Palestinians risk "irking" the international community by refusing to re-open 'peace' talks with the Zionists, says veteran war-criminal Bill Clinton, ex US President.
"This is the first time that any Israeli government has said we will not issue any new permits and not have any new settlements and that should be enough to open the door and start talking," said Clinton, as yet more palestinian homes were bulldozed all over the West Bank and the 'Judaising' of Jerusalem proceeded by leaps and bounds. His position has always been that the US base known by the invaders as Israel must come well before any consideration of the rights of its inhabitants. Any interventions he makes in world affairs must be judged against his first major act of international diplomacy: the bombing of Bagdhad in June 1993, killing 60 innocent God-fearing citizens, including artist Leila al Attar, in retaliation for an alleged plot to assassinate the previous president, George Bush Senior.
The attack "was essential to send a message to those who engage in state-sponsored terrorism".
Bill Clinton: US settlements policy has changed
Former US president Bill Clinton urged the Palestinians on Sunday to accept America's modification of its anti-settlement policy and return to the bargaining table. "Take where we are and the reformulation of the settlement issue and find a way [to move forward]," Clinton told a Jerusalem gathering of high level American and Israeli policy makers at the Saban Forum in Jerusalem.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1258027297193&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Tuesday 17 November 2009
Wednesday 4 November 2009
The Public Liability Scam
Art Fairs have always been a seriously expensive risk for the participants. And no matter how hard they try to keep the wall prices down, from the public's point of view everything on offer seems terribly costly, even at the 'affordable' fairs. This is because the overheads are gigantic: hiring the venue, raising and striking the stalls, paying the staff and advertising, no matter what the style of show may be.
I took part in one such fair, The Big Art Fair, in London's Alexandra Palace, 1994. The expense wasn't too great as we were allowed to enter a fixed number of paintings and they would be hung wherever there was room. The fact that the organisers forgot to insist on a maximum size, resulting in a certain chaos, is another story.
There is something about the Aly Paly that seems to attract artists and businessmen with grandiosity problems the way flames attract moths. Another such fair, the Great Art Show, took place there in 2006. I know all about that because again, dear readers, I could not resist.
Having paid a large fee to hire a stall, I found there had been a 'sea change'. During the intervening years, the creep of litigation culture had engulfed the art world; Public Liability Cover was now mandatory for all exhibitors - another expense to eat into our tiny earnings.
I took part in what I swear will have been my last art fair ever, in the sweltering summer of '09, Chelsea Old Town Hall. Before, during and after forking out our hire fees, we the artists were continually reminded by the organiser that we Must Have Public Liability Cover - checks would be made, and if we were found to be without our figleaf we would be out on the street.
In the event, no such checks were made, but it all made it look so obvious that the litigation industry has everyone by the balls. Even little local art trails now expect all artists to have Cover.
A friend of mine who has set up an erstwhile empty shop in South Bristol as a low-rent artspace also has to have a certificate of cover - her landlord insists. And I'll bet the Council are doing the same to him.
It was not so when I took over a Marylebone High Street shop for a month under the wing of Alternative Arts, back in 1995.
I have spoken to the Government Department for Business, Innovations and Skills (http://www.direct.gov.uk/) and they could tell me nothing about the reason for this new and onerous demand, but the Health and Safety Executive (http://www.hse.gov.uk/) were able to tell me "This is not a health-and-safety matter in law. It is only optional."
The Citizens' Advice Bureau was able to assure me that "There is no known single original source of this necessity, just a general move towards the requirement by companies."
As the country grows more litigous?
"Yes, as the country grows more litigous."
This can only get bigger and more invasive; it has not reached some kind of plateau, that is certain. As long as law firms recognise the chance of turning a profit and the American culture of blame smothers any sense of our personal responsibility it can only get worse. Artists who have no material possessions (most of them) have nothing to lose by risking a court appearance over some brat's stubbed toe, and they should stand against this. Unfortunately it tends to be those with their own car, computer or even house who find themselves in this position; they do have something to lose if a stranger suffers a broken high heel or bangs a head on a low ceiling and is incapable of simply communicating, asking for an apology, as we used to do ten years ago.
I have spoken to the Government Department for Business, Innovations and Skills (http://www.direct.gov.uk/) and they could tell me nothing about the reason for this new and onerous demand, but the Health and Safety Executive (http://www.hse.gov.uk/) were able to tell me "This is not a health-and-safety matter in law. It is only optional."
The Citizens' Advice Bureau was able to assure me that "There is no known single original source of this necessity, just a general move towards the requirement by companies."
As the country grows more litigous?
"Yes, as the country grows more litigous."
This can only get bigger and more invasive; it has not reached some kind of plateau, that is certain. As long as law firms recognise the chance of turning a profit and the American culture of blame smothers any sense of our personal responsibility it can only get worse. Artists who have no material possessions (most of them) have nothing to lose by risking a court appearance over some brat's stubbed toe, and they should stand against this. Unfortunately it tends to be those with their own car, computer or even house who find themselves in this position; they do have something to lose if a stranger suffers a broken high heel or bangs a head on a low ceiling and is incapable of simply communicating, asking for an apology, as we used to do ten years ago.
Monday 2 November 2009
Egyptian authorities destroying Gaza aid
By Iqbal Tamimi
The headlines came in some newspapers two days ago screaming ‘ The poor of Sinai are looting the aid of the poor of Gaza’...this is alarming I thought, the aid was there for a very long time, no one from AlAreesh’s poor ever touched a grain of rice before, what was happening?
It was found that at the early hours of dawn, a few boys ran towards the sport stadium in AlAreesh where tons of humanitarian aid for Gaza was piling up, they have started to loot whatever their hands could reach, and then tens of grownups followed them to take what remained of the food and other urgently needed aid for Gaza.
Is this possible I thought? Why there were no security forces to guard those tons of aid in food and other consumer goods especially that they were supposed to reach the orphans and the needy in Gaza who suffered the Israeli bombardment and the siege?
It has been reported that one of the witnesses said that ‘the poor kids were able to loot a large amount of food aid which has been lying there in the sun since last January’...But then he burst to tears.
I guess he was crying because both the ones on the Egyptian side who committed the looting and the people of Gaza on the other side who are supposed to get the aid are extremely poor. At least one of them should have benefited from the food.
Other witnesses said that there were some Egyptian police security present but the children threw some stones at them and kept them away; others said that they have phoned the police and reported that there is looting going on, but the police never responded.
One wonders, why this aid that was laying there since January has not been looted before or delivered. The answer came from the poor of AlAreesh themselves. One boy carrying a bag of rice on his shoulders in a hurry said: ‘we are not thieves, we are only poor. We came to take whatever we can benefit from because the authorities piled everything here to burn it; we are taking rice, flour, tinned food, oil, cheese, and blankets’.
The Egyptian police refused to comment on the looting, but confirmed that the tons piling there were gathered to be burned down because all of it was inedible any more; all expired and no more safe for human consumption.....WHY on Earth has such a thing been allowed to happen? Why were tons of food aid to starving people not allowed to go through to Gaza? Why feed the fire instead of feeding the people on either side? Why did the North Sinai Governor Mohamed Shousha and the Red Crescent official fail to respond to all the attempts to call them? Why burn all this effort that has been a collaborative effort of millions of people and charity donors around the world? Why has Egypt stooped so low?
It was found that the authorities in Egypt have already burned down in May more than 250 tons of food aid that came originally last January as a donation from the Libyan people, after months exposure to the heat of the sun and finding out that it was no longer edible or fit for human consumption.
Why would Egypt not facilitate the delivery of the food to the starving poor in Gaza? Through the sea...through the crossings...through the air...or even through the tunnels that were gassed by the Egyptian authorities to deter any hungry soul from reaching out for a loaf of bread.....why Egypt are you frightened of being caught red-handed while trying to feed the hungry orphans? Why Egypt? WHY????
Saturday 24 October 2009
Thursday 22 October 2009
Phantom Limb
P' Limb are in a way typical of Bristol, in that this band doesn't sound remotely anything like the English West Country. When I first saw them, at the Fleece, Bristol, I felt I was getting a second shot at enjoying Tina Turner before she got famous; although Yolanda Quartey is her own woman, and the sound, a mix of dark, deep soul with the sunshine of Nashville, is a feast of special ingredients. I wrote, a couple of years back, that they conjured up wide-screen lonely tumbleweed road visions- and sho' nuff, when you invest in their debut CD, as I strongly advise, that's what you get.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzHq4uTJFEs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzHq4uTJFEs
Tuesday 13 October 2009
Dealing in stolen property, Palestine
Zionist analyst shoots himself in foot
Will Palestinian refugees ever be able to return home? Unlikely, as it would be too painful for many, most homes have been destroyed and the few left standing are being requisitioned by the Zionist state, whose laws are constantly being retrospectively altered to cover each encroachment on human rights.
This hot-blooded session on Al-Jazeera, a three-way discussion among Haifa attorney Sudah Adalah, decribing her struggle to assert the rights of many of the dispossed Palestinians, Michel Abdel-Massih QC (London) with a dispassionate but determined invocation of legal precedents and Raanan Gissen in Tel Aviv, exploding angily from the starting block as he insists that this is not a legal situation but a war situation, and that Jews have lost homes, too. He did not go into specifics about these homes.
The background to this is Binyamin Netanyahu's recent speech in which he declared that the 'refugee issue' must be resolved outside Israel (aka Occupied Palestine) to avoid any threat to the existence of the exclusively Jewish state.
Will Palestinian refugees ever be able to return home? Unlikely, as it would be too painful for many, most homes have been destroyed and the few left standing are being requisitioned by the Zionist state, whose laws are constantly being retrospectively altered to cover each encroachment on human rights.
This hot-blooded session on Al-Jazeera, a three-way discussion among Haifa attorney Sudah Adalah, decribing her struggle to assert the rights of many of the dispossed Palestinians, Michel Abdel-Massih QC (London) with a dispassionate but determined invocation of legal precedents and Raanan Gissen in Tel Aviv, exploding angily from the starting block as he insists that this is not a legal situation but a war situation, and that Jews have lost homes, too. He did not go into specifics about these homes.
The background to this is Binyamin Netanyahu's recent speech in which he declared that the 'refugee issue' must be resolved outside Israel (aka Occupied Palestine) to avoid any threat to the existence of the exclusively Jewish state.
Saturday 10 October 2009
Chomsky on Obama
Following the award to the Boy-King Twotank Obama, the barely-installed US President, of a Nobel Peace Prize, I present Noam Chomsky's views on Israel and its self-appointed 'True Friend'. As Mr Chomsky points out, the Zionist regime is at pains to paint itself as being a democracy. The benefits of that democracy, of course, only extend to the members of its chosen tribe. And the regularly invoked 'right of defence' hardly covers the extermination of all extended relatives of any resistance fighters who may or may not be in the country. Back in the Seventies, when Anwar Sadat of Egypt offered Israel a peace treaty, proposing the Zionist withdrawal from occupied Sinai but leaving out the Palestinians, he was turned down. The Zionists' response to the more recent offer by Hamas was the same: continued occupation and expansion with unlimited support from the US, over the offered security. Again, as Noam Chomsky says, the Nazis could have protected themselves against the Poles by withdrawing; so could the Zionists protect themselves by returning to their mothership, the US. An unavoidable irony here is that, despite that previous winner of a politically-motivated Peace Prize being the All-American Henry Kissinger, I feel that in many ways America is my spiritual home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bAUJF5uUuw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bAUJF5uUuw
Monday 5 October 2009
Review: Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee
My radio review of this excellent category-busting film before its special preview in Bristol, October 2009:
Saturday 3 October 2009
Shopping for CCTV
All Britain's city centres, main streets and public spaces are now full of CCTV cameras, which we are told are to cut crime, but increasing evidence shows that they are ineffective in halting crime and even when they do pick up criminal activity the police 'see no ships' unless it is at best, convenient. All this spying has only one practical use, which is as a tool of an authoritarian, perhaps totalitarian, state.
In London you can now be harassed, assaulted or arrested by the police just for taking photos in the street. A trio of brave but determinedly peaceful activist-pranksters tried going a little further, by turning their own cameras on the watchers. Guess what...
In London you can now be harassed, assaulted or arrested by the police just for taking photos in the street. A trio of brave but determinedly peaceful activist-pranksters tried going a little further, by turning their own cameras on the watchers. Guess what...
Friday 2 October 2009
CCTV does not work: new evidence
A local story that illustrates that CCTV is not a silver bullet that fixes everything. Some of the comments are interesting too.
CCTV not enough to protect Bristol family - Thisisbristol 1/10/09 http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/CCTV-protect-Bristol-family/article-1383410-detail/article.html
"A Bristol mother of two thought she had finally stopped the man she believes is terrorising her family, when he was caught on CCTV Bristol vandalising her husband's car.So she was stunned when the police told her that despite paying hundreds of pounds for the security system, there wasn't have enough evidence to charge him."
In this case, police claimed that CCTV evidence was not enough and that old-fashioned witnesses were required. Of course if it is in the interests of the police and/or their paymasters (government/local councils or 'businessmen') then CCTV recordings will miraculously be awarded credibility otherwise denied them.
Some officers, if it suits, will even go so far as to say that if there was only human witness and no CCTV, then all bets are off.
On the other hand, as I happily told a police acquaintance, I once witnessed one near miraculous example of the technology and The Force together doing a good job; I had joined the long-established Bristol anti-war vigil (above) for five minutes one afternoon when a couple of really determined troublemakers jumped up on the kerb, and I could tell they hadn't just come to talk about the weather. But they were followed, practically instantaneously, by two coppers who quietly saw them off. Our uniformed saviours popped up from nowhere and vanished again just as smoothly.
I have to qualify this, though: on 22nd April 2011 the Vigil again came under attack while I attended; this time a sustained visit, leaving your correspondent reclining in the bushes and his Gaza placard ripped up, but this time the cavalry did not speed to the rescue. All the Queen's horses and all the Queen's men missed out because one monitor watcher was off having a cup of tea. ( The police have since told me that the cameras were doing their job but pointing somewhere else). So the jury remains out on this one.
Wednesday 23 September 2009
Israeli army fires at journalist - on camera
There was a time when the Zionist regime and its army took public relations seriously; but that time is long gone. With the US and UK governments prepared to support Israel all the way, while maintaining the charade of 'peace negotiations', the Zionists even shoot journalists as they are talking to camera. They know there will be no repercussions. Our governments cannot be accused of being merely supine; in the short term they will enjoy huge profits from the occupation and the arms industry's advances in killing technology, based on its experiments in Gaza and the West Bank, and the long term advantage of having a Palestine completely emptied of Palestinians but umbilically linked to Washington and Downing Street, as an empire base in the Middle East, are incalculable.
Islam: A potted history of civilization
Hasina Khan, a friend of mine here in Bristol, has published this short history of civilization and its roots in the 'East', just in time for the end of Ramadan. Well worth a look for its summing-up of a very long and complex saga. Another poke in the eye for the white supremacists is the invasion of Greece by King Akhenaten, an African (and father-in-law of Tutankhamun) who introduced the concept of the City to Europe.
Monday 21 September 2009
I Am Israel
A six-and-a-half minute documentary about Palestine's slow engorgement by the guns and concrete of Zionism, told dispassionately. All the more horrifying for its quiet telling.
Monday 7 September 2009
Broon: I wanna be your dog
25th August:
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu met on Tuesday afternoon with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Netanyahu had to be ushered into Downing Street via the back door, as the front entrance was the scene of a pro-Palestine rally.
The rally, attended by hundreds of people, began about 30 minutes before Netanyahu's arrival at Number 10, causing both the cops and Israeli ‘security officers’ present some concern.
Brown met Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor at the door, and all three were rushed in by their respective 'security' goons.
At some point, several demonstrators tried breaching the barrier, but were stopped by the police. Demonstrators shouted slogans including "Free Palestine", “We are all Palestinians” and "Netanyahu's a war criminal," and carried signs reading "Judea and Samaria are Palestinian territory," "Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine," and "Let the Palestinians live."
“We shouted our rage into Downing Street for as long as we were able, but shaming a visiting war criminal is not to be tolerated by our democratic leaders.
So overwhelming numbers of police were drafted in, belts bedecked with tasers, and they finally succeeded in bulldozing the whole protest onto the distant side of the very wide Whitehall road, for the greater comfort of their war criminal guest.
Truth and morals bulldozed out of sight, not unlike the bulldozing tactics used in Israel against Palestinian homes, except that for the Palestinians it is fatal, and final.
And they used the Serious Organised Crime Police Act as a pretext for pushing the protestors away from their war criminal friend – serious organised crime, how very ironic.” - 'Bristolian'
The two held a joint press conference after their meeting, in which Brown said the UK was and is a loyal friend to Israel and that it supports the Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace process’.
Nevertheless, Brown stressed that that the demand to halt 'settlement' construction will not be retracted, as the 'settlements' are what impedes the [unworkable] two-state solution.
Jerusalem, responded Netanyahu, "Is not a settlement. It is the sovereign capital of the State of Israel. We have been building in Jerusalem for 3,000 years."
Brown added that he supported Netanyahu's ‘plan’ to assist in the “rehabilitation of the Palestinian economy “and called on the international community to support a “financial peace”.
The use of phrases such as these must be no more than old-fashioned cant.
Turning their attention to the so-called Iranian 'threat', Brown said that as far as the UK is concerned, such a threat "has no place in a civilized world." London, he added, shares Jerusalem's concern regarding Tehran's nuclear development programme and urged Israel to accept US President Barack Obama's offer to launch a dialogue on the matter.
Netanyahu (of course) agreed, saying that "London, like other European capitals, must speak against the Iranian nuclear programme."
Netanyahu was expected to meet US special Middle East envoy George Mitchell in London on Wednesday, probably to ask the US administration to pressure Saudi Arabia into making several goodwill gestures towards Israel, before agreeing to the American demand to halt 'settlement' construction.
While Netanyahu believes that some progress was made by his emissaries to Washington last week, added the source, he also believes that no significant breakthrough which warrants such a categorical demand was achieved. Speaking to reporters, he criticized the Palestinian Authority "for doing nothing but set preconditions for peace and hardening their stance during the Fatah Congress."
Netanyahu did not comment on Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's statements regarding the establishing of a Palestinian state within two years.
Following reports of a possible peace summit with Obama and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in September, Netanyahu stressed that nothing has been finalized as yet, adding that Jerusalem was appreciative of Washington's efforts to achieve ‘normalization’ overtures from the Arab world towards Israel.
As for Syria, Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the Israeli-Syrian peace process has stalled because of Damascus' support of Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah, adding that "Syria's actions do not indicate that it wants peace. It has taken no steps to curb the terror (sic) organizations."
The prime minister also said that he spoke to Brown about the legal threat posed to IDF officers in British courts: "I told him that it simply did not coincide with common sense. We're fighting the same terrorists and we're exercising our right to self defence. No one accuses the British Army of anything and no one should accuse the IDF or its officers," he said.
According to Netanyahu, Brown said he would look into a legislative change in the matter; in other words, this means finding a way of putting the regime's lackeys above the law. The British premier, never one to pose as a Man of The People despite his buffoonery on YouTube (http://hanleyexpress.blogspot.com/2009/06/gordon-brown-joins-u-tube-generation.html), also voiced his objections to the academic and consumer bans against Israel in the UK. In short, Gordon Brown managed a convincing imitation of a poodle.
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu met on Tuesday afternoon with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Netanyahu had to be ushered into Downing Street via the back door, as the front entrance was the scene of a pro-Palestine rally.
The rally, attended by hundreds of people, began about 30 minutes before Netanyahu's arrival at Number 10, causing both the cops and Israeli ‘security officers’ present some concern.
Brown met Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor at the door, and all three were rushed in by their respective 'security' goons.
At some point, several demonstrators tried breaching the barrier, but were stopped by the police. Demonstrators shouted slogans including "Free Palestine", “We are all Palestinians” and "Netanyahu's a war criminal," and carried signs reading "Judea and Samaria are Palestinian territory," "Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine," and "Let the Palestinians live."
“We shouted our rage into Downing Street for as long as we were able, but shaming a visiting war criminal is not to be tolerated by our democratic leaders.
So overwhelming numbers of police were drafted in, belts bedecked with tasers, and they finally succeeded in bulldozing the whole protest onto the distant side of the very wide Whitehall road, for the greater comfort of their war criminal guest.
Truth and morals bulldozed out of sight, not unlike the bulldozing tactics used in Israel against Palestinian homes, except that for the Palestinians it is fatal, and final.
And they used the Serious Organised Crime Police Act as a pretext for pushing the protestors away from their war criminal friend – serious organised crime, how very ironic.” - 'Bristolian'
The two held a joint press conference after their meeting, in which Brown said the UK was and is a loyal friend to Israel and that it supports the Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace process’.
Nevertheless, Brown stressed that that the demand to halt 'settlement' construction will not be retracted, as the 'settlements' are what impedes the [unworkable] two-state solution.
Jerusalem, responded Netanyahu, "Is not a settlement. It is the sovereign capital of the State of Israel. We have been building in Jerusalem for 3,000 years."
Brown added that he supported Netanyahu's ‘plan’ to assist in the “rehabilitation of the Palestinian economy “and called on the international community to support a “financial peace”.
The use of phrases such as these must be no more than old-fashioned cant.
Turning their attention to the so-called Iranian 'threat', Brown said that as far as the UK is concerned, such a threat "has no place in a civilized world." London, he added, shares Jerusalem's concern regarding Tehran's nuclear development programme and urged Israel to accept US President Barack Obama's offer to launch a dialogue on the matter.
Netanyahu (of course) agreed, saying that "London, like other European capitals, must speak against the Iranian nuclear programme."
Netanyahu was expected to meet US special Middle East envoy George Mitchell in London on Wednesday, probably to ask the US administration to pressure Saudi Arabia into making several goodwill gestures towards Israel, before agreeing to the American demand to halt 'settlement' construction.
While Netanyahu believes that some progress was made by his emissaries to Washington last week, added the source, he also believes that no significant breakthrough which warrants such a categorical demand was achieved. Speaking to reporters, he criticized the Palestinian Authority "for doing nothing but set preconditions for peace and hardening their stance during the Fatah Congress."
Netanyahu did not comment on Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's statements regarding the establishing of a Palestinian state within two years.
Following reports of a possible peace summit with Obama and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in September, Netanyahu stressed that nothing has been finalized as yet, adding that Jerusalem was appreciative of Washington's efforts to achieve ‘normalization’ overtures from the Arab world towards Israel.
As for Syria, Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the Israeli-Syrian peace process has stalled because of Damascus' support of Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah, adding that "Syria's actions do not indicate that it wants peace. It has taken no steps to curb the terror (sic) organizations."
The prime minister also said that he spoke to Brown about the legal threat posed to IDF officers in British courts: "I told him that it simply did not coincide with common sense. We're fighting the same terrorists and we're exercising our right to self defence. No one accuses the British Army of anything and no one should accuse the IDF or its officers," he said.
According to Netanyahu, Brown said he would look into a legislative change in the matter; in other words, this means finding a way of putting the regime's lackeys above the law. The British premier, never one to pose as a Man of The People despite his buffoonery on YouTube (http://hanleyexpress.blogspot.com/2009/06/gordon-brown-joins-u-tube-generation.html), also voiced his objections to the academic and consumer bans against Israel in the UK. In short, Gordon Brown managed a convincing imitation of a poodle.
Update 2 October 2009: Protest as war criminal Ehud Barak is welcomed to Labour's party conference. Film at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2R86Z7wM40
Saturday 15 August 2009
Israel sells off refugees' hopes
Jonathan Cook August 14. 2009
TZIPORI, ISRAEL // Amin Muhammad Ali, a 74-year-old refugee from a destroyed Palestinian village in northern Israel, says he only feels truly at peace when he stands among his ancestors’ graves.
The cemetery, surrounded on all sides by Jewish homes and farms, is a small time capsule, transporting Mr Muhammad Ali – known to everyone as Abu Arab – back to the days when this place was known by an Arabic name, Saffuriya, rather than its current Hebrew name, Tzipori.
Unlike most of the Palestinian refugees forced outside Israel’s borders by the 1948 war that led to the creation of the Jewish state, Abu Arab and his family fled nearby, to a neighbourhood of Nazareth.
Refused the right to return to his childhood home, which was razed along with the rest of Saffuriya, he watched as the fields once owned by his parents were slowly taken over by Jewish immigrants, mostly from eastern Europe. Today only Saffuriya’s cemetery remains untouched.
Despite the loss of their village, the 4,500 refugees from Saffuriya and their descendants have clung to one hope: that the Jewish newcomers could not buy their land, only lease it temporarily from the state.
According to international law, Israel holds the property of more than four million Palestinian refugees in custodianship, until a final peace deal determines whether some or all of them will be allowed back to their 400-plus destroyed Palestinian villages or are compensated for their loss.
But last week, in a violation of international law and the refugees’ property rights that went unnoticed both inside Israel and abroad, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, forced through a revolutionary land reform.
The new law begins a process of creeping privatisation of much of Israel’s developed land, including refugee property, said Oren Yiftachel, a geographer at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva.
Mr Netanyahu and the bill's supporters argue that the law will cut out a whole level of state bureaucracy, make land transactions simpler and more efficient and cut house prices.
In practice, it will mean that the 200 Jewish families of Tzipori will be able to buy their homes, including a new cluster of bungalows that is being completed on land next to the cemetery that belonged to Abu Arab’s parents.
The privatisation of Tzipori’s refugee land will remove it from the control of an official known as the Custodian of Absentee Property, who is supposed to safeguard it for the refugees.
“Now the refugees will no longer have a single address – Israel – for our claims,” said Abu Arab. “We will have to make our case individually against many hundreds of thousands of private homeowners.”
He added: “Israel is like a thief who wants to hide his loot. Instead of putting the stolen goods in one box, he moves it to 700 different boxes so it cannot be found.”
Mr Netanyahu was given a rough ride by Israeli legislators over the reform, though concern about the refugees’ rights was not among the reasons for their protests.
Last month, he had to pull the bill at the last minute as its defeat threatened to bring down the government. He forced it through on a second attempt last week but only after he had warned his coalition partners that they would be dismissed if they voted against it.
A broad coalition of opposition had formed to what was seen as a reversal of a central tenet of Zionism: that the territory Israel acquired in 1948 exists for the benefit not of Israelis but of Jews around the world.
In that spirit, Israel’s founders nationalised not only the refugees’ property but also vast swathes of land they confiscated from the remaining Palestinian minority who gained citizenship and now comprise a fifth of the population. By the 1970s, 93 per cent of Israel’s territory was in the hands of the state.
The disquiet provoked by Mr Netanyahu’s privatisation came from a variety of sources: the religious right believes the law contravenes a Biblical injunction not to sell land promised by God; environmentalists are concerned that developers will tear apart the Israeli countryside; and Zionists publicly fear that oil-rich sheikhs from the Gulf will buy up the country.
Arguments from the Palestinian minority’s leaders against the reform, meanwhile, were ignored – until Hizbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, added his voice at the weekend. In a statement, he warned that the law “validates and perpetuates the crime of land and property theft from the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Nakba”.
Suhad Bishara, a lawyer from the Adalah legal centre for Israel’s Palestinian minority, said the law had been carefully drafted to ensure that foreigners, including wealthy sheikhs, cannot buy land inside Israel.
“Only Israeli citizens and anyone who can come to Israel under the Law of Return – that is, any Jew – can buy the lands on offer, so no ‘foreigner’ will be eligible.”
Another provision in the law means that even internal refugees like Abu Arab, who has Israeli citizenship, will be prevented from buying back land that rightfully belongs to them, Ms Bishara said.
“As is the case now in terms of leasing land,” she explained, “admissibility to buy land in rural communities like Tzipori will be determined by a selection committee whose job it will be to frustrate applications from Arab citizens.”
Supporters of the law have still had to allay the Jewish opposition’s concerns. Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed that only a tiny proportion of Israeli territory – about four per cent – is up for privatisation.
But, according to Mr Yiftachel, who lobbied against the reform, that means about half of Israel’s developed land will be available for purchase over the next few years. And he suspects privatisation will not stop there.
“Once this red line has been crossed, there is nothing to stop the government passing another law next year approving the privatisation of the rest of the developed areas,” he said.
Ms Bishara said among the first refugee properties that would be put on the market were those in Israel’s cities, such as Jaffa, Acre, Tiberias, Haifa and Lod, followed by homes in many of the destroyed villages like Saffuriya.
She said Adalah was already preparing an appeal to the Supreme Court on behalf of the refugees, and if unsuccessful would then take the matter to international courts.
Adalah has received inquiries from hundreds of Palestinian refugees from around the world asking what they can do to stop Israel selling their properties.
“Many of them expressed an interest in suing Israel,” she said.
http://www.jkcook.net/Articles3/0413.htm#Top
TZIPORI, ISRAEL // Amin Muhammad Ali, a 74-year-old refugee from a destroyed Palestinian village in northern Israel, says he only feels truly at peace when he stands among his ancestors’ graves.
The cemetery, surrounded on all sides by Jewish homes and farms, is a small time capsule, transporting Mr Muhammad Ali – known to everyone as Abu Arab – back to the days when this place was known by an Arabic name, Saffuriya, rather than its current Hebrew name, Tzipori.
Unlike most of the Palestinian refugees forced outside Israel’s borders by the 1948 war that led to the creation of the Jewish state, Abu Arab and his family fled nearby, to a neighbourhood of Nazareth.
Refused the right to return to his childhood home, which was razed along with the rest of Saffuriya, he watched as the fields once owned by his parents were slowly taken over by Jewish immigrants, mostly from eastern Europe. Today only Saffuriya’s cemetery remains untouched.
Despite the loss of their village, the 4,500 refugees from Saffuriya and their descendants have clung to one hope: that the Jewish newcomers could not buy their land, only lease it temporarily from the state.
According to international law, Israel holds the property of more than four million Palestinian refugees in custodianship, until a final peace deal determines whether some or all of them will be allowed back to their 400-plus destroyed Palestinian villages or are compensated for their loss.
But last week, in a violation of international law and the refugees’ property rights that went unnoticed both inside Israel and abroad, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, forced through a revolutionary land reform.
The new law begins a process of creeping privatisation of much of Israel’s developed land, including refugee property, said Oren Yiftachel, a geographer at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva.
Mr Netanyahu and the bill's supporters argue that the law will cut out a whole level of state bureaucracy, make land transactions simpler and more efficient and cut house prices.
In practice, it will mean that the 200 Jewish families of Tzipori will be able to buy their homes, including a new cluster of bungalows that is being completed on land next to the cemetery that belonged to Abu Arab’s parents.
The privatisation of Tzipori’s refugee land will remove it from the control of an official known as the Custodian of Absentee Property, who is supposed to safeguard it for the refugees.
“Now the refugees will no longer have a single address – Israel – for our claims,” said Abu Arab. “We will have to make our case individually against many hundreds of thousands of private homeowners.”
He added: “Israel is like a thief who wants to hide his loot. Instead of putting the stolen goods in one box, he moves it to 700 different boxes so it cannot be found.”
Mr Netanyahu was given a rough ride by Israeli legislators over the reform, though concern about the refugees’ rights was not among the reasons for their protests.
Last month, he had to pull the bill at the last minute as its defeat threatened to bring down the government. He forced it through on a second attempt last week but only after he had warned his coalition partners that they would be dismissed if they voted against it.
A broad coalition of opposition had formed to what was seen as a reversal of a central tenet of Zionism: that the territory Israel acquired in 1948 exists for the benefit not of Israelis but of Jews around the world.
In that spirit, Israel’s founders nationalised not only the refugees’ property but also vast swathes of land they confiscated from the remaining Palestinian minority who gained citizenship and now comprise a fifth of the population. By the 1970s, 93 per cent of Israel’s territory was in the hands of the state.
The disquiet provoked by Mr Netanyahu’s privatisation came from a variety of sources: the religious right believes the law contravenes a Biblical injunction not to sell land promised by God; environmentalists are concerned that developers will tear apart the Israeli countryside; and Zionists publicly fear that oil-rich sheikhs from the Gulf will buy up the country.
Arguments from the Palestinian minority’s leaders against the reform, meanwhile, were ignored – until Hizbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, added his voice at the weekend. In a statement, he warned that the law “validates and perpetuates the crime of land and property theft from the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Nakba”.
Suhad Bishara, a lawyer from the Adalah legal centre for Israel’s Palestinian minority, said the law had been carefully drafted to ensure that foreigners, including wealthy sheikhs, cannot buy land inside Israel.
“Only Israeli citizens and anyone who can come to Israel under the Law of Return – that is, any Jew – can buy the lands on offer, so no ‘foreigner’ will be eligible.”
Another provision in the law means that even internal refugees like Abu Arab, who has Israeli citizenship, will be prevented from buying back land that rightfully belongs to them, Ms Bishara said.
“As is the case now in terms of leasing land,” she explained, “admissibility to buy land in rural communities like Tzipori will be determined by a selection committee whose job it will be to frustrate applications from Arab citizens.”
Supporters of the law have still had to allay the Jewish opposition’s concerns. Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed that only a tiny proportion of Israeli territory – about four per cent – is up for privatisation.
But, according to Mr Yiftachel, who lobbied against the reform, that means about half of Israel’s developed land will be available for purchase over the next few years. And he suspects privatisation will not stop there.
“Once this red line has been crossed, there is nothing to stop the government passing another law next year approving the privatisation of the rest of the developed areas,” he said.
Ms Bishara said among the first refugee properties that would be put on the market were those in Israel’s cities, such as Jaffa, Acre, Tiberias, Haifa and Lod, followed by homes in many of the destroyed villages like Saffuriya.
She said Adalah was already preparing an appeal to the Supreme Court on behalf of the refugees, and if unsuccessful would then take the matter to international courts.
Adalah has received inquiries from hundreds of Palestinian refugees from around the world asking what they can do to stop Israel selling their properties.
“Many of them expressed an interest in suing Israel,” she said.
http://www.jkcook.net/Articles3/0413.htm#Top
Thursday 13 August 2009
Hebron: the truth, from an exile in Bristol
Iqbal Tamimi - Abraham bought a cave, he did not buy Palestine
I have been reading an article by Robin-Yassin Kassab, entitled ‘A visit to Hebron’. Yassin Kassab is the author of ‘The Road from Damascus’. This time he was not writing about Damascus, he was writing about my home town Al-Khaleel, known to the Western world by the name of Hebron. In his article he describes his visit to Al-Khaleel accompanied by a number of wonderful writers and publishers, amongst them Michael Palin, Henning Mankel, Deborah Moggach, Claire Messud and MG Vassanji, and he describes the misery of the people in my hometown under the illegal Israeli occupation. Those writers have been able to witness the very painful reality when they travelled to Palestine to participate in the Palestine Festival of Literature.
As usual, the Zionists were ready with sharpened teeth to shred his efforts by their usual Hasbara methods of sending their false poisonous comments in an attempt to mask any efforts at explaining what is really going on in Palestine. One of the comments left by one of those Zionists on his blog complained that ‘Hebron Arabs today have access to 98% of the entire city. Jews have only access to 3% of Hebron’.
In the comment of this ‘anonymous’ reader, what seems to look like an innocent number of complaints, should the reader not know much about that part of the world he/she will fall a victim to the false impression that the presence of the Israeli Occupation in my hometown is justified and not an illegal occupation according to international law and even by Israeli standards. His comments sounded like as if they are coming from a victim who is supposed to have equal rights of access.
The 3% of the Jews in Hebron he was talking about are not supposed to be there, the occupying force according to international law is not supposed to allow or facilitate the transfer of its own citizens to the occupied areas.
He complained that the owners of the city - the Arab Palestinians - have access to 98% of their own city and the occupiers who are called for well-known media manipulation reasons ‘the settlers’ have access to 3%. ‘The expression settlers’ seems to be a very benign use of the language for a malignant reason. Of course the total according to his figures makes the population of Al-Khaleel more than 100%, this is a good example of what happens when Israeli authorities employ cyber amateurs to defend its crimes against the Palestinians, they work very fast so that they conjure numbers that do not make any sense. The Zionist state employs thousands every year to work on character assassination of the writers who bring to light any information about the absurdity of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, like Mr Kassab.
This shows how far they can go to fabricate false stories by throwing numbers without any verifications or referencing, and as usual, the Westerners swallow it all because the numbers and figures are connected in their experience with studies and statistics, and methods we all respect and do not doubt their credibility. I want to surprise ‘Mr anonymous’ and tell him that the people in Al-Khaleel are supposed to have 100% access to their own city because it is their home. It seems that the Zionists are full of themselves to a point they think that people can’t figure out that it is unacceptable for a total stranger to come from as far as Russia to occupy the living room of any Palestinian by hooliganism, and deny the owner access to his own kitchen or bathroom. Blocking the way of the locals is preaching their human rights and this is what the claimed 3% Jewish ‘settlers’ are doing in my hometown.
Those Jewish ‘settlers’ who have access to 3 % of my home have killed three students while walking on campus in 1986 for no reason whatsoever. Those 400 gun-wielding settlers are guarded and protected by 1,500 Israeli soldiers who witness their daily attacks on the unarmed local Palestinians and do nothing about it even though they are supposed to protect the locals according to International law. The Israeli authorities tend to demolish any home, should the owner build one brick without their permission, but at the same time claim that they could do nothing to handle the illegal presence of the Jewish settlers in the heart of Al-Khaleel, occupying the roof tops of the Palestinians homes and throwing their rubbish on them every day, and calling the Palestinian women whenever they open their doors ‘whores’.
I guess those ‘chosen by God’ people show the Almighty as an under-achiever, he could not even choose a respected lot who behave themselves when he went to choose his own loved lot. I would imagine no ordinary person would ever choose to be a friend with someone with a bad reputation and despicable manners like the Jewish settlers, let alone a wise compassionate God, but it seems that they know that the Western world is a hypocritical lot, they would support their claims even though they are a secular majority who deny even the presence of God, but when it comes to Israel suddenly they turn to be serious believers of every claim told by the Zionist lot, and the angel halo appears shining, bright and glowing above their heads, you can almost touch their holy wings. Even those who have just converted to Judaism only yesterday for visa reasons to work in Israel and care less about Moses, Jacob, Solomon, or any other prophet mentioned by any holy book, turn by a swift magic wand into very religious people even when they are posing naked in adult magazines to promote tourism in ‘the Holy Land’.
My brother-in-law is a doctor whose clinic is located in the heart of the city of Hebron, where the settlers are turning the people’s lives into living hell because they are God’s chosen brats. His practice is located in an area where poor, sick, underprivileged people need medical attention. The soldiers who are supposed to be guarding the locals according to international law are not doing so, on the contrary, they are helping the settlers to occupy the rooftops of the neighbouring houses including his clinic, the soldiers themselves used to urinate in the water reservoir on the rooftop of his practice to drive him out, and to evacuate the area from the last few Palestinians who were persevering and trying to get on with their miserable lives against the odds. For years he used to go every single day to his practice and just set there, even though he knew perfectly well that he could not treat the ever-decreasing number of sick people who could reach his clinic, not because of the intimidation of the settlers and the hygiene problems only, but because they are hindered by tens of roadblocks and obstacles as well. But he never gave up on his mission, he continued to go to work every morning anyway - to send the Israeli occupying forces a clear message of ‘I am not leaving’. All his patients knew about his daily struggle and used to knock on his home door asking for help at odd hours, he could not turn them back, but one can imagine what kind of life this must have been for him and for his wife and children who hardly have any privacy at home, and who could not anticipate when the next banging on the door will start.
Many times he would go to his work and could not come back home that day because a new curfew had started while he was in his practice.
This is a reality every single Palestinian in my hometown has to deal with day in day out. I remember asking him once ‘what you were doing in the clinic then if you could not treat your patients’? He smiled and said I used to help my wife in her housework. I have been able to pick the leaves of almost 30 Kg of Oregano one summer to dry them for family use for the rest of the year’.
Storing food to manage during the curfews is another problem. The Israeli authorities used to cut the electricity of the city on purpose until all the stored food kept in homes’ freezers rotted and was no longer edible, besides subjecting the lives of sick people in the operation theatres at the hospital to great danger. My late husband told me about a number of surgical operations he had to perform at Princess Alia Hospital which turned to be a challenge when the electricity was cut off, besides the fact that most drugs including anaesthetics were banned, many patients were stitched without any sedation. Those are only a few kinds of inflicted pains the people had to deal with.
Year after year of hardships taught the Palestinians to find their own solutions, the people knew that the curfews can be imposed at any time, and for no reason whatsoever, no one is allowed to look through a window or walk outside the door during such enforced siege, no shops will be opened, no cars are permitted to take a dying person to hospital. The people of Al-Khaleel had to find solutions to this hard reality. They were forced to become self-sufficient and learn how to survive, no more they rely on freezing their food, they started drying, pickling, salting, and bottling the very little they managed to cultivate in their home gardens.
The same paid Zionist to attack the article and assassinate its writer’s character says ‘Close to 100 Jews have been killed in the Hebron region by Arab terrorists, in cold blood over the years and this number does not include 67 Jews murdered in Hebron 80 years ago, during the 1929 riots and massacre’.
I dare this person who threw at us the first rounded figure using his ‘close to’ expression to come with any evidence of his claim, but still I would like to tell him that according to official statistics by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics the number of reported innocent civilians killed in Hebron by Israeli soldiers in only 8 years not 61 years, between 29 September 2000 - 31 December 2008 is 265 people, those were all innocent civilians.
This same person evidently employed by the Foreign Ministry of Israel to bleach its burned image is complaining about what he described as ‘noise’ in my occupied home town, he claims ‘the Muslim call-to-prayer begins at about 4:00 AM and is repeated five times daily, with other public interludes, until after 11:00 PM, waking up sleeping people and preventing them from sleeping, with this noise being broadcast from numerous points in the city’.
For goodness sake, if you do not like living there just go back where you came from, you are living in our home, you have no right to tell us how to behave or complain about our worshiping rituals, at least the not chosen people who still worship God unlike his own chosen people who smeared his name. So…this chosen by God man considers calling for prayers a ‘noise’, while shelling, bombing, and demolitions of homes, snipers’ bullets whizzing all the time, and hovering military aircrafts since 1967 are not? How about sleeping somewhere else where you will have the right to sleep without being disturbed by the ‘non chosen people by God’.
The same chatterbox complains as well about the Ibrahimi Mosque which no more is treated with the dignity and respect it deserves, he says ‘the largest hall, the Isaac Chamber, is off-limits to Jews so that Moslems may hold their prayers there’. I guess he forgot to mention that the Israelis occupy more than half the Mosque and as such Muslims have no access to their own place of worship, and the 3 main entrances are fitted with metallic security doors and Muslims have access through one entrance only where they are searched and humiliated, men and women, before every prayer by God’s chosen people. But most of all he forgot willingly to mention that a fundamentalist racist Jew shot down 29 Muslims while kneeling in prayer in that same mosque and was considered a hero by the Jewish Zionist society.
Not only that, he lies through his teeth, he claims that ‘Most of those 400 settlers are children, and they aren’t gun-wielding’. Oh really, that is fascinating information, so…the fourth strongest army in the world could not handle less than 400, people the majority of which are children? I would indicate such a story-teller to the Israeli Foreign office should he want to knit a lie, to do some research… and make a lie-proof story because there are people who read and there are those who do their own research. And by the way, when 4000 years ago, the prophet Abraham came to my city as an Iraqi immigrant, he bought the cave which became later the burial place for his wife from us, we the Palestinians, the people of Al-Khaleel…surely you are not serious to believe that whoever buys a cave owns the whole country, and pass it as an inheritance to his believers wherever they are!!!
First published at www.palestinianmothers.com and http://palestinianthinktank.com , 12 August 2009
I have been reading an article by Robin-Yassin Kassab, entitled ‘A visit to Hebron’. Yassin Kassab is the author of ‘The Road from Damascus’. This time he was not writing about Damascus, he was writing about my home town Al-Khaleel, known to the Western world by the name of Hebron. In his article he describes his visit to Al-Khaleel accompanied by a number of wonderful writers and publishers, amongst them Michael Palin, Henning Mankel, Deborah Moggach, Claire Messud and MG Vassanji, and he describes the misery of the people in my hometown under the illegal Israeli occupation. Those writers have been able to witness the very painful reality when they travelled to Palestine to participate in the Palestine Festival of Literature.
As usual, the Zionists were ready with sharpened teeth to shred his efforts by their usual Hasbara methods of sending their false poisonous comments in an attempt to mask any efforts at explaining what is really going on in Palestine. One of the comments left by one of those Zionists on his blog complained that ‘Hebron Arabs today have access to 98% of the entire city. Jews have only access to 3% of Hebron’.
In the comment of this ‘anonymous’ reader, what seems to look like an innocent number of complaints, should the reader not know much about that part of the world he/she will fall a victim to the false impression that the presence of the Israeli Occupation in my hometown is justified and not an illegal occupation according to international law and even by Israeli standards. His comments sounded like as if they are coming from a victim who is supposed to have equal rights of access.
The 3% of the Jews in Hebron he was talking about are not supposed to be there, the occupying force according to international law is not supposed to allow or facilitate the transfer of its own citizens to the occupied areas.
He complained that the owners of the city - the Arab Palestinians - have access to 98% of their own city and the occupiers who are called for well-known media manipulation reasons ‘the settlers’ have access to 3%. ‘The expression settlers’ seems to be a very benign use of the language for a malignant reason. Of course the total according to his figures makes the population of Al-Khaleel more than 100%, this is a good example of what happens when Israeli authorities employ cyber amateurs to defend its crimes against the Palestinians, they work very fast so that they conjure numbers that do not make any sense. The Zionist state employs thousands every year to work on character assassination of the writers who bring to light any information about the absurdity of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, like Mr Kassab.
This shows how far they can go to fabricate false stories by throwing numbers without any verifications or referencing, and as usual, the Westerners swallow it all because the numbers and figures are connected in their experience with studies and statistics, and methods we all respect and do not doubt their credibility. I want to surprise ‘Mr anonymous’ and tell him that the people in Al-Khaleel are supposed to have 100% access to their own city because it is their home. It seems that the Zionists are full of themselves to a point they think that people can’t figure out that it is unacceptable for a total stranger to come from as far as Russia to occupy the living room of any Palestinian by hooliganism, and deny the owner access to his own kitchen or bathroom. Blocking the way of the locals is preaching their human rights and this is what the claimed 3% Jewish ‘settlers’ are doing in my hometown.
Those Jewish ‘settlers’ who have access to 3 % of my home have killed three students while walking on campus in 1986 for no reason whatsoever. Those 400 gun-wielding settlers are guarded and protected by 1,500 Israeli soldiers who witness their daily attacks on the unarmed local Palestinians and do nothing about it even though they are supposed to protect the locals according to International law. The Israeli authorities tend to demolish any home, should the owner build one brick without their permission, but at the same time claim that they could do nothing to handle the illegal presence of the Jewish settlers in the heart of Al-Khaleel, occupying the roof tops of the Palestinians homes and throwing their rubbish on them every day, and calling the Palestinian women whenever they open their doors ‘whores’.
I guess those ‘chosen by God’ people show the Almighty as an under-achiever, he could not even choose a respected lot who behave themselves when he went to choose his own loved lot. I would imagine no ordinary person would ever choose to be a friend with someone with a bad reputation and despicable manners like the Jewish settlers, let alone a wise compassionate God, but it seems that they know that the Western world is a hypocritical lot, they would support their claims even though they are a secular majority who deny even the presence of God, but when it comes to Israel suddenly they turn to be serious believers of every claim told by the Zionist lot, and the angel halo appears shining, bright and glowing above their heads, you can almost touch their holy wings. Even those who have just converted to Judaism only yesterday for visa reasons to work in Israel and care less about Moses, Jacob, Solomon, or any other prophet mentioned by any holy book, turn by a swift magic wand into very religious people even when they are posing naked in adult magazines to promote tourism in ‘the Holy Land’.
My brother-in-law is a doctor whose clinic is located in the heart of the city of Hebron, where the settlers are turning the people’s lives into living hell because they are God’s chosen brats. His practice is located in an area where poor, sick, underprivileged people need medical attention. The soldiers who are supposed to be guarding the locals according to international law are not doing so, on the contrary, they are helping the settlers to occupy the rooftops of the neighbouring houses including his clinic, the soldiers themselves used to urinate in the water reservoir on the rooftop of his practice to drive him out, and to evacuate the area from the last few Palestinians who were persevering and trying to get on with their miserable lives against the odds. For years he used to go every single day to his practice and just set there, even though he knew perfectly well that he could not treat the ever-decreasing number of sick people who could reach his clinic, not because of the intimidation of the settlers and the hygiene problems only, but because they are hindered by tens of roadblocks and obstacles as well. But he never gave up on his mission, he continued to go to work every morning anyway - to send the Israeli occupying forces a clear message of ‘I am not leaving’. All his patients knew about his daily struggle and used to knock on his home door asking for help at odd hours, he could not turn them back, but one can imagine what kind of life this must have been for him and for his wife and children who hardly have any privacy at home, and who could not anticipate when the next banging on the door will start.
Many times he would go to his work and could not come back home that day because a new curfew had started while he was in his practice.
This is a reality every single Palestinian in my hometown has to deal with day in day out. I remember asking him once ‘what you were doing in the clinic then if you could not treat your patients’? He smiled and said I used to help my wife in her housework. I have been able to pick the leaves of almost 30 Kg of Oregano one summer to dry them for family use for the rest of the year’.
Storing food to manage during the curfews is another problem. The Israeli authorities used to cut the electricity of the city on purpose until all the stored food kept in homes’ freezers rotted and was no longer edible, besides subjecting the lives of sick people in the operation theatres at the hospital to great danger. My late husband told me about a number of surgical operations he had to perform at Princess Alia Hospital which turned to be a challenge when the electricity was cut off, besides the fact that most drugs including anaesthetics were banned, many patients were stitched without any sedation. Those are only a few kinds of inflicted pains the people had to deal with.
Year after year of hardships taught the Palestinians to find their own solutions, the people knew that the curfews can be imposed at any time, and for no reason whatsoever, no one is allowed to look through a window or walk outside the door during such enforced siege, no shops will be opened, no cars are permitted to take a dying person to hospital. The people of Al-Khaleel had to find solutions to this hard reality. They were forced to become self-sufficient and learn how to survive, no more they rely on freezing their food, they started drying, pickling, salting, and bottling the very little they managed to cultivate in their home gardens.
The same paid Zionist to attack the article and assassinate its writer’s character says ‘Close to 100 Jews have been killed in the Hebron region by Arab terrorists, in cold blood over the years and this number does not include 67 Jews murdered in Hebron 80 years ago, during the 1929 riots and massacre’.
I dare this person who threw at us the first rounded figure using his ‘close to’ expression to come with any evidence of his claim, but still I would like to tell him that according to official statistics by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics the number of reported innocent civilians killed in Hebron by Israeli soldiers in only 8 years not 61 years, between 29 September 2000 - 31 December 2008 is 265 people, those were all innocent civilians.
This same person evidently employed by the Foreign Ministry of Israel to bleach its burned image is complaining about what he described as ‘noise’ in my occupied home town, he claims ‘the Muslim call-to-prayer begins at about 4:00 AM and is repeated five times daily, with other public interludes, until after 11:00 PM, waking up sleeping people and preventing them from sleeping, with this noise being broadcast from numerous points in the city’.
For goodness sake, if you do not like living there just go back where you came from, you are living in our home, you have no right to tell us how to behave or complain about our worshiping rituals, at least the not chosen people who still worship God unlike his own chosen people who smeared his name. So…this chosen by God man considers calling for prayers a ‘noise’, while shelling, bombing, and demolitions of homes, snipers’ bullets whizzing all the time, and hovering military aircrafts since 1967 are not? How about sleeping somewhere else where you will have the right to sleep without being disturbed by the ‘non chosen people by God’.
The same chatterbox complains as well about the Ibrahimi Mosque which no more is treated with the dignity and respect it deserves, he says ‘the largest hall, the Isaac Chamber, is off-limits to Jews so that Moslems may hold their prayers there’. I guess he forgot to mention that the Israelis occupy more than half the Mosque and as such Muslims have no access to their own place of worship, and the 3 main entrances are fitted with metallic security doors and Muslims have access through one entrance only where they are searched and humiliated, men and women, before every prayer by God’s chosen people. But most of all he forgot willingly to mention that a fundamentalist racist Jew shot down 29 Muslims while kneeling in prayer in that same mosque and was considered a hero by the Jewish Zionist society.
Not only that, he lies through his teeth, he claims that ‘Most of those 400 settlers are children, and they aren’t gun-wielding’. Oh really, that is fascinating information, so…the fourth strongest army in the world could not handle less than 400, people the majority of which are children? I would indicate such a story-teller to the Israeli Foreign office should he want to knit a lie, to do some research… and make a lie-proof story because there are people who read and there are those who do their own research. And by the way, when 4000 years ago, the prophet Abraham came to my city as an Iraqi immigrant, he bought the cave which became later the burial place for his wife from us, we the Palestinians, the people of Al-Khaleel…surely you are not serious to believe that whoever buys a cave owns the whole country, and pass it as an inheritance to his believers wherever they are!!!
First published at www.palestinianmothers.com and http://palestinianthinktank.com , 12 August 2009
Monday 10 August 2009
UK Government torture complicity - more weasel words
The Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary claim that Britain does not collude in torture.
On Sunday 8th August 09, David Milliband and Alan Johnson put out a joint newspaper article in which they said they couldn't guarantee that some methods used by other governments did not amount to torture. (Our own use of torture against Irish suspects in the Seventies is perhaps another matter); Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, was able to challenge their laissez faire attitude on the Today Programme, BBC Radio 4:
"The important word is complicity. Now this is a word that comes from the Torture Convention. It was very helpfully unpacked for us by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Now it referred to things like 'sending questions to a foreign power, knowing that they'll be put to someone under torture', 'sending intelligence that leads to someone's arrest by a foreign power that engages in torture', 'interviewing a suspect quite possibly between torture sessions by that foreign power' - essentially systematic arrangements to receive material that has been harvested in this way... in yesterday's article the Home Secretary and Home Secretary did that thing that interviewees do, which is answer the question that wasn't put to them. So they say, "We cannot eradicate all risk of receiving information from dubious sources". No one asked them to eradicate that risk. People want to know, Have you been sending questions that are then put to people under torture? Etcetera.
...Now this isn't something that I made up. We've had two, high level parliamentary committees reporting within less than a week and to some extent impugning the government's record in this area. We have a number of ongoing court cases and what the government and indeed the security establishment are sadly facing at the moment and have been for some years, is a slow bleed of poisonous revelations, drip by drip, which can't be good for morale and I don't think allow us move on from the darkest moments of the war on terror."
Kim Howells, Labour Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, House of Commons, responded with his answer to the question: ' Do you believe there is no complicity of that sort?'
"Well, I have to be completely objective about this, and we will look at any evidence that's put before us, and there are court cases pending at the moment, and they go back mainly to a period round 9.11, when there was frantic activity across the world, but I can tell you that we found no evidence that there's been collusion and governments that torture their individuals and - can I add this? Y'know, we can't give a guarantee and no government on earth can give a guarantee that someone who's picked up and held in another country hasn't had their or her human rights abused in some way. No one, not the French, the Swedes, the Spanish, the Germans, it doesn't matter who they are; you cannot guarantee if you haven't held that prisoner that they haven't been deprived of sleep for some hours, that they haven't in some shape or form been frightened or cajoled [blog's emphasis] into giving information. But if we don't have that information from other intelligence agencies, how can you be sure that they aren't jihadists, who are trying to murder citizens on the street, or Irish Republicans who want to blow people to pieces in order to further their cause? You have no way of knowing that."
Mr Howells' naivety is breathtaking. Despite centuries of hard evidence that torture merely forces victims to say anything, absolutely anything, as long as it sounds like the kind of information the tormentors are seeking, just to stop the agony, he continues to profess belief in its efficacy, and in the 'ducking stool' method.
If she floats, she is a witch, and must be burned. If she drowns, that is regrettable. It was an honest mistake. Y'know.
On Sunday 8th August 09, David Milliband and Alan Johnson put out a joint newspaper article in which they said they couldn't guarantee that some methods used by other governments did not amount to torture. (Our own use of torture against Irish suspects in the Seventies is perhaps another matter); Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, was able to challenge their laissez faire attitude on the Today Programme, BBC Radio 4:
"The important word is complicity. Now this is a word that comes from the Torture Convention. It was very helpfully unpacked for us by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Now it referred to things like 'sending questions to a foreign power, knowing that they'll be put to someone under torture', 'sending intelligence that leads to someone's arrest by a foreign power that engages in torture', 'interviewing a suspect quite possibly between torture sessions by that foreign power' - essentially systematic arrangements to receive material that has been harvested in this way... in yesterday's article the Home Secretary and Home Secretary did that thing that interviewees do, which is answer the question that wasn't put to them. So they say, "We cannot eradicate all risk of receiving information from dubious sources". No one asked them to eradicate that risk. People want to know, Have you been sending questions that are then put to people under torture? Etcetera.
...Now this isn't something that I made up. We've had two, high level parliamentary committees reporting within less than a week and to some extent impugning the government's record in this area. We have a number of ongoing court cases and what the government and indeed the security establishment are sadly facing at the moment and have been for some years, is a slow bleed of poisonous revelations, drip by drip, which can't be good for morale and I don't think allow us move on from the darkest moments of the war on terror."
Kim Howells, Labour Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, House of Commons, responded with his answer to the question: ' Do you believe there is no complicity of that sort?'
"Well, I have to be completely objective about this, and we will look at any evidence that's put before us, and there are court cases pending at the moment, and they go back mainly to a period round 9.11, when there was frantic activity across the world, but I can tell you that we found no evidence that there's been collusion and governments that torture their individuals and - can I add this? Y'know, we can't give a guarantee and no government on earth can give a guarantee that someone who's picked up and held in another country hasn't had their or her human rights abused in some way. No one, not the French, the Swedes, the Spanish, the Germans, it doesn't matter who they are; you cannot guarantee if you haven't held that prisoner that they haven't been deprived of sleep for some hours, that they haven't in some shape or form been frightened or cajoled [blog's emphasis] into giving information. But if we don't have that information from other intelligence agencies, how can you be sure that they aren't jihadists, who are trying to murder citizens on the street, or Irish Republicans who want to blow people to pieces in order to further their cause? You have no way of knowing that."
Mr Howells' naivety is breathtaking. Despite centuries of hard evidence that torture merely forces victims to say anything, absolutely anything, as long as it sounds like the kind of information the tormentors are seeking, just to stop the agony, he continues to profess belief in its efficacy, and in the 'ducking stool' method.
If she floats, she is a witch, and must be burned. If she drowns, that is regrettable. It was an honest mistake. Y'know.
Surveillance: Guidelines are not enough
Lib Dems demand curbs on 'spying'
Councils have been criticised for using CCTV/phone tapping powers to tackle dog mess.
The Lib Dems want tighter controls on surveillance powers for authorities including councils and the police, adding that only a magistrate should be able to approve a request for surveillance, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).
More than 500,000 requests to access phone and e-mail records were made in 2008, according to the Interception of Communications Commissioner. The Home Office said the powers should be used only when "proportionate".
An average of about 1,500 surveillance requests were made every day in Britain in 2008, according to figures which have emerged from an annual report by commissioner Sir Paul Kennedy.
That is the annual equivalent to one in every 78 adults being targeted.
Although slightly down on 2007, the total number of requests last year was up by more than 40% on 2006, and it included 1,500 approved applications from local councils.
The government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning, and not a blueprint
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said the figures "beggared belief".
"Many of these operations carried out by the police and security services are necessary, but the sheer numbers are daunting," he said.
"It cannot be a justified response to the problems we face in this country that the state is spying on half a million people a year. We have sleepwalked into a surveillance state, but without adequate safeguards. Having the Home Secretary in charge of authorisation is like asking the fox to guard the hen house. The government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning and not a blueprint."
Local authorities in England are still spying on suspected minor offenders despite being banned from doing so by law. Since 2003 they have only been able to use undercover methods against those suspected of breaking criminal law, but the chief surveillance commissioner said it was of "significant concern" that some local authorities were going beyond what was allowed. He was especially worked up about the use of CCTV to monitor people.
In his annual report for 2008, published on 21st July, Sir Christopher Rose raised concerns about "directed surveillance" - such as bugging of a public place or taking photographs of suspects - and the use of covert human intelligence, such as informants and undercover officers.
He mentioned "a continuing failure on the part of authorising officers properly to demonstrate that less intrusive methods have been considered and why they have been discounted in favour of the tactic selected. If, for whatever reason, the government does not wish public authorities to use powers conferred by Parliament, the proper course, it seems to me, is for Parliament to remove those powers."
Authorising officers are senior officials in local authorities, government departments and other public bodies who sign off surveillance requests under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).
Surveillance by local authorities is not yet allowed to be intrusive, such as bugging of phone lines or entering premises.
In England /Wales it is restricted to suspected breaches of criminal law and should not be used to investigate suspected tax dodgers, for example, or on economic or public safety grounds.
Such exemptions do not apply in Scotland.
Sir Christopher warns that public bodies such as local authorities need to stick more closely to the rules.
He says: "A specific act of surveillance may not be intrusive but a combination of acts may enable the construction of a profile; this requires careful consideration when judging whether an individual's private life is subject to interference."
He added that authorising officers sometimes do not understand the need to gain specific authorisation to target people in a public place.
"It is not where the CCTV is placed (which may be overt or covert) but the manner in which the camera is used that is determinative of whether the surveillance is covert," the report says.
And he adds: "CCTV operators employed by local authorities are required to pass rigorous examination for the use of this controversial equipment, yet it appears that some police officers operate CCTV without obvious qualification."
Obviously, merely setting out guidelines is not good enough; there has to be a way of regulating this, and local bodies that overdo it must be accountable in law.
Having operated a CCTV camera myself, as a security guard, I'm aware of the traps. If something looks interesting you will close-in and follow it. That may be nothing more than a beautiful pair of legs. But legs belonging to a woman who has not signed any contract before becoming an unwitting performer. And a crowd of people - any crowd, may be suspect.
On the international level, the operators of remote-control armed drones take this to its extreme, by applying a 'rule of thumb' and just 'taking them out'. That is why it's dangerous to have a wedding celebration in Afghanistan. If you think this jump in context is fanciful, don't forget that Merseyside police began using (unarmed) drones in 2007.
Councils have been criticised for using CCTV/phone tapping powers to tackle dog mess.
The Lib Dems want tighter controls on surveillance powers for authorities including councils and the police, adding that only a magistrate should be able to approve a request for surveillance, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).
More than 500,000 requests to access phone and e-mail records were made in 2008, according to the Interception of Communications Commissioner. The Home Office said the powers should be used only when "proportionate".
An average of about 1,500 surveillance requests were made every day in Britain in 2008, according to figures which have emerged from an annual report by commissioner Sir Paul Kennedy.
That is the annual equivalent to one in every 78 adults being targeted.
Although slightly down on 2007, the total number of requests last year was up by more than 40% on 2006, and it included 1,500 approved applications from local councils.
The government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning, and not a blueprint
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said the figures "beggared belief".
"Many of these operations carried out by the police and security services are necessary, but the sheer numbers are daunting," he said.
"It cannot be a justified response to the problems we face in this country that the state is spying on half a million people a year. We have sleepwalked into a surveillance state, but without adequate safeguards. Having the Home Secretary in charge of authorisation is like asking the fox to guard the hen house. The government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning and not a blueprint."
Local authorities in England are still spying on suspected minor offenders despite being banned from doing so by law. Since 2003 they have only been able to use undercover methods against those suspected of breaking criminal law, but the chief surveillance commissioner said it was of "significant concern" that some local authorities were going beyond what was allowed. He was especially worked up about the use of CCTV to monitor people.
In his annual report for 2008, published on 21st July, Sir Christopher Rose raised concerns about "directed surveillance" - such as bugging of a public place or taking photographs of suspects - and the use of covert human intelligence, such as informants and undercover officers.
He mentioned "a continuing failure on the part of authorising officers properly to demonstrate that less intrusive methods have been considered and why they have been discounted in favour of the tactic selected. If, for whatever reason, the government does not wish public authorities to use powers conferred by Parliament, the proper course, it seems to me, is for Parliament to remove those powers."
Authorising officers are senior officials in local authorities, government departments and other public bodies who sign off surveillance requests under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).
Surveillance by local authorities is not yet allowed to be intrusive, such as bugging of phone lines or entering premises.
In England /Wales it is restricted to suspected breaches of criminal law and should not be used to investigate suspected tax dodgers, for example, or on economic or public safety grounds.
Such exemptions do not apply in Scotland.
Sir Christopher warns that public bodies such as local authorities need to stick more closely to the rules.
He says: "A specific act of surveillance may not be intrusive but a combination of acts may enable the construction of a profile; this requires careful consideration when judging whether an individual's private life is subject to interference."
He added that authorising officers sometimes do not understand the need to gain specific authorisation to target people in a public place.
"It is not where the CCTV is placed (which may be overt or covert) but the manner in which the camera is used that is determinative of whether the surveillance is covert," the report says.
And he adds: "CCTV operators employed by local authorities are required to pass rigorous examination for the use of this controversial equipment, yet it appears that some police officers operate CCTV without obvious qualification."
Obviously, merely setting out guidelines is not good enough; there has to be a way of regulating this, and local bodies that overdo it must be accountable in law.
Having operated a CCTV camera myself, as a security guard, I'm aware of the traps. If something looks interesting you will close-in and follow it. That may be nothing more than a beautiful pair of legs. But legs belonging to a woman who has not signed any contract before becoming an unwitting performer. And a crowd of people - any crowd, may be suspect.
On the international level, the operators of remote-control armed drones take this to its extreme, by applying a 'rule of thumb' and just 'taking them out'. That is why it's dangerous to have a wedding celebration in Afghanistan. If you think this jump in context is fanciful, don't forget that Merseyside police began using (unarmed) drones in 2007.
see also: http://hanleyexpress.blogspot.com/2009/06/ripa-council-snooping-is-growth.html
Thursday 6 August 2009
G20 videos won't change the Met
By George Monbiot
On the day when The Metropolitan Police at last admitted that Ian Tomlinson had not died through a heart attack but from internal haemorrhaging caused by police violence, this (April 2009) article from The Guardian says just about everything that is worth saying:
"If a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who has been twatted by the police. As the tabloids turn their fire on an unfamiliar target – the unprovoked aggression of Her Majesty's constabulary – the love affair between the cops and the rightwing press has never been more fragile.
The policing of the G20 protests at the beginning of this month was routine. Policemen hiding their identification numbers and beating up peaceful protesters is as much a part of British life as grey skies and red buses.
Across 20 years of protests, I have seen policemen swapping their jackets to avoid identification, hurling people against vans and into walls and whomping old ladies over the head with batons. A friend had his head repeatedly bashed against the bonnet of a police van; he was then charged with criminal damage to the van. I have seen an entire line of police turn round to face the other way when private security guards have started beating people up. I have seen them refuse to investigate my own case when I was hospitalised by these licensed thugs (the guards had impaled my foot on a metal spike, smashing the middle bone), until Amnesty International got involved.
But none of this featured in the conservative press. The story was always the same: we would stagger home after our peaceful protests were attacked by uniformed skinheads to discover that we were "Anarchist thugs on the rampage" whose attempt to destroy civilisation had been thwarted only by the calm professionalism of the police. Violent police action mutated into violent protests. The papers believed everything the police told them.
This began to change when the police foolishly attacked a Countryside Alliance march in 2004. In the spirit of impartial policing, the cops gave these reactionaries the treatment they had doled out to generations of progressives. It was grotesque, disproportionate and familiar policing, but there's a world of difference between bloodstained hemp ponchos and bloodstained tweeds. The exposure of the lies the police then told about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and the shooting of Mohammed Abdul Kahar made the papers – which had reproduced the official version – feel stung.
In other circumstances, Ian Tomlinson, the passerby who died after being thrown to the ground by police at the G20 protest, would have been treated by the press as a violent anarchist who had assaulted the road with his body. But video footage and disillusionment has changed that – for a few days at least. On Friday, the front page of the Daily Express carried lurid pictures of the injuries sustained by a woman at the G20 protests, under the headline "Police did this to me: it was just like being whipped by the Taliban".
Yesterday the Daily Mail posted a film made by climate camp activists. Its columnist Melanie Phillips, who is yet to be celebrated for her support of radical causes, opined that "there are always elements in the ranks [of the police] who want to give people a good kicking". An opinion column in the Telegraph explained that "there are individuals who join the police just because they like hitting people", while the Spectator lamented the "disgraceful actions of a few Met officers". Tomorrow's Guardian poll suggests the police are losing the wider battle for public opinion, too.
The papers maintain that a few rogue officers got out of control. But as testimonies collected by Climate Camp's legal team show, police violence at the G20 demos was organised and systematic. It is true that the police appear to have been carried away by testeria (a useful word which describes testosterone-fuelled male rampages). But this keeps happening, and senior officers make no attempt to prevent it.
Before the protests, the police fed the media stories about terrorist plots supposedly being hatched by G20 demonstrators. "We're up for it and we're up to it," Commander Simon O'Brien told the press. Organisers from Climate Camp asked if they could attend police briefings given to journalists in order to put their side of the story. They were rebuffed. The police initially refused to meet them even to discuss the protesters' intentions. The police plan was called Operation Glencoe: it was named after the site of a notorious massacre.
If the police at the G20 protests were pumped up, testerical, itching for a fight, it was partly because their commanders have for years blurred the distinction between peaceful campaigners and terrorists. Until recently, this strategy worked: by turning quiet protests into angry confrontations, the police could show the public that unless they had ever greater powers and resources, the country would be overrun by violent mobs. Now it has backfired.
Don't expect this momentary backlash to change anything. The police appear impervious to criticism. Just eight days before the G20 protests, the parliamentary select committee on human rights published a report on the policing of protests. It recommended that "counter-terrorism powers should never be used against peaceful protesters"; and that "the presumption should be in favour of protests taking place without state interference". The police ignored it. They used counter-terrorism powers to stop and search climate campers eating in a restaurant; they sought to halt peaceful actions. Interestingly, they also appeared to allow genuine rioters to break into a branch of RBS. This, too, is a familiar pattern: the police beat up peaceful protesters and stand by when vandals create some easy headlines for the tabloids.
The public revulsion towards the police lies about De Menezes didn't prevent them attempting a similar cover-up over the death of Ian Tomlinson. Just as the furore reached its peak, the police again curtailed the right to protest when they pre-emptively arrested 114 people close to a power station. Their purpose was to impose sweeping bail conditions on the protesters, which will come in very handy when the decision to build a new coal-burning power station at Kingsnorth in Kent is announced. Today the Guardian published evidence of collusion between the police and Kingsnorth's operator, E.ON.
The police behave like this, despite the opprobrium of left and right, because they know they will get away with it. They know the government won't rein them in; that the Independent Police Complaints Commission appears to eat out of their hands; that the sternest sanction an officer can expect for beating or killing a passerby is some extended gardening leave. They know that in a few days' time the rightwing press will revert to publishing stories about the anarchist baby-eaters seeking to turn Britain into a bloodbath.
But something else has changed in this country: the resolution of the protesters. Despite repeated assaults, they appear to have become better organised and less afraid. That, so soon after Operation Glencoe, 114 people were prepared to risk arrest and another beating testifies to the resilience of this movement. These people know that protest is not a threat to democracy but its cornerstone. They know that the issues they contest outweigh any harm they may suffer. They know that getting beaten up is a sign that the state has lost the argument."
George Monbiot guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 April 2009
Distraction
The metropolitan police have introduced a new, U.S. style euphemism into British discourse. Nick Hardwick, chairman of the IPCC, who was accused on 4th August by the Police Federation of running a "witch-hunt" against G20 officers, told the committee he had received 185 complaints from G20 protests, including more than 50 complaints from members of the public who say they were assaulted or witnessed an assault.
Mr Hardwick said the IPCC received twice as many complaints from the 2001 Countryside Alliance protests, but he said the severity of the G20 complaints and injuries alleged is greater - although the difference may be accounted for by the presence of camera-toting citizen journalists at the protest.
"One of the consequences of this exposure through citizen journalism is that we will all see much more clearly what it is - and sometimes it looks ugly - what we expect the police to do," he told MPs.
Later the IPCC said it had received 185 complaints about the G20 protests, 40-something of which were regarded as 'ineligible', more than 50 were about police tactics and over 80 of which were from people who saw or experienced excessive force by police officers.
Mr Hardwick said there was a need for police to explain better so-called "distraction" techniques they are trained to use in violent confrontations, which he said was a "euphemism" for "kicking, hitting, punching". This is a mild criticism, but as the police are accustomed to being supported by all authorities, MPs and the tabloids through 'difficult times', for a public official to stand up and actually tell it thus represents a Small Step for a Man, and could lead to calls for greater control over the Force. If only. As they are now sanctioned to use guns and tasers as well as their clubs, and the laws of assault and perjury do not apply to them, it's a distant possibility. The Police Federation should relax.
Also- The Guardian interview:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/06/ian-tomlinson-family-accuse-police-of-cover-up
On the day when The Metropolitan Police at last admitted that Ian Tomlinson had not died through a heart attack but from internal haemorrhaging caused by police violence, this (April 2009) article from The Guardian says just about everything that is worth saying:
"If a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who has been twatted by the police. As the tabloids turn their fire on an unfamiliar target – the unprovoked aggression of Her Majesty's constabulary – the love affair between the cops and the rightwing press has never been more fragile.
The policing of the G20 protests at the beginning of this month was routine. Policemen hiding their identification numbers and beating up peaceful protesters is as much a part of British life as grey skies and red buses.
Across 20 years of protests, I have seen policemen swapping their jackets to avoid identification, hurling people against vans and into walls and whomping old ladies over the head with batons. A friend had his head repeatedly bashed against the bonnet of a police van; he was then charged with criminal damage to the van. I have seen an entire line of police turn round to face the other way when private security guards have started beating people up. I have seen them refuse to investigate my own case when I was hospitalised by these licensed thugs (the guards had impaled my foot on a metal spike, smashing the middle bone), until Amnesty International got involved.
But none of this featured in the conservative press. The story was always the same: we would stagger home after our peaceful protests were attacked by uniformed skinheads to discover that we were "Anarchist thugs on the rampage" whose attempt to destroy civilisation had been thwarted only by the calm professionalism of the police. Violent police action mutated into violent protests. The papers believed everything the police told them.
This began to change when the police foolishly attacked a Countryside Alliance march in 2004. In the spirit of impartial policing, the cops gave these reactionaries the treatment they had doled out to generations of progressives. It was grotesque, disproportionate and familiar policing, but there's a world of difference between bloodstained hemp ponchos and bloodstained tweeds. The exposure of the lies the police then told about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and the shooting of Mohammed Abdul Kahar made the papers – which had reproduced the official version – feel stung.
In other circumstances, Ian Tomlinson, the passerby who died after being thrown to the ground by police at the G20 protest, would have been treated by the press as a violent anarchist who had assaulted the road with his body. But video footage and disillusionment has changed that – for a few days at least. On Friday, the front page of the Daily Express carried lurid pictures of the injuries sustained by a woman at the G20 protests, under the headline "Police did this to me: it was just like being whipped by the Taliban".
Yesterday the Daily Mail posted a film made by climate camp activists. Its columnist Melanie Phillips, who is yet to be celebrated for her support of radical causes, opined that "there are always elements in the ranks [of the police] who want to give people a good kicking". An opinion column in the Telegraph explained that "there are individuals who join the police just because they like hitting people", while the Spectator lamented the "disgraceful actions of a few Met officers". Tomorrow's Guardian poll suggests the police are losing the wider battle for public opinion, too.
The papers maintain that a few rogue officers got out of control. But as testimonies collected by Climate Camp's legal team show, police violence at the G20 demos was organised and systematic. It is true that the police appear to have been carried away by testeria (a useful word which describes testosterone-fuelled male rampages). But this keeps happening, and senior officers make no attempt to prevent it.
Before the protests, the police fed the media stories about terrorist plots supposedly being hatched by G20 demonstrators. "We're up for it and we're up to it," Commander Simon O'Brien told the press. Organisers from Climate Camp asked if they could attend police briefings given to journalists in order to put their side of the story. They were rebuffed. The police initially refused to meet them even to discuss the protesters' intentions. The police plan was called Operation Glencoe: it was named after the site of a notorious massacre.
If the police at the G20 protests were pumped up, testerical, itching for a fight, it was partly because their commanders have for years blurred the distinction between peaceful campaigners and terrorists. Until recently, this strategy worked: by turning quiet protests into angry confrontations, the police could show the public that unless they had ever greater powers and resources, the country would be overrun by violent mobs. Now it has backfired.
Don't expect this momentary backlash to change anything. The police appear impervious to criticism. Just eight days before the G20 protests, the parliamentary select committee on human rights published a report on the policing of protests. It recommended that "counter-terrorism powers should never be used against peaceful protesters"; and that "the presumption should be in favour of protests taking place without state interference". The police ignored it. They used counter-terrorism powers to stop and search climate campers eating in a restaurant; they sought to halt peaceful actions. Interestingly, they also appeared to allow genuine rioters to break into a branch of RBS. This, too, is a familiar pattern: the police beat up peaceful protesters and stand by when vandals create some easy headlines for the tabloids.
The public revulsion towards the police lies about De Menezes didn't prevent them attempting a similar cover-up over the death of Ian Tomlinson. Just as the furore reached its peak, the police again curtailed the right to protest when they pre-emptively arrested 114 people close to a power station. Their purpose was to impose sweeping bail conditions on the protesters, which will come in very handy when the decision to build a new coal-burning power station at Kingsnorth in Kent is announced. Today the Guardian published evidence of collusion between the police and Kingsnorth's operator, E.ON.
The police behave like this, despite the opprobrium of left and right, because they know they will get away with it. They know the government won't rein them in; that the Independent Police Complaints Commission appears to eat out of their hands; that the sternest sanction an officer can expect for beating or killing a passerby is some extended gardening leave. They know that in a few days' time the rightwing press will revert to publishing stories about the anarchist baby-eaters seeking to turn Britain into a bloodbath.
But something else has changed in this country: the resolution of the protesters. Despite repeated assaults, they appear to have become better organised and less afraid. That, so soon after Operation Glencoe, 114 people were prepared to risk arrest and another beating testifies to the resilience of this movement. These people know that protest is not a threat to democracy but its cornerstone. They know that the issues they contest outweigh any harm they may suffer. They know that getting beaten up is a sign that the state has lost the argument."
George Monbiot guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 April 2009
Distraction
The metropolitan police have introduced a new, U.S. style euphemism into British discourse. Nick Hardwick, chairman of the IPCC, who was accused on 4th August by the Police Federation of running a "witch-hunt" against G20 officers, told the committee he had received 185 complaints from G20 protests, including more than 50 complaints from members of the public who say they were assaulted or witnessed an assault.
Mr Hardwick said the IPCC received twice as many complaints from the 2001 Countryside Alliance protests, but he said the severity of the G20 complaints and injuries alleged is greater - although the difference may be accounted for by the presence of camera-toting citizen journalists at the protest.
"One of the consequences of this exposure through citizen journalism is that we will all see much more clearly what it is - and sometimes it looks ugly - what we expect the police to do," he told MPs.
Later the IPCC said it had received 185 complaints about the G20 protests, 40-something of which were regarded as 'ineligible', more than 50 were about police tactics and over 80 of which were from people who saw or experienced excessive force by police officers.
Mr Hardwick said there was a need for police to explain better so-called "distraction" techniques they are trained to use in violent confrontations, which he said was a "euphemism" for "kicking, hitting, punching". This is a mild criticism, but as the police are accustomed to being supported by all authorities, MPs and the tabloids through 'difficult times', for a public official to stand up and actually tell it thus represents a Small Step for a Man, and could lead to calls for greater control over the Force. If only. As they are now sanctioned to use guns and tasers as well as their clubs, and the laws of assault and perjury do not apply to them, it's a distant possibility. The Police Federation should relax.
Also- The Guardian interview:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/06/ian-tomlinson-family-accuse-police-of-cover-up
Tuesday 4 August 2009
The Art of Sinking in Poetry
Alexander Pope
It’s difficult not to imagine Alexander Pope as some sort of emaciated, intellectual grandee; but he and John Gay, Jonathan Swift and John Arbuthnot, fellow members of the Scriblerus Club, were among the leading satirists of their time.
Credited to Martin Scriblerus, this slim volume is a piss-taking satire much like Machiavelli’s The Prince. As Machiavelli modelled his book on fawning works of ‘advice’ given to powerful leaders by lesser men hoping for elevation, Pope had a knock at those who were prey to the then current obsession with the ‘sublime’ in poetry as well as painting, to the extent of making all the right noises or shapes but in the end saying nothing; his work following the shape of classical aesthetic treatises. Having identified bathos (and adding this Greek word to the English lexicon) as being as worthy of striving after as more lofty concerns, he gently sets out the rules for producing perfectly bad poetry. He singles out for praise, chapter by chapter, examples of grandiose mediocrity, listing examples of awkward synecdoche and metaphor while shoving in chunks of unbelievably silly contemporary works to illustrate those he describes as 'A-la-mode' and 'Pert' styles.
As well as being a warning to writers who strive for effect rather than content, this is a quietly entertaining read. It’s also, having been written in the 18th century, a fascinating and colourful glimpse of the social and cultural mores of the times. There could not be a better time to see it republished: we have rarely been more bothered with the misuse of language, both by writers and politicians.
But this is not only a textbook for aspiring bad poets. It could be required reading in many art schools, particularly those that follow Goldsmith’s example, where they promote self-interpretation or statements of intent over actually making things that mean something in themselves.
A genuine writer of the profound will take care never to magnify any object without clouding it at the same time. His thought will appear in a true mist, and very unlike what it is in nature. It must always be remembered that darkness is an essential quality of the profound or, if there chance to be a glimmering, it must be as Milton expresses it:
No light, but darkness visible.
This, for a start, is invaluable advice to all those who simply present found or commissioned objects or who make ‘installations’ consisting of rooms containing nothing that will stimulate either the senses or the intellect, all relying totally on the pieces of paper which explain the intended meaning of the objects or which list the metaphors that these objects are intended to represent. If they defenestrate all sense of irony they will certainly feel a benefit through reading this.
As an example of how prescient Pope was, two sub-headings are The Jargon, and The Antithesis, or Seesaw.
When conjecturing how the low populace should be coached in appreciation, he had a go at critics too, and even looked forward to the TV age:
It may be convenient to place the Council of Six in some conspicuous situation in the theatres, where after the manner usually practised by composers in music, they may give signs - before settled and agreed upon - of dislike or approbation. In consequence of these signs the whole audience shall be required to clap or hiss, that the town may learn certainly when and how far they aught to be pleased.
The Art of Sinking in Poetry
Alexander Pope
Oneworld Classics £8.99
Sunday 26 July 2009
Suburbs - from urban blight to global mess
In an article for the London Observer (19.07.09), Tristram Hunt posited that " Suburbs are derided by snobs, yet they are the best hope for our future."
In this, he completely missed the point. Hatred of suburbia is not snob-driven. It is in our nature to live in high-density surroundings, from the nest to villages to industrial cities. This is how animals function. We are happiest and least stressed when everything and everyone we need to make our life complete are within touching distance, and cities work because the citizens are able to come out of their homes, assemble and exchange ideas.
Suburbs, the enormous swathes of miniature manor houses, which largely grew with the spread of private car ownership, are the antithesis of human nature, and are only attractive to those who actively court alienation, a life spent zooming between work and the telly with no danger of connecting to society.
The current vogue for second houses (and even first ones) in the countryside for city workers shapes up as the vanguard of Antisociety. Try taking a walk along any 'quiet' country road in England and parts of Wales, but especially in the so-called Home Counties, and you will be overwhelmed by the new country people, roaring back and forth in their tin boxes between their little hidden homes and town work, the pub or a supermarket. This pattern of life is repeated in suburbia.
But easily the worst aspect of suburbia is that unlike the Great Mistake of the Sixties, the high-rise blocks (many now being thankfully dynamited), these interminable rows of little castles with their lovingly tended little gardens are 'facts on the ground'- the castles are places, no matter how cut off from their neighbours and society, which resemble real homes. Prefabricated boxes in the sky weren't able to exert such a sense of proprietorial belonging.
Unlike the natural high-density growth of villages and cities, suburbs swallow up huge chunks of greenery, too. As the glaciers retreat, the suburbs advance.
The most disturbing, and saddening, tendency in urban planning now is for cities to raze their ancient terraces, the infrastructure of community; and high streets with homes, shops, pubs, businesses, cafes all rubbing shoulders, to replace them with randomly scattered low-density inner-city suburbia. Often living streets, part of the 'internet' of the city, have been replaced with the town planning equivalent of the apple-pie bed: tiny, worming cul-de-sacs. Someone must have thought this would redress the balance after the high-rise Sixties; but the truth is that those old schemes or estates had so much empty space between the blocks, space with no pubs, shops, cinemas, or shelter of any kind, that in effect this is a repeat of the old disaster. Leave your car behind, if you have one, and go for a walk through suburbia. You will see how vast and bleak it is. This has nothing to do with snobbery.
In this, he completely missed the point. Hatred of suburbia is not snob-driven. It is in our nature to live in high-density surroundings, from the nest to villages to industrial cities. This is how animals function. We are happiest and least stressed when everything and everyone we need to make our life complete are within touching distance, and cities work because the citizens are able to come out of their homes, assemble and exchange ideas.
Suburbs, the enormous swathes of miniature manor houses, which largely grew with the spread of private car ownership, are the antithesis of human nature, and are only attractive to those who actively court alienation, a life spent zooming between work and the telly with no danger of connecting to society.
The current vogue for second houses (and even first ones) in the countryside for city workers shapes up as the vanguard of Antisociety. Try taking a walk along any 'quiet' country road in England and parts of Wales, but especially in the so-called Home Counties, and you will be overwhelmed by the new country people, roaring back and forth in their tin boxes between their little hidden homes and town work, the pub or a supermarket. This pattern of life is repeated in suburbia.
But easily the worst aspect of suburbia is that unlike the Great Mistake of the Sixties, the high-rise blocks (many now being thankfully dynamited), these interminable rows of little castles with their lovingly tended little gardens are 'facts on the ground'- the castles are places, no matter how cut off from their neighbours and society, which resemble real homes. Prefabricated boxes in the sky weren't able to exert such a sense of proprietorial belonging.
Unlike the natural high-density growth of villages and cities, suburbs swallow up huge chunks of greenery, too. As the glaciers retreat, the suburbs advance.
The most disturbing, and saddening, tendency in urban planning now is for cities to raze their ancient terraces, the infrastructure of community; and high streets with homes, shops, pubs, businesses, cafes all rubbing shoulders, to replace them with randomly scattered low-density inner-city suburbia. Often living streets, part of the 'internet' of the city, have been replaced with the town planning equivalent of the apple-pie bed: tiny, worming cul-de-sacs. Someone must have thought this would redress the balance after the high-rise Sixties; but the truth is that those old schemes or estates had so much empty space between the blocks, space with no pubs, shops, cinemas, or shelter of any kind, that in effect this is a repeat of the old disaster. Leave your car behind, if you have one, and go for a walk through suburbia. You will see how vast and bleak it is. This has nothing to do with snobbery.
Tuesday 21 July 2009
Control order causes suicide risk
Mahmoud Abu Rideh, Palestinian refugee, who has been imprisoned in the UK for 71/2 years unlawfully without trial before being placed under a 'control order', while his wife and children left to move to Jordan, has three times attempted suicide in despair that he may never see his family again.
His mental and physical health have been severely damaged through his treatment by British authorities; he is confined to a wheelchair.
Under the terms of the order, he has to remain inside his home for 12 hours per day and to phone a monitoring company three times a day. Any visitors must first be approved by the Home Office and he is not allowed to use the internet.
Any breach of these restrictions is considered a criminal offence.
On 10th June, 2009, the Law Lords ruled unanimously that we have the right to know the information used against us to impose control orders. They said that if such information is kept secret, we are unable to challenge the allegations against us.
Write to Home Secretary Alan Johnson, calling on him to lift the control order on Mahmoud Abu Rideh and ensure he continues to receive any medical attention he needs.
www.amnesty.org.uk/aburideh
3rd July update: The Home Office has deigned to allow Mahmoud an exit visa.
Amnesty International UK counter-terrorism campaigner Sara Macneice said:
'It is very welcome news that Mahmoud Abu Rideh will now be able to leave the UK and seek entry to a safe country, and will no longer be subjected to the repressive measures of his Control Order, which have driven him to utter desperation.
'I have spoken to Mr Abu Rideh and this decision has given him real hope that he may now be reunited with his wife and children, and be able to rebuild his life.
'Amnesty is supporting Mahmoud Abu Rideh's application for a UN travel document, to which he should be entitled as a refugee. However he seems willing to apply for an inferior document in order to leave the UK as soon as possible. The Home Office should issue this document to him promptly, rather than subjecting him to yet more delays.
'This is a minor victory for one man, but the pernicious system of Control Orders, which has driven him and his family out of the UK, remains in place. Amnesty continues to call for an end to the Control Order regime and its replacement with measures which respect people's basic human rights.'
His mental and physical health have been severely damaged through his treatment by British authorities; he is confined to a wheelchair.
Under the terms of the order, he has to remain inside his home for 12 hours per day and to phone a monitoring company three times a day. Any visitors must first be approved by the Home Office and he is not allowed to use the internet.
Any breach of these restrictions is considered a criminal offence.
On 10th June, 2009, the Law Lords ruled unanimously that we have the right to know the information used against us to impose control orders. They said that if such information is kept secret, we are unable to challenge the allegations against us.
Write to Home Secretary Alan Johnson, calling on him to lift the control order on Mahmoud Abu Rideh and ensure he continues to receive any medical attention he needs.
www.amnesty.org.uk/aburideh
3rd July update: The Home Office has deigned to allow Mahmoud an exit visa.
Amnesty International UK counter-terrorism campaigner Sara Macneice said:
'It is very welcome news that Mahmoud Abu Rideh will now be able to leave the UK and seek entry to a safe country, and will no longer be subjected to the repressive measures of his Control Order, which have driven him to utter desperation.
'I have spoken to Mr Abu Rideh and this decision has given him real hope that he may now be reunited with his wife and children, and be able to rebuild his life.
'Amnesty is supporting Mahmoud Abu Rideh's application for a UN travel document, to which he should be entitled as a refugee. However he seems willing to apply for an inferior document in order to leave the UK as soon as possible. The Home Office should issue this document to him promptly, rather than subjecting him to yet more delays.
'This is a minor victory for one man, but the pernicious system of Control Orders, which has driven him and his family out of the UK, remains in place. Amnesty continues to call for an end to the Control Order regime and its replacement with measures which respect people's basic human rights.'
Is Obama weaseling out of his commitment on Guantanamo?
As we hear yet more news items suggesting that Barack Obama's declared intention to close that obscenity, the Guantanamo Prison, by 2010, may be delayed, and with still no mention of reparations for the innocent victims who were banged up there or tortured in other countries as part of the same systematic terrorist scheme, less still of any prosecution of those grunts who carried out the tortures, and their superiors (up to G W Bush and his wee pal Tony) who told them to do it, this short film made by the BBC is worth a look.
[unspeak alert:] Note that even here, the 'impartial' BBC voice-over refers to "dangerous detainees" as being a greater problem when it comes to deciding how to set them free. As if untried, uncharged citizens abducted at random may be in any way described as dangerous. If ever there were a prime example of begging the question, this is it.
A former prosecutor, a true believer, wised up fast when he saw Guantanamo for himself:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/7762430.stm
[unspeak alert:] Note that even here, the 'impartial' BBC voice-over refers to "dangerous detainees" as being a greater problem when it comes to deciding how to set them free. As if untried, uncharged citizens abducted at random may be in any way described as dangerous. If ever there were a prime example of begging the question, this is it.
A former prosecutor, a true believer, wised up fast when he saw Guantanamo for himself:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/7762430.stm
Tuesday 14 July 2009
After 7/7: more liberties lost
That excellent and vital documentary, Taking Liberties, unfortunately unseen by most of its target audience as its UK distribution deal restricted it to out-of-town multiplexes and the ungrateful popcorn masses, has a worthy successor in 'Ludicrous Diversion', a new 20 minute film, which you can see at:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-4943675105275097719
Although it's basically about the London Bombings, it goes on to cover the moves made by the State and police using 7/7 as an excuse for yet more incursions into our liberties.
The self-interested behaviour of the police is documented back to the torture of the Birmingham Six, Guildford Four and others, to extract false confessions on the basis of which they were imprisoned for the most precious years of their lives, and the list of new police powers is examined in depth. One particularly interesting point is that officers are now permitted to arrest you only to ascertain your name.
I should add that I write as a witness to the fabrication by police officers of a spurious 'lost' CCTV recording, which appeared to exonerate an 'interested party' from criminal activity. I have also watched as officers committed acts of daring, nay, death-defying acts of perjury. There is hardly any need for further comment from me; the film says it all quite succinctly.
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-4943675105275097719
Although it's basically about the London Bombings, it goes on to cover the moves made by the State and police using 7/7 as an excuse for yet more incursions into our liberties.
The self-interested behaviour of the police is documented back to the torture of the Birmingham Six, Guildford Four and others, to extract false confessions on the basis of which they were imprisoned for the most precious years of their lives, and the list of new police powers is examined in depth. One particularly interesting point is that officers are now permitted to arrest you only to ascertain your name.
I should add that I write as a witness to the fabrication by police officers of a spurious 'lost' CCTV recording, which appeared to exonerate an 'interested party' from criminal activity. I have also watched as officers committed acts of daring, nay, death-defying acts of perjury. There is hardly any need for further comment from me; the film says it all quite succinctly.
Thursday 2 July 2009
When aliens stalked Bournemouth
In 1985, Bournemouth became the first UK town to be invaded by CCTV. Shortly afterwards, the cameras picked up an unidentified foreigner...
Tuesday 23 June 2009
Nokia profits from Iranian surveillance, UK next?
Rory Cellan-Jones, Technology correspondent at BBC News, has reported on the latest moves by the Iranian State to curb dissent:
'As protests continue in Iran, details are emerging of the technology used to monitor its citizens.
Iran is well known for filtering the net, but the government has moved to do the same for mobile phones.
Nokia Siemens Network has confirmed it supplied Iran with the technology needed to monitor, control, and read local telephone calls.
It told the BBC that it sold a product called the Monitoring Centre to Iran Telecom in the second half of 2008.
[ Nokia provides what it calls 'next generation' network 'solution' for Cellcom Israel. Although on Nokia's website map, Palestine is clearly not included as part of Europe, 'Israel' is defined as being in south-west Europe]
Data inspection
Nokia Siemens, a joint venture between the Finnish and German companies, supplied the system to Iran through its Intelligent Solutions business, which [in turn] was sold in March 2009 to Perusa Partners Fund 1LP, a German investment firm.
The product allows authorities to monitor any communications across a network, including voice calls, text messaging, instant messages, and web traffic, but Nokia Siemens says the product is only being used, in Iran, for the monitoring of local telephone calls on fixed and mobile lines.
Rather than just block traffic, it is understood that the monitoring system can also interrogate data to see what information is being passed back and forth.
A spokesman described the system as "a standard architecture that the world's governments use for lawful intercept".
Iran is also struggling to compete with an opposition that call on the skills of one of the world's most vibrant blogging communities and plenty of tech-savvy folks.'
It's here already
He added: "Western governments, including the UK, don't allow you to build networks without having this functionality."
One useful source of information about the watchers is The Open Net Initiative (ONI).
The ONI is a collaborative partnership of four leading academic institutions: the University of Toronto, Harvard University, Cambridge University and Oxford University. It recognises Israel as a legitimate state, although it places it in the Middle East rather than Europe. Here are pieces of their research into the possibilities of state surveillance on the net:
Political Blocking
There are no examples in Europe of filtering carried out to silence political opposition such as those that the Open Net Initiative has documented in other regions. There are, however, examples of filtering that seeks to maintain the legitimacy of government institutions and preserve national identity. In December 2002 a local Swiss magistrate, Françoise Dessaux, ordered several Swiss ISPs to block access to three Web sites hosted in the United States that were strongly critical of Swiss courts, and to modify their DNS-servers to block the domain appel-au-people.org. The Swiss Internet User Group and the Swiss Network Operators Group protested that the blocks could easily be bypassed and that the move was contrary to the Swiss constitution, which guarantees “the right to receive information freely, to gather it from generally accessible sources and to disseminate it” to every person. However, there was strong enforcement, as the directors of noncompliant ISPs were asked to appear personally in court, failing which they faced charges of disobedience.
In their current form, defamation laws at the country level, particularly in Britain, have been criticized for leading to a “Web takedown” culture where ISPs immediately remove content that is allegedly defamatory when brought to their notice, for fear of facing law suits. The concern in Britain, as in other nations, is that this can have a “chilling effect” on lawful online content and behaviour.
For up-to-date information on this, see http://opennet.net/research/regions/europe
see also: http://hanleyexpress.blogspot.com/2009/08/surveillance-guidelines-are-not-enough.html
...and here's a word from our sponsor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNvHl9Uy1Nw
'As protests continue in Iran, details are emerging of the technology used to monitor its citizens.
Iran is well known for filtering the net, but the government has moved to do the same for mobile phones.
Nokia Siemens Network has confirmed it supplied Iran with the technology needed to monitor, control, and read local telephone calls.
It told the BBC that it sold a product called the Monitoring Centre to Iran Telecom in the second half of 2008.
[ Nokia provides what it calls 'next generation' network 'solution' for Cellcom Israel. Although on Nokia's website map, Palestine is clearly not included as part of Europe, 'Israel' is defined as being in south-west Europe]
Data inspection
Nokia Siemens, a joint venture between the Finnish and German companies, supplied the system to Iran through its Intelligent Solutions business, which [in turn] was sold in March 2009 to Perusa Partners Fund 1LP, a German investment firm.
The product allows authorities to monitor any communications across a network, including voice calls, text messaging, instant messages, and web traffic, but Nokia Siemens says the product is only being used, in Iran, for the monitoring of local telephone calls on fixed and mobile lines.
Rather than just block traffic, it is understood that the monitoring system can also interrogate data to see what information is being passed back and forth.
A spokesman described the system as "a standard architecture that the world's governments use for lawful intercept".
Iran is also struggling to compete with an opposition that call on the skills of one of the world's most vibrant blogging communities and plenty of tech-savvy folks.'
It's here already
He added: "Western governments, including the UK, don't allow you to build networks without having this functionality."
One useful source of information about the watchers is The Open Net Initiative (ONI).
The ONI is a collaborative partnership of four leading academic institutions: the University of Toronto, Harvard University, Cambridge University and Oxford University. It recognises Israel as a legitimate state, although it places it in the Middle East rather than Europe. Here are pieces of their research into the possibilities of state surveillance on the net:
Political Blocking
There are no examples in Europe of filtering carried out to silence political opposition such as those that the Open Net Initiative has documented in other regions. There are, however, examples of filtering that seeks to maintain the legitimacy of government institutions and preserve national identity. In December 2002 a local Swiss magistrate, Françoise Dessaux, ordered several Swiss ISPs to block access to three Web sites hosted in the United States that were strongly critical of Swiss courts, and to modify their DNS-servers to block the domain appel-au-people.org. The Swiss Internet User Group and the Swiss Network Operators Group protested that the blocks could easily be bypassed and that the move was contrary to the Swiss constitution, which guarantees “the right to receive information freely, to gather it from generally accessible sources and to disseminate it” to every person. However, there was strong enforcement, as the directors of noncompliant ISPs were asked to appear personally in court, failing which they faced charges of disobedience.
In their current form, defamation laws at the country level, particularly in Britain, have been criticized for leading to a “Web takedown” culture where ISPs immediately remove content that is allegedly defamatory when brought to their notice, for fear of facing law suits. The concern in Britain, as in other nations, is that this can have a “chilling effect” on lawful online content and behaviour.
For up-to-date information on this, see http://opennet.net/research/regions/europe
see also: http://hanleyexpress.blogspot.com/2009/08/surveillance-guidelines-are-not-enough.html
...and here's a word from our sponsor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNvHl9Uy1Nw
Monday 22 June 2009
Arrested for taking a photo
As part of the stand against the corruption of our liberties and the gradual mission-creep taking place in the Police Force as it takes on the appearance and function of an army of occupation in many situations, we are encouraged to use our cameras, as the police use theirs against us.
As this video assembled by the Guardian shows, the officers of the Force do not take kindly to having a taste of their own medicine. If you carry a camera, make sure you have access to a lawyer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/21/kingsnorth-protester-arrests-video-complaint
The police paranoia about anonymity, extending here to blurring out their own faces in their own video, is understandable, as it took three of these big men to subdue a defenceless woman.
Update, 22nd July: This Guardian link kindly sent in by my correspondent:
Woman cuffed by Boys-in-Blue for filming boyfriend being searched:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/21/police-search-mobile-phone-court
As this video assembled by the Guardian shows, the officers of the Force do not take kindly to having a taste of their own medicine. If you carry a camera, make sure you have access to a lawyer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/21/kingsnorth-protester-arrests-video-complaint
The police paranoia about anonymity, extending here to blurring out their own faces in their own video, is understandable, as it took three of these big men to subdue a defenceless woman.
Update, 22nd July: This Guardian link kindly sent in by my correspondent:
Woman cuffed by Boys-in-Blue for filming boyfriend being searched:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/21/police-search-mobile-phone-court
Sunday 21 June 2009
Ezra Nawi
Ezra Nawi, born an Israeli, is a singular activist looked on as a prophet by all those he has helped, and treated as a criminal by the Zionist regime. He has dedicated his life to helping those who are trampled on. He has stood by Jewish single mothers who pitched tents in front of the Knesset while struggling for a living wage, and by Palestinians threatened with expulsion from their homes.
More info: http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
This is a video of his recent attempt to intervene during the heartless demolition of several Palestinian houses, shelters and shanty homes, for which he was arrested.
More info: http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
This is a video of his recent attempt to intervene during the heartless demolition of several Palestinian houses, shelters and shanty homes, for which he was arrested.
Friday 19 June 2009
The hell of life for women in 'liberated' Afghanistan
By Malalai Joya, member of the Afghan parliament
As an elected representative for Farah, Afghanistan, I add my voice to those condemning the NATO bombing that claimed over 150 civilian lives in my province earlier this month. This latest massacre offers the world a glimpse of the horrors faced by our people.
The US military authorities do not want you to see this reality. As usual, they have tried to downplay the number of civilian casualties, but I have information that as many as 164 civilians were killed in the bombings. One grief-stricken man from the village of Geranai said he lost 20 members of his family in the massacre.
The Afghan government commission, furthermore, appears to have failed to list infants under the age of three who were killed. The government commission that went to the village after three days — when all the victims had been buried in mass graves by the villagers — is not willing to make their list public. How can the precious lives of Afghans be treated with such disrespect?
A trick to deceive our people
The news is that the US has replaced its top military commander in Afghanistan. I think this is just a trick to deceive our people and put responsibility for their disastrous strategy on the shoulders of one person.
The Afghan ambassador to the US said in an Al Jazeera interview that if a proper apology is made, then people will understand the civilian deaths. But the Afghan people do not just want to hear “sorry”. We ask for an end to the occupation of Afghanistan and a stop to such tragic war crimes.
The demonstrations by students and others against these latest air strikes, like the April protests by hundreds of Afghan women in Kabul, show the world the way forward for real democracy in Afghanistan.
In the face of harassment and threats, women took to the streets to demand the scrapping of the law that would legalise rape within marriage and codify the oppression of our country’s Shia women. Just as the US air strikes have not brought security to Afghans, nor has the occupation brought security to Afghan women. The reality is quite the opposite.
This now infamous law is but the tip of the iceberg of the women’s rights catastrophe in our occupied country. The whole system, and especially the judiciary, is infected with the virus of fundamentalism. In Afghanistan, men who commit crimes against women do so with impunity.
Rates of abduction, gang rape, and domestic violence are as high as ever, and so is the number of women’s self-immolation and other forms of suicide. Tragically, women would rather set themselves on fire than endure the hell of life in our liberated country.
Women’s rights
The Afghan constitution does include provisions for women’s rights. I was one of many female delegates to the 2003 Loya Jirga who pushed hard to include them. But this founding document of the new Afghanistan was also scarred by the heavy influence of fundamentalists and warlords, with whom President Hamid Karzai and the West have been compromising from the beginning.
In fact, I was not really surprised by this latest law against women. When the US and its allies replaced the Taliban with the old notorious warlords and fundamentalists of the Northern Alliance, I could see that the only change would be from the frying pan to the fire.
There have been a whole series of outrageous laws and court decisions in recent years. For instance, there was the disgusting law passed on the pretext of national reconciliation that provided immunity from prosecution to warlords and notorious war criminals, many of whom sit in the Afghan parliament. At that time, the world media and governments turned a blind eye to it.
My opposition to this law was one of the reasons that I, as an elected MP from Farah province, was expelled from parliament in May 2007. More recently, there was the outrageous 20-year sentence handed down against Parvez Kambakhsh, a young man whose only crime was to allegedly distribute a dissenting article at his university.
We are told that additional US and NATO troops are coming to Afghanistan to help secure the upcoming presidential election. But frankly, the Afghan people have no hope in this election. We know that there can be no true democracy under the guns of warlords, the drug-trafficking mafia and foreign occupation. We know that one puppet can be replaced by another puppet, and that the winner of this election will most certainly be selected behind closed doors in the White House and the Pentagon. I must conclude that this presidential election is merely a drama to legitimise the future US puppet.
Pawns in the Great Game of empire
Just like in Iraq, war has not brought liberation to Afghanistan. Neither war was really about democracy or justice or uprooting terrorist groups; rather they were and are about US strategic interests in the region. We Afghans have never liked being pawns in the Great Game of empire, as the British and the Soviets learned in the past century. It is a shame that so much of Afghanistan’s reality has been kept veiled by a Western media consensus in support of the good war.
Perhaps if the citizens of North America had been better informed about my country, Obama would not have dared to send more troops and spend taxpayers money on a war that is only adding to the suffering of our people and pushing the region into deeper conflicts.
A troop surge in Afghanistan, and continued air strikes, will do nothing to help the liberation of Afghan women. The only thing it will do is increase the number of civilian casualties and increase the resistance to occupation. To really help Afghan women, citizens in the US and elsewhere must tell their government to stop propping up and covering for a regime of warlords and extremists. If these thugs were finally brought to justice, Afghan women and men would prove quite capable of helping ourselves.
Just like in Iraq, war has not brought liberation to Afghanistan. Neither war was really about democracy or justice or uprooting terrorist groups; rather they were and are about US strategic interests in the region. We Afghans have never liked being pawns in the Great Game of empire, as the British and the Soviets learned in the past century. It is a shame that so much of Afghanistan’s reality has been kept veiled by a Western media consensus in support of the good war.
Perhaps if the citizens of North America had been better informed about my country, Obama would not have dared to send more troops and spend taxpayers money on a war that is only adding to the suffering of our people and pushing the region into deeper conflicts.
A troop surge in Afghanistan, and continued air strikes, will do nothing to help the liberation of Afghan women. The only thing it will do is increase the number of civilian casualties and increase the resistance to occupation. To really help Afghan women, citizens in the US and elsewhere must tell their government to stop propping up and covering for a regime of warlords and extremists. If these thugs were finally brought to justice, Afghan women and men would prove quite capable of helping ourselves.
Malalai Joya is the youngest elected representative in Afghan’s parliament. In 2007, she was absurdly suspended for “insulting” other members of the parliament. Joya is an opponent of the US-led occupation and a strong supporter of women’s rights. She opposes the brutal, misogynistic polices of both the Taliban and the fundamentalist puppet forces the US have installed. Her memoir, ‘Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice’, should be published later this year, 2009.
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