Interesting report on the State attacks on British Muslims and the role played by private think tanks.

This report attempts to understand the current climate of fear being whipped-up against Muslims in Britain by examining two right-wing think-tanks: the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC) and Policy Exchange. The report maintains that the arguments advanced by these thinktanks represent a reversion to the failed counter-subversion strategies of the past.

The report also argues that right-wing think-tanks have understated the rise of Islamophobia on the far-right and in some cases condoned the rise of groups such as the English Defence League (EDL) because of their own links to the counter-jihad movement. ... read full story / add a comment

Yassamine Mather looks at the candidates for the presidency, who have to be approved by a council of clerics, and reckons they have anything to offer to the ordinary people.

On the last available day, ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani registered as a presidential candidate. Rafsanjani was the Islamic republic’s fourth president and is standing as a ‘reformist’. In reality he is the candidate of capitalism and probably one of the richest men in Iran. The newst that Rafsanjani had entered the race ‘to save the country’ generated hysteria. The principlists (conservative, hard-line supporters of ayatollah Ali Khamenei) accuse Rafsanjani of holding back before making his last-minute move in order to surprise his opponents. There is some truth to this claim: principlists entered the presidential elections with at least 7 serious candidates and another 14 less serious contenders. Had they known they would be facing such a figure, they would have tried to rally round a single candidate. ... read full story / add a comment

Where are the UN/EU Sanctions? Where are the calls for intervention? Oh! I forgot, its home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet and there was intervention: in 2011 Saudi Arabia intervened to crush the protesters, Full text at link.

Thousands of anti-government activists flocked to the streets of the Shiite village of Daih in Bahrain to protest against the torture of victims arrested by the minority Sunni-ruled monarchy. The frustrated mob held up signs that read: “Manama, capital of torture,” and waved the national flag.

“Torture is a practice rooted in the security agencies,” in Bahrain, the main Shiite opposition bloc Al-Wefaq said in a statement. It added that these practice were “embedded in the security doctrine - corrupt and hostile to the citizens.” ... read full story / add a comment

Come by and rock the BINZ. ... read full story / add a comment

What was the the reasoning behind the Israeli attacks on Syria?Was this agreed with Obama or did Netanyahu exceed his remit. Full text at link.

Over the weekend of May 4-5 Israel launched air raids against targets in Syria. Yassamine Mather and Moshé Machover, two members of the Hands Off the People of Iran steering committee, discuss the issues raised by this latest development

YM: The two Israeli air raids into Syrian territory have to be looked at in the context of the current Syrian civil war and realignment of regional powers. However, there is an Iranian dimension to all this. According to some Iranian military strategists, “Syria is the 35th province [of Iran] and a strategic province for us. If the enemy attacks us and wants to appropriate either Syria or Khuzestan [in southern Iran], the priority is that we keep Syria.”1

According to ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s most senior foreign policy adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, “Syria has a very basic and key role in the region of promoting firm policies of resistance … for this reason an attack on Syria would be considered an attack on Iran and Iran’s allies.”2

Until May 4-5, there could have been no doubt that, in the event of a military attack by US or Israeli forces, Iran’s first line of defence would be a retaliation against Israel using Hezbollah, who in turn would rely on Syrian military support. The Israeli bombings have clearly changed the situation and weakened Iran’s position considerably. What do you think? Am I right or is this a very Iran-centric analysis? ... read full story / add a comment

83 year old Nun faces 20 years in prison for trespassing on National Security Complex. Full story at link.

An 83-year-old Roman Catholic nun and two other activists are on trial in Tennessee this week for what the New York Times called the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex.

Court proceedings began Tuesday in Knoxville, TN for Sister Megan Rice and two other members of the Transform Now Plowshares, an anti-nuke protest group that is charged with crimes related to the July 28, 2012 break-in of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

... read full story / add a comment

Yes, the attempt to blame Stria for the use of Chemical Weapons just won't stick. It looks as if the "rebels" were responsible. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson – the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell under President George W. Bush – said yesterday that the Syrian chemical weapons could be a “Israeli false flag operation”.

Vid and full story at link.

... read full story / add a comment

The Pro-Choice Alliance Cork condemns Fianna Fail's decision to oppose women's access to their existing constitutional right. It calls on all parties to face up to their responsibility not just to pass legislation on X but to repeal the 8th Amendment.

Spokeswoman Sandra McAvoy said

"It looks as if church gate collections matter more to Fianna Fail than their responsibilities to the women of Ireland. They took the same position that women had no right to control their fertility during the long fight to legalise contraception. Their Ard Feis vote could hardly have shown more clearly that they are the party of the past. Fianna Fail’s stance is further proof that the major parties lack common sense, compassion, empathy.”

“They have learned nothing about women’s rights to life, health and to make their own decisions, from the scandals of symphysiotomy and Magdalen homes. But then, they have never shown an interest in the needs and interests of our women citizens.” ... read full story / add a comment

Fracking is so very safe. Full text at url.

A truck carrying drill cuttings from a fracking site set off a radiation alarm at a landfill in Pennsylvania. Emitting gamma radiation ten times higher than the permitted level, the waste was rejected by the landfill.

After the alarm went off, the MAX Environmental Technologies truck was immediately quarantined and sent back to the Marcellus Shale fracking site it had come from in Greene County, Va. The 159-acre Pennsylvania landfill site accepts residual and hazardous waste, but the cuttings were too radioactive for the site to safely dispose.
... read full story / add a comment

REINHART AND ROGOFF: " 'Full Stop,' We Made A Microsoft Excel Blunder In Our Debt Study, And It Makes A Difference." The oft quoted rationale for austerity measures by such people as Ollie Rehn and Tim Geitner turns out to be the result of an excel blunder by the authors ... read full story / add a comment

A couple sent to prison in connection with the 1989 murder of alleged IRA informer, Joe Fenton , have asked that the contents of a "secret dossier" seen by prosecutors be made public. ... read full story / add a comment

LASC, in partnership with the Colombian lawyers collective Equipo Juridico de los Pueblos, are launching a solidarity campaign with the internally displaced campesino community of Pitalito in Cesar, Colombia. ... read full story / add a comment

For those of you following events in Syria, WSWS has an interesting analysis of how the "petty bourgeois" left has given it's support to a CIA backed coup by right wing religious fundamentalists in Syria. Worth a read. ... read full story / add a comment

Maduro leads in the polls but the Right-wing Opposition Candidate Capriles has attacked the National Electoral Council & refuses tosSign CNE document re respecting the Results. Another coup attempt. may be in the works. More at link and on the site.

Nicolas Maduro goes into Sunday’s elections with a huge lead in the polls, according to the final survey of the polls carried out by the VSC.

This shows:

• The average lead for Nicolas Maduro is 16%
• Nicolas Maduro scored an average 53% compared to 37% for his main rival Henrique Capriles. (See chart 1)
• Only 10% of voters have yet to make up their mind about who they are supporting or will not vote. This is not enough to overturn Maduro’s lead.
• When the figures are adjusted just to look at those who have decided how they will vote, Maduro’s lead extends to 18%. (See chart 2) ... read full story / add a comment

Weekly Worker issue 956 - April 04 2013

Welfare cuts: Housing should be a basic human right
The cuts to housing benefit are cruel and irrational, says Michael Copestake

Anti-cuts movement: Frontism produces no lasting gains
What can we expect from the People’s Assembly? Dave Isaacson looks at the June 22 build-up

South African left: Attempt to go round already existing mass organisations
Wasp might be able to sting the SACP/Cosatu bureaucracy. But, asks Peter Manson, can it become a mass party capable of leading a socialist revolution? ... read full story / add a comment

Eddie Ford doesn't like Kim or the bizarre North Korean regime but he looks behind the headlines to examine how the US is stirring things up. Full story at url.

Over the last week there has been a considerable escalation of tensions between North and South Korea. To some degree, of course, this is ‘business as usual’ rhetoric, eg, Pyongyang on March 31 declared that it was in a “state of war” with Seoul (actually that has been the case since the 1953 armistice). But there is more going on than heightened rhetoric - though so far, thankfully, not a single missile has been fired.

Now, I am no admirer of the North Korean regime. It is a brutal and very odd Stalinist dictatorship, which quite literally deifies its leaders - whether the current tyrant, the Great Successor, Kim Jong-un, or his grandfather and Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, the “eternal president” who died in 1994 and presumably still guides the nation, albeit in his new, other-worldly form. To think that such a repressive system could be a workers’ state of any kind, deformed or otherwise, is a grotesque abnegation of genuine socialist politics. ... read full story / add a comment

Link to a wsws review by Joanne Laurie of a new Israelii documentary: The Gatekeepers, directed by Dror Moreh.

The newly released film –directed by Dror Moreh., a former election ad maker for Ariel Sharon - largely consists of interviews with former heads of Shin Bet , the notorious Israeli intelligence service . According to Laurier , The Gatekeepers “ provides a glimpse into the crisis wracking Israeli society and the failing Zionist project.”
... read full story / add a comment

A lot of hype in the MSM lately about North Korea. These two clips from the RT show "breaking the set" with commentators from answercoalition.org give some much needed context and background from which to interpret the current media spin. Instead of a seemingly irrational belligerent nihilism, the North Korean statements in context, become more like a rational defensive response to a systematic aggressor bent on harming and undermining their country and it's tendency to socialism. You may find some of the facts that emerge about North Korea rather surprising. ... read full story / add a comment

RT have been running stories following developments regarding the discovery of a new SARS like coronavirus which has a mortality rate of 50% and is transmissable between humans. Is this the one that kills off most of the great unwashed and lets the elites roam free to spend their ill gotten loot in a fascist marshal law paradise? ... read full story / add a comment

The US and the far right of thee opposition are trying to undermine and discredit the Venezuelan electoral system. Jimmy Carter described that system as the best in the World. Full Text at link.

The presidential candidate of the Bolivarian Revolution, Nicolas Maduro, yesterday counter-attacked the opposition’s campaign to discredit Venezuela’s electoral system ahead of the 14 April presidential election.

In recent days the Venezuelan opposition and allied media have been criticising the 14 April presidential election as not being held in “fair and transparent” conditions, in an apparent effort to discredit the Venezuelan electoral system ahead of the vote. This campaign appears to have intensified following comments made on Friday 15 March by the US’s Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson, who said that it would be “a little difficult” for “open, fair, and transparent elections” to be held on 14 April. ... read full story / add a comment