramilitaries.
Introduction
The following dossier details attacks carried out by unionist paramilitary gangs in the period since June 2005(As reported in the media). Although by no means comprehensive, due to the fact that so many attacks go unreported it offers a chilling picture of orchestrated sectarian intimidation, particularly in areas where there is a vulnerable nationalist minority.
Throughout this period it is very clearly established that unionist paramilitaries have been engaged in ongoing sectarian attacks on Catholics, their homes, churches and businesses in addition to the well publicised feud between the UVF and LVF.
This dossier will be sent to both the British and Irish Governments.
The response from unionist politicians to this ongoing campaign has been typical. They have continued to hide behind anti-republican rhetoric even after the historic statement from the IRA committing that organisation to peaceful and democratic programmes in the future.
They have failed to grasp the reality that the biggest threat to this process at this time comes from violent unionism.
It must be remembered that at a time when the DUP in particular are continuing to ignore the democratic mandate of Sinn Féin and are continuing to stall efforts to put the political process back on track, both they and the UUP sit on Forums and Commissions with the leaderships of the UDA, UVF and Red Hand Commando.
Sinn Féin is demanding that unionist political leaderships tackle the issue of unionist paramilitary violence. Pretending that it is a reaction to the IRA or that it is not happening at all is no longer tenable. Unionist parties need to prove to the broad nationalist community that they are serious about respecting basic rights and entitlements. That they are serious about treating people with equality in the future.
JUNE 2005
2nd June - Blast bombs thrown at two homes in Ahorey, Richill in a racist attack on Eastern European workers.
3rd June - Loyalist feud erupts in violence inside the Belfast court complex.
4th June - Two catholic owned cars set on fire and sectarian slogans daubed in East Belfast
4th June - 7 catholic homes in Coleraine attacked.
5th June - Names of Sinn Féin election workers posted on walls in Coleraine.
5th June - Pipe Bombs thrown at the homes of migrant workers in racist attack in Loughgall.
6th June - 27 year old attacked by masked gang wielding baseball bats in his Ballyclare home.
6th June - Car set on fire in racist attack in Loughgall.
7th June - Catholic homes and a car petrol bombed in Coleraine.
10th June - 56 year old woman attacked in her Ballymoney home and given 24 hours to leave.
16th June - 28 year old shot in Greenland Park, Lurgan.
16th June - Four masked men attack a man at his home in Ballyree Drive, Bangor.
17th June - Elderly catholic woman left hospitalised after attack on her Kerrera Street home in Ardoyne.
19th June - Two nationalists assaulted by loyalist mob in Ballymena
20th June - Three Catholic homes at Old Throne Park, North Belfast destroyed after sectarian arson attack. Eight children including a small baby lucky to escape alive.
22nd June - Ballymena man jailed after UVF gun running plot exposed.
23rd June - Arson attack on St. John's Catholic Church in Portadown.
28th June - 20 year old shot in the legs in Bangor.
28th June - Loyalist flags erected outside PSNI barracks in mixed Dunmurray village.
29th June - Loyalist flags erected in mixed Lisburn Road area.
29th June - Petrol bomb attack the home of a 19 year old woman, Braeside Grove, Castlereagh.
29th June - 17 year old shot, Carrickmannin Gardens, Bangor.
JULY 2005
1st July - Loyalist mob led by PUP member Billy McCaughey disrupt DPP meeting in Clough, Co.Antrim. SDLP Councillor force to be escorted from the meeting by the PSNI.
1st July - Jameson Lockhart shot dead by UVF, Newtownards Road, East Belfast.
5th July - Catholic homes on Mountpottinger Road Attacked by loyalist gang.
6th July - 30 year old shot, Carlingford Street, Creaggh Road.
9th July - Catholic home on the Crumlin Road firebombed.
10th July - Gun attack linked to the LVF on a home in the Silverstream Road area of North Belfast.
11th July - Craig McCausland shot dead by the UVF, Dhu Varren, North Belfast.
11th July - Man forced to flee home in Woodvale Pass as masked and armed gang burst in.
11th July Man shot and seriously injured on the Crumlin Road in an attacked linked to the LVF.
11th July - Catholic woman forced to flee her Ahoghill home after 50 years due to attacks.
11th July - Catholic taxi driver and passengers attacked in Blacks Road area of West Belfast.
11th July - PSNI patrol attacked in East Belfast and weapon stolen.
11th July - Business premises on Creaggh Road burned down in arson attack.
11th July - UVF firing party appear at Belfast City Council backed bonfire on the Newtownards Road.
11th July - UDA firing party appear at bonfire in the Westlands area.
11th July - Harryville Church in Ballymena daubed with sectarian slogans.
11th July - Attempt to abduct nationalist in Portstewart.
12th July - UVF and UDA figures join Orange Parade through Ardoyne, Mountainview and the Dales in North Belfast.
12th July - Loyalist protest outside St. Matthews Catholic Church, East Belfast.
12th Nationalist residents in Lower Ormeau attacked by stone throwing loyalists taking part in
12th parade.
13th July - Catholic homes in Clandeboye Gardens in the Short Strand area attacked.
15th July - Sinn Féin member in Coleraine told of threat to his life.
15th July - Four nationalists in Coleraine told of unionist paramilitary threat to their lives
16th July - Petrol Bomb attack on the Diamond Bar, Ahoghill, Co. Antrim
16th July - Blast bomb explodes inside Catholic woman‚s home, Mountainview Gardens.
16th July - Catholic homes in the Short Strand once again come under attack.
17th July - Blast bomb thrown into a house at Schomberg Court, Carrickfergus.
17th July - Three nationalist homes in Coleraine attacked
18th July - UVF carry out gun attack on house at Victoria Road, East Belfast.
20th July - Shots fired at house in Avonorr Drive, East Belfast.
20th July - Woman in Coleraine has home petrol bombed
21st July - Petrol Bomb attack on Half Way House bar in Broughshane, Co.Antrim
23rd July - Sectarian slogans daubed on Catholic properties in Garvagh, Co.Derry.
23rd July - Several nationalists in Dunloy Co. Antrim visited by the PSNI and warned that they are under threat from unionist paramilitaries.
23rd July - Holy Cross Church in Ardoyne petrol bombed.
23rd July - Device left on Dublin rail line to disrupt travel to the GAA Ulster Final in Dublin.
24th July - Man in his 40s shot in the Shankill Road area.
25th July - Hundreds of UVF members invade Garnerville estate in the East Belfast and force LVF linked families to flee in full view of the PSNI and British Army.
25th July - Taxi Depot in the Ballysillan area destroyed in arson attack linked to loyalist feud.
25th July - Leading republican Martin Meehan advised by the PSNI that his life is under threat from unionist paramilitaries.
25th July - Another paint bomb attack on Harryville Church in Ballymena.
25th July - Two men shot in Tynedale Grove in North Belfast.
26th July - Two Catholic churches in Ballymena attacked.
26th July - Catholic owned bar in Martinstown, Co. Antrim firebombed.
26th July - Catholic owned bar in Rasharkin, Co. Antrim firebombed.
26th July - 10 shots fired at a house in Station Road, Newtownabby.
26th July - A woman and two children escape after petrol bomb attack on their home in Silverstream Gardens.
27th July - Nationalist home in Coleraine has windows broken
30th July - Stephen Paul shot dead by the UVF Wheatfield Crescent, North Belfast.
31st July - UDA linked to the shooting of a 38 year old in the Westland area.
AUGUST 2005
1st August - PSNI Attacked by loyalist gang Palmer Street in the Woodvale area.
1st August - Bomb left outside home in Knockeen Crescent, Ballymena.
1st August - Shots fired into a house in Randalstown, Co. Antrim.
1st August - Petrol bomb attack on Catholic home in Laurel Park, Ahoghill.
2nd August - Petrol Bomb attack on home at Redwood, Dunmurry.
4th August - Loyalist paramilitaries orchestrate riot on the Crumlin Road in North Belfast.
5th August - Further rioting on the Crumlin Road.
6th August - Catholic man attacked in Coleraine shop
7th August - Man shot seriously injured Glenside Park. Victim believed to be leading LVF figure.
7th August - Device left at Brookfield Mill, North Belfast
8th August - Three houses in Cloughmills, Co.Antrim attacked with pipe bombs
9th August - Fire Blankets issues to Catholic families in Ahoghill, Co. Antrim
9th August - The Banbridge Home of Sinn Féin Councillor Dessie Ward petrol bombed.
9th August - Harryville Catholic Church in Ballymena paint bombed.
9th August - Catholic home in Ballymena has windows smashed.
9th August - Masked loyalist protesters are joined by DUP politicians for illegal protest in Ballymena.
10th August - St. Patrick‚s Catholic Church in Lisburn daubed with sectarian slogans
10th August - 15 year old Thomas Devlin murdered in North Belfast attack, attributed in the media to the UVF.
12th August - Catholic homes in the Waterside area of Derry attacked.
12th August - Leading LVF figure Gordon Hutchinson shot and seriously injured in Lurgan.
12th August - Two flats in Rathcoole come under pipe bomb attack
12 August - Pipe bomb left outside republican home in Beechmount Ave, West Belfast
13th August - 30 year old shot in the legs in Newtownabby
14th August - Newsagents shop on the Antrim Road in Belfast set fire in arson attack.
14th August - 15 year old tied to a lamp post and covered in paint on the Donegal Road
15th August - Catholic home in Kilrea attacked
15th August - Catholic home in Ahoghill, Co.Antrim paint bombed
15th August - Michael Greene an LVF associate shot dead in the Sandy Row area of South Belfast
16th August - St. Josephs Catholic Primary School, Ahoghill paint bombed
16th August - St. Mary's Catholic Church, Ahoghill paint bombed
16th August - Pipe bomb left outside home, Windslow, Carrickfergus
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Still on a Break
Despite today's two posts directly below the Oread Daily is still on a break until the beginning of September
Cuba Five Conviction Tossed Out by Appeals Court
Complete Information on this case can be found at NATIONAL COMMITTEE TO FREE THE CUBAN FIVE
From Prensa Latina:Weinglass: Cuban Five Owed Apology
Defense council Leonard Weinglass stressed Wednesday that yesterday´s overthrow of the Miami court decision which unfairly jailed five Cubans was a major victory and that they deserve an apology.
In a telephone conversation he said from his office in New York that the 93-page ruling by a three judge panel of the Atlanta appeals court places them in the same situation before they entered the Miami courtroom, and that the gratifying verdict is so strongly in their favor no lawyer would think they should enter again.
By a unanimous vote, the judges of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta overturned Tuesday the verdict handed down on them by a Miami court in June 2001, and also ruled that a new trial should take place, as requested by the defense, in a city other than Miami.
According to the ruling, the volatile anti-Cuban political climate and intense media coverage, both amplified in the wake of the Elián González drama, made a fair trial in Miami an impossibility.
The defense attorneys had asked Miami Judge Joan Lenard to move the trial out of Miami in January, 2000.
After a trial legal analysts considered was a frame-up, the Cuban Five, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, René González, and Fernando González, detained in 1998 on several spying charges, were sentenced by Judge Lenard to harsh jail terms, including double life in prison for one of the defendants.
Actually, they just were gathering information on anti-Cuban terrorist plots in Miami in an effort to thwart violent actions that would also affect US citizens.
Hernández, Labañino and Guerrero received life sentences from Lenard, who added a second life imprisonment for Hernández. René González was sentenced to 15 years in prison and Fernando González to 19 years behind bars.
The Atlanta ruling comes less than a month after a UN panel ruled that the detention of the five men was arbitrary and in violation of international law.
The judgment came from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, part of the Geneva-based UN Commission on Human Rights.
But "this is a political issue," Attorney Weinglass warned, voicing fear over a possible appeal by the US government prosecutors in an effort to delay the process, and said his team is reviewing appropriate steps for bail.
When asked if he supported Cuban Parliament Chairman Ricardo Alarcon´s demand for their immediate release, he agreed, lamenting the fact that "They´ve already done seven years."
In remarks to the media in Caracas, Venezuela, where he is attending the World Youth Festival, Alarcon hailed the ruling as "a victory against those who promote terrorism, against hypocrites who tout a supposed war on terror and in reality protect terrorists and jail young men who only acted to oppose terrorism in the United States."
Amid a flurry of calls, the defense lawyer took time to comment on the future of his famous case, saying "the next step is up to the US government. They have 21 days to decide whether or not to take the case to the full circuit court."
Massive protests on the island, deep-seated support from the international community and a considerable amount of backing from US people may have finally brought about an ethical judicial decision.
Gloria La Riva, coordinator of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, was quoted on freethefive.org as saying, "This is a huge victory! We are ecstatic about this decision. It confirms that the five Cubans are completely innocent, as we always knew they were."
These victims of lawlessness have spent the better part of a decade languishing in US jails, two of them without seeing their families, and as Weinglass says, "instead of a retrial they deserve an apology from the US governemt and be sent home."
From Granma (Cuba): Atlanta Court overturns the Five’s convictions and sentences
BY GABRIEL MOLINA
ON August 9 a Federal Appeals Court unanimously revoked the convictions of guilt and life sentences imposed on the five Cubans accused of espionage, affirming that they did not have a fair trial in Miami die to the prejudices of the community and the extensive publicity around the case.
In the face of the finding of the Appeals Court and the UN Panel, Ricardo Alarcón, president of the National Assembly, informed Granma International that what the U.S. government should do now is simply, to release them.
“It is a very important decision,” Alarcón added, “because it is what we have been saying for all these years, both the accused and their defense lawyers and all the solidarity groups in the world created in recent years. The conviction and sentence have been overturned and a new trial ordered. This is what the Atlanta Court of Appeals has decided.
“It is very important because it implies an acknowledgement that it was an invalid legal process, which has violated a series of fundamental legal rulings, including perhaps, the most obvious one: that this entire judicial farce was made against five anti-terrorist combatants who were accused of fighting Miami terrorist groups and were forced to stand trial in Miami. That was an extremely grave violation on the part of the judge and moreover, supreme evidence of the way in which the government of the United States acted, because as the judges acknowledged in their finding of today, just one year later the same government stated that there could not be an impartial trial in Miami on any Cuba-related issue.
“I believe that, in essence, the decision is fundamentally in line with a basic point made by the defense. Nobody can now say that our total condemnation of the legal procedure as false, as full of prejudice, was without any foundation, that it was even outside the realm of justice, including U.S. justice and that from a strictly technical U.S. point of view, the least that they would have to do is to overturn it and organize a retrial, and that was what the judges decided. Now it is the turn of the United States to respond. The response is very simple.
“A few days ago a group of UN experts determined that the arrest of these five Cubans and the whole legal procedure had been arbitrary and contrary to the law. To be deprived of one’s freedom against the law is kidnapping. Now a U.S. court has also ruled that what the U.S. government did against those persons was not legal, and for that reason overturned it and ordered a new trial, so that justice is done. What the U.S. government should do immediately is to release them.
“If they want to charge them with something else, let them charge them, let them present evidence, let them find an impartial court to try five men who are currently kidnapped and should be released. It is very important now to ensure that the major international media discover the news. I told CNN, let the people of the United States know the truth; it was for some reason that the three judges said what they said today; it was for some reason that the five UN experts said what they are saying today; let the U.S. people know the truth, let the people know the truth, the facts, what the parties stated in that trial, to see what conclusion the people reach.
“I do not have the slightest doubt that any honest and honorable person who analyzes this case will reach the same conclusion. The U.S. judges have just done so. My respect to them, they are eminent jurists in the United States, with a lengthy curriculum, and they have ruled in the only way that any honorable person could do, the same as the people of the United States will do when the monopolies that exercise hegemony over the media in that country allow it, knowing the truth, enjoying the First Amendment, which is what grants the right to information.”
COURT ACCEPTED THE DEFENSE ARGUMENTS
The panel of three judges at the Atlanta Court of Appeals ordered a new trial having accepted the defense lawyers’ arguments in terms of the guilty verdict in 2001.
None of the jury members were Cuban, but the lawyers had objected to the trial on the grounds of defects in its form and content.
Federal judges have not initially commented on the appeals court decision.
Moreover, the Atlanta judges overturned the conviction of conspiracy to commit homicide against Gerardo Hernández, who was sentenced to two life terms for also being charged with the death of four men who violated Cuban airspace in a light aircraft brought down by a Cuban Air Force MiG in 1996.
The five heroes were convicted in June 2001 having been found guilty of acting as non-registered agents of a foreign government and other charges.
The Five admitted to having been agents of the Cuban government and bravely stated that they had infiltrated terrorist groups but not agencies of the U.S. government.
Their defense lawyers also argued that the principal task of the agents was to frustrate the action of gangs backing acts of terrorism against Cuba, including a series of attacks in Havana in 1997 in which one tourist died and a further 12 people were injured.
From March 10 last year, three U.S. judges were appointed by the 11th Circuit of the Atlanta Court of Appeals to review the case of Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando González.
After close to 17 months and reviewing a large volume of statements, the judges unanimously ruled to overturn the sentences of the Five – as they are known in the international campaigns for their release.
The Five were detained in September 1998, and after 17 months in solitary confinement were subjected to a trial plagued with irregularities in Miami.
In line with the sentences revoked this August 9, Gerardo was serving double life plus 15 years’ imprisonment; Ramón and Antonio, life terms plus 18 years imprisonment for the former and 10 for the latter; Fernando, 19 years’ imprisonment; and René, 15 years.
From AIN - Cuban News Agency: Cuba Reviews Atlanta Court Ruling on Cuban Five
Havana, Aug 11 (AIN) Immediate freedom for the Cuban Five is the only just and ethical recourse after they have spent nearly seven years in prison for crimes they never committed, coincided panelists on Wednesday evening's The Round Table program.
On Tuesday, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals of Atlanta made public its ruling that the convictions against Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez were null and void since they never received a fair and impartial trail.
Legal experts sitting in on the televised Round Table noted that the news about the unanimous court decision continues to have an impact in the international media, making Cubans and the members of 246 Free the Five groups in 82 nations very happy.
The Cuban Five were arrested by the FBI in 1998, and in 2001, after a biased and highly politicized trial in Miami, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from life in prison for three of them to 19 and 15 years for the other two defendants.
Leonard Weinglass, the defense lawyer for Antonio Guerrero, was interviewed by telephone. When asked what's next, he explained that the prosecution has 21 days to appeal the Atlanta court decision, and if they do so, and the court accepts the appeal, a decision could take many months.
Otherwise, if the prosecution feels its still has a case, a date must be set to begin a new judicial process against the five men who dedicated their lives to fighting terrorism.
However, the attorney emphasized that instead of a new trial the Cubans should be set free and that they and the people of Cuba should receive an apology for the injustice suffered.
Roberto Gonzalez, the brother of Cuban Five member Rene, and himself a lawyer, clarified several procedural aspects of US law, and highlighted that the three judges made an ethical decision. Now, he said it is necessary to make the final impulse to obtain the liberty of the Cubans.
Richard Klugh, the defense lawyer for Fernando Gonzalez, stated in a telephone interview that besides the prosecution's decision on whether to appeal or seek a new trial the court would have to decide on whether to free to Cuban Five on bail.
Dr Julio Fernandez Bulte, a well-known Cuban law professor, affirmed that the judicial elements cited and the decision of the three judges was rigorous and professional. He noted the sharp contrast to the frivolous and superficial way in which the Miami court dealt with the case involving 24 charges against the Five.
Fernandez Bulte stated that an appeal by the prosecution would not be viable since the reasons for revoking the convictions and ordering a new trial were overwhelming. He insisted though that justice is yet to be done, because the five have still not been pronounced not guilty, adding that this is the moment to intensify the struggle for their freedom.
Another distinguished Cuban legal expert, Professor Rodolfo Davalos recalled that what was really under review by the appeals court was the legitimate exercise of the constitutional rights of the defendants to a defense and a fair trial. He said the judges verified the long list of arbitrary actions against them that took place before, during and after the trial.
Jose Pertierra, a Washington based lawyer, explained that the prosecutor has the option to drop the charges and set the Cuban Five free, but he voiced the opinion that for political reasons, it is probable that they will insist on holding another trial. Pertierra added that if the case is tried in a city free of the prejudices that contaminate Miami, the prisoners will be absolved because of the weak evidence against them.
In southern Florida the reaction to the court decision from Cuban-American members of Congress and the leaders of organizations with a long standing record of terrorist activities against the island was of anger and deception.
The fact that the heavily manipulated trial against the Cuban Five cost taxpayers 20 million dollars has been highlighted by several observers, who also commented that a similar figure could be required to cover the cost of a new trial at a different venue.
Miami resident Andres Gomez, president of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, congratulated the Cuban people for the favorable court decision and he especially praised those in southern Florida who have been active in the struggle for the Five's freedom.
Gomez affirmed on the panel that when the decision of the appeals court makes reference to the hostile environment of Miami, they are not talking about the entire population of that city, but specifically the ultra rightwing segment that creates an environment of terror and falsely presents itself as representing the whole Cuban-American community.
Maria E. Guerrero, Antonio's sister, described the phone call with her imprisoned brother after the ruling, during which in a very emotional way he urged her to be patient and have faith that justice will prevail. Antonio Guerrero expressed gratitude for the work of the defense attorneys and for the solidarity
shown by the Cuban people.
At the end of The Round Table, Cuban TV broadcast excerpts from the solidarity meeting with the Cuban Five that took place Wednesday in Venezuela, where the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students is taking place.
From the Miami Herald: Court overturns spy verdicts
A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out the convictions of five accused Cuban spies, finding that the volatile mix of Miami's anti-Castro political climate and intense media coverage -- both amplified in the wake of the Elián González drama -- made a fair trial in the city an impossibility.
The decision by a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means that the five Miami men -- convicted in June 2001 of infiltrating Miami's exile community and trying to pass U.S. military secrets to Havana -- will have a new trial. But not in Miami.
In its 93-page opinion, the court found the six-month trial was hopelessly inundated with news coverage and public protests, while the community was already saturated with stories about the Elián case, an immigration agent charged with spying for Fidel Castro and local bans on doing business with Cuba.
The court also said prosecutors made improper comments during the trial, as did José Basulto, the founder of Brothers to the Rescue, who implied from the witness stand that one of the defense lawyers was a Cuban agent.
''A new trial was mandated by the perfect storm created when the surge of pervasive community sentiment and extensive publicity both before and during the trial merged with the improper prosecutorial references,'' the court said.
But at least one juror said she didn't feel nearly as pressured by anti-Castro sentiment as the appeals court believed.
''As far as I'm concerned, the verdict we reached had nothing to do with the community. The verdict we reached was because of the evidence presented to us,'' Omaira Garcia said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
''I felt no pressure at all, and I'm sure the other jurors didn't either,'' said Garcia, a legal assistant.
Lawyers for the defendants -- Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, René González and Ramón Labañino -- cheered the ruling, praising the court for taking a position that would no doubt be unpopular in Miami.
''I have new faith in the court of appeals and the system of laws,'' said Paul McKenna, who represented Hernández. ``The trial was infected with prejudice from the beginning to the end.''
The defense lawyers first asked U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard to move the trial out of Miami in January 2000 and said Fort Lauderdale would be a better venue.
At the time, the federal government was seeking to send 6-year-old rafter Elián González back to Cuba to live with his father, raising a furor in Miami's Cuban-American community.
GOVERNMENT CASE
The verdict in the spy trial was undone in part by the government's stance in a separate civil case that spun out of the Elián case: Defending an employment lawsuit brought by immigration agent Ricardo Ramirez, government lawyers said they could not get a fair trial in Miami. They said the community had become too polarized after the INS raid that sent Elián back to Cuba.
Defense lawyers for the accused spies then used the government's pleadings to persuade the appeals court that it was unfair to hold the spy trial in Miami as well.
Former U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis, whose office dedicated thousands of hours and millions of dollars to its pursuit of the accused spies, said the trial judge went to great lengths to make sure the trial was fair.
''I think the court is wrong,'' said Lewis, now a lawyer in private practice. ``What they are saying is that you can't get a fair trial here in South Florida.''
Federal prosecutors did not comment on Tuesday's decision, though they are certain to pursue a retrial of the five men, who were convicted of 23 spying-related charges.
After their convictions, Hernández, Labañino and Guerrero all received life sentences from Lenard. Hernández was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for his alleged role in the 1996 shooting by Cuban fighters of two Brothers to the Rescue planes over international waters. Four people died in the shooting.
René González, a pilot accused of faking his defection to insinuate himself into Brothers to the Rescue, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Fernando González, no relation, was convicted of trying to infiltrate the offices of Cuban-American politicians and shadowing prominent exiles, including one-time accused airplane bomber Orlando Bosch; González was sentenced to 19 years.
The five men were arrested in 1998 as U.S. agents dismantled a Cuban spy network called La Red Avispa, the Wasp Network. Prosecutors said the ring infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue and other Miami-area exile groups, spreading disinformation and spying for Castro. Some were also accused of trying to gather intelligence about the U.S. military; Guerrero was a laborer at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station near Key West.
DISCS SEIZED
The FBI seized coded computer disks containing 2,000 messages among the defendants and their handlers in Havana, prosecutors said. Federal agents also found shortwave radio messages from Cuba warning that René Gonzalez and another pilot should not fly with the Brothers around the time of the shoot-down.
Defense lawyers essentially conceded that the five were working on behalf of the Cuban government but said they were simply trying to protect their homeland from exile groups and did not try to gather military secrets.
Tuesday's court ruling dismayed many in Miami's Cuban community, especially the relatives of the pilots from Brothers to the Rescue, an organization that flew small planes across the Florida Straits in search of rafters fleeing Cuba.
`DISAPPOINTED'
''We are extremely disappointed,'' said Maggie Alejandre Khuly, whose brother, Armando Alejandre Jr., was one of those shot down on Feb. 24, 1996. ``I sat at the trial every day, and I don't think I saw any miscarriage of justice. But we firmly believe and respect the American justice system.''
Basulto said he didn't believe there was any undue influence on the jurors, none of whom were Cuban American.
''I'm very disappointed in their decision. They were convicted by a jury of their peers,'' he said. ``If they are retried, they will again be found guilty.''
But the court found that, in some cases, if the climate outside the courthouse is too hostile, ``it is unnecessary to prove that local prejudice actually entered the jury box.''
McKenna said he will try to get Hernández released on bail after seven years in custody. And the San Francisco-based National Committee to Free the Cuban Five said it would ask the Justice Department to allow the wives of Hernández and René González to travel from Cuba to the United States to visit their spouses.
Olga Salanueva, wife of prisoner René González, told Cuban broadcasters that she was overjoyed, according to the Associated Press. ''It's been many years since I've received such good news,'' she said.
DECISION CHEERED
In Cuba, where the five men have been portrayed as heroic patriots since their arrest in 1998, the court's decision was hailed.
''This is a victory against those who promote terrorism, against hypocrites who tout a supposed war on terror and in reality protect terrorists and jail young men who only acted to oppose terrorism in the United States,'' National Assembly speaker Ricardo Alarcon told Agence France-Presse. He called on the U.S. government to free the five men from prison.
The court's ruling comes less than a month after a U.N. panel ruled that the detention of the five men was arbitrary and in violation of international law. The judgment came from the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, part of the Geneva-based U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
It found the five were denied full access to evidence and to their lawyers, but a senior State Department official told The Herald at the time that the ruling was a ''politically motivated'' maneuver orchestrated by the Cuban government.
State Department officials did not comment on Tuesday's federal appeals ruling, calling it ``a judicial and law enforcement matter.''
Some in Miami found the federal appeals court's language condescending and insulting.
The court concluded it's ruling by praising the ''traditional values'' of the Cuban-American community and saying: ``We trust that any disappointment with our judgment in this case will be tempered and balanced by the recognition that we are a nation of laws in which every defendant, no matter how unpopular, must be treated fairly.''
''We are sensitive about Cuban issues, that's true, but this is insulting to exiles,'' said Manny Vazquez, an attorney for the Cuban American National Foundation. ``We are a peaceful community, and yes, we want a change in government in Cuba, but we want it in a peaceful way.''
From AFP: US court orders retrial of convicted Cuban spies
A US appeals court has ordered a retrial for five Cubans convicted in 2001 of spying on the United States for the communist government in Havana, their attorneys said Tuesday.
Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, Fernando Gonzalez Llort, Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Ramon Labanino Salazar and Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert were arrested in September 1998 in southern Florida.
They were accused of monitoring US military installations, including the US Southern Command headquarters and a Key West air base, and infiltrating Cuban-American exile groups.
The five were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences after they were found guilty of spying.
Cuba has admitted they were Cuban agents but said they were only spying on Cuban-American exiles in Miami plotting against Cuba, not on the United States.
In Havana, National Assembly speaker Ricardo Alarcon hailed Cuba's "victory" as a US appeals court ordered a retrial for the five convicted Cubans.
"This is a victory against those who promote terrorism, against hypocrites who tout a supposed war on terror and in reality protect terrorists, and jail young men who only acted to oppose terrorism in the United States," Alarcon told AFP.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled that "the pervasive community prejudice against (Cuban President) Fidel Castro and the Cuban government and its agents and the publicity surrounding the trial and other community events combined to create a situation where they were unable to obtain a fair and impartial trial.
"We agree, and reverse their convictions and remand for a retrial. Our consideration of a motion for change of venue requires a review of the totality of the circumstances surrounding the trial."
The case has been one of many sources of tension between Cuba, the only communist-ruled country in the Americas, and the United States.
From Prensa Latina:Weinglass: Cuban Five Owed Apology
Defense council Leonard Weinglass stressed Wednesday that yesterday´s overthrow of the Miami court decision which unfairly jailed five Cubans was a major victory and that they deserve an apology.
In a telephone conversation he said from his office in New York that the 93-page ruling by a three judge panel of the Atlanta appeals court places them in the same situation before they entered the Miami courtroom, and that the gratifying verdict is so strongly in their favor no lawyer would think they should enter again.
By a unanimous vote, the judges of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta overturned Tuesday the verdict handed down on them by a Miami court in June 2001, and also ruled that a new trial should take place, as requested by the defense, in a city other than Miami.
According to the ruling, the volatile anti-Cuban political climate and intense media coverage, both amplified in the wake of the Elián González drama, made a fair trial in Miami an impossibility.
The defense attorneys had asked Miami Judge Joan Lenard to move the trial out of Miami in January, 2000.
After a trial legal analysts considered was a frame-up, the Cuban Five, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, René González, and Fernando González, detained in 1998 on several spying charges, were sentenced by Judge Lenard to harsh jail terms, including double life in prison for one of the defendants.
Actually, they just were gathering information on anti-Cuban terrorist plots in Miami in an effort to thwart violent actions that would also affect US citizens.
Hernández, Labañino and Guerrero received life sentences from Lenard, who added a second life imprisonment for Hernández. René González was sentenced to 15 years in prison and Fernando González to 19 years behind bars.
The Atlanta ruling comes less than a month after a UN panel ruled that the detention of the five men was arbitrary and in violation of international law.
The judgment came from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, part of the Geneva-based UN Commission on Human Rights.
But "this is a political issue," Attorney Weinglass warned, voicing fear over a possible appeal by the US government prosecutors in an effort to delay the process, and said his team is reviewing appropriate steps for bail.
When asked if he supported Cuban Parliament Chairman Ricardo Alarcon´s demand for their immediate release, he agreed, lamenting the fact that "They´ve already done seven years."
In remarks to the media in Caracas, Venezuela, where he is attending the World Youth Festival, Alarcon hailed the ruling as "a victory against those who promote terrorism, against hypocrites who tout a supposed war on terror and in reality protect terrorists and jail young men who only acted to oppose terrorism in the United States."
Amid a flurry of calls, the defense lawyer took time to comment on the future of his famous case, saying "the next step is up to the US government. They have 21 days to decide whether or not to take the case to the full circuit court."
Massive protests on the island, deep-seated support from the international community and a considerable amount of backing from US people may have finally brought about an ethical judicial decision.
Gloria La Riva, coordinator of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, was quoted on freethefive.org as saying, "This is a huge victory! We are ecstatic about this decision. It confirms that the five Cubans are completely innocent, as we always knew they were."
These victims of lawlessness have spent the better part of a decade languishing in US jails, two of them without seeing their families, and as Weinglass says, "instead of a retrial they deserve an apology from the US governemt and be sent home."
From Granma (Cuba): Atlanta Court overturns the Five’s convictions and sentences
BY GABRIEL MOLINA
ON August 9 a Federal Appeals Court unanimously revoked the convictions of guilt and life sentences imposed on the five Cubans accused of espionage, affirming that they did not have a fair trial in Miami die to the prejudices of the community and the extensive publicity around the case.
In the face of the finding of the Appeals Court and the UN Panel, Ricardo Alarcón, president of the National Assembly, informed Granma International that what the U.S. government should do now is simply, to release them.
“It is a very important decision,” Alarcón added, “because it is what we have been saying for all these years, both the accused and their defense lawyers and all the solidarity groups in the world created in recent years. The conviction and sentence have been overturned and a new trial ordered. This is what the Atlanta Court of Appeals has decided.
“It is very important because it implies an acknowledgement that it was an invalid legal process, which has violated a series of fundamental legal rulings, including perhaps, the most obvious one: that this entire judicial farce was made against five anti-terrorist combatants who were accused of fighting Miami terrorist groups and were forced to stand trial in Miami. That was an extremely grave violation on the part of the judge and moreover, supreme evidence of the way in which the government of the United States acted, because as the judges acknowledged in their finding of today, just one year later the same government stated that there could not be an impartial trial in Miami on any Cuba-related issue.
“I believe that, in essence, the decision is fundamentally in line with a basic point made by the defense. Nobody can now say that our total condemnation of the legal procedure as false, as full of prejudice, was without any foundation, that it was even outside the realm of justice, including U.S. justice and that from a strictly technical U.S. point of view, the least that they would have to do is to overturn it and organize a retrial, and that was what the judges decided. Now it is the turn of the United States to respond. The response is very simple.
“A few days ago a group of UN experts determined that the arrest of these five Cubans and the whole legal procedure had been arbitrary and contrary to the law. To be deprived of one’s freedom against the law is kidnapping. Now a U.S. court has also ruled that what the U.S. government did against those persons was not legal, and for that reason overturned it and ordered a new trial, so that justice is done. What the U.S. government should do immediately is to release them.
“If they want to charge them with something else, let them charge them, let them present evidence, let them find an impartial court to try five men who are currently kidnapped and should be released. It is very important now to ensure that the major international media discover the news. I told CNN, let the people of the United States know the truth; it was for some reason that the three judges said what they said today; it was for some reason that the five UN experts said what they are saying today; let the U.S. people know the truth, let the people know the truth, the facts, what the parties stated in that trial, to see what conclusion the people reach.
“I do not have the slightest doubt that any honest and honorable person who analyzes this case will reach the same conclusion. The U.S. judges have just done so. My respect to them, they are eminent jurists in the United States, with a lengthy curriculum, and they have ruled in the only way that any honorable person could do, the same as the people of the United States will do when the monopolies that exercise hegemony over the media in that country allow it, knowing the truth, enjoying the First Amendment, which is what grants the right to information.”
COURT ACCEPTED THE DEFENSE ARGUMENTS
The panel of three judges at the Atlanta Court of Appeals ordered a new trial having accepted the defense lawyers’ arguments in terms of the guilty verdict in 2001.
None of the jury members were Cuban, but the lawyers had objected to the trial on the grounds of defects in its form and content.
Federal judges have not initially commented on the appeals court decision.
Moreover, the Atlanta judges overturned the conviction of conspiracy to commit homicide against Gerardo Hernández, who was sentenced to two life terms for also being charged with the death of four men who violated Cuban airspace in a light aircraft brought down by a Cuban Air Force MiG in 1996.
The five heroes were convicted in June 2001 having been found guilty of acting as non-registered agents of a foreign government and other charges.
The Five admitted to having been agents of the Cuban government and bravely stated that they had infiltrated terrorist groups but not agencies of the U.S. government.
Their defense lawyers also argued that the principal task of the agents was to frustrate the action of gangs backing acts of terrorism against Cuba, including a series of attacks in Havana in 1997 in which one tourist died and a further 12 people were injured.
From March 10 last year, three U.S. judges were appointed by the 11th Circuit of the Atlanta Court of Appeals to review the case of Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando González.
After close to 17 months and reviewing a large volume of statements, the judges unanimously ruled to overturn the sentences of the Five – as they are known in the international campaigns for their release.
The Five were detained in September 1998, and after 17 months in solitary confinement were subjected to a trial plagued with irregularities in Miami.
In line with the sentences revoked this August 9, Gerardo was serving double life plus 15 years’ imprisonment; Ramón and Antonio, life terms plus 18 years imprisonment for the former and 10 for the latter; Fernando, 19 years’ imprisonment; and René, 15 years.
From AIN - Cuban News Agency: Cuba Reviews Atlanta Court Ruling on Cuban Five
Havana, Aug 11 (AIN) Immediate freedom for the Cuban Five is the only just and ethical recourse after they have spent nearly seven years in prison for crimes they never committed, coincided panelists on Wednesday evening's The Round Table program.
On Tuesday, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals of Atlanta made public its ruling that the convictions against Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez were null and void since they never received a fair and impartial trail.
Legal experts sitting in on the televised Round Table noted that the news about the unanimous court decision continues to have an impact in the international media, making Cubans and the members of 246 Free the Five groups in 82 nations very happy.
The Cuban Five were arrested by the FBI in 1998, and in 2001, after a biased and highly politicized trial in Miami, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from life in prison for three of them to 19 and 15 years for the other two defendants.
Leonard Weinglass, the defense lawyer for Antonio Guerrero, was interviewed by telephone. When asked what's next, he explained that the prosecution has 21 days to appeal the Atlanta court decision, and if they do so, and the court accepts the appeal, a decision could take many months.
Otherwise, if the prosecution feels its still has a case, a date must be set to begin a new judicial process against the five men who dedicated their lives to fighting terrorism.
However, the attorney emphasized that instead of a new trial the Cubans should be set free and that they and the people of Cuba should receive an apology for the injustice suffered.
Roberto Gonzalez, the brother of Cuban Five member Rene, and himself a lawyer, clarified several procedural aspects of US law, and highlighted that the three judges made an ethical decision. Now, he said it is necessary to make the final impulse to obtain the liberty of the Cubans.
Richard Klugh, the defense lawyer for Fernando Gonzalez, stated in a telephone interview that besides the prosecution's decision on whether to appeal or seek a new trial the court would have to decide on whether to free to Cuban Five on bail.
Dr Julio Fernandez Bulte, a well-known Cuban law professor, affirmed that the judicial elements cited and the decision of the three judges was rigorous and professional. He noted the sharp contrast to the frivolous and superficial way in which the Miami court dealt with the case involving 24 charges against the Five.
Fernandez Bulte stated that an appeal by the prosecution would not be viable since the reasons for revoking the convictions and ordering a new trial were overwhelming. He insisted though that justice is yet to be done, because the five have still not been pronounced not guilty, adding that this is the moment to intensify the struggle for their freedom.
Another distinguished Cuban legal expert, Professor Rodolfo Davalos recalled that what was really under review by the appeals court was the legitimate exercise of the constitutional rights of the defendants to a defense and a fair trial. He said the judges verified the long list of arbitrary actions against them that took place before, during and after the trial.
Jose Pertierra, a Washington based lawyer, explained that the prosecutor has the option to drop the charges and set the Cuban Five free, but he voiced the opinion that for political reasons, it is probable that they will insist on holding another trial. Pertierra added that if the case is tried in a city free of the prejudices that contaminate Miami, the prisoners will be absolved because of the weak evidence against them.
In southern Florida the reaction to the court decision from Cuban-American members of Congress and the leaders of organizations with a long standing record of terrorist activities against the island was of anger and deception.
The fact that the heavily manipulated trial against the Cuban Five cost taxpayers 20 million dollars has been highlighted by several observers, who also commented that a similar figure could be required to cover the cost of a new trial at a different venue.
Miami resident Andres Gomez, president of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, congratulated the Cuban people for the favorable court decision and he especially praised those in southern Florida who have been active in the struggle for the Five's freedom.
Gomez affirmed on the panel that when the decision of the appeals court makes reference to the hostile environment of Miami, they are not talking about the entire population of that city, but specifically the ultra rightwing segment that creates an environment of terror and falsely presents itself as representing the whole Cuban-American community.
Maria E. Guerrero, Antonio's sister, described the phone call with her imprisoned brother after the ruling, during which in a very emotional way he urged her to be patient and have faith that justice will prevail. Antonio Guerrero expressed gratitude for the work of the defense attorneys and for the solidarity
shown by the Cuban people.
At the end of The Round Table, Cuban TV broadcast excerpts from the solidarity meeting with the Cuban Five that took place Wednesday in Venezuela, where the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students is taking place.
From the Miami Herald: Court overturns spy verdicts
A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out the convictions of five accused Cuban spies, finding that the volatile mix of Miami's anti-Castro political climate and intense media coverage -- both amplified in the wake of the Elián González drama -- made a fair trial in the city an impossibility.
The decision by a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means that the five Miami men -- convicted in June 2001 of infiltrating Miami's exile community and trying to pass U.S. military secrets to Havana -- will have a new trial. But not in Miami.
In its 93-page opinion, the court found the six-month trial was hopelessly inundated with news coverage and public protests, while the community was already saturated with stories about the Elián case, an immigration agent charged with spying for Fidel Castro and local bans on doing business with Cuba.
The court also said prosecutors made improper comments during the trial, as did José Basulto, the founder of Brothers to the Rescue, who implied from the witness stand that one of the defense lawyers was a Cuban agent.
''A new trial was mandated by the perfect storm created when the surge of pervasive community sentiment and extensive publicity both before and during the trial merged with the improper prosecutorial references,'' the court said.
But at least one juror said she didn't feel nearly as pressured by anti-Castro sentiment as the appeals court believed.
''As far as I'm concerned, the verdict we reached had nothing to do with the community. The verdict we reached was because of the evidence presented to us,'' Omaira Garcia said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
''I felt no pressure at all, and I'm sure the other jurors didn't either,'' said Garcia, a legal assistant.
Lawyers for the defendants -- Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, René González and Ramón Labañino -- cheered the ruling, praising the court for taking a position that would no doubt be unpopular in Miami.
''I have new faith in the court of appeals and the system of laws,'' said Paul McKenna, who represented Hernández. ``The trial was infected with prejudice from the beginning to the end.''
The defense lawyers first asked U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard to move the trial out of Miami in January 2000 and said Fort Lauderdale would be a better venue.
At the time, the federal government was seeking to send 6-year-old rafter Elián González back to Cuba to live with his father, raising a furor in Miami's Cuban-American community.
GOVERNMENT CASE
The verdict in the spy trial was undone in part by the government's stance in a separate civil case that spun out of the Elián case: Defending an employment lawsuit brought by immigration agent Ricardo Ramirez, government lawyers said they could not get a fair trial in Miami. They said the community had become too polarized after the INS raid that sent Elián back to Cuba.
Defense lawyers for the accused spies then used the government's pleadings to persuade the appeals court that it was unfair to hold the spy trial in Miami as well.
Former U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis, whose office dedicated thousands of hours and millions of dollars to its pursuit of the accused spies, said the trial judge went to great lengths to make sure the trial was fair.
''I think the court is wrong,'' said Lewis, now a lawyer in private practice. ``What they are saying is that you can't get a fair trial here in South Florida.''
Federal prosecutors did not comment on Tuesday's decision, though they are certain to pursue a retrial of the five men, who were convicted of 23 spying-related charges.
After their convictions, Hernández, Labañino and Guerrero all received life sentences from Lenard. Hernández was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for his alleged role in the 1996 shooting by Cuban fighters of two Brothers to the Rescue planes over international waters. Four people died in the shooting.
René González, a pilot accused of faking his defection to insinuate himself into Brothers to the Rescue, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Fernando González, no relation, was convicted of trying to infiltrate the offices of Cuban-American politicians and shadowing prominent exiles, including one-time accused airplane bomber Orlando Bosch; González was sentenced to 19 years.
The five men were arrested in 1998 as U.S. agents dismantled a Cuban spy network called La Red Avispa, the Wasp Network. Prosecutors said the ring infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue and other Miami-area exile groups, spreading disinformation and spying for Castro. Some were also accused of trying to gather intelligence about the U.S. military; Guerrero was a laborer at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station near Key West.
DISCS SEIZED
The FBI seized coded computer disks containing 2,000 messages among the defendants and their handlers in Havana, prosecutors said. Federal agents also found shortwave radio messages from Cuba warning that René Gonzalez and another pilot should not fly with the Brothers around the time of the shoot-down.
Defense lawyers essentially conceded that the five were working on behalf of the Cuban government but said they were simply trying to protect their homeland from exile groups and did not try to gather military secrets.
Tuesday's court ruling dismayed many in Miami's Cuban community, especially the relatives of the pilots from Brothers to the Rescue, an organization that flew small planes across the Florida Straits in search of rafters fleeing Cuba.
`DISAPPOINTED'
''We are extremely disappointed,'' said Maggie Alejandre Khuly, whose brother, Armando Alejandre Jr., was one of those shot down on Feb. 24, 1996. ``I sat at the trial every day, and I don't think I saw any miscarriage of justice. But we firmly believe and respect the American justice system.''
Basulto said he didn't believe there was any undue influence on the jurors, none of whom were Cuban American.
''I'm very disappointed in their decision. They were convicted by a jury of their peers,'' he said. ``If they are retried, they will again be found guilty.''
But the court found that, in some cases, if the climate outside the courthouse is too hostile, ``it is unnecessary to prove that local prejudice actually entered the jury box.''
McKenna said he will try to get Hernández released on bail after seven years in custody. And the San Francisco-based National Committee to Free the Cuban Five said it would ask the Justice Department to allow the wives of Hernández and René González to travel from Cuba to the United States to visit their spouses.
Olga Salanueva, wife of prisoner René González, told Cuban broadcasters that she was overjoyed, according to the Associated Press. ''It's been many years since I've received such good news,'' she said.
DECISION CHEERED
In Cuba, where the five men have been portrayed as heroic patriots since their arrest in 1998, the court's decision was hailed.
''This is a victory against those who promote terrorism, against hypocrites who tout a supposed war on terror and in reality protect terrorists and jail young men who only acted to oppose terrorism in the United States,'' National Assembly speaker Ricardo Alarcon told Agence France-Presse. He called on the U.S. government to free the five men from prison.
The court's ruling comes less than a month after a U.N. panel ruled that the detention of the five men was arbitrary and in violation of international law. The judgment came from the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, part of the Geneva-based U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
It found the five were denied full access to evidence and to their lawyers, but a senior State Department official told The Herald at the time that the ruling was a ''politically motivated'' maneuver orchestrated by the Cuban government.
State Department officials did not comment on Tuesday's federal appeals ruling, calling it ``a judicial and law enforcement matter.''
Some in Miami found the federal appeals court's language condescending and insulting.
The court concluded it's ruling by praising the ''traditional values'' of the Cuban-American community and saying: ``We trust that any disappointment with our judgment in this case will be tempered and balanced by the recognition that we are a nation of laws in which every defendant, no matter how unpopular, must be treated fairly.''
''We are sensitive about Cuban issues, that's true, but this is insulting to exiles,'' said Manny Vazquez, an attorney for the Cuban American National Foundation. ``We are a peaceful community, and yes, we want a change in government in Cuba, but we want it in a peaceful way.''
From AFP: US court orders retrial of convicted Cuban spies
A US appeals court has ordered a retrial for five Cubans convicted in 2001 of spying on the United States for the communist government in Havana, their attorneys said Tuesday.
Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, Fernando Gonzalez Llort, Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Ramon Labanino Salazar and Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert were arrested in September 1998 in southern Florida.
They were accused of monitoring US military installations, including the US Southern Command headquarters and a Key West air base, and infiltrating Cuban-American exile groups.
The five were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences after they were found guilty of spying.
Cuba has admitted they were Cuban agents but said they were only spying on Cuban-American exiles in Miami plotting against Cuba, not on the United States.
In Havana, National Assembly speaker Ricardo Alarcon hailed Cuba's "victory" as a US appeals court ordered a retrial for the five convicted Cubans.
"This is a victory against those who promote terrorism, against hypocrites who tout a supposed war on terror and in reality protect terrorists, and jail young men who only acted to oppose terrorism in the United States," Alarcon told AFP.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled that "the pervasive community prejudice against (Cuban President) Fidel Castro and the Cuban government and its agents and the publicity surrounding the trial and other community events combined to create a situation where they were unable to obtain a fair and impartial trial.
"We agree, and reverse their convictions and remand for a retrial. Our consideration of a motion for change of venue requires a review of the totality of the circumstances surrounding the trial."
The case has been one of many sources of tension between Cuba, the only communist-ruled country in the Americas, and the United States.
IMPORTANT CORRECTION - "Loyalists Continue Terror Campaign in Northern Ireland"
(Major mix up on Monday's article "Loyalists Continue Terror Campaign in Northern Ireland")
I just received the following:
A little bit of misinformation on the Cloughmills
attacks, I'm a
Sinn Féin Councillor, not an SDLP member!!
Cllr Daithí McKay
Sinn Féin
(Wow! I'm very sorry for the error. Can't say that I know how it happened.)
From the Belfast Telegraph concerning the pipe bomb attacks:
Councillor Daithi McKay said: "We have seen churches attacked, businesses attacked and homes attacked and this is the latest instalment in this ongoing campaign.
"I would appeal to nationalists and republicans to remain highly vigilant in the time ahead as it seems that unionist paramilitary gangs are intent on escalating their campaign.
"I would also once again appeal to the leadership of the DUP to get a grip on this issue.
"Instead of acting as cheer leaders for the paramilitary gangs they must, for the first time, make a stand and begin to treat nationalists in this area with equality and respect."
Some information about Daithi McKay
Councillor Daithí McKay
Sinn Féin – Bann Valley
25 Wallace Park
Rasharkin
BT44 8QH
Email: daithimckay@btinternet.com
Elected to Council - 2005
Political advisor
Committee Membership - Health & Environmental Services Committee, Lignite Committee
Member of Rasharkin Community Association
Serves on Northern Ireland Local Government Association Executive Committee
Chairperson of Northern Ireland Local Government Association E-Government Committee
I just received the following:
A little bit of misinformation on the Cloughmills
attacks, I'm a
Sinn Féin Councillor, not an SDLP member!!
Cllr Daithí McKay
Sinn Féin
(Wow! I'm very sorry for the error. Can't say that I know how it happened.)
From the Belfast Telegraph concerning the pipe bomb attacks:
Councillor Daithi McKay said: "We have seen churches attacked, businesses attacked and homes attacked and this is the latest instalment in this ongoing campaign.
"I would appeal to nationalists and republicans to remain highly vigilant in the time ahead as it seems that unionist paramilitary gangs are intent on escalating their campaign.
"I would also once again appeal to the leadership of the DUP to get a grip on this issue.
"Instead of acting as cheer leaders for the paramilitary gangs they must, for the first time, make a stand and begin to treat nationalists in this area with equality and respect."
Some information about Daithi McKay
Councillor Daithí McKay
Sinn Féin – Bann Valley
25 Wallace Park
Rasharkin
BT44 8QH
Email: daithimckay@btinternet.com
Elected to Council - 2005
Political advisor
Committee Membership - Health & Environmental Services Committee, Lignite Committee
Member of Rasharkin Community Association
Serves on Northern Ireland Local Government Association Executive Committee
Chairperson of Northern Ireland Local Government Association E-Government Committee
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Oread Daily Takes A Break For The Dog Days
I've decided to take the rest of August off to "enjoy" the heat, watch some baseball*, and maybe jump in a pool. So the next regularly scheduled Oread Daily with any luck will appear Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005. In the meantime, should you write or run across something which you would like to see appear on the blog, send it to me at dgscooldesign@yahoo.com and I'll see what I can do.
*(Of course, then comes September and October, with the final days of the pennant races, play off games, World Series, which could also have an impact on that OD schedule, but we'll worry about that some other time)
Catch y'all later...
*(Of course, then comes September and October, with the final days of the pennant races, play off games, World Series, which could also have an impact on that OD schedule, but we'll worry about that some other time)
Catch y'all later...
Monday, August 08, 2005
No More Nuclear Bombs
Four coordinated anti-nuclear bomb protests occurred on Saturday. Protest sites were in Las Vegas, near the Nevada Test Site; Y-12 Production Plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Southern California; and Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico.
At Los Alamos, the birthplace of the Atomic Bomb, hundreds were on hand in protest on the 60th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Sunflowers, the international symbol for nuclear disarmament, were arranged around a pond and protesters gathered to listen to guest speakers. The Los Alamos Monitor reports banners and posters that read things such as, "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war" and "Stop the new bomb factory" were prominently displayed throughout the day's speeches.
"We're trying to protect the planet from being destroyed," said Father John Dear of Pax Christi New Mexico, an organization that strives to create peace worldwide. "Nuclear weapons are the ultimate form of terrorism. We are New Mexico people and we're not going away. We're going to keep building a movement until the weapons are abolished.
Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, an organization that provides leadership on nuclear disarmament and related issues in New Mexico, said Los Alamos does not need a laboratory to be a successful community.
"The more waste dumped here and the more plutonium manufactured here, the more pigeon-holed and associated with pollution the community becomes, and the public doesn't like that," he said.
"If we are going to oppose militarism, then it's best we oppose our own militarism right at home because that would be most effective," Mello said.
Mello said he has spoken with hundreds of scientists at the lab and has found that only about 10 percent support the production of nuclear weapons.
"Scientists need to speak up," Mello said. "If they don't, it's assumed they support nuclear weapons. If they don't want to work on nuclear weapons, they shouldn't. These are hard choices they have to make. We have nothing against the people here, but we have to be firm about these destructive policies."
As part of the event, County Council Chair Fran Berting arrived at the U.S. Post Office to accept a letter written by the mayor of Hiroshima and a resolution passed in April by the Santa Fe City Council. David Coss, a Santa Fe city councilor, gave Berting the letter, which outlines the need to globally work together to end the production of nuclear weapons. He also gave her the Santa Fe resolution which calls upon the U.S. government to order the disarmament of nuclear weapons.
"I respectfully accept this letter and will take it to the next council meeting," Berting said. "I think we all share the same ultimate goal - world peace."
Prior to the event, about 250 New Mexico businesses signed a petition stating they were against the production of nuclear weapons, and banners set up at the rally identified each of those businesses or organizations.
The primary function of the lab today, reports the California Aggie, is stockpile stewardship — the maintenance and storage of nuclear weapons for immediate use in case of nuclear conflict. The lab’s mission is to sustain international peace through the threat of nuclear war, according to lab spokesperson Kevin Roark.
Near Livermore Labs, a place many consider the brain of the nuclear weapons complex in the United States, the Seeds of Change: No Nukes! No Wars! rally began with a pot-luck family picnic, where organizers used sharing and coming together to show their aspirations for a nuclear-free world.
“It is our hope that our voice helps stop the dangerous design of nuclear weapons,” said Tara Dorabjl of Tri-Valley CARES. “We are trying to send a clear message that having nuclear weapons anywhere makes us less secure. We are gathered in part to honor the victims that suffered from the horror of 60 years ago, and to show that we are a growing non-violent community and celebrate our resistance.”
The Livermore Lab is one of the primary nuclear weapons design labs in the world, and has been named as the sole site to develop the Robust Nuclear Earth Penerator, or RNEP, a new high-yield bomb.
Near Oak Ridge, some 1,100 demonstrators carrying signs and beating drums marched to the gates of the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, where the uranium for the original bomb was supplied and warhead parts are still manufactured. Fifteen people were arrested at the Y-12 Production Plant, Oak Ridge for blocking a road outside the heavily guarded weapons factory that helped fuel the bomb during World War II.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, students and peace activists in Las Vegas gathered for seminars and speeches on eliminating nuclear weapons.
Back at Los Alamos, Masako Hashida said she was 15 and working in a Mitsubishi weapons factory making torpedoes in Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, when the second atomic bomb was dropped.
"All at once I heard a loud metallic sound," Hashida said. "I saw huge red, blue, yellow and purple light waves coming toward me. I must have fainted at that moment."
Hashida said when she regained consciousness, she was under a cliff outside the factory and she was surrounded by sooty smoke. She saw bent and torn steel frame girders from the factory.
"As I started to move to seek help, I saw a human-like creature trying to draw itself up to its full height," Hashida said. "Despite the fact that the creature's head was swollen, its eyes were red and popping out, its lips were painfully swollen, and its skin was hanging from the bones, it managed to stand. This person was just staring straight ahead without seeing, without feeling or control. I could not tell if it was a man or a woman."
The next day, Hashida's father came to Nagasaki to look for her body, and when he found her, he hugged her tight and sobbed.
Hashida said at that point she began to realize the impact of what had happened and she too began to cry.
"I have suffered all these years with survivor's guilt," Hashida said. "I even lost my ability to speak for a month or more. For a long time, until recently, I could never talk about that day."
Hashida said people are now forgetting the sorrow, pain and death caused by weapons of mass destruction. She said her memories of all the people who died, including her friends and loved ones, drove her to come to Los Alamos.
"I believe that I must raise my voice and tell as many people as possible about what I witnessed so that these weapons will never again be used," Hashida said. Sources: Los Alamos Monitor, Santa Fe New Mexican, Daily Bruin (UCLA), San Mateo County Times, California Aggie
At Los Alamos, the birthplace of the Atomic Bomb, hundreds were on hand in protest on the 60th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Sunflowers, the international symbol for nuclear disarmament, were arranged around a pond and protesters gathered to listen to guest speakers. The Los Alamos Monitor reports banners and posters that read things such as, "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war" and "Stop the new bomb factory" were prominently displayed throughout the day's speeches.
"We're trying to protect the planet from being destroyed," said Father John Dear of Pax Christi New Mexico, an organization that strives to create peace worldwide. "Nuclear weapons are the ultimate form of terrorism. We are New Mexico people and we're not going away. We're going to keep building a movement until the weapons are abolished.
Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, an organization that provides leadership on nuclear disarmament and related issues in New Mexico, said Los Alamos does not need a laboratory to be a successful community.
"The more waste dumped here and the more plutonium manufactured here, the more pigeon-holed and associated with pollution the community becomes, and the public doesn't like that," he said.
"If we are going to oppose militarism, then it's best we oppose our own militarism right at home because that would be most effective," Mello said.
Mello said he has spoken with hundreds of scientists at the lab and has found that only about 10 percent support the production of nuclear weapons.
"Scientists need to speak up," Mello said. "If they don't, it's assumed they support nuclear weapons. If they don't want to work on nuclear weapons, they shouldn't. These are hard choices they have to make. We have nothing against the people here, but we have to be firm about these destructive policies."
As part of the event, County Council Chair Fran Berting arrived at the U.S. Post Office to accept a letter written by the mayor of Hiroshima and a resolution passed in April by the Santa Fe City Council. David Coss, a Santa Fe city councilor, gave Berting the letter, which outlines the need to globally work together to end the production of nuclear weapons. He also gave her the Santa Fe resolution which calls upon the U.S. government to order the disarmament of nuclear weapons.
"I respectfully accept this letter and will take it to the next council meeting," Berting said. "I think we all share the same ultimate goal - world peace."
Prior to the event, about 250 New Mexico businesses signed a petition stating they were against the production of nuclear weapons, and banners set up at the rally identified each of those businesses or organizations.
The primary function of the lab today, reports the California Aggie, is stockpile stewardship — the maintenance and storage of nuclear weapons for immediate use in case of nuclear conflict. The lab’s mission is to sustain international peace through the threat of nuclear war, according to lab spokesperson Kevin Roark.
Near Livermore Labs, a place many consider the brain of the nuclear weapons complex in the United States, the Seeds of Change: No Nukes! No Wars! rally began with a pot-luck family picnic, where organizers used sharing and coming together to show their aspirations for a nuclear-free world.
“It is our hope that our voice helps stop the dangerous design of nuclear weapons,” said Tara Dorabjl of Tri-Valley CARES. “We are trying to send a clear message that having nuclear weapons anywhere makes us less secure. We are gathered in part to honor the victims that suffered from the horror of 60 years ago, and to show that we are a growing non-violent community and celebrate our resistance.”
The Livermore Lab is one of the primary nuclear weapons design labs in the world, and has been named as the sole site to develop the Robust Nuclear Earth Penerator, or RNEP, a new high-yield bomb.
Near Oak Ridge, some 1,100 demonstrators carrying signs and beating drums marched to the gates of the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, where the uranium for the original bomb was supplied and warhead parts are still manufactured. Fifteen people were arrested at the Y-12 Production Plant, Oak Ridge for blocking a road outside the heavily guarded weapons factory that helped fuel the bomb during World War II.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, students and peace activists in Las Vegas gathered for seminars and speeches on eliminating nuclear weapons.
Back at Los Alamos, Masako Hashida said she was 15 and working in a Mitsubishi weapons factory making torpedoes in Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, when the second atomic bomb was dropped.
"All at once I heard a loud metallic sound," Hashida said. "I saw huge red, blue, yellow and purple light waves coming toward me. I must have fainted at that moment."
Hashida said when she regained consciousness, she was under a cliff outside the factory and she was surrounded by sooty smoke. She saw bent and torn steel frame girders from the factory.
"As I started to move to seek help, I saw a human-like creature trying to draw itself up to its full height," Hashida said. "Despite the fact that the creature's head was swollen, its eyes were red and popping out, its lips were painfully swollen, and its skin was hanging from the bones, it managed to stand. This person was just staring straight ahead without seeing, without feeling or control. I could not tell if it was a man or a woman."
The next day, Hashida's father came to Nagasaki to look for her body, and when he found her, he hugged her tight and sobbed.
Hashida said at that point she began to realize the impact of what had happened and she too began to cry.
"I have suffered all these years with survivor's guilt," Hashida said. "I even lost my ability to speak for a month or more. For a long time, until recently, I could never talk about that day."
Hashida said people are now forgetting the sorrow, pain and death caused by weapons of mass destruction. She said her memories of all the people who died, including her friends and loved ones, drove her to come to Los Alamos.
"I believe that I must raise my voice and tell as many people as possible about what I witnessed so that these weapons will never again be used," Hashida said. Sources: Los Alamos Monitor, Santa Fe New Mexican, Daily Bruin (UCLA), San Mateo County Times, California Aggie
"People Fought, Died And Bled for the Right to Vote"
SNCC Activist Ekwueme Michael Thelwell: "People Fought, Died And Bled for the Right to Vote"
Taken from Democracy Now
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Former field secretary of SNCC, professor Ekwueme Michael Thelwell speaking on the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act at the Grassroots Radio Conference in Northampton, Massachusetts.
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On Saturday, the 40th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Amy Goodman spoke with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, the Jamaican-born novelist and Professor of Afro American studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was also the former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). While working for SNCC in Washington DC, Thelwell recruited volunteers for the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign in Mississippi, which sent volunteers into the state to register African-American voters.
Thelwell's many accomplishments include his publication “Ready for Revolution,” a compilation of the memoirs of Stokely Carmichael, (Kwame Toure) chair of SNCC and honorary prime minister of the Black Panther Party. Thelwell is also the author of the novel, “The Harder They Come.” Amy Goodman interviewed Thelwell at the 10th annual Grassroots Radio Conference, attended by hundreds of media activists from across the country.
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AMY GOODMAN: I had the opportunity to speak with Michael Thelwell on the day of the anniversary, August 6, just on Saturday night at a conference in Northampton, Massachusetts. The annual event was attended by hundreds of media activists from across the country, who had come together to celebrate community media. We were at the John M. Green Hall at Smith College. And I asked Ekwueme Michael Thelwell to talk about the state of the media today.
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: I want to congratulate you personally for the work you are doing because I have been observing the government and media in this country for 40 years. And I have never seen a time where the media, now a corporate monopoly, has been so compromised, so corrupt, so subservient and the general population so victimized as a consequence of that corruption. So the work that you are doing and the people in grassroots media is incrementally much, much more valuable and crucial at this particular time. Because I think that a fundamental social contract of this country , everything that makes this country an entity that you could admire and want to defend, is being challenged as I have never seen it In 40 years. So, what you do is very important.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, it’s especially significant now this weekend with the establishing of a new radio station here –
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: Precisely.
AMY GOODMAN: – in your area, low power FM and all the media activism that goes on here in Western Massachusetts. As we sit here today, in Atlanta, thousands of people marched today on this 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. Could you talk a little bit -- can you go back to that time? Can you talk a little bit about your experience organizing African Americans to vote in the Mississippi Delta? And also you can bring in the experience of Kwame Toure.
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: You don’t want me to talk about all that, Miss Goodman, because we don't have time.
AMY GOODMAN: You can call me Amy.
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: Amy. But what I’ll say is this. We were very active, Carmichael, SNCC, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, in fighting for the right to vote, and I particularly worked in Mississippi. That fight took four years, cost many lives and a whole displaced population. People were turned off their land. People were run out of the state. And white American terrorism was manifest every day of our lives in that struggle, so that people fought, died and bled for the right to vote. When the Voting Rights Act was signed, I was working in Washington, D.C. A comrade of mine who was working with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party is in the audience, Alan Shipman, and we understood and the movement understood that the Voting Rights Act was signed very reluctantly and over the active protest and resistance of segments of the dominant then Democratic Party, because of its Southern wing.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain that for people who weren't even born then, but are very interested in this history.
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: The Democratic Party had a very hybrid and bastard characterization. For the one hand, its Southern arm really ran the country, because in the apartheid South, where 40% of the population, black people, were not allowed to vote, they were still counted in the census. So, the South got representation, as though the black population were in fact citizens. And then only white people were allowed to vote. There was only one party, the Democratic Party, so that the Southern Democrats, the so-called Dixiecrats, had incredible longevity in the Congress, and they were totally overrepresented in the House of Representatives because the black vote was disfranchised.
When L.B.J. signed the Voting Rights Act, he is said to have said, “I have just signed the destruction of the Democratic Party,” which was something we cheered, because we thought that once black people in the South were able to vote, the progressive elements in the Democratic Party, the labor movement throughout the country, and progressives throughout would make an alliance with a more progressive liberal Democratic Party coming out of the South, and the Democratic Party would have a single characteristic. It wouldn't be divided anymore.
To our distress, what happened was the Dixiecrats, the racists, the segregationists simply migrated wholesale into the Republican Party and since that time, there have only been two Democratic presidents, and both of them from the South. You know, so that the law of unintended consequences, we won a victory by which the whole country suffered, as a consequence of the taking over of the Republican Party by these really renegade, undemocratic, reactionary, backward elements from the Southern Dixiecrats. And they have run the Republican Party ever since.
And the Republican Party has managed to establish a media network, which has really created in this country a virtual reality. I have spent the summer examining the media, and I have been appalled at what I have been seeing.But it's very clear – they used to tell us that only totalitarian countries rewrote history, and they did it for devious reasons. But I have seen the way the American media can not only rewrite history, but can completely redefine and reconstruct contemporary reality. Do you remember when the late Ronald Reagan died? Now, this -- may he rest in peace. But you see, this wasn't something four or five generations ago. We have been led to understand that you can rewrite history if everybody who experienced that history is dead. So, who can contradict you? But Ronald Reagan's administration was in the lifetime of everybody living. And yet if you looked at the way the media reported it, you could see no relationship between the administration that we had lived through and the one that they were enshrining in national memory. So, the media is rewriting history every day.
The struggle -- before Mrs. Fanny Lou Hamer died, I went to visit her. And she looked at me and tears came into her eyes. She said, “Mike, do you remember how hard we had to struggle, bled and died for the right to vote?” I said, “Yes, Mrs. Hamer, who could forget?” She says, “You know, these young people don't care anything for that.” This generation, in one generation that struggle had been forgotten almost, and forgotten largely because history isn’t taught properly, but also because there's still a concentrated effort by the very same people who resisted the broadening of the democratic practices in this country to minimize and reduce minority voting. We saw it in 2000. We saw it in 2004. Rehnquist himself did that before he went to the Supreme Court. So, those forces are still very much alive and more powerful now than they were in 1965, which is something nobody would have wanted to believe, that at the turn of the century, forces we thought were in retreat, that this country had made a turn towards a more rational, a more humane, a more decent and civilized society, could have suffered the kind of setbacks we have seen, which is why the work you do on Democracy Now! and the grassroots radio people and the activists present in this room, although you are now threatened and the values we respect are jeopardized, the work you do is much, much more important now than anything we did then, and the price of failure is inconceivable. You don't even want to think about it, because the direction that this country is being moved in.
AMY GOODMAN: In Atlanta, tying in to what you are saying, Professor Thelwell, organizers of the Keep the Vote Alive march called for Congress and the President to extend key provisions of the landmark legislation, the Voting Rights Act, and Congress member John Lewis, Georgia, said, “40 years later, we're still marching for the right to vote. Don't give up, don't give in. Keep the faith. Keep your eyes on the prize.”
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: Absolutely, but it's important to notice, you know, that what will a Republican -- and this isn’t even the same Republican Party. These people are not conservatives. They are right wing radicals. What will that Congress do when it comes time to renew the Voting Rights Act? And it would be important to note also that during the Reagan administration, when another renewal came up, some of the strongest and most cogent and most ideologically driven arguments as to why the Voting Rights Act should be constrained or not renewed came from Mr. Roberts who has been nominated to the Supreme Court now.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain.
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: Well, he was an adviser in the Justice Department or the White House. He served both places, under Reagan, and these issues came up. And he was to write -- it was the Justice Department, and he was to write legal memos to Elliot Smith, the Attorney General, who -- I am not sure I got his name right.
AMY GOODMAN: William French Smith.
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: William French Smith. Thank you. And so, some of those memorandums have come to light. And they were all ideologically driven arguments, couched in legal terms as to why it would be appropriate, good, and in the interest of the country or maybe only the administration, to in fact constrain the Voting Rights Act, not to extend it to certain territory – not to extend it to certain areas, and to restrict it. And those were his first contributions, I guess, to the national political discourse. Whether he will be given an opportunity to make further contributions on the high court is something that we all look at with considerable interest and apprehension.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Thelwell, I wanted to ask what it was like for you to come from a predominantly black country, and also in your writing about Kwame Toure, Stokely Carmichael, the same, from the Caribbean, although his experience may have been different from yours, coming to this country, a predominantly white country, and what was it like for you in the 1960s, your experience as you were fighting here for African Americans to get the right to vote, coming from a very different place?
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: Well, what I am about to say is almost certain to be misunderstood, because my country was predominantly black and with social problems, but on the question of race, relatively civilized. I didn't really become black until I set foot in this country. In Jamaica, I was simply a promising, very smart, very articulate young man. I got off the plane at La Guardia, and I became a Negro. I went to Howard University, the best thing I ever did. It was a black school. 30% of the population was from the Caribbean, another 10% was from Anglophone Africa and the rest were from the African American community, from Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, from Detroit, from New York. So, it was an incredible enclave in Washington of young black people and an institution with a whole black legacy and heritage. So that it was a perfect place to enter into the discourse and sensibility of the black world, of a self-conscious black world, in a way that we didn't really have to do in Jamaica up until the time that I left it. I mean, I had never been refused food in a restaurant. That would happen to me in Baltimore. I had never been arrested for anything. That would happen to me in this country, though always in the civil rights movement, never for petty crime. And I have to say, my education as a black man began when I came -- I went to Howard University and met people like James Baldwin, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, etc., etc., especially because of activism in the movement.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, the Jamaican-born novelist and Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was also Field Secretary for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, SNCC. He worked with them in Washington D.C., organizing recruits for the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign in Mississippi where he also spent a good amount of time organizing African American voters. Among Professor Thelwell's works are Ready for Revolution, which he wrote with Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure), helping Kwame Toure in his last days put together his memoir, Kwame Toure, leader of the Black Panther Party. Also his novel, Professor Thelwell's novel is called The Harder They Come. I interviewed him at the Grassroots Radio Conference, the tenth annual conference. This year it was held in Northampton, Massachusetts. We'll put the full mp3 of the entire event on our website at DemocracyNow.Org. Among those we talked to, Martín Espada, the renowned poet, Frances Crowe, long-time activist, as well as Juanita Nelson, a war tax resistor more author than a half century. Thurston Moore also performed, one of the founders of Sonic Youth. That will all be on the mp3 at DemocracyNow.org.
Taken from Democracy Now
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Former field secretary of SNCC, professor Ekwueme Michael Thelwell speaking on the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act at the Grassroots Radio Conference in Northampton, Massachusetts.
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On Saturday, the 40th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Amy Goodman spoke with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, the Jamaican-born novelist and Professor of Afro American studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was also the former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). While working for SNCC in Washington DC, Thelwell recruited volunteers for the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign in Mississippi, which sent volunteers into the state to register African-American voters.
Thelwell's many accomplishments include his publication “Ready for Revolution,” a compilation of the memoirs of Stokely Carmichael, (Kwame Toure) chair of SNCC and honorary prime minister of the Black Panther Party. Thelwell is also the author of the novel, “The Harder They Come.” Amy Goodman interviewed Thelwell at the 10th annual Grassroots Radio Conference, attended by hundreds of media activists from across the country.
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AMY GOODMAN: I had the opportunity to speak with Michael Thelwell on the day of the anniversary, August 6, just on Saturday night at a conference in Northampton, Massachusetts. The annual event was attended by hundreds of media activists from across the country, who had come together to celebrate community media. We were at the John M. Green Hall at Smith College. And I asked Ekwueme Michael Thelwell to talk about the state of the media today.
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: I want to congratulate you personally for the work you are doing because I have been observing the government and media in this country for 40 years. And I have never seen a time where the media, now a corporate monopoly, has been so compromised, so corrupt, so subservient and the general population so victimized as a consequence of that corruption. So the work that you are doing and the people in grassroots media is incrementally much, much more valuable and crucial at this particular time. Because I think that a fundamental social contract of this country , everything that makes this country an entity that you could admire and want to defend, is being challenged as I have never seen it In 40 years. So, what you do is very important.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, it’s especially significant now this weekend with the establishing of a new radio station here –
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: Precisely.
AMY GOODMAN: – in your area, low power FM and all the media activism that goes on here in Western Massachusetts. As we sit here today, in Atlanta, thousands of people marched today on this 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. Could you talk a little bit -- can you go back to that time? Can you talk a little bit about your experience organizing African Americans to vote in the Mississippi Delta? And also you can bring in the experience of Kwame Toure.
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: You don’t want me to talk about all that, Miss Goodman, because we don't have time.
AMY GOODMAN: You can call me Amy.
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: Amy. But what I’ll say is this. We were very active, Carmichael, SNCC, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, in fighting for the right to vote, and I particularly worked in Mississippi. That fight took four years, cost many lives and a whole displaced population. People were turned off their land. People were run out of the state. And white American terrorism was manifest every day of our lives in that struggle, so that people fought, died and bled for the right to vote. When the Voting Rights Act was signed, I was working in Washington, D.C. A comrade of mine who was working with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party is in the audience, Alan Shipman, and we understood and the movement understood that the Voting Rights Act was signed very reluctantly and over the active protest and resistance of segments of the dominant then Democratic Party, because of its Southern wing.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain that for people who weren't even born then, but are very interested in this history.
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: The Democratic Party had a very hybrid and bastard characterization. For the one hand, its Southern arm really ran the country, because in the apartheid South, where 40% of the population, black people, were not allowed to vote, they were still counted in the census. So, the South got representation, as though the black population were in fact citizens. And then only white people were allowed to vote. There was only one party, the Democratic Party, so that the Southern Democrats, the so-called Dixiecrats, had incredible longevity in the Congress, and they were totally overrepresented in the House of Representatives because the black vote was disfranchised.
When L.B.J. signed the Voting Rights Act, he is said to have said, “I have just signed the destruction of the Democratic Party,” which was something we cheered, because we thought that once black people in the South were able to vote, the progressive elements in the Democratic Party, the labor movement throughout the country, and progressives throughout would make an alliance with a more progressive liberal Democratic Party coming out of the South, and the Democratic Party would have a single characteristic. It wouldn't be divided anymore.
To our distress, what happened was the Dixiecrats, the racists, the segregationists simply migrated wholesale into the Republican Party and since that time, there have only been two Democratic presidents, and both of them from the South. You know, so that the law of unintended consequences, we won a victory by which the whole country suffered, as a consequence of the taking over of the Republican Party by these really renegade, undemocratic, reactionary, backward elements from the Southern Dixiecrats. And they have run the Republican Party ever since.
And the Republican Party has managed to establish a media network, which has really created in this country a virtual reality. I have spent the summer examining the media, and I have been appalled at what I have been seeing.But it's very clear – they used to tell us that only totalitarian countries rewrote history, and they did it for devious reasons. But I have seen the way the American media can not only rewrite history, but can completely redefine and reconstruct contemporary reality. Do you remember when the late Ronald Reagan died? Now, this -- may he rest in peace. But you see, this wasn't something four or five generations ago. We have been led to understand that you can rewrite history if everybody who experienced that history is dead. So, who can contradict you? But Ronald Reagan's administration was in the lifetime of everybody living. And yet if you looked at the way the media reported it, you could see no relationship between the administration that we had lived through and the one that they were enshrining in national memory. So, the media is rewriting history every day.
The struggle -- before Mrs. Fanny Lou Hamer died, I went to visit her. And she looked at me and tears came into her eyes. She said, “Mike, do you remember how hard we had to struggle, bled and died for the right to vote?” I said, “Yes, Mrs. Hamer, who could forget?” She says, “You know, these young people don't care anything for that.” This generation, in one generation that struggle had been forgotten almost, and forgotten largely because history isn’t taught properly, but also because there's still a concentrated effort by the very same people who resisted the broadening of the democratic practices in this country to minimize and reduce minority voting. We saw it in 2000. We saw it in 2004. Rehnquist himself did that before he went to the Supreme Court. So, those forces are still very much alive and more powerful now than they were in 1965, which is something nobody would have wanted to believe, that at the turn of the century, forces we thought were in retreat, that this country had made a turn towards a more rational, a more humane, a more decent and civilized society, could have suffered the kind of setbacks we have seen, which is why the work you do on Democracy Now! and the grassroots radio people and the activists present in this room, although you are now threatened and the values we respect are jeopardized, the work you do is much, much more important now than anything we did then, and the price of failure is inconceivable. You don't even want to think about it, because the direction that this country is being moved in.
AMY GOODMAN: In Atlanta, tying in to what you are saying, Professor Thelwell, organizers of the Keep the Vote Alive march called for Congress and the President to extend key provisions of the landmark legislation, the Voting Rights Act, and Congress member John Lewis, Georgia, said, “40 years later, we're still marching for the right to vote. Don't give up, don't give in. Keep the faith. Keep your eyes on the prize.”
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: Absolutely, but it's important to notice, you know, that what will a Republican -- and this isn’t even the same Republican Party. These people are not conservatives. They are right wing radicals. What will that Congress do when it comes time to renew the Voting Rights Act? And it would be important to note also that during the Reagan administration, when another renewal came up, some of the strongest and most cogent and most ideologically driven arguments as to why the Voting Rights Act should be constrained or not renewed came from Mr. Roberts who has been nominated to the Supreme Court now.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain.
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: Well, he was an adviser in the Justice Department or the White House. He served both places, under Reagan, and these issues came up. And he was to write -- it was the Justice Department, and he was to write legal memos to Elliot Smith, the Attorney General, who -- I am not sure I got his name right.
AMY GOODMAN: William French Smith.
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: William French Smith. Thank you. And so, some of those memorandums have come to light. And they were all ideologically driven arguments, couched in legal terms as to why it would be appropriate, good, and in the interest of the country or maybe only the administration, to in fact constrain the Voting Rights Act, not to extend it to certain territory – not to extend it to certain areas, and to restrict it. And those were his first contributions, I guess, to the national political discourse. Whether he will be given an opportunity to make further contributions on the high court is something that we all look at with considerable interest and apprehension.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Thelwell, I wanted to ask what it was like for you to come from a predominantly black country, and also in your writing about Kwame Toure, Stokely Carmichael, the same, from the Caribbean, although his experience may have been different from yours, coming to this country, a predominantly white country, and what was it like for you in the 1960s, your experience as you were fighting here for African Americans to get the right to vote, coming from a very different place?
EKWUEME MICHAEL THELWELL: Well, what I am about to say is almost certain to be misunderstood, because my country was predominantly black and with social problems, but on the question of race, relatively civilized. I didn't really become black until I set foot in this country. In Jamaica, I was simply a promising, very smart, very articulate young man. I got off the plane at La Guardia, and I became a Negro. I went to Howard University, the best thing I ever did. It was a black school. 30% of the population was from the Caribbean, another 10% was from Anglophone Africa and the rest were from the African American community, from Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, from Detroit, from New York. So, it was an incredible enclave in Washington of young black people and an institution with a whole black legacy and heritage. So that it was a perfect place to enter into the discourse and sensibility of the black world, of a self-conscious black world, in a way that we didn't really have to do in Jamaica up until the time that I left it. I mean, I had never been refused food in a restaurant. That would happen to me in Baltimore. I had never been arrested for anything. That would happen to me in this country, though always in the civil rights movement, never for petty crime. And I have to say, my education as a black man began when I came -- I went to Howard University and met people like James Baldwin, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, etc., etc., especially because of activism in the movement.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, the Jamaican-born novelist and Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was also Field Secretary for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, SNCC. He worked with them in Washington D.C., organizing recruits for the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign in Mississippi where he also spent a good amount of time organizing African American voters. Among Professor Thelwell's works are Ready for Revolution, which he wrote with Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure), helping Kwame Toure in his last days put together his memoir, Kwame Toure, leader of the Black Panther Party. Also his novel, Professor Thelwell's novel is called The Harder They Come. I interviewed him at the Grassroots Radio Conference, the tenth annual conference. This year it was held in Northampton, Massachusetts. We'll put the full mp3 of the entire event on our website at DemocracyNow.Org. Among those we talked to, Martín Espada, the renowned poet, Frances Crowe, long-time activist, as well as Juanita Nelson, a war tax resistor more author than a half century. Thurston Moore also performed, one of the founders of Sonic Youth. That will all be on the mp3 at DemocracyNow.org.
Loyalists Continue Terror Campaign in Northern Ireland
Residents of Northern Ireland’s Catholic community are cautioned to be on alert following the explosion of two pipe bombs outside homes in Cloughmills, Co Antrim and the discovery of a third hoax device left on a windowsill.
These incidents come following a series of attacks on Catholic churches and pubs all summer long across north Antrim.
Sean Farren, a Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) Assembly member for North Antrim, said he was disturbed by the incidents. He said, "Loyalist gangs are flexing their muscles all over North Antrim, most recently in a series of attacks on Catholic churches, but the use of pipe bombs may mean they are moving on to a new level of activity. Pipe bombs are made for one purpose only - to do murder."
UTV reports, the first device exploded in Cypress Park early today, showering a living room with glass. Less than an hour before the attack, another bomb detonated under a van parked in nearby Rosemount.
Inspector Nick McCaw said, "We are treating the incident at the house as attempted murder. Anybody would have been badly injured, if not killed, if they had been in that room when the device exploded."
SDLP’s Daithi McKay, said both families targeted by the pipe bombers today were attacked before. "They are adamant that they are not going anywhere," he said. "They have lived there all their lives and are not going to be intimidated or forced out of the village by a group of thugs.”
"I would appeal to nationalists and republicans in north Antrim to remain highly vigilant in the time ahead as it seems that unionist paramilitary gangs are intent on escalating their campaign," he added.
At the same time, Sinn Fein says six families had been ordered out of Ahoghill, another nearby village. Daily Ireland reports, the Police Services of Northern Ireland (PSNI) informed the six Catholic families that their lives would be in danger if they did not leave the area before the weekend. Speaking of the threats, Ballymena Sinn Féin councillor Monica Digney said she was “horrified” at the news. “These are the actions of bigoted cavemen and it’s up to the political leaders of unionism to bring them to heel,” she said.
Less then two ago, Protestant extremists attacked two Roman Catholic owned pubs and a Catholic family's home in the area while defacing two Catholic churches. No injuries were reported in what police called a wave of intimidation attacks in and around Ballymena, a mostly Protestant town northwest of Belfast. Catholic leaders appealed to the area's Protestant politicians to do more to challenge the extremists, who frequently threaten Catholic homes, businesses and churches in the area.
While all this was going on Republicans from across County Derry gathered yesterday to mark the 24th anniversary of the death of hunger striker Thomas McElwee. West Tyrone Sinn Fein assembly member Barry McElduff spoke at the grave in Bellaghy, Co Derry that Thomas McElwee shares with his first cousin and fellow hunger striker Francis Hughes.
“I believe that that the strength of republicans and the popular support they enjoy is largely the result of two waves of support — the hunger strike and the peace process. Both were responsible for injecting momentum into the republican movement,” he said.
He added, “I understand that people may feel disoriented and possibly feel a sense of loss at the IRA statement of July 28.
“I urge republicans to continue to develop a questioning culture but one that is rooted in activism,” he said.
“Sinn Féin’s goal is achieve a united Ireland and an Ireland of equals, and the challenge is to deliver that as soon as possible,” he said.
The actions of Loyalist extremists, as reported above, make the achievement of that goal a difficult one. Sources: UTV, Q97.5 (London, Ontario), Daily Ireland
These incidents come following a series of attacks on Catholic churches and pubs all summer long across north Antrim.
Sean Farren, a Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) Assembly member for North Antrim, said he was disturbed by the incidents. He said, "Loyalist gangs are flexing their muscles all over North Antrim, most recently in a series of attacks on Catholic churches, but the use of pipe bombs may mean they are moving on to a new level of activity. Pipe bombs are made for one purpose only - to do murder."
UTV reports, the first device exploded in Cypress Park early today, showering a living room with glass. Less than an hour before the attack, another bomb detonated under a van parked in nearby Rosemount.
Inspector Nick McCaw said, "We are treating the incident at the house as attempted murder. Anybody would have been badly injured, if not killed, if they had been in that room when the device exploded."
SDLP’s Daithi McKay, said both families targeted by the pipe bombers today were attacked before. "They are adamant that they are not going anywhere," he said. "They have lived there all their lives and are not going to be intimidated or forced out of the village by a group of thugs.”
"I would appeal to nationalists and republicans in north Antrim to remain highly vigilant in the time ahead as it seems that unionist paramilitary gangs are intent on escalating their campaign," he added.
At the same time, Sinn Fein says six families had been ordered out of Ahoghill, another nearby village. Daily Ireland reports, the Police Services of Northern Ireland (PSNI) informed the six Catholic families that their lives would be in danger if they did not leave the area before the weekend. Speaking of the threats, Ballymena Sinn Féin councillor Monica Digney said she was “horrified” at the news. “These are the actions of bigoted cavemen and it’s up to the political leaders of unionism to bring them to heel,” she said.
Less then two ago, Protestant extremists attacked two Roman Catholic owned pubs and a Catholic family's home in the area while defacing two Catholic churches. No injuries were reported in what police called a wave of intimidation attacks in and around Ballymena, a mostly Protestant town northwest of Belfast. Catholic leaders appealed to the area's Protestant politicians to do more to challenge the extremists, who frequently threaten Catholic homes, businesses and churches in the area.
While all this was going on Republicans from across County Derry gathered yesterday to mark the 24th anniversary of the death of hunger striker Thomas McElwee. West Tyrone Sinn Fein assembly member Barry McElduff spoke at the grave in Bellaghy, Co Derry that Thomas McElwee shares with his first cousin and fellow hunger striker Francis Hughes.
“I believe that that the strength of republicans and the popular support they enjoy is largely the result of two waves of support — the hunger strike and the peace process. Both were responsible for injecting momentum into the republican movement,” he said.
He added, “I understand that people may feel disoriented and possibly feel a sense of loss at the IRA statement of July 28.
“I urge republicans to continue to develop a questioning culture but one that is rooted in activism,” he said.
“Sinn Féin’s goal is achieve a united Ireland and an Ireland of equals, and the challenge is to deliver that as soon as possible,” he said.
The actions of Loyalist extremists, as reported above, make the achievement of that goal a difficult one. Sources: UTV, Q97.5 (London, Ontario), Daily Ireland
Free the Rossport Five
Five men, known as the Rossport Five, Micheal O'Seighin, Willie Corduff, Brendan Philbin, and brothers Vincent and Philip McGrath remain jailed for their protests against the construction of a dangerous gas pipeline in County Mayo, Ireland. The five men are local farmers who have campaigned for some time about the safety aspects of the pipeline, and also the destruction of one of Ireland's last areas of pristine bogland. The five were jailed more than a month ago for refusing to abide by a High Court order preventing them from obstructing the construction of the high pressure pipeline from the Corrib gas field to an onshore refinery across their land.
Joe Higgins, Socialist Party member of the Irish Parliament, writes in Socialist World, I was in the High Court on the day that these men were imprisoned. The President of the High Court was not only threatening to jail these men but 'every landowner in Mayo' should they not obey his orders. The Rossport Five, as they have come to be known, were then bundled off to Cloverhill Prison when they were not prepared to say that they would give up their protest.”
They, of course, are not the only people concerned about Shell’s project. Last week, members of the London Irish Green Group, together with Green Party members from across London and Bedfordshire, protested outside Shell’s headquarters in London. At the protest, Noel Lynch, Chair of the London Irish Green Group, commented: ''We are here as Irish people and members of the Green Party to demonstrate our solidarity with those who are fighting for justice and fair play in Ireland and against the actions of the energy multinationals like Shell. Shell have done similar things in Nigeria, where they have used economic and political pressure to silence those whose lands are being destroyed by their actions, and now they are doing something similar in Ireland. We call upon the Irish government to support the fair and just demands of the Rossport Five, and for the onshore pipeline to be removed from County Mayo.''
Also last week, Shell E&P Ireland announced it would delay laying the pipeline until next year. The company said that the suspension would ''allow for a period of discussion and dialogue.''
Shell To Sea reports Dr Mark Garavan, spokesman for the five men in prison and the Shell to Sea campaign, called on the firm to ''use this pause to reconfigure the entire project, make it safer and better with an offshore terminal, and listen to the people of Mayo.''
Garavan also said while Shell remained committed to building the pipeline, the men (Rossport 5) could not purge their contempt. “The men are not there of their own volition: Shell got the injunction, Shell put them in prison, and it’s Shell that have got to get them out. The men are saying they feel the offshore suspension called by Shell should be seized on for a root and branch review of the whole project,” he said. “Shell should prioritize the safety issues people have over the pipeline, and Minister Dempsey should assist on this point.”
Sinn Fein's Mary Lou McDonald described Shell's announcement as "a red-herring". "What people are most concerned about is the on-shore operation and a pipeline which will pose a real danger to the local community in Rossport. In actual fact campaigners are arguing that the pipeline should be based at sea, so Shell are not facilitating local people in any way by this latest announcement.”
"Shell has said that they have suspended the work in order to allow for a period of discussion and dialogue. If they are genuine about meaningful dialogue, then they will seize the initiative and lift the injunction against the men in Clover Hill prison. These men have spent too long in prison already because of their honorable stance on this issue."
Sign a petition demanding the release of these men at http://www.petitiononline.com/Rossport/petition.html
Sources: London Irish Green Group Irish Republican News, Ireland On Line, Shell To Sea, Socialist World, An Phoblacht
Joe Higgins, Socialist Party member of the Irish Parliament, writes in Socialist World, I was in the High Court on the day that these men were imprisoned. The President of the High Court was not only threatening to jail these men but 'every landowner in Mayo' should they not obey his orders. The Rossport Five, as they have come to be known, were then bundled off to Cloverhill Prison when they were not prepared to say that they would give up their protest.”
They, of course, are not the only people concerned about Shell’s project. Last week, members of the London Irish Green Group, together with Green Party members from across London and Bedfordshire, protested outside Shell’s headquarters in London. At the protest, Noel Lynch, Chair of the London Irish Green Group, commented: ''We are here as Irish people and members of the Green Party to demonstrate our solidarity with those who are fighting for justice and fair play in Ireland and against the actions of the energy multinationals like Shell. Shell have done similar things in Nigeria, where they have used economic and political pressure to silence those whose lands are being destroyed by their actions, and now they are doing something similar in Ireland. We call upon the Irish government to support the fair and just demands of the Rossport Five, and for the onshore pipeline to be removed from County Mayo.''
Also last week, Shell E&P Ireland announced it would delay laying the pipeline until next year. The company said that the suspension would ''allow for a period of discussion and dialogue.''
Shell To Sea reports Dr Mark Garavan, spokesman for the five men in prison and the Shell to Sea campaign, called on the firm to ''use this pause to reconfigure the entire project, make it safer and better with an offshore terminal, and listen to the people of Mayo.''
Garavan also said while Shell remained committed to building the pipeline, the men (Rossport 5) could not purge their contempt. “The men are not there of their own volition: Shell got the injunction, Shell put them in prison, and it’s Shell that have got to get them out. The men are saying they feel the offshore suspension called by Shell should be seized on for a root and branch review of the whole project,” he said. “Shell should prioritize the safety issues people have over the pipeline, and Minister Dempsey should assist on this point.”
Sinn Fein's Mary Lou McDonald described Shell's announcement as "a red-herring". "What people are most concerned about is the on-shore operation and a pipeline which will pose a real danger to the local community in Rossport. In actual fact campaigners are arguing that the pipeline should be based at sea, so Shell are not facilitating local people in any way by this latest announcement.”
"Shell has said that they have suspended the work in order to allow for a period of discussion and dialogue. If they are genuine about meaningful dialogue, then they will seize the initiative and lift the injunction against the men in Clover Hill prison. These men have spent too long in prison already because of their honorable stance on this issue."
Sign a petition demanding the release of these men at http://www.petitiononline.com/Rossport/petition.html
Sources: London Irish Green Group Irish Republican News, Ireland On Line, Shell To Sea, Socialist World, An Phoblacht
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Poems by Toge Sankichi: Hibakusha (A-bomb survivor)
Toge Sankichi was born in Japan in 1921. He started writing poems at the age of eighteen. He was twenty-four when the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. He died at age thirty-six, a victim of leukemia resulting from the A-bomb. His first hand experience of the bomb, his passion for peace and his realistic insight into the event made him the leading Hiroshima poet in Japan.
August 6th
How could I ever forget that flash of light!
In a moment thirty thousand people ceased to be
The cries of fifty thousand killed
Through yellow smoke whirling into light
Buildings split, bridges collapsed
Crowded trams burnt as they rolled about
Hiroshima, all full of boundless heaps of embers
Soon after, skin dangling like rags
With hands on breasts
Treading upon the spilt brains
Wearing shreds of burnt cloth round their loins
There came numberless lines of the naked
all crying
Bodies on the parade ground, scattered like
jumbled stone images
Crowds in piles by the river banks
loaded upon rafts fastened to shore
Turned by and by into corpses
under the scorching sun
in the midst of flame
tossing against the evening sky
Round about the street where mother and
brother were trapped alive under the fallen house
The fire-flood shifted on
On beds of filth along the Armory floor
Heaps, God knew who they were....
Heaps of schoolgirls lying in refuse
Pot-bellied, one-eyed
with half their skin peeled off, bald
The sun shone, and nothing moved
but the buzzing flies in the metal basins
Reeking with stagnant odor
How can I forget that stillness
Prevailing over the city of three hundred thousand?
Amidst that calm
How can I forget the entreaties
Of the departed wife and child
Through their orbs of eyes
Cutting through our minds and souls?
At the First-Aid Station
You
Who weep although you have no ducts for tears
Who cry although you have no lips for words
Who wish to clasp
Although you have no skin to touch
You
Limbs twitching, oozing blood and foul secretions
Eyes all puffed-up slits of white
Tatters of underwear
Your only clothing now
Yet with no thought of shame
Ah! How fresh and lovely you all were
A flash of time ago
When you were school girls, a flash ago
Who could believe it now?
Out from the murky, quivering flames
Of burning, festering Hiroshima
You step, unrecognizable
even to yourselves
You leap and crawl, one by one
Onto this grassy plot
Wisps of hair on bronze bald heads
Into the dust of agony Why have you had to suffer this?
Why this, the cruelest of inflictions?
Was there some purpose?
Why?
You look so monstrous, but could not know
How far removed you are now from mankind
You think:
Perhaps you think
Of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters
Could even they know you now?
Of sleeping and waking, of breakfast and home
Where the flowers in the hedge scattered in a flash
And even the ashes now have gone
Thinking, thinking, you are thinking
Trapped with friends
who ceased to move, one by one
Thinking when once you were a daughter
A daughter of humanity
August 6th
How could I ever forget that flash of light!
In a moment thirty thousand people ceased to be
The cries of fifty thousand killed
Through yellow smoke whirling into light
Buildings split, bridges collapsed
Crowded trams burnt as they rolled about
Hiroshima, all full of boundless heaps of embers
Soon after, skin dangling like rags
With hands on breasts
Treading upon the spilt brains
Wearing shreds of burnt cloth round their loins
There came numberless lines of the naked
all crying
Bodies on the parade ground, scattered like
jumbled stone images
Crowds in piles by the river banks
loaded upon rafts fastened to shore
Turned by and by into corpses
under the scorching sun
in the midst of flame
tossing against the evening sky
Round about the street where mother and
brother were trapped alive under the fallen house
The fire-flood shifted on
On beds of filth along the Armory floor
Heaps, God knew who they were....
Heaps of schoolgirls lying in refuse
Pot-bellied, one-eyed
with half their skin peeled off, bald
The sun shone, and nothing moved
but the buzzing flies in the metal basins
Reeking with stagnant odor
How can I forget that stillness
Prevailing over the city of three hundred thousand?
Amidst that calm
How can I forget the entreaties
Of the departed wife and child
Through their orbs of eyes
Cutting through our minds and souls?
At the First-Aid Station
You
Who weep although you have no ducts for tears
Who cry although you have no lips for words
Who wish to clasp
Although you have no skin to touch
You
Limbs twitching, oozing blood and foul secretions
Eyes all puffed-up slits of white
Tatters of underwear
Your only clothing now
Yet with no thought of shame
Ah! How fresh and lovely you all were
A flash of time ago
When you were school girls, a flash ago
Who could believe it now?
Out from the murky, quivering flames
Of burning, festering Hiroshima
You step, unrecognizable
even to yourselves
You leap and crawl, one by one
Onto this grassy plot
Wisps of hair on bronze bald heads
Into the dust of agony Why have you had to suffer this?
Why this, the cruelest of inflictions?
Was there some purpose?
Why?
You look so monstrous, but could not know
How far removed you are now from mankind
You think:
Perhaps you think
Of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters
Could even they know you now?
Of sleeping and waking, of breakfast and home
Where the flowers in the hedge scattered in a flash
And even the ashes now have gone
Thinking, thinking, you are thinking
Trapped with friends
who ceased to move, one by one
Thinking when once you were a daughter
A daughter of humanity
Friday, August 05, 2005
Baseball Beat: What The Heck Is Going On With The A's
I asked a friend out in Oakland what was going on with the A's who have vaulted nearly to the top of the AL West after their miserable start. What follows is his reply (typos and all):
Admittedly, I gave up on them just abt the time I came through KC. Thought it was impossible, given the rosater, that they could recover. & then, recover they did. & then, they did more than recover.
Starting pitching has been fabulous: Zito is pitching as well as ever; Hardin is a legitimate all-star & the other three Blanton, Haren (hasnt lost in three months) & Saarlos are going great guns.
The Bullpen is going great guns as well especially since the starters are going so far into their starts. Street, the rookie closer, appears to be ready & as good as Billy Money Ball Beane predicted. But Street wasnt expected to contribute this year. Actually it was a blessing that Doxctel is out -- tho Street might have eventually replaced him anyway.
Styrong up the middle: Kendall is an adequate receiver - cant throw many out stealing -- but appears to call a good game & can hit & is not afraid to defend the plate. Crosby at short is a legitimate up & comer (no Tejada) & Ellis plays a solid second.
Rookie Johnson at first is making significan contributions.
Outfield is very goiod : Payton was a good acquisition; Koptsay is as good as there is (except mayube for Tori Hunter) in center & Swisher, another Rookie is doing well in right.
Admittedly, I gave up on them just abt the time I came through KC. Thought it was impossible, given the rosater, that they could recover. & then, recover they did. & then, they did more than recover.
Starting pitching has been fabulous: Zito is pitching as well as ever; Hardin is a legitimate all-star & the other three Blanton, Haren (hasnt lost in three months) & Saarlos are going great guns.
The Bullpen is going great guns as well especially since the starters are going so far into their starts. Street, the rookie closer, appears to be ready & as good as Billy Money Ball Beane predicted. But Street wasnt expected to contribute this year. Actually it was a blessing that Doxctel is out -- tho Street might have eventually replaced him anyway.
Styrong up the middle: Kendall is an adequate receiver - cant throw many out stealing -- but appears to call a good game & can hit & is not afraid to defend the plate. Crosby at short is a legitimate up & comer (no Tejada) & Ellis plays a solid second.
Rookie Johnson at first is making significan contributions.
Outfield is very goiod : Payton was a good acquisition; Koptsay is as good as there is (except mayube for Tori Hunter) in center & Swisher, another Rookie is doing well in right.
Cell Phone to the Rescue
Armando Hernandez and Adrian Cruz were just hangin’ in Chicago’s Humbolt Park Tuesday night when the cops showed up. Those cops told the two to take off. But when they told officers it was 9:36 p.m., not 11 p.m. -- when the park closes the cops got angry, roughed them up, cuffed them and took them to the station. Once there they say they 45 minutes of verbal abuse, punches to the back and stomach, slaps to the face, and repeated whacks from a nightstick.
"I didn't want to say anything else because I didn't want to get hit no more, so I stayed quiet and put my head down after I got hit," Cruz said.
"I'm guessing he (the officer involved in the station beating) had a bad day. I'm guessing he was mad. He usually got mad when I asked him serious questions. What's the charge? What's your name? Why are you doing this? That ticked him off a lot," Hernandez said.
The police charged the men with public intoxication, though they say they were not drinking.
But wait - Hernandez's cell phone recorded some of the incident. Ooops!
WLS reports the audio on the cell phone recording is muffled and difficult to understand. But you clearly can hear an unidentified man yelling and using profanity. You can also hear noises. The two young men say the sound is the officer hitting them.
Their attorney says his clients had done nothing wrong, and police beat them for no reason. "The language that was used and the brutality that was offered, clearly there should be action," said Jeff Granich, attorney.
"Looks specifically to be one officer. Both of these men were beaten. Both of these men were handcuffed while they were beaten. I can't conceive of any situation why two men would be handcuffed and beaten on a municipal violation," the complainants' lawyer, Jeffrey Granich, said.
Granich said both men have a clean record.
NBC5 says the Chicago police are investigating the men's claims. Sources: NBC5 (Chicago), WLS, Chicago Sun Times
"I didn't want to say anything else because I didn't want to get hit no more, so I stayed quiet and put my head down after I got hit," Cruz said.
"I'm guessing he (the officer involved in the station beating) had a bad day. I'm guessing he was mad. He usually got mad when I asked him serious questions. What's the charge? What's your name? Why are you doing this? That ticked him off a lot," Hernandez said.
The police charged the men with public intoxication, though they say they were not drinking.
But wait - Hernandez's cell phone recorded some of the incident. Ooops!
WLS reports the audio on the cell phone recording is muffled and difficult to understand. But you clearly can hear an unidentified man yelling and using profanity. You can also hear noises. The two young men say the sound is the officer hitting them.
Their attorney says his clients had done nothing wrong, and police beat them for no reason. "The language that was used and the brutality that was offered, clearly there should be action," said Jeff Granich, attorney.
"Looks specifically to be one officer. Both of these men were beaten. Both of these men were handcuffed while they were beaten. I can't conceive of any situation why two men would be handcuffed and beaten on a municipal violation," the complainants' lawyer, Jeffrey Granich, said.
Granich said both men have a clean record.
NBC5 says the Chicago police are investigating the men's claims. Sources: NBC5 (Chicago), WLS, Chicago Sun Times
Australians Battle Dredging Operation
Australia’s Port Phillip Bay is set to be the scene of more dramatic protests after a court threw out a last-minute bid to stop trial dredging. The nine-week channel-deepening trial is now set to begin today in the bay's south channel off the coast of Mt Martha.
The Port of Melbourne says trade is being restricted because the channel is too shallow, and the State Government says an independent panel set up to investigate environmental concerns has recommended the trial.
The Blue Wedges Coalition, says the $32 million trial is effectively the first installment of the project. Further, the coalition says the panel recommended a very, very small scale dredge just to test the equipment of the heads. This, they say, is a far cry from what is now planned.
The Blue Wedges Coalition made the last-ditch legal challenge after trying to block the giant dredging ship Queen of the Netherlands from entering the bay. On Tuesday morning protesters came close to the vessels in an attempt to halt their operation. A flotilla of charter boats and surfers confronted the giant dredger as it entered Victoria's Port Phillip Bay to begin a controversial trial to deepen the shipping channel. They were joined by other recreational boats as well as a number of surfers who repeatedly swam across the path of the Queen of the Netherlands, just short of a 100-metre exclusion zone enforced around the dredger.
The Queen of the Netherlands also confronted a small water-borne protest as it passed under West Gate Bridge on its way into port. Four inflatable boats and up to eight surfers and kayaks faced the dredger as it moved up the Yarra River. The dredger passed within meters of several surfers before police boats shepherded away the rest of the protesters.
Meanwhile, the Times reports, the offices of Premier Steve Bracks and other senior government ministers were targeted by dredging protesters. Buckets of sand were dropped outside the offices of Bracks and four other senior ministers and the words "don't dredge our bay" were stenciled outside some of offices.
The Blue Wedges Coalition says that the dredging is moving forward at a ridiculous speed in spite of a substantial body of evidence that it ought to not happen at all. The coalition points out that an independent panel's report found the channel deepening proposal to be fundamentally flawed, and handed down 137 recommendations to be addressed before the project is further considered. Broadly these recommendations were:
• Environmental risk analysis not methodologically sound, requires further development
• Channel designs not optimized. Opportunities to reduce environmental impacts and costs not maximized
• Chosen dredge technology not best practice, environmental impacts not minimized
• No reliability could be placed on turbidity modeling
• Characterization of contaminated sediments not sufficient to assess effects of and methods of disposal of those sediments
• No clear or proven means for satisfactory performance of the proponent’s Environmental Management Plan
• Not clear as how project will be delivered to time and budget by means that do not have undue adverse environmental effects
• Direct economic benefits to Victorian would be less than the cost of the project.
• Interests of Bay users, both recreational and business, not adequately addressed
Jenny Warfe from the Blue Wedges Coalition says the project was motivated by profits and would benefit international companies to the detriment of the community and the highly diverse marine life of the bay.
Dr. Graham Harris BSc, ARCS, DIC, PhD, FTSE - CSIRO Fellow from a review of the Environmental Effects Statement (EES) made on behalf of the Association of Bayside Municipalities says, "The major impact on the Bay is going to be the effects on ecosystems, species and ecological processes arising from the suspended sediments stirred up by the dredging itself and disposal of the dredged material. In particular, there are long term unassessed risks to the National Park ecosystems at the Heads, to fish etc and to the sea grass beds in the Southern part of the Bay. These arise from smothering and light penetration reductions through plumes of sediments and the increased water turbidity. This is where there are acknowledged to be "extreme" or potentially "catastrophic" risk of long term damage to the Bay from short term dredging activities. The possibility of hysteretic effects (point of no return) is real. The EES speaks of regeneration and recovery times of up to 10 years - this may be optimistic in the case of sea grasses in the Southern part of the Bay."
The environmental group Earthcare St Kilda says it, “…has major concerns in regard to the impact of the Shipping Channel deepening proposal on the Port Phillip Bay ecology. We fear oil spills, toxic algal blooms, ships running aground, sick and dying penguins, water that is murky and unsafe for swimming and release of pollutants such as lead, Mercury and DDT. These are the very real risks of the Channel deepening project.”
The group says, “Increased turbidity will reduce light penetration in the water column thereby limiting photosynthesis. This will cause reduced primary production of phytoplankton, macroalgae and sea grasses, and therefore reduced opportunities for the Bay species that feed directly on or among them.”
Earthcare is particularly concerned, “…the decreased foraging ability for species such as penguins, which rely on good visibility to hunt successfully. If the channel deepening goes ahead and creates long-term high turbidity conditions, the St Kilda Penguin colony could be at risk of starvation.”
According to Jo Samuel King, another spokesperson for Blue Wedges, 3 million cubic meters of Yarra toxic mud containing DDT, lead, mercury and arsenic is buried in the seabed of the bay. Dredging would disturb the mud and make the bay highly dangerous to people and the environment.
There are economic and commercial worries as well.
Andrew Malouf, of the Victorian Fishing Charter Boats Association, said both the trial - at the heads and at the northern end of the bay near the port - and the proposed $580 million project would damage the dive and fishing charter industries. "This is going to have an effect all the way down the food chain - from the tourist operators to the local cafes to petrol stations to the accommodation houses," he said.
The decision by the court does not in any way mean the protesters are done. "The next major action is on Sunday at Rye pier at noon, when Blue Wedges will be attempting to stop the dredge by surrounding it with a variety of marine craft," a spokeswoman, Jo Samuel-King, says on News.com.au. The protesters, says the Blue Wedge coalition, will be joined by former Olympian and winner of seven World titles in wind surfing, Fiona Taylor.
The Blue Wedges Coalition is a ‘grass roots’ association. It is a diverse mix of 51 community and environmental groups around the Bay and around 200 individuals who have signed the Blue Wedges Charter. Sources: Earthcare St. Kilda, Dredge the Bay No More, Sunday Times (Australia), World Today Green Left Weekly (Australia) Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Blue Wedges Coalition, Herald Sun (Australia), News.com.au
The Port of Melbourne says trade is being restricted because the channel is too shallow, and the State Government says an independent panel set up to investigate environmental concerns has recommended the trial.
The Blue Wedges Coalition, says the $32 million trial is effectively the first installment of the project. Further, the coalition says the panel recommended a very, very small scale dredge just to test the equipment of the heads. This, they say, is a far cry from what is now planned.
The Blue Wedges Coalition made the last-ditch legal challenge after trying to block the giant dredging ship Queen of the Netherlands from entering the bay. On Tuesday morning protesters came close to the vessels in an attempt to halt their operation. A flotilla of charter boats and surfers confronted the giant dredger as it entered Victoria's Port Phillip Bay to begin a controversial trial to deepen the shipping channel. They were joined by other recreational boats as well as a number of surfers who repeatedly swam across the path of the Queen of the Netherlands, just short of a 100-metre exclusion zone enforced around the dredger.
The Queen of the Netherlands also confronted a small water-borne protest as it passed under West Gate Bridge on its way into port. Four inflatable boats and up to eight surfers and kayaks faced the dredger as it moved up the Yarra River. The dredger passed within meters of several surfers before police boats shepherded away the rest of the protesters.
Meanwhile, the Times reports, the offices of Premier Steve Bracks and other senior government ministers were targeted by dredging protesters. Buckets of sand were dropped outside the offices of Bracks and four other senior ministers and the words "don't dredge our bay" were stenciled outside some of offices.
The Blue Wedges Coalition says that the dredging is moving forward at a ridiculous speed in spite of a substantial body of evidence that it ought to not happen at all. The coalition points out that an independent panel's report found the channel deepening proposal to be fundamentally flawed, and handed down 137 recommendations to be addressed before the project is further considered. Broadly these recommendations were:
• Environmental risk analysis not methodologically sound, requires further development
• Channel designs not optimized. Opportunities to reduce environmental impacts and costs not maximized
• Chosen dredge technology not best practice, environmental impacts not minimized
• No reliability could be placed on turbidity modeling
• Characterization of contaminated sediments not sufficient to assess effects of and methods of disposal of those sediments
• No clear or proven means for satisfactory performance of the proponent’s Environmental Management Plan
• Not clear as how project will be delivered to time and budget by means that do not have undue adverse environmental effects
• Direct economic benefits to Victorian would be less than the cost of the project.
• Interests of Bay users, both recreational and business, not adequately addressed
Jenny Warfe from the Blue Wedges Coalition says the project was motivated by profits and would benefit international companies to the detriment of the community and the highly diverse marine life of the bay.
Dr. Graham Harris BSc, ARCS, DIC, PhD, FTSE - CSIRO Fellow from a review of the Environmental Effects Statement (EES) made on behalf of the Association of Bayside Municipalities says, "The major impact on the Bay is going to be the effects on ecosystems, species and ecological processes arising from the suspended sediments stirred up by the dredging itself and disposal of the dredged material. In particular, there are long term unassessed risks to the National Park ecosystems at the Heads, to fish etc and to the sea grass beds in the Southern part of the Bay. These arise from smothering and light penetration reductions through plumes of sediments and the increased water turbidity. This is where there are acknowledged to be "extreme" or potentially "catastrophic" risk of long term damage to the Bay from short term dredging activities. The possibility of hysteretic effects (point of no return) is real. The EES speaks of regeneration and recovery times of up to 10 years - this may be optimistic in the case of sea grasses in the Southern part of the Bay."
The environmental group Earthcare St Kilda says it, “…has major concerns in regard to the impact of the Shipping Channel deepening proposal on the Port Phillip Bay ecology. We fear oil spills, toxic algal blooms, ships running aground, sick and dying penguins, water that is murky and unsafe for swimming and release of pollutants such as lead, Mercury and DDT. These are the very real risks of the Channel deepening project.”
The group says, “Increased turbidity will reduce light penetration in the water column thereby limiting photosynthesis. This will cause reduced primary production of phytoplankton, macroalgae and sea grasses, and therefore reduced opportunities for the Bay species that feed directly on or among them.”
Earthcare is particularly concerned, “…the decreased foraging ability for species such as penguins, which rely on good visibility to hunt successfully. If the channel deepening goes ahead and creates long-term high turbidity conditions, the St Kilda Penguin colony could be at risk of starvation.”
According to Jo Samuel King, another spokesperson for Blue Wedges, 3 million cubic meters of Yarra toxic mud containing DDT, lead, mercury and arsenic is buried in the seabed of the bay. Dredging would disturb the mud and make the bay highly dangerous to people and the environment.
There are economic and commercial worries as well.
Andrew Malouf, of the Victorian Fishing Charter Boats Association, said both the trial - at the heads and at the northern end of the bay near the port - and the proposed $580 million project would damage the dive and fishing charter industries. "This is going to have an effect all the way down the food chain - from the tourist operators to the local cafes to petrol stations to the accommodation houses," he said.
The decision by the court does not in any way mean the protesters are done. "The next major action is on Sunday at Rye pier at noon, when Blue Wedges will be attempting to stop the dredge by surrounding it with a variety of marine craft," a spokeswoman, Jo Samuel-King, says on News.com.au. The protesters, says the Blue Wedge coalition, will be joined by former Olympian and winner of seven World titles in wind surfing, Fiona Taylor.
The Blue Wedges Coalition is a ‘grass roots’ association. It is a diverse mix of 51 community and environmental groups around the Bay and around 200 individuals who have signed the Blue Wedges Charter. Sources: Earthcare St. Kilda, Dredge the Bay No More, Sunday Times (Australia), World Today Green Left Weekly (Australia) Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Blue Wedges Coalition, Herald Sun (Australia), News.com.au
Thursday, August 04, 2005
"Race & Class in the US: The Legacy of Ted Allen" and "Initial Thoughts on the Contributions of Ted Allen"
Race & Class in the US: The Legacy of Ted Allen (Taken from the Web Site of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization)
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Monday, 02 May 2005
A Talk By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
May 2, 2005
New York City
(Ed. Note: To learn more about Ted Allen, scroll down to a second article)
Good afternoon. This is a special honor. I not only thought the world of Ted Allen, but I saw him as one of my chief mentors. One of the unusual things about speaking with Ted is that I felt that he listened to me, heard me out, respected me and my opinions, and even when there was disagreement, did not write me off. I wish that I could say that these characteristics were widespread in the Left. We will all miss Ted.
I was asked to discuss Ted's contributions on the matter of race and social control. In order to do this, let me identify what I believe to be several key elements. From there I would like to discuss their continued relevance, particularly in terms of the dynamics of the US class struggle and the future of the union movement.
Race is a social construct; it has nothing to do with biological sciences. As the National Geographic documentary "The Journey of Man" noted by way of conclusion: We are all Africans. That is, there in only one race, and that is the human race, descendants of people who originate in Southern Africa more than 60,000 years ago.
Race, as we have come to understand it, was developed on the basis of the English invasion and occupation of Ireland. The process of the suppression of the indigenous population was accompanied by the construction of the notion of race and racial inferiority. Ted, in the first volume of The Invention of the White Race, details what he concludes must be understood as the racial oppression of the Irish. This suppression of the indigenous people was accompanied by the creation of a privileged status for the colonizers.
Race was brought to the Western Hemisphere with the European invasion and applied as part of the process of the colonization. Race, then accompanied the development of capitalism, having a certain relative autonomy, but nevertheless being instrumental in its development. Race and color came to be linked in connection with the African slave trade and the suppression of the Native American. Race also served as the mortar in the building of capitalism. As such, it is not something that can be withdrawn without having a fundamental impact on capitalism.
In order to guarantee control over a rather unruly population, race -- in this case white supremacy -- existed as a dividing line, and with it the creation of a relative differential in treatment between those classified as white and those not. The differential in treatment began with the amalgamation of European immigrant groups into the category of "white." Other categories were created for non-Europeans, and some categories were transitional, with a case in point being the Irish. The differential in treatment was not insignificant: Africans could be slaves, while Europeans could not.
The racial dividing line, and particularly the failure of white liberals, progressives and radicals to challenge the system of white privilege, has served to undermine movements for social justice. Racism, then, is not simply about bad ideas, but is based on a system constructed over hundreds of years. This system reinforces, on a daily basis, the notions of superiority/inferiority, or relevance/irrelevance.
I am not going to review the polemical exchanges that took place in the 1970s around these views. Actually it seems fairly clear that Ted was overwhelmingly correct in his observations. At the same time, it is important to look at this question of race and social control not simply as a historical question, but as a question facing us in the contemporary world and the actual class struggle.
A few months ago I had a one-on-one discussion with a union leader about a host of issues. The discussion shifted to the question of race and the union movement. I suggested that visionary union leadership needed to advance an anti-racist practice both within and without the union movement. This leader looked at me and said that he was going to play Devil's Advocate. How much he was advocating for the devil versus himself I don't know. In any case, he went on to say that he could not see why he, as a white person, had an interest in an anti-racist practice, as such. He said he did not want to be told by people of color that "he would never understand..." and other such things. He said that he was not even sure what an anti-racist practice was, even though he himself was against racism.
This discussion had an emotional and intellectual impact on me. The discussion, taking place around the time that Ted died, could not have been an odder coincidence.
The US union movement is in deep trouble for a host of reasons that need not be repeated right now. Yet, there is a historic problem that runs throughout the entire history of organized labor, whether during good times or bad. The US union movement has never "gotten" the question of race. There have been unions and unionists that have gotten it, of course, but as a movement there has been an almost complete failure.
When the US union movement thinks about race, it may or may not think about such things as: Black folks, minorities and diversity, immigrants, and discrimination. In general, however, it externalizes the problem. I mean this in different ways. One, it views the problem as a problem outside of the union movement, that is, a problem that is imported from outside. Two, it is a problem for people of color, rather than race being a problem for white people. Three, if it is a problem for any white people, it is a problem for some other white people.
For a white union leader to tell me that thinking in terms of anti-racism is archaic or unhelpful shows that even among progressives there has been a failure to appreciate the depths of race and racist oppression in the USA.
The political Right understands the importance of race. It is important for them in terms of creating a united front in favor of the status quo. It is the creation of a reactionary but very real unity of "us" against "them."
I was reading something recently about the 2004 elections. It discussed this problem of white working people who have voted against their own interests. The article pointed out that central to this was the question of race. This was precisely correct.
In the AFL-CIO we developed in 1997 something called Common Sense Economics, an educational program aimed at speaking with workers about issues of class and capitalism. Some of you are probably familiar with it, and I am very proud of it. But there was a problem inherent in it that we attempted to address, but could not entirely, in part because of the ideology of the US union movement.
Common Sense Economics was premised on the need to get workers to understand their class interests and, as a result, become mobilized in a progressive direction. Now, don't get me wrong. This must be done, but in order to get any workers to understand their interests as workers -- and I don't mean only their interests as employees of a particular firm -- they must understand race.
An article from the American Political Science Review (Desmond S. King and Rogers M. Smith, "Racial Orders in American Political Development," February 2005, p.6), though discussing the ante-bellum South, had observations that are just as valuable in looking at today's situation when it comes to race. The article noted:
This white supremacist order made explicitly racial identities seem natural and vital to millions. It habituated many it privileged as "white" to think of their racial status as a primary feature of their lives... Its imposed inequalities gave many white farmers and workers as well as slaveholders a sense of economic dependency on the maintenance of racial restrictions that seemed to make their lands, jobs and wages more secure. It also generated in many a sense of racial entitlement, which most defended in religious and biological terms. It did all these things by creating politically powerful institutions in which all whites could officially share, along with public policies that advantaged whites in relation to blacks, even if some whites benefited far more than others. All of this made most whom governing institutions deemed "white" resistant to radical transformations in the white supremacist order, even those who wished to see slavery and blacks expunged from America.
The ruling circles have developed an effective approach that encourages one section of the working class, and in general a section of the oppressed, to see itself as unique and having a special relationship with those at the top. This problem plagues virtually every social movement. Examples include tax reform movements that are defeated because people at the bottom believe that some day they, too, may be at the top and so they don't want to be penalized at that time. Or, those who do not wish to see themselves as poor because to be poor means to be Black and unworthy. Somehow the poverty of whites is supposed to be superior to the poverty of Blacks and Latinos.
The issue of social control becomes even more deadly the deeper one gets. One of the interesting features of US history is that race continues to evolve. Thus, many people who today are considered white people would not have been considered white 200 years ago, or in some cases, even 100 years ago. Chicanos, on the other hand, had this bizarre experience of being classified as "white" (as opposed to "Black," for instance) as a result of provisions in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which ended the US war with Mexico. Nevertheless, in real-world terms, they were treated much the same as African Americans in the Jim Crow South through segregation, land theft, language discrimination and a host of other forms of national oppression. This classification reversed itself a couple of times until ultimately they are simply classified as "Hispanics." These changes in classifications obviously have nothing to do with advances in the natural sciences, but instead to political conditions.
At present, as part of addressing the changing demographics of the USA, and in need of re-creating a dominant demographic bloc, we are witnessing a phenomenon which has the potential to split the political Right, but could as well have ramifications for progressives. There are moves to adopt Cubans and Mexicans/Chicanos as white people. All the makings of this can be seen in the 2000 and 2004 elections. It is very different than the opportunistic conservative initiatives to peel off some of the Black vote. This is an orchestrated effort to say that you too -- as Latinos, at least some of you -- have a place within the conservative (read: white) bloc. The political Right is far from unified on this, and most Left and progressive forces, let alone liberals, have not a clue as to how to address this potential development.
The complications, resulting from the evolution of race as a mechanism for social control, elude most of organized labor. In this sense, anti-racism is not about making white people better humans or getting a better understanding of people of color. It truly is about understanding power dynamics and struggle in the USA. And, from the standpoint of the union movement, it should be a matter of concern if we wish to develop a genuine labor movement.
So let me return to the union leader I mentioned earlier. Part of the response to him is that the US union movement has traditionally tried to build class consciousness on the basis of economic struggle. Specifically, the idea is "us" against the "boss." In some cases, this is framed more broadly, as it was in the 2004 Presidential elections. In 2004 we were presented with a damning picture of the economic policies of the Bush administration and their allies. In the case of 2004, this was -- at least according to the AFL-CIO -- supposed to trump any sympathy for Bush that the Iraq war had engendered. It did not work out that way, as you know.
Yet the union movement continues to believe that economics trumps everything else. I listen to populists like Jim Hightower give devastating analyses of the operations of the rich and powerful, and indeed they are compelling. I have seen such oration move workers, whether they are union leaders or members, or neither. But at the end of the day, this does not build class consciousness.
To paraphrase an old saying, class consciousness is not only about understanding the enemy, but it is also about knowing what to do about the enemy. In this case, it is not enough for people to understand that they are being stepped upon. It is not enough to understand that there are rich who are trying to get richer. It is not even enough to know that there are other people who are facing the same problem.
Class consciousness will emerge to the extent that workers understand the nature of the enemy and what the enemy is actually doing to play off one against the other. In this case, the question is whether white workers will understand that race is effectively self-imprisonment, with all that this entails.
Thus, to the white union leader I would suggest that labor revitalization will be forestalled in ignoring race. The history of this country has shown repeatedly that the race card can normally trump narrow economics. The race card goes to the heart of the very being of a white person. If the identity of a white person is tied into their being white, and part of the bloc dominating this country, if not the world, then economics becomes a distraction. I have been searching for this fascinating quote from Sigmund Freud which I once stumbled across where he said that a Roman plebian, no matter how oppressed, could take heart in the fact that they were a Roman citizen and therefore -- at least in their own minds -- part of ruling the world. Whiteness has accomplished the same thing in the USA, that is, providing the uniform to wear in service not only of the empire, but as well in the battle against other members of their own class.
Thank you.
Some Initial Thoughts on the Contributions of Ted Allen
By Dennis O'Neil (also from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization)
Wednesday, 19 January 2005
January 19, 2005
(slightly revised June 6, 2005)
Ted Allen, author of The Invention of the White Race and a founding father of modern white privilege theory, died today.
Friends of Ted's who know him best will doubtless put out an obituary rich in biographical detail in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here are a couple of brief thoughts on Ted's historical contribution, which is central to the political tradition that gave rise to the Freedom Road Socialist Organization among other forces on the US Left.
It is unfortunate that Ted Allen died before someone had a chance to interview him at great length for what would surely have been a doctoral dissertation and a fascinating study in intellectual history.
In brief, it would start as the story of a few younger communists in Brooklyn, who left, jumping or pushed, the increasingly revisionist CP in the 1950s. Like many who sought to keep their eyes on the goal of revolution in the US, they understood the importance of the racial divide in the US working class and worked to develop a deeper analysis of it. Two in particular, Ted Allen and Esther Kusic, building on work by earlier thinkers going back to DuBois and Lenin, articulated a theory which explained the puzzling depth and persistence of this divide and, as a result, a great deal of the history of US society and the working class here as well.
Crudely put, white privilege theory states that the presence and persistence of white supremacy as an ideology and the consequent extremely low level of class consciousness in the multi-national working class throughout US history is the product of a centuries-old, deeply entrenched system which awards privileges to white folks. Allen characterized these privileges as "poisoned," because they wind up providing the capitalist class with a divided working class in which the white section is blinded from seeing and fighting for its own true interests.
So far, so good, but then comes the really remarkable development. In the late '60s, Ted worked closely with Noel Ignatiev (then Ignatin) a younger comrade of his active in Students for a Democratic Society, the largest group in the predominantly white campus sector of the revolutionary upsurge that was sweeping the US and much of the world, with the baby boom generation as its shock troops. Together the two wrote a pamphlet entitled "White Blindspot" (including another piece entitled "Can White Workers Radicals Be Radicalized?"), which became one of dozens of pamphlets published by the SDS-affiliated Radical Education Project.
Within six months of its publication, this cheaply mimeographed piece by two little-known authors set the terms for nearly all discussion of racism and what to do about it within the most influential radical group on US campuses. The concept quickly spread throughout the broader Left and there too set the terms in a discussion that had been raging since 1965. That was the year that African American activists in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the youngest and most militant of the organizations in the Civil Rights Movement, politely asked white SNCCers to leave, and encouraged them to go back and organize among white folk.
(The rapid spread of the concept is also shown by the adaptation of the theory's insights from the beginning by the newly born Women's Liberation Movement, which derived the concept of "male privilege" and made it a cornerstone of new feminist theory.)
Its reach was so great not because it was novel or "cool" but because it explained social reality in a way that made the workings of US capitalism much clearer than anything before it. As the theory spread, it occasioned fierce debate and splits not only between advocates and opponents, but also within the ranks of those who took Allen and Ignatiev's ground-breaking work and ran with it. As SDS self-destructed in 1970, both the folks who would become the Weather Underground and many of the rival Revolutionary Youth Movement 2 forces based their analysis and programs on the implications of "white skin privilege." Folks in the Black Liberation Movement and the rising movements among Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Asian-Americans and Native Americans had their own discussions and debates, differing on interpretation and implications, but acknowledging the validity of the central theoretical kernel.
By the mid-'70s, the Weatherfolk had, let's say, slipped from view and many other post-campus radicals had adopted a more old-school and very much by-the-books formalist Marxism-Leninism, with little room for non-canonical twists like white privilege theory. But the theory had slipped the bounds of the radical movement and become, among other things, the foundation for a significant trend in the academy. Some scholars radicalized in the '60s, like David Roediger, took the insights of Ted and his co-thinkers and started doing academic work which by the '90s had expanded to become the whole new field of "whiteness studies."
Among radicals who did not take the turn to various Marxist orthodoxies, the concept of white privilege continued to have currency and to take on new forms. By the late '80s, for instance, an understanding of and at least conversation about means of combating white, and male, privilege became common currency among a new generation of young activists like the environmentalist youth who made up groups like the Student Environmental Action Coalition, and later became a central force in the pre- and post-Seattle globalization battles. Among these forces, study tended to focus on the individual workings of privilege among white folks and the need for individuals to tackle it in their own day-to-day practice. Works like Peggy McIntosh's perceptive pamphlet "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" were used in NGOs and church groups as well as more activist formations to help people, especially white people, learn about and acknowledge the white blindspot.
And the concept of white privilege (a more common formulation than white skin privilege since the mid-'70s, though both have strengths and weaknesses) proved too useful to be driven entirely out of the communist movement for insufficient orthodoxy. In the late '70s, a group called the Proletarian Unity League (PUL) took up a double task. On one front, the PUL sought to rescue white privilege theory from some advocates whose position tended imply that any mass struggle that didn't have the fight against privilege at its center was worthless or even reinforced the system of white privilege. On the other side, they took on the orthos in the New Communist Movement who tried to suggest (confusing cause and effect in a spectacular manner) that the whole idea was a petty bourgeois scheme to split the unity of the working class.
In 1981, the PUL published a book, A House Divided: Labor and White Supremacy, which developed some influence in what was then the rapidly eroding New Communist Movement. The book provided one of the theoretical linchpins (and a guide to practical work) for the formation of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization later in the decade, and for the various mergers that have added to its ranks since. FRSO has made plans to bring out a new book on white privilege by the end of 2005.
In the meantime, the idea has become a meme (the social equivalent to a biological gene) that replicates itself and crops up in the oddest places. One of the most striking is in the writings and speeches of Bill Bradley, a US Senator from NJ in the '90s and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000. The theory of "white skin privilege" (the formulation he uses) most definitely resonates with Bradley: he lived it in a hard-to-ignore form as a privileged white star for the championship NY Knicks basketball team in the '70s , the period in which the NBA became overwhelmingly Black.
Finally, to come full circle, the continued relevance and actual usefulness of white privilege theory itself owes a great debt to Ted Allen. Working largely alone, he spent years researching and reflecting on the history of the US (and of other countries where he could make useful comparisons to other systems of social control employed by the rulers there). The product was the splendid two-volume work, The Invention of the White Race, finally published by Verso in the mid-'90s. Further advances in understanding and combating white privilege from here on out will have as a jumping-off point the new framework Ted Allen constructed in this work.
Ted Allen lived his whole life as a revolutionary, and his contribution to the struggle in this country is a massive one. Thanks to his insight and intellectual rigor, he was fortunate to have lived out at least the early stages of the old Marxist insight that ideas, when they grip the masses, become a material force.
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Monday, 02 May 2005
A Talk By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
May 2, 2005
New York City
(Ed. Note: To learn more about Ted Allen, scroll down to a second article)
Good afternoon. This is a special honor. I not only thought the world of Ted Allen, but I saw him as one of my chief mentors. One of the unusual things about speaking with Ted is that I felt that he listened to me, heard me out, respected me and my opinions, and even when there was disagreement, did not write me off. I wish that I could say that these characteristics were widespread in the Left. We will all miss Ted.
I was asked to discuss Ted's contributions on the matter of race and social control. In order to do this, let me identify what I believe to be several key elements. From there I would like to discuss their continued relevance, particularly in terms of the dynamics of the US class struggle and the future of the union movement.
Race is a social construct; it has nothing to do with biological sciences. As the National Geographic documentary "The Journey of Man" noted by way of conclusion: We are all Africans. That is, there in only one race, and that is the human race, descendants of people who originate in Southern Africa more than 60,000 years ago.
Race, as we have come to understand it, was developed on the basis of the English invasion and occupation of Ireland. The process of the suppression of the indigenous population was accompanied by the construction of the notion of race and racial inferiority. Ted, in the first volume of The Invention of the White Race, details what he concludes must be understood as the racial oppression of the Irish. This suppression of the indigenous people was accompanied by the creation of a privileged status for the colonizers.
Race was brought to the Western Hemisphere with the European invasion and applied as part of the process of the colonization. Race, then accompanied the development of capitalism, having a certain relative autonomy, but nevertheless being instrumental in its development. Race and color came to be linked in connection with the African slave trade and the suppression of the Native American. Race also served as the mortar in the building of capitalism. As such, it is not something that can be withdrawn without having a fundamental impact on capitalism.
In order to guarantee control over a rather unruly population, race -- in this case white supremacy -- existed as a dividing line, and with it the creation of a relative differential in treatment between those classified as white and those not. The differential in treatment began with the amalgamation of European immigrant groups into the category of "white." Other categories were created for non-Europeans, and some categories were transitional, with a case in point being the Irish. The differential in treatment was not insignificant: Africans could be slaves, while Europeans could not.
The racial dividing line, and particularly the failure of white liberals, progressives and radicals to challenge the system of white privilege, has served to undermine movements for social justice. Racism, then, is not simply about bad ideas, but is based on a system constructed over hundreds of years. This system reinforces, on a daily basis, the notions of superiority/inferiority, or relevance/irrelevance.
I am not going to review the polemical exchanges that took place in the 1970s around these views. Actually it seems fairly clear that Ted was overwhelmingly correct in his observations. At the same time, it is important to look at this question of race and social control not simply as a historical question, but as a question facing us in the contemporary world and the actual class struggle.
A few months ago I had a one-on-one discussion with a union leader about a host of issues. The discussion shifted to the question of race and the union movement. I suggested that visionary union leadership needed to advance an anti-racist practice both within and without the union movement. This leader looked at me and said that he was going to play Devil's Advocate. How much he was advocating for the devil versus himself I don't know. In any case, he went on to say that he could not see why he, as a white person, had an interest in an anti-racist practice, as such. He said he did not want to be told by people of color that "he would never understand..." and other such things. He said that he was not even sure what an anti-racist practice was, even though he himself was against racism.
This discussion had an emotional and intellectual impact on me. The discussion, taking place around the time that Ted died, could not have been an odder coincidence.
The US union movement is in deep trouble for a host of reasons that need not be repeated right now. Yet, there is a historic problem that runs throughout the entire history of organized labor, whether during good times or bad. The US union movement has never "gotten" the question of race. There have been unions and unionists that have gotten it, of course, but as a movement there has been an almost complete failure.
When the US union movement thinks about race, it may or may not think about such things as: Black folks, minorities and diversity, immigrants, and discrimination. In general, however, it externalizes the problem. I mean this in different ways. One, it views the problem as a problem outside of the union movement, that is, a problem that is imported from outside. Two, it is a problem for people of color, rather than race being a problem for white people. Three, if it is a problem for any white people, it is a problem for some other white people.
For a white union leader to tell me that thinking in terms of anti-racism is archaic or unhelpful shows that even among progressives there has been a failure to appreciate the depths of race and racist oppression in the USA.
The political Right understands the importance of race. It is important for them in terms of creating a united front in favor of the status quo. It is the creation of a reactionary but very real unity of "us" against "them."
I was reading something recently about the 2004 elections. It discussed this problem of white working people who have voted against their own interests. The article pointed out that central to this was the question of race. This was precisely correct.
In the AFL-CIO we developed in 1997 something called Common Sense Economics, an educational program aimed at speaking with workers about issues of class and capitalism. Some of you are probably familiar with it, and I am very proud of it. But there was a problem inherent in it that we attempted to address, but could not entirely, in part because of the ideology of the US union movement.
Common Sense Economics was premised on the need to get workers to understand their class interests and, as a result, become mobilized in a progressive direction. Now, don't get me wrong. This must be done, but in order to get any workers to understand their interests as workers -- and I don't mean only their interests as employees of a particular firm -- they must understand race.
An article from the American Political Science Review (Desmond S. King and Rogers M. Smith, "Racial Orders in American Political Development," February 2005, p.6), though discussing the ante-bellum South, had observations that are just as valuable in looking at today's situation when it comes to race. The article noted:
This white supremacist order made explicitly racial identities seem natural and vital to millions. It habituated many it privileged as "white" to think of their racial status as a primary feature of their lives... Its imposed inequalities gave many white farmers and workers as well as slaveholders a sense of economic dependency on the maintenance of racial restrictions that seemed to make their lands, jobs and wages more secure. It also generated in many a sense of racial entitlement, which most defended in religious and biological terms. It did all these things by creating politically powerful institutions in which all whites could officially share, along with public policies that advantaged whites in relation to blacks, even if some whites benefited far more than others. All of this made most whom governing institutions deemed "white" resistant to radical transformations in the white supremacist order, even those who wished to see slavery and blacks expunged from America.
The ruling circles have developed an effective approach that encourages one section of the working class, and in general a section of the oppressed, to see itself as unique and having a special relationship with those at the top. This problem plagues virtually every social movement. Examples include tax reform movements that are defeated because people at the bottom believe that some day they, too, may be at the top and so they don't want to be penalized at that time. Or, those who do not wish to see themselves as poor because to be poor means to be Black and unworthy. Somehow the poverty of whites is supposed to be superior to the poverty of Blacks and Latinos.
The issue of social control becomes even more deadly the deeper one gets. One of the interesting features of US history is that race continues to evolve. Thus, many people who today are considered white people would not have been considered white 200 years ago, or in some cases, even 100 years ago. Chicanos, on the other hand, had this bizarre experience of being classified as "white" (as opposed to "Black," for instance) as a result of provisions in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which ended the US war with Mexico. Nevertheless, in real-world terms, they were treated much the same as African Americans in the Jim Crow South through segregation, land theft, language discrimination and a host of other forms of national oppression. This classification reversed itself a couple of times until ultimately they are simply classified as "Hispanics." These changes in classifications obviously have nothing to do with advances in the natural sciences, but instead to political conditions.
At present, as part of addressing the changing demographics of the USA, and in need of re-creating a dominant demographic bloc, we are witnessing a phenomenon which has the potential to split the political Right, but could as well have ramifications for progressives. There are moves to adopt Cubans and Mexicans/Chicanos as white people. All the makings of this can be seen in the 2000 and 2004 elections. It is very different than the opportunistic conservative initiatives to peel off some of the Black vote. This is an orchestrated effort to say that you too -- as Latinos, at least some of you -- have a place within the conservative (read: white) bloc. The political Right is far from unified on this, and most Left and progressive forces, let alone liberals, have not a clue as to how to address this potential development.
The complications, resulting from the evolution of race as a mechanism for social control, elude most of organized labor. In this sense, anti-racism is not about making white people better humans or getting a better understanding of people of color. It truly is about understanding power dynamics and struggle in the USA. And, from the standpoint of the union movement, it should be a matter of concern if we wish to develop a genuine labor movement.
So let me return to the union leader I mentioned earlier. Part of the response to him is that the US union movement has traditionally tried to build class consciousness on the basis of economic struggle. Specifically, the idea is "us" against the "boss." In some cases, this is framed more broadly, as it was in the 2004 Presidential elections. In 2004 we were presented with a damning picture of the economic policies of the Bush administration and their allies. In the case of 2004, this was -- at least according to the AFL-CIO -- supposed to trump any sympathy for Bush that the Iraq war had engendered. It did not work out that way, as you know.
Yet the union movement continues to believe that economics trumps everything else. I listen to populists like Jim Hightower give devastating analyses of the operations of the rich and powerful, and indeed they are compelling. I have seen such oration move workers, whether they are union leaders or members, or neither. But at the end of the day, this does not build class consciousness.
To paraphrase an old saying, class consciousness is not only about understanding the enemy, but it is also about knowing what to do about the enemy. In this case, it is not enough for people to understand that they are being stepped upon. It is not enough to understand that there are rich who are trying to get richer. It is not even enough to know that there are other people who are facing the same problem.
Class consciousness will emerge to the extent that workers understand the nature of the enemy and what the enemy is actually doing to play off one against the other. In this case, the question is whether white workers will understand that race is effectively self-imprisonment, with all that this entails.
Thus, to the white union leader I would suggest that labor revitalization will be forestalled in ignoring race. The history of this country has shown repeatedly that the race card can normally trump narrow economics. The race card goes to the heart of the very being of a white person. If the identity of a white person is tied into their being white, and part of the bloc dominating this country, if not the world, then economics becomes a distraction. I have been searching for this fascinating quote from Sigmund Freud which I once stumbled across where he said that a Roman plebian, no matter how oppressed, could take heart in the fact that they were a Roman citizen and therefore -- at least in their own minds -- part of ruling the world. Whiteness has accomplished the same thing in the USA, that is, providing the uniform to wear in service not only of the empire, but as well in the battle against other members of their own class.
Thank you.
Some Initial Thoughts on the Contributions of Ted Allen
By Dennis O'Neil (also from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization)
Wednesday, 19 January 2005
January 19, 2005
(slightly revised June 6, 2005)
Ted Allen, author of The Invention of the White Race and a founding father of modern white privilege theory, died today.
Friends of Ted's who know him best will doubtless put out an obituary rich in biographical detail in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here are a couple of brief thoughts on Ted's historical contribution, which is central to the political tradition that gave rise to the Freedom Road Socialist Organization among other forces on the US Left.
It is unfortunate that Ted Allen died before someone had a chance to interview him at great length for what would surely have been a doctoral dissertation and a fascinating study in intellectual history.
In brief, it would start as the story of a few younger communists in Brooklyn, who left, jumping or pushed, the increasingly revisionist CP in the 1950s. Like many who sought to keep their eyes on the goal of revolution in the US, they understood the importance of the racial divide in the US working class and worked to develop a deeper analysis of it. Two in particular, Ted Allen and Esther Kusic, building on work by earlier thinkers going back to DuBois and Lenin, articulated a theory which explained the puzzling depth and persistence of this divide and, as a result, a great deal of the history of US society and the working class here as well.
Crudely put, white privilege theory states that the presence and persistence of white supremacy as an ideology and the consequent extremely low level of class consciousness in the multi-national working class throughout US history is the product of a centuries-old, deeply entrenched system which awards privileges to white folks. Allen characterized these privileges as "poisoned," because they wind up providing the capitalist class with a divided working class in which the white section is blinded from seeing and fighting for its own true interests.
So far, so good, but then comes the really remarkable development. In the late '60s, Ted worked closely with Noel Ignatiev (then Ignatin) a younger comrade of his active in Students for a Democratic Society, the largest group in the predominantly white campus sector of the revolutionary upsurge that was sweeping the US and much of the world, with the baby boom generation as its shock troops. Together the two wrote a pamphlet entitled "White Blindspot" (including another piece entitled "Can White Workers Radicals Be Radicalized?"), which became one of dozens of pamphlets published by the SDS-affiliated Radical Education Project.
Within six months of its publication, this cheaply mimeographed piece by two little-known authors set the terms for nearly all discussion of racism and what to do about it within the most influential radical group on US campuses. The concept quickly spread throughout the broader Left and there too set the terms in a discussion that had been raging since 1965. That was the year that African American activists in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the youngest and most militant of the organizations in the Civil Rights Movement, politely asked white SNCCers to leave, and encouraged them to go back and organize among white folk.
(The rapid spread of the concept is also shown by the adaptation of the theory's insights from the beginning by the newly born Women's Liberation Movement, which derived the concept of "male privilege" and made it a cornerstone of new feminist theory.)
Its reach was so great not because it was novel or "cool" but because it explained social reality in a way that made the workings of US capitalism much clearer than anything before it. As the theory spread, it occasioned fierce debate and splits not only between advocates and opponents, but also within the ranks of those who took Allen and Ignatiev's ground-breaking work and ran with it. As SDS self-destructed in 1970, both the folks who would become the Weather Underground and many of the rival Revolutionary Youth Movement 2 forces based their analysis and programs on the implications of "white skin privilege." Folks in the Black Liberation Movement and the rising movements among Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Asian-Americans and Native Americans had their own discussions and debates, differing on interpretation and implications, but acknowledging the validity of the central theoretical kernel.
By the mid-'70s, the Weatherfolk had, let's say, slipped from view and many other post-campus radicals had adopted a more old-school and very much by-the-books formalist Marxism-Leninism, with little room for non-canonical twists like white privilege theory. But the theory had slipped the bounds of the radical movement and become, among other things, the foundation for a significant trend in the academy. Some scholars radicalized in the '60s, like David Roediger, took the insights of Ted and his co-thinkers and started doing academic work which by the '90s had expanded to become the whole new field of "whiteness studies."
Among radicals who did not take the turn to various Marxist orthodoxies, the concept of white privilege continued to have currency and to take on new forms. By the late '80s, for instance, an understanding of and at least conversation about means of combating white, and male, privilege became common currency among a new generation of young activists like the environmentalist youth who made up groups like the Student Environmental Action Coalition, and later became a central force in the pre- and post-Seattle globalization battles. Among these forces, study tended to focus on the individual workings of privilege among white folks and the need for individuals to tackle it in their own day-to-day practice. Works like Peggy McIntosh's perceptive pamphlet "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" were used in NGOs and church groups as well as more activist formations to help people, especially white people, learn about and acknowledge the white blindspot.
And the concept of white privilege (a more common formulation than white skin privilege since the mid-'70s, though both have strengths and weaknesses) proved too useful to be driven entirely out of the communist movement for insufficient orthodoxy. In the late '70s, a group called the Proletarian Unity League (PUL) took up a double task. On one front, the PUL sought to rescue white privilege theory from some advocates whose position tended imply that any mass struggle that didn't have the fight against privilege at its center was worthless or even reinforced the system of white privilege. On the other side, they took on the orthos in the New Communist Movement who tried to suggest (confusing cause and effect in a spectacular manner) that the whole idea was a petty bourgeois scheme to split the unity of the working class.
In 1981, the PUL published a book, A House Divided: Labor and White Supremacy, which developed some influence in what was then the rapidly eroding New Communist Movement. The book provided one of the theoretical linchpins (and a guide to practical work) for the formation of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization later in the decade, and for the various mergers that have added to its ranks since. FRSO has made plans to bring out a new book on white privilege by the end of 2005.
In the meantime, the idea has become a meme (the social equivalent to a biological gene) that replicates itself and crops up in the oddest places. One of the most striking is in the writings and speeches of Bill Bradley, a US Senator from NJ in the '90s and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000. The theory of "white skin privilege" (the formulation he uses) most definitely resonates with Bradley: he lived it in a hard-to-ignore form as a privileged white star for the championship NY Knicks basketball team in the '70s , the period in which the NBA became overwhelmingly Black.
Finally, to come full circle, the continued relevance and actual usefulness of white privilege theory itself owes a great debt to Ted Allen. Working largely alone, he spent years researching and reflecting on the history of the US (and of other countries where he could make useful comparisons to other systems of social control employed by the rulers there). The product was the splendid two-volume work, The Invention of the White Race, finally published by Verso in the mid-'90s. Further advances in understanding and combating white privilege from here on out will have as a jumping-off point the new framework Ted Allen constructed in this work.
Ted Allen lived his whole life as a revolutionary, and his contribution to the struggle in this country is a massive one. Thanks to his insight and intellectual rigor, he was fortunate to have lived out at least the early stages of the old Marxist insight that ideas, when they grip the masses, become a material force.
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