Murder – No Time to Think

United Colours of Palestine

Shed a tear

Do not fear

Blood and paint

Are about to run

The children of

Fearless Palestine

Die under the

Desert sun

Red, the blood of their loving kin

Black, the colour of evil Zion

White, the truth that is without sin

Green, the grass they are to die on

Don’t look away

You must stay

Flesh and soul

Are torn apart

The women of

Fearless Palestine

Are being

Ripped apart

Red, the blood of their loving kin

Black, the colour of evil Zion

White, the truth that is without sin

Green, the grass they are to die on

Fight their cause

Do not pause

Black and white

Like Raven and Dove

The men of

Fearless Palestine

They too need

Your love

Red, the blood of their loving kin

Black, the colour of evil Zion

White, the truth that is without sin

Green, the grass they are to die on

Razan

First of June 20-18

The Gaza border, weather fine

Israeli missiles and white phosphorus

Burned out the Hamas line

Will the world see justice done?

A hundred killed

Innocent blood all spilled

Fearless hands raised to the sky

For peace and Palestine

The martyrs all did die

Gentle Razan

Just 21

The eldest of six

Your blood will run

For Freedom

Razan al-Najar

Was shot in the chest

Trying to help a wounded man

Her bravery will not see rest

Until the world sees justice done

A white butterfly

With hands held high

Told the IDF sniper

She was a nurse unarmed

Yet they killed this fearless tiger

Gentle Razan

Just 21

The eldest of six

Your blood will run

For Freedom

When I try to sleep at night

I am haunted by Razan’s face

Zionist bankers paint the murder white

And poison the whole Arab race

The world will now see justice done

Within this devil’s scandal

They can blow out a candle

But they can’t blow out a fire

Once the flames begin to catch

The wind will blow it higher

(Inspired by Peter Gabriel’s iconic song Biko)

This isn’t anti-Semitism… this is the reality of the killing fields of Palestine

LAST Saturday, thousands of Palestinians attended the funeral in Gaza of a volunteer female medic who was killed by Israeli fire during protests near the border with Israel.

Gentle Razan al-Najar, 21, was shot dead as she ran towards the border fence last Friday to help a casualty.

The death of Razan followed weeks of killings and crippling woundings by Israel’s IDF forces on the Gaza-Israel border.

More than 100 men, women and children have been killed by Israeli forces amid protests in support of the declared right of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel.

Israel claims its soldiers have only opened fire on people trying to break through the border under cover of protests, and has blamed the group Hamas for orchestrating the violence.

But UN and human rights officials have accused Israel of using disproportionate force.

At Saturday’s funeral procession, Razan’s body was carried through the streets of Gaza wrapped in a Palestinian flag.

Her father carried her blood-stained medical jacket, while other mourners demanded revenge.

The Palestinian Medical Relief Society said Razan had been trying to reach an injured protester when she was shot near the city of Khan Younis.

“Shooting at medical personnel is a war crime under the Geneva conventions,” it said in a statement.

UN envoy for the Middle East Nickolay Mladenov tweeted that Israel needed to calibrate its use of force.

The UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also said it was “deeply concerned” and called for the protection of medical workers.

Israel’s military claimed its troops along the border had been attacked by militants with gunfire and a grenade on Friday.

It said in a written statement that it would investigate the death of Ms Najar.

The day after Razan al-Najar funeral, Mohammed Naaim Hamada, 30, died on Sunday morning east of the Gaza Strip as a result of wounds inflicted by Israeli security forces on May 14.

Hamada’s death takes the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since the protests began to at least 121.

Palestinian health officials say another 10,000 have been seriously injured by Israeli troops over the past six weeks at a series of protests along the border.

Sixty died on one day alone, when 40,000 took part in demonstrations that coincided with the controversial relocation to Jerusalem of the US embassy.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel’s military of carrying out “massacres” of unarmed civilians.

Hamas and other groups organised the protest campaign, dubbed the “Great March of Return“, in support of the declared right of Palestinian refugees to return to land they or their ancestors fled from or were forced to leave in the war which followed Israel’s founding in 1948.

The Israeli government, which has long ruled out any right of return, said terrorists wanted to use the protests as cover to cross into its territory and carry out attacks.

Before the protests began, Israeli officials said soldiers would be permitted under certain rules to fire live ammunition at anyone attempting to damage the border fence, and even against people coming within 300m (985ft) of it – a figure that was reportedly later reduced to 100m.

They said Israeli soldiers deployed near the Gaza protests were required to operate according to the international legal framework applicable to police and other law enforcement officials, which is part of international human rights law.

It holds that the “intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life”.

“An attempt to approach or crossing or damaging the fence do not amount to a threat to life or serious injury and are not sufficient grounds for the use of live ammunition,” said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“This is also the case with regards to stones and Molotov cocktails being thrown from a distance at well-protected security forces located behind defensive positions.”

Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East director, said: “This is a violation of international standards, with Israeli forces in some instances committing what appear to be wilful killings constituting war crimes.”

Last month, the group documented witness testimony, video and photographic evidence that it said showed Israeli troops were killing and maiming demonstrators who posed no imminent threat to them.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said the open-fire orders were “manifestly unlawful” and called on Israeli soldiers in the field to refuse to comply with them.

Last month, six other human rights groups asked the Israeli Supreme Court to revoke the military’s rules of engagement that they said permitted live fire at protesters classified as “key agitators” even when they did not pose an immediate threat to life. The groups said soldiers should instead follow the law enforcement framework. The court’s decision is pending.

Palestinian campaigner Nahida Izzat sets out the ongoing crisis in Gaza in startling black and white: “We the Palestinian Nation have been victims of insanely sadistic cruelty, assassinations of pregnant mothers, torture of children, psycho-terror, loss of land, loss of peace, security and independence, loss of health, destruction of our architectural and archeological cultural heritage, loss of collective and personal property, loss of economic means, all at the hands and policies of a foreign and psychopathic body of Jewish Zionist terrorists and their international network of accomplices, for more than seven decades.

“Myriads of Jewish-Zionist funds and foundations continue to raise and collect sums in the billions from international Jewish communities, to finance (either overtly or covertly) the destruction of our nation and our homeland.”

For the past 85 years there have been four major Intifadas (uprisings) in Palestine in 1929, 1936, 1987, 2000.

For six generations there have been 10 wars of aggression by Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 1996, 2006, 2008/9, 2012 and 2014.

Tens of thousands of innocent and peace seeking civilians now lie dead.

Nahida Izzat continues: “Yet, the racist supremacist occupiers Israel still have not learned how to co-exist and live peacefully without violence or aggression.

“Their ideological supremacy and fanaticism is now worsening and spiralling out of control.

Yet, comes those fake “doves” who want to hoodwink Palestinians and the world into believing that “coexistence” and “peace” with violent, nuclear-armed supremacist is not only possible, but only just around the corner!

“I call this behaviour a deception of the highest order.

If every single one of us, 11 million Palestinians, agrees to “coexist” with those who raped our land and dispossessed us;
If we all become ideological clones of Mahmoud Abbas;
If we run with open arms smothering our occupiers with hugs and kisses;
If we agree to absolve them of all the century of crimes;
If we embrace them under the banner of “equal rights for all”;

“The supremacist occupiers would sneer, turn their heads away in contempt, while plotting for their next expansionist war, for how could a “chosen” ever be “equal” to a “goy”?

“The six million dollar question now is, why on Earth do Jewish supporters ignore the fatal need of Israeli supremacists to learn about equality and co-existence and frenetically chase us, to preach co-existence to us and teach us about equality instead of their own?

“It is time to cut the crap, once and for all, and stop the lie of preaching co-existence to Palestinians when you know fair well that Jewish racism and supremacy lie at the heart of the problem.”

Nahida is right, the root cause to all the problems in the entire Middle East is the ongoing denial of Palestinian freedom.

Israel has chosen occupation over peace, and used negotiations as a smokescreen to advance its colonial project.

Every government across the globe knows this simple fact and yet so many of them pretend that returning to the failed recipes of the past could achieve freedom and peace.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

There can be no negotiations without a clear Israeli commitment to fully withdraw from the Palestinian territory it occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; a complete end to all colonial policies; a recognition of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people including their right to self-determination and return; and the release of all Palestinian prisoners.

Maybe it is useful to remind the world that Palestine’s dispossession, forced exile and transfer, and oppression have now lasted for 70 years.

Palestinian Liberation is the only item to have stood on the UN’s agenda since its inception.

The entire world knows that Jerusalem is the flame that can inspire peace and ignite war.

Why then does the world stand still while the Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people in the city and in Muslim and Christian holy sites, notably Al-Haram al-Sharif, continue unabated?

Israel’s actions and crimes not only destroy the two-state solution on 1967 borders and violate international law, they threaten to transform a solvable political conflict into a never-ending religious war that will undermine stability in a region already experiencing unprecedented turmoil.

Israel’s domination of Palestinians makes violence inevitable

The latest round of attacks is shocking, but no anomaly. There will never be quiet as long as one group of citizens are forced to live without rights, and with no way out

No people on the globe would accept to coexist with oppression.

By nature, humans yearn for freedom, struggle for freedom, sacrifice for freedom, and the freedom of the Palestinian people is long overdue.

And in words that would have sat easily with Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King, Nahida Izzat adds: “We the Palestinian people aim to steer our own struggle towards liberation those who want to steer in the same direction are welcome, those who want to steer in a different direction, to protect our killers and secure their future from any upcoming natural justice, are advised to jump across and join the other camp right away, rather than waiting for the future.

“We refuse to grant legitimacy to supremacists, mass-murderers and baby-killers.

“The only fair solution for such chronic grave injustice, to right the wrong of a century of crimes against humanity is the Algerian model of the full Liberation of Palestine.”

Indeed, now is the time to Free Palestine.

Spread the word!

Brief encounter – the murder of Diana

IT was a wet February in 1997 and I was ensconced in a four star hotel in Islington, tasked with bringing home what could be the biggest newspaper story of the decade.

My job as Chief Investigative Reporter for the Scottish national daily The Scotsman was to gather information from Harrods owner, Mohamed Al Fayed, about an alleged conspiracy involving his business rival Tiny Rowland and a senior Conservative government minister.

It was an enjoyable and wholly productive three days of interviews with the gregarious and at times incomprehensible Mr Al Fayed, his PA Michael Cole and head of security John MacNamara – a former Scotland Yard senior detective.

The daily routine was purposeful: breakfast at my hotel, a taxi ride across London to Knightsbridge, an escalator to Mr Al Fayed’s office on the fifth floor of the Harrods department store, a coffee and croissant with Michael Cole and up to three hours of talking, questioning and sifting through reams of documents and photographs.

On Wednesday 12 February, I arrived as usual at 10am in the reception area outside the office and boardroom.

I was greeted cheerily as usual by Mr Cole. But on this morning he asked me if I minded waiting in an ante-room for half an hour as his boss was expecting a personal visit from Princess Diana.

I was shown into the room and given the usual coffee and croissant plus copies of the day’s national newspapers to browse at my leisure.

After 10 minutes waiting, I suddenly needed a quick loo break so quietly made my way to the now familiar private washroom.

Upon my return to my isolated coffee and partly eaten croissant, I stopped suddenly as the most recognisable woman in the world walked by, accompanied by Mr Cole and an as yet unknown young Middle Eastern man.

Diana turned briefly and smiled at me.

It was a memorable brief encounter.

But a tragic event some six and a half months later undoubtedly made it more memorable.

Later that day, I caught my return train to Edinburgh and The Scotsman offices at North Bridge.

Upon my arrival I was introduced to our new editor Martin Clarke, who had taken up his position while I was away in London.

My first meeting with him was also memorable, but for very different reasons.

I was brusquely told that our investigation into the conspiracy surrounding Tiny Rowland had been spiked for ‘political reasons’. I was also told I was ‘wasting my and the newspaper’s time’, not to ask any more questions and to ‘get on with some proper reporting’.

The months passed and on 31 August 1997, two events coincided: it was my final day working for The Scotsman and ironically Princess Diana, 36, her lover (Mohamed Al Fayed’s son) Dodi Fayed, 42, and driver Henri Paul were killed in a horror car crash in the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel in Paris.

My reaction to the deaths at the time was the same as it is now: they were murdered.

But it was only 10 years later at a judicial inquest, following a three year inquiry into their deaths and possible murder, that my own brief encounter came back to haunt me.

The inquest, under Lord Justice Scott Baker, heard on at least six occasions that at the time of his romance with Diana in the summer of 1997, Dodi Fayed was engaged to an American model, Kelly Fisher. Dodi had bought a house in Malibu for Fisher and himself with money from his father.

The inquiry also heard heart surgeon Hasnat Khan give his first detailed account of his two-year relationship with Diana, during which he says he often stayed at Kensington Palace and met the princess’s sons.

He described how the princess broke up with him after she got back from a holiday with Mohammed Al Fayed and his family.

The inquest dismissed reports that Dodi and Diana were in a relationship prior to that summer and therefore any talk of an impending engagement in August 1997 – and possible motive for their murder – were subsequently rubbished.

Something I knew then and now to be untrue.

The Inquest jury returned a majority verdict that Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed were unlawfully killed due to the gross negligence of their driver, Henri Paul, and the paparazzi.

But I am still left with the haunting question: if that was the case, what were Diana and Dodi doing making a personal visit to Mohamed Al Fayed on 12 February 1997?

Mr Al Fayed later claimed that a plot to kill Diana was kicked into high gear as soon as British authorities found out from the CIA that Dodi had picked out a $215,000 star-shaped diamond ring for his future bride.

“The only reason my son and Diana were in Paris that night was so that he could personally collect the ring and propose to her,” he said.

“I spoke to Dodi and he was so excited and happy. Diana was too. They deserved a lifetime’s love together, and this beautiful ring was to put a seal on that,” he added.

“Diana believed all her married life that she was under surveillance by British and foreign intelligence agencies who reported back to her husband Prince Charles and the British establishment,” said Laurie Mayer, Mr Al Fayed’s press spokesman.

“She had every reason to think they intercepted her phone calls. The call she made to Lucia on the afternoon of her death could have alerted them she really was going to marry Dodi and that he, a practising Muslim and the son of a man who helped bring down the British government, would be stepfather to Prince William and Prince Harry.”

Mr Al Fayed also wanted – and got – files on two photographers, a Frenchman and a Dutchman.

“These men know what went on that evening,” said John McNamara.

“They filmed the motorbike we know was blocking the exit road, forcing the Mercedes to take the tunnel. That could show the license plate of that bike and another one we believe shot into the tunnel behind the white Fiat Uno.

“The Fiat Uno was waiting at the mouth of the tunnel. There was a collision and since then the bikes and the Fiat have vanished.

“Immediately after the crash, the photographers sent their pictures round the world. Some of those wired to an agency in North London had vital frames showing the vehicles we cannot now trace.

“The agency was broken into just hours after the crash and neither we, nor the police, believe it was an ordinary burglary.

“Many photographs show Diana lying in the rear seat of the Mercedes, one arm flung across Dodi and her legs buckled up under, have been seen across the world. Some have even been published in Europe. But none has shown the bikes or the car.”

Just one of far too many unanswered questions over the death of the People’s Princess.

Death is Not the End – the conspiracy surrounding the deaths of John Bauldie and Matthew Harding

I NEVER thought for one minute that a life-long obsession with music legend Bob Dylan would collide head on with my 30 year career as an investigative journalist.

But it has done… in the most unexpected way imaginable.

It is a story of a common love, friendship, a sudden and tragic death and an ongoing murder conspiracy.

A conspiracy which may touch the highest levels of British society.

My love and obsession with Bob Dylan has now spanned more than 40 years.

But it was back in 1987-88, while I was hospitalised in Cardiff with cancer, that a new world of Dylan was unexpectedly opened to me.

And with it an equally unexpected friendship.

To while away the hours and weeks of radiotherapy, my mother bought me a copy of Robert Shelton’s definitive Dylan biography No Direction Home.

I consumed the book in a couple of days. And while meandering through the appendices I noted mention of a quarterly Bob Dylan fan magazine, simply titled The Telegraph.

With an annual subscription of just £10, including delivery, I wrote off and subscribed to the magazine instantly.

And so began the expansion of my world of Bob Dylan and an enduring friendship with the magazine’s editor John Bauldie.

John was an ebullient personality, sometimes sounding dour with his native Lancashire drawl, but always enthused by anything to do with Bob Dylan and his hometown football team Bolton Wanderers.

And as a fellow journalist, we automatically had a lot in common.

John was one of the world’s foremost authorities on Dylan’s music. He wrote several key books on him as well as – since 1981 – editing and publishing the superb Telegraph.

Yet there was nobody less like the stereotyped “anorak” than John.

A former lecturer in English literature he was a dapper and cultured man, who brought a well-rounded intelligence to his quest.

His vocation was to amass the data and win for his hero the serious appraisal due to an outstanding 20th century performer.

He only met Dylan once, and that was by accident.

Following a US tour, he was passing the singer’s tour bus when Dylan sauntered out.

The two men held a brief and genial conversation, in the course of which John won a much prized endorsement for his magazine.

“The Telegraph?” Bob murmured. “I seen a few issues of that. It’s pretty interesting.”

That was all the recognition that John required.

Then in 1987 – coinciding with our first contact – he left his teaching days behind him and joined the small team at the newly-launched Q magazine, as a sub-editor.

Meanwhile, I quickly became a regular contributor to The Telegraph and would often engage in long telephone conversations with John at his home in Romford, swapping his immense knowledge of Dylan with my suggestions for magazine lay-out, typography and style.

He seemed like a god to me and was always the first person I turned to for tickets to Dylan gigs – usually after he broke the news of the great man’s next tour.

John loved to travel with his longstanding partner, Penny Garner, and would invariably plan his year around Dylan’s interminable tour itineraries.

And he always cut a memorable figure at those gigs. You’d spot him, immaculately turned-out in his camel-hair coat as he shared his insights and a few drinks with fellow fans.

And it was wholly due to John that I joined him on a flight to Brussels in the summer of 1989 to follow Bob Dylan around Europe, and witness Dylan’s greatest gig at the Statenhal in Den Haag.

When I moved to Scotland in late 1990 to begin a full-time job as a newspaper editor, our telephone conversations became less frequent, but we still had time to meet for a chat before Dylan’s gigs at Glasgow’s SECC in February 1991.

And my quarterly copy of The Telegraph still arrived promptly every three months.

So, it was in total shock and disbelief when I discovered that John, aged just 47, had been killed in seemingly freak helicopter crash in Cheshire.

It was the same crash which killed Chelsea multi-millionaire vice chairman Matthew Harding and three other people on 22 October 1996.

Harding had given John a lift in his private helicopter to watch his love Bolton Wanderers, defeat Chelsea in a Coca-Cola cup tie at Burnden Park.

Ironically it was their mutual love of Bob Dylan which first brought John and Matthew Harding together.

Some months later I wrote to John’s widow Penny, expressing my condolences and deep sadness at John’s death.

Penny replied almost immediately and I have treasured her hand written letter for the past 20 years.

And there my grief and memory of John Bauldie should have remained.

But, last month my investigative senses were stimulated by a chance conversation with another Dylan fanatic at record fair in my local town.

He told me that Penny had died homeless and destitute a few years after John’s tragic death, and both their deaths were not as they might seem.

On arriving home I quickly found online a copy of the official report into the helicopter crash which took John’s life.

The report, dated November 1997, said that the pilot of the twin-engined French Aerospatiale AS 355F1 Squirrel had neither the qualifications nor experience to control the aircraft after it got into difficulties.

Michael Goss, 38, had gone off route on the night of the crash and headed for an area of high ground which a weather forecaster had advised him to avoid.

The report said that after taking off from Bolton after the match, the flight had to operate below an overcast cloud layer which was below the minimum safe en-route altitude.

But, 20 years later there are now allegations that Matthew Harding and his fellow passengers died, not because of an incompetent helicopter pilot, but because of their knowledge of police and local council corruption in property development schemes within the London Borough of Havering.

And it was the friendship between Harding, John Bauldie and his partner Penny, which now may explain the conspiracy surrounding their deaths.

Penny Garner was a Biology lecturer at Havering College of Further and Higher Education – not far from her and John’s home in Romford.

She prepared her students for their A-levels and future careers in Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy and Industry.

During the mid 1990s Penny witnessed criminal issues at the college, created in a failed attempt to close the college for property development.

She struggled with these issues not least due to the wayward management of a faculty head who failed to deal with staff who had purchased a machine gun with live ammunition on college premises.

The machine gun was fired on college grounds with a resulting flood of calls to Havering police.

The college had a large number of students from Irish backgrounds and with the Northern Ireland troubles still flaring many feared there might be links to IRA terrorism.

But witnesses later swore that a Conservative councillor encouraged the sale of the machine gun at the college, via a third party intermediary resident in Lake Rise, Romford.

The gun was later resold, by a science technician in Penny’s faculty, who was encouraged by a well-known local Tory activist involved in the property development plans.

Allegations soon surfaced that the firearms sales, random assaults and thefts were part of a dirty tricks campaign by local Conservative activists and councillors in attempt to close the college.

There were further allegations that their friends in the local police had full knowledge of this campaign.

Penny made John aware of these events.

John and his editorship of The Telegraph was already being investigated without just cause in an attempt to find “dirt” against those opposing the closure of the college for property development.

The corruption involved was such that the attempt to close the college was stopped for fear of official enquiries into the conduct of the Romford, Hornchurch and Upminster Conservative Parties and associates in Havering Borough Police station.

Shortly before his death, John told Matthew Harding about the events at the college. Matthew Harding took a keen interest to find out more and promised to look into the matter.

Harding also had a political axe to grind as he disliked the Conservative Party and recently donated funds to Tony Blair and New Labour.

But the conspiracy gets deeper…

Just two years ago it came to light that murdered BBC Crimewatch host Jill Dando had been probing the death of Matthew Harding and his four friends.

Ms Dando was gunned down on her doorstep in Fulham, south-west London, in April 1999. The killer has yet to be caught, but much evidence points to police, MI5 and political corruption at the highest level.

“Jill told me she was investigating the death of her friend Matthew Harding and money laundering claims,” said a BBC colleague.

“She was killed after ignoring two warnings to back off.”

The source claims Harding first told a friend, Irish investigative journalist Veronica Guerin, about his fears about corruption and money laundering over property developments.

But Ms Guerin was then murdered in 1996 while working on a drugs inquiry in Dublin.

A panicked Harding then repeated his concerns to BBC journalist Ms Dando.

He died just four months later.

The source added: “Jill told me she had begun investigating Matthew’s death and the concerns he had shared with her.

“Somebody tried to warn her off but she persisted in her inquiries.”

The conspiracy remains unsolved, but as someone once said: “This can of worms only opens from the inside”.

Watch this space!

John Lennon – my Working Class Hero

ON a cold December night 35 years ago, Mark Chapman waited for John Lennon outside the New York City apartment building where the former Beatle lived with his wife Yoko Ono and his son.

Chapman, who was 25 at the time, had asked Lennon earlier that day for an autograph, which the former Beatle signed.

Yet five hours later, the killer, who said he wanted to be famous, opened fire with a .38 pistol hitting Lennon four times.

The 40-year-old musician collapsed, and bleeding profusely, was dead on arrival at hospital.

TV networks in the USA interrupted their Monday Night Football broadcast to announce news of Lennon’s death.

Within hours, the murder became front page news across the globe.

With his death on December 8, 1980, the world began to grieve.

Some 3,300 miles away in the coal steeped pit village of Darton in South Yorkshire, I woke to the news on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Like millions of others I felt numb with shock and grief.

Lennon, along with Bob Dylan, had been the soundtrack to my entire life. And for the past 10 years I had hung on every word and every chord these two singer-songwriters had ever played or sung.

As a trainee teacher I walked slowly to my school singing quietly the words to Imagine, and trying to focus on the day ahead.

Then the irony hit me…. just seven days earlier I had been teaching my fourth year class (10^th Grade) about 1960s’ culture, and in particular the music and impact of The Beatles. Somehow I had to continue that day as the curriculum demanded, and follow with the social changes brought about by that decade.

I need not have worried.

My charges’ cruel teenage excitement and questions about the murder of John Lennon made the lesson faultless. They even allowed me to play a couple of his songs as a kind of “education”.

Here was the life, death and music of a true Working Class Hero of my generation.

The day passed and I hurried home to spend the evening listening on my Dansette casette/radio player to hours upon hours of music and eulogies to this amazing man and musician.

One song hit me that day and has stayed with me ever since.

How? is a song from Lennon’s second solo album Imagine, released in 1971. It is a contemplative song inspired by the primal therapy he was undergoing with his wife Yoko, where he faced many personal questions such as “How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?”

It summed up my feelings on that cold winter’s day, and now 35 years later it still epitomises my life.

But before I reprint and reload the song, I must share another sad irony.

The BBC Radio 4 Today programme that brought me the news of Lennon’s death in 1980 was produced by my journalist uncle Rod Pounsett.

Rod sadly died yesterday, aged 76.

How?

How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing? How can I go forward when I don’t know which way to turn? How can I go forward into something I’m not sure of? Oh no, oh no

How can I have feeling when I don’t know if it’s a feeling? How can I feel something if I just don’t know how to feel? How can I have feelings when my feelings have always been denied? Oh no, oh no

You know life can be long And you got to be so strong And the world is so tough Sometimes I feel I’ve had enough How can I give love when I don’t know what it is I’m giving? How can I give love when I just don’t know how to give? How can I give love when love is something I ain’t never had? Oh no, oh no

You know life can be long You’ve got to be so strong And the world she is tough Sometimes I feel I’ve had enough How can we go forward when we don’t know which way we’re facing? How can we go forward when we don’t know which way to turn? How can we go forward into something we’re not sure of? Oh no, oh no

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQU84QlukP4&sns=fb

Not Much is Really Sacred – The Un-Christian Support for Zionist Israel

WITHOUT stepping over the policed bounds of “anti Semitism” it is getting easier to see why Zionist Israel survives, and indeed flourishes, with support from Western governments.

Since the end of World War 2, Israel has been allowed to steal an entire country from Palestine, murder tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians and arm itself with nuclear weapons as the Middle East’s own neighbourhood bully.

Yet it remains unchallenged in its atrocities by the governments of the USA, Britain, France, Germany and beyond.

Israel and its unregulated intelligence agency Mossad carries out the dirtiest of deeds, including many False Flag attacks: 7/7 in the UK, the Bulgarian bus bombing of 2014, and the Charlie Hebdo outrage in Paris and was probably behind the Friday 13 November killings too.

From the very start after the formation of its own nation state Israel’s secret services ran rogue operations, stealing money from the Swiss accounts of Hitler’s victims, bombing a synagogue in Baghdad during prayers in 1951 to scare Jewish Iraqis into moving into tent villages in Israel, and bombing British and American offices in Cairo in 1954 (the Lavon affair) to discredit Egypt’s Nasser regime.

Using American funds, Mossad bribed its way across Africa and Latin America and later former Communist Eastern Europe.

So how does it get away with it?

The placement of important Zionist Jews in Western governments is one theory. The fact that Zionist Jews control many of the world’s multinational trillion dollar companies is another.

But a more powerful theory about how Israel remains an unchallenged terrorist state is the twisted logic of Christian Zionism.

Christian Zionism is a belief among some Christians that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, is in accordance with Biblical prophecy.

Christian Zionism attaches Israel and the church to an elaborate schedule of End Times events dominated by the Great Tribulation and a rapture of Christians, that leaves Jews and the rest of the world behind.

But in truth Christian Zionism is the largest and most destructive lobby within world religions.

It bears primary responsibility for perpetuating tensions in the Middle East, justifying Israel’s apartheid colonialist agenda and for undermining the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Rev Dr Stephen Sizer is powerful in his description and warnings of the power of Christian Zionism.

“At least one in four American Christians surveyed by Christianity Today magazine said that they believe it is their biblical responsibility to support the nation of Israel. This view is known as Christian Zionism,” he says.

“The Pew Research Center put the figure at 63 per cent among white evangelicals.

“Christian Zionism is pervasive within mainline American evangelical, charismatic and independent denominations including the Assemblies of God, Pentecostals and Southern Baptists, as well as many of the independent mega-churches.

“It is less prevalent within the historic denominations, which show a greater respect for the work of the United Nations, support for human rights, the rule of international law and empathy with the Palestinians.”

The origins of the movement can be traced to the early 19th century when a group of eccentric British Christian leaders began to lobby for Jewish restoration to Palestine as a necessary precondition for the return of Christ.

The movement gained traction from the middle of the 19th century when Palestine became strategic to British, French and German colonial interests in the Middle East. Proto-Christian Zionism therefore preceded Jewish Zionism by more than 50 years.

“Christian Zionism as a modern theological and political movement embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism,” says Dr Sizer.

“It has become deeply detrimental to a just peace between Palestine and Israel. It propagates a worldview in which the Christian message is reduced to an ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism.

“In its extreme form, it places an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ’s love and justice today.”

Followers of Christian Zionism are convinced that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 and the capture of Jerusalem in 1967 were the miraculous fulfilment of God’s promises made to Abraham that he would establish Israel as a Jewish nation forever in Palestine.

Pastor John Hagee is one of the leaders of the Christian Zionist movement.

He is the Founder and Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Church, a 19,000-member evangelical church in San Antonio, Texas.

His weekly programmes are broadcast on 160 TV stations, 50 radio stations and eight networks into an estimated 99 million homes in 200 countries. In 2006 he founded Christians United for Israel.

In March 2007, Hagee spoke at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference, saying: “The sleeping giant of Christian Zionism has awakened. There are 50 million Christians standing up and applauding the State of Israel.”

He went on to warn: “It is 1938. Iran is Germany, and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler. We must stop Iran’s nuclear threat and stand boldly with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East… Think of our potential future together: 50 million evangelicals joining in common cause with 5 million Jewish people in America on behalf of Israel is a match made in heaven.”

Palestinians are regarded as alien residents in Israel. Many Christian Zionists are reluctant even to acknowledge Palestinians exist as a distinct people, claiming that they migrated to Israel from surrounding Arab nations for economic reasons after Israel had become prosperous.

A fear and deep-seated hatred of Islam also pervades their dualistic Manichean theology. Christian Zionists have little or no interest in the existence of indigenous Arab Christians despite their continuity with the early church.

“It is my contention after more than 10 years of postgraduate research that Christian Zionism is the largest, most controversial and most destructive lobby within Christianity,” adds Dr Sizer.

“It bears primary responsibility for perpetuating tensions in the Middle East, justifying Israel’s apartheid colonialist agenda and for undermining the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.”

So the Zionist heresy has been mass marketed to a largely ignorant populace who are convinced they do not have enough sense to read the Bible for themselves. They have co-opted Christian laypeople into thinking they can bring about Christ’s return, ending suffering on Earth.

Christian Zionists now have considerable influence over US foreign policy, particularly effective with neo-conservatives as witnessed during the George W Bush administration and the reaction to 9/11.

Burgeoning Christian Zionist organizations such as the International Christian Embassy (ICEJ), Christian Friends of Israel (CFI) and Christians United for Israel (CUFI) wield considerable influence on the US Government claiming a support base in excess of 50 million true believers. In the UK the Christian Friends of Israel have a similarly powerful lobby.

This means there are now at least ten times as many Christian Zionists as Jewish Zionists.

And their European cousins are no less active in the Zionist Hasbarafia, lobbying for Israel, attacking its critics and thwarting the peace process.

The United States and Israel are often portrayed as Siamese twins, joined at the heart, sharing common historic, religious and political values.

Numerous Christian groups encourage Jewish immigration to Israel through financial contributions while assisting ultra-orthodox Jewish groups to promote settlement expansion on Palestinian land.

Not only do Zionists distort Biblical history, they spread lies about more modern events as well.

Proponents of Israel will often pander the tired Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini obfuscation in an attempt to connect all Palestinians to Adolf Hitler. Husseini was imposed upon the Palestinians in 1921 by the British Mandate’s first high commissioner, a British Jew named Herbert Samuel.

Husseini was selected over the rival Nashashibi candidate and favoured by the Zionist Commission. Husseini allied with Hitler to oppose the British, falling into the trap as so many others who have believed “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

In this manner Christian Zionists have the ability to reach outside their own cult and snag more secular individuals by linking Arabs—particularly exploiting the blood connection between Husseini and late President Yasser Arafat – with the epitome of “anti-Semitic” evil.

It is easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred.

Palestine Blood

The West Bank is bleeding

Tears of blood weep

Israel murders

While the West goes to sleep

Down in the cellars

They shelter the storm

Alone in their terrors

A new child is born

The blood of the children

Stains our humanity

While the US give a billion

An act of depravity

Wake up my friends

For now is the time

To make our amends

And save Palestine

Poem: Song of Sorrow

They kill babes in their beds
Kids’ limbs torn to shreds
Old women left to die
With blood in their eye
They taunt them with terror
Then look at the horror
These people you see
Are like you and me