REMEMBER OUR OWN.

          May 23 2008, Utah Phillips, a working class hero died, but he still delivers humour and a working class story.

From Wikipedia:

         Bruce Duncan "Utah" Phillips (May 15, 1935 – May 23, 2008)[1] was a labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller, poet and the "Golden Voice of the Great Southwest". He described the struggles of labor unions and the power of direct action, self-identifying as an anarchist.[2] He often promoted the Industrial Workers of the World in his music, actions, and words.

Early years 

       Phillips was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Edwin Deroger Phillips and Frances Kathleen Coates. He attended East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father, Edwin Phillips, was a labor organizer, and his parents' activism influenced much of his life's work. Phillips was a card-carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World, the "wobblies," headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Phillips rode the railroads, and wrote songs.[3]

         He served in the United States Army for three years beginning in 1956 (at the latest). Witnessing the devastation of post-war Korea greatly influenced his social and political thinking.

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NATO PROTEST CHICAGO - 2012.

This from Contra Info:

          In the context of the 2012 NATO Chicago summit, on 20th and 21st May of 2012, many counter-protesters were detained during anti-NATO protest marches. Several anarchists were arrested ‘preemptively’. They were accused of scheduling and preparing militant actions against the summit meeting of the world’s largest warmonger. There are yet no reliable information from friends and comrades who were actually there, but due to the need of dissemination of some facts about the arrests, here follows a first summary by ABC Berlin.

          Late on Wednesday evening of the 16th of May, the cops stormed a house in the neighborhood of Bridgeport in Chicago, without showing an arrest warrant or search warrant, and arrested nine people. Six were released without charges on Friday. However, three were remanded in custody, and are now being subject to investigation and threatened with charges of ‘conspiracy to commit terrorism, material support for terrorism, and possession of explosives or explosive or incendiary devices.’ They are accused of having planned to attack with Molotov cocktails four cops’ stations, the local campaign headquarters of US president Obama, the residence of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and other targets in the city. All three were described by the prosecution authorities as self-proclaimed anarchists, having travelled together from Florida several weeks before the scheduled anti-NATO protests in Chicago. During the police raid in the Bridgeport house, a device was confiscated by the cops, who now claim that this was used to make Molotov cocktails; nevertheless, according to the residents, this was simply a kit for making beer at home. A bail bond of 5 million US dollars cash was set for each defendant (a total amount of 1.5 million).

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WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY - THOMAS MUIR.

       No matter how far back we go in our history, we always find that the state will always come down hard on those who dare to try to change the system in favour of the ordinary people. Our history is litterd with brutality handed out to people who would dare to challenge the state's monopoly on power. It will fight hard to protect the status-quo retaining the power and wealth in the hands of the few.

THOMAS MUIR, 1765-1799.
EARLY LIFE.

Thomas Muir was born and lived at a place called Huntershill, a district just to the north of Glasgow. The house still stands surrounded by it's gardens and trees. Thomas was born into a wealthy home. He studied law at Glasgow University but left on a point of honour in 1780 and completed his studies at Edinburgh University eventually having a law practice in Glasgow. He was however drawn to the reform movements that had developed all over Scotland. The reform movements had gathered momentum as the French revolution in 1789 inspired support for parliamentary reform all over Britain. Thomas Muir had connections with numerous reform societies throughout Scotland; in 1792 with William Skirving he helped to set up Scottish Reform Clubs, the membership open to every class. He wrote many pamphlets and spoke at a considerable number of meetings. He was an open and ardent supporter of radical political reform at a time when the authorities were becoming ever more nervous due to the events in France.

ARREST AND BANISHMENT.

One year later, after presenting a nationalistic address to the Scottish Reform Movement General Convention, on behalf of United Irishmen. Thomas Muir was arrested and charged with sedition. His trial date, which took place in Edinburgh, was brought forward by several months while he was visiting France. Unable to get travelling arrangements in time, his non attendance made him an outlaw. He was found guilty of, '...having created disaffection by means of seditious speeches'. He returned to Scotland in August 1793 and was sentenced to be banished to Botany Bay for 14 years. However, George Washington heard of his sentence and sent the USS Otter to rescue him and take him to the new Republic of America. His escape was made good in 1796, however the USS Otter, on its way home was wrecked off Panama. Thomas Muir was then arrested by the Spanish and taken to Havana where he was deemed to be a spy and shipped back to Spain. On the way back to Spain they encountered three British ships and a battle ensued in which Thomas Muir lost an eye. The Spanish released him in 1797 whereupon he made his way to France. He was made a French citizen and died at Chantilly in 1799.

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More on Glasgow's working class history.

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IT'S AN INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM.

        Not a new video but one that gets the message acros that it is not a national problem, but an international problem.

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THE NEVER ENDING ISRAELI LAND GRAB.

            While the Western world is pre-occupied with saving the Euro, deficit reduction and increasing the banking system's liquidity, Israel continues with its policy of purloining Palestinian land, while at the same time pursuing its agenda of genocide against the Palestinian people. If you have a look at an old map and look at the territory that was marked as Palestine and compare it with what is now considered Palestinian land you get quite a shock. Not only is the land just a fraction of what it was, this land grab by Israel has been allied to thousands of Palestinian deaths at the hands of the Israeli state. In man's blood soaked history I doubt if there has been a longer, more one-sided war. On the one side you have one of the most modern, powerfully equipped military machines in the world, on the other a people armed with second rate makeshift rockets, improvised home-made weaponry and stones, and after approximately 50 years, still the uneven struggle continues. None of this could happen if it was not for the financial and military support of America. What is happening in Palestine is part and parcel of American foreign policy in the Middle East, all the West is also complicit in the death of the the Palestinian people, the destruction of their farms and property and the grabbing of their land.

This from US Palestinian Community Network:

On May 15, across the shatat and in the homeland, Palestinians marked the 64th anniversary of the Nakba of 1948 in a multitude of ways. We rallied, we held vigils, and we took a quiet moment to remember, reflect, and mourn. On this anniversary, we particularly honored our heroes in Israeli prisons, who conducted the longest, and one of the largest, hunger strikes in history. In our long march to liberation and return, it has always been our people, their undiminished courage, and their towering fortitude, that have carried our struggle through. We are honored to be Palestinian, proud of our people, and the nobility of our cause.

It is therefore with grave concern that we issue this letter expressing our dismay at the continued disregard and disrespect for our struggle and our people by the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), and its President, Ziad Asali.

At this time of remembrance, two photos were widely circulated of Asali embracing Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at a celebration of Israel’s independence hosted by the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. While Palestinians were mourning the destruction of 531 of our villages, and the expulsion of nearly 800,000 of our people, Asali saw fit to attend a celebration of that moment, and shake the hands of a man whose task it is to silence us and defend the destruction of our homes, theft of our land, starvation of our prisoners, and elimination of our people.

Indeed, this incident is merely the culmination of a long history of ATFP’s betrayal of our people. Since its inception in 2003, with Asali as its President, ATFP has consistently found itself the focus of the Palestinian community’s ire, and the organization’s history carries a string of resignations by one Board member after another in disgust. In the wake of Israel’s 2008-2009 war on Gaza, several Board members stepped down in protest of ATFP comments to CNN effectively absolving Israel of responsibility for its crimes. In his resignation letter to the Board, one member wrote:

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IN MONEY WE TRUST.

        This society has many problems and the recent media coverage of the "floating" of Facebook on the stock market highlighted one, the adoration of money and those who have it. What a screwed up society we live in when individuals becoming billionaires can create a frenzy with hours of media coverage, and sadly the frenzy was among those who will benefit nothing from the corporate event.

This is Charles P. Pierce's take on it: 

Even given my status as an Old Guy Who Loves Facebook — a phenomenon of the modern age characterized by aggravated carpal-tunnel syndrome, a weirdly revived devotion to high-school chums, and a proclivity for throwing old Van Morrison videos out to a gaping world — I have to admit that the giddy national pageant attending Friday's Facebook IPO has left me awfully cold, and awfully pessimistic that this country ever is going to get its economic house in order in anything resembling a fair and just way. Entire news networks dedicating huge blocks of time, the way they once went live for hours covering the Mercury program, to the release of a stock onto the market. People waiting outside in Times Square for the magic moment, as though it were New Year's Eve or VJ Day, and everyone acting as though this whole thing is some kind of national triumph rather than a simple mechanism by which an incredibly wealthy recluse will become an unimaginably wealthy recluse. We get together to cheer for stock. We get together to cheer for money. We get together to cheer for zillionaires, and not a dime of it is ever going to filter down to any of those people waiting behind the barriers in New York, watching the price of the stock tick upwards as though they all had a personal stake in it.

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ALL YOU FASCISTS ARE BOUND TO LOSE.

A little bit of confirmation never does any harm, enjoy.

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BLACK CROSS PRISONER SUPPORT.

An appeal from Leeds Anarchist Black Cross on behalf of John Bowden:

         Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services, or what used to be known as the plain Social Work Department, have seriously compromised their professional integrity by defending a member of staff who deliberately told lies in a report to the Parole Boards in an attempt to sabotage my chances of release from prison. Behaving like corrupt policemen instead of traditional social workers seems now to be acceptable practice at Edinburgh Social Services.
In an official report for the Parole Board, written on 29/2/2012 Brendan Barnett, who works for Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services, made the following incredible claims about my original case in 1980:
“Secondary motives for using violence described by the trial judge and acknowledged by Bowden himself suggest a pattern of behaviour that allowed for the predatory targeting of vulnerable human beings on the margins of society defined by race or sexuality.”
“Bowden has suggested that his victims were easily discriminated against on the basis of race and sexuality.”
“There has been no investigation of the values and beliefs that informed Bowden’s targeting of individuals, i.e. what particular characteristics deemed a person worthy of attack: ethnic background, deviant sexuality.”
        There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support Barnett’s bizarre claims, and in fact I was convicted in 1982, alongside two other men, of the murder of a white Caucasian heterosexual male during a drunken party in South London.

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OUR WORLD OR THEIR WORLD??

         While the millionaires' club, also known as the G8, discuss how best to save and maximise the unimaginable wealth of their billionaire friends, for convenience let's call them the financial Mafia, the ordinary people are getting screwed. The talk is all about saving the Euro, protecting the liquidity of the banks and reducing the deficit. All very rational sounding, it is all a matter of figures, percentages etc. and as they sit in splendour, munching on lavish meals, the thought of the suffering inflicted on the ordinary people by their policies will not enter their heads. Of course they may discuss how to control any anger that may arise from that suffering, but not how to alleviate it in any way. We are expendable, in their eyes our suffering is necessary to safeguard their wealth. It is necessary to plunder all public assets to help them balance their crooked books. Unemployment helps to keep down wage bills, increases profit and makes them more competitive, in their eyes a great idea.

"We're going through tough times."

        Across Europe unemployment is rising to levels not seen since that last big “capitalist crisis” in the 30s. In this country there has been 270,000 public sector jobs lost in 2011, 71,000 roles disappeared in education and 31,000 disappeared in the National Health Service. Unemployment is at 8.2%, with unemployment among the young (16 to 24) is at 22.2%, a staggering 1,033,000 young lives being blighted to balance the books of the crooked banking system. Closer to home, here in Glasgow we have three parliamentary constituencies in the city where unemployment is 10% or more. It is not just a matter of employed and unemployed, there is also under-employed. The figures for the last quarter show that those in full employment fell by 13,000 but those in part time employment rose by 118,000, part time employment accounts for more than 18% of the workforce. Of course again these are just figures, they don't in any way portray the misery that is attached to them. Unemployment, under-employment, translates into poverty, malnutrition, illness caused by being unable to heat your home in winter, stress related problems which impinge on personal relationships, and all to appease the accountants of the billionaires.

         What the financial Mafia will be discussing at the G8 is not our world, our world is the well being of all of humanity, theirs is the personal wealth of an army of parasites, we are in conflict with each other. Their decisions negatively impact on our lives, but we don't need them. We can organise the world in a more sane, just, and sustainable manner, we can organise to see to the needs of all our people. The world has enough resources to see to all our needs, it is the money system of the corporate world's wealthy parasites that holds and hordes those resources, creating mass poverty and deprivation in the interests of profit. We should always remember, we are governed by consent, we have the right to withdraw that consent, as I said, we don't need them, but they need us.

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IT'S NOT MY PROBLEM!!

             There is something about this film that I find frightening, could this be the face of a society built on austerity, is this the end product of the financial Mafia's grand plan. Certainly in years of visiting Greece I don't think I saw a beggar on the street until the "financial crisis", now to see people sleeping on the streets of Athens is not the least unusual. As something becomes more commonplace we tend to pay less attention to it, a kind of hopelessness, something we can't do anything about. But we can, we can change the whole stinking system, but that requires we all see the misery on our streets and come together to do something about the injustice.

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THE FUCK IT POINT!!

          Have we reached the "Fuck it" point? If not when, can it be now or is it too late? Or will we blindly carry on as if everything is just fine and science will sort things out as the problems arrive? As poverty increases across the planet day by day, it becomes clearer and clearer that something is drastically wrong. Our wonderful economic and science orientated system is seen to be a complete  and utter failure. Seeking answers within a system that is so obviously destroying the planet we live on, is nothing short of insanity. We have to think outside the present system, put the blame where it belongs, on the system we live under and not the individuals trapped within that system. It can't be modified, altered slightly, or turned into a manageable environmental friendly system, it is unmanageable and environmentally destructive. The system has to be destroyed one way or another, and a new consciousness has to take its place. One that neither desires to exploit the planet nor seeks dominance over it and all its inhabitants.  

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CONFUSED POLICING?

This looked more like confusion rather than policing. Let's hope that our numbers grow and their confusion grows in unison.


See this video and more at Indymedia London

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COMMON SENSE.

From Bob:

        Common sense, comes from the idea that if enough of us believes something through mass experience - that is, when the vast majority of folk "agree" about something that's what we term "common sense".
          It would seem a reasonable criterion to base a few ideas on anyway.

http://citystrolls.com/common-sense/index.html

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TO SOME FASCISM IS ACCEPTABLE, - WHY?

          Most of us are aware of the problems facing the Greek people, most of these problems are the result of the policies of the financial Mafia, which includes the IMF (International Mankind Fuckers). The money maggots of the bond markets' Billionaire Club, having gambled and lost, now want the people of Europe to make good their loses. This is done by getting governments to transfer all public assets to the  billionaires' bank accounts. At the moment the Greek people are being hit hardest, the result being dire poverty and deprivation, with all its resultant conditions, increase suicides, mental health problems, rampant unemployment and decimated education and health services. With this deliberately applied brutal financial plunder there has also been a rise in violence, especially by the fascist groups against immigrants. In most of these cases the police are complicit by their inaction against the perpetrators and lack of support for the victims. The rise of fascists groups is something that always happens in time of extreme poverty, people start looking for answers but they don't all look in the same direction. That is why we have to push harder to get our answers out there, if our ideas are there they will be taken up, if not, then those ideas that are on the table, religion, more government, fascism, etc. will be the ones that the people will grasp.

fascist attacks - www.docupraxi.net by docupraxi

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THE NIGHTWATCHMAN.

Not much I can say except, enjoy.

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GLASGOW EARTH FIRST REMINDER.

Just a last minute reminder for this Glasgow Earth First event.

        A chance to hear how the ecology movement and anti-globalisation movement functions in America. We can all learn from one and other, Panagioti Tsolkas has been active in the Earth First movement in America for most of his adult life and has a wealth of experience to discuss. This is a free event but it would help if you let ann arky know if you intend coming along, so that we can assess numbers. We need to get enough cups for the tea.

DATE: May 14 2012.VENUE: Unitarian Church 72 Berkeley Street Charing Cross, Glasgow.TIME: 6:30pm. to 9-ish.

http://www.radicalglasgowblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/glasgow-earth-first.html

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COMING TO A CITY NEAR YOU.

     They call it democracy, the people call it dictatorship, and it is, dictatorship by the financial Mafia. As usual, the state will do what is necessary to carry out it's instructions, handed down by the robber barons that make up the financial mafia. These scenes will be repeated in city after city where the people stand up against the "austerity plan" which is to plunder all public assets. If your one of those who think that voting sorts things out, just remember, no matter who you voted for, you will get the "austerity plan", and ConDem austerity is not that different from Labour austerity and across Europe we have Social Democratic austerity, Christian Democratic austerity and 57 other varieties. In each the colour is slightly different, but the smell is just the same. Sometimes to make the "austerity" seem a little more palatable, they will add a magic ingredient, called "growth". Then we can all rejoice, we will have austerity with growth.

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WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY - THE LONG WAR.

          Across the globe battles erupt between the state/corporate world and the people, to those who don't know their history it always seems like a new war, a blip in the system, something that will soon be sorted out and then we can all get back to "normality". However to those who do know their history, the battles are the "normality" it is just another battle in the same long war for the freedom to control our own life. A struggle that will continue until there is no state/corporate system exploiting the ordinary people. The battles come in many a guise, it can be strikes as the corporate world tries to extort extra profit from the workers. It can be protests against government policy as it tries to placate its corporate masters. It can be wars as the various power blocks seek to defend their segment or try to expand. No matter what, it is the ordinary people who are at the receiving end of the pain.

         We should always remember our history it is the voice of those who have struggled before you in the same cause, telling you of the dangers, the pitfalls, the victories. it is a cry for freedom.

 

An extract from On History, Repression and the infinite:

The Mexican Guerrilla and Forgetfulness History tells us that the Nazis cleansed Berlin of Jews in the days leading up to 1936 Summer Olympics. Before everyone arrived from abroad, the Jews had been pushed out of sight, the brutality and pogroms hidden away. The city was brightened, the roads were cleaned, and the shops were open. Three years earlier, Hitler had presided over May Day celebrations, having successfully hijacked the ideas of socialism and revolution from the Marxists, many of whom also happened to be Jews. In 1945, Hitler killed himself and had his body burnt. The war he started before his death consigned the world to its current fate of authoritarian domination. Long after he died, the SS patrolled the streets and Nazi rockets filled the sky.

In 1968, the students of Mexico City (DF) began boarding buses and handing out literature, marching in the streets against the PRI government, and withstanding heavy assaults by the police. They fought to free their imprisoned friends, to keep beauty alive, and to destroy the capitalist terror around them. They were executed in cold rooms after defending the occupied UNAM, the wandered drunkenly down Insurgentes knowing their future was gone, they fucked in dirty bathrooms knowing the world was against them, and they witnessed the tumultuous expansion of the world revolutionary Geist before their intoxicated eyes. Some of them were part of the Anarchist International, although we may never know to what extent.

Ten days prior to the opening of the 1968 Mexico City Summer Olympics, the PRI government sent a group of paramilitaries called the Olympic Brigade to liquidate the student movement. The Brigade was created to cleanse the city and erase all unwanted disturbance. In the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, hundreds of students were killed outright, their blood and life and beauty permanently staining the dry ground of the capitol.

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SHE IS BURIED CHEST DEEP.

             Across the globe, for centuries, religion has bound the lives and warped the minds countless millions. Here in the West we have had centuries of sexual abuse by "holier than thou" tyrants preaching meekness and obedience. we also had our witch burnings and our brutal Inquisitions. However though we haven't eradicated the mind distorting institution of religion, we have to a degree tamed the beast.  Not so in Muslim countries where we still hear of beheading, amputations and stoning, in the name of Sharia Law, there the beast still runs rampant, trammelling minds and brutally destroying lives.

         How long must we wait for a wave rationalism and compassion to sweep over the human race.

 

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FERTILE GROUND FOR FASCISM.

          We should never see what is happening in Greece as something divorced from us here in the UK segment of the corporate fascist's world. The only difference between us and Greece is that they are further down the line of the "Great Austerity Plan", (read "transferring all public assets into corporate hands"). Because of the resistance of the Greek people, we are now hear simperings of a change in tactics with the word "growth" being thrown around, all that "growth" will mean is a slight slowing down of the stripping of public assets, not the reversal. Greece is the front line at the moment and we should always try to be aware of what is happening there, it is a sketch of what we will have to go through as the "Great Austerity Plan" relentlessly marches on. It should not be taken as a given that if the poeople rebel they will all be waving red and black flags, there is a lot of money and power available to those on the other side. One simple tactic being used in Greece by the fascist Goden Dawn mob, is that they went about the poorer areas handing out food parcels, and in time of hunger, the hand that feeds you can seem like your friend.

This from Occupied London:

         The future historian will easily draw a line at the end of the Greek Metapolitefsi (the post-dictatorial regime) somewhere between May5th, 2010 and yesterday — the date of the first elections in this new era. Nothing resembles what we used to live a few years ago. As anarchists, anti-authoritarians, people opposed to any form of representation, the electoral process does not concern us. And yet, it is crucial in tracing societal changes — and what is happening in Greece at the moment is immense. For the first time since the Nazi occupation, an openly Nazi party has officially entered the echelons of political power. While the Left celebrates a “victory” it will be unable to capitalise on in any tangible way, few seem to be reading through this temporary, murky shift-around of the mainstream political balance of power.

        Society in the greek territory is polarising rapidly. The one pole, the pole of the far-right, the misanthropic facade of the current system of capitalist exploitation, is forming quickly. The crucial task ahead is for our pole to form faster even; for us to understand that the times (not so far) ahead will involve a fight to shift society as a whole in an emancipatory direction. A struggle to keep our cities, our streets, our spaces clean from misanthropic nazi scum. But also, and most importantly, a struggle and a race to occupy the space left behind by a crumbling, retreating system of order; we’d better get going.

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A RIGHT ROYAL SALES TEAM.

         The British Royal family is sold to the British public as some sort of benign institution with a spin off that it helps our GDP by bringing tourists to this country. A friendly, if somewhat bumbling family, that brings a bit of colour and splendour into our lives. However we all know that it is far from benign, it is the foundation of the power structure that is the establishment, the bedrock of our class system. What we should also be aware of is that it is also the arms industry's best sales team. Flying princes around the world opens doors to the heads of state for our ever hungry arms manufacturers, allowing billion pound deals to be done. This is also a sales team that is paid for by the British public and not by the arms industry.

Extract from Scottish LEFT Review:

          With a tightening of military budgets in the UK and much of the western world, the arms industry aggressively mines old and new export markets. The largest and fastest growing are in Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. It is for this latter region that Prince Andrew, with his royal connections and military background, best fits the UKTI DSO agenda. His personal presence opens the doors of the kings, princes, emirs and sheikhs of the Gulf kingdoms to the arms company executives who negotiate the export deals.

       A Buckingham Palace spokesman was quoted in the Guardian (9/3/12): “Middle East potentates like meeting princes. He comes in as the son of the Queen and that opens doors that otherwise would remain closed. He can raise problems with a crown prince and four or five weeks later we discover that the difficulties have been overcome and the contract can be signed. He brings immeasurable value in smoothing the path for British companies. We don’t send him to developed countries like France and Sweden, where a member of the royal family would not make a difference, but in developing countries, or the far east, a prince can get in because of who he is.”

      But it is not just royals but quasi-royals such as dictators and their family members where Andrew’s presence works wonders. He supposedly had a close friendship with Saif Gaddafi, son of Colonial Gaddafi, and hosted a lunch at Buckingham Palace for Sakher el Materi, son-in-law of Tunisian dictator, Ben Ali, despite being warned of his corrupt activities by the British Embassy in Tunis. Both dynasties have now fallen.---

Read the full article HERE:

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