A difficult struggle for democracy in the Muslim world

The BBC has just reported that Hassan Rouhani has won the "election" for President of Iran with just over 50% of the vote. Given that Rouhani has ostensibly received the backing of the reformists in Iran this could lead to an illusion that there has been some kind of "thaw" in Iranian politics and perhaps an opportunity to change the the way Iran is governed and subsequently its role in the growing conflicts across the Middle east.

The reality of the situation is actually spelled out by the BBC correspondent  Johnathan Marcus who remind us that:

First it should be stressed that it is not the president but the supreme leader and, beneath him, the upper echelons of the Revolutionary Guard who determine the broad lines of Iran's nuclear policy.

Mr Rouhani's election comes at a difficult and potentially dangerous moment for Iran; its position in the region is being tested like never before with Tehran's support for the embattled Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. This is not necessarily the moment for a substantive change in Iranian policy. Nonetheless even a change in style might offer an opening to the US and key UN Security Council members which would be worth testing for any real sign of flexibility in Tehran.

The election itself of course was far from free. An article on Harry's Place reminds us that:

The candidates on the ballot have been preselected in a politically motivated vetting process that has little purpose other than ensuring the election of a compliant president who will be loyal to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The real power will remain with the unelected Islamist elite that has led Iran back into medieval times. How much reform the new President will be able to deliver in a climate of censorship, torture and rape of political opponents remains to be seen.

Meanwhile the protesters in Gezi Park continue their occupation despite the huge pressure being mounted against them by Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The decision to "back down" over the redevelopment seems to be just a cover more more sinister actions by the Government.

According to The Times the authorities are now trying to :

..track down the doctors who had treated protesters and to close media outlets that broadcast images of demonstrators last week.

The Turkish Medical Association (TBB) has refused to co-operate despite being told to "immediately" hand over the names. Given there were over 7,500 people injured across the country during the recent protests that list would be quite large. Combine this with the closure of a TV channel that broadcast almost constant coverage of the events and as part of the general censorship developing, the future for Turkish democracy seems grim.

Solidarity with the protesters in Turkey and a hopefully revived Green movement in Iran should be the priority for all of us concerned with democratic and human rights in these countries.

Meanwhile in Tunisia the harsh treatment of the Femen demonstrators remains a cause for concern. A post on this appears at Andrew Coates website:

http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/tunisia-3-femen-activists-sentenced-to-prison/

You can find out more about Femen at: http://femen.org/en/about

Just who is Erdogan claiming are behind the protests?

What began as a peaceful environmental protest against the redevelopment of Gezi Park has turned into a struggle between the secularists and the growing authoritarian rule of just one man, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. His attempts to crush the demonstrators has been met with fierce resistance from those who are concerned about the stealthy intrusion of "Islamist values" into the secular state established by Kemel Attaturk after the first world war.

In previous days Erdogan has made some bizarre claims about the nature of the protests. The BBC reports about his apparent "back down" today:

Mr Erdogan has previously taken a tough line on the protests, branding the demonstrators "extremists" and "looters". He said the unrest was being encouraged by foreign forces to undermine Turkey and its economy.

So just who are these "foreign forces" one might ask? An article by Professor Droor Zeevi in todays edition of ynetnews.com suggests the following:

According to him, these want to hamper Turkey's economy for short-term profits. Though the specific guilty partners were not explicitly named, it appears Erdogan is hinting at investors such as Jewish-American tycoon George Soros and other Jewish and Western businessmen.

Also unexplained is why should these investors want to see Turkey's dynamic economy fail, and in what way do they influence protesters across the country.

But Erdogan is not interested in answering these questions. The enemy has been identified, and the fight is on.

In Israel, and in the West in general, Erdogan's story sounds like a zany conspiracy theory, the sort of which abounds in the Middle East. But Erdogan's version was carefully crafted.

Long before the present protest, a significant decrease in the Turkish economy's growth has been marked. The country's bane is its large foreign debt: Turkey owes tens of billions of dollars to debtors, especially in Europe and the US, and the interest it is required to pay is debilitating its economic base thus hampering its growth.

The large – some would say megalomaniac – investments in state projects are also emptying the state's coffers.

Erdogan and his team are naturally aware of the imminent economic setbacks, and therefore the choice of financial speculators as the evil behind the protests is not random.

This of course fits in with the general outlook "Islamist" doctrines promoted by organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and others across the Middle East.

Need a scapegoat? Blame the Jews. Same old, same old.

PCS cancels further strike in June, but left remain in denial

The PCS National Executive Committee cancelled the planned one day national strike that everyone had been expecting at the end of June. Management had even begun refusing leave requests for June 27th as part of their preparations. This surprising decision comes as a whole series of one-day national and regional strikes has failed to make any dents in Government policy and the numbers of members participating has been gradually declining exponentially.

This comes in complete contrast to the mad ravings of Socialist Party PCS leaders like John McInally who only recently wrote that:

The re-election of the Democracy Alliance national executive committee is a real blow to the government's attempt to break PCS members' resolve.

The re-election of a fighting left leadership is a mandate to continue with the strategy of industrial action of varying duration and timing which is causing disruption and real concern among management. It is also an endorsement of the union's campaign against austerity.

Instead the NEC are now calling for a "day of action" on June 27th during which members will, err..protest at lunchtime or do not a lot really. An e-mail to PCS Branch Secretaries issued by Steve Cawkwell today states that:

All members will be asked to join a range of activities and meetings at their workplace. The protests should be as large, lively and loud as possible in order to send the Cabinet Office and ministers the message that we demand negotiations on a fair settlement.

The message continues:

The protests will also launch our summer of consultation as we begin a process of discussion in the union on how to escalate the ongoing industrial action.

Every branch in the union will be consulted and all tactics will be considered including action targeted at key parts of the civil service, a national levy to support such action, short disruptive walkouts, and longer term all-member action.

The NEC in September will consider the results of the consultation and call the next phase of action unless the employer agrees to a fair settlement.

This has not gone down well with some of the comrades as the furious discussion on the PCS Face Book page shows. Far from facing up to reality, some are protesting that the action should be long term and in one case a really far left out rep from Oxford tries to claim that:

In DWP especially this month would be great month for day of strike as end of July most members will receive their performance bonus so will not not really lose money. ooh i'm so cross!

How that is "not losing money is beyond me. Members have voted with their feet, with well over two thirds of them ignoring the dispute which only had minority support to begin with.

The trouble with the Serwotka/Socialist Party leadership of PCS is that they have pursued a strategy that is based on their unrealistic political requirements (that of revolutionary Marxism) rather than one that is based on the members actual industrial needs. In other words they do not pick and choose to fight winnable battles. it is this that has led to the continued failure of the union to make any real gains for the members.

Whether the dispute is resurrected in September is questionable to say the least. Members will certainly not be willing to lose money for a campaign that has not only failed but is not winnable. The Pensions issue is already lost and by then the Pay Claims will all have been implemented (on the Governments terms. As for conditions of service changes, these were circulated by Management today and don't really affect existing members of staff.

The union needs more than a consultation process, it requires a clear reformation to end the domination of PCS by the play ground revolutionaries that dominate at present. Such a process will not be easy or comfortable but is essential if PCS is to return to political and industrial reality.

The alternative is for the union to continue its' now rapid loss of credibility.

That cannot and must not be allowed to happen.

Now the Socialist Workers Party gives us a WTF moment!

Last nights news that the BNP leader was visiting Lebanon and Syria as a clear guest of Hezbollah and the Syrian Government was shocking enough. It seems that Griffin is part of a much wider delegation consisting of all the Fascist parities in the European Parliament and included not just the BNP but also the French National Front and the openly anti-Semitic Jobbick party from Hungary. If that's the kind of "friends" President Assad has to rely on for support in Europe then he really is scraping the proverbial barrel.

However the already discredited far-left organisation the Socialist Workers Party also provided a shock in the latest edition of their weekly rag Socialist Worker.

Despite the fact that the six men convicted of planning a terrorist attack on an EDL march were thoroughly immersed in fundamentalist and Jihadist literature, the SWP decided to put their own spin on these failed murderers. Socialist Worker tells us that:

The racist English Defence League (EDL) and the fascist British National Party are allowed to peddle their foul Islamophobia on the airwaves and the streets.

Is it a surprise that some decided they couldn’t take any more and planned an attack on an EDL rally?

That’s what six men in the West Midlands, who have been jailed for up to 19 and a half years each, were guilty of. 

They took a bomb, knives and shotguns to an EDL rally in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, last June.

They arrived after the EDL rally had finished and the attack didn’t happen.

Some have said that the actions of the Dewsbury men are equivalent to the violence of the fascists. 

This argument says that there are extremists on both sides and that socialists should oppose both equally.

But this ignores racism and oppression. 

The plan to attack the EDL was a reaction to discrimination. 

It is not equal to the violence of the state, or of racists or fascists who attack people because of their race or religion.

It was an act of despair against racist thugs.

Excuse me? These Islamists are just as bad as the boneheads of the far-right. The Jihadists see all non-Muslims as inferior, discriminate against women, gays, Jews and frankly anyone else that doesn't agree with them.

For the SWP to try and deny the real nature of the ideology that motivated these men to attempt to perpetrate a violent assault that would have injured or even killed not just EDL members, but probably police, anti-fascist demonstrators and innocent by-standers is a disgrace. But it is what we have come to expect from this cult which operates its' own form of "sharia courts" inside the SWP and has clearly abandoned women's rights no matter how much they try and protest the opposite.

In the same edition of the paper they also seem to have developed relations with Jimas, a sort of Salafist organisation that marched with the EDL in Ipswich recently. This group also turned on a local blogger Andrew Coates resulting in a visit from the constabulary. You can read about this here:

http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/jimas-the-edl-now-outrage-from-local-muslims-some-comments/

You would have thought the SWP would have learnt a lesson from their previous entry into the murky world of religious politics when they got their figures burnt in Respect. Obviously not.

This strange love affair between the SWP (and it has to be said some other sections of the far-left)and the Islamists is bizarre.

As far as I am concerned the far-left, the far-right and the Islamists are a danger to democracy and should be treated as such.

A WTF moment: BNP leader visits Lebanon and Syria

There was an unexpected news item in The Times this morning which reported that:

The  leader of of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, has travelled to Lebanon to the dismay of observers in the Arab world.

The MEP announced on twitter yesterday that he had arrived in the capital of the fractured Middle Eastern state where tensions are running high over the conflict in neighbouring Syria. So far he has described Beirut as "less alien than the streets of London" and praised the militant group Hezbollah.

He went on to claim that the Syrian army (and its' allies) were:

doing a better job than the met dealing with the "British" jihadi cut-throats.

The visit has apparently led to claims that he is in Lebanon at the behest of Hezbollah itself as he wandered into their stronghold in the Bekaa Valley. According to The Times he has denied this but the paper reports that Simon Darby, a BNP spokesman has refused to say why his Fuhrer has turned up in Lebanon.

Since Griffin has declared himself in the past to be a "supporter of  Israel" his sudden support for Hezbollah is baffling to say the least. According to The Times the BNP's policy in the Middle east was one of "non-interference". Go figure.

The situation has become more baffling as the Executive Magazine reports today that:

A British far-right leader is in Syria with the government, his party has confirmed. Nick Griffin, leader of the controversial British National Party, traveled to Damascus from Lebanon on Tuesday on what he described on his Twitter feed as a “fact-finding mission”.

A spokesperson for Griffin, who once said Islam was a "wicked, vicious faith," and accused Muslims of trying to conquer Britain, said he was researching Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Syrian government.

On his Twitter feed Griffin said he was in the capital Damascus and that, despite “occasional explosions,” the country was calm.

He accused the British government, which has thrown its weight behind rebels trying to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, of provoking sectarianism

The article also states somewhat astonishingly that:

The BNP spokesman confirmed he was travelling with the Syrian government and said he would be visiting other parts of Syria in the coming days.

What on earth does the Syrian Government hope to achieve by taking BNP leader Griffin around their country? Are they that desperate for friends they would seek support from an isolated neo-nazi group which is barely functioning in the UK.

Surely they must be aware of his inherent "Islamophobia"?

WTF is going on here?

Don't let the extremists divide us! (with update)

Ever since the burning of Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses back in 1989 there has been a noticeable growth in Islamist extremism. We have had terrorist attacks in London and more recently the brutal murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich. Whilst the majority of Muslims are not involved or supportive of the Islamist current, there remain a substantial number of theologically inspired militant Islamists to present a threat to our society.

At the same time there was a rise of the far-right British National Party which at its peak led to the election of around 50 BNP local councillors and their leader Nick Griffin to the European Parliament with his then deputy Andrew Brons. Thanks to the hard work of organisations like Hope not Hate and the magazine Searchlight, the far right were pushed back, losing nearly all their councillors and hopefully when the European elections take place their MEPs as well.

The BNP has to a large extent been replaced by the English Defence League as a repository for hard-right opinion, but even they were in clear decline until the Woolwich murder. Since then they have experienced a surge of support and they were linked to the recent attack on a Muslim community centre as the letter EDL appeared on the building. They deny this, but this act has been one of a growing series of attacks on the Muslim community in this country.

Then of course the Jihadists are still at work. Today has seen the imprisonment of six men inspired by Islamist extremism who had set out to attack the EDL, only failing to cause loss of life injury by turning up late.

The Islamists like the boneheads of the far right seek to act out their evil fantasies by starting civil strife on our streets regardless of the consequences to ordinary people.

The Hope Not Hate organisation has issued the following statement:

HOPE not hate are shocked and dismayed about reports of a firebomb targeting a Muslim centre in North London. There can be no excuse for violence and political extremism. This attack, at the Al-Rahma Islamic Centre, was seemingly designed to incite fear and anger on the streets of London. Whoever is ultimately shown to be behind this attack, it's clear the EDL and other extremist groups are fostering a climate of hate that allows outrages such as this to be perpetrated.

The people behind this attack are as hate-filled as the Woolwich killers. The people who inspired this attack are little different from those who inspired the Woolwich killers. This is the politics of hate.

We need to stand by the Muslim community to show our solidarity with the belief that an injury to one is an injury to all. We must ensure that this tragic event does not create a cycle of extremism and retribution. HOPE not hate will continue to campaign against all forms of extremism and stands with the mainstream who have so strongly declared in recent days that "We are the Many".

Hope not Hate can be found here: http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/

Searchlight is at: http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/

Islamists war on children

Two disturbing news stories from today's press:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10111687/15-year-old-boy-executed-for-blasphemy-by-Syria-jihadists.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/taliban-fighters-behead-two-young-1944591

No religion can justify these acts, yet there are those who do. See this from Harry's Place:

http://hurryupharry.org/2013/06/10/haitham-al-haddad-guest-speaker-at-city-university-islamic-society-event/

The left seek scapegoats for their failing strike strategy in PCS

The week of action so much trumpeted by PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka and his far left supporters has turned out to be somewhat of a damp squib. Besides attracting little publicity and less support from members its clear that the strikes have also failed to gain attention from the Government either. Most normal people would sit down and try to work out what went wrong, why members were not supporting the long planned strategy and reconsider their future plans.

Not so in PCS. Members were told before the week long series of regional strikes in the two largest civil service departments that if the Government didn't agree to talks then there would be national action at the end of June. Nothing suggests that Serwotka or any of his cronies are preparing to change tact. Far from it.

The talk on the PCS Face Book page has avoided discussing any failures on their part and has concentrated on finding scapegoats, because there is nothing wrong with their strategy or plans it would seem. As usual the attention is focused on the supporters of the 4themembers group and according to one Socialist Party hack, the very blog you are now reading. Its their/my fault. Nothing to do with the fact the vast majority of members are not taking any notice of the shrill calls of the comrades!

Its never their fault of course.

Of course the PCS Face Book pages are very much the domain of the activist class that have come to dominate PCS over the many years that they have been in firm control of the union. This ruling caste have led the union into a isolated political cul-de-sac where the union has become weaker than at any time in its' (or the predecessor unions) history.

Under the far-left the union has become very centralised and criticism either brushed aside or suppressed. So it was amusing to see DWP Group President Fran Heathcote raise the question of free speech in her face Book comments.

Fran is another member of the Socialist Party whose political minder John McInally (PCS Vice President) was behind the censorship campaign launched against me by Serwotka towards the end of last year and was instrumental in removing the increasingly independent minded  (and more competent) Jane Aitchison from the position that Heathcote her self now holds.

The lack of participation by PCS members shows that despite winning the formal votes (with very low support it has to be said) Serwotka & the Socialist Party are nowhere near winning the argument if over two thirds of the members are ignoring the strike calls.

The activists are not to be dissuaded. They have an agenda, not one that serves the needs of the members but one that is simply self-serving. The loyalties of leading PCS figures like McInally, Godrich and Heathcote are first and foremost to the Socialist Party not union members.

The left will blame everyone but themselves for the failure in this campaign.

If PCS is to survive then the union needs to be reclaimed from these Marxist charlatans that are hell bent on playing with our lives.

The far-left have failed. Its time to reclaim PCS whilst there is still time.