"We are not dogs!"

LONDON Mayor Boris Johnson will have to face some dogged questions when he and a couple of acomplices come to Hendon next Tuesday. The Mayor and his Transport Deputy, Isabel Dedring, are due to participate in a "Talk London" panel being held in Simpson Hall, at the Peel Centre on Aerodrome Road, Colindale. Barnet and Camden Greater London Assembly member Brian Coleman, who is also a Barnet councillor, is acting as chair.

Talk London is inviting people to ask questions about "investing in London". The trades unionists and campaigners coming to confront Boris and chums want to know what they are doing about investing in the people who provide essential services for the capital, ennabling its commercial and cultural activities to function. They want to raise the issue of facilities for their essential functions.

Not far from where Broris and co. are speaking, Brent Cross shopping centre boasts 120 stores, a huge car park, and a bus station with four stands served by several routes, some ranging from Barnet (326) Ealing (112), Finsbury Park (210), Hammersmith (266), Harrow Weald (182), Oxford Circus (189) and Watford (142). Besides acting as a terminus for the shopping centre, Brent Cross bus station is an important place for changing buses if you want to cross north London. I sometimes went this way from Stonebridge to Turnpike Lane when I had friends in Tottenham. Also to attend Peter Fryer's funeral at Islington cemetery which is in East Finchley.

Four bus companies use Brent Cross, under the overall aegis of Transport for London (TfL). But outside shopping hours, when the centre is shut, the bus station is lacking in vital facilities.

The "We are not Dogs" Campaign which intends to lobby Boris Johnson is protesting against the closure of the Brent Cross toilet and for decent toilet and messroom facilities for the bus drivers. In a statement it says:

"For years now Transport for London has treated Brent Cross drivers like dogs. They close the only toilet the male and female drivers have at the slightest excuse and force both sexes to use the bushes near the Brent River to relieve themselves when the Centre is closed. A driver was fined £80 for this last year at the Spires in Barnet because he had to use the bushes. The health and safety implications are obvious; must we wait until a woman is raped or killed to expose these shocking social attitudes from TfL?

"Since 28th November they have closed the toilet three times (25 out of 37 days on 4 January), and say it cannot be opened now until February. TfL are threatening to close it permanently unless “we” stop misusing it – just because some unknownperson, driver, member of the public or even a TfL official has carved swastikas on the wall we are “all” not responsible enough to be given this basic human right! The toilets have been fully functional during all this time, only closed to “teach you a lesson” as one official put it.

"A driver asked TfL official Mick Foley why he kept the fully functional toilet closed on New Year's Day when the drivers had nowhere else to go because Brent Cross Shopping Centre was closed? He said 'I know it is fully functional, Gerry. You will have to do something about it'

"So he knows of the petition and our complaints to the GLA members and he is laughing at us. They will close that toilet at random (apparently the graffiti now is a Christmas tree) and there is absolutely nothing the drivers can do about it, they are all totally confident.

"TfL closed the toilet at Turnpike Lane station for months also citing graffiti. An elderly driver from Ponders End garage on the 221 route arrived there late at night desperate and began to wet himself when he found it closed. He relieved himself into a bottle to make less mess. TfL forwarded the CCTV of his humiliation to his garage and they sacked him for it. Apparently these TfL officials enjoy their sadistic "right"to humiliate drivers like this all over London".

We demand:

1. The toilet be opened immediately and kept open while it is functional.

2. The present unventilated fly infested broom cupboard “mess room” is converted into expanded toilet facilities, properly ventilated and available at all times for the drivers.

3. A Muslim shower and prayer area. As the Qur'an advises Muslims to uphold high standards of physical hygiene and to be ritually clean whenever possible, bathrooms should be equipped with a Muslim shower situated next to the toilet, so that individuals may wash themselves. This ablution is required in order to maintain ritual cleanliness.

4. Proper mess room facilities for the 70 odd drivers who have to take their meal breaks at Brent Cross, either a room within the Centre or a portacabin with drinks machine, television and rest facilities. We cannot wait for 5 or 7 years for the new Centre, as they tell us, only to be put in another broom cupboard.

London Mayor Boris Johnson is holding one of his "TalkLondon" events in Barnet on Tuesday 17 January. We intend to hand our “We are not dogs” petition signed by as many bus drivers as possible to the Mayor at this meeting. As many busdrivers as possible need to attend this picket and meeting in uniform and ask as many questions of the Mayor as we can:

● Why do you punish all drivers for the graffiti of one?

● How can you make 70 drivers take their meal breaks at an unventilated, fly-infested converted broom cupboard?

● Why can they not afford to give us decent toilet facilities from the hundreds if not thousands of millions of pounds the customers we bring to Brent Cross spend at the Centre?

● Why do professional drivers get treated like dogs in 2012 in this ‘great city’ showcasing the Olympics?"

It seems that TfL officials are now claiming that damage to the toilets was worse than thought, and that closure was needed before contractors could put it right. One even quoted a figure of £5,000, which the drivers very much doubt. Oddly enough I hear that when Brent and Harrow GLA member Navin Shah visited the bus station and asked to see the damage for himself, the TfL officials would not permit this elected representative to access the toilet.


Who do these officials think they are? Who gave them the right to treat an older worker the way that man was at Turnpike Lane, and get away with it? Maybe they should adopt the swastika from graffiti to serve as TfL management logo, if this is how they treat the workers and our elected representatives.

Navin Shah has given his support to the workers, and Ken Livingstone, who is hoping to be returned to the mayor's job for Labour has added his name to the drivers' petition. Barnet trades union council is supporting the drivers campaign, as is Brent, and I assume my union Unite which represents most bus drivers will taking up the issue with TfL. At least I hope so.

The We Are Not Dogs campaign will be out next Tuesday, January 17 from 18.00 to 19.00 at

Metropolitan Police training college, the Peel Centre, Aerodrome Road, NW9 5JE

(nearest tube Colindale).

All welcome who support the workers and basic human rghts.

http://www.navinshah.com/news/article/109/lack_of_facilities_angers_bus_drivers
http://citizenbarnet.blogspot.com/2012/01/brent-cross-bus-drivers-demand-to-be.html
http://www.london.gov.uk/next-event/getting-there

Incidentally, Tory councillor and GLA member Brian Coleman is better known for taking taxis than for taking an interest in bus services or workers' conditions. But he is very keen on a more ambitious waste disposal project at Brent Cross. Maybe we'll hear this too raised on Tuesday.
http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/brent_cross/4678948.Expert_claims_Brent_Cross_plans_include_incinerator/

High Street Robbery

SOME stories illustrate what the government is doing to young people. First there's Cait Reilly. This 22-year old studied geology at university, but found she could not get a job in her field. So while she had to sign on and claim unemployment benefit, Cait volunteered to help in a museum.

It seemed like a sound move. It might not bring any more money. but besides giving her some interesting activity it would be relevent experience to put in her CV when applying for a suitable job.

But the authorities had other ideas. At the suggestion of her Jobcentre Plus adviser Cait attended a retail jobs ‘open day’, which she was told would lead to a period of training and a job interview.

Miss Reilly and other candidates were sent to an employment skills training workshop for a week, aimed at improving attributes such as communication skills, followed by the five-hour-a-day stint at Poundland near Miss Reilly’s home in King’s Heath, Birmingham, in November.

She and five other claimants spent their time on the placement sweeping up and stacking and cleaning shelves, before they had to attend a final week of training under the ‘sector-based work academy’ scheme (SBWA). The promised job interview never materialised.

As she said: ‘I was actually doing something that was helping me work towards a job and was taken away from that to do something of no value to me. It was very frustrating.’

Under the scheme that is supposed to "encourage" the unemployed off benefits, claimants are being required to take part in an Employment, Skills and Enterprise Scheme in order to receive their Jobseekers Allowance (or dole as we old timers used to call it). The Department of Work and Pensions says that candidates who ‘express an interest’ in doing unpaid placements will lose their JSA if they pull out after the first ‘cooling off’ week on the scheme. But Cait Reilly says she was not informed about any cooling off period.

She said she felt she had to do it because ‘without my Jobseeker’s Allowance, I would literally have nothing’. She believes the placement allowed Poundland to use her as ‘free labour’ in the run-up to Christmas. She has now returned to her voluntary role at the city’s Pen Room Museum of writing and pen trade memorabilia, still looking for paid employment.

Cait is now pursuing legal action against the government. Her solicitor, Jim Duffy, said the practice contravenes article 4 (2) of the Human Rights Act, which states: ‘No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour. ...This Government has created – without Parliamentary authority – a complex array of schemes that allow Jobcentres to force people into futile, unpaid labour for weeks or months at a time".

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085142/Unemployed-graduate-sues-ministers-forced-stack-shelves-Poundland.html#ixzz1jCAInzrG

Talking about this case soon brings people relating similar experiences. One friend's son is doing a plumbing course at college but has been sent to fill shelves in Tesco. A well-known chain laid off all paid staff in the run-up to Christmas and relied on those working for their dole. God bless us all, said Tiny Tim.

Poundland says it had a ‘positive experience’ of the work placement programme which was ‘designed to provide on-the-job training for those looking to retail as a career opportunity’. Poundland's press website says the chain, which was recently acquired by Warburg Pincus, a leading global private equity firm, aims to continue its impressive growth with plans to open a further 50 new stores in 2010/11, creating an additional 2000 jobs.

"Highlights for the year ending 28 March 2010: Operating profit of £21.5 million - up 81.5 per cent (2008/9 £11.8million)• Turnover £509.8 million (net of VAT) - up 28.7% (2008/9 £396.2 million)• c2,000 new jobs created". It does not say how many were paid. It also boasts that £180,000 was raised for Macmillan Cancer Relief. So perhaps young people like Cait Railly should put down their shelf-filling stints on their CV as "working for charity".

http://www.poundland.co.uk/press-centre/2010-press-centre/full-year-results/

Meanwhile to see how the problem is people on the dole not wanting to go after jobs, we go over to Llandudno, north Wales, where DFS the furniture store is due to open a new branch on February 18. So far the company has received 1,385 applications for the 16 jobs that it advertised.

Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 9.1 per cent of Wales’ workforce were unemployed in the period of August to October 2011 - up from 8.4 per cent between May and July last year.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085142/Unemployed-graduate-sues-ministers-forced-stack-shelves-Poundland.html#ixzz1jCAzVOfy


In these troubled times it is not just "ordinary" folk who are getting in trouble. Take TV chef Anthony Worral Thompson. As a friend on Facebook comments, "Millionnaire AWT, a Tory party fundraiser, was caught five times stealing food and wine from Tesco’s worth around £100. He got off with a warning. Nicolas Robinson, a 23-year-old student, was arrested for stealing water worth £3.50 from Lidl during the London Riots. He was given a 6 month prison sentence."

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/anthony-worral-thompson-arrested-for-shoplifting-cheese-and-wine.html
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2012/01/anthony-worrall-thompson-ybf/

Others have chipped in to cite the person who was jailed for receiving a tee shirt that had been nicked,and the juvenile sent down for stealing a plastic dustbin. Some even recalled AWT denouncing the rioters last Summer.

Now come on, fellows, let's be fair. Anthony Worral Thompson could presumably have afforded to pay for the wine and cheese he stole from the store in Henley on Thames, but had his mind on other things. Whereas the people who were sent to jail could not prove their families did not need what they stole, and anyway, the government had told the magistrates what kind of sentences it expected them to pass after the riots. And there were no riots in Henley on Thames, were there?

Seems AWT is still down to speak in schools and colleges for the Tory Young Britain Foundation (unlike those trade unionists I know who have prepared talks to give in schools explaining about trade unions, but find they can't get invited). So he will be able to explain why shoplifting like his is different.
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2012/01/anthony-worrall-thompson-ybf/

If this seems like a recipe for discontent, even disorder, let us note that the government is being asked to consider other means, besides punitive sentences, for teaching the 'oiks' their place.

Plans to open military-run academies in deprived areas were condemned as "national service for the poor" today.

Right-wing think tank Respublica urged the government to open a pilot programme of military academies in underprivileged areas to "tackle poor discipline and educational failure" in the wake of last summer's riots.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

It claimed the academies "would open up new opportunities for those lacking hope and aspiration. They would change the cultural and moral outlook of those currently engulfed by hopelessness and cynicism."

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/114063

Yeah right. Stand up straight there and speak when you're spoken to! Get in line there!
Not that I suppose they will be giving out any proper military training and hardware to practice with in those deprived areas? That would be dangerous.

"It will be all right by the Olympics" . Mayor Boris faces Concrete Problems

CYCLISTS were staging a road safety protest by Kings Cross yesterday evening. If they caused any disruption to traffic, motorists may not have noticed. At least not those trying to get in or out of the capital to the west, where five-mile long tailbacks were tending to gridlock, and all due to closure of the main artery linking London with Heathrow and the West.

On TV we saw Transport for London officers answering questions, but in a year that sees both mayoral elections and London hosting the Olympics, we were bound to hear in other reports from Tory London Mayor Boris Johnson:

Hammersmith Flyover 'will reopen before Olympics start'

The mayor of London's office has said it will know in a week whether the Hammersmith Flyover in west London can be reopened to traffic while critical repairs are carried out to strengthen it.

It gave assurances that the A4 route would be in full working order by the time the Olympics start on 27 July.

Boris Johnson said it would not be shut "one day longer than necessary".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16440285

Boris Johnson took charge of the crisis on the Hammersmith flyover today as it emerged that the bridge could partially reopen to traffic within three weeks.

Mr Johnson visited the west London flyover and said he wanted to reassure drivers "suffering traffic hell" that he is doing everything in his power to ensure it is open again as soon as possible.

Transport for London today admitted that the crisis on the flyover was continuing and said it would be at least another week before engineers can decide whether the bridge is strong enough to support even light traffic.

But sources today told the Standard there are hopes the flyover can be at least partially reopened within two to three weeks. The Mayor gave his assurance that it would be fully reopened in time for the Olympics.

The 50-year-old flyover, which carries the A4 over the centre of Hammersmith, was shut suddenly on December 23 when steel cables were found to have been corroded by salt water from grit laid during successive winters.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-mayor/article-24025913-boris-pledges-to-sort-flyover-crisis.do

The Hammersmith flyover was completed in 1962. According to Wikipedia, " it was one of the first examples of an elevated road employing reinforced concrete balanced cantilever beam supports with a single central column. The deck spine and wings are of hollow prestressed concrete design, with each span being tensioned by longitudinal tendons (four clusters, each of sixteen 29mm steel cables). The flyover was designed by G. Maunsell & Partners, Consulting Engineers, led by Peter Wroth.

Marples, Ridgway and Partners, a Westminster-based civil engineering contractor, built the flyover at a cost of £1.3 million. The then Conservative Transport Minister Ernest Marples had been a Marples, Ridgway shareholder. To avoid a conflict of interest Marples undertook to sell his controlling shareholder interest in the company as soon as he became Minister of Transport in October 1959, although there was a purchaser's requirement that he buy back the shares after he ceased to hold office, at the price paid, should the purchaser so require."

I'm no enginer, but it sounds to me like the bridge is actually built employing the technique of post-stressed concrete, whereby cables are tightened within the concrete after it is laid. Back in the early 1970s I was sharing a house up North with a couple of friends, one of whom was employed as a technician on motorway construction. One day Steve came home not his usual carefree self, and told us that he had been testing the grout, a mixture of cement and sand in water, that was used to surround cables embedded in concrete, in order to seal them from the elements. Finding a batch that was not of the proper consistency - I think it was meant to be cement-rich - he had reported this, only to be told to let it go.

Steve explained that if the cables were not properly grouted and sealed, rainwater permeating through the concrete would cause them to rust, and you might eventually have lumps of loosened masonry from bridges falling down on to the motorway.

I told him somewhat naievely that he ought to go to the press with his story. He replied that if he did that "it would be the end of my career in civil engineering and construction". He was probably right. He won't mind me telling his story now, as last thing I heard he had gone into teaching instead.

In the case of the Hammersmith flyover however, there has been an anonymous whistleblower, who contacted the Hammersmith and Fulham Chronicle to tell them the flyover was unsafe, on December 14. While the most that Transport for London would admit was that it needed some repairs, the Chronicle’s source insists the:

post tensioned strands are severely corroded and in some cases completely severed… these temporary solutions [TfL] are considering involve temporary propping which any structural engineer with half a brain will tell you is almost impossible to do correctly with a structure of this kind. It’s not a question of whether the structure will collapse, it’s a matter of when

http://londonist.com/2011/12/hammersmith-flyover-is-unsafe.php

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16316283

It is reported that the original design of the flyover provided for under-floor heating to keep the surface ice free in Winter. But instead the authorities have relied on putting down grit and salt. (which is more than some London roads have enjoyed !) This has resulted in saltwater seeping down which is far more corrosive to the cables.

The flyover was closed on the 23rd December 2011 after structural defects were discovered, Transport for London estimated that repairs would last until at least January 2012. Well it is January 10, and the flyover is still closed, causing chaos both to commuters and commercial road transport. If it reopens within a few weeks heavy vehicles may still be prohibited from using it.

Mayor Boris Johnson has only promised it will be alright by the Olympics. He may be hoping to take credit, but have to back away from taking responsibility if the problem proves as bad as some fear. Meanwhile, London bus drivers are hoping to tackle Boris over another pressing issue when he visits Hendon next week. They have no toilet facilities at Brent Cross. Of this more anon. Perhaps he'll promise they'll be opened before the Olympics. Boris is good at taking the piss.

A long way from Levenshulme to Liechtenstein

MENTION of Marples Ridgway will bring back memories of Ernie - not the fastest milkman in the West but a Tory minister with that touch of cheek that is supposed to entertain the electorate.

Ernest Marples had a respectable enough background. He was born in Levenshulme, Manchester, in 1907. His father was an engineering charge-hand and Labour supporter, and his mother worked in a local hat factory. Marples attended Victoria Park Council School and won a scholarship to Stretford Grammar, he even became involved in the Labour movement. He was selling fags and sweets to football crowds by the time he was 14, and playing football himself in a YMCA team.

He worked variously as a miner, a postman, and accountant and a chef, but it may have been the army that started him on the wrong path. Commissioned in the Royal Artillery in 1941, he rose to Captain before he was dischargd on medical grounds in 1944. That year he joined the Conservative Party, and in 1945 he was elected to MP for Wallasey In 1951 Winston Churchill appointed him a junior minister, and he remained a minister under Harold MacMillan and Sir Alec Douglas Home.

In 1957 Harold Macmillan appointed Marples Postmaster General, and as the telephone system was controlled by the GPO in those days, Ernest Marples was able to take credit for the introduction of Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD), which gradually replaced the need for phone operators. On 2 June 1957 Marples started the first draw for the new Premium Bonds. The equipment housed at Lytham St.Annes was also called ‘ERNIE’ to represent ‘Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment’,,

Macmillan made him Minister of Transport in 14 October 1959, and Marples remained in this post after Alec Douglas-Home succeeded Macmillan as Prime Minister in 1963 and until the Conservatives lost the general election on 16 October 1964.

As Minister of Transport, Marples oversaw the introduction of parking meters and the provisional driving licence. The 1960 Road Traffic Act brought the MOT test, yellow lines and traffic wardens,

It was Ernest Marples who appointed Dr Richard Beeching as chairman of British Rail The Beeching Report ;in 1963 recommended closure of a further 6,000 miles (9,700 km) of the remaining 18,000 miles (29,000 km) of Britain's railways, and closure of approach routes, which was made up for by motorway expansion and more work for Marples Ridgway.

Marples had set up this company with Reginald Ridgway in 1948. Although it began small it grew with contracts for powers stations and roads in Britain and abroad. When he became a junior minister in 1951 Marples resigned his directorship of Marples, Ridgway to avoid a conflict of interest. When he was made Minister of Transport in October 1959, Marples further undertook to sell his shareholding in the company to avoid a conflict of interest. However, there was a purchaser's requirement to sell the shares back to Maples after he ceased to hold office, at the original price, if Maples wished this. The purchaser was later revealed to be Marples' own wife.

In 1959 Marples authorised the first section of the M1 motorway, Britain's first inter-city motorway, between London and Nottingham. Marples, Ridgway was given the contract. Marples, Ridgway built the Hammersmith Flyover in London at a cost of £1.3 million, immediately followed by building the Chiswick Flyover.

When Lord Denning investigated the security aspects of the Profumo Affair in 1963, and the rumoured affair between the Minister of Defence, Duncan Sandys, and the Duchess of Argyll, he confirmed to Macmillan that a rumours that Ernest Marples was in the habit of using prostitutes appeared to be true. The story was suppressed and did not appear in Denning's final report.

In 1974 Marples was elevated to the peerage, and his wife Ruth Dodson became Lady Marples.

Early in 1975 Lord Marples suddenly fled to Monaco. Among journalists who investigated his unexpected flight was Daily Mirror editor Richard Stott:

"In the early 70s ... he tried to fight off a revaluation of his assets which would undoubtedly cost him dear ... So Marples decided he had to go and hatched a plot to remove £2 million from Britain through his Liechtenstein company ... there was nothing for it but to cut and run, which Marples did just before the tax year of 1975. He left by the night ferry with his belongings crammed into tea chests, leaving the floors of his home in Belgravia littered with discarded clothes and possessions ... He claimed he had been asked to pay nearly 30 years' overdue tax ... The Treasury froze his assets in Britain for the next ten years. By then most of them were safely in Monaco and Liechtenstein."

As well as being wanted for tax fraud, one source alleges that Marples was being sued in Britain by tenants of his slum properties and by former employees. He never returned to Britain, living the remainder of his life at his Fleurie Beaujolais château and vineyard in France. He died in 1978.

He is buried in Southern cemetery, Manchester.

Info.from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Marples

Trade Unionists support Greek Resistance!

THERE'S a demonstration taking place outside the Greek embassy this evening, and trade unionists awakening from the holiday period to a renewed struggle are focussing attention on Greece. There in the face of massive resistance to austerity measures a banker-led right-wing "unity" government is entrusted by European Union capitalists with saving their economy by imposing their will. That's why a court case re-opening tomorrow has meaning for us all.

As Eric Lee of the international news link LabourStart says:

" If you're a trade unionist fighting to ensure that workers don't pay the price for the global financial crisis they didn't create, 2012 looks like it will be a challenging year.

"On Thursday 24 November 2011, the Greek police arrested Nikos Photopoulos, President of the power workers' union GENOP/DEI, along with more than a dozen of his fellow trade unionists. They will appear in court on Tuesday 10 January 2012 to face charges that could see them jailed for up to five years.

"They were protesting against part of the Greek austerity measures - the cutting off of power to people unable to pay a new property tax, levied regardless of income or wealth and added to all electricity bills. The new tax is just the most recent 'austerity' action by the Greek government. The abolition of the national minimum wage and the lowering of employer-paid taxes are next.

"Please take a moment to send a message to the Greek Prime Minister in support of the campaign Greek trade union confederation GSEE, which is calling for the charges to be dropped.

Just go HERE to send your message.

And please don't forget to pass this message along to your contacts, and to use your Twitter, Google+ and Facebook accounts to help us get the word out.

Thanks.

Eric Lee

The TUC has also endorsed a call for solidarity with Greek workers with this statement from the Greek trade unions:

NO TO THE PENALISATION OF TRADE UNION STRUGGLE

The GSEE stands in full solidarity with GENOP/DEI President Nikos Photopoulos and our other colleagues who await trial on 10 January 2012 because of the protest sit-in last November at the Company's computing headquarters to prevent the levying of the brutal emergency property tax via electricity bills as part of the devastating austerity imposed on Greek people.

We once more call on the authorities to refrain from penalizing trade union action and drop the charges against trade unionists who defend the right of citizens to unimpeded access to a vital public good that is doubly essential in these trying times of utmost hardship.

We note that the court hearing comes at a time when DEH-the Greek Public Power Corporation S.A., regardless of the extreme adversity endured by Greek families, callously announced new raises of 15-20% in the price of electricity as of January 2012 to compensate for its use of environment-polluting lignite.

We also note that this hearing precedes by a few days the new advent of the Troika team in Greece with renewed outrageous demands dictating the abolition of the National Collective Labour Agreement and the minimum wage, new wage and pension cuts, immediate mass lay-offs in the public sector and lowering employers' social security contributions.

We firmly reiterate that the GSEE unequivocally refuses any discussion that will undermine the National Collective Labour Agreement and the minimum wage which is the last bastion of protection for workers and will firmly oppose any such attempt.

The Greek trade union movement united will continue its struggle against every brutality directed against our income, our rights, our families, our lives and the future of our country.

GSEE - Greek General Confederation of Labour

http://www.tuc.org.uk/international/tuc-20449-f0.cfm

ISLINGTON branch of the public service union Unison has sent a delegation to the Greek embassy and circulated an international appeal which it is urging British trade unionists to support. It is forwarding the letter of support to the Greek power union GENOP:


Statement by the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples ( ILC)

Stop the prosecution of Nikos Photopoulos and his comrades from the GENOP-DEH union immediately!


We have just been informed by representatives of the Greek public power company union GENOP-DEH of the repression affecting 15 Greek members of the GENOP-DEH union:

On 24 November 2011, squads of riot police (MAT) stormed the power company’s offices in Mesogeion Avenue in Athens and violently cleared it of workers and trade unionists who had been staging a sit-in for a few days. The offices are responsible for cutting off the electricity supply to the thousands of working-class families that are refusing to pay the new property tax imposed by the Greek government by order of the Troika (IMF-European Commission-European Central Bank), which is being levied through the electricity bills. The same offices are in charge of cutting off the supply to the thousands of families which, due to the crisis, can no longer pay their bills.

On 30 November 2011, fifteen trade unionists, including GENOP-DEH General Secretary Nikos Photopoulos, appeared in court, charged with "obstructing the forces of order" and "obstructing the correct functioning of the public services". They face prison sentences of 6 months to 5 years without remission. On the eve of a new general strike called for 1 December by the trade union confederations GSEE and ADEDY, the government has decided it would be wiser to hold fire, and the court has postponed its ruling until 10 January 2012.

Throughout the world, the workers and peoples are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Greek workers and their trade union organisations as they engage in the battle against the Troika's barbaric plans being implemented by the Greek government. Their actions are legitimate, just as the actions of the Greek power workers and their trade union to prevent the power disconnections and to demand the withdrawal of the new tax imposed by the government are legitimate.

No worker, no labour activist and no democratic labour organisation can accept this threat of repression, which would be a blow against all labour and democratic rights .

This is why the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples has decided to inform all labour organisations around the world of these extremely serious facts, and to invite them to build on the efforts, in whichever form they see fit, to demand that the Greek authorities immediately drop the legal proceedings against the GEOP-DEH union members, and to express their solidarity with them.

The co-ordinators of the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples
Louisa Hanoune, General Secretary of the Workers Party (Algeria)
Daniel Gluckstein, National Secretary of the Independent Workers Party ( France )

Among those who have added their names in Britain are John McDonnell MP ; Neil Findlay Labour Member of Scottish Parliament ; Drew Smith Labour Member of Scottish Parliament Ian Hodson National President Bakers Food & Allied workers union BFAWU ; Alex Gordon President RMT ; Billy Hayes, General Secretary CWU; CJR Kitchen General Secretary National Union of Mineworkers ; Tim Wilson, National Chair, Napo ; . Tony Burke Unite the Union ; Helen Davies UNISON Nec ; Mike Calvert Deputy - Chair Islington Unison Dr. Nat M. Queen University and College Union Birmingham , Mick Hubbard, GMB ; Glyn Beagley King’s College London, Anthony Dooley, Ipswich Association, National Union of Teachers, Matt Wells PCS union Defra London Branch ; Nadim Mahjoub Teacher, LSE, Nick Phillips Vice-President Southwark TUC ; Michael Edwards Professor UCL London, Dr John J O'Dowd University and College Union (Glasgow University Branch) Health & Safety Representative, Henry Mott UNITE the UNION Southwark ; Helen Peters, UCU ; Rob Jackson University of Keele ; Roger MacKay President Ipswich & District Trades Union Council, John Calderon Hackney Labour Party ; Nick Kelleher, Secretary, Wolverhampton, Bilston & District Trades Union Council ; Ben Rickman, Secretary, Brent Trades Union Council, Lorraine Douglas ; Anne McCormack Branch secretary St Helens College UNISON ; Geoff Turner University and Colleges Union retired member Sheffield ; George Binette Camden UNISON Branch Secretary ; Ken Muller Assistant Secretary Isligton NUT ; Mark Hollinrake PCS/Unite Trade Unions ; Mark Hoskisson Secretary of Liverpool Trades Union Council ; Richard Morgan Sec Derbyshire Community Branch GMB Acting President, Derby Area TUC (DATUC) ; Marie Lynam, GMB Union ; Michael .Loughlin UCU Manchester University ; Jane Doolan UNISON Islington ; Rosemary Plummer Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap );Jenny Densham; Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Fiona Monkman Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Alex Wood Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Dean Ryan Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Jenny Mackley Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Andrew Berry Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Keith Facey Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Sonita Singh Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Yesim Senler Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Diana James Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Lynne Moffat Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Mark Lysaght Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Garwin Samlal Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Paul Murphy Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Alan Wylie Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Alan Rylatt Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); John Philpott Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Don Euripides Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Sean O'Neill Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Kuldip Binning UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap);Jane Luke UNISON Islington ; Terry Luke UNISON Islington ; Jim Hollinshead (Liverpool John Moores University UCU ; John Williams Liverpool and North West UCU RMB ; M Sargent Secretary of Dover District trades council and RMT Dover ; Karl Rogers Learning Organiser – South TSSA Learning ; Prof. Philip Moriarty School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham ; Councillor Jim Mackechnie Glasgow City Council ; Fiona Monkman Islington Unison ; Councillor Richard Bertin Vale of Glamorgan Council ; Manchester University UCU Branch, Professor Anton Schütz School of Law Birkbeck College London Richard Carabine UCU Committee member & Health & Safety Rep Birkbeck College London ; Suriyakumari Lane Birkbeck College London ; ; Professor Costas Douzinas Birkbeck School of Law London ; Lucie Wibberley Barrister ; Fiona O’May, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh ; Randy Banks President of the University of Essex Local Association of UCU ; Louise Mauborgne Universioty of Leeds ; George Paizis ; Barry White National Union of Journalists ; Vince Mills Chair, Labour Campaign for Socialism, Scotland ; Graham Dyer UCU President SOAS, University of London ; Dr Alan L Bogg Senior Tutor, Fellow and Tutor in Law Hertford College, Oxford ; Keith Ewing School of Law King's College London ;Professor Bill Bowring Barrister, Birkbeck College London, International Secretary of the Haldane Society of Socialist lawyers ; John Hendy QC ; Liz Davies, Barrister ; Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers ; Nicola Kountouris Faculty of Law University College London ; Pete Keenlyside National Executive member, CWU ; John R Holmes Retired member of the Communication Workers Union

Messages to be sent to:

GENOP-DEH Union :

main@genop.gr et press@genop.gr

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Greek Prime Minister Papademos

internationalmediaoffice@primeminister.gr


Greek Minister of Labour

Ministry of Labour

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Fax: +30 210 5295 186 info@ypakp.gr

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Ministry of Justice

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Blair caught up in blood and oil row in Kazakhstan

ARE there no limits to Tony Blair's energies and expertise? Middle East "peace envoy", £2 million a year adviser and rep for JP Morgan's bank, and more recently consultant to Kazakhstan's president Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose central Asian state doesn't just provide a butt for Ali G .'s ignorance-thriving humour but also produces oil, coal and other useful resources, including uranium.

Throw in writing a book, lecturing and appearing on TV not to mention the Iraq war inquiry (alas not yet a war crimes trial) and our ex-New Labour prime minister must really have his work cut out. And to think how I thought I was doing well some years back with a warehouse job, a weekend paper stall and penning unpaid articles for lefty publications. Needs must when the devil drives, and I guess the ex-PM's pension is not much when you've got more than one home and send your kids to private schools.

Blair's jobs are not just sinecures. His work for JP Morgan may be classed as part time but it did involve six trips to Libya no less for talks with the late Colonel. His work for the ex-Soviet republic of Kazakhstan's president places him in the company of princes, from Andrew to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, so you can't go worrying him about "principles".

But now questions are being asked about the Blair billions and where they come from, not to say just where they go, at the same time as his latest client is in serious trouble.

Kazakhstan's Prosecutor-General's Office has launched a criminal investigation into actions taken by police during riots earlier this month in the western city of Zhanaozen that left more than a dozen protesters dead. Nurdaulet Suindikov, a spokesman for the office, told reporters in Astana that the investigation would seek to determine whether individual police abused their powers by firing on protesters with the intention of killing them.

According to official figures, at least 16 people were killed and more than 100 were injured, including 17 police officers, during the unrest, when sacked oil workers clashed with police guarding official "independence" celebrations. Unofficial figures put the number of protesters killed or wounded as much higher.

Amateur videos posted to the Internet by residents of Zhanaozen appeared to show police firing at people as they fled the scene of the protest, contradicting official claims that police only fired into the air or ground and only in self-defense. Before the inquiry was announced it was reported that police were pursuing investigations, not to identify those responsible for shooting demonstrators but to find those responsible for shooting the videos.

Umirzak Shukeev, the head of a government task force created to restore order in Zhanaozen announced on December 28 that a 20-day curfew imposed on the city in the wake of the violence would be extended. He did not say how long the special police measures would remain in effect.

Journalists and internet activists were arrested in raids, and on December 29, authorities announced that more than two dozen opposition activists had been detained as part of the prosecutor-general's investigation. Interfax reported that some of the detainees could face charges of arson and looting.

Impoverished oil workers in Zhanaozen and other parts of the Manghystau region have been holding peaceful protests since May, demanding better wages, improved working conditions, and greater rights. Many were fired by their employees -- subsidiaries of the state-controlled KazMunaiGaz company -- over the summer. Among thos arrested have been workers who blocked a railway line.

President Nursultan Nazarbaev, who visited the remote region last week, accused energy officials and the local government of failing to address the protesting oil workers' demands.
Nazarbaev fired his powerful son-in-law, Timur Kulibaev, as the chairman of Samruk-Kazyna, which controls almost all of Kazakhstan's major businesses, including oil and gas firms. He also fired the governor of Manghystau Oblast and the KazMunaiGaz board director. A state of emergency is in place in Janaozen until January 5.

Denying that workers' grievances had anything to do with what happened on December 16, however, Nazarbaev backed the heavy-handed response, saying the “police were carrying out their duty and acted legally within their authority”.

Western powers interested in Kazakhstan's resources as well as its central strategic position are likely to be concerned by the former Soviet republic's reported moves back into closer economic relations with the Russian Federation and Belarus. They are also anxious not to see a movement with parallels to the "Arab Spring" taking this country into political uncertainty. For this reason they may not want to be too closely associated with Nazarbaev if they fear he may fall.

Nazarbaev was reportedly hoping that Tony Blair's advice could help him secure a Nobel peace prize. He might have reconsidered his confidence in our ex-prime minister having seen what use all those meetings with Blair were to Colonel Gaddaffi in the end .

http://iwpr.net/report-news/simmering-tensions-boil-over-kazakstan
http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/newsquery1.pl?searchtext=Kazakhstan&language=en&number=100&Go=Go

On Kazakh trade unions:
http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1862

Blair's connections:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/8999890/Tony-Blair-and-the-8million-tax-mystery.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jan/10/blairjpmorgan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/8857689/Oil-rich-dictator-of-Kazakhstan-recruits-Tony-Blair-to-help-win-Nobel-peace-prize.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1365907/Tony-Blair-Prince-Andrew-mutual-Kazakhstan.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055223/Tony-Blair-billionaire-donor-Lakshmi-Mittal--major-deal-Kazakhstan.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/kazakhstan/8982290/Kazakh-activists-urge-Tony-Blair-to-give-up-adviser-role.html

Socialist Party/Committee for a Workers International reports:

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/13247/24-11-2011/arrested-in-kazakhstan-free-georgii-epshtein
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/12822/21-09-2011/kazakhstan-dictatorial-regime-threatens-socialist-activists

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/13363/16-12-2011/70-dead-amp-500-wounded-by-riot-police-in-kazakhstan

Medic's Marathon for all our Health

HEADING for Westminster, to say "Hands off our NHS", Clive Peedell is honouring Aneurin Bevan, here seen at start of NHS, who said service 'will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it'.


IN just under a week a medical man with a mission starts out to run 160 miles, from Cardiff to central London, in support of the National Health Service. It's not another charity event. Clive Peedell is not running to raise extra funds, for a service we have all paid for, but to raise awareness of the threat which HM government is posing to our health, with its privatisation plans.

A leading member of the British Medical Association(BMA), Clive is a specialist working in the North East. He will be starting from the statue of Aneurin Bevan, the ex-miner and Health Minister who started the National Health Service. His planned route to London will take him through Prime Minister David Cameron's constituency, Witney in Oxfordshire.

Here in London he will be finishing up at the Department of Health, Richmond House on Whitehall.

This is what Dr. Peedell has to say in his 'Bevan's Run' page on Facebook:

"My name is Clive Peedell and I am Consultant Clinical Oncologist working for the NHS in the North East of England. I am co-chair of the NHS Consultants' Association and a member of BMA Council and BMA political board. I have been an active campaigner against NHS privatisation and market based reforms.

"I believe that a publicly funded, publicly provided and publicly accountable NHS is the most cost effective and equitable way to deliver healthcare to our nation's population.

"This aim of "Bevan's Run" and the associated Bevan's Run blogsite is to raise public awareness about the serious threats that the coalition Government's Health and Social Care Bill poses to the English NHS.

These threats were well summarised in a recent article in the Lancet:
'The proposals are ideological with little evidential foundation. They represent a decisive step towards privatisation that risks undermining the fundamental equity and efficiency objectives of the NHS. Rather than “liberating the NHS”, these proposals seem to be an exercise in liberating the NHS’s £100 billion budget to commercial enterprises”
Professor Margaret Whitehead et al, Dept of Health Inequalities and Social Determinants of Health, University of Liverpool. The Lancet, Volume 376, Issue 9750


"All the key NHS stakeholders have expressed serious concerns about the proposed NHS reforms. The BMA has a policy of calling for the bill to be withdrawn and opposes the whole bill. A recent survey of GPs by the Royal College of General Practitioners showed that three quarters want the bill to be withdrawn.

"In addition, a group of over 400 public health doctors recently wrote an open letter to the House of Lords arguing that the bill will cause “irreparable harm to the NHS, to individual patients, and to society as a whole,” that it will “erode the NHS’s ethical and cooperative foundations,” and that it will “not deliver efficiency, quality, fairness, or choice.”

"Despite this widespread opposition to the proposed reforms, the bill is continuing its passage through Parliamentary process and is likely to be enacted in the Springtime of 2012. It is therefore imperative that the public are informed about what is happening to the NHS, so they can apply pressure to Members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons to stop the passage of the bill.

"Anuerin Bevan, who spearheaded the establishment of the NHS in 1948, famously stated that the NHS 'will last a long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it'

"In recognition of Bevan’s words, I will be running the 160 miles from Bevan's Statue in Cardiff to the Department of Health, Richmond House, in London over 6 days in protest against the Health and Social Care Bill.

"I am very grateful to Dr David Wilson (a fellow Consultant Clinical Oncologist) who as an accomplished long distance runner, will be accompanying me on the journey".


For more of what Clive Peedell has to say on the NHS and where to meet and greet him, see Website:
http://bevansrun.blogspot.com/

For more on NHS issues and campaigning see:

http://www.healthemergency.org.uk/

http://www.keepournhspublic.com/index.php

Campus Capers target profs from Coventry to Beersheba

COMPLAINTS by an Israeli post-graduate student, claiming that her dissertation was unfairly down graded, have been escalated into a public campaign against the academic allegedly responsible.
Smadar Bakovic claimed that Professor Nicola Pratt of the University of Warwick had unfairly graded her dissertation. She said the same dissertation was passed with a distinction after being re-marked by a second professor.
The Jewish Chronicle published two reports on its website, on December 22 and 29. Its reporter Marcus Dysch said Smadar Bakovic repeatedly told Warwick University she was uncomfortable with Nicola Pratt overseeing her master's dissertation on Israeli Arab identity.
Professor Pratt, associate professor at Warwick's politics and international studies department, has lived in Egypt, speaks Arabic and is an expert on women and gender in the Middle East. As Dysch tells us she " is a vocal anti-Israel campaigner who was refused entry to the West Bank by Israeli authorities in 2009. Following Operation Cast Lead she was one of more than 100 academics who wrote to the Guardian saying "Israel must lose", and calling for the UK to implement boycott, divestment and sanctions".
Ms.Bakovic's dissertation originally received a mark of 60%. After she complained and was allowed to resubmit it to another, unnamed supervisor, it scored 71% , a distinction. Both submissions also involved an external examiner.

Warwick University has denied that Ms.Bakovic complained more than once about Nicola Pratt as a supervisor. The university says it had bent over backward to meet the Israeli postgrad's complaint over her marks. It said she was allowed to resubmit because of her strength of feeling, but the higher mark could be attributed to the fact the dissertation was "substantially different" when it was re-submitted.The JC report claims to have seen e-mails indicating the paper had only been "tweaked" slightly.

Whatever the truth of that, it seems the marks were neither the beginning nor the end of the matter. The JC quotes Ms Bakovic as saying: "I knew Prof Pratt because whenever there was an anti-Israel event at the university I went along and she was often there. She moderated a Jews for Justice for Palestinians event, so I knew her stance. As soon as I saw her name a red light came on."
The JC reports that an online petition calling for Professor Pratt to be sacked has been signed by more than 300 people. It states: "Professor Pratt must go now. There must be zero tolerance of bigoted academics who do not have the wit to separate their prejudices from their academic objectivity."
Board of Deputies senior vice-president, Jonathan Arkush, has written to Warwick vice-chancellor Nigel Thrift asking for an inquiry.
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/60846/anti-zionist-professors-low-marks-israeli-now-a-distinction
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/61139/anti-zionist-warwick-professor-faces-investigation
While telling us who Nicola Pratt is, and illustrating its articles with a picture of the professor, supplied by the university, the Jewish Chronicle was less forthcoming about the background of its main source, the 35-year old student Smadar Bakovic, who told it "After a year of battling, I'm absolutely delighted. I feel vindicated. I did it for Israel."
It has been left to Asa Winstanley, a journalist contributing to the Electronic Intifada website, to reveal that Bakovic is listed as the media services coordinator on the website of MediaCentral, an agency in Jerusalem that aims to immerse foreign journalists in Israeli perspectives.The group is a project of HonestReporting, which once described itself on its website as “an organization dedicated to defending Israel against prejudice in the media” (“Our Mission”).
Its managing editor, Simon Plosker, is a reservist soldier in the Israeli army’s press office. He previously worked for the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) and NGO Monitor, another Israel lobby group (“Meet the editors”).
Professor Pratt was one of many academic signatories to a seminal letter in The Guardian during the 2008-09 Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, which asserted that “if we affirm the right to resist military aggression and colonial occupation, then we are obliged to take sides … against Israel, and with the people of Gaza and the West Bank” (“Growing outrage at the killing in Gaza,” 15 January 2009).
The Reut Institute, an influential think tank, issued a report in 2010 on how to counter the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and “sabotage” the movement of solidarity with Palestine. To this end it spoke of “Mobilizing and training civil society partners … for example students and faculty in academia” (“The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall, March 2010, p. 71).
http://electronicintifada.net/content/exposed-uk-university-student-claiming-bias-works-project-israel-pressure-group/10759

How fortuitous that someone like Smadar Bakovic should happen to have chosen Warwick and found a professor like Nicola Pratt whose extracurricular meetings she could keep an eye on.

Meanwhile back in the Land ...

In Israel the campaign against civil rights groups and their funding, and against university lecturers regarded as insufficiently loyal to Zionism, has been led by an extra-parliamentary right-wing group called Im Tirzu which seems to be increasingly influencing government moves.
So it is interesting to see where Im Tirzu gets its money, and, particularly after a year when so many young Israelis took to the streets over issues like housing and social justice, criticising the country's richest families, to read that big business has quadrupled its funding for the far-Right group. Coincidence, or what? No wonder Uri Avneri, who arrived with his parents from Germany in 1933 keeps saying he is reminded of Weimar.
An article by Uri Blau in Haaretz says that Leo Schachter, Israel’s second-largest exporter of processed diamonds, donated NIS 74,000 to Im Tirtzu last year.

• "That same year, the company, which is headed by Elliot Tannenbaum, who immigrated from the United States in the early 1980s, exported $359 million worth of diamonds. Sources in the company say that Tannenbaum decides with his wife Debbie on the donations made by the company. Tannenbaum’s office said in his name that they are not interested in commenting on the matter".

• "According to Im Tirtzu’s most recent financial report, in 2010 it spent NIS 1.14 million on hasbara (PR) and advertising ‏(more than 10 times what it spent in 2009‏). The report also reveals that last year it received donations totaling NIS 1.66 million, almost four times as much as in 2009, when they amounted to NIS 456,000. In 2010 the organization spent NIS 68,000 on “events and activities,” and under the heading “salaries and related expenses” reported spending approximately NIS 250,000. Incidentally, the cost of fundraising efforts in 2010 was close to NIS 70,000 ‏(nearly nine times the sum from the previous year‏).
• "Aside from the Azrieli Group and Leo Schachter Diamonds, the group mentions three other bodies from which it received donations in 2010 exceeding NIS 20,000, the maximum amount for a donation whose source needn’t be listed. Keren Segal Leyisrael − a fund whose declared objective is “to establish, develop and manage educational and cultural projects about Israel’s heritage and the Jewish community in Jerusalem and Israel,” and which is headed by Jerusalem businessman Yotam Bar-Hama − donated NIS 77,000 to Im Tirtzu last year. In 2008, it donated NIS 190,000 to Im Tirtzu. Bar-Hama declined to explain the motives behind the donation, and said only that the fund’s money comes from his family abroad".
• Another organization called The Forum for Religious Zionism donated NIS 74,000 to the movement last year. This is a new organization that was registered in 2010 in the name of Zvi Soibel, former director of the Bnei Akiva yeshiva in Kfar Haroeh. (Bnei Akiva is the religious Zionist youth movement linked with the National Religious Party. Major Peter Lerner, the Israeli army spokesman who joked about the killing of Mustafa Tamimi in Nebi Saleh, is a graduate of its UK section).
• Since its founding, Im Tirtzu has also been supported by the Central Israel Fund, a U.S.-based NPO. The fund, which according to its latest U.S. income tax return, raised nearly $10.5 million in 2010, says that it aids the needy and supports various educational and community projects. Central Israel, which transferred NIS 95,000 to Im Tirtzu last year, raises money for strongly right-wing organizations like Women in Green, and the Hananu organization, which provides legal aid to rightists and in the past even gave money to Yigal Amir. (Amir is the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin)
• "Some of the contributors to Im Tirtzu have been revealed in the past. In 2008, the organization received a donation of NIS 374,000 from the American organization Christians United for Israel, and in 2009 it received the same sum from them. This organization is headed by Father John Hagee, who once said that “God sent Hitler as a hunter to force the Jews to move to Israel in anticipation of Judgment Day.” This money, by the way, was not transferred directly to Im Tirtzu, but rather via the Jewish Agency.

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/major-israeli-businesses-helped-quadruple-donations-to-right-wing-im-tirtzu-movement-1.404637




King's Karsh

It is not just money that is being mobilised from abroad to boost Israel's academic witch hunt. In November we heard how the head of Bar Ilan university was telling the Zionist Organisation of America about the "Bolshevik post-Zionists" who needed to be routed from other institutions, and how some academics at the Ben Gurion University(BGU) of the Negev were coming under fire.


Now a London-born academic at the Beersheba based BGU has had to refute allegations that he compared Israel to the Nazi regime, after he cited Pastor Niemoller's well-known poem about those who stood by when others were taken away during the Holocaust.

Professor David Newman, dean of BGU's faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences was accused by King's College London Professor Efraim Karsh of being anti-Israel and a "pseudo-academic" following an article that he wrote in the Jerusalem Post under the headline Speaking out against the threat.

Karsh, who has written that militancy is inherant in Islam, and not a response to western colonialism, is head of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at Kings College. He accuses Newman of sticking to a "colonial paradigm" about Zionism rather than recognising it as a legitimate movement for self determination.

A strong critic of the "new historians" in Israel who acknowledged responsibility for the Palestinian Nakba, Prof.Karsh has been characterised as the academic voice of Revisionist (right-wing) Zionism. Writing for the US conservative think tank, Middle East Forum, of which he is director, Karsh said that BGU had become a "hotbed of anti-Israel propaganda". Maybe other staff, and students, at Kings ought to look at what their college is becoming a hotbed for.

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/61143/professors-duel-over-colonialist-line-israel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephraim_Karsh

Earlier posting on universities in Israel:
http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2011/11/from-battle-for-olive-groves-to-war-in.html

Continuity Man

AWARD-winning American film maker Michael Moore is no mere "trendy" media type trying to keep up with the fashion of the day. He may be light as theoreticians go, and I'm not nominating him as a wonderrebbe or guru, as though I believed in such things. But giving credit where due, Mr.Moore has uncovered an important thread of continuity leading up behind the anti-capitalist "Occupy" movement, whether or not participants are aware of it.

"On this day, December 30th, in 1936 -- 75 years ago today -- hundreds of workers at the General Motors factories in Flint, Michigan, took over the facilities and occupied them for 44 days. My uncle was one of them.

"The workers couldn't take the abuse from the corporation any longer. Their working conditions, the slave wages, no vacation, no health care, no overtime -- it was do as you're told or get tossed onto the curb.

"So on the day before New Year's Eve, emboldened by the recent re-election of Franklin Roosevelt, they sat down on the job and refused to leave.

"They began their Occupation in the dead of winter. GM cut off the heat and water to the buildings. The police tried to raid the factories several times, to no avail. Even the National Guard was called in.

"But the workers held their ground, and after 44 days, the corporation gave in and recognized the UAW as the representative of the workers. It was a monumental historical moment as no other major company had ever been brought to its knees by their employees. Workers were given a raise to a dollar an hour -- and successful strikes and occupations spread like wildfire across the country. Finally, the working class would be able to do things like own their own homes, send their children to college, have time off and see a doctor without having to worry about paying. In Flint, Michigan, on this day in 1936, the middle class was born.

"But 75 years later, the owners and elites have regained all power and control. I can think of no better way for us to honor the original Occupiers than by all of us participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement in whatever form that takes in each of our towns. We need direct action all winter long if we are to prevail. You can start your own Occupy group in your neighborhood or school or with just your friends. Speak out against economic injustice at every chance you get. Stop the bank from evicting the family down the block. Move your checking and credit card to a community bank or credit union. Place a sign in your yard -- and get your neighbors to do it also -- that says, "WE ARE THE 99%."

"Do something, anything, but don't remain silent. Not now. This is the moment. It won't come again. 75 years ago today, in Flint, Michigan, the people said they'd had enough and occupied the factories until they won. What is stopping us now? The rich have one plan: bleed everyone dry. Can anyone, in good conscience, be a bystander to this?

"My uncle wasn't, and because of what he and others did, I got to grow up without having to worry about a roof over my head or medical bills or a decent life. And all that was provided by my dad who built spark plugs on a GM assembly line.

"Let's each of us double our efforts to raise a ruckus, Occupy Everywhere, and get creative as we throw a major nonviolent wrench into this system of Greed. Let's make the politicians running for office in 2012 quake in their boots if they refuse to tax the rich, regulate Wall Street and do whatever we the people tell them to do".

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/75-years-ago-today-first-occupy

Leave aside Michael Moore's adoption of the all too common confusion around between working and "middle class", which has the danger that it erects a false barrier between those workers still with jobs and skills in demand and the poor and unemployed. Moore's vision also limits itself to the possibility of restoring and defending the relative prosperity gained by sections of working people in heyday of boom and American industrial power.

But at least he reminds us that these gains were made in struggle and did not 'trickle down' from the generosity of the business tycoons and bosses, or the super rich. Evoking the struggles of the 1930s is also a healthy inoculation against the snake-oil salesmen, conspiracy theorists and middle class dumbwits who have been telling eeach other the system was fine until some wicked individuals spoilt it, and have remembered how Henry Ford once spoke ill about bankers, forgetting he also ordered gangsters and guns be used against workers.

Moore is wrong to think the big auto sit-downs of 1936 were the first time such things had happened, even in America, and they certainly were not confined there. In 1920, Italian workers occupied the big plants of Turin, though as one observer noted, while they had raised the red flag over the factories, the tricolore still flew over the barracks and police stations. We know which won, as a former "Socialist" backed by capitalists, landowners and the bankers JP Morgan arranged the "march on Rome" of his blackshirts.

But if the embers of working class resistance had been stamped underfoot with the rise of fascism they burst into flame again in 1943, in the factories of Turin as well as in the partisan movement, which was to leave il Duce dangling.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/62367983/4/THE-TURIN-STRIKES-OF-MARCH-1943

Between the wars sit-downs and occupations had taken various forms and places, from Italy to Poland, even Hungary under a semi-fascist regime, and often involving miners staying underground. In 1934 there was a major staydown strike at Terbovlye, in Slovenia. It may have been miners from Yugoslavia who brought that weapon with them to the anthracite mines in America.

In 1935 about 70 miners stayed down and on strike at Nine Mile Point colliery in South Wales. It was not to be the last time miners in Britain took such action.

http://www.labournet.de/internationales/usa/sitdown37.pdf
http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/ital1920revised.html

In 1936, strikers at Le Havre in Normandy occupied to prevent a lock-out, and their action spread right across France, involving big factories like Renault and the steel plants. It ended with workers winning gains from employers and government, not just national pay agreements but for the first time, holidays with pay and other benefits.

In both France and the United States the sit-down strikes boosted organisation and confidence in the working class, as well as securing immediate gains, and as Leon Trotsky pointed out, they did something more:

Sit-down strikes, the latest expression of this kind of initiative, go beyond the limits of "normal" capitalist procedure. Independently of the demands of the strikers, the temporary seizure of factories deals a blow to the idol, capitalist property. Every sit-down strike poses in a practical manner the question of who is boss of the factory: the capitalist or the workers?

Transitional Programme of the Fourth International
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm

Of course posing the question is not delivering an answer. In the 1970s there were several places in Britain, the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders being most famous, where workers fighting sackings and closure took over the workplace, and while perpectives varied they posed other questions, like how the workplace relates to society, the state and finance.

More recently we have had the occupations at Vestas in the Isle of Wight, and Visteon in Belfast and London. Both raised interest much wider than among "the usual suspects", and neither waited for supposed leaders from the TUC or Labour Party to initiate them. The Vestas strikers, defending wind turbine jobs, gained support from climate camp activists.

Though the main struggle here is currently over cuts and pensions, it is clearly related to who should pay for the capitalists' crisis, and could raise the issues of who is boss, and who owns what, in new ways.

The Occupy movement has sprung up outside the conventional organised labour movement, but if anti-capitalism is to mean anything positive it needs the working class as a political force, and for that the working class needs its memory. Whatever Michael Moore's political limits, we should welcome anyone, particularly with his creative skills, who is bringing out the connections.