SOCIALIST UNITY

photos from Michael Lavallette

From Rich in the West Bank - this is compiled from conversations he has been having with two sisters in Gaza

New Year in Gaza: ‘Too young to die…’

Despite living in one of the most heavily bombarded areas of Gaza City, Rana and her husband had been determined not to leave their house. Rana, in common with most Palestinians, is a refugee whose grandparents were forced from their land in 1948 during the first years of Al Nakba. On January 3rd 2009, three days into the New Year and over 60 years since her grandparents originally became refugees, Rana was forced from her house as Al Nakba continues:

“Our neighbours got a phone call from the Israeli Army last night. They were told: ‘Evacuate your house immediately – we are about to Shell it!’”

The Red Crescent immediately came to Rana’s house and neighbouring houses as they attempted to evacuate all residents. Rana was taken to a friends’ house a little outside the immediate area as she is still unable to reach her sister Amahl and their parents in Deir Alballah. She had just a matter of minutes to get out of her house:

“Really it’s a tragedy, I was crying so much. They shelled our neighbours’ house, a Sports Club, and a Community Association building. The buildings are not totally demolished but have been very heavily shelled, maybe they will return to re-bomb them…”

Today (Jan 4th) Rana returned to her house to collect whatever belongings she could salvage and carry to her friends’ house. There is no electricity at all now in Rana’s neighbourhood and in most of the Gaza Strip. Whilst she gathered up possessions from her house we talked together with the help of a small generator - her only remaining form of power.

“There is no electricity at all now; they bombed the power transformer before the ground attacks began yesterday. I’m collecting whatever I really need – clothes for us, my documents, whatever I can. I can hear them now; they are shelling all around us…”

There is no way for Rana to know when, or even if, she will be able to return to her house again. She had refused to leave for over a week after the massacres began until the Red Crescent came for her, she knew then that the time had simply come when she no longer had the option.

“People here have nothing to lose anymore. They believe they must protect their land, there is nothing else. They don’t fear death, but I do… ha ha ha…”

A nervous laughs escapes as she considers her own mortality.

Rana has many hopes just like people everywhere, but currently she is surviving minute by minute. She hopes to learn lots of new languages (although already speaking Arabic, English, and French) so she can talk to people all around the world, she hopes to listen to music again, and she hopes to give birth to the child she is carrying and have future children. Rana should have a long life ahead of her, but like all Palestinians she has no idea what the future holds:

“I have many hopes; I feel it’s too early to die… I am 25 years old. I am too young to die…”

From the Birmingham Post.

Hundreds of people gathered in Birmingham to voice their protests over the invasion of Gaza as they called on the local city council to boycott all Israeli goods.

The call, which is to be backed up by a mass petition, was made during a public meeting attended by around a thousand people on Monday night at the Council House in Victoria Square.

The emergency meeting, which followed a short march from Waterstones, in High Street, was organised by the Stop the War Coalition in response to Israel’s escalation of the recent week-long bombing of Gaza which has killed more than 500 Palestinians.

A cross-party selection of speakers saw Coun Salma Yaqoob from Respect, Coun Ayoub Khan (Liberal Democrats), Coun Tahir Ali (Labour) and Coun Alan Rudge (Conservative), who is Cabinet member for equalities and human resources, share the same platform.

Other speakers included Kamel Hawwash, of West Midlands Palestinian Community Association, and John Rose, a Jew, who is author of The Myths of Zionism.

Around 30 West Midlands Police officers accompanied the march and remained on duty at the Council House as hundreds of people crammed into the Council Chamber, public gallery and two committee rooms inside, with hundreds more having to be addressed outside.

Coun Yaqoob said: “This is a brilliant turnout and shows how important this issue is to the people of Birmingham.”

“We are calling for an embargo by the city council on all Israeli goods until Israel complies with UN resolutions not to occupy Gaza or the West Bank. We do not want just words of condemnation but action by the city council.

“Birmingham is the second largest city in the UK and the largest authority in Europe and I want to make sure all our councillors sign up to this very important, symbolic boycott. This is a cross-party, cross-faith issue. It is not about Muslims against Jews or Christians.”

Coun Yaqoob said: “Our taxpayers’ money is being used to buy parts of those F16 bombers that are making sorties every 20 minutes in Gaza.

“We have seen 500 Palestinians killed just this week but our brothers and sisters there are not abandoned.”

The protest petition is to circulate this week before being presented to the full meeting of Birmingham City Council next Tuesday when a lobby of councillors is also planned.

Coun Rudge said Birmingham has been fortunate in that people in the city have always worked together. ‘‘We cannot tolerate this non-stop battling going on and I hope this meeting is a step towards getting that message across to everyone in government,” he said.

From the Portsmouth News By Rachel Hine and Fran Duckett-Pike

Protesters who had gathered for a peace rally marched on a Portsmouth police station after one of their leaders was arrested. Around 400 people turned up at Portsmouth’s Guildhall Square to call for an end to Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

The protest passed peacefully but ended on a controversial note when one of the organisers, campaigner John Molyneux, was arrested by police minutes before it was due to end.

Protestors, who had marched for an hour through Commercial Road to Crasswell Street, then moved round to Portsmouth Central police station to demand Mr Molyneux’s release.

They only dispersed when fellow campaigner Waldemar Axim who had been allowed into the police station to check on Mr Molyneux’s welfare, stood on the steps to inform the crowd that he was fine.

Mr Molyneux was later charged with an offence under the public order act because police say he had not given them the required six days notice to enable them to patrol the event effectively. (more…)

Unite trade union representatives from the Yorkshire and Humberside region will be joining many other trade union representatives from across the country at a meeting in London on Thursday 8th January to discuss the mounting problems regarding access to jobs at Staythorpe power station near Newark. Concern is growing following protests over employment rights and also the proposed exclusion of UK workers by foreign companies on the power station project.

Staythorpe is a new combined cycle gas turbine power station in Nottingham that will provide 80 full time jobs once operational. Alstom, the principle contractor in the construction phase, is breaking established national agreements and ignoring the union by refusing to consider local workers for employment. This is despite nPower’s commitment on their own web page that “the new power station will provide a significant benefit in terms of long-term employment as well as a significant contribution to the local economy.”

Jerry Hicks who’s legal challenge forced the coming election for General Secretary in the UK’s biggest union Unite Amicus, is supporting the call for action. He says “This situation is outrageous, the union needs to confront the employers and regain control by organising a National campaign for Industrial action.”

It has been nine weeks since the first protest inside the entrance of Staythorpe Power Station. The unions met with Alstom to discuss the Staythorpe matter, but no progress has been made nor assurances given. Meanwhile, other energy companies are observing what happens next as they seek to exploit the cheap foreign labour market.

Been too busy blogging and demonstrating against the bloodbath but finally have time to post this, do come and discuss Cuba with me this thursday.

Thursday 8th January @ Salmon & Compass
Event date & time:
Thursday, 2009, January 8 19:00 Europe/London
Venue:
Salmon and Compass Bar
Thursday 8th January

@ The Salmon & Compass, Angel, 7pm – 2am / £3 / Donations before 9
50 years of Cuban Revolution special with short films, speakers and discussion with speakers from Cuba Solidarity Campaign, and Derek Wall from the Green Party discussing the challenges facing Cuba politically and environmentally

Film screening @ 7.30pm
Rice N Peas’ “With Or Without Fidel”
+ Resident DJs Cal Jader, Clem George, & Pablo N
+ Guest DJ exclusively from Berlin / Barcelona – Miss Blitz

We all know about climate change, forest destruction and other ecological threats but in Latin America environmental concern is treated more seriously than perhaps in any other part of the world.

In 2006 I visit Venezuela with my partner Sarah, we were there to see our friend Cesar Aponte who works in the Ministry of the Environment. Although Venezuela is an oil economy and Caracas is a sprawling polluted city, Chavez’s government are working hard to promote ecodevelopment. We visited an ecological high school where kids were taught organic agriculture and saw the huge permaculture city farm in Caracas next to the Hilton Hotel.

Venezuela’s own energy needs are nearly all from renewables and there is a plan to stop using petrol for cars, new railways have been built and organic agriculture is a big priority. Visiting London Hugo Chavez’ praised the congestion charge and defined one person one car culture simply as ‘a thing of stupidity.’

There are other examples from the region. The Peruvian peasant leader Hugo Blanco is part of a huge continental ecology movement and Bolivian President Morales is famous for making an inspiration speech on climate change to the UN.
However, ecological concerns have gone furthest in Cuba and the Cuban government have shown a long term interest in ecology. In 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Fidel Castro observed prophetically:

“An important biological species is at risk of disappearing due to the rapid and progressive elimination of its natural habitat: man.
“(…) consumer societies are fundamentally responsible for the atrocious destruction of the environment.

“The solution cannot be to hinder the development of the neediest.”

The Cuban constitution enshrines environmental protection. Cuba has been identified as the one country in the world that has been able to develop in an ecologically sustainable way by the WWF. Uniquely Cuba has balanced a rising standard of living with practices that are ecologically sustainable. While it is pretty shocking for the rest of the globe that no other state has achieved this, it shows just how important the example of Cuba is if we are to meet environmental challenges such as climate change and to deal with global problems of poverty and injustice at the same time. Put most simply to achieve a green world, we all need to learn from Cuba.

More here

Anna Chen’s blog, Madam Miaow is in the shortlist for best culture blog of 2008.

It would be fantastic if this could be won by a socialist, Asian woman. Please spare 30 seconds to vote: http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-culture-blog/

Beware, the current front runner is “the art of manliness”, which is as bad as it sounds; and some of the other blogs in contention are offensively conservative.

The Weblog Awards are the world’s largest blog competition with over 545,000 votes cast in 2007 edition and nearly two million votes cast in all editions since 2003.

Evidence points to the fact that Israel’s military operation in Gaza is being viewed by the Israelis as a dress rehearsal for another war with Hezbollah.

Since its defeat at the hands of the Iranian-backed Lebanese resistance movement during an attempted invasion of Southern Lebanon in 2006, the IDF has undergone intensive training in urban warfare tactics, utilising mock-up towns and urban centres specially built in the Negev Desert. Combined air and land military exercises have also been taking place on the Golan Heights, terrain chosen specifically to mimic the open terrain between the villages and towns of Southern Lebanon.

It is some of these new tactics that are now being tested during what the Israelis expect to be a decisive victory against the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip, where an air blitzkrieg has been followed by a massive armoured incursion backed up by infantry.

With such an armoured spearhead in mind against Hezbollah, the Israelis have also been working to upgrade the defensive capability of their Merkava tank, which proved deficient against Hezbollah’s Russian-made anti-tank missiles in 2006, thus nullifying their offensive capability against the only Arab army in the region to inflict a military defeat on the IDF. (more…)

Buy from Philosophy Football.

“They stole my land, burnt my olive trees, destroyed my house, took my water, imprisoned my father, killed my mother, starved us all, humiliated us all. But I am to blame : I shot a rocket back. So they stole more of my land, burnt my olive trees, destroyed my house, took my water, bombed my country…” Palestine09

Featuring words partly inspired by one of the hundreds of hand-written anonymous placards carried at the Jan 3rd demonstration in London our Palestine 09 design expresses vividly the cycle of despair that has turned the tiny Gaza strip into a war zone of Israeli reprisals using its overwhelming military might.

Helping to raise funds for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign . Available in sizes small (36inch chest/90cms), medium (40inch/100cms), large (44inch/110cms), x-large (48inch/120cms) and xx-large (52inch/130cms).

Worth looking at the following article on Lenin’s Tomb blog about the scale of the killing in Gaza