the Disillusioned kid

Seasinal Message: The Eighth

2011-12-24T14:58:00.007Z

This isn't really a blog anymore, so much as an website of vaguely coherent ramblings about Christmas. But if one thing characterises the festive season, it's tradition. Hence, here I am again.

Following on from last year, the all too real economic class war being waged by our leaders and their allies in the media has meant that the phoney cultural war has been put on the backburner. There has been little talk this year of any supposed "War on Christmas".

The British Freedom Party (a rather unimpressive splinter from the BNP now linked up with the English Defence League in an unpopular move engineered by Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) did try and motivate the assembled Christian soldiers by recycling a story about the Red Cross from 2002. Unfortunately, the claim that they had "banned overt reference to Christmas from its 430 fundraising shops" was demolished almost immediately (having been nonsense when it was current 9 years ago) and the BFP are now pretending it didn't happen (like the Holocaust, presumably).

In place of opening a new front in the War on Christmas, it is perhaps a good opportunity to look back on what has been a truly monumental year in which we've witnessed the Middle Eastern revolutions, the Libyan war, the Eurozone crisis, the August Riots, the indignados and Occupy movements, mass public sector strikes, the phone hacking scandal and more.

I don't want to overstate the connections between any or all of these events, but I do believe they speak to a fairly serious crisis in our soi-disant leader's ability to control their populations. After the demise of the Soviet Union, capitalism reveled in its victory, never again would anything challenge the "free" market in its domination of the world.

Since then capitalism has produced a vast quantity of stuff, but it has singularly failed to buy people's loyalty. Things might have been OK when the economy was booming, but with unemployment on the rise and "austerity" likely to last for at least a decade, people are becoming increasingly disillusioned in capitalist democracy.

This isn't necessarily a positive development. There are obvious parallels with the 1930s which fueled the rise of Fascism and ultimately led to World War 2. Nevertheless, there are very real opportunities for those of us interested in serious, progressive change. What we make of those opportunities over the coming year could be hugely important.

Happy Christmas, Chrismukkah, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, Duckmass, Festivus, Hannukah, Hogmany, Holiday, HumanLight, Koruchun, Kwanza, New Year, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Winterval, Xmas, Yalda and/or Yule! (Other holidays are available. Probably.)

Previous years: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004

Happy Xmas (War is Over) 2011

2011-12-24T14:40:00.006Z

Gereshk, Helmand, Afghanistan

Manger Square, Bethlehem, Occupied Palestine

Santiago, Chile

The Seventh Deadly Seasonal Message

2010-12-21T19:23:00.008Z

Once again, the season of goodwill to all men is upon us. The tree is up, the lights are on and the alcohol is about to kick in.

It is now traditional that to mark this annual event I put fingers to keyboard and deposit a Christmas blog in your mental microwaves to see if it defrosts. This is now just about the only time I write here. The real world now impinges on my time more than it once did and this coupled with different focuses for my activism has meant that blogging is no longer the priority it once was.

I'm sure this is a great disappointment to many (some? any?) of you who miss my critical insights, witty prose and well-selected images, but when reality calls, what am I to do?

Returning to the traditional message, this is usually my opportunity to reflect on the nonsense of the so-called "War on Christmas" a conflict which has allegedly raged in shopping centres, schoolyards and council offices. A cynically manufactured controversy driven by a right wing which is disprate, often incoherent but ultimately all heading in the samer direction: seeking to turn back every social advance of last century from gay rights to female equality.

This year, however, I'm short on material. The leading protagonists in this conflict seem to have been relatively quiet on the subject. One assumes they have been too busy slashing public services to worry about trivial things like the wording used on Christmas decorations. The cultural phoney war has been replaced by an all too real economic class war.

It is this assault on our communities and the effectiveness of our response which will, I suspect, define 2011 politically. This may sound like a pessimistic view, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. Already we are doing better than Ireland, where meaningful resistance to the imposition of austerity did not emerge until almost 2 years after it began. This provides some hope that we may be able to avoid following them into a spiral of cuts, bailouts and worsening cuts.

But hope is no substitute for action and we have a long battle ahead of us. So far the students have shown the way, but the struggle needs to spread to other sectors: trade unions, public sector workers, the unemployed, service users and the rest of society.

So enjoy your strangled turkey, drink until you throw up your liver and revel in the spirit of the season, for tomorrow we bring down a government.

Happy Christmas, Chrismukkah, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, Duckmass, Festivus, Hannukah, Hogmany, Holiday, HumanLight, Koruchun, Kwanza, New Year, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Winterval, Yalda and/or Yule!

Previous years: 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004

Happy Xmas (War is Over) 2010

2010-12-21T19:09:00.005Z

Kunduz, Afghanistan

Bethlehem, West Bank, Palestine

Kunur, Afghanistan

Episode 6: Return of the Seasonal Message

2009-12-24T10:25:00.009Z

Everybody's favourite pagan drinking festival is almost upon us. The decorations are up, the lights are on, the shops are full and school children across the land are dusting off their sheep costumes for another year as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Our Lord Saviour and Protector Cliff. Tradition dictates that I mark this event with some seasonal blogging, even if I haven't bothered to write anything since last xmas.

Usually, this message consists of some unoriginal reflections on the non-existent "War on Christmas" apparently being waged by an Army of Godless-Liberal-Socialist-Pinko-Homosexual-Feminist-Islamofascist-Terrorists. This year, there appears to have been a lull in hostilities with few high profile clashes.

There was a minor skirmish in Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire. A leaflet distributed by the council outlining their festive plans referred to "Christmas Elves", "Christmas pop tunes", and a special dance "to link the Diwali and Christmas celebrations," but this wasn't good enough for the stalwart defenders of Christmas who derided the council's reference to a "Beeston Lights Switch On Event" held on November 28, almost a month before Christmas. Cue inane comments like, "We have had Christian tradition in this country for thousands of years" (about, two thousand, actually) and a promise by the council to use the term next year.

This is of course, complete nonsense. With lights on for almost a quarter of the year in many towns, it is bizarre that we should think of them only as "Christmas" lights. It should be obvious that none of this has anything to do with Christianity. Christmas is after all a pagan festival hijacked by Christians as a way of getting themselves through winter. Rather it is the latest front in an ongoing conflict raged by those who would set back what advances (in rights for women, homosexuals and ethnic minorities) have been made over the previous century.

None of this means we can't or shouldn't celebrate at this time of year. It's just that we shouldn't let a bunch of right-wing authoritarians dictate how we celebrate. Bear in mind that if we had their way we'd all be tea-total and would spend Christmas morning in church before going back to the Workhouse in the afternoon, with a quick break for bread and water if we were lucky.

One tradition I've decided not to follow this year is that of sending Christmas cards. I've never been a big card writer. I'd like to say this was driven by ethical considerations about destruction of forests, the generation of waste and the perpetuation of thoughtless consumerism. The truth, of course, is that I'm just a bit lazy. That said, this year, I have decided that instead of sending cards I'm going to send my friends an email (something I've done in past years, anyway) and donate the money to charity.

In case you're interested, I've decided to donate the money to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a group dedicated to ending "the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world's oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species." Do check them out, they've done a lot of good work and put Greenpeace to shame.

Talking about environmentalism, 2009 may well be remembered as the point at which we failed to stop anthropogenic climate change. That isn't inevitable, but I think it is very likely we will look back on it as the year where it became clear that our so called leaders were not up to the job.

From the attacks on climate activists during the G20 in April, through the failure to intervene in the closure of the Vestas factory on the Isle of Wight in July (despite an inspiring occupation by sacked workers), right up to the farce played out at Copenhagen, the reality of state capitalism's antagonism towards the environment is now obvious for all to see.

None of this makes climageddon inevitable, but it does mean that if we want a half decent world to live in for ourselves and future generations then we can't wait for our so called leaders to sort it out. It's down to us.

Something to think about while you're tucking into the steaming remains of a strangled turkey...

Happy Christmas, Chrismukkah, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, Duckmass, Festivus, Hannukah, Hogmany, Holiday, HumanLight, Koruchun, Kwanza, New Year, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Winterval, Yalda and/or Yule!

Go forth and drink until you throw up your liver (but make sure you do it responsibly).

Previous years: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004

Happy Xmas (War is Over) 2009

2009-12-23T23:11:00.006Z

Bethlehem, West Bank

East Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine

Ramallah, West Bank

Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan

Previous years: 2006, 2007,2008

Happy Xmas (War is Over) 2008

2008-12-24T15:02:00.006Z

Sadr City, Baghdad, Iraq (Dec 24)

Amritsar, India (Dec 24)

Zimbabwe Embassy, London (Dec 20)

Episode V: The Seasonal Message Strikes Back

2008-12-24T10:15:00.008Z

It's that time again. Happy shoppers are congregating in the cathedrals of consumerism, turkeys are contemplating going into hiding and Ron Wood's on tour once more. The annual celebration of Cliff Richard's birthday is a holiday replete with traditions old and new, but none more important than the Disillusioned kid seasonal message. Now in it's fifth year (no I hadn't either) this is almost the only reason this blog exists, given its inactivity over so much of the previous year. Fortunately its also a tour de force of shiny prose, witty reflections and cutting insight. (Note: prose, reflection and insight are not guaranteed.)

This is usually my opportunity to reflect on the so-called "War on Christmas" which the oxygen wasters of the right get so excited about. This year, the latest front in this war has opened up not far from me in Nottingham. Greenwood Junior School in Sneinton has got into all sorts of trouble for postponing a Christmas performance. According to the Torygraph:

Greenwood Junior School sent out a letter to parents saying the three-day festival of Eid al-Adha, which takes place between December 8 and 11, meant that Muslim children would be off school. That meant planning for the traditional nativity play were shelved because the school felt it would be too difficult to run both celebrations side by side.

The move has left parents furious. Janette Lynch, whose seven-year-old son Keanu attends the school, in Sneinton, Nottingham, said: "The head has a whole year to plan for Eid and so she should be able to plan for both religious festivals. I have never heard of this at a school. It is the first year my son has been there and a lot of the mums like me were really looking forward to seeing the children in the nativity."

Predictably, this hasn't gone down well with the fascist onanists of the BNP who quickly moved in to try and make political capital from the controversy. They grumbled, "such outrages will inevitably progress from the exception to the norm, if Britain fails to embrace the BNP and continues its present headlong plunge into the abyss."

Of course, reality is rather more complicated than the knuckle draggers can understand. An Associated Press report suggests that it isn't a nativity at all, but rather a pantomime (Cinderella, in fact) and that it hasn't been cancelled, only postponed to late January.

This pattern will be familiar to students of the War on Christmas: a manufactured controversy fuelling manufactured outrage which can then be capitalised on by the political right. In America where the Christian right is a major political movement this is all a much bigger deal. Here it's rather easier to be dismissive. The recently leaked BNP membership list indicates that the BNP are not a major political force in the Nottingham city area and with several of their prominent members in the area having left the party over the last year or so (including those most likely responsible for the leak) this can't have done them many favours.

In any case, as I've argued in previous years, the fundamental premise of the War on Christmas is wrong. Christmas is only superficially a Christian festival. The timing and most of the traditions are taken wholesale from paganism and any number of religious festivals take place at this time of year. Personally as a godless atheist hedonist I intend to enjoy as many of them as possible with little or no regard for their theocratic justifications. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we abolish religion and smash the state!

Happy Christmas, Chrismukkah, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, Duckmass, Hannukah, Hogmany, Holidays, HumanLight, Koruchun, Kwanza, New Year, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Winterval, Yalda and/or Yule!

The War on Christmas

2008-12-20T20:02:00.004Z

The Greeks really know how to celebrate Christmas.

World's smallest campaigners strike

2008-08-08T23:31:00.001+01:00

More info here.

Don't let them deport my friend!

2008-05-25T08:46:00.004+01:00

I've known Hich for years and now the bastards want to deport him to Algeria...

If you know Hich and/or can help in any way, get int touch with the campaign.

Website: http://freehichamyezza.wordpress.com
Email: staffandstudents@googlemail.com
Phone: 07948590262

The press release does a pretty good job of summing up what's going on...

From a group of Nottingham residents, concerned student and academics at the University of Nottingham.
For immediate use, 24/05/08 SATURDAY

Notts Uni detainee innocent but still facing deportation

Hicham Yezza, a popular, respected and valued former PhD student and current employee of the University of Nottingham faces deportation to Algeria on Sunday 1st June. This follows his unjust arrest under the Terrorism Act 2000 on Wednesday 14th May alongside Rizwaan Sabir and their release without charge six days later.

It has subsequently become clear that these arrests, which the police had claimed related to so-called “radical materials” involved an Al Qaeda manual downloaded by Sabir as part of his research into political Islam and emailed to Yezza for printing because Sabir couldn’t afford to get it printed himself.

There has been a vocal response from lecturers and students. A petition is being circulated, letters have been sent by academics across the world and a demo is being planned for Wednesday. 28th May. This has clearly been deeply embarrassing to a government currently advocating an expansion of anti-terror powers.

On his release Hicham was re-arrested under immigration legislation and, due to confusion over his visa documentation, charged with offences relating to his immigration status. He sought legal advice and representation over these matters whilst in custody. On Friday 23rd May, he was suddenly served with a deportation notice and moved to an immigration detention centre. The deportation is being urgently appealed.

Hicham has been resident in the U.K. for 13 years, during which time he has studied for both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Nottingham. He is an active member of debating societies, a prominent member of an arts and theatre group, and has written for, and edited, Ceasefire, the Nottingham Student Peace Movement magazine for the last five years.

He is well known and popular on campus amongst the university community and has established himself as a voracious reader and an authority on literature and music. An application for British citizenship was underway, and he had been planning to make his yearly trip to Wales for the Hay Festival when he was suddenly arrested.

The authorities are clearly trying to circumvent the criminal justice system and force Hicham out of the country. Normally they would have to wait for criminal proceedings to finish, but here they have managed to convince the prosecution to drop the charges in an attempt to remove him a quick, covert manner. The desire for justice is clearly not the driving force behind this, as Hicham was happy to stand trial and prove his innocence.

Hicham had a large social network and many of his friends are mobilising to prevent his deportation. Matthew Butcher, 20, a student at the University of Nottingham and member of the 2008-9 Students Union Executive, said, “This is an abhorrent abuse of due process, pursued by a government currently seeking to expand anti-terror powers. Following the debacle of the initial ‘terror’ arrests they now want to brush the whole affair under the carpet by deporting Hicham.”

Supporters have been able to talk with Hicham and he said, “The Home Office operates with a Gestapo mentality. They have no respect for human dignity and human life. They treat foreign nationals as disposable goods - the recklessness and the cavalier approach they have belongs to a totalitarian state. I thank everyone for their support - it’s been extremely heartening and humbling. I’m grateful to everyone who has come to my aid and stood with me in solidarity, from students to Members of Parliament. I think this really reflects the spirit of the generous, inclusive Britain we know - and not the faceless, brutal, draconian tactics of the Home Office.”

[ENDS]

Nottingham Celebrates Mayday with Moazzam Begg

2008-05-02T18:28:00.006+01:00

In recent years Mayday in Nottingham has once again become a major celebration with the march from the Brewhouse Yard already something of a tradition. As successful as these demonstrations have been, they have taken place on the nearest weekend to May 1st, with little happening on the day itself. This year, the Mayday Organising Committee (an off-shoot of the Nottingham Refugee Campaign Group) felt that something should be done to mark the day itself and decided to organise a rally addressed by a local asylum seeker and former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg.

The event had originally been intended to take place in the International Community Centre (ICC) on Mansfield Road, but Moazzam Begg is a well-known name and a major draw, so it was felt necessary to move to the New Mechanics on North Sherwood Street. This was probably a wise decision as something like 70-80 people turned up on the day.

Before Moazzam spoke, the meeting was adressed by Amdani Juma, a local asylum seeker, familiar to anybody whose been involved in refugee issues in Nottingham. A refugee from Burundi where he was a pro-democracy activist, for which he was tortured, Amdani came to the UK in 2003 and was granted humanitarian protection. Since finding himself in Nottingham he has busied himself campaigning on refugee issues, raising awareness about AIDS, involving himself in various fora around the city and even became a member of Home Office run National Refugee Integration Forum. Despite all this, his application for Indefinite Leave to Remain was rejected by the Home Office and his appeal against this decision unsuccessful.

Amdani recounted his earliest celebration of Mayday as a child of eight in Burundi. At his instigation a one minute silence was held to remember workers across the world who had died in the struggle for a better world. His talk was wide ranging, but he stressed that he was proud to be an asylum seeker, because it meant that he was a survivor. He described his life as being like living more than one life, with his current struggle for Indefinite Leave to Remain being his fifth life. He also used the talk as an opportunity to promote the sponsored walk he is planning to undertake later in the month to raise money for an AIDS charity.

Moazzam Begg began his talk by musing on the word "Mayday," which he noted is French for "help me." An apposite phrase given his own experiences. Moazzam was one of nine British Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay by the US government. Released in 2005 without charge he has yet to receive any compensation or an apology. Since his release he has spoken widely and published a book, Enemy Combatant, in which he recounts his experiences of extra-judicial detention.

His neatly honed talk explored issues of freedom in the shadow of the "War on Terror." He noted that in surveys of "Britishness," the signing of the Magna Carta was often pointed to as a key event. The document enshrined protection against unlawful detention, a principle which was exported across the world, but which is now under attack. He pointed out that shortly after his abduction at gunpoint in front of his wife and children, his family had issued a writ of haebus corpus in the Pakistani courts. While unsuccessful, it demonstrates the idea's power.

He seemed interested in the way such high ideals had been corrupted and noted with irony the motto which had been plastered across the facility at Guantanamo: "Duty bound to protect freedom." It is this bizarre interpretation of freedom, he suggested, which allowed the US to dub the invasion of Iraq "Operation Enduring Freedom," as if freedom were something which had to be endured.

For someone detained for almost three years, Moazzam was surprisingly fair about his captors. he asserted that, while bad, Guantanamo was not the worst prison on earth. Simply the most notorious. He was clear that there were worse establishments, specifically those where people were killed or forced to see others killed. These, he explained, were what interrogators would threaten recalcitrant subjects with and a number of people being detained by the US have found them shipped to the likes of Egypt for a more thorough going-over than Americans had a taste for. In fact, his relaxed view extends so far that he hopes to tour, later this year, with a young American who had been one of his jailers.

Moazzam argued that the treatment of Muslims in the "War on Terror" with compared unfavourably with that of the Irish Catholic population in northern Ireland at the the height of "The Troubles." He pointed out that even at the height of internment, people were only being held without trial for up to three days. Now the government is seeking to give the police power to detain people for up to ninety days. He clearly saw this as a far broader issue. Noting that even former Secretary of State Colin Powell had called for the closure of Guantanamo he stressed that this would not address the problem of other, less prominent, detention centres (Bagram, Diego Garcia and others).

After the speakers, the discussion was opened up to the floor for questions and contributions. There was also an announcement about plans to mobilise against the BNP's Red White and Blue festival. The event is being held between 15-17 August in Denby, Derbyshire with campaigners planning to mobilise on Saturday 16 August from 9am.

All in all, this was an impressive, well attended event. The organisers are to be congratulated and there's something to build on for next year, but first there's the actual Mayday demonstration: 12 noon, Saturday May 5 starting at the Brewhouse Yard. Hopefully I'll see you there.

Nottingham Uni: The Veggie's Friend (Interview)

2008-04-28T19:29:00.006+01:00

The University of Nottingham was recently voted the Number 1 "Most Vegetarian-Friendly UK University," in a poll conducted by Peta2, the youth wing of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). In achieving first place, Nottingham beat Glasgow University, which has Vegan Society accreditation, into second place.

According to Peta2, the university has been "working alongside Vegsoc – Nottingham University Vegetarian and Vegan Society." Alex Claridge, the society's social security was kind enough to answer a few questions about what the group have actually been doing.

Links: Nottingham University | Peta2 | VegSoc

Q: What's your response to the university's success in the Peta2 poll?

AC: We’re delighted with the result, and incredibly proud of the accolade both as a society and more widely as a university. Although there have been previous animal ethics societies at the uni, this is our first year as ‘vegsoc’and, already, we’ve achieved a very great deal – although that isn’t to say there isn’t more to do! Recogition from PETA is really just the icing on the (vegan!) cake for everyone who has been involved in the society this year, and an affirmation that whatever we’ve done this far is working.

Q:What is your personal experience of being vegetarian on campus?

AC: It is probably more accurate to answer this one in terms of vegetarian and then vegan. As a vegetarian on campus, you can be sure that there will be options for you daily and usually a good selection. For vegans, Nottingham Uni is certainly better than many Universities; we’re currently going through the motions to finalise Vegan Society accreditation, and we hope to be the first English Uni and the second in the UK. In practice, this means that there will always be vegan options, which is a fantastic starting point, and beyond that we’re committed to ensuring that there will be a variety of exciting and great-tasting vegan friendly options.

Q: What have you been doing to encourage the university to become more vegetarian friendly?

AC: In terms of catering, the University have needed little encouragement! I think more and more people are recognising that vegetarian and vegan lifestyles have much to offer and attract a wide variety of people from all walks of life – including both students and lecturers! Perhaps we’ve hastened the process, by offering advice, feedback and the framework for development but our progress in terms of vegan and veggie catering has very much been a co-operative effort on behalf of both our society and the university. We went to the University with solutions rather than problems; I think it is important to be positive in whatever your goal – the emphasis is on what we can do, not what we can’t.

Q: What else do you hope to get from the uni?

AC: We don’t really see our work as a case of what we can ‘get’ from the University – we are after all technically part of the same institution! Rather, we hope that we can fulfil our role as a representative group for vegetarians and vegans at the University to the very best of our abilities. We hope to continue developing food at the University in the same direction to cement the University as truly a leader in terms of veggie and vegan catering. Likewise, we are always glad to tackle issues that might be raised by individual members.

We’re also hoping to expand our sphere of influence and involvement, beyond its current realm of food, to include other issues of concern at the university. We’re acutely aware that Nottingham, for all its achievements in some areas, doesn’t have the best reputation for its involvement in vivisection. We would certainly like to encourage a more open dialogue and discussion about the role of vivisection in the University’s research and teaching, and also open up the floor for feedback and discussion with the student population. Hopefully, this is something that the University will feel able to work with us on – it would be fantastic to boast of a University that is truly leading the way in all areas for vegetarians, vegans and animal-lovers alike.

Q: What other activities has the society been involved  in?

AC: We maintain a busy social programme, including fortnightly meals out and a weekly bar night at the wonderful alley café. We’re developing a discount card for our members to get top offers at restaurants and stores around the city, and we’re currently administering a campus wide survey to get the first comprehensive impression of veggie/vegan numbers on campus and to tailor our work with the University over coming months to student feedback and needs. Over the summer vacation period we’re hoping to produce a essential guide to veggie Nottingham to distribute to new students in September. Members are also working on a compendium of great veggie and vegan recipes to offer online. We like to be kept busy!

Q: The group recently changed it's name from Animal Ethics Society to Vegetarian and Vegan Society. Can you say someting about the thinking behind this change and what it has meant in terms of your activities?

AC: The name change was, in many ways, one of practicality rather than any deeper meaning! The society is generally known as vegsoc - with the official title more one for forms and paperwork. Vegsoc is considerably easier to say, write and brand than Animal Ethics for a start. The society does have a different approach to the previous Animal Ethics society, although I would argue our aims are much the same - broadly speaking, we're in it for the animals. From the outset, our focus has been on showing the fun side of vegetarianism and veganism and dispelling any myths that people may have. We totally re-branded the society, and we've enjoyed a busy social schedule and met lots of new members along the way.

There are a million and one ways you could run a society under the banner of vegetarianism, but our particular take is that by creating a friendly, accessible, and relaxed atmosphere for would-be members and the curious we're doing our bit to take vegetarianism, and particularly veganism, to the masses. Recently, we've had a week of meals and vegan buffets and we had, at times, 50% non-vegetarians dining with us - non-vegetarians who chose to come to our events, on the basis of great food, and a good time. Veggies for the world, albeit one meal at a time! That isn't to say we don't have members who are interested in the academic, philosophical or campaigning side of things - certainly, we're glad to talk to anyone about the 'more serious' side of animal ethics - but there is no reason you can't have fun in the process. No egos, no attitudes, no nonsense - let the good (veg) times roll.

Q: As a society you've lobbied university authorities. You've also hosted former ALF-member Keith Mann an advocate of property destruction. Can you say something about the benefits of these very different campaigning methods?

AC: It was our pleasure to receive Keith, and we’d be interested in hosting similar talks in the future. The event itself offered our members and the local community alike a fantastic opportunity to watch ‘Behind the Mask’, an award-winning documentary considering the animal rights movement as a whole and also, the much-publicised Animal Liberation Front. Keith’s broad experience of the animal rights movement, and integral role in the documentary made him a fantastic speaker to introduce the film and also talk about his much-acclaimed book From Dusk ‘Til Dawn.

As a society we are strictly peaceful and campaign entirely within legal means for progress and change. Our approach is drastically different from that of direct action, however we also feel it is important to foster a wider awareness of the animal rights movement as a whole – both on an academic and a practical level. Detractors are keen to blurry the lines of distinction, or tarnish the animal rights movement as ‘extremist’ which is, I hasten to add, almost always unfounded. There is nothing extreme about opposing animal cruelty, and the issues at hand enjoy support from an ever-increasing and incredibly diverse cross-section of the general public. The best defence therefore, from would-be detractors, is to know your facts!

New Old Coal for Notts

2008-04-18T16:14:00.004+01:00

A coal mining firm is considering reopening a pit in Nottinghamshire which could be the deepest in the UK and one of the largest in Europe.

According to the BBC, Doncaster-based UK Coal are looking at reopening the Harnworth pit which closed in 2006. The pit is likely to reopen later this year, and could, they claim, create 400 jobs, although production would not actually be restarted for a further three years. Studies are being carried out at the moment, but the company believes there could be as much as 40 million tons of coal available at the pit.

Jeff Wood, vice president of the Union for Democratic Mineworkers (UDM, most famous for scabbing during the Miners' Strike), welcomed the reopening of the pit, coming, as it does, when the Wellbeck colliery in Nottinghamshire is coming to the end of its workable life and facing closure by the end of the year: "The good news is... there's now an opportunity to transfer to Harworth, which could potentially mean another 20 to 25 years of work."

With coal power a central concern of various climate change action networks, the reopening of Harnworth may not pass entirely unopposed. All the coal produced by UK Coal goes to customers in this country. The biggest of these are Drax Power Station in Selby, North Yorkshire, which in 2006 was the target of the first Climate Camp, as well as power firms EDF and E.ON. The latter has already been visited by local climate campaigners on more than one occasion. Last year, activists came close to shutting down the the E.ON-run Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station and on April 1 this year, the company's offices on Mount Street, Nottingham were blockaded as part of Fossil Fools Day.

Links: Camp for Climate Action | Climate IMC | The Coal Hole | Eastside Climate Action | Network for Climate Action

Interview with NUT activist

2008-04-16T18:14:00.004+01:00

On April 24, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) will hold the first national teachers strike in more than twenty years. Angry at a below inflation pay award, NUT members across the country have voted for industrial action at a ratio of four to one.

With real terms pay cuts being the in thing in the public sector right now, civil servants in the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) and further education lecturers in the University and College Union (UCU) have also voted to strike on the same day.

In Nottingham there will be a march from The Forest Recreation Ground at 10am, with a rally at the Congregation Hall, Castle Gate at 11am. Speakers will include Martin Sleath (Unison - who aren't striking), Mary Pope (PCS), Helen Bowler (UCU) and Liam Conway (NUT).

To give some insight into why teachers are striking, I interviewed Liam Conway, the Joint Secretary of Notts NUT and began by asking him what his impressive sounding title actually entails.

Q: For those of us unfamiliar with the intricacies of union bureaucracy can you explain exactly what a joint secretary is and what you do?

LC: A joint secretary is just an elected lay official who represents members in various situations, such as with the local authority, in schools etc. Normally it is a single secretary but for the last 3 years it has been a joint secretary in Notts. Other things secretaries or other officers may do is sort out communication with members, newsletters, emails, phone calls, letters etc. Finally the most important part of this role for me is mobilising members to fight for something, in this case pay and to avoid getting dragged into pointless bureacracy or meetings with the local auhority which have no serious objective of interest or value to teachers and other staff in schools. And - not to forget - keep pressure on the union leadership to fight the government, an activity that has produced a result in the first time for years in our case.

Q: Can you briefly explain how we got to where we are today? Why are you striking?

LC: 3 year pay cut up to 2007. Further proposed 3 year pay cut 2008-11. That's it in a nutshell, though there is stuff about a co-ordinated response with other public sector unions confronting Brown's 2% pay freeze. There are now 3 unions on strike on April 24th - NUT, UCU, PCS.

Q: What will be happening in Nottingham/Nottinghamshire? Can we expect to see picket lines outside schools in the county?

LC: There will be some picket lines at some big schools - depending on their strategic importance. Some schools will be closed completely to staff as well as students, so no pickets needed. We haven't finally discussed exactly which schools will have pickets. Of course there is nothing to stop any of the 500 schools in the city and county organising their own pickets and we would encourage this followed by attendance at the rally in Nottingham on April 24.

Q: What is your response the claim made by government spokesmen that this action will only harm children's education?

LC: A bit rich coming from a government that has re-introduced selection, given a whole new meaning to the idea of a gradgrind curriculum, saturated the lives of children with pointless and damaging tests, officially (according to Unicef) made our children some of the most unhappy in the world. Nuff said? Oh and strikes are also very educative - much more than a SAT.

Q: Can you say something about the NUT's pay campaign beyond the national strike?

LC: The Conference decision at Easter was to see what the 24th April was like - strength of the action, membership involvement etc. then consider another ballot. Sadly, against our judgement, the National Executive narrowly rejected a proposal to ballot for discontinuous action which would have allowed us to call action when and where we want. This action results from a ballot for a one day strke only.

Q: If, as seems likely, the government doesn't fold after a one day strike, what is likely to be the union's next step?

LC: I think I've answered that above, but there is no certainty here, even if April 24 is fantastically successful in terms of particpation and mood etc. I will be fighting and campaign for the action to be stepped up and spread across the public sector. We can now see the economy is close to melt down - workers should not carry the can for the crap the bosses have created.

Q: Teachers are a heavily unionised group, but rather than being organised by a single union membership is split across three bodies (NUT, NASUWT, ATL). What has been the response of the other unions to the NUT's decision to strike?

LC: At the moment all the teaching unions other than the NUT are in a social partnership deal with the government and appear prepared to do anything the government asks in return for a place at the negotiating table. Over the past few years they have conceded on a whole number of important issues detrimental to teachers. They are opposed to action on pay currently

Q: This strike, and the pay award which precipitated it, come at a time when the government is increasingly calling on public sector workers to tighten their belts and accept meagre pay awards. How do you see the situation faced by teachers fitting into this broader context and do you think striking could have a positive impact beyond those in the teaching profession?

LC: Striking is the basic self-defence for any worker. In my view teachers are workers, wage slaves etc. What option do they have when their pay is being cut. And there is all the stuff about New Labour's education policies which are extremely detrimental to children - their health as well as their education.

Links: NUT | Nottingham City NUT | Nottinghamshire NUT

One from our labour correspondent...

2008-04-12T16:03:00.005+01:00

Conductors on trains to and from Nottingham are being balloted for strike action.

The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) is balloting around 150 conductors following a dispute over coverage of services on Sundays. The union is urging its members to vote in favour of industrial action. If the union does go on strike, it would affect local services from Nottingham, but not those to London.

The dispute stems from plans by East Midlands Trains to use managers to provide emergency coverage for senior conductors on Sunday services. Senior conductors are responsible for the safety of passengers and the train itself. East Midlands Trains offers a voluntary arrangement for covering Sunday shifts and as they're not prepared to pay any more for people to do this they've struggled to find volunteers and several services have had to be canceled for lack of a senior conductor.

A spokesman for RMT explained, "They proposed to use managers and all sorts to cover the job. That is unsafe in our view. A senior conductor is in charge of a train - not the driver. They are responsible for the safety of the train and customers. There is strict training for them. If there is a problem with Sunday coverage it is because they are not paying enough." The spokesman said that the company had recently introduced ad hoc payments for senior conductors working on Sundays, but claimed that when RMT requested this arrangement be formalised East Midlands Trains instead proposed emergency cover by managers.

RMT are also unhappy about the way the company has attempted to bring the proposal in. The union's General Secretary Bob Crow complained, "The company is acting outside the agreed negotiating machinery and has already poured petrol on the flames by stopping RMT reps being released to undertake normal union duties. We want a negotiated settlement to this dispute, but that will not happen while the company is throwing its weight about."

East Midlands Trains are predictably unhappy about the situation, describing themselves as "very disappointed" about union's decision to ballot its members. Managing director Tim Shoveller said: "We have actually run over 97% of all Sunday services. Under the previous franchise on some Sundays there were as few as 50% of services running because of a shortage of staff. This is a fantastic improvement, achieved through better management and with the flexibility and commitment of our staff. I thank our staff for their continued dedication but we must now find a permanent solution to ensure the reliability of Sunday services. We're confused and disappointed that the RMT do not understand that we must be confident that we can operate our trains every day of the week for passengers. It's not something we can leave to chance."

East Midlands Trains took over the rail franchise, formed from the amalgamation of the former Midland Mainline and the eastern side of Central Trains, in November last year. Legally known as Stagecoach Midland Rail Limited, the company is part of the Stagecoach Group which also owns South West Trains as well as 49% of the Virgin Trains franchise. The group has been criticised for its business practices on a number of occasions. Its co-founder and chairman is Brian Souter a evangelical Christian and outspoken homophobe.

Other coverage: BBC Nottingham | Derby Evening Telegraph | Nottingham Evening Post

Bhutto RIP

2007-12-28T22:23:00.000Z

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is clearly a very big deal. I worry that we may look back on this attack as the moment Pakistan became a failed state. Many Pakistan People's Party supporters are asking questions about the Musharraff's failure to protect Bhutto, perhaps even holding him personally responsible. This can only compound widespread anger at the regime. Attempts to remove chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry from office in March drew hundreds of lawyers onto the streets, indicating that resentment had reached well into the middle-classes.

Bhutto's assassination is hardly an unusual occurence in modern-day Pakistan. Islamist fundamentalists are engaged in a bloody, and apparently growing insurgency, particularly in the regions bordering Afghanistan and Musharraff himself has been the target of attacks on a number of occasions. Such groups can only be empowered by Bhutto's death, although they will likely have to weather some kind of military response. One only has to look across the border to Afghanistan to see how difficult it is to beat such groups in territory they are intimately familiar with.

There's nothing inevitable about state failure, but the country is surely standing on the precipice and it's a hell of a long way down. The consequences for the people of Pakistan of an upsurge in conflict are obvious enough, but the ramifications for the wider world of a nuclear-armed state in disarray ought to be troubling.

Perhaps predictably, this atrocity has encouraged the more dimwitted islamophobes who hold that Bhutto's murder demonstrates the fundamental brutality and inhumanity of Islam. The reality, of course, is more complex. What this shows is rather that the real conflict is not between Islam and the West (Christianity?), but rather within Islam. This is more complicated than the simplistic conflict between secularists and fundamentalists envisaged by many liberals, encompassing a wide range of interpretations, traditions and movements, but will shape in very important ways the world we live in over the coming years and decades. Provided, of course, we manage to survive that long.

Happy Xmas (War is Over) 2007

2007-12-24T18:06:00.000Z

Um Salomona, West Bank

Baghdad, Iraq

Kabul, Afghanistan

Polar Express

2007-12-24T10:10:00.000Z

Don't you just love this country sometimes?

Rail companies will be closing their networks until Thursday morning from about 8pm tonight after rejecting demands for at least a basic service on Boxing Day.

Britain is the only major European country that will be without a rail service on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, despite huge growth in demand. The quarter of British households without access to a car will struggle to get to Boxing Day sports fixtures. The sales will be under way – but only those with cars are likely to benefit: trains do not resume until after 6am on the 27th.

I'm not particularly interested in sports fixtures, don't give a flying sleigh about the sales and plan to spend Christmas and Boxing day at home with the family, nevertheless as one of those without a car (I don't own one and can't drive anyway) I can empathise with those who will find themselves unable to get where they want to be because of this arrangement.

The excuse offered by Association of Train Operating Companies for this, frankly pathetic, state of affairs is that they're just not getting enough pocket money from the government. The association insisted that members would run services only if they received extra subsidy. A spokesman whined, “Train companies are not in the business of running services they know will lose money. Undoubtedly there would be some demand, but not enough to justify a commercial service.” A senior rail industry source told the Times: “We will run trains if the Government funds them. They already subsidise the railway for 363 days a year so why not the remaining two?”

A cross-party group of 28 MPs has signed an Early Day Motion expressing their "deep disappointment" with the rail companies and calling for them to get themselves on track to provide a proper service next year. What with the record of EDM's this isn't exactly encouraging, but it's a start and you might want to consider writing to your MP encouraging them to add their names. The lazy sods will probably be on holiday until mid-January, though.

This all points, of course, to the sheer lunacy of a privatised public transport system. It's overpriced, not very good and still requires a gargantuan amount of taxpayers money. Predictably, the Times article from which most of this post is derived doesn't draw the obvious conclusion, but polls show majority support for renationalisation of the railways and frankly even a government as incompetent as the current one ought to be able to do a better job than the money-grabbing fat cats currently holding the keys.

Episode IV: The New Seasonal Message

2007-12-23T19:06:00.001Z

It's that time of year again. The tree's up, the tinsel's out and Shane MacGowan's been dethawed for his annual outing. Winterval is well and truly upon us. The annual celebration of Cliff Richard's birth is a time closely associated with tradition: the giving of gifts; overconsumption; the singing of carol; the Docto Who christmas special; and, of course, the Disillusioned kid seasonal message. Now in its fourth year (honestly, count 'em) this seasonal event is hotly anticipated by nobody in particular, but might go someway to making up for my generally piss-poor efforts at blogging over the previous year.

Normally my seasonal ramblings consist primarily of various musings on the "War on Christmas" which assorted right-wing nutjobs insist is being waged by a conspiracy of secular-lefty-liberal-PC-islamist-thugs. Invented by American "conservatives" as a stick to beat their political opponents with the concept has been hinted at by some of the nuttier elements of the British right, but has yet to exert any real influence on British political culture. The fact that there isn't and never has been such a conflict outside the paranoid delusions and well-honed persecution complexes of Rebekah Wade and Stephen Green is probably a crucial factor in this absence.

This year I've been fortunate enough to avoid any mention of the War. The tabloids are obviously more interested in writing about a photogenic blond, white girl while the soi-disant "true defenders of the faith" in the BNP are too busy fighting amongst themselves to put up much of a defence. Even their "patriotic Christian" front-group the Christian Council of Britain seems to have nothing to say on the matter. If there were a war it looks like they'd be losing. Which ought to be a comfort.

For what it's worth I enjoy the festive season as much as anybody despite, or perhaps because of, my complete lack of faith. As I've suggested in the past, Christians have no monopoly over winter festivities. Indeed, they are a recurring theme in various cultures. This is hardly surprising. What better cure for the winter blues than a big party? Indeed winter festivities pre-date Christianity's emergence by some way. In fact, th Romans actually held a festival on December 25 which they called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, "the birthday of the unconquered sun." (Note the parallels with Christianity's birth of the son of God.) Christianity settled on the date largely arbitrarily, although the available evidence (much of it derived directly from biblical accounts) suggests that Christ was most likely born in the autumn. Holding the festival in winter served as a sweetener to putative converts who wouldn't have to give up their traditional parties. This also helps to explain the co-option of pre-Christian symbols such as holly.

To cut a long story short, I have no problem at all with stripping Christmas of its religious content. I don't believe that this inevitably reduces the holiday to a celebration of consumer capitalism. In a post written last year, Jason Godesky argued that gift giving is in a sense a hangover from tribal societies and noted that it offers an alternative to market economics, one operating according to an inherently incompatible logic. On this basis, he concluded, that a society in which Roy Wood got his wish and Christmas was celebrated everyday would be a gift-economy and hence something to be striven for. I know it's hard to believe as you do battle with crowds of angry shoppers to get that last copy of Delia Smith's latest cookbook, but Christmas is, in a small way, a glimpse of a post-revolutionary society. Just with Cliff Richard on the soundtrack.

In my experience, radicals never turn up the opportunity for a party so why should this one be any different? I'll be tucking into my nut roast on Tuesday, supping the odd alcoholic beverage and foreshadowing the coming gift economy as I'm sure will most of you. Enjoy it.

Happy Christmas, Chrismukkah, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, Duckmass, Hannukah, Hogmany, Holidays, HumanLight, Koruchun, Kwanza, New Year, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Winterval, Yalda and/or Yule!

2007-12-23T16:55:00.000Z

Something (via) for you to enjoy before you go off and hunt your Christmas turkey in the wilds of suburbia.

"I am the law!"

2007-12-06T17:33:00.000Z

This is pretty shocking, even for a bitter, old anarchist like me. What was it N.W.A. used to say?

2007-12-05T20:34:00.000Z

Nottinghamshire Police shots somebody with 50,000 volts last week. Bizarrely this doesn't seem to have been a particularly controversial move with anybody other than myself. And all I did was write an Indymedia article about it. I bet the Chief Superintendent is quaking in his boots.

Who watches the watchers?

2007-11-26T18:43:00.000Z

Last week's data disk fiasco in which Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs managed to lose two disks containing 25 million child benefit records was clearly a fuck up of huge proportions (but crucially not unique). If one could thing came out of it, however, it's the increased interest it has generated in the government's insatiable desire to know everything and anything it can about the population of the UK.

The most obvious manifestation of this desire is the introduction of identity cards. While this is a story which seems to have gone quiet in recent months, the preparations for the cards, and the database which they will feed into, continue apace. Many of the first-wave of interrogation centres, which those applying for ID cards will have to attend, are already open and if you apply for a passport for the first time (i.e. when you've never had one before) you already have to travel to one to be appropriately probed, poked, prodded and questioned.

The next big step looks to be the integration of the General Register Office (GRO), which handles the registration of births, marriages,civil partnerships and deaths, into the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) on April 1 next year. This is a step which has the advantage of being a bureaucratic step, likely to have little immediate impact on anyone beyond the GRO's employees. Nevertheless it represents a major increase in the amount of data held by the IPS and an important move towards the establishment of the National Identity Scheme.

While ID cards and the databases which the link to (the plural indicates that the government now intend to link three pre-existing databases rather than establish one single, combined one in order to save money) are the most worrying and controversial example of governmental data kleptocracy, but hardly unique.

The "Every Child Matters agenda" driven by the Children Act 2004 instituted a wide range of changes in local government provision for "children and young people," encouraging the merging of education and social service departments across the country. While the merits of this move are debatable (and we're unlikely to know for sure either way before somebody decides to try something else), it seems to me that the plans for a database of every child in the country are deeply worrying. This database, previously known as the Information Sharing Index or, simply, the Childrens Index has now been dubbed ContactPoint because of negative publicity about information sharing, but in my opinion remains no less worthy of those negative associations.

Action on Rights for Children explain:

ContactPoint is effectively a file-front that serves the whole range of agencies that may be involved with a child. It is intended to provide a complete directory of all children from birth, together with a list of the agencies with which s/he is in contact. It won’t hold any case records, but will enable practitioners to indicate their involvement with a family and contact each other in order to share information. It will also show whether an eCAF (an in-depth personal profile under the Common Assessment Framework) has been carried out and is available for sharing.

The theory is that only authorised personnel will have access to the data, but just how much faith are we expected to have in the measures intended to ensure this? I've worked in offices handling large amounts of data on children (which will presumably feed into ContactPoint) and it was an open secret that passwords, ostensibly to be used only be specified persons, would be used by other people. I'm less than convinced that this practice (motivated by a genuine desire to get the work done, rather than any kind of malice) is going to disappear and indeed it may well increase as more information is fed into the supposedly secure index.

This is all to say nothing of the gargantuan amounts of money being spent on setting the thing up. The government estimate it will cost £224 milion to set up and £41 million a year to run. We can safely assume that those will be underestimates. Imagine how many teachers, social workers or schools you could buy with that. (The figures sound particularly offensive given that I knew somebody working on this project in its early stages who used to recount stories of private consultants turning up on Friday's with bottles of champagne.)

Of course, in the spend huge amounts of money on a dubious databse stakes, ContactPoint pales into insignificance against the NHS "Spine," currently estimated at £20 billion this is the biggest IT project in the world. While the spine is a multifaceted project, central to it is the plan to create a huge database of patient's medical records and personal information. This generated considerable resistance last year from The Big Opt Out campaign who encouraged patients to write to their doctors asking them to withold their records.

I could go on. There's also the National DNA Database which police would very much like to expand; the integration of face recognition and Automated Number Plate Recognition software with the UK's unparalleled CCTV network; the growing number of schools fingerprinting their kids; and so on and so forth. Alone any of these would be dubious, together they begin to look distinctly worrying. Give that the incumbent government were the people who invaded Iraq do you really trust them with this much information on you? I certainly don't.

Somebody should really do something about all this...

Come here often?

2007-11-20T13:56:00.000Z

It seems like ages since I posted anything here and, whaddya know, it really is. My sincere apologies to those of you who've missed your daily dose of disillusionment.

There's certainly been a lot of water under the proverbial bridge since my last electronic excretion. While I did burn out for a fair while, I've kept myself busy: I've written a dissertation; moved house; camped to combat climate change; got a merit in my Masters; been arrested; got a job (albeit a temporary one); helped defeat fascism in Notts; been on the radio; kicked against the pricks; and cooked a mean veggie lasagne, but not necessarily in that order. None of this explains my absence from the blogosphere, but I include this list here to demonstrate that I haven't spent the whole time watching paint dry.

Now I've got teh interwebs set up in my new digs I ought to be posting here rather more often, but then how many blogs are there out there where the last post, updated months ago, promises just that? Watch this space. Just don't expect too much.

2007-07-19T15:52:00.000+01:00

I really hope this isn't true. I thought we'd finally got rid of him.

Live Earth or let die

2007-07-11T17:18:00.000+01:00

Even the most insulated of you cannot have failed to notice that Live Earth took place last Saturday, offering rock stars an opportunity to flaunt their supposed environmental credentials in a spare fifteen minutes, before jumping on their private jet to swan off to a gig elsewhere. (Unfortunately, this is hardly an exaggeration.) The corporate sponsorship is similarly unconvincing. Even Chevrolet, who make SUVs which wouldn't look out of place on a battlefield, have their fingers in the pie.

Excuse me if I sound cynical, but my conversion to the Church of Al Gore is late in coming.

I'm far more interested in the burgeoning direct action movement which was kicked off by last year's Camp for Climate Action near the Drax power station in Yorkshire. At the moment this movement is relatively small and it is characterised by a distinct lack of celebrity involvement. Nevertheless, a series of high profile actions at power stations and airports have had a direct impact on carbon dioxide emissions and the leading emitters, even inspiring the emergence of a similar movement in the States. If they don't change in response to the arguments, perhaps a threat to their profit margins will encourage them.

That is not to say that we can rely on direct action alone. A recent Ipsos Mori poll found that 56% of those surveyed believed that there was still a debate amongst scientists about the reality of anthropogenic climate change, with a further 13% apparently unsure either way. The reality of course, is that the scientific consensus is overwhelming. Overturning the work of the well-funded denial lobby and the mainstream media's "impartiality" (which has all too often meant giving the deniers undeserved legitimacy) will not be easy, but it is vital if we are serious about halting climate change.

To be sure, this was one of the stated intentions of Live Earth, but did it really have any success in this regard. What little I saw of the TV coverage in the UK was less than insightful, with presenters Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton interspersing the various bands with assorted banalities. David Attenborough was, presumably, busy.

It's almost a cliche, of course, to note that China alone, with its booming economy and massive population could single-handedly cancel out any improvements made by the rest of the world and these concerns have only been increased with the announcement, last month, that the People's Republic has overtaken the US as the world's leading emitter of CO2. This is a real problem and a difficult one, but shouldn't be allowed as an excuse for inaction in the west.

It is noteworthy that, in a fashion, China too is witnessing the emergence of an environmental direct action movement. Unlike its British counterpart, however, the Chinese movement seems to be a response primarily to local concerns. The head of the country's environmental agency admitted last week that public anger at pollution had fueled a wave of petitions, demonstrations and riots across the country. Whether these expressions of anger, which seem to be largely autonomous and spontaneous, can impact on policy, or if they are simply repressed out of existence by the Chinese state remains to be seen. Nevertheless, I wonder if there isn't some scope for solidarity efforts on the part of British activists. The future of the world might just depend on it.

2007-06-12T17:38:00.000+01:00

The true message of the new Olympics logo has finally been revealed and not everybody's gonna like it...

Save Darfur from Safe Darfur?

2007-06-08T17:52:00.000+01:00

Apparently the Save Darfur Coalition, a US-based coalition campaigning against Sudanese atrocities in the region, is having some internal difficulties (via), following its decision to call for a more aggressive response by the US. This hasn't gone down well with aid agencies on the ground, whose views the Coalition claimed to represent, necessitating a reshuffle of the organisation's top people:

Sam Worthington, the president and chief executive of InterAction, a coalition of aid groups, complained to Mr. Rubenstein by e-mail that Save Darfur’s advertising was confusing the public and damaging the relief effort.

“I am deeply concerned by the inability of Save Darfur to be informed by the realities on the ground and to understand the consequences of your proposed actions,” Mr. Worthington wrote.

He noted that contrary to assertions in its initial ads, Save Darfur did not represent any of the organizations working in Darfur, and he accused it of “misstating facts.” He said its endorsement of plans that included a no-flight zone and the use of multilateral forces “could easily result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of individuals.”

Another aid group, Action Against Hunger, said in a statement last week that a forced intervention by United Nations troops without the approval of the Sudanese government “could have disastrous consequences that risk triggering a further escalation of violence while jeopardizing the provision of vital humanitarian assistance to millions of people.”

Aid groups also complain that Save Darfur, whose budget last year was $15 million, does not spend that money on aid for the long-suffering citizens of the region.

To be sure, the views of aid agencies should not be accepted unquestioningly, but they can hardly be dismissed out of hand by anybody who claims to be genuinely interested in the wellbeing of Darfurians.

There are in any case any number of problems which military intervention raises. Bear in mind that Darfur is usually described as being about the same size as France. Those of you with good memories may recall that prior to the 2003 invasion Iraq was often described in similar terms. Long story short: Darfur's the same size as France (more or less) and it hardly needs me to point out how problematic military intervention there (led by a 150,000 US troops) has been. Even a more subtle approach like a no-fly-zone while superficially attractive isn't without difficulties: "Aid groups and even some activists say banning flights could do more harm than good, because it could stop aid flights. Many aid groups fly white airplanes and helicopters that may look similar to those used by the Sudanese government, putting their workers at risk in a no-flight zone."

The situation in Darfur is unquestionably bleak. Although I remain unconvinced that it fulfills the requirements of the Genocide Convention 1948 which would render it "genocide" in international law, the fact that hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions displaced is indisputable. I follow Alex de Waal in understanding the conflict as a particularly brutal counterinsurgency campaign, begun in response to the emergence of armed resistance groups amongst the population of Darfur. This doesn't make the Sudanese response anymore justifiable, far from it, but it does go someway towards correcting the usual liberal view which seems to assume that Darfurians as helpless, merely waiting around to be either killed or rescued by western benevolence.

This perspective also raises the possibility of an alternative response to Khartoum, namely the possibility that we do what we can to support those groups in the region actively resisting the Sudanese government and the Janjiweed. I don't want to pretend this is a straight-forward matter given the divided nature of the resistance (one SLA splinter group ironically operates under the name SLA-Unity), to say nothing of the Justice and Equality Movement's roots in the Islamist faction of the Sudanese government (they fell out with the militarists in 1999), but it is telling that this possibility is so rarely raised.

2007-06-01T22:18:00.000+01:00

"'[T]errorist' is a word so debased and loaded by political use that, if it has any meaning at all, it is counterproductive. There is no such objective thing as a terrorist. A criminal is a person who has been convicted of a crime. We can examine a person’s records and make an unemotional determination of whether or not they are a criminal. But a terrorist is, in practice, a person who fights for a cause we do not believe in using methods that we do not approve of. Calling someone a terrorist is a value judgement." - Nature

Beer Not Bombs

2007-06-01T14:09:00.000+01:00

Ian Bone, Bash The Rich: True-Life Confessions of an Anarchist in the UK, Tangent Books, Bath, 2006, 281 pp

I've always had a soft-spot for Class War. Nobody makes political propaganda quite like them. One of their recent stickers, for instance, consists of a picture of a scalpel with the message, "Mess with out NHS and we'll mess with you." Of course, not everybody's so keen on the unrepentantly anatgonistic stylings or the group's sense of humour. They also get considerable kudos for their decision in 1997 to wind themselves up (a decision they consciously made themselves, something wwhich is virtually unheard of in political circles) which led to issue 73 of their eponymous paper, an explanation of their decision and a critique of themselves and the wider Left and anarchist movements. (Incidentally, if you haven't read this, you really should, it's quite brilliant.) Of course, the fact that they're still producing paraphernalia testifies to the fact that the organisation was promptly restarted by former members, but that's by the by. Anyone wanting an insight into the politics which guided and the context which gave rise to Class War could do a whole lot worse than pick up a copy of founding member Ian Bone's memoirs.

The book starts with a perusal of the Bone family's radical heritage heritage. While his grandfather had been a miner his dad became a butler and his mother a housekeeper. Despite this apparently servile position, both were solid Labour (not merely Labour voters, Bone stresses). Campaigning for the party in constituencies which had previously been dyed-in-the-wool Tory strongholds.

While Bone inherited this commitment to working-class politics, he became an anarchist and was heavily involved in the movement while at Swansea University. His accounts of participation in the anti-Vietnam movement are particularly interesting and he still holds a grudge against Tariq Ali for bottling a march on the US Embassy and acquiescing in its redirection to Hyde Park, where it was obviously less likely lead to a serious riot.

Remaining in Wales for some years after finishing uni, Bone became peripherally involved in the nascent Welsh Republican movement. While I don't want to question the sincerity of those involved in this movement, the sheer ridiculousness of so much of its campaigning contribute to some of the funniest moments in what is a consistently funny book. In one incident, a number of activists discuss "retaking" Hereford, apparently in some detail, noting that the local police force are unlikely to put up much resistance. These plans are only abandoned when Bone points out that Hereford is where the SAS are based.

While Bone's early political life is intriguing and amusing, often in equal measures, the book's real draw is inevitably his formative role in Class War. The movement grew out of a single paper Bone and a number of others knocked together in the hope of shaking things up in the anarchist movement which they considered to be moribund. They never thought about making this a regular publication, but it proved to be hugely popular and was soon followed up. Beginning in April 1983, the paper would grow to reach a readership of 15,000 at the height of the Miners' Strike, at least according to Bone.

Class War the group would grow out of the paper, but despite the publication's huge success, the organisation itself never grew much beyond 50 people. Bone makes no attempt to cover-up the very real differences which existed amongst this group. Debates appear to have been lengthy and often forceful, something which is unlikely to have been helped by the extensive intake of alcohol which took place in the course of most meeting. What is particularly surprising given the accusations of "macho" posturing levelled at Class War is quite how much time seems to have been spent discussing sexual politics: prostitution, porn, monogamy and even compulsory bisexuality.

In the early days, Class War focused on intervening in other campaigns, hoping to radicalise the participants. In October 1983 they turned up at a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) demonstration and tried to storm the stage when Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock ("Kinnockio") was invited to speak. Later they turned up at an animal rights demo organised by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) demo against a company called Biorex where they hoped to build links with the nascent animal liberation movement. After a sit-down protest led to a riot, Class War crashed the post-march rally BUAV were holding in a nearby Town Hall to protest the organisation's failure to support the rioters. They demanded and were granted a speaker. On this basis, one of their number was sent on-stage only to ignore what he had been told to say by the rest of the group and drunkenly assert, "Hitler was a fucking vegetarian," before stumbling off-stage.

In fact, riots play a central role in the book, as they did in Class War's politics. Bone had, after all, set the organisation up with the hope of building links with those who had launched riots in inner-city areas in 1981. For this reason, I suspect it's unlikely to go down with your average pacifist, although they aren't really the target market. What is perhaps surprising is Bone's openness about his participation in various riots and disturbances. Perhaps he figures the cops know it all already? Or don't care? Whatever, it certainly makes for an engaging, action packed read.

The focus on violence (a word which, appears repeatedly throughout the book), brings to mind Dave Hann and Steve Tilzey's No Retreat, an account of militant anti-fascism in the UK in the 70s-90s and one of the few other political memoirs I've ever read. Unlike Hann and Tilzey, however, Bone doesn't underplay the more mundane aspects of political campaigning: meetings, paper sales, political discussions etc. Then again, it's possible that this simply reflects the fact that Class War meetings (often drunken affairs) were just more exciting than those held by Red Action and hence easier to fit into a book without risking losing half the readers.

This is certainly not a boring, self-aggrandising tome and it's quite the page-turner. It's also very funny (or, as Bone would no doubt have it, "fucking funny as fuck"). If I had one complaint it would be the way it seems to grind to a halt with the narrative located in late-1985, shortly before the Wapping strike. Perhaps this is indicative of a second volume, although I've seen nothing else to suggest this. If there is going to be another one, I'll definitely try and lay my hands on a copy. Which is another way of saying you should get hold of a copy of this one.

The unusual feeling of success

2007-05-31T13:09:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned briefly last week, the Chagossians have once again been victorious in the courts. On Wednesday May 23, the Court of Appeal upheld a ruling in the islanders favour last year. The three judges also ruled that the government should pay legal costs and withheld support for an appeal to the House of Lords. (You can read the judgement in full here.)

Regular readers will be familiar with the Chagossians forty-year struggle to return to the islands from which they were exiled by the British government to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia. Last week's ruling is clearly an important development, but is the third victory the Chagossians have achieved in the British court system since 2000 and so they've yet to actually return, although a handful were allowed to visit the islands briefly last year.

Richard Gifford, the Chagossian's lawyer opined:

It has been held that the ties which bind a people to its homeland are so fundamental that no executive order can lawfully abrogate those rights.

This is now the third time that Olivier Bancoult, the leader of the Chagossian community in exile, has proved to the satisfaction of English judges that nothing can separate his compatriots from their homeland.

They now call upon the British government for a new start in this abusive relationship and to proceed with the utmost urgency to restore these loyal British subjects to their homeland.

In the course of his judgement, Lord Justice Sedley stated that

while a natural or man-made disaster could warrant the temporary, perhaps even indefinite, removal of a population for its own safety and so rank as an act of governance, the permanent exclusion of an entire population from its homeland for reasons unconnected with their collective wellbeing cannot have that character and accordingly cannot be lawfully accomplished by use of the prerogative power of governance.

Having seen victory turn to inaction on previous occasions, the Chagossians greeted the ruling in silence, but their de facto leader Olivier Bancoult, emerged from court, smiling and making the V for victory sign with his fingers (see picture, above). "I'm very happy for my people," he told supporters and journalists. "We will go back and make Chagos great."

Of course, the Foreign Office less happy saying it was "disappointed," although a spokeswoman conceded that the islanders now had the right to return home, at least "in theory." Unfortunately, there's a very good chance they'll appeal the decision although so far they have merely stated their intention to consider an appeal. The UK Chagos Support Association are encouraging supporters to lobby their MPs and anybody else you can think of to try and forestall this possibility. The Association also notes that the Chagossians don't have the means to resettle the Archipelago on their own and urges the government to support them in doing so.

Even if the Foreign Office decline to appeal, as unlikely as that seems, it should be noted that the Chagossians victory is only partial. It appears that while the islanders have the right to return to 65 of the islands in the Archipelago, this doesn't extend to Diego Garcia, the largest and most famous. Few of the reports I've read are clear on this, but such was the conclusion drawn in the 2000 High Court ruling. Furthermore, as I've noted previously, Bancoult (and perhaps other Chagossians, although this is unclear) has accepted that the Americans are there for the forseeable future.

For what it's worth, I'd be more than happy to see the US evicted from the "footprint of freedom," but the Chagossians are few in number and many of them are elderly. I fully understand why they might be able to take what they can get even if it is less than they might have wanted initially. It's taken them forty-years just to get this far.

Update: Jonathan Edelstein has some excellent analysis of the legal wranglings which got us to this point and of the judgement itself.

Me Me Meme

2007-05-31T13:00:00.000+01:00

Interviewed by Pacian.

1. If someone asked you to provide a concise explanation of anarchism and its relevance, what would you say?

Errrrmmmm.... Concise you say?

Anarchism is a broad church and I certainly wouldn't claim to speak on behalf of the movement as a whole. For me though, it's about rejecting all forms of oppression whenever and wherever they appear: capitalism; fascism; fundamentalism; racism; patriarchy;heterosexism; ableism; environmental destruction; even speciesism. As such it is the ultimate revolutionary aspiration, a call for the complete reorganisation (or, perhaps, disorganisation) of society.

Crucially, however, anarchism, for me, isn't just utopian dreaming; about imagining what some far-off future society might look like "after the revolution". It's about getting out there and building that society in the here and now by fighting oppresive structures by any means necessary.

As I suggested, concision is a problem. The Situationists had the right idea, however: "Be realistic, demand the impossible!"

2. If you could only take one form of protest with you to the desert island, what would it be?

This is a difficult one. I'm big on the idea of "diversity of tactics," so I'm less than comfortable abandoning any potential forms of protest without a pretty good reason. Initially I was going to go with something exciting like a riot, but it occurs to me that there aren't likely to be many coppers on a desert island which will probably take the edge of the experience. Internecine rioting is likely to be considerably less satisfying.

I suppose then I should go with something practical like a protest camp. Food, shelter, solar showers, compost toilets, every mod-con for the discerning desert island inhabitant. Either that or a mass rally, because that'll mean there are plenty of people to talk to, although there will also be more mouths to eat. Perhaps we could dine on the socialist paper sellers?

3. Your spaceship is running out of oxygen! So that there's more to go around, which contemporary public figure do you push out of the airlock first? (They are all on board, having a microgravity cocktail party.)

I've spent sometime ruminating on this one and come to the conclusion that if all the public figures who deserve to be dumped in deep space are onboard my starfaring vessel and I can only throw one person out, than it's going to have to be me. How else can I deal with sharing oxygen withthe likes of Tony Blair, George Bush, Mahmoud Ahmajenidad, Osama Bin Laden, Islam Karimov and Cliff Richard?

4. One day you go to put something in the bin, and find that someone has thrown away a movie studio and a multi-million dollar movie budget. There is no name-tag on it or anything, and if the owner wanted it, they wouldn't have put it in the bin, so... What film do you make?

I should probably say I'd make an intelligent art-house work exploring political intrigue, character development and sexual repression. In reality, I'd probably find it very difficult to resist the urge to make a big-budget action film, dripping with explosives, shoout-outs, high-octane car chases, crazy stunts and scantily-clad women.

I know, I'm part of the problem.

5. Pop quiz, hotshot! A man wearing a balaclava is holding a gun to your head. "What is your favourite cartoon, animation or puppet show?" he asks you. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?

Shit myself?

(It's probably Family Guy, in case you were wondering.)

***

Here are the rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions (or leaving them in a comment on your blog). I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Victory!

2007-05-25T16:51:00.000+01:00

The Chagossians have won the right to return in the Court of Appeal. Of course, the government are going to appeal. I'm busy at the moment, but I'll write more in due course. In the meantime, enjoy Steve Bell's awesome cartoon from yesterday's Grauniad.

McDemos

2007-05-20T21:37:00.000+01:00

This is exactly what I need:

In this busy 24/7 world you often don't get the time to make your voice heard, so isn't it about time you contracted your protesting needs out?

We'll ruin multinationals while you relax with a cocktail by the pool. We'll force MPs from office while you catch up with Desperate Housewives on E4. Let us demonstrate for you!

We provide bespoke or off the peg demonstrations against governments, corporations and occasionally neighbours at a price to suit all pockets. No job to small or too big, from a discrete "boo" to literally renting a mob, we cater for all your protesting needs! (via)

I wonder how much they'd charge for an anti-fascist demo?

2007-05-18T21:17:00.000+01:00

Are YOU an animal rights extremist? Apparently I am.

Francophilia

2007-05-09T21:18:00.000+01:00

The French don't wait around do they? Within hours of the news that Nicolas Sarkozy (or "Sarko") had won the French presidential election on Sunday, protests against the result led to riots in Rennes, Toulouse, Nantes, Lyon, Paris, Dijon and Montpellier. On Sunday night alone, 730 cars were torched across France, with violence continuing on Monday and Tuesday evening. Meanwhile, on Monday unions promised to resist any attempt to force through "reforms."

The massive and ultimately successful campaign against the CPE (Contrat Première Embauche, Contract of First Employment) demonstrates that what we are witnessing in France isn't mere posturing. French social movements can stop so-called reforms dead in their tracks, causing massive disruption in the meantime. The flipside of this, of course, is that the majority of the French electorate were perfectly happy to vote for a right-wing authoritarian like Sarko (and in many cases were happy to do so twice). Perhaps they just wanted an excuse for a riot?

Sarko has demonstrated his connection with the common man by holidaying on a billionaire friend's luxury yacht following his victory on Sunday. The Socialists were able to stop fighting amongst themselves long enough to find a representative who described the trip as "ostentatious" and "scandalous." Even the conservative Le Figaro wasn't sure this was his best idea ever reporting that it had caused "concern among a number of friends of Nicolas Sarkozy."

Fuck the War!

2007-05-07T09:28:00.000+01:00

The delightfully named "Fuck the War Coalition!" have claimed responsibility for spraying anti-war slogans and breaking windows at the US Consulate in Edinburgh. The incident follows similar actions at an armed forces recruitment centre in the city and the offices of the pro-war MPs Alistair Darling and Nigel Griffiths.

2007-05-07T09:02:00.000+01:00

May 1 is International Workers Day (unless you live in the US where it's "Loyalty Day"). While there was a time when thousands of workers would come out to celebrate on the day itself, nowadays Mayday rallies (at least in the UK) tend to take place on one of the weekends on either side. In Nottingham we had ours on Saturday, and yours truly was there, camera in hand.

First they came for the animal rights activists...

2007-05-02T16:57:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, thirty people were arrested for alleged involvement in "extremism" in dawn raids carried out across the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands. Predictably the media are lapping it up, providing extensive quotations from the police, with minimal analysis. This time, however, it isn't Muslims they're after, but animal rights activists. This ought to be worrying and not just for people involved in animal rights activism.

NETCU is the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit established to facilitate the policing of "domestic extremism." Now, in an era of international terrorism and post-7/7 this might not seem so unreasonable, but pay careful attention to the definition of domestic extremism they use:

Domestic extremism is the term used to describe any unlawful or recognisably anti-social act carried out as part of an 'extreme campaign'.

It is often associated with campaigns focused around a single issue, such as animal rights.

Violence, you will note, does not figure here, mere illegality is sufficient. If you think that this is merely me being paranoid, I urge you to consider their definition of a "lock on":

A 'lock on' is when a domestic extremist fastens him/herself onto an object to cause an obstruction or disruption using a padlock in combination with arm tubes to make it difficult for the police to remove the individual, the object or both.

Lock ons usually involve several domestic extremists and can involved the use of multiple arm tubes, barrels, vehicles, clamps, D-locks in combination and at more than one location.

"Domestic extremists" appears to be the new term for what used to be known as "activists" or "campaigners," but those terms presumably lack the required shock value. It should be clear that the term has nothing whatsoever to do with violence. It is, after all, pretty difficult to be violent when you're fastened to somebody or something. (As if to underline the point, the front page of their website utilises a picture of the Clown Army.) It's certainly a definition which incorporates myself. How long then before the police are turning up at my house at 5.30 in the morning, and how long before anybody sees me again?

Going off on a slight tangent for a moment, NETCU have been particularly interested in animal rights activism (although they've been spotted on anti-GM demos). Of course, they claim to be "impartial." Tellingly, however, a perusal of their links page reveals a number of explicitly pro-vivisection organisations, but not a single animal rights group. As NETCU Watch ruefully note, not even the RSPCA merit a mention. Whatever one's opinion on vivisection (I'm sceptical about its value, but not actively involved in opposing it) this ought to raise a number of difficult questions. Personally, I find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that it is essentially a political police force set up to render activism ineffective.

NETCU, of course, is merely one element within the state's repressive arsenal, which has blossomed (if you'll excuse the confused metaphors) under New Labour: surveillance cameras are now ubiquitous; unauthorised protests in Parliament Square are illegal; solidarity with armed resistance groups is a criminal offence; Asbos can ban activists from whole areas; ID cards are on the way; and so on and so forth. Typically, the mainstream media seem happy to toe the line on all this. Stopping things getting any worse is going to be up to us. We'll just have to hope they don't arrest us all before we manage it.

2007-05-01T13:54:00.000+01:00

The latest Carnival of the Anarchy took place over the weekend, exploring the perennial violence/nonviolence debate and included a post by yours truly taking Ward Churchill's Pacifism as Pathology as a starting point. Obviously my contribution was brilliant, but some of the other stuff is worth a gander as well.

It's all Greek to me

2007-04-27T18:33:00.000+01:00

Earlier this week, riots shook the Greek penal system, as prisoners protested against the beating of one of their number.

The unrest began at Malandrinos prison in central Greece after the alleged beating of a bank robbery suspect by prison guards. Although designed for 260 inmates, the facility currently holds 440 in predictably cramped conditions. The protesting prisoners demanded a reduction of prison overcrowding and reform of Greece's parole system.

Police were called to the prison in central Greece after inmates refused to return to their cells and began throwing burning sheets and clothes from the roof. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman from the Justice Ministry stated that some 200 prisoners remained on the roof, following the breakdown of negotiations with ministry officials. "Police have entered the prison," she claimed, "and are trying to get them off the roof without using violence."

One inmate, described by Associated Press as a "spokesman" said police were "welcome" to take on prisoners. "We will kill for our dignity," convicted murderer Yiannis Palis told Antenna TV. "We will take this all the way." Unlike so much activist rhetoric you can't help feeling that his past form, suggests this promise should be taken seriously.

Although disorder had initially spread to ten other prisons, this had largely died out by late Tuesday. Police utilised stun grenades and tear gas to quash an uprising at a high security facility in Athens after a number of inmates tried to use the unrest to escape. The use of tear gas, appears to have been particularly controversial, as this institution is located in a densely populated area of the city. By Wednesday, authorities had regained control everywhere except Malandrios and another institution on Crete.

There have been a number of solidarity demonstrations in Greece, organised by the country's famously militant anarchist movement. On Wednesday, a group of anarchists, numbering anywhere between 30 and 80, marched through the centre of Athens, attacking shops, a bank, ministers' offices and a police station where they torched twelve police vehicles. Amazingly, despite clashes with the police at Kaningos Square, there were no arrests and the group dispersed into Exarcheia district, apparently a traditional anarchist neighborhood. Further arson attacks were carried out the following evening and into the early hours of the morning, with two cars belonging to the Uruguayan ambassador to Greece being among the targets (no, I don't know why either).

Till Death Do Us Part

2007-04-18T20:04:00.000+01:00

Subcomandante Marcos and Paco Ignacio Taibo II (2007) The Uncomfortable Dead: What's Missing is Missing, Carlos Lopez (trans.), Serpent's Tail, London, 280pp

Any discussion about The Uncomfortable Dead really needs to begin with a discussion of its two illustrious authors. Like me, I figure most of you will be unaware of Paco Taibo, but quotations on the back of the book describe him as "Mexico's most famous crime novelist" (Neal Pollack) and even as perhaps "the most important single writer working today" (James Sallis). While these are clearly impressive claims, it is, of course, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, the spokesperson of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN), who is the real surprise here. Thankfully, the book isn't just a novelty piece and the authors have the chops to back up their famous names.

Rather than develop a single thread, the two authors have settled on pursuing distinct but interlinked narratives, with each taking a turn at the reins in alternating chapters. In Marcos' chapters we are introduced to Elías Contreras a member of the Zapatista Investigation Commission, usually tasked with looking for people who have gone missing from EZLN territory) who finds himself dispatched by "El Sup" (Marcos himself) to "the Monster" (Mexico City).

The synopsis describes Elías' story emerging "amid a hallucinatory blend of different voices," and indeed this is an accurate description of what we are presented with. Largely written in the first person, the plot is passed between various narrators and additionally incorporating transcripts of intercepted communications, alongside extracts from radical texts by the likes of Mumia Abu-Jamal and Angela Davis. Taibo's chapters follow a more conventional structure revolving around Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, a private eye who specialises in unusual cases. When a client comes to him with a answering phone message from a man who should have died forty years ago, Belascoarán finds himself embroiled in a particularly bizarre case.

Of course, as is always the case in such novels, the two stories intersect. In this instance, in the hustle and bustle of Mexico City as both investigators find themselves in pursuit of a man by the name of Morales and are encouraged to join forces. The structure of the book means that at various points you see the same event from two perspectives, but don't expect that this will help you work out what's going on any quicker. If anything it has quite the opposite effect.

At times, the stylistic idiosyncracies of the novel, especially Marcos' chapters can be jarring. At one point, a character instructs Elías, "If you run into El Sup, tell him to quit screwing around with his stories and his novel and just plain tell us outright how it all ends." This is either a witty instance of postmodern irony or pretentious, self-referential tripe, I'm not entirely sure which. Elsewhere, one character cuts of his narrative part way through to claim that he's just been told he's not actually in the novel, before offering the reader a cigarette. Initially, this sort of thing seems very strange, but if you stick with it there's an interesting, and at times surprisingly emotional, story being told.

Down and Out in London

2007-04-15T12:48:00.000+01:00

George Orwell is perhaps most famous for writing 1984, which depicts a dystopian Britain in which the population are continuously monitored by The Party. It is darkly ironic that today, the area where he lived, like so much of the UK, is saturated with CCTV cameras, the modern day equivalent of Airstrip One's "telescreens":

On the wall outside his former residence - flat number 27B - where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.

Orwell's view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights.

The flat's rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside a conference centre in Canonbury Place.

In a lane, just off the square, close to Orwell's favourite pub, the Compton Arms, a camera at the rear of a car dealership records every person entering or leaving the pub.

Within a 200-yard radius of the flat, there are another 28 CCTV cameras, together with hundreds of private, remote-controlled security cameras used to scrutinise visitors to homes, shops and offices.

The Evening Standard (via)

2007-04-13T18:43:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, if you were out and about in the "real world" you might have bumped into me here. Fortunately for you, you probably didn't.

300 in 300 (characters)

2007-04-13T18:37:00.000+01:00

Possibly the single most racist film I have ever seen, pitting white heroes against evil, exotic, subhuman enemies of various shades. That this can be made in 2007 is instructive. It's also a rubbish film: clichéd, badly acted and, despite its visual pretensions, an unsatisfying cinematic spectacle.

Where did it all go wrong?

2007-04-11T21:10:00.000+01:00

"To understand the significance of this, it’s worth reminding oneself of who Sadr and his supporters are. While generally portrayed as violent anti-Sunni and anti-American extremists (the first charge is certainly true of many of them and the second is silly – being anti-American in Iraq is not extreme), Sadr and his supporters were also among the biggest victims of Saddam Hussein. Sadr’s great-uncle, great-aunt, father, and two elder brothers were murdered by Saddam’s regime. His followers, largely the poor, uneducated and downtrodden among Iraq’s Shi’a majority, were, along with the Kurds, Saddam’s biggest victims – especially in 1991, when Saddam put down their uprising with the aid of our current president’s sainted - or perhaps merely beatified - father.

"Nobody, except possibly the Kurds, should have felt happier about the removal of Saddam. Nobody should have been easier to win over to the Americans’ side if the slightest attention had ever been paid to ordinary Iraqis and their desires. Instead, nobody but the constantly brutalized residents of al-Anbar province in Western Iraq is a more implacable enemy of the United States."
-Rahul Mahajan

Take Back the Power

2007-04-10T12:02:00.000+01:00

Image Source

Earlier today (April 10), activists from Nottingham entered Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station and chained themselves to equipment, preventing it from operating, while supporters maintained a presence outside. The power station is coal-fired and generates huge amounts of carbon dioxide, contributing to global warming. The action is part of Spring into Action, "a week of workshops, events, music and action on climate change happening at different venues across Nottingham."

One of those involved in the action explained in a press release, "The threat of climate change is so huge and the government so complacent that the people themselves are now acting in proportionate response to this and targeting the root causes of climate change. It's not enough to reduce emissions individually – we need to act together to challenge fossil fuel consumption."

Ratcliffe was targeted because coal-fired power stations (of which it is one of the largest) are the biggest producers of CO2 per unit of electricity generated. It is also symbolically significant because the power station is visible from much of Nottingham and familiar to anybody who knows the city. The story certainly seems to have piqued the interest of local media receiving coverage on the The Evening Post and BBC Nottingham sites and was the top story on BBC local radio during their midday bulletin.

The police inevitably turned up and reports suggest that eleven people were arrested. Inspector Glenn Harper, of Notts Police, told The Evening Post, "The site is potentially dangerous to anyone who is unfamiliar with its layout and there are busy roads close by." Protesters shouldn't be misled into believing that the police were there to ensure business carried on as usual with minimal disruption, rather, "Our main priority is to maintain the health and safety of all those involved; the protesters, staff at the power station and the police officers who attend."

In case there's any confusion and to preempt any questions in the comments, I haven't been involved in any of this, having been out of town for a few days. The foregoing is derived from media reports, primarily coverage on Notts Indymedia. For the timebeing that's all I know.

Robert Mugabe's anti-imperialist credentials speak for themselves...

2007-04-08T16:45:00.000+01:00

I've been wondering what to say about Zimbabwe for a while. Usually if I'm stuck for words I don't bother saying anything. You might think that doesn't happen very often, but there are a huge range of issues I have only touched on here to say nothing about those I never write about. In this case, however, I feel compelled to write. Partly because it is an important issue itself, but also because it's something I think receives little attention from radical groups in the UK. On a more personal note, one of my housemates is from Zimbabwe. He isn't particularly political and is here to study rather than out of fear or persecution, but it does give the story a more human dimension, taking it away from the simply abstract.

Like any issue, one has to be careful to separate truth from propaganda here. There is at least one poster on Indymedia UK at the moment who insists that everything you hear about how nasty Mugabe has been is British propaganda invented to drive the neoliberal agenda in Zimbabwe, using the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as its vehicle. Of course, there may be an element of truth here. The MDC, which has its roots in the labour movement, has come to advocate privatisation and related economic "reforms," but this is a familiar path trodden by political parties across the world. The very real flaws with the MDC should not distract, however, from the situation faced by ordinary Zimbabweans which is increasingly coming to make neoliberalism look like a picnic.

There are other fronts for resistance in the country, notably the labour movement. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), for instance, called a two-day general strike on April 3-4. Unfortunately, this appears to have been less than succesful. Joseph Sithole argues that this stemmed from the strike's unclear aims and a failure to clearly explain to people what they should do, coupled with government hostility fuelled by the Congress' close relationship with the MDC. Despite the stay away's limited impact, the Zimbabwean state has clearly been riled, how else to explain threats made against two unionists involved in co-ordinating the action?

You get the distinct impression from much of the media coverage (and my housemate's own analysis) of the situation in Zimbabwe that Mugabe's days are numbered. We can only hope. What interests me is who is going to take his place. Will the MDC take power and begin the thoroughgoing implementation of neoliberalism or will we see a coup by a dissident faction within ZANU-PF? More importantly, would either of these do anything to improve the day to day lives of average Zimbabweans? Obviously, as an anarchist, I'd like to see ordinary Zimbabweans organising autonomously, but I'm realistic enough to be aware that this is pretty unlikely in the immediate future, particularly given the increasing hardships they face. It's hard enough to be a revolutionary at the best of times, let alone when survival from one day to the next becomes a struggle.

A cheery conclusion, eh? I said I was stuck for words.

2007-04-06T22:16:00.000+01:00

I realise it may be beginning to sound like I'm blowing my own trumpet, but some of the guys at Notts Indymedia have produced an awesome radio piece about the Nottingham blockade.

2007-04-06T12:35:00.000+01:00

Look who's got themselves a new blog.

Outlaws outwit the Sheriffs

2007-04-03T20:27:00.000+01:00

A group made up of students, pensioners, Christians, anarchists and Young Greens would normally be a recipe for disagreement, dispute and disunity, if not disaster. The contingent which travelled from Nottingham to Scotland last weekend as part of Faslane 365 incorporated all these demographics and more. Not only did the group manage to operate coherently, but it was able to block the North Gate of HM Base Clyde for more than four hours.

Faslane 365 is an attempt to organise a continuous blockade of the nuclear submarine base at Faslane in protest against government plans to replace the Trident nuclear missile system. Groups from around the world are encouraged to travel to the base and attempt to organise their own autonomous blockades. At the time of writing, the Faslane 365 website claims 102 days of presence by 75 different groups. Totals which have entailed 696 arrests, but only 26 prosecutions.

The group from Nottingham (which included a number of people from nearby Derby) travelled to the base on Saturday (March 31) and Sunday (April 1), blockading the base on the latter. The contingent's theme was Robin Hood, which allowed us to contrast his robbing from the rich to give to the poor, with the government's theft from the poor to fund Trident, and many members were dressed as members of Hood's Merry Band. The police seemed to find it very amusing to asking people why everybody was dressed as Peter Pan.

Saturday was spent milling near the North Gate (the main entrance to the base), marching around the base and relaxing on the beach, all without much of a plan. It is possible that the police took us for a bunch of disorganised fluffies, incapable of sorting out a serious blockade. Whether this was part of some grand plan or simply a reflection of the fact we actually were hopelessly disorganised is debatable. Once we started planning for the next day, however, the commitment of everybody involved became clear and things began falling into place.

The plan involved coordinating the arrival of three minibuses at the North Gate shortly after 6.30 in order to catch the morning shift change. Things looked bad when one of the minibuses suffered a puncture barely a mile from the base, but some quick thinking and everybody's understanding of the requirements of the plan meant that even this didn't stop us, although a fourth minibus did arrive later than planned.

Against everybody's expectations, the police seem to have been caught napping, having had only a handful of officers defending the gate. As a result, by the time the third minibus to arrive had deposited its passengers, there were fifteen people blocking access to the gate. Blockaders were secured by a combinattion of concrete lock-ons, chains, D-locks and a number had even volunteered to be plastered together. The police had little option but to close the gate and redirect traffic to the South Gate, which isn't normally used on Sundays.

Within about ten minutes the police began constructing a blue screen around the blockaders in order to "sanitise" them. This friendly-sounding euphemism is their way of justifying isolating those engaged in a blockade from their supporters while they proceed to cut them out. Fortunately those outside didn't relent in their nopisemaking, bashing barriers with sticks, stones and anything else which came to hand. The police were less than keen on this and, perhaps still smarting from their failure to anticipate our plan, took to threatening people with dubious charges of criminal damage.

People's spirits were lifted by the appearance of the Rebel Clowns who announced that as it was April Fool's Day they had declared themselves all King and Queen for the day and decided to put Faslane, along with the submarines it supports, up for sale. In their usual manner the clowns kept protesters entertained and confused the hell out of the police, although one was arrested, apparently (I wasn't there) after climbing into a passing car.

The clowns managed to make the police look particularly stupid when one of their number put a bike lock on the prisoner handling area, located just down the hill from the North Gate, apparently trapping the police inside. It emerged, once a cutting team, reinforcements and the Inspector in charge appeared, that the key to the aforementioned lock was sitting right next to it, leaving those inside looking distinctly red-faced. The Inspector gave those of us in the vicinity a lecture about the distinction between "lefitimate" and "anti-police" actions, which amounted, in my reading, to, "Nobody's ever thought of doing this before. We'd really rather you didn't do it properly in the future."

The police don't seem to have been in a massive hurry to cut-out the blockaders, but it's clear that one of the concrete lock-ons caused them some real difficulty and it was the blockaders attached to this who were the last to be arrested. Once they'd been cut-out, blockaders were taken to a prisoner handling area, for processing, before being sent off to various police stations across Strathclyde.

Later in the day there were two further arrests. I wasn't there, but these followed a Palm Sunday march up to the gate. According to the accounts I've heard, one of the marchers refused to move, carrying on singing hyms while the police insisted she returned behind the barrier. At this point she was joined by a man who was also arrested. By the end of the day there had been eighteen arrests, including the clown. All were released by 5pm the next day with nothing more serious than a warning letter, which says, essentially, "We have sufficient evidence to prosecute you, but we're not going to this time."

Everyone involved, as far as I can tell, regards the action as a huge success. We managed to function as a unit inspite of our difference and achieved a far more successful blockade than any of us had anticipated. Hopefully these newly formed alliances will not simply evaporate and we can work together in the future. I for one am already chomping at the bit to go after a new target and there's also talk of some people participating in the forthcoming student blockade.

Robin Hood and the Sheriffs of Strathclyde

2007-04-03T19:31:00.000+01:00

2007-03-29T21:49:00.000+01:00

Who said (about the captured British marines), "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they were in Iraqi territorial waters. Equally, the Iranians may well claim that they were in their territorial waters. The extent and definition of territorial waters in this part of the world is very complicated"?

Stop Robbin' the Poor

2007-03-29T18:21:00.000+01:00

For those of you who don't know, I'm off to Faslane this weekend with these people:

Fortunately, I've managed to wangle my way out of wearing one of the costumes (and out of appearing in that photo).

We're going as part of Faslane 365 a year-long protest/blockade of the Trident base at Faslane from 1st October 2006 to 30th September 2007. The Nottingham contingent, which includes a number of people from Derby, will be blockading on Saturday and Sunday. We'll be crossing over with the Clandestine Insurgent Clown Army on Sunday, which ought to be fun, what with it being April Fool's Day. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of peace!

We're spelling out "F365" in case you were wondering...

I'll write more about our exciting adventures when I get back, but in the meantime, thanks to the wonders of the interweb, you'll be able to follow what's going on at Notts Indymedia.

2007-03-21T16:01:00.000Z

If there is an attack on Iran, we will call civil disobedience in every community, walkouts in every school, protests and strikes in every workplace.

If Bush bombs Iran, we should bring this country to a standstill – and we are asking everyone to prepare for this escalation.
- Chris Nineham (via)

If you're a homophobe you can kiss my arse

2007-03-20T18:58:00.000Z

Tim described this as "the most disgraceful and misleading bile that I have seen in a long time." I just think its ridiculous. In fact, the distinct lack of material by "Campaign2007" makes me wonder if this might actually be a joke. I do hope so, although the campaign which the video supports is all too real.

If this is meant seriously and you had anything to do with its production, kindly do me a favour and kill yourself. Cheers.

Tell me about it

2007-03-20T15:54:00.001Z

This (via) was taken at the United for Peace and Justice demo in NYC on Saturday.

Have you left yet?

2007-03-08T21:48:00.000Z

This (via) is intriguing:

The President of Mauritius said on Wednesday his country would be prepared to quit the Commonwealth in its row with Britain over the forced expulsion of the people of the Chagos Islands.

In an interview on BBC radio, Anerood Jugnauth said he sympathised with the islanders expelled by Britain from the Chagos archipelago in the 1960s and 1970s who have been fighting for decades to be able to return home.

"I think ultimately we will have to go to court ... to the International Court of Justice," Jugnauth said.

Asked whether he would be prepared to pay the price of leaving the Commonwealth to pursue the legal battle, the president said: "I believe that yes".

Of course, this raises a number of questions. Not least the context in which the issue of Mauritius' exit from the Commonwealth was raised. Was it simply a hypothetical advanced by the interviewer, essentially out of the blue, or is there a real possibility of such a move taking place? The report on the BBC's own website states that Jugnauth "threatened to leave the Commonwealth," (my emphasis) which is clearly a very different thing to merely entertaining the possibility in response to questioning.

Presumably anybody seeking clarification could find it by searching for the interview online using the BBC's "listen again" feature, but it's hard to know where to start looking. The Reuters article gives few clues (in fact there's nothing beyond the fact that it took place on BBC radio on Wednesday), while the BBC's report bizarrely makes no mention of where this so called "threat" was made, not even admitting that the story emerged on its own radio show.

Whatever the provenance of Jugnauth's threat his remarks on Mauritian sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago seem fairly unequivocal: "We have always claimed Chagos from the British. Our position has always been very clear on that," he said. "We were the first victim, we were deprived of part of our territory and this is against all the United Nations resolutions." Whatever the merits of Mauritian victimhood, his claims that the country was the "first victim," is dubious. Mauritius became independent in 1968, by which point the British had already carved off the Archipelago in order to allow the US to set up base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands. The eviction of the islanders began in 1967 when the British government bought out the islands' plantation owners, closed the plantations and stopped the regular supply ship. By my reckoning, that means the Chagossians became victims before Mauritius even existed, hence it is in fact them who get the dubious honour which Jugnauth seeks to claim.

As I've discussed previously (see e.g. here, here and here), the Mauritian government has an ambiguous relationship with the Chagossian struggle to return home. While government officials have got considerable rhetorical mileage out of the islanders' exile, the Chagossians appear to be less than enthusiastic about Mauritius' sovereignty claims:

In August [2000], the leader of the UK Chagossians, Olivier Bancoult, told the UK based Mauritius News that "we are fighting for our rights, and I am concerned with our rights and our own interests", to the thunderous applause of his compatriots. "All the time that Mauritius has been talking to the British Government, the Mauritius Government never bothered to bring in the islanders or to consult with them. Why should we worry about Mauritius?"

Perhaps nowdays, almost seven years later, this relationship is more cordial, but then again, maybe not.

Hello Ladies...

2007-03-08T18:03:00.000Z

It's International Women's Day. A single day for (more than?) half the species might strike some of you as a little stingy, and indeed many organisations (including, rather disingenuously, the White House) mark International Women's Week. Unfortunately, I'm not organised enough to come up with a week of posts on women's right. In lieu of such a series, I bring you a single post as part of Blog Against Sexism Day.

It would be easy to list assorted attacks on womens rights across the world (e.g. the global gag rule, Nicaragua's ban on abortion, female genital mutilation in the Middle East and Africa etc.), but in many ways, what's much more interesting is the multitude forms of resistance to these practices which have emerged around the world: in the US, mothers are organising for rights considered fundamental in most other western countries; in Afghanistan, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), once heralded as the bearers of the country's future by western imperialists, but long-since forgotten by their fair-weather allies, continue to struggle against religious fundamentalism; last December, 2-300 people marched through Ipswich, following the murder of five prostitutes; in Iraq, women are organising in the face of the deteriorating situation and death threats; in Iran, women continue to protests against the regime, despite state repression.

Women continue to play a crucial role in every other social struggle you can think of. While they may not always get the headlines or the prominent roles, their presence is no less essential for that. (Platitudinous? Perhaps, but true.) The struggles for social justice, peace, freedom and good things generally won't amount to a hill of beans if it doesn't fully involve and account for half the species. My contribution to that involvement and accounting is this post, don't say I never do anything for you.

Who you calling yellow?

2007-03-04T12:30:00.000Z

The General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW, formerly the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions) is the largest trade union federation in Iraq. Established in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq by a number of parties, notably the Iraqi Communist Party, it is ostensibly opposed to the occupation, but has on many occasions worked with the occupiers. Most notoriously, in 2004, IFTU representative Abdullah Muhsin intervened in a debate at the Labour Party conference in order to forestall calls for a withdrawal of troops.

Unfortunately for the GFIW, the occupiers seem less than impressed with their complaisance. Although they have been given exclusive rights to unionise public sector workers in the country, they have been unable to overturn the various anti-union legislation imposed by the new regime. At the end of last month, US troops further demonstrated their commitment to democratic principles by raiding GFIW's headquarters. According to the union's official statement:

On 23 February, American and Iraqi forces raided the head office of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW) and arrested one of the Union security staff.

This unprovoked attack resulted in the destruction of furniture, the confiscation of a computer and fax machine and the arrest of employee who was released unharmed later same day.

The same force repeated this unprovoked attack on 25 February and caused further damage.

The unfortunate reality for GFIW is that, whatever their position vis-à-vis the occupation, they remain a barrier to US/UK efforts to neoliberalise Iraq by force, privatising its resources and handing over control of key industries to western companies. Almost by definition workers' organisation poses a threat to profit margins and hence cannot be allowed to take place outside very tight constraints. (Recall that totalitarian regimes, including Ba'athist Iraq, often use state-run unions as a further tool of control.)

Whatever your position on the occupation - or for that matter formal unionism - I think the emergence of a nascent civil society in Iraq, whatever its flaws, is a positive development. It offers hope that Iraq may not be doomed to perpetual suffering, as I sometimes fear in my more pessimistic moments.

You can send an appropriately strongly worded letter of protest here.

What's the Danish for fuck the police?

2007-03-03T17:56:00.000Z

It looks like things are really kicking off in Copenhagen.

Internationally most famous for its statue of Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid (which is frankly crap in case you were thinking about going), the city also has a vibrant underground. The "Freetown" of Christiania is a former military base which has been squatted since the 1970s and become a hippy-commune-cum-drugs-supermarket, although the Danish state has increasingly tried to assert its control over the community in recent years. The city also has a squatted social centre known as the Youth House (Ungdomshuset) which has been occupied since 1982. Unfortunately, the authorities sold the building to a Christian group who have now obtained a court order for the eviction of the residents. This order was implemented on Thursday (March 1).

The eviction was carried out at 7am (6am GMT) by anti-terror police, deployed from helicopters. Police were soon in control of the building, but more than a thousand squatters and supporters took to the surrounding streets, erecting barricades, torching cars and skirmishing with police. Thursday's clashes led to the arrest of 217 people and injuries to a 25 people, but this wasn't the end of unrest. On Friday night into Saturday morning, squatters again took to the streets, engaging in battles with police, leading to the arrest of 100 people.

Squatters have pledged to continue their fight. Jan, apparently a "spokesman" for the squatters, told Reuters, that activists planned to disrupt traffic, with "pin-point actions creating short breakdowns and disruptions. For example, having a dinner party in the street". He further asserted, "The struggle will continue for a long time. As long as there is no Youth House in Copenhagen, there will be a fight to get one." Solidarity demonstrations, meanwhile, have taken place in Australia, Germany, Norway, Sweden and London.

2007-03-01T17:29:00.000Z

WARNING: Wearing a red nose in Westminster could get you arrested.

I don't own a motor car, but you should listen to me anyway

2007-03-01T17:12:00.000Z

The facility to sign petitions on the Prime Minister's website, has been the source of some consternation in recent weeks, after the government made the mistake of treading on the toes of Britain's motorists. Rather less fanfare accompanied the launch of a petition condemning government policy vis-a-vis the Chagossians and demanding that the islander's ancestral homes be returned to them:

We believe that the forced expulsion of the Chagos Archipeligo at the request of the USA for the sole purpose of establishing a military base on Diego Garcia to be a shameful episode in our countrys' recent history.

Perhaps even more shamefully, the UK government now intends to stop the Chagossians from ever returning to their homes. To do this it will have to overturn or ignore two High Court Judgements allowing the Chagossians the right to return. This is in spite of Home Secretary Robin Cooks position of not contesting the decision to allow repatriation in 2000.

It seems the continuing ''War on Terror'' allows for the contiued theft of these Islands, simply for their strategic position in relation to the Gulf and any future campaigns.

This certainly isn't the first petition organised in support of the Chagossian (see e.g. here, here and here) and it's unlikely to be the last, but as the UK Chagos Support Association note, "It only takes a moment and, while it might not change the world, it adds to the pressure, as this recent episode demonstrated." So, what are you waiting for? Go sign it.

March into March

2007-02-27T20:59:00.000Z

Saturday's demonstration against the occupation of Iraq and the renewal of the Trident nuclear missile system was a nice day out. Particularly because I'd decided to go down by train rather than coach which meant I didn't have to get up at some godforsaken hour. Estimating numbers at these things is notoriously difficult. Jim puts the figure (albeit tentatively) at or near 100,000, although I suspect that's a bit high, but there were certainly a lot of people, as you can see:The march followed the traditional route, running from Speakers' Corner, down Park Lane, up Piccadily to Piccadily Circus, down Haymarket and then into Trafalgar Square where people congregated for speakers and assorted stalls. I've been to lots of these things and long ago stopped paying much attention to the speakers, most of whom simply recounted the reasons why I was there. Which I already knew. Mark Thomas, however, was very good as you can see for yourselves courtesy of MyTube:

I took various photos, most of them not very good, some which you can find over on my Flickr acount. There also seem to have been a surprising number of bloggers present, not that I ran into any of them, including Davide Simonette, Jim, Lenny and Rachel, all of whom have written up their experiences in case you're interested.

Happy Independence Day

2007-02-27T20:25:00.000Z

As Will points out, today (February 27) is Western Sahara Independence Day. This marks the 31st anniversary of the declaration of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in Bir Lehlou. Celebrations within the territories controlled by Polisario (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Rio de Oro) are to include a march, a solidarity conference, a meeting of towns twinned with Saharawi towns and a "super-marathon" between Bir Lahlou and Tifariti, SADR's temporary capital.

(Map of Western Sahara from New Internationalist)

Western Sahara's history is not one which has provided many opportunities for celebration. Polisario was originally formed in 1973 its mission was to drive out the Spanish, who had controlled the territory since 1884, and indeed when Franco was lying on his death bed he did rescind Spanish control, but handed it over to Morocco and Mauritania rather than to the Saharawi themselves. Polisario were able to drive out Mauritania by 1979, but the more powerful Moroccan military proved a tougher prospect. To a large extent things haven't changed all that much since then. A ceasefire in 1991 appears to have remained in force, although human rights abuses by Moroccan authorities persist and there was a limited intifada in 2005. While talks continue, genuine independence still appears to be a distant prospect.

Regular readers may recall that I've written about Western Sahara previously, but those of you looking to discover more about Africa's last colony, which remains little-known despite that status, would do well to check out Will's blog, Western Sahara online and/or the Western Sahara Campaign.

Labouring under delusions

2007-02-23T18:08:00.000Z

The other night I was invited to a Labour Against the War meeting in Nottingham. As the event was limited to Labour Party members and their friends, I had to pretend to be Tom's friend, although I suppose that's better than having to pretend to be a party member. Entry requirements aside, the event provided an interesting insight into the plight of ~~deluded~~ progressive elements within the party.

Maya Evans and Milan Rai from Justice Not Vengeance (neither of whom are party members as far as I'm aware) discussed the burdgeoning conflict with Iran and the ongoing assault on our civil liberties. As ever Mil was incisive and informative. Maya ran through territory with which I am more familiar, but her personal experiences (she was the first person arrested under Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 after she read out the names of the dead in Iraq outside Downing Street) were something I hadn't heard before.

Mohammed Azam from the National Assembly Against Racism arrived late after getting lost in the Meadows. Once he got underway he laid into the BNP and urged party members to make anti-racism central to their campaigning. While none of this was particularly disagreeable, it equally didn't strike me as particularly original.

Christine Shawcroft from the Labour Party National Executive Committee (NEC) meanwhile hit all the right notes on Iran and Trident, but decided to couple that with the hoary old cliche about "reclaiming the party," even encouraging people to rejoin "for peace." It would presumably be churlish to point out here that the combined forces of the nine people in the audience (of whom I was one) is likely to be insufficient to reclaim anything more impressive than the local bus shelter. Not that this seemed to lessen Christine's apparently boundless enthusiasm.

The key-note speaker was to have been Alan Simpson, Labour MP for Notingham South. He's always an interesting speaker and I'd figured he'd be even more so following his announcement over the weekend that he was standing down as an MP. Unfortunately, Alan was defeated by the complexities of the British public transport system, i.e. he got of at the wrong station and missed the meeting entirely.

My conclusion at the end of the evening was that the reclamation of the Labour Party is dead in the water. It's time to put the old girl out of her misery. This isn't a great surprise to me, but I hope it gave some of the people there pause for thought.

Simpy-thetic

2007-02-20T16:30:00.000Z

Alan Simpson MP represents the area in Nottingham where I live and regularly speaks at political meetings in the city and further afield. As such, I've seen him talk more times than I care to remember, including a at several events I've been involved in organising, and spoken to him personally several times. While I agree with him on many issues, find him an affable chap and consider him an excellent public speaker (infinitely better than Broxtowe MP Nick Palmer with whom I once saw him share a platform), we do have a number of political disagreements, although his decision to stand down as a Labour MP suggests we've now got one less.

For years his big thing has been the need for progressives within the party to reassert control from the Blairites, warmongerers and neoliberals. In the run-up to the war, while party members were leaving in droves in protest against Blair's commitment to military action, he called on people not to do so. Subsequently, the line shifted to a call for people of a progressive persuasion to join the party in order to influence the forthcoming leadership campaign. For sometime I assumed - cynically, I admit - he was maneuvering himself for those elections, but if he ever had any such ambitions, he's clearly given up on them.

According to the Beeb, in a letter to constituency party members he explained that concern about the environment was central to his motivation and asserted that "he would be more effective campaigning for radical environmental change outside parliament, rather than remaining on the back benches." This, broadly correlates with my own perspective on electoral politics. It is my opinion, as I may have mentioned before, that change always originates outside Houses of Commons, forcing its way onto the Parliamentary agenda regardless of who our soi-disant representatives are, once the groups pursuing it become influential enough.

Simpson continues, "There are good people in the Parliamentary Labour Party but not enough of them. At times, I feel that colleagues would vote for the slaughter of the first born if asked to." They certainly don't appear to have been particularly troubled by the human cost of the invasion of Iraq. Which, as a friend noted, raises the question of whether there might not have been a time when his resignation might have exerted greater influence. Timing aside, I'm glad he's finally seen sense and look forward to working with him in the future.

Conference Call

2007-02-20T10:27:00.000Z

Organising events tends to require a lot of effort and more often than not is decidedly stressful. When things go well that tends to make up for everything, though. That's probably a fairly good summation of my experience with the Peace Conference which I helped organise and which took place on Sunday.

By all accounts everybody involved including speakers and audience members seemed to find it enjoyable and interesting. The first session on the linkages between oil, war and environmental damage was slightly marred by Life of Brian-style exchanges, but nonetheless there was much of interest on peak oil, Iraqi unions and the connections between these issues and the state of the public transport system. While the No Sweat session didn't happen due to "limited" interest (a probably consequence of the aforementioned exchanges), but the workshops on life as an asylum seeker and peak oil, both of which I dipped into, were well attended and seemed to be stimulating healthy debate.The day's big event was Craig Murray, former British mabassador to Uzbekistan. Unfortunately, Craig was running a little late, which was a little worrying for myself and fellow organisers, but he more than made up for it when he got here with a compelling and amusing talk. To be fair, it was largely the same speech he gave when I saw him in Manchester, with many of the same jokes, but few of the other people in the audience had been there and, in any case, I still found myself laughing. This was certainly a personal highlight for me and afterwards I was able to get my copy of his Murder in Samarkand signed.

Whether because of the incredible organisation or by sheer luck, we finished in time for the awesome fireworks display put on, down by the lake just of campus, for Chinese New Year. Which was nice.

Notts Indymedia has more on the Conference and KnowledgeLab, an event which ran across the weekend and alongside on the Sunday, including various photos by the legendary Tash, from which the picture above has been purloined.

Oaxaca comes to Nottingham

2007-02-14T22:00:00.000Z

I seem to be quite the busybody this week. Which is fine. It's not like I've got any work to do or anything. Tuesday night I found my way to the Nottingham stop on the speaking tour by an activist from Oaxaca. Apart from being the second poorest state in Mexico, Oaxaca last year witnessed a widespread revolt which challenged the state government and reverberated around the world. Andres Aullet is a activist-lawyer who was involved in the struggle and is now a member of Committee of Relatives of Political Prisoners of Oaxaca, which he described as a Trotskyist grouping.

The meeting was organised by No Sweat, (which for those of you keeping score is an Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL) front-group). It was chaired by Tom an "activist in the NUT," with some contributions from Sofie Buckland from No Sweat and the "students' movement." The event kicked of almost half an hour late due to technical difficulties, but once everything was sorted they quickly moved onto two short videos, one a fairly propagandist documentary and the other an assortment of video clips taken throughout the course of the struggle. Tom had suggested that the latter would include some riot porn, although in actuality it was fairly tame (much more so than many of the images of protests in Oaxaca).

Andreas spoke through a translator, which was just as well given how rusty my Spanish has become. He began by recounting the context of the struggle and how it had begun with a strike by teachers. Strikers took control of the main square, but were violently removed by the police. As the struggle escalated, its demands shifted from the purely economic (i.e wage increases) to the political (i.e. the resignation of the state governor) and incorporated increasingly broad sections of Oaxacan society, leading to the constitution of the APPO (Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca, the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca).

Andreas described how a number of activists had demanded space to put their demands on TV. When refused, they had simply taken control of the TV station and had they say anyway. Similar scenes also took place with the local radio. Meanwhile, a number of teachers had decided (apparently against the wishes of some of APPO's leaders) to march to Mexico City, to put their demands to those in the seat of Mexican power.

Despite the militancy of the protests and the number of people on the streets (one march apparently attracted 1 million people, an impressive figure in a city of 2.5 million) various union leaders were keen to negotiate. While the movement had taken up the demand for the governor's resignation, the sycophantic bureaucrats were content to limit themselves to the initial demands of the teachers. This obeisance continued when the Federal Police sought to retake the city on November 25. Union leaders called for people to acquiesce to their return, but many ignored them and when it came to defending the final barricade in the university, thousands turned out to resist the police.

Andreas was critical of the movement's "betrayal" by the leadership, but felt that the strike had nonetheless been important. He argued that Oaxaca had shown that class struggle was still alive and that there were lessons for the workers, who he believed could have been victorious under a different leadership. During the Q&A session he extended his criticisms to the EZLN (the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, commonly known simply as the Zapatistas, a movement based in Chiapas which borders Oaxaca to the south) who he argued didn't understand the need to take power and had initially been wary of supporting the Oaxacan struggle because of the presence of corrupt union leaders. In his analysis this remained their position until the attempts to retake the city in late November. While I disagree with his assertions as to the need to "take power" (a Leninist obsession) I wonder if there isn't an element of truth to his analysis of the Zapatistas' approach. I certainly didn't become aware of any EZLN statements regarding the situation until late-November, but this may simply reflect my own ignorance.

While Andreas' political position is quite different from my own, his insight into the struggle was interesting. Oaxaca was hugely inspirational to activists around the world, including myself. It is always useful to learn about the successes and weaknesses of other struggles and hearing it from a Mexican trot is a helpful corrective to any illusions one might have about an imminent anarchist revolution in the periphery. Now if only we could bring a little bit of the Oaxaca spirit to Nottingham's Market Square...

2007-02-12T22:38:00.000Z

Apparently I've been pushing people's buttons. Which is always a good thing. I hope. Anyway, it's got me into this week's Carnival of the Green so I'm happy.

2007-02-11T13:58:00.000Z

The UK Chagos Support Association have a brand spanking new blog. Why not have a gander?

Morning glory

2007-02-11T12:09:00.000Z

There are a number of pieces of equipment which activists should not be without and an alarm clock is pretty near the top of the list. Of course, even if you've got one they're of limited use if you don't bother to set it. While several of my friends were forcing themselves out of bed at some ungodly hour to get down to Harmondsworth detention centre, I'd planned a more placid day with an hour or two giving out flyers in Market Square. Given that the Stop the War stall didn't kick off until twelve I figured I wouldn't bother with the alarm. Surely, I thought, my body long ago slipped into the routine of getting up fairly early. How wrong I was.

Things got off to a bad start when I woke up at one, something I haven't done for sometime. Honest. Once I'd got myself sorted and in to town, Stop the War were long gone. Some of the guys from the NHS campaign were holding a stall as were representatives of the putative Notts branch of Unite Against Fascism, so I offered my typically enthusiastic support to the former (i.e. I stood around looking uncomfortable, occasionally proffering any passing pedestrians a pamphlet). Unfortunately there wasn't a great deal of material to distribute (which is strange, because the unions ostensibly supporting the campaign are hardly short of money), although on the upside this did mean I didn't have to spend that long standing around in the cold before beating a retreat to the comfort of a public house.

Peace Out

2007-02-11T11:58:00.000Z

In case you happen to be in the Nottingham area next weekend:

PEACE CONFERENCE
Sunday February 18, Portland Building

11:00 – What's oil got to do with it?
Sue Blount, local Green Party councillor
James Howard, Powerswitch
Tom Unterrainer, No Sweat

1:30 – Workshops
Destitution Group, Being an asylum seeker
No Sweat, Workers' struggles and solidarity
Powerswitch, Peak oil
More TBC

4:00 – Speaker
Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan

All Day – Atrium
Stalls from local campaigns (including Amnesty, Defy-ID, Faslane 365, No Sweat, Stop the War) and vegan catering by Veggies

Organised by Nottingham Student Peace Movement

This event is taking place alongside the Fourth Knowledge Lab, which you might also be interested in.

Fair's Fair

2007-02-10T22:17:00.000Z

[This is an article I've knocked together for the next edition of Ceasefire, the irregular Nottingham Student Peace Movement newsletter. It's possible it'll undergo a few changes before publication, but I include it here for your delectation.]

Taking things which hitherto have been viewed as ethically dubious and producing more salutary alternatives is in vogue nowadays, especially within large sections of the activist community. Hence ethical consumerism, ethical careers, ethical investment, fair trade and all the rest. In recent years, the popularity of these has blossomed. In 2005, 40% of UK households bought fair trade products, which can be purchased in more than 55,000 supermarkets across Europe. Fair trade brands now account for 20% of the roast and ground coffee market, while 2005 saw the sale of more than a billion litres of fair trade wine. (All facts from New Internationalist 395, p. 19) This all sounds good and in its own way it is a positive step, but I want to problematise the importance that many activists afford to living “ethically.”

I am not questioning the motives of those who purchase fair trade or pursue ethical careers, both are things I have done and intend to continue doing. In a sense, the unmediated nature of such actions is compelling. You don't have to wait for anybody else. You just get on and do it yourself. My argument is that we should be wary of overstating the important we attach to individual ethical choices. Bedecking ourselves in ethically produced, sweat-free t-shirts made of organic cotton while sipping fair-trade tea from recycled cardboard cups may well leave us with a warm feeling inside, but what has it done to actually improve the world? Sure, one or two people may have been paid slightly more than they otherwise would have been, but global capitalism continues undaunted.

It might be retorted that I am arguing against a straw man. That no-one actually holds such a nuance-free position. It would be nice to think that were true, but New Consumer, ethical shopping's trade magazine proclaims, without a trace of hyperbole that “creating a world that works for everyone has never been easier. It lies in your simple shopping decisions and lifestyle habits!” (Quoted in New Internationalist 385, p. 3) Even if such views are unusual within activist circles (activists after all are, by definition, involved in activism) we should be wary of disseminating messages which reinforce such disconnected perspectives on social change.

It seems to me that one of the key problems with this whole “ethical” business is the fact that it focuses on individual choices rather than collective action, perpetuating the atomising effects of capitalism. Unless you are in an unusual position of influence, your individual choices are likely to have a fairly limited impact. If you want to make the world a better place, you're likely to find rather more success if you combine your efforts with other people. One and a half million atomised individuals moaning about the invasion of Iraq wouldn't have had a fraction of the influence of the same number coming together on February 15. As that example demonstrates, large numbers alone aren't a guarantee of success, the problems we face are huge after all, but there is a long history of movements which have transformed the world. The civil rights movement in the States defeated segregation; the resistance in Vietnam defeated US imperialism; and the suffragettes achieved votes for women.

It might be averred that the anti-apartheid struggle demonstrated the success of ethical consumerism, at least insofar as the boycott of South African goods helped to weaken the regime. It is important to bear in mind, however, that in South Africa the African National Congress (ANC) were well organised and supported by groups around the world. People's choice about whether to buy red or white grapes took place within the context of a wider, larger struggle.

A further problem it seems to me is that the insertion of the “ethical” prefix presupposes that there are also unethical alternatives and implies that these remain in existence. In fact, I would argue that the entire exercise is predicated, albeit usually implicitly, on the continuation of the decidedly unethical status quo. The basic notion is that while exploitation, environmental destruction and the assorted evils of capitalism carry on as they have always done, we can console ourselves that it isn't our responsibility. We've done our bit by choosing fair trade chocolate over a Mars bar; by deciding to work for a wind turbine company rather than BAE Systems.

Ethical consumerism may not just fail to challenge capitalism, but actually reinforce it. Nestlé, long criticised for policies in the third world, now sells fair trade coffee; L'Oréal purchased the Body Shop in May last year, despite a long-history of animal testing; and fair trade coffee is now available in Starbucks and even some McDonald's outlets (the former sells it in 23 countries, the latter only in New England). (All facts from New Internationalist 395, p. 2) Perhaps the most egregious example is BAE Systems decision to begin production of an 'ethical' bullet, which is lead-free. (New Internationalist 395, p. 1) BAE note without a hint of irony, “Lead used in ammunition can harm the environment and pose a risk to people.” (http://www.baesystems.com) Perhaps naively, I'd always assumed that posing a risk to people was ammunition's raison d'etre. If you're an Iraqi civilian getting shot with these things, I doubt it hurts any less. The words may have changed, but the song remains the same.

Capitalism is not a problem we're going to buy our way out of. Our personal choices have only a limited role to play in the struggle for a new, better world. At best they allow us to minimise our culpability in the current system. They won't defeat that system, nor stop its devastation of the environment. Those are things we're going to have to fight for. That might not be as easy as popping out for a fair trade cappuccino, but maybe it's worth the effort.

2007-02-09T12:16:00.000Z

In case you haven't noticed already, the always excellent UKWatch is back up and running with a swanky new look. Why not swing by and say hello?

Financial health

2007-02-09T11:25:00.000Z

In my predictions for 2007, I averred that the campaign to defend the NHS would be one of the major campaigns on the year. I stand by that claim, largely because it seems self-evident. Nottingham, might take a little while to catch up, however.

Last night I toddled along to the public meeting held by the local branch of Keep Our NHS Public. There were probably 20-30 people in attendance (I didn't bother to count), but to my mind the problem was not so much the limited numbers, but the limited representation of what I flipantly refer to as "real people." I probably recognised half, perhaps more, of the audience from assorted campaigns. The three largest socialist parties in Nottingham (SWP, AWL and SPEW) were all out in what passes for force in today's Marxist left. Much of the rest of the audience were made up of independent activists and trade unionists. The public were striking in their absence.

In some ways this is actually very surprising. Last year's "Protect the Patients" march in the city (which I missed because I was fighting the system elsewhere), was by all accounts huge, attracting perhaps 3,000 participants. Where have all those people gone? Are they actively resisting government cuts and reforms or have they all now gone back to their lives, content with the fact that they've "had their say" on the issue? Alternatively, are those people put off by a lefty-dominated public meeting in which they are told what many of them (particularly those who work in the NHS) already know? To be honest, I don't know, although I suspect there may be a combination of factors in play.

To be fair, the meeting was much more informative than many I've been to. Demagoguery was avoided in favour of that most dangerous of amunition, information. The picture of the NHS I came away with is an interesting one, but one which I think has not been widely disseminated. Various speakers acknowledged the fact that New Labour had invested record amounts in the NHS, but the key point is not how much money is in the system, but where it's going. It became apparent that what New Labour are doing (whether consciously or not, a question which was raised, but left hanging) is turning the NHS into a corporate welfare system, taking money from the public purse and handing it to corporate interests.

While my notes are less than comprehensive, some of the processes by which this takes place include: new rules require GPs to present patients with at least three "choices" when they are being referred, which must include at least one private provider; Independent Treatment Centres (ITCs) set up ostensibly to reduce waiting lists are guaranteed payment for a certain number of treatments whether they conduct them or not; the outsourcing of both support (catering and cleaning) and clinical roles; and Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes which often lead to Trusts paying more for buildings in the long-term. The upshot of all this has been not only a proliferation of private companies providing health services, but a massive increase in administration costs. One speaker estimated that administration constitutes something in the order to 15-20% of the NHS' total budget (at least in England).

It is unfortunate that such an analysis of the problems afflicitng the NHS has not been disseminated more widely. It gets us beyond government obfuscation about the wages being earned by doctors and nurses, while providing an insight into the working of state capitalism (in which the state and capital are mutually reinforcing) which I think guides people implicitly towards a more radical critique than a broadly conservative (note the small 'c') appeal to "save the NHS."

As an anarchist, I'm wary of large state-run bureaucracies, but there can be no doubt that capitalism with a national health service is better than capitalism without (something the UK had not so long ago as an activist from the pensioners' movement noted). At least, if you care about things like quality and length of life. There is much about the NHS which merits criticism, but until we get around to organising the revolution (are you doing anything next Tuesday?) I think it behooves us to protect what's good about it (i.e. free, universal healthcare). How we do that and how we attract more people is a question which I'll leave open, but it's probably an important one.

Addendum: I forgot to mention that there's a regional demonstration in Birmingham on Saturday March 3, which speakers encouraged people to promote and participate in. This seems to be part of a national day of action, so maybe there's something going down in your area which you might care to check out.

Drive like bad wind

2007-02-05T17:36:00.000Z

(via)

They're at it again...!

2007-02-05T16:27:00.000Z

Do these shits have no shame?:

More than three decades after British islands in the Indian Ocean were depopulated to make way for an American base, the Government will ask the courts today to ban the inhabitants from ever returning home...

The High Court has twice given the islanders, known as the Chagossians, the right to return and Britain had initially accepted the ruling when the islanders won their first case in 2000.

But today the Government will try and overturn a second ruling in the Court of Appeal.

Way back when in 2000, the Chagossians won the right to return home in the High Court, which ruled that the order used to expel them had been unlawful. At the time Robin Cook, then foreign secretary stated, "The Government will not be appealing" and declined to defend "what was done or said 30 years ago". Following that ruling the government prevaricated until 2004 when on June 10, "Super Thursday," the day of European, local and GLA elections, the Queen signed two Orders in Council which prohibited the Chagossians from setting foot on the archipelago. These Orders were challenged in the High Court last year and once again, the ruling went against the government, much to their chagrin. That's more or less how we got where we are today.

One might wonder why the government is getting so worked up about a few islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean:

"The evidence points to this being done largely at Washington's request," said Clive Baldwin, from the Minority Rights Group, which is campaigning for the Chagossians. "After September 11 and with the island being used as a base for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the military value of Diego Garcia has increased."

Bombers operating from Diego Garcia can strike deep into the Middle East and South Asia. Naval vessels using its harbour can patrol the strategically vital waters of the Indian Ocean and the approaches to the Red Sea. Diego Garcia was a crucial launching pad for the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Some 1,000 American and 40 British military personnel are based there...

A letter of November 2004 from Lincoln Bloomfield, an assistant secretary at the US state department, to Robert Culshaw, a British official responsible for overseas territories, read: "Diego Garcia is a vital and indispensable platform for global US military operations. . . an attempt to resettle any of the islands of the Chagos Archipelago would severely compromise Diego Garcia's unparalleled security and have a deleterious impact on our military operations."

It's worth emphasising here, that although Diego Garcia is the largest island in the Chagos Archipelago, it is but one among sixty and the only one on which there is a military presence. There is no obvious reason why other islands such as Peros Banhos and Salamon couldn't be resettled without having any impact upon the base on Diego Garcia. Indeed, Chagossian leader Olivier Bancoult has averred, "We can agree to co-habit with the Americans." (For what it's worth, my own personal opinion is that the base should be shut down, but a more pragmatic solution is at the very least conceivable.) Certainly nobody has suggested that the Chagossians pose any kind of threat to US military operations. Nevertheless, when the US took out a lease of the island in December 1966, they asked for them to be "swept" and "sanitised", a move described in a secret file as part of "a neat, sensible package".

This isn't to exculpate the British state which has consistently, regardless of which party is in power, shafted the Chagossians and frustrated their attempts to achieve justice. Indeed, it is worth mentioning that when then Mauritian PM Paul Berenger visited the US and UK to discuss the issue of Chagos he received a far more cordial response in the States than he did here. One could argue until the cows come home about who is most responsible for the current situation, but frankly it strikes me as fairly irrelevant. Neither of them has been particularly nice. Both deserve a solid kicking.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

2007-02-04T14:02:00.000Z

The whole Islamic-terrorist-beheading plot seems to have got the media very excited. Predictably the dubious (i.e. vastly exaggerated) nature of past "plots" (the ricin plot, the red mercury plot, last year's explosive liquids plot, Forest Gate etc.) has been forgotten or ignored by the bastions of objectivity in the corporate media. Why demur about the details or even existence of any plot when you can have an exciting headline about beheading? If it all turns out to be nonsense later you just ignore the fact and everyone can carry on cowering in fear before the awesome threat to our very bodily fluids posed by Islamic Fifth Columnists.

This isn't to suggest that this has necessarily all been made up. There might have been a terrorist cell. They might have planned to kidnap somebody. They might have wanted to lop that person's head off. They might have intended to post the video on the internet. It's just that when somebody's cried wolf as many times as the British counter-terrorism establishment, simply taking what they say at face value is the height of naivete.

Things become particularly murky when we turn to the leaks which have populated various articles in the media following the raid. According to the Grauniad (via), police investigating the alleged plot "expressed growing anger yesterday at a series of leaks and briefings which they say are hampering their inquiry":

Whitehall officials briefed journalists early on Wednesday before all of the suspects had been found, with the result that lurid details of the alleged plot were broadcast while one suspect remained at large. At least one tabloid newspaper had even been tipped off the night before the dawn raids, and its reporters put on standby to race to Birmingham...

Paul Snape, vice chair of West Midlands Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, said: "The police force is asking the question, where did it all come from? There may be political reasons for it, such as what was going on at the Home Office and at Downing Street."

The timing is indeed convenient with the Cash for Honours and BAE scandals, the problems in the Home Office and, as Davide Simonetti points out, John Reid's renewed campaign to get support for holding terror suspects for more than 28 days without charge.

Whatever the truth or otherwise of the various claims made about the plot, there is little question that raids such as this don't play well in the Muslim community who feel persecuted. A sentiment which can't be helped by the mainstream media's eagerness to run with any story about Muslim intransigence, no matter what its basis in fact (recall the niqab/pantomime horse story). Insofar as the "War on Terror" is synonymous with the struggle against militant Islamic fundamentalism (as opposed to simply an excuse to invade other countries), it cannot be won without the support of the vast majority of the Muslim community. We won't get that if our default settings instruct us to accept every bad thing said about them. Scepticism is your friend.

The Dictatorship of Democracy

2007-02-03T16:58:00.000Z

"...We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality."
- Mikhail Bakunin

I've written about the soi-disant "Bolivarian revolution," currently underway in Venezuela, previously (here, here and here) and I have neither the time nor the inclination to rehearse the very real (if oftentimes overstated) benefits it has brought so far, nor my concerns about the excessive identification of the various reforms with President Hugo Chavez. What I want to focus on is the news earlier this week, that Venezuela's Congress had given him authority to legislate by decree. According to AP:

The law gives Chavez, who is beginning a fresh six-year term, more power than he has ever had in eight years as president, and he plans to use it during the next 18 months to transform broad areas of public life, from the economy and the oil industry in particular, to "social matters" and the very structure of the state.

This hasn't gone down well with right-wing critics, who have been accusing Chavez of being a putative dictator for years. Vice President Jorge Rodriguez didn't exactly help matters in this respect when he opined, "Dictatorship is what there used to be. We want to impose the dictatorship of a true democracy," consciously or not, echoing Marx's "Dictatorship of the Proletariat." You don't need me to tell you that that particular notion has understandably (and quite rightly) been discredited in light of its application in the USSR. This is not to suggest that Venezuela is about to become a Stalinist dictatorship (although that seems to be the line being pushed by right-wing critics of the regime), which I think remains unlikely, but a descent into Stalinism is hardly the only conceivable basis for criticising the new powers.

Again according to AP, Chavez wants to use the new powers to nationalise "Venezuela's largest telecommunications company and the electricity sector, slap new taxes on the rich, and impose greater state control over the oil and natural gas industries":

The law also allows Chavez to dictate unspecified measures to transform state institutions; reform banking, tax, insurance and financial regulations; decide on security and defense matters such as gun regulations and military organization; and "adapt" legislation to ensure "the equal distribution of wealth'' as part of a new "social and economic model."

Chavez plans to reorganize regional territories and carry out reforms aimed at bringing "power to the people" through thousands of newly formed Communal Councils designed to give Venezuelans a say on spending an increasing flow of state money on projects in their neighborhoods, from public housing to potholes.

The contradictions in the last paragraph are obvious, but it strikes me there is a more interesting point here. Lawmakers supported the "enabling law" unanimously, suggesting an astonishing degree of support for Chavez's policies amongst representatives. Blair could propose a Be Nice to Other People Bill and a large chunk of MPs would vote against it just to spite him. Given this level of support, it seems unlikely that Chavez would have any difficulty getting almost any reform through Congress, which surely renders the decree completely unneccessary, even from Chavez's perspective.

Anyone who still wants to give Chavez the benefit of the doubt on this would do well to bear in mind that this Presidential decree sounds an awful lot like something Blair tried unsuccessfully to sneak in last-year: the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. Save Parliament who mobilised against the Bill, note that in its initial form, the LRRB "had the power to grant any minister the ability to amend, replace, or repeal existing legislation." The minister in question could have amended virtually any piece of legislation save the Bill itself and the Human Rights Act 1998. "So, as was pointed out in The Times by 6 law professors from Cambridge, a minister would have been able to abolish trial by jury, suspend habeas corpus (your right not to be arbitrarily arrested), or change any of the legislation governing the legal system..." Maybe Blair and Chavez aren't quite as different as their political allegiances and rhetorical styles might suggest, or maybe its further evidence in support of the essentially anarchist thesis that power corrupts.

Cinema Verite

2007-02-01T19:04:00.000Z

With the Broadway, Screen Room, Savoy, Showcase and UGC, Nottingham isn't short of cinemas. But if you're looking for underground activist documentaries, you'll have to try elsewhere, namely the Scroat, which takes place (more or less) weekly at the Sumac Centre. They show a wide range of videos, often with speakers who are actively involved in the issues covered. There's even food provided beforehand and a bar to provide fuel for post-film discussions.

Last night's offering was Jill's Film, about the life and death of Jill Phipps. Jill was an animal rights activist killed during protests against live animal exports twelve years ago today (February 1). Clearly the film was, on one level, about animal rights. The focus, however, wasn't so much on the philosophical, ethical and strategic questions that this raises, but on Jill's own life and how she had come to be involved in the animal liberation movement.

Put together and edited by one of her friends and with extensive comments from her mother (who was also involved in campaigning) the film made no pretense about offering an objective account, instead offering an insight into Jill from the perspective of those who knew and loved her. Sure, it probably wouldn't get past the gatekeepers on the TV, but that wasn't its intent.

Propaganda films can come across as didactic which is often off-putting, even where you broadly agree with the points being made. Jill's Film isn't without such moments and there are a few occasions where the resort to cliche ("Fur coats are worn by beautiful animals and ugly people") struck me as pointless and unconvincing sloganeering, but for the most part the film avoids this and is much the stronger for doing so. We follow Jill from her childhood, through the punk scene, into anti-fascism and onto the nascent 1980s animal rights movement. We learn about some of her early experiences, her break from activism after her son was born and her ill-fated return in the hope of stopping live animal exports from Coventry Airport.

While I've been a vegetarian for sometime and peripherally involved in animal rights activity, it's not something I've ever felt able to throw myself into for various reasons. In part this is because the situation seems so hopeless given the sheer scale of animal abuse and the largely disinterested response of most people. Most people don't seem to care about the huge numbers of humans being brutalised, starved and killed across the world; what chance is there that they're going to give a damn about other species? For me, one of the weaknesses of the film (at least from a propagandist perspective) was that it compounded this feeling of powerlessness. Sure the clips of pigs being kicked, sheep having the throats slit while they're still alive and chickens confined to tiny cages are horrific, but by emphasising the immense scale of the problem my response isn't anger (which can lead to action), but depression (which doesn't).

This needn't be the case. Live animal exports were and remain a weak point in the system. The nature of the beast is that it presents relatively easy targets (as lorries have to get onto boats or load their "cargo" into planes and typically have to follow predictable routes to do so) and generates huge opposition from across the political spectrum (as was clear from the video). To be fair, the guy responsible for the film (whose name escapes me) made this point after the film showing.

Long story short: if you get the chance (and you can download it for free so you all have) watch it. If nothing else, it'll go someway to dispelling some of the more ridiculous characterisations of animal rights activist which appear in the media.

2007-01-30T22:58:00.000Z

Will protest for food. Prices negotiable. (via)

Like a bloody-great Taser but more sci-fi

2007-01-25T21:59:00.000Z

Every decent science fiction villain needs a giant ray gun with which to threaten our heroes, so it shouldn't come as a great surprise to discover that the US has developed one which yesterday received its first public test.

According to the Beeb, the "Active Denial System" (ADS) "projects an invisible high energy beam that produces a sudden burning feeling." We're assured by the US that the weapon is harmless. The ray "penetrates the skin only to a tiny depth - enough to cause discomfort but no lasting harm, according to the military," but they would say that, wouldn't they?

The video on the BBC website of the device in use (which should be available here for a few days) includes some perfunctory comments, from "Security Expert" (i.e. not an expert in the science in question) Will Geddes, about the possible risks of long-term harm and the need for extensive testing before the device enters widespread use. Fortunately for you, I have far better sources than the BBC and hence I'm in a position to tell you what happened previously during the development of the ADS:

Little information about [the weapon's] effects has been released, but details of tests in 2003 and 2004 were revealed after Edward Hammond, director of the US Sunshine Project - an organisation campaigning against the use of biological and non-lethal weapons - requested them under the Freedom of Information Act.

The tests were carried out at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Two experiments tested pain tolerance levels, while in a third, a "limited military utility assessment", volunteers played the part of rioters or intruders and the ADS was used to drive them away.

The experimenters banned glasses and contact lenses to prevent possible eye damage to the subjects, and in the second and third tests removed any metallic objects such as coins and keys to stop hot spots being created on the skin. They also checked the volunteers' clothes for certain seams, buttons and zips which might also cause hot spots.

So as long as its only used against naked rioters with 20:20 vision, there's nothing to worry about. Well, not much:

Neil Davison, co-ordinator of the non-lethal weapons research project at the University of Bradford in the UK, says controlling the amount of radiation received may not be that simple. "How do you ensure that the dose doesn't cross the threshold for permanent damage?" he asks. "What happens if someone in a crowd is unable, for whatever reason, to move away from the beam? Does the weapon cut out to prevent overexposure?"

During the experiments, people playing rioters put up their hands when hit and were given a 15-second cooling-down period before being targeted again. One person suffered a burn in a previous test when the beam was accidentally used on the wrong power setting.

Not that battle-weary troops in Iraq or Afghanistan are likely to make mistakes.

The BBC emphasise the military applications of the weapon, noting with more than a little understatement that it "could potentially be used for dispersing hostile crowds in conflict zones such as Iraq or Afghanistan." Don't be surprised if we see them on the streets of Washington or even London in a few years time, though. In 2002, Steven Kerr argued, "'Non-lethal weapons' are the technocrats' latest fix to a social problem they can't solve: our human needs and wants," and warned that "if past practice of the US government is a guide, these new weapons will be field tested on the people of Iraq." There's plenty more fun where ADS came from and once they've thoroughly shared the love with the people of Iraq why wouldn't they bring it home for us?

Spot the Difference

2007-01-21T21:42:00.000Z

(1) Indian demonstrators burn effigies of the producers of Celebrity Big Brother in protest against the treatment of Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty.

(2) Pakistani demonstrators burn effigies of the Danish Prime Minister in protest against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

From which we conclude:

I suppose we had better be grateful that the recipient of the abuse [in the Big Brother house] was not a Muslim. If she was, we'd be hearing from many quarters that Muslims are far too sensitive about legitimate criticism. "Ah, complaing about being called a 'dog', is she? What do these Muslims have against canines, I wonder?" Had those who burned the effigy in India been Muslim, we would no doubt be hearing about the sinister Islamic threat to free speech.

2007-01-21T20:41:00.000Z

Jim, who I guess would describe himself as a green socialist, has a very nice post about what attracts him to anarchism, culminating in the delightful reflection that "a world without anarchists is a world where paving stones have lost their real purpose." Check it y'all.

The Big Comeback

2007-01-15T18:04:00.000Z

Bush's troop "surge," which will see a further 22,000 US troops dispatched to Iraq, has attracted a great deal of attention. I've been particularly surprised with the finality which commentators have described the plan. The gambit is, the corporate media tell us, "one final effort to pacify Baghdad and the western Sunni badlands"; a "last-ditch" plan; Bush's "final gamble." Somehow I'm not convinced.

Does anybody honestly believe that when surging fails to stem the insurgency (as it almost inevitably will) Bush is simply going to turn around and say, "OK, I was wrong, let's go home now"? This has the same degree of finality as a Kiss Farewell Tour. You know full well they'll be back in a year or two, looking slightly worse for wear - perhaps with one less member of the original band (or coalition), but still wheeling out the big hits.

I suppose hoping it's almost over is rather less depressing.

The Struggle Continues

2007-01-14T13:32:00.000Z

BBC News:

Exiled islanders who have protested outside council offices in West Sussex have vowed to fight on after a court ruled they must quit their camp.

The group, from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, is demanding more help towards finding housing.

Regular readers will be aware of the Chagossian struggle in which this is but the latest set-back.

A judge found in West Sussex council's favour after it served a notice telling the group to leave the camp in Crawley.

More than 50 Diego Garcians, all British citizens with British passports, began occupying land at the town's Centenary House social services offices in August...

A judge ruled on Friday that it was not an infringement of the islanders' human rights for the council to stop their protests.

But Yogi Amin, from law firm Irwin Mitchell, said: "Their local council is preventing them from vocalising their views and raising public awareness about the issues.

"We feel this is a clear breach of their fundamental rights... and intend to appeal the decision."

Councillors spouted predictable platitudes, while attenmpting to exculpate themselves:

[...C]ouncillor Henry Smith, leader of West Sussex County Council, said his authority was not to blame for the "second class" treatment which the islanders claim they have been subjected to.

Mr Smith said: "We have every sympathy with their position, and indeed support it, but they have been protesting outside our offices for some months now and it is time for them to move on and to direct their protest at the government instead."

This is an astonishingly ignorant comment. The Chagossians have been directing protests against the British government for nigh-on forty-years, with only limited success. The protest in question was over the specific question of housing. A number of the islanders have travelled to the UK in recent years (on which see here, here, here and elsewhere on this site) hoping to find better conditions than those they have lived with in Mauritius having been expelled from their homes. Now here, they have struggled to find homes. Hengride Permal of the Chagos Island Community Association complains, "We cannot afford private landlords with the minimum wages that people are making."

Persiflage

2007-01-10T21:12:00.000Z

I'm currently snowed under with revision, so you can expect posting to be patchy (read: non-existent) for at least the next few weeks.

In the meantime, check out this intriguing article on Somalia (via) which offers a perspective lacking from the mainstream coverage. I had started a post on it, but probably won't ever finish it and I do think the article is well worth checking out.

You might also be interested in the burdgeoning Carnival of the Anarchy (which I've been invited to join, but have thus far been prevented from doing so by gremlins - or possibly Blogger, it's hard to tell). Looks like it could be interesting. The next Carnival is on January 27-28 (when I'll be away from a computer relaxing) on Anarchist Socialism.

That's all for now. Wish me luck.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

2006-12-30T13:13:00.000Z

So we can add Saddam to the list of bloodthirsty dictators who've finally shuffled off this mortal coil over the past year. While I'm not going to shed any tears for the mass-murdering fuck, I happen to think his execution was a mistake.

While many Iraqis seem happy to see the back of Saddam, this isn't the universal response. There were protests in Samarra, Ramadi and Adwar and gunmen on the streets of Tikrit, Saddam's hometown. The excution did nothing to halt the ongoing insurgency, with explosions occuring in Baghdad and Kufa within hours of the former dictator's death. Anyone who thinks the execution will reduce violence is living in cloud-cuckoo land. If anything, it's only going to make matters worse (bear in mind how bad things already are in Iraq).

I am steadfastly opposed to the death penalty, which I consider a brutal, inhumane form of punishment. Nevertheless, if there's anybody who deserves to hang it's surely Saddam. In fact the focus on his sentence has obscured the Iraqi government's increasing use of the death penalty following its reinstatement in 2004. Amnesty estimated on December 20 that 53 people had been executed since the start of the year (that's presumably now 54, if not more). Many of these trials have large question marks hanging over them. None have received even a fraction of the attention focused on Saddam's case.

My substantive argument against Saddam's execution, however, is a pragmatic one. While he was actually hung for his responsibility for a massacre in Dujail in 1982 which took place after a botched assasination attempt, Saddam went to the gallows in the middle of a further trial for his part in the Al-Anfal campaign. This brutal and infamous campaign saw the deaths thousands of Kurds (estimates vary from 50,000-182,000) and the displacement of hundreds of thousands more. Given the severity of these charges and their emotional potency, the haste with which Saddam was dispatched strikes me as strange. Why not continue the trial?

Facing up to past crimes is an important step in countries which have witnessed regime change following periods of extreme violence, whether as a result of civil war or dictatorship. Brushing these issues under the carpet will only leave wounds to fester which may explode at some point in the future. One can debate whether Saddam's trial - with its limited legitimacy and apparent preference for retribution over justice - is the best way to achieve this, but by killing Saddam the process will become that much more difficult. The romanticisation of the dead is hardly an unfamiliar process. (For an academic survey of different approaches to addressing past wrongs, check out this pdf.)

Executing Saddam has also got all those people who helped him off the hook. We've managed to avoid any embarrassing incidents with Donald Rumsfeld being called to testify on his visit to Saddam in 1983; or Douglas Hurd being quizzed on his trip to Iraq to sell missile systems in 1981. Our own culpability in his reign of terror, to say nothing of our subsequent campaign of state terrorism and siege warfare against the country from 1991 onwards can be quietly pushed to one side. The Bad Man is dead. What are you loooking at us for?

2006-12-30T12:52:00.000Z

The Conspiracy Theory Generator (via), not to be confused with with the conspiracy theorist hot-air generator.

What happens next?

2006-12-28T16:44:00.000Z

It's almost the end of the year, so what better time to stick my neck out and make largely baseless/self-evident assertions about what's going to happen in the coming year?

Firstly, the situation in Iraq is going to continue to deteriorate, but the US and UK will not withdraw. It's possible that the occupying forces may increasingly be able to retreat to their barracks, as control is handed to Iraqi prixies, but this is far from guaranteed. Even if this does take place, the widespread criminal violence (kidnappings etc.) and burdgeoning civil war will go on, possibly extending to Iraqi Kurdistan which has hitherto remained relatively peaceful.

Afghanistan will in all likelihood suffer a similar threat. Having re-emerged as a major threat over the past year, the "neo-Taliban" are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Again it's hard to imagine a US/UK withdrawal, although a steadily rising death toll amongst British and American forces may weaken support for the war.

In Palestine there's little sign that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, caused by extended Israeli closures and international sanctions, is going to be resolved anytime soon. While the "international community" have suggested that sanctions will be lifted once the Hamas government are removed from power, Mahmoud Abbas' calls for new elections may backfire. If Hamas decide to boycott them, then they'll have little legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinian population and if Hamas do decide to run, it's entirely possible they'll win again, perhaps even more convincingly. Either way, I fear we're a long way from stability in the Occupied Territories, let alone a serious Israeli-Palestinian settlement.

The conflict in Darfur will continue, inspite of the peace deal between some rebel groups and the government in Khartoum. While we may see a UN presence in the region, I don't think the kind of large scale western intervention which some liberals support is anymore likely next year than it has been over the last few. Perhaps the most worrying trend visible in the Darfur situation, is its transformation into a regional conflagration incorporating local conflicts in neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic. If this continues, as seems likely, it will serve to make any peace deal all the more complicated to acheive.

On a slightly more positive note, I continue to believe a major assault on Iran is unlikely. The US and UK might well like to attack the country, but bit off more than they could chew in Iraq and will find themselves under increasing pressure in Afghanistan. Similarly, the Hezbollah-Israel conflict of last August will surely have discouraged the more hawkish Israelis. No doubt western powers will try to use the recently established UN sanctions regime to put pressure on Ahmadinejad. They may even supplement this approach with covert action, perhaps through the Islamist-Marxist People's Mujahedin, who have previously received US support, despite being designated a "Foreign Terrorist Organisation," by the US State Department. If we keep looking for the big attack or even an invasion, we may miss these smaller and less obvious interventions.

Back in Blighty I think it's safe to say we're going to see the attack on our civil liberties continue. The introduction of ID cards will begin in earnest with 69 interrogation centres being opened sometime in 2007. After calls from senior police officers for bans on flag burning, and the power to proscribe chants as well slogans on placards, banners and headbands, I'd be less than surprised if at least some of these suggestions found their way into legislation over the coming year. Even children won't escape this, with the expansion of fingerprinting in schools and the establishment of the Children's Index.

As pessimistic as the foregoing sounds, it isn't all going to be bad. I promise. It's just that bad things are easier to predict with any degree of certainty. We do know that by this time next year, Blair will be gone, even if we're not entirely sure when he's planning on going (place your bets here), so at least there's that to look forward to. I also believe that none of the foregoing is inevitable. History shows that if people get themselves organised in sufficient numbers, governments have to sit up and pay attention. (On which note I predict the Save the NHS campaign is going to be one of the big movements of next year.) The future really is in our hands. I just wish we didn't seem so butter fingered.

Teacher: Leave them kids alone!

2006-12-27T18:57:00.000Z

The problem of kids being bullied for their lunch money is an old problem, which has become a cliche in a certain flavour of school-orientated dramas. This being the case, it obviously needs a new, flashy solution:

All secondary pupils in Scotland should be given ID cards in an effort to stamp out bullying, according to a teaching union...

The [Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association] SSTA's general secretary, David Eaglesham, said the time had come for photographic identification to be added to the cards used to access school facilities.

Fortunately, the Scottish Greens seem to have their heads screwed on about this. Eaglesham "said that introducing such a system would also help prepare young people for "'the realities of identity management in the 21st Century.'" In response, Green MSP Patrick Harvie argues, "We should be preparing young people for the reality of defending their privacy and civil liberties against ever-more intrusive government systems."

The general introduction of cards in schools should be viewed alongside the use of fingerprinting at several establishments. At the recent Defy-ID National Gathering, a friend described this process as "grooming" children in preparation for ID cards and constant surveillance later in life. If kids are normalised to it while they're young, they'll never be able to imagine a world where we aren't constantly recorded, monitored, tracked and studied. That, of course, is exactly what those pushing the emergence of the surveillance society want. The longer we take to stop this, the harder it's going to get.

Happy Christmas (War Is Over)

2006-12-26T16:05:00.000Z

Kabul, Afghanistan

Kandahar, Afghanistan

Basra, Iraq

2006-12-24T15:11:00.000Z

Those of you looking to volunteer in the War on Christmas can sign up here.

Christmas TV

2006-12-24T12:20:00.000Z

2006-12-23T19:55:00.000Z

Global Orgasm Day?! You couldn't make this shit up.

Reindeer: Horses With Antlers

2006-12-23T12:34:00.000Z

The tree's up, the tinsel's out and Slade are back on the wireless. It's time once again to celebrate the birth of Doctor Who, make our annual sojourn to the Church of Consumerism and await Satan's visit and his bulging sack. It's time also, for that other festive tradition (i.e. something that's happened more than once before), the Disillusioned kid Seasonal Message. Obviously, I wouldn't dream of going against tradition so, for your delectation and delight, here's this year's winterval waffle.

Perhaps surprisingly given my all-pervading cynicism, I actually like Christmas. Last year I suggested that this might stem, at least in part from "a naive hope that the season of goodwill contains the seeds of a better world," but didn't really explore the ramifications of this idea. Conveniently, Jason Godesky has actually done that for me this year. In a fascinating post, he ruminates on what would happen if Roy Wood actually got his wish and Christmas was celebrated every day of the year. Godesky argues that gift giving is in a sense a hangover from tribal societies and notes that it offers an alternative to market economics, one operating according to an inherently incompatible logic. On this basis, he concludes,

What would it be like if we really did make Christmas last the whole year long? It would be a gift economy—it would be a tribe. It's no empty holiday slogan: it's our birthright. We deserve nothing less, and settling for less is killing us. If we don't demand more, if we don't demand what we deserve, and if we don't do it right now, then we have ceded our right to survive. It's time we actually did make Christmas last all year—nothing less will do.

Obviously, that's what I was getting at.

To suggest that Christmas is generally a good thing is not to ignore the concomitant downsides: mindless consumerism, sweatshop labour, domestic violence, animal cruelty etc. These are products of wider societal problems (capitalism, patriarchy, exploitation of animals), not of the season per se. Those problems need to be tackled, but that doesn't, or at least shouldn't, preclude us enjoying the festivities. Go forth and drink until you throw up your liver,* for tomorrow we smash capitalism.

Of course, one of the less salutary traditions at this time of year is the increasingly obstreperous mumblings from the right of the isle about a nascent "War on Christmas." In reality there isn't and never has been such a conflict outside the paranoid delusions and well-honed persecution complexes of Rebekah Wade and Stephen Green. It is interesting to note that while the Daily Mail (via) is fulminating about the fact that "only one in 100 Christmas cards sold in Britain contains any religious imagery or message," militant secularist George W. Bush seems to have no problem with sending a card emblazoned with a picture of the White House in snow and making mention only of "the season."

Much of the "controversy" around the matter this year seems to have been stirred-up by the tabloid press in order to boost their readership. They're not alone, however. The BNP, the soi-disant "true defenders of the faith," have also been getting their knickers in a twist about "the Labour controlled central government, many local councils, and the entire Politically Correct anti-British Establishment doing all they can to undermine the Christian festival of Christmas." Now, I'm not suggesting that every Christian Soldier who has signed up to this valiant fight is an unreconstructed fascist, but it is telling that this valiant struggle has been so easily co-opted by Griff & Co.

Christmas is only a Christian festival in a very limited sense. Festivities at this time of year pre-date Christianity's emergence and the Romans even held a festival on December 25 called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, "the birthday of the unconquered sun." Christianity settled on the date largely arbitrarily, although the available evidence suggests that Christ was most likely born in the autumn. Holding the festival in winter served as a sweetener to putative converts who wouldn't have to give up their traditional parties. This also helps to explain the co-option of pre-Christian symbols such as holly.

Although I've described this process as "hijacking" in the past, I don't believe there's anything inherently wrong with it. Winter's cold and miserable, and frankly why would anybody bother if there wasn't a party in the middle of it? If you want to assign that some religious significance -whatever its origins - feel free. Whatever flies your sleigh. But don't try and tell me you have a monopoly over seasonal festivities and don't expect the rest of us to be singing from the same carol sheet. I'll enjoy my nut roast perfectly fine without having God's Seal of Approval.

The problem of course is that our courageous Christian Soldiers are motivated less by a desire to defend the festive spirit than by a thinly-veiled political agenda. Jarndyce describes the so-called war as "a cipher for our thoughts about immigration," and there's more than a snowflake of truth to that assessment. The War on Christmas is fundamentally a stick for beating radicals, liberals and ethnic minorities with. It's part of the wider struggle against the evils of "political correctness" - a largely meaningless catch-all phrase wielded by the right as a whipping-boy embodying their multitudinous dislikes (anti-racism, gay rights, health and safety regulations, immigration, red-tape, religious tolerance etc.). Our brave Christian Soldiers are involved in an ambitious political project and won't be satisfied until they've overturned every progressive development of the last fifty-years. If they want a war, we'll give 'em one, although I'd appreciate it if they could hang on until Tuesday.

Happy Christmas, Chrismukkah, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, Duckmass, Hannukah, Hogmany, Holidays, HumanLight, Koruchun, Kwanza, New Year, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Winterval, Yalda and/or Yule!

* Please remember to drink responsibly

2006-12-22T22:38:00.000Z

Brownfemipower has compiled a list of posts by bloggers participating in the day of internet solidarity with the people of Oaxaca, including my post. In other news, I've also made this month's Carnival of Socialism.

7even

2006-12-22T17:03:00.000Z

I've only known here two days and Rachel has already tagged me with a meme. *rolls eyes* At least, it's a fairly interesting and not too involved example of the phenomenon: Write about the seven best things you did in 2007. So in no particular order, here they are:

1) Returning to university. Honestly, the work thing's over-rated.

2) Quitting my job. See above.

3) Seeing Propagandhi at the First Floor Club in Derby. I've been waiting five years for them to tour and they were well worth the wait.

4) Going to see Children of Men. Soul-destroyingly brilliant dystopian sci-fi starring Clive Owen.

5) Meeting Shimri Zameret. I got pissed in a park with an Israeli refusenik. How cool is that?

6) Striking for pensions. The main reason I joined Unison. Pity they were so quick to sell us out, not that I was particularly surprised.

7) My birthday party. I ended up throwing up over my own leg. Enough said.

At this point I'm supposed to perpetuate the meme by tagging seven other ~~victims~~ people, so if you can be bothered: Alex, Chris Rossdale, DanR, Janine, Jim Jay, Nella, Pacian. If not, it's probably for the best.