There’s been a lot of fuss this week about Jenny Jones’ support for Take The Flour Back, a revival of mid-1990s anti-GM activism. On one side, so the story goes, you have plucky scientists just doing research, and on the other side you’ve got anti-science vandals and woo-merchants.

The truth is rather different, but to be fair to the skeptic firing squad, some of the Take The Flour Back logic was poor. They’re worried that one of the genes inserted at Rothamsted is ‘most similar to a cow’.

I should declare an interest, or at least some history – I was convicted in Edinburgh in 1999 for an anti-GM protest, and acquitted on appeal in 2003.

You regularly hear that one side of this fight makes emotional arguments and the other relies on science, and that’s true.

We brought scientific expertise into court to talk about the existing evidence of gene flow, instability of the genome from retroviral DNA insertion, and issues with specific genes, including those used as antibiotic resistance markers, or to express the BT toxin, or to confer tolerance to herbicides made by the same companies.

At that time, we also raised concerns about corporate control over the food chain, and the consequences of that were already being seen in America, India and Brazil. The arguments against us mostly implied we sought to take food from the mouths of starving children in the South, and described us as Luddites. Despite this 180° distortion, their PR megaphones had some success reversing the roles and pitching themselves as the rationalists taking on the emotional and ill-informed opposition.

They also successfully narrowed down what science should be to appeal to a group who should have been amongst our chief allies – actual scientists, even including some who’d describe themselves as environmentalists. This appeal spread even to some parts of the left who ought to have been anxious about corporate control of the food chain even if biodiversity seemed a frivolous concern for them. They didn’t want to look like Luddites, especially if somehow these magical new products could end hunger.

Specific experiments aren’t necessarily intrinsically good science, for all sorts of possible reasons. Is the methodology robust? Has a subset of the results been cherry-picked to suit funders? Can the results be statistically significant? Have extraneous factors been minimised? Should it have been done double-blind? Fundamentally, for the GM field trial question, is it ethical?

Ethics isn’t something alien to science, some hippie obsession. It’s embedded in good science. Academic research has to pass the universities’ ethics committees, and it’s easy enough to think of research that would fail without having to Godwin the debate.

And GM field trials tell you only one thing more than GM trials in secure labs – how those crops interact with their environment. Lots of those interactions are already demonstrated, and proving them again is hardly worthwhile.

For pollinating crops, we know that genes will spread. But wheat is largely self-pollinating, the defenders of the Rothamsted experiment tell us, and that should be good enough. Don’t bother your pretty little heads about that word “largely”. But the science is against them – including this wheat-specific research. We know that traits like herbicide tolerance spread widely, to other conventional crops, to organic crops and to weedy relatives.

And it’s not just wind or insect pollination that leads to gene flow. Back in 1999 we argued about horizontal gene transfer through soil bacteria, too, and that’s happening as well: “the successful transfer of transgene-borne antibiotic resistance genes to bacteria might be unavoidable according to a plethora of scientific data“.

More alarmingly still, from the same paper, “several commercial [GMOs] contain antibiotic resistance genes that are still under the control of bacterial promoters as remnants of the bacterial vectors used to construct the [GMOs].”

The most important question for the defenders of field trials is this – what happens if problematic gene flow takes place from your trial, and how would you seek to rectify it? There is as yet no recall button, especially when (as with herbicide tolerance or the BT gene) an inserted sequence has adaptive qualities, and until there is it’s simply unforgivable to plant GM crops in the wild, especially fertile ones.

Science and its technological implementation
I am resolutely pro-science, although I have no post-school scientific qualifications. I admire Ben Goldacre’s regular destruction of myths, dodgy research, and woo groupthink. To take the alternative medicine debate, I don’t believe in homeopathy or acupuncture or iridology. Or anything that’s not been properly scientifically tested and found effective.

But, going back to the distinction between science and technology, and returning to the atom, Rutherford’s research was elegant and admirable pure science, while Oppenheimer’s role on the Manhattan Project was at best an ethically dubious development drawing on that research. We gained a lot from Rutherford’s work, but Oppenheimer’s legacy has hung over the world for more than half a century. I have no problem with the discovery of PCBs in the lab, but if I could go back in time and monkeywrench efforts to put them into the environment I would.

I’m not even anti-GM. We were promised secure vats of GM bacteria churning out medicines or other resources. Go for it. Let’s see it. Start with treatments for the diseases of the South which have proved so uneconomic for the drug companies. I’ll be right there, and I’ll do you your glowing press release for nothing.

But field trials of GM crops are bad science. It’s time for the skeptics to look again at that actual science, rather than just lauding field trials as obviously valuable research.

In fact, if they want to support good science rather than this irretrievable externalisation of risk onto the environment and the food chain, they should get their hands dirty with us.

—
A longer version is at Better Nation

Earlier in the year I noticed that by the 4th January, Channel 4 news had reported the deaths of 4 women as a result of domestic abuse. This was a lot higher than the usual reported number of 2 women or 1.5 women a week. London-based charity NIA.

The Twitter account @OneinFour noticed this too, so they started to count the number of women and girls who were murdered throughout the year as a result of domestic violence.

111 days into the year, and the number had risen to 33. One woman or girl every 3.3 days. And today, just over a month later, the number has risen above 40.

When I write about rates of domestic abuse, I’m often met by people quibbling over the statistic that 2 women a week are murdered by a male partner or ex partner. It’s alarmingly high – it’s too high for some to believe it’s real. In every case that has been counted this year, the primary suspect or the person who has been charged with the murder has been a male relative, partner or ex partner.

One of the murders reported today is of a girl who was raped and killed by her abusive boyfriend. She was 17-years old.

The background to this year’s murders has been a slew of government cuts and the recession. Clear links have been made between the recession and rates of violence against women.

Refuges are reportedly turning away 230 women a day. Funding to domestic abuse groups has been cut by 31% over the last year. Specialist services have had 70% cuts.

As government cuts result in further refuge closures, the answer to the question ‘why doesn’t she leave‘ is becoming ‘because she has no-where to go‘.

But we also need to remember that the issue isn’t just refuge cuts. The issue continues to be that some men choose to be violent towards women and girls.

The attempted murder of a woman this week has been described as an ‘isolated incident‘ by police. But it isn’t an isolated incident. It is part of the pattern of the 40+ murders of women and girls this year.

And when it comes to prevention, this rhetoric that domestic abuse murders are ‘isolated incidents’ is part of the problem. We need to stop seeing domestic abuse murders as ‘one offs’.

We need to start joining up the dots and recognise the pattern that links these deaths is male violence against women. We need to start tackling the causes of violence against women and girls, and we need to start funding prevention, as well as support, services.

In his first meeting with new French President, Francois Hollande, Cameron made it clear the UK would veto any European moves towards a financial transaction tax (or Robin Hood tax).

This position is in stark contrast to opinion, as new polling from the Robin Hood Tax campaign shows most Britons think the financial sector is not paying its fair share.

The survey of more than 1,000 people across England, Scotland and Wales, carried out by Ipsos MORI for the Robin Hood Tax campaign, found that more than three-quarters (77%) of the British public think the Government has not done enough to ensure we are “all in this together”.

71% of those adults who believed the government had not done enough thought banks are “not being asked to pay their fair share”.

By comparison 67% felt that high income earners were not paying their fair share.

People are tired of seeing their schools and hospitals cut while a sector that relied on taxpayers money to survive gives lottery-sized bonuses to bankers whatever their performance.

More than two-thirds (68%) of adults thought financial donations to the Conservative party affected their decisions on regulation and taxation of the City of London.

The Robin Hood Tax campaign is calling on the Government to back international moves in Europe and beyond for a financial transaction tax (FTT).

Extending the UK’s current tax on share transactions to bonds, currencies and derivatives could raise an additional £20bn to tackle poverty at home and abroad and fight climate change.

A blind, deaf, tube-fed, non verbal, disabled man from Scotland has been deemed fit for work by the DWP. As a result of not completing the form correctly, his benefits will be stopped on 7th June and he will have to access the appeal process to have this decision over-turned.

This man has to have 24 hour care and the person who had completed his form for him as his disability prevents him had not included something in the 30 page form which meant that due to that error his money will stop.

These forms are very lengthy, complicated and ask many intimate and intrusive questions very much like the Disability benefit forms I complete on behalf of my children.

The problem isn’t the fact that you have to ask for help; it isn’t the time it takes to complete them; it isn’t the caring that you have to do at the same time; it isn’t the humiliation that you feel as you complete them; it isn’t the shame culture which has grown up in recent years around those legitimately asking for help.

It isn’t the fear of hate crime which vulnerable people face; it isn’t the lack of disability access which greet many disabled people called to an assessment with untrained staff; it isn’t the tabloid press who brand genuinely disabled people as “scroungers” and “scum”.

It isn’t any one of those things. It’s all of them.

The mistake regarding his forms will take weeks to rectify. And if you still feel this is a justifiable process in order to weed out the liars and fakes living in mansions and driving luxury cars, I ask you to think again. More money is lost in DWP error than is lost through benefits granted to liars and fakes.

The fact that you feel this is a justification at all simply means that you have been desensitised by effective propaganda because disabled people are the new scapegoats de jour.

My thoughts are with those without a support network, those who are killing themselves because they have lost, or fear losing their benefits.

The battle against disabled people shames us all.

—
A longer version is at Nicky Clark’s blog.

Over the last few years, films like the Age of Stupid and an Inconvenient Truth tackled climate change, influencing both public opinion and policy change. More recently, the End of the Line lifted the lid on the threat from over-fishing, and successfully changed both government and business policy.

The same team are now behind The Spirit Level, a film based on the book, and our aim is no less ambitious. We want to achieve real, tangible change in policies and attitudes.

I’ve long been passionate about the role that film can play in creating social change, and this text immediately struck me as one of the most important social messages facing the developed world.

The ignorance about how unequal our societies have become – and the effects of this – is shocking.

This May, starting today, we are launching our campaign both to raise awareness and funds for the film.

We want as many people as possible to know we are making this film – to show just how much public support there is for the issue, to help us attract the money we need to make it, and to put pressure on politicians to move beyond lip-service to real policy change.

Financially, we are asking supporters to pre-buy the download of the film.

This is a movement and a campaign and, regardless of how much cash you have, we want you to participate and spread the word about our message.

So, from today, regardless of whether you can donate, please share the campaign page – on Facebook, Twitter and blogs

Facebook page / Twitter – @SpiritLevelDoc

And sign up to our newsletter at www.thespiritleveldocumentary.com or see www.indiegogo.com/spiritlevelfilm

And please do email any thoughts you have for the film or campaign to us at hello@thespiritleveldocumentary.com.

Theresa May might be at pains to persuade us a draft of the Communications Bill isn’t the sort of ‘snoopers charter’ the last government proposed, but she hasn’t yet extended the courtesy of explaining what it might entail to the Deputy Prime Minister yet.

That’s according to the influential anti-snooping Lib Dem backbencher Julian Huppert, who slammed the shadowy approach of the Home Office in an address to a group of Liberal Democrat students at the University of Warwick on Thursday.

Quite who has access to the plans is not known, but it’s clear the DPM hasn’t been enlightened, despite having assured voters he won’t stand for an assault on civil liberties.

A frustrated Huppert let slip that “they haven’t even shown Nick” details of the bill (a draft of which hasn’t been published yet), before criticising the Home Secretary for refusing to provide any substantive details in her appearance before the Home Affairs Select Committee last month.

Critics will now be inclined to ask on what grounds exactly the Deputy Prime Minister saw fit to play down the extent of the surveillance proposals, beyond the scraps of information he is allowed by May.

Huppert was keen, however, to re-iterate party chairman Tim Farron’s threat to terminate the bill if it proves to be too authoritarian. “There is no way we will allow something to happen that will make civil liberties worse”, he reassured the students, adding that killing the bill was something “we may still have to do”.

The ‘black boxes’ designed to intercept communications “themselves are a risk”, he explained, in that they provide a clear target for hackers.

One wonders how the Libdem leader will be able to stand up for liberal values in the coming debate on web snooping if, like the rest of us, he doesn’t know with any great certainty what the measures in question are.

—
Tom Newham is studying History and Politics at Warwick University and writes for The Student Journals

All of Ireland stood and stared in confusion last month when a backbencher MP stated that ‘fornication’ was the main cause of unwanted pregnancies, as a defence against bringing in legislation that would allow for abortion under certain circumstances.

Michelle Mulherin, A TD (MP) for Fine Gael, the mainstream centre-right party, said: “abortion as murder, therefore sin … which is no more sinful than … greed, hate and fornication. The latter, being fornication I would say, is probably the single most likely cause of unwanted pregnancies in this country.”

Most were shocked; having not seen or heard this kind of language since Ireland was ruled by Bishops in the Catholic Church.

The last several decades have been mostly those of progress, with contraception being legalised in 1980, divorce in 1996 culminating with the passing of the Civil Partnership Act in 2010.

It is often that for this reason Irish people tend not to identify openly as politically conservative. Most parties both the right and left prefer to use words like liberal and progressive despite their actual place on the political spectrum.

While in other countries, Conservatism has prouder traditions, in Ireland is associated with reactionary Catholicism that plagued the country for too long in the twentieth-century.

This hasn’t the only incident of this nature. Irelands Minster of State for European Affairs Lucinda Creighton last year sparked controversy when she commented she was against same-sex marriage, due to marriage being ‘primarily about children’, and its main purpose to ‘propagate’ [sic]. This led to her party leadership having to distance themselves from Minister Creighton and comment that her views are ‘her own’ and not those of the party.

But a poll conducted in 2010 showed that 67% of Irish supported gay marriage. Despite this public support, and the support of all other party leaders including, the deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore, Taoiseach Enda Kenny and his party have not moved on the subject.

The Gay and Lesbian Equality Network has said that Kenny has missed a “great opportunity” in not following President Obama’s lead on this issue following the recent announcement of his support for same-sex nuptials.

It seems that the Christian-Democrat Fine Gael party, who at this time hold a majority in the Irish Parliament (Dail Eireann) are the main instrument in Irish conservatism, and despite the fact that they, as a party, hold the majority support of the country, most do not identify with their socially conservative faction.

A war has been waged on certain members of the party with the Irish media and consensus. Fine Gael TD and Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar commented in March that RTE (Ireland’s public broadcaster, the equivalent of the BBC) has a bias towards ‘liberal’ and ‘centre-left’ parties.

Largely, Ireland has secularised and liberalised, with church attendance majorly in decline for the last several decades. The ‘non-religious’ are now the largest group after Catholics according to the latest census taken last year.

Despite this an ugly Christian-right resurgence has begun to bubble, although, perhaps it will die out quickly before coming to light in a major way.

“Don’t Ever Come Back” was the headline on the Huffington Post yesterday, referring to proposed legislation from two US Senators following the move from Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin to renounce his US citizenship.

This move will save Saverin a reported $67 Million in potential taxes after Facebook went public. Some Americans seem to have taken Saverin’s decision to leave as a personally offensive.

The American pride, the American attitude of ‘America number one’ is at once amazing and disturbing.

Visiting the country in 2010, every house had a the Stars and Stripes proudly waving outside it, even in the staunchly Democratic Maryland. As my then American girlfriend explained, the flag is just “what you do”.

But here I don’t believe you would get the same response. I’m British, but I don’t “love” my country. This is 2012 however, the year of the United Kingdom: the London 2012 Olympics, the Royal Jubilee. It’s impossible to go into a supermarket without seeing the Union Jack adorning t-shirts, lunchboxes and (weirdly in my local Sainsbury’s) BBQ sets.

I support/defend/hold-affection-for some things that are British: the BBC, the NHS, Wallace and Gromit. But the Queen? No. An anachronistic relic of our feudal past.

Back in 2005, Michael Howard wrote that multicultural integration has been a failure and that not enough has been done to emphasise the merits of “Britishness”. It is time, he said, to move away from so much “attachment to other traditions” and to promote instead what he called “the British Dream”. In the words of Jeff Daniels, “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”

What is ‘Britishness’? A love of Cricket? The passion for queuing? An impulse to plant flags in brown people’s countries?

Last October David Cameron unveiled changes planned to the Life in the UK citizenship test, which must be taken by all those seeking indefinite leave to remain or who apply for a British passport. The Guardian wrote a short quiz with a questions taken from the Official Practice Citizenship Test.

I scored 13 out of a possible 24. The pass mark was 75% and according to the Life in the UK Test, I have “insufficient knowledge of the English language or of life in the UK to remain”.

I was born in the UK, I have the privilege of being white, heterosexual, middle class, university educated… in terms of British cultural life I have it easy, the system is set up for me to succeed, yet I failed the Citizenship Test, I will not be holding a street party to mark the Jubilee or proudly backing ‘Team GB’.

The mantra of America has always been it is a place where anyone can grow up to be president. Here in the UK, if you are reading this, you won’t be the head of state; your parents weren’t the *right* parents.

This summer, as the Union Jack is beamed around the world, we should be asking what it stands for. Why should we have pride in the accidental location of our birth?

The JPMorgan story doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon. The losses suffered by the bank keep getting bigger and bigger. Insiders are now saying they’ve surpassed the initial $2 billion estimate by at least $1 billion.

The Federal Reserve has stepped in. It’s set out to examine the scale of the losses and the size of the original bets. It’s also going to ask whether the American bank’s chief investment office took too many risks for a federally insured depository.

One thing is clear – a serious investigation is necessary.

We can’t take JPMorgan’s claims at face value.

This is Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica:

…when they are in trouble, banks will mislead the world about their financials. And some will lie. Richard S. Fuld Jr. of Lehman Brothers, E. Stanley O’Neal and Charles O. Prince of Citigroup all played down their banks’ exposures before their institutions took vast losses. Were they deliberately misleading? Because of the failures to investigate the financial crisis adequately, we still don’t know.

There are real questions to be asked. And Eisinger is right to ask them.

• What did Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan’s chief executive, and Doug Braunstein, the bank’s chief financial officer, know about the bets and when did they know it?
• How accurate were JPMorgan’s first-quarter earning claims?
• Were execs at the top of JPMorgan being wholly truthful when discussing the chief investment office’s investments?
• Were there other trades made by JPMorgan and when did those losses take place? And were the bank’s positions marked correctly?
• Finally, JPMorgan recently changed a crucial measure of risk. Why? And was that adequately disclosed?

So many questions. So few answers.

The thing that underpins all of these suspicions is that the timings of this whole drama doesn’t stack up.

The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg picked up on the “London Whale” in early April.

At the time JPMorgan dismissed journalist’s questions. In its first-quarter earnings on the 13th April, Dimon and Braunstein called it a “tempest in a teapot.”

The bank maintains its main losses happened in late April and early May. But timings and statements are already being challenged by shareholders. Two suits have already been filed, accusing the bank of grossly misrepresenting the trades.

The allegations are that the bank was bluffing all along. Fearing if news of their exposed position got out, losses would have ballooned. So, the claims go, JPMorgan dodged the questions. And so there are more questions.

Eisinger sums it up, arguing “how little true accountability there has been since the financial crisis. No top-tier banker has gone to prison for the many bank failures, the deceptive sales practices or the misrepresentations of the books. As a society, we have thrown up our hands at Too Big to Prosecute financial fraud”.

We need far greater accountability. And the questions posed here need to be answered. Any less would be criminal.

—
Article first published at The Bureau for Investigative Journalism

A petition has been created to pressure the government to raise the minimum wage for under 21 year olds. The petition follows the Chancellor of the Exchequers’ announcement outlined in the budget in March 2012 that the minimum wage for over 21 (currently at £6.08 per hour) would be raised to £6.19 per hour in October 2012.

Gorge Osborne’s 11p increase will not meet inflation, as recommended by the Low Pay Commission. The minimum wage for under 21 year olds will remain frozen at £4.89 per hour, not meeting inflation.

Author of the petition James Imhoof argues that there is no evidence to support the government’s argument that the minimum wage freeze for under 21 year olds will help people get back into work.

Mr Imhoof said: “This unjust measure will only serve to widen the increasing intergenerational inequality that we are seeing in Britain, and force hundreds of thousands of young people further into poverty.”

He added: “The cost of living continues to rise, and it is only fair that the minimum wage should rise as well.”

The petition asks parliament to discuss an increase in the National Minimum Wage in line with the current rate of inflation for under 21 year olds.

It follows figures released yesterday by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) which show that UK unemployment fell by 45,000 between January and March 2012.

You can sign the petition here: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/33865.

TUC analysis published yesterday, using official figures, shows that the number of men doing part-time jobs because they can’t find full-time work has more than doubled to nearly 600,000 between December 2007 and December 2011.

The number of under-employed women has increased by 74% to 780,000, bringing the total number of people in involuntary part-time work to a record 1.38 million.

The proportion of women working part-time that don’t want a full-time job, often because of family and caring responsibilities, has also been falling. This shows that the recent rise in part-time employment has mainly come about through necessity rather than choice.

Number of people doing part-time work because couldn’t find full-time jobs, Q4 2011

(Quarterly Labour Force Survey, October – December, 2011)

Percentage increases in involuntary part-time work, Q4 2007–Q4 2011

(Quarterly Labour Force Survey, October – December, 2007 & 2011)

(Download the full analysis)

While we had good news last month that overall unemployment fell so too did the number of people in full-time work.

While part-time or temporary jobs may be better than no work at all, people are having to take huge salary sacrifices, reduce their hours and trade down their skills to stay in work.

Creating more well-paid, skilled, full-time jobs is the only way to secure a sustainable recovery that works for everyone, as it will raise people’s incomes and help them to work at their potential again.

—–
How we get better quality jobs – fulfilling and rewarding for individuals – is one of the topics being discussed at the upcoming TUC Conference: After Austerity

It’s clichéd to say, but the next 6 months really will be a vital period for English Higher Education. The first cohort of students enter the new university fees and funding system in the autumn, raising higher education up the agenda once more.

Student groups, anti-cuts activists and political organisations must be ready for this moment, not least because with every term that passes the Coalition’s disastrous changes to higher education will become harder to roll-back.

Campus activism, protests, publications and lobbying are all important responses. But they’re not enough.

But broader and more strategic political action is needed too. This is the motivation behind the ‘Which Side are You On?’ campaign, which is seeking to pressure university Vice-Chancellors into a very simple act: namely, stating whether they favour or oppose burdening typical undergraduates with over £40,000 of debt, and the withdrawal of public funding for university teaching.

This may not sound particularly dramatic. But that’s exactly the point.

Why on earth should a university VC – as head of a higher educational institution – refuse to put on record where they stand on these vital issues? And yet, almost all Vice-Chancellors (with laudable exceptions) have thus far managed to avoid doing so. VCs have found time, mind you, to grant themselves massive pay rises, even as they equivocate over fundamental reforms to their institutions.

We believe this is indefensible, but moreover that it provides an opportunity for action. This is why a number of student groups are coordinating an open letter calling on all university Vice-Chancellors to make their positions on fees and cuts public. We already have signatures from a number of high-profile academics and student groups – but we need more to ensure that VCs are pressured to respond.

If it turns out that VC’s are willing to publicly oppose the Government’s reforms en masse, we shift pressure back on to the Coalition over HE. This would be a small but significant victory in itself.

And in the (likely) case that VC’s refuse to publicly oppose higher fees and the withdrawal of public funding, we provide students, staff and activists with a potent focal point on campus around which to base activism, protest and debate at the start of the academic year.

The letter is here: and what we need now is for activists to circulate it for signatures as widely as possible – amongst students but particularly amongst university staff and academics.

Once it is sufficiently supported, it will be published in the national media, and student groups – particularly those new students paying up to £9000 a year – can demand that their VCs finally answer: “Which side are you on?”

—
Richard is part of Southampton Students for Education

On April 28, the Co-operative announced it will be ending contracts worth £350,000 to four of Israel’s largest export companies known to operate in and profit from the occupation of the West Bank.

The Group has not stocked goods sourced from West Bank settlements or the occupied Golan Heights since 2009 and have emphasised that this is not a boycott of Israel:

the Group will continue to trade with Israeli suppliers that do not source from the settlements, and currently has supply agreements with some twenty Israeli businesses, a number of which may benefit from a transfer of trade.

There are four companies integrated into the settler economy, but there are dozens of others with direct links to the United Kingdom.

It is international inability to tackle Israel’s settlement programme which is a key obstacle to any negotiations. A poll in October 2010 showed that 70% of Palestinians will support negotiations if Israel ceases its settlement program.

In the same month YouGov Siraj polling showed that an overwhelming 90% of Palestinians would not support the negotiations as settlement construction continued.

A 2011 report from the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ) and the Palestinian Ministry of Economy detailed how the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza saps nearly 85% of GDP from the Palestinian economy (nearly $7 billion) a year. Furthermore, “over USD 4.5 billion per year, a full 56% of GDP, is the cost (in terms of both foregone revenues and higher costs of raw materials) for the Palestinians for not being able to access their own resources.

The cost of the settlement enterprise, and the occupation built around it, is astronomical, but increasing settler violence is another vital reason to begin to put pressure on its economic underpinning.

According to mapping by the UN, the weekly average of settler attacks resulting in Palestinian casualties and property damage increased by 32% in 2011 compared to 2010, and by over 144% compared to 2009. Research from Israeli NGO Yesh Din shows that over 90% of monitored complaints regarding settler violence filed by Palestinians with the Israeli police in recent years have never led to prosecution.

Backlash
But Labour Friends of Israel and Progress have both promoted an article by Eric Lee, which accuses the Cooperative Group of “demonising Israel” and suggests that any move away from economic ties with Israeli companies who directly support the settlement enterprise is a “slippery slope” towards a complete boycott of Israel.

Neither organisation has offered any rationale behind that claim. Lee’s only argument against the move appears to be that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Guardian have welcomed it. Lee even admits that:

For those of us who support a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine and who oppose the building of settlements in the occupied West Bank, it is easy to dismiss this as irrelevant.  After all, it’s not like the Co-op voted to ban all Israeli products.  In fact the Co-op went out of their way to say precisely that. They’re not boycotting Israel.  They’re just boycotting companies that profit from the occupation.

The reality is that the United States, European Union and the Quartet have so far failed to prevent the on-going, and accelerating, expansion of Israel’s illegal settlement programme. Meanwhile, the Cooperative Group have taken a measured, sensible and practical step towards ending the economic stranglehold the occupation imposes on the West Bank by refusing to be complicit in it.

If we support a two-state solution, as both Progress and LFI claim to, then it is incumbent upon us to speak out against settlement construction and support activity aimed towards the creation of a viable Palestinian State.

Now we must ask why other retailers maintain their unethical economic relationship with Israel’s settlement programme and pressure them to follow the Co-op’s example.

—
A longer version of this blog is here.

Dear Daily Telegraph,

You had the scoop of the decade with MPs expenses. You are clearly a paper that employs excellent journalist with great research skills. It is a shame these skills weren’t utilised when you interviewed Ian Duncan Smith yesterday about the changes to DLA.

Here are the basic mistakes in your article;

1. The subheader says IDS is going ahead with changes to DLA to “rid the system of abuse and fraud”. The Government’s own figures show DLA fraud is 0.5% for 2010/11. To start the article as you did just cements the idea in the mind of the public that all disabled people are scroungers and consequently increases disabled hate crime.

2. IDS says the number of claimants have risen by 30%. This isn’t true. According to IDS’s own department, the claimant case has risen by 16% amongst working-age claimants, to whom these changes will only apply, once population growth has been taken into account.

3. “The rigorous new process being introduced by Mr Duncan Smith could lead to those without limbs, including former soldiers, having their payments reduced as their everyday mobility is not undermined by their prosthetic limbs”.

If you read the Government’s draft qualifying criteria for Personal Independence Payments (that is replacing DLA) you’d have realised this statement is disingenous. It clearly says that even if your everyday mobility is severely limited through amputation, under the new system you’ll receive minimal support to help with this.

Case study 7 says “Andy is 50. His left leg was crushed and had to be amputated above the knee and his right leg was also injured.The scar on his left stump has not healed very well so he has difficulties with his prosthesis and his right leg is weak. He finds it very tiring if he walks more than 40-50m so he often uses a wheelchair if he is going outdoors. Mobility activities = 10 (standard rate Mobility component)”. This means that the Government recognises that Andy cannot walk more than 50metres, that, to use IDS’s terminology, his ‘everyday mobility’ is undermined but will only award him 10 points. This means he will no longer be able to access the motobility scheme which allows him to rent a car to give him the freedom that his body no longer allows him.

4. “In the assessment, lots of people weren’t actually seen. They didn’t get a health check or anything like that”. To get DLA you are medically assessed by the doctors and hospital workers that see you regularly. They need to provide supporting evidence to the DWP that your disability or illness is as you have described it. The DWP regularly contacts doctors who have provided supporting evidence for extra information before it makes a decision. This is why it is actually very hard to be awarded DLA and why the fraud rate is so low.

5. “Something like 70 per cent had lifetime awards, (which) meant that once they got it you never looked at them again”. This 70 per cent figure may be true and it is very high, but to suggest that some people should not receive lifetime awards shouldn’t automatically mean that no-one receives lifetime awards. Many claimants have degenerative incurable illnesses such as Parkinson’s or, like me, Cystic fibrosis, or are permanently paralysed. We can’t get better, so if we are found to need help this year then the same will be true in four years time. It is a waste of taxpayer’s money to reassess all claimants every few years.

6. You quote IDS as saying “Tony Blair’s government tried to attack DLA, just to restrict it. We’re not doing that”. Actually IDS is. The Government declared in its Budget 2010 policy costings document that it intends to save 20% from its DLA budget by changing the way it is allocated – this is the very definition of restricting DLA.

There are other things I do not agree with with this article, but as they are matters of tone not fact you have a right to editorial control over these issues.

I appreciate that the Telegraph is right-leaning and therefore broadly supportive of the current Government, but by swallowing every fact uttered by IDS without question, this piece reads as a poor piece of advertorial for the Government’s cuts not as a strong, piece of quality journalism.

Yours sincerely,
Sharon Brennan

—-
Shannon is a writer and journalist living in London and living with Cystic Fibrosis. Her blog focuses on the latest news and opinions on NHS.

One day, when I was a teen, I started to cut myself, making thin little slits on my ankles and arms with a penknife. I stopped sleeping. I started to hear strange noises and voices in my head at night.

Then I started to fall out with everyone at school; I found myself dipping into a weird sense of ecstasy: watching myself saying and doing vicious, nasty things to my peers, incapable of stopping myself. I told my parents I wanted to kill myself.

There was no reason for this to happen: I had been happy enough at school.

The road to normality took a year of counselling and hospital appointments. During that time, I never thought I might be mentally ill. No one who treated me ever said that could be the case. My family and I never discussed my problems in terms of illness. I was just going through a difficult patch. The suspicion I might be a loony – that was just unpalatable, to me and everyone else.

Andy Burnham wants to tackle this culture. In an under-reported speech earlier this year he said: “A country which has so often led the world in challenging discrimination needs to recognise we’ve much to learn from other countries when it comes to the stigma.”

It’s a noble aim. One in four of us will suffer from a mental health problem at some point in our lives, yet still the shame persists.

Just as he wants to change public attitudes, so Burnham wants to reform services. He cites the fact that 70% of prisoners have two or more mental health conditions. I’m surprised the number’s that low.

When I was researching gangs I remember a psychiatrist telling me to look out for “frozen watchfulness” among the kids – their faces would be expressionless, their eyes constantly shifting around – a legacy of domestic abuse.

I remember meeting a former gang member who was undergoing counselling for what was essentially PTSD. If you live your life in constant fear of being shot, it’s what you’ll get – a lack of empathy, of bottled up emotions.

I spoke to Amanda and Steve (names changed), a pair of psychiatrists based in the Midlands, and asked them about Burnham’s claim that the NHS “treats, rather than prevents” because of these splits.

Amanda replied: “He’s absolutely right about the physical division of services. It makes relations strained. But my problem is that his take is idealistic. I’ve heard a lot of it before. People throw these buzzwords around – ‘collaborative’ is another one – but simply changing the language isn’t going to help.

“The real problem is that GPs have ten minutes with each patient. If someone comes to see them with a sore throat, of course that means they’ll dish a prescription out for a sore throat. There are some perceptive GPs who realise that mental and physical health problems can manifest as each other, but they’re constrained by time.”

What about Burnham’s claim that failure to centralise mental health costs money? Steve said: “He’s right. If you have a doctor who’s receptive to mental health needs, you could save millions. So many mentally ill people are heavy smokers, for a start, or can’t manage their diabetes. But the problem is this: if you refer them, you will save money in acute care but those savings won’t be passed on to us.”

Within this culture, it must be very difficult to see the wider picture. Amanda says: “I sometimes think politicians don’t realise people go into healthcare because they’re caring people. The police will hand people over to us as a way of filling the gaps. And I had an old lady in with dementia. We could have discharged her, but we didn’t – basically because her social worker was anxious she wouldn’t let her care workers in.”

But Nick Clegg pressed the opposite case for the Bill, using mental health as an example. He told ITV’s Daybreak: “GPs will tell you many of the people they see actually have mental health problems. If you give those people greater say maybe they’ll provide more support to mental health services.”

It’s a fairly big maybe, and it’s not one with reams of evidence to support it.

——-
Alan White’s work has appeared in the Observer, Times, Private Eye, The National & TLS. As John Heale, he is the author of One Blood: Inside Britain’s Gang Culture, republished this year. He tweets @aljwhite

The financial services regulator has so many groups and committees for liaising with industry that it says it would take more than 18 hours to draw up a list of them.

The Financial Service Authority has just refused the Bureau’s request for a list of these groups because it would take too long to compile. 18 hours is the maximum number of hours a response to a Freedom of Information request must take.

‘This is because a list of groups, committees and forums through which the FSA consults on or discusses its rules and/or regulatory policy is not held centrally or in an easily accessible format,’ it said. ‘Where such groups exist, any details would be spread across all areas of the FSA.’

In the wake of the financial crash, the regulator has been criticised for being too close and cosy with the industry it regulates.

The body nicknamed the Fundamentally Supine Authority by Private Eye is widely believed to have fallen victim to ‘regulatory capture’ – a situation where the regulator starts acting in the interests of the regulated industry rather than the public.

All regulators need to talk to industry, and no-one is suggesting that financial regulation should be created in a vacuum. But to avoid ‘regulatory capture’ liaison with firms and their lobbyists should be structured and transparent.

How is this possible if the FSA is unable to easily say who is meeting whom, or when or why?

Consistent transparency would also be good. The FSA has proved curiously reluctant to release minutes of some industry group meetings under Freedom of Information – or the names of attendees. It claims this would breach Data Protection law as the meetings take place under Chatham House rules, and attendees have not consented to their involvement being made public.

Yet the regulator is happy to publish minutes and names of attendees of some meetings – all the minutes of its securitisation standing group are available, for example. The minutes for November 2011 carried a warning to the banks that some of their employees were still up to no good.

‘The FSA had been made aware of certain questionable practices in the asset-backed securities market over the last 18 months,’ the minutes said. ‘These included discretionary managers selling assets at non-market prices to avoid triggers, and secret deals.’

Both situations could result in certain investors having access to privileged information. ‘ The FSA went on to point out that securities markets were only just re-emerging as a funding source for credit institutions across Europe and the UK. Dodgy practices could undermine them afresh.

There is clearly a public interest in this information being in the public domain. Apart from anything else it adds weight to arguments that the bonus system needs to be changed.

On this evidence, some bankers’ desire to earn bonuses is still outweighing their concern for the long-term reputation of their bank, and for the economy in general.

Why the FSA can’t be similarly transparent about all its meetings – and all its warnings – isn’t clear.

—
First published by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism

The local elections are over, France and Greece have seen people vote for an alternative and as pundits scramble to analyse and say what it all means, I want to take a step back and consider the role that organising and campaigning plays in building for change.   

In these times, that is the greatest challenge we face.  Whether it is for elections, for a plastic bag free area or for better, more equitable pay and conditions, we need to reorientate our view of success of campaigns to incorporate organising more fully. 

In the trade union movement we debate about what it means for us to organise. I want to briefly explain how I view campaigning and talk about my approach to organising. 

For me, organising is about empowerment and hunger for change; creating a sustainable organisation that can weather success and failure.  To do that, we need to work on the issues that people care about, stand up for our values and, crucially, deploy our resources in the most effective way possible. 

Campaigns can rise and fall, but people and their power remains if we organise rather than just campaign. 

President Obama knew this from his experience in community organising in Chicago and I think that the success of his election was down to the massive organisation that was built. To me, in the years between his election and the current campaign, the breakdown in this structure was the most disappointing.

Ads, relentless as they are do play a role in swaying opinions, but nothing is more powerful than the opinion of someone you respect and trust. This is also why it’s important that we move to an organising position.

How do we move from purely campaigning to organising? 

• Pick the right issue.  Talk about it in the way that is understandable to a lot of people and relates to our core values. 
• Engage and involve people at every step of the campaign.  Think about how you build teams; step back as much as possible and let others take ownership of the campaign.  I can get some press if people are mobilise for the day, but we’re going to change the world if we organise for the long term.
• Be ready to learn.  A key element of our ability to be successful when organising is our readiness to learn from others, to look outside our world and be humbled and to recognise we don’t always have the answers.  The flip side to this is our willingness to share successes and failures with others.  

Despite, being an organiser and campaigner for many years, I’m still in a process of learning which is why I’m excited about our conference on 26 May called Grassroots. 

It brings together a wide range of organisations and activists who are looking to learn from each other, challenge perceptions and be as effective as we can. 

We’re going to hear new approaches to strategy and tactics, good ways to communicate and lastly how we are going to organise meaningfully.

In focussing on organising in our campaigns, I’m going to amend a well known phrase: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, but lets make that small group as big as we can.

—
Grassroots is being held at the TUC, Congress House, Great Russell St, London on 26 May.  To register go to www.grassrootsuk.org/register-to-come

Becky Wright is the Director of the TUC’s Organising Academy which is responsible for the development and delivery of the TUC’s training programme for union organisers and officers. She blogs regularly at Stronger Unions

The Daily Mail is, as ever, outraged. The current target of its ire, and a concerted campaign of political pressure, is online pornography.

The house that Dacre built has convinced the government to float the idea of a massive online firewall.

One would have to opt out of the blocking software in order to access anything the government deemed too explicit, ostensibly to protect children from the horrors of the internet.

As is so often the case, The Mail’s anger is selective and ill thought through.

First, the firewall would not permit anyone under the age of 18 to watch porn, but, needless to point out, it is legal to have sex at 16. Indeed, one can join the Army at 16 – an age when someone’s old enough to shoot people, but not watch porn.

An equally flagrant double standard: It’s legal to let children as young as 7 watch people being violently killed in films with 12A certificates, yet an equivalent level of sex would require a far higher rating. Why then, is it only porn that is to be censored – there are far more traumatic things hidden in the darker corners of the internet.

As Unity pointed out on this site last week, there is more than an element of Christian moralising involved.

Second, the result of this tremendously illiberal law being enacted would be internet service providers holding a list of everyone in the UK who watches porn. It’s a safe bet that within a few years, some religious offshoot of Anonymous will have hacked into the ISPs servers and posted those lists online.

By enacting the proposed legislation, the government will be creating a climate of fear around porn, and by extension, sex in general.

Third, Alan Moore noticed that

Sexually progressive cultures gave us mathematics, literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.

He’s right. Very little good has come from societies that seek to over regulate sexuality. Let’s not become one.

Very soon, the children of the first digital natives will need protecting from the genuinely messed up stuff that’s out there – and they will be.

By their parents, who can regulate internet use far more effectively, and less obtrusively, than the state or a company could ever hope to.

—
Dan Jones writes about politics, religion and culture. Follow him on Twitter @DanJoness.

I love London.

I don’t mean it’s a great place to live. It can be. It can also be hell. It’s a hard place to live. It’s expensive. It isn’t easy to make close friends here, if you’re starting from scratch. You don’t get much space, and within that tiny space it is possible to be infinitely lonely. People come here, and hate, it and go. People come here, and love it, and stay. Those are Londoners.

I grew up here when “London Mayor” meant some old Lord, well connected in the City, who wore a big chain and a tricorn hat, who was wheeled out once a year in a fairytale gold carriage to be waved at by grateful orphans.

Back then, London was governed in the same way as the rest of the country, but with the addition of the Greater London Council, which provided an overview on housing, roads and so forth. Local councils looked after their own services. As with everything in this country, it was all strongly party-political. In 1977 the country was in a mess. We had had, or were having the oil crisis; everyone – EVERYONE was on strike. The previous year, we had had a serious drought, the Notting Hill Carnival riot. and, to my personal delight, a Biblical plague of ladybirds. It was all getting a bit Ragnarok.

In the middle of this, with an election looming, a Labour splinter group stood up and said that they had no faith in their party’s election manifesto. Ken Livingstone was in that group. It didn’t go down well with Labour.

After a few years of political pushy-shovey, in 1981 Ken became the leader of the GLC. He wanted to spend money on the poor. Hell he did spend money on the poor, on the gay, on the disabled, on the homeless. Thatcher was our Prime Minister. It didn’t go down well with the Conservatives.

In 1985 the GLC – which by then had pretty much got everyone’s back up by pointing out that the poor a) existed, b) needed to be addressed and c) were going to require some actual cash, was disbanded. County Hall – our graceful County Hall, with its open arms curving towards the river – was sold to a Japanese company.

I was 15. My family, which was Daily-Mail reading Conservative, believed solidly that Ken was quite mad. But even I could see that this – the breakup of the GLC and the flogging off of its beautiful offices – was a big “fuck you” to Ken. Directly to Ken, who had been openly socialist and lefty, and had dared to champion the scummy poor, whom no decent person ever even spoke about, other than in the hushed tones of pity or with braying disapproval, because everyone knows the poor could stop being poor if they wanted to badly enough.

This was 1985. I’m not making this up. This was how it was. This is how it still is.

In 2000, some great beast slouched towards the South Bank to be born, and the Greater London Authority was set up. It was to be controlled directly by an elected London Mayor. London opened its arms to Ken Livingstone and buried its face in his chest.

The point of Ken was that, with his unsmiling lefty pragmatism, he never seemed to waste any time judging anyone. He just got on with trying to make it work.

He wasn’t perfect. He screwed up sometimes. Some things worked, some didn’t. Sometimes he employed people he shouldn’t have, made bad decisions. His relationship with both political parties – but most notably with his own – always looked awkward. Although he was Labour, Labour knew he wouldn’t toe the party line if he disagreed with it. Ken was Ken first. This is the very quality the public like about him.

The same likeably-ungovernable quality is broadly true of Boris. There’s a difference though: we’re supposed to like Boris because he’s so jolly Borissy, isn’t he? He’s playing a cult of personality card, and playing it well, as a stepping stone in his career. That’s what the Mayorship is, to Boris. It’s the ramp up to PM.

The Cult of Boris (say it carefully), is part of an interesting modern Tory phenomenon, where politicians – Louise Mensch springs to mind as another example – stick their heads above the parapet and ask us to admire them not for their policies – which run a poor second place to the Sturm und Drang of whatever they’re currently on Newsnight talking about – but because they’re … entertaining. Yes, I mean that pejoratively.

Ken, on the other hand, doesn’t really care whether you like him per him, or not. He cares, with occasionally damaging tunnel vision, about whether the issues are being addressed. Ken has always understood with perfect clarity that the rich in London will always look after themselves, and that they have the means to do so.

If you want to keep London from descending into pockets of anarchy surrounding a series of leafy gated communities, you must care for those who have the fewest advantages. The Mayorship has never been a career step for Ken. Looking after London is the ultimate destination. Looking after London is what he wants – wanted – to do.

So what now? Belts are tight. People are buckling up for things to get even rougher. Few of us below a certain level have anything to spare, and the attitudes which always accompany hard times nibble on the edges of us now. Suspicion, intolerance, fear. It is going to get worse over the next four years. Mark my words. The best we can do is to help one another, where we can. To not let suspicion, intolerance or fear become our response to hard times.

Ken has said that he will not stand again, and I am heartbroken. For the sake of finding Boris entertaining, for the sake of Boris’s career path, we have agreed to see London split apart into have and have-not, we have agreed, as a city, to condemn the saddest Londoners to fall by the wayside, and that the unlikely glue that holds Londoners together as one race will be dissolved in a miserable and unworthy bath of money and ambition.

I don’t think we will see anyone else like Ken, anyone else with his grasp of the bottom-up, unpretty mechanics of London. I don’t think I will feel about another politician the way I felt about him.

I never liked him – he was never easy to like – but I loved him. I loved him because I love London, and so did he.

—
This was first posted at Rachel’s blog Chiller, where there’s a longer version. She tweets from here.

In January 2009, two articles in British tabloids revealed that “Muslim fanatics” were planning to harm public figures in the UK as a response to Israeli actions in Gaza. The People revealed that the singer Madonna was a target because of her “Jewish links”, while the Sun issued a front page story (since deleted from its website) claiming that Alan Sugar was a “terror target” because he is Jewish.

Both stories relied heavily on postings taken from on-line discussion forums, and were deeply problematic.

The evidence of a plot against Sugar was discovered by Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads to have been planted by Glen Jenvey, who was the person who claimed to have discovered it.

Jenvey’s status as an independent “counter-terror” expert had been endorsed by Patrick Mercer MP, who was formerly Shadow Minister for Homeland Security. Further, Mercer’s office acted as a conduit between Jenvey and the media – Tim has published an email in which a member of Mercer’s staff pitched a (different) story to the People after having “been in touch with Mr Jenvey about a number of things”.

As the evidence against Jenvey piled up, Mercer issued a statement in which he announced that he would be “looking carefully” into “his dealings with Mr Jenvey”. However, he’s been reluctant to discuss the matter since then; instead, he discussed Tim with Nadine Dorries MP, and followed her lead by crying “stalker” to deflect further critical scrutiny (Mercer found this tactic so congenial that he went on to use the same trick against his ex-lover).

Tim’s interaction with Mercer was recently (20 April) raised on Twitter, by someone using the name “Tabloidman” (@tabloidtroll)

@tabloidtroll: @bloggerheads You’re in Private Eye for your little dodgy stunts so often you should be given your own column don’t you think? #hypocrisy

@malcolmcoles: @bloggerheads @tabloidtroll he wasn’t necessarily claiming you were named in it was he? I read it more that your stunts were in it …*

@tabloidtroll: @zelo_street @bloggerheads I was referring to his involvement not naming you insignificant little man.

@tabloidtroll: @zelo_street @bloggerheads God this is boring! Just see his manipulation in the Eye of far right activist to have a go at Patrick Mercer.

Tabloidman has spent the last few months firing off vituperative Tweets against various individuals involved with the Levenson Inquiry; his targets have included Tom Watson MP and Richard Peppiatt, who last year quit working for the Star in disgust at the paper’s standards.

But why did Tabloidman seize on the Mercer connection in the first place? As Tim notes in an interview for the Social Media Show, this is not likely to be an issue that many people are familiar with. This, and other reasons not in the public domain, led Tim to suspect the identity of Tabloidman to be a freelance journalist named Dennis Rice, whose credits appear to include a story about a piece of burnt toast that looked like Osama bin Laden.

As Tim now writes on his blog, he recently asked Rice by email if he was Tabloidman; Rice replied, stating that he was not, and that his “lawyers will deal with anything anyone would be foolish enough to print – alleging or otherwise – that I am”. Earlier, a message had been sent to Tabloidman containing a weblink to a page on Tim’s site. Tabloidman clicked on the link; the IP matched that of Rice’s email.

It’s not clear why Rice would consider being linked to Tabloidman to be damaging to his reputation: he commended Tabloidman on his own Twitter feed, and he has been in communication with Tabloidman about Tim; after a link to Tim’s piece was promoted by Tom Watson, Tabloidman cautioned Watson that

Ricey told me about the loon stalking him. Be careful of the company you keep. (1)

Think Thames Valley Police will want to talk to you. They are currently investigating your (clearly unchecked) source. (2)

Rice has indeed reported Tim to the police for daring to ask him about Tabloidman; he has also deleted his own Twitter feed while allowing Tabloidman to rant on against Tim, both on Twitter and on his own website. These attacks include the claim that Tim has “harassed” Nadine Dorries (a subject I have discussed here) and a deliberate misrepresentation of the IP address issue – Tabloidman states that Tim is claiming to have captured an IP from a Twitter DM, which is of course impossible.

Tabloidman also reportedly claims that his anonymous Tweets attacking people amount to “whistleblowing”, and that his anonymity is therefore protected by law.

Coincidentally, Rice had a “terror target” story of his own, back in September 2008: in an article for the Express (sister paper to the Star), he wrote that Paul McCartney “has been threatened that he will be the target of suicide bombers unless he abandons plans to play his first concert in Israel.”

The report quoted criticism of McCartney from “a number of websites”, although Omar Bakri provided the meat of the piece with a suitably sinister quote. Patrick Mercer also makes an inevitable appearance in the story.

—
A longer version is at Richard’s blog

Mexican journalist Regina Martinez was slightly built. She used to stand at the back at press conferences and rarely asked questions. That is not why she is dead.

“Regina would always write about one-third more of the real truth than I dared to do in any story we covered. And I write more than most reporters,” a journalist from Xalapa, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Maybe that is why she was killed, beaten and strangled in her bathroom on Saturday by an as yet unknown hand.

Whatever the truth behind her death in the Mexican city of Xalapa, she became another statistic in a country which has seen more than 50 journalists, bloggers and other media workers killed in the last six years.

On this Press Freedom Day, Mexico remains the most dangerous place in the world to try and report the truth.

Regina was the correspondent for the weekly political magazine Proces in the state of Veracruz. Her last story, which appeared the day before her death, was about the mysterious killing of a local activist, Rogelio Martinez.

Mexico – despite its much-publicised war on the drug cartels – remains a haven for trafficking and organised crime, and one thing they have come to rely on is legal impunity. Each time a journalist or a human rights defender is attacked in Mexico, people shake their heads and ask why does it take another beating, kidnap or death to briefly make a headline story.

Now, a former colleague tells me, almost everyone is compromised either because people are so scared they exercise a careful – and in some cases, life saving – form of self censorship or because, even when they put themselves at risk, editors and proprietors aren’t prepared to publish.

As we mourn Regina – and all our other colleagues who have paid the price for doing their jobs – there is one small ray of light on the horizon.

This week, the Chamber of Deputies agreed to pass a new law on the protection of human rights defenders and journalists which, in principal, gives practitioners a small measure of support if they find themselves targeted because of their work.

Unlike the startlingly toothless prosecutor’s office that was supposed to crack down on attacks on journalists – which has yet to see a single conviction – this latest initiative may yet prove to be an iron fist.

We must hope it will be because, as Regina’s colleague Jenaro Vilamil wrote in his valedictory poem for her: “The dark and murderous hand on your body could be for me.”

—-
Aid agency CAFOD, along with The Guardian and Committee to Protect Journalists, is launching a photo exhibition ‘The Silenced: Fighting for Press Freedom in Mexico’ to commemorate reporters in Mexico who have lost their lives in the pursuit of truth.

Elizabeth Mistry is a freelance journalist and travel writer who has covered Latin America for more than 15 years. She will chair a panel discussion at the launch of the exhibition.

Last week, I travelled 3,500 miles to meet with the last British resident in Guantánamo Bay, Shaker Aamer. Under the Orwellian rules that govern legal visits with a prisoner there, everything he said to me is classified.

I have to submit my notes – in this case, almost 200 pages – to the US censors and they decide what I can, and cannot, tell his family, his British lawyers, and the world.

So I can tell you nothing that Shaker said. I can, though, tell you what I said to him.

I asked him whether he was still being held in solitary confinement in Camp V, Echo Block, where he was transferred last year? Can you imagine the claustrophobic impact on him of months in a small cell that does not even have a toilet – just a hole in the ground.

What was Shaker’s reply to me? I cannot tell you. It’s still a ‘state secret’.

I asked him whether the US military is still beating him up pretty much every day? They call it an FCE (a Forcible Cell Extraction), where soldiers in black Darth Vader outfits burst into the cell and drag him bodily out. His answer? I cannot say.

I asked him whether he was getting any medical care for his multiplicity of illnesses. His answer? I cannot say.

Why, you might ask, is all of this considered secret, a threat to US national security?

Obviously the fact that Shaker may be subject to cruel and degrading treatment is not a threat to national security – it does, however, threaten to embarrass politicians.

Obviously, Shaker’s medical complaints should not be classified — but perhaps the fact that he may be slowly dying reflects badly on the supposedly enlightened regime of Guantánamo Bay.

All this is as absurd as it is wrong. Yet it is part of a broader, very worrying trend that is being reinforced by Britain. The centrepiece of the British government’s ‘Green Paper’ on security issues is a plan for more secrecy in our courts, in large part to satisfy what is said to be the United States’ insistence that anything they say is classified should remain secret.

Indeed, the ‘Green Paper’ was supposedly designed to avoid a repetition of the Binyam Mohamed case, where the British courts had the audacity to release a brief synopsis of Binyam’s torture in US custody.

So should the British government be underwriting a US policy that is designed to keep the torture of prisoners secret? Or should the ‘Green Paper’ rather seek to fulfil our obligation under the UN Convention Against Torture to expose and investigate any allegation that torture has taken place?

—
Clive Stafford Smith is the director of the charity Reprieve

Last week, Israel celebrated its 64th Independence Day, commemorating the establishment of a Jewish homeland in 1948 in accordance with the United Nations partition plan, that proposed two states for two people in British Mandate Palestine.

In many respects, Israel has been a stunning success: it is a thriving democracy, has an independent judiciary that regularly rules against the government, and enjoys a free press representing the spectrum of society.

The civil rights and protection against discrimination provided by Israel to religious and ethnic minorities, women, the LGBT community, trade unionists and political opponents are unprecedented and unrivalled in the Middle East.

Israel’s non-Jewish citizens, who make up around 20% of the population, have a right to vote, with representation in many of the larger political parties, and Arab political parties and elected members of parliament.

However, there are serious socio-economic problems effecting Israel’s Arab minority, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recognises at least some of these problems, recently announcing a 4 billion shekel (£650 million) project of investment into the Arab sector, and extra police in Arab-majority areas with high crime rates.

Britain has an important role to play in helping to raise awareness and close the socio-economic gap within Israel, with organisations such as the ‘UK Task Force on issues relating to Arab citizens of Israel’ confronting the problem through engagement and education.

Much like Britain, Israel has a right-wing coalition government whose policies have been opposed by a left-wing concerned with growing income inequality and the squeezed middle.

Last summer’s social justice protests over the cost of living and housing were the largest demonstrations in the country’s history, incorporating all sectors of Israeli society, irrespective of religion, race, or gender.

In response, the Israeli government vowed to build nearly 200,000 new apartments, increased corporate tax, and implemented free education and child-care for 3 and 4 year olds. Following a successful general strike by the Histadrut trade union congress in February, the government was forced to increase pay and improve working conditions for thousands of contract workers.

A pressing concern at the moment is the fate of the Middle East peace process. Peace talks have reached an impasse, with Israel calling for a return to talks without pre-conditions, and Palestinians demanding a settlement building freeze first.

In the absence of meaningful discussions, a source of optimism is the increasing security and economic cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians, supported by Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair, with major advances in state-building under Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. These developments cannot replace negotiations and peace talks, but they can strengthen and support the political process.

Another hope for the future was provided by the founders of Blue White Future, that includes a former head of Israel’s internal security service and the head of Israel’s peace negotiations between 1999-2001.

In an op-ed published in the The New York Times last week they called for a series of unilateral Israeli moves to advance the prospects for a two-state solution in the absence of peace talks, with voluntary relocation of a significant number of settlers living in the West Bank prior to a negotiated peace deal between Israel and Palestine.

Such a trust-building initiative could significantly increase the chances of a negotiated, peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

These proposals should be promoted by the British left, who have a responsibility to support positive developments that could deliver justice, security and peace for both the Israeli and Palestinian people.

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Alex Bjarnason is a Labour party member and supporter of Labour Friends of Israel. He writes in a personal capacity and tweets @alex_bjarnason

With airport queues at Heathrow hitting two hours, research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveals technology introduced to help speed up passport control is so under-used that it has cost nearly £2 per arrival.

The IRIS recognition immigration system, which scans the unique patterns of travellers’ irises at passport control to confirm their identities, was introduced nearly six years ago in an attempt to cut down on airport arrival delays.

But government figures revealed through a freedom of information request show the system has been used just 4.7 million times since it was first introduced in 2006.

The technology cost just over £9m, the equivalent of a staggering £1.94 for each person that has used it.

Earlier this year the government announced the hugely costly system was being scrapped after revealing the software used is already out of date.

Despite costing £4.9 million to develop and a further £4.2m to run, the technology and new automatic passport scanning gates often fail, exacerbating rather than helping the airport queues. Delays of up to two hours were reported at Heathrow last week.

Lucy Moreton of the Immigration Service Union, told the Bureau that staff training in the scanner manual control had ‘fallen fowl foul of the cuts.’ Border Force officers are being reduced from 8,874 in March 2010 to 7,322 by March 2015.

‘This system has simply reached its end point,’ said Moreton, warning ‘if the government is going to invest in more technology they need to make sure the technology is robust and is going to work.’

A report by the Home Affairs Select Committee published last month said, ‘[IRIS'] sole value appears to have been that it provided data for the e-gates. This money could have been better spent on border staff – at least 60 immigration officers could have been employed with the money spent on IRIS.’

Birmingham and Manchester airports have stopped using the scanners. The scanners are currently operational in Heathrow and Gatwick, however enrollment onto the scheme has stopped. Approximately 385,000 people are currently registered, according to information released by UKBA.

Pressure to reduce delays at border control is mounting giving the upcoming Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. UKBA confirmed that the IRIS technology will continue to be available for registered passengers until after the games.

However, the current malfunctioning equipment and long queues are causing some to question how airports will cope under the added influx of those visiting for the games.

Yesterday London Mayor Boris Johnson wrote to Home Secretary Theresa May saying queues at border control gave ‘a terrible impression of the UK’.

Sean Tipton, from the Association of British Travel Agents said, ‘there is clearly a problem developing at some of the airports in the UK, they are not sufficiently resourced in terms of manpower and if there is not sufficient manpower the technology has to be operational.’

A UK Border Agency spokesperson said, ‘We continue to introduce new technology to protect the border while making legitimate travel easier. Planning for an alternative to IRIS began over two years ago and IRIS is being phased out as the technology became outdated. This government plans to replace IRIS with other types of gates that non-EU passengers will be able to use.

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Many will find it hard to comprehend how Bob Diamond can receive a remuneration package of £17.7m when he openly concedes that Barclays has had an “unacceptable” year.

The vast majority of people from trade unionists to government ministers acknowledge that excessive executive pay has become a serious problem.

Yet institutional shareholders are still largely unwilling to vote down remuneration reports even when they reward poor executive performance.

Barclays’ AGM on Friday saw only 26.9% of shareholders vote against Diamond’s controversial report, and this is considered significant dissent.

It is clear that the government’s proposal to give shareholders a binding simple majority vote on pay will not in itself solve the problem.

FairPensions have therefore launched the Your Say on High Pay campaign to give a voice on excessive pay to those ordinary savers who own stakes in FTSE companies through their pension schemes or ISAs.

If you are a member of a pension scheme or have an ISA then you can use FairPensions’ online tool to email your pension fund or ISA provider.

The email requests that the fund or ISA provider asks their asset manager to vote against remuneration reports that contain certain unacceptable components, such as a bonus that exceeds 200% of base salary.

While pension providers are not obliged to act on members’ requests it is hard to ignore the views of those people whose money they manage, especially when those views are expressed by a large number of members.

Excessive pay damages the interests of ordinary savers not only because it diverts money away from dividends but it also creates perverse incentives – there is little financial reason for CEOs to run their companies well when they are so well rewarded for failure.

The campaign tool also allows those who do not have a pension or savings but are concerned about dramatically increasing wage inequality to sign a petition against excessive executive pay.

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Annie Powell is at Fair Pensions