Economic Aspects of "Love"

[American Dream]

http://www.buddhistpeacefellowship.org/ ... velopment/

[American Dream]

We do this because the world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning.

— ~Sandra Cisneros, on writing

http://to-gulistan.tumblr.com/post/4378 ... ve-in-is-a

[American Dream]

Shadeism



This documentary short is an introduction to the issue of shadeism, the discrimination that exists between the lighter-skinned and darker-skinned members of the same community. This documentary short looks specifically at how it affects young womyn within the African, Caribbean, and South Asian diasporas. Through the eyes and words of 5 young womyn and 1 little girl - all females of colour - the film takes us into the thoughts and experiences of each. Overall, ‘Shadeism’ explores where shadeism comes from, how it directly affects us as womyn of colour, and ultimately, begins to explore how we can move forward through dialogue and discussion.

[American Dream]

Remi Kanazi

http://poeticinjustice.net/audio.aspx

[American Dream]

Leaders RMX (featuring Luka Lesson & Farid Farid)

Verse 1 (L-FRESH The LION):
We’re in search for a leader to lead us
one that will never leave us
one with the people, who will never place some fences between us
one that’ll take us up to the sky in order to free us
one that will teach us, and not take us to war, they will feed us
a leader won’t keep you down, they find your strengths and then bring them out
look for peace and get rid of doubt, they lead by action and not their mouths
they don’t try and change you, they educate you
they sacrifice and without supplies they find a way to aid you
they know no excuses, they don’t need no juice to boost us
they know wisdom like Confucius and they won’t mislead or confuse us
they find a new path then test it, they perceive truth and contest it
use their intellect as their weapon and don’t need the internet to be connected
with the people, they plant seeds coz they plan for a better day
they know the difference between lending a hand and taking your land away
that’s the way that they are, they support you when there is no where to go
just look in your heart, you can find a leader closer to home
don’t be mistaken
Chorus Part 1 (Farid Farid):
Blessed are the peacemakers
chastening the spirit of the greed-takers

creating a consecrated belief
out of an anointed relief

that we breathe, we feel, we eat of the same flesh
body and blood, we breaking our daily bread
in pieces

we feeding the movement of the multitude
Hardt & Negri, we nourishing an attitude of gratitude
satiating our hunger with some real soul food

Verse 2 (Luka Lesson):
I’m just trying to provide some leadership
inspired to be aligned with leaders
engaged in a dialogue with their demons
and shining through the right allegiances
no pretence they don’t pretend to be geniuses
just walk the talk in their speeches
-its medecins sans frontieres, doctors fighting diseases
emmanual jal travelling the whole world fighting for peace
its just some of our leaders can’t even leave the streets
they need to compete to be feeding their seeds
they’ve got no time for dreams
they fight day and night for something to eat
and to dodge the police
and watch all the lucky ones leave
and not let it stop their belief
there are no greater leaders than these
times haven’t changed dangerous minds lay isolated
stars align and constellations
lead us to the same old conversations – land
the constant craving of man to take by force
demands the sands of time be laden with land minds and replaced by ports
resources, are way too important
the labour’s imported
fake leaders drag us to war by calling the poor the terrorist forces
real leaders leave the space for us to walk forward beside them
real leaders won’t drag you down just so their status can heightened
real leaders don’t police your speech when they decide its wrong
real leaders lead us all to freedom
and keep us strong after they’re gone

Chorus 2 (Farid Farid):
Bleakness can only be healed through meekness
humility obliterating the fog of mental angst
and love evaporating the humidity of alien stress

See, this is our revolution
making way for a new evolution
through articulate, eloquent illocution

If you’re tired of tyrants
then start trying to defy your mind
expand your horizons and ultimately
begin flying!

Written by L-FRESH The LION, Luka Lesson and Farid Farid

[American Dream]

http://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/02 ... the-world/

How not to change the world




—-

[American Dream]

http://libcom.org/library/poverty-privilege-politics

The poverty of privilege politics

In this text from September 2012 the authors argue that privilege politics may not lead us towards a revolutionary perspective.

Privilege. Now there’s a word we are hearing a lot. The concept and finger-pointing of privilege is coming to increasingly concern us as a problem and a poor semblance within the alternative left. We feel not only embarrassed by the simplicity of this undisclosed and undefined overarching theory but concerned that it further leads a stagnant movement down more dire dead ends. And yet our disquiet is not because we believe interpersonal politics are less worthy of our attention, nor because we are without awareness and rage about the oppressive power structures within our lives and political milieus. We do not believe that these are minor details that can wait til after the revolution. Whilst we are currently organising what is suspiciously like a women’s consciousness raising group, we dismiss those laughable and cringeworthy lists that have gone viral in the social networking world. These might appear as conflicting positions, but as we hope to explain, we do not find them so.

As mentioned, we are confronted with endless lists asking us to ‘Check our Privilege.’ We have encountered the ‘heterosexual privilege checklist” the “cis privilege checklist” and the “able bodied checklist.” (examples of these checklists are included at the end of the article- the Eds.) We think you get the picture? Soon we will be carrying around score cards wishing to be the most victimised person in the world. This sort of privilege scorekeeping is tallied in our everyday encounters but most often called out in a certain political context, such as a political meeting, discussion or lecture. We now are presented with the ‘manarchist’ who uses his male privilege taking up space in meetings. Taking up space is not seen as only about the amount a person of privilege speaks but often the language used. We see a growth in these subcultural movements in the UK of an adherence to a new political language and analysis with a centrality of privilege as an overarching ideology. We find an anti-intellectualism where both theorising and militancy are seen as a privilege in and of themselves, as if acting on the front line as WELL as analysis are only weapons of the oppressive rather than weapons of the oppressed. We find this dangerous because it evokes that the most ‘oppressed’ are helpless and weak, encourages a lack of activity and analysis away from ‘make do and mend’ circles, and further rarefies the notion of resistance.

Another vagary is the self-flagellating groups emerging that prop up a culture of shame. For example, recent workshops have emerged under the theme of ‘Men dealing with their patriarchal shit.’ Whilst we want individuals to examine, analyse and challenge their own behaviour in political terms these punkier than thou equal ops sessions reinforce the holier than thou attitude of the attendees….and the ones who could do with it rammed down their hairy throats wouldn’t dream of attending. These examples of new emerging themes demonstrate that on one side of the coin you have a points based oppression outlook (we’ve made the complexities of power into a handy ticklist for you!) and on the other you have individualised guilt and self- victimisation (which is another way of re-focusing on the ‘more privileged’ ironically). This focus on the individual and self as the problem is a product of privilege leading us nowhere. It’s a dead end. We feel a political lens of privilege is divisive and unhelpful when we are part and parcel of a system that already thrives on the division of the working classes, through gender, class and sexual oppression.

So how then do we divide these concepts so we neither become a self parodying shell of victim politics nor replicate the power structures we seek to destroy? How does this differ from an analysis of power? Does it permit spaces for movement and resistance? Or does it revert back to the activist quagmire of guilt, shame and stagnation? These are questions that should be discussed within our wider political groups.

We recognise the well meaningness of checking your privilege. We too understand that people are silenced not just as individuals but due to identities. However, we perceive wrong footed attempts to right this balance. In meetings we witness call outs where someone will announce that six men have spoken and no women. This is an attempt to expose the hidden subtleties of patriarchy and male dominance, and to empower women. We have never seen this work to readdress power relations. This call of male privilege may serve to quieten the six men who have spoken, but it does not give more voice to the silenced. More awkwardly, it is often uncomfortable for the women in the group who may feel, as we do in this scenario, an obligation to speak, but with it comes an unnatural sense of representation. The opposite usually takes place; a silencing of people rather than the growth of new conversations. One that is forced, fake and full of disdain. Whilst the next person, woman, is to speak but feels an artificial pressure of representation that we are supposed to be speaking on behalf of all women, from an identity as ‘woman’, and only as ‘woman’. And when we, or she, speaks, it is of course as a woman within patriarchy and to a room where she is being observed and judged by the six men who have spoken, under a political male gaze. Because of these things, and more, we do not see these clumsy attempts moving any steps toward challenging sexist oppression. To do that we need first to acknowledge intersectionality of power, history and privilege. With a singular identification of privilege we reduce the myriad of power relations within the group to a straightforward visible one. We don’t want a politics that reduces and simplifies power into an ideology of privilege. Intersectionalities of power, oppression and privilege need to be examined mixed with relations of capital. Analysing and pinpointing privilege to an obsessive extent in political circles can be demobilising as well as futile. But most damaging of all, these performances of privilege call out, mislead us into believing that challenging patriarchy within our interpersonal relations occurs within the formalities of a meeting and it is who speaks rather than what they say.

Because ultimately, it is not woman’s voice we should be seeking but feminist voice. A feminist voice is not one based on identity but rather on a shared transformative politics. A feminist voice is a stance rather than a given. As bell hooks reminds us; feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. We suggest this will often be best realised through those most facing sexist oppression but also we are vigilant to note that not all oppressed are resisting, subverting or fighting this oppression, nor are those who seem to benefit in ways from it always or automatically in alignment with the oppressive forces. So where does that leave identity and privilege in the struggle for freedoms? Understanding politics through the lens of privilege is intrinsically entangled with identity politics. And, for reasons stated, we find identity politics a monolithic and restrictive way to understand the world. We are our identities but we are never just one identity, we are a complexity of them. And identities do not line up in a straightforward ABC of oppression, no matter how much the privilegists want them to. This just falls into binaries that we are attempting to escape from, or creates more. The queer movement challenges the notions of “men” and “women” yet seems to be opting instead for “cis” or “trans” giving new permanence and boundaries to our gender. This is not to downplay the struggles but we believe that these fixed linear positions are not just unhelpful but often false. Cis gender may not seem intrinsically a privilege to the women killed by domestic violence or childbirth. Nor male privilege to a gay Ugandan. The relationality of power has to be optimistically understood if we are to move beyond an idle determinism and singular identity code. But, also, to resist we must understand our power; the strength in our collective power rather than this frugal analysis of power where privilege divides us into mundane categories of oppression. We need to galvanise on our power as a class, as this class being fucked over by capital within all it’s facets of everyday life. Rather than creating new prisons and new boxes to further tear ourselves to pieces within, we need to analyse and act with fluidity and creativity in terms of our intersectional identities in the kitchens, the bedrooms, the meeting spaces, the pubs and in the streets we demand to occupy.

Privilege Checklists:

http://queersunited.blogspot.co.uk/2008 ... klist.html

http://takesupspace.wordpress.com/

http://manchesterafed.wordpress.com/201 ... anarchist/


Tabitha Bast and Hannah McClure are engaged in the following crimes of passion; mostly together, but some as singular adventures – the Space Project (a radical education Space), as writers (latest article in “Occupy Everything: Reflections on Why its Kicking Off Everywhere), New Weapons Reading Group, various Queer ventures, Plan C, Footprint Worker’s Co-operative, working with domestic violence perpetrators, parenting, and general Leeds/Redhills based agitation.

[Hammer of Los]

...

Great stuff.

Can I still buy Fair Trade at Sainsbury's though?

I guess buying local is better than flying the stuff halfway round the world.

Tabitha and Hannah seem like really smart girls though.

...

[American Dream]

...

Great stuff.

Can I still buy Fair Trade at Sainsbury's though?

I guess buying local is better than flying the stuff halfway round the world.

Tabitha and Hannah seem like really smart girls though.

...

Personal ethical choices are fine- be they taking shorter showers, eating vegan, bringing a cloth bag to the grocer's, refusing to buy from a certain company, or what have you. As long as these individual consumer choices don't become the foundation of an ego-driven marketing campaign for "Brand Me" which assumes and justifies the utter lack of a need to do anything further, then there is absolutely no contradiction with organized efforts to change the System...

[American Dream]

http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9100

US Special Operations Command Trained Military Unit Accused of Death Squad Killings in Honduras
Posted on: 25/02/2013 by Annie Bird



This article is based entirely on the report “Human Rights Violations Attributed to Military Forces in the Bajo Aguan Valley in Honduras” published on February 20, 2013. To see the full report with citations:

http://rightsaction.org/sites/default/f ... _Final.pdf

Since January 2010, there has been a constant stream of killings of members of land rights, campesino movements in the Bajo Aguan region of Honduras. At least 88 campesino movement members and supporters have been killed, along with five bystanders apparently mistaken for campesinos. Most recently, on Feb. 16 two campesinos were killed–Santos Jacobo Cartagena was gunned down while waiting for a bus, and Jose Trejo, an outspoken advocate for the investigation of his brother’s Sept. 22, 2012 murder, was shot while driving.

While the 2010 and 2011 State Department human rights reports described deaths of campesinos in the Aguan as the result of “confrontations” between palm oil corporation’s security forces and campesino farmers who claim the land was stolen by the agri-businessmen, only six of the killings have occurred on disputed land during land occupations or evictions. In contrast, 78 were targeted assassinations, 8 of those preceded by abductions, their tortured bodies found later; another 3 victims remain disappeared. Fifty-three people were shot while driving, riding their bicycles or walking along public roads. Another 13 were assassinated in their homes or while working on farms not in dispute.

All of this points to one explanation: a death squad is operating in the Aguan. This is not news to anyone who lives there, where it is considered common knowledge and it is widely understood that police and military participate in the killings. Dozens of acts of violence and intimidation have been carried out by the Honduran military against campesino communities over the same time period and geographical area where the death-squad killings have targeted campesinos, lending greater credibility to the charge.

While masked gunmen have been killing campesinos, the Honduran military’s 15th Battalion special forces unit and units or joint taskforces associated with it, have been receiving training from the U.S. armed forces Special Operations Command South, SOCSOUTH, which is also funding construction on the 15th Battalion’s base in Rio Claro, Trujillo.

Local residents and national press have reported the presence of U.S. Army Rangers in the area since at least 2008, and public records of the U.S. government confirm their presence. In 2008, SOCSOUTH conducted two trainings with 135 soldiers each, all from the 1st Special Forces Battalion. The Honduran press has reported that the 1st Battalion and 15th Battalion, both special-forces units, operate as one command, sharing the installations in the Rio Claro military base for training. SOCSOUTH and the U.S.Southern Command, SOUTHCOM, have also funded improvements and expansion of the Rio Claro base since September 2011.

One disturbing observation that resulted from our investigation is that conditions surrounding many of the killings involved techniques included in U.S. training. According to Honduran press, U.S. special forces train the Honduran Special Operations Forces of the 1st and 15th Battalion in insertion, parachuting, explosives, long-distance sharpshooting, intelligence, advanced marksmanship, urban operations, close combat, martial arts and offensive driving. Dozens of campesinos have died after high-speed pursuit in vehicles, either after crashing or being shot, in incidents that can only be described as offensive driving.

Campesinos have reported surviving long-distance sharpshooting assassination attempts, and many have been killed from shots fired from a significant distance. One man was found dead from unexplained internal injuries while it was rumored that the unit was being trained in mortal hand-to-hand combat, raising suspicions. At least one man was killed in a stealth raid assisted by a helicopter, in which an armed group wearing black uniforms with masks quickly and surreptitiously entered a farm in the night, assassinated a campesino, and left–an operation known in military terms as “insertion”.

The improvements to the Rio Claro military base began just weeks after Xatruch II, a military–police joint task force, arrived in the Aguan. Honduras sent a Xatruch II unit to participate in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004, and at least two of the commanding officers of the Xatruch II deployment in the Aguan participated in Iraq. There is significant evidence that the Xatruch II operation in the Aguan is the same unit that served in Iraq.

From Iraq to Aguan

But Xatruch II is not all that is moving from the Middle East to the Aguan–so is the war on terrorism. The conflict in the Aguan is an 18 year-old land dispute. Campesinos explain that agri-businessmen used violence and fraud to illegally separate them from the palm oil plantations they had labored to create and equip. In 1998 they initiated lawsuits demanding annulment of the title transfers, but ever since they have struggled to maintain legal representation as their lawyers were threatened or bribed into abandoning the cases. On September 22, 2012 they lost the only lawyer who had stuck it out when he was shot to death outside a church. Just three months before, he had won the annulment of 3 of the 28 disputed title transfers.

Honduran military, even the commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Security, have consistently distorted the nature of the conflict, claiming there is a guerrilla group operating in the area, connected to drug traffickers. On Sept. 6, 2012, The Times of Israel ran a story citing only Israeli radio, claiming the Hezbollah had established a training camp in Nicaragua on the border with Honduras, a story that was then repeated in Latin American press. The Times of Israel then reported further on the story citing the Latin American press reports it had generated itself. The dangerous, unsubstantiated and opportunistic accusations of narco-terrorism levied against the campesino movement in the Aguan by the military fit neatly into the U.S. objective of expanding its military reach in the region.

Security forces in the Aguan explain that the mission of Xatruch II is to defend the land of the businessmen from the ‘criminal’ campesinos. However, broad evidence indicates that some of the businessmen in conflict with the campesinos are involved in drug trafficking in the region. Local residents have reported that the 15th Battalion and the Tocoa police have provided protection to the traffickers. The police define their mission as defending the property of Miguel Facusse, whose principal residence in the region was implicated in drug trafficking,according to a State Department cable leaked by Wikileaks.

The conflict in the Aguan is a longstanding land conflict, and it must be treated as such. The conflict can be resolved by duly addressing the land-rights claims. Militarization, supported by the U.S. government, will not resolve the underlying conflict and it clearly increases, rather than decreases, the bloodshed.

Only the courts can resolve the conflict, but the courts don’t function and have further collapsed since the June 2009 military coup.

There is a solution to the violence in the Aguan–the courts, not the military.


Annie Bird is Co-Director, Rights Action

[American Dream]

"When Reagan was elected, two months later there was a meeting of his National Security Council in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to discuss one thing: How can we destroy liberation theology in Latin America? And they concluded: We can’t destroy it, but we can divide the church. And so they went after the pope. They gave him lots and lots of cash for Solidarity in Poland. And in exchange, they got the permission, if you will, the commitment on the part of the papacy, to destroy liberation theology."

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/28/f ... _ex_priest

[American Dream]

http://anneboyer.tumblr.com/post/43074968509

[American Dream]

Cindy Milstein

The Culture of Capitalism (Pinhole 1): No Place

New York City is perhaps one of the best places to be a flaneur, engaging in the act of idly strolling through the streets, taking in the little moments that otherwise go unnoticed, appreciating them as pinholes, turning the world as we know it upside down, all the better to see it for what it is. New York City is also perhaps one of the best metropolises to experience alienation in all its rawness — accessible, visible, and celebratory at every turn. One doesn’t have to wonder at one’s own estrangement; it’s plain as day, especially through the camera obscura of everyday details that one stumbles on, repeatedly, endlessly, as a loafer on foot. Somehow this savage rawness makes alienation a tiny bit easier to bear, although in another pinhole effect, likely a whole lot harder to contest.

New York City, too, just might be home to one of the greatest — if not the greatest — concentrations of cultural workers, whether in the form of one’s waged labor or through laboriously endless weight of creating culture in one’s lifestyle and on one’s body. Capitalism retains it’s basic “cell form” logic of commodifying things — material and increasingly immaterial — but its growth logic has nurtured that capacity to expand from the realm of production (with us as producers), to consumption (with us as spectators), to the very sociocultural fabric of life (with us as way-too-enthusiastic participants). As James C. Scott talks about in a section of his recent Two Cheers for Anarchism, rather than a world aimed at a “gross domestic product,” we’ve moved into the aspiration of “the production of human beings.” Hence, the culture of capitalism isn’t incidental; it’s the pinhole through which we can see who we’ve become in this upside-down world, or what we’ve been reduced to, and may just be the terrain of where social struggle, resistance, and reconstruction in particular is most crucial. For we need to be different human beings if we have any hope of populating, humanely, other possible worlds.

http://cbmilstein.wordpress.com/2013/02 ... -no-place/

[American Dream]

The logic behind white domination is to prepare the black man for the subservient role in this country. Not so long ago this used to be freely said in parliament, even about the educational system of the black people. It is still said even today, although in a much more sophisticated language. To a large extent the evil-doers have succeeded in producing at the output end of their machine a kind of black man who is man only in form. This is the extent to which the process of dehumanization has advanced.

—Steve Biko

[American Dream]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/mar/0 ... -character

Police spies: in bed with a fictional character

Mark Jenner lived with a woman under a fake name. Now she has testified to MPs about the 'betrayal and humiliation' she felt

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans
The Guardian, Friday 1 March 2013


Mark Jenner, the police spy who went by the name of Mark Cassidy for six years


Mark Jenner, the undercover officer in the Metropolitan police’s special demonstration squad, who went by the name of Mark Cassidy for six years – then disappeared.

He was a burly, funny scouser called Mark Cassidy. His girlfriend – a secondary school teacher he shared a flat with for four years – believed they were almost "man and wife". Then, in 2000, as the couple were discussing plans for the future, Cassidy suddenly vanished, never to be seen again.

An investigation by the Guardian has established that his real name is Mark Jenner. He was an undercover police officer in the Metropolitan police's special demonstration squad (SDS), one of two units that specialised in infiltrating protest groups.

His girlfriend, whose story can be told for the first time as her evidence to a parliamentary inquiry is made public, said living with a police spy has had an "enormous impact" on her life.

"It has impacted seriously on my ability to trust, and that has impacted on my current relationship and other subsequent relationships," she said, adopting the pseudonym Alison. "It has also distorted my perceptions of love and my perceptions of sex."

Alison is one of four women to testify to the House of Commons home affairs select committee last month.

Another woman said she had been psychologically traumatised after discovering that the father of her child, who she thought had disappeared, was Bob Lambert, a police spy who vanished from her life in the late 1980s.

A third woman, speaking publicly for the first time about her six-year relationship with Mark Kennedy, a police officer who infiltrated environmental protest groups, said: "You could ... imagine that your phone might be tapped or that somebody might look at your emails, but to know that there was somebody in your bed for six years, that somebody was involved in your family life to such a degree, that was an absolute shock."

Their moving testimony led the committee to declare that undercover operations have had a "terrible impact" on the lives of innocent women.

The MPs are so troubled about the treatment of the women – as well as the "ghoulish" practice in which undercover police adopted the identities of dead children – that they have called for an urgent clean-up of the laws governing covert surveillance operations.

Jenner infiltrated leftwing political groups from 1994 to 2000, pretending to be a joiner interested in radical politics. For much of his deployment, he was under the command of Lambert, who was by then promoted to head of operations of the SDS.

While posing as Cassidy, he could be coarse but also irreverent and funny. The undercover officer saw himself as something of a poet. A touch over 6ft, he had a broad neck, large shoulders and exuded a tough, working-class quality.

By the spring of 1995, Jenner began a relationship with Alison and soon moved into her flat. "We lived together as what I would describe as man and wife," she said. "He was completely integrated into my life for five years."

Jenner met her relatives, who trusted him as her long-term partner. He accompanied Alison to her mother's second wedding. "He is in my mother's wedding photograph," she said. Family videos of her nephew's and niece's birthdays show Jenner teasing his girlfriend fondly. Others record him telling her late grandmother about his fictionalised family background.

Alison, a peaceful campaigner involved in leftwing political causes, believes she inadvertently provided the man she knew as Mark Cassidy with "an excellent cover story", helping persuade other activists he was a genuine person.

"People trusted me, people knew that I was who I said I was, and people believed, therefore, that he must be who he said he was because he was welcomed into my family," she said.

It was not unusual for undercover operatives working for the SDS or its sister squad, the national public order unit, to have sexual relationships with women they were spying on. Of the 11 undercover police officers publicly identified, nine had intimate sexual relations with activists. Most were long-term, meaningful relationships with women who believed they were in a loving partnership.

Usually these spies were told to spend at least one or two days a week off-duty, when they would change clothes and return to their real lives. However, Jenner, who had a wife, appears to have lived more or less permanently with Alison, rarely leaving their shared flat in London.

It was an arrangement that caused personal problems for the Jenners. At one stage, he is known to have attended counselling to repair his relationship with his wife. Bizarrely, at about the same time, he was also consulting a second relationship counsellor with Alison.

"I met him when I was 29," she said. "It was the time when I wanted to have children, and for the last 18 months of our relationship he went to relationship counselling with me about the fact that I wanted children and he did not."

Jenner disentangled himself from the deployment in 2000, disappearing suddenly from Alison's flat after months pretending to suffer from depression.

The police spy left her a note which read: "We want different things. I can't cope ... When I said I loved you, I meant it, but I can't do it." He claimed he was going to Germany to look for work.

It was all standard procedure for the SDS. Some operatives ended their deployments by pretending to have a breakdown and vanishing, supposedly to go abroad, sending a few letters to their girlfriends with foreign postmarks.

Alison was left heartbroken and paranoid, feeling that she was losing her mind. She spent more than a decade investigating Jenner's background, hiring a private detective to try to track him down. She had no idea he was actually working a few miles away at Scotland Yard, where he is understood to still work as a police officer today.

The strongest clue to Jenner's real identity came from an incident she recalled from years earlier when he was still living with her. "I discovered he made an error with a credit card about a year and a half into our relationship," she said. "It was in the name Jenner and I asked him what it was and he told me he bought it off a man in a pub and he had never used it. He asked me to promise to never tell anyone."

The Metropolitan police refused to comment on whether Jenner was a police spy. "We are not prepared to confirm or deny the deployment of individuals on specific operations," it said.

Alison told MPs that the "betrayal and humiliation" she suffered was beyond normal. "This is not about just a lying boyfriend or a boyfriend who has cheated on you," she said. "It is about a fictional character who was created by the state and funded by taxpayers' money. The experience has left me with many, many unanswered questions, and one of those that comes back is: how much of the relationship was real?"

• If you have information about Mark Jenner or any other undercover police officers contact: paul.lewis@guardian.co.uk