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
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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.
Big Brother is 60 so what's new?
On the 8th June, it was exactly 60 years since the publication of George Orwell's 1984. He spent the grim winter of 1948, the year of my birth and the Nakba among other remarkable events, polishing the work before reversing the numbers to get the title.
Given the great loss of liberties and the policies being followed to catch the so-called 'Fifth Columnists',(a totally fictional threat created by Churchill's government to justify the invasive policies and imprisonments without trial during the six years of war with the Nazies), Orwell's saga was not so remote; merely a few years in the past. His future was created in the image of the recent years, the projected crumbling, rusting infrastructure of imagined future society growing from the bombsites all over Britain.
The former head of GCHQ, Sir David Pepper, chose the occasion of this anniversary to come out of the shadows and tell the BBC ('Who's Watching You') that it has become necessary for the government to record all data from phone and internet traffic in the war on fright. 'Fight against terror' was the phrase he used.
"There are plenty of people who will do all they can to make themselves difficult to find," he said. "The thing you worry about most is the attack that you haven't seen coming."
His answer? Mass surveillance. It's here already, in the streets, and too many citizens have been fooled into voting for more, rather than less, CCTV, in the belief that it (A) works and (B) only spies on 'Them'.
In the programme, Pepper also explained the challenges that face his former colleagues at GCHQ with a diagram that shows how information is shifted in little pieces over the internet, a development which he implied must be met by granting the agency total access to all our communications. Including this one.
Mass surveillance in any form is bound to be subject to mission creep. Local councils already overstep the mark when it comes to snooping. (see: http://hanleyexpress.blogspot.com/2009/06/ripa-council-snooping-is-growth.html)
And allowing the government and its agents such powers over us, given the inescapable evidence of their incompetence, immorality, brutality and self-interest, would be the greatest folly; but Pepper tried to make the case for arrogating such powers. A Home Office Memo leaked while the airheaded former home secretary, Jacqui Smith, was losing her sense of proportion over GCHQ's megalomaniac plans held them to be "impractical, disproportionate, politically unattractive and possibly unlawful". The plans have since been modified so that data collection would be 'outsourced' to internet service providers, whoever they may be, but the key measure of mass surveillance remains and so does the function and ultimate use of that machinery by an anonymous official.
The late Ben Pimlott wrote: “Orwell offers a political choice between the protections of truth and the slide into expedient falsehood for the benefit of rulers and the exploitation of the ruled. Thus the novel is above all subversive, a protest against the tricks played by government. It is a volley against the authoritarian in every personality, a polemic against every orthodoxy, an anarchistic blast against every unquestioning conformist.”
I couldn't put it better, and neither could Henry Porter, whose blog alerted us all to this timely anniversary.
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Tasers with a side order of wallops
Coming soon to your high street. Here is an example of what we may come to expect from police officers in England/Wales, in any situation from the genuinely dangerous down to the simply inconvenient - from the police point of view, of course.
So far, all the blandishments and bland assurances we have been given by police spokesmen about Tasers, as indeed about basic police behaviour, are looking like hot air.
Their statement, on this occasion that they had, because public trust in the police was considered very important, referred this to the IPCC, must also be read with some scepticism: considering their concern for PR on one hand and the specious addition of the word 'independent' to the title of the new complaints body on the other. The IPCC, (a.k.a. the PCC) like its predecessor the PCA, relies almost totally on the police for its evidence-gathering. The results are selective and inevitably biased. The citizen reporter who captured this example of undeniable brutality did well.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/8101763.stm
Here is an excerpt from Henry Porter's blog on this subject:
After the G20 demonstration the IPCC did everything in its power to try to remove video evidence showing the police's treatment of Tomlinson from the web. The handling of the Jean Charles de Menezes case does not give us confidence about the transparency of the IPCC's processes, or of the reliability of the police. I am not suggesting that police in County Durham have lied but I am saying that Richards' death should be treated as a matter of grave concern and be thoroughly and openly investigated.
This country has no capital punishment for very good reasons. What we cannot allow to develop is a shoot to kill policy, in which the police are executing people who may, in time, be persuaded to drop their weapons or who can be rendered harmless by non–fatal shots to the body.
So far, all the blandishments and bland assurances we have been given by police spokesmen about Tasers, as indeed about basic police behaviour, are looking like hot air.
Their statement, on this occasion that they had, because public trust in the police was considered very important, referred this to the IPCC, must also be read with some scepticism: considering their concern for PR on one hand and the specious addition of the word 'independent' to the title of the new complaints body on the other. The IPCC, (a.k.a. the PCC) like its predecessor the PCA, relies almost totally on the police for its evidence-gathering. The results are selective and inevitably biased. The citizen reporter who captured this example of undeniable brutality did well.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/8101763.stm
Here is an excerpt from Henry Porter's blog on this subject:
After the G20 demonstration the IPCC did everything in its power to try to remove video evidence showing the police's treatment of Tomlinson from the web. The handling of the Jean Charles de Menezes case does not give us confidence about the transparency of the IPCC's processes, or of the reliability of the police. I am not suggesting that police in County Durham have lied but I am saying that Richards' death should be treated as a matter of grave concern and be thoroughly and openly investigated.
This country has no capital punishment for very good reasons. What we cannot allow to develop is a shoot to kill policy, in which the police are executing people who may, in time, be persuaded to drop their weapons or who can be rendered harmless by non–fatal shots to the body.
Sunday, 14 June 2009
Gaza artists deliver hope out of the womb of destruction
Iqbal Tamimi
21st April, 2009
Israel should realize by now that the Palestinian nation is indestructible. A nation that was born from the womb of a great civilization is hard to defeat regardless of the methods or the variety of arms used to attack them. Nothing ever will break their spirit. Israel keeps destroying and Palestinians keep rising up from the ashes, green and willing to rebuild.
Israel has bombed everything in Gaza during the latest 21 day assault including hospitals and the only museum in the Strip. But the artists of Gaza who even do not have any materials to experiment with, have been able to make their statement heard out of the rubble.
No colours were left in Gaza, no canvas or building material since the tools of arts are like food and medicine and were subjected to the cruel Israeli siege. But Gaza’s artists will never give up, they used destroyed oxygen cylinders, parts of what is left of a bed, remains of destroyed ambulances that were shelled by Israel, lab coats, a destroyed children’s swing, and burned medical gloves to create their art on the half-standing walls of the hospital destroyed by the Israeli army.
The artwork was created to commemorate the 14 doctors and paramedics killed during the attack that left the white walls of the hospital in black and grey and smelling of gun powder.
Three artists from Gaza celebrated the rebirth of Gaza. Basil Almaqusi, Shareef Sarhan, and Majid Shala are members of the modern artists school, they are a group called Shababeek (it means windows in Arabic). Life might have deserted Gaza, but art will bring it back to life through the windows of hope and art.
The artists chose to name their gallery the Rescue, and the venue was on the remains of the bombed hospital ground of the Red Crescent at Tal Elhawa south of Gaza which was destroyed last January.
The white surgical gloves and white bandages offers hints of hope on the verge of death and destruction. 14 medical lab coats were part of the exhibition; those were the coats of the doctors and paramedics who were also victims of the Israeli aggression They were killed while stretching their hands to help those who were swinging between life and death. Israel forced its siege on everything including art materials, but this never stopped the artists of Gaza from creating art of whatever available in their destroyed city. Viva Gaza…Viva Palestine
First published on http://www.palestinianmothers.com
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Smile on the Face of the Tiger
John Pilger
June 11, 2009 "Information Clearing House"
At 7.30 in the morning on 3 June, a seven-month-old baby died in the intensive care unit of the European Gaza Hospital in the Gaza Strip. His name was Zein Ad-Din Mohammed Zu’rob, and he was suffering from a lung infection which was treatable.
Denied basic equipment, the doctors in Gaza could do nothing. For weeks, the child’s parents had sought a permit from the Israelis to allow them to take him to a hospital in Jerusalem, where he would have been saved. Like many desperately sick people who apply for these permits, the parents were told they had never applied. Even if they had arrived at the Erez Crossing with an Israeli document in their hands, the odds are that they would have been turned back for refusing the demands of officials to spy or collaborate in some way. “Is it an irresponsible overstatement,” asked Richard Falk, the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University, who is Jewish, “to associate the treatment of Palestinians with [the] criminalised Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not.”
Falk was describing Israel’s massacre in December and January of hundreds of helpless civilians in Gaza, many of them children. Reporters called this a “war”. Since then, normality has returned to Gaza. Most children are malnourished and sick, and almost all exhibit the symptoms of psychiatric disturbance, such as horrific nightmares, depression and incontinence. There is a long list of items that Israel bans from Gaza. This includes equipment to clean up the toxic detritus of Israel’s US munitions, which is the suspected cause of rising cancer rates. Toys and playground equipment, such as slides and swings, are also banned. I saw the ruins of a fun fair, riddled with bullet holes, which Israeli “settlers” had used as a sniping target.
The day after Baby Zu’rob died in Gaza, President Barack Obama made his “historic” speech in Cairo, “reaching out to the Muslim world”, reported the BBC. “Just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” said Obama, “does not serve Israel’s security.” That was all. The killing of 1,300 people in what is now a concentration camp merited 17 words, cast as concern for the “security” of the killers. This was understandable. During the January massacre, Seymour Hersh reported that “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel” for use in Gaza.
Obama’s one criticism of Israel was that “the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements . . . It is time for these settlements to stop.” These fortresses on Palestinian land, manned by religious fanatics from America and elsewhere, have been outlawed by the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice. Pointedly, Obama made no mention of the settlements that already honeycomb the occupied territories and make an independent Palestinian state impossible, which is their purpose.
Obama demanded that the “cycle of suspicion and discord must end”. Every year, for more than a generation, the UN has called on Israel to end its illegal and violent occupation of post-1967 Palestine and has voted for “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”. Every year, those voting against these resolutions have been the governments of Israel and the United States and one or two of America’s Pacific dependencies; last year Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe joined them.
Such is the true “cycle” in the Middle East, which is rarely reported as the relentless rejection of the rule of law by Israel and the United States: a law in whose name the wrath of Washington came down on Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait, [an invasion which might not have occurred without the encouragement of the perfidious US/UK] a law which, if upheld and honoured, would bring peace and security to both Palestine and Israel.
Instead, Obama spoke in Cairo as if his and previous White House administrations were neutral, almost divine brokers of peace, instead of rapacious backers and suppliers of the invader (along with Britain). This Orwellian illogic remains the standard for what western journalists call the “Israel-Palestine conflict”, which is almost never reported in terms of the law, of right and wrong, of justice and injustice – Darfur, yes, Zimbabwe, yes, but never Palestine. Orwell’s ghost again stirred when Obama denounced “violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan [who are] determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can”. America’s invasion and slaughter in these countries went unmentioned. It, too, is divine.
Naturally, unlike George W Bush, Obama did not say that “you’re either with us or against us”. He smiled the smile and uttered “many eloquent mood-music paragraphs and a smattering of quotations from the Holy Quran”, noted the American international lawyer John Whitbeck. Beyond this, Obama offered no change, no plan, only a “tired, morally bankrupt American mantra [which] essentially argues that only the rich, the strong, the oppressors and the enforcers of injustice (notably the Americans and Israelis) have the right to use violence, while the poor, the weak, the oppressed and the victims of oppression must . . . submit to their fate and accept whatever crumbs their betters may magnanimously deign suitable to let fall from their table”. And he offered not the slightest recognition that the world’s most numerous victims of terrorism are people of Muslim faith – a terrorism of western origin that dares not speak its name.
In his “reaching out” in Cairo, as in his “anti-nuclear” speech in Berlin, as in the “hope” he spun at his inauguration, this clever young politician is playing the part for which he was drafted and promoted. This is to present a benign, seductive, even celebrity face to American power, which can then proceed towards its strategic goal of dominance, regardless of the wishes of the rest of humanity and the rights and lives of our children.
http://www.johnpilger.com/
Thursday, 11 June 2009
In Pictures: Gaza's new homes
Gazans have begun building with mud. Under Israel's blockade, building materials cannot enter the Strip, leaving the owners of several thousand homes destroyed in the recent conflict unable to rebuild.
Mud bricks are made using soil dug out from smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt. A wide range of goods is brought through the tunnels.
The soil is mixed with straw, which helps bind it, and sand, which the workers say stops the bricks from breaking. The mixture is packed into moulds, and the bricks are left to dry in the sun.
Nidal Eid, 35, has rented a house since his home near Rafah in south Gaza was bulldozed during an Israeli incursion in 2003. He started building his new home two weeks ago, but now needs wood for the roof.
Mr Eid is building two rooms, a hall, a kitchen and bathroom, all on the ground floor, to house himself, his wife and seven children: "It's not my dream, or my children's dream - but it is a temporary solution," he says.
The dried bricks are held together with wet mud. Israel bans cement because it can be used to make launching pads for rockets which Palestinian 'militants' fire into Israel – one of its excuses for the blockade.
Mud bricks are made using soil dug out from smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt. A wide range of goods is brought through the tunnels.
The soil is mixed with straw, which helps bind it, and sand, which the workers say stops the bricks from breaking. The mixture is packed into moulds, and the bricks are left to dry in the sun.
Nidal Eid, 35, has rented a house since his home near Rafah in south Gaza was bulldozed during an Israeli incursion in 2003. He started building his new home two weeks ago, but now needs wood for the roof.
Mr Eid is building two rooms, a hall, a kitchen and bathroom, all on the ground floor, to house himself, his wife and seven children: "It's not my dream, or my children's dream - but it is a temporary solution," he says.
The dried bricks are held together with wet mud. Israel bans cement because it can be used to make launching pads for rockets which Palestinian 'militants' fire into Israel – one of its excuses for the blockade.
Jihad al-Shaer (above), 36, was one of the first people in Gaza to build with mud and straw, known as adobe. He began his house in February, but says the idea dates back to his travels in south Asia, where he saw many homes built that way.
Mr Shaer says the house cost only $3,000, and took seven weeks to build with the help of friends. The roof is supported by recycled wood – new wood is difficult to find in Gaza – and palm branches.
Until he built the house, he was living in his parents' home with his four daughters: "It was really crowded," he says. Since the family moved into their new house, a new baby has arrived and is now two weeks old.
He adds that the new house has already survived rainstorms: "I feel proud and comfortable. It's really cool in summer and warm in winter – our grandparents and great grandparents used to live in houses like these."
He has started a garden, where he grows vegetables and has built a swing for his daughters. Hamas, which controls the Gaza, now says it will fund the construction of mud buildings.
Photos: Alexei Kidel.
Mr Shaer says the house cost only $3,000, and took seven weeks to build with the help of friends. The roof is supported by recycled wood – new wood is difficult to find in Gaza – and palm branches.
Until he built the house, he was living in his parents' home with his four daughters: "It was really crowded," he says. Since the family moved into their new house, a new baby has arrived and is now two weeks old.
He adds that the new house has already survived rainstorms: "I feel proud and comfortable. It's really cool in summer and warm in winter – our grandparents and great grandparents used to live in houses like these."
He has started a garden, where he grows vegetables and has built a swing for his daughters. Hamas, which controls the Gaza, now says it will fund the construction of mud buildings.
Photos: Alexei Kidel.
this was originally posted by Fakhri Dweik on http://www.palestinian.ning.com/
-where you can see all photos.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8068864.stm
-where you can see all photos.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8068864.stm
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
How many secret prisons does Israel have?
UN torture watchdog demands access
By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth, 18 May 2009
Jonathan Cook reports on evidence of a secret Israeli prison - described by an Israeli human rights group as an even grosser violation of international law than Guantanamo - where Arab and Muslim prisoners, including Palestinians, are systematically tortured.
The United Nation's watchdog on torture has criticised Israel for refusing to allow inspections at a secret prison, dubbed by critics as "Israel's Guantanamo Bay", and demanded to know if more such clandestine detention camps are operating.
In a report published on Friday 15th May, the Committee Against Torture requested that Israel identify the location of the camp, officially referred to as "Facility 1391", and allow access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Findings from Israeli human rights groups show that the prison has in the past been used to hold Arab and Muslim prisoners, including Palestinians, and that routine torture and physical abuse were carried out by interrogators.
The UN committee's panel of 10 independent experts also found credible the submissions from Israeli groups that Palestinian detainees are systematically tortured despite the banning of such practices by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1999.
The existence of Facility 1391 came to light in 2002, when Palestinians were detained there for the first time during Israel's reinvasion of the West Bank.
In a submission to the UN committee, Israel denied that any prisoners are currently being held at the site, although it admits that several Lebanese were detained there during the attack on Lebanon in 2006.
The committee expressed concern about an Israeli Supreme Court ruling in 2005 that found it "reasonable" for the state not to investigate suspicions of torture at the prison. The panel is believed to be concerned that, without inspections, the prison might still be in use or could be revived at short notice. The Israeli court, the committee wrote, "should ensure that all allegations of torture and ill-treatment [of] detainees in Facility 1391 be impartially investigated [and] the results made public."
Hamoked, an Israeli human rights organisation, first identified the prison after two Palestinian cousins seized in Nablus in 2002 could not be traced by their families. Israeli officials eventually admitted that the pair were being held at a secret site.
Israel still refuses to identify the precise location of the prison, which is inside Israel and about 100km north of Jerusalem. A few buildings are visible, but most of the prison is built underground.
"We only learnt about the prison because the army made the mistake of putting Palestinians there when they ran out of room in Israel's main prisons," said Dalia Kerstein, the director of Hamoked."The real purpose of the camp is to interrogate prisoners from the Arab and Muslim world, who would be difficult to trace because their families are unlikely to contact Israeli organizations for help." Ms Kerstein said the prison site was an even grosser violation of international law than Guantanamo Bay because it had never been inspected and no one knew what took place there.
According to the testimonies of the Palestinian cousins, Mohammed and Bashar Jadallah, they were held in isolation cells measuring two metres square, with black walls, no windows and a light bulb on 24 hours a day. On the rare occasions they were escorted outside, they had to wear blacked-out goggles.
When Bashar Jadallah, 50, asked where he was, he was told he was "on the moon."
According to the testimony of Mohammed Jadallah, 23, he was repeatedly beaten, his shackles tightened, he was tied in painful positions to a chair, he was not allowed to go to the toilet and he was prevented from sleeping, with water thrown on him if he nodded off. Interrogators are also reported to have shown him pictures of family members and threatened to harm them.
Although Palestinians passing through the prison were interrogated by the domestic secret police, the Shin Bet, foreign nationals at the prison fall under the responsibility of a special wing of military intelligence known as Unit 504, whose interrogation methods are believed to be much harsher.
Shortly after the prison came to light, a former inmate - Mustafa Dirani, a leader of the Lebanese Shi'ah group Amal - launched a court case in Israel claiming he had been raped by a guard.
Mr Dirani, seized from Lebanon in 1994, was held in Facility 1391 for eight years along with a Hizbollah leader, Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid. Israel hoped to extract information from the air in its search for a missing airman, Ron Arad,downed over Lebanon in 1986.
Mr Dirani alleged in court that he had been physically abused by a senior army interrogator known as "Major George", including an incident when he was sodomised with a baton.
The case was dropped in early 2004 when Mr Dirani was released in a prisoner exchange.
Ms Kerstein said there was no proof that more prisons existed in Israel like Facility 1391, but some of the testimonies collected from former inmates suggested that they had been held at different secret locations. She said the concern was that Israel might have been one of the countries that received "extraordinary rendition" flights, in which prisoners captured by the United States were smuggled to other countries for torture.
"If a democracy allows one of these prisons, who is to say that there are not more?" she asked.
The committee examined other suspicions of torture involving Israel. It expressed particular concern about Israel's failure to investigate more than 600 complaints made by detainees against the Shin Bet since the panel's last hearings, in 2001.
It also highlighted the pressure put on Gazans who needed to enter Israel for medical treatment, to turn informer.
Ishai Menuchin, executive director of Israel's Public Committee against Torture, said his group had sent several submissions to the committee showing that torture was systematically used against detainees. "After the court decision in 1999, interrogators simply learnt to be more creative in their techniques," he said.
He added that, since Israel's redefinition of Gaza as an "enemy state", some Palestinians seized there were being held as "illegal combatants" rather than "security detainees".
"In those circumstances, they might qualify for incarceration in secret prisons like Facility 1391."
http://www.jkcook.net/
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth. His lastest books are 'Israel and the Clash of Civilizations:Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East' (Pluto Press) and 'Disappearing Palestine:Israel's Experiments in Human Despair' (ZedBooks)
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in AbuDhabi.
http://www.redress.cc/palestine/jcook20090518
Putting the Bush Years on Trial
Alexander Cockburn
Originally posted: May 4th 2009.
The notion of putting the Bush years on trial has never held allure for President Obama; even less so that of putting Wall Street in the dock. From his lips has always dropped the catechism of uplift and forgiveness, of "moving forward". He and his advisors had supposed that closing down Guantanamo and issuing a stern denunciation of torture would be sufficient advertisement of the new era; that a few terse reprimands for excessive bonuses for executives would slake the public appetite for retribution on the bankers and tycoons.
On torture, as he approaches the 100-day benchmark, Obama has been forced to change step, in response to public outrage at the chilling stream of memoranda documenting the savageries, and legal justifications for same, ordered and subsequently monitored in minute detail by the Bush high command. Obama's continuing aversion to any serious calling to account of the sponsors of torture has been evident in his almost daily shifts in position. At the start of this last week he indicated that yes, those okaying the tortures might be legally answerable, that a "Truth Commission" might be the way forward. By Thursday he was backing into that, saying that a commission would "open the door to a protracted, backward-looking discussion" and in the language of his press secretary, "the president determined the concept didn't seem altogether workable in this case" because of the intense partisan atmosphere built around the issue.
So it's still not clear whether Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their subordinates will have to endure the soft option of a bipartisan commission of enquiry, or face a special prosecutor, or sit back and watch political momentum flag as the issue devolves into lengthy and possibly closed hearings by the Senate Intelligence Committee. As Republicans have not been slow in pointing out, senior Democrats in Congress were certainly complicit in sanctioning torture as early as 2002. They say House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed waterboarding. She says she did not.
As always, former vice predident Cheney has usefully raised the stakes. Did the various tortures, the hundreds of waterboarding sessions, the exposure of naked captives to weeks of intense cold in small concrete boxes, actually make America safer? Cheney snarls on television that they did, thus inviting documented ripostes that this is far from clear, and indeed they contributed nothing of advantage to the national interest.
http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn04242009.html
Originally posted: May 4th 2009.
The notion of putting the Bush years on trial has never held allure for President Obama; even less so that of putting Wall Street in the dock. From his lips has always dropped the catechism of uplift and forgiveness, of "moving forward". He and his advisors had supposed that closing down Guantanamo and issuing a stern denunciation of torture would be sufficient advertisement of the new era; that a few terse reprimands for excessive bonuses for executives would slake the public appetite for retribution on the bankers and tycoons.
On torture, as he approaches the 100-day benchmark, Obama has been forced to change step, in response to public outrage at the chilling stream of memoranda documenting the savageries, and legal justifications for same, ordered and subsequently monitored in minute detail by the Bush high command. Obama's continuing aversion to any serious calling to account of the sponsors of torture has been evident in his almost daily shifts in position. At the start of this last week he indicated that yes, those okaying the tortures might be legally answerable, that a "Truth Commission" might be the way forward. By Thursday he was backing into that, saying that a commission would "open the door to a protracted, backward-looking discussion" and in the language of his press secretary, "the president determined the concept didn't seem altogether workable in this case" because of the intense partisan atmosphere built around the issue.
So it's still not clear whether Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their subordinates will have to endure the soft option of a bipartisan commission of enquiry, or face a special prosecutor, or sit back and watch political momentum flag as the issue devolves into lengthy and possibly closed hearings by the Senate Intelligence Committee. As Republicans have not been slow in pointing out, senior Democrats in Congress were certainly complicit in sanctioning torture as early as 2002. They say House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed waterboarding. She says she did not.
As always, former vice predident Cheney has usefully raised the stakes. Did the various tortures, the hundreds of waterboarding sessions, the exposure of naked captives to weeks of intense cold in small concrete boxes, actually make America safer? Cheney snarls on television that they did, thus inviting documented ripostes that this is far from clear, and indeed they contributed nothing of advantage to the national interest.
http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn04242009.html
RIPA - Council snooping is growth industry
Originally posted: April 1st 2009.
The government passed the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) in 2000. Although it was ostensibly intended to aid the police and 'security' services for the fight against crime and for counter-terrorism, it was so loosely drafted that hundreds of public bodies have been taking on those powers. The BBC broadcast an update on this on the 26th March, 2009:
Councils in England-and-Wales have used controversial spying laws 100,000 times in the past five years, figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show.
The RIPA was designed to fight serious crime, but officials have been using it to spy on suspected dog fouling, littering and ther minor offences.The government has promised curbs on its use but the Lib Dems warn it could still become a "snoopers' charter".
The figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal for the first time how widesread the use of RIPA is among council officals in England and Wales.
A survey of more than 180 local authorities found:
1,615 council staff have the power to authorise the use of RIPA.
21% (or 340) of these staff are below senior management grade.
RIPA powers have been used 10,333 times in the last five years.
Just 9% of these authorisations have led to a successful prosecution, caution or fixed-penalty notice.The Lib Dems are calling on the government to ensure that RIPA powers are only used where strictly necessary and that their use is sanctioned by magistrates. The party's local government spokesman Julia Goldsworthy said,"This government has seen civil liberties as little more than a temporary inconvenience."
ON THE TODAY PROGRAMME
"Slowly but surely freedoms have been eroded and we're now in a situation where dog fouling is considered sufficient to warrant surveillance by council officials."
Shami Chakrabarti, of Liberty, called for tighter restrictions on the use of surveillance powers. She told BBC News, "The over-use of surveillance is destroying trust in proper law enforcement." Council officials were even using 'targeted surveillance', including monitoring phone calls, e-mails, text messages and CCTV, to police school catchment areas, she added.
The government is planning to issue [it says here] new guidelines to councils on the use of RIPA. Local government minister John Healey has written to councils to emphasise that the powers are "not appropriate" for tackling offences like littering or dog fouling.
"The public must have confidence in who has these powers and that they are used in a proportionate and proper way. It is right and important that councils have these powers of surveillance," he said, as an effective 'weapon' against rogue traders, fly tippers and loan sharks." [Does he think loan sharks can be identified by their fins?]
Ministers want applications for the use of RIPA to go to the top of organisations, such as the chief executive of a council rather than the head of trading standards or environmental health. The Conservatives say they would restrict RIPA powers by local authorities only to crimes which could lead to a prison sentence. Local councils would also require judicial approval for the use of surveillance powers and council leaders would have to sign off each use of the powers.
[So that's what the Tories say while they're out of power, but when they get in, they could allow just as much mission creep as anyone. And the business of 'signing off' has become steadily less important with police officers and guns, for instance.]
The government passed the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) in 2000. Although it was ostensibly intended to aid the police and 'security' services for the fight against crime and for counter-terrorism, it was so loosely drafted that hundreds of public bodies have been taking on those powers. The BBC broadcast an update on this on the 26th March, 2009:
Councils in England-and-Wales have used controversial spying laws 100,000 times in the past five years, figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show.
The RIPA was designed to fight serious crime, but officials have been using it to spy on suspected dog fouling, littering and ther minor offences.The government has promised curbs on its use but the Lib Dems warn it could still become a "snoopers' charter".
The figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal for the first time how widesread the use of RIPA is among council officals in England and Wales.
A survey of more than 180 local authorities found:
1,615 council staff have the power to authorise the use of RIPA.
21% (or 340) of these staff are below senior management grade.
RIPA powers have been used 10,333 times in the last five years.
Just 9% of these authorisations have led to a successful prosecution, caution or fixed-penalty notice.The Lib Dems are calling on the government to ensure that RIPA powers are only used where strictly necessary and that their use is sanctioned by magistrates. The party's local government spokesman Julia Goldsworthy said,"This government has seen civil liberties as little more than a temporary inconvenience."
ON THE TODAY PROGRAMME
"Slowly but surely freedoms have been eroded and we're now in a situation where dog fouling is considered sufficient to warrant surveillance by council officials."
Shami Chakrabarti, of Liberty, called for tighter restrictions on the use of surveillance powers. She told BBC News, "The over-use of surveillance is destroying trust in proper law enforcement." Council officials were even using 'targeted surveillance', including monitoring phone calls, e-mails, text messages and CCTV, to police school catchment areas, she added.
The government is planning to issue [it says here] new guidelines to councils on the use of RIPA. Local government minister John Healey has written to councils to emphasise that the powers are "not appropriate" for tackling offences like littering or dog fouling.
"The public must have confidence in who has these powers and that they are used in a proportionate and proper way. It is right and important that councils have these powers of surveillance," he said, as an effective 'weapon' against rogue traders, fly tippers and loan sharks." [Does he think loan sharks can be identified by their fins?]
Ministers want applications for the use of RIPA to go to the top of organisations, such as the chief executive of a council rather than the head of trading standards or environmental health. The Conservatives say they would restrict RIPA powers by local authorities only to crimes which could lead to a prison sentence. Local councils would also require judicial approval for the use of surveillance powers and council leaders would have to sign off each use of the powers.
[So that's what the Tories say while they're out of power, but when they get in, they could allow just as much mission creep as anyone. And the business of 'signing off' has become steadily less important with police officers and guns, for instance.]
see also: http://hanleyexpress.blogspot.com/2009/08/surveillance-guidelines-are-not-enough.html
Building on bold-faced lies
Originally posted: March 18th 2009.
Leaked Israeli 'settlement' expansion plans prove that interminable peace talks are but cover for the material destruction of Palestinian horizons, writes Khaled Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem
While Israel never stops claiming that it has a sincere desire for peace with the Palestinians, the Israeli Housing Ministry, in co-ordination with other government agencies as well as the occupation army, is finalising plans to build tens of thousands of Jewish 'settler' units all over the West Bank, especially in occupied East Jerusalem.
The plans, it is generally agreed, would put an end to Palestinian dreams of establishing a viable and territorially contiguous state that they could call their own. According to a detailed document by the Israeli Peace Now group, which monitors the proliferation of Jewish colonies in the West Bank, the Housing Ministry is planning to build more than 73,000 new apartments and 'settler' units on occupied Palestinian land.
If implemented, the plan means that existing 'settlements' would more than double, both in the sheer number of apartments and in terms of the 'settler' population. That population now stands at more than half a million in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, one major obstacle that could impede the implementation of the plan is the growing dearth of Jewish immigrants from abroad.
In 2008, less than 18,000 immigrants arrived in Israel. This is a mere trickle compared to the hundreds of thousands who arrived in the late 1980s and early 1990s following the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the Israeli government hopes to be able to tackle this problem, at least partially, by giving "generous inducements" to potential 'settlers' that would woo Israeli Jewish citizens to move onto the West Bank. These inducements include hefty tax reductions, preferential treatment with regards to income tax, and long-term loans.
Predictably, the Peace Now revelations drew furious reactions from Palestinian leaders who labelled the plan "peace killer". "If this is true, then it will be futile to even think about peace, let alone the continued relevance of the two-state solution," said Palestinian Authority (PA) official Saeb Erekat.
"I believe that if the international community is sincere about peace in this part of the world then it must force Israel to stop stealing Palestinian land. As far as we are concerned, we can't allow this incessant theft of our land to go on and on under the rubric of a disingenuous process that has a form but has no substance," he added.
Erekat said the PA would be closely watching how the Obama administration deals with the issue of 'settlements'. He admitted that the Bush administration's approach towards the "settlement issue" was scandalous, adding that the next Israeli government, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, would have to accept the principle of land-for-peace or otherwise there will be no peace process left.
Embarrassed by the leaking of the plan, which was applauded by members of the religious and right-wing parties, Israeli government reactions ranged from silence to half-hearted denials. Israeli Housing Minister Zeev Boim, a former deputy defence minister and a notorious hawk advocating an accelerated pace of 'settlement' expansion, described the Peace Now document as "baseless and inaccurate".
However, Boim did admit that at least 11,000 'settler' units were approved for construction in 2009 and that hundreds of other tenders had been issued for construction in the central and northern parts of the West Bank. He also indicated that more tenders might have been issued by other government agencies.
Boim's defences were flatly rejected both by Peace Now and Palestinian experts on Jewish 'settlement' activities as "sly and dishonest manipulation of statistics". Abdel-Hadi Hantash, a veteran cartographer and noted expert on Jewish 'settlement' expansion, described Boim's pronouncements as "prevarications and outright lies". "These people are pathological liars. They claim they want peace, but everything they do on the ground shows beyond any doubt that true peace is the last thing on their minds," he told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Hantash said Istrael was following a master plan the implementation of which would render the creation of a Palestinian state impossible.
"We have to differentiate between official Israeli pronouncements on the one hand, and activities on the ground, on the other. In terms of activities on the ground, it is manifestly obvious that Israel is building new 'settlements' and is expanding existing ones, and in both cases more Palestinian land is confiscated, or more correctly, stolen," he said.
Hantash described Israeli claims that most of the new building occurs within existing 'settlements' themselves and is aimed at meeting immediate housing needs for the 'settlers' as a "pack of lies". "First of all, the 'settlements' themselves are illegal according to international law, because the West Bank is not a disputed territory as Israel claims but an occupied land. Second,I have accurate information based on Israeli sources that the vacancy rate in 'settlements' in the West Bank stands at 18-25 per cent. Hence, the mantra of 'natural growth' is merely a pretext, and for that matter a meretricious one."
Israeli plans - both long standing and new - to swallow up East Jerusalem, now accelerated, have drawn angry reactions from the European Union. According to a confidential EU report issued on 15 December, Israel is using 'settlement' expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory policies as well as the West Bank apartheid Wall to swallow up occupied East Jerusalem. The report points out that Israel is undermining the PA's credibility and weakening support for peace talks among Palestinians.
"Israel's actions in and around Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking,"the report said.
The EU report also speaks of a systematic Israeli policy aimed at narrowing Palestinian horizons in East Jerusalem for the purpose of preventing their demographic growth or forcing them to leave their city.
"Israeli 'facts on the ground' including new 'settlements', construction of the barriers, discriminatory housing policies, house demolitions, restrictive permit regimes and continued closure of Palestinian institutions, increase Jewish Israeli presence in East Jerusalem, weaken the Palestinian community in the city, impede Palestinian urban development and separate East Jerusalem from the West Bank," the report added.
Palestinian officials have welcomed the report, calling it a "belated but welcomed recognition of the anti-peace measures Israel has been carrying out" in the Palestinian capital. "We certainly appreciate this report. But it is very important that the Europeans act on it, because without doing so, Israel will just continue doing the same thing," said Hatem Abdel-Qader, a PA official in charge of the Jerusalem portfolio. "Of course, the Europeans won't take an active posture if the Arabs themselves remained silent."
http://www.weekly.ahram.org Issue No. 938
Leaked Israeli 'settlement' expansion plans prove that interminable peace talks are but cover for the material destruction of Palestinian horizons, writes Khaled Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem
While Israel never stops claiming that it has a sincere desire for peace with the Palestinians, the Israeli Housing Ministry, in co-ordination with other government agencies as well as the occupation army, is finalising plans to build tens of thousands of Jewish 'settler' units all over the West Bank, especially in occupied East Jerusalem.
The plans, it is generally agreed, would put an end to Palestinian dreams of establishing a viable and territorially contiguous state that they could call their own. According to a detailed document by the Israeli Peace Now group, which monitors the proliferation of Jewish colonies in the West Bank, the Housing Ministry is planning to build more than 73,000 new apartments and 'settler' units on occupied Palestinian land.
If implemented, the plan means that existing 'settlements' would more than double, both in the sheer number of apartments and in terms of the 'settler' population. That population now stands at more than half a million in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, one major obstacle that could impede the implementation of the plan is the growing dearth of Jewish immigrants from abroad.
In 2008, less than 18,000 immigrants arrived in Israel. This is a mere trickle compared to the hundreds of thousands who arrived in the late 1980s and early 1990s following the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the Israeli government hopes to be able to tackle this problem, at least partially, by giving "generous inducements" to potential 'settlers' that would woo Israeli Jewish citizens to move onto the West Bank. These inducements include hefty tax reductions, preferential treatment with regards to income tax, and long-term loans.
Predictably, the Peace Now revelations drew furious reactions from Palestinian leaders who labelled the plan "peace killer". "If this is true, then it will be futile to even think about peace, let alone the continued relevance of the two-state solution," said Palestinian Authority (PA) official Saeb Erekat.
"I believe that if the international community is sincere about peace in this part of the world then it must force Israel to stop stealing Palestinian land. As far as we are concerned, we can't allow this incessant theft of our land to go on and on under the rubric of a disingenuous process that has a form but has no substance," he added.
Erekat said the PA would be closely watching how the Obama administration deals with the issue of 'settlements'. He admitted that the Bush administration's approach towards the "settlement issue" was scandalous, adding that the next Israeli government, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, would have to accept the principle of land-for-peace or otherwise there will be no peace process left.
Embarrassed by the leaking of the plan, which was applauded by members of the religious and right-wing parties, Israeli government reactions ranged from silence to half-hearted denials. Israeli Housing Minister Zeev Boim, a former deputy defence minister and a notorious hawk advocating an accelerated pace of 'settlement' expansion, described the Peace Now document as "baseless and inaccurate".
However, Boim did admit that at least 11,000 'settler' units were approved for construction in 2009 and that hundreds of other tenders had been issued for construction in the central and northern parts of the West Bank. He also indicated that more tenders might have been issued by other government agencies.
Boim's defences were flatly rejected both by Peace Now and Palestinian experts on Jewish 'settlement' activities as "sly and dishonest manipulation of statistics". Abdel-Hadi Hantash, a veteran cartographer and noted expert on Jewish 'settlement' expansion, described Boim's pronouncements as "prevarications and outright lies". "These people are pathological liars. They claim they want peace, but everything they do on the ground shows beyond any doubt that true peace is the last thing on their minds," he told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Hantash said Istrael was following a master plan the implementation of which would render the creation of a Palestinian state impossible.
"We have to differentiate between official Israeli pronouncements on the one hand, and activities on the ground, on the other. In terms of activities on the ground, it is manifestly obvious that Israel is building new 'settlements' and is expanding existing ones, and in both cases more Palestinian land is confiscated, or more correctly, stolen," he said.
Hantash described Israeli claims that most of the new building occurs within existing 'settlements' themselves and is aimed at meeting immediate housing needs for the 'settlers' as a "pack of lies". "First of all, the 'settlements' themselves are illegal according to international law, because the West Bank is not a disputed territory as Israel claims but an occupied land. Second,I have accurate information based on Israeli sources that the vacancy rate in 'settlements' in the West Bank stands at 18-25 per cent. Hence, the mantra of 'natural growth' is merely a pretext, and for that matter a meretricious one."
Israeli plans - both long standing and new - to swallow up East Jerusalem, now accelerated, have drawn angry reactions from the European Union. According to a confidential EU report issued on 15 December, Israel is using 'settlement' expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory policies as well as the West Bank apartheid Wall to swallow up occupied East Jerusalem. The report points out that Israel is undermining the PA's credibility and weakening support for peace talks among Palestinians.
"Israel's actions in and around Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking,"the report said.
The EU report also speaks of a systematic Israeli policy aimed at narrowing Palestinian horizons in East Jerusalem for the purpose of preventing their demographic growth or forcing them to leave their city.
"Israeli 'facts on the ground' including new 'settlements', construction of the barriers, discriminatory housing policies, house demolitions, restrictive permit regimes and continued closure of Palestinian institutions, increase Jewish Israeli presence in East Jerusalem, weaken the Palestinian community in the city, impede Palestinian urban development and separate East Jerusalem from the West Bank," the report added.
Palestinian officials have welcomed the report, calling it a "belated but welcomed recognition of the anti-peace measures Israel has been carrying out" in the Palestinian capital. "We certainly appreciate this report. But it is very important that the Europeans act on it, because without doing so, Israel will just continue doing the same thing," said Hatem Abdel-Qader, a PA official in charge of the Jerusalem portfolio. "Of course, the Europeans won't take an active posture if the Arabs themselves remained silent."
http://www.weekly.ahram.org Issue No. 938
'Smart' Bombs
Originally posted: January 1st 2009.
The Israel Air Force used a new bunker-buster that it received recently from the United States in the strikes on the Gaza Strip on Saturday 27th December 2008.
The missile, called GBU-39, was developed in recent years by the US as a small diameter bomb for low-cost, "high-precision" and "low-collateral" strikes.
The Zionists bought 1,000 of the missiles in September 2008. The regime claims that they were used successfully to penetrate underground Kassam launchers in the Gaza strip during the heavy aerial bombardment on Saturday. They were also used in Sunday's bombing of tunnels in Rafah.
The GPS-guided GBU-39 is said to be one of the most accurate bombs in the world. The 113kg. bomb has the same penetration ability as a 'normal' 900kg bomb, although it has only 22.7kg. of explosives. At just 1.75 metres long, its small size means an aircraft can carry more, and attack more targets in one raid.
There has been much talk about "smart" bombs over the years since America declared War on Fright. The claims made for them are strictly science-fiction, though. If they really as smart as we are told, then the US cold-bloodedly intended to wipe out an entire wedding party in Afghanistan, and the Zionists premeditatedly murdered (as I write) upwards of 400 Palestinian civilians who were already suffering from years of enforced deprivation and mini-pogroms in the world's biggest concentration camp.
Just as the UK made a neat profit from the Vietnam War by manufacturing all the napalm that was dropped on the Vietnamese, the economy is benefiting from the US-sponsored policy of partial genocide in Palestine. The company that produces guidance electronics for the US-supplied F-16 plane which drops the GBU-39, Raytheon, has its administration offices on the outskirts of Bristol.
The Israel Air Force used a new bunker-buster that it received recently from the United States in the strikes on the Gaza Strip on Saturday 27th December 2008.
The missile, called GBU-39, was developed in recent years by the US as a small diameter bomb for low-cost, "high-precision" and "low-collateral" strikes.
The Zionists bought 1,000 of the missiles in September 2008. The regime claims that they were used successfully to penetrate underground Kassam launchers in the Gaza strip during the heavy aerial bombardment on Saturday. They were also used in Sunday's bombing of tunnels in Rafah.
The GPS-guided GBU-39 is said to be one of the most accurate bombs in the world. The 113kg. bomb has the same penetration ability as a 'normal' 900kg bomb, although it has only 22.7kg. of explosives. At just 1.75 metres long, its small size means an aircraft can carry more, and attack more targets in one raid.
There has been much talk about "smart" bombs over the years since America declared War on Fright. The claims made for them are strictly science-fiction, though. If they really as smart as we are told, then the US cold-bloodedly intended to wipe out an entire wedding party in Afghanistan, and the Zionists premeditatedly murdered (as I write) upwards of 400 Palestinian civilians who were already suffering from years of enforced deprivation and mini-pogroms in the world's biggest concentration camp.
Just as the UK made a neat profit from the Vietnam War by manufacturing all the napalm that was dropped on the Vietnamese, the economy is benefiting from the US-sponsored policy of partial genocide in Palestine. The company that produces guidance electronics for the US-supplied F-16 plane which drops the GBU-39, Raytheon, has its administration offices on the outskirts of Bristol.
Form 696 -2003 Licensing Act
Originally posted: December 16th 2008.
696 TEARS
Feargal Sharkey, chief executive of British Music Rights, whose band recorded 'Teenage Kicks', widely known as John Peel's all-time favourite record, has said that the 2003 Licensing Act, requiring the completion of a huge and exaustively detailed form every time live music is played, was having a damaging effect on small pubs, clubs and bars featuring live music. He called on the Government to act, in November 2008.
Giving evidence to the Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee, he said that bureaucracy and the cost associated with getting a new licence to play live music was proving prohibitive for smaller venues.
He added that smaller venues were essential for enabling young musicians to get their first taste of playing live in public and called for post-legislative scrutiny of the Act, asking that it be made easier for smaller venues to obtain licences to play live music.
"What we need to achieve is a vibrant, lively music scene. From my own personal experience it's one of the only opportunities that young singers and musicians have of first appearing in public."
He explained that besides problems experienced in smaller venues the live music industry business in the UK was booming and was second only to that of the US.
He also argued that live music suffered from problems of public 'perception' and said objections to live music applications were often made due to concerns about noise levels; but investigations by the Live Music Forum has found the majority of complaints registered were about neighbours playing their HI-FIs too loud and not about noise made by live events.
Stephen Spence, assistant general secretary of Equity, told the hearing that changes to the Act, such as excluding small venues from it, would benefit the live music industry.
The form demands that licencees give police masses of detail, including the names, aliases, private addresses and phone numbers of all musicians and other performers appearing at their venue, and the ethnic background of the likely audience. Failure to comply could mean the loss of a licence or even a fine and imprisonment.
The police claim they need the information demanded in the Form, which runs to eight pages, so they can identify which acts or venues attract troublemakers, and make sure venues are 'safe', but Mr Sharkey is so angry about it that he has been consulting lawyers about how to stop it.
As the chief of BMR, he applied for a judicial review into whether a local authority has the right to make it a condition of publicans' licences that they will have to fill in Form 696. The scheme was introduced by Metropolitan police after incidents at gigs in 2006, some involving guns. Theoretically it applies to any licenced premises where there is live entertainment, but Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Martin, head of the Met's pubs and vice squad, claimed that in reality it would apply only to performances likely to pull big crowds. This may well be how it is presented; how it might even work to start with, but with the police behind it we can expect 'mission creep'.
The Act applies in 21 London boroughs, but professionals in the business fear that if it becomes accepted it will be copied in other cities. Martin Rawlings, director of the Pub and Beer Association, said, "I know of licencees faced with this, saying they are just not going to put live music on. Form 696 is being used only in London so far, but there are similar things going on around the country, where the police are asking publicans to sign various protocols. It has gone too far, frankly."
Feargal Sharkey has also complained to the Equality and Human Rights Commission that the police appear to be focusing on the music enjoyed by black and Asian teenagers. One of the questions in the form asks the licencee to specify the type of music that will be performed, giving as possible examples "Bashment, R&B, amp, Garage" [Bashment?] Another question asks, "Is there a particular ethnic group attending?" This is not a spoof. The Force is asking publicans and managers to do its terrorist recon for it, and by accident or design, this has to be another little piece chopped out of our liberties.
In a letter to Sir Ian Blair, the (then) Met commissioner, Mr Sharkey said, "In explicitly singling out performances and musical styles favoured by the black community we believe the use of Risk Assessment Form 696 is disproportionate, unacceptable and damaging to live music."
The Musicians' Union also consulted lawyers, because they believe that performers' privacy is being invaded. Rick Finlay, a drummer in London venues for 30 years, warned that even if licencees agree to fill in Form 696, musicians may not co-operate. "I would be pretty angry about it, and I can tell you some of my colleagues would refuse to work with me rather than give their details. The last thing they need is a deterrent, which implies that there is something wrong with what they are doing."
However, Detective Chief Superintendent Martin claimed Form 696 was already making live music in large venues safer. "It's not about being risk averse, it's about managing the risk. If you're a publican and you are just having some performers to entertain your regular customers, you won't be expected to do a risk assessment [yet]. It's for when the performance is being put on to draw people in." He added, a little disingenuously," We will never assess somebody just on the genre of music they are performing."
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Scrapthe696
696 TEARS
Feargal Sharkey, chief executive of British Music Rights, whose band recorded 'Teenage Kicks', widely known as John Peel's all-time favourite record, has said that the 2003 Licensing Act, requiring the completion of a huge and exaustively detailed form every time live music is played, was having a damaging effect on small pubs, clubs and bars featuring live music. He called on the Government to act, in November 2008.
Giving evidence to the Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee, he said that bureaucracy and the cost associated with getting a new licence to play live music was proving prohibitive for smaller venues.
He added that smaller venues were essential for enabling young musicians to get their first taste of playing live in public and called for post-legislative scrutiny of the Act, asking that it be made easier for smaller venues to obtain licences to play live music.
"What we need to achieve is a vibrant, lively music scene. From my own personal experience it's one of the only opportunities that young singers and musicians have of first appearing in public."
He explained that besides problems experienced in smaller venues the live music industry business in the UK was booming and was second only to that of the US.
He also argued that live music suffered from problems of public 'perception' and said objections to live music applications were often made due to concerns about noise levels; but investigations by the Live Music Forum has found the majority of complaints registered were about neighbours playing their HI-FIs too loud and not about noise made by live events.
Stephen Spence, assistant general secretary of Equity, told the hearing that changes to the Act, such as excluding small venues from it, would benefit the live music industry.
The form demands that licencees give police masses of detail, including the names, aliases, private addresses and phone numbers of all musicians and other performers appearing at their venue, and the ethnic background of the likely audience. Failure to comply could mean the loss of a licence or even a fine and imprisonment.
The police claim they need the information demanded in the Form, which runs to eight pages, so they can identify which acts or venues attract troublemakers, and make sure venues are 'safe', but Mr Sharkey is so angry about it that he has been consulting lawyers about how to stop it.
As the chief of BMR, he applied for a judicial review into whether a local authority has the right to make it a condition of publicans' licences that they will have to fill in Form 696. The scheme was introduced by Metropolitan police after incidents at gigs in 2006, some involving guns. Theoretically it applies to any licenced premises where there is live entertainment, but Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Martin, head of the Met's pubs and vice squad, claimed that in reality it would apply only to performances likely to pull big crowds. This may well be how it is presented; how it might even work to start with, but with the police behind it we can expect 'mission creep'.
The Act applies in 21 London boroughs, but professionals in the business fear that if it becomes accepted it will be copied in other cities. Martin Rawlings, director of the Pub and Beer Association, said, "I know of licencees faced with this, saying they are just not going to put live music on. Form 696 is being used only in London so far, but there are similar things going on around the country, where the police are asking publicans to sign various protocols. It has gone too far, frankly."
Feargal Sharkey has also complained to the Equality and Human Rights Commission that the police appear to be focusing on the music enjoyed by black and Asian teenagers. One of the questions in the form asks the licencee to specify the type of music that will be performed, giving as possible examples "Bashment, R&B, amp, Garage" [Bashment?] Another question asks, "Is there a particular ethnic group attending?" This is not a spoof. The Force is asking publicans and managers to do its terrorist recon for it, and by accident or design, this has to be another little piece chopped out of our liberties.
In a letter to Sir Ian Blair, the (then) Met commissioner, Mr Sharkey said, "In explicitly singling out performances and musical styles favoured by the black community we believe the use of Risk Assessment Form 696 is disproportionate, unacceptable and damaging to live music."
The Musicians' Union also consulted lawyers, because they believe that performers' privacy is being invaded. Rick Finlay, a drummer in London venues for 30 years, warned that even if licencees agree to fill in Form 696, musicians may not co-operate. "I would be pretty angry about it, and I can tell you some of my colleagues would refuse to work with me rather than give their details. The last thing they need is a deterrent, which implies that there is something wrong with what they are doing."
However, Detective Chief Superintendent Martin claimed Form 696 was already making live music in large venues safer. "It's not about being risk averse, it's about managing the risk. If you're a publican and you are just having some performers to entertain your regular customers, you won't be expected to do a risk assessment [yet]. It's for when the performance is being put on to draw people in." He added, a little disingenuously," We will never assess somebody just on the genre of music they are performing."
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Scrapthe696
Tasers for all police in South Britain
Originally posted: November 24th 2008.
Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle
As of Monday, 24 November 2008, all police officers in England/Wales are to be given access to Taser stun guns. Non-firearms officers in ten forces will be 'trained' to use the weapons. It is claimed that every incident they are involved in will be assessed over a 12-month trial period. Tasers work by firing metal barbs into the skin which then discharge an electrical blast which is designed to disable someone long enough to allow police to attack without danger to themselves; although they may also be used like cattle-prods, the gun being directly pushed into the victim.
The government is expected to arm police with 10,000 of the 50,000-volt weapons. Until now, the guns have been used by small units of firearms officers.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith reportedly wants front-line response officers in all 43 police forces in England/Wales to be trained to fire Tasers at 'violent suspects'. She told The Sunday Times that £8m will be made available to equip up to 30,000 police response officers across the country with them.
She said (ingenuously): "I am proud that we have one of the few police services around the world that do not regularly carry firearms and I want to keep it that way. But every day the police put themselves in danger to protect us, the public. They deserve our support, so I want to give the police the tools they tell me they need to confront dangerous people. That is why I am giving the police 10,000 Tasers to ensure that officers across the country benefit from this form of defence." (sic)
If all it takes is for the police to ask, our Home Secretary is dangerously naive. The "dangerous people" could include anyone who looks like a low-lifer, someone with physical disabilities resembling drunkenness, e.g. epilepsy, merely gets in the way of police business or may be identified as being in some way anti-establishment. At a time when there is growing concern about gun crime, this ironically could lead to an escalation in gun ownership as a response.
Alan Campbell, MP, admitted that Tasers were for police protection as well as for the 'protection' of the public, told the BBC (on the Today Programme) that there had been a "rigorous assessment" and that there was 'no danger' of serious injury. But in the US, 320 people have been killed by Tasers since 2001, and many cities and police forces there have banned their use against minors. Mr Campbell added, "We don't routinely arm our officers," -This may have been true a few years ago.
On the morning of Thursday 20th November, I was in the queue for stamps at the local post office/corner shop (Bristol BS3) when I noticed ahead of me in the queue, a copper in a bullet-proof vest, with a pistol on his hip.
A machine for killing people, at the ready, ten-thirty on a quiet suburban morning.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) said trials showed in the majority of cases Tasers helped police resolve incidents without resorting to other weapons. Like the day last year when an officer threatened to use one against a citizen trying to re-enter an English seaside hotel to carry out a rescue during a fire. As former Toronto mayor John Sewell told Naomi Klein, "the taser is not the thing that replaces the gun, it's what replaces all the other things that police might do other than use a gun, like talk to you." (Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine)
Oliver Sprague, an arms expert at Amnesty International UK, said, "Tasers are potentially lethal weapons which are already linked to numerous deaths in North America and that's why wide deployment without adequate training is a dangerous step too far for British policing."
In September, police were given the green-light to use Tasers against children, despite warnings that they could trigger heart attacks in young people. Home Office Police Minister Tony McNulty said medical assessments had confirmed the risk of death or serious injury from Taser use was "low", but he did not add that the Defence Scientific Advisory Council had said that not enough was known about the health risks of using the weapons against children.
The committee, which comprises independent scientists and doctors, said that limited research suggested there was a risk children could suffer "a serious cardiac event". It recommended that officers should be "particularly vigilant" for any Taser-induced adverse response and said guidance should be amended to "identify children and adults of small stature" as being at potentially greater risk from the cardiac effects of Tasers.
Two years ago in Chicago a 14-year-old boy went into cardiac arrest after being shot with one. Medics had to use a defibrillator four times to rescue him.
The scientists researching on behalf of the Government were also asked to test whether the weapons could cause a miscarriage if used on a pregnant woman. While not saying whether police would be allowed to Taser an expectant mother, the Home Office said the DSAC committee had "specifically asked" for computer simulations to be carried out to analyse the effect on "a pregnant female". Taser International, the American firm that makes the device, said tests on pigs suggested the weapons were safe; although the pigs may not necessarily have been pregnant.
ACPO, which issues guidance to forces on the use of weapons, said Tasers would be made "readily available" for "conflict management" at incidents of "violence and threats of violence of such severity that they will need force", This will, of course, include incidents where violence is of police origin, like peaceful but 'inconvenient' demonstrations, where until now officers were restricted to using clubs against marchers, including, famously, Blair Peach, beaten to death in Southall, London.
Now, 're you gonna co-operate with me? http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KWaCD6jIH5Q
The UN's Committee Against Torture has declared that Taser use can constitute a form of torture, contrary to the UN's convention against the same.
The committee delivered its verdict on 23rd November 2007, after examining the Portuguese police force's adoption of the TaserX26, described as a weapon with "proven risks of harm or death" by an expert called to testify. The committee's statement said, "The use of TaserX26 weapons, provoking extreme pain, constituted a form of torture, and that in certain cases it could also cause death, as shown by several reliable studies and by certain cases that had happened after practical use."
Further reading: see 'Sanctioned /Torture & Summary Execution in America http://educate-yourself.org/pnt/index.shtml
19th March - From our Canada CorrespondentThe RCMP announced the other day that the use of the Taser has been reviewed and acknowledges there are risks of permanent harm and death. Whether this brings about a reduction in its use, only time will tell.
Meanwhile, today in Toronto, the chief of police has endorsed the use of the device and here's the report. I draw your attention to the phrase, "in-custody death syndrome", in the final paragraph.
So "in-custody death syndrome is the new euphemism for police brutality, i.e., blaming it on a circumstance which appears to have no cause, or which can't be explained but to which a pattern can be identified --- in other words, death while in the company of the police,
"We reiterate that to date, there is no evidence, either scientific or medical, that a conducted-energy weapon has been the direct cause of death anywhere, at any time, on any person," Chief Tom Kaye, vice-president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, said in a news conference in Ottawa.
The Canadian Police Association and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, representing chiefs and rank-and-file officers, said the public has been subjected to "inaccurate and incomplete" information on electrical stun guns and they want to dispel some myths related to their use.
The bottom line is that [conducted-energy weapons] saves lives," said Charles Momy, President of CPA. "They certainly enhance public safety and officer safety. It is our position that all police officers should be authorised to carry CEWs," he added, saying further that officers should also be provided with regular and adequate use-of-force training.
The Associations say the weapon should only be used if there's a threat to the police officer or a threat to the public.
"There has to be some active resistance on people's behalf. It's got to be some kind of assaultive, combative behaviour," said Kaye, who is chief of the Owen Sound, Ontario, police force. " The device should not be used in passive-resistance cases." Kaye acknowledged that police may have used it in those types of cases in the past. "They may have allowed it to be used more as a compliance device. We're suggesting that that's not correct," he said, adding that there needs to be a better job done of reporting and tracking the use of the device.
Kaye wouldn't comment on the Dziekanski case (Polish, killed in an airport because no one spoke his language) or whether he believed a Taser was responsible for his death. He pointed out, however, that there have been 150 studies and reviews around the world, none of which, [he claimed], suggest anyone has died from being zapped with a Taser. He mentioned "in-custody death syndrome," in which people who have been pepper-sprayed or just held down by officers have died in police custody.
Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle
As of Monday, 24 November 2008, all police officers in England/Wales are to be given access to Taser stun guns. Non-firearms officers in ten forces will be 'trained' to use the weapons. It is claimed that every incident they are involved in will be assessed over a 12-month trial period. Tasers work by firing metal barbs into the skin which then discharge an electrical blast which is designed to disable someone long enough to allow police to attack without danger to themselves; although they may also be used like cattle-prods, the gun being directly pushed into the victim.
The government is expected to arm police with 10,000 of the 50,000-volt weapons. Until now, the guns have been used by small units of firearms officers.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith reportedly wants front-line response officers in all 43 police forces in England/Wales to be trained to fire Tasers at 'violent suspects'. She told The Sunday Times that £8m will be made available to equip up to 30,000 police response officers across the country with them.
She said (ingenuously): "I am proud that we have one of the few police services around the world that do not regularly carry firearms and I want to keep it that way. But every day the police put themselves in danger to protect us, the public. They deserve our support, so I want to give the police the tools they tell me they need to confront dangerous people. That is why I am giving the police 10,000 Tasers to ensure that officers across the country benefit from this form of defence." (sic)
If all it takes is for the police to ask, our Home Secretary is dangerously naive. The "dangerous people" could include anyone who looks like a low-lifer, someone with physical disabilities resembling drunkenness, e.g. epilepsy, merely gets in the way of police business or may be identified as being in some way anti-establishment. At a time when there is growing concern about gun crime, this ironically could lead to an escalation in gun ownership as a response.
Alan Campbell, MP, admitted that Tasers were for police protection as well as for the 'protection' of the public, told the BBC (on the Today Programme) that there had been a "rigorous assessment" and that there was 'no danger' of serious injury. But in the US, 320 people have been killed by Tasers since 2001, and many cities and police forces there have banned their use against minors. Mr Campbell added, "We don't routinely arm our officers," -This may have been true a few years ago.
On the morning of Thursday 20th November, I was in the queue for stamps at the local post office/corner shop (Bristol BS3) when I noticed ahead of me in the queue, a copper in a bullet-proof vest, with a pistol on his hip.
A machine for killing people, at the ready, ten-thirty on a quiet suburban morning.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) said trials showed in the majority of cases Tasers helped police resolve incidents without resorting to other weapons. Like the day last year when an officer threatened to use one against a citizen trying to re-enter an English seaside hotel to carry out a rescue during a fire. As former Toronto mayor John Sewell told Naomi Klein, "the taser is not the thing that replaces the gun, it's what replaces all the other things that police might do other than use a gun, like talk to you." (Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine)
Oliver Sprague, an arms expert at Amnesty International UK, said, "Tasers are potentially lethal weapons which are already linked to numerous deaths in North America and that's why wide deployment without adequate training is a dangerous step too far for British policing."
In September, police were given the green-light to use Tasers against children, despite warnings that they could trigger heart attacks in young people. Home Office Police Minister Tony McNulty said medical assessments had confirmed the risk of death or serious injury from Taser use was "low", but he did not add that the Defence Scientific Advisory Council had said that not enough was known about the health risks of using the weapons against children.
The committee, which comprises independent scientists and doctors, said that limited research suggested there was a risk children could suffer "a serious cardiac event". It recommended that officers should be "particularly vigilant" for any Taser-induced adverse response and said guidance should be amended to "identify children and adults of small stature" as being at potentially greater risk from the cardiac effects of Tasers.
Two years ago in Chicago a 14-year-old boy went into cardiac arrest after being shot with one. Medics had to use a defibrillator four times to rescue him.
The scientists researching on behalf of the Government were also asked to test whether the weapons could cause a miscarriage if used on a pregnant woman. While not saying whether police would be allowed to Taser an expectant mother, the Home Office said the DSAC committee had "specifically asked" for computer simulations to be carried out to analyse the effect on "a pregnant female". Taser International, the American firm that makes the device, said tests on pigs suggested the weapons were safe; although the pigs may not necessarily have been pregnant.
ACPO, which issues guidance to forces on the use of weapons, said Tasers would be made "readily available" for "conflict management" at incidents of "violence and threats of violence of such severity that they will need force", This will, of course, include incidents where violence is of police origin, like peaceful but 'inconvenient' demonstrations, where until now officers were restricted to using clubs against marchers, including, famously, Blair Peach, beaten to death in Southall, London.
Now, 're you gonna co-operate with me? http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KWaCD6jIH5Q
The UN's Committee Against Torture has declared that Taser use can constitute a form of torture, contrary to the UN's convention against the same.
The committee delivered its verdict on 23rd November 2007, after examining the Portuguese police force's adoption of the TaserX26, described as a weapon with "proven risks of harm or death" by an expert called to testify. The committee's statement said, "The use of TaserX26 weapons, provoking extreme pain, constituted a form of torture, and that in certain cases it could also cause death, as shown by several reliable studies and by certain cases that had happened after practical use."
Further reading: see 'Sanctioned /Torture & Summary Execution in America http://educate-yourself.org/pnt/index.shtml
19th March - From our Canada CorrespondentThe RCMP announced the other day that the use of the Taser has been reviewed and acknowledges there are risks of permanent harm and death. Whether this brings about a reduction in its use, only time will tell.
Meanwhile, today in Toronto, the chief of police has endorsed the use of the device and here's the report. I draw your attention to the phrase, "in-custody death syndrome", in the final paragraph.
So "in-custody death syndrome is the new euphemism for police brutality, i.e., blaming it on a circumstance which appears to have no cause, or which can't be explained but to which a pattern can be identified --- in other words, death while in the company of the police,
"We reiterate that to date, there is no evidence, either scientific or medical, that a conducted-energy weapon has been the direct cause of death anywhere, at any time, on any person," Chief Tom Kaye, vice-president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, said in a news conference in Ottawa.
The Canadian Police Association and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, representing chiefs and rank-and-file officers, said the public has been subjected to "inaccurate and incomplete" information on electrical stun guns and they want to dispel some myths related to their use.
The bottom line is that [conducted-energy weapons] saves lives," said Charles Momy, President of CPA. "They certainly enhance public safety and officer safety. It is our position that all police officers should be authorised to carry CEWs," he added, saying further that officers should also be provided with regular and adequate use-of-force training.
The Associations say the weapon should only be used if there's a threat to the police officer or a threat to the public.
"There has to be some active resistance on people's behalf. It's got to be some kind of assaultive, combative behaviour," said Kaye, who is chief of the Owen Sound, Ontario, police force. " The device should not be used in passive-resistance cases." Kaye acknowledged that police may have used it in those types of cases in the past. "They may have allowed it to be used more as a compliance device. We're suggesting that that's not correct," he said, adding that there needs to be a better job done of reporting and tracking the use of the device.
Kaye wouldn't comment on the Dziekanski case (Polish, killed in an airport because no one spoke his language) or whether he believed a Taser was responsible for his death. He pointed out, however, that there have been 150 studies and reviews around the world, none of which, [he claimed], suggest anyone has died from being zapped with a Taser. He mentioned "in-custody death syndrome," in which people who have been pepper-sprayed or just held down by officers have died in police custody.
'Yes, Hate' - by Gideon Levy
Originally posted: November 23rd 2008.
October 2008: The voice of humanity speaks out at http://www.haaretz.com//hasen/spages/1031286.html
My settler colleague, Israel Harel, his community's champion at rolling his eyes, playing innocent and speaking with a honeyed tongue, is once again grieving and playing the victim. In a column published here [Haaretz] last week ("Have we become Sodom?" October 23), he complained that the reason for what he termed destructive criticism of the settlers is hatred. And indeed, Mr. Harel, this time, you're right: large segments of Israeli society do indeed hate. But this is not baseless hatred, not hatred for the sake of hatred, to use your words. It is hatred for your enterprise. You have earned this hatred honestly - the only honest thing about your enterprise.
Yes, there are Israelis who do not want to see their countrymen despoiling the vineyards and burning the fields of poor farmers. Yes, there are Israelis who do not want to see troops of masked settlers beating elderly shepherds with clubs. Yes, there are Israelis who do not want to see other Israelis sikking their dogs on and puncturing the tyres of the soldiers who protect them. Yes, there are Israelis who are embarrassed by the fact that tens of thousands of their fellow Israelis live on privately owned lands that were robbed, stolen and extorted, both in broad daylight and under cover of darkness.
And yes, there are Israelis who think that you have brought disaster upon us, a tragedy that will last for generations. That via your actions, you have brought wars and bloodshed and the brutalisation of society upon us. That if you were not there, none of us would be there any longer, in a land that is not ours. That just as we withdrew from occupied South Lebanon - solely because, fortunately, you were not there - we would also long since have been able to withdraw from the areas you have occupied. Yes, there are Israelis who hate all this.
Poisoning a Subcontinent
Originally posted: November 22nd 2008.
"The error of Afghanistan is far more serious than the error of Iraq. If the resulting insurgency is now exported to Pakistan, both errors will seem peccadilloes. Pakistan is the sixth largest state in the world, and nuclear-armed. The awful prospect is that Obama and Brown may feel too weak to learn from Iraq and pull back. They will blunder on, not to a clean defeat but to something far worse, a war of attrition whose poison will spread across a subcontinent."
http://tinyurl.com/5rrwrg
Thus spake Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins. This explains the urgency of the case the Stop The War Coalition put in a letter delivered to Gordon Brown on Thursday 20 November, the seventh anniversary of the attack on Afhganistan, planned some three months before the Twin Towers bombing. The text of the letter, reprinted in The Guardian, is:
"Seven years after the supposed liberation of Afghanistan, there is now conclusive evidence that the Nato occupation is a disaster. The civilian death toll is mounting. The level of violence is higher than at any time since the invasion in 2001. The UN reports that, under occupation, life expectancy has fallen to 43 years and one in five children die before they reach their fifth birthday. Afghanistan is now fourth from bottom of the UN's league table of development. The mounting violence has caused a refugee crisis and, according to Acbar, the umbrella group of Afghan NGOs, it is making the delivery of aid to the majority of the country impossible. The NGOs warn that there is a very real danger that thousands of Aghans will starve this winter. The end of the Bush era should be a moment to reassess our foreign policy: 68% of the British public now believe the troops should leave Afghanistan within a year; and 125 British soldiers have already lost their lives in a war that even the UK ambassador to Afghanistan, Sherard Cowper-Coles, has said is unwinnable. We urge Gordon Brown to recognise the facts, respect public opinion and order the withdrawal of British troops."
The letter was signed by Nazir Ahmed- House of Lords, Julie Bowman- Military Families Against The War, Louise Christian human rights lawyer, Jeremy Corbyn MP, George Galloway MP, Lindsey German- Convener: Stop The War Coalition, Elfyn Llwyd MP- Plaid Cymru UK parliamentary group leader, Rachael Massey- Military Families Against The War, Andrew Murray- Chair:Stop The War Coalition, Michael Rosen- poet & broadcaster, Nitin Sawhney- musician and Walter Wolfgang- Labour CND.
GUARDIAN, 21.11.08, http://tinyurl.com/6pj8a7
"The error of Afghanistan is far more serious than the error of Iraq. If the resulting insurgency is now exported to Pakistan, both errors will seem peccadilloes. Pakistan is the sixth largest state in the world, and nuclear-armed. The awful prospect is that Obama and Brown may feel too weak to learn from Iraq and pull back. They will blunder on, not to a clean defeat but to something far worse, a war of attrition whose poison will spread across a subcontinent."
http://tinyurl.com/5rrwrg
Thus spake Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins. This explains the urgency of the case the Stop The War Coalition put in a letter delivered to Gordon Brown on Thursday 20 November, the seventh anniversary of the attack on Afhganistan, planned some three months before the Twin Towers bombing. The text of the letter, reprinted in The Guardian, is:
"Seven years after the supposed liberation of Afghanistan, there is now conclusive evidence that the Nato occupation is a disaster. The civilian death toll is mounting. The level of violence is higher than at any time since the invasion in 2001. The UN reports that, under occupation, life expectancy has fallen to 43 years and one in five children die before they reach their fifth birthday. Afghanistan is now fourth from bottom of the UN's league table of development. The mounting violence has caused a refugee crisis and, according to Acbar, the umbrella group of Afghan NGOs, it is making the delivery of aid to the majority of the country impossible. The NGOs warn that there is a very real danger that thousands of Aghans will starve this winter. The end of the Bush era should be a moment to reassess our foreign policy: 68% of the British public now believe the troops should leave Afghanistan within a year; and 125 British soldiers have already lost their lives in a war that even the UK ambassador to Afghanistan, Sherard Cowper-Coles, has said is unwinnable. We urge Gordon Brown to recognise the facts, respect public opinion and order the withdrawal of British troops."
The letter was signed by Nazir Ahmed- House of Lords, Julie Bowman- Military Families Against The War, Louise Christian human rights lawyer, Jeremy Corbyn MP, George Galloway MP, Lindsey German- Convener: Stop The War Coalition, Elfyn Llwyd MP- Plaid Cymru UK parliamentary group leader, Rachael Massey- Military Families Against The War, Andrew Murray- Chair:Stop The War Coalition, Michael Rosen- poet & broadcaster, Nitin Sawhney- musician and Walter Wolfgang- Labour CND.
GUARDIAN, 21.11.08, http://tinyurl.com/6pj8a7
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Evenin' all...
Decency and Disorder
Ben Wilson
Faber paperback: £12.99
Whether or not you think that the law exists only to protect the ruling classes and their status quo at the expense of the freedom and rights of the masses, this exhaustive study of the puritan reaction to the licentious eighteenth century, deeply researched and documented while highly readable, will fill the gaps in your perception and understanding of the state machinery we have inherited.
The original organised police force, in London, was certainly, like all police forces, given the brief to rid the streets of 'undesirable' persons, rendering them safe for the ostensibly wealthier sort, and so they were, as they continue to be, fundamentally driven by a form of snobbery, their excesses of zeal and lack of probity justified by their seeing themselves as serving their masters. Ben Wilson takes us right back into the steamy, seamy cradle of today's rightwing extremism, although he skips over the parallels between then and now. Jeremy Bentham said, ' …the more strictly we are watched, the better we behave.' His solution was a network of paupers' prisons where every single action of the inmates would be under constant surveillance. It might have worked, if they could have then sold their stories to the red-tops.
His contemporary in London, ex-Glasgow Lord Provost Patrick Colquhoun was well ahead of his time; although much of what he proposed was already in force in urban France.
'The new police force would be centralised and superintended by a board under the direct control of the Home Secretary. It would gain its information from parish officials in order to compile a national database…it would be a thorough and never-ending inquisition into the habits of the people of England and Wales…Every aspect of lower-class life would be put under iron control.'
The one fundamental difference between the police of then and now is that then, poverty, drunkenness, freedom and rebellion were all seen to be equal symptoms of godless immorality. The police of 1808 were being asked to act like the 'religious police' of today's Saudi Arabia. In today's UK we have dispensed with the cloak of philanthropy and go Straight to Jail.
And now we are having it both ways: the mass drunkenness, the clashes between 'the mob' and the police force on one hand, and CCTV and (as yet, unarmed) drones on the other.
This book is indispensable for anyone who wants to know what life was actually like a little while ago - although packed with hard facts, it's entertainingly visual, wrily funny and hellishly dark by turns. Although it’s almost inevitably about England rather than all Britain, and narrows down to London life, it’s one to savour.
Ben Wilson
Faber paperback: £12.99
Whether or not you think that the law exists only to protect the ruling classes and their status quo at the expense of the freedom and rights of the masses, this exhaustive study of the puritan reaction to the licentious eighteenth century, deeply researched and documented while highly readable, will fill the gaps in your perception and understanding of the state machinery we have inherited.
The original organised police force, in London, was certainly, like all police forces, given the brief to rid the streets of 'undesirable' persons, rendering them safe for the ostensibly wealthier sort, and so they were, as they continue to be, fundamentally driven by a form of snobbery, their excesses of zeal and lack of probity justified by their seeing themselves as serving their masters. Ben Wilson takes us right back into the steamy, seamy cradle of today's rightwing extremism, although he skips over the parallels between then and now. Jeremy Bentham said, ' …the more strictly we are watched, the better we behave.' His solution was a network of paupers' prisons where every single action of the inmates would be under constant surveillance. It might have worked, if they could have then sold their stories to the red-tops.
His contemporary in London, ex-Glasgow Lord Provost Patrick Colquhoun was well ahead of his time; although much of what he proposed was already in force in urban France.
'The new police force would be centralised and superintended by a board under the direct control of the Home Secretary. It would gain its information from parish officials in order to compile a national database…it would be a thorough and never-ending inquisition into the habits of the people of England and Wales…Every aspect of lower-class life would be put under iron control.'
The one fundamental difference between the police of then and now is that then, poverty, drunkenness, freedom and rebellion were all seen to be equal symptoms of godless immorality. The police of 1808 were being asked to act like the 'religious police' of today's Saudi Arabia. In today's UK we have dispensed with the cloak of philanthropy and go Straight to Jail.
And now we are having it both ways: the mass drunkenness, the clashes between 'the mob' and the police force on one hand, and CCTV and (as yet, unarmed) drones on the other.
This book is indispensable for anyone who wants to know what life was actually like a little while ago - although packed with hard facts, it's entertainingly visual, wrily funny and hellishly dark by turns. Although it’s almost inevitably about England rather than all Britain, and narrows down to London life, it’s one to savour.
Slingshot Hiphop
Originally posted: November 11th 2008.
Slingshot Hiphop Review by Maureen Clare Murphy, Electronic Intifada
Jackie Salloum's invigorating new documentary Slingshot Hiphop portrays the story of three aspiring Palestinian musicians from the rap group DAM as they develop their talent in their bedrooms and take it to standing-room-only crowds throughout historic Palestine.
Though the DAM crew may hold Israeli passports, their lyrics about discrimination, resisting oppression and pride in a common heritage ring true with young Palestinians everywhere. Indeed, the musicians from Lyd might find a feeling of familiarity in the southern Gaza Strip, where Mohammed al-Farra from the group Palestinian Rapperz (PR) lives. Whether in the Gaza Strip, or in Lyd, Palestinians are subject to Israel's racist policies of house demolitions and arbitrary arrest. "It's like a refugee camp in Israel," DAM member Tamer Nafar says of Lyd, where a lack of community services, unemployment, and poverty bred by systemic state discrimination makes drug use an attractive escape for many young people.
DAM's work inside their own community is especially significant. The group visits a camp for children (called Camp Return, referring to Palestinian Refugees' right of return) in Lyd. After Tamer performs an unaccompanied rap describing his pride in being Palestinian ("Remove the word self-pity from your mind... raise our heads high"), one of the children in the audience asks with genuine surprise, "I'm a Palestinian?"
When the rappers gently ask him what he thought he was, he replies, "Just Arab." - indicating the internalisation of Israel's attempts to strip Palestinians inside Israel [e.g. annexed Palestine] of their national identity.
Salloum's film shows the audience how these artists are using a cultural medium to unite Palestinian youth who have grown up not knowing their peers in other arts of the Palestinian Diaspora, and how their themes of repression and subjugation communicate their common story of injustice. In Gaza, PR's Mohammed al-Farra echoes Tamer Nafar and his comrades when he explains that he and his crew turned to rapping as a form of release and resistance following Israel's brutal repression of the second Palestinian intifada which broke out in 2000. In November of that year, Mohammed narrowly escaped death when he turned his body just in time for an Isreali fired bullet to penetrate his arm instead of his heart. Filled with despair, Mohammed struggled to find rap CDs in Gaza's music stores, and was riveted when a friend brought back an Eminem CD from Canada. But he found his direction when he heard DAM on the internet. Now, he says, his dream is to meet his "brothers in '48". referring to the part of historic Palestine that is now considered to be Israel proper and to which Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are prohibited from freely visiting.
Slingshot Hiphop Review by Maureen Clare Murphy, Electronic Intifada
Jackie Salloum's invigorating new documentary Slingshot Hiphop portrays the story of three aspiring Palestinian musicians from the rap group DAM as they develop their talent in their bedrooms and take it to standing-room-only crowds throughout historic Palestine.
Though the DAM crew may hold Israeli passports, their lyrics about discrimination, resisting oppression and pride in a common heritage ring true with young Palestinians everywhere. Indeed, the musicians from Lyd might find a feeling of familiarity in the southern Gaza Strip, where Mohammed al-Farra from the group Palestinian Rapperz (PR) lives. Whether in the Gaza Strip, or in Lyd, Palestinians are subject to Israel's racist policies of house demolitions and arbitrary arrest. "It's like a refugee camp in Israel," DAM member Tamer Nafar says of Lyd, where a lack of community services, unemployment, and poverty bred by systemic state discrimination makes drug use an attractive escape for many young people.
DAM's work inside their own community is especially significant. The group visits a camp for children (called Camp Return, referring to Palestinian Refugees' right of return) in Lyd. After Tamer performs an unaccompanied rap describing his pride in being Palestinian ("Remove the word self-pity from your mind... raise our heads high"), one of the children in the audience asks with genuine surprise, "I'm a Palestinian?"
When the rappers gently ask him what he thought he was, he replies, "Just Arab." - indicating the internalisation of Israel's attempts to strip Palestinians inside Israel [e.g. annexed Palestine] of their national identity.
Salloum's film shows the audience how these artists are using a cultural medium to unite Palestinian youth who have grown up not knowing their peers in other arts of the Palestinian Diaspora, and how their themes of repression and subjugation communicate their common story of injustice. In Gaza, PR's Mohammed al-Farra echoes Tamer Nafar and his comrades when he explains that he and his crew turned to rapping as a form of release and resistance following Israel's brutal repression of the second Palestinian intifada which broke out in 2000. In November of that year, Mohammed narrowly escaped death when he turned his body just in time for an Isreali fired bullet to penetrate his arm instead of his heart. Filled with despair, Mohammed struggled to find rap CDs in Gaza's music stores, and was riveted when a friend brought back an Eminem CD from Canada. But he found his direction when he heard DAM on the internet. Now, he says, his dream is to meet his "brothers in '48". referring to the part of historic Palestine that is now considered to be Israel proper and to which Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are prohibited from freely visiting.
Look and listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIo6lyP9tTE
Asian Dub Foundation
Originally posted: October 24th 2008.
Asian Dub Foundation, noted pop combo and supporters of Stop the War Coalition, have produced another album, the very latest in post-industrial apocalypso: PUNKARA. It's out on CD and digital download, featuring Iggy Pop plus Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello. Listen up:
Asian Dub Foundation, noted pop combo and supporters of Stop the War Coalition, have produced another album, the very latest in post-industrial apocalypso: PUNKARA. It's out on CD and digital download, featuring Iggy Pop plus Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello. Listen up:
UK 'Weakness' forces Dixons to cut costs
Originally posted: October 19th 2008.
Good news for geeks but not for shareholders
The price of a DSG share has fallen to 27p, an all-time low. Analyst Andrew Hughes, talking to The Independent, said that it is unlikely that they will pay a dividend in the next two years. Another analyst, John Baillie, said 'It is all doom and gloom for DSG.'
On April 13th 2008 John Clare, chief executive of the Notorious DSG, said dropping the 68-year-old name in favour of Curry's was 'an emotional moment' but a necessary change given that Dixons, the UK chain floated in 1962, accounted for less than 10 per cent of group sales. It was common knowledge, however, among customers and businessmen alike, that Dixons' reputation as a cynical money-taking concern with no effective after-sales service, necessitated the 'image upgrade'.
This blog's advice for those unfortunate to have blown their wages in a DSG shop and tried to return faulty goods, is to go straight to the County Court (small claims) rather than wrestle with the bouncers; but a neat alternative is to issue them with a moneyclaim for the refund plus interest. Visit http://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/, which will navigate the rest for you.
Clare also insisted that Dixons Group was still committed to the Dixons chain despite its 'issues'.The chain is now struggling with fierce competition from supermarkets and falling gross earnings, which dropped by 0.6 per cent over the year.
Trading in the UK businesses (Dixons, PC World/The Tech Guys, Currys and The Link) has also been tailing off, making losses in the last quarter. Overall, sales at Dixons fell 14 per cent to a relatively tiny £688m. The Chief Executive said rising costs combined with an 'uncertain' outlook on 'consumer spending' would lead to lower profit in the current year than last year. It could be that their problem is simply that they are running out of uninitiated new suckers. They are cutting £30m from group costs this year, but still face rental losses of £27m, and plan to leave 12 out-of-town 'retail parks' to avoid paying rent.
There could be up to 800 job losses through the closure of two distribution centres and 'outsourcing' of back-office functions - possibly to developing countries, where Dixons' reputation has not yet reached, and where average wages tend to be lower. They will begin trading in Poland and Portugal this year and have also set up a franchise in Russia and Ukraine.
Update: 2 September 2009- "Like for like" sales are down 15% at Currys / PC World. On BBC Radio 4, a spokesman for Planet Retail said "Their range and service is quite terrible."
Good news for geeks but not for shareholders
The price of a DSG share has fallen to 27p, an all-time low. Analyst Andrew Hughes, talking to The Independent, said that it is unlikely that they will pay a dividend in the next two years. Another analyst, John Baillie, said 'It is all doom and gloom for DSG.'
On April 13th 2008 John Clare, chief executive of the Notorious DSG, said dropping the 68-year-old name in favour of Curry's was 'an emotional moment' but a necessary change given that Dixons, the UK chain floated in 1962, accounted for less than 10 per cent of group sales. It was common knowledge, however, among customers and businessmen alike, that Dixons' reputation as a cynical money-taking concern with no effective after-sales service, necessitated the 'image upgrade'.
This blog's advice for those unfortunate to have blown their wages in a DSG shop and tried to return faulty goods, is to go straight to the County Court (small claims) rather than wrestle with the bouncers; but a neat alternative is to issue them with a moneyclaim for the refund plus interest. Visit http://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/, which will navigate the rest for you.
Clare also insisted that Dixons Group was still committed to the Dixons chain despite its 'issues'.The chain is now struggling with fierce competition from supermarkets and falling gross earnings, which dropped by 0.6 per cent over the year.
Trading in the UK businesses (Dixons, PC World/The Tech Guys, Currys and The Link) has also been tailing off, making losses in the last quarter. Overall, sales at Dixons fell 14 per cent to a relatively tiny £688m. The Chief Executive said rising costs combined with an 'uncertain' outlook on 'consumer spending' would lead to lower profit in the current year than last year. It could be that their problem is simply that they are running out of uninitiated new suckers. They are cutting £30m from group costs this year, but still face rental losses of £27m, and plan to leave 12 out-of-town 'retail parks' to avoid paying rent.
There could be up to 800 job losses through the closure of two distribution centres and 'outsourcing' of back-office functions - possibly to developing countries, where Dixons' reputation has not yet reached, and where average wages tend to be lower. They will begin trading in Poland and Portugal this year and have also set up a franchise in Russia and Ukraine.
Update: 2 September 2009- "Like for like" sales are down 15% at Currys / PC World. On BBC Radio 4, a spokesman for Planet Retail said "Their range and service is quite terrible."
Credit Crunch: The Prequel
Originally posted: October 16th 2008.
John Bird and John Fortune have been lifting the lid off society's pretensions and weaknesses since the late Sixties. In 2007 they recorded this astoundingly prescient 'chat' about the business of the money market. Bird even mentions"sub-prime" in passing, a term which most of us had never heard until the news media began repeating press releases about the US mortgage market in August/September 2008.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC31Oudc5Bg&index=22&list=PLEF3C3F87A48C78D6
George and the Contender
Originally posted: October 10th 2008.
Despite the fake polls (like those that showed Tony Blair as the most popular PM), George W Bush unites the American people to some extent in hatred and contempt. Here's one farewell to him, plucked from the web:
funkvigilante.com - This is a song for the free people of the world. George W. Bush has said that despite his dismal approval ratings and failed policies that history will have the final word on his presidency. We felt that we should do our part to make sure that history gets it right.
http://funkvigilante.com/WorstPresidentEver.shtml#musicvideo
-and we have here, a Real Contender for the Dubbya role of the future:
ACTUAL SARAH PALIN QUOTES:1. We can't afford to lose had pushed for more troops where it is the taxpayers.
2. Senator McCain also showed great appreciation for what America - as a result of this latest crisis is the undo influence of lobbyists in public policy decisions being made.
3. It's Alaska who's more apt to be talking about solutions has to be considered also.
4. I think, with Ahmadinejad, personally these central fronts on the war on terror of the evil in the world.
5. I'm ill about the position that America is in, and the dealings with Freddie and Fannie has to be considered also.
6. Senator McCain also showed great appreciation for what America working with existing allies - they want freedom.
7. I'm ill about the position that America is in, and should not be rewarded, we are getting into crisis mode here.
8.It's very important when you consider even to make sure that an eye is being kept on, we are getting into crisis mode here.
9. We can't afford to lose that is what America needs today is the undo influence of lobbyists in public policy decisions being made.
10. At the same time the dealings with Freddie and Fannie and there also.
11. And as Ronald Reagan believed that a multi-faceted sollution - that's more than a lot of other senators and representatives did for us.
12. He's also known as the maverick, whether that is part of the solution or not to look at that as more opportunity.
13. With his warnings two years go about - as a result of this latest crisis and we are a free-thinking society.
14.Well, there is a danger in allowing also bipartisan effort of the evil in the world.
15. I see our country being able to represent those things also rallying against for opportunity to change it.
16. And as Ronald Reagan believed that and show our cards to terrorists as I asked President Karzai.
17. It is for no more politics as usual and that has to be considered also and there also.
18. Darn right as it's been proposed not when that could ultimately, adversely, effect a plan to keep America secure.
London Observer columnist Victoria Coren noted that Ms Palin subscribes to the belief that God created the dinosaurs six thousand years ago, and suggested that this branch of learning be dubbed Palintology.
Gilad Atzmon - The Wandering Who?
Originally posted: October 1st 2008.
Saxman and composer Gilad Atzmon seems to be permanently on tour as inheritor of Coltrane's voice, although he often sounds closer to Charlie Parker, which he acknowledged in his recent appearances with a string section, reproducing 'Bird With Strings' - one of the landmark recordings in jazz history. He is also a novelist, though, and a scholar. Born an Israeli, he insists on being seen as a Palestinian, and never wastes an opportunity to speak out for the dispossessed Canaanites.
His exegesis of a new study of Jewish nationalism is vital reading, no matter what argument you start with. Here are parts of his analysis:
'A nation is a group of people united by a common mistake regarding its origin and a collective hostility towards its neighbours' (Karl W Deutsch)
"When And How the Jewish People Was Invented" is a very serious study written by Professor Shlomo Sand, an Israeli historian. It is the most serious study of Jewish nationalism and by far the most courageous elaboration on the Jewish historical narrative.
Though most contemporary Jews are utterly convinced that their ancestors are the Biblical Israelites who happened to be exiled brutally by the Romans, truth must be said. Contemporary Jews have nothing to do with ancient Israelites, who have never been sent to exile because such an expulsion has never taken place. The Roman Exile is just another Jewish myth.
"I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land," says Sand in a Haaretz interview, "but to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th Century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realisation that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled."
Indeed, in the light of Sand's simple insight, the idea of Jewish exile is amusing. The thought of the Roman Imperial navy working 24/7 schlepping Moishe'le and Yanka'le to Cordova and Toledo may help Jews to feel important as well as schleppable, but common sense would suggest that the Roman armada had far more important things to do.
However, far more interesting is the logical outcome: If the people of Israel were not expelled, then the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah must be the Palestinians.
http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/09/02/gilad-atzmon-the-wandering-who
Saxman and composer Gilad Atzmon seems to be permanently on tour as inheritor of Coltrane's voice, although he often sounds closer to Charlie Parker, which he acknowledged in his recent appearances with a string section, reproducing 'Bird With Strings' - one of the landmark recordings in jazz history. He is also a novelist, though, and a scholar. Born an Israeli, he insists on being seen as a Palestinian, and never wastes an opportunity to speak out for the dispossessed Canaanites.
His exegesis of a new study of Jewish nationalism is vital reading, no matter what argument you start with. Here are parts of his analysis:
'A nation is a group of people united by a common mistake regarding its origin and a collective hostility towards its neighbours' (Karl W Deutsch)
"When And How the Jewish People Was Invented" is a very serious study written by Professor Shlomo Sand, an Israeli historian. It is the most serious study of Jewish nationalism and by far the most courageous elaboration on the Jewish historical narrative.
Though most contemporary Jews are utterly convinced that their ancestors are the Biblical Israelites who happened to be exiled brutally by the Romans, truth must be said. Contemporary Jews have nothing to do with ancient Israelites, who have never been sent to exile because such an expulsion has never taken place. The Roman Exile is just another Jewish myth.
"I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land," says Sand in a Haaretz interview, "but to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th Century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realisation that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled."
Indeed, in the light of Sand's simple insight, the idea of Jewish exile is amusing. The thought of the Roman Imperial navy working 24/7 schlepping Moishe'le and Yanka'le to Cordova and Toledo may help Jews to feel important as well as schleppable, but common sense would suggest that the Roman armada had far more important things to do.
However, far more interesting is the logical outcome: If the people of Israel were not expelled, then the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah must be the Palestinians.
http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/09/02/gilad-atzmon-the-wandering-who
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