Pope’s comments bolster anti-Muslim prejudice

by Eddie Truman, of Islamophobia Watch

In a world in which people with dark skins and vaguely foreign sounding names are being chucked off planes for fear they might blow up, Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks about Islam couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Choosing to quote the words of the 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”, the Pope displayed either a staggering ignorance of Islam or was making a calculated insult to the world’s Muslims.
The Catholic churches’ response to the outcry following his remarks was not to apologise but to explain that Muslims clearly didn’t understand what he was saying.
So that’s clear then; evil and stupid along with it.
Of course on matters of Catholic doctrine the Pope is, as we all know, infallible and so apologies don’t come naturally to a man who is always right.
It is the sheer hypocrisy of Pope Benedict’s attacks on Islam as a religion which is most breathtaking.
Here is the head of a religion which was involved in the systematic genocide of South American indigenous peoples, saying that Islam was an inherently violent religion!
Not only that but the Pope is either ignorant of the history of Islam or chooses to ignore the fact that for centuries the Muslim world propelled mankind into great scientific advance.
It did so while European civilisation waded through its own excrement and routinely slaughtered women for being ‘witches’.
Monarchs reigned with a religious police that held power through a book written in a language that the lower orders were not permitted to learn.
Fortunately for Europe, the Scots were one of the first to understand the necessity of overthrowing such tyranny.
So what have Muslims given us backward Europeans?
For a start, a sensible system of numbers. No longer were the Europeans completely crippled by the absurdity that was Roman numerals.
Islamic scientists contributed to algebra, algorithms, trigonometry, geometry, chemistry, cosmology, astronomy, medicine and optics.
Islamic scholars developed the concepts of modern hospitals, universities, observatories and civil systems.
As former Catholic nun and highly respected religious commentator Karen Armstrong said of the Pope’s remarks in The Guardian:
“We simply cannot afford this type of bigotry.
“The trouble is that too many people in the western world unconsciously share this prejudice, convinced that Islam and the Qur’an are addicted to violence.”

* See www.islamophobia-watch.com

Join the demo for democracy!

Saturday 30 September is a chance for the people of Scotland to march for Scottish independence and the establishment of a country free of Her Majesty and her blood soaked empire.
The demonstration has been called in Edinburgh by Independence First as part of their campaign for a referendum on independence for Scotland.
Scottish Socialist Party members and branches will be marching in unity with all those who want to see the end on the Union, the break up of the British state and the establishment of a Scottish republic.
The voices supporting independence in Scotland are growing louder day by day. A recent poll showed that 48 per cent of Scots were in favour of independence with 41 per cent opposed.
The SSP sees a successful independence referendum as the first step to the establishment of a Scottish workers republic.
* Demo details: Sat 30 September, 1.30pm Edinburgh. Marching from East Market Street (behind Waverley station) to the Scottish Parliament

News from Iraq

We’ve had both wonderful and tragic news from Iraq this week.
First of all, congratulations to Voice correspondent in Baghdad, Isam Rasheed, whose partner gave birth to a baby girl this week. Both mum and daughter are doing well.
However, even the happiest family is never far from tragedy in Iraq - Isam’s close friend Alaa Adel was murdered by US troops on 15 September.
Alaa had been working as Isam’s assistant recently, and was heavily involved in getting aid to places like Fallujah, ripped apart by the occupation.
Iraqis working in journalism risk their lives to get stories out which give us the true picture from the streets there. Never has that been clearer to us at the Voice.

Hunterston electricians strike against pay cut

Electricians at Hunterston power station in Ayrshire have entered their second week of strike action after bosses stopped a 50p-an-hour pay enhancement.
The payment, which has been in place for 30 years, was scrapped in January.
The workers, represented by Amicus, are in dispute with their employers Balfour Kilpatrick. British Energy, the nuclear power giant which runs Hunterston, had said they were not going to get involved.
But that changed when the strikers’ picket line was moved, at British Energy’s instruction, from the private road to the power station out to a roundabout just off the busy A78.
British Energy complained the original picket line had made workers “late”.
One of the strikers told the Voice the size of the police presence at the picket line had become “unbelievable”, but that the police had behaved reasonably.
Now police have stepped in asking British Energy to allow strikers back on to their preferred site.
The electrician added that British Energy employees were now coming under pressure to cross the picket line.
But the 40 Balfour Kilpatrick workers plan to keep their action going as long as necessary - their strike began with two days action last week, the same this week and next, and will continue until their payment is reinstated.

Give parents real choice

Single parents should be given the option of staying at home to raise their children, and be paid for doing so.
That is the recommendation of Kathleen Marshall, the Children’s Commissioner, speaking on Radio Scotland this week.
She says forcing parents to go back to work is not always the best thing for children, and therefore single parents should have the choice to act in the interests of their families.
She agreed ‘completely’ that work is a route out of poverty and that children would therefore benefit.
But she added:
“I think there are many (parents) who would prefer to be at home with their children and the children would benefit from that.”

‘Human time’
She noted:
“One of the things we are doing just now is squeezing valuable human time out of children’s lives.
“When they hang around with their friends, we disperse them.
“We put barriers in the way of innocent well-meaning adults acting with children. The time parents have to spend with their children is becoming ever smaller because of work.”
The response to her comments has included a knee-jerk anger at the idea of single mums watching daytime TV all day at the expense of the state, borne of the all-too-prevalent idea that childcare is easy, involving nothing more than babysitting.
All of which reflects the dismal status of children in the UK. We may say, as a nation, that we value childhood, yet our government allows them to be treated first and foremost as consumers, to be marketed to and exploited for corporate profit.

Vital role
Nor is parenthood accorded much respect, despite the vital role in educating and nurturing the upcoming generation that parenting plays.
Good parenting can make all the difference between breaking cycles of neglect and underachievement, and allowing them to perpetuate.
This latter, if you want to be completely balance sheet about it, has to be paid for in the end too, in terms of social work intervention, healthcare, state benefits and so on.
In Venezuela, wages for housework are being phased in, in recognition of the role women play, not just in building communities, but also in raising the next generation of citizens.
We could learn a thing or two.

Afghan women and the USSR
I’m puzzled by the article on page four of Voice issue 278. We now know that the USA starting channelling money to the Mujahedin before the Soviet invasion in 1979 in an effort to precipitate just such an invasion, because they realised it would be unwinnable by the Soviets. Despite the manifest imperfections of the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan, it did succeed in introducing measures which for that country at that time were highly progressive: including education and literacy programmes for women.
It was the US-backed Mujahedin warlords who opposed and tried to destroy these programmes. The USA’s plan to bog the Soviets down worked, with massive funding and assistance to the anti-Soviet and fundamentalist Mujahedin forces eventually forcing the Soviets to withdraw and also contributing to the collapse of the USSR.
After the Soviets withdrew the Mujahedin overthrew Najibullah’s relatively progressive regime in 1992, after which civil war broke out within the former anti-Soviet camp between the Mujahedin and the Taliban. The Taliban took control of Kabul in 1996, and executed Najibullah, who was in hiding in the UN compound.
The article in Voice 278 talks of RAWA fighting the Soviet “oppressors”, and says that the leader of RAWA was killed in 1987 by the KGB working in collaboration with “a warlord”!
Surely it was the warlords who were trying to overthrow the Soviets? Am I just a long-time dupe of Stalinist propaganda?
Alex Miller,
Birmingham

SSP is still spot on
As a Scottish Socialist living in England I have been saddened by the recent split in the Scottish Socialist Party.
South of the border trade unionists and socialists have no party of their own. In this year’s council elections five separate left groupings stood in Merseyside where I am based, and to overcome this situation many of us have offered tentative support to the rival attempts by London based organisations to set up broader based movements. But now it is quite clear such organisations have no genuine commitment to socialist unity outwith their own shadowy control.
However I’m heartened to see that the Scottish Socialist Party remains as committed as ever to the best principles of our movement - working class democracy - as well as to inclusive and innovative ideas and practices.
For me the best thing about the Scottish Socialist Party was always that it was based on a recognition that we had to learn both from each other and from our mistakes and not repeat past crimes made in the name of socialism.
The world we want to win is shaped by the way in which we fight for it and relate to one another. Another world is possible and integrity and a commitment to equality must remain at very heart of our struggle to create it.
Respect and Solidarity appear to be somewhat misused slogans at the moment, but I would offer both to comrades in the Scottish Socialist Party and a warm welcome to those joining us in Manchester on 23 September.
Danny McGowan,
Secretary Sefton TUC, Merseyside (pc)

Union should look back in anger at shop’s demands
I read in a Sunday tabloid this weekend that Oasis (the clothes shop, not the band) has sent out an edict to its staff telling them what colour of underwear they’re allowed to wear, that they should have regular manicures and pedicures, and that their legs and arms shouldn’t be too hairy!
While this is all quite horrifying, it’s not too surprising from a retail giant, who treat their employees as the company’s property.
Particularly in the fashion industry, which is pretty much entirely based on instructing women on how they should look, and encouraging them to spend the most amount of money possible in following those instructions.
What was even more grim was the response quoted from an USDAW (shopworkers union) spokesman - and you could tell it was a man.
While he did concede that the rules were “bizarre” and not in anyone’s best interests, he added that “a woman could take it really badly if she was told her arms were too hairy.”
So, when an employer tries to exercise control over their employees, right down to the colour of our pants and the length of the hairs on our legs, what we can expect from a trade union is a request to be more sensitive with those easily upset ladies?
“Take it really badly”? Damn right I would.
Heather Marr,
Glasgow

50-50 is for all women
Steve Wallis’ letter last week (Voice issue 278) misses the point of the SSP’s 50-50 gender equality rule.
This mechanism for public elections is not there to ensure certain women are elected, but to ensure that women are equally represented by the SSP across the board in elections.
I agree with Steve that Rosie Kane would be the best candidate for the top of the SSP’s Glasgow list for next year’s Scottish Parliament list, and I will be delighted to see her voted back in.
The party had agreed earlier this year that our regional lists, four of which are topped by men and four by women, should keep the same male-female order as in 2003 as we had six sitting MSPs. However, since two MSPs have recently left the SSP, it is within reason to change that order.
In fact, a resolution is going to the October conference which will enable us to do that if we so wish.
The SSP’s 50-50 policy is quite clear that, not only should the eight lists be topped by equal numbers of men and women, but the party should also consider which seats are most winnable when deciding which should be topped by which gender, making Steve’s claim that 50-50 makes gender balance “less likely” to be achieved quite absurd.
As opposed to “undemocratic”, I firmly believe that the 50-50 policy is a necessary democratic measure which helps support and encourage women - marginalised and oppressed by society and therefore much less likely than men to put themselves forward for election - to play as full a role in the SSP as men.
As Rosie herself said in support of the 50-50 policy, the cream doesn’t always rise to the top - sometimes the cream can’t even get out the fridge if someone’s holding the door shut.
Ann Marie McKenna,
Glasgow

Why feminism should matter for socialists

Women’s Voice – Marion Hersh

Women form just over half the population and get the worst deal everywhere. Women worldwide do most of the world’s work, but earn a fraction of men’s pay. In Scotland most women earn just under three-fifths of what men do and full time women workers earn 16 per cent less than full time men. This is 30 years after the equal pay act - what a joke!
After being poor and working very hard all their lives, most women can look forward to a poverty-stricken old age with very low pensions. However, women do at least live longer than men, so we have a very long time in which to enjoy our poverty.
Women worldwide are affected by the experience or threat of violence. This starts at birth, with sex selective abortions and the killing of baby girls in many countries, and continues throughout a woman’s life.
Domestic violence is the major cause of death and injury for women aged between 16 and 44 (http://hardy.amnesty.org.uk/svaw/vaw/global.shtml). One in five women experiences rape or attempted rape in her lifetime and at least one in three women is beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused. 
Most women do not report rape and sexual violence, because we are still made to feel it is our fault and know we have little chance of being treated seriously by the legal system and, in some countries even risk being murdered for ‘adultery’. 
In Scotland, rates of reporting rape have increased, but the numbers of convictions and prosecutions have stayed the same. Therefore only 10 per cent of reported rapes actually get to court and convictions only occur in 4 per cent of cases (www.rcne.com). There are also proposals to cut the already short sentences for rape even further. Why bother? Why go through the trauma of reporting rape in the almost certain knowledge that your rapist is not going to be convicted and most likely not even prosecuted?
Women are still judged by their sexual behaviour and there are still double-standards - men are lads or real men (or whatever the current expressions are), whereas women are sluts and whores. In civil cases in Scotland, women can still be humiliated and embarrassed by being questioned in court about their previous sexual history, which has no actual relationship to the case.
This depressing list goes on and on and on, but there is not the space to discuss all the issues here. So what are we going to do about it?
Women are constantly being told that our issues are a diversion from the main struggle - come the ‘revolution’ we will get equal pay, equal rights, an end to male violence. Of course this has not happened and never will unless socialism pays serious attention to women’s issues. 
There are still a number of male ‘socialists’, some of them quite prominent, whose ‘socialism’ stops when they get home and who seem to think that the role of their female partner is to be a domestic servant and sex slave. There are also many male ‘socialists’ who seem to be unaware of the power imbalance between men and women. Visiting lap dancing clubs or paying for sex is not just a private matter, but has political implications and reinforces the dominant power position of men relative to women. 
Therefore, assuming that the ‘revolution’ will deliver on women’s issues is just plain false. Equally, relying on the state is not going to get women anywhere, as the equal pay act shows.
Working class women are affected both by all the same issues as working class men, as well as specific issues that affect us as women.
Socialism needs to take feminism and women’s issues seriously, both because they are very important in themselves and because being effective means recruiting more women.
Women will only join the SSP if it is really committed to women’s issues and organises in a way that removes the barriers to women being actively involved.

Images of war: out of sight, out of mind

by Dick Barbor-Might

There are many different ways to keep things unwanted out of sight and therefore out of mind. One of the ways the instigators of foreign wars avoid their responsibility is to make sure that the public don’t get to see images of our supposed enemies when they are dead.
Still less do they want us to know too much about dead civilians and how many there are of them.
Too much of that kind of thing appearing in the media and it becomes quite hard to pursue a robust foreign policy.
One tried and tested way in which warmongers can sidestep their problems is to cultivate selective pity.
This is one of the most dangerous phenomena of our dangerous times.
It provides a space in which we can be invited to feel “our” pain - but not theirs.
It happened in the aftermath of the First World War, this manipulation of a people’s grief, with the unveiling of the Cenotaph in London on Armistice Day 1920 and the laying to rest of the Unknown Soldier, interred in earth dug up from four battlefields.
My own father, a former soldier in the Royal West Kents, had survived through what seemed bad but turned out to be good fortune.
He had contracted rheumatic fever in the trenches and was in hospital when his battalion was decimated in some hopeless attack.
Now, as the sun pierced the autumn mist in Whitehall, my father stood amongst the vast quiet and respectful crowds as the troops reversed arms and the gun carriage bearing the coffin of the Unknown Soldier came into sight.
King George V stood bareheaded and alone, the King Emperor in person, commemorating the million Empire war dead. The ceremony was dignified and moving, the nation was united in grief, each and every dead soldier was remembered.
But not the German dead. Yet those deaths were remembered, in Germany.
Nowadays our situation is very different than in those long ago days of tragic and respectful grief.
True, our soldiers still die in the wars (although not so many of them) and, true, their deaths are numbered and their names are recorded. But the official commemoration of their deaths is muted.
The Prime Minister stays away from the funerals and many of the families of the dead and injured soldiers are not at all respectful but bitterly angry.
In Britain as in America the pro-war factions are discredited and there are beginning to be tacit admissions by Cabinet Ministers that “mistakes” were made in Iraq and “under-estimates” of Taliban strength in Afghanistan.
In the fading days of the Blair premiership the tactic is to avoid any encounter where the Government can be called to account.
Thus Manchester’s Labour Council tries to save Blair from the embarrassment of a Military Families against the War peace camp in Albert Square.
Despite the efforts of our rulers, war reporting does sometimes bring disconcerting images to our breakfast tables. And then the impact can be quite startling.
Does anybody remember seeing the newspaper photograph of the grinning skull of the Iraqi soldier incinerated at the wheel of his vehicle on the ‘Highway of Death’ during the First Gulf War?
Iraqi troops, defenceless against air attack, were fleeing along the Basra Road from Kuwait into Iraq. They were taken out in what American Air Force pilots joyfully called ‘the turkey shoot’.
Although there were not too many such images in the corporate media the public revulsion aroused by this and other photographs might have been a factor in persuading the older Bush, George W’s father, that the slaughter should be stopped.
That was in 1991.
Nineteen years earlier a British news camera man, Alan Downes, filmed a little Vietnamese girl in the village of Trang Bang, her back on fire from a napalm attack, running desperately towards his camera.
The image of Phan Thi Kim Phúc, then only nine years old, became iconic.
It authentically summed up the vileness and villainy of that other American war.
President Nixon thought or pretended to think that the image might be a fake. Thus do the powerful, the authors of these tragedies, avert their gaze.
The media may reveal but it can also conceal. The Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery has described how the images of death and destruction from Lebanon that we saw on our TV screens scarcely featured on Israeli TV.
Israelis, he wrote, were much too busy with the damage caused in their Northern towns by incoming Hezbollah rockets to feel pity and empathy for non-Jews, such feelings having “been blunted here a long time ago.”
But, as Avnery also pointed out, referring to the vastly greater Israeli onslaught:
“The pictures of death and destruction in Lebanon entered every Arab home, indeed every Muslim home, from Indonesia to Morocco, from Yemen to the Muslim ghettos in London and Berlin.
“Not for an hour, not for a day, but for 33 successive days - day after day, hour after hour... the mangled bodies of babies, the women weeping over the ruins of their homes, Israeli children writing ‘greetings’ on shells about to be fired at villages, [the Israeli Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert blabbering about ‘the most moral army in the world’ - while the screen showed a heap of bodies.”
The Israeli Defence Forces have sewn the dragons’ teeth of hatred, not only for Israel but also for America and Britain as the two nations whose leaders, Bush and Blair, gave Ehud Olmert the green light for the assault on Lebanon and blocked the desperate calls for an immediate ceasefire.
Bush and Blair have also been sewing dragons’ teeth in Iraq, the Arab country that along with Palestine most exemplifies the bad faith and cruelty of ‘the West’.
Just in the first weeks of the invasion and occupation of Iraq about 7000 civilians were killed, 95 per cent of them by US forces. “Killed” is a polite word; “slaughtered” would be more appropriate.
How many Iraqi civilians died as the result of the invasion and subsequent occupation that, remember, we were told would liberate the country?
The figures matter. They matter even to Blair. When asked how he could sleep at night when there were 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians on his conscience, it is said that he replied, “I think you will find the true figure is 50,000”.
The 100,000 figure was an estimate of “excess deaths” since the invasion and came from a study conducted by John Hopkins University School of Public Health in Baltimore and published in The Lancet.
Blair treated the whole initiative with contempt, denying pleas to commission a fully resourced inquiry into the deaths. That was in the autumn of 2004.
Nobody knows what the true figure of Iraqi deaths is by now, two years of bloody mayhem later.
The dreadful consequences of this war will haunt us for decades to come.
It is time for an ending and time for a reckoning, of those who have died and for those like Blair who are responsible for the catastrophe.

STOP THE WARMONGERS IN MANCHESTER

Two events amidst a week of protest at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester aim to bring home the weight of opposition to Blair and New Labour, particularly around the issue of the war - there’s the national Stop the War coalition demo, ‘Time to Go’ on Saturday 23 September and the locally organised Rally of Resistance on Wednesday 27 September. Manchester activist John Nicolson tells the Voice what’s going on in the city which was dubbed by its own Labour Council, the ‘City of Peace’.
The current climate of opinion in government and media is increasingly hostile - both at home and abroad. Seemingly all ‘foreigners’ are ‘illegal’ and all ‘illegals’ are ‘criminals’ - and the same goes for anyone in a mental health institution - and all should be deported, often to countries which have been ravaged by the wars instigated by the US and its UK backers.
Against all this, the Stop the War Coalition has called for a demonstration against the Labour Party Annual Conference in Manchester (on the Saturday before the Conference starts, 23 September) and the European Social Forum has called for an international day in support of migrants (on Saturday 7 October).
This should give activists a good base to work together imaginatively, respecting the huge experience that people on the left in Greater Manchester have, allowing us to express our anger and our need to turn back the ever-moving right-wing tide.
For many of us this has to be more than just building for a demonstration, no matter how large.
For us, it is important for the left to unite in activity, including but greater than a Stop the War demonstration following the same format as previous Stop the War demonstrations, which people must realise have not stopped the war or brought more people into opposition to it.
For example, refugees need to be a leading force within all such demonstrations, as the victims of war. New nuclear missiles need to be stopped - and the old ones got rid of as well!
Direct action should be encouraged, not just on the day before Labour’s Conference, but throughout the week.
People in Manchester will be invaded by the Conference and its security forces for the whole week after the demonstration - and many of us want to show our anger at these warmongers polluting our City of Peace in this way.
So as well as organising for the demonstration, there are many experienced activists with ideas which would make a valuable contribution and have a chance of bringing more people in.
There is nothing incompatible with encouraging and supporting other action during - or after - the week of their Conference and the different types of activity reinforce and strengthen each other.
Demonstrations alone will not end the war.
But the presence of thousands on the streets does give a boost to other activities.
That’s why we are building the resistance in lots of other ways. Particularly this means a happening, or gathering, or rallying - a sort of ‘Stop Manchester’ day, also known as ‘Peterloo - 2’ - in the middle of the conference week.
Now titled ‘Rally of Resistance’, people will be getting together from 1pm on Wednesday 27 September in St Peters Square - the same Peters Fields where the Peterloo massacre took place nearly 200 years ago. The event is not just against the wars, but FOR Social Justice and Peace - attacking oppression created by this Labour government locally and internationally.
This hopefully will bring together all campaigns, trade unions, activists, individuals, anyone who is angry with what Labour has done - including those who are victims of war, particularly the refugees living here.
The Stop the Warmongers group is asking as many groups and individuals as possible who might be interested in these ideas, and going well beyond Manchester, across the north and Scotland, so we can bring everyone together - pensioners, health workers, housing campaigners, solidarity campaigns, anti-deportation campaigns, students, school students, trade unionists, direct action campaigners, anti-war activists, women’s groups, street theatre, musicians, socialist choirs, comedians, and whoever else.
This is an event without organisers, without seeking permission of the state to take to our own streets, that goes beyond polite demonstrations sanctioned by an increasingly restrictive police state.
This is an event that everyone can tell everyone else about, in person, by leaflet, by email, by text, by website, until the whole of the centre of Manchester is filled with people who don’t want to be governed by those who have armed, allowed and even encouraged the warmongers to ride roughshod over the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon... and the list sadly goes on.
This is an event without an agenda - other than saying “no” to war and “yes” to peace and social justice.
No-one is excluded.

A week of events

Saturday 23 Sept: Stop the War Demonstration - Albert Square - 1pm. And 7pm-late - International Solidarity Fundraiser - Lever St Basement
Sunday 24 Sept: evening - Labour Against the War (with Tony Benn) - Friends Meeting House (FMH), Mount St, Manchester (behind library)
Monday 25 Sept: 1pm - Hands off Venezuela - FMH; 3pm Coalition against Welfare Reform Bill, Exchange Square - GMEX; 6.30pm - Road to Guantanamo Film - University, Martin Harris Building
Tuesday 26 Sept: 1pm - Palestinian Solidarity Campaign - FMH; 6.15pm - civil liberties/international evening, including Book Launch (Tariq Mehmood) - Green Room, Whitworth St; Also 7.30 Stop the War/CND meeting at Methodist Hall, Oldham St; And Keep Our NHS Public, from 6pm at the Mechanics; And 7.30 Burnage Defend Council Housing, Burnage Community Centre.
Wednesday 27 Sept: 1pm Rally of Resistance, St Peters Square; - evening - Defend Council Housing, FMH
Thursday - 6.30pm - ‘Standing on the Shoulders of Fascism’ (Steve Cohen), Immigration Lawyers, Mechanics Inst, Princess St; and later - Red Pepper Social - ‘Glad to See the Back of Them’
* Visit www.mancsagainsttanks.org for more details, as well as www.stopthewarmongers.org

Sign up for peace

Writers seek Faslane 365 support

We are a group of concerned poets, authors, journalists and publishers writing to ask if you would join us in signing the Statement of Support for Faslane 365 (which is at the end of this email message) and also consider joining with other Authors, Poets, Editors, Publishers and Journalists in a prestigious Power of the Word Blockade (on 6 and 7 December) of the Faslane Naval Base in Scotland - this is the home base of Trident, the UK’s Weapon System of Mass Destruction.
Faslane 365 is a civil resistance project, which will be starting on October 1st 2006 (anniversary of the Nuremburg Judgements) and focussed in Scotland to apply critical public pressure for the disarmament of Britain’s nuclear weapons by a continuous peaceful blockade of the Trident base at Faslane.
To make this happen, groups and organisations from Scotland and beyond are being invited to come and shut down the base for at least one two-day period each during the year.
The purpose of Faslane 365 is twofold: to bring people to witness and impede the nuclear base where Britain’s nuclear weapons are deployed, and enable them to demonstrate the range of serious concerns - from human rights to climate change - that people in the real world consider to be the vital challenges for the 21st century.
Running from 1 October 2006 for a year, at a time when Tony Blair has put on the political agenda the prospect of spending some £40 billion more to keep nuclear weapons in Scotland until at least the year 2055, Faslane 365 will draw attention to the dangerous insecurity and waste of resources inherent in the Trident nuclear system, and will mobilise support for these nuclear mistakes to be disarmed.
In preventing nuclear ‘business as usual’ we also intend to highlight our real, human security needs, which will require a very different allocation of resources and action.
In order to do this, Faslane 365 is asking a wide range of local, national and even international groups from all sections of civil society to come to Faslane with at least 100 people committed to stay and make their visions for a just and peaceful future visible for at least one two-day period.
To ensure effective coverage, groups will overlap on the first day with the previous group and on the second with the incoming group.
All who participate will contribute, but no one organisation will ‘own’ the continuous blockade.
All groups will agree to a basic set of non-negotiable guidelines that stress nonviolence and respect for all. All groups must also commit to the main demand: Trident must be taken out of deployment and the government should make a timetable for dismantling the weapons, together with a commitment not to develop any new nuclear weapons. Beyond these basic commitments, it is up to individual groups to conduct the blockade as they see fit.
We thought that writers and publishers also have a part to play in this ambitious citizens’ initiative so that we can add our strength and hope to Faslane 365.
Already almost 40 different groups have booked dates in the Blockade Rota.
These blockading groups include academics, artists, musicians, peace prize recipients, health service professionals, alongside the more usual peace and justice, human rights, environmental and debt relief organisations and geographical groupings. Three political parties are also taking on two-day blocks each.
We are therefore writing to ask if you would be willing to join in a prestigious Power of the Word Block which will include 100-plus authors, poets, playwriters, editors, publishers and journalists who will undertake an outside mass Read and Speak Out event at Faslane as part of their Blockade.
The dates set for this particular block are 6 and 7 December 2006. If you are at all interested in taking part then please fill in the tick boxes below (they appear after the statement of support) so we know what each of you can do and can plan the details of our participation.
Details like how to provide shelter to enable readings and press work whatever the weather, transport to and from Faslane, and provision of hot food and drinks at the base will be arranged later nearer the time.
You can find out much more about Faslane 365 by looking at the Resource Pack on their website at www.faslane365.org
Hoping to hear from you soon, and please at the very least fill in the statement of support and send it back to Power of the Word Block, C/o Angie Zelter, Valley Farmhouse, East Runton, Cromer, Norfolk, NR27 9PN.
Best wishes,
Iain Banks (author), Jay Griffiths (author), David Hoffman (photo-journalist), AL Kennedy (author), Mark Lynas (journalist), Gavin MacDougall (publisher), Adrian Mitchell (poet and playwright), George Monbiot (author and journalist), John Pilger (author and journalist), Word Power Books (publisher).
* email: poweroftheword @faslane365.org
See the website: www.faslane365.org

Chick flick with a big difference

“In the past, I think we thought we had a purpose, to entertain [the audience].
“Now you feel like they feel like they have a purpose, in supporting free speech and supporting us, so it’s amazing. And it’s definitely a new audience.”
So says Natalie Maines, lead singer with US country group the Dixie Chicks, who caused controversy for criticising US President George W Bush at a London gig in 2003.
From the stage, Texan singer Natalie said she was “ashamed” warmonger Bush came the same state as the band.
The backlash was unprecedented. Their albums were destroyed in the street. Radio stations refused to play the band’s songs.
“People don’t like mouthy women in country,” said the Dixie Chicks’ Emily Robison, who along with her sister Martie Maguire, make up the Texan country act.
A new film about the backlash, Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing, has been premiered in Toronto.
The film is directed by Cecilia Peck and Barbara Kopple - who previously won two Oscars for best documentary feature. Kopple said:
“When Natalie made her comments particularly from the country music box, there was no community, they were out there all on their own.
“Our hope with this film, is that people will see it and no longer will the Chicks stand alone.”
After Natalie’s comments in March 2003, the country music world, that had promoted the band so much, suddenly shut them out.
The Dixie Chicks believe sexism played a role in the gravity of the reaction.
“I think it’s because we are in country music. I think if we were a man in the country music, we would have been seen as rebellious,” said Emily Robison.
The film’s producers say they were drawn to the Dixie Chicks for their strength in the face of such a prolonged negative reaction from country music’s fans and other artists. “During the 60s there was a cultural movement that happened, we were just coming out of the repression of the 50s, there was music, it was anti-war... you really felt a sense of belonging to a community,” added Kopple.
Although their latest album, Taking the Long Way, has gone platinum, the Country Music Association has not nominated them. Countless radio stations still shun their music and the band recently had to cancel shows in the American deep south.
“We have basically been playing to half the audience we had on the last tour, but it’s a different audience and they just... look good,” said Maguire.
The band say the backlash gave them the capability to stand up for what they believe in, and reinforced their friendship.
“They never asked me to apologise. We never debated that,” said Maines, who remains unashamedly anti-Bush.
“What I said can come off as silly or whatever and just everything that has happened since then, it’s more of a disgrace - just watching the footage from Hurricane Katrina... it’s unbelievable.
“At this stage, I don’t think that I am pissing off any new people.”

Processions and poison in Nicaragua

Gordon MacBrayne reports for the Voice from Nicaragua, on life in a country that’s been rocked by revolution and war, and remains beleaguered by poverty.

The last two weeks of September are something of a marching season in the Nicaraguan city of Leon. This starts with a public holiday marking almost two hundred years of independence for the Central American republic. Well ordered and uniformed school children along with much practiced marching bands take to the streets.
Next comes the procession of the Virgin of Merced. Priests and pious Catholics carry statues through the old part of the city to the church that bears her name. Cries of ‘Viva Maria’ and the thunderous bangs of massive fire works echo in the crowded colonial streets. Rockets light up the darkness of the early evening.

Indigenous
At the end of the month, in broad daylight, there is another procession. It starts from church of Sutiava in what is still considered the indigenous people’s part of Leon, where the culture and customs of the Maya people have a proud and tenacious base.
The procession, carrying gifts for the poor, makes its way to the cathedral that once marked the spiritual centre of Spanish power in this part of the Americas. At the cathedral the poor get their gifts blessed, gifts mostly given by people slightly less poor than themselves. These are then processed back to ‘the church of the Indians’ in Sutiava for distribution.
This is the procession of Saint Jerome, an early Christian scholar said to live in the wilderness, who was given to alternative medicine, friendliness towards wild animals and those who lived on margins of fourth century society. San Jerenimo, to give him his Spanish name, is much revered by people in Leon.
This is echoed in the cries and carry on of many who make up or accompany the procession. In socially conservative Leon, a few years ago, I saw a cross-dressed Lady Di, as HRH Diana Princess of Wales was fondly known here, lift up his skirt to reveal more thigh than was decent and samba down the street. Whistles and roars of approval from the spectators.
‘Viva San Jeronimo, patron of prostitutes, pimps and drunkards’, is a common refrain. During all this the parish priests have the good sense to bring up the rear of the procession. From a safe distance they wave billowing clouds of smoky incense to purify the assembled masses.
But there is a more sombre side to all this. Marching seasons attract a degree of fringe celebration. Inevitably this means drinking. Leon is no different from other places in this respect.

Deaths
During early September events occurred which put a strain on this second poorest of countries in the western hemisphere. Sudden deaths were reported, firstly in the small coastal communities around Poneloya and Pióates, half an hour drive from Leon. Then more deaths were reported in Leon itself.
The cause was soon established. Besides the excellent range of rums made by the renowned Flor de Caóa company in Nicaragua there is another source of sugar cane based liquor. These spirits are less refined and come under the general heading of artisan products, known as lijon or guaron.
The source of the poisonous distillation was traced to a house in Poneloya which had added methanol, better used as a fuel or solvent. The police quickly stepped in, putting a ban on artisan liquor sale. The local hospital called in all final year medical students as human and material resources stretched to the point of collapse.
Trauma patients and mothers who had recently given birth were sent home to make beds available. Arrests have been made, thousands of gallons of illegal liquor confiscated and the source of the methanol traced to neighbouring countries.
Last week US military helicopters based in Honduras flew medical supplies into Leon’s small airport, normally used for crop spraying planes. Nevertheless, almost 50 people have died, hundreds more are ill. This form of spirits is much cheaper that beer or rum and drunk mostly by poor people.
The final few days of the marching season and the accompanying fringe binge will be a test on how effective both the police and health service have been in coping with this emergency.
There is still another line to run on this story. A medical student working at the hospital told me that word got out to the more dedicated drinkers of Leon that refined alcohol - reportedly Johnny Walker - was used in the treatment of those who drank methanol.
Some heroes lined up at the hospital door claiming to be poisoned and demanding a cure. Doctors refused further treatment.

Mexican election protests continue

In Mexico, supporters of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador remain defiant in the face of the right-wing theft of the presidency by Felipe Calderon and his supporters, including outgoing president Vicente Fox.
Last weekend, Obrador’s supporters packed Zocale Square in Mexico City, voting to make him the leader of a parallel government that will challenge Calderon’s governance.
They have been so incensed by what appears to be a US-style farce of an election, involving hundreds of thousands of lost votes and wandering ballot boxes, that they set up camp in the square seven weeks ago.
Saturday saw them leave for the first time, to allow the traditional military parade, lead by Fox, that marks independence day.
But even then, popular anger - manifesting in banners proclaiming ‘Fox, traitor to democracy’ - was clearly visible.
As soon as the parade had passed, the people, and their tents, were back, waving the yellow flags of Obrador’s party, the Democractic Revolutionary party.
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez refuses to recognise Calderon as the legitimate president of Mexico, and has aired his concerns about the alleged electoral fraud in public.
For this, Calderon has threatened to cut off all diplomatic ties with Venezuela.
However, as there are to be two Mexican governments, perhaps he will find favour with the other one.

Events

Fife Spanish Civil War commemorations
Music night: 27 September, 7-10pm at Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy.
Film night: 3 October, Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy 7pm. Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom.
Spanish Civil War memorial re-dedication ceremony: 7 October, 11am. Assemble at Kirkcaldy Town House.
Memorabilia display: 27 September until 8 October, Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy.

Public Meeting

ISRAELI ANARCHISTS AGAINST THE WALL
SARAH and SAIF
Public meetings called by Glasgow Branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK).
Friday 29 September, 7.30pm at Lecture Theatre A, Boyd Orr Building, University of Glasgow
Saturday 30 September 4pm Augustine Unitarian Church, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh
Saif is an Israeli Palestine and Sarah is a non-Zionist Jewish Israeli. Both carry out protests with other colleagues against the Apartheid Wall and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Admission is £2.00 at both venues

UN drag their heals as genocide continues in Darfur

Military intervention by the West in other countries is a thorny issue for socialists – usually it means invasion. But, writes Roz Paterson, in Darfur catastrophe looms large in which the Sudanese government is complicit.
At the end of this month, the 7000 African Union (AU) peacekeeping troops stationed in Darfur are due to leave, under order of the Sudanese government in Khartoum. This same government has decreed that the 20,000 UN peacekeepers due to take their place are to stay away and let Khartoum deal with Darfur.
What they have in mind, say those watching from a near distance, is a ‘final solution’ that will make the current humanitarian catastrophe look like a picnic.
Already, Sudanese troops are moving in and the signs are not good. Villages have been bombed to ruins and columns of desperate people are filing up into the mountains, where a combination of weather and starvation will kill them in time; they know it, but they have no choice, the human instinct is to cling to any hope of life. If something doesn’t change very soon, that hope of life is about to be snuffed out.
Darfur is plagued by violent, Sudanese government-sponsored militias, the Janjaweed, pursuing a ‘scorched earth’ policy - literally. They pass through a village and leave it a burnt crater.
They round up girls and women and serially rape them in front of their fathers and husbands, before burning them alive. They decapitate men and use their heads as footballs.
They have so far driven 2.5 million people from their homes and into refugee camps teeming with disease and want. They have killed between 30,000 and 70,000.
They are backed up by Sudanese troops, who strafe the ground to help them clear it. There appears to be no end in sight.
The AU troops were a weak force, but they helped a little. In one area, they patrolled three times a week and rapes of women by militiamen were down to four a month. Through lack of numbers, they reduced patrols to one a week; the number of women raped shot up to 200.
Without them, aid agencies are likely to pull out altogether. It was dangerous enough when they had a semblance of protection. But as things deteriorate, everyone is a target; children, aid workers, AU soldiers.
Around 3.4 million people in Darfur are dependent upon food aid. Conditions are such that only four in ten get it. Imagine what it’s going to be like when things get worse.
What Khartoum proposes is to send in 10,000 Sudanese troops to fight ‘the problem’. By the problem, President Omar al-Bashir means the rebel groups, such as the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese Liberation Army, who are pitted against the government, rather than the Janjaweed who persecute this nation.
What lies behind this turmoil is complex. Oil is key. Following its discovery in south Sudan in 1979, the Khartoum government made deals with oil multinationals over the heads of the people who owned the land, sparking a 21 year civil war that only ended with a peace deal signed in May this year. Already the terms are fracturing, as Khartoum continues its bid to wrest control.
Oil underlies regions of Darfur too, and clearing the ground is one quick way to allow oil companies access. Tellingly perhaps, China, who have secured oil exploration rights in Darfur, have vetoed UN intervention.
On Sunday, protests were staged in 32 countries across the world, but governments continue to dither.
As one Darfurian commented: “We have a saying in Darfur, ‘The dog barks but it makes no difference to the camel.’ We are the dogs. The world is the camel.”
Al-Bashir is hi-jacking anti-imperialist language to press his case. He says a UN intervention would be ‘neo-colonialism’. He says if they come, his Sudanese troops will fight them “as Hezbollah beat Israeli soldiers.”
It seems the West will intervene where it has strategic interests, such as Iraq and (soon) Iran, but not otherwise.
Darfur is desperate for protection. Salva Kiir Mayardit, head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and a Vice-President of Sudan since the peace deal, has now called on the UN to intervene. He prevaricated before, clearly hoping sanctions or rebellion could stem the flow of blood. They couldn’t.
Last week, he said: “The aggravation of the humanitarian and security situation in Darfur necessitates intervention of international forces to protect civilians from the atrocities of the Janjaweed militias so long as the government is not capable of protecting them.”
It used to be that the UN was only compelled to intervene when genocide was happening. Thus, since 2003, the UN has been hesitant to use the g-word in relation to Darfur, despite the clear evidence that an entire people was being annihilated.
Since September last year, the Responsibility to Protect (RTP) has meant that UN states share “responsibility to take collective action in a timely and decisive manner” to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity.
Surely the time has come?

Sabra and Shatila massacre: 25 years on and still no justice

Lebanon, 17 September 1982: The rape, torture and murder of at least 800 Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila is discovered.
Robert Fisk, one of the first journalists on the scene, drawn there by the eerie silence and sickly sweet smell, described what he saw: “(T)here were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall.”
Ariel Sharon, Israel’s then defence minister, ultimately had responsibility for allowing Phalangists into the camps 36 hours earlier, in the full knowledge of what they would do.
Not only that, but Israel armed these militiamen, trained them, equipped them with US army rations and Israeli medical equipment, and even gave them military assistance while they worked their way through the trapped and unarmed refugees.
Sharon was never brought to justice for this war crime. In fact, he later became the Prime Minister of Israel and was famously described as a ‘man of peace’.

Left loses and far right makes gains in East German elections

by Felicity Garvie

The left in Germany is reeling after it saw heavy losses in the Berlin state (Laender) parliament elections on Sunday.
The Left Party/PDS fell to 13.4 per cent of the vote, almost halving its tally of votes across the region from the previous election in 2001.
In some boroughs its result went from upwards of 40 per cent to the low 20s after being in government with the mainstream Social Democrats (SPD - Germany’s New Labour) for the past period and presiding over swingeing cuts in social housing and municipal jobs.
Voter participation was at a record low of 58 per cent and while the main parties of SPD and CDU (party in national government led by Angela Merkel) registered no great change, the Greens gained 4 per cent to level-peg with the Left Party on 13 per cent.
There is now talk of a red-green coalition in Berlin which in all probability would see a continuation of the same anti-worker, pro-privatisation policies.
Interestingly, the Electoral Alternative for Security and Justice (WASG) which refused to join the Left Party and stood its own candidates in most districts, got 52,000 votes, or 2.9 per cent. Because of the 5 per cent barrier, they didn’t get into the Berlin parliament but they did get 14 local councillors in seven out of the 12 districts (Bezirke). This will be a disappointment for them but reflects a principled stance not to merge with the PDS whilst it continues to carry out a programme of ca pitalist cuts.
Mecklenburg-Pomerania, a mainly rural region on the Baltic coast, has become the third federal state in the East where the neo-nazi NPD is now in government.
It got 7.3 per cent of the vote (a jump of 6 per cent) which gives it six seats. It is particularly worrying that 15 per cent of 18-25 year olds voted NPD, this in an area where the left is traditionally weaker.
Rural parts of former Eastern Germany have always been an easier recruiting ground for the far right where there has not been a strong, anti-fascist movement and jobs and material security have been decimated in the 17 years since capitalist re-unification.
The PDS has been in government here since 1998 and, as in Berlin, has cut public service jobs, adding to the unusually high unemployment of 18 per cent compared with a national rate of 10.5 per cent.
The PDS lost 22,000 votes in the region, whilst the SPD fell ten percentage points.

Marchers slam Nuke hypocrisy

by Jo Harvie

After a five-day march, 85 miles from where they started, a group of dedicated peace campaigners completed their journey across Scotland, from Faslane nuclear base to the Scottish Parliament.
This was the Long Walk for Peace, organised by the group Scotland’s For Peace, against a replacement for Trident nuclear weapons. The government is due to decide officially on whether they will spend £25billion on a new generation of nuclear weapons by the end of the year.
Around 100 people set out last Thursday morning from the North Gate of the Faslane base, and squelched through torrential rain to Dumbarton on the first leg. Frances Curran, SSP MSP for West Scotland, was one of the drookit-but-determined walkers on the first day:
“Both I and the SSP back the demand to scrap Trident and oppose any new WMD being developed and stationed on the Clyde.

‘Hypocrisy’
“To support UK nuclear weapons as New Labour do, while lecturing other countries about them, is sheer hypocrisy.
“The billions spent on these terror-weapons would be far better spent on pensions, health and housing.
“Later this month I will be lodging a Bill at Holyrood to provide Free School Meals and a fraction of the cash squandered on Trident would pay the £90million, providing considerable educational and health benefits.”
On Friday it was sunshine all the way from Dumbarton, via Clydebank, to Glasgow. A short rally on Glasgow’s Byers Road welcomed the marchers where speakers included SSP MSP Rosie Kane, Patrick Harvie for the Greens, and the indomitable Bruce Kent, Vice-President of CND, one of the many who walked the whole length of the route.
Saturday’s leg kicked off with a substantial demonstration through Glasgow city centre, and a rally in the city’s George Square.
Rose Gentle was among those who addressed the crowd of over 1000, along with poet AL Kennedy, Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP and SSP convenor Colin Fox.
Colin congratulated those taking part in the walk and told them that, when they reached Edinburgh, there would be a cup of tea waiting despite ugly rumours they may have heard about the city’s hospitality.

Doubt
He spoke of his recent visit to Aldermaston, where plans for Trident’s replacement already seem well under way - throwing doubt on the government’s claim that there is still to be a decision. “We want a nuclear-free Scotland,” Colin said, “and that’s with regards to nuclear weapons on the Clyde and a new generation of nuclear power stations...
“We want a Scotland which is synonymous with peace and internationalism, extending the hand of friendship abroad - not sending armies marching into other countries.”
Rosie Kane and Carolyn Leckie, SSP MSP for Central Scotland, were among the many who walked from Glasgow to Coatbridge that afternoon.
Sunday and Monday took the long walk to Bathgate and then on to Currie, near Edinburgh. All along the length of the walk, the campaigners met with local people, leafleted and held public meetings, in wee towns and big cities. This was not just a publicity stunt, but a serious and very effective means of reaching out to people across Scotland with the campaign to scrap Britain’s nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
They arrived in Edinburgh on Tuesday afternoon, where they were met by supporters for a demonstration that took them to the doors of the Parliament.
The bizarre weather that’s plagued the walk continued to last, as the demo was alternately bathed in sunshine then blasted by monsoon conditions.
But, just as along the way, spirits could not be dampened. This walk has been a historic achievement for all who took part, and what it’s done to raise the profile of opposition to nuclear weapons in Scotland cannot be underestimated.

Bravery
The Scottish Parliament currently hides behind nuclear weapons’ status as reserved to Westminster - we hope MSPs can learn from the bravery of the marchers, and take a stand with the 80 per cent of Scots who want Trident, and its replacement, scrapped.
Now we step into the year of Faslane 365 - beginning on 1 October, 365 days of continuous action outside the nuclear base will highlight and disrupt the presence of these weapons of unimaginable horror, which our government leaves parked on the Clyde. See page 9 for more details.

‘Fabulous, inspiring and significant’

Louise Robertson is one of the tough cookies who walked the whole length of the march. She’s a long-term peace campaigner and one of the founders of the Faslane Peace Camp, which has been parked outside the nuclear base since 1982. She’s also a member of the Scottish Socialist Party’s Dumbarton branch. She took a moment before setting off on the third leg of the march, from Glasgow to Coatbridge, to talk to the Voice, and assured us that she was feeling fine.
“The march so far has been fabulous, inspiring and significant. I’ve been able to talk to loads of interesting people, who’re all taking part in this for their own different reasons.
“For me it’s a continuation of everything we’ve been doing up til now - and it’s symbolic too, walking from Faslane where we set up the peace camp to the Scottish Parliament where Les (Louise’s partner, also one of the founders of the Faslane Peace Camp) stood for election in 2003. I’ve seen the argument to scrap nuclear weapons going on over all these years, and it’s still just as relevant today. We still need to see Trident scrapped and the money spent in useful ways instead.
“We’ve been walking mostly along main roads so we’ve not passed huge numbers of pedestrians, but loads of cars have been peeping their horns in support. And everywhere we’ve stopped people have organised to meet us, and put on tea and sandwiches, offering that kind of practical support as well.
“It was a really good turnout for the demo today. I thought Colin spoke very well, he got a good response. Everyone who’s asked me about the Scottish Socialist Party along the way has been really encouraging, saying we’ve got to keep strong and keep going, and I think Colin’s speech will have added to that warmth for the SSP.
“There was a good representation from the Scottish Socialist Party taking part today, and I hope people noticed that too.
“And my wee Molly, my granddaughter, is here too on her first demonstration.
We’ve got to keep things going, and further raise the profile of this issue with big demos in the future.
“I think such a victory, if we could scrap nuclear weapons after campaigning for so long, well, it would transform everything.”