Electioneering for Caroline with Hugh Kerr

I had tremendous fun electioneering for Caroline Lucas with Hugh Kerr.

Hugh is a member of Solidarity, Tommy Sheridan's Party in Scotland but got in touch with me to say how impressed he was with Caroline's work in the European Parliament and wanted to do some work to support her campaign.

He has given her this great endorsement:

"As a former Labour Member of the European Parliament, I urge all voters in Brighton and Hove to vote for Caroline Lucas. I have watched Caroline in action in Brussels, Strasbourg and Britain and she is one of the most exceptional members of [the European] parliament of our time. She would make a superb MP for the people of Brighton Pavilion." Hugh Kerr, Labour MEP for Essex West and Hertfordshire East, 1994-99."

He agreed to come and help with the election effort over the weekend, his son who lives in Seaford has joined the Brighton and Hove Green Party.

He is a bit like a genial Scottish version of Tom Baker, enormous fun to be around, he was out and about with his son and mine Vince, leafleting Hollingbury with the Green Party newspaper.

He was expelled by Tony Blair from the Labour Party when he was an MEP in 1999 and was for a time a member of the Green Group. A badge of honour if you ask me, not that I have ever been a member of the Labour Party, infact I joined the Greens when they were the Ecology Party back in 1980.

A veteran green socialist he told me how he once managed to persuade Harold Pinter to head a Green-Alternative election list in Scotland, but while Harold agreed (can you imagine him writing the election literature in the style of The Caretaker or The Birthday Party) this was gently vetoed by Lady Antonia Fraser, Pinter's wife.

He also told me that in retrospect he thought that Caroline and Jean had shown that you could do great things without the participation of the traditional left, which might even get in the way.

He is of course on the left but also green to the core, he was particularly pleased that he had canvassed a voter who had a chip fat powered car who was supporting Caroline.....Hugh is no advocate of dodgy biofuel. Good for him.

Wonderfully funny modest person, be very good to run into him again and a good reminder that some people have been pushing green left politics for a long time.

I really think that Caroline can do it and become the first Green Party MP but don't leave it to the likes of me and Hugh, it will need an army of helpers.

The Eco Centre opposite the train station in Brighton houses the Green Party HQ, there is election work going on every day, if you just make a trip and leaflet for an hour it would help.

For the General Election Pavilion campaign we have a number of ongoing and interesting opportunities for press, research and political volunteers in our Brighton office.

We also need help with leaflet deliveries and door-knocking all year round, and hold regular 'Action Days' in the Brighton Pavilion constituency.

Sign up to our email list for regular updates on ways you can help on the ground.

Sign up now or contact Alex at: 01273 766670 or email info@brightonandhovegreenparty.org.uk if you have any questions or want to find out how you can get involved.

And if you want to catch up with me, 7pm friends meeting house, Brighton, snow permitting for a showing of Venezuela: Inside the Revolution on wednesday 20th.

The cautionary tale of a university axeman

From my Morning Star column

Features
The cautionary tale of a university axeman
Friday 15 January 2010 Derek Wall
Sir Howard Newby is an interesting character. He is perhaps best know for his pioneering and impressive work as a sociologist in the 1980s, when he published classics such as Green and Pleasant Land?: Social Change In Rural England.

More recently he has been employed as vice-chancellor of the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, and the University of Liverpool.

There is a lot of material on the internet about Sir Howard.

A blog entitled SirHowardNewbywatch might catch your eye, but if you clicked on the link you may be disappointed to be met with the message, "This blog has been archived or suspended for a violation of our terms of service." Intriguing.

If you search a little further, you can find entries relating: "Howard Newby, higher education's Dr Beeching, has been stopped... Howard Newby is to higher education in the early 21st century what Richard Beeching was to our country's railways in the 1960s." Again you may be disappointed if you click and are confronted by the message, "Error 404 - Not Found."

An entry which describes him as "the David Brent of the academic world" has also been removed from the internet.

I must admit I hadn't thought much about Sir Howard Newby, even though I completed my PhD at the University of the West of England and used to teach economics there.

I was alerted to Sir Howard by the news that the Bristol Blogger had been shut down by host Wordpress. As a former Bristolian, I look at the Bristol Blogger every now and then. It's a fine piece of work that investigates tales of corruption and scandal in the city.

When the blog was closed down there was much speculation as to why. It turned out that Wordpress had been approached by Kevan Ryan, director of legal services at the University of Liverpool, who insisted that blog entries about Sir Howard were defamatory.

Wordpress swiftly closed the Bristol Blogger and a second blogger Ecologics for writing about Sir Howard. Both were restored after they had removed several posts about Sir Howard. SirHowardNewbywatch remains closed.

The posts which were said to be defamatory were based on previously published stories in the Guardian, Times Higher and Private Eye about Sir Howard's - to say the least - controversial tenure at UWE.

Sir Howard was heavily criticised by the University and College Union while at Bristol for advancing privatisation policies that saw contracts going to a private consultancy firm allegedly linked to him and his wife.

Essentially he tried to initiate a capitalist revolution at UWE, cutting back, streamlining and transforming for goals of profit.

Sir Howard left UWE after just 16 months and his appointment at the University of Liverpool also proved controversial.

The legal department of Liverpool University was foolish to put pressure on bloggers. The allegations made seem to be based almost exclusively on press reports that have been in the public domain for several years. Equally most of them are cached on the web and can be read with a little trouble. The closure of the Bristol Blogger merely alerted people who had known nothing about the controversies surrounding Sir Howard to a very interesting set of circumstances.

This episode flags up two wider concerns. The first is the continuing battle for the enclosure of the internet. Those with wealth and power would dearly love to control the net - knowledge, after all, is power. Those of us who blog face a potential battle and it is worrying that Wordpress took action on behalf of Liverpool University so swiftly.

It also reminds us that universities are not neutral. Profit is the holy grail of the post-Thatcher Britain we now inhabit. And universities are increasingly seen as businesses designed to make money.

The days of Tolkien, when academics had time and space to write literary masterpieces, are long gone. Perhaps academics had it too easy at one time, but recent decades have seen a slump in the pay and conditions of university staff.

University workers, academic and non-academic, as well as students know that they are going to have a fight on their hands over cuts. Labour, the Tories and Lib Dems are all committed to cutting public spending. Higher education will be a major target.

Vice-chancellors come in various guises, but in general their pay and conditions have improved drastically as universities have become more corporate.

In 2007-8 the highest-paid vice-chancellor, at the University of Nottingham, was paid £585,000 - an 89.9 per cent increase on the year before. Out of 156 vice-chancellors in the UK, over 50 were paid over £200,000 and none were paid less than £100,000 during the same period. If cuts need to be made, I think I can see an obvious saving.

Public scrutiny made the scandal of MPs' expenses visible. It would be good news if heavy-handed action against bloggers made the public aware of the way higher education is changing - and that students, workers and wider society are paying the price.

GAZA ONE YEAR ON

End the Siege of Gaza - Bring Israeli War Criminals to Justice



Tuesday 19 January 2010 - 7pm



Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL, London



Organised by PSC, STWC, CND and BMI.



Reporting back from the Viva Palestina / PSC Aid convoy just back from Gaza!



Speakers include:



Dr Karma Nabulsi, Oxford University



Bruce Kent, Vice President Pax Christi



Sir Gerald Kaufman MP



Phyllis Starkey MP



Lowkey



George Galloway MP



Alison Shepherd, UNISON



Daud Abdullah, Middle East Monitor



Jeremy Corbyn MP



Kate Hudson, Chair CND



Alexei Sayle



Richard Burden MP



Joseph Healy, The Green Party



Lindsey German, Stop the War Coalition



Hugh Lanning, Deputy General Secretary PCS


Joseph Healy, The Green Party

Simon Dubbins, UNITE



Nicci Enchmarch, PSC


Anas Altikriti, BMI

Ismael Patel, Friends of Al Aqsa

Belfast pension black hole for terrorists?

Mick Hall of Organized Rage reminds us that sectarian killers were part of the public spending plans of Britain and are now part of a wider pension crisis.

Now they are not needed the UDA are being given generous pensions....I don't suppose the traditional media or political party's will rush to point out the the UK government took part in a dirty war in Ireland.

It has since come to light the UDA was acting as a direct conduit of the UK secret state, with many of it's leading members receiving a 'retainer' from the RUC Special Branch, military intelligence or the British security services. Thus like all public servants on short term contracts, when they have outlasted their usefulness, the members of the UDA expected; and have now received a severance payment of ten million pounds.


Understandably there paymasters felt unable to pay it directly into the UDA's bank account and a repeat of the open door policy which was briefly practiced by the Northern Bank might bring a rash of unfavourable publicity, besides it is doubtful the UDA tops would have the ability to launder ten million pounds in readies.


As McCann reports in the Derry Journal, the UDA has now agreed to dispose of its guns, hatchets, hammers, cut-throat knifes, baseball bats, pliers, blow torches, etc, on the understanding they will be paid ten million pounds when they take up their new posts as 'community activists.' Nice work if you can get it some might think, however there was an obstacle in the way. For whilst the UDA was out and about killing catholics on their master bidding, other folk have been doing the vitally important work of serving the unionist working class community as community activists.

More here

Haiti 'a repeat of what they did to us in New Orleans

Just got this from Les who is in New Orleans, so has seen US disaster relief at first hand, its called disaster relief because its a disaster.

ths is a repeat of what they dd to us in New orleans - or rather didn't do.

In NO the focus was on preventng "looting" and protectng private property.

Food and water , etc. were forcible prevented from rreaching us.

I cALLED fEMA hq IN dALLAS, tX AND THEY JUST MADE EXCUSES CLAIMNG THAT IT WAS TOO DANGEROUS TO go nto New orleans. was out on the streets everyday and did not see a single bit of vilence or dsorder, just people trying to help each other.

I told the Fema rep they could do airdrops but the rep had no response.

I mentioned that airdrops were done within 2 days after Hurrican Becky in the 60's. Agan just empty excuses.

This was on Wed morning following the levee breaks.

Us locals who were here HATE the Red Cross who clamed they could not come into the city because it was not safe.

One former boss from New Iberia told me he had ten truckloads of food and supplies ready to go n but that the National Guard at the highest levels refused to let him in.

Haiti is seeing the same type of non response.

This is criminal.


Les Evenchick
New Orleans

Reflections by Comrade Fidel HAITI’S LESSON

great to get this stuff from Fidel, get lots of ecosocialist stuff from him which is really inspiring,

Two days ago, close to 6 in the evening Cuba time, already dark in Haiti due to its geographical location, the TV channels started carrying news that a violent earthquake, --of 7.3 intensity in the Richter scale—had severely shaken Port au Prince. The seismic phenomenon had originated at a tectonic fault in the sea only 9.4 miles from the Haitian capital, a city where 80% of the population lives in fragile houses built with clay and adobe.

The news continued almost uninterrupted for hours. There were no images but it was said that many stouter constructions like public buildings, hospitals, schools and other facilities had also collapsed. I have read that a 7.3 earthquake equals the energy released by the explosion of 400,000 tons of TNT.

The descriptions were dramatic. In the streets, the wounded cried for medical help surrounded by ruins and their families buried under the debris. But, for many hours no one could broadcast any image.

The news took us all by surprise. Rather often we had heard news of hurricanes and large floods in Haiti but we did not know that our neighbor was threatened by a major earthquake. It surfaced now that 200 years ago a major earthquake had hit that city, which at the time was certainly inhabited by a few thousand people.

At midnight there was still no estimate of the number of victims. Senior UN officials and various Heads of Government spoke of the impressive event and announced that they would be sending rescue brigades. Since MINUSTAH --UN international forces-- are deployed there some Defense ministers spoke of the possibility of casualties among their personnel.

Actually, it was yesterday morning that sad news started flowing in on the high number of human casualties in the population and even such institutions as the United Nations reported that some of their buildings in that country had collapsed; a word that usually does not say much but that could mean a lot under the circumstances.

For hours increasingly dramatic news of the situation in that country continued to flow uninterrupted with reports of different numbers of deadly victims that depending on which version fluctuated between 30 thousand and 100 thousand. The images are appalling. Obviously, the catastrophic event has been widely reported all over the world and many governments, sincerely moved, are making efforts to cooperate to the extent of their capabilities.

A lot of people are sincerely touched by the tragedy, especially natural unassuming people but perhaps few stop to think on why Haiti is such a poor country and why almost 50 percent of its population depends of family remittances. And in this context, would it not be proper to also analyze the reality leading to the current situation of Haiti and its huge suffering?

It is amazing that no one says a word on the fact that Haiti was the first country where 400 thousand Africans, enslaved and brought to this land by Europeans, rebelled against 30 thousand white owners of sugarcane and coffee plantations and succeeded in making the first great social revolution in our hemisphere. Pages of insurmountable glory were then written there where Napoleon’s most outstanding general tasted defeat. Haiti is a complete product of colonialism and imperialism, of more than a century of using its human resources in the hardest labors, of military interventions and the extraction of its wealth.

Such a historic oblivion would not be so grave if it were not because Haiti is an embarrassment in our times, in a world where the exploitation and plundering of the overwhelming majority of people on the planet prevail.

Billions of people in Latin America, Africa and Asia endure similar privation although probably not all of them in such high proportion as Haiti.

No place on earth should be affected by such situations, even though there are tens of thousands of towns and villages in similar and sometimes worse conditions resulting from an unfair economic and political international order imposed worldwide. The world population is not only threatened by natural catastrophes like that of Haiti that is but a pale example of what can happen to the planet with climate change; an issue that was the target of mockery, scorn and deception in Copenhagen.

It is fair to say to every country and institution that have sustained the loss of citizens or members to the natural catastrophe in Haiti that we do not doubt that at this point they will make the greatest effort to save human lives and to alleviate the pain of that long-suffering people. They cannot be blamed for the natural phenomenon that has taken place there even though we disagree with the policy pursued towards Haiti.

But, I must say that I feel it’s high time to seek true and real solutions for that fraternal people.

In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country. Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the Haitian people free of charge. Our doctors are working every day at 227 of the 337 communes of that country. On the other hand, no less than 400 young Haitians have been graduated as medical doctors in our country. They will now work alongside the reinforcement that traveled there yesterday to save lives in that critical situation. Thus, up to one thousand doctors and healthcare personnel can be mobilized without any special effort; and most are already there willing to cooperate with any other State that wishes to save Haitian lives and rehabilitate the injured.

Another high number of Haitian youths are studying medicine in Cuba.

We also cooperate with the Haitian people in other areas within our capabilities. However, there is no other form of cooperation worthy of the definition but that of struggling in the field of ideas and political action to put an end to the endless tragedy endured by a great number of nations like Haiti.

The head of our medical brigade has informed that “the situation is difficult but we are already saving lives.” He said this in a brief message sent a few hours after arriving in Port au Prince yesterday with an additional group of doctors.

Late at night he said that the Cuban doctors and the Haitian doctors graduated at the ELAM (Latin American Medical School) were being deployed in the country. At Port au Prince they had cared for over one thousand patients while urgently commissioning a hospital that had not collapsed and using tents where necessary. They were also preparing to rapidly set up other first-aid centers.

We take wholesome pride in the cooperation that at this tragic hour the Cuban doctors and the young Haitian doctors trained in Cuba are giving their brothers and sisters in Haiti!


Fidel Castro Ruz
January 14, 2010
8:25 pm

Ten Things the U.S. Can and Should Do For Haiti

http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley01152010.html

Weekend Edition
January 15-17, 2010

Give Haiti Grants as Help, Not Crippling Loans
Ten Things the U.S. Can and Should Do For Haiti
By BILL QUIGLEY

One. Allow all Haitians in the US to work. The number one source of money for poor people in Haiti is the money sent from family and workers in the US back home. Haitians will continue to help themselves if given a chance. Haitians in the US will continue to help when the world community moves on to other problems.

Two. Do not allow US military in Haiti to point their guns at Haitians. Hungry Haitians are not the enemy. Decisions have already been made which will militarize the humanitarian relief – but do not allow the victims to be cast as criminals. Do not demonize the people.

Three. Give Haiti grants as help, not loans. Haiti does not need any more debt. Make sure that the relief given helps Haiti rebuild its public sector so the country can provide its own citizens with basic public services.

Four. Prioritize humanitarian aid to help women, children and the elderly. They are always moved to the back of the line. If they are moved to the back of the line, start at the back.

Five. President Obama can enact Temporary Protected Status for Haitians with the stroke of a pen. Do it. The US has already done it for El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Sudan and Somalia. President Obama should do it on Martin Luther King Day.

Six. Respect Human Rights from Day One. The UN has enacted Guiding Principles for Internally Displaced People. Make them required reading for every official and non-governmental person and organization. Non governmental organizations like charities and international aid groups are extremely powerful in Haiti – they too must respect the human dignity and human rights of all people.

Seven. Apologize to the Haitian people everywhere for Pat Roberts and Rush Limbaugh.

Eight. Release all Haitians in US jails who are not accused of any crimes. Thirty thousand people are facing deportations. No one will be deported to Haiti for years to come. Release them on Martin Luther King day.

Nine. Require that all the non-governmental organizations which raise money in the US be transparent about what they raise, where the money goes, and insist that they be legally accountable to the people of Haiti.

Ten. Treat all Haitians as we ourselves would want to be treated.

Bill Quigley is Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He is a Katrina survivor and has been active in human rights in Haiti for years with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. He can be reached at: duprestars@yahoo.com.