election update

For the duration of the election campaign, I have been writing on another blog, rather than here.
If you would like to see updates and comments, then please go to this address:

www.fb2010.wordpress.com

http://www.fb2010.wordpress.com

Many thanks for visiting.

Farid Bakht

A shop opens up on Roman Road

With so many empty shops on the high street, it is good to see someone taking the plunge and opening a shop in these cash-strapped times.
A CHARITY shop has opened its doors in the East End selling second hand clothing and bric-a-brac.
The Lamas Pyjamas shop on Bethnal Green’s Roman Road opened last Saturday. All profits will go to the Buddhist centre of which it is part.
It co-owner Padmalila Coulson, an ordained Buddhist, explained they are planning to run workshops showing people how to mend their old clothes. Later they hope to run workshops demonstrating how recycled clothes can be turned into other products.

Source: East London advertiser

East London to miss out on Olympics?

The East London Advertiser is right to worry about this and wrote this:

“FEARS have surfaced that East London could miss out on the benefits of playing ‘host’ to the 2012 Olympics.

Ambitious plans to use the Games to transform one of London’s “most deprived” areas will need a huge effort from the Government and local authorities, City Hall has been told.

The regeneration would prove challenging and require virtually unprecedented levels of cooperation between Whitehall, Mayor Boris Johnson and the five ‘host’ boroughs, the London Assembly’s economic development committee heard.

“There is scepticism from people in the East End about how much their life will improve as a result of the Olympics,” said committee chair Dee Doocey.

“The risk is they’ll be left out of the benefits after 2012 unless we act to secure that legacy in terms of skills, jobs, housing and standard of living.

Several areas have been identified where the five boroughs lag behind the rest of London.

These include targets for narrowing the difference in life expectancy, unemployment, education and skills”

Should we be surprised? The Olympics are a bonanza to the participating companies. Being next door does have its advantages. Unfortunately, it’s Canary Wharf (as in Big Business) who are benefitting.
Tower Hamlets is being bypassed.
A project that was meant to cost £3,000 million has quadrupled to £12,000 million, and we still have two and a half years left for more opportunities to pad the bill.
Then, comes the question of who pays the bill.
Thanks Ken Livingstone.
A nice idea on the back of a fag packet.
Heseltine & Blair failed with the Millenium Dome.
What a precedent.

Stop and search unlawful

Judges in Strasbourg say UK powers under Terrorism Act 2000 violate convention on human rights

The ability of UK police to use “arbitrary” counter-terror stop and search powers against peace protesters and photographers lay in tatters today after a landmark ruling by the European court of human rights.
The Strasbourg court ruled it was unlawful for police to use the powers, under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, to stop and search people without needing any grounds for suspicion.

They all want to CUT

The Conservatives are not hiding their mission for savage cuts in an emergency budget in June.
After the failed coup against Brown, the knives are out to slash budgets. Darling and Balls are set to match the Tories in a macho display for the City.
The Universities are the first in line – they have warned that New Labours cuts will raise tuition fees from £3,400 to £5,000.
They think many universities may even close or as they put it: it took 800 years to build up one of the world’s finest systems of higher education but only six months to bring it to its knees.
Meanwhile, Nick Clegg ignores the Liberal grassroots and party philosophy and says he will cut, cut and cut.

Naturally, this is the week the big banks paid themselves billions in bonuses. Shameless.

Boris the Buffoon chips in with a ‘forecast ‘ that 9,000 bankers could leave in protest at the 50 % tax decision.
He wants us to cry. Some of us might say: good riddance.

And millions of people will still be tactically voting, switching between these three parties?
How will that register a protest?
How will that change anything?
How will that make them take any notice?

Farid Bakht
Parliamentary Candidate for Bethnal Green & Bow
& International Coordinator for the Green Party

Cracks in the Wall

1979 saw the arrival of a hardline Conservative government, on a mission to dismantle the post-war consensus since 1945. They succeeded. All mainstream politicians now are card-carrying members of the orthodoxy.
The Right slashed and burned their way through housing, education, railways, airways, gas, electricity, water, phones and above all gave the banks a a free ride.
1989 cemented it with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the departure of the failed Soviet machine. There were no challengers.
For another couple of decades, the clarion call of the Lady from Finchley held true: TINA or There Is No Alternative.
Today, we know that idea was bogus.
All the privatised utilities did not spur ‘competition’ and lower prices. They just made vast profits over a captive consumer. Richard Branson made money, but at our expense.
The foundation has always been the banks and the City of London. They are now on life support and we are feeding the saline drip, weakening our bodies in order to keep them alive.
And how grateful they are.

The main political parties are still stuck in the 1990s. For a moment in September 2008 and in March 2009, they panicked. They had second thoughts.
But now the printing presses are running across the world – $12 trillion in support (so far) but then who’s counting…… the politicians and bankers have recovered their nerve.

The politicians can lie about wars
They can lie about the economy.
They can lie about their expense claims…….

They are as arrogant as the bankers.
They believe they can just carry on as before.
The mantra of Mandelson resonates in their ears. A few bullet points on a powerpoint presentation, a few one-liners and a couple of buzz words are all that are needed to hoodwink the voters.
If that does not succeed, then let APATHY wipe out the opposition voters.
The more a citizen disconnects from the Democracy network and remains merely a consumer, the more powerful the political parties become.
All the politicos need do is use clever software to target some voters , street by street, ward by ward and constituency by constituency…… just like supermarkets do when they decide to move into a neighbourhood.

Fortunately for us, we can see that like the Berlin Wall, their wall is weak at the foundations. We can make the cracks before we pull it down.
The end of the decade will look a lot different than the start.

We have moved from TINA at last …… we now need to break our chains of APATHY….. and then only can we break down their wall.
2010 will see the arrival of the smaller political forces, both on the Left (we call it Green here) and the Far Right.
At long last a contest of ideas will become the dynamic for this decade. Some beautiful; some ugly.
We cannot tell the difference between Hedge-Fund-friendly New Labour or the Conservatives or the Lib-Dems.
But Alternatives are now sprouting.
We are not talking about fun conferences and ‘another world is possible’ talk-fests, funded by the corporate institutions where people could apparently attain power without contesting for it. A cul-de-sac.

Politics is reappearing once more.
Splashing a bit of green here, a couple more CCTV cameras and some cheap talk attacking bankers with one hand, (while handing over a blank cheque with the other)……. this will no longer do.

David will replace Tony (Gordon was an aberration and will join Major as the Grey Pair of Forgotten Faceless Frontmen).
Nick Clegg will stick his head above the parapet, only to see it slapped down.
The mainstream media will dress the election up as ‘change’.
The rest of us will not be fooled.
While we cannot prevent this masquerage for now, we can send a shot across the bows. If we persuade enough people to wake up from apathy and walk a few miles in an anti-war march, a few more miles on a war for a million Climate Jobs and a few yards to a polling booth and mark an ‘X’ for an alternative party…… we will make some cracks in the wall.
This is a decade long road. 2010 is just the start of this journey.
When the Polish Solidarity campaign started in 1980 in shipyard of Gdansk in Poland, nobody envisaged the fall of the Berlin Wall less than ten years later.
The impossible became possible. Dreams became a reality.
We are now at the beginning.
G20 and Copenhagen have revealed the bankruptcy of the mainstream politicians and bankers.
The status quo will not remain.
The wall will come down. This will be a decade filled with hope. There will be an alternative. And it will not be stopped.

Farid Bakht

Poll suggests Greens to win MP seat in Brighton Pavillion

Just had these polling details, however while this is very good news, elections are won on the ground, please join me and go down to Brighton and help with canvassing. East Berkshire Green Party members are going down on 30th January. If you want to help elect Caroline, go to the Eco Centre, ring on the buzzer and volunteer.

Greens take a 10 point lead over Labour and an 8 point lead over the Conservatives in their target constituency of Brighton Pavilion – ICM Research telephone opinion poll.

Headline results

1. The Greens have the greatest support with 35% of the constituency’s voters followed by the Conservatives on 27%, Labour on 25% and LibDems on 11%.1

2. Almost two thirds (63%) of Labour and Lib Dem voters in the sample said that they would be likely to switch their vote to the Greens if that party was best placed to stop a Conservative win. 37% said they were very likely and 26% said they were quite likely to switch their vote in that situation.2

______________

Green candidate Caroline Lucas has a significant lead over the other parties’ candidates in Brighton Pavilion constituency, according to the first publicly released standard-size constituency opinion poll of local voters.

If repeated at the general election with a similar turn out, the result would see the Greens winning their first parliamentary seat, taking the constituency from Labour with a majority of almost 3,500 over the Conservatives.3

The telephone poll of 533 voters adjusted to match the local electorate’s profile and undertaken by ICM Research’s Government and Social Unit between 16 – 21 December 2009, suggests the Greens enjoy a 10 point lead over Labour and an 8 point lead over the Conservatives in the constituency.1

Paul Steedman, National General Election Campaign Director for the Green Party, said, “Besides pointing to the prospect of electing the country’s first Green Party MP, this opinion poll supports what we have been hearing from voters when we’ve talked to them on the door steps.

“We only need a 7% swing from Labour to Greens to win the seat. This opinion poll suggests we are on target to achieve this.

“It gives tactical voters a clear message – only a vote for the Green Party can stop the Conservatives in Brighton Pavilion.

“The ICM poll shows that Labour are trailing in third place – behind the Greens by 10 points and the Conservatives by 2 points. The Tories are still behind the Greens by 8 points.

“Remember, this was a Labour seat in 2005. The significant shift demonstrates that where voters have the chance to see Greens in action, where they get elected and as local councillors and work hard for residents, as we do here in Brighton or in other parts of the country such as Lewisham and Norwich, they like what they get.

“The poll also suggests that almost two thirds of Labour and Lib Dem voters would be likely to back the Greens if we were in a position to stop a Tory win in this constituency. This isn’t surprising news to us either – we know the voters of Brighton to be as savvy as you’ll find anywhere in the country.

“Caroline has already shown her dedication to the people of Brighton as their representative in the European Parliament for over ten years. She will bring all her experience to stand up for them in Westminster.”

Candidate Caroline Lucas said, “Brighton is a special place and its voters are impatient for a fresh, independent voice to represent them in Westminster. I believe I am offering them that.

“Taken with the other indicators such as the bookies making the Greens favourites, this poll should help to reassure wavering Labour and Lib Dem supporters that a Green vote in Brighton Pavilion is the best way to stop the Tories.

“If elected, I promise to honour the trust that voters have placed in me and provide Brighton with the fresh, independent voice its people want and deserve.”

Killing intellectuals in Dhaka & the Jamaat

The Liberation War of 1971 ended on December 16th when the Pakistani Army surrendered.
A few days before, the Pakistan occupation forces and their local collaborators/paramilitaries — Razakar, Al-Badr and Al-Shams — abducted leading intellectuals and professionals, mostly on December 14, 1971 and killed them to cripple the nation intellectually.
The Jamaat e Islami Party still has prominent leaders in its ranks, responsible for taking part in these particular massacres and for other atrocities during the 9 month long war.
Instead of being banned or ostracised, they are courted and treated as ‘normal’ democratic politicians.
They only recently added the word Bangladesh to their name, to give a veneer of respectability. It is common knowledge that they never accepted and still do not believe in the independent state of Bangladesh – their whole raison d’etre is to recreate a link with Pakistan and oppose India.
Tellingly, despite their rhetoric, they have close relations with the US and it didn’t escape notice that during Bangladesh’s almost two years of military rule (2007-8), the Jamaat escaped lightly while other parties saw their leaders and activists jailed.

On December 14th, 1971, academics, literateurs, physicians, engineers, journalists and other eminent personalities were among the people dragged blindfolded out of their houses in Dhaka and massacred at Rayer Bazar and in other killing fields in the city.

Instead of trying tens of thousands of collaborators for massacres throughout the war, and thus drawing a line under the sordid episode, the first Awami League government in independent Dhaka released them.
They slowly returned to the centre of Dhaka’s politics in the 1980s, under the protection of the dictator, HM Ershad.
The Jamaat joined a coalition government in 2001 to 2006 – an era marked by the rise of Islamic paramilitaries, bombings and executions.

Farid Bakht

Killers on the loose in Bangladesh

Yesterday was World Human Rights Day.
Not for all.
In Bangladesh, an organised group of killers have been executing people since 2004.
The name is innocuous enough – Rapid Action Battalion or RAB.
They like dressing in black combat uniforms and top it off with black bandanas and sunglasses.
You get the picture.

It could be a film.
It could be a caricature.
It is anything but.

This year their execution score is 141 – there are still a couple of weeks to go before the end of the year.
Over five years they have killed 1,462 people.
It does not matter which political party is in office – they both let RAB get on with it…… and apologies for their crimes.
Why?
Because RAB is a death squad – which many followers of eighties style Latin American politics would be familiar with.
The executions regularly appear in the newspapers.
The story line is always the same.
While escorting a criminal, RAB opened fire in self defence as friends of the detainee tried to rescue their colleague. In the ‘Crossfire’, the criminal was shot. …
‘Crossfire’ has entered the language of Bangla.

Who are these criminals?
Mostly, left wing guerrillas in rural Bangladesh.
A law and order problem?
That’s a convenient way of looking at it.
Thankfully, Bangladesh returned to democracy last December but how can democrats from both parties just stand by? And even justify this.
If the guerrillas are only outlaws (as the authorities claim) then the least they deserve is a fair trial and then prison, if found guilty.
When a soldier can just pull the trigger, he not only takes a life, he destroys the legitimacy of a callous elite, indifferent to the real problems of their people.
And what are the embassies and Aid Agecies saying?
Yes, you guessed it. Nothing. They wouldn’t want to interfere in the activities of another nation – especially when it is Pro-Western and a loyal voter in the UN.

Farid Bakht
International Coordinator
Green Party of England & Wales

Racism at ‘shocking’ levels in EU

LEIGH PHILLIPS

09.12.2009 @ 17:39 CET

EU OBSERVER / BRUSSELS -
Whether looking for a job, buying something from a shop or visiting the doctor, minorities in Europe commonly face discrimination, the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency has said.

Using language rarely found in the dry reports of EU agencies, the FRA described as “shocking” the rampantly racist, anti-immigrant and Islamophobic experiences of minorities as they go about their daily lives.

Muslims are amongst the most discriminated against in the EU (Photo: superblinkymac)

The agency’s first-ever report, published on Wednesday (8 December), attempts to map the contours of discrimination across the bloc in a comprehensive, 276-page survey of over 23,000 individuals. It reveals that over a fifth (22 percent) of sub-Saharan Africans have been discriminated against at least once in the last year while looking for work, 17 percent of Roma say they have experienced similar incidents while being seen by a doctor or nurse and 11 percent of North Africans are subjected to racism when in or simply trying to enter a shop.

The original continent of emigration is now one of the world’s most popular destinations for immigration and in many countries amongst some sections of the native population, this change is unwelcome. As the economic crisis bites, discrimination is expected to intensify as people and political organisations look for outsiders to blame for the problem.

But the precise extent of racism and other forms of ethnic discrimination are often unknown, particularly in government data – no similar official effort had previously been mounted on an EU-wide basis.

Rather than simply asking who felt discriminated against, the survey used a stringent metric of exploring discrimination in nine different areas of everyday life: when looking for work or at work, when looking for a house or apartment to rent or buy, by healthcare and social services, by schools, at a café, restaurant, bar or nightclub and at shops, as well as discrimination when trying to open a bank account or obtain a loan.

The survey found that while minorities are commonly accused of criminal activity, they are in fact frequently the victims of crimes themselves: Roughly a quarter (24 percent) had been the object of a crime at least once in the last 12 months.

Unreported malice

However, lacking trust in the police, a full 82 percent of the individuals who said they had had a recent experience of discrimination in the past year did not report the incident, usually because they thought “nothing would happen” or “it happens all the time.”

“This lack of reporting indicates that official figures on racist discrimination constitute just the ‘tip of the iceberg’,” the report said.

Some communities view the police themselves as a source of the problem. Among all North Africans who were surveyed, 1 in 5 (19 percent) considered that they had been stopped by the police specifically because of their ethnicity.

In a breakdown of the groups most discriminated against, the agency found that far and away, the most persecuted community was the Roma living in the Czech Republic, some 64 percent of whom said they had such experiences. Gypsies living in Hungary (62%), Poland (59%) and Greece (55%) were also high on the “top 10″ most targetted groups.

Africans, both from the Maghreb and south of the Sahara also made it into the top of the chart, with 63 percent of all Africans in Malta, 54 percent of sub-Saharan Africans in Ireland, 52 percent of north Africans in Italy, and 47 and 46 percent of Somalis in Finland and Denmark respectively reporting incidents.

Brazilian victims

In one exception to the triptych of Roma, African immigrants and Muslims that repeatedly featured in the report, Brazilians living in Portugal also reported high levels of anti-immigrant sentiment (44 percent).

One in three Muslim respondents were discriminated against in the past 12 months, most commonly when looking for work, in bars, restaurants and shops, and while trying to find an apartment or house.

Muslims aged 16-24 experience more discrimination in comparison with other age groups, with overall discrimination rates declining with age. However, this changes amongst muslim youth who are citizens of the country they are living in: 29 percent of youths aged 16-24 who are citizens in contrast to 48% of youths who are not.

Other groups found to be the subject of prejudice were migrants from within the EU itself, notably those from central and eastern Europe and the Balkans who live in the western member states, as well as Russians and Turks.