—front page—

—page two—

—page three—

Independence grows as Blair and Brown battle for Britain

by Ken Ferguson

More than ten years of careful image polishing by New Labour’s propaganda department has tarnished as vicious backstabbing broke out around the cabinet table.
Heir apparent Gordon Brown is now facing a determined campaign to block his entry to 10 Downing Street from a group of ultra-Blairite MPs, in what looks like a battle of style over substance.
At the heart of the ‘stop Brown’ movement is his arch-enemy, Airdrie’s own Dr John Reid.
There can be little doubt that the conveniently ‘on holiday’ Reid fashioned the bullets about Brown being ‘flawed and deluded’, fired by Reid’s long-time student buddy and failed Home Secretary Charles Clarke.
However, the high profile name calling acts as a smokescreen which obscures the real military and political events which lie at what amounts to a crisis for the politics underpinning New Labour. Brown has long since jettisoned any residual radicalism from his far off socialist phase, endorse free market chaos, big business and the city fat cats, with the entire package gift wrapped in the Union Jack.
He may well even believe the sub-imperial guff about the benefits of the empire and the union, but a large part of the script is written to make a ‘Jock’ acceptable as Prime Minister.
It may well work in the Home Counties but there is mounting evidence that what plays well in Croydon might not be so popular in Cowdenbeath.
Heading the list is an opinion poll showing a seismic shift in favour of independence a matter of months before Scottish Parliament elections.
In the Sunday Times’ YouGov survey, published at the weekend, 44 per cent of respondents said they backed an independent Scotland compared with 42 per cent against. A series of other surveys over recent weeks underline that the union is under pressure.
As Scottish MPs stick dirks into each other for the keys to Downing Street, panic is spreading in the Holyrood branch office with dark warnings to First Minister Jack McConnell that his job is on the line. For the left, growing support for independence is not just a constitutional question but also has serious implications for our ability to make effective intervention against neo-liberalism and in support of those struggling against imperialism across the globe.
Alongside the democratic question, this presents Scots with an agenda which can end the recruitment of young people to the British war machine and death in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It holds the possibility of shifting the call to scrap nuclear weapons from the realm of debate to that of reality, with an independent Scotland able to close the huge Faslane base and redeploy its staff to work that doesn’t involve weapons of mass destruction.
Worst of all from the unionist point of view, it opens up the prospect of a major split in the British state and unleashes alternative ideas that can inspire opponents of market madness across the world.
Voters are increasingly demanding more power for Edinburgh and this looks likely to feed the support for a clean break with the bloodthirsty British state.
This is good news for the SSP and is reinforced by polling evidence showing the party with a 6 per cent share in the key second Holyrood vote - just 1 per cent under the vote that returned six MSPs in 2003.
It shows that the party has a resilience in support and that our ideas have far more purchase than mainstream pundits suggest.
Increasingly it is becoming clear that independence will be at the centre of next year’s election. A change of leadership will not give New Labour their craved for ‘Brown bounce’ and their vote is up for grabs.
With the SNP reviving and the Greens still eyeing an alliance with, well, almost anybody, the SSP has a key role in putting the independence case in a socialist context.
There is much to play for in the months ahead.

Union Jack and British Brown fly their flags for votes, Queen and country

by Wullie McGartland

Another battle seems to have broken out in New Labour over who can wrap themselves in the biggest flag.
In one corner we have Gordon Brown waving his huge Union Jack and in the other Jack McConnell and his wee Saltire.
Last week saw the bold Gordon visit Edinburgh, still spouting his British mantra.
He told journalists:
“The common view is that Scotland and England are moving apart, not closer together. But in family connections this is simply not true.”
He used some mighty scientific figures to back up his claim, stating that at the time of the union with England in 1707, only 30,000 Scots had English relatives, and as late as 1910 that figure was still fewer than 800,000.
Now, he said, around 2.5 million Scottish residents are either English themselves or have relatives who are English.
So that’s it, you cannae have independence because your Auntie Morag lives in Ramsgate.
Is there nothing Brown won’t say in order to make himself appear less Scottish to the electorate of middle-England?
Meanwhile our illustrious First Minister, Wee Jack, has been busy trying to prove his Scottish credentials.
He gave a statement this week supporting the making of St Andrew’s Day into a bank holiday, saying: “I believe that we should encourage employers and employees to mark the day with a holiday.”
But hang on before you book that long weekend. He went on to add, “that this should be as a substitute for an existing local holiday, rather than an additional one.”
So you can get 30 November off, but only if you come in to work on Christmas Day or some other that you already have off.
And the holiday would not be statutory, but at the discretion of your employer - as are most bank holidays for those working in the private sector, especially the service industries.
Workers in this country already have fewer holidays than any other European country, but Jack says we can’t have any more because it will affect his big business buddies.
As Jack and Gordon both go on the flag waving offensive, they’re fooling nobody - Jack’s still more interested in keeping the Union Jack flying over Scotland and the only flag Gordon’s really interested in seeing is a white one from the Blair household.

Arran marches for peace

Saturday saw a march on Arran in the lead up to Scotland’s Long Walk for Peace this week. About 100 people marched in Lamlash and Brodick and attended a rally, where the speakers were Katy Clark MP, Chris Ballance MSP (Greens), Campbell Martin MSP (Independent), Kenny Gibson (SNP) and Colin Turbett (SSP). The event was organised by the Arran Justice Peace and Environment Group.
The march included a contingent of high school students as well as veterans of peace campaigns going back many years.

—page four—

In Afghanistan, knowledge is power

“I’m proud to be part of America’s efforts to advance the rights of Afghan women and girls... [they] are gaining greater rights.” - Laura Bush, speaking at the White House, 12 March 2004.

In downtown Kabul, the Burqa is back! Accessorised this season with un-made up yet downcast eyes and a generous dose of abject terror.
Yes, sexual violence against women is in-style, big-style, in Afghanistan. In fact, conditions for women and girls are worse now than they were, even under the Taliban.
In Herat, where Northern Alliance warlord and female repression enthusiast Ismail Khan rules the roost, hundreds of women of all ages have burnt themselves to death in recent months, in response to the increasingly suffocated and violent nature of their lives.
Here, as in Kabul, women must cover up from head to toe, or risk being hauled in by self-styled ‘virtue’ vigilantes, who use rape as a means of punishing females who dare to reveal so much as an inch of ankle.
Women cannot take taxis alone, girls cannot be educated alongside boys or, indeed, at all. Nor can they work. A shop in Herat was shut down this summer solely because it employed women.
Then there are the religious police, who can force women to undergo ‘chastity checks’ - that is, intrusive, gynaecological examinations - to ensure their virginity.
God alone knows what happens to them if they fail these tests.
It’s not just the warlord gangs who indulge in this behaviour. Within the ranks of the Afghan National Army, young girls are passed around as ‘gifts’ and rape is as common a strategy as stop and search.
Amnesty International, in their 2003 briefing ‘No-One Listens To Us and No-One Treats Us As Human Beings’, noted that abuse against women was on the rise and ranged from rape to abduction to forced marriage, including for underage girls.
All of which begs the question; can this really be the same Afghanistan that Mrs Bush was describing to her audience at the White House?
Apparently so.
It is essential to the ongoing myth of America as the harbinger of freedom, and to public support for future military interventions, that we believe that the US defeated the Taliban and women lived happily ever after.
And international media has been almost slavish in its adherence to this.
We hear the little success stories, the token women on city councils, the odd school here and there.
We hear less about the public beating of women in front of their children, the kidnapping and rape of barely pubescent girls, the status of females as objects, possessions of their family, scarcely human in their own right.
In truth, the US did more harm than good.
They chased away the Taliban...and replaced them with “the most anti-women people”, according to Malalai Joya, who famously spoke up during the Loya Jirga in Kabul in 2003 (when the country’s new constitution was supposedly publicly discussed), before her microphone was shut off.
She made clear that, despite all the rhetoric about democracy, women’s rights were more threatened than ever thanks to the appointment to government of some of the most barbarous criminals in Afghanistan’s recent history.
According to the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), these include ‘the vile Sayyaf’, whose practises included boiling people alive, and Khalili, whose gang specialised in gouging out eyes.
Joya and RAWA are not ignored by the international press and the US administration, but only half the story is told.
Joya’s outburst was not an example of how women can speak their mind in the new Afghanistan, but a striking illustration of how repressive the nation remains. Four serious attempts have been made on her life since 2003, and she now travels only with armed bodyguards and in the burqa she despises.
As for RAWA, they are held up as critics of the Taliban, which they undoubtedly are.
But they are also critics of the current regime, staging a yearly protest outside the UN offices in Islamabad to mark 28 April, the day the Russian regime fell in Afghanistan.
Officially, this is a victory day but to RAWA, and all women, it is a day of despair, when the Soviet oppressors, whom they had valiantly resisted for so long, were replaced by the violent misogynists of fundamentalism.
RAWA describes itself as ‘the oldest political/social organisation of Afghanistan women, struggling for peace, freedom, democracy and women’s rights in fundamentalism-blighted Afghanistan since 1977.’
Their campaign of resistance has maintained a continuous thread through the Russian occupation, the Taliban and the Karzai regime, and their weapon of choice is education.
They run schools for boys and girls, and literacy classes for adult women. Literacy levels amongst women in Afghanistan are amongst the lowest in the world, according to UNICEF, at 2-3 per cent (for men, it stands at 28 per cent).
They want to create more schools, publish textbooks containing modern scientific and political knowledge, establish public libraries in every city, town and village in Afghanistan, and run IT courses, to enable women to access the greatest library of all, the internet.
“We have these plans because we are firmly of the opinion that knowledge itself is a great power and it will raise women’s awareness about their human rights and their place in society and about the social and political problems of the country which consequently will lead to understanding their worthy role in every sphere.”
RAWA’s work, which extends into the refugee camps in Pakistan where so many Afghan women and their families flee, also includes running mobile health services, establishing small enterprises - such as chicken farms and carpet weaving workshops - to enable women to earn an honourable living.
Their activities extend to, political lobbying and education, establishing orphanages and women’s refuges, tracing missing women, distributing food to areas hit by drought and earthquakes, and helping families relocate to places where they won’t be terrorised.
All of which they do at enormous risk to themselves - their first ‘leader’, Meena Kamal, was assassinated in 1987 by a warlord in collaboration with KGB forces - and on precious few resources.
Their political demands include the bringing of war criminals, such as Khan, Khalili and Sayyaf, to justice and the unqualified adherence to the principle of democracy “and its major tenet - secularism”.
They should be lauded as the champions of women’s rights and freedom, but they are ignored by the West, because they don’t fit into the legend of the American liberation of the Middle East.
But RAWA continue to resist, because they must, and because they are all the women of Afghanistan have going for them right now.
* See: www.rawa.org

Gie’s Peace – Morag Balfour

Morag is a long term activist in the peace movement and is the SSP’s peace and disarmament spokesperson

Shop a priest!

Just when I thought I’d never again be shocked by the contents of a newspaper, the most outrageous story grabbed me. No, I haven’t been reading the News of the World, if that’s what you’re thinking. This thing was in the Sunday Herald.
It seems that the Catholic Church has abandoned its own doctrine and is being far too tolerant of its homosexual clergy. Now that shocked me. Who knew they had that problem? Tolerance?
It appears that there is a group of raving fundies just waiting to remedy the situation though, so the Catholic Church may yet escape the sin of tolerance.
They call themselves ‘Catholic Truth’, are lay people, obviously self-appointed and quite daft. Their website has a section on ‘homosexuality’, with the cracking strapline underneath - ‘Join Our Heavenly Witness Protection Programme’. In this section, they actually encourage readers to report priests/bishops/church employees who are gay and have partners or are suspected of ‘activity’.
This appalling site then goes on to make a link, the most tenuous I’ve seen in my entire life, between homosexuality and paedophilia. Apparently, shopping your priest for being gay will stop children being abused. No matter then that 95 per cent of convicted child abusers are actually heterosexual. In their wacked-out little minds ‘to expose homosexual activity is a great work of charity’.
Catholic Truth tend to bitch about just about everything though. I think they want the Latin Mass back too.
The ‘recommended books’ section should be re-labelled ‘jokes’ I think. Try this one out for laughs - this one is describing The Devil’s Final Battle by Father Paul Kramer: “Father Kramer links terrorist attacks and wars to the suppression of the Fatima message. Provides evidence that we are living through The Great Apostasy, the final conflict for our souls. Reads like a thriller. Highly recommended.”
As an aside, the Fatima message thing is quite interesting. Mary appeared to three weans and showed them folk burning in Hell, but only for a short period.
They were traumatised. This happened out of doors - mushrooms anyone?
This noxious bunch can’t be left to have the final word on sexuality within the Catholic Church. I don’t believe in hell, but if I did, I’d rather spend eternity burning there as opposed to spending five minutes in heaven with these guys.
They’d denounce me anyway, I’m so liberal theologically it’s funny; I’m into ecumenical and interfaith stuff, frequently think of burning huge swathes of The Bible and I’ve spent my whole life running from idiots with ‘strong doctrine’.
I think I might be a heretic.
I’m a Quaker and a member of the Iona Community. The Iona Community is an ecumenical, very liberal, Christian Community. It welcomes openly Lesbian and Gay people. One of our number is transsexual, and she is loved for who she is. I couldn’t be part of something that didn’t have acceptance and love at its core. What use is anything else?
But alas, those dubious in theology or in grasp of reality are never happier than when they’re ‘discovering’ new witches to burn. And people laugh when I tell them that growing up within the church prepared me perfectly for politics?

—page five—

letters page

‘Solidarity’ shun workers’ rights
The current situation facing SSP Parliamentary staff is very grave. SSP Parliamentary staff are collectively employed by the SSP Group and the NUJ is the recognised trade union for staff.
Tommy Sheridan and Rosemary Byrne are set to withdraw their funds from the SSP Group staff allowance pool this week. This will endanger the job security of existing staff by leaving the pooled account short of the resources needed to pay salaries until April of next year.
Sheridan and Byrne have attempted to dictate which staff are retained by the SSP group and which staff transfer across with them to Solidarity. This is despite the repeated refusal by SSP members loyal to the party to transfer to working for Solidarity (sic).
Despite being written-to several times by the NUJ, neither Sheridan nor Byrne have deigned to reply, far less enter into consultation and negotiation with the trade union as to how their actions will affect the job security of staff employed by the SSP group.
The trade union has the legal right to be consulted about changes to contracts of employment, potential redundancies and transfers of undertakings (when staff or employers change hands). These legal rights have been totally ignored by Sheridan and Byrne despite staff reminding them of their duties on several occasions.
We are forced to conclude that workers’ rights are not something that Solidarity’s MSPs have any interest in upholding. Parliamentary staff have now contacted the NUJ with a view to seeking their support in an official dispute with Sheridan and Byrne.
Bill Scott, NUJ Rep,
SSP Parliamentary Staff, Edinburgh

Another Tesco is possible...
With the new plans submitted on Tesco’s proposals to build in Partick, Glasgow, I strongly urge all those in the area who oppose this ‘retail village’ to go and view the exhibition of the plans at Partick Library between 13-15 September, and to speak to their local Councillor or MSP before it’s too late.
We must consider the threat to local businesses, and the damage to Partick’s infrastructure. Despite the claims from Tesco of jobs being created, those lost from Dumbarton Road’s shops will tarnish such claims.
And levels of traffic congestion and pollution in the area are already unacceptable - an additional supermarket will only compound the problem.
The excessive number of student flats proposed, without even considering their height, will be a blot on the landscape.
Surely affordable social housing for all generations would be far more acceptable in such a desirable area, when so many people cannot afford to join the housing ladder.
Jill Ferguson, Glasgow

Scrap the SSP’s 50-50 rule
Tommy Sheridan has claimed that the Scottish Socialist Party is “gender-obsessed”. Although I disagree with most of his arguments and am staying in the SSP, that is a valid point.
The 50-50 rule, supposedly adopted to ensure gender balance within the party, should be scrapped.
Such positive discrimination is counter-productive.
The resentment it causes probably increases the amount of sexism in the party, which is certainly not severe enough to require such undemocratic measures.
Ridiculously, the 50-50 rule may even make it less likely for gender balance to be achieved amongst the SSP’s representatives in the Scottish Parliament.
I am confident that we can win several seats, but if we only win one, it will almost certainly be the person at the top of the Glasgow list. If there was a fair vote, Rosie Kane, who was elected second on the list behind Tommy Sheridan in 2003, would almost certainly come top.
But it has already been decided that a man should top the Glasgow list.
Steve Wallis, Glasgow

Molly’s trial by media
If you read the papers on 30 August, you’d have read all about the ‘abduction’ of 12-year-old Molly Campbell, from her rightful home on Lewis with her mum, to darkest Pakistan, where, so it was rumoured, she was going to be forced into an arranged marriage, presumably by her dad.
MSPs and MPs were falling over themselves to assist in this headline-grabbing international emotional crisis.
A day or so later, it turned out that Molly, who wants to be known by her Islamic name Misbah, went of her own free will, because she wanted to be with her family. She hadn’t been able to see them at all under the existing custody arrangement. Living in Pakistan, she reasoned, she’d get the best of both worlds, in that she’d be able to see her mum too.
What gets me is how quick the media were to characterise this as an abduction, with all the intentionally horrible connotations that word conjures up, when in fact it was clearly nothing more sinister than a messy and rather complicated broken family situation.
Had Molly’s dad been a white stockbroker, living in Dorset, we’d probably have never heard about her decision to go and live with him.
Instead, we saw it through the lens of a media that knows racism sells papers and TV shows, and will gleefully press all the right buttons when an opportunity like this arises. We should always be very wary of what we read in the press, even the so-called ‘quality’ press, which was just as culpable in this case as the trashiest of tabloids.
Molly’s father was branded a brutal abductor on the basis of his ethnic origin, nothing more. No wonder his daughter was glad to leave the UK.
Paula Smith, Glasgow

Bribes to return to Iraq

by Wullie McGartland

A pilot scheme launched by the UK government to bribe asylum seekers to go back home is leading people into returning to dangerous war zones and areas blighted by death and mayhem.
The scheme which opened in January and closes next month, offers asylum seekers £3,000 to return to their countries of origin.
To date it has received a total of 6120 applications, with people from war-torn Iraq applying in greater numbers than any other nationality, despite the Foreign Office warning against all travel to the country.
In 2005, just 768 Iraqis left the UK voluntarily, but the latest statistics state that 1387 have left this year.
People feel they have no real choice but to return.
Many have been waiting five or six years to get refugee status, a time when they are not allowed to receive any benefits or to work.
As one Kurdish man told press:
“The [UK] government puts too much pressure on people to go back.
“The support the government gives is small and it forces people into feeling that though they are not safe in Iraq they are also not safe living here - they have no freedom, they have no papers, no job, no house and no life.
“They prefer to go to hell than stay here.”
Campaign groups have warned the UK government that many of the people being bribed to return are facing danger and hardship that will force them to flee Iraq once again. Kasim Karim, of the Kurdish Cultural Association, said:
“They are returning on the promise that [the government will] give them £3000 if they return before December.
“If they return after this they may only be given £1000, which is nothing.”
Mr Karim also stated that he had spoken to returnees who were finding it difficult to settle and predicted that many would seek asylum again at a later date.
Meeting learns of good news for Souidi family
Over 50 people gathered in a community centre in Maryhill, Glasgow last Friday night, brought together by a campaign to help a local Algerian family fight to stay in Glasgow.
Ahlam Souidi spoke to the Voice last week about how she and her family, who’ve lived in Glasgow for five years, are facing deportation.
There’s been some good news since then, with the family’s lawyer securing a judicial review in the High Court - this doesn’t look at new evidence but does mean that previous decisions made regarding the family’s case will be re-examined.
With that news shared, Friday’s meeting looked more broadly at the issues facing asylum seekers in Glasgow, the fear and uncertainty faced everyday by families who arrived in Scotland looking for safety and security, but live here under the constant worry of detention and deportation.
Asylum seekers shared experience of trauma, and how they’ve begun to organise to support each other.
There were several organisations represented, many of whom Ahlam Souidi has worked with in her super-human efforts as a community activist, including members of the Fire Brigade who Ahlam has helped establish a fire safety programme specially designed for refugees in Glasgow.
A number of practical proposals were made from the meeting. Appeals were made for letters of support for the Souidi family which their lawyer can collate to strengthen their case.
A demonstration called by the Unity network for Saturday 7 October will now incorporate a feeder march from Maryhill, as well as a number of other areas in the city. The event marks the Third International Day of Action for Migrants and Refugees’ Rights. The main demo will start in George Square at 12noon.
* For more on Ahlam Souidi’s story see Voice issue 277 at: www.scottishsocialistvoice.net
Send letters of support for Ahlam to the Voice: voice.editorial@btconnect.com - we’ll pass them on.

—centre pages—

 

EDUCATION IS NOT A FOUR-LETTER WORD

Socialist education in high on the SSP’s agenda - but what does that actually mean, especially when for most Scots, school years were never the best of our lives. Here, Malcolm McDonald suggests some radical education methods, while Matt Preston looks to the late Paolo Freire, one of the world’s most significant educational theorists, for inspiration.

Keeping socialist ideas alive

by Malcolm McDonald

A recurring theme throughout the turbulent summer of 2006 has been education within the Scottish Socialist Party. Or rather, the lack of it.
Faced with the most emotionally and politically confusing situation in the party’s short history, many SSP members felt the lack of it, and keenly.
Without a solid grounding in socialist politics, many felt that they were navigating without a compass, forced to depend on gut instinct and the opinions of the people closest to hand. It would be a crying shame if the brave new SSP failed to address the issue of education and equip the membership for the fights of the future - which hopefully will be external, not internal, ones.
But what form should this education take? The traditional 45-minute lead-off from a small pool of ‘good’ speakers, followed by contributions and questions from the floor? A series of informative pamphlets penned by our resident panel of experts? Or something, dare we say it, a little more radical?
We could begin by challenging the very word ‘education’.
It suggests something that is done to you, and fits in exactly with the 45-minute ‘chalk and talk’ format.
We should be talking about learning, as opposed to information being posted in. About skills and knowledge being brought out and enhanced, and attitudes - that is, ways of thinking - considered, questioned, challenged perhaps.
We also need to think about what we are trying to achieve here. A party of people who can rhyme off the history of the Bolshevik revolution without stopping for breath?
Or a party of people who can use the lessons of history, including the history currently in the making, to further the cause of socialism today?
People who can make the link between the anti-war movement and furnishing schoolchildren with a free, nutritious school meal every day of the week, people who, when faced with complex issues such as the betrayal of trade union members by unaccountable but once lauded leaders, can think it through in political terms rather than resort to knee-jerk responses.
People who can talk the talk - and know what they’re saying.
The Scottish Socialist Party’s education working group, which hasn’t met for over two years now, started to formulate some better ways of doing things and these ideas, plus initiatives from Scottish Socialist Youth and others, were beginning to bear fruit, with workshops at National Council, theatre forum at Socialism 2005, and a number of popular education methods creeping into dayschools and branch meetings. But too often we resorted to our default mode; that 45-minute thing.
If we are to radically change the way we do things, it is important to understand that people relate to the world in different ways.
In other words, different people learn different things in different ways. One comrade’s enlightening read of a thoughtful pamphlet, enabling them to become the historically clued-up socialist tactician they aspire to being, is another comrade’s role play in a supportive group environment, enabling them to become the empathetic yet persuasive street-level activist they aspire to be.
All of which means that the method will vary according to the message. And the members.
Activist is a bona fide learning term; it means someone who learns by doing. But not by being thrown in at the deep end, necessarily. Activists respond to role play, to supported practice, to open debate leading to outcomes.
The trick is to think creatively and use your resources.
If you have an actor in your branch, encourage them to take part. If you have a teacher, they could learn you a thing or two.
Including the fact that school students need variety to keep taking it all in and, more to the point, start learning for themselves. Variety means nothing that drags on for more than, say, 15-minutes. It means interspersing discussion with a video, or an activity, or a Q&A session. Keep waking them up!
Different presentations throw issues and ideas into relief. Give it small bursts, with a bit of repetition and don’t give them the hand-outs till the end, cause they’ll only go and read them while you’re talking! And always bear in mind; you are not just posting info into people - you are trying to encourage them to think, to get it, to do the mailings themselves.
How do you know it’s working? You have to ask. Feedback is essential to keep honing the methods and keep the ideas alive.
We’ll know we’ve got there when someone you’ve never seen before stands up at National Council and says something simple, clever, that you’ve never thought of before.
We’ll know we’ve got there when the membership doesn’t only listen - it answers back.
That’s when change happens. And that’s when education gets really exciting.
* If you would like to be involved in the SSP education working group, email Malcolm: mc5999@hotmail.com

“Education either functions as an instrument (to) bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” - Paolo Freire

Freire: education for liberation

by Matt Preston

Paolo Freire is one of the world’s most significant educational theorists. His ideas and practices have formed the basis for radical education movements across the world, and, minus the radical bits, are even used by the CIA. Yet socialists are still reluctant to take his methods on board.
Born into a middle class family in Brazil in 1921, Freire was fortunate to receive a university education and qualified as a lawyer. Yet through his family’s experience of hardship and hunger during the economic depression of the 1930s, Freire developed a burning awareness of the inequalities surrounding him.
Ditching his career in law he threw himself into working to better the lives of ordinary people. After a period spent studying education, Freire was invited to organise a literacy programme in the city of Recife, and went on to head Brazil’s national literacy campaign. Here he developed the popular educational methods that have made him famous.
Central to Freire’s work is a criticism of traditional education. Here the educator holds the knowledge and must fill the learner’s empty mind. Freire sees this process as dehumanising the learner as it ignores the knowledge that people already have. It also reinforces social division, as the oppressed are encouraged to accept without question the privileged educator’s view of the world.
Freire linked his teaching of literacy to the students’ direct experience of the world, arguing that reading and writing was of no use to the oppressed unless it empowered them to improve their situation. Provocative words such as ‘land-owners’, ‘migration’ and ‘refugee’ would be the starting point.
Further, by writing about their own reality, learners would develop their social analysis as well as becoming literate.
Following the right-wing military coup in 1964, Freire was considered a danger to the authorities and he was first jailed, then exiled. In Chile, he published the essay ‘Education as the Practice of Freedom’, which described his experiences in Brazil, as well as his most famous work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which looks at the political aspects of education. In this book he criticises revolutionary leaders who still rely on traditional methods of education.
Even those whose aim is to liberate the oppressed, Freire argues, can become an elite who encouraged passivity and dependence on their leadership. He attacks those left leaders who rely on manipulation, sloganeering and prescribing ideas to their followers, saying that “a true revolution” must be based on a “courageous dialogue with the people”.
For him this starts from an honest account of its achievements as well as its mistakes.
Freire echoes Karl Marx in his insistence that revolutionary social change must be led by the people, bluntly stating that “if the people cannot be trusted, there is no reason for liberation”.
Learning takes place most effectively when the learner is active, and not just passively listening or reading. This does not contradict the fact that those with knowledge and experience of struggle must pass this on. But it must be done in a dialogue with newer recruits to the movement.
According to Freire, educators should not start by deciding what the students need to learn, but should instead find out as much as they can about the student’s views. In the process the educator must also be prepared learn. Summing this up, Freire famously says that “no-one teaches another, nor is anyone self taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world”.
By applying this method, the learner is empowered by, not alienated from the educational process.
Freire maintained his writing and activism until his death in 1997. He helped establish numerous popular education programmes around the world and, returning to Brazil in 1980, was a founding member of the Worker’s Party (PT), becoming San Paolo’s minister for education in 1989.
See: www.paolofreire.org and www.freire.org

—page eight—

people not profit

Saving the Vale

The future of emergency treatment at the Vale of Leven Hospital is in doubt after a pilot project was scrapped sparking fears over patient safety.
The Lomond Integrated Care Project at the Vale was the first of its kind in Scotland, established after concerns were raised by consultants and anaesthetists.
But emergency heart attack and stroke victims and all ‘blue light’ patients will no longer be treated at the Vale after 9pm.
The Dumbarton Vale of Leven branch of the SSP has been at the forefront of the campaign to halt cuts and restore services at the Vale of Leven District and were out on the streets over the weekend with stalls in Dumbarton and the Vale.
Local people queued to sign petitions calling for all services to be restored.
Scottish Socialist Party Councillor Jim Bollan said:
“This is another nail in the coffin for the Vale hospital.
“New labour have once again re-organised health care provision resulting in cuts and an inferior service if you live in the wider Vale area.
“The Scottish Socialist Party has long argued for our local services to be democratised and made accountable to local residents.
“We have long campaigned to have the funding levels increased to wipe out the cuts being inflicted on our local health services.
“This campaign will continue. Jackie Baillie MSP needs to be held to account for this further erosion of health care services in the Vale of Leven area.”

Right-to-buy suspended as housing stock reaches critical new low

The full implications of Thatcher’s right-to-buy scheme for council houses are finally being felt as Scotland’s housing stock drains to a disastrous low.
Falkirk is the latest area looking likely to suspend the home ownership scheme as over 500 homes are being lost to public ownership every year.
In 1980, there were 34,000 council homes here.  Now there are 18,500.
In June, Dumfries and Galloway council, who remain the strategic authority for council housing despite the stock having been transferred to a housing association, voted to suspend the right-to-buy, with 69 villages designated ‘pressured areas’.
These are rural areas where affordable housing is rapidly becoming unavailable, with the knock-on effect that people in services such as teaching and nursing and firefighting cannot afford to live there, so the services die and families move out and areas dwindle into retirement zones or commuter belts.
Just a month previously, Perth and Kinross did likewise, as areas like Highland Perthshire had become desperately short of accommodation, with over half the social housing stock sold since 1980 and, crucially, not replaced.
St Andrews and East Fife suspended the scheme in May too, over concerns that villages like Lower Largo, Pittenweem and Crail had very little available council accommodation. There are shortages in West Fife too.
A Shelter Scotland spokesperson comments: “There is no doubt that the right-to-buy has been popular - but this has been at the expense of both the most disadvantaged in society, and increasingly the ability of local authorities to meet housing need.
“An increasing number of Scottish local authorities recognise that the right-to-buy is one of the main causes of a shortage of affordable housing.”
In fact, right-to-buy drains the housing stock at the rate of around 11,000 houses a year. Since 1980, 440,000 have gone, with precious little by way of replacement.
East Renfrewshire were the first to suspend the right-to-buy and the Highlands and Islands looks set to be the seventh, as acute shortages start to bite in areas including Inverness, Badenoch and Strathspey, Nairn, Skye and Lochalsh.
The other housing news from the Highlands is that, this month, the proposal to transfer the social stock to a private landlord, the Highland Housing Association, will be distributed to 14,500 homes, with a ballot in late October, results due in November.
Unlike the arm-twisters in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Highland Council are not trying to blackmail tenants by saying that if they vote YES, all the housing debt will be written off by the Treasury.
Oh no, they’re going for a refreshing new tack, warning  tenants that if they vote NO, their rents could go up by £700 in eight years!
Housing Stock Transfer is also being proposed for Stirling and Renfrewshire, and the SSP is supporting the NO campaigns, as transfer to a private landlord, as the Glasgow travesty has illustrated, leads only to chronic under-investment, rising rents, no public accountability, demolitions without replacements, and the further erosion of the principle of publicly-owned, affordable housing for people to live in.
People must be the priority, not profits for private companies.

SSP goes streets ahead in Irvine

The SSP continued its campaigning work in Irvine in Ayrshire this weekend.
Our demand for an end to pensioner poverty and for a £160 non means-tested pension for everyone struck a chord with many people.
A good number came to the stall to discuss problems with their pensions and fuel bills and some expressed an interest in joining the Scottish Socialist Party.
There was also a lot of fear regarding government attacks on Incapacity Benefit.
One disabled woman said she was made to feel like a criminal by the government, just because she managed to put on her lipstick!
It was good to have our presence there, and clearly lots of local people thought so too.

—page nine—

cultural resistance

Banksy has a pop at music industry fame

by Simon Whittle

Earlier this month, it was revealed that UK mystery street artist Banksy had swapped over 500 retail copies of Paris Hilton’s debut CD, Paris, with his own version, complete with retouched artwork and remixed music.
Banksy is renowned for his guerrilla art, which has appeared in locations as far apart as Glasgow, New York and even Israel’s Apartheid Wall in Palestine (see Voice issues 213 and 240).
DJ Danger Mouse - who, in 2004, notoriously created The Grey Album by remixing The Beatles (aka The White Album) with The Black Album by Jay-Z - is behind the Paris Hilton remixes.
For the artwork, Banksy has Barbara Kruger-fied images of the model-turned-wannabe-popstar with slogans like “90 per cent of success is just showing up”, “Every time someone asks me how I am, I hesitate for a little bit too long” and “Every CD you buy puts me even further out of your league”.
The original barcode was left on the CDs, so people buying them would not realise they had been tampered with.
Banksy’s spokeswoman said he had tampered with the CDs in branches of HMV and Virgin as well as independent record stores, in 48 shops in cities including Bristol, Brighton, Birmingham, Glasgow, London and Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Song titles on the CD have been changed to names like Why Am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For?
A spokesperson for HMV said that the chain had recovered seven of the CDs from two Brighton shops but that no customers had complained or returned a “doctored” version.
The motive behind the ‘prank’ is not about two guys ganging up on a model, or popstar, or whatever Paris is calling herself this week. That’s not the issue. Banksy, in his excellent book of art, Wall and Piece, makes it clear where he stands:
“The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous.
“Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don’t go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit.”
Banksy and Danger Mouse released the following short statement on their Paris project: “It’s hard to improve on perfection, but we had to try.”
According to a ‘leaked’ email, Danger Mouse met Banksy in London while shopping for disguises. But why the disguises?
Banksy’s identity remains unknown. Like a street rat, he’s out and about in the dead of night, shimmying up drainpipes, along the outside of railway bridges, crawling past Israeli checkpoints, generally evading the law in order to deliver his unique brand of political art.
He’s the man in the overcoat in London’s Tate Gallery, or New York’s Metropolitan Museum, waiting for the right moment to hang his own subverted classics to the wall, works that often go weeks before being ‘discovered’.
“Remember crime against property is not real crime,” says Banksy.
“People look at an oil painting and admire the use of brushstrokes to convey meaning.
“People look at a graffiti painting and admire the use of a drainpipe to gain access.”
Danger Mouse is one half of pop duo Gnarls Barkley, who had a massive international hit with Crazy earlier this year. He also produced last year’s Demon Days album by Gorillaz (featuring Damon Albarn). Banksy did the cover art for the Think Tank album by Blur, who also feature Albarn in their line-up.
It’s quite possible that Danger Mouse and Banksy met through the Blur/Gorillaz frontman.
The HMV spokesperson added: “I guess you can give an individual such as Banksy a little bit of leeway for his own particular brand of artistic engagement.
“Often people might have a view on something but feel they can’t always express it, but it’s down to the likes of Banksy to say often what people think about things.”
Are HMV breaking the mould by condoning subversive art, even if it means branding their own customers as thick? Or are they just desperately trying to look cool?
Or are they simply licking the arse of someone they see as ‘famous’?
I dunno about you, but my money’s on the arse-licking.

SPANISH CIVIL WAR MEMORIAL EVENTS

A series of events have been organised by Fife Federation of Trade Union Councils to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War and those from Fife who made the journey to Spain to serve with the International Brigades. They include:

* Music night: 27 September, 7-10pm at Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy. Featuring Dunragan, Socialist Musicians Collective, John Morton, Chris Miles and Gordeanna McCulloch. Tickets £3 available now from the box office: 01592 412929.

* Film night: 3 October, Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy 7pm. Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom - regarded as one of the best films about the Spanish Civil War. Apart from the fight against fascism, the film also deals with the complex issues surrounding the many political groups that made up the opposition to Franco. Tickets £3.

* Spanish Civil War memorial re-dedication ceremony: 7 October, 11am. Assemble at Kirkcaldy Town House for march to the Memorial.

* Memorabilia display: 27 September until 8 October, Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy. Small display of memorabilia relating to the Spanish Civil War and the Fife veterans.

Roses against Nazis

Preview: My Dark Sky - The White Rose Resistance to Hitler and the Holocaust. Written by Tim Nunn, directed by Katherine Morley. Première at the Tramway, Glasgow, Saturday 16 September, 7.30pm, £5/£3
The White Rose was a group of young people in Nazi Germany. Instead of following the tide of fascism they organised resistance by publishing pamphlets against the Nazis, organising secret meetings and conducting graffiti campaigns.
In February 1943 two of them, siblings Sophie and Hans Scholl, were caught distributing the White Rose pamphlets. Within weeks, most of the group were in custody and swiftly executed.
Their individual stories, backgrounds and motivations for campaigning against Hitler varied enormously. Some had already served in the army and some had seen with their own eyes the persecution of Jews, Russians and Poles on the Eastern Front.
Most them were very engaged with the arts - music, literature and visual arts. Some had been sucked into the Hitler Youth and turned against Nazism after having been a part of it. Others had always been committed in their opposition.
The true story of the White Rose is full of drama, heroism, romance, tragedy, the beauty of great art and music, and the complexity of relationships between young people from different economic and religious backgrounds.
This new play, My Dark Sky, is a portrait of the White Rose and its core members during the last few days of their protest.
* See ‘My Dark Sky’:
Tramway, Glasgow: 16 September (Preview), 20-23, 27-30 September, at 7.30pm. Box office: 0845 330 3501. www.tramway.org; Carlibar Primary School, Barrhead, 13 October at 7.30pm. Box office: 0141 577 3828; Carnoustie High School Theatre, 20 October at 7pm, call Pauline Meikleham on 01241 435 222 for info; Theatre Workshop, Edinburgh, 26-28 October at 7.30pm. Box office: 0131 226 5425. www.theatre-workshop.com; Regal Community Theatre, Bathgate, 3-4 November at 7.30pm. Box office: 01506 433 634; Lochside Theatre, Castle Douglas, 16-17 November at 7.30pm. Box office: 01556 504 506. www.lochsidetheatre.co.uk

—page ten—

international news

US aims to bring back rebranded landmines

by Ken Ferguson

Famously banned after a high profile campaign in which ‘Peoples’ Princess’ Diana played a prominent role, landmines could make a comeback if Bush has his way.
The silent, killer-weapons were banned amidst pictures of mutilated kids and legless soldiers, and Bush spin doctors are not about to link the floundering President with such grisly images. That’s why we are about to be told about ‘networked munitions systems’ which is the sanitised title for a new generation of anti-personnel mines.
The initial target of the re-launch are the politicians in the US Congress who will have to vote the funding for development of this nasty high-tech landmine.
Although the US has not signed the international treaty banning landmines, even under Bush, policy was edging in that direction under the influence of the 154 countries that have banned mines, including all the US NATO allies.
Clinton refused to back the ban but set up a multi-million dollar search for ‘alternatives’, and the US claims not to have used them since the 1992 Gulf War, and has not made any since 1997. But amidst high profile ‘war on terror’ rhetoric around the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the Pentagon is requesting $688million for research on, and $1.08billion for the production of “alternatives to anti-personnel mines”. However, instead of developing alternatives to landmines, the Pentagon this year awarded a contract for initial production of high-tech weapons that look and act in a remarkably similar way to the conventional, victim-activated mines.
The general’s new toy is called ‘man-in-the-loop’ technology and are in fact landmines, renamed ‘networked munitions systems’. The key difference is that the decision to detonate the weapon is in the hands of a conscious human and this technology is designed to make landmines more discriminate.
Unlike conventional antipersonnel mines that detonate by being picked up, stepped on, or otherwise moved by a victim, this technology would limit the indiscriminate effects of mines by giving a soldier the ability to decide when to detonate a mine. A tripwire is touched, or an electronic beam broken by a potential victim, and a soldier, possibly stationed miles away, is alerted and has to decide whether to activate the weapon.
If new landmines were only able to detonate through this intentional action of a human they could be considered legal.
But the weapon system can also operate ‘autonomously’ - if the soldier flips a switch the weapon becomes a conventional anti-personnel mine. Just like the old-tech version now banned, this weapon cannot tell the difference between the boot of a soldier and the foot of a child.
Hundreds of millions of dollars researching alternatives to anti-personnel mines has produced, that’s right, another conventional landmine with a switch. Turn the switch one way for command detonation and the other way for victim-detonation. The generals may not call them landmines but this new indiscriminate weapon will seriously threaten the lives and limbs of civilians and soldiers wherever they are deployed. International Humanitarian Law requires that in war, a distinction must be made between civilians and military personnel and that all feasible measures be taken to protect civilians from the weapons of war.
The Pentagon has curiously turned this on its head and have used funds Congress has supplied to find alternatives to indiscriminate landmines to design another weapon capable of being operated like a landmine. The resumption of landmine production is certain to further erode the already thin global reputation of the US. But the current administration continues to insist they have no intention of ever joining the Mine Ban Treaty.
This puts them in a rogues gallery of states including countries, like Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, Georgia and Russia who have unscrupulously used landmines to block refugees from fleeing oppression, terrorise civilians and illegally annex sovereign territory.
The campaign against such weapons in the US is likely to intensify in the months ahead.

FIDEL CASTRO RECOVERS

by Brian Pollitt

Reports from Havana published by Prensa Latina and the Washington Post indicate that Fidel Castro is making a slow but steady recovery from major surgery carried out on 31 July.
He has been visited three times since then by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez who has reported lively discussions with him lasting up to two hours. Bolivian President Evo Morales also reported a more recent meeting, on 6 September, being impressed by Castro’s focus on Cuba’s co-operation in Bolivia’s medical and literacy campaigns. These include the provision of seven free opthalmalogic centres and 20 equipped hospitals.
Morales also met with Raul Castro, to whom Fidel has temporarily ceded his official State and Party positions, as well as Bolivian students studying medicine in Cuba. Cuba is about to host the summit of 116 developing nations of the Non-Aligned Movement and while Castro is not expected to preside over the event, he expects to receive in private a number of the 50 heads of state expected to attend.

—page eleven—

international news

Gaza at ‘breaking point’

by Roz Paterson

Gaza is at ‘breaking point’ according to the UN. Food, electricity and fuel are running out, while the number of wounded and dead being admitted to the increasingly over-stretched hospitals never seems to lessen.
There are 1.5million people herded into this tiny region of what should rightfully be Palestine; is it possible that Israel, with the tacit agreement of the international community, is going to let them all die?
This latest, most deadly siege of Gaza began back in June, when Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. The Israelis mounted a military offensive, allegedly to save this soldier and fend off further militant rocket attacks into Israel. Their actions, killing 240 Palestinians, 197 of them civilians, 50 of them children, bulldozing agricultural land, bombing the region’s major power plant, shutting all the borders and stopping the inflow of cash and resources, has neither rescued Shalit nor stopped the rockets.
Nor, says a UN official, has it led to “the fall of the Hamas government”, whom the Israelis insist are terrorists who cannot be tolerated for their refusal to recognise Israel or renounce violence.
In fact, Hamas have done both, accepting the possibility of a two-state solution, which implicitly acknowledges a recognition of Israel, and honouring until recently a unilateral ceasefire in the face of unremitting Israeli aggression.
Israel’s “strangulation of commerce and trade has ruined [Gaza’s] economy, it has brought the institutions of government to a point of near-meltdown and badly shaken the society”, engendering “mass despair, anger and a sense of hopelessness and abandonment”.
Palestinians are now regularly rooting in rubbish tips for food to eat; over 70 per cent cannot meet their family’s basic needs. “Women in Gaza tell me they are eating only one meal a day, bread with tomatoes or some cheap vegetables,” reports Kirstie Campbell, from the UN World Food Programme.
Nor is there fuel to cook the food they get. There are problems mounting up for the future too, as the Israelis have bulldozed some 4 per cent of farmland here. If that doesn’t sound like much, consider that, in total, less than 1 per cent of the UK herd was destroyed through Foot and Mouth, and remember the devastation that caused.
The fishing industry remains at a standstill, with 35,000 fishermen on permanent shore leave due to the ongoing presence of Israeli gunboats in Palestinian waters; in clear breach of all agreements regarding these waters. But hell, the Israelis have never been taken to task by their American paymasters yet for breaking agreements, so why should they care?
As for the withholding of monies, the Palestinians’ punishment for democratically electing a government the US didn’t want, at least 165,000 public sector workers are now into their third month without wages. Incoming funds have dwindled for the Palestinian Authority, from £200million to £25million.
Meanwhile, the death toll keeps rising. Last Friday, four Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers, three of them civilians. The day before, a teenage bystander was shot dead. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights comments: “We believe that the whole offensive against the Gaza Strip is characterised by being an act of revenge and retaliation in which civilians are paying the price.”
Particularly child civilians, who comprise one-third of conflict-wounded admissions to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the last three months. Many believe children are being deliberately targeted, to make life that bit more unbearable for the people of Gaza.
Juma’a al-Saqqa, a doctor at Shifa, says: “We have passed through the worst situation we have ever come across in our years of work. But this is our situation. What can we do? We raised our voices to the world, but nobody moves.”
Aid is getting through to Lebanon, the focus of international attention this summer. But Gaza, say aid workers, is much, much worse than Lebanon. And still deteriorating.

Turkish protestors dying on hunger strike

by Steve Kaczynski

In Scotland, lawyers sometimes do not even return their clients’ phone calls.
In Turkey, there is a lawyer in a small flat in Sisli, Istanbul who is dying for his clients’ sake. Behic Asci is a lawyer for the Halkin Hukuk Burosu (People’s Law Bureau).
Born in 1965, he has represented political prisoners for much of his life since qualifying as a lawyer, and has been victimised by the Turkish state for doing so.
He was arrested in 2004 and spent several months in prison - not the first time this has happened. And in late 2005, the state took away his official right to practise law.
However, this is not the reason he began his hunger strike. Since the end of 2000, a total of 122 people have died in protest at Turkey’s F-Type prisons, a new form of prison that includes strict isolation and solitary confinement.
The deaths started with 28 prisoners being killed during a state crackdown on prisons aimed at ending a hunger strike opposing the F-Types. The state operation, cynically called ‘Operation Return To Life’, involved amongst other things the burning to death of six women prisoners in Bayrampasa Prison, Istanbul.
But the hunger strikes didn’t end - they actually intensified, as prisoners were forced into the F-Type prisons. Many more deaths have occurred since then, mostly among prisoners on hunger strike like Meryem Altun, who I knew when she lived in London, but also among former prisoners and their supporters outside the jails, like Sultan Yildiz.
Yildiz was a stalwart supporter of the prisoners - I met her on solidarity delegations to Turkey. She paid the price of her bravery and dedication, by being murdered by police along with three others, in November 2001.
The state has been unyielding on the question of prisoner isolation, and the protesters and prisoners have shown extraordinary persistence.
Behic Asci joined the protest on 5 April this year.
He takes vitamin supplements, which allows the protest to last as many as 300 days before death occurs.
A woman in the southern city of Adana, Gulcan Goruroglu, and a woman prisoner named Sevgi Saymaz, currently held in Usak Prison, are also on hunger strike.
The attention of the international left has begun to be attracted to Behic’s protest in particular. He was visited by two reporters from Green Left Weekly in August.
In an email, Behic told me that “international solidarity is a condition of the international struggle against imperialism”. Behic and his comrades deserve true solidarity.
* Send messages of solidarity to: avukatbehic@mynet.com

Europe-wide asbestos campaign launched as deadly dust toll rises

by Voice Reporter

A campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of asbestos exposure is being launched by the European Commission in all 25 European Union member states.
The European Asbestos Campaign 2006 slogan will be ‘Asbestos is deadly serious - prevent exposure’. The initiative has been organised with the European Senior Labour Inspectors Committee (SLIC), the co-ordinating committee for labour inspectorates throughout the EU.
EU officials say that despite an EU-wide ban on all asbestos use, “the practical problem of preventing exposure to asbestos in the course of removal, demolition, servicing and maintenance activities remains”.
And with the increase in globalisation and increasingly close economic ties, the EU has to take extra care not to counteract its efforts by re-importing asbestos-containing materials.
SLIC says “the main focus of the campaign is on the protection of workers in maintenance-demolition-removal activities and waste disposal”.
Meanwhile, the global asbestos disease epidemic continues to be bad news worldwide. An official committee in India this week indicated that asbestos related health problems are rife among workers employed in shipbreaking in Alang, Gujarat.
The report, prepared by the Delhi-based National Institute of Occupational Health, found x-ray evidence of lung damage in almost one in six of the workers tested. The report added that all “stakeholders”, including medical professionals, need training on health issues related to asbestos exposure.
In Japan, the government said it will require all registered businesses in Japan to pay a total of 7.38billion yen (£33.5million) annually over four years to meet compensation payouts for asbestos related cases.
The government estimates asbestos related compensation costs will reach 76billion yen (£345million) by 2010. Companies are being asked to shoulder about 30billion yen (£136.2million) of the total bill. Employers are not being held to account everywhere, however.
A court in Spain last week found two doctors and two directors from the Uralita group not guilty of the murder of eight workers, who died of asbestos disease after being exposed to the fibre at the company’s asbestos factory in San Vicente del Raspeig.
The court said that those affected became ill before regulations on the use of asbestos came into force in 1982, and ruled that the company was not therefore responsible. The verdict is expected to be appealed.

—page twelve—

Afghanistan: ‘a problem unsolvable by military means’

by Ken Ferguson

We can only assume that even the ultra brazen ex-war minister John Reid now regrets his infamous remark about British squaddies heading up the Khyber into Afghanistan without having to fire a shot.
Now we are told hair raising tales of helicopters and equipment that cannot operate properly in the heat of Afghanistan (weather seems not to have been factored into the master plan) and ammunition stocks planned to last into next year now reaching rock bottom.
The Brits alone have fired around one third of a million shots since they took position in Helmand.
Alongside this the death toll continues to mount, a car bomb goes off in the capital Kabul and a regional governor is assassinated by the Taliban.
The reality is that exhausted troops are under 24/7 fire from a determined enemy and the ‘offensive’ is actually turning into a desperate holding operation reminiscent of the US and French experience in Vietnam.
Both Western powers there assumed that by deploying massive firepower and bombing they would crush their guerrilla opponents.
Both paid the price of their arrogance in death, humiliation and hard cash.
Now from the horse’s mouth comes confirmation that a similar fate is facing the US, Canadian and European troops in the hills of Afghanistan.

‘Screw up’
Captain Leo Docherty, a former aide-de-camp to the commander of British forces in Helmand Province, told journalists that the current offensive was a “textbook case of how to screw up a counter-insurgency.”
He said NATO commanders had been “sucked into a problem unsolvable by military means” as a result of pressure from the Afghan governor, and they are now caught in the middle of a civil war.
Captain Docherty recently resigned from the Scots Guards and is now free to speak his mind on the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan.
The NATO forces planned to seize territory and hold it and thus deny it to the Taliban.
<