Activism – Page 10

Apathic students are good for business

Published on February 25, 2009

Hicham Yezza looks at the student protests against the Israeli re-invasion of Gaza and what this meant for the political awareness of students:

For anyone interested in the health of our political system, these events are highly instructive. For a start, they would have been unthinkable a decade ago: everyone remembers the quasi-proverbial, and not wholly undeserved, reputation students have cultivated over the years for extreme political apathy. Indeed, the extent of the indifference to the political process among the youth was a source of national despair, wistfully and routinely bemoaned by politicians across the spectrum.

More importantly, these protests have also been very indicative of some larger truths: not only have they highlighted a rise in political awareness among a new generation raised in the shadow of the Iraq war debate, they have also exposed what has for long been a suspected but unspoken reality: rather than being the centres of learning, debate and intellectual engagement of yore, British universities are now little more than businesses purveying a product, employable students. The message is unambiguous: political engagement might be good for the mind but it is very, very bad for business.

Of course I doubt these “centres of learning, debate and intellectual engagement of yore” ever really existed apart from in golden Baby Boomer memories of ’68… Universities have always been as much if not more guardians of the existing order as incubators of radicalism and any room for political engagement has to be created by the students themselves. What has happened in the last few decades is that this room, hard won during the sixties, seventies and eighties, has disappeared as universities “went commercial” while succesive governements made it more difficult for students to do anything but study. If you have to depend on a student loan of several (tens of thousands) of pounds to be able to study, you’ll be less likely to waste your time with political activity, especially if, as in the Netherlands, your loan or grant is made dependent on your study results. It’s perhaps no coincidence that there was little if any student protest over here against the invasion of Gaza, certainly not on the scale of the UK protests.

If the name of Hicham Yezza sounds familiar, it’s because he was the student arrested for supposedly downloading an Al Queda terrorism manual, which turned out to be made available at the U.S. Department of Justice website and who, once he wasn’t charged under the anti-terrorism law, was re-arrested for unspecified offences against the Immigration Act — wouldn’t want to waste an investigation after all. Here’s what you can do to help him.

The ruling classes are a-feared

Published on February 23, 2009

British police is warning about a Summer of Discontent:

Police are preparing for a “summer of rage” as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned.

Britain’s most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming “footsoldiers” in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.

Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police’s public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.

He said that banks, particularly those that still pay large bonuses despite receiving billions in taxpayer money, had become “viable targets”. So too had the headquarters of multinational companies and other financial institutions in the City which are being blamed for the financial crisis.

Hartshorn, who receives regular intelligence briefings on potential causes of civil unrest, said the mood at some demonstrations had changed recently, with activists increasingly “intent on coming on to the streets to create public disorder”.

If you look back through the archives you’ll see Palau has warned time and again that New Labour and its cronies in the police forces have been preparing for the economic downturn for a long time, exactly by giving the police far ranging powers to nip any social unrest in the bud. Deliberately or not, they’ve created a body of legislation that can make any form of protest, no matter how peaceful, illegal.

Hartshorn is indeed issuing a warning, but it’s aimed at us. Best not be thinking about protesting and accept your lot like good boys and girls…

Cointelpro is alive and well

Published on January 5, 2009

In Maryland the police spend years spying on political groups ranign from cyling advocates to Amnesty International:

The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored — and labeled as terrorists — activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing bike lanes.

Intelligence officers created a voluminous file on Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling the group a “security threat” because of concerns that members would disrupt the circus. Angry consumers fighting a 72 percent electricity rate increase in 2006 were targeted. The DC Anti-War Network, which opposes the Iraq war, was designated a white supremacist group, without explanation.

One of the possible “crimes” in the file police opened on Amnesty International, a world-renowned human rights group: “civil rights.”

Back in the sixties, Cointelpro was an FBI led programme to infiltrate and spy on various alleged subversive groups. Not only did FBI agents infiltrate various antiwar and civil right groups, they also attempted to provoke those groups into criminal acts. Supposedly the Cointelpro programme was stopped in 1971, but since the original operation only came to light after the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI burgled an FBI office, who knows what’s still going on. Certainly the modus operandum described here sounds a lot like what the FBI was up to:

After trawling the Internet, an analyst reported a “potential for disruption” at both executions. Mazzella dispatched a corporal who needed experience in undercover work to the Electrik Maid community center in Takoma Park, where death penalty foes were organizing rallies.

At a rally to save Vernon Evans Jr. outside the Supermax prison in Baltimore a few weeks later, the woman who said her name was Lucy McDonald asked veteran activist Max Obuszewski how she could learn more about passive resistance and civil disobedience.

The activists recall that she had a genial disposition and refreshing curiosity, and she quickly became a fixture at meetings and rallies of death penalty opponents and antiwar activists. She used a laptop computer at meetings, but the activists say no one was alarmed. “Maybe I wondered what she was typing,” said Mike Stark of Takoma Park. “But you always check yourself. In our movement it’s very important to be outward and not paranoid.”

Bonus: how clueless use of information technology made things worse:

Police had turned to the database in a low-cost effort to replace antiquated file cabinets. The Washington High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a regional clearinghouse for drug-related criminal information, offered its software for free.

But the database did not include categories that fit the nature of the protest-group investigations. So police created “terrorism” categories to track the activists, according to the state review. Some information was sent directly to HIDTA’s main database as part of an agreement to share information.

Putting the activists into the database was “a function of nothing more than the insertion of a piece of paper in a paper file in a file cabinet,” Sheridan wrote. But labeling them “terrorists,” he said was “incorrect and improper.”

America 2008 = Argentine 2003

Published on December 9, 20081 Comment

Workers occupy factory after the factory’s bank refuses credit to pay them:

[…]about 250 workers have occupied their employer’s factory after the company shut its doors without any notice. They intend to stay there until severance and vacation pay due them is guaranteed.

The company is Republic Windows and Doors, and a spokesman for the company told the AP that the precipitous closure was necessary because its creditor, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, won’t let them pay their employees, which is rather interesting because BofA recently received $25 billion from the feds as part of that massive bailout Bernanke, Paulson, and Bush convinced Reid and Pelosi was necessary or the sky would fall and the American Way of Life would end.

For an eye witness view of the occupation, there are of course Youtube videos:

As the title says, it reminds me of what happened in Argentine at the start of the decade, when their economy collapsed. That country had opened up and “liberated” their economy, atteacting investors looking for low risk, high profit investments. When the economic miracle turned out to be not so miracleous after all, they were gone in a flash leaving a broken country behind. Like the workers at Republic Windows and Doors the people of Argentine took their fate in their own hands and occupied and re-opened hundreds if not thousands of empty factories, shops and other workplaces. I wonder if Naomi Klein ever thought the scenes she reported on five years ago would be replicated in her own country?

Dictatorship: Are We There Yet?

Published on November 28, 20081 Comment

I keep asking that.

But I think finally we are undoubtedly on the cusp of it (or in that annoying phrase that seems to have become hip recently, on the flex), when a squad of not just any old plods, but armed antiterrorist police is sent to arrest legitimately elected member of parliament and shadow immigration minister Damien Green, search his home and office, take his DNA, impound all his personal or business data and hold him incommunicado for 9 hours while the ruling party briefs assiduously against him in the media, on a spurious suspicion of ‘conspiracy to commit public malfeasance in office’ (ie receiving leaks of how incompetent Jacqui Smith, Phil Woolas and other Home office ministers are).

I’m amazed they didn’t taser him for good measure, pour encourager les autres.

But why? What could have posessed them to do such a disgusting, antidemocratic thing? Why would a New Labour prime minister rip up the constitution (such as it still is) and begin arresting the opposition, for all the world like some nascent Mugabe?

It appears that Green was treated like a terrorist simply for doing his job and exposing government wrongdoing and incompetence in the public interest. Since when has that been an offence? Exposing government wrongdoing is what an opposition MP does. That’s why the communications of MP’s are privileged; so that political police pressure like this can’t be brought to bear on the people’s representatives when they are doing their duty.

Privileged communication is the bedrock of the parliamentary system Parliament is said to be jealous of its privileges and ready to fight to the death to protect them; an MP cannot be arrested while in the precincts of the House, for instance.

Why, then, did the parliamentary authorities, the sergeants-at-arms, allow the Metropolitan Police into Green’s parliamentary offices to leaf through privileged communications at will, unless they had political clearance at a very high level – say from a Home Secreteary or PM – to do so?

Labour ministers like that lying little ratfaced sycophant, immigration minister Phil Woolas, are all over the papers, radio and tv this morning, disclaiming any political motivation for this unprecedentedly shocking act. “Ooh no, wasn’t us guv, nothing to do with us. Dictatorial, authoritarian, Stalinesque? Oh no, we don’t accept that. Blame the Met and Ian Blair, he’s retiring, he’s a a handy scapegoat. Jacqui Smith? Who she?”

Bollocks. They can deny it till they’re blue in the face but I’m in no doubt that the order to arrest an opposition MP came right from our very own ~~Rosa Klebb~~ the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, angry at having her own and her colleagues’ mendacity exposed.

Smith has shown herself quite happy to use the law to pursue her political priorities. Smith is perfectly prepared to use the power of the state against the individual for partisan purposes too, and freely admits it. Here she is speaking of manipulating the law and the police against the populace for purely partisan political ends:

I now want the Action Squad to co-ordinate a new drive against the hard core of ‘hard nut’ cases.

That car of theirs – is the tax up to date? Is it insured? Let’s find out

And have they a TV licence for their plasma screen? As the advert says, “it’s all on the database.”

As for their council tax, it shouldn’t be difficult to see if that’s been paid

And what about benefit fraud? Can we run a check?

No stranger to dictatorship she; it comes as absolutely no surprise that Smith concentrated her political studies at Uni on East Germany.

Here she is on the BBC yet again, within the past 5 minutes, still asserting that no minister had anything to do with it and it was all David Normingtonof the Cabinet Office.

In a statement, the Metropolitan police said:

‘The investigation into the alleged leak of confidential government material followed the receipt by the MPS (Metropolitan Police Service) of a complaint from the Cabinet Office.’

Yes, from Normington the highest ranking Home Office civil servant, who of course didn’t even speak to the PM or Home Secretary about something so momentous as the arrest of an MP.

Oh, sure.

But the order for Green’s arrest has to have come from Gordon Brown, if not at his instigation, then at least with his entire approval. They can deny it till doomsday; the order for Green’s arrest came direct from New Labour, no matter how much they dissemble; not only that, it came direct from the Cabinet Office and therefore direct from no 10; and most of all it came direct from our unelected prime minister, Gordon Brown, unless, of course, the police are lying. And I wouldn’t put it past Mandelson to allege that either.