Monthly Archives: March 2008

Women from the West Bank in Birmingham

Three women representing Palestine spoke at the Council House in Birmingham (11/3/2008) of the situation they continue to face daily at the hands of an occupying force. No one had come from Gaza because of the impossible restrictions placed on its people. There the Israelis say its is because of rockets being fired that such force is necessary, but as one speaker pointed out no rockets come from places like Nablus but it makes no difference to continuing attacks on them by the Israeli army.
I was concerned to learn that there was now no British Consulate in the Palestinian territories. Since the office had closed in Ramallah it was necessary for people to travel to Jerusalem to get visas, a near impossible task. This was true of the United States, but some European states maintain a presence. This seems to me to mark the British approach which is all the time to support the criminal Israeli administration. Many Jewish people are ashamed of what is being done to Palestinian people in their name.

Continue reading

New Labour’s Humanitarian Approach

Iraq is safe for return. New Labour has said so. UNCHR doesn’t agree, but 1400 failed asylum seekers are being told that they will be forced into destitution in UK. They will also have to sign a waiver clause disclaiming the responsibility of the British Government if anything happens to them and their families. Proud to be British and swear an oath of allegiance to this fatuous crowd?
Having gone into Iraq in the first place against the wishes of a majority in the UK once again responsibilities are shelved. The same can be said of the treatment of those who came from former colonies when Britain set out to exploit vast areas of the world in competiton with other European powers. If you come from the Indian Subcontinent you have to be 21 to come as a couple, but only 18 if you come from Eastern Europe. Nothing to do with continuing racism?

Continue reading

Salutations

There’s always someone around to pontificate and tell us what we all ought to be doing expressing our deep and undying gratitude for being British. Now some idiot has come up with an oath of allegiance. To the Queen? Nah, that would upset those with Republican sensibilities.
Of course those at the top are blameless. They’re in a position to dictate what’s good for us (them) and (sometimes) able to keep their exploits under wraps. That can go wrong big time of course as the Mayor of New York has found to his cost.

Continue reading

Smelly and Scratcher miss out

Ending up in a prison In Equatorial Guinea is not an ideal to be aimed for. It’s precisely where Simon Mann has ended up while others associated with the attempted coup to gain influence over the country’s oil reserves have done a bit of dodging, including Smelly and Scratcher. Who they? Characters from a Dickensian novel? Don’t know about Smelly but Scratcher’s escapades and dodgy deals are well documented.
Of course Simon is very very sorry and he’s been saying so for four years while in a Zimbabwean jail. Don’t think he would have been sorry if the coup had come off and the sorry gang had ended up with the promised millions. Other names came out of a hat. Peter Mandelson, surely not!? Jeffrey Archer, well he’s been inside but Mr Mann doesn’t think so. JACK STRAW? Well he’s not been involved, but he’s had to do a bit of a turn around about the government having no idea what was going on.

Continue reading

G.Ps The story is out

George Monbiot has been thinking just what I’ve been thinking. It’s just that he’s come at it from another angle. It’s about GPs and their opening times. Rememer I had a phone call asking me what would make me change my GP. But I DON’T WANT TO CHANGE MY GP.
According to George the government has embarked on a programme of change on the basis that many said they wanted a more convenient opening times like evenings and Saturday mornings. Except that the document cited never mentioned these supposed wishes at all. Monbiot likens it to the “dodgy dossier” which claimed the weapons of mass destruction were upon us.

Continue reading

Letter from Gaza

The following is from a doctor living in the Jabalia Camp inside Gaza:
Sent: Sunday, 9 March, 2008 8:07:29 AM
Subject: Re: Palestinians in the Midlands (UK) mourn the victims of Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank
Dear brother Kamel,
Thank you for your email and would like to send you how was my life during the brutal Israeli attacks.
“I am surrounded by firing on all sides of my house. We have no water or electricity and no phones and my children are thirsty. I am scared to death to take a cup of coffee for fear that my children won’t have any water to prevent dehydration. Sunday afternoon we decided to fast the second day.
Homelessness waits me around the corner or maybe in another five minutes, and that I was once homeless before,” Even when going to bed where the fire ceases, I start to imagine from where the bullet will come, from this window, this door or that wall. Or a bomb will destroy the wall and where the bullet will go to my head, chest arms or any part of my body. Even I started to think of my children who will be killed and what will happen if I was killed.
I am crying over Jabalya, because the Israelis have once again tried to silence the barrage of Hamas rockets that kill and maim and traumatize Israeli citizens. The greatest fallout is being heaped on the innocents civilians.
Jabalya is the largest of the Palestinian refugee camps (180,000), where I was born, raised and still living in. It was the birth place of the first Intifiada and people are looking for their rights to live in peace equally.
“How can the deaths of one or two innocent Israelis mean that we have to suffer the deaths of more than 130 innocent Palestinians in Gaza? Is that fair; can that be accepted by rational people of us. It will bring more animosity, hat redness and bloodshed. I am against sending rockets and I say this loudly, but in the meantime it needs from the Israelis also to condemn the Israeli attacks and Palestinian killings neither sending r?” (you know that I am against killing of human being and any civilian from both sides and no difference between Israeli and Palestinian blood, in the mean time I mentioned killing more than a hundred Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom are children and women will not bring peace to any I want to ask the Israeli leadership if they are serious about peace or not?
After Anapolis: Ehud Olmert announced to expand the Israeli settlements and started attacking Nablus and Ramallah. Are there any rockets from Nablus or Ramallah?
There is a need to work together and seriously to achieve the peace for all, not the peace that serves the interest of one group.
Immediate actions must be taken to prevent the situation from being irreversible and contain this violence.
In both communities there are enemies for peace. These actions start by building the trust through removing the check points and the closure on the Gaza Strip and have an independent state. At the same time Palestinians and Israelis had to work together and side by side to secure the lives of all.
All the best
I. A. MD, MPH
Jabalia Camp

Continue reading

Why don’t you do something and become a volunteer?

Our former great leader goes from strength to strength. The man who told people that volunteering would be good for their souls gathers lucrative offers from all quarters. Many of those he would like to do this work in deprived areas and happen to be on very low incomes. Blair’s “expertise” appears to have no bounds as does his religiosity. Now he has been offered a lectureship at Yale University on religion and politics. When most of us would rather forget him he keeps popping up in the most unlikely places.
While in the U.S. he took the opportunity to call in on his mate George who shares a religious conviction. I suppose if the two of them together instruct us “how not to do it” it all might have some credibility. In UK Blair presided over the use of the Sabbath for trade, casinos and non-stop drinking. If God is Mammon we’d all understand. Quite frankly I don’t.
The problem we still have of course is that New Labour is like the water snake, the hydra, you cut off one of its heads and it grows dozens more, equally hypocritical, if not downright dangerous, in their self-righteousness.

Continue reading

Jewish Voice for Peace Condemns Escalation of Violence in Middle East

I don’t really know how to express the revulsion that the majority of us as humans have on hearing of the killing and maiming of our fellows. Jewish Voice for Peace has put across their reaction referring to their response from Oakland, U.S.A. on 6th March.
“Jewish Voice for Peace believes the loss of just one person is one life too many. There is no difference in the immeasurable heartache felt by the parents of dozens of children killed in Gaza last week, or the parents of the 8 students killed yesterday in Jerusalem. All killings must stop.”

However they point out the role of the organisation which was attacked in the systematic attack on Palestinians: “The Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva is the birthplace of Gush Emunim, one of Israel’s rightwing settler movements. Human rights groups have documented how the group systematically assaults Palestinians, destroys their crops, and attacks children on their way to school. “
The weekly reports of non-violent protest in the village of B’ilin puts another story across. Palestinians have indeed noted the expressions of sympathy sent to Israel on what happened at the school in contrast to what happened to them in Gaza not to mention the daily occurrences across the rest of Palestine exemplified by the following latest e-mail form B’ilin.
Several wounded in Bil’in’s weekly anti-wall protest
Friday March 07, 2008 18:47
“Dozens of the residents of Bil’in near Ramallah took to the streets on Friday in their weekly march protesting the confiscation of the village’s land and the illegal construction of the wall in the village.
The residents were joined by a number of international and Israeli peace activists, in addition to a number of the supporters of Palestinian Democratic Federation Party (Fida), who are celebrating the eighteenth anniversary of the party.
Protestors carried signs condemning the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and others demanding the dismantling of the wall that is causing serious hardships to the farmers in the village.
The protestors were stopped by the Israeli soldiers at the iron gate of the wall and were prevented to reach their confiscated land. Troops used tear gas and sound bombs to force the protestors to leave.
Palestinian youth who were in the march responded by throwing rocks at the soldiers, who, in turn, fired rubber-coated steel bullets. As a result, a number of Palestinians and Internationals were treated for gas inhalation.
Meanwhile an Israeli peace activist identified as Marina and a Palestinian protestor identified as Naji Shouha were wounded by the rubber-coated steel bullets; their wounds were described as moderate.”

For more information:
The Bilin Friends of freedom and Justice -society
Email: majdarmajdar@yahoo.com
Tel: 972 547 847 942
e-mail

Continue reading

Jerusalem killings provoke revenge

If the killings in Jerusalem are revenge attacks then expect more either way. The policies being followed ensure that they will get bigger and bloodier. Already there are reports of more deaths in Gaza and at the moment an ongoing invasion of Bethlehem.
The above gives reports of the attack on a school on Jerusalem killing 8 students in the Jerusalem Post and the Palestinian News Network.

Continue reading

Dealing with flooding in Southern Africa

A scheme to “harvest” flood water in Malawi is reported in Al Jazeera (6/3/2007). Global warming has meant above average rainfall across Africa with resultant threat to life and livelihood. Deforestation hasn’t helped.
The floods have been compared by organisations such as UNICEF to other major disasters, however as with floods a year ago have not received the coverage that might be expected. The report above comes from Al Jazeera which often reports on significant matters ignored by the world’s press elsewhere.

Continue reading