Afri, Action from Ireland

Date for the diary: Famine Walk 2018

Date for the diary: Famine Walk 2018 by Afri

Saturday 19th May, Doolough Co. Mayo

http://www.afri.ie/news-and-events/date-for-the-diary-famine-walk-2018/

Registration from 12.45pm in Louisburgh Town hall

Beginning at 1.30pm

Walk Leaders: Richard Moore, Fatin al Tamimi

Music: Lisa Lambe

Famine Walk 1988-2018

Register online here (alternatively you can raise sponsorship for Afri – just bring this to the registration desk on the day) and see who’s going on Facebook

Saturday 19th May 2018 will see the 30th anniversary of the Famine Walk from Delphi Lodge, Doolough to Louisburgh in Co. Mayo. Afri first organised the walk in 1988 to commemorate the Great Hunger of 1845-50. Regions such as Mayo illustrated how a natural setback such as potato blight can mutate to disaster in the context of unchecked market forces, lack of democratic structures and resources, and a pitiless, moralistic ideology. While some £9.5 million was eventually spent on late and poorly-designed ‘Relief’, £14 million went to sustain the military and police forces.

Our walk retraces a journey of horror which occurred on 30th/31st March 1849. Two poor-law commissioners were to assess people in Louisburgh, entitling them as ‘paupers’ to meagre relief rations. The inspection never happened, but the people were instructed to appear at Delphi Lodge (ten miles away) at 7 the following morning. They walked the hilly road in wintry conditions, including snowfall. At Delphi Lodge they were refused food, or admission to the workhouse, and so began their weary return journey, on which many, even hundreds, died.

Afri, drawing on the local history of Louisburgh and Doolough, recalls the dead and displaced of the Great Hunger – and all those facing the same grotesque and avoidable cruelties in today’s world, from the so-called ‘War on Terror’ to the indignities of ‘Direct Provision’. We walk the famine road to remember the causes of hunger and poverty in our world – political, military, economic and environmental – and our failure to learn the lessons of our own history. Our Walk Leaders eloquently represent the spirit of resistance and transformation:  

In the twentieth-anniversary year of the Good Friday Agreement we welcome Richard Moore, who was blinded as a 10-year-old child by a rubber bullet fired by a British soldier during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. He reacted by founding Children in Crossfire, declaring: “I learned to see life in a different way. I may have lost my sight, but I have my vision”.

2018 is also significant in that it marks the 70th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, and in this context, we are also honoured to welcome Fatin Al Tamimi, Chairperson of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The extraordinary voice of Lisa Lambe will provide the music for this year’s walk. We are delighted to have Lisa as part of this year’s walk line up.

Register online here (alternatively you can raise sponsorship to help Afri continue our work – just bring this to the registration desk on the day) and see who’s going on Facebook

Read an article about the Famine Walk and BBC Radio 4 Ramblings Show.

Find out about our ‘Music From A Dark Lake’ CD, a compilation of songs from past Famine Walks.

Support the work of Afri in tackling the root causes of hunger, poverty and conflict in the Global South.

Afri’s vision is of a more just, peaceful, equal and sustainable world. Afri seeks to inform debate and influence policy and practice in Ireland and internationally on human rights, peace, global justice, and sustainability issues.

Contact Details
134 Phibsborough Road,

Dublin 7, D07 V882

Ireland.

Tel: +353 (0)1 882 7563/7581

E-mail: admin@afri.ie

Charity No. 7627

Charity Registration No. 20017262

Journalist among 9 killed as 20,000 Palestinians protest at Gaza border

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/06/palestinian-man-killed-fresh-gaza-protests-officials-say/

Deadly clashes on Gaza border erupt from Palestinian protest

Raf Sanchez, Gaza city – Sat 7 APRIL 2018

At least nine Palestinians, including a journalist, were killed by Israeli forces on the Gaza border on Friday, as thousands of demonstrators burned tyres and sent towers of thick black smoke billowing over the isolated Mediterranean enclave.

The latest fatalities mean that 31 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli snipers since Gaza residents last week began “the Great March of Return”, a series of weekly border protests demanding the right to return to their ancestral homes in what is today Israel.

Around 20,000 Palestinians flocked to five protests site along the border, according to the Israeli military. A 16-year-old and a well-known Palestinian journalist were among those killed, Gaza health officials said. The health ministry said 408 Palestinians had been taken to hospitals and medical centres for treatment. Hundreds more suffered other injuries, including tear gas inhalation, the officials said.

Early on Saturday, Palestinian health officials confirmed that Yasser Murtaga had died from a gunshot wound sustained while covering demonstrations near the Israeli border in Khuzaa. The area was the scene of large protests Friday, and was covered in thick black smoke.

Murtaga was over 100 meters (yards) from the border, wearing a flak jacket marked “press” and holding his camera when he was shot in an exposed area just below the armpit. Journalists were in the area as protesters were setting tires on fire.

The Israeli military has said it fired only at “instigators” involved in attacks on soldiers or the border fence. It had no immediate comment.

Demonstrators burned hundreds of rubber tyres all along the Israeli frontier, creating a wall of smoke which they hoped would blind Israeli marksmen. Israeli forces used fire hoses to try to put out the flames and large turbine fans to keep the noxious smoke from blowing into Israel.

The overwhelming majority of the protesters were unarmed and the small handful who did carry weapons were wielding small axes, knives, or heavy shears to try to cut through the Israel fence. The Telegraph saw no firearms in the crowds.

The Israeli military alleged that Hamas operatives had tried to use the chaos of the riots to damage the border fence. A spokesman said there were at least four attempts to throw improvised bombs towards Israeli forces.

No Israelis were killed or wounded during either Friday’s demonstrations or the clashes last week.

António Guterres, the UN secretary general, had earlier appealed to the Israeli military to use “extreme caution with the use of force in order to avoid casualties” among Palestinian demonstrators.

Human rights groups have criticised the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) for their policy of directing sniper fire on those who come too close to the fence, arguing that lethal force is only permissible to counter an imminent threat to life.

Lt Col Jonathan Conricus, a spokesman for the IDF, said Israel was “using less lethal means to the greatest extent possible before using lethal means”. He said Israeli forces were justified in opening fire to prevent Palestinians breaking through the Gaza border fence.

“The reason we are so adamant about the integrity of the fence is because it is all that separates thousands of rioters from the nearest Israeli target, which could be a kibbutz, or a farm, or other Israeli communities, or Israeli soldiers,” he said.

The protests on Friday were significantly less bloody than last week, when 16 Palestinians were killed during the day and others died later from their injuries. The IDF said that it had not changed its rules of engagement but that fewer demonstrators had attempted to breach the fence.

Palestinians at a protest site east of Gaza City said the vast plumes of tyre smoke had also reduced the killings. “The burning tyres helped us because snipers can’t see us. But also people did not go as far as this week because they did not want to go past the smoke,” said one man.

Many women and children stood amid the crowds at the border and young Palestinians flew colourful kites into the blackened skies, where they shared airspace with Israeli surveillance drones.

Israel claims that Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by the US and UK, was behind the demonstrations. Several senior Hamas leaders didi visit protest camps during the day on Friday.

But most of the people gathered at the border said they were not affiliated with Hamas or any other faction. All said they were there to protest for the Right of Return, while many unemployed young men said they were also simply there for the excitement.

“It’s useless, we’re resisting alone,” said Ali Abu Hasira, a 23-year-old as he gestured towards Israeli forces in the distance. “The Arab countries have abandoned us.”

Several protesters burned images of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the heir to the throne of Saudi Arabia, after he said the Jewish people had the right to a state of their own in the Middle East.

The protests are expected to continue every Friday until May 15, when Palestinians commemorate “the Nakba”, the Arabic word for catastrophe, when they were displaced from their homes in 1948.

The IDF said they were prepared for weekly confrontations but were encouraged that the protests were smaller than they had been on March 30. “We are not going to tolerate riots like that being a weekly Friday occurrence,”  said Lt Col Conricus.

At least six journalists were shot and wounded, according to a statement from the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. A spokeswoman for the Israeli army had no immediate comment on the statement.

Why are all forms of alternative living, including canal and gypsies/travellers being actively suppressed by the UK’s Tory government? Sound familiar?

The treatment of an alternative green community saddens Tom Greeves

The announcement by Steward Community Woodland, near Moretonhampstead, that most of the 21 residents have now left, and that their homes and other structures are being dismantled, should send a shudder through all of us.

It is the consequence of an enforcement notice issued by Dartmoor National Park Authority following the loss (in August 2016) of an appeal against refusal of planning permission for permanent residency, combined with the refusal of the park authority to countenance a new application for low-impact dwellings in the 32-acre woodland (which is owned by the community).

This is one of the worst environmental outcomes that I am aware of, having studied Dartmoor for more than 50 years. Future generations will be astonished that this has happened in one of our national parks, which are often hailed as leaders in environmental protection.

After 67 years of existence it is surely not too much to expect Dartmoor National Park to be a beacon of environmental and social awareness, with well thought-out policies on how the resources of Dartmoor can best be used for the communities that live there, as exemplars of what could happen elsewhere? But it seems we are still light years from that happy state.

There was once a call to ban all cars from Dartmoor

The community had lived quietly and gently in Steward Wood since 2000. Their homes had not been built by means of large machines scouring the earth and replacing the habitats of thousands of living creatures with concrete and brick, but had grown organically, through the skill of their builders, in a symbiotic relationship with the other occupants (plants and animals) of the wood.

Some of us were encouraged by a policy (DMD30) in the Development Management and Delivery Development Plan Document adopted by Dartmoor National Park in July 2013, which specifically allowed low-impact residential development in the “open countryside”.

Anxious to comply with the criteria in this policy, and to address the concerns of the Planning Inspector who refused their Appeal in 2016, in the autumn of 2017 the members of Steward Community Woodland submitted a detailed proposal to the national park for an imaginative new scheme of roundhouses and an “innovation centre”, which would be a base for the study of low-impact living.

‘Anger, grief and sadness’ as ‘off the grid’ community is cleared from Dartmoor

Extraordinarily, the response of Dartmoor National Park Authority has been negative to an extreme (as it has been for the past 17 years).

Rather than allowing the application to take its course, with opportunity for public comment and debate, they would not even validate it.

They claimed that the roundhouse built by two members of the community from their own wood, straw bales, cob and turf, was not of appropriate design or scale for any other structures, and would not fit policy DMD30, which, on their interpretation, was meant to apply only to tents and yurts.

This is despite Pembrokeshire Coast National Park having given permission for many roundhouses of similar type. No sensitive person could say that the roundhouse in question was not a thing of beauty, to be marvelled at for the skills, craftsmanship and sound environmental criteria used for its construction.

This story is, sadly, one of overbearing authority unable to grasp intellectually or practically the benefits to be gained by Dartmoor as a whole from the Steward Wood settlement.

How can a planning authority allow controversial new housing developments on greenfield sites in Chagford and elsewhere, and yet not embrace low-impact dwellings by an established and respected community in their own woodland, hidden from public gaze?

Many people on and beyond Dartmoor have for years recognised and celebrated these contemporary woodland dwellers, for the new and hopeful messages they brought all of us.

They are inheritors of a marvellously rich cultural history, millennia old, contained within our Dartmoor woods. Those who know Steward Community Woodland, and what it aspired to, should seek out David Spero’s wonderful book Settlements (2017), which documents photographically Steward Wood and other low-impact communities in Britain.

If Dartmoor National Park Authority had adopted a similar approach, they would now be extolling the virtues of Steward Wood, which would have brought them deserved plaudits.

Unfortunately the present situation indicates that Dartmoor National Park Authority actually has no deep understanding of the environmental crisis affecting our planet, and no flexible will to allow serious practitioners the opportunity to demonstrate alternative lifestyles.

This is not the sort of cultural behaviour to expect from a national park, which should be open to all new environmental approaches, and it is deeply concerning. We are all diminished, and Dartmoor’s soul has lost a spark of hopefulness for our future relationship with the land.

Dr Tom Greeves is chairman of The Dartmoor Society.

Organisers, Activists for Love, Hull want thousands to take part to give the homeless a voice

Take a look inside the Baker Street squat

The Baker Street squatters will hold a march this week to give the homeless a chance to get their voices heard.

Activists for Love, Hull, have organised the peaceful protest for Saturday, January 27 and will start their march at what has been their home for almost a month.

The march, named “all we want is a bed”, will give those living on the streets th chance to speak and tell their stories.

It will also feature some guest speakers and will make its way through the city centre from Baker Street to Hull City Hall

Activists for Love, Hull said they will be “rolling out the red carpet” for the march, which will start at 12.30pm on Saturday afternoon.

The group want to raise awareness of the plight of the homeless and give them a voice to be heard.

They said: “We would love as many people as possible to join us.”

Organiser, Lou Castrow, said: “We thought this would be the next stage and the march will be a great way to raise our profile. We want thousands there and we want to use their voices.

“We want to highlight what’s gone wrong in our system and why its failing so badly.”

The squatters moved into the MRC building on Baker Street through an open door on Boxing Day and have created a family unit.

Since then, they have struck up a close relationship with the building owners who have offered to provide accommodation for the squatters.

MRC has said:”We have put forward an ambitious plan to house some of them within a large property sourced by MRC.

“Raise the Roof and it’s trustees have agreed to rent this property and together with Activists for Love, Hull, have pledged to continue providing care and support to those who have committed themselves to becoming drug and alcohol free.

“We have been informed that within the squat environment, a family unit has formed giving mutual aid and support to each other and we are sure that this will be replicated within the house and will help the transition into independent living.

“MRC will be ensuring the property is compliant with all current legal requirements prior to handing the property over to Raise the Roof, who will then be redecorating and furnishing the property with the assistance of Activists for Love, Hull in readiness for the tenants to move in.”

“All we want is a bed” will start at the Baker Street squat at 12.30pm on Saturday January 27.

By Thom Forester – 1st February 2018
​When the late Gerald Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster -often credited with being ‘Britain’s riches man’- was asked what advice he had for young entrepreneurs, Mr. Grosvenor told The Financial Times, “Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror.”

Although the Grosvenor family dates back to the Norman Conquest. Most of their fortune is rooted in the 1677 marriage of Sir Thomas Grosvenor to the 12-year-old Mary Davies, heiress to 430 acres of boggy marsh between what is now Knightsbridge and the Thames in London’s West End. This bog would later became some of the most expensive real-estate in the world.

In 1066-7 William the Bastard declared that all land, animals and people in the country belonged to him personally. This was as alien to these Isle’s laws and customs as the colonial land-grabs were to the First Nations of America. Over a very short space of time, we went from a country in which >90% of people owned land, to a country of landless serfs, themselves owned by foreign lords. Our lands were parcelled up and given as payment to Williams mercenaries.

Still today, the monarch’s land monopoly remains, in theory and practise, a legal reality. Most of the largest land-owning families are direct descendants of the Norman Yoke and William the Bastard’s 22th great-granddaughter sits upon the ‘English’ throne. Meaning, in this ‘property owning democracy’, land distribution is -for the most part- still determined by ‘Right of Conquest’. Important to bare that in mind… especially if you run out of space whilst pegging your washing out on that increasingly thin-blue-line! 😉

In 1872 the British Government published ‘The Return of the Owners of Land’, only the second audit of land to have taken place in British history, the other being the Domesday book. After 2 years of gathering all the information the returns found that 1 million people owned freeholds, about 5% of the population. 10 Dukes owned over 100,000 acres each with the Duke of Sutherland owning 1,350,000 acres (1/50th of the entire country). Return of Owners of Land, confirmed that 0.6 per cent of the population owned 98.5% of the land and half of Britain was owned by 0.06% of the population. These findings are still well hidden till this day. 

The reason for all this secrecy is because Britain has the worst land-distribution of any country on Earth (except Brazil). As it stands, AT LEAST 70 per cent of land in the British Isles is owned by fewer than two per cent of the population. Meanwhile Britain’s 16.8 million homeowners account for barely 4 per cent of the land between them… which is about the same amount as is ‘owned’ by the Forestry Commission.

I have to thank the late Gerald Grosvenor for his honesty, at-least he didn’t attribute his vast fortune to some ‘divine right’… although, he may as well have -it’s not like you peasants are gonna do anything about it… ARE YOU?!

https://www.varsity.co.uk/comment/14335

In response to new plans to fine people for sleeping rough, Charlotte Lillywhite condemns councils callous treatment of the homeless

Stoke-on-Trent council plans to reduce their funding of homelessness services by £1m – by Charlotte Lillywhite

Sunday January 7 2018

The proposal issued by Stoke-on-Trent City Council to fine homeless people for sleeping in tents, for persistent or aggressive begging, and for sleeping in public toilets, is appalling. Although the proposal concerning the use of tents has now been scrapped following a public petition, the council is still considering whether to impose fines for the other activities. An on-the-spot penalty of 100 may be issued, followed by prosecution and a bill of up to 1000 if the initial penalty is left unpaid. This doesnt mean that the fine for sleeping in tents is any less relevant, however: the councils desire to put it in place, and the support that the proposal attracted, is telling in itself.

Economic motives lurk beneath the surface of these proposed fines. The proposals were primarily supported by businesses in Stoke-on-Trent. This indicates that people are more concerned about the way that the city appears to tourists and consumers, than they are about those who have found themselves in desperately vulnerable situations. The charity Shelter recorded that 43 people in Stoke-on-Trent were without a home this year. It also noted a 22% increase in homelessness in the West Midlands in the last twelve months.

How do councils expect the homeless to pay these fines?

The prioritisation of appearance over reality is also revealed in the impracticality of these policies how does the council expect homeless people to pay the fines which are to be needlessly imposed upon them? This inefficacy forces us to interrogate the councils motives. Are the proposals designed to send out an intolerant message to the citys homeless?

A sinister behavioural system begins to emerge from behind the legitimate fa硤e of the councils policies: an effort is being made to criminalise the homeless. By trying to make sleeping in a tent an offence, and by attempting to criminalise aggressive and persistent begging terms which can be subjectively defined and thus manipulated councillors legitimise the stigmas which propelled them to punish rough-sleepers in the first place.They exploit social fears by forging an imaginative link between homelessness and crime. This validates their treatment of the homeless as criminals, excusing their perpetuation of prejudice by deflecting any criticism onto the idea of law and order. Through this, PSPOs (Pubic Space Protection Orders, which allow councils to criminalise activities within certain areas) become a series of legal loopholes, enabling unjustified punishments to be proposed.

This exploitation is widespread: 36 local councils in England and Wales are working on similar policies involving PSPOs, including Newport City Council, which is trying to place a blanket ban on rough sleeping and begging. On a larger scale, the government is distorting the reality of homelessness in our society. At PMQs on 13th December, Theresa May brazenly lied about the situation, claiming that statutory homelessness peaked under the Labour government and is down by over 50% since then. This implies that the Conservatives are responsible for reducing the figures. The truth, however, is that, while statutory homelessness did peak under Labour, this was a result of Conservative control from 1979 to 1996. Labour went on to reduce the number of rough sleepers to its lowest level since 1998. Homelessness only began to rise again once the Conservatives returned to power in 2010: the DCLG reports that the number of households in temporary accommodation has increased by 65% since December of that same year.

This rise is irrefutably linked to Conservative policy. Since coming into office, the government has slashed benefits, cut council funding and reduced the availability of affordable housing. This pushes people into desperate situations and has left a considerable number of them homeless. For example, the DCLG has linked 28% of cases involving those who have become homeless since 2010 to Assured Shorthold Tenancies. Those who are victimised by government policy are then punished by the same authorities. This is exemplified by the situation in Stoke-on-Trent, where the recent proposals run alongside a plan to reduce support for homelessness services by 1m, due to budget cuts.

This forces people back into the vulnerable situations in which they started. Only now there is a framework which legitimises their callous treatment. To truly change the situation, the prejudice which encourages the formation of these policies and grants them legitimacy must be dismantled: systemic action is required to change the causes of the issue rather than the effects. We need transparency to ensure reality is no longer distorted and to avoid the manipulation of the public at the hands of authority.

Today, as the New Chartists the Chartist part now refers to the 1215 Great Charter (Magna Carta) we, too, have a list of six Requirements and because we are exposing proven and current High Treason and appalling financial fraud within Parliament, the Judiciary and the City of London not to mention the small matter that we also represent 99% of the people – we will not be overcome or dispersed until the job is done.  We are going nowhere until all the injustice, hardship and suffering stops!

Our six requirements are:
https://www.newchartistmovement.org.uk/about-1

1. That the People are ultimately Sovereign by restoring the supremacy of our Trial by Jury Common Law Constitution, as confirmed by the 1215 Great Charter, along with the absolute right of a randomly selected Jury to annul bad and flawed legislation (statutes) passed by the agenda-driven, self-serving politicians in Parliament.

2. That Poverty and Austerity be ended immediately by the reinstatement of the fiscal process known as Sovereign National Credit whereby HM Treasury creates and issues debt-free and interest-free money that is based entirely on the wealth and labour potential (creativity) of our nation. This will involve restoring the 1914 Bradbury Pound which prevented a financial collapse at the outbreak of the First World War. To support this, we will be making a full exposure of the fraudulent activities of the privately controlled Bank for International Settlements and its debt-creating central banking system, which includes the Bank of England.

3. That Children must be protected from Establishment-led abuse by abolishing the secretive and corrupt Family Courts, along with the setting up of a new and properly run public inquiry involving a randomly selected Grand Jury to investigate thoroughly, without fear or favour, the alleged abuse of children by people in positions of trust and authority, some of whom, it is alleged, are holding, or have held, positions at the very highest levels of government.

4. That our Armed Services and Police Service be shielded from further cut-backs by immediately withdrawing from the proven and treasonous process to unify our already deliberately depleted Armed Services with those of the European Union; whilst at the same time annulling the process to privatise and corporatise our Police Service, including giving private security firms the powers of arrest. Those men and women who are seeking to serve and defend us are being deliberately emasculated so as to allow our treasonous political class to end our countrys ancient freedoms and sovereignty and our Common Law Trial by Jury Constitution.

5. That the fraud and deception of our Legal System be ended by exposing and collapsing the alien and parallel legal system that some say evolved from the 1666 Cestui Que Vie Act which seemingly allows Legal Fictions to be created when our parents are compelled to register a birth and so receive a Birth Certificate for their new-born. There is provable evidence that a legal, but definitely not lawful, system of deception and entrapment exists (using the deliberate and unfathomable language of legalese) where you find that our Courts of Justice are listed by Dun and Bradstreet as corporations so as to make them places of business and not justice. It is a system whereby Roman Civil Law (also known as Maritime Law and Napoleonic Law) is allowed by open treason to operate without hindrance in our Common Law Trial by Jury country with the open acquiescence and complicity of the Judiciary.

6. That true Justice in the Courts be restored by bringing to trial those rogue judges, lawyers, auditors and bankers who are, or have been, involved in fraudulent bankruptcies that have stolen billions of pounds from totally innocent victims, not to mention carrying out large-scale money-laundering exercises in order to hide their criminally obtained money.

The Winchester Declaration

All of the above Requirements are covered by the 2016 Winchester Declaration which was unanimously agreed upon on November 17th 2016 at a specially convened and very well attended meeting of the British Constitution Group at the Winchester Guildhall. The Winchester Declaration calls for Parliament to accept and pass the Restoration Amendment that would meet and satisfy all of the above Requirements and thus completely restore the Rule of Law and Financial Sovereignty to our country.