A stain on the world's conscience
Monday 19 November 2012by John Wight Printable Email
As ever, the dominant narrative being presented to us on the current conflict in Gaza is that Israel is defending itself and its civilians against unprovoked aggression by Palestinian terrorists.
And as expected, it is the same narrative being pushed in Washington and London, as, like a well-rehearsed play, the actors involved perform their respective roles with the same old aplomb.
It is the same narrative we have been subjected to over countless years, one intended to paint Israel, that democratic outpost of Western civilisation surrounded by barbarian hordes intent on its destruction, as perennial victim.
But as in the past, so as now, it is a lie.
The truth is the current conflict has little if anything to do with Hamas or its rockets.
It does however have everything to do with the state of Israel's decades-long policy of occupation, embargo, siege, collective punishment, expropriation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
Israel's war is not with Hamas but with the Palestinian people in their entirety, both the 1.5 million in Gaza and the 2.5 to three million in the West Bank.
It is a war waged every hour of every day there is occupation, checkpoints, and settlements.
It is a war waged every hour of every day there is an economic embargo, siege, and collective punishment.
It is a war being waged every second of the indignity and humiliation suffered by its victims.
Yet despite the irrefutable facts of Israel's barbaric treatment of a people criminalised for daring to exist, we are treated to a constant inversion of the truth, which holds that the many and multiple depredations being suffered by the Palestinians do not amount to one of the most sustained and grievous crimes against humanity in history, but are the result of their intransigence and violence.
This is the song of colonialism. The victims always bring it on themselves. If only they would learn to bear their chains in silence.
As Golda Meir said, "We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children."
And they are killing them, right now, even as the world looks on - again.
Worse, when we consider that Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people constitutes a clear and inarguable breach of international law, and has done for decades, the Western media's continuing policy of ascribing a moral equivalence between Israel, an oppressive settler colonial state, and the Palestinians, an oppressed colonised people, monumental insult is added to monstrous injury. There is no moral equivalence. Nor can there ever be.
Israel's latest military assault against the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, which, at 40km long and 10km wide with a population of between 1.5 and 1.7 million people, is one of the most densely populated pieces of land in the world, goes by the biblical name of Operation Pillar of Cloud.
As with Operation Cast Lead four years ago, during which 1,400 Palestinians were killed, thousands more were wounded and war crimes, as adduced by the UN and the Red Cross, were committed wholesale, this latest military operation is designed to terrify the Palestinians into submission.
The major, though as yet unquantifiable, difference between now and then is Egypt.
Hosni Mubarak, Israel's man in Cairo, has been replaced by Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected president of Egypt and champion of the Muslim Brotherhood, and at time of writing the prime minister of Egypt has already visited Gaza to show solidarity and offer Egypt's rhetorical support to the Palestinians.
The question now is how this support will manifest if, as expected, Israel escalates its assault in the days ahead.
The answer could well have a bearing on the future not only for the Palestinians but the region as a whole.
The Obama administration, thus far supporting Israel in Washington's time-honoured fashion, will not relish the prospect of strained relations with the most populous Arab nation in the world.
Not now with the region still in a state of flux as a result of the Arab spring. And not even despite the fact that Israel is and remains the US's closest ally.
Former US president Ronald Reagan, with the candour of a man accustomed to making and breaking governments at will, said it best.
"The greatest security for Israel is to create new Egypts."
A new Egypt has been created, not by Israel or the US but by the Egyptian people. And it remains to be seen how this will affect Israel's ability to continue in the old way.
It is a question that is still to be answered. What we know for certain now is that oppression breeds resistance.
The rockets being fired against Israel from inside Gaza are the natural response of a people under siege for the crime of exercising their democratic right to elect a government of their own choice.
And when it comes to that government, Hamas's supreme crime, according to Israel and its apologists, is that in its charter it states its desire to see the destruction of Israel.
Standing alone and shorn of any historical or actual context, it is a desire that cannot be understood or accepted by any reasonable person.
But add this context, in the shape of the previously mentioned decades-long occupation and policy of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and national humiliation - is it really beyond comprehension that the people suffering this oppression may develop along the way a hatred of their oppressor, however irrational it might seem to us who don't live under this kind of oppression and consequently could never understand its dehumanising impact?
In the last analysis, the only way Israel will ever be able to guarantee its security is if it guarantees the security of the Palestinians.
This will first of all require an end to the inherent racism that exists in the heart of every coloniser towards those being colonised.
The Palestinians are not subhumans. They are not products of a lesser culture or race.
They are a people who have suffered six decades of injustice that continues as a stain on the conscience of the world.
Incinerating their children in the name of civilisation and democracy renders both meaningless.
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Tuesday, 20 November 2012
Monday, 22 October 2012
Comment
Marching for real change
Friday 19 October 2012 Printable Email
David Cameron entertained his backbenchers this week - it doesn't take much - by ridiculing Ed Miliband's decision to speak at today's A Future that Works protest in London.
Cameron chortled, as only privately educated beneficiaries of inherited, tax-dodged wealth can do, that the Labour leader was ingratiating himself with his trade union paymasters by attending "the most lucrative sponsored walk in history.
What a card and what a loss to the world of stand-up comics when Cameron renounced comedy for politics.
This braying ass and his back-bench sycophantic gigglers wouldn't understand in a month of Sundays why hundreds of thousands of people are taking to the streets of London, Glasgow and Belfast.
The short answer is in opposition to the Tory-Liberal Democrat government policies, but a more detailed response would cover a catalogue of crimes committed by this conservative coalition and its own corporate paymasters.
It won't just be trade unionists protesting, although they have reasons enough to do so.
Whether in the public or private sector, workers have seen job losses, pay restraint, attacks on pension schemes and plans to undermine trade union representation.
Council tenants and the homeless will also take to the streets because they see a government intent on fleecing working people to suit its friends, the property speculators, private landlords and banks.
There are 4.5 million people on council housing lists, but, instead of investing in a new generation of local authority homes, the government pushes further privatisation and housing benefit cuts to drive poor people out of better-off areas of our cities.
Ministers take refuge in their natural prejudice against claimants by increasingly equating them to scroungers on society.
Justifying their campaign to slash benefits they seek support from "hard-working families," juxtaposing their economic hardship in the current crisis with supposed featherbedding of the unemployed, as though most, or even many, don't work through choice.
It is classic Tory divide-and-rule tactics, as Liberal Democrat leaders would once have pointed out before their backsides became so cosily moulded to their ministerial easy chairs.
Marchers know that it wasn't claimants, public service workers, trade unionists, pensioners, single parents, asylum-seekers, the long-term unemployed, young people or any other convenient scapegoat that caused capitalism's crisis.
It was sparked by private banks that gambled on subprime mortgages, worthless financial packages and commodity speculation.
When the going was good, the rewards were excellent for company directors and shareholders, but, unlike other gamblers who stand their own losses, the banks insisted on being bailed out, refinanced and allowed to start again.
Britain's finance sector wasn't unlucky. It was corrupt and crooked. Instead of being bailed out, the banks should have been nationalised and the people running them should be in jail.
Barclays has just set aside a further £700 million to cover its "mis-selling" saga, making £2,000 million so far.
What other business could engage in fraud on this scale and still be allowed to operate?
Yet politicians of all stripes still bow down to the banks, euphemising them as "markets" or "investors," and tell workers to pull together and bear the pain of paying for the crisis.
That's not acceptable from the Tories and Liberal Democrats. Nor will it be from Miliband. He should be told that today.
Workers are not marching today against Tory austerity with no better aim than embracing austerity-lite from Labour. They want real change.
If you have enjoyed this article then please consider donating to the Morning Star's Fighting Fund to ensure we can keep publishing your paper.
Donate to the Fighting Fund here
Marching for real change
Friday 19 October 2012 Printable Email
David Cameron entertained his backbenchers this week - it doesn't take much - by ridiculing Ed Miliband's decision to speak at today's A Future that Works protest in London.
Cameron chortled, as only privately educated beneficiaries of inherited, tax-dodged wealth can do, that the Labour leader was ingratiating himself with his trade union paymasters by attending "the most lucrative sponsored walk in history.
What a card and what a loss to the world of stand-up comics when Cameron renounced comedy for politics.
This braying ass and his back-bench sycophantic gigglers wouldn't understand in a month of Sundays why hundreds of thousands of people are taking to the streets of London, Glasgow and Belfast.
The short answer is in opposition to the Tory-Liberal Democrat government policies, but a more detailed response would cover a catalogue of crimes committed by this conservative coalition and its own corporate paymasters.
It won't just be trade unionists protesting, although they have reasons enough to do so.
Whether in the public or private sector, workers have seen job losses, pay restraint, attacks on pension schemes and plans to undermine trade union representation.
Council tenants and the homeless will also take to the streets because they see a government intent on fleecing working people to suit its friends, the property speculators, private landlords and banks.
There are 4.5 million people on council housing lists, but, instead of investing in a new generation of local authority homes, the government pushes further privatisation and housing benefit cuts to drive poor people out of better-off areas of our cities.
Ministers take refuge in their natural prejudice against claimants by increasingly equating them to scroungers on society.
Justifying their campaign to slash benefits they seek support from "hard-working families," juxtaposing their economic hardship in the current crisis with supposed featherbedding of the unemployed, as though most, or even many, don't work through choice.
It is classic Tory divide-and-rule tactics, as Liberal Democrat leaders would once have pointed out before their backsides became so cosily moulded to their ministerial easy chairs.
Marchers know that it wasn't claimants, public service workers, trade unionists, pensioners, single parents, asylum-seekers, the long-term unemployed, young people or any other convenient scapegoat that caused capitalism's crisis.
It was sparked by private banks that gambled on subprime mortgages, worthless financial packages and commodity speculation.
When the going was good, the rewards were excellent for company directors and shareholders, but, unlike other gamblers who stand their own losses, the banks insisted on being bailed out, refinanced and allowed to start again.
Britain's finance sector wasn't unlucky. It was corrupt and crooked. Instead of being bailed out, the banks should have been nationalised and the people running them should be in jail.
Barclays has just set aside a further £700 million to cover its "mis-selling" saga, making £2,000 million so far.
What other business could engage in fraud on this scale and still be allowed to operate?
Yet politicians of all stripes still bow down to the banks, euphemising them as "markets" or "investors," and tell workers to pull together and bear the pain of paying for the crisis.
That's not acceptable from the Tories and Liberal Democrats. Nor will it be from Miliband. He should be told that today.
Workers are not marching today against Tory austerity with no better aim than embracing austerity-lite from Labour. They want real change.
If you have enjoyed this article then please consider donating to the Morning Star's Fighting Fund to ensure we can keep publishing your paper.
Donate to the Fighting Fund here
Friday, 19 October 2012
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Thursday, 4 October 2012
Eric Hobsbawn
Features
Obituary: Eric Hobsbawn
Thursday 04 October 2012 Printable Email
Eric Hobsbawm, who died on Monday aged 95, stood unchallenged as the foremost historian in the Marxist tradition not just in Britain but internationally.
He was also an active Communist for most of his life and closely involved in the key debates which defined the history of the left in Britain during the 20th century.
Born in Alexandria to Jewish parents of British-Austrian nationality in 1917, he was orphaned as a child and then brought up by an uncle in Berlin.
There he witnessed the nazi rise to power at first hand and participated in resistance activities as a member of a communist youth organisation.
Moving to school in Britain in 1934, he secured a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, in 1935 and quickly became involved in the wider intellectual and organisational activities of the university's Communist Party branch. He served during the second world war in the engineers and army educational corps.
After the war he lectured at Birkbeck College in London from 1947 until his retirement in 1982 and held a fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, between 1949 and 1955.
He held visiting chairs in the United States from the 1960s and became president of Birkbeck College in 2002.
As a historian Hobsbawm was a central figure among those who transformed British history writing in the 1940s and '50s and for at least three decades broke the dominance of those who had hitherto made history speak for the existing order.
Along with Christopher Hill, Donna Torr, George Thomson, Rodney Hilton, Victor Kiernan, EP Thompson and other members of the Communist Party Historians Group, Hobsbawm laid out a new agenda.
This was interdisciplinary, insisted that society had to analysed as a whole and drew on the approach of the French historians of the Annales school, Georges Lefebre and Marc Bloch, both deeply influenced by Marx.
In 1952 Hobsbawm with other members of the Historians Group founded the journal Past and Present and a little later the Society for the Study of Labour History. The sophistication of their analysis forced mainstream historical journals to engage on fields of battle defined in Marxist terms.
Hobsbawm himself did so particularly in three areas.
He redefined the European crisis of the 17th century in economic, demographic and political terms as a clash between feudalism and capitalism.
He provided statistical support for Marx's view that the initial phase of industrial growth was at the expense of working-class living standards and hence challenged the dominant academic orthodoxy which insisted that industrialisation improved living standards.
Hobsbawm also produced detailed studies which vindicated Lenin's explanation of the reformism of Britain's labour movement in terms of a labour aristocracy sustained on the profits of empire.
Regis professors were lured out of their ivory towers - often returning battered and discredited.
These debates took Marxist assumptions on the class-driven character of social change to the heart of history teaching in schools and universities.
Hobsbawm followed this up in the 1960s and '70s with brilliantly accessible histories of Britain, Europe and the world over the past three centuries that defined the historical understanding of a generation.
It is rare for a scholar of Hosbawm's stature to be so accessible in their writing and teaching. Many of us will remember this for many years to come.
At the same time Hobsbawm was closely involved in the politics of the Communist Party. Along with EP Thompson and John Saville, he was among those who demanded changes in inner-party democracy and a departure from democratic centralism in the wake of the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and its denunciation of Stalin. He did not, however, leave the Communist Party.
In the '60s and '70s he developed links with those in the Italian Communist Party who saw themselves as developing a strategy for socialism that was quite distinct from - and to a large extent posed against - that of the Soviet Union.
In 1977 he published The Italian Road to Socialism based on a long interview with Giorgio Napolitano, then international secretary of the Italian party and today president of Italy.
In 1978 he gave a lecture at Marx House in London that was subsequently published in the Communist Party monthly Marxism Today as The Forward March of Labour Halted.
Writing at the time when the trade union movement was at the peak of its strength - and the left highly influential within it - Hobsbawm argued that the manual working class was in numerical decline and that the character of its politics was inherently economistic, trapped within the bounds of self-interested wage bargaining, and that consequently the left had to look in future to broader alliances and social movements.
This lecture became an iconic text for that wing within the Communist Party that sought to steer it away from class politics and to challenge key elements of Marxism.
While Hobsbawm never fully endorsed this endeavour, he actively supported the transformation of Marxism Today into its flagship journal and was a very frequent contributor. He continued to be so until 1991, by which time the Communist Party of Great Britain under the control of this wing had expelled virtually all opponents and then voted itself out of existence.
The same tendency subsequently provided important ideological support for those within the Labour Party calling for a realignment away from the trade union movement and the creation of new Labour.
Although Hobsbawm supported Neil Kinnock's remoulding of the Labour Party and was honoured by Tony Blair he subsequently spoke out against new Labour, its alignment with US policies and, very firmly, against the invasion of Iraq.
In his final years Hobsbawm continued his role - to use his own phrase - as a "public intellectual."
He refused all invitations to unilaterally condemn the Soviet Union and instead asserted its historic role in the defeat of fascism.
He indicated his concern at the manipulation of "identity politics" and in particular the divisive use of nationalism and national mythology. He showed his exasperation at the abandonment by most contemporary historians of any attempt to understand overall processes of social change.
Internationally, his writings have become an intellectual beacon for those seeking an understanding of human development in Marxist terms, particularly in Latin America and the Indian subcontinent.
While in Britain his death marks the end of that generation of communist historians who transformed history-writing, his continuing influence as a humanist and historian is assured.
Obituary: Eric Hobsbawn
Thursday 04 October 2012 Printable Email
Eric Hobsbawm, who died on Monday aged 95, stood unchallenged as the foremost historian in the Marxist tradition not just in Britain but internationally.
He was also an active Communist for most of his life and closely involved in the key debates which defined the history of the left in Britain during the 20th century.
Born in Alexandria to Jewish parents of British-Austrian nationality in 1917, he was orphaned as a child and then brought up by an uncle in Berlin.
There he witnessed the nazi rise to power at first hand and participated in resistance activities as a member of a communist youth organisation.
Moving to school in Britain in 1934, he secured a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, in 1935 and quickly became involved in the wider intellectual and organisational activities of the university's Communist Party branch. He served during the second world war in the engineers and army educational corps.
After the war he lectured at Birkbeck College in London from 1947 until his retirement in 1982 and held a fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, between 1949 and 1955.
He held visiting chairs in the United States from the 1960s and became president of Birkbeck College in 2002.
As a historian Hobsbawm was a central figure among those who transformed British history writing in the 1940s and '50s and for at least three decades broke the dominance of those who had hitherto made history speak for the existing order.
Along with Christopher Hill, Donna Torr, George Thomson, Rodney Hilton, Victor Kiernan, EP Thompson and other members of the Communist Party Historians Group, Hobsbawm laid out a new agenda.
This was interdisciplinary, insisted that society had to analysed as a whole and drew on the approach of the French historians of the Annales school, Georges Lefebre and Marc Bloch, both deeply influenced by Marx.
In 1952 Hobsbawm with other members of the Historians Group founded the journal Past and Present and a little later the Society for the Study of Labour History. The sophistication of their analysis forced mainstream historical journals to engage on fields of battle defined in Marxist terms.
Hobsbawm himself did so particularly in three areas.
He redefined the European crisis of the 17th century in economic, demographic and political terms as a clash between feudalism and capitalism.
He provided statistical support for Marx's view that the initial phase of industrial growth was at the expense of working-class living standards and hence challenged the dominant academic orthodoxy which insisted that industrialisation improved living standards.
Hobsbawm also produced detailed studies which vindicated Lenin's explanation of the reformism of Britain's labour movement in terms of a labour aristocracy sustained on the profits of empire.
Regis professors were lured out of their ivory towers - often returning battered and discredited.
These debates took Marxist assumptions on the class-driven character of social change to the heart of history teaching in schools and universities.
Hobsbawm followed this up in the 1960s and '70s with brilliantly accessible histories of Britain, Europe and the world over the past three centuries that defined the historical understanding of a generation.
It is rare for a scholar of Hosbawm's stature to be so accessible in their writing and teaching. Many of us will remember this for many years to come.
At the same time Hobsbawm was closely involved in the politics of the Communist Party. Along with EP Thompson and John Saville, he was among those who demanded changes in inner-party democracy and a departure from democratic centralism in the wake of the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and its denunciation of Stalin. He did not, however, leave the Communist Party.
In the '60s and '70s he developed links with those in the Italian Communist Party who saw themselves as developing a strategy for socialism that was quite distinct from - and to a large extent posed against - that of the Soviet Union.
In 1977 he published The Italian Road to Socialism based on a long interview with Giorgio Napolitano, then international secretary of the Italian party and today president of Italy.
In 1978 he gave a lecture at Marx House in London that was subsequently published in the Communist Party monthly Marxism Today as The Forward March of Labour Halted.
Writing at the time when the trade union movement was at the peak of its strength - and the left highly influential within it - Hobsbawm argued that the manual working class was in numerical decline and that the character of its politics was inherently economistic, trapped within the bounds of self-interested wage bargaining, and that consequently the left had to look in future to broader alliances and social movements.
This lecture became an iconic text for that wing within the Communist Party that sought to steer it away from class politics and to challenge key elements of Marxism.
While Hobsbawm never fully endorsed this endeavour, he actively supported the transformation of Marxism Today into its flagship journal and was a very frequent contributor. He continued to be so until 1991, by which time the Communist Party of Great Britain under the control of this wing had expelled virtually all opponents and then voted itself out of existence.
The same tendency subsequently provided important ideological support for those within the Labour Party calling for a realignment away from the trade union movement and the creation of new Labour.
Although Hobsbawm supported Neil Kinnock's remoulding of the Labour Party and was honoured by Tony Blair he subsequently spoke out against new Labour, its alignment with US policies and, very firmly, against the invasion of Iraq.
In his final years Hobsbawm continued his role - to use his own phrase - as a "public intellectual."
He refused all invitations to unilaterally condemn the Soviet Union and instead asserted its historic role in the defeat of fascism.
He indicated his concern at the manipulation of "identity politics" and in particular the divisive use of nationalism and national mythology. He showed his exasperation at the abandonment by most contemporary historians of any attempt to understand overall processes of social change.
Internationally, his writings have become an intellectual beacon for those seeking an understanding of human development in Marxist terms, particularly in Latin America and the Indian subcontinent.
While in Britain his death marks the end of that generation of communist historians who transformed history-writing, his continuing influence as a humanist and historian is assured.
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
http://bulatlat.com/main/2012/10/03/military-files-case-against-labor-leader/
MANILA – The Cabuyao Municipal Trial Court issued a warrant of arrest dated August 2, 2012 against labor leader Hermenegildo “Hermie” Marasigan. Marasigan is a member of KMU’s national council and vice-chairman of the the Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Timog Katagalugan (Pamantik), KMU’s regional chapter.
According to a report from Pamantik-KMU, Marasigan is being charged with “direct assault upon a person in authority” and “slight physical injury” during a supposed incident that took place on Oct. 20, 2011 in Barangay Pulo, Cabuyao, Laguna. An official of the Philippine Army is behind the charges; the officer earlier alleged that Marasigan was guilty of “human rights violations” against a soldier.
KMU chairman Elmer Labog immediately expressed outrage against what he deemed as political and legal harassment against the Southern Tagalog labor leader. Labog led leaders of Pamantik and Olalia in a protest in Cabuyao last October 2 to denounce the warrant of arrest against Marasigan and the continuing military operations in the region.
“Southern Tagalog has one of the highest concentration of workers in the country, and the labor movement there is very active and highly politicized. Ka Hermie is an exemplary labor leader and these made-up charges against him are a direct attack not so much against his person but against the labor movement not just in the region but in the country. This is out-and-out political harassment and a move to cripple Pamantik and Olalia’s activities in the region. These labor organizations are active in exposing the countless labor rights and also human rights violations in Southern Tagalog,” Labog said.
Labog said the Aquino administration is utilizing the same militarist tactics against political dissenters and labor leaders that were employed by his predecessor Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the former dictator himself Ferdinand Marcos.
“Aquino is wielding martial law against workers and the labor movement. This is not the first attack that his government launched against Filipino workers, and it’s certain that it won’t be the last,” he said.
The warrant against Marasigan was delivered last Sept. 26, after two men in plainclothes went to his house in Brgy. Pulo, Cabuyao, Laguna and told his wife that he was being “invited” to the town’s police station. A staff of Olalia went to the Cabuyao police station twice to inquire about the incident but the police authorities denied sending a letter to Marasigan. It was only when the staff staff went to the Cabuyao MTC that the existence of the arrest warrant was confirmed.
According to Pamantik, the arrest warrant against Marasigan came at the heels of the establishment of a military camp beside a local office of Anakpawis Partylist in Brgy. Pulo. Members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines have been noted to be asking residents about the whereabouts and homes of workers who are members of KMU-affiliated unions such as those working for Nestle Cabuyao and RFM. The soldiers have also been holding public film showings featuring documentaries against progressive partylist groups Anakpawis and Bayan Muna.
Residents, in the meantime, have also complained against the rowdiness of the soldiers who hold drinking sessions in the camp. When residents petitioned for the removal of the camp, the military merely transferred to another location in the same barangay, near the Malayan Colleges in Paseo de Cabuyao.
Labog said the AFP should immediately pull out from Cabuyao and from all workers’ communities.
“The Aquino government is using the military to intimidate workers and frustrate workers’ efforts at forming unions and fighting for their rights,” Labog said.
What went before
Based on an October 23 report from Journal.com.ph, the military was swift to file “human rights violation charges” against Marasigan when on October 22, he tried to stop soldiers from conducting community development operations in Bgy. Pulo.
The media report revealed that it was Capt. Gene Orense, civil military officer of the 202nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division who said that the army will file the charges against Marasigan. It was reported that the AFP was conducting a so-called “community organizing activity for development operations” in Brgy. Pulo when Marasigan and a few others from Pamantik and Olalia arrived and allegedly disrupted the meeting.
“Marasigan and his group reportedly forced their way into the barangay hall of Pulo, Cabuyao, and went on to write graffiti on the wall with the words: “Palayasin ang militar dito sa Barangay Pulo,’” (Remove the military from Pulo village) said the report.
In the meantime, the report also included a statement, which claimed that Marasigan figured in a punching match with a Cpl. Reynante Roxas. Roxas of the SOTWA, Bravo Coy Command Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Division of the Philippine Army filed the case against Marasigan on Oct. 25, 2011.
Pamantik, in a statement, explained that the October 20 activity was precisely against militarization. It said the peaceful protest was threatened when the military took out their high-powered firearms. The soldiers, at the time, were occupying a former health center which they turned into a detachment. The detachment, in the meantime, was next door to a day care center where toddlers and small children were present and playing at the time.
“The Philippine Army violated Article 4, Section 4 and Article 12 of International Humanitarian Law when they established camp at kept weapons in a civilian community,” Pamantik said.
The group said the charges against Marasigan were issued arbitrarily and the subsequent hearings held without following due process.
“Marasigan did not receive any subpoena, neither was he formally and legally informed that criminal charges were filed against him. It was revealed that in the first hearing that took place last November 23, 2011, the soldier who filed the charges did not even attend, but the court still continued to process the case and issue a resolution as well as a warrant of arrest. The court should immediately have thrown out the case,” it said.
According to a report from Pamantik-KMU, Marasigan is being charged with “direct assault upon a person in authority” and “slight physical injury” during a supposed incident that took place on Oct. 20, 2011 in Barangay Pulo, Cabuyao, Laguna. An official of the Philippine Army is behind the charges; the officer earlier alleged that Marasigan was guilty of “human rights violations” against a soldier.
KMU chairman Elmer Labog immediately expressed outrage against what he deemed as political and legal harassment against the Southern Tagalog labor leader. Labog led leaders of Pamantik and Olalia in a protest in Cabuyao last October 2 to denounce the warrant of arrest against Marasigan and the continuing military operations in the region.
“Southern Tagalog has one of the highest concentration of workers in the country, and the labor movement there is very active and highly politicized. Ka Hermie is an exemplary labor leader and these made-up charges against him are a direct attack not so much against his person but against the labor movement not just in the region but in the country. This is out-and-out political harassment and a move to cripple Pamantik and Olalia’s activities in the region. These labor organizations are active in exposing the countless labor rights and also human rights violations in Southern Tagalog,” Labog said.
Labog said the Aquino administration is utilizing the same militarist tactics against political dissenters and labor leaders that were employed by his predecessor Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the former dictator himself Ferdinand Marcos.
“Aquino is wielding martial law against workers and the labor movement. This is not the first attack that his government launched against Filipino workers, and it’s certain that it won’t be the last,” he said.
The warrant against Marasigan was delivered last Sept. 26, after two men in plainclothes went to his house in Brgy. Pulo, Cabuyao, Laguna and told his wife that he was being “invited” to the town’s police station. A staff of Olalia went to the Cabuyao police station twice to inquire about the incident but the police authorities denied sending a letter to Marasigan. It was only when the staff staff went to the Cabuyao MTC that the existence of the arrest warrant was confirmed.
According to Pamantik, the arrest warrant against Marasigan came at the heels of the establishment of a military camp beside a local office of Anakpawis Partylist in Brgy. Pulo. Members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines have been noted to be asking residents about the whereabouts and homes of workers who are members of KMU-affiliated unions such as those working for Nestle Cabuyao and RFM. The soldiers have also been holding public film showings featuring documentaries against progressive partylist groups Anakpawis and Bayan Muna.
Residents, in the meantime, have also complained against the rowdiness of the soldiers who hold drinking sessions in the camp. When residents petitioned for the removal of the camp, the military merely transferred to another location in the same barangay, near the Malayan Colleges in Paseo de Cabuyao.
Labog said the AFP should immediately pull out from Cabuyao and from all workers’ communities.
“The Aquino government is using the military to intimidate workers and frustrate workers’ efforts at forming unions and fighting for their rights,” Labog said.
What went before
Based on an October 23 report from Journal.com.ph, the military was swift to file “human rights violation charges” against Marasigan when on October 22, he tried to stop soldiers from conducting community development operations in Bgy. Pulo.
The media report revealed that it was Capt. Gene Orense, civil military officer of the 202nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division who said that the army will file the charges against Marasigan. It was reported that the AFP was conducting a so-called “community organizing activity for development operations” in Brgy. Pulo when Marasigan and a few others from Pamantik and Olalia arrived and allegedly disrupted the meeting.
“Marasigan and his group reportedly forced their way into the barangay hall of Pulo, Cabuyao, and went on to write graffiti on the wall with the words: “Palayasin ang militar dito sa Barangay Pulo,’” (Remove the military from Pulo village) said the report.
In the meantime, the report also included a statement, which claimed that Marasigan figured in a punching match with a Cpl. Reynante Roxas. Roxas of the SOTWA, Bravo Coy Command Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Division of the Philippine Army filed the case against Marasigan on Oct. 25, 2011.
Pamantik, in a statement, explained that the October 20 activity was precisely against militarization. It said the peaceful protest was threatened when the military took out their high-powered firearms. The soldiers, at the time, were occupying a former health center which they turned into a detachment. The detachment, in the meantime, was next door to a day care center where toddlers and small children were present and playing at the time.
“The Philippine Army violated Article 4, Section 4 and Article 12 of International Humanitarian Law when they established camp at kept weapons in a civilian community,” Pamantik said.
The group said the charges against Marasigan were issued arbitrarily and the subsequent hearings held without following due process.
“Marasigan did not receive any subpoena, neither was he formally and legally informed that criminal charges were filed against him. It was revealed that in the first hearing that took place last November 23, 2011, the soldier who filed the charges did not even attend, but the court still continued to process the case and issue a resolution as well as a warrant of arrest. The court should immediately have thrown out the case,” it said.
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Broken dreams: Forced labour in the UK food sector
Broken dreams: Forced labour in the UK food sector
Many of us remember the publication of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) Inquiry into recruitment and employment in the meat and poultry processing sector back in 2010. The Inquiry highlighted just how poor the conditions for some workers in this industry are, providing concrete examples of discrimination, physical and verbal abuse.
Though appalled at the Inquiry's findings, I hoped something positive might come from them. The report received good coverage in the mainstream press, and it even seemed to get traction beyond the ‘usual suspects' in the CSR and ethical trade arena.
But it seems I was too optimistic. Because last week I was equally horrified by the findings of new research detailing widespread exploitation and abuse in the UK food industry - particularly among low-wage migrant workers.
New evidence
Funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), ‘Experience of Forced Labour in the UK Food Industry' is a detailed study - one of the largest of its kind - of experiences of forced labour and exploitation in the food industry. It draws on interviews with 62 migrant workers (mainly Polish, Chinese, Latvian and Lithuania) across five locations. Most workers interviewed were working on farms (many as fruit or vegetable pickers), in food processing and packing, or in ‘minority ethnic catering'.
Human cost
The report paints a grim picture. Using a set of 19 indicators of forced labour, the study identified 14 forced labour practices in the UK food industry. These range from debt bondage as a result of paying upfront fees to travel to the UK and secure work, threats and bullying; through to non- or under-payment of wages, retaining documents, and tie-ins (eg through accommodation). But what comes out strongly is the human cost of these practices - in particular, the acute sense of powerlessness among the workers, and the absolute and relative poverty that they live in.
"Work is tough, low-paid and insecure; many interviewees barely earned enough to survive. Fear and powerlessness were almost ubiquitous... Although none were actually coerced into work, this insecurity, allied with material deprivation, made it difficult to distinguish between free and unfree employment relationships".
Unlike some reports, it tackles head on the underlying causes of these problems, putting the competitive structure of the food supply chain centre stage. It also highlights the role of cultural drivers - and isolated criminal actions of employers and employment agents.
What can be done?
The authors suggest a range of interventions to help minimise the economic, cultural and criminal drivers behind these practices. Proposing the need for a combination of state and non-state action, they set out recommendations for different actors including government, large food retailers and suppliers, inspectorates, trade unions and voluntary organisations.
Practical recommendations for large food retailers and suppliers include the need for better methods of collecting confidential evidence from employees (ie getting away from ‘staged interviews'); looking at ways to challenge ‘flexible employment' arrangements that keep workers ‘on call'; and providing guidance and advice on identifying and addressing particular exploitative practices.
These issues are firmly on ETI's agenda. We have long been aware of the shortcomings of audits as a way of identifying and addressing exploitative labour practices, and have been exploring different approaches to moving ‘beyond audit' to get a better picture of what is really happening on the ground. As the report notes, it's not just about improving audit interview techniques. It's also about providing guidance on and support around ways of identifying forced labour practices, and looking at using workers' contracts as a way of providing better protection and increased transparency around payments, deductions and lack of certainty around working hours.
Most importantly, however, it's about retailers working in collaboration with trade unions and NGOs to bring about an end to exploitative practices and improve the lives of workers involved in growing, picking, packing and processing our food. Without a joint approach to tackling these issues, I fear I may find myself reading a similar report in two years' time.
Many of us remember the publication of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) Inquiry into recruitment and employment in the meat and poultry processing sector back in 2010. The Inquiry highlighted just how poor the conditions for some workers in this industry are, providing concrete examples of discrimination, physical and verbal abuse.
Though appalled at the Inquiry's findings, I hoped something positive might come from them. The report received good coverage in the mainstream press, and it even seemed to get traction beyond the ‘usual suspects' in the CSR and ethical trade arena.
But it seems I was too optimistic. Because last week I was equally horrified by the findings of new research detailing widespread exploitation and abuse in the UK food industry - particularly among low-wage migrant workers.
New evidence
Funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), ‘Experience of Forced Labour in the UK Food Industry' is a detailed study - one of the largest of its kind - of experiences of forced labour and exploitation in the food industry. It draws on interviews with 62 migrant workers (mainly Polish, Chinese, Latvian and Lithuania) across five locations. Most workers interviewed were working on farms (many as fruit or vegetable pickers), in food processing and packing, or in ‘minority ethnic catering'.
Human cost
The report paints a grim picture. Using a set of 19 indicators of forced labour, the study identified 14 forced labour practices in the UK food industry. These range from debt bondage as a result of paying upfront fees to travel to the UK and secure work, threats and bullying; through to non- or under-payment of wages, retaining documents, and tie-ins (eg through accommodation). But what comes out strongly is the human cost of these practices - in particular, the acute sense of powerlessness among the workers, and the absolute and relative poverty that they live in.
"Work is tough, low-paid and insecure; many interviewees barely earned enough to survive. Fear and powerlessness were almost ubiquitous... Although none were actually coerced into work, this insecurity, allied with material deprivation, made it difficult to distinguish between free and unfree employment relationships".
Unlike some reports, it tackles head on the underlying causes of these problems, putting the competitive structure of the food supply chain centre stage. It also highlights the role of cultural drivers - and isolated criminal actions of employers and employment agents.
What can be done?
The authors suggest a range of interventions to help minimise the economic, cultural and criminal drivers behind these practices. Proposing the need for a combination of state and non-state action, they set out recommendations for different actors including government, large food retailers and suppliers, inspectorates, trade unions and voluntary organisations.
Practical recommendations for large food retailers and suppliers include the need for better methods of collecting confidential evidence from employees (ie getting away from ‘staged interviews'); looking at ways to challenge ‘flexible employment' arrangements that keep workers ‘on call'; and providing guidance and advice on identifying and addressing particular exploitative practices.
These issues are firmly on ETI's agenda. We have long been aware of the shortcomings of audits as a way of identifying and addressing exploitative labour practices, and have been exploring different approaches to moving ‘beyond audit' to get a better picture of what is really happening on the ground. As the report notes, it's not just about improving audit interview techniques. It's also about providing guidance on and support around ways of identifying forced labour practices, and looking at using workers' contracts as a way of providing better protection and increased transparency around payments, deductions and lack of certainty around working hours.
Most importantly, however, it's about retailers working in collaboration with trade unions and NGOs to bring about an end to exploitative practices and improve the lives of workers involved in growing, picking, packing and processing our food. Without a joint approach to tackling these issues, I fear I may find myself reading a similar report in two years' time.
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Britons rally in support of Greek striking steelworkers
Tuesday 24 July 2012 by John Millington Printable Email
Trade unionists in Britain flooded to the Greek embassy in London on Monday to show solidarity with striking steelworkers after their picket lines were attacked by riot police in Athens.
Workers at the Hellenic Steel factory have been on strike for 268 days, struggling for decent wages and demanding the reinstatement of sacked colleagues.
But last Friday Greece's coalition government ordered police to try and break the strike despite ongoing negotiations between unions and employers.
Riot police attacked picket lines with batons and tear gas.
But despite a handful of strike breakers and managers being escorted through police lines, the workers' union Pame has insisted the strike "will go on."
Greek and British communists alongside members of transport union RMT unfurled a banner saying: "Without you no cog can turn. Workers can do without the bosses."
Speaking to the Morning Star after delivering a letter on behalf of the union to the Greek embassy condemning the police action, RMT president Alex Gordon said: "Riot police have been deployed and workers quite rightly are resisting.
"I think the first thing, is to get the message out that the Greek workers are not alone."
Mr Gordon added that the example of the strike in Greece and the brutal response of the government was a sign of things to come.
"Things are getting difficult in Britain," he said, pointing to reports of ministers considering sacking striking border guards.
"The duty of trade unionists and socialists is to collective action and to defend our class interests."
johnm@peoples-press.com
Foreign news: p6
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