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Le cercle littéraire des amateurs d’épluchures de patates est un titre étrange et accrocheur qui a tout de suite éveillé ma curiosité. Il percute l’esprit par son opposition entre l’élégance dégagée par  « le cercle littéraire »  et la trivialité du mot « patates », pas même « pomme de terre ».

Passé les premières pages où l’on assiste à un échange de politesse, ce livre parvient bien vite à nous captiver, nous poussant sans cesse à le reprendre une fois posé. Le style simple et constant, sans fioriture, parvient à transporter l’émotion ; les personnages se révèlent vite attachants. Comment résister alors à la fantasque Isola, à la puissance tranquille d’Amélia, à la sombre timidité de Dawsey ou encore au fort caractère de Kit ?

La plume de Mary Ann Shaffer et d’Annie Barrows retranscrit parfaitement l’ambiance de cette communauté insulaire, tant et si bien que l’imagination se laisse bercer et croit qu’il suffirait d’un bateau pour les rejoindre. Les anecdotes des habitants s’entremêlent pleines de larmes ou d’humour tendre, l’humanité transpire des mots et ne peut que vous toucher. Alors, au moment où vous vous habituiez à cette agréable routine, un rebondissement vient surprendre votre regard de lecteur et vous embarque à nouveau dans le tourbillon de la lecture.

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Un titre intrigant, des mots simples mais porteurs d’émotion, une ambiance bien présente et des personnages attachants, ce roman épistolaire saura assurément vous séduire.

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Religion forbids carousing, but makes up for it by providing the abstainer with the activity of abstinence.  Instead, the religious person passes his time thinking about his religiousness.  In this way, he feels purposeful, and resists the boredom that might otherwise result from a lack of entertaining, forbidden pastimes.

Similarly, the romantic pursues romance, not necessarily because they are likely to find the true love they seek, but because the pursuit never ends.  As their quarry eludes them, they find that their time slips by quickly, and though they are in pain, it is pain that they take to be instructional, driving them continually after their wild goose.

The nature of each individual wild goose varies, but they share the common quality of being uncatchable.

The Jerusalem Post reports on an astonishing decision closing off yet another non-violent effort to exert pressure on Israel to end its brutal and illegal occupation of Palestine. Excerpt and link to original news report below.  I wonder when we can expect the North Korean, Iranian, Zimbabwean and Sudanese challenges to boycotts on the grounds that they are discriminatory?

Despite its long history of supporting Israel in defiance of multiple U.N. resolutions, somehow I can’t imagine that a ruling like this, which declares that it is neither illegal nor a violation of one’s freedom of expression for France to fine someone from calling for a boycott of Israeli goods, could ever be passed in the U.S., where freedom of expression is so central to the American political imagination — or at least it was during the Cold War, when freedom of expression was said to be what fundamentally distinguished America from the Soviet Union.

Jerusalem Post Jul 20, 2009
European court: Israel boycotts are unlawful discrimination

By HERB KEINON

Israel finally won one last week in an international human rights court. On Thursday, the Council of Europe’s European Court of Human Rights upheld a French ruling that it was illegal and discriminatory to boycott Israeli goods, and that making it illegal to call for a boycott of Israeli goods did not constitute a violation of one’s freedom of expression.

The Council of Europe is based in Strasbourg, has some 47 member states and is independent of the European Union. The court is made up of one judge from each member state, and the rulings of the court carry moral weight throughout Europe.

On Thursday the court ruled by a vote of 6-1 that the French court did not violate the freedom of expression of the Communist mayor of the small French town of Seclin, Jean-Claude Fernand Willem, who in October 2002 announced at a town hall meeting that he intended to call on the municipality to boycott Israeli products. …

–L.L. Wynn

See here and also here [via Jews sans frontières]

It may indeed be already too late!

Workers at platform-crane manufacturer JLG in south west France won a 30,000 euro pay-out for each of 53 staff made redundant after three weeks of strike action. The tactics employed by the workers – including blocking a high-speed TGV train in a station and placing gas canisters around four cranes on site, threatening to blow them up – won wide attention in the French press and, as this Sud Ouest article demonstrates, showed the value of determined collective action.

“They had no other choice.” Christian Amadio, secretary of the comité d’entreprise at JLG France, is modest in success, despite the oviations by dozens of workers waiting outside the Tonneins mayor’s office until after 1am on Thursday-Friday night. The negotiations were long – more than 7 hours – and bitter. But they paid off in the end. “We won what we fought for. No more.” The agreement is based on a 30,000 euro pay-out for each of 53 workers who will be laid off according to plans announced by the platform-crane manufacturer in April. The names of the laid off workers will be announced in mid-September.

The workers were determined to stick together until the end, even into the early hours if necessary. No-one could leave the negotiating table without a written protocol determining reasonable conditions for departure. Even the storm which broke out in early evening could not dampen their spirits. The most hardy found refuge in the town hall with the mayor Jean-Pierre Moga. “He is the only elected official who we’d like to thank”, said Amadio, “he was always on our side, the others really disappointed us.”

Return to work on Monday

But the wait was a long one for the hundred strikers who will go back to work on Monday after three weeks of occupation of the production sites, punctuated by certain direct actions. “Mentally broken”, some ‘cracked’ while waiting for the negotiations to reach a conclusion. Others, like Pascale, who works in payroll and who joined the ranks of the strikers in the second week, remained calm. “We knew it was at a decisive stage. Everyone in their own way expected some fallout from these three weeks. I got out and went to sleep.”

While some of his colleagues had their ears at the door of the marriage-hall trying to get a trinket of news, played petanque or sipped on a pastis, Pascale was there, eyes closed, her head propped up by Jean. Before the start of the movement she only knew the electrician by sight. Afterwards, much had changed. “We were the company’s workers at the start. But now many of us feel like part of the same family. We have got to know each other and found out what we have in common”, smiled the young woman.

“At each break in the negotiations we saw bigger smiles on the faces of the comité d’entreprise representatives. It was a good sign”, Hélène recounted this morning, with a drawn look on her face. If the wait was a long one, the party which followed at the site, and which some continued until dawn, also left its mark, given the need to unwind.

Pay-off à la gas canister

As for the role of the infamous gas canisters placed around the cranes, opinions were divided. This morning many of the workers were “sure it had helped things along”. “At least it meant they took us seriously”, commented Denis Jalibat, a CGT rep. Christian Amadio was less certain, “Honestly, I’m not sure”. For Éric Martin, vice-director of the département’s labour office, which played a mediation role in the negotiations, “they were there soley for the media effect”. Nonetheless, a deal was signed and the management, whose initial offer was one month’s pay for a worker of two years experience, and then went on to offer up to 16,000 euros, had to sharply increase the pay-out.

In any case, their tactics may well produce copy-cats. “We had our way of doing things, we didn’t plan to become a model”, argued Amadio. “Managing to win this pay-out was above all thanks to the unity of the workforce, which lasted for three weeks and which was not discouraged despite pressure management, who did everything possible to keep the dispute running and salaries unpaid.”

“All in it together, that’s what we have to remind people and all those thinking about not sticking it out”, mused Fabrice, a proud worker in distribution. “Unity was our strength.”

Photo courtesy of HLFRGRFX

Banksy currently has an exhibition on display at the Bristol Museum.  
For more of Banksy’s work, check out his website.

This review was written by Peter Curtis for and published by The Freedom Socialist Party, Australia. http://www.socialism.com/activities/melbourne.html

— Review —

Abolish the ABBC: Demolish the framework of fear!

Review Framework of Flesh: Builder’s Labourers Battle for Health and Safety, Humphrey McQueen, Ginninderra press, 2009.

Will they jail him? Hundreds of unionists in South Australia cheered Ark Tribe as he entered court on 10 March 2009. Tribe is the latest construction worker to be threatened with six months jail for standing up for his right to make the workplace safe and objecting to the flagrant injustice of the Australian Building Construction Commission (ABCC) star-chamber by refusing to answer when questioned. But, will they jail him? The State forces failed to convict Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) organiser Noel Washington last year. With all the penal powers, the police, the ABCCs special powers, and all the law courts of the land, the power of the unions stopped them dead. Despite all the encouragement, belligerence and arrogance of this anti-labour federal government, despite the coercive forces available to the State they failed to follow through their threats. Legal means are no match for the collective response of workers. Solidarity grows from the social and industrial strength that workers build by organising and unifying their unions to better fight for their rights at work.

“In 1890, The Victorian Master Builders demanded the sacking of the colony’s coroner because he believed that his duties went beyond establishing the cause of ‘accidental’ death to preventing its recurrence. The coroner had attributed the death of a bricklayer to the vice-president of the Builders’ and Contractors’ Association.” In 2009, Julia Gillard, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Workplace Relations, declared to the union movement that she and her government are unashamedly acting for these same business interests. Gillard, at the behest of her corporate masters, has made her choice and it is as bad as the other ‘choices’ we have got rid of. The Government is doing what ever has to be done to create economic and industrial conditions suited to maximising the corporations’ profits. Gillard and her ABCC are clear — woe betides any workers who demand, agitate, and enforce their rights to make a workplace safe.

Humphrey McQueen’s latest book, Framework of Flesh: Builder’s Labourers Battle for Health and Safety is an essential tool for the job of building our strength and organising our response to the bastardry of corporate bosses and their political minions within the labour movement. We are provided with a critical eye to workers’ activity on the job. The stories of labourers’ battles with their bosses as they respond to the logic of a system that drives capitalists’ to exploit, maim and kill, are insightful. Drawing on 130 years of evidence, McQueen resurrects the voices of the labourers themselves and allows them the opportunity to testify to the exploitation, the deaths, and the abuses committed by Messrs Construction Capital. Voices like Charlie Sullivan’s live on from the 1920s when he wrote that history was made by “the great and humble army whose sweat and blood are mingled in the concrete and bricks as surely as if the walls were built over a framework of human flesh.”

Such sentiment is a sobering reminder to those of us who are fortunate enough to avoid nursing a lifetimes of muscle strains, crushed bones and collapsed lungs through to retirement at age 67 — yet another of the federal government’s propositions for improving the quality of old age! McQueen asks his reader to consider the evidence, admissions and arguments that the bosses’ knowingly and actively enforce the neglect of health and safety at work. The historical evidence advises that ours is not a ‘brave new world’ but one where old objectives are still pursued today but in new ways: “In 1855 factory owners in Manchester, England organised and collected 50 thousand pounds to meet the costs of defending members who had been prosecuted by the factory inspectors. The object was to prove ‘killing is not murder’ if done for the sake of profit.”

Diminishing the labourers’ efforts by trivialising their struggles and sacrificing lives is an essential part of ruling class propaganda that is absorbed and disseminated by the corporate mass-media and perpetuated by too many of their journalists. Framework of Flesh is an antidote to the world of their creation. Few know what takes place on construction sites and they lack the experience and imagination of the Director of Construction for the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the 1930s, “who acknowledged the emotional strain: ‘Every day those men went on the bridge, they went in the same way as a soldier goes into battle, not knowing wether they would come down alive’.”

Yet despite a construction worker being killed every week between 1996 and 2005 and 41 deaths in 2003 alone, the Cole Commission presumed the innocence of the construction bosses. “From mid 2001, the Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry repackaged the accusation that labourers threw themselves off buildings to get compensation. … to allege that unions provoked disputes over health and safety to win industrial demands such as Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBAs) … According to Commissioner Cole, this ‘widespread exploitation’ of bosses had trivialised safety. In truth, workers on EBAs were as half as likely to be injured as those outside them. Pressing for an EBA was, therefore, a safety matter.”

The words of Ben Mulvogue, Secretary of the Builders’ Labourers’ Federation, should resonate today. In 1915, he reminded and reassured his members that: “the union does antagonise, and strives to abolish many things that are, and advocates and tries to inaugurate changes which should, and will, be made in the future. … The object and aims of the union movement and the realisation thereof have been the dream of the sages and seers, and the prophets of the past ages. Every new demand for better physical protection of the workers ensures a great ideal development for future generations.” Rights are not privileges to be handed out by the master to be taken back when they choose. Fighting for our rights at work and health and safety go hand in hand, they are only won and defended through struggle. Even if we could vote for our rights, this act would not prevent deaths and injuries at work. To absorb and act on this knowledge is ‘responsible unionism’ — the agitation and organisation for workers’ rights.

The West Gate Bridge towering over the Melbourne docks is an ever present memorial to those workers and their families who lost a life in the “most murderous of all incidents on Australian construction sites.” Workers recently contracted by Leightons to carry out repairs on the overloaded bridge only to be duped of their wages and conditions, and see their health and safety representative and union delegates sacked, are now being represented in the media as the “violent thugs that are threatening to undermine every principle of human decency.” In recent weeks Leightons’ corporate leaders, are carrying on Hollands’ legacy: while recognising that the lack of health and safety on sites could not be ignored, in practice the pursuit of profits came first for both.

Frameworks of Flesh makes an outstanding contribution to the continual struggle to make construction sites fit for workers to work on. It is much more than that however, because the research is so thorough. McQueen provides both the evidence and the analysis necessary to make sense of why builders, and capitalists generally, do what they do. Understanding developments by interrogating our history are necessary if unionists are to prepare themselves for the inevitable struggles ahead. The proposed national standards for Occupational Health and Safety will fall a long way short of where we need them to be unless unionists get organised and demand something better. Both unfettered right of entry for union officials and the ability of unions to collectively bargain and organise across an industry are essential steps toward safer workplaces. The ABCC may finally be abolished but this government’s intention is to maintain it and merely re-badge it. Our best form of defence is to strengthen both our individual understanding and our collective capacity to resist by learning from the combined wisdom that is accrued from our own experience and that of working people yesterday and today. Framework of Flesh is one exemplar from which we all can benefit.

Peter Curtis

Peter Curtis is a socialist and campaigner for the equitable provision of education. He is a teacher and a member of the Australian Education Union. Framework of Flesh is available for $30 from Solidarity Salon. www.framework-of-flesh.com.au

Speakers’ notes for the Demolition of the
Australian Building and Construction Commission and the
Defense of Ark Tribe.

It is very important that the word is passed around to as many people as we can get to. This includes addressing youth groups, book groups, church groups, and any collective of concerned citizens.
Following is a selection of speaking points for anyone who is addressing a group to inform them of these real threats to getting home safely from a day at work. It is important for fellow workers and citizens to understand that the battle against the ABCC is in defense of our civil liberties and democratic rights. The ‘Spirit of Eureka’ could be invoked here.
Use them and please adapt these points according to your audience.
Other additions, thoughts and examples are welcomed. For example a few lines of the song ‘Solidarity for Ever’ could be included to sing at the end of a meeting.

Outline
A) Speakers Notes.
1. The Construction Commission is an issue For All Working Australians Who Value A ‘Fair Go’.
2. Federal ALP And The “Tough Cop On The Beat”
3. What kind of democracy? – Exercising Our Rights to Participate – Making our Communities and Unions matter.
4. Everyday on site building workers are menaced by the absence of health and safety … Young apprentices and training, and safety at work.
B) Statement of defiance
C) Model motion
D) Personal message to Ark Tribe
E) Appendix including other useful contacts and web sites.

The CFMEU’s Construction Division’s Campaign
to defeat the unjust laws of ABCC

1. This is an issue for all working Australians who value a fair go.
At the ACTU Congress in June, every union in this country indicated its opposition to these unjust laws being used against workers.

You have all seen the Work Safe ads on television – “talk it, act it, get home alive”

www.workcover.vic.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/WorkSafe/SiteTools/About+WorkSafe/Campaigns

Real Threats – to lives of workers, and livelihoods of whole families

Did you know? In this fair and democratic country, Australia, values that we care about are being violated by the fact that an working man faces being sent to jail for 6 months for alerting government health and safety authorities to unsafe working conditions that threatened the lives of his and fellow workers.

Occupational Health and Safety laws breaches by employers, like those that Ark and his work mates identified, are, in effect, being imposed on workers by the Construction Commission because any action taken to protect safety and conditions is deemed unlawful.

The Construction Commission is the biggest threat to workers health and safety
www.rightsonsite.org.au provides footage of the circumstances of the dispute that leaves Ark facing the ABCC, the courts and gaol. Ark also explains why he is taking the action he is taking.
The questions – Why has nothing fundamentally changed under an ALP government?
• A government put in to power by the combined activity of tens of thousands of workers under the banner of YOUR RIGHTS AT WORK.
• Why is this government – that was put in to power to get rid of the Howard laws – now breaking its promise to get rid of those laws?
• Why is Working safe and “talking it and acting on it so get home alive” illegal if you are a construction worker?

2. Federal ALP and the “Tough cop on the beat”
Gillard’s proof? – Speech in parliament
“high levels of unlawfulness as evidenced by allegations, investigations, prosecutions, audits AND THE LIKE” !!?? … but … NO CONVICTIONS!

Why we need to DEFEND THE ACTIONS of Ark Tribe.
We CANNOT TOLERATE going to work and LEAVING OUR RIGHTS AT HOME.

Ark Tribe – Will they jail him? How do we Demolish this framework of fear?

Will they jail him? Hundreds of unionists in South Australia cheered Ark Tribe as he entered court on the 10th March 2009. Ark is the latest construction worker to be threatened with six months jail for standing up for his right to make a workplace safe and objecting to the flagrant injustice of the Australian Building and Construction Commission’s (ABCC) star-chamber by refusing to answer when questioned.
But, will they jail him? The State forces failed to convict CFMEU organiser Noel Washington late last year. With all the penal powers, the police, the special powers, and all the law courts of the land, the power of the unions stopped them dead. Despite the belligerence and arrogance of this anti-labour federal government and the coercive powers and forces available to them the enforcers failed to follow through their threats.
Legal means are no match for workers’ organised collective response from on the job. Solidarity grows from the social and industrial strength that workers build by organising and unifying themselves. Solidarity is vital to better fight for our rights at work.
While there is an ABCC there will never be Rights at Work in a Fair Work Australia.

The reason CFMEU is being targeted is because it has over decades persistently campaigned for better Health and Safety on building sites and demolition sites.
• Asbestos from 1970’s on
• Public Housing
• Environmental green bans
• Air and water pollution

3. WHAT KIND OF DEMOCRACY IS IT WHEN WE CANNOT EXERCISE OUR RIGHTS AND PARTICIPATE?
It is these kind of actions – practically demonstrate what it means to exercising our rights and participation means – THAT IS HOW WE MAKE AND DEFEND A DEMOCRACY.

Taking a stand on defending our rights at work, to express our collective opinion, and putting words into action is the BEST WAY TO UNDERSTAND AND PROTECT OUR DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS.

Making our Communities and Unions matter
What does a fair and democratic Australia mean? The best way to answer this question is by helping each other and showing people through collective actions.
Unions matter for making and keeping Australia a fairer and democratic society.

The Liberal Howard Legacy: Terror; Alert and Alarmed; Constructing Fear
• From 2000 to 2003 Liberal Government spent $60 million on the Cole Royal Commission into building workers
• $20 million dollars was spent on anti-terrorist measures!
WHY? To smash unions; exercising rights for safe conditions and protect lives; livelihoods.
• Workchoices was the end result.
• Your Rights at Work Campaign – Tens of thousands of workers organised to defeat Workchoices. We sacked the government and its leader Howard.
Why to STOP UNIONS connecting to larger social and environmental issues STOP taking on responsibilities beyond immediate industrial issues.
UNIONISTS are people who live in the community!

Gillard speech; where is the violence and where are the convictions?
NO EVIDENCE!
When was the last time a building worker menaced you?

• We have criminal laws to deal with workers who commit crimes on site.
• Why has labour law that is meant to improve and protect conditions for workers now become a sub-branch of the criminal code?
The Construction Commission is the greatest threat to safety
Why isn’t WorkSafe tackling the Commission?
4. EVERYDAY ON SITE BUILDING WORKERS ARE MENACED BY THE ABSENCE OF HEALTH AND SAFETY – BEFORE THE UNION CLEANED UP unsafe SITES WERE UNSAFE.
THE CURRENT UNION CAMPAIGN HAS HAD AN EFFECT
Gillard’s definition of violence does not extend to the tens of thousands of building and construction workers expected to die from asbestos-related diseases. No executive or director of James Hardie faces penal sanctions over that slaughter.

Gillard acknowledged that health and safety issues were ‘deliberately not included in Mr. Wilcox’s terms of reference’. That exclusion meant that Wilcox could not investigate one of the principal realms of illegalities by employers, or use that investigation to explain the levels of unlawfulness by workers defending themselves, as in the case of Ark Tribe. Under the review’s unbalanced terms of reference, would Tribe’s conscience have allowed him to accept Wilcox’s fee of $326, 974?

• WILCOX REVIEW – No OH&S – what sort of conscience accepts $315 K
• PM Kevin Rudd’s government is still funding the ABCC to the tune of $32 million a year. Murray Wilcox, a former federal court chief justice, was appointed to review the powers of the ABCC. He has also been asked to report on the integration of the ABCC into Labor’s proposed industrial relations umbrella, Fair Work Australia, by February 2010.
• Even though Wilcox said in an October 3 discussion paper that the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act was “discriminatory” against building workers, he did not call for its abolition far from it.
• Still bad laws though – band-aids don’t stop infections.
Young apprentices and training and safety at work – If there is any remaining doubts – REMEMBER OUR KIDS – LEST WE FORGET.
See E) Appendix for further information

B) Model motion
This meeting supports the actions of Ark Tribe to defend his democratic rights to free speech and speak out and act against laws that prevent construction workers working safely. Ensuring that employers meet their legal and statutory obligations in providing the necessary conditions for safe work practices requires the organising power and support of a union. We support and encourage actions of Ark Tribe in refusing to provide evidence to the ABCC or any other body that denies him his legal right of presumption of innocence, and to legal representation of his choice. We call on the federal government to disband the ABCC.

C) Statement of Defiance
Support Ark Tribe and his Right to a Safe Workplace.
We the undersigned welcome the refusal of Ark Tribe to provide evidence to the ABCC. We call on our fellow Australians to join Ark Tribe in breaking the laws. We accept that in signing this statement we make ourselves libel to prosecution for incitement to break the law.
Name Address email Organisation Signature

D) Personal support for Ark. Ark is standing up for all of us by defending our rights at work. While he has the support of the union and of many workers from around the country it is important to let him know. All said and done he is the one facing 6 months in a gaol.
See Ark Tribe on You Tube, and Send support to Ark on www.rightsonsite.org.au

E) Appendix and other useful websites
Adelaide woman Andrea Madeley has called for the national adoption of industrial manslaughter laws.
Her plea follows a $72,000 fine imposed by an Adelaide magistrate on local business Diemould Pty Ltd which had employed her teenage son Daniel until his death in their workplace on Saturday June 5, 2004.
Her call follows the state Labor government’s disgraceful attack on worker’s compensation laws last year, and the Federal Labor governments “lowest common denominator” approach to a standardised national set of worker’s compensation laws.
The teenager suffered fatal injuries when his dustcoat became caught in the unguarded spinning shaft of one of the company’s boring machines. He died the next day in the Flinders Medical Centre.
The boy suffered injuries to every part of his body – his brain bled severely, his spine was lacerated, his arms and legs were broken and both feet were severed – in the incident.
“I need to ask Daniel’s employer these questions now,” said Andrea Madeley. “We’re talking about a machine capable of tearing a human being apart – please tell me what the hell you were thinking having Daniel operating that thing alone in the factory in the middle of the night?
“It will be my life’s work to hound the conscience of shoddy operations – companies that believe the bottom line is more important than the lives of their workers and their loved ones. That is the promise I made to Danny. I aim to keep it.” www.void.org.au http://www.void.org.au/index.html

Ark Tribe on you tube and Send support to Ark on www.rightsonsite.org.au
www.rightsonsite.org.au provides footage of the circumstances of the dispute that leaves Ark facing the ABCC, the courts and gaol. Ark also explains why he is taking the action he is taking.
www.workcover.vic.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/WorkSafe/SiteTools/About+WorkSafe/Campaigns – provides the ads seen on TV
www.void.org.au Voice of Industrial Death. To keep her promise to her son, and to help the families of other victims of workplace death, Andrea established the organisation VOID (Victims Of Industrial Death) in May 2006. She is its foundation President, and maintains this website for the organisation.
chriswhiteonline.org/2009/06/arks-tribe
www.framework-of-flesh.com.au “I hope that Framework of Flesh is read by every building worker and by all those with an interest in occupational health and safety.” Linda Clarke. Framework of Flesh: Builders’ Labourers Battle for Health & Safety by Humphrey McQueen, published by Ginninderra Press, Adelaide, 2009

Howard Dean was on the program Democracy Now! on Friday when co-host Juan Gonzales departed from the subject of Health Care reform to a question about Afghanistan:

JUAN GONZALEZ: In terms of the—to get back again to other issues right now, I’d like to ask you about the continuation and expansion of the American war in Afghanistan. Do you have concerns about—that this is becoming really President Obama’s war—

HOWARD DEAN: It is.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —and the impact on our country in the future?

HOWARD DEAN: Look, again, you know—and I don’t have to say anything nice; I’m not in the administration. But I’m with Obama on his conduct of the war. I always said, when I was running against the Iraq war, that Afghanistan was different.

Let me tell you what the stakes are now. And what I find incredibly refreshing about this president is he uttered words that Lyndon Johnson never said, which is that we cannot win this war militarily. He knows that from the get-go. Here’s what’s at stake. It’s not just the Taliban. I think we could probably control the Taliban and the al-Qaeda in the Northwest territories by doing some of the things we’re already doing—drones and air power and so forth. Roughly 50 percent of the Afghan people are women. They will be condemned to conditions which are very much like slavery and serfdom in a twelfth century model of society where they have no rights whatsoever. So, I’m not saying we have to invade every country that doesn’t treat women as equal, but we’re there now. We have a responsibility. And if we leave, women will experience the most extraordinary depredations of any population on the face of the earth. I think we have some obligation to try and see if we can make this work, not just for America and our security interests, but for the sake of women in Afghanistan and all around the globe. Is this acceptable to treat women like this? I think not.

AMY GOODMAN: We just interviewed an Afghan parliamentarian, Dr. Wardak. She said the opposite. She said, yes, she agrees with you on the way women are treated, but that this is worsening the treatment, that the increased number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, the huge number of troops that are coming in right now, are alienating the Afghan population.

HOWARD DEAN: Well, that—and that is the clear challenge for this president and for the generals who are over there, is can they stop that? Because if they don’t, we’ll be out of there much faster than we ought to be, and we will be leaving behind 50 percent of a population who are going to experience horrendous depredations and set back the cause of women’s equality around the world by decades.

There you have it folks! All these years later, Liberals are still using Afghan women as justification for the continuing occupation of the country! In this, there is little difference between the words of Howard Dean and any radio address given by Laura Bush during her husband’s administration. Of course, in these remarks, no analysis is ever given to the fact that warlords and other anti-women politicians make up a good part of the nucleus of the “post-Taliban” government.

Time and time again, by both parties, the women of Afghanistan have been used as a prop. It’s simple folks. War, as a phenomenon that disproportionately effects women, will not liberate them. What? Am I supposed to believe that the gusts of winds generated from the blasts of U.S. bombs will be so forceful that they will just blow those burqas right off for good? Liberation!

As one of the first posts on this blog I would like to put some short stories from three boys I am working with. I asked them to write something about themselves and the place they live in. So here they are:

”My name is Waleed, I’m from Deheishe camp and I wish the soldiers left Palestine. Then I could visit many places and learn in many cities. I know this wish will never come true but I say this because the Israelis occupied our land and kill our people and destroy our homes so we live in a refugee camp where there are thousands like me waiting until our land is free.”

”Hi, my name is Osama, I’m 18 years old. I’m a teenager from Palestine, I live in a small refugee camp where there are more than 16.000 people living on 1 square kilometer. Our lands are occupied by the Israelis and they call it their land. They destroyed our homes, farms and villages. I haven’t visited my village, I can see it between the mountains but the Israeli soldiers are killing when we try to enter it. There are about 1 million people like me or even more than that who left their lands and homes in 1948 nakba. ”

”Hi, my name is Mahmoud Yacoub, I am 17 years old, I live in Deheishe camp with my family. Palestine is my country which is the most what I like. We have a life here – may be not normal – but it’s okey. I hope that Palestine will be free and peaceful. ”

I would like to say to those who don’t know much about the nature of the occupation that the freedom of movement for Palestinians is severely restricted and it is one of the most humiliating and painful to bear policies that Israeli government imposed on them. The Palestinian children have never been to the ”live” sea, I mean Mediterranean Sea, even if it’s less than 80km (around 50 miles).

I was taken to the highest point in this crowded refugee camp from where we could see the surrounding areas. A local boy showed me the hills next to the camp on which there was an illegal Israeli settlement (they are all illegal under international law). He said that if someone tried to go up tose hills which used to be Palestinian land, they would get shot straight away. You could also see ”Israeli only” roads. The view was disturbing and so sad, I had tears in my eyes but didn’t want to show that to the boy who took me there. Tears are not the sign of weakness, or are they?

this from al jazeera this week…apparently my home state of california will be launching missile tests in collusion with the zionist terrorist colonial regime:

Israel is set to hold a missile test on a US missile range in the Pacific Ocean in an exercise that will also see the US test three missile defence systems, a senior US general has said.

The test site will allow Israel to measure its Arrow interceptor missile system against a target at a range of more than 1,000km, Army Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly, director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, said on Tuesday.

“They [Israel] are having a flight test soon this summer,” he said.

“They are limited to the range of the missile they can test in the eastern Mediterranean. There’s a safety issue.

“That’s the primary purpose of them coming to the United States to use our test range.”

The Arrow system, which was developed by Israel and the United States, is intended to defend Israel against possible ballistic missile attacks from Iran and Syria.

It will be the third such test held by Israel in the United States, a US defence official said.

US test

The exercise is likely to take place within the next few days off the central California coast, between Santa Barbara and Point Mugu.

The test will also give the US military a chance to test its own anti-ballistic missile systems, O’Reilly said.

“The upcoming test also provides us the opportunity to have the Patriot system, the THAAD system and the Aegis system all interacting with the Arrow system so that we’re demonstrating full inter-operability as we execute this test,” he said.

But he said that the exercise would only test certain elements of US missile defence systems and be a largely Israeli operation.

Israel successfully test-launched its Arrow II interceptor missile in April, shooting down a target simulating an Iranian Shehab missile over the Mediterranean Sea.

Israel has expressed concerns that Iran’s uranium enrichment programme is aimed at producing nuclear warheads that could be attached to ballistic missiles.

Iran has repeatedly denied that it is pursuing a nuclear weapons programme, saying that its uranium enrichment work is geared towards generating electricity.

it doesn’t get more complicit than that.

apparently, palestinian children in jerusalem scare the zionist terrorist colonists who occupy that city. two disturbing news items of note from today:

1. Israeli authorities decided to shut down the offices of the Nidal Center for Community Development in the old city of Jerusalem on Wednesday. Israeli forces raided the offices and ordered employees to evacuate their offices.

The center was shut down because Israel claims it poses a “security threat”. According to the closure order that was posted on the doors of the center the center will be closed until the 11th of August.

The Health Works Committees, of which the Nidal center is an affiliate, says “the closure is part of an Israeli campaign against the holy city of Jerusalem aimed at judaizing the city”.

The Nidal center is not the only center that has recently been closed down by the Israeli authorities. Around a month ago a similar closure order was presented to the Palestinian African Community Center, based inside the old city next to the Al-Aqsa compound.

2. A group of Arab summer camp children were banned from entering Temple Mount in Jerusalem while wearing their camp t-shirts.

When the children arrived at Temple Mount wearing their orange summer camp shirt, which read ”Al-Quds – Arab Culture Capital,’ police officers told them that if they wish to enter, the shirts must come off.

The incident took place Tuesday when children from the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Tzur Baher toured Jerusalem’s Old City as part of their summer camp activities. However, what should have been an enjoyable day out quickly became a humiliating experience.

Fuad Abu Hamed, whose son was among the children, told Ynet that “The officers held them up at the entrance to Temple Mount for more than an hour and a half, and demanded (all children) take off their shirts…including the ones who didn’t have an undershirt”.

The camp’s guides tried to diminish the sense of humiliation for the children wearing no undershirts and quickly purchased clothes for them in the Old City.

Hamed says his son returned home wearing only an undershirt.

Jim Moody sees a danger of opposition to the war in Afghanistan merging with the way that war is waged

More British service personnel have now died in Afghanistan than during the war in Iraq: 184 compared to 179. And the death rate has clearly accelerated. Between Thursday and Friday last week eight were killed. Fighting the Taliban has cost the lives of 15 British soldiers so far this month.

While there appears to have been some hardening of support for a continued British presence in Afghanistan over recent years, a near majority is still opposed. An ICM poll of 1,000 adults within the last week reported that 46% backed British involvement in Afghanistan, with 47% against; three years ago, polls showed 31% backing and 53% opposing. As many as 42% want British forces out of Afghanistan now, while 56% want all troops withdrawn by the end of this year.

In the face of these frankly unsupportive poll results, foreign secretary David Miliband could only lamely reiterate the UK government’s complete commitment to support the US in Afghanistan; an additional 700 troops are shortly to take the number of British forces to 9,100.

Under its umbrella, Operation Enduring Freedom, the USA has more than 28,000 troops, together with some junior coalition forces operating mainly in the east and south of Afghanistan adjacent to the border with Pakistan. Over 23,000 more US troops are marshalled within the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) under Nato control (ie, led by the USA). British forces in Afghanistan constitute nearly as many as those provided to ISAF by France, Italy and Germany combined, so it is clear who is the USA’s most dependable ally.

The vague ‘grand strategy’ is often asserted by British ministers to be on track, partly comprising as it does the normalisation of Afghanistan before elections to the puppet regime due to be held on August 20. Afghan army strength has now reached 90,000, but with little sign on the ground that they are other than quite secondary actors in operations of any consequence. But what the overall strategy of the occupation of Afghanistan actually is never gets clearly specified.

The Russian empire in the 19th century managed to conquer the mountainous Caucasus and bring it within its control. In the same century, the ‘great game’ was played out between Russia and Britain over a geographically comparable Afghanistan. While it is, of course, possible to subdue Afghanistan, as the several Afghan wars attest, the question that arises presently is whether the ostensible or full benefits to the USA and the UK are worth the cost in material and humans. What social system is likely to be the end result of this current war and occupation?

Afghanistan offers no agricultural or mineral resources of any note. Getting rid of the opium poppy trade is a nonsense militarily. What we are left with are purely political reasons for war in Afghanistan.

While the British government acts as the Obama administration’s lapdog, Brown spouts the line that fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan prevents terrorism in the UK. He and his fellow apologists point to the Taliban’s influence in Pakistan, whose northernmost parts have been colonised by them.

And so the slogan of defeating the Taliban on the streets of London becomes the justification for another imperialist adventure. After all, as everyone knows, bin Laden found refuge in Afghanistan after 9/11. Western governments’ stated fear is that he and his al-Qa’eda will once more use Afghanistan as a base if there is any let-up in the ‘cleansing’ operation that imperialist forces are engaged in.

So Obama is no pacifist on Afghanistan, despite his dovish noises over Iraq. In fact, as US troop levels fall in Iraq, they are being increased in Afghanistan. Obama is intent on a Bush-like surge there, to which Britain adds its contingent of extra forces. On this at least Brown and Cameron have no significant differences: both will without doubt continue to back up the USA’s war effort in Afghanistan following the next election.

Opposition in Britain to the war and occupation of Afghanistan is nowhere near as divisive as was opposition to the attack on Iraq. While Iraq ranked as the top political issue, Afghanistan is a long way down the list. Recent polls bear this out. But there is considerable opposition nonetheless, with its main organisational focus being Stop the War Coalition.

Much is being made in the bourgeois media of the use of snatch Landrovers and the lack of air transport for troops and the way that this limits the versatility of those on the ground. Ground transport, even if armoured, takes fairly predictable routes and thus becomes vulnerable to attack by the Taliban. Were troops to be whisked in and out of conflict zones by helicopter on a regular basis, their commanders would be able to second-guess the enemy and score victories with many fewer casualties – or at least that is the argument. Not that this would in any way win ‘hearts and minds’. The troops are, after all, supposed to be securing Afghanistan’s countryside, so allow-ing the occupation to end.

Former chief of the general staff Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, has been vocal in claiming that a shortage of helicopters has meant UK forces are in greater danger through ground, rather than air, travel. However, it is not the job of those who are opposed to UK forces, as well as US and other allied forces, being in Afghanistan at all to devise what can only amount to more effective ways of killing Afghans, be they Taliban or whatever.

Under the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party, Stop the War has a policy of ‘broadness at all costs’. This clearly runs the risk of opposition to the war itself merging with opposition to the way the war is being waged. People like Rose Gentle – mother of Gordon Gentle, a soldier killed in Iraq in 2003 – have been doing an excellent job campaigning against the presence of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Inevitably, however, other speakers from Military Families Against the War will express worries about deficiencies in the equipment supplied to fighting units. This is perfectly understandable. After all, they have either lost loved ones or have them operating in Afghanistan. But there is the danger that such concerns feed directly into the Tory and top brass clamour for more helicopters and strike aircraft. The best way of protecting troops is, after all, by wiping out the enemy.

This is, of course, not the intention of the STWC leadership, which staged a demonstration in London on July 13 to mark the death toll for British troops in Afghanistan exceeding that in Iraq. Such initiatives are certainly to be commended, as is STWC’s petition calling for an end to the British presence. It is unfortunate, however, that the petition demands that “the government commence the withdrawal of all British military forces from Afghanistan” (my emphasis) rather than insisting they be pulled out immediately. Similarly the phrasing, “only the Afghan people themselves can generate a political solution to their country’s problems”, can reinforce the notion that the occupation has been basically well-meaning rather than multiplying those “problems”.

here are some things the zionist entity is spending your good, american, hard-earned tax dollars on:

1. Intelligence agents have been offering young Palestinians cash bribes as incentive to spy for Israel during interrogation at military checkpoints near the West Bank city of Tulkarem.

A number of Palestinians told Ma’an that Israeli officers stopped their cars and detained the Ennav and Jabara checkpoints. While detaining the Palestinians at the checkpoints, the intelligence men offered cash and permits to enter Israel if they agreed to collaborate.

During the interrogation, the same young men said, they were asked about their income and social status. They were also asked to divulge their mobile phone numbers.

After refusing to cooperate, the men were released but given letters summoning them for further interrogation at the Israeli military headquarters south of Tulkarem.

The issue of collaborators is sensitive in Palestinian society, because information provided by Israel’s spies has often led to the arrest or assassination of political and military leaders.

2. Israel will offer more than $3,500 to any foreign Maccabiah participant who decides to stay, the Immigrant Absorption Ministry announced on Sunday.

The Maccabiah, often called “the Jewish Olympics,” has brought some 5,700 Jewish athletes and their coaches to Israel from all over the world in time for the opening ceremony on Monday in Ramat Gan.

For the first time, the Ministry for Immigrant Absorption is offering participants from abroad a special assistance package to the tune of nearly NIS 15,000 in addition to standard assistance given to immigrants.

The grant will include a one-time stipend of NIS 4,000 for sports equipment and a monthly stipend of NIS 1,200 for nine months during the first year in university or college for anyone beginning school before 2011. Additionally, the ministry will subsidize salaries given to the new immigrants by their employers for a period of 24 months.

Photo Credit: HLFRGRFX

Location: Hillel Street, Jerusalem

The year after college graduation, I moved to our nation’s capital to participate in the first year of the Capital Fellows Program, a program that operates under the umbrella of the National Fellows Initiative, and seeks to prepare the next generation to live cohesive and coherent lives for Christ.

As a part of this program, we spent a lot of time talking and thinking the concept of vocation and our own individual callings, with the belief that our faith is not merely lived out on Sundays but that we are also meant to work “for the sake of doing a thing that is well that which is well worth doing” (Sayers).

During the fellows year, I decided that I had a pretty decent handle on what that meant, and that it would be relatively easy to go into the work force and demonstrate my passions and my giftings and spend each day really living in Paul’s command in Colossians 3 to work for God.

Like most notions as they transition from abstract to reality, my ideas of vocation became a lot harder to sustain once I actually was faced with the opportunity to implement them.

Today, I came across an article at RELEVANT magazine which expressed my thoughts about living in this tension of calling and reality:

A few years ago, I was struggling with the two—occupation and vocation. I sensed my heart was leading me to live with reckless abandon, to pursue my dreams and passions, while my mind was telling me to live with careful reservation, pursuing a responsible and stable life in preparation for marriage. I was worried I was facing a crossroads in my life, and I was, quite frankly, anxious about “selling out.”

…Maybe it’s not a bad thing to struggle with the concepts of occupation and vocation. Maybe the real tragedy is in not struggling at all—in flaking out on your responsibilities for the sake of your “calling” or compromising your dream for the sake of security. Maybe those of us who don’t lose sleep over the idea of calling and living responsibly are indeed missing out.