New Left Project

Photos From Today’s Tomlinson Demonstration

2010-07-30T09:50:00+00:00

by Random Blowe

Photos by unslugged from today’s protest in support of the Tomlinson family at the Crown Prosecution Service and on into the City.

LAZY FRIDAY - First as Tragedy Then as Farce

2010-07-30T07:41:00+00:00

by Random Blowe

In today’s Friday lunchtime distraction, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek gets the RSA Animate treatment as he investigates the surprising ethical implications of charitable giving.

Abdul Aziz Naji, Released from Guantánamo Last Week, Speaks to Algerian Media

2010-07-30T06:04:28+00:00

by Andy Worthington

In the first detailed interview with a prisoner released from Guantánamo to Algeria, Abdul Aziz Naji, forcibly repatriated last week, has spoken to the Algerian newspaper El Khabar, describing his experiences during his eight years in US custody. While this is a welcome demonstration of transparency on the part of the Algerian authorities, it is also indicative of what can be achieved through international criticism. After the Obama administration and the US Supreme Court conspired to repatriate a cleared prisoner against his will, for the first time, human rights groups and the United Nations all expressed their disgust with the United States’ actions, and their fears that a “diplomatic assurance” with the Algerian government, guaranteeing Naji’s humane treatment on his return, was fundamentally untrustworthy, given Algeria’s poor human rights record.

As a result, although this interview is good PR for both the Algerian government and the Obama administration, it should in no way be construed as a green light for the forcible repatriation of five other Algerians in Guantánamo who are unwilling to return home, as I explained in an accompanying article, “Guantánamo Algerian Returns Home; Will Obama Suspend Further Transfers?” and should also not be taken as proof that Abdul Aziz Naji will not, in future, be put on trial, as has happened to other prisoners who returned voluntarily from Guantánamo.

The interview began by explaining that Naji “[a]rrived on Monday to his neighbourhood in Batna province” (overlooking the fact that he spent a week in Algerian custody prior to being released), and that he “tells the suffering he endured there under the pretext of alleged[] international terrorism charges,” and “says the world has to know the truth about abuses against humanity committed by US soldiers in the Guantánamo detention camp.”

“They force detainees to take some medicines for three months to drive them crazy, losing [their] memory and committing suicide,” Naji told El Khabar, adding, “I still remember how a Yemeni prisoner killed himself [because] he couldn’t resist the torture and sexual abuse practiced by the prison caretakers.” That man is not identified, but it may have been Abdul Rahman al-Amri, who died on May 30, 2007, reportedly by committing suicide. As I explained in an article on the third anniversary of his death, former prisoner Omar Deghayes “recalled a devout man who was deeply troubled by the kinds of humiliation that were used on him at Guantánamo.”

The interview also explained that Naji said that in Guantánamo “prisoners suffered different kind[s] of torture to force them [to] confess [to] terror charges” that were falsely leveled against them, and that he criticized the International Committee of the Red Cross because they reportedly “avoided evoking the bad treatment of the soldiers against the prisoners,” and “the majority of detainees accused the Red Cross of collusion with the US soldiers.” This is a common complaint, but it seems to me that it may be based on a misunderstanding of the basis on which Red Cross representatives are allowed access to prisoners — on the understanding that they are prohibited from publicly reporting on the conditions they encounter — and it certainly fails to acknowledge the uproar caused in October 2003, when Christophe Girod of the International Committee of the Red Cross broke with protocol, telling the New York Times, “The open-endedness of the situation [at Guantánamo] and its impact on the mental health of the population has become a major problem.”

Perhaps the most revealing section of Naji’s interview was his discussion of “how some detainees had been promised to be granted [a] political asylum opportunity in exchange [for] a ‘spying role’ within the detention camp,” and how, after their release, they were “maintained as spies serving for the US, under the cover of political refugees.” He specifically mentioned one Algerian, known as “Bavardad,” who “was forced to become a spy within a mosque in a European country, because he was told [that if] he return[ed] to Algeria, [the] intelligence services would consider him a traitor and would kill him. He concluded, however, that once he returned to the country, he had been well treated by [the] Algerian security services.”

Clarifying the circumstances of Naji’s capture, El Khabar also reported that he was “arrested in Pakistan with another Algerian, Mustapha Hamlili, who had lived there for 15 years with his Afghan wife,” and that he was “taken to Bagram military base in Afghanistan, for cross-examinations and torture, before flying to Guantánamo.” The interview neglected to mention that Hamlili’s voluntary repatriation from Guantánamo in July 2008 — along with seven other Algerians between July 2008 and January 2009 — received little international criticism, and that, along with other released men, he was subsequently charged with “membership in a terrorist organization abroad and using forged travel documents.” The interview also neglected to mention that it took another 19 months until he was finally cleared, after a trial that concluded in February this year, or that, in the cases of two other men who were cleared after trials that took place 15 months after their repatriation, the prosecutor had called for prison sentences of 20 years.

Welcome though it is to see Abdul Aziz Naji safely at home, and interviewed by an Algerian newspaper, it is the fate of Mustapha Hamlili and the other returned Algerians that is more generally indicative of what awaits former Guantánamo prisoners in Algeria, and that should give pause to the Obama administration as it contemplates forcibly repatriating five other prisoners from Guantánamo.

Personally, I hope that Abdul Aziz Naji is able to stay in contact with his lawyers, and that he can establish contact with representatives of human rights groups, to ensure that his appearance in the Algerian media is indicative of a new openness on the part of the Algerian government, as is not just a PR stunt, and also, hopefully, to avoid the farcical charges and long-winded trials to which all the other returned Algerians have been subjected.

Note: The El Khabar interview no longer appears to be available online, but I suspect that this is a problem with the website archive, rather than anything more sinister.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

See the following for articles about the 142 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 to January 2009, and the 60 prisoners released from February 2009 to mid-July 2010, whose stories are covered in more detail than is available anywhere else –- either in print or on the Internet –- although many of them, of course, are also covered in The Guantánamo Files: June 2007 –- 2 Tunisians, 4 Yemenis (here, here and here); July 2007 –- 16 Saudis; August 2007 –- 1 Bahraini, 5 Afghans; September 2007 –- 16 Saudis; September 2007 –- 1 Mauritanian; September 2007 –- 1 Libyan, 1 Yemeni, 6 Afghans; November 2007 –- 3 Jordanians, 8 Afghans; November 2007 –- 14 Saudis; December 2007 –- 2 Sudanese; December 2007 –- 13 Afghans (here and here); December 2007 –- 3 British residents; December 2007 –- 10 Saudis; May 2008 –- 3 Sudanese, 1 Moroccan, 5 Afghans (here, here and here); July 2008 –- 2 Algerians; July 2008 –- 1 Qatari, 1 United Arab Emirati, 1 Afghan; August 2008 –- 2 Algerians; September 2008 –- 1 Pakistani, 2 Afghans (here and here); September 2008 –- 1 Sudanese, 1 Algerian; November 2008 –- 1 Kazakh, 1 Somali, 1 Tajik; November 2008 –- 2 Algerians; November 2008 –- 1 Yemeni (Salim Hamdan) repatriated to serve out the last month of his sentence; December 2008 –- 3 Bosnian Algerians; January 2009 –- 1 Afghan, 1 Algerian, 4 Iraqis; ; February 2009 — 1 British resident (Binyam Mohamed); May 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian (Lakhdar Boumediene); June 2009 — 1 Chadian (Mohammed El-Gharani), 4 Uighurs to Bermuda, 1 Iraqi, 3 Saudis (here and here); August 2009 — 1 Afghan (Mohamed Jawad), 2 Syrians to Portugal; September 2009 — 1 Yemeni, 2 Uzbeks to Ireland (here and here); October 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti, 1 prisoner of undisclosed nationality to Belgium; October 2009 — 6 Uighurs to Palau; November 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian to France, 1 unidentified Palestinian to Hungary, 2 Tunisians to Italian custody; December 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti (Fouad al-Rabiah); December 2009 — 2 Somalis, 4 Afghans, 6 Yemenis; January 2010 — 2 Algerians, 1 Uzbek to Switzerland, 1 Egyptian, 1 Azerbaijani and 1 Tunisian to Slovakia; February 2010 — 1 Egyptian, 1 Libyan, 1 Tunisian to Albania, 1 Palestinian to Spain; March 2010 — 1 Libyan, 2 unidentified prisoners to Georgia, 2 Uighurs to Switzerland; May 2010 — 1 Syrian to Bulgaria, 1 Yemeni to Spain; July 2010 — 1 Yemeni (Mohammed Hassan Odaini).

call for papers sspt

2010-07-30T05:04:29+00:00

by Infinite Th0ught

CALL FOR PAPERS SSPT18 (Autumn/Winter) – Utopia, Dystopia and Critical
Theory We invite submissions for the next issue of SSPT linked to the theme
of Utopia, Dystopia and Critical Theory. In a period of geo-political,
ecological and e…conomic turmoil, we find ourselves in the midst of a
crisis of legitimation with respect to the dominant post-Cold War neoliberal
economic and political doctrine of unfettered market-led growth,
de-regulation and privatization of national resources and public services,
and total sovereignty of private ownership and capital over all spheres of
life. With a deepening crisis of the neoliberal political economy, it is
clear that mere economic functionalism is redundant. Now is a time for a
critical reappraisal of the frameworks and structures that continue to be
applied to a highly conflicted and unsustainable political and economic
system. Such projects will need to engage with debates over utopia/dystopia,
for any consideration of transformation in the present entails a complex yet
inextricable orientation towards the future.
Please send your articles of 5000-6500 words (in .doc format) via email to
sspt@sussex.ac.uk Accepted articles will be published alongside a selection
of papers on the same theme from this year’s SSPT Conference (held in May
2010). The deadline for submissions is 31 August 2010.
Possible topics include: -
• Science Fiction, Cultural Politics, the Political Imagination
• Crisis (of Capitalism, Feminism, the State, Marxism, Critical Theory) •
Ends (of History, Ideology, Capitalism, Communism, Neo-liberalism,
Postcoloniality)
• Immanent and Transcendent Criticism
• Environment, Catastrophe, Risk
• Futures (of Critical Theory, Political Economy, Postmodernity, Europe,
Islam, Secular Humanism, Globalisation, Feminism)
• Representations of Transcendence, Utopia/Dystopia, Apocalypse,
NegativeTheology
• Iconography, Idolatory and Ideology Critique.

The right to work (less)

2010-07-30T04:37:00+00:00

by Lenin's Tomb

Nina Power applies the scalpel of socialist feminist critique to the Right to Work campaign in today’s Guardian. This is most welcome, because the campaign against the cuts, and against unemployment, should be the topic of urgent debate in the press - which otherwise shows little interest in the concerns of the working class. (Ask yourself this: all newspapers have a ‘business’ section, overwhelmingly concerned with the doings of chief executives, financiers and multinationals, so why is there no labour section?) Power’s basic point is that the slogan ‘Right to Work’ is problematic because of the way in which it suggests that access to waged labour is itself a sufficient solution, and secondly because of certain connotations that it may have in participating in a discourse that elevates work to “the ultimate mark of a man or, in more recent decades, a woman too.”

Indeed, while I don’t completely agree with Power’s analysis, there’s a real problem here. We have a Tory government that is determined to cut the welfare state, slashing benefits, driving more and more of the disabled off benefits. (On this latter, see Christopher Read’s disturbing article for the New Left Project). One of the ways in which this is justified is by means of a moralistic, coercive appeal to work as the alternative to poverty and ‘dependency culture’. Work, in this reactionary trope, confers dignity and respectability. Indeed, it is put to us that if we truly respect our elders, we have to find a way to ‘allow’ older people to stay on in work for a few more years before claiming their pension entitlement, even as youth unemployment soars, and even if this means millions of people die before seeing a single penny of their deferred wages.

To the extent that asserting a ‘right to work’ could be seen as colluding in this idea, I can see the virtue of Power’s alternative ‘refusal to work’: the right to be lazy, as Lafargue put it. A central component of socialism in its marxist variant is the drive to reduce the burden of compulsory labour on people, using productivity gains to shorten people’s working lives and elongate their living hours. Concretely, in the context of a recession with mass unemployment, we can see how this might translate into a real demand: share the work around more equitably, give us a shorter working week with no loss of pay.

So, here’s where Power’s argument becomes problematic. A central campaigning demand of ‘Right to Work’ is a 35 hour week with no loss of pay, as affirmed at the 2010 conference. This is not especially radical. The New Economic Foundation goes farther, demanding a 21 hour working week, spread over four days. But given that the average working week in the UK is the longest in Europe at some 41.4 hours, and given that the average worker in the UK performs two months of unpaid overtime each year, a compulsory 35 hour week would be a good start, and constitute a relief for millions of workers. It would, in the marxist lexicon, reduce the rate of exploitation, as well as giving people more leisure time and reducing the demonstrably adverse effects of over-work - the physiological effects described by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson in The Spirit Level, and the psychological effects described by Oliver James in Affluenza.

The Federation of European Employers, of course, sees things differently. They believe that regulations and social benefits, giving people the right to holidays and sick leave for example, is costing EU businesses too much, and they want to see such entitlements removed so that more time is spent at work and thus more surplus extracted. The CBI, for its part, is committed to maintaining high working hours and its successful lobbying to maintain Britain’s opt out of the EU Working Time directive is one of the politico-legal bases for Britain’s over-long working week and high rates of exploitation and inequality. So, the Right to Work campaign positions it against the employers, the government, and their moralising drive to force people to work more. We are for the right to work - for access to waged labour - but we are also for the right to work less for the same wage. That can’t be accomplished unless the work is shared more equitably, and unless unemployment is systematically attacked.

The demand for the right to work is also a demand to end the ruling class policy of maintaining a certain rate of unemployment (typically 5% in growth periods) to weaken the bargaining power of labour, reduce wage claims and thus supposedly control inflation. It’s a demand, tacitly, to increase the share of the social product going to labour. This is important because, as Power points out, the mass entry of women into the workforce in the last forty years or so has coincided with wage stagnation and attacks on welfare, such that the amount of work being done by men and women has increased while the share of the social product going to labour has diminished. New Labour’s adaptation to neoliberalism meant that Gordon Brown embraced a definition of ‘full employment’ as the maximum employment that will place no upward pressure on inflation. That has actually involved consistently high rates of unemployment and is thus inconsistent with the right to work. This means that women in particular are suffering: with the dual burden of domestic and workplace labour increasing the total amount of work performed by women, both the social wage and the market wage have stagnated or declined for millions. Defending the right to work is therefore an important weapon in defending the income of workers, especially the most precariously employed, lowest paid women workers.

Now the Tories’ attack on welfare will adversely effect women in two ways. It will drive up unemployment by relieving hundreds of thousands of public sector workers - disproportionately female - of their jobs. It will also reduce help for working mothers and children, further depress the social wage, and make it less easy for mothers to seek paid work. That’s why they’re pushing the ‘family’ agenda, as if restoring Victorian patriarchal values will sweep up the social mess created by these cuts. This is why a defence of the welfare state is an essential component of Right to Work’s strategy, and is also a vital element of women’s liberation.

Lastly, do we need a new slogan to escape the pharisaical connotations alluded to above? I don’t know that we do. The right to work is not coextensive with the obligation to work. On the contrary, asserting the right to work is essential for the purpose of reducing the amount of work that people have to do, and increasing the share of the social product they receive for their labour. It is also synonymous with defending the welfare state, so that unwaged work is paid in some sense. It does not entail “working even harder for less so that those at the top can keep more” - quite the reverse. Most importantly, I think, the slogan cuts through the hypocrisy of the Tory cuts agenda. As much as they bluster about the redeeming powers of waged work, they are engaged in a programme that systematically attacks the right to work which we defiantly assert. What we need, I daresay, is not a new slogan, but a militant application of the current slogan. There lies the real basis for a movement to liberate ourselves from the burden of compulsory, soul-destroying, exploitative labour.

Funny thing about Afghanistan

2010-07-29T23:56:00+00:00

by Jews Sans Frontieres

‘Save Wanstead Flats’ Campaign Calls Mass Community Picnic

2010-07-29T15:46:00+00:00

by Random Blowe

The first meeting of the new 20-strong steering group of the ‘Save Wanstead Flats’ campaign met tonight at Durning Hall Community Centre and is planning a public meeting in late September. The campaign will be inviting representatives of the City of London Corporation and the Metropolitan Police to provide answers about plans to base an Olympics policing operational base on the Flats in 2012. In order to push this proposal through, the Corporation intends to amend the Epping Forest Act, which has protected Wanstead Flats from development since 1878.

Local people want to know why the proposed site for the police base has been chosen, how that decision was made and why the Olympic stadium site itself cannot be used. There has been no consultation, even though the plans involve locating a fenced, high-security compound – with buildings, parking areas, stables and apparently even police holding cells – for at least 120 days and so close to residential neighbourhoods.

On Sunday 5 September, Save Wanstead Flats is also calling a Mass Community Picnic at 1pm on the spot to the west of Centre Road where the police want to site their base. If you live near Wanstead Flats, come along with food, picnic blankets, your children and your friends and join others to demonstrate the local community’s opposition to these plans.

For more information, join the campaign’s mailing list by e-mailing savewansteadflats@gmail.com or contact Save Wanstead Flats c/o Community Involvement Unit, Durning Hall, Earlham Grove, London E7 9AB

Zizek animated: First as tragedy, Then as farce

2010-07-29T11:19:00+00:00

by Luna 17

Also see my piece about Zizek’s book ‘First as tragedy, Then as farce’ HERE and Duncan Simpson’s Counterfire review of his new book HERE.

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MKs in the UK

2010-07-29T11:18:00+00:00

by Jews Sans Frontieres

Zionists are often fond of pointing out that there are Arab members of the Israeli parliament and that this somehow proves that Israel is not a racist state, indeed that it is a normal functioning democracy. Well these two “Israeli”-Arab visitors to the UK parliament have other ideas. See this from the UK’s Jewish Chronicle:

Israeli Arab Knesset members have launched a blistering attack on the Jewish state and its Parliament, declaring Israel “racist, fascist and worse than apartheid South Africa”.
Speaking to supporters of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign at the House of Commons on Wednesday, MK Haneen Zoubi said: “Israel is much worse than the apartheid regime in South Africa. There were no ethnic cleansing policies there, but there are those policies in Israel.”
Demand for entrance to the event was so great that supporters filled two committee rooms.
One campaigner said the current Palestinian mood lent itself to a third intifada, an “intifada for democracy”.
In May Ms Zoubi, 41, was on the lead boat in the Gaza flotilla and addressed the Knesset by phone while on board. She was interrupted with shouts of “Go to Gaza, traitor” by Jewish MKs.
Speaking at the PSC event she said: “Everyone in Europe who supports Israel, financially and politically, must know they also support its racism, oppression, occupation and siege.
“The racism and discrimination against Palestinians in Israel is systematic. It’s not a policy, it’s an ideology. No-one can support the siege and call themselves a human being.”
Ms Zoubi attacked Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s proposal to require all new Israeli citizens to swear an oath of allegiance recognising the country as a Jewish state.
She said she would campaign for democracy for “Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews” alike.
Jamal Zahalka, an MK since 2003, said the Knesset had passed “racist laws” that discriminated against Israeli Arabs.
“There is democracy, and then there is Israeli democracy,” he said. “I say, give me my land and keep your ‘democracy’. We should focus on the end of the occupation, the end of the siege and the end of the settlements. A two-state solution is losing time and becoming impractical.”

Gratifying to know that it was such a well attended meeting.

Crisis, cuts and coalitions

2010-07-29T10:59:00+00:00

by Luna 17

Well, I’m off to the Lake District for a wedding and a long, relaxing weekend, so blogging resumes on Monday. Meanwhile, Luna17 recommends:

1. Capitalism in the wake of the financial crisis (Left Economics Advisory Panel)

2. Southampton’s Tory council to sack librarians (The Third Estate)

3. Economic vandalism and UK Film Council (A Very Public Sociologist)

4. Gay jokes and Carry-On commentating (Laurie Penny)

5. Is John Redwood as stupid as his blog? (Though Cowards Flinch)

6. Thoughts about coalition (Michael Prior)

7. Strategy and tactics (John Rees at Counterfire)

8. Raoul Moat: rapist, abuser and control freak (Scottish Socialist Youth)

9. Rape: treat the cause, not the symptom (The F Word)

10. Chilcot inquiry: too late, Hans Blix, too late (Sami Ramadani at Comment is Free)

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