On International Women’s Day, Palestinian women continue their struggleElectronic Intifada - 7 Mar 2008rr r r rr r rr r rr r rr r rr rrr rOn 8 March, the world celebrates International Women’s Day. This is one of the most distinguished events renewing support for women’s issues, their struggle for equality and commitment to women’s enjoyment of all their rights in accordance with international standards and conventions. The latest form of systematic violence by IOF was the military campaign against Jabaliya town in the northern Gaza Strip, which lasted from 28 February to 4 March 2008
We shall (not) overcome… Nuclear protest survived six Tory governments. But not New LabourUKWatch.net - 7 Mar 2008It survived six Tory governments, the end of the Cold War and the rise and fall of mass marches against the British nuclear deterrent. But after 50 years in which the tradition of peaceful demonstration has been maintained outside the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, the New Labour era has finally done for one of the most famous symbols of protest in British political history. Today would have seen the latest gathering of the band of women who have assembled on the second Saturday of each month since the 1980s to object to the continuing development of the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent. Instead, following a High Court ruling this week, the protest tents are being removed, demonstrators are being threatened with arrest and “no camping” signs are being erected. From being a symbol of the right to protest, Aldermaston has become the latest testament to the desire of successive New Labour governments to curtail the right to assemble, demonstrate and object to government policy. Evidence from the Ministry of Defence to the High Court cited “operational and security concerns”. In their High Court appeal, legal representatives for the Aldermaston women argued that the by-law which ostensibly took effect last May banning “camping in tents, caravans, trees or otherwise” amounted to an unlawful interference with freedom of expression and the right of assembly guaranteed by articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. David Plevsky, appearing for the Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp, said the new regulations were “criminalising the peaceful, traditional and regular activities of the AWPC”. It cut no ice. Before the ruling, Sian Jones a member of the peace camp, said: “If we don’t win this review our very existence will be under threat. But there are also wider implications for the long-held right to protest, which is such an important part of British society. Aldermaston has been known as a place of protest for the last 50 years, and this year is the 50th anniversary of the first CND march there.” That battle has now been lost. As a result of the heavy-handed prohibition of a long-running series of protests which have never resulted in violence, a march this Easter to Aldermaston ? intended to commemorate the pioneering protest of 1958 ? has now taken on a wholly contemporary significance. After a series of assaults on the right to protest around Westminster and beyond, the 2008 trek through Berkshire is set to become the latest chapter in the fight to wrest back civil liberties that New Labour appears determined to take away. The CND is planning a 50th anniversary day of action on Easter Monday, when the atomic weapons establishment is to be surrounded by a “human chain” to highlight what it says is the stifling of legitimate protest. The police have warned that anyone causing an obstruction during that protest is likely to be arrested and prosecuted. Kate Hudson, the chairperson of CND said: “We feel this is an extremely serious matter where the long-established and hard-won right to protest is now under attack. People are extremely worried about the weapons of mass destruction being produced at Aldermaston and it is unrealistic of the Government to think that they will not take part in expressing their views. “We hope that on Easter Monday people will not only come because it is the 50th anniversary of the first march but also to show the need to defend their civil liberties.” One campaigner planning to take part, 57-year-old Margaret Jefferson, from west London, said: “I think it is essential that people make a stand on this issue. I had stayed at that peace camp as have so many others without posing any threat to anyone. What is this Government afraid of, what do they think we will do? “We live in a very dangerous world as it is and with the end of the Cold War there is even less justification for nuclear weapons. As long as these weapons are here there is the risk that a version of them will come into the hands of terrorists.” One of the most famous figures to participate in 1958 is too frail to be there on Easter Monday. But there is no questioning his ongoing commitment to the protest and outrage at the modern Labour Party’s complicity in its suppression. Michael Foot, the former Labour leader, who marched with his late wife, the actress and author Jill Craigie, said last night that he was “deeply saddened” to hear of the camp being closed down, and especially dismayed that this should happen under a Labour government. “We thought the cause was right and just and we were glad to take part in these marches,” Mr Foot said. “I think it is wretched that they are now thinking of shutting down the camp after it had been goingsuccessfully for more than 20 years and I am sure Jill would have felt the same way as well. “The governments at the time sometimes behaved very badly towards these protesters who were simply exercising their rights in a peaceful way. But these were Tory governments, the Labour Party supported them as I recall, I was the leader at the time. But times seem to have changed.”
Asylum Watch: Mind your languageUKWatch.net - 7 Mar 2008When Amar Albadawi arrived in the UK from Darfur, he made a beeline for English language classes. He couldn?t speak a word of English and as an asylum seeker dispersed to a house in Rochdale he wasn?t joining an established, Arabic-speaking refugee community. One year later, he recalls that studying English was a priority. ?I found that wherever I went I needed someone to translate. I might wait up to an hour for an interpreter at Rochdale city council,? he says. ?Really the first thing I had in my mind was that I must learn the language.? Albadawi?s experience runs contrary to the ?fewer translations, learn more English? mantra of communities secretary, Hazel Blears. Blears? department published new guidance earlier this month ramming home the view that translation is a disincentive for learning. But this announcement also comes hot on the heels of sweeping cuts to English classes that exclude large groups who urgently want and need to learn. The end of free universal access to English for speakers of other languages (Esol) was announced in October 2006, in the face of escalating costs and a chaotic, massively oversubscribed service. The new measures were to prioritise public funding ?towards those learners most in need of help?, according to the Learning and Skills Council (LSC). The new funding rules for Esol came into force in September 2007. Most adult students now have to pay fees ranging from 500-900 for a 15-hours-a-week course over a full academic year. Newly arrived asylum seekers, who live on asylum support of 41.41 per week and cannot work, can no longer access classes for free. Refugees can, if they demonstrate they receive benefits. Hard-won concessions allow for some exceptions, including free classes for asylum seekers who have been here for six months, refused asylum seekers who cannot be returned home and asylum-seeking children up to the age of 19. Despite these softeners critics believe this has only served to tweak laws that amount to more barriers to Esol. The new arrangements are not without their critics in government. First the Audit Commission, then the Commission on Integration and Cohesion expressed concerns that the new funding regime would leave the most vulnerable without the skills to get by. These fears have now been realised, according to a damning survey of Esol tutors and college head teachers by the University and College Union (UCU), published in November 2007. They describe a fall-off in enrolments because would-be learners cannot pay. A learner hardship fund has mitigated some damage but provides no long-term solution and overburdens teachers with paperwork. Tutors go on to describe the impact of a far less publicised but equally damaging development: the shift in education policy to favour higher level English and English for work over beginner level courses. As a result, colleges are facing chaos with ?hundreds of students on entry-level waiting lists that stand no chance of getting a place,? according to Susan McDowell from Lambeth College, quoted in the report. UCU?s survey concludes that the new regime is hurting the poorest and most vulnerable most. ?Hazel Blears is wrong to suggest the availability of translation services is the biggest disincentive for people not to learn English. We know that the biggest disincentive is the now prohibitive cost of learning English for so many people,? says UCU general secretary Sally Hunt. These findings come as no surprise to Kathryn, an Esol teacher from Manchester with six years formal teaching experience. ?If you are catering for learners who can get Level 2, that person is already at GSCE level and you are delivering to people who can cope,? she says. ?Think about the others. It is the poor and uneducated illiterate in their own languages who suffer.? Kathryn believes it is a ?basic democratic right? to learn the English language. She was so struck by the situation of people ?with no rights at all in a complex world? left ?unable to communicate? that she and a friend ran a free class for refused asylum seekers for six months in south Manchester. Others have also been moved to act. The award-winning conversation class at the Common Place social centre in Leeds is free to 50 students a week. Zoube Maelke from Syria, attendee and chef, explains that it is the ?only place some asylum seekers can come?. Projects like these, though, as Kathryn points out, are only possible with ?mountains of goodwill?. The Home Office calls on new arrivals to ?embrace a common language? in the preamble to its citizenship test, but the new funding restrictions and employment-led priorities make it harder than ever to access Esol. It is left to activists on the ground, without recourse to public funds, to fill in the gaps. If Albadawi arrived in the UK today, he would not be able to afford English classes. He would find himself waiting for hours for interpreters in Rochdale. And all the while council employees with reduced translation budgets would view him with hostility as another immigrant who refuses to learn English. - More information: www.dfes.gov.uk/curriculum_esol
Beyond Bread and ButterUKWatch.net - 7 Mar 2008Last year proved again that the public sector is where the unions still have both strong organisation and the ability to act strategically. Strikes by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) and Communication Workers? Union (CWU) on pay cuts, job losses and backdoor privatisation, and by the Prison Officers? Association (POA) over industrial rights and pay, showed that industrial action and popular campaigning are not only still possible but that they are the most potent challenge to the government?s continued pro-market policies. These unions have raised the question of alternatives to New Labour?s public sector reform and its insistence that ?there is no alternative? to introducing market mechanisms. Unions are increasingly pressing alternatives based on principles of democratisation. The importance of these strikes is that they have been high profile, actively involved the membership and have had some successes. They have begun to break the pattern of large-scale defeats experienced by unions ? like those of the miners and printers ? in the 1980s. Wider challenge It is also significant that the unions have framed their demands not merely in terms of economistic, ?bread and butter? issues but as part of a wider challenge to government policy. They have begun to move beyond simply campaigning against the effects of neoliberalism to challenge this economic orthodoxy itself. The CWU leader, Billy Hayes, lambasted the government for being willing to intervene to bankroll hand-over-fist the failing private financial organisation, Northern Rock, while remaining unwilling to intervene to settle the postal workers? dispute and safeguard a valued public sector service like the Royal Mail. The POA leader, Brian Caton, used the occasion of his union?s illegal national lightning strike to condemn the government?s policy of locking more and more people up in prisons while running down the restorative justice system. He made it clear that ?prison does not work? on its own and that the POA does not support the ?hang ?em and flog ?em? brigade. Mark Serwotka, the PCS leader, made the connection between deteriorating working conditions and the declining quality of service provision. Thus, job cuts leading to work intensification, pay cuts leading to falling morale and outsourcing leading to cutbacks have been convincingly put forward to explain why service standards are falling. In these broadsides against government policy, market-defined notions of efficiency, effectiveness and productivity have increasingly come under scrutiny and the importance of a public service ethos is being explicitly asserted. Such a process is essential to creating receptiveness to ideas about how public services can be genuinely ?public? and fulfil the aspirations that most people have for them. It is a process that can take hold in practical, lived ways in local communities. Here, the public sector unions need to do more imaginative thinking. It?s no use just repeating the demand to renationalise. It was people?s dissatisfaction with their experience of nationalisation that opened the way for support for actual and de facto privatisation. The unions need to develop further positive solutions based on popular participation and control. In this way these public service unions could spearhead a political form of trade unionism, effectively providing the backbone of a progressive opposition to a government that only has credible opponents to its right. The opportunities to do so will be present again in 2008. Teachers, lecturers, local government and health workers, as well as civil servants and police and prison officers, will all have disputes with the government this year over pay and jobs. Private and public sector unionism Is all this just the preserve of public sector unionism and not applicable to the private sector? Sure, in the public sector unions are stronger, line management more supportive and bargaining units larger and more coherent than in the private sector. Consequently, unions have more facility-time and can organise more easily. Indeed, union density in 2006 in the public sector was 59 per cent, compared with only 17 per cent in the private sector, while 83 per cent of working days ?lost? due to strikes were accounted for by public sector action. But the public sector only looks good in comparison with the private and when we look at the overall picture we get a measure of the difficulties afflicting unions in general. The overall density of union membership was 28 per cent in 2006 and the pattern of recent decades ? falling overall in both sectors, albeit with a big gap between private and public ? continues. While public sector strikes have dominated since the late 1990s, overall action has fallen and strike days ?lost? have only exceeded one million once in the past decade. We need to recall that although private sector density is abysmally low, it still accounts for just over 40 per cent of all members because the private sector dwarfs the public sector by numbers employed. Moreover, the growth of numbers employed in the public sector since 1997 has now come to an end and the public sector continues to fragment as more services are contracted out or given over to the voluntary sector. Organised labour cannot keep to its comfort zone of a small and shrinking public sector. Political trade unionism But can the idea of political trade unionism be applied to the private sector? There are some obvious pointers. In the cases of air, rail and bus transport, as well as food production, childcare and pensioners? homes, unions could easily set themselves up as the honest and true defenders of quality provision. By robustly establishing that investment in staffing levels, pay, working conditions and training are essential to providing the high quality goods and services that people demand and expect, unions can replicate the kind of producer-user alliances that are emerging in the public sector. Whether public or private sector based, working with communities outside the workplace is crucial if these alliances are to grow popular roots. Most towns and cities have trades councils, which exist to coordinate campaigns across unions. They are starting points to approach the various organisations in their localities for these alliances. The campaigns by the London and Birmingham Citizens groups involving unions, faith groups, community and voluntary organisations over ?living wages? and social provisions offer one model of how to construct local alliances (see Red Pepper, Aug/Sept 2007). Another is the way in which the PCS union has worked together with the National Pensioners? Convention over issues of benefits provision; from this, mutual support against job losses and real cuts in the level of pensions has followed. A final example can be found in the various short-lived campaigns against ward and hospital closures, which generate new networks among local communities but usually have unions at their hearts. There is a rider to establishing such producer-user alliances, however. Unions must work to become much more visible and credible partners. So unions must interpret the nostrums that ?unity is strength? and ?an injury to one is an injury to all? widely. In 2008 this would involve taking coordinated industrial action to beat the next three years of public sector pay restraint. The success of the joint action on pensions in March 2006 should be a salutary lesson here. Just as importantly, and particularly for affiliated unions, when unions criticise Labour they must be prepared to follow through on their criticisms. This means not just the criticisms on Radio 4 but popular mobilisations to back up the criticisms, especially when those criticisms are invariably ignored. Otherwise, unions fall into the trap of identifying Labour as the problem but then appealing to the self-same Labour to be the solution through the rationale of reason alone. Interestingly, the leading left Labour MP, John McDonnell, has recently argued that this means understanding that the levers of power open to the unions now lie outside Labour and parliament.
Operation Merlin IICampaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) - 7 Mar 2008Summary: But what if CIA-Mossad hoped that the Iranians would at least put the Operation Merlin stuff into their files, perhaps even correcting the errors and building working prototypes, to be found by the IAEA at a later date, providing “evidence” that the Russians were helping the Iranians develop nuclear weapons? source: AntiWar.com read more
Bunch of HuntsUKWatch.net - 7 Mar 2008?It?s pretty much business as usual hunt sabbing in the fields of rural England, three years after the hunting ban came into force – if you can call it a ban; week in week out we see hunts chasing and killing foxes in direct violation of the ban.? – H.S.A. Press Officer Three years since the ban on hunting with hounds was passed through parliament, has it made a blind bit of difference to the bloody fate of persecuted British wildlife? No ? but it has provided an invaluable lesson on how people with cash and influence can buck the law with impunity. Not only that, but those trying to curb their illegal activities face police harassment and hunt thuggery. When the the Criminal Justice Act 1994 was first introduced, one of its main targets was the Hunt Saboteurs movement, denounced as ?Thugs, wreckers and bullies? by the then Home Secretary Michael Howard. Within hours of the bill receiving royal assent, police moved in and began arresting those disrupting bloodsports under the new offence of ?aggravated trespass?. At one point, Sussex police were fielding nearly eighty officers every weekend to arrest and harass hunt saboteurs. Contrast this with the Hunting Act 2005. Pretty unequivocal in its terms, it made hunting with hounds a criminal offence. The more nave might have expected a similar police effort made to clamp down on those now in breach of the law. What actually happened was that David ?there?s none so blind as those who will not see? Blunkett announced a ?softly-softly? approach, letting the police off the hook. In a backstairs deal, hunting became an offence – but not one for which details of those arrested would be recorded, or one which would count towards national crime enforcement statistics. The same police forces which had deployed vast resources to harass anti-bloodsports activists now simply ignored the hunting issue. Bloodsports enthusiasts carried on their merry way, initially using the flimsy legal camouflage of ?exempt? hunting. What this meant in fact was that some hunts took to having a bird of prey on hand (falconry isn?t banned), others a few bumpkins with shotguns (because it?s allowed to use two hounds to flush prey towards guns) and others still took to dragging smelly rags around miles from the action in attempt to pretend they were drag-hunting. Once it became apparent that across the country police were not about to take any action anyway even these pantomimes were dropped. For example on Saturday 5th January, the Surrey Union foxhunt chased and killed a fox on the village green at Ockley, Surrey. This was photographed by sabs. Efforts to interest police in the footage were met with the thin blue line of complete indifference.
?Finally – seven years after Neo-Labour promised to ban hunting with dogs, the law?s been passed. Foxes can relax and hunt sabs can hang up their balaclavas?Or can they?? – SchNEWS 486 Of course there have been a handful of prosecutions across the country – twenty-five to be exact. Almost all of those prosecuted by the CPS have been targeted for ?low-level? hunting ? using lurcher dogs to hunt rabbits and hares. While just as cruel as yer redcoated, stirrup cup drinkin? landownin? variety, the setting of dogs on wildlife isn?t protected by that most vital exemption in the Hunting Act ? the defence of being a toff.
When huntsmen from the more prestigious hunts find themselves in court, always as a result of footage taken by the League against Cruel Sports and often as a result of private prosecutions taken out by them, they are equipped with the best legal advice money can buy. As a result they can afford to pay for continual appeals and, like Premiership footballers charged with speeding, find themselves able to wriggle through the smallest of courtroom loopholes. We are now nearing the end of the third fox-hunting season since the introduction of the ban. Sab groups, committed to taking direct action against bloodsports, have gathered hours of footage of hunts breaking the ban. In response, the hunts have upped the level of violence and intimidation ? especially against those carrying cameras. This season has seen a rise in violence targeted at sabs, with vehicles attacked and people hospitalised. And it is usually the camera operators they go for first. When police do turn up, naturally they haven?t developed a sudden sympathy for the anarchists in their (t)rusty black landrovers. In November last year, sabs out with the notorious Old Surrey and Burstow fox hunt, filmed huntsman Mark Bycroft blatantly urging his hounds on to a fox. One sab told us, ?They were on to their third fox of the day ? it broke out of some woodland and we were standing there filming. Police arrived and told the sabs, ?You lot move away or you?ll be arrested.? When we asked what for, we were told aggravated trespass. Pointing out that we were disrupting a unlawful activity didn?t do any good as at that point Bycroft rode up and told the police, ?You lot sort ?em out or we will.? The cops then immediately jumped on one cameraman and wrestled him to the ground, putting him in handcuffs. Minutes later they arrested me.? All charges have since been dropped. Of course it?s not surprising that the boys in blue line up with the chinless in pink ? some of them ride with the hunt! On Saturday 9th February 2008, Sabs on the South Downs and Eridge hunt were bemused to have an off-duty WPC from Surrey ride up to them flashing her warrant card. Strangely enough two sabs were later arrested and held for 22 hours. ?Basically our vehicle had been blocked in by hunt thugs. After one female hunt sab had been ridden down we?d asked for police assistance and been told that the matter ?had already been dealt with? ? i.e. they?d asked the WPC if everything was OK. To try and get out I rolled forward with the Land Rover and cracked a brake light on the 4×4 blocking the road. When the police eventually did turn up I was nicked for criminal damage!? And the courts take a lenient view of hunt violence. One hunt supporter, convicted of GBH in November for breaking a woman?s arm in two places, merely received an eight month suspended sentence. You can easily imagine what would have happened if the offence had been the other way round. As one greying veteran of the anti-bloodsports battles told SchNEWS, ?Screw this monitoring lark: no more standing around with cameras while still getting attacked by the huntscum and arrested by the plod ? let?s get back to old fashioned sabbing…? With the law still an ass, all kinds of anti-hunt action continues ? and help and support is still needed. See www.huntsabs.org.uk
On the Importance of Peace JournalismUKWatch.net - 7 Mar 2008I have always been committed to peace journalism. In the early 1980s, for instance, I launched the group, Journalists Against Nuclear Extermination (JANE), to campaign for peace through the National Union of Journalists. And similar preoccupations have been ever-present in my journalism and academic writing and practice since then. My PhD (published as Secret State, Silent Press: New Militarism, The Gulf and the Modern Image of Warfare by John Libbey in 1997) examined the press coverage of the 1991 Gulf conflict. But it was essentially a protest (in appropriate academic prose) at the unnecessary massacres inflicted on defenceless Iraqis by the US-led coalition – and the way the mainstream media hid the reality of that horror behind the myth of heroic, precise warfare. For me, it has always been clear that some of the most important responsibilities of the journalist are to promote peace, dialogue and understanding; to confront militarism in all its forms – and the stereotypes and lies on which it is based. And yet, while the mainstream media are awash in debates over citizen journalism and the impact of the internet on traditional routines and professional values, little is heard beyond a select group of activist reporters and academics about peace journalism. One of the most original contributions to the debate over its practical and theoretical aspects appears in Peace Journalism by Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick (Hawthorn Press, Stroud, 2005). Every journalist should be aware of it; every journalism education programme should include it in their reading lists. Most academic analysis of conflict reporting is quick to condemn. But this text is far more ambitious. It both highlights the media’s many failings and also offers convincing alternative strategies. Lynch and McGoldrick, drawing on 30 years’ experience reporting for the BBC, ITV, Sky News, the London Independent and ABC Australia as well as teaching peace journalism at four universities, rightly call for a ‘journalistic revolution’. Drawing particularly on the peace research theories of Prof. Johan Galtung, they argue that most conflict coverage, thinking itself neutral and ‘objective’, is actually war journalism. It is violence and victory orientated, dehumanising the ‘enemy’, focusing on ‘our’ suffering, prioritising official sources and highlighting only the visible effects of violence (those killed and wounded and the material damage). In contrast, peace journalism is solution-orientated, giving voice to the voiceless, humanising the ‘enemy’, exposing lies on all sides, highlighting peace initiatives and focusing on the invisible effects of violence (such as psychological trauma). They then apply this theory to a series of case studies such as the murder of two-year-old James Bulger in February 1993, Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the 2001 US attacks on Afghanistan, a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, the terrorist attacks on Casablanca, the US/UK invasion of Iraq 2003. Dotted throughout the text are comments from practising journalists and advice from the authors. For instance, to resist war propaganda they advise journalists to be on the look out for shifting war aims, to avoid repeating claims which have not been independently verified, to avoid demonising a person or group and to remind their audience of when war propaganda turned out to be misleading. The authors are also not afraid to tackle complex theory head-on. For instance, in a chapter titled ‘Why is the news the way it is?’ they leap confidently into the deep waters of Saussurean linguistics and Derrida’s concepts of deconstruction, logocentricism and the ‘transcendental signifier’. Perhaps it was wise to leave such difficult territory towards the end of the text. There are some serious limitations to the text. For instance, the authors focus almost entirely on the mainstream media and thus fail to acknowledge the contribution of campaigning, alternative media (such as those linked to radical left, feminist, environmental, human rights causes) to the promotion of peace journalism. For instance, Peace News (currently edited by Milan Rai and Emily Johns) is an outstanding publication worth highlighting. Its international coverage is particularly impressive (see www.peacenews.info). So too are websites such as medialens (media monitoring), Indymedia (grassroots anti-war, environmental campaigns), counterpunch (investigative journalism site run by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair) and Dahrjamailiraq (showcasing the work of an outstanding freelance reporter in Iraq). Lynch and McGoldrick also fail to acknowledge the important theoretical work of Chris Atton and Tony Harcup which have highlighted the ways in which alternative writers challenge dominant ideologies, journalistic routines and organisational structures and, in effect, promote peace journalism. Moreover, Lynch and McGoldrick lavish too much praise on the London Independent which they argue ‘more than any other newspaper’ fulfils the criteria of peace journalism. While the excellence of much of its reporting of the 2003 Iraq invasion (particularly by Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn) cannot be denied, critical research suggests that, in many respects, the newspaper reproduces many of the dominant news values of Fleet Street. Ultimately, then, this text reminds us how crucial it is to look beyond the narrow confines of the mainstream media for inspirational models of peace journalism. Links: www.peacenews.info www.medialens.org www.Indymedia.org.uk www.counterpunch.org www.Dahrjamailiraq.com
