GEORGE BARNSBY BLOG NO.937 MONDAY 9TH NOVEMBER 2009 INCORPORATING COPAM (COMMITTEE OF PEACE AND MULTICULTURALISM ) barnsby@blueyonder.co.uk.
DAY FORTY FOUR OF A PLANET NOT FACED WITH EXTINCTION ?
Once again we have visited the site of Barack Obama the most powerful
man in the world who promised to remove all nuclear weapons in the world,
but who since has not kept this promise and threatens Afghanistan with even
greater disasters with fresh troops and more deadly weapons
Yesterday we laid down guide lines saying that we would check Obama’s
Website for mention of progress in destroying nuclear weapons, but we would
check it against the realities of what the people of Cuba and their rulers
Fidel and Raul Castro could tell us of the situation on the ground
particularly of the closing of the of the death camp at Guantanamo Bay and
the lifting of the blockade of Cuba which has cost so much in deaths and
hardships for the Cuban people. We still await replies from Cuba and must
therefore report that Obama’s Website at www.Whitehouse.gov says nothing
regarding the abolition of nuclear weapons, but a great deal on
intensifying the War in Afghanistan.
DID OUR MPs REALLY SPY FOR THE REDS?
This was the headline of an article in our local paper the Express and
Star by Peter Rhodes, their chief reporter on the case of Bob Edwards the
ex-Bilston MP on the general charges arising from the book The Defence of
the Realm, the Authorised History of MI5 by Christopher Andrew.
I have criticised Rhodes on two counts. First that he has taken hearsay
and chatter
for evidence and that he fails to make his own opinions clear. He has been
out of the office for a week and I could not contact him today, but progress
has been made with contacting the author of the MI5 book . He is said to be
the Britain’s leading historian of Intelligence and we have tracked him down
via the publishers of his book and have sent an email to him which we hope
has now reached him. What I said to him I printed in last night’s BLOG so I
need not repeat it here. But the crux of the matter was that spying on
Left’s and Communists was common from the day of its inauguration to the
present day. That as a life-time Communist I was particularly vulnerable and
that I was taking my case to the Freedom of Information authorities on the
two counts of my own case and that of Brian Price who was a member of
Wolverhampton Communist Party and was exposed as a spy for the Police. These
cases I have put to the authorities concerned and hope for acknowledgement
shortly. I have told Professor Andrew that I look forward to friendly and
fruitful discussion with him on the question of spies and the Labour
movement.
THE WALL CAME DOWN AND THE WORLD WAS CHANGED UTTERLY. .
This is a heading from another article by Peter Rhodes in the Express
and Star today by . He writes as the world celebrates the fortieth
anniversary of the ending of the Wall. Rhodes speaks with authority and
personal experience of the event which he reported at the time, but has
views very different from mine of this key event which it was hoped would
end the Cold War, but whose celebrations today are marred by new Walls in
Palestine being built very much higher than the Berlin one and a nostalgia
by Ossies and Wessies alike for the advantages the German Democratic
Republic gave to working people as against the old and new Nazis and
supporters of Hitler posed. He then appeals for people who experienced the
events of 9 Nov 1989 to let him know about it. I shall look forward to
reading them, but am unlikely to agree because to me the Wall was the Wall
of Freedom necessitated by the fact that the imperialist powers of the US,
France, Britain and Germany were nearly 200 miles inside the territory of
the GDR and used the Marshall Plan as a weapon to destroy the GDR which led
to the Berlin blockade as capitalist powers attempted to destroy not only
the GDR but also the Soviet Union. This marked the end of the Alliance of
US, British and Soviet alliance which had won the war and the beginning of
the Cold War and both my experiences and my sympathies were with the Eastern
Bloc. Capitalism has two fatal flaws of incomes so vast at one end and
unemployment so great at the other end and its movement in booms and slumps
at the other. In the Socialist world however, in the GDR full employment ,
houses for all at nominal rents, free social services and free schooling was
the sort of Security from the Cradle to the Grave that people in the West
could only dream about and I visited the GDR frequently mainly as a teacher
of German teachers of English at the luxurious Potsdam Technical High School
where one session was devoted to a visit to the Wall of Peace as it was
rightly called in the GDR. My friendship with Rudi Achtelstetter, a comrade
who fought on different sides to me but was also like me an anti-Hitlerite
is well documented in this BLOG and we hope this Christmas the famous
incident in Xmas 1914 when Germans came out of their trenches and
fraternised with their working class brothers on the other side marked the
first time the ruling classes had lost their god-given right to set one set
of working class people against their brothers was a real turning point in
history and should be celebrated every Christmas
DIGGING UP THE DEAD.
Tonight has seen a number of programmes celebrating Armistice Sunday.
The most striking has been Michael Portillo’s Digging up the Dead which
tells the story of the so-called Civil War in Spain, but was really a Hitler
established military and Catholic dictatorship of General Franco and helped
crush the Left with such events as the total destruction of Guernica by
German aircraft as commemorated by Picasso’s remarkable painting of that
event and the West’s policies of Appeasement which made the Second World war
inevitable.
Portillo appears in the Thursday night programme The Week with his
partner Diane Abbott and the chairman Andrew Neil who we have previously
asked on several occasions to support Diane as Prime Minister when Gordon
Brown has been taken away as a Nuclear Maniac prepared to see the
destruction of the planet and all of us on it.
Michael Portillo has refused to support Diane or reply to our messages
which is unconstitutional and deprives us of our democratic rights and now
Portillo will have a chance to redeem himself in this remarkable programme.
For Portillo’s father was a Socialist who fought on the side of the
Republicans and against General Franco.
When the ‘Civil War’ officially concluded in about 1943 Portillo had
fled to France as an exile and it was there that Michael was born. But at
least anti-Francoist children were given special treatment if funds could be
raised for them and many children came to England where accommodation was
found for them and they were brought up speaking English and receiving
English education. Michael Portillo was one of these children and he then
went to University, became a Tory and was unceremoniously dumped by a Labour
candidate in what was the sensation of the election campaign.
Refusing to be lured back into politics we will have to wait and see
whether he remains true to his father’s traditions or reneges as has been
the case of Tony Blair and Lord Mandelsohn and Alan Johnson and Gordon
Brown who all began their political lives as members of progressive
organisations such as Communists and YCLers but degenerated into New Labour
heretics who have betrayed both themselves and their family tradition.
SAVE THE LABOUR PARTY FROM THE NEW LABOURITES WHO HAVE
HI-JACKED IT