(* where the 'l' has it gone?)

Well, really. I ask you. After years of sterling, or is that euro, service to the Headitor and he goes and gets another, additional columnist for this newsohsheet. That's gratitude for you. Who is this guy (?) Serge anyway (and what's his real name? 'Power Serge'?!!) and what game is he playing? I'll be watching. But of course you'll continue to read ME because I bring you the best in fantastic facts, absolute nonsense and wicked repartee. Vote for Billy Boy!

But, good news on the INNATE web front….well over a thousand visitors came to the website last month, presumably to read my pieces [you’ve got to be joking – Ed] [Yes, I have got to be joking or I’d go bananas – Billy]. There were 1,244 visitors to be precise, now if we discard some of those including ones that are search engines searching, it’s still looking healthy. Tomorrow, the universe. Nonviolent News, Martian edition [That’s a bit of a contradiction, I thought Mars was the god of war –Ed] [Or patron saint of chocaholics in the UK and Ireland – Billy].

Mistaken substitles (No 423) etc
A previous issue (No. 102) advertised the booklet A time to heal: perspectives on reconciliation. There is no truth in the rumour that this was originally entitled 'A time to heel; Obedience training for reluctant dogs.' Meanwhile it’s good to see that long time British peace activist Dave Mumford is the new international coordinator for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), great to see someone from the neighbouring island that some of us know of old. But….is this a black mark for Awel Irene? Could she not come up with a Welsh person called Ifor ???

Finally, a nice thought for the day from the Christian-Marxist dialogue of 30 or 40 years ago. Christian leftists then wanted to show that the common concept of ‘God’ was not one they believed in, certainly not ‘the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate’. So, talking to Marxists they coined the phrase "The God you don’t believe in is the God we don’t believe in". Has a nice prophetic-style ring to it, doesn’t it. By the way, where did all the Marxists go? [Rhetorical question I hope – Ed].

Near where the river Shannon flows
Good to see the US military presence at Shannon Airport getting the attention it deserved at the recent Grassroots Gathering in Belfast. It’s not just an occasional plane stopping over at Shannon but a) Military transports with personnel and equipment b) Civilian planes chartered by the military carrying, again, military goods and personnel c) Refuelling tanker planes based at Shannon which transfer fuel to US military planes in the air so they don’t have to land. All in all, more than a tiny cog in a gigantic military machine. The Grassroots Gathering also agreed to set up an informal anti-war network where Shannon would be a principal focus (see news items) and call for a demo on 8th December. If you want to learn more about what’s going on, you can’t do better than visit the local Shannon Refueling Peace website at www.refuelingpeace.org (note the one ‘l’ in the address) and congratulations to them for doing the tiring, laborious and time-demanding but necessary task of monitoring what is actually happening there. Because once the likes of the US military are in somewhere, well, give them a centimetre and they’ll take a kilometre. Permission for Afghanistan from Bertie? Don’t bother us with that – bombing Iraq, anywhere, it’s just the same...

Meanwhile, nice to see that ‘Millennium Twain’ in Los Angeles (sent to me by unamity@yahoo.co.uk) has launched a petition to the UN Security Council to require international weapons inspections of all US secret military bases. "Evidence has been mounting" goes the petition, "from the world’s leading viral scientists, chemical weapons experts, and former military officers at these facilities, that highly dangerous and experimental technologies and weapons are being developed at US secret bases, under the cloak of ‘National Security’." Though the language used (‘Uncle Scum’ for ‘Uncle Sam’) doesn’t make it look a very serious effort, even if the Security Council was open to persuasion.

Economics, Part 1
I hope to rite more about economic matters in days to come but an interesting thought struck me (bedoinnngggg) when I was on a walking tour of central Belfast recently which was actually led by the Headitor. It was during the Grassroots Gathering in Belfast. It's funny how the Headitor and myself end up at the same events, a bit wired really [don't you mean 'weird'? - Ed] [That too, but wired, as in 'wired together' - Billy]. Anyhow, he'd taken us past McCausland's Hotel, Musgrave Street police station, and on to the Old Town Hall in Victoria Street. The story goes, he said, that the new City Hall was built with the profits from the gas industry in Belfast (this tour gave him an amazing opportunity to air his prejudices) [I don't do prejudice - I have well considered and measured opinions - Ed].

Anyway, I find it just incredible that as capitalist an era as the Victorian one saw it as right and proper for a local authority to run a utility and make a profit from it (even if that profit was spent on a vainglorious pile like Belfast City Hall) [sounds like you are getting as well considered opinions as myself – Ed] and yet it is considered impossible in our era. In fact Belfast’s gas supply which was still run from naphtha (coal derivative) was closed down in the mid-1980s, and a private firm set up a natural gas supply a decade or so later in the mid-1990s. And today even public and voluntary bodies feel they have to use naive terms like ‘entrepreneurial’ when what they mean is ‘innovative’, and other terms borrowed from neo-liberal capitalism. Margaret Thatcher and the general right wing revolution of a couple of decades ago have made a lasting mark. Even more so in Ireland where the division of wealth is like the USA rather than Europe and politics were conservative to begin with. No particular signs that the drift to the right will be halted just yet.

Dr Zweistein I presume
I was forwarded a nice piece in the summer about Albert Einstein written by Jon Elliston (drawing on Fred Jerome’s book ‘The Einstein file’). Trying to stem the rush toward global nuclear confrontation in 1948 at the beginnings of the Cold War, Einstein, the most prominent refugee from Nazi Germany to become an American citizen, was urging the superpowers to cooperate in developing atomic power (sounded a good idea at the time – Billy) and agree to cease their nuclear weapons programs. He attended a dinner at a Bulgarian diplomat's home in Washington to promote the proposals. "Einstein's atomic peace initiative, like most of his other political activities, put him squarely and unapologetically on the internationalist, socialist left. With a new round of anti-Communist witch hunts cranking up, Hoover's agents and informants were hounding the scientist. So an FBI source was listening when Einstein sounded off at the dinner. Speaking to the Polish ambassador to Washington, Einstein is reported to have said, "I suppose you realize by now that the U.S. is no longer a free country, that undoubtedly our conversation is being recorded. This room is wired, and my house is closely watched."

"Einstein had a keen eye for such surveillance, because he was a veteran target of political repression. After all, he'd relocated to the United States in 1932 to escape the noose of Nazism, which was quickly closing in around the world's most renowned Jew. Einstein spent the remainder of his life--he died in 1955--assisting political underdogs in the United States and around the world. He lent his good name to causes ranging from disarmament to racial justice to free speech to economic equality." He also makes a very good anti-racist, pro-refugee poster; his picture and the caption "Their clothes aren’t the only thing a refugee brings with them". And that’s just one comment on the 1950s in the land of the free (enterprise) and the home of the brave (bombers – B52 variety).

Inedible but true
Where would we be without Earthwatch, the magazine of Friends of the Earth Ireland? It has often been extolled in this newssheet as a source of the best information on so many environmental/ecological issues. In this Colm I am pleased to extol it again. The autumn issue has the usual amazing mixture of reports, including from Earthwatch local groups, asks questions about floods in Europe and global warming, reports on Jo’burg summit, FEASTA, bog news etc etc etc. Perhaps I can be forgiven for taking out just two little snippets to whet your appetite (for some nice pesticides?). The issue includes a photo of "Percy Schmeisser, a Canadian Organic Farmer who discovered that his fields were crosspollinated from a nearby Monsanto-Test trial. When he dragged Monsanto to court Percy not only lost, but was in turn convicted of growing, without permission, seeds owned by Monsanto". I’ll make no comment because that is beyond comment. And finally, this quiz reveals that 1 kilo of pesticides is used in Europe, per person, per year….and a kilo of kiwi fruit flown from New Zealand to Europe creates about 5 kilos of C02. Inedible but true.

Well, that’s me again. November and the winter is about to bite. Next month it’s Christmas, that dreaded time when I look for a postponement of Christmas Day so I can catch up (maybe I should become an Orthodox as their Christmas is later). I do enjoy it when I get there though. Hardly seems any time since we were enjoying our glorious summer weather – oops, sorry that was 1959. But tempus fugit. That sounds a bit rude doesn’t it. Just as well I don’t throw in the word for word in Irish as well as that might be considered even ruder ruder. I think I’d better sign off before I incriminate myself further, see you soon, Billy ‘the premier Nonviolent News columnist’.