Cassandra Voices

Category: Current Affairs

  • Palestine: What happens when the violence ends?

    Self-defence, blood lust, ethnic cleansing, disproportionate response, mowing the lawn, genocide, death from the sky. It’s up to you however you wish to describe the unparalleled violence unleashed on Gaza.

    I describe it as shooting or in this case bombing Palestinians in a barrel. Let’s have a brief resume of what’s happened.

    The district of Sheikh Jarrah is in East Jerusalem, which was the proposed capital of a Palestinian state. The signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1993 led to further Israeli expansion into the West Bank. Since then areas like Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah have been systematically targeted by the illegal Jewish Settler movement, which uses Israeli courts to award Zionist Jews the homes and land currently occupied by Palestinians.

    If you take nothing else from this article please remember the Occupation is illegal under international law, therefore every decision taken by the Occupation army, the illegal settlers. Yet the Apartheid Israeli judiciary routinely sends Palestinian including young children to prison on extracted false confessions, many made under duress, under physical threat.

    In some cases children are handed false confessions written in Hebrew, which they cannot understand, and are told these are official release forms. The kids sign them thinking they are going home but in reality, these are confessions that will condemn them to jail.

    Add to this ‘Administrative Detention’, Imprisonment without trial, and we have the flawed corrupt Apartheid regimes conveyor belt to jail. All of this is illegal.

    As a result many Human Rights organisations describe Israel as an apartheid state. This is because Zionism, a political ideology is inherently Apartheid.

    Israelis protest against Netanyahu outside his official residence in Jerusalem on 30 July 2020.

    Corruption Charges

    Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now facing corruption charges. A former Israeli Knesset member during a CNN interview accused him of inciting the current round of violence by continuing Israel’s expansionist, illegal land grabs in the Occupied West Bank, and also through the attacks on people at prayer, men, women and children at the Al-Aqsa mosque, towards the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

    Is seems conceivable that the leader of the seventh largest military force on Earth would engineer a state of conflict between Israel and a people without an army, air force or navy, to protect themselves. All they have is local militias, composed of the fathers and sons, mothers and daughters of the local community.

    But if an Israeli Knesset member says exactly that, then it must carry some weight.

    The Dust Settles

    So, where are we now and who won and who lost?

    As the bloodletting ends, as it must, the dead are buried and the dust settles over the destroyed building, like a shroud over Gaza.

    The reality is, everything will be the same and yet everything has changed utterly.

    I have always been sceptical when I heard claims following previous attacks on Gaza that the resistance has won.

    I genuinely thought it was just bravado for the masses. When we see the death toll, the numbers injured and the devastating damage to civilian homes, hospitals and the infrastructure, I have to ask how have they possibly won?

    The loss of life alone is unimaginable in such a small environment. Twenty-five miles by six miles, that is the size of the Ards Peninsula in Northern Ireland, with the equivalent of the entire two million population of Northern Ireland squeezed into it.

    Thus far, the destruction in Gaza is an incredible scale.

    The targeting and killing of whole families is a war crime in itself.

    The systematic destruction of all roads leading to the main hospitals in Gaza, preventing ambulances and victims from accessing acute services is another war crime. The wanton destruction of family homes, farms, places of worship and work are too.

    The Resistance has Won

    The latest Blitzkrieg on Gaza is just another Zionists war on civilians that will never be forgotten. Israel claims its aims were to degrade the military capabilities of Hamas and other resistance groups in Gaza. It cites rockets fired from Gaza as the pretext.

    Under international law, however, with Israel illegally occupying the West Bank and enjoying control air, sea and land borders around Gaza, the Palestinians have a right to resist the Occupation, by any means necessary, including armed resistance.

    Then this David versus Goliath battle is one of the Palestinian David with rocks and rockets legally resisting an illegal Goliath occupation, which uses gunboats, tanks, artillery shells, drones and F16, F35 jets to bomb and murder Gazans at will, and without any recourse to the rules of war.

    The reality is that Israel will only end the bloodshed once it has expended the armaments supplied to it by America France  Britain and the EU.

    Yet Israel has failed again in its stated objective to destroy the ability of the resistance in Gaza to challenge the Occupation. It did not have the courage to commit ground troops as the cost in Israeli soldiers lives was deemed potentially to be too high.

    The resistance groups retain both the ability, and the will, to continue to resist the illegal Occupation and siege by any and all means necessary.

    The attacks on Gaza are a proxy threat to other nations in the region. We will do the same ‘to you’ is the message from Israel. Indeed, Israel routinely bombs Syria in another example of its illegal war crimes, while their military leaders have stated on numerous occasions that they will bomb Gaza back into the stone age.

    I know, it’s hard to believe, but the resistance has won! Gaza may have been levelled: the suffering of the dead, the injured and the dying is unfathomable.

    But while Gaza has been destroyed, the spirit of resistance embodied in the people has survived. This provides the impetus to continue demands for equality, peace, freedom and justice for Palestinians and Palestine survives, not just in Gaza but in East Jerusalem, in Sheikh Jarrah, in the West Bank, in Al-Aqsa and across historic Palestine, which Zionists call Israel.

    Netanyahu has only succeeded in uniting Israelis in their demand for his prosecution for corruption and united Palestinians for the first time in a generation in their defence of Al-Aqsa, East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza. A new generation of resistance has been born, united and unified from the river to the sea.

    Did Netanyahu help create the conditions that made this latest attack on Gaza inescapable? Is the shedding of blood in Gaza simply a political gambit aimed at a domestic audience?

    Is it a case of: he or she who kills the most Palestinians getting the most votes?

    Alas, history certainly bears that perspective out to be true.

    Moving Forward

    What Gaza needs is financial support, rebuilding materials, medicine, hope and solidarity in equal measures.

    What it will get is another 50,000 or more refugees, many of whom were previously refugees from the Israeli murder and bombing campaigns of 2014/2009/1967/1948.

    This further degrades Palestinian civil society’s ability to respond to the damage to lives, homes, infrastructure and the economy.

    Egypt is complicit in the siege. It will not help Gaza or Palestine. The humanitarian catastrophe will continue apace

    Israel sells Gaza water, gas, oil and electricity. It makes a profit from all of these utilities. The profits of Occupation.

    And yet the spirit of Resistance has prevailed once again. But the price of resisting the continued illegal Zionist Israel occupation of Palestine is a continued loss of liberty and life for Palestinians.

    The continues loss of life, homes, farms, workplaces, mosques, schools, hospitals, clinics, the loss of innocence in the young, their hopes dashed for the future, and their dreams of a life free from violent occupation, imprisonment, death from the skies. This is a psychological trauma seemingly without end.

    When the bombs stop flying in the east the people stop protesting in the West. Will you stand with Palestine. Or simply melt away like snow on a ditch until the next murderous bombing raids occur?

    Peace needs you now. Palestinians need you now. The future generations being born into captivity need you now.

    What will you do to help end the madness of a rogue Apartheid state and bring peace to the people of the Middle East and West Asia? It is in your hands

    Feature Image: Destroyed house in Gaza City, December 2012.

  • Ireland and Colombia: the Coal Connection

    Most Irish people could not imagine what links their country with Colombia, or even the extent to which their electricity is still comes from coal into the 21st century. But the Electricity Supply Board (ESB), and therefore Ireland as a whole, is complicit in human rights violations, as well as ongoing air and water pollution occurring in a Colombian region.

    Cerrejón

    To understand better what I am talking about we need to go to the north east of Colombia, to La Guajira region, just before the border with Venezuela. Here we find the largest coal mine in South America – and one of the largest in the world – in operation since 1985, which produces, on average, approximately thirty-two million tonnes of coal a year.

    All of this coal is exported, principally to Europe thanks to a Free Trade agreement highly beneficial to multinational corporations, under a neoliberal global economic model where developing countries in the Global South provide cheap natural resources for the Global North’s energy production, through mining and extractive industries.

    In most cases this model is highly destructive. The company and the mine, both called Cerrejón, have changed owners throughout its thirty-six years of operation and are now owned in equal parts by the multinational companies Glencore, BHP Billiton and Anglo-American, which run many other mega-mining projects all over the world.

    Many local and international activists and organizations, including a UN Human Rights expert in September 2020[i], have been demanding a halt to mining on the grounds of human rights violations.

    Over thirty indigenous, Afro-Colombian and campesino communities were displaced due to the coal mining project. Of these communities only a few have been resettled in urban areas, where they do not belong, and promised a series of measures – services, financial aid, school bursaries – which are mostly inadequate.

    If the company justifies resettlement as a measure of protection of the local communities’ health and safety, no other choice is given to them: they have to leave the land that they have been occupying for thousands of years, since before the arrival of the European settlers.

    In most cases their economy was based on agriculture and livestock, so without access to the land and without the possibility of employment in cities, the subsistence of these people, and of their cattle, is at immense risk.

    In fact, drought  is another big issue in this semi-arid to arid region. The main source of water, which the local communities rely directly upon, is the Ranchería river and its tributaries: the mine has been accused of drying seventeen of these waterways throughout the years. For instance, in 2017, Cerrejón proceeded with the diversion works of the Bruno stream even though the Colombian constitutional court ruled that the company had to consult all twelve of the communities affected before starting the works.

    Wayuu

    The Wayuu, or Guajiros, are an Amerindian ethnic group of the Guajira Peninsula, including the northernmost part of Colombia and northwest of Venezuela. A study reported by Human Rights Watch in 2017[ii] that one Wayuu child dies every week on average because of malnutrition; 5000 Wayuu children died of hunger between 2010 and 2018.[iii]

    Children and youth are certainly the most vulnerable[iv], but are not the only ones suffering respiratory problems due to their proximity to pollution from the mine.

    In particular, the high concentration of substances such as Sulphur, Chromium, Copper, Bromine, Nickel, Manganese and Zinc in the air, as stated in the Colombian Constitutional Court Ruling T-614/19,[v] and the contamination of rivers and bodies of water in the area.

    High concentration of metals has also been found in the blood of people from the communities surrounding the mine: this can lead to DNA damage, skin lesions, lung cancer, respiratory and heart diseases.

    Furthermore, the Wayuu people and organisations have suffered harassment and death threats as a result of dissent and resistance to the coal extraction practices. For example, the local organisation Fuerza de Mujeres Wayuu (Wayuu Women’s Force) has been reporting death threats against them from the far-right paramilitary group Aguilas Negras since 2019.

    You will not find any of the above details either on the Cerrejón company and foundation website and Facebook page or on the mine marketer’s website (CMC), where they claim to be

    a reflection of the best of Colombia: a world-class operation committed to the sustainable development of La Guajira […] in areas such as education, health, culture, sports, productive projects, the environment, infrastructure enhancement, training, employment and basic sanitation for our neighbouring communities, including the native Wayuu people.

    Ireland

    Moneypoint Power Station By GavinZac – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7582681

    Moneypoint, located on the River Shannon in County Clare, near Kilrush, is Ireland’s largest electricity generation station. The power station is run by the ESB, the semi-state electricity company – 95% owned by the Irish government – and it is the only coal-fired power station in Ireland, and the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the country.

    It has relied entirely on imported coal since 2011, 90% of which has been imported from Colombia, mostly from the Cerrejón mine, and it has been polluting Ireland too. Coal represents 14% of the country’s total energy mix.

    The ESB claims that it has been purchasing only a small percentage of the Cerrejón mine’s total output and that senior managers personally visited the site and met workers, community leaders and trade union officials; while the company committed to remain vigilant on the issues.

    In 2018 the Irish Department of Climate, Environment and Communications announced that Moneypoint would phase out coal burning by 2025[vi] and in 2019 the Irish government launched its Climate Action Plan,[vii] including a commitment to stop burning coal, so far no concrete details have been provided on what technologies will be used to replace coal, or alternatives for Moneypoint employees.

    In 2018 the Irish government acknowledged the impact of coal mining on human lives in La Guajira and the human rights abuses connected to the supply chain, but no formal action has been taken still on the situation by the government,[viii] nor by the ESB.

    In the last few years, on the one hand, Ireland, like other European countries, has contributed aid towards developing countries to tackle climate change and to the Colombian peace process; yet on the other hand, it hasn’t stopped importing environmentally destructive coal that involves human rights violations.

    But Ireland is responsible also for another reason: CMC, the exclusive marketer of Cerrejón coal, which coordinates the sale and delivery of this coal globally, has its headquarters in Dublin, thanks to the well-known corporate tax regime that has made Ireland such a popular destination for multinational corporations.

    Recent Developments

    In January 2021, GLAN (Global Legal Action Network), supported by a coalition of Colombian, International and Irish human rights and environmental groups, including Christian Aid Ireland, lodged a formal complaint to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) through their national contact point in Ireland.[ix]

    They claimed that Cerrejón and the ESB were in breach of their human rights responsibilities by continuing to import coal and failing to take necessary actions to identify and prevent the harms caused by the operations, i.e. human rights abuses; air and water pollution and displacement of local communities.

    Simultaneous complaints have also been filed to OECD representatives in Australia, the UK and Switzerland against the three corporations involved and against ESB and CMC. The OECD will now have to investigate if the multinational companies are in compliance with with the OECD’s Guidelines, and take action accordingly.

    For the same reasons Irish organisations such as Stop Blood Coal Ireland and Terra Justa  – based in Bolivia but with staff members in Ireland and the UK  – have been calling on the Irish government to stop purchasing Cerrejón coal on human rights grounds. Compensation to communities affected for more than three decades, as well as support for basic rights and resources in La Guajira, including transition measures to support mine workers, are also demanded.

    Furthermore, very recently, in March 2021 Still Burning, a ‘network fighting against the global hard coal industry’, also launched the book Coal, Colonialism & Resistance, which centralises the voices of affected communities and warns of ‘false green solutions’, highlighting the colonial entanglements of coal.

    The Irish organisation, Latin American Solidarity Centre, based in Dublin, is now hosting two webinars on land defenders along with the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies of the University College Cork (UCC).

    On the 13th and 20th of May the Irish organisation, Latin American Solidarity Centre, based in Dublin, hosted two webinars on land defenders along with the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies of the University College Cork (UCC).

    The second session, ‘Law, threats and criminalization’, analysed the threats that land defenders face. The two panellists, Jakeline Romero, from the Fuerza de Mujeres Wayuu in La Guajira, and Isabel Matzir, from the Resistencia de Cahabón in Alta Verapaz (Guatemala), explained the state and corporate strategies and practices used to criminalize them and delegitimize their struggle. Within Colombian distorted system, threats and violence from the state and corporations against indigenous people are still taking place with total impunity. And the reason is simple, as claimed by Jakeline Romero, “they have interests; economic and political power are in their hands,” so they can still declare nothing of what has been denounced is real.

    She claims also that the recent repression against peaceful protesters has a lot in common with the emblematic violence against the indigenous, Afro-descendent and campesino communities in Colombia. The is the same military response from the state. The government does not recognise either their rights or their cultural difference, but local organisations like Fuerza de Mujeres Wayuu keep on defending the land and denouncing the systematic human rights violations. As it is not always possible to denounce these injustices nationally – people in the territories often fear for their lives – and local communities cannot do everything on their own, international exposure and support are essential.

    “People have to know that the coal arriving in Europe is bloodstained, it’s against human life,” says Jakeline. She adds that the pandemic has been used by the government to legislate against the indigenous people, and in general against the people in Colombia. To repress more than ever on the street of the Colombian cities, as well as in the indigenous areas.

    Further sources:

    Erika Quinteros, Emma Pachon, ‘Climate Change and its Effect on Indigenous People’, Council of Hemispheric Affairs, 27 June 2017, <https://www.coha.org/climate-change-and-its-effect-on-indigenous-people/>.

    Angelica Ortiz, ‘Indigenous resistance: my fight for land and life in Colombia’, The Ecologist, 12 October 2017, <https://theecologist.org/2017/oct/12/indigenous-resistance-my-fight-land-and-life-colomba>.

    Extractivismo en Colombia, ‘Comunicado: Corte Constitucional Ordena Proteger el Agua, la Salud y la Seguirdad Alimentaria de Comunidades que Dependen del Arroyo Bruno’, 21 December 2017, <http://extractivismoencolombia.org/comunicado-corte-constitucional-ordena-proteger-agua-la-salud-la-seguridad-alimentaria-comunidades-dependen-del-arroyo-bruno/>.

    London Mining Network, ‘Open letter to Cerrejon Coal’, 27 July 2018, <https://londonminingnetwork.org/2018/07/21828/>.

    GreenNews.ie, ‘Calls for ESB to explain large coal imports from controversial Colombian mine’, 21 September 2018, <https://greennews.ie/calls-esb-explain-coal-imports-cerrejon-mine/>.

    Marienna Pope-Weidemann, Sebastian Ordoñez Muñoz, ‘The Cost of Mining in Latin America’, New Internationalist, 23 October 2018, <https://newint.org/features/2018/10/23/cost-mining-latin-america>.

    Latin American Solidarity Centre, ‘Briefing – The Irish connection to the Cerrejón coal mine’, 14 January 2019, <https://lasc.ie/briefing-the-irish-connection-to-the-cerrejon-coal-mine/?fbclid=IwAR3q4cEAlV7kXhtSj5lgu8_qCGVhhOUAapaBtxM-GI45mBiUpzgMbslvmvE>.

    Peter Hamilton, ‘ESB called out for ‘contributing to human rights violations’’, The Irish Times, 20 February 2020, <https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/esb-called-out-for-contributing-to-human-rights-violations-1.4178686>.

    Luca Manes, ‘Colombia, la miniera a cielo aperto della discordia: sfruttamento miliardario di tonnellate di polvere nera’, ReCommon, published in La Repubblica, 1 February 2021, <https://www.repubblica.it/solidarieta/diritti-umani/2021/02/01/news/colombia_la_miniera_della_discordia-285426246/>.

     

    [i] United Nations Human Rights, ‘UN expert calls for halt to mining at controversial Colombia site’, 28 September 2020, <https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26306>

    [ii] Human Rights Watch, ‘OECD: Examine Local Hunger Crisis in Colombia’, 30 October 2017, <https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/10/30/oecd-examine-local-hunger-crisis-colombia#>

    [iii] Sandra Guerrero, ‘“4.770 niños muertos en La Guajira es una barbarie”: Corte’, El Heraldo, 15 October 2018, <https://www.elheraldo.co/la-guajira/4770-ninos-muertos-en-la-guajira-es-una-barbarie-corte-553890>

    [iv] Claudia Morales, ‘El exterminio del pueblo wayuu’, El Espectador, 19 April 2015, <https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/nacional/el-exterminio-del-pueblo-wayuu/>

    [v] Corte Constitucional República de Colombia, Sentencia T-614/19, 2018-2019, <https://www.corteconstitucional.gov.co/relatoria/2019/T-614-19.htm#_ftn6%20%20Sentencia%20T-614/19>

    [vi] Eoin Burke-Kennedy, ‘Ireland 2040: €22bn to turn State into low-carbon economy’, The Irish Times, 16 February 2018, <https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/ireland-2040-22bn-to-turn-state-into-low-carbon-economy-1.3394805>.

    [vii] Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, Climate Action Plan 2019, Published on 17 June 2019, <https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/ccb2e0-the-climate-action-plan-2019/>

    [viii] Dail Debates, Topical Issue Debate Human Rights, 12 July 2018, <https://www.kildarestreet.com/debates/?id=2018-07-12a.432>.

    [ix] Eoin Burke-Kennedy, ‘Complaint made against ESB over purchases of coal from Colombian mine’, The Irish Times, 19 January 2021, <https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/complaint-made-against-esb-over-purchases-of-coal-from-colombian-mine-1.4461662>; Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA), ‘OECD to investigate human rights abuses filed against the owners of Cerrejón coal mine; BHP, Anglo American and Glencore’, 19 January 2021, <https://aida-americas.org/en/press/oecd-to-investigate-human-rights-abuses-filed-against-the-owners-of-cerrejon-coal-mine>.

  • Al-Quds: the Red Line

    Al-Quds (‘the holy sanctuary’), Jerusalem is the red line for the Palestinian people, the wider diaspora and the Arab collective. It is the capital of Palestine and home to the third holiest shrine in Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Muslims believe Muhammad was transported from the Great Mosque in Mecca to Al-Aqsa during the Night Journey. Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad led prayers towards this site for sixteen to seventeen months after his migration to Mecca. So how did we get to this current impasse?

    Jerusalem is in flames. Gaza is being bombed back to the Stone Age. Israeli Zionists and illegal settlers are attacking Palestinian business, homes, and people in the streets, at their residences and places of worship. Palestinians are defending themselves by any means necessary.

    Palestine: To Exist is to Resist

    I won’t give a historical lecture, just some pertinent facts. The First Zionist Congress was held in 1897 in Basel Switzerland. It was decided then that European antisemitism needed to be challenged and that a new state for the Jewish people, free from European antisemitism was to be created. Several places were considered including Madagascar, Uganda and some Latin American countries.

    Finally, it was decided Palestine would become the new Israel. From 1901 onwards the Jewish National Fund began buying land in Palestine. Palestine at that time was part of the Ottoman empire. The land was bought from absentee Turkish landowners, the Palestinians put off the land and Jewish only migrants employed.

    This continued up until World War I. The British formed regiments of Palestinian and Arab troops promising them freedom from Ottoman occupation if they fought for Britain. When the war ended the troops dispersed and Britain and France carved up the Middle East as a prize for both their colonial empires.

    All manifestations of violence today in the Middle East stem from the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and subsequent redrawing of the old Ottoman Empire into a new white European colonial construct. All those who fought for Britain and for the freedom of small nations were abandoned. They were simply cannon fodder to save British lives by using expendable Arab lives.


    History’s Dead Hand on the Middle East
    (Image: Kevin Fox, all rights reserved)

    The Jewish National Fund continued to buy up land and displace the indigenous population. As the 1920s progressed we witnessed clashes between the European colonists and the indigenous population with riots in Jerusalem during this decade.

    With the outbreak of World War II Zionist designs on fully colonising Palestine were set in motion. After 1945 further ethnic clashes occurred. The Zionists were fully armed and trained and the Palestinians had no army, just bands of neighbours and villagers trying to defend their homes and families.

    The Stern Gangs, the Hagana and the Irgun began a campaign to terrorise, murder and displace the indigenous population. They succeeded with the help of Britain and America at the UN and the state of Palestine under the British Mandate was partitioned and the new state of Israel born at the point of terrorist guns. 750,000 Palestinians were forced into exile into the surrounding Arab countries and the systematic erasure of the Palestine footprint in the new state began. Villages were destroyed so their inhabitants could not return. Businesses taken over by Jewish Zionist families, homes sequestered and the land stolen.

    This happened again in 1967 during the Six-Day War with the occupation of the West Bank. This continued Occupation and the siege on Gaza from 2007 are a continuation of the policy of the theft of homes, theft of land, theft of resources and the displacement of the indigenous population.

    From the Wild West to the Middle East, the European white colonial settlement of North America and Canada became the blueprint for the Zionist colonisation of Palestine. We can see the house evictions in Sheikh Jarrah East Jerusalem for what they really are: a continuation of the Zionist-Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine. It is a microcosm of everyday reality and life under Occupation.

    These house possessions by Zionists are just the latest step in the long path to the total Judification of Palestine. West Jerusalem is already nearly 100% Zionist.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing criminal corruption charges and is hanging on to power as leader of an extremist Zionist political party Likud by the skin of his teeth. During the Holy Muslim Festival of Ramadan up to 100,000 Palestinians gather for prayer and worship daily at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem known in Arabic as Al Quds

    Now if you remember, the Israeli military Occupation is illegal under international law. The Zionist settlements are illegal under international law.

    Every day Palestinians watch their homes land and businesses confiscated by the Israeli occupation. These daily injustices lead to a growing sense of frustration, anger and discontent.

    The Israeli illegal occupation forces then attacked the peaceful worshippers in the compound adjacent to the Al-Aqsa mosque. They attacked people through dispersal squads who use sound bombs, chemical canisters, arrests and assaults to clear any groups who might congregate.

    This means family, friends, neighbours and communities cannot gather in conversation in the community and in peace at the end of the day attending or leaving prayer.

    The scenes witnessed all over the Arab, Persian and Muslim world of peaceful worshippers, many of them women, being attacked inside the mosque at prayer, has led to the resistance groups in Gaza launching primitive rockets at Israel in retaliation.

    Israel’s disproportionate response by launching military sorties from land, sea and air has destroyed buildings and killed scores of men, women and children.

    While Israelis cower in their bomb shelters from the falling debris of Palestinian rockets with a payload similar to an enormous firework, the Gazan’s have no bomb shelters, no air force, no navy and no land army. They have a few rockets, machine guns, mortars and rifles to defend themselves against one the best-equipped armies in the world today.

    While yet another pro-Zionist American President Biden phones Netanyahu to give his support to the ‘Israel must have the right to defend itself ‘mantra, all we will see and hear from Western media propagandists are further Zionist cries of victimhood.

    I visited Gaza on a medical aid convoy in 2010. I walked the streets the Zionists are turning to rubble. They intend to bomb Gaza back to the Stone Age.

    Electricity only runs for a few hours a day. Fresh drinking water is nearly unheard of and bottled water and fuel for generators is sold to Gaza by Israel

    With a total land, sea and air blockade, the Gazan population has an unemployment rate of nearly 70%. They watch on each day as a bombing campaign destroys one building, one house, one business, one apartment block, and one family at a time. The fear the people, and especially the children, must be living under is unimaginable..

    Occupied Territories Bill: Government Defies Dáil Majority Leaving the Jaber Family to their Fate

    What can we do?

    Support the right of Palestinians as enshrined in International Law to free themselves from Occupation by any means necessary.

    Go on a protest.

    Support BDS and boycott Israel goods and companies.

    Demand your government divests from the political and financial support of Israel.

    Once the killings and bombings stop all the people you see protesting will go home and the Palestinians and the Yemenis and the Syrians will be forgotten. Please remember it’s not just Palestine the Zionists want to destroy. They want total hegemonic control over the entire region. That means destroying any country and its peoples that it cannot control. Look at Iraq and Libya, see Syria and Yemen watch them threaten Lebanon and Iran.

    Netanyahu’s Likud government has made Israel a cancer on the body politic of the region. Like cancer, it must respond to treatment or the host and the body die.

    There will soon be one million Zionist Jewish settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They are all illegally there. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying force suhc as Israel from settling its civilian population in occupied territory.

    UN Resolution 194 states that Palestinians exiled from their homes, land and property have the Right of Return.

    Israel has never let the Palestinians return. It continues to usurp their rights and ethnically cleanse the West Bank of its indigenous population through dispersal and dispossession.

    In 1901 European Jews had a dream of a land free from hatred, from discrimination, from racial and religious prejudice. Far from creating this land, they created a state based on hatred, discrimination, and racial and religious prejudice. To many onlookers, Israel and its settlers have recreated that which they set out to escape.

    Featured Image of Al-Aqsa Mosque by Frank Armstrong (2003).

  • Belfast’s Broken Record Crackles On

    There is a strong impression of the same old story of the Troubles in Belfast, all over again. The new element is the pandemic affecting teenage lives. Words and images by Fellipe Lopes in collaboration with Daniele Idini.

    It is hard to see a purpose behind the recent violent protests in Belfast that have fleetingly come to global prominence. On the ground, community leaders identify continuities, as recreational rioting is all too familiar, ever since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

    There is, however, a perception that the intensity of this year’s disturbances are a product of uncertainties around the new Irish Sea border and Northern Ireland’s position in the post-Brexit context.

    Brexit has clearly increased insecurity in the Unionist or Loyalist community, many of whom voted against withdrawal from the EU. Now the establishment of a commercial border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, through the Northern Ireland Protocol, designed to protect the Good Friday Agreement, has created a sense of betrayal. This has hardened the rhetoric of struggle and conflict.

    The Unionist side of the argument is that this creates further distance from the rest of the U.K. amidst a sense that they are the ones being sacrificed in the divorce from the E.U.. Moreover, talk of a possible United Ireland in the South and persistent grievances over the failure to prosecute senior Sinn Féin politicians for a perceived failure to abide by social distancing rules at the Bobby Storey funeral fans the flame.

    © Fellipe Lopes
    © Daniele Idini

    Added to all this, Northern Ireland’s lockdown has affected the lives of young people in particular: directly through extended school closures, and loss of job opportunities, but also by creating a despondency that leaves many feeling they have little to lose.

    Finally, the long-standing educational segregation between Catholic and Protestant communities perpetuates a sense of “us” and “them.”

    So, how to explain these violent outbursts? What is different now from the usual activities? And what role has the pandemic played, especially on the youth involved? We spoke to a politician John Kyle, an activist Eileen Weir and an academic Dr Katy Hayward to find out more.

    John Kyle (PUP). ©Fellipe Lopes

    According to John Kyle, a Councillor on Belfast City Council, and former interim leader of the centre-left ‘Loyalist’ Progressive Unionist Party in Northern Ireland:

    “There are different factors involved. The first is that young people have been restricted. They have been unable to go to school, unable to meet with their friends, unable to go to the movies, unable to do, you know, stuff like that. If then there’s an opportunity to go out and get a bit of excitement, they will take that opportunity. Secondly, here in Northern Ireland, there is a tradition of what we call recreational rioting. In other words, if there were kids at an interface between two communities in the summer nights, sometimes, they arrange on Facebook to meet up for a fight. And so you might get 100 kids, sometimes 30, sometimes 50 kids. They meet up, start shouting at each other and throwing stones and bottles. And that’s what we call recreational rioting.”

     

    Daniele Idini with John Kyle. © Fellipe Lopes

    But Dr Katy Hayward, an academic and writer based at Queen’s University in Belfast says:

    “Something different has happened in the past few weeks, and that is that you’ve had a change in the political situation whereby the rhetoric in particular, from Unionist communities, and leaders has been one in which people have begun to really, doubt the process of basically the core elements of the Peace Process, for a long time. And amongst Loyalist communities, there has been a sense of frustration and anger about the Good Friday Agreement and compromises there. This is now beginning to get into the wider mainstream political field. And that’s primarily as a result of the conditions of Brexit, also you’ve had a new dimension, which is the criticism of the police service”

     

    Katy Hayward at Queen’s University Belfast. ©Daniele Idini

    On the other hand, Eileen Weir, Peacemaker and Community relations worker at Shankill Women’s Centre speaks of persistent social problems:

    “yeah, I think it is partly down to boredom. The things that people are not picking up on is that we have interface violence all year round. Right? This is not the first. They are usually not to that extreme where things are being burned or anything, but the two communities come together for a fight all year round and every year. We have a big, big drug problem in our communities and a lot of our young people are addicted to some type of drug, whether it’s illegal or prescribed. So we have a big mental health problem in our communities. It’s like they put a plaster on a thing that actually needs an operation. Our rate of suicide, and not just with young people with adults as well, is through the roof.”

     

    Eileen Weir in front of the Shankill Woman’s Centre. © Fellipe Lopes

    Walking around the predominantly Protestant areas of Shankill and Lanark Way, as well as in the Catholic Springfield Road and Falls, reveals a tranquil environment with bustling local shops, active community centres and friendly characters, more than willing to share their views on the current situation.

    These are among the areas of Belfast most affected by the long period of the Troubles and the scars are apparent. Chatting to locals from both communities living alongside the so-called the Cupar Way Peace-Wall the general impression is of a desire to leave behind a troubled past.

    Shankill Road © Fellipe Lopes
    Falls Road © Fellipe Lopes

    According to Eileen:

    “we do have peaceful communities, OK? I mean, the woman that I work with, you know, we’re from North and West Belfast and we have a fantastic relationship. I don’t like to label anybody. But within that group I have Republicans, I have Nationalist, I have Loyalists, but building relationships is not enough. And we can all build relationships. But that relationship doesn’t happen overnight.”

     

    Clonard neighbourhood. © Fellipe Lopes
    Shankill neighbourhood. © Daniele Idini

    By Monday April 19th the moratorium on Loyalist protests in the wake of Prince Philip’s death had lapsed. That morning, in front of the Irish Secretariat, a two man protest against the Northern Irish Protocol, organised by the Loyalist Communities Council’s Chair David Campbell and former politician and co-founder of the group David McNarry, was in full swing.

    Before long, however, it was interrupted by David McCord, whose brother Raymond was allegedly killed by members of the UVF in 1997. With a picture of his late brother in hand, he confronted the two men who were holding a banner that had appeared in different locations across Northern Ireland the previous night, addressed to the large media presence before them.

    © Daniele Idini

    There is a big gap between the government and these communities that reflects uncertainties over the decisions being made, especially the government’s failure to recognise the serious impact of their policies. Our conversations in the neighborhoods reveal a lack of understanding of the practical implications of Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol. This incoherence is reflected in the seemingly pointless violence.

    Now there is particular concern around the escalating misbehaviour of teenagers, leading shop owners in the affected areas to coordinate closures.

    Meanwhile on social media, calls to resume Anti-Northern Ireland Protocol protests across the region started to circulate. This included tweets about one to be held that evening at Lanark Way, where in previous weeks the violent riots had taken place.

    In the hours leading up to the anticipated protests on Monday April 19th in the Springfield Road area, rumours circulated about community efforts to prevent local teenagers from taking part.

    Springfield Road Interface. © Fellipe Lopes

    But by that evening approximately thirty teenagers were blocking Lanark Way on the Shankill Road side, setting fire to furniture and rubbish in the middle of the street.

    © Daniele Idini
    © Daniele Idini
    © Fellipe Lopes
    © Fellipe Lopes

    The protest soon descended into stones and pieces of iron being thrown at police cars. Over the course of the disturbances we saw no visible expression of what was motivating the protesters; no posters criticizing the governments, or otherwise communicating reasons for the violence.

    After a couple of hours, the PSNI asked journalists to leave the area and move to Springfield Road, as they closed the gate. This raises an important question as to what happens in the fight between teenagers and the police when media outlets are absent. A lack of media coverage fuels growing resentment towards the PSNI.

    Lanark Way interface Gate © Fellipe Lopes
    Lanark Way interface Gate. © Daniele Idini

    Katy points to this new antipathy towards the PSNI:

    “you’ve had this new dimension, which is the criticism of the police service. That’s something very new. So for some time, Loyalists have been feeling that the police service no longer backs them … what changed in the past week was that the First Minister of Northern Ireland called on the chief constable to resign, and we had all the political leaders of Unionism calling for the same thing.”

     

    @ Fellipe Lopes

    Katy adds:

    “They don’t trust political representatives or institutions to manage Northern Ireland’s interests. So you can see here all these factors exacerbating the sense of insecurity and that it only takes a few individuals. We know those individuals who have been present for a long time, presenting the Peace Process, presenting the compromise, thinking that violence pays. There’s a new narrative in Loyalism now that looks at what happens with the Protocol … They say the threat of Republican violence led to the Irish Sea border. So that’s another element.”

    Another important dimension is the difficulty faced by women in particular during the pandemic, as Eileen puts it:

    “the reason why this impacts on women more so is that there is homeschooling – working from home and often caring for an elderly relative. A lot of women’s jobs are low paid … zero hours contracts. We get very little recognition for the work of women. In the present situation, if it wasn’t for community workers being on the ground, you’d be seeing a hell of a lot more problems. And really, that’s not what community workers are for. That’s what our political representatives are for.“

     

    Eileen Weir. © Fellipe Lopes

    We also raised the question of a United Ireland and whether it is healthy to talk about this now. Katy said:

    “the more you talk about it, the more unnerving it is for Unionism. And that’s perfectly understandable because, of course, it’s anathema to the Unionist identity and certainly that is a factor. Because Brexit has taken Northern Ireland outside of the European Union, that’s a bereavement for some people and particularly for Nationalists. Northern Ireland is on the wrong side of that European external border, but that’s kind of overlooked because that leads to, certainly amongst Nationalists, a growing desire for Irish unity. They wish to see that happen and happen soon. But that has increased the uncertainty and insecurity for Unionists and we have both communities feeling more insecure in their position, thinking that the other is secure because basically they got what they wanted. ”

    Unsurprisingly, John holds a different view:

    “I personally think that the best outcome is a Northern Ireland that is part of the United Kingdom, but that has a close relationship with the Republic of Ireland. People here who identify as Irish have got free movement between the North and the South. They can work anywhere in Ireland and celebrate their Irishness and vice versa. There is good things in the British system and good things in the Irish system.”

     

    The Cupar Way ‘Peace Wall’. © Daniele Idini

    Right now there is considerable focus on the decisions that the governments are making. The other part is about the lives and futures of these teenagers. Several communities in Belfast have paid a high price for the lack of access to education and job opportunities. Teenagers are now paying this bill. With their futures appearing bleak many have been drawn into unsuitable activities.

    Discussion of the protest should look beyond the intricacies of the Brexit deal and the Northern Ireland Protocol. Society and government should be forming a long-term plan for the social and cultural integration.

    On the streets you see violence involving teenagers and a decisive response from the police. What we did not discover is whether external forces are guiding and supporting these teenagers. Perhaps the real question is who stands to gain from the disorder?

    These communities are experiencing challenges very similar to what happened from the 1960s to the 1990s. The Good Friday Agreement created peace, but the record player is still playing the same scratched tune, with an extraordinary new phenomenon at play, which is the pandemic.

    The response of these adolescents represents another side to the impact of the pandemic. Mental health problems present as an issue in the lives of many families. The social projects around the Shankill and Falls Road do their best, but at this point the government has a responsibility to intervene, not only through policing, but also with social supports, inclusion programmes, enhanced access to education, job opportunities, improved living conditions and greater support for social workers, and psychologists.

    The pandemic is leaving a distinct legacy in Belfast: the ashes from the street bonfires; the stones hurled at police and journalists, and a new generation of teenagers accustomed to fighting the police. But the locals we spoke to all want peace and integration. They don’t want this generation to experience the same story as their parents.

    The fear is reborn of a new chapter to the Troubles. What happened over the last few weeks in Belfast has reawakened fears in these communities. No doubt this is a political issue, but the psychological scars are borne by individuals, families and communities.

    You can support Cassandra Voices reporting either on an ongoing basis through Patreon or a one-off PayPal donation to admin@cassandravoices.com.

    © Fellipe Lopes

  • Old Headscarf

    At thirty-two, after decades of sporting a headscarf, I abandoned the practice and exposed my bad hair days. There was a short-lived, still humongous, stir. At home, there was one overriding fear: “And what will people say?”

    I had long interpreted the headscarf as a politico-cultural expression of Islamic modesty; for years though, I never risked taking it off. The spectre of community disapproval deterred me, but then, so did the thought of selling out. That I could enact the archetype of Muslim woman unshackling her chains, could endorse the cardboard tropes, bothered me. When I finally stopped caring and took the plunge, my entire conception of reality shifted.

    Four years on and my experience equips me with insight. A hijabi when headlines hyped the War on Terror, I already know that all are prey to mainstream conditioning; that IQ, educational, or professional qualifications are not automatic safeguards against ignorance. In my life as it unfolds post-headscarf, the comic sea-change in strangers’ attitudes towards me, I can vouch that opting out of norms incurs social penalties. I have witnessed polarities in treatment, know a hunger for acceptance, and appreciate anyone’s pressure to conform to the crowd.

    By interrogating the headscarf as immutable religious law, I am reminded that beliefs and identities are products of historical, political, and cultural forces, configured by upbringing and environmental backdrop. I observe that too many of us outsource our critical faculties in blind deference to expert authorities, subscribing to the fallacy that appointed ‘philosopher-kings’ must comprehend something we can’t, that the structural asymmetry of information serves anything other than vested interests. Hence, if Imperial College London plots a graph about it, or a man in spectacles rattles off numbers, or a stack of death certificates signed by frontline heroes just says so, we’ll dig no deeper; we’ll admire the emperor’s new threads as he stands naked in plain sight.

    So now as I stride into shops, into salons; down hospital corridors; onto Dublin’s public transport, my face unmasked, not even pretending to be sorry, the waves of hostility, the missiles of verbal abuse, are (stifle yawn) old headscarf to me.

    I can hush attacks with official paperwork—I’ve secured a medical exemption. What’s troubling is the visceral nature of the onslaught. Where dishonouring the dead and the vulnerable enters the equation, I see how my behaviour signifies a disregard for the common good. The shock value speaks more to the success of the global fear campaign than to an informed understanding. I don’t blame anyone for adhering to public health guidance, but when inquiry into its validity is cast in tin foil hat terms, when scrutiny of the doublespeak and the doublethink provokes outrage, when repurposing masks as an instrument of control is the step too far; then even the most credulous need to wonder. When a conscientious refusal to play along counts for little more than petulance, an attention-seeking stunt at best, and those, masked up, cruising solo in their cars, represent virtue, then the time for reflection is long overdue.

    The transition from denial to acceptance is a scary leap: shaking off the programming, rearranging beliefs, remodelling the systems on which we have staked our lives, our livelihoods, our selves, is a terrifying task. Or is it because the conspiracy realm is traditionally populated by weirdos that it’s easy to dismiss the evidence? That Bill Gates is up to nothing other than philanthropy is the comfort of faith. Klaus Schwab will spell out The Great Reset in a how-to guide, but the idea of a technocratic agenda still sounds like hogwash. PCR is not fit for purpose, but we accept the reported case numbers. An mRNA vaccine, rushed, and proudly ‘experimental’ may be a gamble, but we’ll roll up our sleeves, we’ll take a jab —make that two—for  the team. Big Pharma, absolved of liability, is fattening that bottom line, but call it old -fashioned opportunism if you must, not an orchestrated end.

    The Orwellian echoes lend an aura of irony to the occasion, more than mobilise action it seems; and so, is the question that nobody sees it, or really that they’d just rather not? A recent encounter gives me heart: Lolloping down a supermarket aisle, shoppers lunging out of my path, I near collided into a fellow unmasked objector. We shared a moment, grinning at one another; armed with the knowledge, that acquiescence, is always a choice.

    Editor’s Note: A report of the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention: Using face masks in the community: first update – Effectiveness in reducing transmission of COVID-19 published in February 2021 concluded:

    The evidence regarding the effectiveness of medical face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 in the community is compatible with a small to moderate protective effect, but there are still significant uncertainties about the size of this effect. Evidence for the effectiveness of non-medical face masks, face shields/visors and respirators in the community is scarce and of very low certainty.

    Additional high-quality studies are needed to assess the relevance of the use of medical face masks in the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Featured Image: Anna Shvets Photography

  • Mandatory Hotel Quarantine Alienates Immigrant Communities

    Never before have I felt so far from my country of origin as when I heard that Italy would be added to the list of countries from which arrivals are mandated to enter a hotel quarantine for twelve days on arrival in Ireland. Now any trip to my family will cost almost two grand, and that’s before accounting for the flights and numerous tests.

    That’s quite a spike in price compared to the few hundred euro I needed prior to April 15th. In pure economic terms, it further diminishes the purchasing power of a particular section of immigrants, as well as Irish citizens living abroad; even if only for a particular item, such as the opportunity to visit loved ones occasionally, and to return for a short stay in case of an emergency.

    For many of us, living from pay cheque to pay cheque, the inflated price of the hotel stay is a serious impediment to reaching one’s country of origin; and that’s without considering the dread we feel about spending almost two weeks under hotel arrest, without even access to a kitchen. I wonder how healthy it is to eat takeaway food for twelve days in a row?

    One may argue that the measure is a proportionate response to a public health emergency and that the right to travel abroad does not come before the right of a country to remain Covid free. But this ignores whether we test negative on arrival and show no symptoms and, more broadly, the rights of European citizens living in another member state.

    Under Article 45 of the charter of the fundamental rights of the European Union, as citizens we enjoy a right to freedom of movement. Every citizen of the Union has the right to move and reside freely within each member states’ territory. There has to be a very compelling (and proportionate) reason for this right to be withdrawn.

    The time for extreme restrictions on the right to travel was March 2020, when some member states including Denmark and Poland temporarily closed their borders. But at this stage any restrictions surely should be decided on a case-by-case basis, and not applied indiscriminately. Ireland isn’t exactly Covid-free New Zealand at this stage, and the Irish government is not aiming for a Covid-free status. What’s more the number of exceptions – including for politicians, and elite athletes in all likelihood – demonstrates the law is being applied unfairly.

    As for the variants of concern, well 90% of experts say that Covid-19 will become endemic, and so we will never be able to travel freely again if that argument is applied to international travel.

    I wonder if this is another aspect of our pre-Covid life that we have to reluctantly accept has disappeared – in order to protect the weak and vulnerable? Or so it is argued. Even if that means uselessly undermining the rights of immigrants living in Ireland now confronted with draconian barriers to movement.

    One can understand – confronting the pressure the pandemic has put on healthcare capacity all over the world – why authorities might consider any means possible to stop the spread. But even working from that assumption, it is really difficult to find justification for mandatory hotel quarantine if an individual tests negative on departure and after five days on arrival, for example.

    In any case, regardless of its arguable necessity, this measure’s immediate effect is to further alienate foreign communities living in Ireland and, I suspect, Irish ex-pats abroad, even though the data shows that foreign travel has had a miniscule effect – just one percent of cases according to Leo Varadkar in January – on the spread of the disease.

    Regarding the Irish media’s coverage of this issue, it is disturbing that sympathy seems to be reserved for Irish citizens returning home to loved ones, but silence on how this will affect other EU citizens, and non-EU nationals. It sends out a clear message about how much the political and media establishment value foreign workers living in this country who cannot vote in national elections.

    The effect is to place a prohibitive price tag on returning to countries of origin for communities that are already massively economically disadvantaged by the pandemic; not to mention the housing crisis, and more generally, a widening inequality that too many in the political establishment of this country seem to accept as “the way things are.”

    Now this political establishment has no shame in implementing Populist measures, which seem aimed at gathering political support from a terrorized audience that dreams of a ZeroCovid approach, after being treated to a partially informed debate for months.

    It is a curious paradox that the internationalist establishment left in Ireland has no objection to sealed borders, and the effect this will have on immigrant minorities, many of whom are living on the margins of society.

    Often, the most useless measures to tackle a problem reveal where the real problem lies. In this instance, the cynical alienation shown by NPHET and politicians in proposing and implementing such policies that have major impacts on communities with whom they normally have no contact, apart from well-orchestrated photo ops with appropriately smiling immigrants.

    The question now becomes: for how long will this policy of internment last?

  • Rule of Law Backsliding in Rogue EU States

    This is an abridged interview with jurist Laurent Pech, Professor of European Law, Jean Monnet Chair of European Public Law (2014-17), and Head of the Law and Politics Department at Middlesex University London. Professor Pech identifies rapid autocrisation in a number of EU states, particularly Hungary and Poland, where the Rule of Law has been undermined in a three stage process that has been exacerbated by the emergency conditions of the pandemic.

    On Mandatory Hotel Quarantines

    Technically it has always been possible for national authorities to restrict EU free movement rights on a number of grounds, such as public health. But EU law is normally opposed to collective measures. So you can only restrict on a number of grounds the exercise of free movement on a case by case basis. And you must always comply with the principle of proportionality, so you cannot impose disproportionate measures in the name of public health. You have to have a compelling reasons and you have to demonstrate them on a case by case basis. I’m not familiar with the measures contemplated by the Irish government …

    Without knowing the details of any general policy of containing EU citizens or more generally, [a mandatory hotel quarantine for] EU residents, regardless of citizenship, in my view, would not be compatible with the law, as I understand it.

    What I can tell you is that public health can only be used as a grant of derogation for individual cases, not for the blanket prohibition on arrivals from other EU countries. I don’t think … the European Commission, would let it fly.

    …

    I’m not familiar with any [other] EU country … which is essentially preventing residents in the EU from travelling as a collectively speaking, as a country, imposing on EU residents, trying to get to another EU country and then the mandatory quarantine.

    On the Rule of Law

    I can tell you what the Rule of Law is in EU law in the law of the European Convention on Human Rights, in fact, in our Constitution, constitutional law … the case law has defined the rule of law quite compellingly. Why are we debating these days the definition of the rule of law?

    …

    the concept is being challenged, especially from current authorities in Warsaw and Budapest. The argument is the Rule of Law is too vague and meaningless. It does not exist. And it’s just kind of an intellectual subterfuge to impose neoliberal policies or whatever. But as a matter of EU law, actually, the Rule of Law can be defined. It’s normally defined, understood as a set of legal principles, such as the principle of legal certainty, the principle of judicial review before independent courts, respect for human rights, these kind of principles.

    …

    The Rule of Law is to be found in the EU treaties and has been exhaustively defined both in EU legislation and in the case of the European Court of Justice.

    …

    The essence of the Rule of Law is that we have rules to prevent the abuse of power so we can do something about the abuse of power. We can fight abuse of power, abuse of public power both. But to do that, we need independent consent, which is why one of the components of the Rule of Law is independent courts, where you can assert your rights against the public authorities. So the essence of the Rule of Law, is essentially that even the king, even the president, is subject to the law. There are no distinctions; everyone can assert a right against the public authorities. So this is the essence of the Rule of Law even before the EU itself was created.

    It’s one of the many checks and balances on what we can call unhealthy democracy … certain countries in the European Union have gone down a path where, as for the Rule of Law being challenged in its conception, in its very existence, also other type of checks and balances such as freedom of the press. I mean, it looks like that once one is gone. Then the other one follows.

    Hungary and Poland

    In the case of Hungary and in the case of Poland, essentially, we have a new breed of autocrats. They’re not like the old autocrats, where you see tanks one morning in the streets and then a clear change of regime in the afternoon. It’s much more difficult and they’re much smarter than the previous generation. So I have used the concept of Rule of Law, backsliding of democracy and the Rule of Law; I use the term backsliding to describe what has been happening in the past ten years in these two countries.

    To summarize briefly the process … They only need to get free and fairly elected once and then as soon as they’re elected their job is to make sure to rig the system, to undermine the checks and balances before the next legislative elections. How do you do that? … they tend to always apply the same playbook or the same cooking recipe. The first two steps you’re going to take is you’re going to capture of the Supreme Court or the constitutional court of the country.

    You either purge the current membership of the Supreme Court or you appoint new judges to the Supreme Court … You don’t care whether you comply with the Constitution, because by the time you have captured the Court, then you can get the new court to argue that what you want is not a violation of the Constitution…

    At the same time, what we’ve seen in Hungary, Poland and elsewhere is that while you are violating the Constitution in plain sight, you have to capture the public broadcaster. Or do you do that? If you have a parliamentary majority it is very easy. You can violate the Constitution and you can just pretend it’s not a violation of the Constitution. You’re going to appoint a new board and you’re going to appoint a new president and you’re going to use the taxpayers’ money essentially also to bully or try to corrupt or bribe the private media outlets as well into submission. Why is it important to capture the media? Because you need to shape the public narrative while you are openly violating the Constitution.

    Scapegoats

    You have to explain or try to convince the people that yes, maybe, yes, we are violating the Constitution … but we are doing this in the name of the people. And you are going to convince them this is what you want and then you going to use this some scapegoats in the process. So what you see, what we’ve seen in Poland, Hungary and elsewhere is that they always have a huge need for scapegoating.

    So it’s going to be George Soros … you name a new thing and then they change. They rotate. … It was perhaps worth stressing that you have a change of scapegoat every six months to twelve months when you have exhausted one you need another scapegoat … then it could be also academics. So it could be a corrupted journalist, it could be Communist judges. You need to smear, essentially, the guardians of the Rule of Law. So once you have captured the Supreme Court and the media, you’re going to use scapegoating … You’re going to then bully into submission, order what are called guardians of the Rule of Law, guardians of democracy, the press being one of the key checks on power.

    …

    What I’ve seen emerge in the past few years, is that to avoid European criticism, what they do, they use proxies … what do I mean by proxy? A fake association, a fake NGO which indirectly or directly is given taxpayers’ money … You use a story as a way of distracting the people from the destruction of checks and balances.

    The new would-be-autocrats are much more difficult to fight because a lot of time by the time people wake up it’s a bit too late … the media sector is gone, judicial branch is gone. And then obviously they’re ready for the next elections with the press either bullied into submission or brought to bankruptcy.

    The Last Steps

    One of the last steps in this kind of Rule of Law backsliding process is to radically change the rules of the game. So by the time you have the next legislative election, they’re going to have reformed completely the electoral code. They’re going to capture the electoral commission as well. So it means that they can essentially rig the elections … usually it’s enough to control the ecosystem of the public media. But then also, if need be, you can also rig electoral results in a specific constituency … Also, remember, if you have captured the judicial branch, it means that there’s no place for you to go to challenge the results of the election, even if the results have been gained through unlawful means

    You can you still have elections. Yes, the opposition can win … but it’s virtually impossible to win in these conditions.

    There is no electoral level playing field anymore. Within three, four years, the system has been completely captured … Hungary is no longer a democracy. I expect Poland to be another electoral taken custody within the next two years.

    In fact, Poland is quite dramatic in a way. They had two presidential elections last year. Both of them were completely unconstitutional. I mean, there is not even a room for discussion. They were held in unconstitutional conditions.

    It’s possibly what I call the authoritarian gangrene is going to spread to other EU countries because people are watching, people are paying attention and they’re saying, well, look, it’s working, it’s working fine for Orban and Kaczyński, so why not me? Why not implement this recipe as well in my own country?

    In Hungary the main newspaper, which is not in the control by the government, now has sixty defamation lawsuits pending against. Essentially they’re trying to bankrupt these main opposition newspaper through lawsuits … then you’re going to punish judges if the lawsuits are wrongly decided, so to speak. In addition to that, you have the death threats, that you have a smear campaign. So much so that essentially, if you’re a critical journalist, then you may have no choice but to leave your own country if you want to pursue your profession. What’s happening to journalists is also happening across the board to judges, lawyers, academics. And so we are talking here essentially about a return to the old fashioned de facto one party state. And so I’m afraid we have to be aware of the gravity of the situation

    The Silver Lining

    The silver lining is that Poland and Hungary are the two most extreme cases of autocratic nations, at least in the EU … But maybe we’re going to get there slowly but surely in terms of third possible candidate in the EU. Now, we’ve been talking about Slovenia in the past few weeks because of the parameters of the attacks essentially trying to take control of the Slovenian state agency. And this Slovenian prime minister is indirectly funded by Orban. So essentially Orban is trying to export his model into the Balkans and also into Slovenia. We’ve been talking about the situation in Romania and Bulgaria for quite some time. Malta has also been in the news following the assassination of a journalist who was investigating corruption cases.

    I would say some political entrepreneurs are looking at how successful Orban and Kaczyński have been. Some of them are wondering whether, in fact, this is a good way forward, not for ideological reasons, just possibly this autocratic playbook is a good way of wining power and retaining it.

    The Situation in the U.K.

    Poland and Hungary are just the two most advanced cases in the EU. I have personal worries about the situation in the U.K. if we leave the EU for a minute … there are clear indications that the ruling majority in the UK is trying to dismantle or capture the checks and balances. So essentially they’re trying to annihilate any accountability, including changes to elections. Usually when you see changes being contemplated regarding the electoral commission or electoral rules or IDs to be required to vote and then surprise, surprise, those most disadvantaged by the new electoral rules are those not voting for the ruling party. So this is when you have to get worried. And also in the U.K. we’ve been talking about changing judicial review to make it more difficult to challenge that. And we’ve been talking also about possibly reducing the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.

    [During the pandemic] I’ve seen an excessive use of secondary legislation. So the parliament has essentially abdicated its role as the key legislator and the government has taken over defining or restricting free movement, something which normally can only be done by the parliament. So I would say this is also part of a potential authoritarian pattern. So we need to really make clear, because once the government is in the business of de facto legislating in place of the parliament, then essentially abuse of power can easily be committed. And if at the same time judicial review is undermined, then you find yourself essentially without any avenue to challenge the excessive use of power. I’m not a libertarian myself, but certainly as a lawyer, I have strong concerns when I see the government essentially becoming the de facto parliament in the name of the Covid-19 emergency.

    Press Freedoms

    So there is ongoing work in the EU to make it more difficult for politicians or oligarchs, these regimes, to sue or bully (journalists) into submission.

    We need to go back to what was the case in the nineteen eighties through strong anti-concentration rules in the media market … if we want to have media pluralism, we need to have a properly functioning media market. You cannot have dominant players essentially asphyxiating the market. So you need to prevent abuse of a dominant position … if we had a well-functioning media market, we would be protected from public abuse of power, but also prevent abuse of power. And the abuse of power does not necessarily come from overbearing governments, it can also come from overbearing private actors. Think of Amazon, think of Google. There is a lot of work to be done in this regard. So concentration of power, whether private or public must be constrained, must be restricted and subject to the law applied by independent courts.

    Covid-19 and Authoritarianism

    Covid-19 has been kind of a blessing in disguise for these autocratic regimes …. giving them even more powers than they used to have … an exceptional situation calls for exceptional powers. But the problem is, once these kind of governments get accustomed to exceptional powers, then they don’t want to give it back …

    So then that’s going to be the next battle as soon as the covid-19 situation is under control. I mean, we need to make sure that parliaments everywhere get back into the business of what they’re supposed to be doing in the first place, which is legislating and controlling the executive these days. What we’re seeing is just an executive without being subject to any meaningful scrutiny from any national parliaments anywhere. So this is actually the widespread issue.

  • Brazil’s Pandemic Reaches Crisis Point

    At the beginning of the pandemic, the Paraisópolis Favela Residents Association (G10 Favelas) hired a team of doctors, nurses and first responders with ambulances to serve the favela residents, because the SAMU (Mobile Emergency Care Service) could not provide services to the local community.

    Pedro Dell’Antonia Gymnasium transformed into a field hospital in Santo André, São Paulo, with a capacity for 110 patients. PH André Lucas
    Rescuer, community leader Renata Alves with doctors after an assessment of Covid-19 cases in Paraisópolis. PH André Lucas
    Doctors examine a patient. PH André Lucas
    Child cries at the sight of a man being taken away in an ambulance with suspected covid. PH André Lucas
    A doctor performs a clinical examination on a man who had ben unable to get out of bed. PH André Lucas

    The Paraisópolis favela is the second largest community in São Paulo with 75,000 residents, and the daily effort continues to raise awareness among the local population of the dangers of Covid-19. According to Daniel Cavareti, National Coordinator of G10 Favelas:

    We divided the community into 50 micro-regions and elected local volunteers. Each takes care of a region. They are residents who help to distribute donations without agglomerations and who call the ambulance, in case anyone needs it.

    Daniel Almeida sanitizing alleys in the Vietnã favela. PH André Lucas
    Daniel is president of the “Amigos da Molecada” association of the Vietnã favela, in São Paulo. He uses equipment to clean the streets around the community. PH André Lucas
    Children play in the alleys of the Vietnã favela as Daniel sanitizes. PH André Lucas

    In São Paulo, the Butantan Institute implemented mass testing in favelas which began in the Favela São Remo, the Western-most and most vulnerable part of the city.

    Some 1,600 tests were carried out in June 2020, once of which diagnosed Palmira Costa, aged sixty-six, with Covid-19. She lives with her eight-year-old granddaughter Fernanda.

    Palmira with her 8-year-old granddaughter Fernanda. PH André Lucas

    ‘My mother takes oxygen at home already due to respiratory problems, so I was always very concerned to avoid this disease affecting her. She was very fearful when she tested positive, but at least she did not develop the symptoms. She is very afraid, you know?’ reports Fernanda, daughter of Palmira.

    The average number of daily deaths in Brazil (a country with a population over 200 million) currently exceeds 3,000 per day, a macabre number that may be understating the real figure. The official death toll from Covid-19 in Brazil stands at 313,866, second in the world only to the United States.

    Nurse Marcelo Silva, in attendance at the temporary hospital in Santo André in São Paulo. PH André Lucas

    Thirty-five-year-old nurse Marcelo works at the Santo André field hospital. He finds that the affection and support there creates a lighter atmosphere for patients caught in this moment of uncertainty.

    The work is exhausting, but apart from sad stories of death, Marcelo points to the love on display where multiple members of the same family are hospitalized at the same time.

    It is increasingly common for there to be severe cases among patients as young as thirty, but with the help of doctors, physiotherapists, and nurses most recover.

    Doctors assess the patient’s pulmonary situation. PH André Lucas

    All cases that need tomography and diagnosed with Covid-19 in one of the 7 UPA (Emergency Care Unit) or one of the 35 UBS (Basic Health Unit) in the municipality are referred by ambulances to the Hospital at the Gymnasium Pedro Dell’Antonia, which was set up on an emergency basis due to a lack of ICUs in the city.

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    Fortunately, the hospital created especially to attend to cases of Covid-19 in Santo André does not lack for basic health tools such as PPE and respirators. But working conditions have become more challenging as the government has taken almost no measures to reduce the spread.

    The patients at the Gymnasium Pedro Dell’Antonia are the most serious cases, those who are not intubated are using non-inhalant masks and nasal catheters.

    Inpatient with oxygen assistance. PH André Lucas
    Doctors and nurses in the makeshift corridors of the Hospital de Campanha in Santo André, Sao Paulo. PH André Lucas

  • A Few Good Men and Women

    In the wake of the murder by a police officer of the unfortunate Sarah Everard, and the ensuing justified anger, many media people were calling for “good” men to act more visibly in opposing violence against women. While I back 100% the calls made for “good” men to speak up, I am also concerned that the more general ideas of social equality are fast becoming reduced to a gender-specific proposition, having the potential knock-on effect of splitting the Left.

    This is not to diminish the seriousness of violence against women, but only to attempt to bring to light how the focus on gender equality may be impacting our perception of more general inequality, and how this apparent narrowing of focus risks being manipulated by those whose interests are not necessarily best served by social equality.

    While many women are exploited by many men, in the wider culture there are those still looking to keep wages low; rents and the cost of living high, while reneging on any social housing provision, who will look to spin the fact of female exploitation in order to capture the female vote to the service of their own particular brand of social exploitation.

    Spin

    In a recent tweet, Una Mullally, responding to Josepha Madigan’s dig at the Kerryman newspaper, suggesting the paper be renamed the Kerryperson, called this out for the cynical political ploy it was. Referencing her own Irish Times article of March 8th which predicted this type of play, Mullally described Madigan’s move as an awkward Fine Gael grab for the female vote, which, as things stand, may decide the next government, as it decided the referendum in 2015.

    But the main talking point in the past week has not been Fine Gael attempts to capture the female vote, but the more immediate mystery as to why “good” men don’t speak out against violence against women.

    Fintan O’Toole, writing in the Irish Times on March 16th said that in order for men to make a more overt stand against violence against women they must first learn to be shocked by that violence. At the moment, he argues, such violence all seems routine to most men. I wonder about that, since it seems to suggest that silence equals complacency equals broad approval.

    When you remove the particular instance O’Toole is referring to, that is, the emotive and highly charged question of violence against women, and replace it with say, general social inequality; you immediately already have an answer as to why “good” men appear to do nothing in the face of violence against women. The truth is, the majority of good men, and good women too, tend to remain strategically schtum on a wide range of problematical social issues until they see which way the political winds are blowing.

    Good Men

    Edmund Burke is reputed to have said that ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.‘

    Burke wrote the line in a letter in 1770, which is more than a little while ago. The point being, the good men idea is far from being new. In fact, Burke’s quote needs updating, since at the time of his writing the realization of women’s suffrage was a long way in the future. An updated version would read: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and good women to do nothing.‘’

    So instead of posing the question, Why do good men do nothing, in such a way as to refer to a specific issue – in this case male violence against women – it is perhaps clearer to ask why do good people, regardless of gender, not raise their voices in say, situations where right-wing policy creates homelessness and subsequent deaths from exposure; or privatisation results in poor services and deaths due to cut corners and profit-conscious oversights? Why do good people not raise their voices en masse on these issues too?

    By the strict criteria of the “good” men concept as framed by Edmund Burke and others, we are all responsible, good men and good women alike, for homeless deaths, for direct provision deaths, for deaths caused as a result of medical privatisation, for domestic violence in all its guises and so on. Since this is a democracy, we all, strictly speaking, bear equal responsibility for the failings of democracy to deliver equal treatment to all. But these are difficult questions when applied to the real world.

    For instance, if you were an arts practitioner cosying up to Josepha Madigan when she was Minister for Arts, with a view to gaining favour and financial support for some project you had planned, are you complicit in Madigan’s rallying support to oppose Traveller accommodation? Or are the two issues compartmentalised? One being her political position and the other being her apparent social and class intolerance. Do you sacrifice your project to make a point, or do you compromise?

    Herds

    Along with such moral quandaries you also have the problem of the behaviour of crowds, which tend to behave like herds. Even politicians don’t really lead, they too follow the herd in the form of the public mood glimpsed in polls. Most people are spectators, going with the flow of the herd. We stand and watch the game until some critical mass is reached and then we raise our voices in support of whatever new majority appears to be on the rise. This works for every growing gang, from commies to fascists. A critical mass is reached and the herd follows. History shows that the herd will follow any old idea once this critical mass is achieved.

    Søren Kierkegaard, writing on this phenomenon, noted that an individual is worth more than a crowd of individuals, because an individual has personal agency, whereas a crowd tends to go with the flow of the herd. As a result, Kierkegaard comes to the conclusion that truth always belongs to the minority, since the majority tend towards unthinking obedience to the movement of the herd.

    It could be that now is the time where the issue of violence against women is to be embraced by the herd as an issue whose time has come. An issue for which good men are expected to speak up. But the point is, that apart from the particular issue, the question as to why do good people do nothing might be more properly considered in relation to a wider sense of social equality, encompassing all issues of social inequality.

    This applies equally to the politician allowing the market to decide the fates of those seeking housing, as it does to the person turning a blind eye to white collar corruption, or a man turning a blind eye to violence against women.

    Good Men and Good Women

    In this regard, for Fintan O’Toole to suggest that the evil of violence against women is exacerbated by good men doing nothing, is disingenuous at best, or is simply more political gamesmanship.

    Because the Irish Times also plays politics with notions of equality, quietly supporting right-wing Fine Gael policy through the manner in which it shapes and pitches stories, while always being first up with the property supplements when the market shifts, eager supporters of the housing Ponzi scheme, where the wealthy business class figuratively eat our young by selling them over-priced houses, while their political cronies refuse to enter into any believable form of social housing policy.

    Which begs the question, that when Fintan O’Toole is calling on “good” men to be more vociferous in condemning violence against women, is he referring to the same “good” men who remain silent in the face of social inequality on a more general level, keeping strategically schtum on a range of social equality issues, in order to ensure the perpetuation of a neoliberal status quo that is giving rise to social inequality in the first place?

    Conclusion

    All of this is not to suggest that the call for “good” men to raise their voices on the subject of violence against women is a wasted exercise; but only to point out that such a call to “good” men is not new; and furthermore, that by repackaging that call as an issue-specific moral imperative, while ignoring the same demand across a more general range of social equality issues, is to have the effect, whether knowingly or not, of splitting the Left by narrowing the imperative of social equality to a divisive gender issue, in such a way as to assist the project of the establishment parties and the elite they appear to represent.

    This will doubtless remain the situation until such time as good men and good women of all classes speak out against social inequality in all its guises.

  • The Terrible Truth about Sarah Everard

    Even after six days listening to the outpourings of grief, shock, and rage, about the kidnap and horrific murder of Sarah Everard in London; of how her life was scrubbed out, a beautiful young woman reduced to ‘human remains’ in a builder’s bag identifiable only by her dental records; even after story upon story hit the media of how women are attacked, abused, raped and battered, in every country, every week, every day; the words of Mairin de Burca, founder and creator of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement in 1970’s Dublin, stopped me in my tracks:

    ‘Sarah Everard wasn’t wiped off the face of the earth because someone wanted her jewellery, her mobile phone, the keys to a car or home. She was murdered because she was a woman and a man got pleasure from killing her.’
    Mairin de Burca

    The words were a gut punch. They also felt (horribly) true.

    Since forever in our Western culture women have been attacked but murders such as Sarah Everard’s surely mark new levels of depravity.

    Where is this depravity coming from? What is driving it?

    In one way the answers are so glaringly obvious it’s a measure of the robustness of the Patriarchal system that all of the drivers remain firmly in place: the Patriarchal system itself, the law as it stands, encompassing both police and judiciary, and pornography.

    Let’s take pornography. Instead of being closed down long ago for systematic civil rights abuses, called out for abusing children, trafficking women, cheer-leading sexual brutality against women 24/7, it is protected. It’s legal. It is also a massive money spinner.

    When I was researching Feminism Backwards I went back and had a look, where is porn at today. For those of you, like me, who haven’t kept up, you’re in for a shock. Where once porn meant large naked ladies with pneumatic breasts in Playboy mags, porn today involves the vicious sexual exploitation of women, is expensively shot, and is everywhere.

      

    ‘Before the internet’ as Michael Sheath, child sex abuse expert says ‘there was a ceiling on how much porn you could consume, maybe your dad had some; you had to go to a sex cinema to watch a film. It was limited in scope and there was a stigma on its consumption.’

    In 2021 porn dominates the sexual landscape like a horrible cancer. ‘Thanks’ to the internet it can be viewed anywhere, anytime. As Gail Dines professor, author and long time anti-porn activist says, in today’s porn ‘you will not see two people having sex, you will see images depicting a level of physical cruelty that would not be out of place in an Amnesty International campaign’.

    Porn has become truly vile.

    Young men, some starting as young as eight, will have watched thousands of hours of porn, many before they ever have a sexual relationship and porn is now the way most kids, particularly boys, get their sex ed., with every type of porn freely downloadable onto iPhones, tablets, laptops.

    So what, you might say. Porn has always been around. It’s just a bit of popcorn on the side.

    Wrong.

    Porn is no longer about eroticising sex, it is about eroticising extreme male violence against women. Porn sites such as ‘Gag me then fuck me’, ‘Anally Raped Whores’, ‘18 and Aroused’ indicate what’s on offer.

    As Dines writes ‘with mind numbing repetition you will see gagging, slapping, verbal abuse, hair pulling, pounding anal sex, women smeared in semen, sore anuses and vaginas, distended mouths and more exhausted, depleted and shell shocked women that you can count’. Young women routinely wrecked by being simultaneously anally, vaginally and orally penetrated, shouted at, whipped, spat at, splattered with male cum, are left with prolapsed anuses, ravaged vaginas and shattered self esteem.

    As Dr Fiona Vera-Gray of Durham University wrote in The Guardian last week, ‘This is not a problem of niche sites or the dark web, something only found by “bad men” actively searching for this content. This is mainstream pornography on mainstream sites with the mainstream message that sexual violence is sexy.’ With porn’s ever growing audience the brutality has to be endlessly upped.

    Porn, like a lot of other nasties, flourished during the neoliberal ‘boom’. As Feminism was reduced to consumable ‘Pink Power’, porn was pushed ever further into the mainstream. Modern ‘laddettes’ were deemed ‘up for it’, encouraged to watch it, even ‘normal’ women were seduced with films such as ‘50 Shades of Grey’, dubbed by the porn industry as ‘A Romantic Tale for the Porn Age’. Sugaring porn’s brutal edges with sensational clothes, stunning interiors, and A List actors, 50 Shades was basically a film that depicted in unbearable detail how to lure a lonely isolated child into ‘consenting’ to sexual abuse’ (Gail Dines). It grossed $570 million.

    As Gail Dines writes in her book The Pornification of Culture, porn’s favourite gags – the objectification of women, the sexualisation of women as girls, of girls themselves, the younger the better, has leaked into films, advertising shoots, video games, glossy fashion and fashion mags. As actress Kathy Burke’s character remarks acidly on Fashion’s love affair with ‘pre-nubiles’  in ‘Absolutely Fabulous’, ‘They’ll be chucking foetuses down the catwalk next.’

    Second Wave Feminist had few illusions about what porn was. It was ‘the scene of a crime’.  ‘Porn is the theory. Rape is the practice.’ (Robin Morgan, 1975).  Or as Andrea Dworkin wrote, ‘I live in a country (America) where women are tortured as a form of public entertainment and for profit, and that torture is held up as a state protected right.’

    Pretty unbearable right?

    Try flipping the picture and imagine an industry, estimated to be worth $97 billion, where adult women kidnap and traffic young boys, young men, even children, many of them damaged, survivors of incest or child abuse. The women then film the guys day after day being violently sexually assaulted by other adult women, whipped, beaten, gagged, penetrated with everything the ladies can lay their hands on, physically wrecking the guys physically and psychologically, all for the pleasure and gratification of other women worldwide and making the women at the top of this ‘business’ obscenely rich.

    Not so nice, huh?

    Would the male judges, male barristers, male politicians, male academics, male policemen still turn a blind eye?  Would they still argue that porn and it’s ‘consumption’ are an inevitable part of life and cannot be regulated, never mind stopped? That it is protected under Free Speech?  And that anyway it doesn’t affect real people’s everyday behaviour?

    Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Kylie Bax wearing a Playboy shirt, with Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Melania Trump.

    In a week where in London a Metropolitan policeman savagely murdered a young woman walking home through lit streets, almost certainly tricking her into getting into his car by using his police ID, where another policeman guarding the site where her poor body was found sent obscene images ‘as a joke’ around his police mates, where another London policeman was released (today) without sentence after brutally attacking a woman, wrestling her to the ground in a headlock while screaming she was ‘a fucking slut’, where yet another policeman who had viciously killed the Mum of two he was having an affair with had his ‘manslaughter’ sentence reviewed because of the levels of injury to her, where a whole bunch of policemen brutalised women attending a peaceful vigil for the woman one of their mates had slaughtered, and that on the way home from that vigil yet another woman who ran to a policeman for help as a man exposed himself to her, was told to get lost, he wouldn’t deal with people attending the vigil, where in America this week six Asian women were shot down in two separate spas and the US sherrif said the shooter was ‘having a bad day.’ That he had a sex addiction and was ‘removing temptation’.

    I mean come on.

    If, as the porn industry is forever saying, porn doesn’t affect normal living why is it that violence against women is now a worldwide pandemic with two women killed every three days in the UK? Why is it that the police are not only ignoring women’s pleas for help, but appear to be actively involved in their brutalisation? Why is it that rape convictions are at an all time low? With only 1.5% going to trial? Why is it that in a rape case the victim is the only person in the court without legal representation? How in the name of god has it been deemed legal to force her to hand over, to the rapist and his legal team, all of her notes from counselling or therapy, if she’s been lucky enough to get counselling or therapy?

    It’s bullshit.

    With visits to Netflix, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter combined outnumbered by visits to porn sites, maintaining the nonsense that the porn industry doesn’t affect everyday would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. Does the fashion business not affect normal life? Or the food business? Or the drinks business?

    Even as we become more ‘civilised’, more caring, more vegan, women are to accept porn’s violence against women, its endless, ferocious violation, without question, while the Justice System and the police stand by?

    With Sarah Everard’s terrible death at the hands of a policeman, who had, incidentally, four days previously exposed himself in a fast food restaurant, and shockingly was not demobbed, his badge, gun and car immediately removed, thereby saving Sarah Everard’s life, but was allowed to carry on, women’s anger has reached boiling point.

    This is women’s George Floyd moment. See what they are doing to us? Enough. Enough.

    The Patriarchy, and its porn addiction, are costing women their lives. Their latest victim is Sarah Everard. In her name. In the name of all women – Black, Asian, White – murdered and destroyed by men fuelled on porn’s poisonous meth, shut it down.

    In the name of us all, shut it down.