- Rogue bodyguards
- Blair's bodyguard
- Multi-cultural? No, anti-semitic
- BNP idiot of the week
- By their celebrities shall you know them
- Not our brothers
Rogue bodyguards
Over the last weeks we have become more aware of the extent to which the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority "outsources" its security services. According to the Pacific News Service 1,500 of the security personnel are South Africans and many have used their backgrounds as mercenaries during the years of apartheid to bolster their credentials.
This fact emerged after after a bomb blast in January 2004 in which one South African was killed and another injured. The dead man, Frans Strydom, had been a member of Koevoet, an Afrikaner group that paid bounty for the bodies of black activists in the 1980s. The injured man, Deon Gouws, is a former policeman and member of the Vlakplass death squad. Before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission he confessed to killing 15 black people and 40-60 firebomb attacks.
Strydom and Gouws were employed by Erinys International, a security firm based in the United Kingdom. Erinys International, has been awarded a two-year, $80 million contract in August 2003 to protect 140 Iraqi oil installations and contracts to protect American construction contractors Kellogg, Brown and Root.
Blair's bodyguard
He has been called Blair's bodyguard; he's a bruiser, a fixer and a henchman. It's John Reid of course and he's been living up to his reputation. He has just run up against the parliamentary ombudsman over his failure to disclose information about how Paul Drayson, now Lord Drayson, obtained a government contract for his pharmaceutical firm. Reid Health Department has manage to stall for two years. Why does it matter? Drayson's firm Powderjet received a £32 million contract for smallpox vaccine, without normal competitive tendering. The contract was awarded shortly after Drayson donated £100,000 to Labour.
Multi-cultural? No, anti-semitic
This year's Emma awards, for multicultural art and entertainment, include two for The Passion of the Christ - as best film production and best film actress. Excuse me?
That would be the film which our reviewer said depicted "relentless savagery... [which] mirrors the inner beliefs of an old-fashioned Catholic who believes that he or those he loves may spend eternity in the fires of hell if he offends the savage God who rules the universe." And concludes that because The Passion of the Christ is true to the story in the Bible of Jesus being condemned to death, and because that "was deliberately written by the early Christians so as to exonerate Pilate and blame the Jews..." the film is "saturated with anti-semitism." How multicultural is that?
BNP idiot of the week
A Channel Four documentary about young women in the sex trade in Bradford has been cancelled. This is because the BNP planned to exploit the fact that some of the pimps shown in the film are Asian. An excuse for the age-old rape lie about black men, with the BNP's own foul little twist.
Phil Edwards, a BNP official, said: "There is something about these Asian blokes that they like these young girls, something to do with their religion, they can not get it in their own communities. I'm not sure exactly what it is, I don't know much about their religion and really I don't want to."
By their celebrities shall you know them
Unfortunately the UKIP appears to be recovering from defections by its members to the BNP. Some opinion polls put them ahead of the Liberal Democrats at 18%. Now all their celebrity supporters are coming out of the woodwork. They include: Edward Fox (a man who thinks he is Edward VIII and claims to have never worn jeans ); Sir Patrick Moore (long-time member of far-right Freedom Association); Robert Kilroy-Silk (I don't like Arabs); and Joan Collins (star of films such as Rally Round the Flag Boys and A Game for Vultures).
Not our brothers
Two very silly letters in the Weekly Worker last issue (20 May). Both on the subject of AWL member Sacha Ismail's analogy between the Muslim Association of Britain and India's Hindu-chauvinist BJP. One said it was "absurd". Why? Because MAB, "has a record of campaigning against war and for the defence of human rights and civil liberties."
But the MAB is a British wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a sophisticated organisation with many international "affiliates"; each group adapts to the political conditions of its country.
Its roots, history, trajectory and essential identity, everywhere in the world, are Islamist.
The MAB is dishonest about its international affiliation. The MAB has also not renounced it.
If you want to know just how reactionary the Brotherhood can be, look at Sudan.
Sudan is an ex-colonial country. Under the rule of the British, long-standing divisions in the area were exacerbated.
The current Sudanese regime (which came to power in a 1989 coup) is dominated by the National Islamic Front which, in turn, are dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood (it has split in recent years). For 15 years the regime has been waging war on the oil rich regions of the the South.
Under the NIF, conflict in Sudan has become even more intractable, based on an "Islamic" jihad against the African and Christian population.
Now the regime has obliterated the life of the Durfur region in the west of the country. Thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.
It is not absurd to want to have nothing to do with any branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is a matter of the most basic political integrity and consistent socialist principle.
