Monthly Archives: March 2012

Who runs this country, and for whose benefit.

Another Birmingham company located in Great Barr is being shut down by its US owners, with a loss of more than 200 jobs. The production is being moved to Germany. Simple economics? Maximum profits? Cheapest labour?
The ownership of the company which has acquired a number of companies of British origin. You can’t tell these days. Even the household name of Cadbury’s migrated across the pond benefitting that predatory buyer more than the people who worked in the industry. A company supported by British workers for generations.
As for movement of Capital and Labour, it’s the European Union, another Capitalist club, which has made provision for this. Again to the the benefit of the owners and to the detriment of the work force. In 1970 the British economy was built on 80% productive manufacturing, 20% service industries, largely unproductive. Thatcher resolved to deal with the “enemy within” following the success of the British workforce supporting the beleaguered miners in 1972, notably at the Battle of Saltley Gate in Birmingham. Out went baby with bath water, Rather than try to restore the situation, New Labour went along with Thatcherism, intensifying the move to privatisation. Today they support the cuts agenda which allows huge sums of public money to go into the pockets of big business – which is likely either to be, or become under foreign ownership. When will the lesson be learnt?

Warmongers among the Nobel prize recipients

Once more Mordechai Vanunu has been nominated for the Nobel Peace prize for drawing our attention to Israel’s nuclear capacity, a fact that Israel has tried rather unsuccessfully to conceal to the world she endangers. As Vanunu has pointed out one of his chief tormentors, Shimon Peres, is a recipient. He is just one of a number of people who have led a rather bizarre career of talking about peace while acting as belligerents. These are some of the highlights from the veteran Peres past:
Shimon Peres procurer of arms
In 1947 Shimon Peres joined the Haganah, where David Ben-Gurion named him responsible for personnel and arms purchases. In 1948 he was named head of naval services in the Defense Ministry and in 1952 he was named deputy director general of the Defense Ministry.
In 1953, at the age of 29, he became the youngest ever director -general of the Defense Ministry.In 1959 Peres was elected to the Knesset for the first time. Running with Mapai (Mifleget Poalei Eretz Yisrael), he was made deputy defense minister.
Architect of peace?
In 1992, after Labor – headed by Yitzhak Rabin – won the elections, Peres was named foreign minister. Peres than began negotiating with Yasser Arafat and the PLO, trying to get the organization to recognize Israel. Those negotiations materialized into the Oslo Accords, which effectively created the Palestinian Authority. The Oslo Accords were finalized on August 20, 1993 and signed by Mahmoud Abbas for the PLO and Peres for Israel. In 1994, Peres – along with Rabin and Arafat – were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the peace talks that produced the Oslo Accords.
Architect of Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal
In December 1995 Shimon Peres drew world headlines for his casual remark to a group of Israeli journalists in Tel Aviv: “Give me peace and we will give up the nuclear program–this is the whole story.” Though the media heralded this announcement, it reflected nothing more than longstanding policy. For years, Israel has said that it would negotiate the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East after the establishment of lasting peace. Shimon Peres has told Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Israel would be willing to negotiate the signing of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty within two years after the establishment of “regional peace.”
But Peres has never said what such a peace would include. He has preferred ambiguity in this and much else in Israel’s nuclear diplomacy. In fact, it was Peres who came up with Israel’s most often repeated nuclear declaration. At a April 1963 meeting in the White House, Peres responded to President John F. Kennedy’s questions about Israel’s nuclear program by saying: “Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East.” Two years later, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol elevated Peres’s words to Israel’s official nuclear line.
Mordechai Vanunu on Shimon Peres
Vanunu said in a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee that he did not wish “to belong to a list of laureates that also includes [President] Shimon Peres, the man behind Israeli atomic policy.”
Vanunu added: “Peres established the reactor in Dimona and developed Israel’s nuclear weapons program… In the same way as Pakistan’s [nuclear scientist] Dr. Khan, Peres was the man behind the proliferation of nuclear weapons in South Africa and other states. He was also behind the nuclear test in South Africa in 1978.”