War On Want Christmas Appeal

War On Want have launched a Christmas Appeal For Palestine.

This is a message from John Hilary:

We need your help today to support people in Palestine in their fight for a better life. I visited Palestine this summer, my first visit in many years. I was truly shocked to see how much everyday life for Palestinians has deteriorated. Olive farmers in the West Bank told us how they can no longer get enough water for their trees as water supply has been diverted to illegal Israeli settlements built on their land. In Bethlehem, we met refugee children who are now forced to live under the shadow of Israel's illegal Separation Wall. The people of Bethlehem are threatened on a daily basis by the violence of the Occupation.

The people of Palestine urgently need your support today. Please help us by donating to our Christmas appeal.

http://www.waronwant.org/palestine-appeal

Palestinians are facing economic meltdown as a result of Israel's illegal Occupation of their land. The system of checkpoints and closures in the West Bank has brought the local economy to its knees and communities are harassed on a daily basis. The situation in Gaza is even more urgent. The Israeli blockade has entered its third year, and 80% of people are dependent on food aid.

To meet this new level of threat to the livelihoods of people in Palestine we need your help. Your support will enable us to work with local communities and women's groups in the West Bank and Gaza, giving them the tools and skills to create a better future.

Please donate today.

http://www.waronwant.org/palestine-appeal

Thank you for your support,

With best wishes
John Hilary

Defend Joel Kovel - Support Free Speech!

Just back from a short break in York (a great place for a visit and a hive of Green activity, home to my old friend from Sheffield and now Green Councillor and blogger Andy D'Agorne)

The big news in the ecosocialist community is the victimisation of leading ecosocialist thinker and writer Joel Kovel. It seems Joel has fallen victim to the increasingly vicious Zionist backlash against anti-Zionist Jews and other anti-racist leftists who dare to speak out about the crimes and malevolence of the Israeli regime and the IDF. More from Derek Wall on his blog here, including contact details for Joel's former employer.

This comes in a week where on this side of the pond an appalling article by author and journalist Howard Jacobson took up two pages of the mainstream "intellectual" broadsheet The Independent, casting aspersions of anti-semitism left, right and centre at just about anyone who dares to voice any negative opinion about the actions of Israel and its military. Needless to say this has ignited one of the fiercest flame wars ever seen on the website and pages of that normally reserved organ!

There are real anti-semites out there, and some of them have posted comments on Jacobson's article and need opposing, but attempts to silence criticism of the actions of the state of Israel by smear and innuendo against brave people with good anti-racist credentials and histories is really contemptible and should not be allowed to succeed.

Occupy!

Workplace or institutional occupation is a tactic having an international comeback. It is ideally suited to situations where workers have little to lose and can force concessions in the most desperate circumstances. Occupation can be used by students as in the recent wave of University occupations pressuring Israeli links of UK Universities around the Gaza situation, but is also a time honoured method of working class struggle.


Poster for the Movimiento Nacional de Empresas Recuperadas (MNER), at a worker-recovered print shop, Chilavert Artes Gráficas in Buenos Aires, Argentina - from Wikipedia entry by Brian Zbriger.

Info here on recent or ongoing occupations in Ukraine, in Ireland (complete with the reappearance of the Starry Plough flag - the symbol used by James Connolly's Irish Citizen Army in the early 20th Century)and in Chicago, USA.

The plus points of occupation as opposed to other tactics are that it prevents lockouts, it actively prevents any economic activity that is not under the control of the workers, it captures plant and buildings and holds them as a bargaining chip, it is often warmer inside at this time of year (!) and last but not least it prefigures more generalised self management. Let us hope that these good examples begin to spread around the world. Things may be about to get quite exciting.

Weekly Links 27/01/2009

Lots of interesting, exciting, and scary developments around the world this week as the impact of the conjoined economic/ecological/resource/political crises becomes stronger. In the developed world, one of the places that is experiencing most change and that consequently has most possibilities at the moment is Iceland. The government has been under increasing pressure from mass protest and revolt, and this has continued despite the calling of an election for May. It now seems that the existing government has collapsed to be replaced by a caretaker regime until the elections - more on Indymedia here. Derek had a piece earlier this week about the Icelandic Green Left Party, riding a wave of popularity in the current crisis. A comprehensive bit of analysis from the AVPS blog here.

Repression and resistance continue to develop in Italy where the hard right government and its fascist outriders face a developing independent radical movement that has tired of the timid and backtracking Parliamentary reformism of the established parties. See here and here

In Nepal, the authoritarian militarists of the Maoist movement are facing increasing workers opposition to their attempts to impose Chinese style state capitalism on the country. It seems they are responding in the usual vicious Maoist manner and encountering growing resistance from rival "left" factions.

Britain
This weekend saw the Convention of The Left Recall Conference and the Progressive London Conference.

Jim reported on the London event here and here.

Meanwhile, A Very Public Sociologist reported this week on the dispute at "Britain's Left Wing Daily", the Morning Star.

Unions
There is a major left-right battle in the Unite Union over the election for General Secretary of the Amicus side of the union. More from Derek here.

Gaza
Mobilisations and demos on the Gaza issue continue across the UK, with a current focus on exposing and attcking the blatant bias of the BBC and Sky blocking the Disasters Emergency Committee Gaza Appeal broadcast. Some enterprising researcher dug up this revealing piece from 2005 that sheds light on the so-called "non-partisan" approach of the BBC Director General.

Meanwhile the Green Party of England and Wales published this condemnation of the BBC's position.

Events This Weekend

This weekend sees a flurry of events important to the development of the left and more specifically the green left in Britain.

The long awaited recall conference of the Convention of the Left is in Manchester on Saturday - see website here and John Nicholson's introduction on the Socialist Unity Blog here.

Green Left are having a meeting for supporters and activists in Manchester on Sunday as Derek reports here.

A more middle-of-the-road event is the Progressive London event convened by Ken Livingstone, but there will be Green activists arguing for a left green approach there too.

Meanwhile, with the Gaza blockade continuing and the fragile ceasefires allowing an acccounting of the death and destruction, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has its 2009 AGM this weekend, plus there are continuing solidarity events around the country.

Weekly Links 11/01/2009

Gaza
Here are some links regarding this weekend's demonstrations and other events.
UK Indymedia had a timeline of events during the Saturday protest in London.

Pictures from the London Demonstrations are posted here, here, and here. They also have reports and pics from Sheffield and Edinburgh, which also has links to Indymedia reports of protests from around the world.

A detailed opinion piece with photos from the London demo has been posted on the website of the commune.

Bloggers reports come from
- Derek Wall recording David Rosenberg's views on Another Green World.
- Jim, on Daily (Maybe), who links to lots of other blogging comment.
- Ed, at I.R. also has some good pics from Saturday's demo.


Other blogging
Dave Osler at Dave's Part reflects on the latest revelations of a racist outburst from a British Royal.
Matt S at Anglo-Buddhist Combine reports on early UK opinion polling for the upcoming European elections.
Meanwhile, on the subject of polls, A Very Public Sociologist blogged about the latest Weblog Awards this week, and gave some suggestions for a brave and eclectic handful of leftist bloggers to vote for against the rightist hordes.

Weekly Links 05/01/09

Gaza
Lots of coverage of the situation in Gaza and the demonstrations against the continuing Israeli assault from my regularly linked bloggers this week including Derek, Jim (who has a helpful selection of links), Dave Osler and Matt S.
There is another demonstration arranged for this Saturday in London.


The latest eco-catastrophe
The latest eco-catastrophe in the US has not had much coverage on this side of the Atlantic - a huge coal slurry retention pond has broken its banks in Tennessee and flooded some 400 acres of 6' deep slurry (over 1.1 billion gallons) into the Tennessee Valley. It's meant evacuating people, warning others to boil water, and is dumping a huge amount of toxins into the Tennessee River, used as a drinking water source by many communities downstream. A number of people are reporting vomiting after drinking water.
Reports here and here from the regional media.
More info from United Mountain Defense

Activism and Repression
Hot on the heels of their recent attempts to spread security services propaganda about the threat of "ecoterrorism" in the UK (a story based on exaggeration, guilt by association and innuendo and very quickly demolished so that they had to issue a sheepish apology through their "readers editor") the Guardian/Observer and other sections of the media are now busy retailing the exaggerated fairy tales of the French and other security services about the threat of a new wave of "home grown leftist terror" about to sweep Europe.

The Guardian/Observer group, (in addition to continuing a stream of biased knocking copy on the South and Central American left) are fast becoming the conduit of choice for psy-ops and disinformation aimed at radical activists in the UK and Europe. This is nothing new really, some of us remember some "freelance" journalists from the 80's who were very keen to fit up parts of the British anarchist movement on behalf of elements of the secret state.

The texts that seem to have got the French state machine in a tizzy (and it seems to be these that are more the target than the small acts of sabotage that were the pretext for the paramilitary police action) are rather disappointing really, for an old leftist like myself - rehashed Situationist and Autonomist theses with an anti-globalisation flavour and some unpalatable (for me, but it takes all sorts) elements of nihilism and primitivism. Nevertheless, I am never one to avoid an opportunity to offend the powers that be, so here are some links to English Translations of two of the offending documents and you can judge for yourself -

The Coming Insurrection

20 Theses On The Subversion Of the Metropolis

For me, Kovel's analysis and programme in the last chapter of The Enemy of Nature is nearer the spot - I will post some more on this in the near future.

Nevertheless, the fact that states in Europe are "upping the ante" against even potential opposition is interesting, as is their apparent concern that the current crisis will grow so severe that currently marginalised and tiny groups and ideas might gain a larger and more effective following.

Weekly Links 19/10/08

Green Politics
The Campaign For Better Transport is running a campaign to get UK MPs to support a Transport Bill amendment to make it greener.
Michael Palin is a leading light of the Campaign for Better Transport and is speaking at a CFBT fundraiser at the Southbank Centre on 13th November.
Michael is like me, Sheffield born, so local CFBT campaigns around the Woodhead Tunnel and the Peak District will have a special interest for him.

Workers and Unions
I reported on Friday about the PCS strike ballot. On Tuesday of this week the Union is holding a meeting at Westminster to discuss the so-called welfare "reforms" proposed in the government's Green Paper.

There was a general strike in Italy this week - good to know that resistance to the Berlusconi regime continues.

From the USA, Daniel Gross has an article on the Counterpunch website about the case of Alexandra Svoboda, an IWW activist subject to Police brutality during a peaceful march last year -

A peaceful union march is brutally attacked by police. A union activist’s leg is horribly disfigured and nearly amputated. Maimed possibly for life, she is charged with multiple felony offenses.

The battleground is not the coalfields of Harlan County in the 1930s or 1970s; it's not an example of anti-union violence in Colombia or the Philippines. Our setting is present day Providence, Rhode Island.

Palestine
An exhibition of Art for Palestine, by artists from Palestine, the Arab World, China and the UK - Occupied Space 2008 is to be on show in London for the first two weeks in November. The exhibition is organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

And Finally ...A Bit of Music
Finally this week, a bit of music. The US election campaign has unleashed further waves of distortion and propaganda from the established media. Meanwhile in Britain we have had the unedifying spectacle of a New Labour Minister (incidentally a much unloved National Union Of Students leader in my days of study) playing to the reactionary media gallery on the topic of immigration. One of the best agit-prop songs on media distortion of the last few decades was Billy Bragg's "It Says Here" - a song that he tends to adapt to changing circumstances for live appearances. Here is a youthful angry version from You Tube. Speaking of adapting songs to changing circumstances - have a listen to one of Bragg's later versions of "Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards" here.
One of Bragg's popular radical songs is The World Turned Upside Down about the Diggers of the English Revolution - explained here and sung by songwriter Leon Rosselson, a legend of rebel protest music in Britain whose songs have been recorded by a variety of artists.