THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

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Boston artist Steve Mills - realistic painting

Sunday, August 8, 2010

The UN Security Council, UNAMI and the Yazidi Paradigm in Iraq


The UN Security Council, UNAMI and the Yazidi Paradigm in Iraq

Reidar Visser

August 4, 2010

Over the past week, the Iraqi press has accorded a hilarious amount of attention to today’s meeting in the UN Security Council devoted to Iraq. The basic purpose of the meeting is to renew the mandate for the UN assistance mission to Iraq, UNAMI, which expires in a few days; this limited objective notwithstanding Iraqi journalists and politicians have conjured up a lively scenario of some kind of concerted international action to install a whole new government for Iraq to end the current deadlock. Beyond their regrettable effect of giving Iraqi politicians an excuse for further postponing government-formation, maybe until after Ramadan in mid-September, there seems to be little substance to these reports apart for their obvious entertainment value – how about a scenario in which Russia and China slug it out over whether Maliki or Allawi should have the PM position; Brazil intervenes to suggest Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum as a compromise candidate!
Far more serious matter can be found in the small print of the report of the UNAMI special representative of the secretary-general in Iraq. The main part of the report is unremarkable: In predictable fashion it glosses over several of the shortcomings of the 7 March elections and ends up recommending an "inclusive and broadly participatory" government-formation process. But the section on "human rights" has flagged some interesting items that should serve as an indication to the Iraqis about what sort of assistance they can really hope to get from the international community. This part of the report contains several striking items, among them a congratulation to the Kurdish regional authorities for establishing an "independent board of human rights" coupled with a failure to elaborate on why the local elections in that region that were supposed to take place in 2009 have just been postponed until 2011. But by far the most remarkable entry is the following one: "In a further positive development, on 14 June the Iraqi Federal Court passed a ruling increasing the number of seats in the Council of Representatives for the Yezidi minority group in proportion to their population in accordance with the figures from the last national census".
Many Iraqis will fail to see the positive aspect of this much-overlooked ruling by the federal supreme council. For one thing, it is the latest in a string of partially contradictive rulings by the court on the use of minority quotas in the Iraqi political system. First, in a ruling on 20 July 2009 the court (wisely) struck down a proposal to subdivide the electoral constituency of Kirkuk in ethnic districts (Arab, Turkmen, Kurds) on the grounds that it would constitute racism and that the constitutional requirement of 1 parliamentary representative for 100,000 Iraqis was geographically based and had nothing to do with ethno-sectarian subdivisions:

But the latest rulings made on 14 June include firstly a radical interpretation of the principle of proportional representation that threatens a return to the hated single-constituency arrangements of January 2005, and secondly – the "milestone" flagged by UNAMI – instructions to the Iraqi parliament to adjust upwards the number of seats for the Yazidis ahead of the 2014 elections with a reference to population data that show some 200,000 Yazidis already back at the time of the previous census (1997).
This will play well in the international community, where typically the situation of minorities attracts headlines far more easily than less dramatic bread and butter issues. But what are the consequences for Iraq? As is well known, the demarcation of ethno-sectarian groups in northern Iraq is a messy business, with the groups themselves often disagreeing on the criteria for self-definition. For example, some Christians believe they are a religious minority whereas other think they are "ethnic Assyrians"; similarly the Kurds try to convince Yazidis and Shabak that they are Kurds whereas many members of these groups virulently oppose Kurdish overlordship, partly on the basis of religious tenets (the Yazidis have their own religion and the Shabak are Shiites) and partially with reference to language. Ironically, because of the Kurdish attempts to dominate these groups indirectly by installing pro-Kurdish leaders among them, it is the Kurds and their clients that have spearheaded the quest for more "minority seats" in order to populate them with pro-Kurdish placemen – the very demand to which the federal supreme court has now yielded, and which UNAMI applauds before the Security Council. (It deserves mention that UNAMI and the Kurds and ISCI tried the same trick during the revision of the election law in 2008 but were trumped by what was then known as the 22 July group of Iraqi nationalist parties.) So the question is what will follow next. By linking the criteria of numerical representation (1 to 100,000) to the level of minority groups for the first time (previously minority representation had a less mathematical, negotiated basis), the federal court, with the support of UNAMI, could be opening a can of worms where a far greater number of Iraqis may feel tempted to be defined according to ethno-religious criteria. If the Yazidis can, why not the Turkmens or the Kurds?
This, in other words, is what the UN Security Council has in store for the Iraqis: More Paul Bremer logics, where the Iraqi population is carefully calculated according to ethno-sectarian criteria and then given their proper share. It is the perfect way of legitimising and perpetuating a neo-imperial approach: The Iraqis are seen as a primitive people forever locked in ancient communitarian hatreds above which they can rise only with the benevolent assistance of Western diplomats. It is a kind of epistemology that went out of fashion in academia somewhere in the early twentieth century, but in the UN Security Council it is apparently still taken seriously. Tomorrow, after the ongoing consultations, UNAMI is likely to have its mandate renewed for another year. That will probably not include installing a "salvation government", as some Iraqi newspapers had speculated, but the Yazidi paradigm will remain, almost unnoticed.

Saturday, August 7, 2010: 46 Iraqis Killed, 213 Wounded

Saturday, August 7, 2010: 46 Iraqis Killed, 213 Wounded

Margaret Griffis

August 7, 2010

Explosions from an unknown source left casualties in Basra where police were already expecting large demonstrations. At least 46 Iraqis were killed and 213 more were wounded there and elsewhere. Meanwhile, U.S. forces have officially handed over control of combat operations to their Iraqi counterparts. Also, British special forces are under investigation prisoner abuse.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki admitted his reluctance to give up the premiership is part of the deadlock preventing the formation of the new government.
In central Basra, at least two explosions of unknown origins left as many as 25 dead at the al-Ashaar souk. Medical officials reported 110 hospital admissions but the toll could be as high as 162 wounded. Although witnesses and some security sources earlier said three improved bombs were the cause of the explosions, the city’s police chief maintains that a malfunctioning generator is actually to blame. Even before the blasts, Basra police had prepared for potential demonstrations against frequent electrical blackouts. It is unclear whether this may have been related sabotage. A lawmaker blamed police for the security situation in the city. Although few reports of violence come out of Basra, it has long been clear that attacks there seldom get accurate coverage in the media.
In Baghdad, an all-night shootout at a Saidiya bomb factory left five policemen and one gunman dead. Another 14 Iraqis were wounded, among them women and children. Two suspects were later arrested. In the cache discovered at the factory was an explosives-packed minibus. Last night, gunmen killed a policeman and wounded two others in Hurriya. In the Jihad neighborhood, one civilian was killed and three more were wounded.
Bombs planted outside the homes of three policemen and a Sahwa member in Garma left 15 wounded. Four people were killed in the attacks.
At a checkpoint outside Fallujah, gunmen killed a policeman and wounded three others. A sticky bomb wounded a policeman.
Gunmen killed a policeman in Rutba.
A bomb in Abu Ghraib killed a militant leader from the 1920 Revolution Brigades. Elsewhere, a blast killed one civilian and wounded two others.
In Mosul, a police official tried to stop a suicide bomber but the explosives were triggered, killing one policeman and wounding six others, including the official. An I.E.D. killed a child. Gunmen wounded three people, including a prison warden, at a mourning service.
In Khanaqin, two brothers were killed in a blast.
Two roadside bombs in Mahmoudiya wounded two people.
Police captured nine suspects and a weapons cache in Baquba.

Τhe US Socialist Workers Party & the boycott of Israel

ΤΟ ΚΟΜΜΟΥΝΙΣΤΙΚΟ ΚΟΜΜΑ ΤΩΝ ΗΠΑ "ΕΡΙΞΕ ΤΗΝ ΜΑΣΚΑ" ΑΠΟΚΑΛΥΠΤΟΝΤΑΣ ΟΤΙ ΕΙΝΑΙ "ΚΑΤΑΣΚΕΥΑΣΜΑ" ΤΟΥ ΙΣΡΑΗΛ!!!

Why the left should support the boycott of Israel -- a reply to the US Socialist Workers Party

By Art Young


August 7, 2010

Socialist Voice -- When Israeli commandos attacked the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters on May 31, 2010, murdered nine humanitarian aid workers and seized the cargo of badly needed supplies for Gaza, they touched off an international storm of outrage that continues to this day. The widespread anger has galvanised the international movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people, drawing in new forces and producing new initiatives.
Following the attack on the flotilla, Palestinian civil society issued an appeal to progressive forces around the world to redouble their solidarity efforts and to strengthen the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS) against Israel. On June 7 the major Palestinian trade union federations appealed to dock workers to refuse to handle Israeli cargo. They said:
Gaza today has become the test of our universal morality and our common humanity. During the South African anti-apartheid struggle, the world was inspired by the brave and principled actions of dockworkers unions who refused to handle South African cargo, contributing significantly to the ultimate fall of apartheid. Today, we call on you, dockworkers unions of the world, to do the same against Israel’s occupation and apartheid. This is the most effective form of solidarity to end injustice and uphold universal human rights.[1]
Workers in a number of countries responded to this call.
The Swedish Dockers’ Union, which had supported the Freedom Flotilla, declared a one-week blockade on Israeli goods and ships beginning on June 23. The union also called for "a general blockade of Israeli goods until the rights of the Palestinian people are guaranteed and the blockade of Gaza is lifted."[2]
On June 3 the Congress of South African Trade Unions called for "greater support for the international boycott, divestment and sanction campaign against Israel, which is proving again to be violent and ruthless in attacking and murdering those who stand in its way. We urge all South Africans to refuse to buy or handle any goods from Israel or have any dealings with Israeli businesses."[3]
In a statement issued the same day, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, a COSATU affiliate, said, "we salute the Swedish dock workers for their blockade of all Israeli ships. We call for an escalation of the boycott of Israeli goods and call upon our fellow trade unionists not to handle them. We call upon our members not to allow any Israeli ship to dock or unload in any South African port."[4] In February 2009, following the Israeli assault on Gaza, members of SATWU refused to unload cargo from an Israeli ship in Durban.
The South African Municipal Workers’ Union, another COSATU affiliate, declared that it would "immediately work towards (making) every municipality in South Africa … an Apartheid Israel free zone". It said that it would "engage every single municipality to ensure that there are no commercial, academic, cultural, sporting or other linkages whatsoever with the Israeli regime".[5]
In Turkey, the dock workers’ union declared that it would "boycott ships from Israel, which has become a machine of death and torture. In this framework, no member of our union will give service to Israel in any docks where we are organized. The Liman-Is union invites all unions and NGO’s organized in our country and throughout the world to join this boycott and protest campaign."[6] Unions in the Port of Kochi (Cochin) in India also refused to handle Israeli cargo.
In the first action of its kind in the United States, on June 20 more than 700 unionists and community activists picketed at several entrances to the Port of Oakland, California, protesting the arrival of an Israeli-owned vessel. Two shifts of members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union refused to cross the picket line. The cargo was unloaded only 24 hours later, after the picket lines were lifted.
The protest was organised by the Labor/Community Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian People, an ad-hoc coalition of local labour, Palestine solidarity and social justice groups. Several hundred unionists responded to the call of the San Francisco and Alameda County labour councils and other unionists to support the action.[7] Statements of support for the action were issued by the Oakland Education Association, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions and the Cuban labour federation, the Cuban Workers Central, among others.[8]
Opposing the boycott
One group that did not support the action in Oakland was the United States Socialist Workers Party. The SWP is opposed to boycotting Israel. It reaffirmed this stand at its national conference a few days before the picket in Oakland.
The group first elaborated its position on the Palestinian struggle in a series of articles that appeared during the first half of 2009 in The Militant, a weekly newspaper that expresses its views. These articles argued that:
  1. There is no Zionist movement today.
  2. Anti-Zionism is a cover for anti-Semitism.
  3. Israel’s rulers plan to give up control of most of the West Bank and Gaza.
  4. Israel is not an apartheid state.
  5. The BDS campaign is not only wrong. It is anti-Semitic.
  6. The democratic, secular Palestine that the SWP envisages must grant a special right of immigration to the Jews of the world.[9]
This line of argument places the SWP in the Zionist camp. To be sure, the SWP opposes Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, but the thrust of its argument is directed against the solidarity movement. It endorses the slanders advanced by Israel’s supporters that anti-Zionism in general and the BDS movement in particular are anti-Semitic. The group also supports a privileged position for Jews in Palestine.[10]
A complete reversal on Zionism
These positions represent a breathtaking turnabout for a group that for decades unconditionally supported the Palestinian people and thoroughly opposed Zionism.
The SWP’s previous position on these questions was explained in a resolution it adopted at its 1971 convention. The opening paragraphs of that resolution read:
The Socialist Workers Party gives unconditional support to the national liberation struggles of the Arab peoples against imperialism, that is, we support all these struggles regardless of their current leaderships. Our foremost task in implementing such support is to educate and mobilize the American people against U.S. imperialist actions in the Mideast.
Israel, created in accordance with the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish state, could be set up in the Arab East only at the expense of the indigenous peoples of the area. Such a state could come into existence and maintain itself only by relying upon imperialism. Israel is a settler-colonialist and expansionist capitalist state maintained principally by American imperialism, hostile to the surrounding Arab peoples….
The struggle of the Palestinian people against their oppression and for self-determination has taken the form of a struggle to destroy the state of Israel. The currently expressed goal of this struggle is the establishment of a democratic, secular Palestine. We give unconditional support to this struggle of the Palestinians for self-determination….
Our revolutionary socialist opposition to Zionism and the Israeli state has nothing in common with anti-Semitism, as the pro-Zionist propagandists maliciously and falsely assert. Anti-Semitism is anti-Jewish racism used to justify and reinforce oppression of the Jewish people….
Zionism is not, as it claims, a national liberation movement. Zionism is a political movement that developed for the purpose of establishing a settler-colonialist state in Palestine and that rules the bourgeois society headed by the Israeli state today in alliance with world imperialism. [11]
It is immediately apparent that what the SWP says today is the polar opposite of these positions. Contrary to Marxist practice, the SWP has neither acknowledged the reversal nor explained why in its view it is necessary.
Zionism and anti-Zionism
The first indication that the SWP had changed its position on these questions came in an article in the March 2, 2009 issue of The Militant. The article quoted SWP leader Norton Sandler as follows:
"Class-conscious workers should drop the term Zionism," in the current context, Sandler added. "There is no Zionist movement today. The reality is, it has become an epithet, not a scientific description; a synonym for 'Jew’ that helps fuel Jew-hatred, which will rise as the capitalist crisis deepens."[12]
Sandler’s claim that the Zionist movement had vanished from the face of the Earth was so at odds with current reality and with the SWP’s previous position that it was challenged by some readers of the paper. Sandler’s reply appeared in the April 13 issue.
I made these remarks at a January 31 public meeting in London. I was not addressing the history of the Zionist movement, or how the state of Israel came into being as an expansionist colonial-settler state. Zionism in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century was a bourgeois political current contending with the communist movement for the allegiance of workers who were Jewish. Israel was established in 1948, more than six decades ago. There is no Zionist movement today and there hasn’t been for a long time.[13]
Sandler’s historical survey evades the challenge posed by the readers. He merely repeats his assertion of the non-existence of Zionism today and "for a long time", as though the repetition is proof enough.
This claim is simply ludicrous.
Zionism — promoting the existence of an exclusive Jewish state — is a political movement that transcends religious or ethnic factors.
As the SWP’s 1971 resolution states, Zionism is the ruling ideology of the Israeli state. The founding principles of that state proclaim that it is a Jewish state — meaning that it is a state that claims to be the homeland for the Jews of the world and whose Jewish citizens enjoy privileges denied to other inhabitants. Israel is the dominant military power by far in the Middle East, thanks in no small measure to the support it receives from Washington. Israel’s ruling Zionists command an arsenal that includes between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads.[14]
Ever since the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Western powers have favoured the dispossession of the Palestinian people, first through massive Jewish immigration to Palestine and subsequently through their support of the Jewish settler state. They have maintained this policy for nearly a hundred years because it was — and is — in the interests of these powers to promote the existence of an ethnically defined Jewish state, with special privileges for Jews, as a divisive force in opposition to the national liberation struggles of the peoples of the Middle East. That’s why US President Barack Obama and prime ministers Stephen Harper of Canada and David Cameron of Britain are as committed to Zionism as Benjamin Netanyahu.
Zionism is also a highly organised and influential international movement.
North America is home to many prominent Zionist organisations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, B’nai B’rith, the Zionist Organization of America, the Canada-Israel Committee and the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy. Right-wing Christian Zionists also actively advocate and raise funds for Israel. Supporters of human rights for Palestinians confront organised Zionist opposition every step of the way, from charges of anti-Semitism to hostile picket lines outside public meetings and disruptions during meetings, often organised by the vigilante Jewish Defence League.
In all these cases, Israel advocacy and support is based on Zionism — the idea that Israel must remain a Jewish state.
In the March 2, 2009, article quoted above, Sandler and the SWP allege that it is anti-Semitic to oppose Zionism. Their logic is rather peculiar since it hinges on the SWP’s denial that Zionism exists. But the conclusion is all too familiar. It is the common coin of most defenders of Israel and its policies. Here the SWP finds itself in the company of openly reactionary forces.
To be sure, Holocaust deniers, rightist politicians and others — actual Jew haters — cloak their anti-Semitism in the garb of opposition to Zionism. The crimes of the Israeli state, which claims to represent all Jews, facilitate the propaganda of these hate mongers.
But it is a reactionary slander to tar all opponents of Zionism as anti-Semites. It is a slander first and foremost against the Palestinian people who understand only too well what Zionism means and what it has done to them. For decades they have struggled heroically to overturn Zionism, and their struggle continues today. The vast majority of the world’s oppressed and exploited support them.
It is also a slander against the anti-Zionist wing of the Palestine solidarity movement, including the small but growing number of Jews who oppose Zionism. Forces far more powerful than the SWP have laboured mightily to make this label stick, but they have failed.
An end to Israeli expansionism?
In his April 13 article Sandler also expresses the view that the expansion of Israel’s borders is drawing to a close. "The majority of the Israeli ruling class has given up the dream of a 'Greater Israel.’ They are forced to opt for what they consider the only pragmatic solution — maintaining a majority Jewish state within borders of their own choosing. This is hardly the Zionist movement’s dream of an Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River." (Other articles published between February and June 2009 make the same claim.)
Here Sandler and the SWP merely echo the Israeli rulers who never tire of claiming that their only aim is an Israel with defensible borders living in peace next to a Palestinian state. This has been Tel Aviv’s mantra ever since it occupied Gaza and the West Bank in the 1967 war. Israel’s actions reveal a different plan. Seen from the Palestinian perspective, history since 1967 has been one of unrelenting Israeli expansion onto Palestinian land and continual ethnic cleansing by the Zionist state. Approximately half a million Israeli settlers now live in the occupied West Bank, some 9 per cent of the Jewish Israeli population. The settlements, the wall, the Jewish-only road network, the draining of the water resources — these and many other features of the occupation are turning the West Bank into a series of isolated and dependent cantons. The settlement enterprise has not halted for a moment, not even during the recent phony temporary "settlement freeze" declared by Netanyahu under pressure from Obama. Meanwhile Israel maintains an iron grip on the Gaza Strip.
"Greater Israel", Israeli rule from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, has been the reality for more than 40 years — that is, for more than two-thirds of Israel’s existence. During this period Israel has steadily strengthened its hold on the conquered territories (although the Palestinians have resisted tenaciously and scored some successes along the way).
The reality of "Greater Israel" that Palestinians face every day is documented in countless reports from the United Nations and many other organisations, including Israeli human rights groups. But Zionist propaganda appears to carry more weight with the SWP.
No Israeli apartheid?
Another major article appeared in the April 6, 2009, issue of The Militant. "Israel boycotts and divestment serve as cover for anti-Semitism" was written by Paul Pederson, a member of the paper’s staff. He stated:
There are sweeping differences between the apartheid regime in South Africa and the capitalist regime in Israel—in terms of organization of labor, the character of the regimes, and the historical conditions under which they emerged. The attempt to paint them as the same simply obfuscates the real social and class relations in Israel and the tasks facing the toilers there to chart a revolutionary course forward. Applied to Israel the term "apartheid" is simply an epithet, rather than a scientific description of a social structure.
Perhaps the most glaring difference between the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the fight for Palestinian national rights today is the existence of a revolutionary organization—the ANC under Nelson Mandela—in the case of South Africa.[15]
The first sentence asserts that "there are sweeping differences between" South Africa and Israel. This is an empty platitude. There are also sweeping differences between capitalist rule in the US, Canada and Great Britain. But there are also fundamental similarities, just as there are in the case of apartheid-era South Africa and Israel.
The second sentence is another platitude, asserting that the false comparison leads to false conclusions.
The third sentence states the SWP’s political position — Israel is not an apartheid state.
This is a straightforward question of fact: is the Israeli system of rule fundamentally similar to the apartheid system in South Africa? Does it meet the commonsense or legal understanding of the term?
Israel was established in 1948 by the massacre and expulsion of most of the native inhabitants, who generations later still cannot return to their homes. It practices systematic discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and structural discrimination against these Palestinians is enshrined in its laws and the entire legal apparatus. In addition, Israel rules over millions of other Palestinians in the occupied territories through a combination of measures that ultimately rest on its military control. These inhabitants are systematically deprived of their land, their water and other resources, to the benefit of Jewish Israelis. The Jewish settlers who live on Palestinian land enjoy full rights of citizenship while Palestinians are denied basic human rights.
This, in a nutshell, is the Israeli system of rule over the Palestinians. It bears a striking similarity to the system of apartheid in South Africa even if it differs in many particulars. (For a more detailed analysis see "Not an analogy: Israel and the crime of apartheid" by Hazem Jamjoum.[16])
In the course of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, large numbers of people around the world came to understand that apartheid is a crime against humanity that must be eradicated wherever it might appear. In 1973 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, which specifies that a regime commits apartheid when it institutionalises discrimination to create and maintain the domination of one racial group over another. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also defines apartheid as a crime. This statute came into effect in 2002, long after the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Of course the experts on what is apartheid, and what it is not, live in South Africa. It is no accident that many unions and solidarity organisations in South Africa have endorsed the idea that Israel is an apartheid state.[17]
One of the most thorough and authoritative studies of Israeli apartheid in the occupied territories was published by the South African Human Rights Council in May 2009. The 302-page report by an international panel of experts concluded "that Israel, since 1967, has been the belligerent Occupying Power in the OPT [occupied Palestinian territories], and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid".[18]
Today’s solidarity activists draw strength from this understanding of the crime of apartheid. They look at Israel in light of the experience gained in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and they are inspired by the victory that was won there. Their explanations of the Israeli apartheid system have been convincing and have helped to build the movement.
Returning to the article cited above, only one element of the argument remains. Israel is not an apartheid state, Pederson states, because the Palestinian leadership is not revolutionary.
It is, to say the least, rather bizarre to assert that the nature of the Palestinian leadership determines the nature of the Israeli state. Nevertheless, the assertion is revealing. It expresses how the SWP has come to condition its support for struggles against imperialism on its view of the leadership of such struggles. This provides a handy excuse for refusing to support them. In 2003 the SWP refused to support the large demonstrations against the war in Iraq. Its Canadian sister organization expelled supporters who argued that Marxists had a duty to defend the Iraqi people against imperialism by taking concrete action against the war. The SWP justified its abstention from the struggle by pointing to the bloody and reactionary record of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Over the last few years the SWP has adopted a similar approach toward the Palestinian struggle.
Suffice it to say that this has more in common with dead-end sectarianism than it does with Marxism. The SWP used to understand this quite well. The 1971 resolution cited earlier begins with these words:
The Socialist Workers Party gives unconditional support to the national liberation struggles of the Arab peoples against imperialism, that is, we support all these struggles regardless of their current leaderships.
Israel boycott, a growing and dynamic movement
As noted earlier, the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel (BDS) has made great strides in the past few years. BDS is now one of the most dynamic and fastest growing components of the international movement in solidarity with Palestine.[19]
Israel’s rulers recognise the power and potential of the boycott movement.
On July 14, 2010,  the Israeli Knesset (parliament) approved the initial reading of a bill designed to punish residents of Israel who promote boycotts of the state or Israeli products. If enacted into law it will allow punitive fines to be levied against such persons. The bill is primarily aimed at Palestinians living in the West Bank and the small but growing number of Israeli citizens, Jewish and Palestinian, who form the "Boycott From Within" movement supporting the international boycott. In a speech to the Knesset, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the Boycott From Within movement as a "national scandal". Neve Gordon, a professor at Ben Gurion University who endorsed an academic boycott of Israel last year, has received death threats. Gideon Sa’ar, the minister of education, has threatened to punish any lecturer or institution that supports a boycott of Israel.
In February, the REUT Institute, one of Israel’s most influential think tanks, published a report in which it warned of a dangerous decline in Israel’s international support. It urged the government to take more effective action against the forces promoting the "delegitimization" of the state of Israel, including the international BDS movement.[20] The institute devoted the June 10 issue of its magazine to a detailed analysis of the movement, noting that:
the damage caused by the BDS Movement lies in its promotion of delegitimization towards Israel through creating the comparison — whether implicit or explicit — between Israel and the former apartheid South African regime. Therefore, BDS should be viewed first and foremost as a tool to brand Israel as a 'pariah state’ with the ultimate aim of undermining the legitimacy of its political structure.[21]
Although only five years old, the BDS movement has scored some notable successes, winning increasing support in many quarters. National trade union federations in South Africa, Ireland, Scotland, Quebec and elsewhere have endorsed the boycott, as have numerous unions in various countries. On July 22 the annual conference of Unite, the largest union in Britain, with 2 million members, voted unanimously in favour of a complete boycott of Israeli goods and services. Earlier this year Israeli Apartheid Week, an educational activity promoting BDS, took place on more than 50 campuses worldwide. The number of participating campuses has grown steadily from year to year.
Grassroots organising has been particularly effective in Europe, where a divestment campaign forced the French multinational Veolia to withdraw from a major transportation project in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israeli businesses have acknowledged a decline in their sales because European consumers are boycotting Israeli agricultural products.
In the United States and elsewhere, the movement is increasing its pressure on pension funds and university endowments to divest from companies such as Lockheed Martin, ITT, United Technologies, General Electric, Caterpillar and Motorola that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands while helping it carry out its war crimes. On June 2 students at Evergreen State College in Washington state voted by a large majority to demand that the college’s foundation divest from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation and that the college ban the use of Caterpillar equipment on campus. Rachel Corrie, an Evergreen student, was killed by a weaponised Caterpillar bulldozer as she attempted to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip in 2003.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has been a particularly vocal supporter of the college divestment campaigns in the United States.
An appeal from Palestine
The BDS movement responds to an appeal for solidarity issued on July 9, 2005, by more than 170 Palestinian organisations, including trade unions, political and social organisations, and women’s and youth groups. The signatories represent the three components of the Palestinian nation — refugees, Palestinians living under in the occupied territories and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The appeal from Palestine said:
We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.
These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in U.N. resolution 194.[22]
The BDS call does not advocate a particular political solution to the conflict. Its approach is to develop a grassroots mass political campaign in favour of these three basic pillars of human rights for the Palestinian people. This approach serves not only to overcome divisions among the Palestinians, it also stands on the universal principles of human rights that have animated the struggle against racism in South Africa, the United States and elsewhere.
The movement took another step forward in 2008 with the formation of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, a broadly representative group of Palestinians that serves as the leadership of the international BDS campaign.
The rapid growth of the movement can be attributed to a number of factors: its origin in Palestine; the unity among Palestinians that it expresses; its new, rights-based approach to the struggle; its consistent anti-racism (which includes opposing Islamophobia and anti-Semitism); and the movement’s Palestinian leadership. The movement also offers many opportunities for grassroots organising of boycott and divestment campaigns as well as educational activities. As it has grown the movement has acquired experience and developed an increasing number of local leaders. It has also become more diverse, developing targeted academic and cultural boycotts of Israel similar to those used in the struggle against South African apartheid.
Israel boycott, 'a cover for anti-Semitism’?
These developments have not gone unnoticed at the SWP’s headquarters. The group has taken up the cudgels against the boycott movement, waging a sustained campaign against it in the pages of its newspaper. Leaders of the group have denounced BDS in meetings organised to build the solidarity movement, from Israeli Apartheid Week to the recent US Social Forum.
The SWP’s campaign is fundamentally dishonest. The Militant has not reported any of the basic facts about the boycott movement. The SWP has also chosen to ignore the appeal of Omar Barghouti, a leader of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, who wrote in a recent article that: "genuine solidarity movements recognize and follow the lead of the oppressed, who are not passive objects but active, rational subjects that are asserting their aspirations and rights as well as their strategy to realize them."[23]
In the SWP’s eyes BDS is "a cover for anti-Semitism". The article by Paul Pederson cited previously said this:
In the absence of any revolutionary perspective, campaigns such as the anti-Israel boycott can appear to be a radical substitute. But, as the crisis of capitalism deepens, the "anti-Israel" character of these campaigns is simply a modern form of Jew-hatred. All who genuinely support the battle for Palestinian national rights must oppose it.
Not to be outdone, in his reply to critical readers in the next issue of The Militant, Norton Sandler compared advocates of BDS to the Nazis:
In London earlier this year the Marks & Spencer department stores and Starbucks coffee shops were targets of protests over the Israeli assault on Gaza. These businesses are supposedly Jewish-owned. … Jewish businesses were a prime target of the Nazis in Germany after 1933. Why aren’t U.S.-owned businesses targets during protests against Washington’s Iraq and Afghanistan wars?[24]
The SWP’s allegation that the boycott movement is anti-Semitic and akin to Hitler’s targeting of Jews in Germany is beneath contempt. It assumes that readers of The Militant will not try to ascertain the facts for themselves. But facts are more powerful than such slanders, and the facts about the BDS movement are readily available.
(For example, The Militant repeatedly alleges that boycott activities in the United Kingdom target the Marks & Spencer department store chain because the company’s owners are Jewish. Like virtually everything else the SWP writes about the BDS movement, this is untrue. The Boycott Israeli Goods website lists seven major retailers in the UK that sell Israeli products. Each of them has been the target of pro-Palestinian protests in recent years. According to the website, Marks & Spencer has deep historical ties to the state of Israel. Also, "in 1998, Sir Richard Greenbury, then CEO of Marks & Spencer, received the Jubilee Award from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. In 2000, the Jerusalem Report stated that 'M&S supports Israel with $233 million in trade each year.’"[25])
Supporters of the SWP might want to reflect on the fact that the group’s campaign against boycotting Israel places them to the right of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship in the US, which recently endorsed boycott, divestment and sanctions, and the Methodist Church of Great Britain, which has called on its followers to boycott all products from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.[26]
A fateful leap toward Zionism
Already well on its way toward the Zionist camp, the SWP took another fateful leap at its national conference this June. The Militant reported that the conference featured a series of classes.
One on "World Capitalist Crisis, Israel, and the Roots of Jew Hatred" took up the need for a multinational, working-class leadership to fight for a democratic, secular Palestine. Communists would fight for Palestine to be a refuge for all Jews facing persecution. Conference participants discussed how the call for a boycott of Israeli products is not a road toward winning self-determination for the Palestinians, but a dangerous concession to anti-Semitism.[27]
This passage does more than repeat the familiar slander against the boycott movement. It introduces a new and far-reaching change in the SWP’s program. Its call for a democratic, secular Palestine now has a distinctly Zionist flavour — Palestine must be a homeland for world Jewry.
This has several major implications.
For one thing, what is it about Palestine that makes it the proper destination for Jews who may feel the need to emigrate? Why not the United States, Canada or Australia, much larger and wealthier countries? Religious Zionists believe that Palestine is the Holy Land and that God has granted the Jews the right to settle there. Secular Zionists advance other reasons. Both agree that the Palestinians must not obstruct Jewish immigration and colonisation. But what is the SWP’s reason for selecting Palestine for new waves of Jewish settlement?
Furthermore, the SWP appears to give little weight to the possibility that "Jews facing persecution" at some point in the future might choose to defend their rights in the countries where they reside, struggling alongside the oppressed and exploited of those countries. It is Zionism, not Marxism, that insists on the need for a sanctuary for Jews in Israel/Palestine.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, the SWP’s vision for Palestine fails to mention the Palestinian refugees, victims of Israel’s wars. Many of them live in dismal refugee camps near Israel’s borders. According to Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees. One in three refugees in the world is Palestinian.[28] Any settlement that deprives them of their right to return home, to receive redress for their dispossession and to live as full citizens in the land of their choice is an unjust settlement that will not endure.[29]
While barring all Palestinian refugees, Israel accords automatic citizenship to immigrants who are Jewish. The SWP appears to want to maintain this arrangement in some form in the new state that they envisage. Whatever else one might say about it, this state would be neither democratic nor secular.
Although a logical extension of the positions first developed in early 2009, the SWP’s discovery of Palestine as a homeland for the Jews and its silence on the Palestinians’ right of return marks a fateful leap toward Zionism.
Bending to imperialist pressure
The SWP’s embrace of Zionist arguments against the Palestinian struggle are the clearest and most extreme examples of the group’s steady rightward evolution. Unfortunately they are not an isolated case. A few other examples show the pattern.
For a number of years following the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the SWP refused to support the anti-war movement. It wrote article after article criticising what it called the "middle class radicals" leading the movement while itself doing virtually nothing to oppose the war and occupation. It also repeatedly condemned acts of resistance by Iraqi fighters to the occupation of their country.
More recently the SWP refused to support the Honduran people in their struggle for democracy.
In June 2009 the Honduran army staged a coup d’état, overthrowing the elected government. President Manuel Zelaya had angered business leaders by raising the minimum wage. He had also alarmed Washington by joining the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Latin America (ALBA), an alliance initiated by Venezuela and Cuba that conducts mutually favourable trade between Latin American countries, thereby weakening the US grip on the continent. In Honduras workers, peasants, Indigenous people and other toilers mobilised in large numbers against the coup, which they understood was a blatant attack on their democratic rights. Their struggle continued for months, while Cuba, Venezuela and much of Latin America did all they could to restore constitutional rule in Honduras. The Honduran masses resisted valiantly but ultimately were defeated by the combined power of Washington, the Honduran army and the local oligarchy.
The SWP urged its followers to remain aloof from the struggle against the coup, which it characterised as "part of (the) infighting between wings of the capitalist class". The July 20, 2010, issue of The Militant also falsely asserted that constitutional procedures had been followed after the army "arrested" the president.[30] An editorial in the next issue declared that "the interests of Honduran workers and farmers do not lie in whether Zelaya returns to the presidency". It warned against "the false claim by middle-class radicals that Zelaya’s ouster was a 'right-wing’ coup 'made in USA’." The editorial also attacked ALBA.[31]
In August 2008 Georgia provoked a war with Russia, attempting to reclaim territories then under Russian protection. Georgia was an ally of the US, which had provided it with $277 million in military aid since 1997. It had troops in Iraq serving under US command. Soon after the war with Russia broke out, the US sent additional supplies to Georgia. It also mobilised international public opinion against Russia. The Militant’s coverage echoed the imperialist propaganda. "Russian troops out of Georgia!" was the title of an editorial in the September 1, 2008, issue, which characterised the fighting as a Russian invasion and occupation.[32]
In September 2005 a Danish newspaper published blatantly anti-Islamic caricatures, provoking massive protests by Muslims in many countries. The SWP turned its back on their cry for dignity and equality and their outrage against the xenophobic intent of the cartoons’ publishers. The Militant joined in the reactionary uproar against the demonstrations, smearing them as "often violent protests".[33] The SWP refused to recognise that the protests embodied the fight against both national oppression and imperialism.
This is a pattern of repeatedly bending to imperialist pressure in times of crisis. It is a disgraceful course of conduct for a group that calls itself socialist, particularly one located in the United States, the heartland of imperialism.
[This article first appeared at Socialist Voice, based in Canada. It is posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with Art Young's permission.
Notes
[1] http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/712
[2] http://ibnkafkasobiterdicta.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/the-swedish-dockers-union-decides-on-a-blockade-against-israeli-ships-and-goods/
[3] http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?include=docs/pr/2010/pr0531d.html&ID=3395&cat=COSATU%20Today
[4] http://groups.google.com/group/cosatu-press/msg/a2ff0baff48201c4?pli=1
[5] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1264
[6] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1264
[7] http://www.laborforpalestine.net/wp/2010/07/10/blockade-dockers-respond-to-israel-flotilla-massacre-and-gaza-siege/; and http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11348.shtml
[8] http://www.laborforpalestine.net/wp/2010/06/19/support-pours-in-for-zim-lines-picket/
[9] This position was first expressed in June 2010.
[10] A Zionist blogger welcomed the SWP’s support. "Communists Against Boycotting Israel," http://www.thejudeosphere.com/?p=1388.
[11] http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/swp-us/24thconvention/zionism.htm. Also available as a pamphlet by Gus Horowitz, Israel and the Arab Revolution, from amazon.com and pathfinderpress.com.
[12] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7308/730857.html
[13] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7314/731436.html
[14] Estimates vary widely. This estimate is provided by the US-based Center for Defense Information, http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?documentid=2965&programID=32
[15] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7313/731336.html
[16] http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10440.shtml
[17] See, for example, the statement by the South African Municipal Workers’ Union quoted earlier in this article. Many other examples could be cited.
[18] "Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law", Executive Summary, p. 5. Links to Executive Summary and full report at http://www.hsrc.ac.za/Media_Release-378.phtml.
[19] For more information on the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, see "BDS: A Global Movement for Freedom & Justice" by Omar Barghouti, http://al-shabaka.org/policy-brief/civil-society/bds-global-movement-freedom-justice and "Pro-Israel Lobby Alarmed by Growth of Boycott, Divestment Movement" by Art Young http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/462.
[20] "The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall", http://www.reut-institute.org/en/Publication.aspx?PublicationId=3769.
[21] "The BDS Movement Promotes Delegitimization of the State of Israel", http://reut-institute.org/data/uploads/PDFVer/20100612%20ReViews%20-%20BDS%20Issue%2016_1.pdf.
[22] "Palestinian Civil Society Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel," http://www.stopthewall.org/downloads/pdf/BDSEnglish.pdf.
[23] Barghouti, http://al-shabaka.org/policy-brief/civil-society/bds-global-movement-freedom-justice.
[24] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7314/731436.html. Emphasis added.
[25] http://www.bigcampaign.org/index.php?page=who_sells_israeli_goods
[26] http://epfnational.org/action-groups/epfs-executive-council-statement-on-divestment-boycott-and-economic-sanctions-as-a-means-of-nonviolent-resistance/ and http://www.methodist.org.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=opentogod.newsDetail&newsid=453.
[27] http://www.themilitant.com/2010/7426/742650.html. Emphasis added.
[28] http://www.al-awda.org/faq-refugees.html
[29] The July 26, 2010 issue of The Militant published an excerpt from a report by the SWP’s central leader, Jack Barnes, in which he states that a new, revolutionary leadership in Palestine will be built around struggles on many fronts. Barnes provides a list of such progressive causes. He does not include the right of return of the Palestinian refugees, http://www.themilitant.com/2010/7428/742853.html.
[30] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7327/732752.html
[31] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7328/732820.html
[32] http://www.themilitant.com/2008/7234/index.shtml
[33] "Socialists Must Oppose Anti-Muslim Bigotry" by Sandra Browne and Robert Johnson, http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=91.

Paul Hellyer & UFO's

Paul Hellyer

Paul Theodore Hellyer, PC (born 6 August 1923) is a Canadian politician and commentator who has had a long and varied career. He is the longest serving current member of the Privy Council, just ahead of Prince Philip.

Canadian Action Party

In 1997, Hellyer formed the Canadian Action Party (CAP) to provide voters with an economic nationalist option following the collapse of the National Party of Canada.[4] Hellyer believed that both the Progressive Conservative and Liberal parties were embracing globalization, and that the New Democratic Party was no longer able to provide a credible alternative. CAP also embraced Hellyer's proposals for monetary reform: that the government should become more involved in the direction of the economy by gradually reducing the creation of private money and increasing the creation of public money from the current ratio of 5% public / 95% private back to 50% public and 50% private.[5][6]
His party remained a little-noticed minor party, and Hellyer lost bids for a seat in the Canadian House of Commons in the 1997 and 2000 elections.
Following the 2000 election, and a resurgence for the New Democratic Party, Hellyer approached NDP leadership to discuss the possibility of merging the two parties into 'One Big Party'. This process was furthered by the passage of a unanimous motion at the CAP's convention in 2003.
In early 2004, after several extensions of the merger deadline, the NDP rejected Hellyer's merger proposal which would have required the NDP to change its name. Hellyer resigned as CAP leader, but remains a member of the party. Rumours that he might run for the NDP in the 2004 election proved to be unfounded.

[edit] Peace in space and UFO advocacy

On 3 June 1960, Hellyer flew in by helicopter to officially inaugurate an Unidentified flying object landing pad in St. Paul, Alberta. The town had built the landing pad as its Canadian Centennial celebration project, and as a symbol of keeping space free from human warfare. The sign beside the pad reads:
"The area under the World's First UFO Landing Pad was designated international by the Town of St. Paul as a symbol of our faith that mankind will maintain the outer universe free from national wars and strife. That future travel in space will be safe for all intergalactic beings, all visitors from earth or otherwise are welcome to this territory and to the Town of St. Paul.[7]
Throughout his life, Hellyer has been opposed to the weaponization of space. He supports the Space Preservation Treaty to ban space weapons.[citation needed]
In early September 2005, Hellyer made headlines by publicly announcing that he believed in UFOs. On 25 September 2005, he was an invited speaker at an exopolitics conference in Toronto, where he told the audience that he had seen a UFO one night with his late wife and some friends. He said that, although he had discounted the experience at the time, he had kept an open mind to it. He said that he started taking the issue much more seriously after watching ABC's Peter Jennings' UFO special in February 2005.[citation needed]
Watching Jennings' UFO special prompted Hellyer to finally read U.S. Army Colonel Philip J. Corso's book The Day After Roswell, about the Roswell UFO Incident, which had been sitting on his shelf for some time. Hellyer told the Toronto audience that he later spoke to a retired Air Force General who confirmed the accuracy of the information in the book. In November 2005, he accused U.S. President George W. Bush of plotting an "Intergalactic War". The former defence minister told an audience at the University of Toronto:
"The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning...The Bush Administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."[8]
Hellyer told the audience that in December 2004, he had enjoyed reading and had endorsed a book by Alfred Webre entitled "Exopolitics - Politics, Government and Law in the Universe". He ended his 30 minute historical talk with a standing ovation by stating:
"To turn us in the direction of re-unification with the rest of creation the author is proposing a “Decade of Contact” – an “era of openness, public hearings, publicly funded research, and education about extraterrestrial reality”."[citation needed]
In 2007, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Hellyer is demanding that world governments disclose alien technology that could be used to solve the problem of climate change:
"I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation...that could be a way to save our planet...We need to persuade governments to come clean on what they know. Some of us suspect they know quite a lot, and it might be enough to save our planet if applied quickly enough."[9]
In 2010, Hellyer accused Stephen Hawking of spreading misinformation about threats from aliens.[citation needed] Hawking has warned humanity against contacting aliens. According to Hawking, if human beings tried to contact aliens, they could invade us and take away our most important resources. Hawking had also said that though most extraterrestrial life could be only in the form of small animals, there could also be "nomads, looking to conquer and colonize" other planets. Hellyer told the Canadian Press that
"the reality is that they (aliens) have been visiting earth for decades and probably millennia and have contributed considerably to our knowledge."
Blaming Hawking for scaring mankind about aliens, he said, "He (Hawking) is indulging in some pretty scary talk there that I would have hoped would not come from someone with such an established stature."

Writings, and personal life

Hellyer has written several books on Canada and globalization, including One Big Party: To Keep Canada Independent, in which he promoted the merger of the CAP, NDP and various left-wing activists to save Canada from the effects of globalization, and possible annexation by the United States.
He was an early investor in the Toronto Sun, and for a time a columnist for the newspaper.
Paul Hellyer currently resides in Toronto. He has three children and five grandchildren.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Hellyer

August 01, 2010

Image of the Day: The First Stars of the Milky Way

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef0133ee1ab36b970b-pi
The image reveals a small region inside the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri, which boasts nearly 10 million stars. Globular clusters, ancient swarms of stars united by gravity, are the homesteaders of our Milky Way galaxy. The stars in Omega Centauri are between 10 billion and 12 billion years old. The cluster lies about 16,000 light-years from Earth.
The most distant galaxy cluster ever has been discovered by combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical and infrared telescopes. The cluster is located about 10.2 billion light years away, beats the previous record holder by about a billion light years and is observed as it was when the Universe was only about a quarter of its present age.
The ancient cluster, JKCS041, is found at the cusp of when scientists think galaxy clusters can exist in the early Universe based on how long it should take for them to assemble. Therefore, studying its characteristics - such as composition, mass, and temperature - will reveal more about how the Universe took shape.
"This object is close to the distance limit expected for a galaxy cluster," said Stefano Andreon of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Milan, Italy. "We don't think gravity can work fast enough to make galaxy clusters much earlier."
Distant galaxy clusters are often detected first with optical and infrared observations that reveal their component galaxies dominated by old, red stars. JKCS041 was originally detected in 2006 in a survey from the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope. The distance to the cluster was then determined from optical and infrared observations from UKIRT, the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope in Hawaii and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Infrared observations are important because the optical light from the galaxies at large distances is shifted into infrared wavelengths because of the expansion of the universe.
The Chandra data were the final - but crucial - piece of evidence as they showed that JKCS041 was, indeed, a genuine galaxy cluster. The extended X-ray emission seen by Chandra shows that hot gas has been detected between the galaxies, as expected for a true galaxy cluster rather than one that has been caught in the act of forming.
Also, without the X-ray observations, the possibility remained that this object could have been a blend of different groups of galaxies along the line of sight, or a filament, a long stream of galaxies and gas, viewed front on. The mass and temperature of the hot gas detected estimated from the Chandra observations rule out both of those alternatives.
The extent and shape of the X-ray emission, along with the lack of a central radio source argue against the possibility that the X-ray emission is caused by scattering of cosmic microwave background light by particles emitting radio waves.
It is not yet possible, with the detection of just one extremely distant galaxy cluster, to test cosmological models, but searches are underway to find other galaxy clusters at extreme distances.
The previous record holder for a galaxy cluster was 9.2 billion light years away, XMMXCS J2215.9-1738, discovered by ESA's XMM-Newton in 2006. This broke the previous distance record by only about 0.1 billion light years, while JKCS041 surpasses XMMXCS J2215.9 by about ten times that.
"What's exciting about this discovery is the astrophysics that can be done with detailed follow-up studies," said Andreon.
Among the questions scientists hope to address by further studying JKCS041 are: What is the build-up of elements (such as iron) like in such a young object? Are there signs that the cluster is still forming? Do the temperature and X-ray brightness of such a distant cluster relate to its mass in the same simple way as they do for nearby clusters?
Casey Kazan from Chandra documents.
Source: University of California - Irvine

The Eridanus Void: Does a MegaMassive Black Hole One-Billion Light Years Across Exist?

August 05, 2010

The Eridanus Void: Does a MegaMassive Black Hole One-Billion Light Years Across Exist?

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef0133ee4e8301970b-pi
The apparent development of a large void of some billion light-years in diameter in the Constellation Eridanus appears to be improbable given current cosmological models. A radical and controversial theory proposes that it is a "universe-in-mass black hole" rather than hypothetical dark matter responsible for the phenomenon described as the expanding-accelerating universe. This radical theory of cosmology suggests that stars at the edge of the Hubble length universe are being consumed by a universe-in-mass black hole.
In August of 2007, astronomers at the University of Minnesota located a gigantic hole in the universe. This empty space, stretching nearly a billion light-years across, is devoid of any matter such as galaxies, stars, and gas, and neither does it contain the strange and mysterious dark matter, which can be detected but not seen.
Empty places in the universe are not uncommon. It is already known that matter tends to clump and form stars and galaxies, clusters and superclusters, due to the pulling force of gravity. So astronomers have already seen places in the universe where there are groups of matter and places where matter is more scarce. But this new discovery is much larger than any previously known "hole".
“Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size,” explains Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota. Rudnick was one of the researchers to find the hole. 
Rudnick and his team studied data from a survey of the entire sky imaged by the Very Large Array radio telescope. A map of this area of the sky was already known to be an anomaly. It had been called a "cold spot" after a satellite that charts the cosmic microwave background radiation discovered it was less warm than its surroundings. (Overall the cosmic microwave background radiation is exceptionally cold, and the difference seen was only in millionths of a degree.)
The area of sky in which the hole exists lies in the direction of the constellation Eridanus. Eridanus is the constellation of the River, and can be found winding below Taurus and Cetus.
But the hole is not a part of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, which is a remnant of the Big Bang. The hole lies between six to 10 billion light-years away. The cold spot is a result of the CMB radition passing through this blank area on its way to Earth. Supporters of the standard model Big Bang theory say the region is colder because of dark energy.
Dark energy, which has yet to be verified, can be seen as the opposite of gravity. While gravity pulls matter together, dark energy is what is causing the universe to expand, and at an ever-increasing rate. When the radiation from the Big Bang passed through this void in the universe, it had less energy than the radiation that passed through normal regions of space. In a simplistic explanation, the radiation is given a boost when it nears the pull of matter such as galaxies, and dark energy allows the radiation to propel away from these areas without losing the boost when gravity would pull it back. The radiation passing through the empty space does not get the boost and the energy, therefore it is slightly colder.
A contrary theory proposed in The Journal of Cosmology suggests that our observable universe orbits a super-supermassive hole just as the stars of entire galaxies orbit and eventually are swallowed by the supermassive black holes at their center. Like the stars closest to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy which have a greater velocity than stars on the outer arms (where the Earth is located), stars at the edge of our known, Hubble-length universe, orbit one of these "universe-in-mass holes" at a greater velocity than those stars further away thus effecting the red shift and dimness of light and creating the illusion the universe is accelerating and exanding. 
The illusion of an "accelerating universe" is due to the gravitational effects of a universe-in-mass black hole at the edge of our Hubble length universe. Stars closest to the hole accelerate to their doom.
Galaxies, stars, planets, moons, molecules, atoms, and so on, are continually recreated and destroyed, and matter and energy, including hydrogen atoms, are continually recycled and reassembled via activities associated with "black holes" also known as graviton-holes, gravity holes, super massive black holes, galaxy-in-mass gravity holes, and universe-in-mass gravity holes, depending on their size and gravity-mass.
In an infinite universe, these galaxy-in-mass black holes become more massive yet and eventually consume all the galaxies which have been caught up by its increasing gravitational grip . Once all surrounding galaxies have been consumed, all that is left is a void, a galaxy-in-mass gravity-hole in the fabric of space-time surrounded by eternal night and empty space.
The billion-light-years across "Eridanus black hole" is typical of black holes which have the gravity-mass of millions of entire galaxies. The Eridanus black hole sits like a giant black spider in an ocean of nothingness, having swallowed up all surrounding galaxies, gas, and light, including radiation from the Cosmic Microwave Background. 
Based on an analysis of the NRAO VLA Sky Survey data, Rudnick and his team in fact discovered that there was a significant and rather remarkable absence of galaxies even in the distant space surrounding this hole, in the constellation of Eridanus. Thus, the billion-light-years across "Eridnus black hole" must have consumed the gravity-mass of millions of entire galaxies all of which have been collapsed and concentrated into the singularity of this super-galactic hole.
The billion-light-years across "Eridanus black hole" should not be considered unique or as something abnormally large. There appears to be a gravity-hole which may contain the collective mass of all the galaxies which populate a Hubble length universe and which sits just outside our known Hubble length universe; that is, just beyond that region of space which can be observed.
Elsewhere, Is the he VIRGOHI21 black hole an example of what happens when the gravitional mass of an entire galaxy comes to be bound up in the singularity of a single black hole which becomes a galactic orphan devoid of any stars but which would then begin to draw distant galaxies toward it? Stars and entire galaxies are recycled. Stars grow old and die, becoming white dwarfs, brown dwarfs and black holes (Hawking 1990), all of which eventually, in an infinite universe, are swallowed by the supermassive black hole at the galactic center which becomes even more massive in size until all stars, young and old, within its galaxy, disappear inside. 
VIRGOHI21 has swallowed all the stars of its galaxy and has the gravity of an entire galaxy, an estimated total mass of about 1/10th the Milky Way, ten times more dark matter than ordinary matter, and is surrounded by vast clouds of hydrogen. Because of its galaxy-in-mass gravity, VIRGOHI21 has pulled up to 2000 galaxies toward it, creating the Virgo Cluster. 
More recently, in March 2009, astronomers using the the 1.2-metre UK Schmidt Telescope in Australia published a paper which revealed the discovery of an even larger, 3.5- billion-year-wide void while undertaking the Six Degree Field Galaxy Survey in the southern hemisphere. Enormous cosmic voids and giant concentrations of matter have been observed in a new galaxy survey, one of the biggest completed so far. One of the voids is so large that it is difficult to explain where it came from.
Scientists are still analysing the new map, but a few features stand out immediately. The biggest concentration of matter seen by the survey is a previously known giant pileup of galaxies called the Shapley supercluster, which lies about 600 million light years from Earth.
The survey also found some enormous voids – regions of space that are relatively empty, including one that is about 3.5 billion light years across.
"This is as big as I've ever seen," survey team member John Huchra of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told New Scientist.
Casey Kazan 
Sources:
cosmology.com 
http://deep-space-astronomy.suite101.com/article.cfm/hole_in_the_universe
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16903-new-cosmic-map-reveals-colossal-structures.html