The Tadamon Exhibtion is open 12.00 – 18.00 Monday to Saturday and Sundays 12.00- 16.00 until October the 5^th.

Private view 2nd September 2010 at 18.00

Map: Freedom Bookshop
About the artist: http:penniequinton.org

Tadamon means solidarity in Arabic and these images show moments of strength witnessed in the Palestinian struggle for survival.

Moments following extra-judicial killings of beloved members of the community wanted by the Israeli government.

Moments in which people in the West Bank are forced to deal with their confusion and pain brought on by the Gaza war of 2008/2009 – combined with the Palestinian Authority clamping down on protest in the West bank at this desperate time.

Moments such as the bravery of children whose first language has become the politics of survival, out on the streets hurling stones at the wall following yet another bombardment of their cousins in Gaza.

Or moments of the villagers of Nilin and B’lin facing tear gas and stun grenades in their protests, held every Friday since 2004, resisting the illegal apartheid wall built on village lands.

There is a saying in Palestine that ‘to be Palestinian is to exist to resist‘ and this essential stubbornness and refusal to disappear, this insistence on being continually present in the face of ongoing repression that interferes in every area of life, is a potent force in the demand for sovereignty.

The price of this is high, and people have been paying it since 1948. But there is no choice but to keep on paying it to resist is to survive.

I love and admire this Palestinian strength in the struggle for self-determination and the moments where dancing and joy overflow despite everything.

I am proud to share some of these moments I was honoured to witness during my work in Palestine.

Tadamon Exhibition opens on the 3rd September 2010 at the Freedom Gallery. above Freedom book shop in Angel Alley off Whitechapel High Street. Nearest Tube Aldgate East.

The Tadamon Exhibtion is open 12.00 – 18.00 Monday to Saturday  and Sundays 12.00- 16.00 until October the 5^th.

Private view 2nd September 2010 at 18.00

Freedom Bookshop
http:penniequinton.org

Kent Police have finally admitted their policy of stop and searching climate activists at Kingsnorth power station during the week long protest in 2008 was not lawful and have agreed to pay compensation to three people who challenged the action in the High Court.

Back in January 2010 The High Court ruled in favour of the claimants, including well known London activist Dave Morris, of Haringey Solidarity Group, and two children, that the controversial mass search operation by Kent police went beyond the realms of legality.

This week, The Chief Constable of Kent Police went further, admitting that the entire stop-and-search operation was a violation of the public’s human rights to privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of association. The Chief Constable has now agreed to put this admission in a letter to the 25 other police forces involved in the Kingsnorth operation, in which he also notes that “lessons must be learned” He will also write a letter of apology to the three claimants.

It is now clear that the estimated 3,500 searches that took place that week were also unlawful and solicitors are investigating the possibility for others to claim compensation.

The solicitor acting for Mr. Morris and the two children commented: “Kent Police has been forced to make a remarkable admission. It is that the outcome of one of the most expensive policing operations ever in the UK was a massive violation of the human right to protest. That human rights breaches occurred on this scale, were not identified by the two internal police investigations into the operation, and ultimately had to be exposed by the activist and two tenacious children and who brought this case says something very worrying about policing of peaceful protest about vital issues like climate change.”

The week-long family-friendly public camp, organised by Climate Camp in the summer of 2008, involved extensive discussions and workshops, collective sustainable living, protests and direct action against government plans to expand coal-fired energy production in the light of its disastrous contribution to greenhouse gases and climate change. The power station’s expansion plans have since been suspended.

The case was won despite police efforts to deny there was any systematic stop and search policy at the camp. Their position collapsed after a key document came to light that revealed the police ‘bronze commanders’ in charge of the operation at Kingsnorth were systematically giving briefings for blanket stop and searches.

Coinciding with the 13th June kick-off of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) has brought together local Cape Town communities for the first Poor People’s World Cup. The message behind the tournament is clear: ‘While the poor people in Cape Town and in South Africa as a whole are suffering, the rich are enjoying themselves in the expensive stadiums at the expenses of the poor.’ The Poor People’s Tournament ‘is not only for soccer teams, bit also for the whole community and for the people who struggle everyday against water and electricity cut-offs and against evictions from their homes and working places’.

‘All the traders and communities – that were negatively affected by FIFA related urban renewal projects and by the implemented by-laws – were invited to this tournament: a tournament that is FREE and open to everybody.’ Everybody, that is, except the international corporations who collaborated with FIFA to regenerate Cape Town. The organisers have invited journalists, professional football teams and tourists to see first-hand that sports can avoid nationalist ends and exploitative means. This is a contra-World Cup ‘for the poor communities by the poor communities that is not exploiting people or marginalizing people, but involving people and creating new spaces of exposure and participation’.

On 23rd June, 1500 residents from Blikkiesdorp and surrounding areas marched to Dan Plato (Mayor of Cape Town) inviting him and FIFA to the Poor People’s World Cup finals on 4 July. The march highlighted the disastrous effect of the World Cup on Cape Town’s poorer residents. ‘The displaced communities are now living in Blikkiesdorp as a result of World Cup regeneration projects. Many of these residents were promised proper houses before moving to this “concentration camp” with tin can structures – far away from the city centre and from job opportunities, good education, their social networks, etc.’  In solidarity with those living in the relocation area soccer teams, coaches, and spectators participating in the Poor People’s World Cup joined the march.

If you know tourists in Cape Town for the World Cup, the invitation to the tournament and the 4 July finals has been extended ‘don’t stay only in the controlled spaces bounded by FIFA rules and regulations, but move beyond these areas to experience the true spirit of what the game of soccer is all about!’

The AEC was formed on November 2000 with the aim of fighting evictions, water cut-offs and poor health services, obtaining free electricity, securing decent housing, and opposing police brutality, and currently acts as an umbrella body for over 15 community organisations, crisis committees, and concerned residents movements who have come together to organise and demand their rights to basic services.

For more information, visit http://antieviction.org.za or follow on Twitter http://twitter.com/antieviction

For the last few months, both the state and corporate advertising have almost been legislating for a Bacchanalian frenzy during the event. Yet, many ordinary South Africans have claimed the carnivalistic element of the tournament for themselves in ways that are humorous, spectacular, bizarre and touching. The central paradox of 2010 may turn out to be that this mega-event designed to serve the pecuniary interests of transnational capital and the South African state elite may in fact unleash popular energies and expectations that the authorities are unprepared to deal with longstanding problems of SA police brutality, (e.g. the torture in 2004 of Landless Peoples Movement activists, and police general Bheki Cele’s 2008 ‘shoot to kill’ order in KwaZulu-Natal).

Before turning towards some of my own personal experiences of what the World Cup has meant so far, a few words are necessary on the relationship between the South African government and FIFA. The Swiss-based cabal has in effect privatised the popular game of soccer as a commodity which it sells to its corporate backers for lucrative advertising space. Before a single ball was kicked, the organisation had already made over $3 billon in broadcasting rights: as a result anyone who watches a game will find the national logos of the players dwarfed by the signs of Adidas and Coca-Cola.

While FIFA strives to present itself as a philanthropic body concerned only with the future of the beautiful game, in reality it is more of a parasite leeching off the body of state funding. South Africa has hemorrhaged over R44 billion into stadiums and other infrastructure. As part of its legal requirements as a host (a word which works on two levels in this context), it has to meet every whim of FIFA: from deploying special police to protect against unaffiliated advertising near stadiums (the horror!) to providing entertainment and five star accommodation for all FIFA delegates and their families.

However, this is not just the textbook neo-colonial relationship of an African country being hammered by the demands of “the West’’. Instead, the South African government actively pandered to this from actually seeking the bid to continually meeting FIFA’s most petty demands. The state is hoping that this event will serve a range of long term goals from shoring up popular support to cementing South Africa’s position as the pre-eminent power in sub-Saharan Africa. Crucially, both the parliamentary opposition and the media, normally quick to jump on any evidence of ANC malfeasance have acquiesced in this process through treating the World Cup as sacrosanct. This kind of subservient boosterism has reached sublimely farcical levels. For instance, the state has set up special courts to process World Cup related cases. A recent expose by journalist Lionell Faull showed that many of these are in fact standing empty: yet another example of the grotesque leveraging of public funds into white elephant preparations. However, Western Cape premier Helen Zille cited the same article as proof of South Africa’s ability to “deliver’’ an “efficient and modern’’ judicial system.

This dreamland of World Cup promises extends to the popular benefits it was supposed to engender: hundreds of thousands of jobs. Billions in GDP [Gross Domestic Product]. The clear fact that these were hollow promises has been brushed aside with vague mumblings about nebulous foreign investment and trickle down economics. From national government downwards everyone is trying to get their piece of the action: even host cities are competing amongst themselves to become the most gentrified “World Class Cities’’. Taking the idea of treating the state as a branch of advertising to its logical conclusion, cities have licensed images of their stadiums and fan parks to various corporations. For example, the Cape Town stadium belongs to Hyundai, the Moses Mabidha stadium (named after a venerable leader of the South African Communist Party) has gone to Coca-Cola. It seems the trajectory of who really scores in the World Cup is clearly delineated.

These mumbled and ambivalent promises are also shored up by the perception that the event will at the very least, in the words of a well-respected South African journalistic cliché, “unify a deeply divided country’’. It’s easy to see this as so much cynical politicking. Certainly the bombardment of corporate advertising, with it stock series of clichés and parade of atrocious theme songs (worst of the tournament must go to Somalian ‘’rebel rapper’’ K’naans, whose horrific ‘’ Wavin Flag’’ is a vague anthem of political upliftment that chimes nicely with Coca-Cola’s CGI’ed adverts of South
African life). But it would be a misreading to see all this excitement as simulation.

I was in Cape Town for the opening match and it was like being in a city transformed. I have never seen so many people, South African’s of all races and classes, congregating in a kind of beneficent chaos. Even the police had to step aside as South African’s would have the party that has been promised to them: the fact that ordinary people will be paying for the event for years to come makes a month of hedonism particularly urgent. And as I have travelled around the country, I have noticed a real atmosphere: people seem more relaxed and civil even. Certain still well established divided have been breached, albeit temporarily. This is not just the case of rich whites learning to use the Vuvuzela: it is also the case of a space of shared public participation and sense of joined excitement. And there are other things at play which suggest that there is more to this than just a temporary feel good hedonism. Ordinary people talking about FIFA’s transparent and unhesitant greed and the South African state’s collusion in this: there is a sense that the country has been swindled and taken advantage of. These may be small stirrings as yet but in a year when the BP disaster has unmasked (again) the utterly venal nature of corporate power, it is heartening to see that FIFA has been unable to hoodwink the South African public.

A walk around the Cape Stadium on Monday the 14th prior to the Italy-Paraguay match brought many of these issues to light (British readers will be heartened to know that on the way I made the effort of giving the finger to the official Sun supporters bus and will surely appreciate this noble gesture against the Murdoch empire). One is confronted with a huge mass of police milling around and doing nothing as part of the bid arrangements: many were listlessly hanging around McDonalds. Even more heartening was the sight of the stadiums security guards on strike angry at the pittance they were being paid. These strikes were also repeated at several other stadiums aimed at the practises of the company that FIFA had outsourced too, Stallion Security. In the week that followed. There were similar strikes in Johannesburg and Durban. Predictably, the state was forced to step in and clean up through replacing the strikers with police officers. These strikes are significant as they seems to be the first time that concrete protest has been made against the soccer Czars during a World Cup. And in addition, many of the country’s labour unions are threatening to conduct high-profile strikes ignoring cynical government arguments that such actions would be unpatriotic during the World Cup.

FIFA and the state may have patronisingly assumed that people would be happy with scraps from their table, but in their arrogance may not have recognised the fact that South African’s are still prepared to take their grievances to the streets. In a more oblique way, this was brought home by the attempt of two stewards to scalp their free tickets to me and my friend Willem. FIFA has predictably been apoplectic about this, but really in a country with the highest rate of economic inequality on Earth this seems like a fair way of making some extra money, not to mention piquancy of the corporate robber barons being themselves outfoxed.

The South African state may collude in its own self-destruction tournament as it strives to meet the almost farcically avaricious demands of FIFA and its partners, but in the midst of this ordinary people have been hacking out public spaces of participation for themselves. It can only be hoped that this will open a space for dialogue and action. In addition, the fact that the national team has been kicked out of the tournament after a frustrating performance means that for the next few weeks the country will be in essence a theme park for tourists now that the nationalist component of the event is no longer viable. Conversely, South Africans are now the spectators in their own country: the result of this remains to be seen. While much of our media focuses on labour unrest and other actions during the event as a negative thing, in reality it shows that radical forms of participatory democracy are alive in South Africa: this is the reality which stands against the common media image of a happy African wilderness eager to participate in its own disenfranchisement.

Christopher McMichael is a PhD candidate at Rhodes University

]]> http://www.freedompress.org.uk/news/2010/07/10/world-cup-2010-whose-party/feed/ 0 http://www.freedompress.org.uk/news/2010/07/09/linamar-factory-to-close/ http://www.freedompress.org.uk/news/2010/07/09/linamar-factory-to-close/#comments Fri, 09 Jul 2010 17:41:10 +0000 dean http://www.freedompress.org.uk/news/?p=3091 Workers who fought for others jobs set to lose theirs
Workers at the Swansea factory who, along with the anarchists, rallied in support of the sacked Visteon workers last year look like they will be following suit with the closure of the South Wales manufacturing plant and the loss of all existing jobs.

Linamar plans to close the factory, which produces high precision car components, by the end of the year with the loss of 208 jobs. This comes two years after they took over the plant from Ford-Visteon with a commitment to invest in its future. Within a year it had already halved the workforce and is now set to cut all links with Wales and move production elsewhere.

Before the announcement bosses at Linamar had re-assured workers that they had secured new engine work from Ford supplying its massive engineering plant in nearby Bridgend. Angry workers now believe that Linamar, the second biggest auto-parts company in Canada, was only interested in securing the work from Ford, work which is to be transferred to the German plant.

The factory itself has had a long history of militant strike action. Originally built in 1960 for fridge manufacturer Prestcold, the plant was acquired by Ford in the mid-1960s before being transferred to Visteon, a car parts manufacturer spun out as a separate company with UK factories in Enfield, Basildon and Belfast. It was with the closure of these Visteon sites early in 2009, and the sacking of the entire UK workforce, that Linamar workers rallied in support, with union convenor and militant trade unionist Rob Williams being sacked for his solidarity work on behalf of the Visteon workers.

On hearing the news of his dismissal the Linamar workers immediately downed tools and walked off the job threatening an ‘all-out’ indefinite strike forcing management to back down and re-instate Williams. Workers feared Williams’s dismissal was a deliberate act to undermine the confidence of the workforce in an attempt to ease the closure the factory. Around 140 workers have been made redundant in the previous six months.

As one union representative said at the time, “Visteon farmed out Swansea to Linamar because they were worried the workforce would not take mass lay-offs lying down. Linamar sweetened the pill with big redundancy settlements for the first lot to go. Now it looks like they want to go in for the kill.”

Production will cease by the end of the year after a 90 day ‘consultation period’ between management and unions. It is unclear how the workers will respond, and if Linamar will honour its pension commitments to the workers the way Visteon failed to do.

There are circled A, black star (with silver edging) and Freedom logo t-shirts available in black and the infamous anarchist Wildcat available in white. Each t-shirt comes with the Freedom logo on the left hand sleeve. To order your t-shirt  with a card go to the online shop or you can send a cheque made payable to Freedom Press.

Phone: 020 7247 9249
email shop@freedompress.org.uk

Order your t-shirt online

Freedom Bookshop
Angel Alley
84b Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7QX
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday: Midday till 6pm Sunday: Midday till 4pm

T-shirts printed by Sabcat Printing the anarchist t-shirt printers

There are circled A, black star (with silver edging) and Freedom logo t-shirts available in black and the infamous anarchist Wildcat available in white. Each t-shirt comes with the Freedom logo on the left hand sleeve. To order your t-shirt with a card go to the online shop or you can send a cheque made payable to Freedom Press.

Phone: 020 7247 9249
email shop@freedompress.org.uk

Order your t-shirt online

Freedom Bookshop
Angel Alley
84b Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7QX
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday: Midday till 6pm Sunday: Midday till 4pm

T-shirts printed by Sabcat Printing the anarchist t-shirt printers

♦ West Glasgow Against Poverty

♦ Leeds Anarchist Federation has issued a call-out for an anti-fascist action coalition to oppose racist/fascist groups in the region. According to the group the revolutionary left have failed to show a unified response that militantly challenges the politics of the English Defence League, who are once again planning to take the streets, this time in Bradford on 28th August. The bigoted nationalist ideology of the EDL as well as the oppressive and reactionary influence of Islamism in our communities both divide the working class, therefore the Anarchist Federation Leeds calls for all independent proletarian antifascists in the region to work together, and invites people from the Yorkshire area to get involved in mobilising against reactionary elements in the community.
First meeting will be on Saturday 3rd July, 1pm, Swarthmore Education Centre, 2-7 Woodhouse Square, Leeds, or get in contact: leeds@af-north.org

♦ The campaign group Save Goldsmith’s Nursery is stepping up its fight to prevent the closure of the essential nursery provision at the world famous college in South London. At the beginning of June parents and nursery staff at Goldsmith’s College were told of plans to close the college’s nursery within three months. Outraged staff and students demanded an immediate enquiry as the closure, set for September, will leave staff and students with no childcare provision and some staff with almost immediate dismissal. There has already been three demonstrations against the closure with parents, students and staff voicing their anger at the college’s lack of consultation and disregard for those who use the facility. The closure is seen as management’s attempt to claw back some of the college’s financial deficit, although plans were previously presented, and dismissed by the college, to make the nursery ‘cost neutral’. Autonomy and Solidarity, Goldsmith’s student anarchist group, are said to be involved in the campaign.
Website: http://savegoldsmithsnursery.org/

Zomia, just to be clear, is not a country, it’s not a kingdom. The term, which originates from the vernacular languages spoken in the area, means remote highlanders. It also refers to the geographical territory that these highlanders call their home. The territory we are talking about is an enormous massif of roughly 2.5 million square kilometres, including the east of India, Burma, chunks of China, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. James C Scott, whose book The Art of Not Being Governed which he calls ‘An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia’, presents a scarcely historicized account of this region.

In traditional, mainstream histories, we commonly read how the settlement of a community on a river basin and the agricultural cultivation of the land were the beginning more or less of a ‘civilization’ proper – beginning in fact of ‘culture’. These terms are used to imply a hierarchical social structure, of courts, palaces and kingdoms. Cities were automatically the only or the greatest foci of ‘culture’. People, they said, naturally gravitated towards these centres because of the wealth, security and the exuberance they offered. All these facts are not in dispute. What is disputed, however, is the partial and smoky nature of these facts. Left out in these accounts is the fact that many communities chose NOT to be part of these kingdoms because of various reasons – taxes, slavery, conscription, war, bonded labour and so on (more or less the same reasons ,under changed labels, that cause mass migrations today).

Kingdoms were forcibly populated by less than holy methods. Marauding armies conducted regular sweeping exercises to capture people from fringe communities, villages and other remote areas, not only for slaves but also to populate the centres of kingdoms. Many rulers even resorted to providing special incentives, tax concessions etc to get the populations to stay, and to cultivate wet-rice (in the case of Southeast Asia), because of its high yield per square kilometre. This way they could monitor the crops and claim them through taxes. Traditional school histories also do not reveal the fact that populations fleeing from these budding empires (or nation-states) was quite a common occurrence. Socio-political mobility and instabilities do not sit well with those historians who have a stake in presenting a particular view of history. It must be remembered that most pre-colonial chroniclers were court chroniclers, or were part of the rulers’ coterie. They had to appease their patrons, and project the best possible image of their kingdoms.

So, where does Zomia figure in all this? In post-modern parlance areas like Zomia can be termed the alternative space. Remote, inaccessible areas like high mountain ranges, thick swamps and jungles become the refuge of those peoples who refused to be incorporated into expanding and tyrannical empires. Some of these were formerly independent, land-cultivating people who resisted and lost, others loose-knit but recognizable communities of foragers, hunter-gatherers etc. But historicizing does not simply limit itself to deliberate selection of facts; the discourse also involves the glorification and justification of certain terms like ‘civilization’, ‘culture’, ‘progress’ etc by opposing them to other terms like ‘barbarians’, ‘savage’, ‘ancient’ etc, which were projected as undesirable. Those who could not be controlled were not simply strange – they were somehow less than human. Everything – from their dress to their food habits – were cited as proofs of their backwardness, while these were actually signs of adaptation, and other practices like nomadism may well have been a deliberate attempt to elude capture and assimilation.

This does not mean that there are no populations that were ‘left behind’ – that remained untouched by the civilizing process. It does not mean either that the runaway communities had better, more ‘progressive’ social systems, although their mobile, amorphous lifestyles afforded them many freedoms that populations firmly subjected to a highly centralized, fixed and policed systems could never have had. All that the historical accounts such as the one explained here suggest is that there are truths that are kept well-hidden, and there are stories that are never told. History too is a story: told by someone, to someone, for some reason. There are as many histories as there are historians.

Chetna