On Blair, Chilcot Report and Crimes against Iraq, MXM Coordinators discuss

MXM Easter Rising Event Report - 'The Most Important 1916 Centenary Event'

'This is the most important 1916 event I have addressed' - Bernadette Devlin MacAliskey
Event report on Malcolm X Movement's and Crimes of Britain's event 100 Years Since the Irish Easter Uprising

Friday 13 yesterday turned out to be a fantastic day to salute the revolutionaries and martyrs of the great Irish Easter Uprising in 1916.day the 13th there was a tiny bit of bad luck that was overshadowed by an enormously informative and inspiring evening. The Malcolm X Movement's event was entitled 100 Years Since the Irish Easter Uprising, and we were honoured to have two special guests, both of whom very kindly flew in especially for this event, being former PLO Ambassador to Ireland and veteran senior Palestinian revolutionary Saeb Shaath, and the most well known and respected living female Irish revolutionary Bernadette Devlin MacAliskey. It was also a great privilege to have on the panel leading global Black radical decolonial scholar Hakim Adi and finally our young comrade Gerard MacNamara from the excellent and highly successful social media project Crimes of Britain as well as MXM coordinator Sukant Chandan chairing the event. The revolutionary 'craic' was being had in full effect! The room was packed with over 80 people in total in attendance.

Sukant Chandan opened the event for the MXM as chair by stating that the historical importance of the 1916 Uprising are many including the fact that it was the only anti-imperialist uprising in Europe during the first imperialist war, and that it electrified the anti-colonial peoples especially of the British empire as it struck the enemy right on its doorstep at such a critical moment. Chandan stated the reason the MXM has put on this event and the reason that of all the centenary commemorations across the world why this one stands out is due to the fact that no one until this event has brought clearly the global anti-imperialist analysis from Africa and Asia into the analysis to 1916. Chandan singled out Peter Middleton for particular thanks who was in attendance and whom in the 1990s, was a leading political organiser in London for Irish freedom, including amongst many other the weekly protests outside Downing Street.

Gerard MacNamara from Crimes of Britain and co-organisers of this event made his maiden public speech, and a brilliant talk outlining the history of British colonial looting and genocide against the Irish people, in the forced famines against the Irish for example in taking away millions of gallons of butter away from the Irish, tearing off roofs of houses so people could not squat them and how this colonial supremacism AKA white supremacy/racism against the Irish is still normalised today. MacNamara stated that Channel 4 recently floated the idea of having a comedy on the Irish famine. While at the time of the famines a British army colonel stated: "you must pay or get out, I tell you, I care no more about turning you out on the roadside than I do about shooting the bird which flies across my path".

Hakim Adi made a very informative speech as to how the Irish struggle had inspired Black / Pan-African liberation, including stating how Claude McKay, a leading Halrem Renaissance man of Jamaican heritage spent time in London uniting with Irish revolutionaries in the 1930s. Adi also relayed how much the Irish struggle informed many ideas in the leader of the millions-strong global United Negro Improvement Association, Marcus Garvey, who named his own building Liberty Hall after the Irish revolutionaries building in Dublin also called Liberty Hall that is still a trade union hub today.

Saeb Shaath gave a impassioned contribution imparting knowledge to the attendees as to the plots of the British colonialists in their oppression of Ireland and how they developed their oppression to then export to the rest of the people of the British colonies. Shaath focused especially on colonial partition, of which the British are the global masters, and how they have divided and partitioned many countries and regions, including Palestine and the Arab world. Shaath then recounted the current situation of British imperialist meddling in the North African and Middle Eastern regions. There were many cheers and applause for Palestinian liberation throughout his contribution from the audience.

Bernadette Devlin MacAliskey very generously flew in from Derry especially for this event but the flight was delayed for an hour so she entered the event at 830pm. However, she was welcomed by great cheering and applause and everyone spontaneously and en-masse chanted her name in unison to welcome her, reflecting the great respect and admiration her role and sacrifices for Irish freedom and socialism inspires. Devlin spoke in her typically eloquent and articulate manner on a number of issues that captivated all in attendance. She stated that she has spoken at many centenary events, events attended by great numbers of people but that the MXM event she was addressing was the most important one that she had spoken at because while Irish people have been commemorating and saluting 1916 for 99 years, it was an event like this that brought together all the global dimensions and impact of 1916. Devlin stated that the Irish people who were starved out of Ireland by the British colonialists first went to the North Americas as Irish speakers not English speakers. Devlin explained that they were not a part of the colonial 'white' club, and that there was a process that turned Irish people into white people, and that was through realising that if they spoke English that they could not be visibly defined as being phenotypically be seen as anything other than white. Devlin stated that she did not identify with those of Irish heritage that saw themselves as white in the USA, but she identified closely with the Black Panthers, with the Native American movement and other radical movements. Devlin's contribution was met with great applause and a long standing ovation.

The event saw young Black and Asian and radical white British youth and Irish patriots and revolutionaries gather together to understand each other and to unite with each other. No one else is doing this important work in England in bringing together communities of resistance, communities of oppressed peoples.

The full speeches have been recorded on video and will be uploaded in the coming two weeks and will be shared across MXM accounts and supporters on social media.

The MXM would like to give a big thank you to all our speakers, and all those who attended and put in the hard work to make this event a success.

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Next MXM public event:
1926 General Strike: 9 Days That Shook Britain

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Email: 2015mxm@gmail.com

MXM Investigate UK State Criminality in its Support of Terrorism

Malcolm X Movement coordinators Dan Glazebrook and Sukant Chandan are writing a four-part series for the Russia Today news website on one of the biggest political scandals in the UK: the UK state collusion with terrorism in the Muslim world. Here follows the first part.





British collusion with sectarian violence: Part one

In the first of a four-part series, Dan Glazebrook and Sukant Chandan look at the recent spate of revelations about the involvement of British security services in facilitating the flow of fighters into Syria.

Over 13 years ago, in March 2003, Britain and the US led an illegal and unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq, a fellow UN member state. Such a war is deemed to be, in the judgment of the Nuremberg trials that followed World War Two, “not only an international crime” but “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

The mainstream narrative surrounding this war, and the endless catastrophes it bequeathed to Iraq, is that it was the result of a series of unfortunate ‘intelligence failures’: the British government had been led to believe that Iraq posed what Tony Blair called a “clear and present danger” to international security by intelligence that subsequently turned out to be false.

Blair told us that the Iraqi government had an active nuclear weapons program, had acquired uranium from Niger, had mobile chemical weapons factories that could evade UN weapons inspectors, and had stocks of chemical weapons able to hit British troops in Cyprus within 45 minutes.

All of these claims were false, and all were blamed on ‘intelligence failings’, creating an image of an intelligence service totally incapable of distinguishing between credible information and the deluding ravings of crackpots and fantasists, such as the notorious Curveball, the source of many of the various made-up claims later repeated in such grave and reverent tones by the likes of Tony Blair and Colin Powell.

In fact, we now know that sources such as Curveball had already been written off as delusional, compulsive liars by multiple intelligence agencies long before Blair and co got their hands on their outpourings – and the British government was fully aware of this.

The truth is, there were no intelligence failings over the Iraq war. In fact, the intelligence services had been carrying out their job perfectly: on the one hand, making correct assessments of unreliable information, and on the other, providing the government with everything necessary to facilitate its war of aggression. The Iraq war, then, represented a supreme example not of intelligence failure, but intelligence success.

Fast forward to today, and we are again hearing talk of ‘intelligence failings’ and the supposed incompetence of the security services to explain a debilitating Western-sponsored war in the Middle East: this time in Syria.

Earlier this year, British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond admitted that 800 British citizens had gone to join the anti-government terrorist movement in Syria, with at least 50 known to have been killed fighting for Al-Qaeda or Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). The British security and intelligence community, we are to believe, were simply unable to stop them.

Opportunist political opponents blame such shocking statistics on incompetence, while the government and its supporters increasingly weave them into an argument for greater powers and resources for the security services. Both are wrong; and a closer look at some of these so-called ‘intelligence failings’ makes this very clear.

In December 2013, it emerged that MI5 had tried to recruit Michael Adebolajo, one of the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby, just a few weeks before Rigby’s murder. Adebalajo had been on the radar of both MI5 and MI6 for over 10 years. He had been under surveillance in no less than five separate MI5 investigations, including one set up specifically to watch him. He was known to have been in contact with the senior leadership of Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, based in Yemen, and he had been arrested in Kenya on a speedboat on the way to Somalia with five other youths, where he was suspected of hoping to join Al Shabaab.

The Kenyans were furious when they handed him over to the Brits only for him to be turned loose, presumably to continue with his recruitment activities.

The following month, 17-year-old Aseel Muthana left his family home in Cardiff to join rebel fighters in Syria. His brother Nasser had left three months earlier, and his family were worried that Aseel would try to join him. So they confiscated his passport, and informed the police of their concerns. The police kept the family under close scrutiny. They even arrived at his house at 5pm the day he left for Syria, to be told he hadn’t been seen since the night before. He boarded a flight at 8.35pm that night, using alternative travel documents issued by the Foreign Office. His family were horrified that he had been allowed to travel, without a passport, despite all their warnings.

A similar case occurred in June 2015, when three sisters from Bradford traveled to Syria – it is thought to join IS – taking their nine young children with them. Again, the family had been under intense scrutiny from the police ever since their brother went to join IS in Syria earlier that year. And far from being unaware of the risk of their being recruited, counter-terrorist police were, it appears, deeply complicit in their recruitment.

A letter from the family’s lawyers said they were “alarmed” by the police allegedly having been actively promoting and encouraging contact with the brother believed to be fighting in Syria: “It would appear that there has been a reckless disregard as to the consequences of any such contact [with] the families of those whom we represent,” the lawyers said, and continued: “Plainly, by the NECTU [North East Counter Terrorism Unit] allowing this contact they have been complicit in the grooming and radicalizing of the women.”

October 2014 saw the trial of Moazzam Begg, for various terrorism-related offences. Begg had admitted to training British recruits in Syria - but in his defense, he made the incendiary claim that MI5 had explicitly given him the green light for his frequent visits in a meeting they had arranged with him. MI5 admitted it was true, and the trial collapsed.

Six months later, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an interview with Aimen Dean, a founding member of Al-Qaeda who was subsequently recruited by MI6 as a spy. Part of his work for MI6, he said, involved encouraging young impressionable Muslims to go and join the ranks of Al-Qaeda.

Then in June 2015, Abu Muntasir, known as the godfather of British jihadists, thought to have recruited “thousands” of British Muslims to fight in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Burma, Bosnia and Chechnya, gave an interview to the Guardian, repenting his actions. He explained that he came back from fighting in Afghanistan to “create the link and clear the paths. I came back [from war] and opened the door and the trickle turned to a flood. I inspired and recruited, I raised funds and bought weapons, not just a one-off but for 15 to 20 years. Why I have never been arrested I don’t know.”

That same month, a second trial collapsed, for much the same reasons as Begg’s. Bherlin Gildo was arrested in October 2014 on his way from Copenhagen to Manila. He was accused of attending a terrorist training camp and receiving weapons training as well as possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist. The Guardian reported that the prosecution “collapsed at the Old Bailey after it became clear Britain’s security and intelligence agencies would have been deeply embarrassed had a trial gone ahead.”

In January 2016, it was revealed that Siddhartha Dhar traveled to Syria in September 2014 while on police bail for terrorism offences – the sixth time he had been arrested for terror-related offences, and not long after MI5 had reportedly tried to recruit him. Police had demanded he hand in his passport, but did not follow it up; this was despite the fact that he had revealed - live on BBC morning television no less - that he would “love to live in the Islamic State.” He later posted pictures of himself posing with guns in Raqqa, and is suspected of being the so-called ‘new Jihadi John’, appearing in an IS video executing suspected spies. The original ‘Jihadi John’ – British-Kuwaiti Mohammed Emwazi – had also been well known to the British security services, having – just as Adebolajo and Dhar - apparently been offered a job by MI5.

Is this all just a ‘catalogue of blunders’, more ‘intelligence failings’ on a massive scale?

These cases demonstrate a couple of irrefutable points. Firstly, the claim that the security services would have needed more power and resources to have prevented the absconding is clearly not true.

Since 1995, the Home Office has operated what it calls a ‘Warnings Index’: a list of people ‘of interest’ to any branch of government, who will then be ‘flagged up’ should they attempt to leave the country. Given that every single one of these cases was well known to the authorities, the Home Office had, for whatever reason, decided either not to put them on the Warnings Index, or to ignore their attempts to leave the country when they were duly flagged up. That is, the government decided not to use the powers already at its disposal to prevent those at the most extreme risk of joining the Syrian insurgency from doing so.

Secondly, these cases show that British intelligence and security clearly prioritize recruitment of violent so-called Islamists over disruption of their activities. The question is – what exactly are they recruiting them for?

At his trial, Bherlin Gildo’s lawyers provided detailed evidence that the British government itself had been arming and training the very groups that Gildo was being prosecuted for supporting. Indeed, Britain has been one of the most active and vocal supporters of the anti-government insurgency in Syria since its inception, support which continued undiminished even after the sectarian leadership and direction of the insurgency was privately admitted by Western intelligence agencies in 2012. Even today, with IS clearly the main beneficiaries of the country’s destabilization, and Al-Qaeda increasingly hegemonic over the other anti-government forces, David Cameron continues to openly ally himself with the insurgency.

Is it really such a far-fetched idea that the British state, openly supporting a sectarian war against the Ba’athist government in Syria, might also be willfully facilitating the flow of British fighters to join this war? Britain’s history of collusion with sectarian paramilitaries as a tool of foreign policy certainly suggests this may be so. This history, in Ireland, Afghanistan and the Arab peninsula, and its role in shaping British policy today, will be the subject of the articles to follow.

Public event: 100 YEARS SINCE THE IRISH EASTER UPRISING: A Historic and Unique Blow to British Colonialism!

100YEARS SINCE THE IRISH EASTER UPRISING
A Historic and Unique Blow to British Colonialism!

The 1916 Irish Easter Uprising against British colonialism was one of the most important global revolutionary developments at the time, and shook the empire to its very core and inspired a new wave of revolutionary struggle against colonialism throughout Africa and Asia. This event seeks to bring this history and legacy to new generations of Black, Asian and working class anti-imperialist socialist youth. This event brings some the best of anti-imperialist voices to speak to this subject and to inform and inspire us.

SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER: BERNADETTE MACALISKEY - A leader of the Bogside resistance, one of the youngest MPs ever and veteran republican socialist

SAEB SHAATH - Former PLO Ambassador to Ireland speaking on the impact of the Easter Uprising on the struggle of the Arab peoples against colonialism

HAKIM ADI - World renowned Black radical scholar and historian speaking on the impact of the Uprising on African liberation

Gerard MacNamara - From 'Crimes of Britain', speaking on the importance of the Uprising on anti-imperialist youth today

Chair: Sukant Chandan - A coordinator at the Malcolm X Movement

Other speakers tbc

Fri 13 May, 2016
Doors open at 6pm, 630pm sharp start, ends at 9pm
Marx Memorial Libray
37a, Clerkenwell Green, Farringdon EC1R 0DU
£5 suggested entry

This event is organised by the Malcolm X Movement and Crimes of Britain

Attending this event means that you are giving consent to possibly be in the video footage of the event which will be uploaded on social media.