“Philip Ruff’s book about the Latvian anarchist Janis Zhaklis dispels some myths which have been intentionally created to cover up the factual smithereens, which for many dozens of years had been presented as the true history of the 1905 revolution.”
“School history text-books and other publications for readers interested in this period, used phrases like “chaotic riots”, “disorganised peasant uprisings”… illustrated by dull drawings and picture reproductions – peasants, armed with pitchforks and spades against the background of a burning castle… The purpose of such interpretations is clear – they were meant to show the Bolsheviks as the only true liberators of oppressed nations and workers against the background of the 1905 events.”
“Philip Ruff’s book removes the foggy veil from the dull, lacklustre reproductions in those text-books; it purposefully and methodically draws the connection between the seemingly disparate events and gives them a logical, fact-based and completely different content and interconnectedness.”
“Before the publication of Ruff’s book, next to nothing or very little was known about what really lies at the basis of anarchist ideas. All these myths (or rather, lies) Philip Ruff’s book deconstructs in a quiet, convincing story, richly supported by historical facts.”
Far-right violence against immigrants has become endemic in parts of Germany and that won’t change anytime soon. The public and the police are too often indifferent to extremism, despite the risk it poses to the country’s reputation. Deep down, Germany still hasn’t grasped that it needs to embrace its minorities…
Olympic impact on UK retail sales. August brings the worst sales growth this year.
UK retail sales values were down by 0.4% on a like-for-like basis from August 2011, when they were down 0.6% on the preceding year. On a total basis, sales were up 1.6%, against a 1.5% rise in August 2011.
Stephen Robertson, Director General, British Retail Consortium, said: “There’s no evidence here of any Olympic boost to retail sales overall. Sadly, apart from April – distorted by Easter timings – August saw the worst sales growth this year.
It’s clear people were absorbed by the magnificent Olympics and had little interest in shopping, especially for major items. Usually-reliable online sales suffered, putting in the worst sales growth since we started the measure four years ago. Some retailers told us online activity was particularly thin in the evenings. If people weren’t watching television they were more likely to be following the sport on PCs and mobile devices than shopping.
On October 8th Wandsworth Council plan to lay off all the staff at Kimber Road, York Gardens and Battersea Park adventure playgrounds. This would involve knocking down all the wooden structures, that the children themselves have often helped build.
If you would like to help us campaign to try and reverse these appalling plans, then please contact Wandsworth Against Cuts: wac.doc@btinternet.com
A year ago, the former head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, raised eyebrows in the darker recesses of Whitehall by telling some home truths in her BBC Reith lectures about the security and intelligence agencies.
She returns to her three key themes – torture, terrorism and secrecy – on Thursday with the publication of a short book, Securing Freedom, based on those lectures. It is a refreshing antidote to the rhetoric deployed by ministers and their acolytes who appear too frightened to come clean on any issue relating to that elusive but overarching concept of “national security”. Here are some points that MI5, MI6, the CIA and the new justice secretary Chris Grayling should note:
1. “Torture is illegal in our national law and in international law. It is wrong and never justified … Torture should be utterly rejected even when it may offer the prospect of saving lives … I am confident that I know the answer to the question of whether torture has made the world a safer place. It hasn’t.”
MI5 and MI6 remain embroiled in the unresolved dispute about their role in the abuse and torture of terror suspects. The government tried to push allegations under the carpet by compensating UK residents and citizens taken by the CIA to Guantánamo Bay – and no sooner had it done so than evidence emerged in Libya showing how MI6 helped arrange the abduction of Libyan dissidents to Tripoli, where they say they were tortured by Muammar Gaddafi’s secret police. “There are clearly questions to be answered about … whether the UK supped with a sufficiently long spoon,” says Manningham-Buller, who was head of MI5 at the time. MI6, which was ultimately accountable to then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, says the rendering of the dissidents to Libya in 2004 was authorised by ministers.
2. “Rushing to legislate in the wake of a terrorist atrocity is often a mistake,” says Manningham-Buller in a clear reference to the Blair government’s practice of drawing up more and more “counter-terrorism” laws, a practice sharply criticised by Ken Clarke, now sacked as justice secretary. “We compound the problem of terrorism if we use it to erode the freedom of us all,” she adds. To the surprise of her former colleagues in MI5, she used her maiden speech in the Lords to attack the Labour government’s proposal to detain suspected terrorists without charge for up to 42 days.
Will the reshuffled government succumb to pressure from the security and intelligence agencies and introduce more laws they hope will frighten terrorists, ignoring the root causes? Governments, including the British, talk to terrorists, and, Manningham-Buller reminds us, they have “too often preferred the stability of the devil we know to the uncertainties of democracy” – a reference to the Arab spring and Britain’s close relations with Middle Eastern autocracies.
3. “The scrutiny of the security and intelligence agencies will evolve, and it is right that it should. But, given that intelligence to counter these threats will still be needed, that scrutiny will never be able to be transparent. For to secure freedom, within a democracy and within the law, some secrets have to remain.” And there’s the rub. “Overt information may be more important than secret intelligence. There are those, the sceptical observers I wish the readers of intelligence to be, who believe that governments hype threats for their own purposes to ensure legislation proceeds through parliament.”
The coalition government is determined to push through into law its “justice and security” bill designed to prevent any information from the security and intelligence agencies, domestic or foreign, from ever being disclosed in court. The very existence of such secret hearings would be secret, if the government has its way. Ironically, its fate may well end up in the hands of Manningham-Buller and others in the (unreformed) House of Lords.
British Conservative politicians have been booed at the Paralympics in London amid protests against cuts to disability benefits.
The government has faced heat for awarding Paralympic Games sponsors Atos a contact to carry out “fitness to work tests” on people on incapacity benefits, which opponents claim has driven disabled people to poverty and even suicide.
Atos Healthcare, a global IT company, was given the £400m (NZ$796m) contact at the beginning of last month.
The British government claims more than £600m (NZ$1.19b) each year is being spent on overpayments to people who no longer qualify for the level of benefits they are receiving, the BBC reports, and so is now basing its payments on the Atos Work Capability assessments.
However, action group Disabled People Against The Cuts says less than 0.4 per cent of incapacity payments are fraudulent, but the government is looking to cut spending in the area by 20 per cent.
Opponents to the assessments say more than 1,000 people who had their benefits cut as they were deemed fit work subsequently died last year.
DPAC’s Roger Lewis told the BBC the assessments were causing “huge damage and distress to disabled people”.
“We now have a situation where we know that people have gone through the Atos assessments who have unfortunately died as a result. Some have committed suicide. Some have had heart attacks.”
Last Friday saw a large protest at the Atos’s London headquarters, as well as a demonstration at the Department for Work and Pensions, also in the capital.
Both Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne have now been loudly booed by crowds at Paralympic events.
Cameron received his negative reception when he was shown on the big screen at the Aquatic Centre, while Osborne was on the end of deafening disapproval at a packed London Olympic Stadium as he was announced to present the medals for the 400m T38.
Not all UK politicians have been booed by Paralympic crowds, with former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown receiving a “rather contrasting reaction” as he presented medals at the swimming, the Guardian reported.
It is not clear if the reception for the Conservative MPs is related to the Atos contract, or simply a reflection of the slumping support for the Tory-led Government in the polls.
British paralympians have also spoken out against proposed cuts to the disability living allowance, telling the Guardian that without benefit they would not have been able to participate in society, let alone sport.
“Without DLA I would not have been able to do what I did or be a top athlete,” Ade Adepitan, former-Paralympic wheelchair medallist told the paper.
Athletes also hid their security pass lanyards, which bear the Atos logo, during the opening ceremony to the games, however ParalympicsGB rejected this was a protest, rather claimed they had been tucked under their uniforms as it was windy.
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Olympic medalist Liz McColgan has said she fears that a generation of aspiring athletes will see no benefit from any “legacy” from the London Games.
The former long-distance runner, from Dundee, directed her concern to politicians during an event in the Scottish Parliament.
She said little has changed since she was young.
“I still coach kids who are paying £3 to get into a track that has very bad lighting. I can’t see them in the winter time. There’s only one toilet. There’s no drinks available,” she pointed out.
“It’s quite sad that we’ve had so much success at the Olympics, and we’ve got 112 kids who all want to be like Mo Farah, and I can see that the cycle track that’s just 100m along across the park is exactly the same, the swimming clubs are exactly the same.
Were we prepared? No we weren’t.
We are probably going to let down a lot kids who are so enthused from the success that we had. Kids nowadays have got a great access to television. I didn’t have that in my day. They see it and they want it.
I feel the Government, the associations have let us down because we are not prepared to deal with all these kids that want to be the next Chris Hoy or Kat Grainger.”
Ms McColgan, who won silver in the 1988 Seoul Olympics and two golds in Commonwealth competitions, said it was lucky that the 2012 Games were a success.
Speaking as a panellist at the Festival of Politics in Holyrood, she said: “I believe there’s no legacy that I can see left in my neck of the woods. We’re left to our own devices.”
In a direct plea, she said: “I’ve sat on many, many panels like this and nothing happens. Everyone’s got great ideas but nothing happens. Why not just listen for once and take action?”
She was joined on the panel by former Scotland rugby player John Beattie who also complained about a lack of action to stimulate investment in sport for children.
He suggested private funding for state school sport, adding that he feels guilty about the high standards he enjoyed at private school.
“I don’t think it’s a Government thing alone. There’s a whole corporate world that should be getting into this because there’s no way you’re getting more money,” he said.
“The next step to make it work would be corporate money coming into the school system to sponsor leagues, to pay teachers extra.”
The panel also included sports journalist Alison Walker and Scottish Sports Association policy director Kim Atkinson, and was chaired by Labour MSP John Park.
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Although Ruff has been coming to Latvia since the 80s of the last century and for quite a while his visits are connected with his research of the biography of one of the possibly best known anarchists of Latvian descent Peter the Painter, this time his visit is special. In the middle of August the publishing house “Dienas Gramata” is releasing the result of his 9-year research – the book Pa stâvu liesmu debesîs. Nenotveramâ latvieðu anarhista Pçtera Mâldera laiks un dzîve (On a Towering Flame to the Skies: The Life and Times of the Elusive Latvian Anarchist Peter the Painter).
The name of Peter the Painter in Great Britain first came up in connection with the so-called Houndsditch Murders in 1910. That was a daring and unsuccessful attempt to burgle a jeweller’s shop in the East End of London, which ended in violence unheard of in those days – several policemen had been shot dead. An even more outrageous event happened soon after that, which became known as the Siege of Sidney Street. Several Latvian anarchists managed to stand up to an overwhelmingly greater force for hours in a besieged house in Sidney Street. The house was surrounded not only by police and even army units with cannons, but also by huge crowds of onlookers and even the Home Secretary of the time Winston Churchill turned up. No one surrendered alive, but Peter Piatkov, or Peter the Painter, who was widely regarded as the main culprit, managed to escape.
The completion and publication of the book does not at all mean that Ruff’s interest in Peter the Painter and other revolutionaries of 1905 has been exhausted. He is full of determination to find a publisher also in Great Britain, and he is still not satisfied that he has found out everything to the end.
Shaker Aamer: A Decade of Injustice will be screened at the House of Commons, Committee Room 15 on Monday 29th October, 2012 at 19:00 pm.
Shaker Aamer is one of the 171 men still held in detention in Guantanamo Bay on the camp’s 10th anniversary. Despite never having had a trial, having been approved for release twice, and a growing number of people from all walks of life campaigning for him, Shaker remains in detention. His physical and mental health deterioration is a prevalent concern.
During the 10 years that Shaker Aamer has been incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, he’s has never been charged, and he has never denied his innocence. He has continuously lobbied for the welfare of other Guantanamo inmates from within the system. Many believe that this, and his potential as a witness to U.S. human rights abuses, are the reasons he still remains captive.
The exposition focuses on the history of the Holocaust as well as on the current right-wing extremism in Germany. Furthermore it shows initiatives to protect minorities and promote democracy in every day life .
The exhibition also features a picture of “The truth lies in Rostock“. The film was produced in 1993 and is one of the rare documents about the riots in Rostock-Lichtenhagen 20 years ago.
“Germany after 1945”, which is designed as a touring exhibition, opens its doors on Tuesday, August 21 in Berlin. Next spring the exhibition can be seen in New York.
“School history text-books and other publications for readers interested in this period, used phrases like “chaotic riots”, “disorganised peasant uprisings”… illustrated by dull drawings and picture reproductions – peasants, armed with pitchforks and spades against the background of a burning castle… The purpose of such interpretations is clear – they were meant to show the Bolsheviks as the only true liberators of oppressed nations and workers against the background of the 1905 events.”
