Motor Racing And Gallery Motor

We're told that new President Barack Obama telephoned Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas yesterday to tell them how committed he was to Middle East peace. Well, one thing yesterday tells us is that Obama is not too committed to democracy. Whether you like the fact or not, Hamas - and not Fateh- won the 2006 Palestinian elections- and as such, can be said to represent the democratic wishes of the Palestinian people.

The Zionist slogan 'Yes to Hummus, No to Hamas' might have a certain ring to it, but there can be no effective Middle East peace-deal which doesn't involve Hamas- the idea that a lasting deal can be stitched up between Tel Aviv and Fateh is naive to say the least. What Obama's actions show is that he, like his predecessors is a Henry Ford democrat. Countries have the right to elect in any colour governments they like, so long as Washington (and in the case of Hamas, Tel Aviv), approves.

If people have the temerity to vote the wrong way- as they did in Palestine in 2006, or in Federal Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s, then their elected representatives will be shunned- and if they still don't toe the line and adopt a suitably servile position, then it's time to build the air-raid shelters.

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1. Face down the antis and smoke openly in public.
2. Announce that the US is going to stop giving blank cheques to Israel.
3. Ditch Joe Biden as VP and replace him with Maggie Gyllenhaal.
4. Announce that he’s going to introduce a free national health service.
5. Visit Tehran and Damascus and adopt a new, friendlier stance towards Iran and Syria.
6. Ditch Hillary The Hawk and appoint Jimmy Carter or Ramsey Clark as Secretary of State.
7. Announce that the US will only act in accordance with international law.
8. Announce that the US will pay reparations to the people of the former Yugoslavia for the illegal bombing of the country in 1999- and that it will also compensate the Iraqi people for the illegal attack on their country in 2003.
9. Announce the immediate withdrawal of US troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan.
10. Announce the closure of most of the US’s overseas military bases.
11. Stand up and say “The ‘war on terror’ was a load of old baloney- it was a neo-con smokescreen for extending US hegemony around the globe”.
12. Appoint Ralph Nader Trade Secretary.

Of course, it would be a miracle if he even does one of these things.

But wouldn’t it be nice if he did!

Anyway, that’s my wish-list. What's yours?

UPDATE: 'Nicki' has added her list in the comments below - and there's three of hers I wish I'd added to mine:

2. Ban political donations from Agents of foreign countries and corporate political donations. Cap political donations at $100. Return democracy to the American people.

12. Put all neo-cons and associated corporate racketeers on trial for high treason and crimes against humanity.

13. Transform the WB and IMF. Change the culture of American consumerism, stop encouraging usury, free people from debt, free other nations from debt. Truly bring liberty and freedom to the world.

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Well, there was I thinking that when British servicemen and women join up to 'Defend the Realm' the realm in question was that of the United Kingdom.

It seems I got it totally wrong. British armed forces are, it seems, there to defend the Israeli Realm.

The BBC reports:

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has offered British naval resources to help monitor events in the Gaza conflict and stop weapons being smuggled in.

He wants to help ensure protection and monitoring of the crossings into Gaza.
Mr Brown said: "We will do everything we can to prevent the arms trading at the root of the problems.

So there you have it, dear British readers, our Royal Navy, funded by your taxes, is going to be working for the Israeli government.

Do we, the British people, have any say in all of this?

Our country is all but bankrupt, and our armed forces hideously overstretched, but here is our Prime Minister offering 'naval resources' to assist a foreign power.

A foreign power incidentally, which is such a 'strong ally' of Britain that it carried on selling arms to the fascist Argentinian junta of General Galtieri during the Falklands war.

You might have thought that H.M. Opposition would make a big stir about Gordon Brown's announcement. But so far, not a word. In Britain's one party state, unequivocal support for the State of Israel is, it seems not negotiable.

It's about time that changed.

UPDATE: Charlie Marks has more on this shocking, if unsurprising news.

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This column of mine appears in The Morning Star.

The Austrian Way

I SPENT this Christmas in Austria, a country which, thankfully, has been wise enough not to follow the British path and privatise its entire economy.

In Austria, not only are the railways still in public ownership but prices are determined by a simple distance-based system, with the price you pay determined by the number of kilometres you travel.

At rush hour, instead of fares rising to price people off the trains, Austrian State Railways simply lays on more trains with more carriages.

Even at the busiest times, travellers always get a seat, as they do in other European countries which operate under the same model.

Compare this to what happens in Britain, where commuters, having forked out a fortune for their season tickets, face years of overcrowding, because the train companies prefer to ram people like sardines into trains rather than lease extra carriages from the rolling stock companies.

It was disclosed recently that overcrowding on Britain's trains was so bad that commuters were being allocated less space than the EU minimum for transporting farm animals.

The late "One Nation" Tory Sir Ian Gilmour, a staunch critic of privatisation, called his party's proposal to privatise the railways "crazy." He was putting it mildly. *********************************************************************************

Gatwick - a living nightmare.

It used to be said that the most stressful part of flying was the flight itself. But flying is now a doddle. The real stress comes with having to deal with a privatised British airport.

On my way to Austria, I experienced the living nightmare that is Gatwick.
Herded like sheep, my family, together with thousands of other weary passengers, were told that we had to queue outside due to the lack of space inside the terminal.
And just why is there so little space inside the terminal? Because Britain's privatised airports are first and foremost shopping malls from where you can also fly, as opposed to being places to fly from with one or two shops.

The difference between the BAA-owned airports and those still in public ownership could not be more different.

While Britain's privately owned airports are widely condemned as an international disgrace, municipally owned Manchester airport is regularly voted one of the world's favourite airports by its users.

For privatisation zealots, that is, of course, unwelcome news.

Tory MP Graham Brady acknowledges that Manchester airport is a "magnificent gateway" to northern England, but still calls for its privatisation.

"Next door to my constituency, there is a thriving modern plc worth £3 billion which remains in the public sector without anyone batting an eyelid," he complains. Brady lambasts Manchester airport's "anachronistic ownership structure" as "a monument to old-fashioned municipal socialism."

As opposed of course to being a monument to old-fashioned Thatcherite dogma, like Gatwick. ************************************************************************

Rail companies provide lousy new year tradition.

IN Germany, a long-standing new year tradition is the television screening of the classic 1960s comedy sketch Dinner For One, starring Freddie Frinton as an inebriated butler.

In privatised, neoliberal Britain, we have a different and less humorous new year custom - the announcement of above-inflation price rises by Britain's profiteering train companies.

This week, fares on Britain's railways, already by far and away the most expensive in Europe, have gone up by average of 7 per cent, with some season ticket prices rising by as much as 11 per cent.

Train companies say that the increases are necessary to pay for "much-needed investment."

If you believe that one, then I'm sure that you also believe that Israel is a force for peace in the world, that Tony Blair is a man who never tells lies and that Father Christmas is a real, living person.

The truth is that the companies are raising fares to boost their already obscenely high level of profits and to pay even higher dividends to their shareholders.
In its most recent half-year figures, the Go-Ahead Group made a pre-tax profit of £58 million, while Stagecoach recorded a £105 million surplus.

Arriva made £66 million, First Group £54 million and National Express £47 million.
These profits have been at the expense of Britain's long-suffering commuters and taxpayers who pay around four times more in subsidy to the private rail operators than they did to the much-maligned British Rail.

Only when the railways are bought back into full public ownership and run once more for the benefit of the travelling public and not wealthy shareholders will Britain's great train robbery come to an end.
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Great Sage of Wokingham

REMEMBER John Redwood - the wild-eyed free-market fanatic who once challenged John Major for leadership of the Conservative Party?

On his blog, the Great Sage of Wokingham reflects on why Britain's trains are so expensive.

"There is one simple reason why train fares are so high and rising so fast - the costs of train travel are too high and rising too fast," he opines. Sorry, John, but the simple reason why train fares are so high and rising fast is because our trains are operated by profiteering plcs.

Nowhere in his article does Redwood mention the fact that Britain's railways, unlike those in Europe, are in private ownership.

Writing an article on why Britain's trains are so expensive without mentioning their ownership structure is as ridiculous, and dishonest, as writing an account of World War II without mentioning Adolf Hitler.

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It's time for nationalisation

THE Campaign for Public Ownership's new website will be up and running very shortly, with details of our latest campaigns and how you can get involved.

Let's make 2009 the year that nationalisation is put firmly back onto the political agenda, not as an emergency measure to bail out failing banks and building societies but as an integral part of economic policy.

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For our first ‘Weekly Fromm’ of 2009, I thought it appropriate, in the light of events in Gaza, to post the thoughts of the great man on Zionism from 1959:

It is often said that the Arabs fled, that they left the country voluntarily, and that they therefore bear the responsibility for losing their property and their land. It is true that in history there are some instances — in Rome and in France during the Revolutions when enemies of the state were proscribed and their property confiscated.

In general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than the [European] Jews. Just because the Arabs fled? Since when is that punishable by confiscation of property and by being barred from returning to the land on which a people's forefathers have lived for generations? Thus, the claim of the Jews to the land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse.

No doubt if Fromm were alive today and expressed such opinions he would be denounced as an ’anti-semite’, even though he was Jewish.

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It is said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. But in 2009, it's making false and unfounded accusations of anti-semitism against those who oppose Israel's brutal invasion of Gaza.

There have been many shocking examples of this phenomenon in the past few days, but the most execrable effort of all was published in today's Guardian.

It is not Israel's action, but the vitriolic reaction to it that has been disproportionate. There's only one explanation: anti-Semitism

says the blurb to Elizabeth Wurtzel's piece.

What utter claptrap.

People oppose Israel's action because it is wrong, not because it is being carried out by Jews. Zionists might find it hard to believe, but the majority of people around the globe do not approve of shelling UN schools, refugee centres and ambulances.

As one of the commenters to Ms Wurtzel's piece writes:

We now have a new definition for anti-semitism - Opposition to the killing of innocent civilians and the shelling of UN buildings. That defines the world as being 99.999999999% anti-semitic.

Despite admitting that she hasn't set foot in Europe since 2002, Wurtzel claims that Europe "has become an unbearable place to be, as the anti-American feelings in light of the Iraq war have mingled with antisemitism to a point where they are indistinguishable, the new phobias of the First World."

Again, what utter claptrap. There is a concerted campaign being waged by apologists for Israel's aggression to maintain that Europe has become an anti-semitic cesspit.

It hasn't. People's anger is rising, but it's anger directed against the state of Israel, not Jews in general.

On the subject of 'phobias', it's worth pointing out that Ms Wurtzel found fame and fortune by writing the book 'Prozac Nation' which talked about her battle with depression.

I think it would be better for all of us if she concentrated on dealing with her own phobias, instead of writing about the imaginary "new phobias" of a continent she clearly knows nothing about.

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This article of mine appears in The Australian.


FOR Imperial Japan it was Pearl Harbor. For the Soviet Union it was the invasion of Afghanistan. For the "1000-Year Reich" it was Operation Barbarossa.

History is littered with examples of countries and regimes that have destroyed themselves by launching ill-thought-out and over-ambitious attacks on others.

Could Israel, by its invasion of Gaza, have joined their number?

Let me declare my position from the start: I oppose the Israeli military invasion of Gaza because I believe it to be illegal and immoral. But I also believe that from Israel's point of view, Operation Cast Lead is a colossal strategic error.

There's no doubt that Israel's bombardment has inflicted damage on Hamas's military capability. But liquidating Hamas as a political and military force, as Israel's leaders hoped the operation would achieve, is another thing altogether.

Hamas now has the legitimacy of a resistance movement fighting against a foreign occupier and its popularity among Palestinians - and Muslims - across the world is likely to rise accordingly.

That's bad news for Fatah, Israel's preferred Palestinian faction, whose leaders have been denounced by Hamas and its supporters as cowards and Western collaborators.

It's not only the knock-on effects on internal Palestinian politics that should concern Israel. In the past couple of weeks there has been a significant shift in global public opinion towards the Jewish state. Despite the best efforts of its well-oiled public relations campaign and its supporters in the media, Israel's international image has taken a battering.

For many, the abiding image of the past fortnight will be the picture of a Palestinian mother weeping over the death of her five daughters, graphically displayed on the cover of The Washington Post. Israel has bombed UN schools and killed paramedics, and it stands accused of shelling a house full of refugees. We are used to Israel being condemned by radical Islamic clerics: now the condemnation comes from the UN, the Red Cross and the Vatican.

The shift in my views on Israel is, I believe, typical of many. In 1998, I attended Israel's official 50th birthday celebrations.

Last Saturday, along with at least 100,000 others, I took part in a huge anti-Israel demonstration in London. The London march was only one of many similar demonstrations across the world.

In Germany, where for obvious and understandable historical reasons criticism of Israel has been inhibited, protesters have marched with banners comparing Israel's actions with those of the Nazis in World War II. The point here is not whether such an analogy is accurate but that the comparison is now being made.

The global outrage that Israel's actions in Gaza have provoked has also given a powerful boost to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign aimed at subjecting Israel to an international boycott similar to the one that ended apartheid in South Africa.

The European Union, the world's biggest importer of Israeli goods, is under increasing pressure to suspend its recently upgraded trade agreement with Israel, while calls for a ban on arms sales to Israel have also intensified.

This wave of anti-Israel feeling is a far cry from the situation 40 years ago. In the 1960s and '70s, Israel basked in the warm glow of global public approval. Moshe Dayan, the hero of the Six-Day War, enjoyed a level of popularity that rivalled that of the day's biggest film stars, while prime minister Golda Meir was among the most respected political figures in the world.

When Israeli athletes were massacred at the Olympic village in Munich in 1972, there was widespread grief and anger.

This goodwill towards Israel, though tarnished by Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, endured until the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, an event that ushered in a more aggressive era in Israeli foreign policy. In the space of 40 years, Israel has gone from hero to villain: in 1967, 73 per cent of Europeans said they supported Israel; by 2007, 67 per cent were siding with the Palestinians.

And perhaps most worrying of all for Zionists is the fall in support for Israel in the US, where only 31 per cent of Democrats say they support the invasion of Gaza.
Zionists claim that growing public opposition to Israel signals a revival of anti-Semitism. But in fact the reason is simple.

In the wars of 1967 and 1973, Israel was seen as a country defending itself against hostile neighbours. In recent years it has been seen not as the victim but as the aggressor: both in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza now.

Some of the more intelligent Zionists realise that the Gaza invasion is a huge own goal.

British writer and commentator Peter Hitchens, a self-described consistent hardline supporter of the Jewish state, argues the invasion of Gaza will make it much harder to persuade Arab states and their people that Israel has a right to exist.

There can be little doubt that Gaza has given the anti-Zionist movement greater momentum.

It wasn't a Hamas spokesman but a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, who declared at Saturday's march in London: "Zionism is bullshit!" When Murray told the crowd he did not accept Israel's right to exist, he received one of the loudest cheers of the day.

Israel's operations in Gaza make a two-state solution to the Middle East problem less likely, as a growing number of people begin to question the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

Operation Cast Lead also undermines Arab regimes that have friendly relations with Tel Aviv. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak's 28-year hold on power is looking increasingly vulnerable, with anti-government demonstrations taking place almost every day.

Thirty years after the Islamic revolution in Iran, the coming to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt would be a disaster for Israel, but it is an outcome that becomes more likely each day the Gaza offensive continues.

Israel's leaders say that they had no alternative but to launch the attack on Gaza in the light of Hamas rocket attacks.

But it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the decision to invade owed less to concerns over Israel's long-term security than to an attempt to secure the ruling Kadima-Labour Party coalition's return to power in the forthcoming general election.

"I have some good news," declared Azzam Tamimi, a Palestinian academic and prominent Hamas supporter, at Saturday's London rally. "Israel has dug its grave."

Some will dismiss such talk as wishful thinking. But there are plenty of reasons for believing that he could be right.

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