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BOOK REVIEWS
As Of 1st Sep 2007 there are 2 Book Reviews On This Site
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_A Permanent State of Terror?, Campaign Against Criminalising Communities in association with Index on Censorship, £4.50
In some ways the current “war against terror” being waged by the government is nothing new. The history of the 19th and 20th centuries was the history of repression in Ireland, Kenya, Cyprus, and Aden overseas and against working class demands for change at home. The advocacy of Republicanism remains a treasonable felony punishable by transportation for life. Whole communities were criminalised. Republicans and nationalists in the North of Ireland were subjected to internment without trial, the torture of suspects and a shoot to kill policy. During the strike of 1984-1985, mining communities were dubbed “the enemy within” and subjected to paramilitary policing. The Thatcher government made no secret of the fact that it was waging a civil war.
Today’s war on terror is a war against dissent, solidarity and democracy. With the aid of the gutter press, fear is generated and manipulated to serve the government’s political ends. Within the British ruling class there is a strong faction, which has never liked democracy and has as its agenda its destruction. The “lower orders” are expected to know their place, tug their forelocks, keep quiet and stay there obediently creating wealth for their masters. For those who rule by the grace of god, dissent is blasphemy.
The distinction between organised violence against civilians and anti-government actions has been deliberately blurred in order to silence opposition. Even animal rights activists and environmentalists who have used direct action to further their cause are subjected to the attentions of M15, the political police. Like David Kelly and Diana Spencer those who upset the ruling class could end up dead.
In a very interesting pamphlet, one of the most interesting essays is by Mark Thomas, director of the Ilisu Dam Campaign. He points out that New Labour, deliberately forgetting the history of the Labour movement, he cites Gandhi and the Poll Tax protests, one could add the Chartists and the Tolpuddle Martyrs, would like to see direct action airbrushed out of history. The definition of terrorist in the Terrorism Act is so vague that under its terms Jesus could have been defined as a terrorist. Is New Labour reinventing the Roman Empire?
He goes on to discuss the case of the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) To wear a t-shirt with images or symbols supporting the PKK is an offence punishable by 6 months imprisonment. He asks how can the PKK be considered terrorists and the Turkish State, guilty of gross violations of human rights, not and gives the answer because the British government wants to do business with Turkey. Capitalism is the biggest terrorist of all.
There is much, much more interesting, and at times frightening, material in this pamphlet including an article reprinted from the US journal Revolutionary Worker, on the terrible conditions, tantamount to torture, suffered by internees in Camp X-ray. Similar dreadful conditions are being suffered by internees in Belmarsh prison.held without trial.
When people defend themselves against government it is called subversion and terrorism. When government attacks the people it is called peace keeping and defending democracy. The difference is obvious.
Terry Liddle
Listen to the Refugee’s Story, Ilisu Dam Campaign Refugee Project, The Corner House and Peace in Kurdistan. £5.00
On both sides of my family my ancestors came to Britain as refugees from political and religious persecution and chronic poverty. The Irish were depicted as barbaric, demented Fenian bombers. East European Jews were attacked as poverty stricken aliens and political subversives. Not a lot has changed.
Illustrated by the Kurdish artist Rebwar Saeed and subtitled How Foreign Investment Creates Refugees and Asylum Seekers, this pamphlet is in two parts. In the first part refugees, Kurds, Afghans, Nigerians, Colombians, tell their own, often harrowing, stories. Fazil Kawani ,who works with the Asylum Rights Campaign, states : “If we believe that the right to be free from persecution is a fundamental human right for every individual, then we should provide this right to everyone on this planet, regardless of his or her race, culture, religion or background." In the early 19th century political refugees from Karl Marx to Napoleon III could find a save haven in Britain. Nowadays, they are demonised and blamed for all of society’s ills from bad housing to unemployment. Sensationalised scare stories sell semiponographic tabloids and the hate mongers of the BNP make political capital out of it. They have a deep pool of racism to tap into. The white working class has long had it drummed into its head you may be scum but at least you’re not black. They deliberately forget that if not one foreigner had set foot in Britain since 1066 these problems would still exist. They are endemic to the capitalist system.
The poet Benjamin Zephaniah states: “We should try listening to the refugee’s story”. He continues: “ We have got our priorities wrong . Instead of spending billions of pounds on a war with Iraq that will create thousands more refugees, we should spend that money or making peace.” Sadly under capitalism war is always more profitable than peace.
In the second part Jean Lambert, the Green Party MEP, looks at how such polices as the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy and the World Trade Organisation’s trading agreements tend to uproot poor people from their homes and displace them forcing them to migrate in search of a living.
Ann Feltham of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade looks at how weapons exports and the subsequent wars create refugees. She states that the Defence Export Services Organisation, part of the Ministry of Defence, employs 600 civil servants to promote military exports often to the most tyrannical regimes.
Other contributors look at the negative effects of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, the displacement of the poor in India by large scale dam building projects and the displacement of indigenous communities in Colombia by British-based mining interests.
A final section looks at campaigns and issues, organisations campaigning in this area are listed as an appendix. Teresa Hayter makes an excellent case for the free movement of people. Mark Thomas looks at how banning “terrorist” organisations gives the green light for human rights abuses.
If capital can move across borders without problems then so should people.
Terry LIddle
Both titles available from CAMPACC
http://www.campacc.org.uk/publications.htm
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Link To Review Of Humanism by B.Smoker
http://pub21.bravenet.com/hosting/cms/editpage.php?page=6
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