Have you seen this van in Redbridge?

You work when there’s work to be had. You can’t afford a new outfit for your brother’s wedding – let alone a present. Let alone a stag do. You’re angry and two things make you even angrier. One is people on benefits who look like they shouldn’t be. Another is people who don’t come from this country who live 5 to a room, work for their uncles, price your employer out of the market and you out of a job.

The Conservative-led coalition government is pretty sure you’ll fall into line behind their latest initiative.

Exacerbating community relations, by van

The initiative is led by Mark Harper, Minister of State for Immigration and Conservative MP for the Forest of Dean – he’s @mark_j_harper on Twitter. The Government says:

“Over the next week, two vans will be driven around Hounslow, Barking & Dagenham, Ealing, Barnet, Brent and Redbridge and will show residents how many illegal migrants have recently been arrested in their area. They will also show a text number that migrants can message to arrange their return.”

Sometimes I’m afraid of the Conservatives and this is one of those times. Why would migrants abandon everything that is familiar, make a long, arduous and often treacherous journey to the UK only to then live in frankly dreadful conditions and work without rights or proper pay? Because they have nothing to lose where they were before. Perhaps their lives were under threat back home. Perhaps there was no work and no social security. Perhaps there was a war, or a mafia.

Make no mistake, you would do the same. That’s not to say that you have to put up with the situation. Like everybody else I want a working NHS and working public services – and those things depend on maintaining the proportion of taxpayers to service users. But nevertheless, you would do the same – and you would deserve compassion and assistance. Not for your neighbours to start associating you with images of handcuffs.

The trouble for me is that these poor, desperate people, who have moved here to become poor, lonely, exploited, desperate people, are the last people who should be targeted by the government. They are being treated as culprits when in fact they are victims. In some ways they are being treated as vermin to be cleared away.

The first question is, who is profiting from these people? Who is selling – and buying – goods and services at a price so low that the people working to deliver them cannot be paid a decent wage? Who is transporting the migrants, who is employing them, who are their slum landlords? These are the ones who need to be brought into line with the law. And if they keep within the law and there is still a problem, then the next question to ask is, why do migrants feel it would be better to nearly destitute themselves in Britain rather than remain where they were born? And then you will discover stories which make your heart heavy, which bring out the generosity of spirit that this government has given up on. And you will realise why the International Development budget exists.

It may well be that these vans form only part of wider government initiatives to make it hard for undocumented migrants to set up home here. As it is, though, these vans are on the streets of Redbridge and other London boroughs and they are the only part of the action that most people will ever see or hear about. And the message these vans are sending out is potentially a very damaging one. They make it seem as if the people who are here without permission are culprits and criminals who need to be taken away in handcuffs. The mixed message of the handcuffs and the “Let us help you” will bring out the worst fears of most migrants, I’d imagine – because my hunch is that the picture will speak louder than the words. And for the rest of us, whose right to be here isn’t under question, what are we supposed to think? To me, this is somewhere further along the line to official incitement against migrants than this country has seen for a long time.

This government thinks it is appropriate to try to gain support by turning us against some of the poorest and most vulnerable amongst us. I think the Conservatives are trying to make fools of us.

Preliminary thoughts about what to do next:

• Ramfel (Refugee and Migrant Forum for East London – their Facebook page seems to be most recently updated) is concerned with community relations. If you spot the van, contact them so that they can take action to monitor the repercussions, and counter any misinformation about illegal immigrants. If you don’t use Facebook, then try info@ramfel.org.uk – there you can also offer help leafleting.
• Write you your MP
• Write to Mark Harper.
• As usual keep your criticism sharp and grounded, don’t rant, don’t exaggerate, don’t insult our public servants, and don’t forget that there is a massive fight for the scraps at the bottom of this society which is ripe for exploitation. Just make the best arguments possible.

Updates

• The Twitter hashtag (shared with a bunch of random stuff) is #GoHome
• The leader of Brent Council has made short statement of protest.
• More from him on the BBC.
• And here’s a video of Minister Mark Harper misrepresenting undocumented migration as a kind of anti-social petty crime, cut with shots of that nasty van.
• @The_UK_Migrant points or that this new policy is likely to amount to stop and search.
• Why shouldn’t London be less like Operation Wetback and more like New York?
• Even the Daily Mail – bastion of anti-immigration sentiment – thinks the Go Home vans are ridiculous.
• PICUM – the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants – is a good resource.
• Nigel Farage is crowing about the Go Home Vans, rightly assuming that this is the Conservative response to the UKIP threat. When he then proceeds to call the campaign ‘nasty’ he fails to grasp the irony of this recognition.
• It’s Saturday night and via Barkingside21 on Twitter I know of two reported sightings. Just two, in Kilburn and Willesden Green. Not a very busy or comprehensive tour, then. Perhaps the Go Home Van is feeling a little outlandish? Good.
• The campaign has united leaders from all parties on Redbridge Council. They have sent Teresa May a unanimous message. It goes: 1) not about us without us and 2) fuck off with your rabble rousing.

The logic of practice

It made front page news in The Independent and nowhere else. The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have come to a number of decisions to undo the small gains in animal welfare achieved by New Labour.

Please read that piece and give attention to the suffering of circus animals, badgers, birds, and animals about to be slaughtered (in particular look at Animal Aid’s video of illegal slaughterhouse abuses).

But while The Independent’s concern for animals is necessary and all the more admirable for being so rare, what its anti-coalition blinkers (which I have to admit nearly blinkered me too) prevented it from reporting is that New Labour had been backing away from some of its own initiatives before the election.

I’ll concentrate on beak mutilation. Mutilations of animals are ‘for their own good‘, according to intensive farmers, .

“Feather pecking and cannibalism (Figure 1) affects all birds in all production systems. When laying birds are kept systems that give the opportunity for aggressive birds to contact many other birds, cannibalism and feather pecking can spread rapidly through the flock and result in injuries and mortality. Mortality of up to 25–30% of the flock can occur and cause huge mortality and morbidity problems as well as financial losses to the farmer.”

So it is common practice to cut off part of the birds’ beaks. This is painful. Here is why the government act which regulates beak trimming refers to it as ‘mutilation’.

“The beak contains nociceptors that sense pain and noxious stimuli. ^[12] Beak trimming excites nociceptors. Following a trim, the nociceptors in the beak stump show abnormal patterns of neural discharge, which has been interpreted as acute pain.^[13] Neuromas are found in the healed stumps of birds beak trimmed at 5 weeks of age or older and in birds whose beaks are subjected to severe trimming.^[14] Neuromas are defined as tangled masses of swollen regenerating axon sprouts. During healing, neuromas are formed as part of the normal regeneration process. Eventually, the nerve fibers regrow, the excess axon sprouts regress, and the neuromas disappear. If beak trimming is severe because of improper procedure or done in older birds, the neuromas may persist, and the emitted action potentials are abnormal,^[15] which suggest that beak trimmed older birds may experience chronic pain. However, neuromas do not persist in the beaks of birds subjected to proper trimming at 10 days of age or earlier.^[16] For this reason, when conservative beak trimming (50% or less of the beak) is done correctly in birds 10 days of age or younger, formation of neuromas is prevented and the keratinized tissue regenerates.^[17]“

Labour was due to ban beak mutilation but faltered after a Farm Animal Welfare Council recommendation that, although a total ban was desirable, ‘commercial’ (euphemism for overcrowded) flocks could suffer cannibalism and feather pecking. As reported in a recent ministerial statement:

“The Farm Animal Welfare Council reviewed the evidence in 2007 and 2009. On both occasions it recommended that, until an alternative means of controlling injurious pecking in laying hens can be developed, the proposed ban on beak trimming should not be introduced, but should be deferred until it can be demonstrated reliably under commercial conditions that laying hens can be managed without beak trimming, without a greater risk to their welfare than that caused by beak trimming itself. The Farm Animal Welfare Council recommended that infra-red beak treatment should be the only method used routinely, as the evidence indicated that it does not induce chronic pain.”

This is a stark case of profit taking precedence over ending extreme cruelty. Farming UK reports that breeders are beginning to select for pecking behaviour, in the expectation that in time it can be bred out of chickens. However:

“Rob Newbery, the NFU’s chief poultry adviser, believes it may be a very long time before the industry reaches such a point. “Everyone says that with the breeds we use now and the way the world is today in terms of keeping laying hens that we need beak trimming. It has to be impressed on Defra and FAWC that unless there are major changes – and I can’t see what those major changes would be with commercial poultry keeping – they need to stick with allowing producers to use infrared beak trimming.”

Locked within this logic of existing practice, it would be easy to miss the obvious – that here are social animals, animals with a pecking order, whose dysfunctions are due to overcrowding and the impossibility of escape from the aggressive members of the confined flock. Their life must be hell.

I would say these animals shouldn’t be considered food, their eggs shouldn’t be considered food, and I’m repelled by the eugenics solution.

But as far as the workers in this industry are concerned, the implications of the proposed ban on beak mutilation and my own proposal to stop eating animal are the same: either joblessness or higher food prices, and these things have to be taken seriously because they are the reason that vested interests have been able to oppose the ban.

Written ministerial statements indicate that while there is plenty of research into alternatives to beak mutilation, funded by business interests which are invested in current expectations about food and current approaches to intensive farming, nobody with credibility seems to be joining up animal welfare with research into a new national economy of plant food.

This needs to happen, or animals will never be free.

And while it is sickening to think that if the ban goes ahead in January, some of these birds will trade in their lives for their beaks because of the assessment of commercial farmers that consumers will not pay more if they invest in improving conditions for their flocks, I think that this staggering multitude of agonising mutilations is the first thing that has to stop, and I hope I am in good company.

Read Compassion in World Farming’s report from October 2009 on ‘Controlling Feather Pecking and Cannibalism in Laying Hens Without Beak-Trimming‘.

Update: read Barkingside 21’s round-up of recent developments with animal farming and animal welfare.

Killed for being thirsty

Camels were imported to Australia as freight animals in the 1840s, used up and thrown away when they were replaced by motor vehicles.

They thrived in the wild; their numbers are now estimated at a million.

Currently humans and camels in Australia are suffering water shortages and camels are winning out. People are scared to go out and their infrastructure is being wrecked – this is clearly intolerable for the 350 residents of Docker River, many of whom feel unsafe leaving their homes. The situation is quite unambiguously a failing on the part of the Australian government in neglecting these camel colonies. And now they seem to be on the verge of another failing – they propose to drive the camels into the desert and kill them.

The way I feel about camels is the way I feel about mice. If you don’t like them using your stuff, then make your stuff mouse-proof or camel-proof. Design out the problem. If it’s “very expensive and time-consuming”, so what? Why should we expect our relationships with animals be cheap or straightforward? Give some consideration to whether it’s so easy to say who is the more invasive animal and remember who initiated this particular invasion.

And if there are too many and you can’t share (for example camels are descending greedily on re-vegetation projects) then take contraceptives. Or – OK – interfere with their fertility.

To gun them down by helicopter is indescribably savage, cruel and utterly short term. Camels are capable of great suffering. I can’t find anything scholarly, but they probably have significant higher level thinking skills – they are certainly social and have relationships. Don’t these things count for anything? I have no words to express how horrific it is that gunning them down could even be considered.

ISS wiping the floor with SOAS university cleaners

This is an unambiguously awful occurence. The outsourced cleaning company (it makes me very angry that outsourcing cleaning should ever happen)  employing the cleaners at the School of Oriental and African Studies was content to plunder them for cheap labour as long as they kept their heads down. When they dared to organise for better terms and conditions, BAM – tricked into a corner, corralled by immigration officials, some incarcerated, some already deported. Absolutely disgusting.

So I’ll reproduce from the Facebook group statement, write to SOAS, and swing into line behind the Strangers Into Citizens campaign.

Stop the Deportation of SOAS University Cleaners!

Recently SOAS cleaners, through fighting back and uniting with students and other workers from other backgrounds, were able to win improvements in conditions and the London Living Wage.

At 6.30am on Friday the 12th June, without any advance warning SOAS cleaning staff were called to an emergency `Staff Meeting’, were confined in a room (G2) and then confronted by a team of 40 immigration officers in riot gear who had been hiding in the room behind the staging.

9 people were arrested and sent to detention centres and are now on fast-track to be deported from the UK, thus they may be deported within 72 hours. Five of these people are members of UNISON, and one detainee is six months pregnant, she is thought to have collapsed during the events.

Graham Dyer, Lecturer in Economics of Developing Countries and SOAS UCU Chair said: “It is no co-incidence that there is an immigration raid at a time when the UCU, Unison and the NUS are fighting against the victimisation of a migrant worker who has been at the heart of a fight that has improved the pay and conditions of workers here at SOAS. It is also not coincidental that ISS had only just signed a union recognition agreement with UNISON last week. Our fight has united lecturers, staff and students and has rocked SOAS management. Those managers are now lashing out. It is a disgrace that SOAS management saw fit to use a seat of learning to intimidate migrant workers. This is their underhand revenge and we will do all we can to stop migrant workers paying the price.”

Thus far they have been split up and detained in Borough police station, Old St police, Yarlswood, and are set to be moved to Dover detention centre, and Heathrow for deportation on Monday. As you can imagine the information from immigration authorities has not been forthcoming.

By 16:30 pm on the 12th June over 100 people showed up on the steps of SOAS for a solidarity meeting, a second meeting was held at 13:00pm on Saturday 13th.

The film director [but ignorant and often wrong] Ken Loach stated:

“This raid is the action of a bully. Migrant workers are amongst the most vulnerable – poorly paid and far from home. Recent action by Unison to secure better wages and conditions at SOAS was good news. Now we wonder if the SOAS cleaners are being targeted because they dared to organise as trade unionists. We should all stand with them in solidarity in the face of this victimisation.”

As we enter the first day of refugee week 3 of SOAS’s staff have already been deported including 6 months pregnant Luzia.

You can also offer your support by emailing MPs, MEPs, SOAS Management, and anyone else you can think of.

These people came, they were employed – ultimately by SOAS – to do one of the most important jobs on the campus. They have earned their amnesty, along with a living wage.

There is a petition, which I won’t sign because it strays from the point, there are parts I’m uncomfortable with, and others about which I’m ignorant. But I will be writing some letters.

Update 17 June 09

Another student occupation result (I admire this one far more than the previous bout of occupations, which sought to ring-fence grants for only Palestinian students; a bit like agitating for affirmative action for Hispanic Americans while ignoring African Americans and generally reflective of the post-colonialist – I think – fetishisation of Palestinians-as-emblematic cause):

“Joint statement from SOAS and Students’ Union

Dear staff and students,

Following the protest by students about Friday’s visit by the UK Border

Agency, we are pleased to confirm that a way forward has been agreed by

all parties involved.

The events surrounding last Friday have been deeply distressing for

everyone at SOAS and in particular the individuals who were detained.

Furthermore, we are disturbed by allegations that have emerged about the

possible role that ISS played in the visit.

We have agreed the following:

1. SOAS will write directly to the Home Secretary within 12 hours of the

end of the protest, requesting that he grants [sic] exceptional leave to

remain in the UK those cleaners who are still being detained. In

addition, SOAS will request the immediate return of those who have been

deported and exceptional leave to remain for those forced into hiding by

Friday’s raid.

2. SOAS will open discussions with ISS, and separately with UNISON, UCU

and the SU, to review in detail the events of last Friday.

3. SOAS will discuss the possibility of bringing cleaning services

in-house at the next scheduled meeting of its Governing Body.

4. SOAS will meet with the relevant unions to discuss health and safety

issues relating to immigration raids and acknowledge UCU policy of

non-compliance with immigration raids.

5. SOAS will not take action against those involved in the protest.

This incident has highlighted the need for further debate regarding this

issue and, as has been mentioned in earlier correspondence, SOAS will be

speaking with other heads of universities about the wider implications

of the Government’s policy on immigration and any likely impact it may

have on our staff and students.

We recognise the valued contribution of all migrants who have worked at

SOAS over the years and have a long tradition of welcoming people from

all over the world. In our personal capacity, we would also like to

indicate our support for the regularisation of non-documented workers.

We would like to thank all staff and students for their valued

contributions, support and co-operation in recent days as we have

worked toward this agreement.

Signed:

Professor Paul Webley

Director and Principal

Nizam Uddin

Students’ Union”

I think some compensation is called for, from the employer ISS.

Well done, SOAS SU.

Stop the Deportation of SOAS University Cleaners!

Recently SOAS cleaners, through fighting back and uniting with students
and other workers from other backgrounds, were able to win improvements
in conditions and the London Living Wage.

At 6.30am on Friday the 12th June, without any advance warning SOAS
cleaning staff were called to an emergency `Staff Meeting', were
confined in a room (G2) and then confronted by a team of 40 immigration
officers in riot gear who had been hiding in the room behind the staging.

9 people were arrested and sent to detention centres and are now on
fast-track to be deported from the UK, thus they may be deported within
72 hours. Five of these people are members of UNISON, and one detainee
is six months pregnant, she is thought to have collapsed during the events.

Graham Dyer, Lecturer in Economics of Developing Countries and SOAS UCU
Chair said: "It is no co-incidence that there is an immigration raid at
a time when the UCU, Unison and the NUS are fighting against the
victimisation of a migrant worker who has been at the heart of a fight
that has improved the pay and conditions of workers here at SOAS. It is
also not coincidental that ISS had only just signed a union recognition
agreement with UNISON last week. Our fight has united lecturers, staff
and students and has rocked SOAS management. Those managers are now
lashing out. It is a disgrace that SOAS management saw fit to use a seat
of learning to intimidate migrant workers. This is their underhand
revenge and we will do all we can to stop migrant workers paying the price."

Thus far they have been split up and detained in Borough police station,
Old St police, Yarlswood, and are set to be moved to Dover detention
centre, and Heathrow for deportation on Monday. As you can imagine the
information from immigration authorities has not been forthcoming.

By 16:30 pm on the 12th June over 100 people showed up on the steps of
SOAS for a solidarity meeting, a second meeting was held at 13:00pm on
Saturday 13th.

The film director Ken Loach stated:
"This raid is the action of a bully. Migrant workers are amongst the
most vulnerable - poorly paid and far from home. Recent action by Unison
to secure better wages and conditions at SOAS was good news. Now we
wonder if the SOAS cleaners are being targeted because they dared to
organise as trade unionists. We should all stand with them in solidarity
in the face of this victimisation."

As we enter the first day of refugee week 3 of SOAS's staff have already
been deported including 6 months pregnant Luzia.

Please sign this petition and if possible come and show your full
support in a DEMONSTRATION Monday 15th June at 8.30am on SOAS Steps.
Banners and other visual, audio aids welcomed.

You can also offer your support by emailing MPs, MEPs, SOAS Management,
and anyone else you can think of. UNISON can only represent those
already in their union.

Please also join the Facebook Group:
Stop the Deportation of SOAS University Cleaners!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=89511288639
<https://owa.nottingham.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=89511288639>
Petition:
SOAS management have used immigration police and deportation against
activist workers. The outsourced cleaning company ISS and the schools
management were aware of this intended raid and helped facilitate the
removal of these people.

We denounce the actions of the school and demand that academic
institutions should not be complicit in assisting the Government in
implementing their racist immigration programme. We find this
particularly disgraceful given SOAS's attempt to shake the reputation
leftover from its colonial past. SOAS cannot lecture other countries
about oppression when it complies in programmes such as this.

We cannot allow employers and the Government to use the threat of
deportation to intimidate workers and prevent them from fighting to
improve pay and conditions.

We are demanding an immediate end to the deportations!

We urge you to show solidarity with the cleaners, UNISON and SOAS SU.
We need to:

* Protesting against the deportation of migrant workers and their
families (next DEMONSTRATION Monday 15th June at 8.30am on SOAS Steps).

* Bringing all workers in house, to receive equal treatment to SOAS
staff, and for the university to take full responsibility for them.

* Formally disassociating from agencies such as ISS, and condemning
practices as witnessed at SOAS.

* Supporting the `Stranger into Citizens Campaign' which calls for an
amnesty for all migrant workers.

PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION TO VOICE YOUR PROTEST AGAINST THE DEPORTATION
OF SOAS UNIVERSITY'S STAFF.

Professor Julia O'Connell Davidson
School of Sociology & Social Policy
University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG7 2RD

Tel: +44 115 846 7177
E mail: julia.o'connelldavidson@nottingham.ac.uk

Ali Abunimah – defending the right to compare Israelis to Nazis

I’ve had half an eye out for attempts to defend the right to compare Israel to Nazis, apartheid and so on. Unsurprisingly one came from the Electronic Intifada and Ali Abunimah.  It is no good.

In Israel, “Every threat or grievance of major or minor importance is dealt with automatically by raising the biggest argument of them all — the Shoah,” former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg has written using the Hebrew word normally reserved for the Nazi Holocaust, “and from that moment onward, every discussion is disrupted.

Such use of the Holocaust by Israelis rarely attracts attention or opprobrium outside the country. By contrast Palestinians must always be careful about breaking the taboo of likening any of Israel’s actions with those of Nazis. Even their allies usually tell them, “don’t go there.”

Palestinians, however, do not have the luxury of simply ignoring the Holocaust’s presence in their lives, dispossession and deaths. This is because the continual insistence by Israel, and especially its supporters in the US, that nothing Israel does to Palestinians can ever be compared to any Nazi crimes also serves to implicitly legitimize Israel’s persecution and massacres of Palestinians.”

Israelis are often framed for massacre and murder in cold blood and it’s bad of Abunimah to sling the term around without substantiation. But his main point is that Israelis and their supporters (Jews) are hypocrites – they impose a taboo against comparing situations to the Holocaust which they freely break among themselves. The taboo is therefore spurious – a convenient way of waving Israel on in its putative atrocities. Personally I get very frustrated with conversational or rhetorical Holocaust analogies but considered explorations can be helpful.  For example, Charles Patterson attempts, in Eternal Treblinka, to link human violence against humans and human violence against animals with reference to the emotional detachment, rationalisation, denial and euphemism we collectively use to justify the violence and industrialisation of our relationship with animals and, earlier, slaves. He argues with careful reference to the technologies and methods employed, including eugenics and the slaughterhouse, and subsequent experiments with rendering the corpses. The crux, from the Borderlands review:

The humanist will say “Stop treating humans like animals: respect the human and violence will not be possible.” But there is alternative line of thinking that responds in an apparently oblique way to the humanist: “Stop treating animals like we treat animals; then it will not be possible to treat humans like animals.”

So far I find Patterson’s extended comparison more convincing than I expected, and principally concerned about the victims of the Holocaust. It is over-hard on the US – despite the pioneering Union Stockyards there was no Holocaust in Chicago. Why continental Europe and not the US? I’m part-way through but I don’t think the book deals with this  important question and its implications. The final three chapters are dedicated to people whose experience of the Holocaust prompted them to work in the area of animal rights. In Israel, as Abunimah notes, there are others whose experience of the Holocaust goad them to speak out on behalf of Palestinians. And there are others who take a proselytising project of embittered anti-Zionism as their personal lesson from the Holocaust.

Returning to Abunimah’s piece, then, you have to be slightly dense not to understand why such a taboo against Holocaust analogies may be defended by some Israelis at the same time as it is broken by others. A Holocaust analogy from somebody who wants to needle Israel’s collective conscience about Palestinians is one thing.  A Holocaust analogy from somebody whose project is to dismantle Israel is another. His other inadvertant point is that, in their advocacy work, he and others  find themselves at a loss  if invoking the Holocaust is off the agenda. Without it they view themselves as helpless against Israel’s legitimisation of its policies towards Palestinians. I find this utterly unconvincing.

“…and most “decent” people outside who have the power to act choose instead to do nothing if they are not condoning Israel’s actions as “self-defense” by a people still haunted by Holocaust fears.”

At this point would have been good to mention the Hamas Charter as well as the promulgation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (translated into German from automobile manufacturer Henry Ford’s much-admired redux ‘The International Jew‘, and circulated to millions by Hitler in the 1930s as a precursor to genocide) by Iran and Syria. If this “people” is “still haunted” (and I think there are plenty of non-paranoid reasons to seal your own borders with Gaza under its present regime – ask non-Islamist Egyptians) then you can understand why.

“Let me be clear: these “Auschwitz borders” do not literally enclose a Nazi-style death camp and Israelis are not Nazis.”

This is where it should have ended but it trundled rustily on for quite some time before concluding that Auschwitz for Palestinians was only a matter of time.

“Gazans are resisting and not primarily through armed struggle. Last January, hundreds of thousands broke through the border wall with Egypt, briefly freeing themselves before Egypt, in collusion with Israel and the US-backed puppet Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, restored the blockade. Palestinians’ steadfast refusal to submit is their greatest act of resistance, but they cannot prevail alone.”

To be fair,  the ‘help’  of their with-friends-like-these boycotting comrades on the extreme left is probably a liability Gazans could do without. And also to be fair, there is no need for Abunimah to exaggerate what is going on in Gaza as he does. Containment, dependency, living hand-to-mouth, and power cuts which prevent people doing many things they should be able to take for granted and threaten the lives of the most vulnerable – these things are more than enough. Hamas is responsible. Israel is responsible. You might suppose that Israel holds more cards, but I think Hamas is prepared to sacrifice more life. Nevertheless, Gazans were pictured after blockade was breached returning to Gaza in masses with refrigerators, carpets, toilet roll and things to stockpile.  So I find it strange when Abunimah talks of  “brief” freedom just after he talks about utter dehumanisation and just before he talks of the threat of genocide. The tiny fragment which escaped the Warsaw Ghetto certainly didn’t return, and family ties were severed without a second thought when there was a chance to save the life of a loved one.  I take from this that Gaza’s population doesn’t fear genocide, however insufferable the situation. I really resent Abunimah persisting with this.

“The Holocaust lesson that I learned at school is that we are obliged not to wait until things are as bad as Auschwitz before we speak out and act.”

Which is to say that if we “wait”, it’s only a matter of time before Israelis conduct a genocide of Palestinians. It might be plausible to conclude this if the hemming in of Gazans were happening out of the blue. If all you ever read was Electronic Intifada you might be forgiven for thinking it did. Hamas ghosted out. Hesbollah whitewashed. Iran, nowhere to be seen. Destabilising conflict between the Islamists and Fatah, only mentioned in condemnation of Fatah. Bloody typical. For Abunimah Israel must always be the only villain.

His intifada may be electronic but as a wise man* once wrote, “The paths to destruction are often indirect, but ideas can be agents as sure as guns and bombs.”

* Stephen Jay Gould (1981) The Mismeasure of Man, New York: Norton. p263

Update: good analogies are specific and thought-out.

Would you eat an animal that knows how to practice tactical deception?

From 2002, a finding about domestic pigs (abstract, my underlining):

When food finders are exploited by others, but cannot themselves switch to scrounging or leave their foraging group, other behavioural adaptations should be favoured. Tactical deception in primates and foraging at the periphery of the group in ground-feeding birds have been suggested as two such responses. We show that exploited individuals may also respond by adjusting their foraging behaviour to the concurrent behaviour of the scroungers. We investigated the foraging strategies of exploited subordinate domestic pigs, Sus scrofa. Pairs of pigs were tested in competitive foraging trials. We trained the subordinate pig in each pair to use a producing tactic in competitive pair trials by informing it about the location of hidden food during a preceding search trial in which it foraged alone. The dominant pig was naïve about the food location in the competitive trials but able to displace the subordinate from the food source. We have shown previously that the dominants scrounged on their coforagers in these competitive trials by following them and displacing them from the food source. In the present study, logistic regression analyses show that the food-finding subordinates altered their foraging behaviour depending on the current behaviour of the dominants. Overall, the subordinates were more likely to show food-directed behaviour when the chances of arriving at the food source ahead of their exploiters were higher. The foraging behaviour of individual subordinates was related to their exploitation experience. Individuals subjected to higher exploitation pressure showed more varied strategies. These behavioural strategies are most simply interpreted as attempts by the exploited food finders to increase the time they can spend at the food source before the scroungers arrive.

Held S, Mendl M, Deveraux C, and Byrne RW (2002) Foraging pigs alter their behaviour in response to exploitation. Animal Behaviour: 64 (2); 157-165.

This demonstrates higher order thinking. If for no other reason than that, do not eat them.

Or if there are reasons other than aesthetic ones to exploit them, then let them live well with nesting material, shelter, friends and family to huddle with, muck, space to do the different stuff pigs like to do, and variation in their lives.

There is plenty more evidence of pig consciousness and behavioural preferences in the Compassion in World Farming report on animal sentience I picked up from the Global Warning event. Higher order thinking is also present in poultry, cattle and sheep – more on this another time.

Thrupennies

I see a topless woman every morning on the train while turning from Page 2 to Page 4. Despite a hugely diverse array dimensions-wise, since January when I started picking up The Sun on the train I’ve never seen a woman who wasn’t white and barely out of school. It could be a lot worse I suppose. I mean, she always has a face, a name, a distinctive pair of pants and either an espoused cause, a response to a current piece of news or, occasionally, a political view, albeit truncated to about 10 or 12 words. For example:

“News in Briefs. SEXY Sam [22, from Manchester] urged generous readers to support our Help for Heroes campaign, which has raised an astonishing £4million. She said “The money has helped hundreds of troops and their families. But there is still plenty we can do – so everyone keep digging deep”.

or

“News in Briefs. BECKY couldn’t believe Lotto winner Peter Kyle had frittered away his £5.1million jackpot in just three years. She said “Everyone dreams of going crazy when they win, but you’d have thought common sense would have stopped him”.

I can’t deny that these are thrupennies with a human face but I still loathe Page 3 with every sinew as an icon of female objectification, the sexualisation of young women, male consumption of women’s bodies (particularly the younger ones who are prone to confuse sexual desire for a more multidimensional appreciation), and the standardisation of ideas about beauty. It is also a marker of the invisibility of older women. Page 3 is the Sun’s signature and largest image; if we are indeed an increasingly visual culture, big signals important. Male readers’ most throwaway sexual titillation is highly prized by The Sun while the women are disposable, one a day, appraised but practically voiceless.

OK, the other day two men got on the Central Line at Leyton. They might have been decorators, sounded like they were local to north east London, and were very young – one of them had a starter beard. He picked up the Metro, leafed through a few pages, sighed, turned to his friend and said, “Tell you what, I read this paper and I always end up depressed.” His friend snorted and replied “That’s why it’s free”, and after a moment’s reflection, “There’s no tits”. The first bloke solemnly agreed, “Yeah, you look at those and you always feel better” and then they fell into thought.

So that’s why we get the Metro for free: no tits. Again, tits highly prized. And that’s what photos of breasts are for – to cheer up male Britons and keep them going, like Pictures of Lily and wartime pin-ups. Again, the world as a colourless place without actual shown, rather than imagined, breasts.

Then I was at a conference in Oxford University. There was a debate and one of the speakers, to drive his point home that the Web is far from the sole origin of educationally bankrupt reading material, produced a copy of the Daily Star which, after a cursory check that we were all over 18, he first held folded in half above his head and then allowed to flop open, revealing four breasts. Then later one of his co-debaters, seated behind him at the time, complained that he hadn’t been able to get a glimpse of “the young ladies”, so out came the breasts again to general hilarity. Once again I got confused – either thrupennies are not rubbish, they’re like vitamins for the lads and should be considered with the seriousness due any health intervention, or they are rubbish, pollutants of the mind – in which case why? – because they stop us thinking, or because they promote consumeristic views of, and use of, women’s bodies, and therefore women?

I thought that speaker was walking a fine line. I would never do that in a talk. But he did overturn the motion, with support from me. The woman sitting next to me said that the breasts were a factor in voting against him.

So what conclusions do I draw? I don’t know. Maybe only that I object, for the reasons above. That’s the only conclusion I get to draw, really. Biology, hijab, women’s self-esteem, the extent to which visualisations of womens’ bodies are marginal to feminism – there’s a lot to consider.

From Der Spiegel: How a UNICEF photo makes the West’s heart ache

“An 11-year-old child bride sits next to her 40-year-old fiance. For UNICEF, this was the Photo of the Year. Dutch writer Leon de Winter laments the perversity of this wedding picture and the frightening relativism of the West.”

See it and 10 others in the UNICEF Photos of the Year gallery on Der Spiegel Online International. Have hankies to hand.

You have to watch that Facebook like a hawk

On Friday 30th when I was checking out Facebook’s Beacon (social advertising software) Facebook was about to reinstate privacy measure and an opt-in rather than opt-out approach.

Facebook’s Beacon was more intrusive than previously thought, wrote Juan Carlos Perez in PC World that day (nod to Yish):

Beacon will report back to Facebook on members’ activities on third-party sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from Facebook and have declined having their activities broadcast to their Facebook friends.

…

Of particular concern is that users aren’t informed that data on their activities at these sites is flowing back to Facebook, nor given the option to block that information from being transmitted, Berteau said in an interview.

“It can happen completely without their knowledge, unless they are examining their network traffic at a very low level,” Berteau said.

Facebook’s statement:

Stories about actions users take on external websites will continue to be presented to users at the top of their News Feed the next time they return to Facebook. These stories will now always be expanded on their home page so they can see and read them clearly.

Users must click on “OK” in a new initial notification on their Facebook home page before the first Beacon story is published to their friends from each participating site. We recognize that users need to clearly understand Beacon before they first have a story published, and we will continue to refine this approach to give users choice.

If a user does nothing with the initial notification on Facebook, it will hide after some duration without a story being published. When a user takes a future action on a Beacon site, it will reappear and display all the potential stories along with the opportunity to click “OK” to publish or click “remove” to not publish.

Users will have clear options in ongoing notifications to either delete or publish. No stories will be published if users navigate away from their home page. If they delay in making this decision, the notification will hide and they can make a decision at a later time.

Clicking the “Help” link next to the story will take users to a full tutorial that explains exactly how Beacon works, with screenshots showing each step in the process.

Hands off our Facebook data

After an adventurous honeymoon with Facebook I now conduct relations in the missionary position – can’t remember the last time I added an App. I use Facebook to share pics and exchange the occasional pleasantry – events are handy, too, but that’s it.

Google and Facebook have both been touted as Personal Learning Environments, places which blend work and social lives. Like Yishay, Google’s my thing. I’d like to be more distributed but I’m not – I use Google for almost everything networked at the moment. I suppose if you are going to take part of your life online, there’s a case for keeping things with one organisation – at least you’ve got half a chance of keeping tabs on it. Some people are adamant that our only hope is to keep things distributed, though – although again with Open ID on the horizon (and that’s another initiative with privacy issues) maybe the difference between distributed and concentrated will disappear.

Anyway, OpenSocial is coming and Facebook CEO Zuckerberg must be anxious to raise some cash. He recently took the brazen step of allowing users’ data to be used to advertise the products they use to their friends. A series of sharp and painful tugs on Facebook’s lead by the privacy monitors is bound to follow. And hopefully some well-aimed and authoritative criticism will make everything alright as it did when CEO Zuckerberg bowed to pressure and added privacy settings last year.

I find Facebook, Google, Microsoft etc users’ attitude to privacy interesting. As a population it’s evident that we feel very secure in the tolerance and permissiveness of today’s liberal democracies. That’s a seriously wonderful thing and the intense indignation when Facebook reneges on privacy agreements – actual or assumed – might suggest that people recognise not to take it for granted. But at the same time there’s neglect which suggests our attitude to privacy is a mile wide and an inch deep – many of us happily trade away our privacy in return for goods and services. Loyalty cards, oyster cards, ISPs are all actively collecting data about us. In considering why we don’t mind Peter Fleischer (at a Google privacy event earlier this year) made an interesting point about norms – if everybody is letting it all hang out then it becomes acceptable to let it all hang out – maybe you even come under scrutiny for not letting it all hang out.

Fair enough, but then we must understand and take seriously that our online trail can tell anybody with access to it untold amounts about us, and that includes less benign governments than the one we have now. If Hitler or Stalin had inherited the networked data which exists now the clampdown would have been much quicker and much more thorough. You can’t always stop totalitarians coming to power, but you can avoid handing them their purge on a plate. But, as Bobbie Johnson pointed out (same event), people tend to underreact about data retention and abuse when the government’s doing it because “everybody hates the government anyway”. Something’s a bit wrong there… we have to feel as if we have a vested interest in keeping our privacies and liberties.

I’m not sure what Facebook’s recently-announced rival OpenSocial’s business model’s going to be but you can be pretty sure it will be based on our personal data. Time to start thinking seriously about where we want this to stop.