"In the rocket attack that just happened, her mother held her so tight she wasn't able to get enough air"

Another account from Sharyn, www.talestotell.wordpress.com

Last night, Monday, at about 5am, one of our calls was to Jazeera Hotel in Al Mina (the port area) which had been shelled by Israeli ships. When we first arrived it seemed there was no-one there, but eventually the medics retrieved the two caretakers from under the rubble. 50 year old Faieq Moshtaha had shrapnel injuries but was able to walk and was put into our accompanying ambulance, 33 year old Helmi Moshtaha had shrapnel inuries and a deep head wound and was stretchered into my ambulance.

I filmed the first bit of this but then had to stop to help staunch bleeding; they might post the footage up on the ISM website but it's not the best quality. (My voiceover sounds like I'm stoned, but it honestly is just lack of sleep!) Living by the sea as I do, I know the shells are usually followed by another lot of shells five minutes later, and I was really thinking the medics were going to get hit before they got Faieq and Helmi out, but all was well. As I held a compress to Helmi's head I noticed something strange. If you have a woodburning stove, like I do, you often burn yourself mildly, and the hairs on your hand go all crisp. All of the hair on Helmi's head was like that.

Tonight, Tuesday, just before I came on shift, I caught a ride with S that turned unexpectedly into the pickup of the body of a resistance fighter. This was in fact the first time in all these days since I began riding with the ambulances, that I saw a fighter in my ambulance. Since it was just the two of us I helped to haul what was left of him - which didn't involve a head or the top of his torso - onto the stretcher. I was glad of the darkness that blurred the details, though it also made me very aware that our every move in this apparently empty wasteland was probably being observed. Back at the hospital I discovered that in the basement there is a man who washes and dries any of your clothes that have got blood on, within an hour.

For the medics here, it seemed this episode meant I had crossed some sort of line that brought me a little closer to their own lives. Several asked me if I had been afraid, and I gave the answer I've given you, but with the increasing feeling that not to be afraid is meaningless when it's probably just because you really don't quite get what awful things can happen to you and your friends and family. I have started to answer apologetically, "I'm not afraid, but I'm sure I should be." Later on into the night, medic E asks me more specifically what I had felt when seeing the 'shaheed' resistance guy. I think about it for a while and say,

"I think my strongest feeling is that I am very sad that any of us can do this to each other. Any human to any other human, no matter what reason. And, I feel respect for the strength of someone who does this job."

He begins to talk to me about his own feelings. He is 36, has been a medic for ten years. He has a wife and four children. He says he has never seen anything as bad as these days, in that time. And he says a lot of the time he is very frightened. Sometimes so frightened, if the area is dangerous, that he almost can't bring himself to continue to drive towards the call-out location. He describes a call-out during the night that we had both been on (perhaps thinking I had observed this hesitation) saying that he first thought he couldn't do it; he had to stop, talk himself through his fear, and then continue with the collection, expecting a rocket to blow him apart at any moment. It seems that with the drone surveillance technology, they really can send rockets with your name on.

Arafa was a good friend of his, he told me, and described phoning Arafa's wife several times since his death. He tries to talk to her but she can't stop crying.

His family worry about him very much; when he visits his parents his father begs him to take a different job. But this job is important to him and he knows someone must do it. He tells me that if he came across an injured Israeli he would treat him with the same care he would anyone.

I want to hear more, but at this point that, in true Palestinian style, some of
the others start getting actually distressed about the fact that there is hot food next door and I am not there eating it. It isn't good enough that I can come and have some later, or that some can be put aside for me; it doesn't matter that this is an important conversation, I am A Guest And I Must Eat Now.

Tonight, we collect two men carrying a little girl of 13 months. She is still warm, but EB finds no pulse. If I understood correctly, she has had breathing difficulties since she was born, and in the rocket attack that just happened, her mother held her so tight she wasn't able to get enough air. I ask to clarify this story several times because I want to think I've misunderstood.

At one point tonight I come out of the Disaster Management room and am confronted with a family of about 12 small children, 1 old women, and a couple of young women, all on a sofa and all looking at me with mute appeal. The effect is so overwhelming I have to retreat back into the Disaster room again.

Ambulance convoys were allowed to come up from Rafah today, and it seems this family caught a ride; whether they're here to return home or to stay with relatives because Rafah is under attack is unclear. Shortly after we load them all into an ambulance and drive them to their destination.

This appears to be a bit of town that our driver considers extremely dangerous. They have all started smiling, he is getting more and more stressed, and the fact that they are all shouting directions at him does not help. We manage to suppress all but one set of directions, and then tip out the family at their door, trying to do it all at top speed. Our driver screeches off, shouting in one-part jest and three-parts panic that we are crazy to be here at all, that look! there isn't even a cat or dog on these streets, they have too much sense, that this is all a game to the Israelis, a computer game, that we and our ambulance are just blips on their computer screens, that they'll destroy us just for fun.

In the light of dawn, we collect an old woman and a young man from a shelled building down near Gaza beach; I clean the young man's head wound. A couple of times tonight, I've look round for the medic and realised I'm it.

By the way - it turns out the triplets (Abdullah, Mohammad, and Samih) are about 28 days old, and have been separated from their family ever since their birth. They needed hospital care at first, but now could go home - except their home is in Khan Younis, which is cut off. Their poor mother is phoning every day. They are getting great care here, but an incubator is a poor replacement for a mother's arms.

Tea & Cake at the Airport

With the government apparently about to help send us all that little bit further down the planetary pan with the likely announcement of a new runway at Heathrow, and hundreds of climate change protesters trying to point out that this might be a fucking lousy idea, Marc Roberts again blesses us all with a neat summary of the quality of mainstream media reporting on the subject.
The mentality of most of the pondscum at the BBC (etc) is illustrated in a fairly benign way by a former BBC environment correspondent speaking at a Panos event. Anyone really wishing to grasp the extent of the BBC's ignorance and out-of-date stances on climate change only needs to listen to the Today Programme or You and Yours on R4. Having said that, the defence of Peter Sissons' laughable interview with the Green Party's Caroline Lucas that my beloved husband received in the post a week or two ago was particularly spectacular. I thought he'd blogged it, but I obviously need to do my wifely duty and nag him into getting it done.

Ian Brown/Sinead O'Connor - Illegal Attacks

Nice bit of political comment from one of Manchester's finest (and a damn good song too...)

Weird beasties

This is some footage of a brilliant creature called the Hispaniolan solenodon - kind of a giant Caribbean shrew with (like our shrews) a poisonous bite. I have no particular reason for posting this, except that I think it's kinda cool, and I could do with a brief respite from the relentless horror of Gaza. Although of course our giant shrew story isn't wholly fun, since it's an endangered species...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7792789.stm

Vittorio Arrigoni, Gaza, January 9, 2009

This email came from Vittorio, another of the Free Gaza/ISM crew in Gaza at the moment, a friend of Sharyn's. He blogs (in Italian) at http://guerrillaradio.iobloggo.com/

"Take some kittens, some tender little moggies in a box", said Jamal, a surgeon at the Al Shifa, Gaza's main hospital, while a nurse actually placed a couple of blood-stained cardboard boxes in front of us. "Seal up the box, then jump on it with all your weight and might, until you feel their little bones crunching, and you hear the last muffled little mew."

I stared at the boxes in astonishment, and the doctor continued: "Try to imagine what would happen after such images were circulated. The righteous outrage of public opinion, the complaints of the animal rights organisations…" The doctors went on in this vein, and I was unable to take my eyes off those boxes, sitting at our feet. "Israel trapped hundreds of civilians inside a school as if in a box, including many children, and then crushed them with all the might of its bombs. What were the world's reactions? Almost nothing. We would have been better off as animals rather than Palestinians, we would have been more protected."

At this point the doctor leans towards one of the boxes, and takes its lid off in front of me. Inside it are the amputated limbs, legs and arms, some from the knee down, others with the entire femur attached, amputated from the injured at the Al Fakhura United Nations school in Jabalia, which resulted in more than fifity casualties. Pretending to be taking an urgent call, I took my leave of Jamal, actually rushing to the bathroom to bend over and throw up.

A little earlier I'd been involved in a conversation with Dr. Abdel, an ophtalmologist, regarding the rumours that the Israeli Army had been showering us with non-conventional weapons, forbidden by the Geneva Convention, such as cluster bombs and white phosphorous. The very same that the Tsahal Army used in the last Lebanese war, as well as the US air force in Falluja, still violating international norms. In front of Al Auda hospital we witnessed and filmed white phosphorous bombs being used about five hundred metres from where we were, too far to be absolutely certain there were any civilians underneath the Israeli Apaches, but so terribly close to us all the same.

The Geneva Treaty of 1980 forbids white phosphorous being used directly as a war weapon in civilian areas, allowing it only as a smoke screen or for lighting. There's no doubt that using this weapon in Gaza, a strip of land concentrating the highest population rate in the world, is a crime all on its own. Doctor Abdel told me that at Al Shifa hospital they don't have the medical and military competence to say for sure whether the wounds they examined on certain corpses were indeed provoked by white phosphorous bullets.

But on his word, in twenty years on the job he had never seen casualties like those now being carried into the ward. He told me about the traumas to the skull, with the fractures to the vomer bone, the jaw, the cheekbones, tear duct, nasal and palatine bones showed signs of the collision of an immense force against the victim's face. What he finds inexplicable is the total lack of eyeballs, which ought to leave a trace somewhere within the skull even in case of such a violent impact. Instead, we see Palestinian corpses coming into the hospitals without eyes at all, as if someone had removed them surgically before handing them over to the coroner.

Israel has let us know that we've been granted a daily 3-hour truce, from 1:00 to 4:00 PM. These statements from the Israeli military summit are considered by the people of Gaza as having the same reliability as the Hamas leaders' declarations that they've just provoked a massacre of enemy soldiers. Just to be clear on this point, the soldiers of Tel Aviv's worse enemy are the very same who fight under the Star of David.

Yesterday a war ship off the coast of Gaza's port picked out a large group of alleged guerrilla fighters from the Palestinian Resistance, moving as a united front around Jabalia. They shot their cannons at them. But as it turned out, they were their own fellow soldiers, with the shooting resulting in three being killed and about twenty injured. No one here believes in the truces that Israel declares, and as it happens, today at 2:00 PM Rafah was under attack by the Israeli helicopters. There was also yet another massacre of children in Jabalia: three little sisters aged 2, 4 and 6 from the Abed Rabbu family were slaughtered. Just half an hour earlier in Jabalia, once again the Red Crescent hospital's ambulances were under attack. Eva and Alberto, my ISM colleagues were on board that ambulance and managed to film everything, passing those videos and photos on to all the major media.

Hassan was kneecapped, fresh from mourning the death of his friend Araf, a paramedic who was killed two days ago as he came in aid of the injured in Gaza City. They had stopped to pick up the body of a man languishing in agony in the middle of the road, when they were under fire by about ten shots from an Israeli sniper. One bullet hit Hassan in the knee and the ambulance was filled with holes. We're now at a death toll of 688, in addition to 3,070 injured, 158 dead children and countless missing. Only yesterday, we counted 83 dead, 80 of which were civilians. Thankfully, the death toll on the Israeli side is still only at 4.

Travelling towards Al Quds hospital, where I'll be working all night on the ambulances, as I raced along on board one of the very few fearless taxis left, zig-zagging to avoid the bombs, on the corner of one street I saw a group of dirty street urchins with tattered clothes, looking exactly like the "sciuscià" kids of the Italian afterwar period. They threw stones towards the sky with slingshots, at far away and unapproachable enemy who was toying with their lives. This is a crazy metaphor, which could serve as a snapshot of the absurdity of this time and place.

Stay human
Vittorio Arrigoni

A two-state solution?

I hold no particular position in favour of one or two state solutions in Palestine and Israel; maybe because I'm too pessimistic to see any likelihood of a solution of any kind in the near or medium term.
Anyway, here is an update of the excellent postcards showing why a two-state solution is a ludicrous idea at the moment, unless the illegal outrage that are the West Bank settlements is properly dismantled.
I came across a website the other day, a very good example of the disingenuous sneakiness of the pro-Israeli camp. The website - PalestineFacts or something like that - purported to be a purely factual presentation of the situation in Palestine and Israel, allowing people to choose for themselves. The tone was fairly dry and academic, and there was official-looking information on how to cite the website. The historical stuff looked ok (I was specifically looking for information on the Palestinian killings of dozens of Jews in Hebron in 1929, to inform a post on Hebron).
But get to the settlements page and the site reveals its true colours. Far from being a 'factual' account, a substantial part of the page was occupied (no pun intended) by the argument that it wouldn't be acceptable for white neighbourhoods in the US to refuse black people the right to build houses in the middle of their communities, juts because they were black. So, the argument goes, it's racist of Palestinians to refuse to have Jewish settler neighbourhoods in their areas. No account taken, of course, of the fact that if a black community sought to build houses in a white neighbourhood in the USA they would presumably be aspiring to fit in and meet with their neighbours, and would build their homes in empty spaces after going through a due process of planning permission. Whereas these put-upon and racially vistimised settlers in the West Bank only have the intention of building ethnically pure communities where Palestinians are permitted occasionally as underpaid and abused labour and certainly not near any homes, and that these communities come aong not with planning permissions and local integration plans but with bulldozers, land confiscation plans and the full military might of the world's fourth largest military, and they then routinely shoot at, steal more land from, expropriate massively disproportionate amounts of water from and damage the olive trees and mutilate the sheep of their unreasonable Arab neighbours.
Wow, Palestinians are just so unreasonable as to not want shooting and their livestock torturing. Outrageous.

Manchester Gaza vigils this week

BBC, Oxford Rd - 5.30pm - 6.30pm daily
Tues 6th Jan 5.30pm - 6.30pm
Weds 7th Jan 5.30pm - 6.30pm
Thurs 8th Jan 5.30pm - 6.30pm
Fri 9th Jan 5.30pm - 6.30pm
(bring candles and jars)

Grist to the anti-European mill

By the way, for anyone who thinks we're not all doomed on a number of fronts, please observe the new head of the EU for the next 6 months. Czech President Vaclav Klaus thinks that climate change is a dangerous myth, has declared that Israel's butchery in Gaza is 'defensive not offensive,' and has a picture of Maggie Thatcher on his desk.
Wahey.

80% of emergency calls cannot be answered

This is what happens to ambulance workers when the Israeli army attacks. From http://talestotell.wordpress.com/:

6pm: To Al Awda hospital, run by the Union of Health Work Committees. It normally has a 50 bed capacity but has been stretched to 75. E and Mo interview Ala'a, the medic from Jabalia RC who was injured when Arafa was killed yesterday.

The story goes as follows:

It was about 8.30 am Saturday morning in Jabalia. Five teenagers found themselves under shell attack and tried to get away. Three escaped. One, Tha'er, 19, had his foot blown off. His friend Ali, also 19, tried to pick him up and carry him to safety, but was shot in the head and killed. It took 75- 90 minutes before a Jabalia Red Crescent ambulance could reach them. Medic Arafa, 35, and Ala'a, 22, carried Tha'er to the ambulance, and then went back for Ali's body. As they closed the van door, they were shelled.

Ala'a says "I felt nothing - just that I was flying in the air and then falling." Other ambulances evacuated all. Arafa, who was married with 5 children, had a severe chest wound with most of one lung gone and only survived 2 hours. Ali's head was blown off. Ala'a is now in hospital with severe shrapnel wounds all over, especially chest and legs. Tha'er survived but also now has several lacerations to back and body from shrapel.

Arafa was a teacher for the UN, gave medic training, and volunteered as a medic after being one professionally earlier.

Resources to oppose arms manufacturers supplying Israel

The following information was distributed on leaflets on the Gaza march on Saturday, and on Manchester Indymedia:

Target your local weapons manufacturer. Companies like BAe, EDO, and others supply Israel with the aircraft, tanks and components they need to carry out these murderous attacks - and have offices and factories right here in the UK:

Brimar (make components for Apache attack helicopters)
Greenside Way, Middleton, Manchester, M24 1SN

BAe (supply F16s to Israel)
MBDA, Station Road, Bolton, BL6 4BR
Shared Services, Brisance House, Euxton Lane, Chorley, PR7 6AQ
Military Air Solutions, Woodford Aerodrome, Chester Road, Woodford, SK7 1QR
Land Systems UK, Leeds Valley Park, Leeds, LS10 1AB
more at: http://www.baesystems.com/WorldwideLocations/UnitedKingdom/Locations/

Or get involved in an existing campaign...
...against Heckler & Koch, Nottingham: http://nottsantimilitarism.wordpress.com/
...against EDO, Brighton: http://smashedo.org.uk/

See: http://www.stoparmingisrael.org/info/companies.php
for more ideas and: http://www.caat.org.uk/issues/israel.php
for more background.

Text from Sharyn in Gaza, 11.50pm 3.1.09

[Re the numbers on today's marches] Yay, very good to hear.
Ambulance guys having philosophical discussion while we wait for next injuries, explosions rocking the building. Where do they find this determined good humour?

Israeli tanks head into Gaza

Not a fun Saturday night. Between the news that Israeli tanks are heading into Gaza, Marc getting called in to do physio-y things to a very sick teenager and the residual desire to slowly and painfully break the arm of the gobshite who killed the lovely little plum tree on my allotment, my attitudes towards life, the universe and everything are currently a tad jaundiced.
My friend Sharyn is riding with ambulances in Gaza tonight. One Red Crescent station has already been damaged so working alongside medics is no guarantee of safety. Sharyn knows what the Israeli forces are capable of - she has a nice ring of shrapnel from a splinter bullet in her stomach to show it - and one of her latest blog posts, cited below, wondered what it was the Israelis didn't want the hundreds of international they let out through Erez the other day to see. I guess this is the answer.
I remember so well what it's like being aware that an incursion is on its way, watching the sun go down and wondering what will be revealed when the darkness lifts next day. The strange sensation of compression at the base of the throat that is the tension of not knowing.
The last 36 hours have seen hundreds of thousands of people - maybe millions - demonstrating around the world. Yesterday was mainly the Muslim countries, with crowds heading out onto the streets after prayers.
Today was Europe, Australia, the USA. 20,000 in Paris. The lily-livered lying scum at the BBC, whose coverage wasn't too bad at the start but which has degenerated into whinging apologias for the Israeli military, reported 12,000 in London today but I prefer to rely on my mum's description, which suggests that it's bollocks and should be comfortably doubled. Manchester was a good couple of thousand, which given that coaches went from hear to London wasn't too bad.
There are legitimate critiques of marches and their failure to build in participation and to build on their energy to keep working in the communities from which the marchers come. But I also know that the sight of people demonstrating around the world is a terrific boost to the morale of Palestinians when they come under attack, and however dispiriting another bloody chant-chant-slogan-slogan-slogan, SWP-dominated, patriarchal march can feel, they do have their uses. As emphasised by Sharyn's words below, and in a chat I had on the subject with Kevin Brown of the FBU, who was on a solidarity delegation to the West Bank last June.
My brilliant mum was commenting on a news piece she saw which showed an Israeli policeman holding the remains of one of the Hamas rockets we keep hearing so much about in the news - a glorified firework, maybe 2 feet long. And then it cut to an unexploded Israeli missile, the size, as she put it, of a room. A pity not all the fools bleating about Hamas violence haven't been made to view that news item. As I've said publicly and repeatedly, Hamas are largely a nasty, reactionary bunch and targeting civilians is inexcusable. But to talk as if the two had some parity is also offensively stupid, as well as tediously predictable.
Also not an enhancement to my love for my fellow (hu)man has been the process of editing for length an article by Naela Khalil, a journalist from the West Bank who was threatened with suspension for carrying out a piece of investigative work into the use of torture and illegal detention by Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, against each other's supporters. Naela won the Prix Samir Kassir for her article, which is a valuable contribution to revealing the truth about political conflict within Palestine. It's hardly a shock to find that members of the Palestinian security services are learning the tricks of the Israeli torturers who abused them and are turning them on their political rivals at home, but it's not an encouraging spectacle either. The piece is supposed to be running in Red Pepper, but I suspect they're going to bottle it.

The maths of lives

Here is an excellent post from Brian Candeland of Manchester Green Party, on the relative value of lives, be they Indian, Gazan, Congolese - or rich white Westerners.

Gaza ongoing

I just got a very moving email from my friend Sharyn, who is still in Gaza, still bearing witness to the effects of the Israeli atrocities there. As she says, it is hard not to wonder why the Israelis permitted several hundred international passport holders – mainly foreign women with Palestinian husbands – to leave via the Erez checkpoint today. As Sharyn puts it, “and we wonder what they have planned next that they don't want outsiders here to witness.”
The focus, rightly, is on the human horrors, the children killed by indiscriminate bombing and missile strikes. But as Sharyn observes, the architectural heritage of Gaza is also being reduced to rubble – beautiful old mansions and mosques destroyed, in a similar (if more extreme) destructive frenzy to that which my friend Naseer, a conservation architect in Nablus, spends his working life struggling against in the old city there.
Another distressing aspect of the news is now the Israeli response to protests against its actions. In the West Bank village of Nil'in, the army shot dead two young men. Arafat Khawaje, 22, was shot in the back and died that day (last Sunday). Mohammed Khawaje, 20, was shot in the forehead and died in a Ramallah hospital a couple of days later. Today, protesters from the nearby village of Bil'in report that they've been fired on with a type of bullet they haven't come across before, a small plastic sphere filled with some kind of liquid, but which breaks the skin and causes bloody lacerations.
Gush Shalom reports 'mass arrests' amongst Palestinian citizens of Israel and have called for as many people as possible from all Israeli communities to attend a demonstration at Sakhnin on Saturday 3rd, as well as the main peace movement protests planned for Tel Aviv later that day. And the Ma'an News Agency reports that five people have been injured in Hebron as demonstrators clashed with the ever-present soldiers there, and that the West Bank is being subjected to prolonged Israeli-imposed curfews aimed at preventing people from answering Hamas' call for mass demonstrations. Reports of turnouts of thousands suggest that this tactic has been unsuccessful... but the bombing goes on.

On First World Nationalisms

Given the discussion today of the Tory poll on class and race resentment amongst the white British working class, the following quote sent to me by Marc seemed very apposite. It's taken from The Social and Political Thought of Noam Chomsky by Alison Edgley.

"America and 'first world' nationalisms are, it seems, highly successful at disguising themselves, particularly from political theorists. Their invisibility is suggestive of the extent to which their manifestation is taken as the norm. As black writers and feminists have argued, one extremely significant characteristic of racism and sexism is the extent to which the white male is taken as normal so that everything else is 'other', different, pathology. This is also true for state and nationalist propaganda. For the invisible to remain invisible and for the norm to remain the norm, the possibility of the 'other' must be quieted, removed. This means information, knowledge and rhetoric must secure these requirements."

Manchester New Year's Eve candlelit vigil for Gaza

Train companies continue to take the piss...

... and Marc Roberts, of course, has a brilliant cartoon about it. So, we lose billions in public transport investment (thanks to lots of bloody stupid Manchester voters) and now train travel is going up. And this contributes to a viable strategy for decarbonising the British economy how?

Mazin Qumsiyeh

The best list of suggested action I've seen, from Bethlehem University science professor Mazin Qumsiyeh.

Subject: What can you do?

So far hundreds of civilians have been killed in Gaza. Five sisters in
one family, four other children in another home, two children on a
cart drawn by a donkey. Universities, colleges, police stations, roads,
apartment buildings were all targeted. The UN Special Rapporteur on
Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian areas issued a statement that
"The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent s evere and massive
violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva
Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and
in the requirements of the laws of war."

Twenty things to do to bring peace with justice:

1) First get the facts and then disseminate them. Here are some basic
background information
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.btselem.org%2Fenglish%2FGaza_Strip
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://electronicintifada.net%2Fv2%2Farticle4933.shtml
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.mepeace.org%2Fforum%2Ftopics%2Fthe-true-story-behind-this-war
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.unitedforpeace.org%2Fdownloads%2FIf%2520Gaza%2520falls.pdf

2) Contact local media. Write letters to editors (usually 100-150
words) and longer op-eds (usually 600-800 words) for local newspapers. But
also write to news departments in both print, audio, and visual media
about their coverage. In the US
You can find media listings in your country using search engines like
google

3) Organize and join demonstrations in front of Israeli and Egyptian
embassies or when not doable in front of your parliament, office of
elected officials, and any other visible place (and do media work for it).

4) Hold a teach-in, seminar, public dialogue, documentary film viewing
etc. this is straightforward: you need to decide venue, nature, if
any speakers, and do some publicity (the internet helps).

5) Pass out flyers with facts and figures about Palestine and Gaza in
your community (make sure also to mention its relevance to the audience:
e.g, US taxpayers paying for the carnage, increase in world
instability and economic uncertainty)

6) Put a Palestinian flag at your window.

7) Wear a Palestinian head scarf (Koufiya)

8) Wear Black arm bands (this helps start conversations with people)

9) Send direct aid to Gaza through the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency (UNRWA).
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.un.org%2Funrwa%2F

10) Initiate boycotts, divestments and sanctions at all levels and
including asking leaders to expel the Israeli ambassadors (an ambassador of
an apartheid and rogue state). See Palestinian call
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://electronicintifada.net%2Fv2%2Farticle10056.shtml

11) Work towards bringing Israeli leaders before war crime courts
(actions along those lines in courts have stopped Israeli leaders from
traveling abroad to some countries like Brigtai9n where they may face
charges)

12) Calling upon all Israelis to demonstrate in front of their war
ministry and to more directly challenge their government

13) Do outreach: to neighbors and friends directly. Via Internet to a
lot of others (you can join and post information to various
listservs/groups).

14) Start your own activist group or join other local groups (simple
search in your city with the word Palestine could identify candidate
groups that have previously worked on issues of Palestine). Many have also
been successful in at bringing coalitions from different
constituencies in their local areas to work together (human rights group, social and
civil activists, religious activists, etc).

15) Develop a campaign of sit-ins at government offices or other places
where decision makers aggregate

16) Do a group fast for peace one day and hold it in a public place

17) Visit Palestine

18) Support human rights and other groups working on the ground in
Palestine

19) Make large signs and display them at street corners and where ever
people congregate.

20) Contact local churches, mosques and other houses of worship and ask
them to take a moral stand.
--------------------

Gaza cartoon

Gee, a cartoon not by Marc Roberts. But by the indefatigable Latuff instead.

Gaza continues

The Israeli military atrocities in Gaza continue. The death toll nears 400.
Meanwhile, Obama 'monitors' and Brown has little twitches of conscience while figuring out which bank to nationalise next. In Tehran, Iranian Jews demonstrate for Palestine, and in Israel, Ha'aretz reports that the Israeli military has been cooking this up for months, during the 'ceasefire.'
It's very hard to know what to do here, of course. Yesterday, my first day properly out of bed after a week of 'flu, I took myself off to the vigil outside the BBC in Manchester. The previous day's demonstration apparently attracted maybe a couple of hundred, according to my friend Hannah. The vigil had perhaps 70. There will be one every evening that this continues, so I guess I'll be down there again tomorrow at 5pm before I head off to friend Ruth's to try and not be too much of a spirit of depression at the New Year party. And at 3pm on Saturday there will be a bigger demonstration.
It always amazes me that Palestinians in such appalling circumstances draw hope from what feel like the most tiny things we do here, but a text from my amazing friend Sharyn just after I sent her news of these two demonstrations and the bigger ones outside the Israeli embassy in London read as follows:
"Fatima is so happy telling her family what you just said. 10 people just gained some strength for this night under the bombs."
Of course I cried and felt inadequate. Doh.
What else to do? There's not much I can usefully write - my only attempt at getting into Gaza, 7 years ago, ended up with me in al-Hussain Hospital in Beit Jala, shot full of pethidine, thanks to a little altercation with the lovely Captain Joseph Levy of the Erez border crossing. I can draw on the words of friends - including Sharyn - who are there. I can help to spread Free Gaza movement press releases and the writings of those with useful things to say and reports from the ground, including Sameh Habeeb. I can keep making sure that the Free Gaza Facebook group stays up to date and also that the stupid, hateful, vile anti-semitism that Israel's stupid, hateful, vile actions engenders is not allowed to find its voice through any channel that I can stop up. And, I suppose, I can not give in to the grief and guilt that so many of us who have spent time in Palestine feel at not being there at this hour, and keep working in the ways that I can here, even if it's not there. But it feels so very little.

Eeeeuuuuwwwwhhhhh

Yuck. Don't know where Marc Roberts finds this stuff, but viewing his terrifyingly prolific output of cartoons does nothing for one's faith in humanity. Western Civilisation is decadent and muct be destroyed...

Israeli bombing in Gaza (and other Christmas happenings)

Well, Christmas is over - sort of - and the sales frenzy is busily creating a dead cat bounce in the UK economy. Harold Pinter is RIP. And the original Three Legged Cat has had a rather dramatic festive period, as a result of which he's now a three-legged, one-fanged cat.
And in Gaza, the Israeli airforce is reported on the BBC this morning to have killed 40 people and injured dozens more in bombing raids overnight. Accordingly, below is the full text of an email from an excellent Gazan reporter which I received last Friday, covering not the attacks but the general ongoing effects of the Israeli blockade.

For More Media Reportings and News Reports contact me on:
Mob: 00972599306096
Sameh.habeeb@gmail.com

Hunger before the storm
By: Sameh Akram Habeeb

Israeli politicians, in the run-up to elections, are promising to deal a severe blow to Gaza as this is how Israeli policy is made. However, every household in Gaza is already under siege. In Gaza you can only find pale, angry and frustrated faces. If you visit my house you won't find power, while my neighbor is out of gas. Another neighbor seeks potable water as power outages have left him without for four days. A third neighbor desparately looks for milk for his child but does so in vain. Another friend who lives on the corner needs medicine that can't currently be found in Gaza.

There is no shortage of such stories in Gaza (though there is a shortage of nearly everything else). Perhaps broadcasting such stories would result in pressure on Israeli leaders to stop the siege. Because what is happening is that the entire Gaza population of 1.5 million -- densely packed into a small area -- is being punished for crude rockets being fired into Israel by a few.

Shaher Mazen, 25, holds a degree in political science but works as a taxi driver to put bread on the table for his family. I spoke to him while I was on my way to some of the Gaza bakeries to cover some news that was happening there. Shaher was frustrated because of siege and furious towards the two rival Palestinian governments, considering them as weak in the face of Israel.

Mazen said, "We are under an organized Israeli media campaign. We are being starved and victimized by Israel. The world think we are besieging Israel, not the other way around. Israel is playing up the issue of rocket fire to besiege us more and more."

Al-Shanty bakery in Gaza City is one of the Strip's largest, supplying tens of thousands with bread. Yesterday, hundreds of people crowded outside the bakery in a very long queue, waiting for a bag of bread. Children, women and men were awaiting the chance to buy some bread, which has become scarce as Israel has not allowed the import of adequate supplies of flour and cooking gas.

"Our bakery is out of bread for days now and what we have will only last for another 24 hours. In fact, we stopped our work yesterday as we ran out of flour. Now, we use animal feed which will finish in a matter of hours," explained 24-year-old Abed Masod while he busily worked at the bakery.

A woman's voice arose above the crowd. She started to scream and appealed to God for salvation and relief from Gaza's dire situation. Forty-five-year-old Om Ali Shoman's weary face bore the impact of Gaza's suffering. "This is our destiny," she said. "It's a conspiracy designed against us. What did my children do to stay at home with no bread? Did they fire rockets? Did they kill Israelis? Are they holding guns?"

Only about a dozen of Gaza's 47 bakeries are currently operating as of yesterday, but with rapidly diminishing supplies. The UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) had to stop its food aid deliveries because Israel has not allowed it to replenish its stores. This affects 750,000 refugees in the Gaza Strip.

Gazans fear that the worst, however, is yet to come as the Israeli government renews its threats of a major offense against the Gaza Strip, irrespective of the civilian toll an invasion would inevitably incur.

Time is running out in Gaza and mass starvation looms as Gaza's skies are further darkened with threats of an Israeli military incursion. As a journalist, peace activist, and one of the hundreds of thousands of Gazans who are being collectively punished by Israel, I urge those who read this to appeal their governments to hold Israel accountable to international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, article 33 of which forbids the collective punishment of a civilian population. Though it unilaterally removed its illegal settlement population from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel has remained in control of Gaza's borders, sea and airspace, as well as its population registry, and remains the occupying power, and as such is obligated to abide by international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention.

I urge readers to press their governments to force Israel to respect the countless United Nations resolutions that affirm Palestinian rights, and which Palestinian leaders demand must be immediately implemented.

Please don't let Gaza's plight be forgotten, and urge those around you to act as well.

All photos in the link below by Sameh A. Habeeb:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb/BakeriesOfGazaOutOfBreadPeopleAreHungry#

Sameh A. Habeeb is a photojournalist, humanitarian and peace activist based in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. He writes for several news websites on a freelance basis.

Contact me:

Sameh A. Habeeb, B.A.
Photojournalist & Peace Activist
Humanitarian, Child Relief Worker
Gaza Strip, Palestine
Mob: 00972599306096
Tel: 0097282802825
E-mail: Sam_hab@hotmail.com
Sameh.habeeb@gmail.com
Skype: Gazatoday, Facebook: Sameh A. habeeb
Web: www.gazatoday.blogspot.com
Daily Photos:http://picasaweb.google.com/sameh.habeeb

More on the TIF

Why do I even bother writing anything without checking whether Marc Roberts has already done a cartoon on the subject?
Sigh.

Swings and roundabouts

It's always nice to get good feedback on work, and even nicer when it's public and from the excellent Coolerchoice environmental blog. They've posted a positive review of my Ethical Consumer magazine report on the environmental and human rights records of Premiership football clubs.
Between the content of the article and the comments, it was also heartening to see some decent debate going on about the whole issue of making football ethical. There are plenty of campaigns on this, from the rejection of corporate control of football clubs by supporters via organisations like Supporters Direct, to revelations of the outrageously small wages (in some case well below the minimum wage) paid by many Premiership clubs to low-ranking employees, whilst top-rank footballers take home sums beyond most people's wildest dreams.
Some attacks on the idea of considering ethics alongside football - such as on Indymedia - have suggested that this is just another example of middle-class environmentalists interfering in working-class culture.
I'd reject that on two grounds: one, that plenty of working-class football supporters have political, environmental and social consciences and to suggest that giving a toss about the environment is solely a middle-class trait is pretty offensive, and two, it discounts that fact that when things go pear-shaped environmentally, it's people on low incomes and with no political clout who get properly shafted - see for instance Friends of the Earth's work mapping pollution in the UK onto low income areas. Golly gee, middle-class people don't get dirty factories and particulate-clouded bypasses built next to their gardens. Next stop, the revolution.
Well, however much of a warm fuzzy feeling I might have got from that nice review, it's done little to overcome my general sense of fury, disappointment, disgust and lots of other negative emotions at the killer combination of stupidity and selfishness which has caused the population of Greater Manchester to reject the TIF bid. So, we've got some of the shitest public transport in Europe, but no, lets reject £3 billion in investment so that a load of middle-class idiot commuters in Cheshire Tractors are free to spend hours sitting stationary on Princess Parkway every morning.
You bloody morons. Especially you so-called lefties who've campaigned against the Yes vote. Worried about the 'state tracking'? Well get rid of your mobile phone before you whinge about your car. Worried about 'working class people who can't afford to get into work in the morning'? Bullshit: you're worried about your own privileged car-driving lifestyles. You just have to look at the demographics of public transport use to see that it's not the comfortable middle class that would have benefited from better buses, trams, trains and cycling and pedestrian routes. And as for the scum at Peel Holdings; well, it just adds to the myriad reasons why Peel is beneath the underneath of the belly of contempt.
Rant over. I'll just go and seethe some more in peace.

Manchester climate change essay competition

Essay contest: What do we do next?
"What are the current problems/future opportunities for climate campaigners in Greater Manchester"
First Prize- £30
Runners Up- to be confirmed
Deadline Sunday 1st February 5pm
entries to editor@manchesterclimatefortnightly.info
Winner announced on Tuesday February 10th at the "Climate Change: Global and Local" meeting hosted by Manchester Climate Forum. Friends Meeting House, 6 Mount St
More information from http://www.manchesterclimatefortnightly.info

RIP Oliver Postgate

Sad news this morning, although well into his 80s I guess Oliver Postgate had had a decent run at life, and possibly is checking out at a good time, a decade or so before things go really tits up.
Anyway, this is just the product of a desire to pay tribute not just to his wonderful children's programmes (I remember with particular love Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine, the Clangers and Noggin the Nog) but also his staunch political stands - on climate change, on pacifism, and on unpopular topics such as the idea that the West should buy up the Afghan poppy crop to take it out of the hands of the world's various drug barons whilst also giving Afghan farmers a livelihood.

No comment needed

Language and journalistic arrests in Israel

Outgoing Israeli PM Ehud Olmert made an interesting choice of words the other day when talking about the appalling violence Hebron's community of extremist religious Jewish settlers have been inflicting on the city's Palestinian inhabitants. Speaking of footage of settlers opening fire on unarmed people, he used the word 'pogrom.'
Not a term used lightly by anyone in Israel, and certainly not by a Jewish Israeli of the oppression of a West Bank Palestinian. Certainly not a term that a goy (and yes, I have been called that in Israel, to my face, and on one occasion by a child who must have been all of seven years old) like me would be allowed to use of these settlers' action without howls of 'anti-semite!'
And another interesting event to note amidst the horror of events in Hebron and Gaza, Ha'aretz newspaper reports that the heroic Israeli journalist Amira Hass was arrested leaving Gaza via the Erez border crossing and questioned by Sderot police. Hass has spent much of the last ten years living in Gaza or Ramallah, one of the few Israelis to do so, and her writings, including the books Drinking the Sea at Gaza and Reporting from Ramallah, should be required reading (alongside Robert Fisk) for, well, pretty much anyone really.

Another work of genius from Marc Roberts

I was going to post something ranty about press coverage of the Plane Stupid Stansted action today. And certainly the BBC R4 lunchtime coverage was typically shite, in its usual style of 'let's give unlimited space to Michael O'Leary to talk drivel and not address any of the substantive issues at all.' But Marc Roberts has covered pretty much everything else I'd want to say.

The Guardian on writing for the internet

Now here's an interesting piece on writing for the internet, and how to go about pushing a website up the ratings not by filling it with rubbish that's searched for a lot ('Britney Spears naked' etc) but by the quality and quantity of links to it.
Michael Wignall at Streamengine does great short workshops on how to do combine writing in a search-engine-friendly way, as well as one that's attractive to website readers.

BBC in tedious old fool shocker

Well golly gee, looks like the BBC has been letting its misinformed old farts talk bollocks again. Why do the likes of the hugely tedious Peter Sissons get to interview anyone who actually knows their stuff? The case in point being his interview today with Green MEP Caroline Lucas, in which he was peddling the stunningly outdated line that there is a genuine scientific question over anthropogenic climate change. No Peter, there isn't, and there hasn't been in twenty years. There are just a few left of a dying swarm of well-funded lobbyists who are still trying to get idiots like him to cover their frankly genocidal ideas. Why do I pay my licence fee again?

All the men should leave now...

Today is the 19th anniversary of the shooting dead of 14 young women and injuring of 14 more people at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec. Marc Lepine shot the women because, he said, he was 'fighting feminism' and they were engineering students.
Women get beaten, raped and killed all over the world for asking for their right to be human beings, and it's usually done by men. I'm not arguing that men are intrinsically worse or more violent, but I am arguing that we've created societies that encourage them to be that way, and that now they are being challenged in their power some of them seem to find it legitimate to fight back in violent and horrible ways. It's also why it pisses me off that idiots like Fathers for Justice get so much coverage for their whingings about male rights; yes, there are a few men out there unjustly separated from their children, and there's an awful lot justly separated because statistically men are much more likely to be the ones beating their wives or partners and abusing their children. The press goes crazy when a Karen Matthews does something terrible to her child (at least the child is still alive...) but apparently men sitting in cars gassing themselves and their kids so their wives/mothers can't 'have them' attracts pretty brief comment nowadays. I don't see the Sun giving them front page spreads with 'pure evil' headlines...

Message from the campaign to stop the Deportation of Hicham Yezza

Below is the text of a message regarding the threatened deportation of Hicham Yezza. Hicham was an administrator at the University of Nottingham who helped print off material about al-Qaeda from a US government website for a friend who was using it for his academic research. With the racism endemic amongst the British public and police, Hicham and his friend were both arrested and questioned for nearly a week before being released without charge. However, Hicham was told that there were 'irregularities' in his immigration status and was told that he wouldn't be charged if he would leave the UK quietly. He refused, and now the immigration service is even sinking to cancelling court proceedings to try and turf him out quickly and quietly. Freedom of speech and knowledge - but only if you're white, apparently.

Legal developments and the home office - we need your help!!
To members of Global Support to Stop The Deporation of Hicham Yezza

November 27 at 1:11pm
Reply
Dear friends,

Thank you all for your continuing support throughout the previous months of hard campaigning. Together we have already achieved an extraordinary level of success in stopping the initial deportation and bringing the Home Office actions to the attention of the national and international media.

Last Wednesday, on the 19th November, Hicham was due to attend a hearing regarding the alleged charges that formed the basis of his attempted deportation in June This is precisely what the campaign demanded: a chance for Hicham to fight his case in a court of law (As you might already be aware, Hich was offered the chance back then to have the charges dropped against him in exchange for quietly leaving the country but refused).

However, in an extraordinary and highly unexpected move, the Home Office announced on the EVE of the trial that it had decided to reject Hicham's right to stay in the U.K and, even more incredibly, have announced that he would only be given till Tuesday 2nd of December (in five days!) before being LIABLE TO BE DEPORTED from the country.

In other words, the Home Office has opted to assume Hicham is guilty rather than let a court of law decide. Hicham's solicitors have called the decision (and its timing) a clear attempt at "psychological warfare" in order to unsettle Hicham before the hearing and to intimidate him into giving up.

We believe this act and its timing to be clearly unfair and highly indicative of the political nature of Hicham's persecution by the Home Office. We are committed to fighting this decision by lodging an appeal before Tuesday and we ask you to help us in every way you can.

In particular, we are in urgent need for people to donate to Hicham's legal fund. Hicham has been prevented by the Home Office from returning to work and is entirely dependant on the campaign's support for financial support. We are currently aiming to raise five thousand pounds to ensure Hich can fight his case properly. We are still applying for access to legal aid in order to lessen this burden but we cannot count on this and need to ensure we are ready for all eventualities.

Please, if you can, log onto your online banking and donate TEN pounds (or whatever it is you can afford) to the campaign bank account. With a collective effort, we can give Hicham the opportunity to fight his case in a fair and just manner.

Please click www.freehicham.co.uk for details of how to donate as well as other ways of helping out (including template letters to the Home Office).

Please continue to spread the word and inform all your friends and colleagues about the campaign.

Many Thanks

The Free Hich Campaign

Website: www.freehicham.co.uk

Email: staffandstudents@gmail.com

A work of pure genius

As someone who occasionally needs to resize photos for work purposes but has no desire to learn (or to shell out for) Photoshop, and who hasn't yet managed to figure out how to resize or crop pictures using the various opensource graphics programmes, I was very, very happy to discover DrPic. That rare thing, a really useful website...

Surviving winter in freelance-land

This spring, I moved from being a part-time employee and part-time freelancer to being a full-time freelancer. I joined the pyjama workforce, that band of people who can be shamed at any time of the day by a postman turning up with a parcel, only to find them unshowered and wearing worn plaid jammies or a threadbare dressing gown.
A few months later I decided that this lifestyle is psychologically unhealthy, at least for me, and joined a shared workspace co-op called Openspace. First and foremost this provides flexible work packages ranging from full membership (£100 a month for a desk, some storage space, high speed internet, some blog space on a shared website and use of other shared facilities such as a printer and secure backups) to the ability to just drop in with your laptop once or twice a month to get a change of scene or a reliable web connection.
Openspace also fits into my work and concerns nicely by being a social enterprise (by virtue of its not-for-profit, co-operative status) and its commitment to environmental and social functions such as recycling, using recycled products and green electricity and providing a networking point for other social and ethical enterprise.
Now I've been a member for several months, I thought it was time to evaluate whether this was a good decision, and decided that actually it's probably been close to a life-saver.
As winter draws in and daylight hours get unspeakably and depressingly short, dragging myself outside during the daytime would have been really hard to do regularly as pyjama-me. Somehow actually getting my arse in gear by 3pm or whenever it's getting dark at the moment seems like a massive effort when I don't actively HAVE to. But the bike ride down to Openspace forces me to get outside and get a bit of sunshine and exercise, and that's a very, very good thing for my mental wellbeing.
Secondly, one of the unexpected benefits of Openspace – even to its founders – has been the quantity of cross-fertilisation of work and projects that has come out of it. People have submitted bids together, developed artistic projects and generally passed round useful information about economic opportunities. With the credit crunch and looming economic nightmare of the next year or so, opportunities that I wouldn't have known about but for being in a shared space have made my financial situation that much more stable, at least for the moment.
Working at Openspace comes easier too, especially when I've got a big deadline looming – I'm pretty good at keeping my self-discipline going when it comes to deadlines, but my bathroom does tend to get suddenly cleaner and my kitchen floor washed when I've got a big one coming up. But being in a workspace somehow forces me to get my head down and get on with it, and that makes me that more productive.
A final small benefit has been that as the weather gets colder, it's nice to be able to head off to the office, where it's nice and warm, instead of staying at home, having to put the heating on at some eye-popping cost in fuel bills. Yes, I know I should wrap up in more jumpers, but there's only so many I can actually fit on, and if I'm going to work (ie type) my fingers still need to be out there in the air and not seized up from the cold. The cats are pissed off though – fewer nice hot radiators to weld themselves onto.
There's only one lovely Openspace, in Manchester, but I know that Edinburgh has the Melting Pot and the Hub network has places in a number of cities worldwide, including London and Bristol in the UK. And similar, if less ethically-oriented, setups can often be found by Googling terms like 'shared workspace' or 'co-working' for your town.

Fascists, fascists everywhere...

Well, who'da thunk it. Someone in the BNP has leaked their entire membership list and posted it on a Blogspot page. Given that coppers now get fired for this, and it is somewhat frowned upon in certain other professions represented - like teachers and nurses - I guess a few fash will be sweating for their jobs tonight. I'm sure their trade union reps will be sobbing in sympathy. Or not. A few posh types too - like former Chief Inspectors. Surely, old chap, one should just lurk on the more objectionable end of the Tory party with the other inbreds, not actually slum it with the skin'ead hoi polloi.
Hehehehe.
Interesting, though, to see the mainstream media take on it - absolutely loving it, but not quite daring to pop up a link to the actual site.

Writing course at Gorton Monastery

For anyone foolish enough not to be coming to ChomskyAt80, here's a quick plug for a writing course on the 29th November, bring run by Hyde freelancer Andrea Wren. I don't know Andrea well, but we met a few times at the late lamented ConnectMedia NorthWest get-togethers and she could certainly teach aspiring feature writers a thing or two about how to market themselves.

Another act of genius

Another act of genius from Marc Roberts. Oh, and as I omitted to mention last time I posted one of his cartoons, they've been popping up in all sorts of cool places, like Ethical Consumer magazine, New Internationalist and Realclimate.org, the kind of place journalists should be going for information on dangerous climate change rather than publicity-seeking Scandinanvian eejits with spurious credentials for talking about anything but themselves. Thank goodness for some decent research, like this. But then there's often a disturbing similarity between your average wordcount-padder when faced with a rampant self-publicist telling them something they want to hear, and a rabbit caught in headlights...

Reporting Poverty in the UK

Last Wednesday was the Manchester launch of Reporting Poverty in the UK, a guide for journalists based on research carried out by Glasgow Caledonian University.
The research looked at how the British press talks about poverty, and while perhaps not a surprise to someone with my attitude to the ethics of the mainstream press in this country, it did include some depressingly good illustrations of the way that some journalists think.
One illuminating quote from the editor of a national tabloid was along the lines of: "Fuel poverty is not a story. Poor people fiddling their gas meters is a story." So - thousands of people freezing in their homes over the winter isn't interesting, and fuel companies making massive profits off huge price rises isn't interesting, but a tiny and unrepresentative number of poor people finding ways to get round that is a valid subject for prurient, judgemental prying. What a delightful society we are.
A more comforting comment was from an anonymous female tabloid reader, who said something akin to 'I read the News of the World but I don't believe anything in it - not even the TV listings.'
The actual launch event, run by funders the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Media Trust, was excellent (and not just because of the really good lunch, much better than the somewhat suspect sarnies usually on offer. And a decent veggie selection).
With a reasonable balance of journalists and people from a wide range of organisations tackling poverty or working in marginalised areas (like Carisma from Home Sweet Home, Moss Side), there were some really active debates about how third sector organisations, especially those with tiny PR resources and budgets, can relate to the media, how they can protect their members and service users when journalists turn up wanting case studies, and how journalists can behave in a slightly more ethical and honourable fashion, respecting people whose life circumstances have put them in poverty.
Discussions raised issues like why the press seems to feel the need to stereotype and insult poor people - is it so that the better-off can deny to themselves that they might be benefiting from an unequal system? And is the kind of understanding and improvement in reporting that the event and report are trying to achieve eroded by developments in the media industry itself, where it seems to be increasingly difficult to get an entry into national-level newspapers and magazine without spending weeks or months doing unpaid internships. And who gets to do those in London, a ludicrously expensive city to work in? Rich, usually white, kids. Increasing yet more the distance between journalists and the people and communities they talk about. So, all the more need for people to take a look at the Media Trust/JRF guide, and try to absorb some of its lessons.

Cantankerous Frank gets arrested as an eco-terrorist

Marc Roberts is a genius Manchester-based cartoonist with a a big heart, lots of common sense and a stunning capacity for bile and vitriol regarding the many ways various human systems and organisations are fucking up the Earth. He's also terrifyingly prolific, and this evening's cartoon is a particularly marvellous comment on the state of the planet.

The Onion sez it again

Best bits of US election analysis I've seen so far...
"Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job"
and
"Nation Finally Shitty Enough to Make Social Progress"

4th November 2008

God, I hate US elections.
I hate being stuck on the other side of the Atlantic not being able to participate usefully in something which is going to affect the whole world so profoundly.
I hate that I end up with wishy-washy liberal sympathies for politically horrible Democrat candidates just because they're less obviously maniacally dangerous than the Republican version, even though in the end I know they'll be equally vile on most of the issues that matter, and even if they're not all the other vested interests will scupper anything worthwhile they might do.
I hate how furious I end up being at the American population for electing murderous fucking nutters, and how on one level I know that there are so many people who are disenfranchised and maybe they'd have voted differently (although part of me can't help suspecting that The Onion was right on the button here). But the other part of me is just thinking YOU BASTARDS ELECTED BUSH - TWICE!
And I hate that the media seems to have nothing else to report (except for BBC talentless waste-of-oxygen celebs saying stupid things) when there are so many things going on in the world, but to people who don't have power/money/their own radio show.

Meeja whinging

As a media freelance who occasionally crosses the divide between PR and journalism - as seems increasingly common - I appreciate that the PR's job is not always a happy one. But Cake PR of London seem to be taking it out on muggins, the hapless freelance on the receiving end of their less-than-impeccable competence.
Nearly 3 months ago, I went on a PR trip to the Lake District organised by Cake on behalf of fair trade fruit company Agrofair. The trip went fine, but because of the short notice I paid for my own train and taxi fares, which totalled over eighty quid. The following week I sent my tickets and receipts and an invoice into the PR girlie at Cake who I'd been dealing with. She acknowledged receipt and said she'd get the cash sent asap.
Have I seen that cash yet? Have I buggery. Maybe in smug London PR-land eighty pounds is small change, but in Northern freelance land it's a fair wad on spending money, and I want it back. The rude cow has even stopped replying to emails, and the accounts department don't seem to know what I'm on about, which seems to imply that she hasn't even registered the claim.
So, warning to fellow freelances etc. Avoid Cake PR. And to fair trade companies wanting to operate ethically, avoid them too, if you're as interested in freelance journalists not getting screwed over as you are in just treatment for majority world farmers.
Ho hum.

School in Hebron

"Waiting"

Waiting is Donna Baillie's film about the trials of getting to school if you're a Palestinian kid in Hebron - and if it wins the Babelgum film festival $10,000 will go to those very kids. Take a look!

We're doomed, I tell you...

You'd think that being shacked up with a climate change obsessive, spending your working life researching evil corporate behaviour, being politically engaged with the fate of Palestine and playing mother to a bulimic three-legged cat would induce a level of hopelessness about the state of the world that couldn't get any lower.
You'd be wrong.
In one of my normally mind-numbing days being pimped out to do research for Supposed Ethical Corp, yesterday I got sent off to look up stats on food security. It took only a couple of hours of reading reports like Chatham House's 'UK Food Supply: Storm Clouds On The Horizon' and the Cabinet Office's 'Food: an analysis of the issues' to convince me that not only are we doomed on this front (as well as the ice caps melting, blah blah) but that as a species we bloody well deserve to be. Global grain stores halved in thirty years - because it costs too much to stash. Scary amounts of agricultural land worldwide irreversibly degraded. Chinese per capita meat consumption increased by two-and-a-half-times in twenty years. And official proposals to address the problem seem to include joys such as another shot at persuading us all that GM food is a great idea, really.
Oh boy, we are so fucked.

Further horrors from the Hate Mail

Oops! Another stupid Hate Mail hack has the idiocy to send this round via press /PR service Responsesource. I guess she'll be closing down that AOL account soon...

——-Original Message——- From: rsreply@dwpub.com [mailto:rsreply@dwpub.com] Sent: 13 February 2008 15:57 To:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Response Source - Diana Appleyard , Daily Mail (Request for personal case study)

PUBLICATION: Daily Mail (Request for personal case study)
JOURNALIST: Diana Appleyard (staff)
DEADLINE: 14-February-2008 16:00
QUERY: I am urgently looking for anonymous horror stories of people who have employed Eastern European staff, only for them to steal from them, disappear, or have lied about their resident status. We can pay you £100 for taking part, and I promise it will be anonymous, just a quick phone call. Could you email me asap? Many thanks, Diana

HOW TO REPLY:
Email: mailto:dianaappleyard@aol.com
Phone: not provided for use
Fax: 01296 738083 (preferred)

The politics of museum displays

Paris is great, even in December, but being back from Paris can be a bit of a sharp comedown.
While wending my way around the galleries of the Louvre which house ancient archaeological pieces from an area roughly described as the Levant - Palestine, Lebanon, Southern Syria, Jordan, Israel - the disparity between the different bits of the museum struck me.
In the big, exciting, fashionable, child-friendly Egypt galleries, for instance, and other areas like the Assyrian and Mesopotamian galleries, noneof which are associated with major current political issues, the spaces are clean and bright and newly-furnished-looking, and the display cabinets are new and expensive-looking, and there are attractive places to sit, and plenty of these have been sponsored by one big international corporation or another, as evidenced by the plaques with their names on.
But in the complicated and controversial and unfashionable area that is 'the Levant,' the vibe is very different, with slightly grubby walls and floors, tatty cases, little seating and older, sparser labelling of many of the objects. Granted, most of the stuff here is less sexy - no vast reconstructions of Assyrian palaces, or stunning wall-sized sculptures. But the 3-foot-high Jordanian plaster figure, older than any pottery and with blank inhuman eyes but a bizarrely realistic child's nose was pretty amazing to me. But could it be that those big corporate donors don't want to get mixed up with this stuff, that even those donors from the Arab world who are happy to claim more resplendant, less currently complex civilisations for themselves, are chary of association with this untidy, emotionally and politically loaded corner of the Middle East?

Train torture

At this time of year it's hard to feel like one of the biggest impediments to sustainable transport in the UK is the British train industry. Having spent the last few weeks making regular visits to the trainline.com website to see if they've deigned to start listing affordable tickets for Christmas, I am now convinced that the modern version of Mr Scrooge is a bunch of rail industry prices executives laughing to themselves while anyone who doesn't fancy shelling out (for example) £65 a pop to get home for Christmas has to waste their time watching train ticket websites like a hawk. And then when they finally release all three reasonably priced tickets, they will sell in ten seconds flat and half the desperate buyers will be faced with that horrible patronising screen that some scumbag copywriter at trainline.com has invented to tell you lies about where the ticket you just tried to buy has disappeared to in cyberspace.
This country really badly needs decent public transport, and the grasping corporations ijn place aren't providing it. We need to tax the tits off the aviation industry and instead of building another insanely polluting runway at Heathrow, put the money into an improved, not-for-profit rail system.
And then we need to hang Richard Branson up by his heels from the front of one of his Pendelinos and tug on his cheeky little goatee till his eyes pop out.

Meeja horing

Well, rather bizarrely OA and I seem to have degenerated into poster children for not having kids for environmental reasons - OA's vasectomy has now managed to make its way into Ethical Consumer magazine, the Metro, BBC2's Heaven & Earth, the Observer and now the Femail section of the Daily Mail.
The Observer, done by their environment & transport editor Juliette Jowit, was generally a fairly positive experience. Juliette was a genuinely interesting person to talk to, wrote an excellent article and was obviously very interested in properly exploring the issue of population and the environment. After the horror of the Observer Woman section and its general pathetic vacuousness, being involved in this article kind of restored a small amount of my faith in this publication (though I still want one of those Observer Woman Makes Me Spit t-shirts). The pic of me was a bit of a horror, but at least Albert's beans on the allotment looked good!
Daily Mail writer Morag Turner wasn't as horrible as I was expecting from this fascist rag (Overgrown Antipodean and I will be donating half our fee for the piece to the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns), although she obviously had a fairly shallow understanding of and interest in the subject. You kind of got the impression that she was a bit bored of writing the usual tripe that goes in Femail and had aspirations (not matched by the quality of her article, unfortunately), to write 'proper' stuff. The quotes from OA and I that made it into the article bore a slightly bizarre and vague relation to what we actually said, but that's tabloids for you. The most traumatic bit of this whole experience was getting photographed - I knew we were going to have a photographer round, but was utterly unprepared for the appearance of the makeup artist, who proceeded to plaster me in more slap than I've worn in about the last 15 years and certainly more than I have ever worn at one time in my entire life. I looked like a raddled old slapper and my hair kept sticking to me. The photographer was a kind of old-style gent, but the makeup artist was weird - we started off thinking that she was rather standoffish, but rapidly realised that actually is was just that breahing occupied all synapses, and she certainly couldn't walk and speak at the same time. And the result was infinitely more horrible than anything the no-makeup, bit-of-a-weird expression Observer guy inflicted on what miniscule public reputation I may have!
Well, Daily Mail woman is now talking about pimping us to Grazia or something similar. Will have to see what the fee would be... and maybe donate half of that one to something radical feminist. Unless of course they see this blog...
Observer article:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2206650,00.html
Daily Mail article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=495495&in_page_id=1879

Is this a ham I see before me?

Well, it's a bit off-topic but I suppose it fits into corporate ethics on the grounds of gouging bastard London theatres, and into art on the grounds of being a Shakespeare play. But generally I just need another opportunity to vent some spleen, whilst possibly getting a warning out there to anyone still planning to cough up serious cash for the West End production of Macbeth with Patrick Stewart.
Overgrown Antipodean (see http://theethicalwedding.blogspot.com for who this is) reckons that the reason this production had theatre critics creaming themselves en masse is that they're all middle aged men whose egos have been stroked by the idea that a bald 60-something can play a part better suited to a man in his 30s or 40s, with its implications of military and physical prowess. It's as good an explanation as any.
I was really excited about seeing this play. Macbeth has always been one of my favourites and I've never seen it done on stage. I have been known to 'fess up to a liking for Mr Stewart too, although I did go off him slightly after reading somewhere that he'd left his wide for a bit of stuff, which is just tediouslt stereotypical of aging actors whose careers are doing well, and really not in Jean-Luc's class. So prior to actually seeing it, this play had a lot going for it. And it's not often I shell out nearly £40 each for theatre tickets.
Oh dear. Was I ever wrong. I mean, it wasn't really, really diabolical or anything (well, one or two bits were). But it certainly wasn't up to the hype, and some bits were really quite ropey. Patrick Stewart was the hammiest thing alive. There's one scene in which he makes a ham sandwich and you just want to yell, Mary Whitehouse Experience style, 'that's you that is!' at him. What are directors for but to tell people they're hamming themselves into seriously unhalal territory and looking very, very silly in the process. OA nearly laughed a couple of times, and he is damn sure that if he had, plenty of the audience may well have succumbed too and then where would have Mr S been?
Next up is the big 3 witches 'double, double toil and trouble' speech. Now, this bit needs to be done well because the coherence of the plot of much of the rest of the play rests on understanding what they're saying. So doing it as some dodgy semi-rap with a lot of feedback hissing is really, really unhelpful. And when you do it in a style which is blatantly a rip-off of the 1990s video to Shakepeare's Sister's 'stay,' the one with Marcella Detroit and Siobhan Fahey fighting over some prine bloke in a hospital bed, then it just gets really daft. I mean, director blokey, did you think no-one would notice? Dear oh dear.
And then there's the generic authoritarianism motif which seems to be de rigeur for any play in London which is vaguely about power, kingship, corruption, authority etc etc etc. I'm sure once, about twenty years ago, this was a fresh and interesting take, but now it's just a bit sloppy and vaguely offensive to use shots from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in such an imprecise and slapdash way.
There were some good things. Banquo's ghost standing bloodied on the dining table; the slithery bloodspots projected on the background; Lady Macbeth looking very fine in a rather nice bias-cut evening frock. But, to be honest, I'd quite like my 40 quid back. And my main lesson from this? Well, never trust a critic, but that goes without staying. But for my Shakespeare, I'm definitely sticking to the regions and hoping for some more quality like the wonderful, brilliant production of the Tempest this summer at Manchester's Royal Exchange, with Pete Postlethwaite.

Sands of Sorrow

Profoundly moving film made in 1950 or so showing the experiences of Palestinian refugees forced from their homes during the establishment of the State of Israel. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8047351706461342401&q=uranium&pl=true