Sarat's Pad, home of PANTHER

The White Mouse

Nancy Wake was the Allies' most decorated servicewoman of WWII, and the Gestapo's most-wanted person. They code-named her 'The White Mouse'. When war broke out she was a young woman married to a wealthy Frenchman living a life of luxury in cosmopolitan Marseilles. She became a saboteur and Resistance fighter who led an army of 7,000 Maquis troops in guerrilla warfare to sabotage the Nazis. Her story is one of daring, courage and optimism in the face of impossible odds.

In 1992 a television mini-series was made about her life. However the subject was irritated by historical liberties that were taken with her life story, such as showing her having an affair while working for the Resistance in Auvergne:

"What do you think my bosses in England would have thought, all those thousands of pounds to train me and for me to go and have an affair. Really"!

"The mini-series was well-acted but in parts it was extremely stupid. At one stage they had me cooking eggs and bacon to feed the men. For goodness sake did the Allies parachute me into France to fry eggs and bacon for the men? There wasn't an egg to be had for love nor money, and even if there had been why would I be frying it when I had men to do that sort of thing?"

Nancy Wake's comrade Henri Tardivat perhaps best characterised the guerrilla chieftain: "She is the most feminine woman I know, until the fighting starts. Then, she is like five men."

Full article here

The thing is, old boy, it would be awfully foolish to think 24 SAS is entirely a joke, to think, for instance, that women simply don't do that kind of thing and everyone knows (haw, haw, snigger, snigger) women don't do that kind of thing.  On the contrary, old boy, the crustiest, most traditional retired general knows full well that women do do that kind of thing, and do it bloody well.

Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, GC, MBE, (1 January 1914, Moscow - 13 September 1944, Dachau concentration camp), usually known as Noor Inayat Khan, was a British Special Operations Executive agent in World War II of Hyderabadi (Indian) origin and the first female radio operator to be sent into occupied France to aid the French Résistance. Awards George Cross, MBE, Croix de Guerre, Mentioned in Dispatches

Noor Inayat Khan

Free Indian Sufi women fighting with the British against fascism would hardly be new.

Over half of First Aid Nursing Yeomanry's total strength was devoted to the work of Special Operations Executive (SOE) during WWII. One of FANYs members was the fiery Violette Szabo (née Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell) ('Louise') who was the half-French daughter of a Brixton motor-car dealer and was said to be the best shot in the SOE.

Mme. Szabo was posthumously awarded her George Cross in 1946 and it was received from the King by her 4-year old daughter. (See SPECIAL FORCES, ROLL OF HONOUR)

Leo Marks, who was the head of the Codes Section of the SOE, spoke of Violette almost with awe and devotes to her parts of his recent memoir "Between Silk and Cyanide - The Story of SOE's Code War, 1941-1945" (HarperCollins).

Violette Szabo: History of this British SOE Agent

The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (Princess Royal's Volunteer Corps) (FANY(PRVC) - pronounced Fanny) is a British independent all-female unit and registered charity affiliated to, but not part of, the Territorial Army.

It was formed as the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in 1907 as a first aid link between the field hospitals and the front lines, and was given the yeomanry title as all its members were originally mounted on horseback.

In the Second World War, the F.A.N.Y. was formed into the initial driver companies of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, called the Women's Transport Service, and it also served as a parent unit for many women who undertook espionage work for the Special Operations Executive. Three of these (Odette Sansom, Violette Szabo and Noor Inayat Khan), were awarded the George Cross and Nancy Wake the George Medal for their service.[1]
FANY

List of SOE agents - Pearl, Nancy, Krystyna, Lorraine, Marie, Noor...

SOE included a number of women (who were often recruited from the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry); F Section alone sent 39 female agents into the field, of whom 13 did not return. The Valençay SOE Memorial was unveiled at Valençay in the Indre département of France on May 6, 1991, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the despatch of F Section's first agent to France. The memorial's Roll of Honour lists the names of the 91 men and 13 women members of the SOE who gave their lives for France's freedom. SOE

Friday, March 07, 2008 Nothing is inevitable

Maryam Namazie
No Hejab No. 1

Rowan Williams’ lecture on Civil and Religious Law in England would do any Islamist - or for that matter archbishop - proud. And it has. Hizb ut Tahrir, Muslim Council of Britain, and UK Islamic Sharia Council have all rushed to his defence whilst the rest of us are still grappling with its adverse implications for real live human beings and our society at large.

Let’s be frank. The Archbishop’s lecture lays out quite concisely the Islamist strategy for gaining access to political power and a how to guide on diminishing the role of secularism (with lessons for religious groups aiming to access or - as in his case - maintain power).

Like the Islamists, Rowan Williams uses rights language to help justify regression and violations of rights. By using terminology like‘Muslim communities in this country seek the freedom to live under sharia law,’ he deliberately fails to differentiate between the political Islamic movement and Islamists on the one hand and Muslims and those deemed to be Muslims on the other.

Of course Islamists want sharia here and everywhere. But to imply that ‘Muslims’ would ‘freely’ choose sharia implies that the masses of 21st century humanity would choose to live in the Middle Ages. On the contrary, a large number of those of us he wishes to hand over to the Islamists have resisted and fled Islam in power and have not accepted nor ever will accept sharia law.

Moreover, like the Islamists, he uses anti-racist language to assert that his defence of sharia is a defence of the ‘rights of religious groups within a secular state.’ Clearly, however, having the right to a religion is not the same as having the ‘right’ to religious law. His is merely a prescription for discrimination, inequality and culturally relative rights.

Also, like the Islamists he justifies and excuses sharia law and even attempts to dispel the ‘myths’ surrounding it. He quotes Tariq Ramadan saying 'the idea of Sharia calls up all the darkest images of Islam...It has reached the extent that many Muslim intellectuals do not dare even to refer to the concept for fear of frightening people or arousing suspicion of all their work by the mere mention of the word'.

Clearly, though, it frightens people because it is frightening.

From the death sentence imposed on Parwiz Kambakhsh in Afghanistan for blasphemy and the recent sentence of death by stoning of two sisters Zohreh and Azar Kabiri-niat for ‘adultery’ in Iran, the image of Islamic law is dark because its reality is even darker.

Of course the archbishop is not referring to nor do the Islamists want the stoning of adulterers or the hanging of apostates like myself from cranes in Trafalgar Square. That is - according to Suhaib Hasan, one of the ‘judges’ at these sharia courts or councils and a spokesperson for the MCB, the job of Islamic states. This, however, doesn’t mean that he can’t dream: ‘Once just only once if an adulterer is stoned nobody is going to commit this crime at all.

‘We want to offer it to the British society. If they accept it, it is for their good and if they don’t accept it they’ll need more and more prisons.’

Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, we are told that we need not worry. Ibrahim Mogra of the MCB says the sharia councils will only cover ‘small aspects of Sharia for Muslim families when they choose to be governed with regards to their marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody of children and so forth’.

Mogra implies that those who avail themselves of sharia law will 'choose' to do so. It is interesting how pro-women's ‘choices’ the political Islamic movement becomes when it is vying for power and influence in the west. According to Mogra, sharia will even give rights to women they don’t have under English law. His pathetic example? ‘A Muslim man can take a second wife under sharia law and treat her as he wants knowing that she has no legal rights in Britain. It means that she is regarded as no more than a mistress and he can walk out on her when he wants.’

Despite their deceptive claims, in the real world, even ‘small aspects of sharia’ will increase intimidation and threats against the most vulnerable women and girls, deny them rights they have and deserve and leave them hostage in virtual Bantustans at the mercy of the likes of Suhaib Hasan and Ibrahim Mogra.
And for those rejoicing that sharia law in England will be a ‘moderate interpretation,’ I need to remind them that a ‘small aspect’ is not the same as a different interpretation. As Hasan says to the woman who questions his ruling in one of these kangaroo courts: ‘there is no exception to this rule, in the sharia there is no exception, you have to accept it.’

Marriage, divorce, child custody may be ‘small aspects’ to Mogra and the MCB but they are important pillars in the oppression of women living under Islamic law. Much of the struggle for women's rights has taken shape in countries like Iran against these very aspects.

And by the way, laws are generally meant to safeguard rights not violate them. Many of the laws that sharia courts aim to avoid have been fought for by progressive movements over centuries in order to improve people’s, women’s and children’s position in society and often vis-à-vis religion in power.

This whole scandal is in my view a feeble attempt by the archbishop to muster up support for religion in power, safeguard its dwindling position in society and reduce secularism’s role by going to the Islamists. This time, though, the archbishop may have been a little too clever for his own good.

Nonetheless, we need to remind him and his friends that backwardness is never inevitable and we have many rights and freedoms here in Britain to prove it.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 Challenges facing the women’s liberation movement

Against sexual apartheid

This is my open letter to anyone who will listen.

Sexual apartheid is the outrage of our century.

In Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and countries ruled by Islamic laws, millions of women and girls are segregated, degraded and relegated to second class citizenship.

Keeping women and girls separate and unequal are important pillars of Islamic rule, affecting every aspect of people’s lives.

Sharia law itself specifies that a woman is worth half that of a man and that she is the property of her male guardian, needing his permission even to travel and work.

As the source of ‘corruption’ and ‘chaos’, she must be segregated at workplaces, schools, libraries, universities, in sports and recreation, transportation, the health system, and even when attending weddings and funerals. In Iran, there are even plans to segregate pedestrian walkways on the basis of sex. ‘Alarmed’ at the large number of women university students, the Islamic regime threatens to limit female enrolment and change textbooks based on ‘gender differentiation.’ According to an official of the education ministry: ‘The spiritual, physical, and mental needs of boys and girls are not identical, and therefore textbooks that give them information cannot be the same.’

From age nine on girls must be veiled - a symbol like no other of what it means to be female under Islam - hidden from view, restricted and suppressed. Consigned to walking around with a mobile prison of one’s own.

Separate and unequal.

Like I said - the outrage of our century.

They say a society’s treatment of women is a measure of its freedom.

If so, the mistreatment of and discrimination against women is a measure of the degree of influence and power of Islamic and religious laws - whether in Iran or Britain.

But stop, I am told. Saying so ‘just supports Western propaganda’ - something by the way that the Islamic regime of Iran often tells women and men it is hauling off to prison and execution.

How absurd. It is like Iranian women’s rights activists telling one to stop opposing US-led militarism because it supports the ‘Islamic regime of Iran’s propaganda!’

The religious-nationalist anti-imperialist left always ready to act as prefect when women’s rights under Islamic laws are concerned has an affinity towards Islam, which it views as an ‘oppressed religion’ bullied by the USA.

It is an anti-colonial movement whose perspectives coincide with that of the ruling classes in the so-called Third World.

This grouping is on the side of the ‘colonies’ no matter what goes on there.

And their understanding of the ‘colonies’ is Eurocentric, patronising and even racist.

In the world according to them, the people in these countries are one and the same with the regimes they are struggling against.

So at Stop the War Coalition demonstrations here in Britain, they carry banners saying ‘We are all Hezbollah;’ at meetings they segregate men and women and urge unveiled women to veil out of ‘solidarity’ and ‘respect’.

But even their anti-imperialism - their badge of honour - is pathetically half-baked; it does not even scratch beneath the surface to see how political Islam is an integral part of the US’ militarism and new world order.

Their historical amnesia of even the past 30-40 years ignores that the political Islamic movement was encouraged and brought to centre stage by Western governments as a green belt against the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.

They conveniently forget how in Iran, for example, it was supported in an effort to crush the left and working class revolutionary movement. Or how political Islamists are some of the US’ closest allies.

They fail to see that in practical terms - notwithstanding the differences - political Islam and USA-led militarism are two sides of one coin with the same agenda, the same vision, the same infinite capacity for violence, the same reliance on religion and reaction, the same need for hegemony.

It should not be surprising then that anywhere US-led militarism has ‘intervened’ - from Afghanistan to Iraq to Palestine - political Islam has been brought to power or strengthened.

This type of politics denies universalism, sees rights as ‘western,’ justifies the suppression of women's rights, freedoms and equality, under the guise of respect for other ‘cultures’ implying that people want to live the way they are forced to and imputing on innumerable people the most reactionary elements of culture and religion, which is that of the ruling class.

In this type of politics, the oppressor is victim and any criticism racist.

Whilst the anti-imperialist left defends and justifies political Islam on the one hand, the virulently racist and right-wing defends US militarism and the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine on the other.

They include groups and organisations like Jihad Watch and the Horowitz Freedom Center. The latter even has an ‘Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week’ and rattles off fact after fact about the horrendous status of women under Islam so that it can help promote the neocon agenda of bombing men, women and children into ‘liberated’ swamps like Iraq.

Like the Stop Islamisation of Europe campaign, these groups have ‘difficulty with the concept of moderate Muslim’ and believe the ‘onus is on Muslims to ensure the safety of non-Muslims.’

Why? As if the onus of safeguarding Spaniards is on all those who are Basque or deemed to be Basque.

They are ‘concerned’ about the ‘rights’ of women and apostates so they can ban the Koran and ‘Muslim immigration.’ So they can stop the sub-human teeming hordes destroying the Christian nature of Europe and the West.

They are quite happy to defend Christian religious morality, restrict the benefits due single mothers, demand exemptions from the Sexual Orientation Regulations, bar funds for AIDS- related and contraception-related health services abroad if they provide abortions and consider the women’s rights movement’s fight for equality ‘the destruction of the nuclear family and of the power structures of society in general.’

According to their warped worldview, ‘the West has skyrocketing divorce rates and plummeting birth rates, leading to a cultural and demographic vacuum that makes [it] vulnerable to a take-over.’

Both anti-imperialist left and the right-wing refuse to see millions of people as truly human - with innumerable differences of opinions, and belonging to vast social movements and progressive organisations and parties - and worthy of the same rights and dignity as they believe is their due.

Despite all their language to the contrary, the politics of both sides has nothing to do with improving and changing the lot of humanity and women’s status.

It is within this context that left and progressive groups, socialist and mass movements within the Middle East and elsewhere are challenging people and organisations everywhere to take a principled and human stand against sexual apartheid vis-à-vis both camps of reaction.

This is the challenge that the women’s liberation movement in Iran brings to you today.

Clearly, sexual apartheid must enrage civilised humanity into an international movement that is about changing and improving people’s lives.

But in order to succeed, this movement must reject both US-led militarism and political Islam and rely on and support a third camp of the millions of refusing and resisting people across the globe. To do so, it must be uncompromisingly secular and humanist, it must refuse to tolerate the intolerable, it must raise the banner of universal rights, it must defend the right and historical duty to criticise religion, and defend the freedoms and equality of people everywhere.

To succeed, it has to have at its core a defence of the human being.

In 1973, as a result of international attention and widespread opposition to the apartheid system in South Africa apartheid was recognised as a crime against humanity.

On the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, let’s together proclaim that sexual apartheid is a crime against humanity.

We must accept nothing less.

The above is Maryam Namazie’s speech at a seminar entitled ‘Sexual apartheid, political Islam and women's rights’ in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day on March 10, 2008 at Conway Hall, London. The seminar was organised by Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and Equal Rights Now - Organisation against Women's Discrimination in Iran, and endorsed by the National Secular Society, the British Humanist Association, the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association and the Organisation for Women’s Freedom in Iraq.

It can be useful, revealing, to contemplate a person's heroes or heroines.  Mine are Maryam Namazie and Violette Szabo.

It is well known both that the Far Right say they hate Muslims and that they do hate and attack Muslims, at least at the level of some 'White Power' knuckle-walking skin (not that I'm referring to Griffin or anything). The trouble is of course those pesky Joos, whom both Jihadists and Nazis  regard as the sole cause of what they see as society's ills and for whom both have a psychotic loathing.  They have other things in common, as explained in the article by Martin Lee below.  Since both have a supremacist and totalitarian ideology, they cannot share power, in the extremely unlikely circumstances that they ever obtained it, however briefly.  It might be a good idea to put both on a remote island and leave them to sort it out between them.  

What they can do jointly as singly is make things unpleasant for everyone else.  It is hysterically funny in a sick sort of way to think of some of the anti-fascists listed on Redwatch demonstrating to protect Islamists from the Islamists' allies; the Trots of the Islamist-Trot alliance do not know the difference between sane Muslims and mad ones (these, I am coming to think, are a simpler and more accurate definitions than 'political Islam' or 'Islamist'). 

Muslims Against Sharia do know the difference and have tabulated it, and also (right-hand side-bar of the page) generated an interesting list of Islamic fascists - Islamists claiming to be moderates - in the States and Canada.  Perhaps some British Muslims could do the same here and present it to the idiots who govern.    

Don't plagiarise or 'take on loan' (Harry's Place, August 4th 2005)

MPACUK, an affliate of the Stop the War Coalition was caught out yesterday "borrowing" a picture of a devil-like figure peering out from behind an American flag, to illustrate its article "Zionists Behind Terror Attacks". The picture was sourced directly from a neo-nazi site.

MPAC responded thus:

MPACUK: We received a number of complaints that the original image used on this article was from a neo nazi web site. These complaints were not the normal tirade of abuse and insults we receive but seemed genuine. We checked this out and changed the image. The writer concerned picked the image from a google image search and did not view the image in it's website before picking it for the article.

I wonder what the search term was.

Anyhow,here's another similar example of the sort of stuff MPACUK "accidentally" puts on its website, through no fault of its own.

Like the MAB/Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb'ut Tahrir, MPAC are keen not to be thought of as a racist organisation: which all three are. So I'd expect them to take this article down shortly.

But don't worry. You can still read the article on David Irving's "Action Report online", which was posted two days before MPACUK put the article up.

In turn, David Irving's site got the article from your friendly neighbourhood white supremacists, National Vanguard Online

MPAC lifts more material from Neo Nazi website (Harry's Place, February 8th 2006)

Following swiftly on the heels of last week's borrowing from David Irving's website, today's offering from MPAC is taken from the neo-nazi newspaper, the American Free Press. "Free", in this context, means 'freedom from jews and freemasons who secretly control the world with their octopus like tentacles and... (cont p 94)'. You can skim their website here, or if you're worried about linking to an acknolwedged Nazi website, read the Wikipedia entry on the American Free Press here.

MPAC's story is, again, "STOP Blaming Europe - We've Been Duped Into Hating Each Other!!!!!".

Who do you think is doing the 'duping'?

Have you guessed yet?

There's a clue in the picture that MPAC use to illustrate the article, in case you haven't worked it out:

Weirdly, MPAC still is occasionally referred to as a "moderate" organisation. It is, in fact, moving more clearly into the camp of neo-nazi conspiracy theorising. Its stories are now increasingly nicked from the racist sites that its members spend their days browsing.

Why is MPAC so unoriginal? Can't they come up with weird racist conspiracy theories of their own?
From Harry's Place, 17 December 2007:

We can also add to that list, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee ("MPAC"): another far right organisation, which has now issued a call to "hunt" down political and religious dissenters in a manner which cannot fail but expose them to a genuine risk of extreme personal harm.

The campaign in question is connected to the Policy Exchange report into extremist literature in British muslim institutions; in relation to which Newsnight discovered certain irregularities relating to receipts. During the course of the Newsnight programme in question, the BBC announced the whereabouts of the muslim researchers. It goes without saying that, if you're investigating violent political extremism, and you're identity is announced, your personal safety is gravely jeopardised.

MPAC, which has a history of republishing material from Neo Nazi websites, then put up an article which encouraged its readers to help it "hunt" down the muslim researchers who had purchased the extremist literature at muslim institutions.

MPACUK hang out here.

The Swastika and the Crescent In the wake of Sept. 11, new light is thrown on the international ties increasingly linking Muslim and neo-Nazi extremists By Martin A. Lee Intelligence Report (Southern Poverty Law Center) Spring 2002

As Germany's defeat loomed during the final months of World War II, Adolf Hitler increasingly lapsed into delusional fits of fantasy.

Albert Speer, in his prison writings, recounts an episode in which a maniacal Hitler "pictured for himself and for us the destruction of New York in a hurricane of fire."

The Nazi fuehrer described skyscrapers turning into "gigantic burning torches, collapsing upon one another, the glow of the exploding city illuminating the dark sky."

An approximation of Hitler's hellish vision came true on Sept. 11, when terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers in New York, killing nearly 3,000 people. But it was not Nazis or even neo-Nazis who carried out the attack — the deadliest terror strike in history allegedly came at the hands of foreign Muslim extremists.

Still, in the aftermath of the slaughter, white supremacists in America and Europe applauded the suicide attacks and praised Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the massacre.

An official of America's premier neo-Nazi group, the National Alliance, said he wished his own members had "half as much testicular fortitude." The awestruck leader of another U.S. Nazi group called the terrorists "VERY BRAVE PEOPLE."

Neofascist youth in France celebrated the event that evening with champagne at the headquarters of the extreme right Front National. German neo-Nazis, some wearing checkered Palestinian headscarves, rejoiced at street demonstrations while burning an American flag.

Jan Kopal, head of the Czech National Social Bloc, declared at a rally in Prague that bin Laden was "an example for our children."

Horst Mahler, a former left-wing terrorist and prominent member of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) in Germany, proclaimed his solidarity with the terrorists and said America had gotten what it deserved.

What's going on here?

For decades, American extremists have lumped Arabs in with dark-skinned "mud people." In Europe, neo-Nazis have been implicated in countless xenophobic attacks on Arabs, Turks and other Muslims.

Extremist parties on both sides of the Atlantic hope to bar entrance to non-white immigrants.

The peculiar bond between white nationalist groups and certain Muslim extremists derives in part from a shared set of enemies — Jews, the United States, race-mixing, ethnic diversity.

It is also very much a function of the shared belief that they must shield their own peoples from the corrupting influence of foreign cultures and the homogenizing juggernaut of globalization.

Both sets of groups also have a penchant for far-flung conspiracy theories that caricature Jewish power.

But there is more. Even before World War II, Western fascists began to forge ideological and operational ties to Islamic extremists.

Over the years, these contacts between Nazis and Muslim nationalists developed into dangerous networks that have been implicated in a number of bloody terrorist attacks in Europe and the Middle East.

Wealthy Arab regimes have financed extremists in Europe and the United States, just as Western neo-Nazis have helped to build Holocaust denial machinery in the Arab world.

In the 1970s, Saudi Arabia hired an American neo-Nazi as a lob