Andy Roberts

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  Spain reveals pain over cuts and unemployment

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/21/spain-reveals-pain-over-cuts-and-unemployment

  Spain protests: Young protesters in Madrid and beyond have many different demands, but they are united in opposing the Spanish governmentThis article titled “Spain reveals pain over cuts and unemployment” was written by Giles Tremlett in Madrid, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 21st May 2011 11.59 UTCThe arrival of the table, a battered piece of formica bashed on top of four rough, oversized legs raised a cry of joy. Never mind that anyone on a normal chair would barely be able to see over the top – here was another small triumph of the new Spanish revolution, the gathering of angry Spaniards of all colours, ages and persuasions that is sweeping across the country and beyond its borders.The table that arrived in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square was part of the swirl of creative chaos, naive enthusiasm and pent-up frustration that has transformed it into a makeshift camp for thousand of protesters who call themselves los indignados, the indignant ones.Tents and mattresses, armchairs and sofas, a canteen, portaloos and solar panels have sprung up in a remarkable display of organisational prowess. And the mass of people jostling around, each pursuing their own dream or demand, or just watching others doing the same, seemed more like something transported from the Arab spring in North Africa than from Europe.As the protests continued to swell on Friday, with 60,000 people defying authorities to obey the campaign’s “Take over the square!” slogan in dozens of Spanish cities, and with copycat demonstrations across Europe, the question was whether this was the new May 1968 – a youth-led popular revolt against an establishment deemed to have failed an entire generation.Esther Gutierréz, an elfin 26-year-old, wandered through the crowd with a battered shopping cart full of fruit.“We’ve got so much food we don’t know what to do with it. People just bring it to us for free and it’s wonderful stuff,” she said. “We want real democracy. Not just freedom for bankers. You’re not from the Spanish press, are you? We don’t speak to them.”Cynical and ingenuous by turns, the Madrid protesters and those who last week refused to obey orders to budge from the occupied city squares have torn up the rule book of Spanish public politics. The heavyweights of old – political parties, trade unions and media commentators – are not wanted here.“I was sacked when the Madrid regional government closed down a women’s centre last year when it imposed cuts,” explained Beatriz García as she bashed a small frying pan with a wooden spoon. “The unions didn’t even bother to turn up.”The political parties were worse, she said. “There is no renovation. There is nothing new or different, just two parties who take it in turn to govern because our electoral laws favour them.”Just a week ago Spain was known for the passivity of its citizens as they put up with one of the most depressing eras in recent history. Despite unemployment hitting 21%, widespread spending cuts and a socialist government bound to obey the diktats of Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the financial markets, they had refused to show their pain. Marches, sit-ins or riots were for the French – or British students. The real drama, anyway, was in North Africa. Spaniards stayed at home.All that changed this week as demonstrations organised via Facebook and Twitter became static protests in city squares, mushrooming into something that caught politicians, unions and the media by surprise.While journalists were following the dull routine of campaigning for Sunday’s municipal and regional elections, the steam was beginning to escape from a pressure cooker of discontent.Many Spaniards had told pollsters they were tired of the same, well-known political faces – especially those who are due to be re-elected despite being mired in corruption scandals. Politicians have rarely been held in such disregard, with the prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and opposition leader, Mariano Rajoy, of the conservative People’s party, rating lowest. Rajoy seems set to take over after a general election next March.When police forcibly evicted the Madrid demonstrators on Tuesday morning, they came back in even greater numbers later that day. By Friday night authorities had lost the battle to impose rules banning public politics on the day before elections. Police could only look on. “Join us, police officers!” the demonstrators shouted.By the early hours of Friday, it was already elbow-room only in the Puerta del Sol – the square which prides itself on being Spain’s “kilometre zero”, the spot from which all other distances are measured.On the statue of King Carlos III, somebody had pinned a sign that read: “We are anti-idiots, not anti-politicians.” Other placards read: “We aren’t against the system, we want to change it”, “Democracy, a daily fight”, and “Take your money out of the bank!”“We’ve brought tents, food and even Trivial Pursuit to keep us entertained,” said Pablo Cantó, a fresh-faced 23-year-old journalism student. Like many younger protesters, and the movement as a whole, he had trouble expressing exactly why he was here. “We want change,” he said. “Things just can’t carry on as they are.”The heavy clouds of cannabis smoke suggested others had brought their own form of entertainment.“I’ve been protesting for decades,” said 60-year-old school teacher Rosa Marín. “I’m glad to see so many young people here. The questions is this: Is this another May 1968, or are they just here for the party?”A gang of drunken skinheads, mindlessly chanting football terrace slogans, were there for the latter.But a neat, disciplined circle of people intently debating social reform showed many were here in earnest. They took turns to stand up and make their proposals, the audience listening and using the sign language applause of the deaf – by shaking their hands above their heads – to show approval without drowning the speakers out.The proposals, due to make their way through a laborious process of committees, working parties and general assemblies, varied from calls for less spending on the military to helping businesses. “Because it is not just money for the owners. They are the ones who give people like us jobs,” said one young man.For some younger protesters, it was a political baptism. “I don’t know what will come out of this, but it is enough just to show everyone how upset we are,” explained Javier de Coca by phone from the protest camp in Barcelona’s Plaza de Catalunya, where there was a surprising absence of the nationalist or separatist symbols of protest movements in recent years.“It’s as if they’ve realised they have more serious problems to deal with,” said one protester. One of those problems is 45% youth unemployment.On a wall beside the tarpaulin-covered command centre in what some were calling Madrid’s “Republic of Sol” – home to a press office, an infirmary and a legal centre – a list of needs had been pinned up. Toilet paper and food were scratched off the list. Bookshelves, wood, rubber gloves and bottles of cooking gas were on it. Volunteers were needed for a creche.“We process the proposals and try to turn them into something that makes legal sense,” explained a volunteer at the legal centre.However, the open assemblies are painfully slow. Some last for hours, as everybody is given their turn to speak. After almost a week of protests, the demonstrators have failed to come up with a coherent set of demands.Electoral reform to end the two-party system and action to both punish corrupt politicians and limit their luxuries and privileges were the main areas of agreement.So is the Arab spring spreading to southern Europe? “You can’t really compare us to people who were risking their lives by protesting,” said 23-year-old computer engineer Jaime Viyuela. “But yes, you can say that we are inspired by the courage of the Arab spring.” guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogSpain reveals pain over cuts and unemploymentRelated posts:Zapatero says Spain safe from bailoutProtest march against coalition cuts expected to attract 300,000Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square

  

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  May 21 2011, 8:54am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  A misplaced May Day dream for the masses

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/29/a-misplaced-may-day-dream-for-the-masses

  May Day by John Sommerfield describes a society on the edge. The parallels with today are obvious – but it’s the differences that make it worth reading.

  This article titled “A misplaced May Day dream for the masses” was written by Sam Jordison, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 29th April 2011 14.15 UTC It might have associations with people in funny clothes performing arcane rites and with Oxford students getting smashed off their gourds, but most us don’t think about Tories when we think about May Day. As several union leaders have already pointed out, the party’s current desire to replace May Day with Trafalgar Day (supposedly to “lengthen the holiday season”) is not practical so much as ideological. May Day might feel like a natural part of the calendar – but it has only been marked by a bank holiday since 1978, introduced by a Labour government to mark international workers’ day. And that, of course, is why the rightwingers don’t like it. They’d like it even less if they picked up the book that I’ve just been reading: May Day by John Sommerfield. This was written in 1936, but has just been reissued, with excellent timing, by London Books. It describes a society on the edge. The rich are getting richer and the poor are paying for it. The authorities clamp down on protest with the cynical use of force. Someone on a march is killed in an “accident”. The success of a march leads someone to comment: “I don’t think there’ll be so much damned squeamish argument against arming the police.” The parallels with our current troubles are obvious – but it’s the differences that make May Day worth reading. Sommerfield describes a few days in the lives of dozens of different characters across London, showing them at work, at play, down the pub, in bed, making love, feeling regret the day after, giving birth, dying, plotting to overthrow the bosses, plotting to undermine the workers. It’s a broad, ambitious sweep, but it’s all heading in the same direction: the inevitability of a general strike and the exultant victory of the Communist point of view. By the time Sommerfield was writing, Stalin had embarked on one of the biggest murder sprees in human history, but Sommerfield pants for Soviet Britain. So much so that he frequently loses all restraint:

  “Then into this sudden pool of quiet splintered an alien voice, a hoarse shout of ‘Workers, all out on May Day. Demonstrate for a free Soviet Britain!’ … This rang in a million ears. Eyes remembered the chalked slogans on walls and pavements. The slogans, the rain of leaflets, the shouts and songs of demonstrators echoed in a million minds.” He also gushes:

  “The printing presses were spinning themselves dizzy. There had never been so many leaflets before. They fell like rain, they were scattered like machine gun bullets.” Sommerfield loved his leaflets. He was also absolute in his convictions. For him there are two races in the world – rich and poor and that is where all conflict will lie. “Soon a lot more people will be having to take sides,” he wrote. They did indeed – but not in the way he thought. They would be fighting against fascism, not for “Soviet Britain”. There are plenty of things to be said in the book’s favour, particularly in the ambitious way he looks into so many lives around London, explores their living conditions, and lays bare their pleasures and pains. There’s also plenty more to be said against his writing which veers from the ridiculous to the not-too-bad and never really gets close to the sublime. Yet it’s as an attempt at social realism that it is most fascinating – and most flawed. In 1984 Sommerfield wrote a new forward for the book acknowledging how few favours time had done for his “1930s Communist romanticism”, but also said he hoped the book could be read as “an historical novel – worth reading, now, I hope, in relation to our own times.” To an extent it can. But I read it more as a reflection on a lost past and an exercise in folly. Possibly, it is harsh to judge Sommerfield’s May Day, for getting things so spectacularly wrong. It’s a novel, after all. It deals in fiction, not fact. But then again, while I was reading May Day, I couldn’t help thinking of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novella with the same title. It’s just one mark of Fitzgerald’s genius that his reflections on the day – although written in 1920 – still apply. The protests he describes seem hopeless, futile, distorted by absurd mobs on both sides: “all crowds have to howl”. The rich are oblivious at best, unforgiving and condescending the rest of the time. The tragedies he depicts are universal – but also painfully personal. His lead, Gordon Sterett, is a penniless, struggling artist who has never found his feet since returning from the First World War, but who has found booze and bad company. He is drowning in the tide of history, but his problems are more individual than any Sommerfield manages to describe. He is more real. So too is the world around him. The clothes are smarter, the dancing is more formal and the drinks sound more exotic. No one has a smart phone and radicals print their views on paper. Otherwise, Fitzgerald could be writing about today – or forever. His despair and defeat for the small man rings far more true than Sommerfield’s misplaced dream for the masses. May Day is a crushed dream. It makes the Tory vendetta against the holiday seem even more than usually petty.

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  April 29 2011, 9:47am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Syria, Libya and Middle East unrest – live coverage

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/29/syria-libya-and-middle-east-unrest-live-coverage

  Syria faces ‘day of rage’, EU discusses sanctions against Syrian regime. Pro- and ant-government supporters rally in Yemen. Pro-Gaddafi forces attack Tunisian town of Dehiba

  This article titled “Syria, Libya and Middle East unrest – live coverage” was written by Mark Tran, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 29th April 2011 09.43 UTC

  12.03pm – Syria: Reports are coming in of thousands of people demonstrating in Kurdish regions of eastern Syria in solidarity with the southern city of Deraa, which has been in lockdown for days. There are also reports of large demonstrations in the Damascus suburb of Saqba amid chants of “overthrow the regime”.

  11.45am – Syria: President Bashar al-Assad’s government has deployed forces in strength in anticipation of protests after Friday prayers. Syrian Republican Guard trucks equipped with machine guns and carrying soldiers in combat gear patrolled the circular road around Damascus ahead of prayers on Friday, a witness told Reuters. Two other witnesses said various security units and secret police manned checkpoints around Damascus, cutting off the city from the suburbs and rural regions, as telecommunications and electricity were cut off from urban centres and towns that had defied warnings not to hold protests.

  11.36am – Libya: Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, has accused the Gaddafi regime of passing out tablets of Viagra to his front line troops to help them rape women. Rice made the allegation in a closed-door meeting of the security council, Colum Lynch reports on Turtle Bay, on the Foreign Policy website. Rice made the allegation after facing criticism from council members that the Western-backed coalition has effectively sided with Libya’s rebels in the country’s ongoing civil war. China, Russia, India and other have expressed concern that the Nato-backed military coalition has exceeded its mandate to protect civilians, and had become a party to the country’s conflict… UN council diplomats said that Rice provided no evidence to support her claim, which appeared earlier this week in the British tabloid, the Daily Mail. Human rights advocates say the allegation first surfaced publicly last month when a doctor in Ajdabiya, Suleiman Refadi, claimed in an interview with Al Jazeera English that Qaddafi’s force’s had received packets of Viagra and condoms as part of a campaign of sexual violence. “I have seen Viagra, I have seen condoms,” Refadi told Al Jazeera.

  Save the Children has alleged that Libyan children as young as eight have suffered sexual assaults, including rape, amid the worsening conflict across the country.

  11.27am – Syria: Syria is also facing pressure from the UN’s nuclear watchdog. The Associated Press reports that the IAEA is setting the stage for UN security council action against Syria for allegedly trying to build a secret nuclear reactor. On Thursday the head of the IAEA said for the first time that a target destroyed by Israeli warplanes in Syria in 2007 was a covert nuclear site. The agency later retracted the statement, but diplomats say it is working on an assessment that will judge the destroyed building a likely reactor.

  11.17am – Libya: The Guardian’s Xan Rice, has interviewed the leader of the rebellion in Misrata, the only rebel-held city in western Libya. The rebel leader made an urgent plea to the international community for weapons that would allow his fighters not just to defend the besieged city, but to topple the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Khalifa al-Zwawi, an appeal court judge who heads Misrata’s transitional council, said that after weeks of fierce fighting, rebel forces would eject the last of Gaddafi’s troops from the city “very soon”. “Once we have done that our target is to eliminate the Gaddafi regime,” he told the Guardian in an interview. “We want to go to Tripoli and set it free, and Libya free. We want to move from defence to attack.” Until now, the rebels in Misrata have relied solely on small arms and weapons captured from loyalist troops, or sent by sea from Benghazi, the rebel capital in the east. But Zwawi said help was required if his forces were to go on the offensive. “The most important thing for us now is arms. We need weapons that are suitable to take on Gaddafi. As soon as our freedom fighters reach people in other cities they will join our revolt,” he said.

  11.08am – Syria: The Human Rights Council, which is holding a special session in Geneva, is expected to call for a fact-finding mission to look into violations committed by Syrian forces and also suggest that Syria should not seek membership in the forum next month, Reuters is reporting. “The council will be quite divided, but we should get a vote in favour of the text,” a western diplomat told Reuters. “It will be a tough slog today. But the key thing is getting a result,” said another. In an opening speech, Kyung-wha Kang, UN deputy high commissioner for human rights, said Syrian tanks were shelling densely populated areas and entire towns were under siege. “There have been reports of snipers firing on persons attempting to assist the injured or remove dead bodies from public areas,” she said. There is “a widespread, persistent and gross disregard for basic human rights by the Syrian military and security forces,” she said, speaking on behalf of the UN human rights office.

  On the divided Arab response. “There will be an Arab League statement. But it would be a lie to say there is a consensus of positions,” a Geneva-based Arab diplomat told Reuters. “To avoid speaking in favour of Syria, most (Arab) delegations will not take the floor.” “The Arab group is a bit embarrassed. During the Libyan affair we were all unified and integrated the international community’s consensus,” he said, adding that censuring Syria could set off a chain reaction. “Do this and a Pandora’s Box will open. Bahrain is also a member and Gulf countries are fully behind Bahrain,” he said.

  11.00am – Libya: My colleague, Harriet Sherwood, who is in Tripoli, has sent an update on the fighting on the border with Tunisia. Forces loyal to Gaddafi have retaken a border crossing between Libya and Tunisia close the Western Mountains region, which has been the scene of fierce fighting over recent weeks. Rebel fighters gained control of the Wazin-Dehiba border post last week. But it fell in an onslaught by regime troops, in which missiles were fired across the border into Tunisia, on Thursday. The Tunisian news agency, TAP, quoted witnesses saying Libyan refugees on the Tunisian side of the border had been killed and wounded. According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, more than 30,000 Libyans have fled the area in recent weeks. The region is largely populated by Berbers, who have suffered decades of repression under the Gaddafi regime.

  10.30am: Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of unrest in the Middle East, where major shows of strength are expected in Syria and Yemen. • In Syria, activists have called for a “Friday of rage” following Muslim prayers, to commemorate the death of over 100 people killed by security forces exactly a week ago. As the Assad regime braces itself for more protests, international diplomatic pressure is mounting. The UN’s top human rights body is holding a special session in Geneva to consider possible abuses in Syria. Meanwhile, EU governments are meeting in Brussels are to discuss sanctions on the Syrian leadership for the first time. • In Yemen, opponents of President Ali Abdullah Saleh have called for rallies across the country after Friday prayers to demand his exit, two days after plainclothes gunmen shot dead 12 demonstrators in the capital. Funerals of the 12 protesters killed on Wednesday were expected to draw big crowds in Sana’a. • There are reports of clashes between Tunisian troops and forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi inside the Tunisian border town of Dehiba. Residents say there was heavy fighting in the centre of the town, which is near a border crossing point into Libya. This would be the first time that fighting in Libya has spilled across the border to Tunisia. • The death toll in one of Morocco’s worst terrorist attacks has risen to 16. The MAP news agency said two people died of injuries in the hospital after Thursday’s explosion in a tourist cafe in Marrakech, bringing the number of dead from 14 to 16. At least 11 of those killed were foreigners, and at least 20 people were injured.

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  Related posts:Libya and Middle East uprising – live updates Libya unrest: Allies assemble arsenal for possible strike against Gaddafi Libya no-fly zone – live updates

  

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  April 29 2011, 6:14am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  Egyptian soldiers attack Tahrir Square protesters

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/09/egyptian-soldiers-attack-tahrir-square-protesters

  This is tragic. Those altruistic spontaneous revolutionaries in Tahrir Square were so convinced the Egyptian army was on the people’s side.  Now at least two people have been killed in a pre-dawn raid on protesters calling for the trial of Mubarak and the removal of the army chief.

  This article titled “Egyptian soldiers attack Tahrir Square protesters” was written by Peter Beaumont, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 9th April 2011 14.48 UTC Egypt’s deepening political crisis following the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak has taken a dangerous new turn after soldiers armed with clubs and rifles stormed protesters occupying Cairo’s Tahrir Square in a pre-dawn raid, killing at least two. The demonstrators, angry at the slow progress of reform since the country’s 18-day revolution earlier this year, had been demanding the trial of Mubarak, his son Gamal and close associates, and an immediate transition from military to civilian rule. The rally revealed the increasing impatience and mistrust that many Egyptians feel towards the military, which took over when Mubarak was forced out of office on 11 February. Some protesters accuse the top brass of protecting the former leader. Eyewitnesses who spoke to the Observer – accounts confirmed by graphic video footage – described hundreds of troops charging into the square firing rubber bullets at 3am on Saturday to clear it. The assault appears to have been triggered by the decision of several dozen Egyptian soldiers on Friday to defy orders and join a protest in the square to call for the removal of Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, who is titular head of the country. “The people want the fall of the field marshal,” said protesters, in a variation on the chant that has become famous across the Middle East. In the aftermath of the assault, as security forces retreated, witnesses described an army officer leading slogans against Tantawi, while anti-army graffiti appeared on barricades. Tamer el-Said, an Egyptian film-maker who was in the square, described what happened. “There was a huge demonstration that started at about 11 o’clock [on Friday]. There were some military officers who joined it who were dissatisfied with what the supreme military council was doing. There were between 15 and 20 of them. Obviously it was really dangerous for them so the other protesters decided that they would protect them from being arrested by the military police. “At about 11 o’clock last night the security forces, who had surrounded the square, tried to enter it to try and catch these soldiers but the protesters would not allow them to come in. There were army and police and special forces. At 3 o’clock they attacked the square. They were firing bullets in the air: at first rubber bullets and then live rounds. They pushed all the demonstrators out of the square. Then they started to chase the protesters into the surrounding streets and the downtown area using tear gas and bullets. I have a friend who was there who said there was continuous shooting.” The huge turnout in the square has followed growing fears in some sections of Egyptian society that the army has hijacked the revolution. According to eyewitnesses, the raid was led by a mixture of army, police and internal security forces in 20-30 military trucks. They said the firing continued in the square until about 5.30am. Although an army spokesman insisted the army had fired only “blanks” and not live rounds to warn protesters, images posted on social media sites appeared to show both blank and live shell casings. The force of around 300 soldiers honed in on a tent camp where protesters had formed a human cordon to protect army officers who had joined them. The troops dragged protesters away, throwing them into trucks, which video footage showed driving into the square amid the sound of gunfire. At least seven of the soldiers were reported to have been snatched. “I saw women being slapped in the face, women being kicked,” cried one female protester, who took refuge in a nearby mosque. Troops surrounded the mosque and heavy gunfire was heard for hours. The military issued a statement afterward blaming “outlaws” for rioting and violating the country’s 2am to 5am curfew, and asserted that no one was harmed or arrested. “The armed forces stress that they will not tolerate any acts of rioting or any act that harms the interest of the country and the people,” it said. “We are staging a sit-in until the field marshal is prosecuted,” said Anas Esmat, a 22-year-old university student in the square, as protesters dragged debris and barbed wire to seal off the streets leading into it. Protesters chanted: “Tantawi is Mubarak and Mubarak is Tantawi”, explicitly equating the field marshal with the president who appointed him.

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  April 9 2011, 11:08am | Comments »

• I posted to distributedresearch.net

  UK Uncut accuses police of politically motivated arrests

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/02/uk-uncut-accuses-police-of-politically-motivated-arrests

  The UK Uncut Campaign group are claiming that the police are trying to disband it following arrests at Fortnum and Mason sit-in.

  This article titled “UK Uncut accuses police of politically motivated arrests” was written by Mark Townsend, for The Observer on Saturday 2nd April 2011 20.44 UTC Protest group UK Uncut signalled its intention to continue occupying high street stores as police released images of individuals wanted in connection with violent disorder. A spokesman for the tax avoidance campaigners insisted they would not be cowed, despite concerns that the Met is intent on disabling the group’s command structure and has “politically targeted” its ringleaders. The Met has charged 138 people – practically the movement’s entire leadership – with aggravated trespass after a UK Uncut occupation of Fortnum & Mason in central London during the anti-cuts march. A meeting of UK Uncut supporters heard that those charged have had their phones confiscated. The mobiles contain details of the group’s secure networks and email accounts used to mobilise and organise its actions. The group believes the decision to charge all those inside Fortnum & Mason was an attempt by police to crush the movement. Only two of its chief ringleaders were outside the store at the time. “Practically the entire UK Uncut was inside, but it’s definitely not the end of that tactic because most people can see that this is political policing,” said the spokesman. The group is baffled why Scotland Yard, which rejects claims of politically motivated policing, decided to charge its members while previous peaceful occupations had seen officers take no action. Video evidence reveals a senior police officer assuring protesters on the day that they would not be detained upon leaving the store. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard has released 18 images of protesters, unconnected to UK Uncut, that they are keen to identify in the wake of the disorder. The investigation, Operation Brontide, is expected to publicise more images, mainly from CCTV. The Met is eager to disrupt those engaged in “black bloc” tactics, and is believed to have footage showing anarchists removing black clothing, bandanas and scarves before changing into civilian gear to evade detection. Detective chief superintendent Matthew Horne, leading Operation Brontide, said: “A significant minority came to London to cause violence and damage. There is an extensive operation to identify these people.” Fresh claims of politically motivated policing have also surfaced in a report alleging that officers prevented Muslims from attending counter demonstrations against a major English Defence League rally. Leicester constabulary operated a policy of stopping elements of the Muslim community protesting against the EDL during a high-profile march in the city last October, according to the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol). It said that the force attempted to dissuade Muslims through mosques and schools from protesting against the EDL demonstration at an authorised protest by Unite Against Fascism (UAF) on the same day, and issued leaflets advising that young people could be picked up and held in “safe areas”. Val Swain of Netpol said: “This is a strategy that we have seen up and down the country, and it appears to have been sanctioned at the highest levels. “The way in which the police are interfering in communities to deter people from organising and participating in lawful, legitimate protest is deeply disturbing. It is not for the police to decide which sectors of society are allowed to protest and which are not.” Saqib Deshmukh, a youth worker in the East Midlands, said it appeared that officers were willing to facilitate the EDL’s right to protest at the expense of the Muslim community, adding: “Certain groups of people are being denied the right to protest. It seems that the government is far more worried about the mobilisation of Muslim people than they are about the EDL.” Police in Lancashire adopted another tactic, imposing a limit of 3,000 on both an EDL march and one by counter-demonstrators in Blackburn to reduce the possibility of violence. The report by Netpol claims the reaction by Leicester constabulary could breach articles 10 and 11, the freedom of assembly and expression, of the European convention on human rights. It also reveals widespread disquiet over why the EDL was allowed to congregate in city centre pubs before the march and move close to Muslim areas. One community worker described their treatment as a “policy of appeasement”. The Leicester force has previously stated that it adopted polices to reduce the risk of public disorder and that it engaged with the Muslim community and acted in its interests.

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  April 2 2011, 4:17pm | Comments »

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  ‘Black bloc’ anarchists behind anti-cuts rampage reject thuggery claims

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/01/black-bloc-anarchists-behind-anti-cuts-rampage-reject-thuggery-claims

  Masked protesters called ‘Black Bloc’ from the Anarchist section of London protestors say their ranks have swollen to 1,500 and include social workers and nurses.

  This article titled “‘Black bloc’ anarchists behind anti-cuts rampage reject thuggery claims” was written by Robert Booth and Marc Vallée, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 17.36 UTC They dressed in black, masked their faces and flew red and black flags as if they were a revolutionary army, but anarchists who smashed up shops, banks and hotels during last Saturday’s anti-cuts protests in London have dismissed government allegations they are “mindless thugs”. Amid growing public anxiety about the actions of the so-called black bloc, the home secretary, Theresa May, this week threatened pre-emptive police action while Kit Malthouse, London’s deputy mayor, branded them “fascist agitators”. But unmasked and talking to the Guardian, anarchists involved in last weekend’s violence claimed their direct action tactics were going viral. They said they were legitimate representatives of the public’s concern about public sector cuts and their ranks had swollen to an estimated 1,500, boosted by student first-timers. The black bloc tactic involves masked militants moving in tight units cordoned by flags, vandalising symbolic property and sometimes attacking police. The group created chaos in central London’s busiest shopping area last weekend, seizing attention from about half a million peaceful anti-cuts protesters on a Trades Union Congress-organised march and terrifying onlookers. Anarchists attacked the Ritz hotel, smashed the windows of banks, fought with police officers and vandalised police vans. There were 201 arrests (mostly non-violent protesters at Fortnum & Mason) and at least 84 people were injured including 31 police officers, 12 of whom required hospital treatment for minor injuries. One activist admitted criminal gangs and small numbers of football hooligans were among those who adopted the approach. But the anarchists stressed that those in the black bloc last weekend included graduates, social workers, students, the unemployed, militant feminists and mental health nurses. The anarchists who agreed to talk also revealed their own deeper motivations: anger at family poverty as they grew up, the exhilarating sense of belonging they found in the black bloc, and longstanding grudges against the police. All of them said the failure of the peaceful anti-Iraq war march to overturn government policy was formative in their decision to turn to aggression and violence over the cuts. “We realised that political change in this country isn’t predicated on being right and winning a debate,” said Peter Wright, a twentysomething teacher who was in the black bloc with the South London Solidarity Federation, “which seeks to destroy capitalism and the state”. “You have to force your agenda. The slogan on Saturday was to make the country ungovernable,” he said. On Saturday, some anti-cuts activists plan to occupy Trafalgar Square and have asked anarchists to attend even though the opprobrium they drew after the march has sparked a debate inside the movement about whether their tactics are self-defeating. Nevertheless, with the royal wedding and May Day around the corner police are braced for more unrest. “We are not in any way setting out to terrorise the public. We are the public,” said Robert James, a smartly turned-out unemployed anarchist in his mid-20s. “We should do our utmost to ensure no one is harmed, but we can’t guarantee that people will not be shaken up by scenes of disorder … We are not calling for political reform or changes to the tax system. We are sending a clear message to capitalism that we can’t be bargained with. There is no reform. We only seek your abolition.” Jason Sands, 32, a graduate and local authority IT worker in south London and black bloc veteran, said the ranks of anarchists appeared to be “growing in confidence, skill and numbers”. He said there had been an influx of students galvanised by last year’s violence at the Conservative party headquarters in Millbank Tower during anti-tuition fees protests and by police tactics used against conventional demonstrators such as kettling. “It feels good to be part of it,” Sands said. “You are in a group of people who have a shared outlook which you don’t always feel in normal life. It can feel exhilarating running down a street and moving as a group. It is an atmosphere of resistance, not of chaos. You could get hurt or arrested so you have a combination of fear and adrenaline and a sense that this is the moment to act because it could all end shortly. There’s an intensity to the moment. It is not just about breaking things. It is manifesting your politics and personal feeling in the street.” He said some anarchist protesters only turned up if there was going to be a black bloc, finding it “boring” otherwise. Both Sands and James traced their anarchism to their experience of growing up relatively poor in the 1990s. “I have been going on protests since my parents took me on CND marches and anti-poll tax protests,” said Sands. “I realised kids from other families had more stuff and bigger houses but the most acute thing was the poll tax.” After university he found marches in London too “institutionalised” and became involved in violent action abroad, taking part in anti-G8 action in Rostock, Germany, in 2007, during which the offices of Caterpillar, the bulldozer company, were firebombed. James said he was radicalised when he saw his working-class family fall behind during the consumer and debt boom. “People growing up in the 1990s experienced capitalism moving away from the production of goods towards finance capitalism and the movement of debt,” he said. “Social mobility was everything but was quite difficult to attain. We achieved that through consumption and financed it through debt. Those who weren’t able to do that, especially as children, found themselves becoming the collateral damage of the consumer war.” He later went on anti-war marches and found himself feeling “utter contempt” for the state. “You would be incredibly surprised by the demographic that uses black bloc tactics, in terms of age, gender, occupation,” James said. “The media like to paint a picture of hooligans and thugs, mindless men on the rampage. It is simply not true. There are women and probably transgender people too. Some of the scariest-looking anarchists work in jobs like social care and mental health. It doesn’t come from a thuggish place.” The anarchists named in this article insisted on using pseudonyms.

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  April 1 2011, 4:30pm | Comments »

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  Protest march against coalition cuts expected to attract 300,000

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/26/protest-march-against-coalition-cuts-expected-to-attract-300000

  Police braced for high numbers of political demonstrators and protestors in London with 800 coaches and at least 10 trains chartered from around the UK

  This article titled “Protest march against coalition cuts expected to attract 300,000″ was written by Polly Curtis, Matthew Taylor and Vikram Dodd, for The Guardian on Saturday 26th March 2011 00.52 UTC More than a quarter of a million protesters against public sector cuts are expected to flood central London today in the biggest political demonstration for nearly a decade. Police sources, normally cautious about estimating numbers, said last night they were braced for up to 300,000 people to join the march – far higher than previous forecasts from TUC organisers. More than 800 coaches and at least 10 trains have been chartered to bring people to the capital from as far afield as Cornwall and Inverness. The Metropolitan police, under fire for their use of kettling in previous protests, said “a small but significant minority” plan to hijack the march to stage violent attacks. Organisers, however, insist it will be a peaceful family event. Union members are expected be joined by a broad coalition, from pensioners to doctors, families and first-time protesters to football supporters and anarchists. Ed Miliband said the government was dragging the country back to the “rotten” 1980s. Labour is calling today’s event the “march of the mainstream”. The opposition leader will address the rally – his biggest audience ever – in Hyde Park to set out Labour’s alternative to the cuts, accusing the government of fomenting the “politics of division” not seen since Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s. His remarks are reinforced by a Guardian/ICM poll that shows the public divided over the cuts. Of 1,014 people questioned this week, 35% believe the cuts go too far, 28% say they strike the right balance and 29% say they don’t go far enough; 8% don’t know. Two other polls put the balance more strongly against cuts. A YouGov survey for Unison found that 56% believe the cuts are too harsh and a ComRes poll for ITV showed that two-thirds think the government should reconsider its planned spending cuts programme. Just one in five disagree with that view. The TUC organisers of the event said they had organised a family-friendly demonstration with brass, jazz and Bollywood bands. But with unofficial feeder marches, sit-down protests and a takeover of Trafalgar Square planned, there was increasing nervousness that acts of peaceful civil disobedience could lead to stand-offs with police and outbursts of violence. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, which is providing 100 legal observers along the route to monitor the scenes, said she had been heartened by advance co-operation between the TUC and police, but added: “Events around in the world show the precious nature of peaceful dissent guaranteed by our Human Rights Act. This fundamental freedom was hard won and is still much envied elsewhere. It must not be jeopardised either by over-zealous policing or anyone looking for trouble.” Miliband said in a speech in Nottingham: “I thought the politics of the 1980s were rotten because they divided our country. I fear that this government is practising the politics of division.” He argued that the government’s policies divided rich against poor, public sector workers against private sector workers and north against south. “These aren’t the voices of people marginal to our country but the voices of the mainstream majority in our country and that’s why I’ll be addressing the rally tomorrow,” he said. He had been told not to join the march because of safety concerns. The Tories called on Miliband and the TUC leader, Brendan Barber, to take responsibility for any disruption on the march. Michael Fallon, deputy chairman of the Conservative party, said: “Under Ed Miliband, Labour are abandoning the centre ground, retreating into their comfort zone of left-wing protest and cosying up to the unions.” Barber will tell the rally that no part of the public realm is protected from the cuts, highlighting the proposals to radically change the NHS. “Today let us say [to David Cameron]: we will not let you destroy what has taken generations to build,” he will say. The bulk of the march will be made up of trade unionists, with virtually all of the TUC’s 55 affiliated unions represented. Also among the marchers will be a coachload of mothers and toddlers from Hampshire demonstrating against the closure of Sure Start centres in the county. Catherine Ovenden, 31, said the decision to cut the service would have a devastating impact on families. “So many people rely on these centres and we are going to lose a third of them,” she said . The demonstration is timed to mark the new financial year next week, when many of the cuts kick in. Research by the Fabian Society suggests that taken with the wider tax and benefit reforms announced since the election, this week’s budget would in fact force large number of working families into tax, instead of lifting them out as the coalition has claimed. Tens of thousands of the lowest-income families will lose around 6% of their net income in the next year because of the government’s tax and benefit changes with the bulk of the cuts kicking in next week, the analysis by the Fabian Society shows. From next week the childcare element of the tax credit system will be reduced from 80% to 70% of qualifying families’ nursery bills. A family with one child and one earner earning up to £23,000 will lose between 5.7% and 6.4% of their net income, compared with last year. This would cost such a family with an income of £6,000 £1,362 a year and a family on £23,000 £1,710 a year.

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  March 26 2011, 9:01am | Comments »

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  The fate of the Arabs will be settled in Egypt, not Libya

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/16/the-fate-of-the-arabs-will-be-settled-in-egypt-not-libya

  Looking to Egypt to build a genuinely revolutionary democratic system, so that all the dominoes in the region including Libya will eventually fall.

  This article titled “The fate of the Arabs will be settled in Egypt, not Libya” was written by Seumas Milne, for The Guardian on Wednesday 16th March 2011 22.00 UTC Barely two months since the triumphant overthrow of the Tunisian dictator that detonated the Arab revolution, a western view is taking hold that it’s already gone horribly wrong. In January and February, TV screens across the world were filled with exhilarating images of hundreds of thousands of peaceful demonstrators, women and men, braving Hosni Mubarak’s goons in Cairo’s Tahrir square while Muslims and Christians stood guard over each other as they prayed. A few weeks on and reports from the region are dominated by the relentless advance of Colonel Gaddafi’s forces across Libya, as one rebel stronghold after another is crushed. Meanwhile Arab dictators are falling over each other to beat and shoot protesters, while Saudi troops have occupied Bahrain to break the popular pressure for an elected government. In Egypt itself, 11 people were killed in sectarian clashes between Christians and Muslims last week and women protesters were assaulted by misogynist thugs in Tahrir Square. Increasingly, US and European politicians and media hawks are insisting it’s all because the west has shamefully failed to intervene militarily in support of the Libyan opposition. The Times on Wednesday blamed Barack Obama for snuffing out a “dawn of hope” by havering over whether to impose a no-fly zone in Libya. But Saudi Arabia’s dangerous quasi-invasion of Bahrain is a reminder that Libya is very far from being the only place where hopes are being stifled. The west’s closest Arab ally, which has declared protest un-Islamic, bans political parties and holds an estimated 8,000 political prisoners, has sent troops to bolster the Bahraini autocracy’s bloody resistance to democratic reform. Underlying the Saudi provocation is a combustible cocktail of sectarian and strategic calculations. Bahrain’s secular opposition to the Sunni ruling family is mainly supported by the island’s Shia majority. The Saudi regime fears both the influence of Iran in a Shia-dominated Bahrain and the infection of its own repressed Shia minority – concentrated in the eastern region, centre of the largest oil reserves in the world. Considering that both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, home to the United States fifth fleet, depend on American support, the crushing of the Bahraini democracy movement or the underground Saudi opposition should be a good deal easier for the west to fix than the Libyan maelstrom. But neither the US nor its intervention-hungry allies show the slightest sign of using their leverage to help the people of either country decide their own future. Instead, as Bahrain’s security forces tear-gassed and terrorised protesters, the White House merely repeated the mealy-mouthed call it made in the first weeks of the Egyptian revolution for “restraint on all sides”. It’s more than understandable that the Libyan opposition now being ground down by superior firepower should be desperate for outside help. Sympathy for their plight runs deep in the Arab world and beyond. But western military intervention – whether in the form of arms supplies or Britain and France’s favoured no-fly zone – would, as the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan argues, be “totally counter-productive” and “deepen the problem”. Experience in Iraq and elsewhere suggests it would prolong the war, increase the death toll, lead to demands for escalation and risk dividing the country. It would also be a knife at the heart of the Arab revolution, depriving Libyans and the people of the region of ownership of their own political renaissance. Arab League support for a no-fly zone has little credibility, dominated as it still is by despots anxious to draw the US yet more deeply into the region; while the three Arab countries lined up to join the military effort – Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the UAE – are themselves among the main barriers to the process of democratisation that intervention would be supposed to strengthen. Genuinely independent regional backing from, say, Egypt would be another matter, as would Erdogan’s proposal of some sort of negotiated solution: whatever the outcome of the conflict there will be no return of the status quo ante for the Gaddafi regime. In any case, the upheaval now sweeping the Arab world is far bigger than the struggle in Libya – and that process has only just begun. Any idea that all the despots would throw in the towel as quickly as Zin al-Abidine Ben Ali and Mubarak was always a pipedream. They may well be strengthened in their determination to use force by events in Libya. And the divisions of ethnicity, sect and tribe in each society will be ruthlessly exploited by the regimes and their foreign sponsors to try to hold back the tide of change. But across the region people insist they have lost their fear. There is a widespread expectation that the Yemeni dictator, Ali Abdallah Saleh, will be the next to fall – where violently suppressed street protests have been led by a woman, the charismatic human rights campaigner Tawakul Karman, in what is a deeply conservative society.   And where regimes make cosmetic concessions, such as in Jordan, they find they are only fuelling further demands. As the Jordanian Islamist opposition leader, Rohile Gharaibeh, puts it: “Either we achieve democracy under a constitutional monarchy or there will be no monarchy at all”. The key to the future of the region, however, remains Egypt. It is scarcely surprising if elements of the old regime try to provoke social division, or attempts are made to co-opt and infiltrate the youth movements that played the central role in the uprising, or that the army leadership wants to put a lid on street protests and strikes. But the process of change continues. In the past fortnight demonstrators have occupied and closed secret police headquarters, and the Mubarak-appointed prime minister has been dumped – and Egyptians are now preparing to vote on constitutional amendments that would replace army rule with an elected parliament and president within six months. There is a fear among some activists that the revolution may only put a democratic face on the old system. But the political momentum remains powerful. A popular democratic regime in Cairo would have a profound impact on the entire region. Nothing is guaranteed, but all the signs are that sooner or later, the dominoes will fall.

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  March 16 2011, 6:57pm | Comments »

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  Tunisian prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi resigns amid unrest

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/27/tunisian-prime-minister-mohamed-ghannouchi-resigns-amid-unrest

  Down with the interim coalition Government. The Tunisian mass movement is being emulated in the whole region. In the revolutionary process, the mass of workers, young people and poor are learning very quickly. Past illusions in the ‘benevolent’ and protective role of the army have been replaced by a much more defiant attitude. Egypt take note.

  This article titled “Tunisian prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi resigns amid unrest” was written by Kim Willsher, Paris, for The Guardian on Sunday 27th February 2011 19.58 UTC Tunisia was thrown into turmoil once more after Mohamed Ghannouchi resigned as prime minister of the post-revolution government amid further clashes between police and protestors. The interim president, Fouad Mebazaa, named the former government minister Beji Caid-Essebsi as Ghannouchi’s replacement. Ghannouchi said he felt forced to stand down “because I am not willing to be a person that takes decisions that would end up causing casualties”. He made the announcement after three people died on Saturday and nine others were injured during outbreaks of violence on the streets of the capital, Tunis. Tunisia’s interim coalition has struggled to assert its authority since a wave of protests that started in December sparked what was called the “jasmine revolution”, leading to the overthrow in January of president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled for 23 years. Protestors have targeted Ghannouchi, accusing him of being too close to the former government. They have also become frustrated over the slow pace of change since the revolution despite the interim government’s pledge to hold a general election by 15 July this year. Ghannouchi, 69, who since 1989 had held various ministerial posts under the old regime, told a news conference he had thought carefully about the decision. “I am not running away from responsibility,” he said. “This is to open the way for a new prime minister.” He added: “This resignation will serve Tunisia, and the revolution and the future of Tunisia.” On a third day of clashes, police fired tear gas and warning shots in an effort to disperse stone-throwing youths and protesters shouting anti-government slogans around Habib Bourguiba avenue in central Tunis. More than 100 people were arrested and accused of “acts of destruction and burning”, according to a statement by the Tunisian interior ministry put out by the state-run news agency Tunis Afrique Presse. Demonstrators want the interim government disbanded along with the current parliament. They also seek the suspension of the constitution and the formation of an elected assembly that can write another, organise elections and oversee the transition to democracy. Ghannouchi took power after Ben Ali fled on 14 January. He formed a new “national unity” government, including opposition party members and a blogger.   Tunisia’s revolution was sparked by the death of a young street vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, in December. In an act of desperation which sparked unrest in several other Arab countries in the region, Bouazizi set fire to himself after officials stopped him selling vegetables without permission.

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  February 27 2011, 2:35pm | Comments »

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  Wisconsin is making the battle lines clear in America’s hidden class war

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/27/wisconsin-is-making-the-battle-lines-clear-in-americas-hidden-class-war

  From Wisconsin, class politics emerges into the US news, but the interpretation here has more to do with culture and aspirations than the relationships to the means of production. And who is responsible for these ‘distorting filters of media representation’?

  This article titled “Wisconsin is making the battle lines clear in America’s hidden class war” was written by Gary Younge, for The Guardian on Sunday 27th February 2011 17.59 UTC You can tell a great deal about a nation’s anxieties and aspirations by the discrepancy between reality and popular perception. Polls last year showed that in the US 61% think the country spends too much on foreign aid. This makes sense once you understand that the average American is under the illusion that 25% of the federal budget goes on foreign aid (the real figure is 1%). Similarly, a Mori poll in Britain in 2002 revealed that more than a third of the country thought there were too many immigrants. Little wonder. The mean estimate was that immigrants comprise 23% of the country; the actual number was about 4%. Broadly speaking, these inconsistencies do not reflect malice or wilful ignorance but people’s attempts to make sense of the world they experience through the distorting filters of media representation, popular prejudice and national myths. “The way we see things is affected by what we know and what we believe,” wrote John Berger in Ways of Seeing. “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” When it comes to class, Americans have long seen themselves as potentially rich and perpetually middling. A Pew survey in 2008 revealed that 91% believe they are either middle class, upper-middle class or lower-middle class. Relatively few claim to be working class or upper class, intimating more of a cultural aspiration than an economic relationship. Meanwhile, a Gallup poll in 2005 showed that while only 2% of Americans described themselves as “rich”, 31% thought it very likely or somewhat likely they would “ever be rich”. But trends and ongoing events are forcing a reappraisal of that self-image. Social mobility has stalled; wages have been stagnant for a generation. It is in this light that the growing resistance to events in Wisconsin must be understood. The hardline Republican governor, Scott Walker, has pledged to remove collective bargaining rights from public sector unions and cut local government workers’ health benefits and pension entitlements. As the prospect of becoming rich diminishes, many are simply trying not to become poor. Inequality of income and wealth has been more readily accepted in the US because equality of opportunity has long been assumed. The absence of the latter raises serious questions about the existence of the former. This tension brought thousands to the streets in all 50 states to support the Wisconsin unions last weekend. For Walker’s measures to pass, a certain number of local senators must be present in the chamber for the vote. To prevent that happening, the entire Democratic delegation fled the state and is refusing to return until Walker agrees to negotiate. Meanwhile, thousands of pro-union demonstrators have descended on the state capitol to protest, sparking solidarity rallies nationwide. Polls suggest the public is siding with the unions locally and nationally. A survey last week showed 53% against cutting benefits and pay for government workers and 61% opposed to removing collective bargaining. Even conservative polls suggest a majority in Wisconsin is opposed to Walker’s attempt to eliminate collective bargaining. Coming so soon after Republican electoral victories at federal and state level, Walker might have anticipated an easier ride for his agenda than this. After all, membership of unions is at an all-time low and public support for them does not fare much better. Moreover, support for unions ordinarily falls when unemployment rises. But these are no ordinary times. For if organised labour has fallen out of favour, the illusion that you can make it on your own is not far behind. A Pew survey in 2008 – before the banking system imploded – showed that fewer Americans than at any time in 50 years thought they were moving forward in life. The number of those who don’t believe you can get ahead by working hard has doubled in 10 years. Half the country thinks its best days are behind it. While many may question the role of the unions, few believe firing 12,000 government workers, as Walker has pledged to do, is the answer. Walker’s case is as predictable as it is weak. Government workers, he claims, have higher pay and better benefits than others in a bloated state that must slim down if it is to keep running. This is hardly true. Accounting for age and education, US local government employees earn 4% less than their private sector counterparts. Yes, the shortfall in pensions is real. But if the political will existed, calamity could be avoided with a fairly modest increase in the budget allocation. Union members do generally enjoy better benefits. That’s the whole point of being in a union: to improve your living standards through collective action. And that is precisely why Republicans like Walker want to crush them. His agenda has nothing to do with redressing a fiscal imbalance and everything to do with exploiting the crisis to deliver a killer blow to organised labour. If fixing the budget deficit were really Walker’s priority, he would not have waved through $140m in tax breaks for multinationals or refused to take federal funds for transport or broadband development. Like 10 other states, he might even have raised taxes progressively. None of these contradictions are particular to Wisconsin. Similar stories could be told as far away as Ireland and as nearby as Indiana, where Democrats also fled the state to defeat a union-bashing bill. Nor are they coming exclusively from the hard right. Democrats in the US and social democrats around Europe are attacking unions too, albeit with less relish. What Wisconsin does offer is a transparent illustration of the ideological sophistry and political mendacity driving these attacks.   But having started this fight in such a brazen manner, Walker has little option but to pursue it to its bitter end. That is why it has taken on national significance. Faced with an existential threat, the labour movement has broadened its horizons and galvanised a pluralistic, national opposition. That is a precondition for success but by no means a guarantee. Last weekend’s demonstrations do not necessarily reflect a new sense of class consciousness, but they do suggest the potential for it. The idea of a class system where only a handful can ever be truly wealthy intrudes awkwardly on a culture rooted in notions of self-advancement, personal reinvention and rugged individualism, even if it is closer to reality. Old habits die hard. The weekend protests were organised under the banner “Save the American Dream”. Democratic politicians, funded by both unions and corporations, pretend not to take sides, casting the national conversation not in terms of bosses and workers or wages and profits but of rich and poor. The problem with this, explains Michael Zweig, the director of the centre for the study of working-class life at the State University of New York, is that “most people want to be rich and most of them don’t know what rich is. If you put class in terms of power, you start to get to the source of the problem.” Leaders like Walker are making it clear which side of the class divide they stand on. A growing number of Americans, it seems, have begun to understand that this is precisely the problem and are discovering the source of their own power.

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  February 27 2011, 12:09pm | Comments »

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  Egypt’s generals unveil reform package

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/27/egypts-generals-unveil-reform-package

  The reform package being offered by the Egyptian army in power falls way short of the list of demands put forward in the  peoples communique number 1 from the organising committee of protesters from January 25th

  This article titled “Egypt’s generals unveil reform package” was written by Jack Shenker in Cairo, for The Guardian on Sunday 27th February 2011 15.56 UTC Egypt’s ruling generals have unveiled a package of far-reaching constitutional reforms, following mounting criticism of the way in which the military is handling the country’s post-Mubarak transition period. A committee of legal experts appointed by the interim government has proposed changes to eight articles of the Egyptian constitution, which will be put to a national referendum next month. The amendments would create new term limits on the presidency, make it easier for Egyptians to run for president, ensure stronger judicial oversight of elections, and restrict the government’s power to maintain emergency laws – all ahead of a general election expected later this year. Committee member Sobhi Saleh, a lawyer who has previously represented the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement in parliament, described the amendments as a historic achievement. “I am very satisfied,” he said. The announcement comes at a critical time for the armed forces, following violent street clashes between soldiers and pro-change demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Peaceful protests calling for the resignation of interim prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, who was a cabinet member under Mubarak and is closely associated with the old regime, were met with a brutal response by military police who used tasers and batons to attack those rallying in the capital. Senior generals later offered a semi-apology for the assault, insisting the aggression was “unintentional”, but that has done little to reassure protesters, some of whom are now comparing the military to Mubarak’s much-hated central security forces. “The army and the police are one,” claimed one activist, deliberately inverting a popular protest chant during the anti-Mubarak uprising that declared “the army and the people are one.” The military remains a popular institution in Egypt for its role in defending the nation during wars in 1956 and 1973, and bound emotionally to many families through a policy of national conscription. Yet with an emerging body of evidence suggesting that the army has been complicit in torture and other human rights abuses during the past month’s unrest, plus the supreme military council’s growing intolerance of strikes and apparent unwillingness to confront lasting remnants of the Mubarak regime, many of those who initially welcomed the generals’ takeover following Mubarak’s downfall are now having second thoughts. “I’m not sure how long the general Egyptian public can maintain the bizarre idea that the army is so great,” said Issandr El Amrani, a political analyst and blogger based in Egypt. “This is the army that took power in a coup in 1952 and ended political pluralism, lost tonnes of wars after that and continued to justify its predation on the national budget despite not having had to fight anyone since 1973.” The process of amending the constitution has been criticised by many of the pro-change protesters who helped end Mubarak’s three-decade rule and who wish to see a new constitution written from scratch. Such a move has been resisted so far by the armed forces, but in an attempt to appease its critics the supreme military council has said that parliament will be formally mandated to draft a completely new constitution following the next election. “What is needed now is to scrap the existing constitution and not to amend it,” said Bahieddin Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, who has warned that Egypt is in danger of falling prey to “neo-Mubarakism”. “No amendments, however extensive, would be enough to salvage it because the philosophy and spirit of the constitution are diametrically opposed to democratic values and human rights. The present constitution can only encourage despotism.” El Amrani agrees: “Although the amendments may signal some great improvements … it will also deliver the interim military government a clear public mandate. You can expect millions of Egyptians voting overwhelmingly in favour of the amended constitution, delivering a clear sign of public support for the transition model chosen by the military. It will be difficult for opposition groups to then challenge the army, which can point to this popular mandate as the source of its legitimacy.”

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  February 27 2011, 12:00pm | Comments »

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  Benghazi celebrates as reports emerge of battles in central Tripoli

  http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/25/benghazi-celebrates-as-reports-emerge-of-battles-in-central-tripoli

  As already disclosed, time is running out

  This article titled “Benghazi celebrates as reports emerge of battles in central Tripoli” was written by Martin Chulov Benghazi, for The Guardian on Friday 25th February 2011 15.37 UTC Clashes have continued on the outskirts of Tripoli for a third consecutive day as Muammar Gaddafi’s loyalists attempt to shore up the capital from a rampant anti-government revolution. Demonstrators at a large opposition rally in Libya’s second city, Benghazi, today received numerous phone calls from frantic relatives in Tripoli who relayed details of ongoing battles nearing the centre of the city. There were unconfirmed reports today of a major airbase in Tripoli having fallen into opposition hands. If true, it would be a serious blow to the Libyan leader’s attempts to cling to power in the capital. In much of the rest of the country, the battle already appears lost. Opposition activists have been striving to get their hands on military bases and ammunition, seeking to further weaken the regime of the veteran dictator who has already been ousted from eastern Libya and much of the centre of the country. Benghazi’s main military base was sacked on Sunday and Libya’s second city fell later that day. Ever since, Benghazi has been a hub of anti-government dissent. Most towns and villages along the 1,000km (620-mile) route between the two cities now appear to turned against the dictator. Demonstrators in Benghazi, where it all started on 17 February, were joyfully celebrating today at a large rally after Friday prayers outside the looted court house and police headquarters. “Gaddafi go to Israel,” they said. “Libya is free, Gaddafi must leave.” Benghazi has remained calm since Sunday, with most residents insisting that the last remnants of the dictator’s old guard have fled the region. “They can never return,” said Khadija Begaigy, who lives in the city. “It is finished for them, and now onwards to Tripoli!” So far, almost all of the armoury seized from Benghazi’s looted military bases remains safe inside the forecourt of a ransacked secret police headquarters near the port. There have been calls for those weapons to be used against loyalist forces still defending the capital. However, the small number of weapons that have been handed out are being used to help with neighbourhood defences. Gaddafi was expected today to fly in reporters from the UK on a Libyan government jet, intending to show that all is well in the capital. However, Libyans continue to paint an entirely different picture. “The battles here have been worse this week than last,” one man in Tripoli told his mother, who was protesting in Benghazi today. “Something is clearly happening here.”

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  Related posts:Libya rebels isolate Gaddafi, seizing cities and oilfields How will Libya’s protests play out? Libya protests: ‘Now we’ve seen the blood our fears have gone’

  

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  February 25 2011, 9:52am | Comments »

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