Sasha Johnson’s attackers Were Four Black Men, Claim Police

According to Sky News, the police have said that the attackers who shot BLM activist and Taking The Initiative party founder Sasha Johnson were four Black men. The Sky report states

Met Police Commander Alison Heydari appealed to the public for information on the shooting, saying “four black males in dark clothing” fired a gun during a party in Peckham.

“From our enquiries so far, we have established that Sasha had been at a party at a house on Consort Road in Peckham early on Sunday morning,” Cdr Heydari said.

“Around 3am a group of four black males dressed in dark coloured clothing entered the garden of the property and discharged a firearm.

“We are aware of Sasha’s involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK and I understand the concern this will cause to some communities – however, I wish to stress that at this time there is nothing to suggest Sasha was the victim of a targeted attack.”

The rozzers also deny that they are aware of any credible death threats against her. This has been rejected by her party, which has reasonably asked how they can say that without talking to her and that the fact that she was shot in the head makes those threats very credible.

See: Black equal rights activist shot by group of four men at party, police say (msn.com)

I realise that some of the great commenters on this blog will be somewhat sceptical that Johnson’s attackers were not White racists, given the way long shadow of the Stephen Laurence murder. However, I think that it’s all too possible that her assassins were Black. There is, unfortunately, a violent gang culture in many deprived Black communities, and these people will try to kill someone for the most trivial reason. A few years ago some idiot tried to shoot a White DJ, who played rap music for Radio 1. He’d clearly annoyed someone, and not everyone was a fan. I’ve heard people, who listened to him describe him as an idiot and other, more colourful terms. But stupidity and inanity don’t justify attempted murder.

Johnson was a volatile person, who apparently suffered from bipolar disorder. She also seems to have made a few personal enemies. One of the videos I posted about her yesterday came from a former friend, Michelle Francis, who had some very radical racial views herself. Francis says in another video, also about some spat or other with Johnson, that she (Francis) believes in racial segregation. She makes all manner of personal accusations against Johnson, including the claim that she never paid the workers in her restaurant.

I am also aware that there are criminals, who try to infiltrate political parties right across the spectrum in order to gain a false legitimacy and increase the scope of their activities. The attempt to set up a false BLM party by anonymous individuals seems to me to be an attempt by some seriously shady people to cash in on the name and prestige of the real BLM movement. For all I know – and this is just speculation – Johnson could have been targeted for assassination because she blocked such attempts at criminal infiltration.

Whatever the motive, I do not support this attempt on her or indeed anyone’s life, and wish her a speedy recovery.

Before We Go to War with Iran, We Should Listen to Michael Moore and Neil Young

Yesterday I put up a piece commenting on Secular Talk’s video about the drone strikes on the Saudi oilfields. The host, Kyle Kulinski, stated that he believed the media would start lying and claim that these attacks were completely unprovoked. The reality is that they were committed by the Houthis in Yemen in retaliation for the genocidal war the Saudis are waging against their country. Kulinski also predicted that the media, including the Beeb, would tell us all that Iran, and only Iran, was responsible. He states that it’s possible that the Iranians have helped them, and that elements in Iran do support and celebrate it. But he fears a push for war, and doesn’t trust any of the actors – Trump, Netanyahu or the Saudis – to draw back.

I share his fears. And so, I believe, do very many other people. On my YouTube page the other day I found the video below from that old rocker, Neil Young. It’s of him playing ‘Rocking in the Free World’. I think its from the Michael Moore documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. In it the Capped Crusader showed how George Dubya, the American-Saudi oil interests and the military industrial complex pushed for war in the Middle East following the terror attack on 9/11. Wars that they were very careful not to let their sons or daughters become physically involved, while actively recruiting the working class, and particularly the Black working class, to be their cannon fodder.

The film ends with Neil Young’s ‘Rocking in the Free World’.

I know people, who don’t like the song because they think it’s actually a celebration of the capitalist west. So did the late Radio 1 DJ John Peel. He chose it as one of his favourite tracks in an interview on Radio 4 I can remember listening to in the ’90s. He didn’t like it for the same reason, until he listened to it properly. It’s an angry, bitter song, and as flag-wavingly patriotic as Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’. They’re both about how America gives working people nothing but poverty while sending them to fight wars.

Consider the lyrics to Young’s song:

There are warning signs on the road ahead

Some people are saying that we’re better off dead….

That’s another kid,

Who’ll never go to school,

Never fall in love,

Never get to be cool….

We got a thousand points of light

for the homeless man.

We got a kinder, gentler machine gun ham. 

The tunes played over footage of demonstrations in America against Bush, Young and his band in concert, recruiting sergeants going round Black neighbourhoods, and the chaos, grief and warfare in Iraq and the Middle East.

The clip begins with Dubya stumbling his way through the saying ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’ But he couldn’t remember it properly, and so ends with stating the saying’s message ‘Don’t get fooled again’. To which Moore adds, ‘For once, we agree’. Then into the song.

Moore’s absolutely right, as has been corroborated by the former Guardian journo, Greg Palast, in his book, Armed Madhouse. In it he provides copious proof that the Iraq invasion was started, not because Saddam Hussein backed Osama bin Laden, or to liberate the Iraqi people from his dictatorship, but because the Saudi and American oil interests wanted the Iraqi oil reserves. The multinationals wanted to get their grubby hands on Iraqi state enterprises, the Neocons wanted to remove another source of support for the Palestinians, and create the low tax, free market utopia of the kind they want to introduce in the US. The result was absolute chaos. Apart from the carnage of the war, the Iraqi economy was decimated under the impact of foreign imports. Iraqi domestic firms couldn’t compete and collapsed. There was 60 per cent unemployment.

This is what will happen to Iran if we get fooled by the right-wing political elite, the oil industry and the military-industrial complex. It won’t be to liberate the Iranian people from their despotic government, nor to defend an innocent Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are Wahhabis – militant Sunnis – who despise and fear the Shi’a. That’s why they invaded Yemen: the Shi’a Houthi had overthrown the Sunni government. A few years ago one high-ranking Saudi cleric, the Sharif of Mecca or Grand Mufti, declared that Shi’a Muslims were ‘heretics and worthy of death’. Iran supports the Shi’a nations in the Middle East, hence Saudi determination to destroy the country’s regime. Israel and its supporters here also wants the Iranian government overthrown, because they are intensely hostile to Israel, expressing their hate in genocidal language, and support the Palestinians. Western oil interests want to get their hands on the Iranian oil industry, because we used to own it before Prime Minister Mossadeq nationalised it briefly in the 1950s before we had him overthrown, and it was nationalised against during the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Our multinationals want to seize Iranian industries, as under current Iranian legislation they cannot be invested in or owned by foreign companies. And this includes the 51 per cent of the economy held by the state or the bonyads, the Islamic charitable funds. In fact, Forbes was whining about how unfree Iranian industry was, meaning that westerners couldn’t get their mitts on it, a few years ago.

These are the forces pressing for war with Iran.

They fooled many people 18 years ago after 9/11. But not everyone. One million people in Britain marched against the invasion of Iraq, including our local priest. Since then, I’ve no doubt more people know how spurious the cause for war was. More people realise that the two chiefly responsible for the war, George Dubya Bush and Tony Blair, are liars and war criminals.

Don’t let them fool our people again!

Not one courageous squaddie should be sent to his or her death killing ordinary Iranians, just to make the oil industry and the multinationals rich!

 

 

 

‘Liar, Liar’ – The Anti-May Pop Song the Beeb Won’t Play

Yesterday’s I carried a piece by Adam Sherwin about a pop song against Theresa May that the Beeb definitely won’t be playing. The article reads

‘The BBC will not play a song accusing Theresa May of being a “liar” which has already made the top ten.

“Liar Liar’ by seven-piece band Captain Ska from London, includes soundbites from several of the Prime Minister’s speeches and interviews with the chorus: “She’s a liar liar, you can’t trust her, no, no, no.”

The lyrics include: ‘Where there’s nurses going hungry and schools in decline I don’t recognise this broken country of mine.”

Released last Friday, the song has soared to No. 7 in the Officials Singles Chart midweek update and has made the Download chart top 10. However the BBC said the song would not be included on the Radio 1 playlist or aired during Friday’s Official Chart rundown.

A spokesman for Radio 1 said: ‘We do not ban songs or artists, however our editorial guidelines require us to remain impartial and the UK is currently in an election period so we will not be playing the song.”

Capital FM and Heart have also opted not to play the song.

The band said in a statement: “We’re overwhelmed with the support and our message is that people do have the power to change society if we act together.’

Ordinarily, I’d say the ban on playing very political music during an election was fair. However, considering the massive bias the Beeb has against Corbyn and the Labour party, as shown in their attack on him on Woman’s Hour and the Six O’clock News, the refusal to play the record seems a bit hypocritical. Would the Beeb similarly censor a record if it extolled the virtues of May or Boris Johnson?