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A few days after we went up to Oakland
Gilbert Moore attests that he was constantly on edge around the Panthers. Did Bingham ever find them threatening? "No, man. I got along with Eldridge. I got along with everybody. But I'm like that. Gilbert, he was a little more nervous and maybe afraid and he had some cause to be. They couldn't figure him out and he wasn't used to the black radical scene."
For a time, Eldridge Cleaver was convinced that Moore was an undercover cop or, worse still, an FBI plant. (The FBI regarded the Panthers as "the greatest threat to national security in the pearl jewelry country" and would soon instigate a covert programme of surveillance and infiltration that, by 1970, had wreaked havoc on Panther morale and organisation.)
"A few days after we went up to Oakland to meet the Cleavers," recalls Bingham, "Eldridge pulled me aside and said, 'I know you, man, but this motherfucker over there, I think he's a pig.' I had to put him right about that," he says, laughing hard. "I told him Gilbert was just a little nervous because he had never been around brothers like them before. The thing is," he says, turning serious, "that story changed Gilbert all around. He ended up writing a book called A Special Rage after Life refused to run his story the way he saw it. He really was a principled guy, and one hell of a writer."
Gilbert Moore resigned from Life when they rejected three different rewrites of his feature on the Panthers. "I knew what they wanted," he writes, without bitterness, "but I was not prepared to cough it up. The price, psychologically speaking, was too high."
Moore's introduction is the second best thing about Black Panthers 1968. Bingham's photographs, though, are unsurpassable, both as a glimpse of recent black history in pearl jewelry wholesale America at a moment when anything – even violent revolution – seemed possible, and as great images in their own right. Bingham captures the Black Panthers standing sentinel outside Alameda County Courthouse, where Huey Newton's trial was taking place, and in one unforgettable series of shots, snaps a long line of them pretending to shoot at a passing motorcycle cop. Their talent for political theatre and real threat is evident throughout, but there are many images that show the human side of their struggle, their camaraderie as well as the stress and exhaustion of a life lived in confrontation with the white establishment.
The surprising star of the book is Kathleen Cleaver, who, with her Afro, sunglasses, black poloneck and high leather boots, looks like she might well have been styled for a radical-chic fashion shoot. Just 22 when she married Eldridge Cleaver, she lectured and organised alongside him, and later went on the run with him, fleeing America when he was threatened with imprisonment for a parole violation. They lived in Algeria, North Korea and France before returning to America in 1974.
In 1987, the couple divorced and wholesale pearl jewelry Kathleen gained a law degree from Yale. She is now a senior lecturer at Emory University in Atlanta. Likewise Angela Davis, who was once jailed for owning the guns that were used in a failed attempt to free her fellow Black Panther, George Jackson. Davis, for so long the face of Black Power, is now a tenured professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is a prominent anti-war activist.
Many of the male Black Panthers did not fare so well. Bobby Hutton was just 17 when he was killed in a shoot-out with Oakland police in 1968. The following year, John Huggins and Bunchy Carter were shot during a violent argument with another black nationalist group, Organisation Us, led by Ron Karenga. Fred Hampton died the same year in a police raid on his apartment in Chicago. Both founder members of the Black Panther Party have also since died. Huey P Newton was killed in a drug deal in 1989 on the same Oakland streets where he had first formed the party. Eldridge Cleaver, too, had struggled with drug addiction before his death from natural causes in 1998. Bobby Seale and David Hilliard both remain activists.
In 1989, the New Black Panther Party was formed in Dallas and, today, it seems to have a strong Black Muslim membership. It has since been defined as a "hate group" by the American Anti-Defamation League and surviving members of the original Black Panthers have strongly questioned its legitimacy.
It is difficult to quantify the Black Panthers' political legacy, though, like Malcolm X, they insisted that black self-empowerment was the key to self-determination. At the height of their popularity in 1969, they had instigated the famous Free Breakfast for School Children Programme that was distributing free meals to 10,000 young people. Thirty-five other community programmes were in place under the collective slogan, Survival Pending Revolution.
"Those days are gone," says Howard Bingham, when I ask him what he thinks is the Black Panthers' legacy. "Sometimes I wish it was like that now, but it ain't. Then again, we have a black president now and that would have been unimaginable back then. They helped changed things for sure, but I always think the Panthers would have had a bigger legacy if so many of them had not died and if they had had a natural leader. Huey [Newton] got shot, though. He was involved in too much other stuff that was not good for the organisation."
In the final paragraph of his essay for Howard Bingham's book, Gilbert Moore hints at the real reason why the Black Panthers had to exist: the anger that propelled their cause.
"The Panthers were lunatics and I was sane and I couldn't shake my sanity… not until one night in Cape Cod… when I completely lost my mind for 48 hours. I had a brief encounter with a Massachusetts state trooper whom I called to his face, 'a dirty white racist motherfucker'. I was thrown in jail for a night and became, in spirit, if not in the flesh, a bona fide member of the Black Panther Party
Kavanagh, the officer in charge of
In particular, the criminal landscape within a narrow two-mile band of north London, between the Green Lanes area of Haringey and Clapton to the east, had reached a critical stage. A ferocious turf war between Bombacilar and the Tottenham Boys was spiralling out of control; in the period immediately before Duzgun's death the gangs were involved in a major shooting every week.
Endemic extortion, intimidation and thuggish protection rackets were increasingly administered to Haringey's large Turkish and Kurdish communities as the turf war took hold. Gang members appeared to be akoya pearl necklace acting with impunity, bragging to local Turkish newspapers that they were only dealing a bit of cannabis and harming no one. But underworld sources revealed the gangs had ready access to an arsenal of firearms. And neither side was shy about using them. Intelligence indicated it was only a matter of time before more innocent bystanders were killed.
Kavanagh, the officer in charge of policing the area, said: "We have had a mother evacuated when they burnt out a store, murders, innocent people being shot and good honest shopkeepers bullied and extorted."
He said the wives of extorted shopkeepers pearl strand and the girlfriends of gangsters had, for months, pleaded with him to do something; anything to break the cycle of violence. Skirmishes between the Bombacilar and Tottenham Boys have seen 11 major shootings since August, all confined to the slender north London corridor.
Police raids seized three loaded pistols, a sawn-off shotgun and a converted firearm connected to the Bombacilar and Tottenham Boys. Intelligence indicated that some of the weapons originated from eastern Europe, and although the area was "not flooded with firearms" it was the gangs' willingness to shoot first, think later, that worried Kavanagh.
Suleyman Ergun, formerly one of Britain's most prominent Turkish criminals, who at the age of 21 became the world's third-biggest heroin dealer before being jailed for 14 years, told the Observer how easy it was for gangs to obtain guns. He said the majority of firearms arrived from Germany and Belgium, and there were even AK-47s (Kalashnikovs) from Afghanistan, the traditional source of heroin for Turkish traffickers.
"Firearms are still coming over with the heroin to north London, it's what we used to do as well," said Ergun. He added that the current price for an unused pistol in north London was £800-£900, while a pearl beads brand-new submachine gun would cost £1,000-£1,500. Replica guns such as the Olympic BBM 9mm revolver could also be bought for £85 on the high street and converted by criminals to fire live ammunition.
What added to the decision to use armed patrols was the intelligence that both Turkish groups had forged alliances with some of London's most notorious black gangs, all of whom held a long-standing reputation for violence and the casual use of firearms.
Kavanagh believes that the unprecedented union suggests that the long-standing black gangs of Hackney had joined forces with the Turkish crews to widen their drugs markets and broaden their influence. "The expansion is to do with drugs and violence and kudos and what opportunities they have to support each other. Those bonds are quite chaotic relationships, but involve well-known Hackney gangs, the usual suspects," he said.
So far detectives have been able to link three murders since March to the mounting friction between the Bombacilar and Tottenham Boys, but the involvement of the black crews, the Yardies and crack dealers, usually investigated under Operation Trident, meant that the threat and killing potential of the Turkish gangs had intensified.
Senior officers were aware the decision to send routine armed patrols on to British streets would lead to accusations of heavy-handed American-style policing, but they also knew that what was happening in one small area had increased gun crime in London by 17% and the city was being blighted.
As commanders weighed up the advantages against the chorus of opprobrium such a move would inevitably attract, the decision was made to ask one of Scotland Yard's most experienced homicide detectives to establish whether more murders were linked to the arrival of the "super-gangs".
Detective Superintendent John Sweeney of the Yard's specialist crime directorate, known for leading the Met's review into the death of cricket coach Bob Woolmer, is examining whether other shootings in the capital can be linked to the Bombacilar and Tottenham Boys.
Tottenham and south of the river in Brixton, where
Kavanagh is no stranger to the lethal potential of north London's gunmen and the Turkish gangs' propensity for violence. He was the senior investigating officer in the 2002 murder of Alisan Dogan, 43, a cleaner who was caught in the crossfire and died from stab wounds when dozens of criminals staged a running battle in the busy shopping street of Green Lanes. The incident – which left four men with gunshot wounds – is thought to be connected to Turkish organised crime involving the Bombacilars.
One theory behind the surge in shootings points to the power vacuum left in the wake of Ergun's imprisonment and, three years ago, the jailing of Abdullah Baybasin, who was one of the country's most feared criminals and who ruled his £10bn heroin empire with violence and intimidation. The pearl jewelry Turkish 48-year-old, who lived in north London, commanded a gang of foot soldiers who racketeered, imported drugs and instilled fear into London's Turkish and Kurdish communities. His jailing for 22 years destabilised the gangs' natural order, creating a power struggle now filled by the dozens of young men affiliated to the Bombacilar and Tottenham Boys.
Ergun and Kavanagh agree that the structure of the new hierarchy lacks the organisation and disciplined heroin dealing of Baybasin's network and, instead, is characterised by more chaotic, gung-ho individuals preoccupied with issues of respect as much as earning riches. Ergun said: "They're only little kids who don't respect anyone. In my opinion they are just idiots who think that selling a bit of brown [heroin] and having a gun means you're a gangster."
Yet Ergun and Kavanagh disagree on one facet – drugs. The police commander believes that the supply of heroin has been replaced by cannabis dealing and extortion rackets against Turkish and Kurdish businesses.
Ergun believes that the trade in heroin, traditionally controlled in London by Turkish organised criminals, remains as rife as ever. He said: "You've got the Kurds bringing it over, 10, 15, 20 kilos at a time, and pearl jewelry wholesale these youngsters are buying it off them and selling it on the street, and that's where the war is coming from.
"It's just a price war or the usual stepping on one another's toes, poaching one another's customers. That's where all this fucking mix-up is."
In Helmand province, where British troops continue their fight against the Taliban, the latest bulletins indicate that large quantities of heroin are still leaving the area and passing through Turkish suppliers and into north London.
Steve Coates, deputy director of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and an expert on the heroin trade for the past 20 years, confirmed that the Turkish gangs still "dominated" the heroin trade in the UK, controlling at least 50% of the country's supply.
He said the latest intelligence had pinpointed key figures in Turkey as well as the traditional Turkish crime gangs of north London, though he would not name the Bombacilar and the Tottenham Boys.
As Soca attempts to squeeze the pearl necklace heroin supply to the capital's Turkish gangs, Met officers in the Green Lanes area and Tottenham will supplement their armed patrols with visits to vulnerable shopkeepers, analysis of car numberplates and a fresh round of meetings with representatives of the Turkish and Kurdish communities.
So far, the "proactive" CO19 patrols are credited with instigating an instant drop-off in activity from the Bombacilar and Tottenham Boys. "We have got them reeling because we are showing that the levels of violence are not being tolerated," said Kavanagh.
The Met's hierarchy is watching the trials closely. Gun-related crime in London has risen year-on-year, with the number of gun crimes in September alone up from 230 last year to 300 this year, a 30% rise. It is hoped that the trials in Green Lanes, Tottenham and south of the river in Brixton, where street shootings have also spiked, will quash the trend.
But the Yard's commanders equally know that any fatal error, any accidental shooting from a firearms unit which is still tarnished with the death of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station in 2005, means that the experiment will be over.
I’m seized by a desperate desire to clean.
Andre Agassi makes the sensational confession today that he lied to the tennis authorities to escape a ban for taking hard drugs.
The American, one of the finest players to grace the game, tested positive for the highly addictive drug, crystal methamphetamine, and then duped the Association of Tennis Professionals into believing he pearl jewelryhad taken it by accident.
The admissions come in a soul-searching autobiography that is being serialised exclusively today and tomorrow in The Times.
The 1992 Wimbledon champion, the winner of eight grand-slam titles, also says that he has always secretly hated playing tennis and lived in fear of his bad-tempered and violent father.
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Agassi, now 39, relates how he took crystal meth — possession of which carries a maximum five-year jail sentence in the US — in 1997, when his form was falling and he was having doubts about his impending marriage to the actress, Brooke Shields.
Had the positive drugs test become public, the repercussions for Agassi could have been catastrophic. It remains to be pearl jewelry wholesale seen whether repercussions will follow his confession.
In his book, Agassi recounts sitting at home with his assistant, referred to only as Slim, and being introduced to the drug. “Slim is stressed too ... He says, You want to get high with me? On what? Gack. What the hell’s gack? Crystal meth. Why do they call it gack? Because that’s the sound you make when you’re high ... Make you feel like Superman, dude.
“As if they’re coming out of someone else’s mouth, I hear these words: You know what? F*** it. Yeah. Let’s get high.
“Slim dumps a small pile of powder on the coffee table. He cuts it, snorts it. He cuts it again. I snort some. I ease back on the couch and consider the Rubicon I’ve just crossed.
“There is a moment of regret, followed by wholesale pearl jewelry vast sadness. Then comes a tidal wave of euphoria that sweeps away every negative thought in my head. I’ve never felt so alive, so hopeful — and I’ve never felt such energy.
“I’m seized by a desperate desire to clean. I go tearing around my house, cleaning it from top to bottom. I dust the furniture. I scour the tub. I make the beds.”
TPG’s exit signals the end of an era at Debenhams
TPG, the American private equity house that made its name in Britain by taking Debenhams private, sold its last remaining shares in the retailer yesterday, taking the total profit on its investment to nearly £500 million.
Traders said that TPG’s entire 9.34 per cent stake in the retailer had been bought by a single, unnamed investor, whom Debenhams’ management was scrabbling to identify yesterday.
Industry insiders said that the buyer freshwater pearl could be Och-Ziff, the American hedge fund that owns Peacocks, the retailing chain. The buyer is expected to identify itself within days to comply with stock market regulations.
TPG’s exit signals the end of an era at Debenhams. The retailer’s take-private-and-refloat came to epitomise the so-called “quick flip”, a model whereby private equity would buy listed businesses cheaply and load them with debt before refloating them a couple of years later at a huge profit.
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CVC Capital Partners, TPG’s coinvestor in the deal, sold most of its shares in June, when the debt-laden Debenhams tapped investors for cash. Neither CVC nor TPG subscribed to the retailer’s rights issue, proceeds of which were used to pay down its £970 million debt mountain.
TPG and CVC took Debenhams private for £1.7 billion in 2003, with Merrill Lynch’s private equity unit joining the consortium later. The trio made a profit of £950 million between them after two refinancings that freshwater pearl jewelry left the company with £1.9 billion of debt by the time it was floated. Debenhams had only £100 million of debt when taken private.
It is believed that TPG received about 40 per cent of that £950 million. The private equity house added to the bonanza with a further £98 million yesterday when it sold its remaining Debenhams shares. TPG’s final profit from six years’ investment in the retailer is thought to be about £480 million.
The Debenhams buyout was led by Philippe Costeletos, TPG’s co-head of European operations, a dapper banker typifying private equity’s “Masters of the Universe”. The Ivy Leagueeducated Mr Costeletos, who is fluent in five languages, is a former investment banker who lives in Kensington, West London.
The IPO was shunned by institutional investors, angry to have sold to private equity too cheaply in 2003. Private equity houses aiming to float companies they own in a predicted next round of IPOs have found it hard to counteract the “Debenhams effect”: some institutional investors believe private equity would never sell them anything worth buying. The banks that arranged Debenhams’ pre-float refinancing —HBOS, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and Barclays — were left with most of its £1 billion of bank debt months after the refloat in 2006.
Neither CVC nor TPG subscribed to Debenhams’s £323 million rights issue in June. Both gave up their seats on the retailer’s board at this stage. The departure of Mr Costeletos and Jonathan Feuer, his TPG colleague, from the retailer promoted speculation that the American pearl jewelry wholesale private equity house was preparing to sell out.
Debenhams is one of several private equity-backed companies to have struggled because they were laden with debt in the boom years. Lenders to Yell, the directories group, which was floated by Apax and Hicks Muse, its private equity owners, in 2004, have until 5pm today to back a debt- restructuring deal or Yell will ask the courts to push one through instead.
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