Tag Activism

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My mate the terrorist

Jul 3, ’10 2:13 AM

While I was party­ing at Sun­rise Cel­eb­ra­tion in Somer­set recently my good friend Ken O’Keefe was sail­ing off to Gaza on the Mavi Mar­mara, as part of the Gaza Free­dom Flo­tilla.

The flo­tilla was car­ry­ing human­it­arian aid, med­ical sup­plies, and con­struc­tion mater­i­als, intent on break­ing the Gaza Strip block­ade being per­pet­rated by the apartheid state of Israel against the people of Palestine.

In the middle of the night on 30 May, while in inter­na­tional waters, they were for­cibly boarded by armed Israeli com­mandos. The pas­sen­gers defen­ded their ship against the invaders and nine of them were murdered, most shot at close range in the back of the head.

Ken helped over­power two com­mandos and man­aged to dis­arm one of his pis­tol and empty it’s ammuni­tion. The com­mandos even­tu­ally over­powered the flo­tilla, then promptly kid­napped every­one, tow­ing the ships to a deten­tion camp. After steal­ing everyone’s pos­ses­sions and gen­er­ally treat­ing them like dogs the kid­nap­pers relen­ted to inter­na­tional pres­sure, releas­ing and deport­ing most of those they had kid­napped. Ken wanted to appeal his deport­a­tion to Ire­land and instead go to Gaza, but, hav­ing already been ser­i­ously beaten twice by Israeli sol­diers while cap­tive, his soli­citor advised him that for his own safety he should leave Israel.

For his troubles Ken was laugh­ably lis­ted on the IDF’s offi­cial pro­pa­ganda web­log — IDF Spokes­per­son — as “known to be involved in ter­ror­ist activ­ity,” and con­tinu­ing with:

Ken O’Keefe (Born 1969), an Amer­ican and Brit­ish cit­izen, is a rad­ical anti-Israel act­iv­ist and oper­at­ive of the Hamas Ter­ror organ­iz­a­tion. He attemp­ted to enter the Gaza Strip in order to form and train a com­mando unit for the Palestinian ter­ror organization.

To form and train a com­mando unit? I’ve had some heated argu­ments with Ken over the years but ‘ter­ror­ist com­mando’? Someone in the IDF pro­pa­ganda unit’s been telling porkies. (Note to IDF: when you’re falsely accus­ing someone of being a ter­ror­ist try not to get their nation­al­ity wrong. Kind of makes you look like you don’t know what you’re talk­ing about.)

So let’s get this straight. They kid­nap Ken (whose life story hap­pens to be an open book). Then they deport him. And then they tell us he’s a known ter­ror­ist? Wouldn’t it per­haps be a little more prudent to hold onto a terrorist?

Someone in the IDF pro­pa­ganda unit doesn’t know how to tell porkies.

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Climate Camp’s open letter to the Met

Aug 26, ’09 12:50 PM

Open let­ter from the Camp for Cli­mate Action to Ian Thomas, the Chief Super­in­tend­ent of the Met­ro­pol­itan Police Ser­vice. Worth read­ing in it’s entirety.

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A gender experiment in policing

Aug 22, ’09 8:49 AM

Could be inter­est­ing. Jon Hen­ley for The Guard­ian:

The Met­ro­pol­itan police have announced a new strategy for next week’s Cli­mate Camp – put­ting women officers in charge of the oper­a­tion. Will this avoid the viol­ence seen at the G20 protests?

Per­haps the most noted Amer­ican researcher into gender dif­fer­ences in poli­cing, Joseph Balkin, observed that “police­men tend to see police work as involving con­trol through author­ity, while police­wo­men see it as pub­lic ser­vice”. In some respects at least, he con­cluded, “women are bet­ter suited for police work than men.”

Maybe this strategy should be trans­posed to inter­na­tional politics?

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Free Ezra Nawi

Jun 19, ’09 7:30 PM

Sign and send a mesage: freeezra.org

Join Naomi Klein, Neve Gor­don, Noam Chom­sky and thou­sands of oth­ers and tell Israel not to jail Ezra Nawi, one of Israel’s most cour­ageous human rights activists.

His crime? He tried to stop a mil­it­ary bull­dozer from des­troy­ing the homes of Palestinian Bedouins in the South Hebron region.

Nawi, a Jew­ish Israeli of Iraqi des­cent, is a threat to the set­tlers and the Israeli gov­ern­ment because he has brought inter­na­tional atten­tion to efforts to illeg­ally remove Palestini­ans from the Hebron region. He will be sen­tenced in July.

Watch these young Israeli sol­diers demol­ish the home, arrest Nawi and then laugh about the deprav­ity. Truly lost in the darkness.

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The Reason Project launches

May 12, ’09 8:12 AM

The Reason Pro­ject, co-founded by Sam Har­ris, launched today:

The Reason Pro­ject is a non­profit found­a­tion devoted to spread­ing sci­entific know­ledge and sec­u­lar val­ues in soci­ety. The found­a­tion draws on the tal­ents of prom­in­ent and cre­at­ive thinkers in a wide range of dis­cip­lines to encour­age crit­ical think­ing and erode the influ­ence of dog­mat­ism, super­sti­tion, and bigotry in our world.

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UK police’s use of “kettling” to be legally challenged

Apr 26, ’09 11:12 AM

Bind­mans, a Lon­don law firm, is pre­par­ing to launch a legal chal­lenge against the UK police’s use of ket­tling:

Bind­mans is … pre­par­ing to launch a legal chal­lenge against the use of “ket­tling”, the police tac­tic used to pen in 5,000 people dur­ing the G20 protests and a strategy which led to pro­test­ers suf­fer­ing asthma and panic attacks. John Halford, a part­ner in Bind­mans, said that the firm had held talks with Cli­mate Camp legal advisers on Fri­day to pre­pare to launch a judi­cial review against the con­tain­ment of protesters.

Halford said that “ket­tling” is leg­ally jus­ti­fi­able only when there is no altern­at­ive to address actual or immin­ent viol­ence. He said: “There is much to sug­gest that ‘ket­tling’ was the first thing resor­ted to as a response to a peace­ful demon­stra­tion that was con­sidered a nuis­ance by the police. Worse, many pro­test­ers have repor­ted unpro­voked baton charges and other forms of intim­id­a­tion while they were penned in. We plan to ensure all of this is examined by the courts.”

I’ve exper­i­enced ket­tling before as part of a peace­ful demon­stra­tion in 2003 against the world’s largest arms trade fair, DSEi, held every other year at East London’s ExCeL Centre. I spent most of my time in the kettle try­ing to explain par­ti­cip­at­ory eco­nom­ics to the police. An enga­ging lot to be sure.

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Landshare launches their website

Apr 21, ’09 9:21 PM

You might remem­ber my post about a new pro­ject in the UK called Land­share. Well they’ve just launched their new web­site.

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Funny little world we live in

Mar 12, ’09 2:08 PM

George Bush over­sees tor­ture and com­mits the “supreme war crime” of aggres­sion, caus­ing suf­fer­ing and death for mil­lions. Gets to go back to his ranch.

One of the vic­tims of these crimes throws a shoe at the per­pet­rator. Gets 3 years in jail.

The Guard­ian did get one thing wrong in their report. Mun­tazar al-Zaidi is not just a hero in the Arab world.

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Landshare: linking people who want to grow their own food to space where they can grow it

Nov 3, ’08 1:44 PM

Abso­lutely bril­liant idea intro­duced by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on his UK TV pro­gram River Cot­tage last night: Land­share, link­ing people who want to grow their own food to space where they can grow it.

Check it out at Landshare.net and register your interest.

I have a flat with a small garden — which helps me stay sane liv­ing in the middle of a busy city like Lon­don — but I’d love to be able to grow more than we cur­rently can and while I’ve signed up for an allot­ment in Cam­den I’m over 700th on the list so have an estim­ated wait of more than 10 years!

I see unused land all over Lon­don that could be used for grow­ing food. Now I’ve got my beady eyes on the large dis­used grassed area at the hous­ing estate across the road!

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Free Gaza makes it into the Gaza Strip again

Oct 29, ’08 10:37 PM

Des­pite the Israeli government’s threat to for­cibly stop them the Free Gaza group made a second suc­cess­ful sail­ing to Gaza Strip today. Their first sail­ing, on 24 August, made them the first people to freely enter Gaza Strip in forty-one years.

Israel has imposed an immoral and illegal1 block­ade on Gaza Strip since June 2007, in an attempt to under­mine Hamas, who won the elec­tions in Janu­ary 2006, and as col­lect­ive pun­ish­ment of Gazans for elect­ing them.

The block­ade means Gazans have been unable to travel in or out of Gaza Strip to see fam­ily mem­bers or go to uni­ver­sit­ies they’ve been accep­ted into, or receive med­ical care. It also means an increas­ing lack of things like spare machinery parts and all the other things that go into run­ning a civ­il­ised world.

This kind of cow­ardly col­lect­ive pun­ish­ment has been car­ried out before in this part of the world and that is estim­ated to have cost the lives of a mil­lion people, half of whom were children.

Let’s hope Free Gaza is just the begin­ning of the break­ing of this siege.

Notes:
  1. Uni­ver­sal Declar­a­tion of Human Rights: Art­icle 13. Every­one has the right to leave any coun­try, includ­ing his own, and to return to his coun­try. [↩]
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