Beatles dedicate recording to Tommy Sheridan

In a bizarre show of solidarity pop industry icons and legends The Beatles have dedicated a track recorded in 1962 in Hamburg to famous Scottish socialist politician and Solidarity party leader Tommy Sheridan.

Listen very carefully to the voice intro and prepare to be amazed.

The lyrics include the repetitive line 'I want your money - that's what I want' this is probably a reference to the pro-war billionaire capitalist Rupert Murdoch who owns a British tabloid newspaper that has as yet failed to pay Mr. Sheridan the £200 000 owed to him arising from his famous legal victory in summer of 2006.

UPDATE 13th January 2007
So how come the Beatles refer to Tommy Sheridan on the Hamburg track?
At the time the Beatles were honing their skills in Hamburg, Brian Epstein was the manager of the music department of a local store in Liverpool. Epstein noticed that numerous people came into the store asking for a record by Tommy Sheridan. In 1960, the Beatles had made their debut on vinyl, backing Tommy Sheridan on a song called "My Bonny." He took it upon himself to go and see the Beatles play and was immediately impressed - the rest as they say is history.

This blogger responds to BBC claim: "it is simply a fact that Bush has tried to export democracy" to Iraq.

Subject: RE: is the BBC impartial?
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 13:11:17 +0000
From: HelenBoadenComplaints@bbc.co.uk

Dear Mr (...)

Thank you for your email and I have discussed it with the editor of Newsnight. We don't agree with the point you make because it is simply a fact that Bush has tried to export democracy and that this has been troublesome. It's also true there were various motives for the Iraq war - regime change, WMD, oil - and we have questioned and debated these more than any other issue over the last five years.

Yours sincerely
pp Helen Boaden
Director, BBC News


To: Helen Boaden

I was much perturbed by your recent email response to a media lens
contributor which contained the phrase that "it is simply a fact
that Bush has tried to export democracy" to Iraq.

For the BBC to support such an unevidenced claim by the Bush
administrations in terms of its justifications for invading, or remaining in Iraq is
both unsatisfying and deeply worrying.

On the basis of available evidence it would be perhaps more balanced
(and more in keeping with historical American foreign policy in the
region) for the BBC to take the editorial position that the
United States fears a sovereign and more or less democratic Iraq. The
real reason for the invasion, surely, is that Iraq has the second
largest oil reserves in the world, very cheap to exploit, and is at
the heart of the world's major hydrocarbon resources. The issue is not
access to those resources but control of them (and for the energy
corporations, profit). As Vice President Dick Cheney observed in May
2006, control over energy resources provides "tools of intimidation or
blackmail"—in the hands of others, that is. Authentic Iraqi
sovereignty will not easily be tolerated by the occupying power, nor
can it or neighbouring states tolerate Iraq's deterioration, or a
potential regional war in the aftermath.

An analysis of the available evidence points to the fact that
Washington's goal in Iraq is complete control of that territory either
directly or via some kind of pliable government. It is important that
the BBC news teams should not accept at ahistorical face value that
Bush administration ever aimed to make Iraq a free and sovereign
state.

Your position only makes sense if you don't take into account that, as
former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz once put it, Iraq
"floats on a sea of oil"; and if you don't consider the decades-long
U.S. campaign to control, in some fashion, Middle East energy
reservoirs.

The United States viewed Middle Eastern oil as a precious prize long
before the Iraq war. During World War II, that interest had already
sprung to life: When British officials declared Middle Eastern oil "a
vital prize for any power interested in world influence or
domination," American officials agreed, calling it "a stupendous
source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in
world history."

In The Age of Turbulence, the bestselling, over-500-page memoir by
longtime Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. He wrote simply, as
if this were utterly self-evident: "I am saddened that it is
politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq
war is largely about oil." As the first major government official to
make such a statement, he was asked repeatedly to explain his
thinking, particularly since his comment was immediately repudiated by
various government officials, including White House spokesman Tony
Fratto, who labeled it "Georgetown cocktail party analysis."

His subsequent comments elaborated on a brief explanation in the
memoir: "It should be obvious that as long as the United States is
beholden to potentially unfriendly sources of oil and gas, we are
vulnerable to economic crises over which we have little control."
Since former ally Saddam Hussein was, by then, unremittingly
unfriendly, Greenspan felt that (as he told Washington Post reporter
Bob Woodward) "taking Saddam out was essential" in order to make
"certain that the existing system [of oil markets] continues to work."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the first meeting of the National
Security Council on January 30, 2001, seven months before the 9/11
attacks argued that the Clinton administration's Middle Eastern focus
on Israel-Palestine should be unceremoniously dumped. "[W]hat we
really want to think about," he reportedly said, "is going after
Saddam." Regime change in Iraq, he argued, would allow the U.S. to
enhance the situation of the pro-American Kurds, redirect Iraq toward
a market economy, and guarantee a favorable oil policy

A Republican moved motion on September 26, 2007 in the US Senate
called for the division of Iraq into semi-autonomous regions that
would be decided by the US client government inside Baghdad's Green
Zone.

BBC news editors should remember that the US has now, in effect,
created a new Sunni tribal militia which takes orders from the US
military and is well paid by it and does not owe allegiance to the
Shia-Kurdish government in Baghdad. This is despite the fact that the
US has denounced militias in Iraq and demanded they be dissolved.

Furthermore, many of the air wars targets were primarily civilian in
nature and destroyed in order to prevent a country's ability to
maintain basic services. Perhaps the clearest evidence of this
strategy can be found in the US destruction of Iraq's water
purification and electrical systems. As most BBC news editors will be
aware Iraqis continue to suffer from this destruction unless they live
in the fully serviced Green Zone.

We should also take account of other information from Iraqis
themselves about their experience of living under so-called exported
American democracy - a poll in Baghdad, Anbar, and Najaf on the
invasion and its consequences. "About 90 percent of Iraqis feel the
situation in the country was better before the U.S.-led invasion than
it is today," United Press International reported on the survey, which
was conducted in November 2006 by the Baghdad-based Iraq Center for
Research and Strategic Studies. "Nearly half of the respondents
favored an immediate withdrawal of U.S.-led troops," reported the
Daily Star in Beirut, Lebanon. Another 20 percent favored a phased
withdrawal starting right away. (A U.S. State Department poll, also
ignored, found that two-thirds of Baghdadis want immediate
withdrawal.)

At the very least the BBC policy of unchallenged face value acceptance
of aspects of the Bush doctrine as 'fact' needs to be seriously
reviewed. A more accurate and balanced statement would have been for
the BBC to have re-contextualised your phrase e.g. " a claimed but openly contested motive for the war in Iraq is that Bush has tried to export democracy".

I look forward to your response.

Regards,

leftpost

The real Obama: Another cowboy set for White House?

What Obama said when he was interviewed for Foreign Affairs last year.

"A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace."

"We should expand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines."

"I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened."

"We must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability -- to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities. But when we do use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others -- as President George H. W. Bush did when we led the effort to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991."
Reviewing the a recent speech by Obama at Chicago University, Ha'aretz Washington correspondent Shmuel Rosner concluded that Obama "sounded as strong as Clinton, as supportive as Bush, as friendly as Giuliani. At least rhetorically, Obama passed any test anyone might have wanted him to pass. So, he is pro-Israel. Period."

Israel is "our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy," Obama said, assuring his audience that "we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs." Such advanced multi-billion dollar systems he asserted, would help Israel "deter missile attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza." As if the starved, besieged and traumatized population of Gaza are about to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.


Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians.

There was absolutely nothing in Obama's speech that deviated from the hardline consensus underpinning US policy in the region. Echoing the sort of exaggeration and alarmism that got the United States into the Iraq war, he called Iran "one of the greatest threats to the United States, to Israel, and world peace." While advocating "tough" diplomacy with Iran he confirmed that "we should take no option, including military action, off the table."

Lenin's Tomb recently commented: "The gangly African American who insists he was never a Muslim. Obama-mania has apparently taken hold of some slightly loopy American voters after his surprisingly strong finish in Iowa. The commentariat is effusive - Obama doesn't inspire, they say, he elevates. What does Obama offer? Not a great deal, but he does it with aplomb. His foreign policies include gradual withdrawal from Iraq, redeployment to Afghanistan and Pakistan, discussions with Iran, and strongly pro-Israel policies. (Among his foreign policy advisors is Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose ideas look like they have made some impact.) Despite his position on Iraq, neocon Bob Kagan likes him a great deal. Domestically, he offers a few meliorative reforms in healthcare, neoliberal fiscal policies which potentially contradict his package of tax cuts for the poor and pay increases for teachers - if he sticks to PAYGO, any drop in the income of the Treasury due to recession will have to be made up for with spending cuts. He appears to have acquired a progressive aura simply by exuding some nebulous quality of hope and optimism and - the buzzword of the election - 'change'. He looks elegant and dignified, sounds like he knows what he's talking about, and he has performed that Clinton routine of triangulation and glittering generalities much more convincingly than Hillary. Obama's main charm for white conservatives is that he assures them that race doesn't matter in America - classy guy, they say, not like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. No hysterics. Kind of guy you could have round for dinner and he wouldn't embarrass anyone."

Cornell West discusses Obama's relationship with black America.


Don't forget that Obama also "thinks we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix".

This blogger reminds readers that the US is a one-party state with two wings, Democrat and Republican and both are way to the right of the majority of Americans on many crucial issues. Corporations dominate the power structure and hence US politics. In the US this is even more so the case than in other countries because of the much more brutal suppression of labour. In the absence of economic democracy, “politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.”

Since the state, having become so thoroughly co-opted by corporate interests, is part of the problem, it is difficult to significantly change it from within through elections or public policy reforms. While short-term, pragmatic change remains possible and desirable, systemic change would require a transformation of power relations within society through a democratisation of economic decision-making.