Urban Uprisings in Contemporary Europe

Stellan Vinthagen December 18th, 2011

FSSK, CUS and CSM invite you to a conference day:
Urban Uprisings in Contemporary Europe
Paris 2005, Athens 2008, London 2011 – What’s next?

When: Wednesday 15th of February 2012. 9.50am -16.30 pm
Where: Linnésalen, Mediehuset, Seminariegatan 1B, Campus Linné

A Spectre is stalking Europe – the spectre of suburban youth revolts. Europe is a
continent marked by growing inequality, racism and social tensions. In recent years we
have seen battle like pictures on TV from Paris, Athens, Lyon, Rotterdam, Copenhagen
and most recently in London and other British cities. During the last two years different
areas in the metropolitan districts in Sweden has also become a part of this picture.
How should we understand this development, how do we explain these uprisings? Are
there general patterns that could be seen in all cities?
The unit for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Forum för Studier av Samtidskultur -
FSSK), the Centre for Urban Studies (Centrum för Urbana Studier) and Gothenburg
CSM (Forum for Civil Society and Social Movement Research), all at Gothenburg
University, arrange a one day conference on these issues and we welcome you to this first
conference day in a series on urban movements and urban change.
The conference is free (and includes coffee and bun) but has a limited number of seats.
We therefore require that you send us an email if you like to participate before the 8th of
February to ensure your seat.

Email to:
catharina.thorn [at] kultur.gu.se
ove.sernhede [at] gu.se
hakan.thorn [at] sociology.gu.s

Resistance Studies Seminar: Skolan som en arena för motstånd

Stellan Vinthagen November 24th, 2011

Alla intresserade är välkomna till Motståndsseminarium torsdag den 8 dec 2011.

Sven-Eric Liedman, pensionerad professor i idéhistoria ger ett motståndsseminarium på Annedalsseminariet, Institutionen för Globala Studier, Campus Linné, www.globalstudies.gu.se i Sal 220, kl 15:15-17.00. Som vanligt så samlas vi på Gyllene Prag för en bit mat och fortsatta samtal efteråt.

Titel: “Skolan som en arena för motstånd”
Skolsystemet från förskola till universitet är alltid en plats för ständigt kämpande intressen. Just nu styr kravet på att skolan ska förbereda unga människor för en snabb och gränslös marknad, där effektivitet är nyckelordet. Det väsentliga blir då kunskaper i sådant som betraktas som viktigt för ett marknadsliv: matematik, språk, framför allt engelska, men också vad som kallas social kompetens. Begreppet “social kompetens” är värt en särskild eftertanke. Det betecknar i allmänhet en förmåga att umgås med andra människor, vara inkännande men inte kravlös. Men lätt insmyger sig också en nyans av medgörlighet, framför allt den underordnades medgörlighet och kritiklöshet gentemot den överordnade, den anställdes gentemot företaget eller institutionen. Social kompetens kan i så fall urata till kritiklöshet.

För egen del kämpar jag för en skola, och i mitt fall framför allt ett universitet, där ifrågasättandet är i högsätet. Orättvisor på nära håll liksom i ett världsperspektiv kommer då i fokus. Den tilltagande segregationen också i ett land som Sverige måste komma i fokus, liksom givetvis hela den globala snedfördelningen (det hör ju till saken att världen i dag finns i Sverige på ett annat sätt än för femtio år sen). En avgöraned aspekt av detta är också hushållningen med naturens resurser. Det måste inskärpas att människan redan genom sin egen kropp är en del av naturen.

Det betyder inte alls att matematik eller engelska eller några andra skolämnen blir mindre viktiga. Det betyder att attityden till både kunskap och omvärld förändras. Det gäller inte att smälta in utan att få en kritisk inställning till den dominerande utvecklingen.

Extra Resistance Studies Seminar: The Online Struggle on Vaccination

Stellan Vinthagen October 14th, 2011

During the guest research visit by professor Brian Martin from Australia he will give a resistance studies seminar. Brian is one of the world’s leading scholars on nonviolent resistance and widely published. And his publications are available online here.

20 oct 15-17 Room 129, Annedalsseminariet. A vaccination struggle. The struggle between supporters and critics of vaccination in Australia reveals a wide range of tactics, especially online tactics to suppress free speech, and suggests new arenas for studying resistance. The debate over vaccination, involving conflicting perspectives on children’s health, has been heated in many countries. In Australia, the debate recently seems to have reached a new level of bitterness. The Australian Vaccination Network (AVN), a long-established citizens’ group critical of vaccines, has come under attack by pro-vaccination citizen campaigners (Stop the AVN, and others) who have tried to shut down the operations of the AVN using a variety of novel methods, especially via the Internet. How can such attempts at censorship be opposed?

Take the chance to meet Brian and join us afterwards at the restaurant Gyllene Prag for some food, drinks and more talks on nonviolent resistance.

Resistance Studies Seminars, Gothenburg, Fall Schedule 2011

Stellan Vinthagen September 15th, 2011

Welcome to the new schedule for resistance studies seminars at Gothenburg university!

We are this semester, as before, offering a meeting place for critical discussions on resistance, from various perspectives and by different seminar presenters. Everyone that is interested in critical discussions on resistance is welcome: researchers, students, activists, journalists, authors, or others that find the themes interesting.The seminars are at Campus Linné, see a map at www.globalstudies.gu.se or directly at this link.

If you want to get regular emails about the coming program of seminars, let our seminar organizer Per Ström know you are interested: email (without the spaces between letters) per. strom @ yahoo. se

We start early with an extra seminar already on September 22 with Professor Evelina Dagnino, from Campinas University, Brazil on “Civil society: theoretical challenges and practical dilemmas from a Latin American perspective”. Seminar is in English. Thursday 15:15-17 at the A-building in room A-206 (see map). The seminar is organized with the help of Associate Professor Edmé Dominguez at School of Global Studies. If you have questions about this seminar, please email directly to Edmé: edme. dominguez @ globalstudies. gu. se

September 29 with Paul Routledge, Reader at University of Glasgow. He will talk on “Climate Justice as Alterhegemony: The Case of the landless movement in Bangladesh”. Seminar is in English. Thursday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalsseminariet (Room 303).

September 27 with Irene Molina, Docent i kulturgeografi, Uppsala Universitet och medlem i ArA, Föreningen Antitrasistiska akademin. “Förorten och det symboliska politiska våldet”. Seminar are in Swedish. Tuesday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalseminariet at Room 303.

October 13 with Ramzi Abdou, Palestinian Youth Activist, Student in Political science from Gaza University. United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East “UNRWA” in GAZA. “Culture of Resistance vs. Defeat”. Seminar are in English. Thursday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalseminariet at Room 303.

October 27 with Mathias Wåg, Redaktör för antologin I stundens hetta och ansvarig utgivare för tidningen Brand. “I stundens hetta – Svarta block, vita overaller och osynliga partier”. Seminar are in Swedish. Thursday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalseminariet at Room 419.

November 10 with Paulina de los Reyes, professor i ekonomisk historia och verksam vid Ekonomisk Historiska Institutionen, Stockholms Universitet. “Intersektionalitet, makt och motstånd”. Seminar are in Swedish. Thursday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalseminariet at Room 303.

November 24 with Elin Andersson, aktivist och freelansjournalist. “Är det verkligen fred vi vill ha? – om risken för ett nytt krig om ockuperade Västsahara”. Seminar are in English or possible Swedish. Thursday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalseminariet at Room 303.

December 8 with Sven-Eric Liedman, professor i Idé- och lärdomshistoria vid Göteborgs Universitet. “Hets – marknadsliberala skola med konservativa ideal”. Seminar are in Swedish. Thursday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalseminariet, hörsal.

Resistance Studies Magazine back again! Call for Papers

jj July 29th, 2011

The Resistance Studies Magazine is a peer-reviewed, on-line, and open-access magazine for the studies of resistance and social change (http://rsmag.org/)

We are back after a break and will have a relaunch this fall. We will continue to be a peer-reviewed journal and we have an expanded editorial board.

After a first selection by the editor all articles we want to include will be sent anonymous to at least two reviewers for comments and advise.

We will consider:

- Theoretical and empirical articles on power, resistance and social change.

- Reviews of scholarly articles and books.

Articles submitted before September 1. will be included in the process for texts to be published in our October issue. We accept manuscripts in Word, Open Office or .rtf formats and ask contributors to read the guidelines for submissions here: http://rsmag.org/?page_id=15

For submissions and drafts, please use the following e-mail address: editor (at) rsmag (dot) org

Yours sincerely

Jørgen Johansen

Please help us to let this call be distributed to all relevant individuals, networks, and institutions.


————————————————-
Resistance Studies Magazine

http://rsmag.org/

Editor: Jørgen Johansen
Cellphone: +46 761481011
Office: +46 534 30123
Skype: jj_ahimsa
e-mail: editor (at) rsmag (dot) org
snail mail: J. Johansen, Sparsnas 1010, 66891 Ed, Sweden

As the drop excavates the Stone – The work of Amnesty International from a resistance perspective

Stellan Vinthagen May 25th, 2011

Amnesty International is one of the largest and most recognized human rights organisazitions in the world with more than 2.8 million supporters worldwide in about 150 countries. Traditionally, Amnesty has worked with the promotion of the civil and political rights, even though the organization during this time has claimed that all of the rights in the UN´s Universal Declaration on Human Rights are valid. Thus, big changes have occurred within the organization during the last couple of years. Today, Amnesty also work with the promotion of the economic, social and cultural rights. This work was set forth in the launch of the global campaign “Demand dignity” in May of 2009. Within this campaign, Amnesty is recognizing that poverty is in fact a result of human rights violations. Even the methods for activism that Amnesty is using have partly changed during the years.

During this seminary we will present the changes that have occurred within Amnesty as an organization during the last couple of years. Our focus point will be the activist work within the Swedish section, because this is what we have experience from. We will connect the work of Amnesty to relevant resistance theories in order to create a picture of how the organization can be considered to be an actor of resistance, both nationally as well as internationally.

Elin Åman is currently a student at the masters program in Human Rights at School of Global Studies and an active member of Amnesty International. She is the coordinator of the Swedish sections special group for economic, social and cultural rights.

Johanna Tjernström has a Master’s degree in Global Studies at School of Global Studies and is an active member in Amnesty International, among other things as a board member of the district of Gothenburg.

Annedalsseminariet – Seminariegatan 1A
Thursday 15.00 -1700. Seminar will be in English at room 419.

Welcome to the seminar
Free and open for everyone

Call for papers: Resistance Studies Panel at ISA, San Diego, 2012

Stellan Vinthagen May 12th, 2011

Dear Resistance Researchers,

We are planning to organise a resistance studies panel at the International Studies Assocation (ISA) in San Diego  2012 (see http://www.isanet.org). Organisers of the panel are Mona Lilja and Stellan Vinthagen. The plan is: (1) to discuss resistance studies (2) to meet each other live! (3) to make our work known for others who might be interested. So, if you think this is interesting, join us! Send your abstracts (with title) to Stellan Vinthagen (stellan[dot]vinthagen[at]gmail[dot]com) at the LATEST the 22 May, and then we will put up the panel and connect your paper to the panel. If many people submit papers we register the ones we get first.

However, we are also planning to have meeting and dinner during the same day as our panel, and all will be invited to this that show interest.

All the best,

Mona Lilja and Stellan Vinthagen

Extra Seminar: Genome Hackers

Stellan Vinthagen May 2nd, 2011

Extra seminar with resistance relevance:

Genome Hackers: How amateur biologists are challenging Big Bio and making Dna hackable Seminar, Friday 6th May, 10:00-12:00, rum F417, Skanstorget 18, Gothenburg

Alessandro Delfanti is a PhD candidate in Science and Society at the  University of Milan and the International School for Advanced Studies. He has been a visiting fellow at the UCLA Center for Society and Genetics in Los Angeles. His research interests are related to open access and open source and how these practices interact with scientists’ cultures and the socioeconomic configuration of contemporary biology. Alessandro also tackles science, intellectual property and today’s
capitalism as a journalist and a political activist. He teaches Sociology of New Media and is an editor of the open access Journal of Science Communication. Genome Hackers is the title of his PhD dissertation.

Turkey: Civil Disobedience? Or Political Resistance?

jj April 23rd, 2011

From: SDE
The movement initiated by the BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) and the DTK (Congress of Democratic Society) in the Southeast Anatolia is defined as civil disobedience by the pioneers of the movement and it continues under this stamp. Undoubtedly the people living in the region have problems and there is no doubt that they are at a position to express them. At such a point, the discussable dimension of the issue is the meaning of this action and its relationship with the solution of the demands. To ask in a simpler tone, before its contribution, is this civil disobedience movement?

In order to answer this question we should firstly refer to the meaning of the civil disobedience. In fact, civil, civil society, interest group, political party and all the concepts like this has a meaning and a definition in the western political culture where they were born. In other words, we can’t pad them as we wish. If we do something under the title of such a concept we have to take its meaning there into consideration and do the minimum requirements of these concepts. The civil resistance is not exempt from this condition.

The concept of civil disobedience has been on stage since the mid 19th century. In short, civil disobedience is a civil action taken when it is convinced that there remains no political or judicial way of expressing the demand of public against authoritarian bodies. As clearly understood from this short definition, it is the state of protesting a legal regulation on behalf of legitimate demands by a public sect which doesn’t find a legal regulation to be legitimate. Despite of the appearance of representatives at a position of being the leaders of public this movement is a public movement in all aspects.

More importantly the civil disobedience begins where the political struggle ends. In other words, it is the job of taking the risk of an action considered as crime since it is illegal at a point where the hope of political struggle for social demands disappears. The most consistent dimensions of it are belief in the legitimacy of the demands, the warranty of depersonalization by attributing to the society and not resorting to violence.

Then, under the lights of this description is the movement that we are talking about is a civil disobedience?

As clearly known, it has been put forward that the Kurdish civil action has been done for four main demands which has never been accomplished. These are, failure in education in mother tongue, the discharge of the political prisoners, stopping the civil and military operations and pulling down the election thresholds below 10 percent.

As clearly known the civil disobedience is claimed to be done for four main reasons which have not been resolved. These are: the failures in initiating education in mother tongue, in releasing the political prisoners, in sustaining the civil and military operations and in dropping the election thresholds blow ten percent. Undoubtedly these are problem to be resolved and the demands for their solution are the very basic right of a sect of the society.

However, the solution ways within the frame of the constitution have not been followed adequately. In other words, the so called civil disobedience does not carry the requirement of reaching the end of all political ways. Regardless of what the citizens attending the movement claim we can clearly say that the organizations pioneering this movement do not carry this requirements. We don’t need to too much back, if this movement took place a few years ago it would be more appropriate to be named as civil disobedience than today, because civil disobedience is a multidimensional risky and marginal way which is taken when all political hopes. Whereas, the Kurdish Issue summarized above in a few points has never been so close to the solution since the Republican era as it is today. The state expresses that serious mistakes have been committed and these should be made up for. It also tries to purge a structure which is the main actor of all the mistakes mentioned above. It tries to annihilate a militaristic structure which converted the issue into gangrene in a pro-security system at a pathological level and involved in terrorism at this point. A significant public opinion has come about in civil society regarding the requirement of the solution of aforementioned issue and many civil society institutions declared that they are supportive to the endeavors for the solution. Research institutions such as Institute of Strategic Thinking (SDE) and Politics, Economy and Society Researches Association (SETAV) have published reports that would enlighten the community in this respect as a logistic support to inform the political decision makers in this direction.

In such an environment the public opinion directs the attentions to those who consider themselves to represent the Kurds. However, the things done are surprising. It is an obvious observation that an ordinary observer can see that these they haven’t done any contribution to the process. In short, since the Kurdish politicians could not do politics at the position of policy making all the political ways have been wasted thus the turn of civil disobedience has not come yet. A deputy throw stones to the security forces with children poured down to the streets by illegal organizations instead of doing politics. Of course, the problematic consequence of this action is that it undermines the discourses of civil disobedience.

One of the main stalemates of the Kurdish politicians is that they cannot develop a policy out of the concerns of the illegal Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its leader Ocalan, whereas politics requires clarity, the ability to think alternatives and the ability to prefer the most profitable choice among many different choices. The establishment of many things in political arena in accordance with Ocalan closes the way for the affirmative politics. Then almost all claims are deprived of frankness or clarity and proof.

What is more, the relationship between the PKK and its leader Ocalan with the political structure considered to have sit at the very center of the case has been discussed. There may not be an organic relation but the process is full of cooperation instances. It is clear that that the pro-security system felt insecurity and even committing its illegal action via this party. This situation can be explained with the idea that everyone founds its calculations on his interests but the process show a deeper relation impression.

In the mean time, the representatives of the civil disobedience who demand the “cease of civil and military operations” didn’t contribute anything to the initiation process which tries to purge the pro-Ergenekon militia structure which is at the very center of the respective operation. They adopted similar attitude with the Republican People Party (CHP) and Nationalist Progress Party (MHP) which have benefited from these clandestine structures and try to take the case from the judicial bodies via deputyship and etc.

What is more, dropping the election threshold is not a main problem of civil society platform. As this claim is not sensible just at the wake of the elections it also concerns the political representatives seriously because, acceptance of a party considering itself as the particular representative of a large landscape and dense population that it would not be able to pass the 10 percent threshold and the reason for falling below in the former elections is not the threshold itself. It was because of the inconsistence of the representatives and unconvincing for the population that they tried to lead.

It seems that those who consider themselves to be the representatives or organizations of Kurdish citizens do not remain at a point that will contribute to the solution. Although it can be said that the main cause of this is their conditioning themselves to illegal structuring and thus could not get to the solution area it can also be said that a part of them are in favor of deadlocking. That is, they may have thought that in case of solution they will lose their functions. A great majority of our prudent citizens who doesn’t want even to remain among the marginal 10 percent political group observes the case closely. In these circumstances these citizens see the movement named as civil disobedience as such instead they perceive it as political disobedience which has not been accomplished.

Special Report: Inside the Egyptian revolution

jj April 13th, 2011

(Reuters) - In early 2005, Cairo-based computer engineer Saad Bahaar was trawling the internet when he came across a trio of Egyptian expatriates who advocated the use of non-violent techniques to overthrow strongman Hosni Mubarak. Bahaar, then 32 and interested in politics and how Egypt might change, was intrigued by the idea. He contacted the group, lighting one of the fuses that would end in freedom in Tahrir Square six years later.

A protester stands in front of a burning barricade during a demonstration in Cairo January 28, 2011.

A protester stands in front of a burning barricade during a demonstration in Cairo January 28, 2011.

The three men he approached — Hisham Morsy, a physician, Wael Adel, a civil engineer by training, and Adel’s cousin Ahmed, a chemist — had all left Egypt for jobs in London.

Inspired by the way Serbian group Otpor had brought down Slobodan Milosevic through non-violent protests in 2000, the trio studied previous struggles. One of their favorite thinkers was Gene Sharp, a Boston-based academic who was heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi. The group had set up a webpage in 2004 to propagate civil disobedience ideas in Arabic.

At first, the three young Egyptians’ activities were purely theoretical. But in November 2005, Wael Adel came to Cairo to give a three-day training session on civil disobedience. In the audience were about 30 members of Kefaya, an anti-Mubarak protest group whose name means “enough” in Arabic. Kefaya had gained prominence during the September 2005 presidential elections which Mubarak won by a landslide. During these protests, they had been attacked by thugs and some women members had been stripped naked. Bahaar joined Adel on the course and his career as an underground trainer in non-violent activism was born.

Adel taught activists how to function within a decentralized network. Doing so would make it harder for the security services to snuff them out by arresting leaders. They were also instructed on how to maintain a disciplined non-violent approach in the face of police brutality, and how to win over bystanders.

“The third party, the bystander sitting on the fence, will join when he realizes that security forces’ use of violence is unwarranted,” Bahaar said in one of a series of interviews with Reuters. “Security will harass you to provoke an angry violent response to justify a repressive crackdown in the name of law and order. But you must avoid this trap.”

The process took time. As Wael Adel put it during an interview in a rundown Cairo cafe in March, there was a process of “trial and error” before Egypt’s non-violent warriors were strong enough to begin to take on a dictator.

Kefaya, for example, did run some more campaigns – including one for judicial independence in 2006. But it failed to stir mass protests or expand beyond the middle class elite. There was also internal disagreement between its younger activists and older politicians. By 2007, it had lost its momentum and many had quit.

THE ACADEMY OF CHANGE

In the meantime, the trio of thinkers had morphed into an organization called the Academy of Change — based in London and ultimately moving to Qatar. The Academy became a window for Egypt’s activists into civil disobedience movements outside the Arab world. To disseminate the new methods of resistance, it wrote books about nonviolent activism with a focus on the Arab world: “Civil Disobedience,” “Nonviolent War the 3rd Choice” and “AOC MindQuake” that were published in 2007.

A year later the Academy published “Shields to Protect Against Fear”, a manual on techniques to protect one’s body against attacks by security services during a protest. “The idea of non-violent protest is not martyrdom,” Adel said. “We knew to get ordinary Egyptians, and Arabs, to face their governments and security, they have to have tools to protect themselves. This boosts the morale and enthusiasm to go to the street.”

The ideas espoused by the Academy spread through Egypt. The calls for change reached industrial areas where large groups of workers have long suffered low wages and bad work conditions. Mounting economic hardship mobilized workers in the Nile Delta city of Mahalla El Kobra, home to the country’s biggest textile factory. The workers had been in contact with Kefaya activists and other independent labor activists. The groundwork for a sustained mass mobilization was being prepared.

The first real victory sprung from Mahalla in December 2006 when over 20,000 textile workers staged a six-day strike over unpaid bonuses. The protesters — peaceful but stubborn — confused police forces accustomed to clashing with disorganized crowds. The government offered concessions to avoid losses from a halt to production.

Then came a setback. In April 2008, workers in Mahalla went out on strike again, over rising prices. An online call by Kefaya’s former activists to support the Mahalla strike on fizzled out. Meanwhile, in Mahalla, the protest turned violent. Activists claim plain-clothes police destroyed public and police property and then blamed it on the protesters. Bloody clashes between police and Mahalla citizens lasted three days. Police fired live rounds and teargas, while enraged crowds threw rocks. At least three people were killed, hundreds were wounded and scores arrested.

More discipline was needed. Bahaar began to widen his efforts, traveling to disparate locations farther away from the capital to extend grassroots awareness of peaceful civil disobedience.
Meanwhile, ex-Kefaya activists formed the April 6 Facebook group, using the internet to gather supporters. The group adopted the Otpor clenched-fist logo and some members travelled to Serbia for civil disobedience training.

THE FACEBOOK ACTIVISTS

February 2010. Mohamed ElBaradei was back in Cairo. The former head of the International Atomic Energy Association and Nobel peace prize winner had inspired some of Egypt’s younger generation that change was possible. Several of them had created a Facebook page backing ElBaradei as the country’s next president. But how were they to achieve their goal given Mubarak’s repressive regime? They turned to the Academy for help.

The Academy directed them to its online training manuals, which the Facebook activists tried for a while. But despite their internet savvy, many felt that relying entirely on online training was too theoretical. Couldn’t the Academy give them practical training?

Enter Bahaar.

Those who had signed up to the Facebook page were divided into groups of 100. Bahaar trained eight of the groups in different parts of the country using, among other tools, PowerPoint presentations that explained how you maximize the power of a protest movement. Every protester had a family, and around the family was a wider community, Bahaar explained. If a protester was arrested or beaten by the police, his or her family might be radicalized. Similarly, if a policeman engaged in brutality, his family and social network might not be supportive. By maintaining disciplined non-violent activity, the regime’s power could be progressively weakened.

Why wasn’t Bahaar himself arrested? He says this was partly because he was working underground but also, he thinks, because the security services didn’t judge his non-violent approach a threat.

Others were not so lucky. Khaled Said, 28, was beaten to death by police in Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city, in June 2010. His family said he had posted a video showing police officers sharing the spoils of a drugs bust. Said’s body was barely recognizable and the act of brutality galvanized further protests — in particular, the anti-torture Facebook page “We are Khaled Said,” created by Google executive Wael Ghonim and underground activist AbdelRahman Mansour.

The page played a pivotal role in spreading non-violent strategies such as “flash mob” silent protests, where groups of people suddenly gather in a public place and do something unusual in unison for a short time before dispersing. Instructions for a nationwide “flash mob” were posted on the page. Participants were told to dress in black and arrive at specific locations in small groups to skirt the ban on large public gatherings. They formed single files along main roads with their backs turned to the street. After a certain hour they marched away.

“The Khaled Said page drew countless willing supporters, many apolitical, because its focus was ending human rights violations and that is an issue that affects all citizens. The page set gradual, easy-to-handle tasks. People felt safe and joined,” said Ahmed Saleh, one of the organizers working with the ElBaradei youth campaign and Khaled Said page.

Like Mahalla’s 2006 strike, the flash mob was a new type of protest unfamiliar to security forces. Its cadres were organized, civil, and well diffused across Egypt — and seemingly leaderless. The police didn’t know how to react. Participants were trained in non-violent techniques — both online, by the “Khaled Said” page founders, and on the ground, by Bahaar.

FREEDOM SQUARE

In late 2010, the Khaled Said page decided to call for something more ambitious — a nationwide march to demand the dissolution of parliament, the disbanding of the state security agency, seen by Egyptians as the state’s main arm of torture, and the resignation of the interior minister.

The date chosen for mass action was January 25, Egypt’s national police day. Mansour — who was conscripted into the army on January 17 — posted the call for the nationwide march on December 28. Protesters were urged to march to Cairo’s Tahrir Square and other public spaces across the country. The page was not yet calling for Mubarak to go. It was Tunisia’s popular uprising, which reached its climax on January 14 with the ousting of President Zein El Abedine Ben Ali, which turned Egypt’s protests into an uprising.

The protest drew people of all ages and backgrounds. By 8 p.m. a unified, single chant inspired by Tunisia rang around Tahrir (Arabic for “freedom”) Square: “The people demand the fall of the regime.” By then, many understood at least a few of the tactics of non-violent disobedience. “You don’t need to train every single protester, only a small group of activists well connected with people in their local areas. Ideas spread like a virus,” says Bahaar.

Protesters conversed with riot police sent to cordon off the Square. The aim was simple: win over those in uniform. Women gave out food and biscuits to hungry conscripts and officers.
Young people quickly regrouped after being dispersed. Some climbed security personnel carriers to drag down officers firing teargas and water cannons, raising the crowd’s resolve to push security back and gain more ground. A pattern of whistling and rhythmic banging of stones on metal fences in Tahrir spontaneously developed when they needed to rally reinforcements to hold the fort. Protesters would also whistle to signal their success in forcing security to pull back.

Encouraged by the mass protests, the Khaled Said page posted a second online call for Friday, January 28, naming the event a “revolution” to overthrow the regime.

April 6 activists and youth from the Muslim Brotherhood formed the crucial front lines of protesters who broke security cordons and later faced attacks from pro-Mubarak loyalists. The youth of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s most organized opposition force whose members are accustomed to working within disciplined ranks, played a critical role in organizing activists into security teams to guard Tahrir Square’s multiple entrances. They searched those who came into the square for weapons or fluids that could be turned into Molotov cocktails. They wanted neither infiltrators nor supporters to turn to violence.

To help demonstrators hold true to non-violent resistance, the Academy posted online an eight-minute film covering similar ground to its 2008 manual. This explained how people could protect their chests and backs with makeshift shields made of plastic and thick cardboard, and how to mitigate the effect of teargas by covering their faces with handkerchiefs doused in vinegar, lemons or onions.

For the most part, people were having fun. They also took pride in their ownership of the square. Music was put on. Volunteers and protesters swept it, collected garbage and built outhouses.

“Non-violent action is not just about non-violence, but also about joy and happiness,” Adel said. “The festive atmosphere was a key element to drawing the high numbers that Egypt had rarely seen. People felt safe so they came out. They saw in Tahrir what Egypt could possibly be in the future and they wanted to be part of this new Egypt.”

The protests were not entirely peaceful. In particular, scuffles broke out after a group of thugs thought to have been organized by Mubarak’s henchmen charged through the square on horses and camels on February 2, beating and whipping protestors in what came to be known as the “Battle of the Camel”. Many demonstrators fought back, throwing stones at Mubarak loyalists to keep them from entering the square. But there was no wholesale riot and discipline returned.

“The key to a successful non-violent revolt is its ability to constantly reinvent and correct itself,” Adel says. “If violence or conflict breaks out, quickly resolve it while finding ways to avoid it.” Trained cadres shouted “peaceful, peaceful!” to restrain their hotter-headed colleagues. Soon after, the army, which had not been involved in the clashes, said it would not fire on unarmed civilians.

Nine days later Mubarak was gone.

COP: A Living Movement: Toward a World of Peace, Solidarity, and Justice

Stellan Vinthagen April 5th, 2011

Joint Conference of PJSA and the Gandhi King Conference

Hosted by the Christian Brothers University, Memphis, TN ~ October 21-23, 2011


The Peace and Justice Studies Association and The Gandhi-King Conference

Jointly present a dynamic conference experience:

“A Living Movement: Toward a World of Peace, Solidarity, and Justice”

The Peace & Justice Studies Association (PJSA) and the Gandhi-King Conference (GKC) are pleased to announce our first-ever jointly sponsored annual conference. The PJSA and the GKC are partnering this year to promote dynamic exchange among individuals and organizations working for a more just and peaceful world. This partnership promises a unique conference experience that combines the best of scholarly and grassroots perspectives on the pressing justice issues in our communities and around the globe.

We invite submissions for the 2011 Annual Conference, to be held on the campus of Christian Brothers University, in Memphis, Tennessee, from Friday October 21 through Sunday October 23, 2011. We welcome proposals from a wide range of disciplines, professions, and perspectives that address issues related to the broad themes of solidarity, community, advocacy, education, and activism as they are brought to bear in the pursuit of peace and justice.

Our goal is to create a stimulating environment where scholars, activists, educators, practitioners, artists, and students can build community and explore interconnections. We invite participants to engage in various modes of exploration, including papers and presentations, hands-on practitioner workshops, and a youth summit. We aim to foster an experience in which attendees will have multiple opportunities to meet and dialogue in both formal and informal settings, against the unique historical backdrop of Memphis, TN.

The deadline for proposal submissions is April 15, 2011. Abstracts are limited to 150 words, and must be submitted electronically through the PJSA website.

For more information, contact: info@peacejusticestudies.org or info@gandhikingconference.org

COP: Nonviolent Civil Resistance

Stellan Vinthagen April 5th, 2011

Call for Papers (Please forward and distribute widely)

Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change volume 34

Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, a peer-reviewed volume published by Emerald Group Publishing, encourages submissions for Volume 34 of the series. This volume will have a thematic focus on nonviolent civil resistance and will be guest edited by Lester Kurtz (George Mason University) and Sharon Erickson Nepstad (University of New Mexico). We encourage submissions on the following topics: variations of nonviolent strategies, the effects of repression on nonviolent movements, reasons for the recent rise of nonviolent revolutions, factors shaping the outcome of nonviolent struggles, and the international diffusion of nonviolent methods.

Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change (RSMCC) is a fully peer-reviewed series of original research that has been published annually for over 30 years. We continue to publish the work of many of the leading scholars in social movements, social change, and peace and conflict studies. Although RSMCC enjoys a wide library subscription base for the book versions, all volumes are now published both in book form and are also available online to subscribing libraries through Emerald Insight. This ensures wider distribution and easier online access to your scholarship while maintaining the esteemed book series at the same time.

RSMCC boasts quick turn-around times, generally communicating peer reviewed-informed decisions within 10-12 weeks of receipt of submissions.

Submission guidelines

To be considered for inclusion in Volume 34, papers should arrive by October 1, 2011.

Send submissions as a WORD document attached to an email to BOTH Lester Kurtz and Sharon Erickson Nepstad, guest RSMCC editors for Volume 34, at lkurtz (at) gmu (dot) edu and nepstad (at) unm (dot) edu. Remove all self-references (in text and in bibliography) save for on the title page, which should include full contact information for all authors.

  • Include the paper’s title and the abstract on the first page of the text itself.
  • For initial submissions, any standard social science in-text citation and bibliographic system is acceptable.

For more information, please visit the RSMCC homepage.

Please forward and distribute widely.

COP: A Decade of Terrorism and Counter-terrorism since 9/11

Stellan Vinthagen March 30th, 2011

A Decade of Terrorism and Counter-terrorism since 9/11: Taking stock and new directions in research and policy

Call for Papers

Organising body: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group (CSTWG) of the British International Studies Association

Supported by: The British Academy, Consortium for Research on Terrorology and Political Violence; Communication Research cluster, University of Strathclyde

Location(s): University of Strathclyde and Glasgow City Chambers, Central Glasgow.

September 11, 2011 will mark ten years since the terrorist attacks on America and the start of the global ‘war on terrorism’. The extensive changes engendered by these processes in the last decade have yet to be fully understood and appreciated. There is consequently a real need for rigorous and sustained retrospective analysis. In a year that will see a wide range of special commemorative and academic events, this conference will seek to assess the widespread impact of terrorism and counter-terrorism since 2001 from a distinctly ‘critical’ perspective. More specifically, the conference will foreground inter-disciplinarity and seek to review what we have learnt in a period of unprecedented interest in the study of terrorism and counter terrorism. There will be a range of debate sessions between ‘critical’ and ‘mainstream’ scholars, and engagement with policy actors, including speakers from the government ‘Contest II’/’Prevent’ campaigns, the police, legal officials, civil libertarians and Muslim community representatives.

Key note speakers include Joseba Zulaika (University of Nevada in Reno), Michael Stohl (University of California Santa Barbara), Michael Scheuer (ex-CIA), Richard Jackson (Aberystwyth) Caron Gentry (St Andrews) and Dr. Bob Lambert (Exeter, ex-Special Branch)

The conference is intended to play a significant role in the expansion of interest in, and the re-orientation towards a more empirically informed and theoretically sophisticated practice of, studies of terrorism and political violence. Subsidiary aims include to foster knowledge exchange between social science and natural science disciplines; and to contribute to the re-evaluation of policy on terrorism and counter terrorism.

Scholarship on terrorism has expanded exponentially in the past decade. The subject itself is clearly of major importance inside and outside the academy. While the conference is an initiative from scholars who are part of an openly ‘critical’ working group on terrorism, the conference organizers are concerned to open up dialogue on the shared problems of data, methods and theory which most observers agree are important issues in ‘terrorism studies’. We will bring together an unusually interdisciplinary group including exponents of both ‘orthodox’ and ‘critical’ terrorism studies, and those from other areas of social and natural science who are often not part of the mainstream discussion of ‘terrorism’.

There will be a strong policy and civil society element to the conference with policy actors and human rights activists debating responses to terrorism, civil liberties, and ‘suspect communities’.  We will also host roundtable discussions featuring those with experience of political violence from a variety of conflicts.

In addition, we will host advanced research training workshops for conference participants, together with interdisciplinary research sessions including a small number of ‘master classes’ where leading researchers will reflect on interdisciplinarity and on their own research methods and practice. We intend  to offer both early career and established scholars an opportunity to discuss practical questions outside the formality of the set-piece keynote addresses and we hope that this will encourage sharing of new and developing methods in the field especially in the context of the new opportunities and issues thrown up for methods by new digital technologies. We hope to use these methods workshops to focus in the interdisciplinary workshops on fostering research networking for the future.

Conference themes
The conference is intended to look back and review how we have understood terrorism and counter-terrorism, and attempt to think through where the study of terrorism and counter-terrorism should go from here. Themes in the conference include, among others:

•    ‘Non-state terrorism’, including but not limited to terrorism as an instrument of power;
•    ’State terror’ and repression, including, but not limited to Western State terror;
•    ’Counter-terrorism’, risk governance and ‘radicalisation’;
•    ‘Advances in terrorism studies’ with a particular focus on data, methods and theory, including the contribution of critical terrorism studies;
•    ‘Communicating terrorism’: cybersecurity, social media, influence agenda, public diplomacy, information operations and strategic communications;
•    Gender and terrorism/counter-terrorism;
•    Historical materialism, terrorism and counter-terrorism;
•    The war on terror and the global South;
•    The ways in which conflict resolution can inform the study of terrorism and counter-terrorism policy.

The conference will include a mix of plenaries, keynotes, panel, debate and workshop sessions.

Abstracts and Expressions of Interest
The organizing committee welcomes the submission of
1.    Abstracts (max. 350 words) on these and related topics;
2.    Panel proposals (with a minimum of 3 abstracts, plus a short overview of the panel (circa 250 words))
3.    Workshop proposals (with either a policy/civil society or methodological/practical orientation max 350 words of workshop description plus max 250 words on any individual elements)
All abstracts will be reviewed by the organizing committee to meet rigorous academic standards. Abstracts will be reviewed for relevance, conceptual quality, innovation and clarity of presentation. At least one author of accepted papers is required to attend the conference in order to present the paper.

Abstracts should be sent to Jan Bissett jan.bissett@strath.ac.uk by Wednesday 1 June 2011.

Publication
Papers from the conference will be selected competitively for inclusion in either:
1.    A special issue of the journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism; or
2.    An edited volume on the conference theme published by a major academic publisher.
These outputs will be edited and overseen by an overlapping editorial team led by the organisers. It is anticipated that the journal will focus on advances in terrorism studies. The book will focus substantively on 9/11 and its legacies incorporating interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives. The edited collection will be divided into key sections reflecting the conference themes. It is important to note that the papers for the book will be needed in near final draft form in advance of the conference.
Costs: Conference costs  will be announced shortly. It is envisaged that full costs will be around £200 with reductions for student, policy and civil society participation. Accommodation will not be included in conference costs and should be booked separately. It is the responsibility of delegates to book their own accommodation. A list of hotels, hostels and B&Bs will be provided by the conference organizers.

Conference organizing committee
David Miller (Strathclyde) (convenor), Helen Dexter (Manchester), Piers Robinson (Manchester), Dave Whyte (Liverpool), Vicki Sentas (King’s), Bela Arora (University of Wales, Newport), Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet (Manchester), Jessie Blackbourn (Salford), Idrees Ahmad (Strathclyde), Roy Revie (Strathclyde), Steven Harkins (Strathclyde), Rizwaan Sabir (Strahclyde), Tom Mills (Strathclyde), Cyrus Tata (Law, Strathclyde), Rachel Hendrick (Strathclyde), Rani Dhanda (Strathclyde)

Administrative support Jan Bissett:jan.bissett@strath.ac.uk
Conference blog: http://decadeofterrorismandcounterterrorism.wordpress.com/
Twitter:  http://twitter.com/#!/911plus10

Keynote speakers
The conference will hear several keynote addresses from world leading authors on terrorism and political violence.  Each Plenary speaker will also run a Masterclass on research techniques in terrorism specifically aimed at Postgraduate students and early career researchers.

Keynote addresses confirmed so far:
Joseba Zulaika is the Director of the Centre for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada in Reno and an anthropologist by training. Among his research interests are the international discourse of terrorism. His 2009 book Terrorism: the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy was published by the University of Chicago Press. His recent explorations of terrorism focus in particular on the role of intellectuals and reflect on the domain of terrorism studies.

This self-reflexive focus – which is comparatively rare in academic work on terrorism – is the reason why we particularly want Prof Zulaika to deliver a keynote at the conference.
Michael Stohl is Professor of Communication at the University of California Santa Barbara. Stohl’s current research focuses on organizational and political communication with special reference to terrorism, human rights and global relations. Stohl’s foundational work on state terrorism, his focus on Terrorism as communicatively constituted violence, and his current work on terrorism networks and counter terrorism are the key reasons why he is being invited to deliver a keynote. He will also lead a workshop on network analysis in relation to terrorism.

Michael Scheuer (invited) spent 22-years with the CIA in which he held various positions including Senior Adviser for the Usama Bin Laden Department, Chief of the Southwest/Southeast Asia Counternarcotics Operation, and Chief of the Sunni Militant Unit. Dr. Scheuer is the author of Imperial Hubris. Why the West is Losing the War on Terrorism (2004) and Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of the United States (2003), as well as Marching Towards Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (2008).

Richard Jackson Professor in International Politics (Aberystwyth). He is the founding editor of the journal Critical Studies on Terrorism. Together with Jeroen Gunning and Marie Breen Smyth, Richard Jackson is co-editor of the Routledge Critical Terrorism Studies Book Series. Richard Jackson has published numerous books and articles on terrorism-related issues and international conflict resolution.

Caron Gentry was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas and has recently taken the post of Lecturer at the University of St Andrews. Her previous work has been published in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence.  Her research interests are gender, terrorism and political violence.

Burjanadze: ‘We are Ready for Peaceful Revolution’

jj March 18th, 2011

From Civil.ge

Nino Burjanadze

Nino Burjanadze

Nino Burjanadze, former parliamentary speaker and leader of opposition Democratic Movement-United Georgia party, told an indoor rally of People’s Assembly on March 15, that a peaceful revolution was needed and the Assembly was ready for that.

“We need a large number of people for one reason – to force these authorities to go peacefully, without blood. Yes, this country today, unfortunately, needs a revolution and if no other way is left, we are ready for it [revolution], of course, through peaceful means,” Burjanadze said.

“We are not going to raise our hands even against those compatriots, who committed crime, but if someone dares to raise a hand against us, they will receive a fierce response,” she said and called on police and army to “serve the country and people and not the authorities.”

“We are not alone in this struggle and the entire world will stand beside us in the struggle for justice like it stood beside the Egyptian and Tunisian peoples,” she said.

Burjanadze was speaking at an indoor rally in Tbilisi at the basketball arena packed with activists from People’s Assembly.

The People’s Assembly is a movement launched last year by opposition-minded, public figures, probably the most prominent of them Nona Gaprindashvili, who was women’s world chess champion from 1962 to 1978.

Nino Burjanadze has long been a strongest backer of the movement among politicians and the movement became largely associated with Burjanadze’s political platform.

During a rally outside the Parliament in November 2010, the People’s Assembly announced about start of setting up “resistance committees” throughout the country “to prepare for civil disobedience campaign.”

it was announced at the rally on March 15 that such committees had been established in recent months in “almost each and every town and village” in the country and the People’s Assembly was ready to act.

Nona Gaprindashvili, the chairperson of People’s Assembly, announced at the rally that the movement was starting “a round-the-clock working regime”, getting ready for “a decisive, final stage of struggle.”

She said that this “final stage” would start after Bright Week – a week following the Orthodox Easter, which this year is marked on April 24.

Gaprindashvili said, that by that time, beginning of May, the People’s Assembly “will announce a concrete action plan and the entire Georgia should be ready for this day.”

“We will fight to the end unless we set Georgia free from this criminal regime,” she said.

The People’s Assembly also announced about the readiness “to cooperate with “everyone who genuinely aspires setting Georgia free from this regime and who will not make a deal with the authorities.”

Most of the opposition parties have distanced themselves from the People’s Movement, not least because of the movement’s association with Nino Burjanadze.

SSU professor: Egypt revolt not spontaneous

jj March 15th, 2011

By JEREMY HAY
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Cynthia Boaz

Cynthia Boaz

Observers worldwide were captivated in February as millions of Egyptians overthrew President Hosni Mubarek, who has been in power since 1981. Many also described it as spontaneous.

It wasn’t, said Cynthia Boaz, a political scientist at Sonoma State University.

She met with some of the students who became its leaders in 2008, at a workshop co-organized by the Washington-based nonprofit where she is a paid consultant, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

They discussed the lessons and methods of nonviolent mass civil resistance, and the skills it requires.

Boaz remains in contact with them and said that what is now known as the January 25 Movement, while sparked by a similar revolt in Tunisia, was anything but impromptu.

“I didn’t know they were planning … to start on Jan. 25,” she said, “but I knew the movement had planned for a major action. It’s an organized, planned, disciplined movement.”

Despite the scattered violence that continues, the revolution was overwhelmingly peaceful, waged not with weapons but with voices and placards and mass gatherings.

Boaz, 40, is an expert in nonviolent struggle who consults with educators, activists and students from countries ranging from Spain to Iran. She said toppling repressive regimes is a milestone in the capacity of organized civil resistance movements.

“What happened in Egypt represents a systemwide demand for a new alternative,” she said. “It’s not just about removing the old system from power.

“It was important to get something new for Egyptians, and that really is about democracy.”

Some of the effects are already evident in the largely peaceful protests happening across the Middle East in countries from Bahrain to Yemen.

“It isn’t like these movements have emerged overnight. They’ve just been waiting for an opportunity,” Boaz said.

Libya is an exception because “it’s not organized, there’s not a coherent, unified message,” she said. “It’s not disciplined, and it’s not non-violent.”

Egyptian activists worked for years to identify and neutralize the sources of power in the nation of 83 million. Their effort extended to having coffee with members of the Army.

“It’s a very nuanced divide and conquer strategy,” Boaz said. “You genuinely build real relationships with people, and you begin to help them question the legitimacy of the ruler and the system they’re upholding.”

—–O—–

With the events in the Middle East, Cynthia Boaz is in demand. Before flying to Chile Friday to meet with Latin American diplomats, she talked with The Press Democrat about Egypt’s revolution.

Q: What took place in Egypt has variously been termed a revolt, an uprising, a revolution. Which would you use?

A: Revolution. When power shifted from the regime to the people, that’s what made it a “revolution.”

Q: The revolution is often described as a spontaneous event ignited by the events in Tunisia. To what degree was it organized and why does it matter?

A: This question represents a common and unfortunate misconception about nonviolent action, which is that when you see it, it’s ad-hoc, it’s spontaneous; people just decide to show up in the city square and protest.

But that takes away credit from the activists. When nonviolence succeeds … it’s planned, organized and disciplined.

Q: But doesn’t the suddenness of these events, and how they took place almost simultaneously in these countries, signify a degree of spontaneity?

A: The disaffection and frustration that people feel is long term, so in many of these cases there will be a spark that ignites a population to action.

But that doesn’t mean it’s spontaneous. It means that there may be a movement waiting for a strategic moment in time.

Q: Is it significant that the Egyptian revolution was largely nonviolent?

A: What’s won through violence has to be sustained through violence, so the only truly legitimate way to create democracy is through a bottom-up, nonviolent process.

Also, the long-term consequences of a nonviolent victory in Egypt are that it really increases the credibility of nonviolence.

Young people who are natural bases of recruitment by terrorist organizations are now seeing another option for pushing their grievances — nonviolence.

Q: Regarding legitimacy, what about the American Revolution?

A: Mass non-violent action is relatively new, since the beginning of the 20th Century. It was really perfected by Ghandi …and (the Egyptians) were also looking at Eastern Europe and what happened there in Serbia and Ukraine.

Q: Of the students you know, are any members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is expected to play a role in Egypt’s next election?

A: No. In fact, they are very clear that the movement’s goals and objectives are secular.

See the debate following the publication of this text and the corrections made by Cynthia Boaz at the bottom of this article

Bianca Jagger: We Must Declare a Non-Violent Revolution

jj March 14th, 2011

From Huffington Post

I am calling for a non-violent revolution. A call to arms, without weapons.

On Tuesday the 8th of March, I joined Annie Lennox, Cheri Lunghi, Jude Kelly, Natasha Walter and hundreds of women on a march along London’s Southbank to celebrate 100 years of International Women’s Day (IWD).

It was encouraging to see so many women come together, but we should have been thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions perhaps? The first march in 1911 saw over a million women and men campaign to end discrimination against women and to demand equal rights.

Are we so complacent that we feel we do not need to demand gender equality? Many women are convinced there is equality between men and women. The fact however is that the US has never had a female president and, in the UK there has been just one female prime minister out of 52 male leaders. Shouldn’t this be a wake up call to all those who think we have achieved gender equality?

It is true that much progress has been made since the original march for IWD, and women are excelling in many fields. We may have different lives to those of our grandmothers and even our mothers but gender equality has far from been achieved.

Non-Violent Revolutions

In recent months we have seen women at the forefront of revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Asmaa Mahfouz, a 25-year-old Egyptian woman has been credited by some as sparking the revolution in Egypt when she posted a YouTube video calling for people to join her in Tahrir Square in a fight for democracy. Of the hundreds of thousands of people who joined Asmaa Mahfouz there was as many women as men. This is a pivotal time in history for the Middle East, and women are playing a significant role in its progression towards democracy and freedom.

After such progress, it was shocking to see this week, a peaceful march led by women in Tahrir square to mark International Women’s Day met with aggression and sexual harassment from a gang of over 200 men.

In many countries around the world women have to physically fight for their voices to be heard. We in the west are lucky that we have a voice, but it must come with an obligation to fight for those women who don’t.

As we see women around the world risk their lives to fight for fairness and freedom, we should be inspired to stand up for our rights, our right to be equal; a right which was passed in 1948, under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and is yet to be fully achieved.

In response to those who deny the existence of gender discrimination I let the statistics speak for themselves.

Gender Inequality

Women now carry out 60% of the world’s work and produce 50% of the world’s food but only earn 10% of the world’s income and only own 1% of its property. According the UN women make up 70% of the worlds poorest. Two thirds of the 774 million illiterate adults worldwide are women. This is because 70 million girls each year are denied the right to the most basic education.

Women around the world face severe restrictions in freedom and in some cases are condemned to death for allegedly breaking bias moral and religious codes, enforced by men.

Death Penalty

In recent years many cases of gender discrimination, gender related violence and honor killings have been brought to public attention. Some of the most egregious cases I have come across are; Mosammet Hena a 14-year-old girl from Bangladesh, who was allegedly raped and was whipped to death for crimes against honour.

The disturbing case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, who was sentenced to death by stoning in Iran for adultery and murder, crimes she has repeatedly denied. Death by stoning is a mandatory sentence for “adultery while married” in Iran. After intense public outcry and campaigning by the international community, human rights organizations including my own The Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, the Iranian authorities have since announced that her death sentence has been “suspended”. At present, the outcome of her case remains unclear.

Honor Killing

Honor killings are increasing in the western world, the recent cases of the television executive Muzzammil Hassan who was found guilty of beheading his wife in a suspected honor crime and the Iraqi father, found guilty of running over his 20-year-old daughter in a Arizona car park have shocked America. In 2009 police recorded over 250 incidents of “honor”-based violence in London alone, according to the Guardian.

Female Genital Mutilation and AIDS

Female genital mutilation and AIDS are another threat to women around the world. Action Aid estimates that 75% of all young people in Sub-Saharan Africa with AIDS or HIV are women. 92 million women and girls around the world are believed to have undergone female genital mutilation.

Rape as Weapon of War

Rape has long been used a weapon of war, during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, it is estimated between 250,000-500,000 women were raped. UN Special Reporter Rene Degnu-Segui stated, “rape was the rule, it’s absence the exception”. In 1993 I traveled with United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) personnel through Bosnia and Croatia on a fact finding mission to document the mass rape of women, I had been asked to testify before the Helsinki Commission in the US Congress. I listened to hundreds of shocking testimonies of women, who had been brutally raped. It is estimated that during the Bosnian war up to 50,000 women were systematically raped.

Although the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia issued arrest warrants based on the Geneva Conventions and Violations of the Laws or Customs of War, rape continues to be used as a weapon of war. In 2009 we learned of the brutal raping of 8,000 women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Margot Wallstrom, the UN’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, described the country as “the rape capital of the world” speaking of the violence she explained “if women continue to suffer sexual violence, it is not because the law is inadequate to protect them, but because it is inadequately enforced.”

In countries such as Saudi Arabia, women are not even allowed to drive, let alone vote. In Saudi Arabia and in places such as Chechnya, Afghanistan and Somalia women are routinely punished for not adhering to strict dress codes, and can be flogged in the street for showing their faces.

Seven UN member states have not signed the convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women; Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan and Tonga. The United States, along with Niue and the Vatican City have not yet ratified it!

Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence

These stories are not freak occurrences, every day women face gender related abuse. I was shocked to learn that globally 60 million girls are sexually assaulted on their way to school each year. In the UK only 7% of rape cases end in conviction and only between 10-20% of rapes are thought to be reported. In the US one in four women can expect to experience domestic violence, and according to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner-related physical assaults and rapes each year.

Decision Makers

Globally there is severe disparity between men and women in parliament, and women make up only 19% of the worlds parliament seats. As of 2011 there were only 17 female Senators in the US out of 100 and 76 women in Congress out of 435. In the UK there are 144 members of parliament out of 650. In a world where leaders such as Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy, Burlesconi, Putin, Gaddafi, Mubarak make headlines daily, we hear relatively little of Gillard, Rousseff, Patil and Fernández de Kirchner, some of the world’s 18 female heads of state. Is it perhaps because they make up such a small percentage of world power or is it because we underestimate the power of women in leadership positions?

The reason why I have emphasized the statistics in this article, is because they speak for themselves. Nevertheless they are easily ignored, but we cannot afford to ignore the reality they represent.

Call to Action

We have the tools to change the world, we can make a difference, we can even change the course of history. The time for further excuses, postponement, or procrastination, for hesitation and prevarication has long passed. Now is the time for courage and leadership. We must take concrete steps to empower women, achieve gender equality, equal legal rights and justice.

We must demand that all countries adhere to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and meet the Millennium Development Goals to eradicate extreme poverty, achieve universal primary education, improve maternal health and reduce child mortality, and combat HIV/AIDS.

We can, and we must embark upon a non-violent revolution. We cannot afford to be apathetic, for the sake of the women suffering at the hands of violence, persecution and injustice. For the sake of our daughters and grand daughters we cannot sit still or we will jeopardize their future.

I call on governments, academics, NGO’s, and people across the world to do what it takes to achieve gender equality.

I will be speaking tomorrow at 4.30pm at The Women of the World Festival, Southbank Centre, London

You can follow me on Twitter @BiancaJagger and join my foundation’s Facebook fan page at the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation.

Follow Bianca Jagger on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BiancaJagger

Unless The Women of Egypt Rise There Was No Revolution

jj March 10th, 2011

From: Illume

By Adisa Banjoko. Adisa has entertained many with his work on Hip Hop culture, eastern philosophy, martial arts, Islamic culture, African American and youth social issues.

American Muslims must demand that the safety, freedom and education of the women in those nations is a top priority

Revolution: A fundamental change in the way of thinking about, or visualizing something

Over the recent weeks, many people around the world have been shocked and inspired by the non-violent revolution in Egypt. I’m sure it drove neo-conservatives mad having to admit that the face of the new generation of Islam got rid of their corrupt regime without making violence the focus. But indeed thats what happened.

With cautious eyes the world now watches to see what the endgame for Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain and other countries might be. The simple truth is, these brutal dictators physically, economically and culturally abused their citizens for many decades. A change had to come eventually.

I hope the people of these nations get the leadership they envisioned for themselves. My desire for them is that it blends the most effective democratic practices with the most compassionate and logical Islamic elements. But ultimately those countries belong to the people and whatever they believe is best for them, I pray they can bring into actuality.

At the same time though, the most serious issue for me has become this: As new regimes in Egypt and other nations evolve, American Muslims must demand that the safety, freedom and education of the women in those nations is a top priority. For me personally, the new level of safety, freedom and education for the women of emerging regimes will be the litmus test that will determine my support for them.

Sadly, in many Muslim nations physical abuse, human trafficking, rape, honor killings, and overall neglect of women is far too common. I am not trying to bash my Muslim brothers. But I cannot stay silent about it any longer. As men of God, we should be ashamed that things have gotten this bad for so many generations of women who love God.

Don’t get me wrong, I know America is a sexist nation. I can acknowledge elements of sexism within myself I still need to workout. I recognize many Christians, Jews, Hindus and people of other religious paths also are abusive and neglectful of woman. Muslims do not have a patent on sexism. But if the Muslim men are to truly say they had a revolution, we must see the women of Islam in positions of power. We should know their names, read their stories and know their opinions on everything from family, to politics and technology. We should want to see Muslim women in leadership positions helping to make the new governments of Islam resonate with their ideas and intellect as much as any man standing next to them.

Love and support of women is a Prophetic tradition. When The Prophet was leading prayer, if he heard a baby crying he would shorten the prayer so as not to distress the mothers in the midst of prayer. He was known to have said “A woman acts for the people”. Yet we don’t give them the space to act on our behalf. Prophet Muhammad taught that a Muslim was someone with whom the people are safe. Sadly so many women of this deen are unsafe from Muslim hands in America and overseas. This must change immediately.

In Dr. Ivan Van Sertima Golden Age of the Moor its noted that ”In Andalus women moved freely in public and engaged in various gatherings. The practice of purdah (requirement that women cover their faces in public etc.) was almost completely ignored. Moorish Andalus was unique among Islamic nations. It could easily be argued that women enjoyed more societal freedoms in al-Andalus than in any other part of the Islamic world.” Another section explains how women ”appeared freely in public and took their share in all the intellectual, literary, and even scientific movements of the day. Women held schools in some of the principal towns. There were women poets, historians and philosophers, as well as women surgeons and doctors.”

How many advancements in medicine, technology and science have not been brought into existence because our sisters were cut off from knowledge by us? No historian worth half of their salt will argue against the fact that Prophet Muhammad gave the women of Islam rights that Western women did not see for several hundred years. But we should not have to look back to the time of The Prophet or the Moorish Empire to see an armada of free, highly educated, accomplished women living full lives. The Prophet Muhammad said that if a man walks with an oppressor, knowing he is an oppressor that he has gon forth from Islam. I cannot walk with brothers who brutalize and threaten women. As a husband and father I cannot allow it. Let the ummah of 2011 and beyond seek to outdo the Moorish standards of honoring our sisters.

If we do not help our Muslim sisters rise, I will never say there was a revolution. I will just say some other people took over. I fear that if the men of Islam fail to make the safety freedom and education an immediate priority around the world, we may have missed our greatest moment of redemption. Not redemption from America or any of its allies, but from God.

Music of The Revolution: How Songs of Protest Have Rallied Demonstrators

jj March 9th, 2011

From: Movements.org

Look up the original site and get several of the movies.

Music almost always plays a pivotal role in protest movements, with songs and chants unifying dissidents in their rallying cries. Unlike movements of decades past, however, protest music made popular during the recent revolution in Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond spread virally with the help YouTube and Facebook.

TUNISIA

Twenty-one-year-old Hamada Ben Amor, known as El Général—an underground rapper living in the town of Sfax south of Tunis—uploaded a song he had written called “Rais Le Bled” (“President, Your Country”) to Facebook on November 7. The rap called out then-president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali for the problems faced by average Tunisians trying to make a living, including food scarcity, a lack of freedom of speech, and unemployment with lyrics like: “Mr. President, your people are dying/People are eating rubbish/Look at what is happening/Miseries everywhere Mr. President/I talk with no fear/Although I know I will only get troubles/I see injustice everywhere.”

The Voice of Tunisia

The rap was picked up by local TV station Tunivision and Al-Jazeera and resonated with many Tunisians who quickly began sharing the song. Soon enough, the government blocked the musician’s Facebook page and cut off his mobile phone. Despite the attempt to make his music disappear, El Général’s song quickly became the anthem of the Jasmine Revolution.

El Général then recorded another song of protest call “Tounes Bladna” (“Tunisia Our Country”) on December 22. By that point, Ali’s regime had had enough with the musician. El Général was arrested by state security on January 6, taken to the Ministry of Interior, and interrogated for three days.

He tells The Guardian, “They kept asking me which political party I worked for. ‘Don’t you know it’s forbidden to sing songs like that?’ they said. But I just answered, ‘Why? I’m only telling the truth.’ I was in there for three days, but it felt like three years.” The public was outraged and began demanding his release. The pressure mounted on the government worked and he was soon released from detention.

Since Ben Ali left office on January 14, El Général’s tunes have continued to serve as a rallying cry for other demonstrators in the Middle East, and his work has proven to be popular among demonstrators in Bahrain.

EGYPT

Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm (“Uncle Ahmed”), a popular voice for the poor who has spent 18 of his 81 years in Egyptian prisons, wrote “The Donkey and the Foal,” a commentary about then-president Hosni Mubarak and his son Gamal. Musician Ramy Essam, who had taken to playing in Tahrir Square during the protest, set the poem to music and sang the song as Negm stood beside him.

Essam then penned the song “Leave,” inspired by the slogans and chants being shouted around Tahrir Square:

“We are all united as one,

And what we ask for,

Is just one thing: Leave! Leave! (x3)

Down, down Husni Mubarak! (x4)

The people demand: Bring down the regime! (x4)

He is going away. We are not going anywhere! (x4)

We are all united as one,

And what we ask for,

Is just one thing: Leave! Leave! Leave! (x4)”

The Truth Behind the Egyptian Revolution

Amir and Adel Eid from the Egyptian rock band Cairo-Kee gathered up other artists to record “Sout Al Horeya” (“The Voice of Freedom”), which quickly became another anthem for the revolution. The video for the song was shot entirely inside Tahrir Square during the revolution using a basic digital SLR camera.

“I went down to the streets vowing not to return, and wrote with my blood on every street.

Our voices reached those who could not hear them

And we broke through all barriers

Our weapon was our dreams

And tomorrow is looking as bright as it seems….”

Sout Al Horeya

LIBYA

Traditional songs have also played an important role in demonstrations. Libyans in the liberated eastern parts of the country forged bonds by singing the old national anthem while waving the tricolor flag from before Gaddafi came to power in 1969 as “a symbol of the reinvention of the Libyans.”

In this video, the massive crowd in Beghanzi sings the old anthem to share their pride in being liberated.

ARAB RAP DIASPORA

The Narcicyst, an Iraqi-born rapper living in Toronto, joined with other musicians from the Arabic rap diaspora in North America, such as Omar Offendum, Amir Sulaiman, and Canadian R&B singer Ayah, to record a track called “#Jan25 Egypt,” based off the popular hashtag used during the demonstrations in Egypt. In an Al Jazeera English interview, Omar said that it’s a “song of solidarity with the Egyptian people and [a way] to open it up [what’s happening in Egypt] to an audience in the United States.” The song starts:

“I heard ’em say

The revolution won’t be televised

Aljazeera proved ’em wrong

Twitter has him paralyzed

80 million strong

And ain’t no longer gonna be terrorized

Organized – Mobilized – Vocalized

On the side of TRUTH

Um il-Dunya’s living proof

That its a matter of time

before the chicken is home to roost”

Omar Offendum

LOOKING FOR MORE MUSIC?

Check out Mideast Tunes, a hub launched by Mideast Youth for the region’s underground and alternative music scenes. You can browse music by country or genre. The site has highlighted a number of other protest songs coming out of the region for its listeners (1, 2).

Abdulla Darrat, co-founder of the enoughgaddafi.com (Khalas) site run by a Libyan exiles (now found at http://feb17.info), put together a “mixtape” featuring hip-hop artists from the region. The mix, called “Mish B3eed,” or “Not Far,” features songs describing the conditions in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. It can be downloaded here.

Durrat says, “[These musicians and emcees] very successfully put into words a lot of the sentiments that young people in the area are carrying with them, and they’re voicing really the struggle of…everyday people.”

Are any popular protest songs missing? Share them in the comments below!

Resistance Within the Army: Israeli Soldiers Tell About “Breaking the Silence”

Stellan Vinthagen March 7th, 2011

Extra Resistance Studies Seminar, School of Global Studies
Monday March 14th 10-12, Annedalsseminariet Room 419
www.globalstudies.gu.se

When telling the truth about war and  occupation is unwanted and even hindered, documenting and telling the truth might be understood as resistance to a discourse of justification. The Israeli organisation Breaking the Silence consist of Israeli soldiers that tells about how it is to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories. During seven years they have collected witness reports from soldiers. The witness reports tells about the work assignments given and gives a picture of the everyday as a soldier, a picture that is far from the Israeli PR-version. Breaking the Silence does a controversial work, trying to serve the public understanding of what a war, an occupation and a life of a soldier is, and tell about the consequences this have for Israelis and Palestinians. One of the founders of the organisation, Yehuda Shaul, tells about the work, shows a film and gives witness from the Gaza-war during the winter 2008-2009.

Next Resistance Seminar: 2 and 3 March, Gothenburg University

Stellan Vinthagen February 25th, 2011

Resistance Studies Seminars
—————————————————————————————–
March 2 with Angie Zelter and Nätverket Ofog – Peace Activists.

War starts here – let´s stop it here!

I Norrbotten finns Europas största krigsövningsområde NEAT, North European Aerospace Testrange. På detta 24000km2 stora område tränar NATO, USA och många andra på krig i form av t.ex. bombfällning. NEAT används också för att utveckla förarlösa bombplan och annat krigsmateriel. Förberedelserna för krig pågår för fullt här och nu. Krig börjar här. Och det är skrämmande tyst om det.

Tillsammans med Angie Zelter, känd fredsaktivist från Storbritannien och mottagare av Right Livelihood Award och Nobels alternativa fredsprise 2001. Angie Zelter och det antimilitaristiska nätverket Ofog kommer för att prata om Sveriges del i det globala krigsmaskineriet med fokus på vad som pågår i Norrbotten. Angie Zelter kommer ge exempel från aktioner hon har deltagit i och vi kommer även att prata om det internationella aktionsläger mot NEAT som vi arrangerar 22-29 juli i sommar och vad annat vi kan göra för att stoppa denna förödande utveckling.

! Seminar is in English and Swedish. March 2 . Wednesday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalseminariet at Room 419 !

—————————————————————————————–

March 3 with The Journal Dissident – Från kritiken av den politiska ekonomin till motstånd.

Ungdomsarbetslösheten är en viktig faktor för att kunna förklara de stora upproren i Tunisien, Egypten och Libyen. Samtidigt pågår det runtom i Europa protester mot förändringar i utbildningssystemet och i Grekland fortsätter strejkerna och kravallerna mot regeringens åtstramningspolitik. Vi tycks se en mängd resningar mot det faktum att en växande del av världsbefolkningen upplever sig vara överflödig och oanställbar.

I tredje bandet av Kapitalet utvecklar Marx ansatser till en överbefolkningsteori. Kapitalismens utveckling av produktivkrafterna gör att färre och färre arbetare blir nödvändiga för produktionen, vilket skapar en strukturell överbefolkning i förhållande till ekonomin. I väst märks detta främst genom en alltmer prekär och osäker arbetsmarknad, men globalt sett är denna tendens en brutal verklighet i världens kåkstäder. Kapitalismen skapar en sorts utsida till sin egen produktionsprocess, en överbefolkning som ofta är beredd att jobba under de mest vidriga villkor för att överleva. Men detta är bara ena sidan av myntet, det andra är att motsättningen mellan arbete och kapital har omstrukturerats. Vi ser alltmer kamper på gatorna: alltifrån rödskjortornas intåg i Bangkok 2010, demonstrationerna i Wisconsin till kampen på Tahirtorget i Egypten. Vad betyder det för klasskampen att en allt större del av arbetarklassen gjorts
onödig för kapitalet? Vilka arenor för kamp finns det då?

I det här föredraget diskuterar vi Marx’ kritik av den politiska ekonomin som en överbefolkningsteori, men också som en teori för motstånd och revolt. Studiet av kapitalismen var nämligen för Marx först och främst studiet av den verkliga rörelse som avskaffar de nuvarande tillstånden.

! First part of a stand-alone seminar series in three parts with focus on workplace struggles.

Seminar is in Swedish. March 3 . Thursday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalseminariet at Room 419 !

Belgian senator calls on ’sex strike’ until political deadlock is broken

jj February 9th, 2011

From The Telegraph

A female Belgian senator has called on the wives of all politicians to ban sexual intercourse until deadlock that has left Belgium without a government for 241 days, has been broken.

Mrs Temmerman urged 'the spouses of all negotiators to withhold sex until a deal is reached'

Mrs Temmerman urged 'the spouses of all negotiators to withhold sex until a deal is reached'

Marleen Temmerman, a Socialist senator, has urged the bed partners of MPs, senators and party political leaders to keep their “legs closed” until the deadlock, which is closing in on a world record of 249 days, is ended.

“I call on the spouses of all negotiators to withhold sex until a deal is reached,” she said. “Have no more sex until the new administration is posing on the steps of the palace.”

Belgium has been without a government since May 2010 after splits between Flemish, Dutch-speaking, and Walloon, francophone, political parties precipitated early elections.

The vote, last June, deepened the crisis after a majority of voters in Flanders, the richer Dutch-speaking north of Belgium, supported Flemish separatists who call for the break-up of the Belgian state.

Talks have remained deadlocked and many Belgians fear that market turmoil could bring down their highly indebted country if it fails to end the crisis by Feb 17, when it will beat war-torn Iraq to set a new world record of more than 249 days without government.

Mrs Temmerman has pointed to Kenya in 2009 when women’s movements called for a general sex strike after a conflict between the Kenyan president and prime minister threatened to plunge the country into chaos.

“They decided to have a sex strike to enforce a political solution and called on the first lady and wife of the prime minister to participate in this physical abstinence,” she said.

“Kenyan prostitutes were offered financial compensation if they showed sisterly solidarity and participated in the sex strike. The impact has never been scientifically proven, but after just one week there was a stable government.”

Catherine Fonck, a Christian democrat senator, rejected the call.

“I don’t want to take part in a sex strike,” she said. “Politicians are not there to strike, on the contrary, politicians are there arouse the country.”

Bolivia: Coca-chewing protest outside US embassy

jj January 29th, 2011

From BBC

Indigenous activists in Bolivia have been holding a mass coca-chewing protest as part of campaign to end an international ban on the practice.

The protest was good-natured

The protest was good-natured

Hundreds of people chewed the leaf outside the US embassy in La Paz and in other cities across the country.

Bolivia wants to amend a UN drugs treaty that bans chewing coca, which is an ancient tradition in the Andes.

But the US has said it will veto the amendment because coca is also the raw material for making cocaine.

The protesters outside the US embassy also displayed products made from coca, including soft drinks, toothpaste, sweets and ointments.

They were supporting a Bolivian government campaign to amend the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs to remove language that bans the chewing of coca leaf.

The convention stipulates that coca-chewing be eliminated within 25 years of the convention coming into effect in 1964.

Bolivia says that is discriminatory, given that coca use is so deeply rooted in the indigenous culture of the Andes.

Eradication

The US is opposed to changing the UN convention because it says it would weaken the fight against cocaine production.

In a statement, the US embassy said Washington recognised coca-chewing as a “traditional custom” of Bolivia’s indigenous peoples but could not support the amendment.

“The position of the US government in not supporting the amendment is based on the importance of maintaining the integrity of the UN convention, which is an important tool in the fight against drug-trafficking,” it said.

The US is the world’s largest consumer of cocaine and has been leading efforts to eradicate coca production in the Andes for decades.

Bolivia is the world’s first biggest producer of cocaine after Peru and Colombia, and much of its coca crop is used to make the illegal drug.

Bolivian President Evo Morales has long advocated the recognition of coca as a plant of great medicinal, cultural and religious importance that is distinct from cocaine.

As well as being Bolivia’s first indigenous head of state, Mr Morales is also a former coca-grower and leader of a coca-growers trade union.

The Bolivian amendment would come into effect on 31 January only if there were no objections.

How to Plan and Execute an Act of Electronic Civil Disobedience

jj January 24th, 2011

From Infoshop News

In the midst of hacktivists using ECDs (similar to distributed denial of service attacks) to defend Wikileaks, it’s worth having a document that describes how such attacks are planned and executed. Such a zine has recently been released that is written in laypersons terms so expertise in computing or networking is certainly not needed to understand it. If you have the ability to browse the web and edit a Microsoft Word document, you’ve probably got what it takes to understand the ideas it presents.

The zine goes through everything from anonymously scoping out your target to distributing your ECD tools and call-out. It includes a guide on doing research and making online postings anonymously, legal risks you may encounter and analysis of the effectiveness of ECDs as opposed to other large protest tactics. It reviews three popular tools (the Greek ECD Tool, the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, and Slow Loris) and provides step-by-step instructions for configuring and packaging them. It also includes a short section on the history of the use of ECDs by social movements.

Download the zine for printing and online reading at:
http://zinelibrary.info

Students recreate the civil rights movement in Second Life

jj January 20th, 2011

by Justin Olivetti

Americans celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day this past week to honor both the man and the civil rights movement that he supported. As part of that celebration, a team of doctoral students from Indiana University of Pennsylvania used Second Life to recreate key moments in the civil rights movement as a teaching tool.

Players who went through the simulation encountered critical junctures of the movement, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King Jr.’s beginnings at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the 1963 March on Washington, and the Mississippi Freedom School Movement. By experiencing it first-hand in a virtual world, players hopefully gained a perspective on the issues surrounding segregation, integration, equality, voting rights and civil disobedience of the era that are in danger of slipping into distant history.

As they moved through the simulation, players were able to take quizzes, look at photos and videos, and make personal choices relating to the movement, such as whether to protest or sit in the back of the bus.

While it looks as though the simulation is no longer available in the game, you can watch the two-minute overview of the project after the jump.

The Fall of the West’s Little Dictator

jj January 20th, 2011

“A Watershed Moment in the History of the Arab World”

By ESAM AL-AMIN CounterPunch

When people choose life (with freedom)
Destiny will respond and take action
Darkness will surely fade away
And the chains will certainly be broken

Tunisian poet Abul Qasim Al-Shabbi (1909-1934)

On New Year’s Eve 1977, former President Jimmy Carter was toasting Shah Reza Pahlavi in Tehran, calling the Western-backed monarchy “an island of stability” in the Middle East. But for the next 13 months, Iran was anything but stable. The Iranian people were daily protesting the brutality of their dictator, holding mass demonstrations from one end of the country to the other.

Protesters want the unity government to exclude members of Mr Ben Ali's RCD party

Protesters want the unity government to exclude members of Mr Ben Ali's RCD party

Initially, the Shah described the popular protests as part of a conspiracy by communists and Islamic extremists, and employed an iron fist policy relying on the brutal use of force by his security apparatus and secret police. When this did not work, the Shah had to concede some of the popular demands, dismissing some of his generals, and promising to crack down on corruption and allow more freedom, before eventually succumbing to the main demand of the revolution by fleeing the country on Jan. 16, 1979.

But days before leaving, he installed a puppet prime minister in the hope that he could quell the protests allowing him to return. As he hopped from country to country, he discovered that he was unwelcome in most parts of the world. Western countries that had hailed his regime for decades were now abandoning him in droves in the face of popular revolution.

Fast forward to Tunisia 32 years later.

What took 54 weeks to accomplish in Iran was achieved in Tunisia in less than four. The regime of President Zein-al-Abidin Ben Ali represented in the eyes of his people not only the features of a suffocating dictatorship, but also the characteristics of a mafia-controlled society riddled with massive corruption and human rights abuses.

On December 17, Mohammed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old unemployed graduate in the central town of Sidi Bouzid, set himself on fire in an attempt to commit suicide. Earlier in the day, police officers took away his stand and confiscated the fruits and vegetables he was selling because he lacked a permit. When he tried to complain to government officials that he was unemployed and that this was his only means of survival, he was mocked, insulted and beaten by the police. He died 19 days later in the midst of the uprising.

Bouazizi’s act of desperation set off the public’s boiling frustration over living standards, corruption and lack of political freedom and human rights. For the next four weeks, his self-immolation sparked demonstrations in which protesters burned tires and chanted slogans demanding jobs and freedom. Protests soon spread all over the country including its capital, Tunis.

The first reaction by the regime was to clamp down and use brutal force including beatings, tear gas, and live ammunition. The more ruthless tactics the security forces employed, the more people got angry and took to the streets. On Dec. 28 the president gave his first speech claiming that the protests were organized by a “minority of extremists and terrorists” and that the law would be applied “in all firmness” to punish protesters.

However, by the start of the New Year tens of thousands of people, joined by labor unions, students, lawyers, professional syndicates, and other opposition groups, were demonstrating in over a dozen cities. By the end of the week, labor unions called for commercial strikes across the country, while 8,000 lawyers went on strike, bringing the entire judiciary system to an immediate halt.

Meanwhile, the regime started cracking down on bloggers, journalists, artists and political activists. It restricted all means of dissent, including social media. But following nearly 80 deaths by the security forces, the regime started to back down.

On Jan. 13, Ben Ali gave his third televised address, dismissing his interior minister and announcing unprecedented concessions while vowing not to seek re-election in 2014. He also pledged to introduce more freedoms into society, and to investigate the killings of protesters during the demonstrations. When this move only emboldened the protestors, he then addressed his people in desperation, promising fresh legislative elections within six months in an attempt to quell mass dissent.

When this ploy also did not work, he imposed a state of emergency, dismissing the entire cabinet and promising to deploy the army on a shoot to kill order. However, as the head of the army Gen. Rachid Ben Ammar refused to order his troops to kill the demonstrators in the streets, Ben Ali found no alternative but to flee the country and the rage of his people.

On Jan. 14 his entourage flew in four choppers to the Mediterranean island of Malta. When Malta refused to accept them, he boarded a plane heading to France. While in mid air he was told by the French that he would be denied entry. The plane then turned back to the gulf region until he was finally admitted and welcomed by Saudi Arabia. The Saudi regime has a long history of accepting despots including Idi Amin of Uganda and Parvez Musharraf of Pakistan.

But a few days before the deposed president left Tunis, his wife Leila Trabelsi, a former hairdresser known for her compulsive shopping, took over a ton and a half of pure gold from the central bank and left for Dubai along with her children. The first lady and the Trabelsi family are despised by the public for their corrupt lifestyle and financial scandals.

As chaos engulfed the political elites, the presidential security apparatus started a campaign of violence and property destruction in a last ditch attempt to saw discord and confusion. But the army, aided by popular committees, moved quickly to arrest them and stop the destruction campaign by imposing a night curfew throughout the country.

A handful of high-profile security officials such as the head of presidential security and the former interior minister, as well as business oligarchs including Ben Ali’s relatives and Trabelsi family members, were either killed by crowds or arrested by the army as they attempted to flee the country.

Meanwhile, after initially declaring himself a temporary president, the prime minister had to back down from that decision within 20 hours in order to assure the public that Ben Ali was gone forever. The following day, the speaker of parliament was sworn in as president, promising a national unity government and elections within 60 days.

Most Western countries, including the U.S. and France, were slow in recognizing the fast-paced events. President Barack Obama did not say a word as the events were unfolding. But once Ben Ali was deposed, he declared: “the U.S. stands with the entire international community in bearing witness to this brave and determined struggle for the universal rights that we must all uphold.” He continued: “We will long remember the images of the Tunisian people seeking to make their voices heard. I applaud the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people.”

Similarly, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, not only abandoned his Tunisian ally by refusing to admit him in the country while his flight was en route, but he even ordered Ben Ali’s relatives staying in expensive apartments and luxury hotels in Paris to leave the country.

The following day the French government announced that it would freeze all accounts that belonged to the deposed president, his family, or in-laws, in a direct admission that the French government was already aware that such assets were the product of corruption and ill-gotten money.

The nature of Ben Ali’s regime: Corruption, Repression and Western Backing

A recently published report from Global Financial Integrity (GFI), titled: “Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2000-2009,” estimates Tunisia was losing billions of dollars to illicit financial activities and official government corruption, in a state budget that is less than $10 billion and GDP less than $40 billion per year.

Economist and co-author of the study, Karly Curcio, notes: “Political unrest is perpetuated, in part, by corrupt and criminal activity in the country. GFI estimates that the amount of illegal money lost from Tunisia due to corruption, bribery, kickbacks, trade mispricing, and criminal activity between 2000 and 2008 was, on average, over one billion dollars per year, specifically $1.16 billion per annum.”

A 2008 Amnesty International study, titled: “In the Name of Security: Routine Abuses in Tunisia,” reported that “serious human rights violations were being committed in connection with the government’s security and counterterrorism policies.” Reporters Without Borders also issued a report that stated Ben Ali’s regime was “obsessive in its control of news and information. Journalists and human rights activists are the target of bureaucratic harassment, police violence and constant surveillance by the intelligence services.”

The former U.S. Ambassador in Tunis, Robert Godec, has admitted as much. In a cable to his bosses in Washington, dated July 17, 2009, recently made public by Wikileaks, he stated with regard to the political elites: “they rely on the police for control and focus on preserving power. And, corruption in the inner circle is growing. Even average Tunisians are now keenly aware of it, and the chorus of complaints is rising.”

Even when the U.S. Congress approved millions of dollars in military aid for Tunisia last year, it noted “restrictions on political freedom, the use of torture, imprisonment of dissidents, and persecution of journalists and human rights defenders.”

Yet, ever since he seized power in 1987, Ben Ali counted on the support of the West to maintain his grip on the country. Indeed, Gen. Ben Ali was the product of the French Military Academy and the U.S. Army School at Ft. Bliss, TX. He also completed his intelligence and military security training at Ft. Holabird, MD.

Since he had spent most of his career as a military intelligence and security officer, he developed, over the years, close relationships with western intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, as well as the French and other NATO intelligence services.

Based on a European intelligence source, Al-Jazeera recently reported that when Ben Ali served as his country’s ambassador to Poland between 1980-1984 (a strange post for a military and intelligence officer), he was actually serving NATO’s interests by acting as the main contact between the CIA and NATO’s intelligence services and the Polish opposition in order to undermine the Soviet-backed regime.

In 1999 Fulvio Martini, former head of Italian military secret service SISMI, declared to a parliamentary committee that “In 1985-1987, we (in NATO) organized a kind of golpe (i.e. coup d’etat) in Tunisia, putting president Ben Ali as head of state, replacing Burghuiba,” in reference to the first president of Tunisia.

During his confirmation hearing in July 2009 as U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia, Gordon Gray reiterated the West’s support for the regime as he told the Senate Foreign Relations committee, “We’ve had a long-standing military relationship with the government and with the military. It’s very positive. Tunisian military equipment is of U.S. origin, so we have a long-standing assistance program there.”

Tunisia’s strategic importance to the U.S. is also recognized by the fact that its policy is determined by the National Security Council rather than the State Department. Furthermore, since Ben Ali became president, the U.S. military delivered $350 million in military hardware to his regime.

As recently as last year, the Obama administration asked Congress to approve a $282 million sale of more military equipment to help the security agencies maintain control over the population. In his letter to Congress, the President said: “This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country.”

During the Bush administration the U.S. defined its relationship with other countries not based on its grandiose rhetoric on freedom and democracy, but rather on how each country would embrace its counter-terrorism campaign and pro-Israel policies in the region. On both accounts Tunisia scored highly.

For instance, a Wikileaks cable from Tunis, dated Feb. 28, 2008, reported a meeting between Assistant Secretary of State David Welch and Ben Ali in which the Tunisian president offered his country’s intelligence cooperation “without reservation” including FBI access to “Tunisian detainees” inside Tunisian prisons.

In his first trip to the region in April 2009, President Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, stopped first in Tunisia and declared that his talks with its officials “were excellent.” He hailed the “strong ties” between both governments, as well as Tunisia’s support of U.S. efforts in the Middle East. He stressed President Obama’s “high consideration” of Ben Ali.

Throughout his 23 year rule, hundreds of Tunisian human rights activists and critics such as opposition leaders Sihem Ben Sedrine and Moncef Marzouki, were arrested, detained, and sometimes tortured after they spoke out against the human rights abuses and massive corruption sanctioned by his regime. Meanwhile, thousands of members of the Islamic movement were arrested, tortured and tried in sham trials.

In its Aug. 2009 report, titled: “Tunisia, Continuing Abuses in the Name of Security,” Amnesty International said: “The Tunisian authorities continue to carry out arbitrary arrests and detentions, allow torture and use unfair trials, all in the name of the fight against terrorism. This is the harsh reality behind the official rhetoric.”

Western governments were quite aware of the nature of this regime. But they decided to overlook the regime’s corruption and repression to secure their short-term interests. The State Department’s own 2008 Human Rights Report detailed many cases of “torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” including rapes of female political prisoners by the regime. Without elaboration or condemnation, the report coldly concluded: “Police assaulted human rights and opposition activists throughout the year.”

What next?

“The dictator has fallen but not the dictatorship,” declared Rachid Ghannouchi, the Islamic leader of the opposition party, al-Nahdha or Renaissance, who has been in exile in the U.K. for the past 22 years. During the reign of Ben Ali, his group was banned and thousands of its members were either tortured, imprisoned or exiled. He himself was tried and sentenced to death in absentia. He has announced his return to the country soon.

This statement by al-Nahdha’s leader has reflected the popular sentiment cautioning that both the new president, Fouad Al-Mubazaa’, and prime minister Mohammad Ghannouchi have been members of Ben Ali’s party: The Constitutional Democratic Party. And thus their credibility is suspect. They have helped in implementing the deposed dictator’s policies for over a decade.

Nevertheless, the Prime Minister promised, on the day Ben Ali fled the country, a government of national unity. Within days he announced a government that retained most of the former ministers (including the most important posts of defense, foreign , interior and finance), while including three ministers from the opposition and some independents close to the labor and lawyers unions. Many other opposition parties were either ignored or refused to join based on principle protesting the ruling party’s past.

In less than 24 hours, huge demonstrations took place all over the country on Jan. 18 in protest of the inclusion of the ruling party. Immediately four ministers representing the labor union and an opposition party resigned from the new government until a true national unity government is formed. Another opposition party suspended its participation until the ruling party ministers are either dismissed or resign their position.

Within hours the president and the prime minister resigned from the ruling party and declared themselves as independents. Still, most opposition parties are demanding their removal and their replacement with reputable and national leaders who are truly “independent” and have “clean hands.” They question how the same interior minister who organized the fraudulent elections of Ben Ali less than 15 months ago, could supervise free and fair elections now.

It’s not clear if the new government would even survive the rage of the street. But perhaps its most significant announcement was issuing a general amnesty and promising a release of all political prisoners in detentions and in exile. It also established three national commissions.

The first commission is headed by one of the most respected constitutional scholars, Prof. ‘Ayyadh Ben Ashour, to address political and constitutional reforms. The other two are headed by former human rights advocates; one to investigate official corruption, while the other to investigate the killing of the demonstrators during the popular uprising. All three commissions were appointed in response to the main demands by the demonstrators and opposition parties.

January 14, 2011 has indeed become a watershed date in the modern history of the Arab World. Already, about a dozen would-be martyrs have attempted suicide by setting themselves ablaze in public protest of political repression and economic corruption, in Egypt, Algeria and Mauritania. Opposition movements have already led protests praising the Tunisian uprising and protesting their governments’ repressive policies and corruption in many Arab countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Libya, Yemen, and the Sudan.

The verdict on the ultimate success of the Tunisian revolution is still out. Will it be aborted by either infighting or the introduction of illusory changes to absorb the public’s anger? Or will real and lasting change be established, enshrined in a new constitution that is based on democratic principles, political freedom, freedoms of press and assembly, independence of the judiciary, respect of human rights, and end of foreign interference?

As the answers to these questions unfold in the next few months, the larger question of whether there is a domino effect on the rest of the Arab world will become clearer.

But perhaps the ultimate lesson to Western policymakers is this: Real change is the product of popular will and sacrifice, not imposed by foreign interference or invasions.

To topple the Iraqi dictator, it cost the U.S. over 4,500 dead soldiers, 32,000 injured, a trillion dollars, a sinking economy, at least 150,000 dead Iraqis, a half-million injured, and the devastation of their country, as well as the enmity of billions of Muslims and other people around the world.

Meanwhile, the people of Tunisia toppled another brutal dictator with less than 100 dead who will forever be remembered and honored by their countrymen and women as heroes who paid the ultimate price for freedom.

Esam Al-Amin can be reached at alamin1919 (at) gmail.com

Portrait of Hitler Discovered in French Church Window

jj January 18th, 2011

From Der Spiegel On Line

A stained glass window in a small church has caused a sensation in France. Unveiled in 1941, it depicts Adolf Hitler executing a saint who symbolizes the Jewish people. Local priests have praised the work as a brave act of resistance against the Nazi occupiers.

In the popular imagination, the French Resistance against the Nazi occupation of France is associated with heroic acts of guerrilla warfare, such as blowing up bridges or derailing trains. But in one small town near Paris, two artist brothers also resisted the occupation in their own quiet way — with a politically charged stained-glass window.

Local historians in the town of Montgeron have rediscovered a stained-glass church window that criticizes the Nazi occupation by depicting Adolf Hitler as an executioner. The dictator is shown in the act of killing St. James, who was one of Jesus’ 12 apostles.

Although Hitler’s distinctive hairstyle can easily be recognized in the portrait, his trademark moustache has been left out. “The glassmakers hid it behind his arm, to avoid any trouble,” local priest Dominique Guérin told the French newspaper Le Parisien.

Political Message

The church’s stained-glass windows were unveiled in July 1941, during the Nazi occupation. Locals believe that the two artists, the Mauméjean brothers, deliberately depicted Hitler as the executioner of St. James, whom the church is named for, as an act of artistic and religious resistance.

Guérin’s predecessor Gabriel Ferone told Le Parisien that the saint represents the Jewish people, as his name in Hebrew has the same etymology as Jacob, the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. Stained-glass windows created by the brothers in other churches also mix political and religious messages, according to historian Renaud Arpin.

Authorities in the town are now hoping that the media attention will turn the church into a tourist attraction. Montgeron is only 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) from Paris and is easily reachable by train.

dgs/SPIEGEL

The Clicktivists – a new breed of protesters

jj January 17th, 2011

By Ben Bryant London ES

As protests go, a lunchtime dance outside the Bank of England wouldn’t even register as an act of civil disobedience. And yet, for the dozens of people who attended last Friday’s Dance Against The Deficit to bump and grind to the bewilderment of City workers, it makes perfect sense.

Faces of protest: clockwise from top left, False Economy’s Clifford Singer, Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy, Milena Popova of Yes to Fairer Votes, Ellie Mae O’Hagan of UK Uncut, blogger Laurie Penny, Sean O’Halloran and Jessica Riches of UCL Occupation and David Babbs of 38 Degrees

Faces of protest: clockwise from top left, False Economy’s Clifford Singer, Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy, Milena Popova of Yes to Fairer Votes, Ellie Mae O’Hagan of UK Uncut, blogger Laurie Penny, Sean O’Halloran and Jessica Riches of UCL Occupation and David Babbs of 38 Degrees

It would be glib to describe this kind of playful protest as the new face of activism but the dance, which was organised by a group of bloggers and activists, posted on Facebook and publicised by interested people on Twitter, shows how campaigning has evolved. The way in which activists are exchanging ideas and mobilising has changed, thanks to social media, and it’s this, along with a surge in public dismay over Coalition cuts and broken promises, that is fuelling a resurgence in popular protest.

Activists haven’t always embraced the internet so readily. Critics of acts like signing up to an online petition or “liking” a cause on Facebook argue that they dissuade users from getting off their computers and on to the streets to protest.

This kind of flirtation with a cause even has a name — “clicktivism”, the sort of activism that’s perfectly suited to the process of skittering across the web from the Save Darfur Facebook page to a video of sneezing pandas on YouTube.

Organisations such as UK Uncut, however, are bucking this trend, successfully translating online campaigns into offline action. The latest clicktivists are smart, media-savvy, highly engaged with social media, accessible, usually only loosely organised, and well aware of the pitfalls of clicktivism. They use social media to enable a public sceptical of traditional party political routes to engage with the issues on their own terms.

UK Uncut
Who?
A loosely organised national network of anti-cuts activists who have risen to prominence for campaigns targeting Vodafone and Arcadia Group, which includes Topshop, Burton and Dorothy Perkins. The group has no official leader or hierarchy. Instead, says co-founder Chris Tobin, a 25-year-old drama teacher from Brent, its collaborative blog “allows people to co-ordinate their own actions”. Its 12 founders are students and professionals from their twenties to early forties, including teachers, a nurse and media professionals.

What do we want?
The group has focused all of its energies on corporate tax avoiders so far but is actually an anti-cuts movement, explains 23-year-old spokesperson Alex Wright, a charity worker from Tower Hamlets: “Our aim as a movement is to highlight that, actually, these are ideological cuts. It has nothing to do with necessity. Tax avoidance is just an issue of many, highlighting some of the ways where the Government could be reclaiming this money and not making the cuts.”
greatest success?

Pay Day, on December 18, saw nationwide protests that disrupted Arcadia Group and Vodafone businesses all over the UK. Demonstrators occupied Topshop, Bhs and other Arcadia businesses from Truro to Edinburgh, in some cases gluing themselves to the windows to prevent ejection. This action forced the closure of at least 13 stores.

Where’s the money from?
It requires very little funding, since UK Uncut uses tools that are freely available on the internet to unite its network of activists. “Twitter isn’t a gimmick in this,” says Tobin. “Twitter and Facebook allow for a realistic campaign that has a completely different structure to the sort of organisations that have defined protests.”

How many followers?
It has no formal membership and its supporters range in their degree of advocacy from sympathisers to demonstrators. This means its founders have no idea how many people are involved, although they have accumulated more than 13,000 followers on Twitter.

What’s the next move?
A nationwide day of mass action is planned for January 30, with smaller nationwide occupations and demonstrations taking place throughout this month.

38 Degrees
Who?
A Left-of-centre campaigning organisation with a team of three staff and a network of volunteers. It launched in May 2009 and is unique because its direction is driven almost entirely by its membership, who use social media and the internet to help decide on every aspect of running a campaign. “We have a staff team who are very focused on listening to what our members want, and exercising some judgment as well,” explains
29-year-old executive director David Babbs, who lives in Bethnal Green.

What do we want?
It has co-ordinated campaigns on a range of issues, from saving BBC 6 Music to protecting the NHS. At the moment their energies are focused on a newspaper campaign that portrays George Osborne as a pouting “Artful Dodger”, stating that he is not only skirting the issue of tax avoidance but dodging £1.6 million of tax himself.

Greatest success?
38 Degrees delivered a petition signed by 11,000 people to party leaders to call on them to urgently pass a Recall Law for MPs that would let voters oust them between elections. The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, has since indicated that this will become a reality.

Where’s the money from?
Half of 38 Degrees’ funding is raised from membership donations. The other half is provided by benefactors and trusts.

How many followers?
38 Degrees claims to have a membership of about 300,000, whose levels of advocacy vary. Its campaigns tend to be based around online activism that requires supporters to sign petitions or email their MP rather than take direct action.

“We make change happen through people power,” says Babbs. “So in terms of what the staff can do without members our options are genuinely limited.”

What’s the next move?
£20,000 has been raised by members to display a round of Artful Dodger adverts on bus stops and billboards around the UK. The organisation is also currently engaged in several other campaigns.

False Economy
Who?
Conceived by a group of activists, campaigners and trade unionists, False Economy isn’t a campaigning organisation in itself but rather a platform for people to find out about how Coalition cuts are affecting the populace and what they can do about it.

“We’re very interested in what people do offline,” says campaign director Clifford Singer, 42, who lives in Hackney, “but False Economy itself is an online hub. It’s a way for people to get information about what’s going on, about local cuts in their area and the arguments against the Government’s economics, and to spread that using social media.”

Its success at uniting online activists has been assisted by the involvement of Liberal Conspiracy blogger and prolific tweeter Sunny Hundal, who has proven adept at connecting activists online and offline through events such as this month’s grassroots conference Netroots.

What do we want?
The site has three aims: to map the cuts and their effect on people, to provide a resource for campaigns and protesters from different organisations and to make a case against the Government’s view of how it would reduce the deficit.

Greatest success?
It is not due to launch until the first week of February and is still in the process of establishing the site.

Where’s the money from?
False Economy was set up with financial support from the TUC, Unison, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and the Fire Brigades Union, and has a staff of two working part-time. “We have very limited funds at the moment,” says Singer, who is a part-time web developer, and hopes to maintain the site through donations.

How many followers?
It’s currently reported to attract about 2,000 unique users a day.

What’s the next move?
The group’s energies are focused on their launch in the first week of February. It has also used Freedom of Information requests to conduct research into the impact of public sector cuts, which it plans to release at the same time.

National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts
Who?
A network of student and education worker activists not affiliated with the National Union of Students (NUS), the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) was founded at a conference of more than 150 campaigners at University College London in February last year. It was originally conceived in response to the NUS’s failure to represent students who wanted to campaign for free education, and organises protests and occupations opposing tuition fees and cuts in education funding.

Founder Michael Chessum, a 21-year-old student officer at University College London, explains: “We thought there were lots of little local campaigns which weren’t being catered for or supported by their students’ union or the NUS. We wanted to give them a national face and a national direction.”

What do we want?
The NCAFC ultimately wants to secure free education for students, and this is where its views differ from the NUS. Considered more radical than the NUS, the group has a record of supporting forms of (non-violent) direct action, such as university occupations, that the NUS is less willing to undertake.

Greatest success?
A march the NCAFC organised on December 9 last year saw tens of thousands of students descend on London to protest, causing disruption that included the painting of a giant “NO” on the grass in Parliament Square.

Where’s the money from?
By donation through its website.

How many followers?

The campaign against a rise in tuition fees was believed to have the support of hundreds of thousands across the UK, most of them students. Marches have seen tens of thousands of students take to the streets. “What’s important about the campaign is it’s still overwhelmingly a physical thing,” says Chessum, who lives in Haringey.

What’s the next move?
A mass demonstration is planned for January 29, where protesters will take to the streets of London and Manchester.

Egypt’s Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as “human shields”

jj January 13th, 2011

From: Ahramonline

Muslims turned up in droves for the Coptic Christmas mass Thursday night, offering their bodies, and lives, as “shields” to Egypt’s threatened Christian community

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.

Among those shields were movie stars Adel Imam and Yousra, popular Muslim televangelist and preacher Amr Khaled, the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak, and thousands of citizens who have said they consider the attack one on Egypt as a whole.

“This is not about us and them,” said Dalia Mustafa, a student who attended mass at Virgin Mary Church on Maraashly Street. “We are one. This was an attack on Egypt as a whole, and I am standing with the Copts because the only way things will change in this country is if we come together.”

In the days following the brutal attack on Saints Church in Alexandria, which left 21 dead on New Year’ eve, solidarity between Muslims and Copts has seen an unprecedented peak. Millions of Egyptians changed their Facebook profile pictures to the image of a cross within a crescent – the symbol of an “Egypt for All”. Around the city, banners went up calling for unity, and depicting mosques and churches, crosses and crescents, together as one.

The attack has rocked a nation that is no stranger to acts of terror, against all of Muslims, Copts and Jews. In January of last year, on the eve of Coptic Christmas, a drive-by shooting in the southern town of Nag Hammadi killed eight Copts as they were leaving Church following mass. In 2004 and 2005, bombings in the Red Sea resorts of Taba and Sharm El-Sheikh claimed over 100 lives, and in the late 90’s, Islamic militants executed a series of bombings and massacres that left dozens dead.

This attack though comes after a series of more recent incidents that have left Egyptians feeling left out in the cold by a government meant to protect them.

Last summer, 28-year-old businessman Khaled Said was beaten to death by police, also in Alexandria, causing a local and international uproar. Around his death, there have been numerous other reports of police brutality, random arrests and torture.

Last year was also witness to a ruthless parliamentary election process in which the government’s security apparatus and thugs seemed to spiral out of control. The result, aside from injuries and deaths, was a sweeping win by the ruling party thanks to its own carefully-orchestrated campaign that included vote-rigging, corruption and widespread violence. The opposition was essentially annihilated. And just days before the elections, Copts – who make up 10 percent of the population – were once again the subject of persecution, when a government moratorium on construction of a Christian community centre resulted in clashes between police and protestors. Two people were left dead and over 100 were detained, facing sentences of up to life in jail.

The economic woes of a country that favours the rich have only exacerbated the frustration of a population of 80 million whose majority struggle each day to survive. Accounts of thefts, drugs, and violence have surged in recent years, and the chorus of voices of discontent has continued to grow.

The terror attack that struck the country on New Year’s eve is in many ways a final straw – a breaking point, not just for the Coptic community, but for Muslims as well, who too feel marginalized, oppressed, and overlooked by a government that fails to address their needs. On this Coptic Christmas eve, the solidarity was not just one of religion, but of a desperate and collective plea for a better life and a government with accountability.

Richmond Cops Mistakenly Hand Over Anti-Protest Guides to Anarchist

jj January 12th, 2011

From: The GreenIsTheNewRed.com

After filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the Richmond Police Department for police training documents, Mo Karn received much more than expected in return: homeland security and crowd control guides that show how the police target protests.

The police filed for an emergency court order yesterday to prohibit Karn from publicizing any of the documents, which should never have been released. The cops’ reasoning? “Defendant Mo Karn is a known and admitted anarchist.”

The documents, however, have already been published online. And buried in the training guides are insights into three trends in law enforcement that have been occurring not just in Virginia, but nationally: the demonization of protest, the militarization of police, and turning local cops into “terrorism” officials.

The Demonization of Protest

The Richmond Police Department’s Emergency Operations Plan
includes a section on “civil disturbances.” While this sounds innocuous, “civil disturbances” are defined so broadly as to include what the police call “dissident gatherings.”

“The City of Richmond is a target rich environment” for antiwar protesters, the document says. And it warns that police and homeland security have reason to be increasingly concerned:

“Current training and intelligence reveals that protestors are becoming more proficient in the methods of assembly.”

Militarization of Local Police

Such a depiction of “assembly” (a First Amendment right) as a “disturbance” and a threat is all the more troubling when put in the context of the other police department guides. Richmond’s Crowd Management Operating Manual is for the police unit assigned to large protests (no experience required). Among the tools that the crowd management team are issued include riot shields, chemical agents, cut tools, helmets, body armor, cameras, video cameras, batons, gas masks, and a “mass arrest kit.”

Deputizing Local Cops as Counter-terrorism Officials

This militarization of local police is accompanied by another trend in law enforcement since September 11th: deputizing local cops to becoming “homeland security” and counter-terrorism officials. According to the Homeland Security Criminal Intelligence Unit Operating Manual, “The Richmond Police Department is under contract with the FBI to provide assistance through staffing, intelligence and equipment.” And one member of the homeland security unit is assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The result? Documents like the Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment. The 2009 document was created by the Virginia Fusion Center, of which the Richmond Police Department is part. Fusion centers are ostensibly designed to gather terrorism intelligence from multiple police agencies, and make us safer. In practice, they routinely label activists as “terrorists.” Among the “terrorist threats” identified in Virginia were animal rights activists, environmental activists, and anarchists.

According to the threat assessment, “The Virginia Federation of Anarchists has held two conferences in Richmond in November 2007 and January 2008? and “Anarchist protesters at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. spilled over into Prince William County.”

Karn, meanwhile, wears her scarlet circle ‘A’ with pride, and has no problem being labeled an anarchist. The FOIA was submitted by the Wingnut Collective, a Richmond anarchist group, as part of their police accountability project.

In his court motion warning that Karn is an “anarchist,” Richmond’s Deputy Assistant Attorney Brian Telfair doesn’t allege the possibility of any violence or property destruction. Instead, he cites a blog post by Karn about acquiring government information through legal requests. The title? “FOIA Rocks!”

Tunisian Unrest Stirs Arab World

jj January 6th, 2011

By Emad Mekay IPS

CAIRO, Dec 31, 2010 (IPS) – As Western countries were busy celebrating Christmas and dealing with air traffic holiday delays because of snow blizzards, the tranquil North African country of Tunisia was going through events that would have been thought unthinkable just three weeks ago – public unrest that saw thousands demonstrate against the regime of President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

Tunisia suicide protester Mohammed Bouazizi dies

Tunisia suicide protester Mohammed Bouazizi dies

While the media and policy makers went heads over heals in the United States and Europe during similar protests against the disputed presidential elections in Iran in 2009, the unexpected events went largely ignored in the Western media. Tunisian bloggers and twitter posts are now the main source for minute by minute development of the unrest.

Arabs across the Middle East Watched in awe as online video posts and sporadic coverage on Al-Jazeera TV station showed Tunisians, with a reputation of passivity, rise up in unprecedented street protests and sits-in against the police state of President Ben Ali.

The Ben Ali regime exemplifies the “moderate” pro-Western Arab regimes that boast strict control of their population while toeing the line of Western powers in the Middle East.

The spark of the unrest, now about to end its second week, came when a 26- year-old unemployed university graduate, Mohammed Buazizi, set himself ablaze in the central town Sidi Buzeid to protest the confiscation of his fruits and vegetables cart.

Buaziz’s suicide attempt was copied by at least two other young university graduates in protest against poor economic conditions in the Arab country.

Similar to previous unrests in many Western-backed Arab countries, the police responded with overwhelming force. There were reports of use of live ammunition, house-to-house raids to chase activists, mass arrests and torture of prisoners.

The police initially crushed the demonstrations in Sidi Buzeid after cutting all communication and roads to the town, only to be faced with more demonstrations in several neighboring towns.

Egypt had followed the same tactics against unrest by factory workers in the industrial city Al-Mahal El Kobra on April 16, 2007, and killed the unrest in just four days after the regime managed to control media reports from inside the town, and major Western media outlets either ignored the events or belittled them as ineffectual.

But unlike the unrest in Egypt, there are reports of demonstrations and clashes spreading in Tunisia to the towns Gandouba, Qabes and Genyana among others.

The Ben Ali regime blamed “radical elements”, “chaos mongers” and “a minority of mercenaries” for incitement, all typical accusations by Arab rulers in face of signs of fidgeting among their oppressed publics.

So far, according to press reports and Web posts, at least two protestors have died, with many injured in the protests.

On Thursday, human rights activist and blogger Lina Ben Mhenni reported a third death and said that police was conducting house-to-house raids to chase activists (http://twitter.com/benmhennilina). The report has not been independently verified.

The Tunisian Journalists’ Syndicate issued a statement last week decrying official attempts “to hinder media coverage and stop reporters from doing their job.”

The communications minister has banned the showing of Al-Jazeera channel in Tunisian coffee shops or any public viewing, according to another web post by an unidentified Tunisian man.

A blogger wrote: “They are clamping down on the Internet too, blocking some sites and Facebook accounts. I might not be able to post any longer. If I disappear suddenly, please pray for me.”

Comments from across the Arab countries followed in support.

“Thank Allah the peoples of the region are finally waking up and are protesting against the tyrants who spread injustice and corruption all over the face of the earth,” a post from Dubai said.

“The end of the Arab regimes looks so near,” another post from Egypt said.

Other Arabs are seeing the demonstration as an inspiration. In chat forums and social media, Arabs were applauding the protestors, often calling them “heroes”.

The Egyptian opposition leader Hamadeen Sabahi called for a demonstration on Sunday in solidarity with the “Tunisian Intifadah”.

The fear of similar spillover into Arab countries pushed at least one Arab ruler to rush to aid Ben Ali. Libya’s maverick leader Muammar Qaddaif said he was immediately dropping all restrictions on the entry of Tunisian labour into Libya. Tunisians were free to travel to his oil-rich country for work, he said.

Opposition says the unrest was prompted by high prices and unemployment but now has turned political with some demonstrators calling on President Ben Ali to step down.

Tunisia, like other non-oil producing Arab countries has implemented a Western-inspired privatization programme and gradual cut to state subsidies to staple goods without offering alternative sources of income.

Yet as the Tunisians waited impatiently, the fruits of the alleged economic reforms never came. Pictures and video on social media showed protestors holding bread loaves, a sign of hunger and poverty.

Tunisia’s protests caught the region by surprise as the Ben Ali regime, like other rulers, had often trumpeted his country as an oasis of stability.

Trying to absorb the shock, Ben Ali announced a small cabinet reshuffle but left the interior ministry intact. He vowed a clampdown on the protestors. (END)

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