It's me fuming rights init!

Special Report | Why world peace needs women

2012-01-03T09:46:00.000-08:00

Awarding the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize to three women could prove a turning point in acknowledging women's immense contributions to the field. Ceasefire's Pennie Quinton was in Oslo to hear some of the world's prominent female peacemakers, including Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, talk on the subject.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf speaking to Norwegian business elites at an event organised by the Norwegian refugee council.
©Pennie Quinton 2011

“ If your dreams don’t scare you they are not big enough” said Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as she opened her speech at a special event organised by the Norwegian refugee council, (NRC) on Sunday the 12^th of December. The event was an the opportunity for Norwegian business elites to meet with the Liberian Nobel peace prize laureate.

From 1976 onwards women’s work for peace has been acknowledged by the Nobel peace committee a little more regularly then in past years, with eleven women recognised; but now women in developing countries coming out of conflict are calling for greater recognition of the important role of women in bringing peace and stability to their communities and countries.

President Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee were jointly awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize along with Yemeni human rights activist and journalist Tawakel Karman, founder of Women Journalists Without Chains campaign: “For their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

Recently re-elected President of Liberia, Sirleaf became Africa’s first female head of state in 2006. A Harvard-trained banker and administrator, she had held positions in Citibank, the World Bank, and the United Nations.

Leymah Gbowee organised a broad women’s peace movement that made a significant contribution to bringing an end to the country’s 14-year civil war in 2003. She trained as a trauma counsellor, and is now executive director of the Women in Peace and Security Network, a pan-African organisation working to promote women’s role in peace building and conflict prevention.

In Oslo this December at a number of supporting events surrounding the Nobel peace prize, prominent women leaders and activists from: Afghanistan, Somalia, Liberia and Kenya were invited to speak on the necessity of recognition and international support for the role of women’s leadership in peace negotiations, promoting reconciliation between tribal leaders and war lords in ethnic conflict.

So just how much has women’s role in peace making been recognised by the Nobel Committee? Of the 101 individuals awarded the Peace Prize since 1901, just 15 awards went to women while just eight women were awarded the prize individually, compared to 41 men individually recognized.

Pacifist author Bertha von Suttner was the first female Laureate in 1905. Her long correspondence with Alfred Nobel is thought to have been a major influence on his decision to include in the Nobel prizes an award for peace.

It would be sixteen years before another woman, American suffragist Jane Addams, won in 1931. Another fifteen years later, in 1946, a prize was awarded to Emily Greene Balch, American academic, writer, and pacifist, for her work with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; she shared it with Young Men’s Christian Association founder John Mott.

A further 46 years passed before two grass roots community activists in Northern Ireland, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan (née Maguire) were recognised in 1976 for their work in the Northern Ireland peace movement.

In 2006 Williams and Corrigan founded the Nobel Women’s Initiative along with sister Laureates Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchu Tum. The six women decided to bring together their experiences in a united effort to help strengthen work being done in support of women’s rights around the world.

That call was expressed at an accompanying event to the Nobel Ceremony, entitled “Women’s political leadership in peace and conflict” organised by Care Norway and the Norwegian Refugee Council on Thursday December 9 three major female political figures to spoke on this issue.

Martha Karua: former minister of Justice for Kenya who led peace negotiations through post- electoral violence.

Politician and member of the transitional Federal government of Somalia’s legislative branch Asha Ahmad Abdalla is critical of her own governments’ lack of democracy and openness. “ Somalia is the most neglected humanitarian crisis in the world, a community of mother’s grieving over their children”

Wazhma Frogh, an activist in the Afghan women’s network who joined the panel the discussion direct from the Bonn peace conference on Afghanistan and told of the problems she had faced as a woman taking part in the Afghanistan peace process.

Wazhma Frogh speaking in Oslo at special event organised by the Norwegian refugee council & Care NO.
©Pennie Quinton 2011

“At the Grand Assembly or the Peace Jurga,” she reported, there were 2300 people from the whole country – but only 300 women. I was assigned to committee 13 – and I was the only woman among tribal leaders and MPs. They said: ‘we want to give her a good lesson now!’ Not only was I the only woman, but also I was a young woman. Now being a woman is a problem but being a young woman is even more of a problem.”

“On the first day I walked into the room,” Frogh recalled, “and no one said ‘hi’ to me. So for the first day I listened. On the second day I said ‘hi’ and again no one responded. As the day progressed it seemed that the process was stuck on negotiating a treaty.”

Then Frogh realized that: “the tribal leaders did not understand the difference between a treaty and an agreement. So I said: ‘can I help you?’ I stood up and explained the difference between a treaty and an agreement. On the third day they selected me as head of the programme.”

The tribal leaders saw only that they needed to be stronger, to have more guns, more soldiers and more equipment. Frogh asked them: “What do you want at the end of 2014? Two thousand men able to shoot, or efficient protection where goods and people are able to move around safely?” Committee 13 then said, “We shall lobby for you to become our representative at the Security Council.”

Wazhma Frogh says that peace in Afghanistan is only possible through campaigning at the grassroots: “people have to own it.” But NATO’s policy is not to interfere in matters considered “cultural”. Its failure to acknowledge the rights of women is detrimental to building a stable society in Afghanistan. She said to NATO representatives: “Let’s do it right – you don’t want another 9/11 and we don’t want you to come back. We have to take reconciliation back to people’s homes.”

NATO arms local militias, and then NATO sees a reduction in suicide attacks as a success indicator: “they don’t count how many women are able to travel safely to school or work,” Frogh says: “The biggest instruction NATO soldiers get is – don’t speak to Afghan women, because the Afghan men will kill you. If they see a woman getting killed or attacked by Afghan men they don’t get involved because that violence is ‘local, cultural’.”

“This is wrong,” Frogh concludes: “we need to lobby for the empowerment of women in the peace process. It should be women that lead the peace process. NATO Security Council really has to reform itself into a people’s organisation necessary for peace.”

Martha Karua told the conference how she had been through activism into government – and back. “The Nobel Peace Prize is,” she said, “an encouragement to women to achieve for the common good of all”.

Karua spoke of the ‘inter-connectedness’ that exists in the world: “we are working to achieve peace. We must stand out and talk about peace. There are millions in poverty and most conflicts are about a scramble for resources. There can’t be peace without women – we are giving true meaning to democracy by focusing on peace.”

The Nobel Peace Prize is, Karua said, relevant because it “encourages many people, known and unknown, to bring peace and equality to the world. Our former Kenyan prize-winner, Wangari Muta Maathai, had no recognition at home, even after receiving this prize. She finally received recognition after her death, in part due to this prize – it draws attention.” She continued: “Affirmative action for women is a favour to society, as in conflict women suffer disproportionately; women suffer more violence to their bodily integrity and to their person.”

Martha Karua said she got her place at the negotiating table in Kenya simply because she was Minister of Justice. “But I was one woman, so the other side brought in one woman, and we were able to mediate…”

“The role of women is a perspective that needs to be on the decision-making table,” Karua insists: “The struggle of claiming our space as equal women is on going, but there is an attitude of scepticism towards women: you have to prove yourself over and over. We need a lot of encouragement towards women’s empowerment, being seen as a rebel, as a non-conformist mitigates against women so you may suffer ostracisation for going against the grain. I was marginalised, but I am lucky because I chair a political party. I personally believe in the art of the possible, if you work hard enough you’ll draw positive energy towards what you are trying to achieve.”

Hon Martha Karua speaking in Oslo ©Pennie Quinton 2011

Asha Ahmad Abdalla says, “We need to rebuild from the ground up re-uniting the people.”

She explained how women are so important in conserving the generations. “So many Somali women overseas in the Diasporas are sending money home, saving their families who are on the brink.” Empowerment of women is, she says, at the core of human rights issues: “women must be in leadership roles especially in peace negotiations.”

She went on to describe how in Djibouti women reformed the Transitional Federal Government: “100 women came up with a formula for women to be separate from the clans by negotiating between the warlords and the clans.”

Women make up the majority of Somalia’s population at 65%: “All the men died in the war. Women have been going to school and are working in education and the NGOs.” Though the constitution guarantees women 12 per cent of the places in parliament, “the warlords did not allow all 12% to participate in parliament, we only had 43 from 500, that’s around 8 per cent. Now,” Asha Abdualla said to applause, “we are looking for a female president.”

Running for president had been “the most difficult time of my life.” It’s OK in Somalia, she said, “to be in parliament, but to be a leader and a woman… I could find nothing in our religion to say women could not be leaders. I encourage our women to read religion.”

Hon Asha Abdualla of Somalia TFG speaking in Oslo December 2011 ©Pennie Quinton 2011

Martha Kurua noted that “even in Africa, where there is a strong tradition of women’s involvement in the community, women’s leadership is the exception, not the norm. We still need to bring a critical mass of women to the negotiating table.”

After the conference session Wahzma Frogh told me: “Women’s movements opens the way for the inclusion of other men as well. It’s not a competition, and it is not a battle. We are fighting against exclusion and discrimination. Our communities fear women but we are fighting to get our share.”

Frogh has “seen our culture changing – but culture is being used to keep women in the back seat. In conflict the law is defined by the rule of the gun and has to do with perceptions that war is necessary to get power, to be able to rule, it is a battle for power.

Men do not want to share power or privilege, they see power as being rightfully theirs but we want our share.”

In Afghanistan at the provincial council level it was all men but, Frogh reports, “25 women have taken their places – and women bring a difference, so get the support of their communities. Their decisions at village level are beneficial for the community for improved life so women do bring an active contribution.”

NATO never recognised, Frogh says, “how women are struggling in homes and villages – and are not automatically supportive of women. NATO should be supportive of women but are in fact the biggest supporters of violence on women. They do not see how women can get peace processes going NATO must change the way it looks at peace.”

At the press conference following the closed business event President Sirleaf was asked what impact the Nobel peace prize will have for women in Liberia. She described how the prize will enable the creation of a broad platform for the women’s agenda in Liberia to stop rape and help reform, transforming the prize into something that contributes to girls futures carrying along a whole generation of young people.

Nobel prize winner Leymah Gbowee speaking to business leaders at NRC HQ Dec 2011 ©Pennie Quinton 2011

Leymah Gbowee recalled how she came to realise that the Liberian child soldiers were also victims of conflict: “They were recruited at 8, 9 or 10 years old, given drugs and guns. A lot of them were arrested at their place of recruitment; working with them I could see they were victims like myself. The perpetrators are the ones who give the guns and I realised then that even if it was going to kill me, I would say something; I would say something to Charles Taylor” – the civil war leader. “I would say something to Charles Taylor about the horrible future he has created for Liberia”

Leymah Gbowee gave an ironic smile as she concluded: “sometimes you get more than your wish.”

http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/if-dreams-dont-scare-big-enough/

2011-11-14T09:42:00.000-08:00

Tectonic movements in the British media

2011-09-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

Official inquiries as a result of the phone hacking scandal are rocking the British media landscape [REUTERS]

Tectonic movements in the British media

The phone hacking scandal that rocked News of the World to its core is still causing uneasiness in the British media.

Can the media industry in Britain restore public trust, which is ebbing away in the wake of the scandal over phone-hacking by employees of the Murdoch-owned News International? The grand institutions of British media are taking a long hard look at themselves and their media ethics following the public outcry over the News of the World hacking scandal, clearly anxious over what inquiries into this will reveal.

On September 6, James Murdoch was recalled to a Parliamentary Select Committee on the Media for further questioning: at the same time, across town, a list of high powered media figures gathered at a Westminster Media Forum conference titled “News Now”.

“Everybody here I would hope is in favour of a free press: it’s the life blood of democracy,” Mark Lewis, lawyer for the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, told the conference. Dowler’s voice mail had been hacked by the News of the World staff, who deleted her phone messages, giving false hope to the Dowler family that Milly was alive.

“We talk about the risk of state regulation, of state control of the press,” Lewis said. “We talk about Stalinism but we have a problem if we go the other way and have corporate control of the press, that’s corporate Stalinism, and if we have too great a control by any corporation then we lose sight of democracy.”

Lord Inglewood, chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications, led the Media Forum discussion, which centred on the failure of checks and balances that permitted such corporate erosion of democracy in the UK by the Murdoch empire. The revelations of July 2011 showed the extent of phone-hacking and the News of the World executives’ powerful influence over the British police and politicians, including a succession of Prime Ministers. Tony Blair, it was recently revealed, was godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch’s children.

Current Prime Minister David Cameron’s appointment of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his press officer, after Coulson had been sacked in 2007 in connection with phone hacking, also demonstrates the unhealthy influence of the Murdochs over democratic governance.

“Some have called this a shift to a ‘public-relations democracy’,” said Professor Natalie Fenton, co-director at Goldsmith’s Leverhulme research centre, University of London. “Politicians are at the mercy of hungry journalists who can make or break their career. Politicians put PR before sound policy-making and journalists intimidate policy-makers with threats of media campaigns that will make them unelectable”.

The phone hacking scandal caused a major shock for News Corp[GALLO/GETTY]

At the launch of the Hacked Off campaign by the victims of phone-hacking, Fenton had “sensed the palpable fear of the MPs in the room – and a very explicit understanding of the courage it had taken to speak out against the Murdoch Empire.”

That kind of media activity “isn’t about speaking truth to power,” she said, “it’s about conducting character assassinations of people who irritate certain people and secret meetings with those in ministerial office where acceptable terms of media policy may be laid down”.

Mary Hockaday, head of the newsroom at the publicly-funded BBC, said that when we all look back on 2011 what will stand out about the news industry will be the sheer number of news stories and the breadth of the news agenda - from the Arab Spring to the summer riots… but after that, of course, hacking. “This has been a year when this slow-burning story finally begun unravelling at speed and sucked media police and politicians right into it,” she said.

The Select Committee was asking Murdoch and other newspaper representatives whether they had misled Parliament at earlier hearings. Those led to a formal inquiry by Lord Justice Leveson into the standards of the press, looking at the relationship between the press and the police and the press and politics.

Its brief is to inquire into the culture, practices, and ethics of the press, looking at the contacts and the relationships between national newspapers and politicians and police, the extent to which the current policy and regulatory framework has failed including in relation to data protection; and the extent to which there was a failure to act on previous warnings about media misconduct.

There are also moves to reform the regulation of the media in Britain, to support the integrity and freedom of the press, with the plurality of the media, and its independence, including from government, while encouraging the highest ethical and professional standards. Regulation, however, worries media managers.

Tom Kent is deputy managing editor and Standards Editor at Associated Press. He would prefer that media organisations remained self-policing and practised a code of ethics “integral to the culture of their particular organisations”.

Professor Natalie Fenton responded that this approach has failed to protect media in the interests of the public: “Regulation of the press has always been seen as tantamount to authoritarian rule… It’s seen as deliberate interference with the inner vision and the freedom of the press and it’s been profoundly anti democratic.”

“Yet we have to now face up to the fact that this approach has actually done precious little to protect the public interest in the provision of news and its contribution to democratic life,” Fenton continued: “maybe it has done quite a lot to encourage commercial news vandalism.”

Public-service broadcasting is regulated by law in the UK and, Fenton said, there “we see some of the very best in investigative journalism. It’s not perfect, but it does expose the nonsense that imposing standards on a news industry inevitably leads to anti-democratic practise and diminishes journalistic integrity.”

If we accept that there is a connection between news and democracy, that news provides the vital resources of information gathering, deliberation, and analysis – then surely,” Fenton concluded, “it’s not unreasonable to accept that it’s any government’s democratic responsibility to ensure the conditions are in place to promote democratic practise.

An excessively liberalised press has failed to provide the freedom to practise independent journalism in the public interest.”

Solicitor Mark Lewis said that the scandal did not start in 2011, “it didn’t start with Milly Dowler’s family when that was exposed”. That revelation simply broke the “wall of silence” about what the Murdoch press - and other newspaper groups - had been doing. Lewis has had “phone calls from other groups’ lawyers who said ‘if you mention us, we’re going to sue you’.”

All the newspaper groups say their journalists follow the Press Complaints Commission Code of conduct and abide by the criminal law “but what they don’t say is whether they did all the time, and whether they have looked at past actions by individual reporters," Lewis said.

Investigating properly is “something that’s worth while doing, it helps democracy,” Lewis concluded, “but actions which don’t do that which, break the law for no purpose at all, other than to feed a story which isn’t in the public interest, or to create a story – that’s not worth while at all.”

Society is bigger than government

2011-09-17T11:59:00.000-07:00

Words and images ©Pennie Quinton 2011

Society is bigger than Government

I had been out of London when the riots began, having a genteel Sunday afternoon in Stratford-on-Avon. My mobile rang as I was standing in a queue at the Royal Shakespeare company: the ringtone blared from my handset generating a severe frown from the one woman taking forever dealing with enquiries at the counter. I quickly stifled it.

“Where are you?” growled the voice down the phone of a friend – a campaigner for Kurdish rights from north London.

“Oh, I am in Leamington Spa visiting my sister and we are trying to see something at the RSC!”

“I thought you would be out in the middle of it all, photographing.” She said.

“Photographing what; in the middle of all what?” I asked, puzzled.

“Oh the police have shot another man dead, and the demonstration against his death turned into a riot, but the organisers of the protest have condemned the riot, people have been made homeless because their apartment block has been burned down. It is chaos!”

“Riots in London why?” I asked, inwardly cursing my bad timing for leaving the city.

More ferocious stares from the grey haired woman manning the counter…

“Er, well I am at the theatre; I can’t really talk, will be back later on tonight.”

I had already been fourth place in the queue for over ten minutes, which grew ever longer as the attendant fumbled and fussed. I wondered if queuing, an oft-observed cliché about English life, like much else in Stratford-on-Avon, was deliberately being overdone for the American tourist market. I doubted queues were much of a feature of Elizabethan life, although rioting was probably more common in Shakespeare’s time and after my visit to the town of the great man’s birth I could see why he could not wait to get to London to join in with all that violence and debauchery, just as I could not wait to return to photograph the debauchery of the second Elizabethan age.

The last decade of Elizabeth Tudor’s reign has been recognized by historians as an exceptionally volatile period, characterized by “high prices, food shortages, heavy taxation" and major wars against Spain and Ireland.

As I walked around the RSC souvenir shop, I could see the staff discreetly nudging each other and pointing at me as if I was going to steal something: they must have heard me discuss the news of the riot with my sister and thought we were a mini looting team, day-tripping from London.

London is the city in which I grew up and I always feel a sense of relief on my return – not least after being in Stratford-on-Avon. As news came through that Hackney was kicking off, I felt I had to get out and see what was happening.

I have filmed and photographed demonstrations all over the world since completing my Masters in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, which was where my work began to focus on mass movements, insurrection and protest. Discontent and unfairness bug me and keep me awake at night. I have to work out why these things happen; this motivating factor regularly drives me into the streets and even into conflict zones with my cameras to see, to understand. The media is mediated; I need to see for myself to know why people suddenly express rage and frustration. I’m left wondering why they don’t express rage and frustration all the time. Why riots in London now and not following the police shooting of Charles de Menezes in Stockwell in 2005?

And now London is in shock about the rioting, with many expressing outrage feeling their sense of security violated. BBC News Anchors’ first response to any understanding expressed concerning the possible causes underlying the riots is a pithy but loaded: ‘But surely you don't condone this?’ Right now, people are venting and expressing their hurt, but simply venting will not solve the problems that have instigated these riots.

In Elizabethan London a fabulously wealthy elite lived cheek-by-jowl with a thoroughly destitute majority. Even when gainfully employed, workers in handicrafts earned not much more than subsistence wages: for example, a 1589 proclamation prescribes wages for London linen weavers of 6d a day with meat and drink, or 10d a day without meat and drink. Given this polarization, it is not surprising that the 1590s were especially marked by social disorder and protest.

The public spending cuts this year meant many of the youth summer schemes in London did not run. These riots suggest boredom – and inarticulate rage. The youth are smashing and grabbing the things society tells them to want. The coalition government's austerity measures have hit this generation hard. There will be no higher education for those who cannot take on burdensome debt. The chance of ever being able to afford to buy a home in London seems remote – except for those whose wealthier parents can provide the deposit for a home loan. A generation of young people have been left behind by this coalition’s policies and the policies of previous governments. How can these young people see that they have anything invested in British society that will enable them to become fulfilled and successful adults?

Pennie Quinton is a freelance journalist based in East London. You can read more of her writings on her website penniequinton.org

Running through riotous London - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

2011-08-09T13:50:00.000-07:00

Running through riotous London - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Audio of Debate "Why does Street Photography make us paranoid."

2011-07-29T04:19:00.000-07:00

Audio and Video highlights of Debate organised by 'the London Festival of Street photography' on why does street photography make us paranoid.

Panelists:

Anna Minton, Author of 'Ground Control'
James Welch, Liberty legal director
Pennie Quinton, Photographer and Journalist
Dermont Robinson, Detective Superintendant, Head of Counter Terrorism, City of London Police
Terry Hanley, Planning and Contingency Director for Knightsbridge Guarding

[Audio] http://londonstreetphotographyfestival.org/uploads/whydoesstreetphotographymakeusparanoid_debateaudio.mp3

Video highlights of debate: "Why does street photography make us paranoid"

http://saveKEMP.com

2011-07-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

©Pennie Quinton 2011

"Free Gaza have a great day" Graffiti @ Gunnersbury train station

2011-07-27T17:36:00.001-07:00

©Pennie Quinton 2011

Full Moon over Tower blocks

2011-07-27T17:16:00.001-07:00

©Pennie Quinton 2011

'Unsung hero' Brian Haw, 1949-2011

2011-06-20T03:31:00.000-07:00

On Sunday June 19, 2011, Brian Haw died peacefully in his sleep following a long fight against lung cancer.

Brian’s death ends his decade-long challenge to the British establishment and his constant reminder to Members of Parliament and civil servants entering the Houses of Parliament in London of the brutal effects on ordinary people of economic sanctions and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On June 2, 2001, Brian Haw left his wife and seven children and his work as a carpenter to live day and night outside Parliament, to focus attention on the devastating impact of the economic sanctions on Iraq and the plight of children born with birth defects attributed to the use of depleted uranium munitions in the 1991 Gulf war.

Brian endured threats, violence and abuse for the duration of his protest. “I want to go back to my own kids and look them in the face again,” he wrote in 2002, “knowing that I've done all I can to try and save the children of Iraq and other countries who are dying because of my government's unjust, amoral, fear- and money-driven policies. These children and people of other countries are every bit as valuable and worthy of love as my precious wife and children.”

In 2003, when the UK and US commenced their war against Iraq, Brian began fasting and praying with other protesters who joined him in sleeping rough in Parliament Square. Laws were drafted and passed attempting to remove Brian – but he manage to remain.

Member of Parliament John McDonnell recalls how, with fellow-MP Tony Benn, he acted as a character witness for Brian in his many appearances in court, including some brought by the Metropolitan Police on accusations of aggression and assault. “Brian was bearing witness to the horrendous war crimes in Iraq, reminding MPs of their own guilt,” McDonnell says. “He was always willing to engage in debate but was continually harassed by the state. He remained a pacifist and a true democrat. Argument and debate were the only tools that he would use in his fight against injustice. He won repeatedly in court against the police.”

“Brian was in the British tradition of protest against great injustices,” McDonnell adds, “alongside the long-term picket outside the South African embassy against Apartheid.”

Jeremy Corbyn MP says Brian “single-handedly managed to irritate the British establishment simply by his presence in Parliament Square, every day reminding MPs of their preference for lies and deceit regarding Iraq and Afghanistan over the truth that British weapons and arms have destroyed thousands of innocent lives.”

Rikki Blue is an independent film-maker who covered many of the protests and events that spiraled out of Brian’s long struggle to remain in Parliament Square. He recalls that Brian “always worried about the kids. Everything that is wrong about war is that innocents die and the biggest symbol of innocence are children.”

“Brian demanded that the world stops killing kids,” Blue expands: “He was such an angry man but when he smiled it was like the heavens opened. He suffered so much persecution and violence during his time in the square – but nothing could shake his belief that killing kids is wrong.”

Emma Sangster, of the Voices in the Wilderness campaign against sanctions in Iraq, recalls how she first met Brian ten years ago: “Initially he had just three little placards – but he created a space where people could learn about the world in a way that was very formative before he was beleaguered by all the legal pressures the laws especially drafted to get rid of him.”

Later the authorities’ determination to remove him became more entrenched but, Sangster says, “truth was stranger than fiction in the ways he managed to survive and remain. In 2002 he won the case that made his protest lawful: he stood his ground but he was under lots of pressure day after day.”

“In 2004,” Sangster recalls, “I took my newborn son to meet Brian at a vigil at Downing Street. It was very special. Brian had great affection for my son Tom as well as all the children he met in Parliament Square.”

“His legacy,” Sangster concludes, “will be one of inspiration that people can stand up as individuals against the great wrongs. That was his message and it went all over the world. He was iconic, inspired by the Christian tradition of people who stand up and speak out: this was what drove him during the early period of his protest and is what I remember him most for.”

Milan Rai, an author and editor of Peace News also pays tribute: “We first met Brian while holding our Friday vigils in Parliament Square on the Iraq sanctions. We used to enjoy speaking with him and supporting him.”

Brian Haw became, Rai says, “a symbol for people in Britain who treasured him for speaking out against the lies that were told about the invasion of Iraq. He became a channel for people’s anger. Brian was motivated by a very deep love of children: he felt so fiercely about the plight of the children in Iraq, he was going to stand up for those children as if they were his own. He was a man of uncompromising principles who touched a chord.”

In 2004 I filmed Brian Haw welcoming American peace campaigner Cindy Sheehan, whose son had been killed in Iraq. Brian and Cindy threw their arms around each other and wept over the grim images of mutilated children arranged over Brian’s protest display. They both kept saying, “see what they are doing to the kids, see what they are doing to the kids.” Crowds of people followed them to the Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street, where they continued to protest for the rest of the day.

After the first year of his protest Brian had amassed a large number of placards denouncing US and British bombing of Iraq: the local authority, Westminster City Council, went to court to end the vigil. The judge, Mr Justice Gray declined, finding that: “This application raises questions as to the interaction between the right and the duty of a local authority to remove obstructions from its highways on the one hand, and the right of the individual citizen to use those highways to exercise his or her right to freedom of expression on the other hand… I am not satisfied in the circumstances of this case that there is any pressing social need to interfere with the display of placards so as to protect the right of others to pass and re-pass [the highway].”

One significant aspect of the case was an individual’s right under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of speech. Mr Justice Gray added that he was “not persuaded” the defendant's placards could be considered advertising. “Looking at the issue of reasonableness in the round and taking account of the duration, place and purpose and the effect of the obstruction, as well as the fact that the defendant is exercising his Convention right,” Mr Justice Gray came to the conclusion “that the obstruction for which the defendant is responsible is not unreasonable: I decline to grant the injunction.”

After the ruling, Brian raced outside the courts and embraced a Buddhist monk and nun who had held a vigil outside the Royal Courts of Justice and told them: “God sends us good judges.” He pointed to pictures of sick Iraqi children, declaring: “This has been hidden from our people for so long. This is an abomination. If the people knew what is being done in their name in Iraq, they would be horrified.” Asked how long he would continue his protest he said: “As long as it takes. When do you give up on the kids?”

With the death of Brian Haw London has lost one its most unusual and distinctive landmarks. Anyone who passed the Houses of Parliament could hardly miss him. Another indicator of his wide impact was Britain’s most coveted art award, the Turner Prize, being won by Mark Wallinger for rebuilding Brian’s Parliament Square protest in the Tate Britain gallery.

John McDonnell now plans to put a resolution (an “Early Day Motion”) before the Houses of Parliament calling for the erection of “a monument to Brian Haw that celebrates peace, rather than celebrating war as do many of London’s great monuments.”

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201162081348694801.html

The revolution in heaven will not be televised

2011-05-30T07:22:00.000-07:00

©Pennie Quinton 2011

The revolution in heaven will not be televised

PENNIE QUINTON:

…And I was hurt and scared and shocked when they sent a limousine from heaven to take her to God if there is one...¹

Now that limousine has taken Gil Scott-Heron to heaven; and he will see to it that God, if there is one, has a lot of explaining to do. The revolution in heaven will not be televised, but poets undermine the power of empires and their words live on.

I first heard ‘The revolution will not be televised’ on the grassroots independent media project www.indymedia.org when it was covering Prague ‘S26’ demonstration against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on September 26, 2000.

I was there for the demonstration – an overwhelming experience that changed my life and worldview.It sent shock-waves through governments and succeeded in focusing attention on issues such as the legitimacy of the IMF and the clash between World Trade Organization rules and UN environmental conventions.

‘The revolution will not be televised’ became the soundtrack for this unexpected metamorphosis.

Despite first being released in 1970 (on Small talk at 125^th and Lenox), in 2000 it resounded relevant and fresh amid the carnivalesque tactics of beautiful chaos of the pink- and-silver bloc that disrupted and halted the IMF conference. The Carnival Queen entered the lair of the IMF, through tear gas, police batons and street fighting, chasing the beast away from its prey (for the time being)².

There were cameras – our cameras – everywhere. This revolution was going to be televised, but with more than the one-sided, editorializing, clichéd mainstream media descriptions of ‘a hard core of demonstrators’.

En route to the conference centre where the IMF were meeting, Prague’s high concrete Nusle Bridge was the scene of a long showdown between demonstrators and cops. The Italian Ya Basta group³ were at the front in home-made padding with plastic dustbin lid shields – a small army of Michelin people, taking the police blows and pepper spray.

After many hours in solidarity linking arms and pushing forwards against the armoured personnel carriers of the Czech policie, we went for food.

We emerged from a curry house an hour later onto Wenceslas Square to rejoin the crowds.

Due to some planning error two unescorted buses carrying IMF delegates drove right into the middle of hundreds of milling protesters.

At the sight of the crowds the delegates stared out at us frozen with terror, hanging tightly onto the yellow poles inside the bus, their complexions pale as the name-tags pinned to their neat dark suits.

The crowd, also frozen in stunned silence, stared right back, unsure how to react. Here were the deciders of policies that impacted on so many lives worldwide, against which the protest had been struggling, vulnerable and exposed in our midst, staring fearfully at us staring confused and unsure back at them.

Static-laden, the atmosphere was filled with potential confrontation. No-one knew what came next.

A young woman darted out to the front of the bus, took out a spray can and sprayed a big smiley across the windscreen in shaving cream. There were cheers and laughter. The silence and tension was broken.

A small regiment of riot police ran single-file into the crowd, briskly escorting the delegates off of the buses to their nearby hotel, refusing to acknowledge the surrounding crowds, then vanished as fast as they had come.

Later, listening to this story reported on Indymedia radio; I was amazed and inspired by the track that followed: ‘The revolution will not be televised’.

This song and the moment of confrontation between the IMF delegates and we, the people, are for me intertwined.

The fear on the delegates’ faces and the fear that as a member of a mob I could be called to act violently against defenceless people acts as a reminder that we are all human and vulnerable and of how easy it is to abuse power at the moment we have power over another.

The young woman with the can of shaving foam kept it real. Her gesture thawed the ice in which we were frozen at that tense moment.

Over the next five years the anti-globalisation protests continued and the Indymedia phenomenon grew; expanding into radio, video and online projects across the world with the slogan ‘Don’t hate the media, be the media.’ From this dramatic introduction to protest and grass roots media I became involved in Indy media projects in: London, UK, France, Italy, Belgium, New York, Switzerland and Spain.

That hearing of “the revolution will not be televised” on the streets of Prague completely changed the direction of my life and I played Gill Scott Heron regularly on the weekly radio slot I produced and hosted on Resonance FM for five years, Global Indy reports.

Gil Scott-Heron’s words and music continued as an inspiration. And his poem ‘Whitey on the moon’ remains pertinent in the face of the government cuts and austerity measures while the banks are bailed out with business as usual:

Was all that money I made las’ year

(for Whitey on the moon?)

How come there ain’t no money here ?

(Hmm! Whitey’s on the moon)...

I think I’ll sen’ these doctor bills

(to Whitey on the moon.)⁴

Global capitalism is failing the vast bulk of the world's population.

RIP Gil Scott-Heron: long live your words.

1‘Coming from a broken home’ Now and then: the poems of Gil Scott-Heron (2001) Edinburgh: Canongate, p 1

2 Prague World Bank / IMF 2000 from A Year in the Streets http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFz4EHgt3Uk

3 See interview at http://www.ainfos.ca/00/nov/ainfos00001.html

4‘Whitey on the moon’ Now and then: the poems of Gil Scott-Heron (2001) Edinburgh: Canongate, p 21

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artandmusic/?cid=500&b_log=500

Canal Art one Sunday April 2011

2011-04-20T10:23:00.000-07:00

©Pennie Quinton 2011

The Magician he sparkles in satin and velvet, you gaze at his splendour with eyes you've not used yet" Donovan lyric from Sunny Goodge Street

2011-04-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

©Pennie Quinton 2011

The Magician he sparkles in satin and velvet, you gaze at his splendour with eyes you've not used yet" Donovan lyric from Sunny Goodge Street

http://strandlines.org/content/magician-he-sparkles-satin-and-velvet-you-gaze-his-splendour-eyes-youve-not-used-yet-donovan

©Pennie Quinton 2011

The street of the definite article

2011-04-20T06:20:00.000-07:00

©Pennie Quinton 2011

The street of the definite article

The strand.

The one two the iambic chaos

The rush through it, on it and under it

The busy busy

The buses the bridges the protests

The lawyers the law courts the justice,

The cafes, the authors

The Dickens, the Thackery the Makepeace

The temple inn

The no children

The Strand school for civil service gone,

The whirling doors on the King’s building

The Students, the must just read hard enough

The elect alumni, on the plate glass

The mini deities to become

The bus stop that never stops

The sun dial that never sees the sun,

The empty office blocks,

The man suits that always hurry

The black cabs

The cyclists

The lights

The waitings

The crossings

The coffee bars,

The Somerset house and my love my love

The river.

©Pennie Quinton 2011

Vale Vittorio Arrigoni, 'hero of Palestine'

2011-04-17T02:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/16/vittorio-arrigoni-murder-peace-activist-palestinian

Vale Vittorio Arrigoni, 'hero of Palestine'

The murder of a peace activist who fought for Palestinian human rights has left me crying with rage at such cruelty and stupidity

- Pennie Quinton
- guardian.co.uk, Saturday 16 April 2011 12.00 BST
- Article history

Vittorio Arrigoni in April 2010. Photograph: International Solidarity Movement/handout/EPA

Hearing of the murder of Vittorio Arrigoni, a committed peace activist who for the last 10 years campaigned for recognition of Palestinian human rights under Israeli occupation, has left me shaking and crying with rage at the sheer cruelty and stupidity of those who would carry out such an act. According to news reports, Arrigoni was murdered by the Tawheed and Jihad group, which operates in the Gaza Strip in opposition to the Hamas government.

His kidnap and murder came as a terrible shock to all who knew him. Known to his friends as Vik, as a human rights campaigner he was an unstoppable force.

Even after Israel's forces deported him from the West Bank he still took part in a direct action, associated with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), to highlight Israel's deportation of peace activists, taking a flight to Ben Gurion airport in the hope of being allowed to attend a peace conference in Bethlehem – only to be deported after spending Christmas 2005 in detention.

I first met and interviewed Arrigoni while he was preparing for this action. He described to me how, after some years of suffering depression, he undertook volunteer work in Africa and Eastern Europe. He soon found himself in Palestine as part of ISM and felt that he had to do all he could to help bring about equality and human rights for Palestinians living under occupation and to raise awareness outside Palestine of the difficulties and injustices of their lives.

He was aboard the 2008 Free Gaza Movement vessel and was imprisoned in Israel several times. He was in Gaza throughout "Operation Cast Lead", helping medics and reporting what was happening. Arrigoni wrote for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto and for Peace Reporter and in 2010 he wrote Gaza Stay Human, a book based on what he witnessed and survived during Operation Cast Lead.

Khaleel Shaheen of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, a friend of Arrigoni, says: "What has happened is a black day in Palestinian history. The horrific murder of our friend Vittorio is totally condemned. We ask the local authorities to bring the criminals to justice as soon as possible. He is in our minds always. He is a hero of Palestine."

Arrigoni's brutal murder comes after the murder of a settler family and the shooting of theatre director Juliano Mer-Khamis last week. Writing as someone who has spent a great deal of time in the West Bank over the years, these events seem alien to the Palestinian culture of resistance I have come to know and respect. Such actions smack of some kind of dirty war, based on motives that have little to do with the ongoing struggle for Palestinian self-determination.

On Friday Arrigoni's friends gathered at the Italian embassy in London with candles and flowers. Demonstrations also took place following the Friday prayer across from the UN headquarters in Gaza. The villages of Bil'in and Al Masara dedicated their weekly Friday demonstrations to Arrigoni; and there were gatherings in Al Manara square in Ramallah and at Al Jundi al Majhull in Gaza City. A mourning tent will open at the fisherman's port Al Mina and in Nablus, in the north of the West Bank, political parties have called for an event in the city centre, condemning Arrigoni's killing and celebrating his work.

Vik took and withstood much violence but stayed so human and loving until the end – dear Vittorio Arrigoni, you are deeply missed.

Black Block on the move in London

2011-03-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

©Pennie Quinton 2011

Sunset over Bow February 2011

2011-03-27T06:19:00.001-07:00

©Pennie Quinton 2011

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/94998

2010-09-09T01:34:00.000-07:00

Tadamon: Images Of Solidarity And Strength In Palestine

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/94998

Wednesday 08 September 2010

Asa Winstanley

Photographer, film-maker and human rights campaigner Pennie Quinton is familiar to many on the London activist scene.

Since late 2004, she has spent much time living and working in occupied Palestine. Now, with a large photographic archive to draw on, Quinton has selected some of her best work from Palestine for this new exhibition, named Tadamon after the Arabic word for solidarity.

The photos comprise three broad sections - popular resistance against Israel's apartheid wall, a massive 2008 funeral procession for four assassinated resistance fighters in the Bethlehem area, and Nablus solidarity demonstrations for Gaza during Israel's brutal 2008-9 onslaught against the coastal enclave.

Some of the best images, though, are expressions of Palestinian cultural resistance through popular dance and music.

While familiar signifiers of the conflict such as slingshot-welding youth are represented, Quinton has steered away from the typical. In one striking close-up, her camera homes in on the sons of a murdered fighter as they almost literally force the tears back into each other's eyes.

Basem Abu Rahme, a non-violent martyr in a village's struggle to regain its annexed land, is pictured a year before his murder at the hand of Israeli forces displaying some of the hundreds of spent tear gas shells collected by the people of Bil'in. It would be the impact from one of these, fired at high velocity, that caused his death on April 18 2009.

The exhibition is a healthy antidote to the wearisome "balance" syndrome that most of the media falls prey to in this country which falsely assumes parity of power between colonised and coloniser.

Quinton's sympathetic eye for the Palestinian people shines through in this deeply humanistic collection.

Runs until October 5 at Freedom Bookshop, Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1. Open from 12pm-6pm Monday to Saturday and 12pm-4pm on Sunday.

Tadamon Exhibition: images of solidarity & strength in Palestine

2010-08-19T07:26:00.000-07:00

Image funeral march for four assassinated men, Bethlehem March 2008 ©Pennie Quinton 2010

Tadamon means solidarity in Arabic and these images show moments of strength witnessed in the Palestinian struggle for survival.

Moments following extra-judicial killings of beloved members of the community wanted by the Israeli government.

People of Nablus protest against 2008/2009 war on Gaza in the Safe place for Gaza tent.©Pennie Quinton 201o

Moments in which people in the West Bank are forced to deal with their confusion and pain brought on by the Gaza war of 2008/2009 – combined with the Palestinian Authority clamping down on protest in the West bank at this desperate time.

Moments such as the bravery of children whose first language has become the politics of survival, out on the streets hurling stones at the wall following yet another bombardment of their cousins in Gaza.

Boy kicks tear gas grenade back towards the wall Bethlehem March 2008 ©Pennie Quinton 2010

Or moments of the villagers of Nilin and B' lin facing tear gas and stun grenades in their protests, held every Friday since 2004, resisting the illegal apartheid wall built on village lands.

Nilin October 2008 ©Pennie Quinton 2010

There is a saying in Palestine that ‘to be Palestinian is to exist to resist‘ and this essential stubbornness and refusal to disappear, this insistence on being continually present in the face of ongoing repression that interferes in every area of life, is a potent force in the demand for sovereignty.

The price of this is high, and people have been paying it since 1948. But there is no choice but to keep on paying it to resist is to survive.

Corpse of Mohammad Shehada assassinated by Israeli forces 12th March 2008 ©Pennie Quinton 2010

I love and admire this Palestinian strength in the struggle for self-determination and the moments where dancing and joy overflow despite everything.

Boys dance Dubka at Sabastia ancient amphitheatre Nakba 2008 ©Pennie Quinton 2010

I am proud to share some of these moments I was honoured to witness during my work in Palestine.

Tadamon Exhibition opening night private view is on the 2^nd September at the Freedom Gallery. above Freedom book shop in Angel Alley off Whitechapel High Street. Nearest Tube Aldgate East.

The Tadamon Exhibtion is open 12.00 – 18.00 Monday to Saturday and Sunday 12.00- 1600 until October the 5^th.

Freedom Bookshop
Angel Alley
84b Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7QX
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday Midday till 6pm, Midday till 4pmSunday
Phone: 020 7247 9249
email: shop@freedompress.org.uk

http://www.freedompress.org.uk/news

The great balcony flowering.

2010-07-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

©Pennie Quinton 2010

Thames at dawn

2010-05-24T04:48:00.000-07:00

©Pennie Quinton 2010

I have never seen the Thames looking so smooth and clear before.

©Pennie Quinton 2010

TUC Welfare protest and 1st picnic of 2010

2010-04-14T00:59:00.000-07:00

©Pennie Quinton

Blossom

2010-04-13T15:21:00.000-07:00

Apple blossom Victoria Park

2010-04-13T06:36:00.000-07:00

Bishops road blossom

2010-04-13T05:34:00.000-07:00

Danger of Tory Sus-style searches

2010-04-12T04:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/apr/12/sus-laws-tories-stop-search

By promising to reduce 'unnecessary' paperwork, the Tories would remove the last safeguards for stop-and-search victims

- Pennie Quinton
- guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 April 2010 16.20 BST
- Article history

Today is the deadline for the government's submission to the European court of human rights requesting that 17 judges reconsider the original decision reached unanimously by seven judges last year – that being stopped and searched without suspicion under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 was a serious violation of the right to privacy. The section 44 test case test case that Kevin Gillan and I took with Liberty set out to demonstrate the scope for misuse and lack of accountability of the power.

Section 44 has often been viewed as Labour's reintroduction of the notorious Sus laws that provoked the 1981 Brixton riots following the police operation "Swamp" – an attempt to cut street crime which used the Sus law to stop more than 1,000 people without suspicion over six days. Recent statistics show that young black people and British Asian people are still six times more likely to be stopped by the police under a variety of search powers than white people.

A powerful new British film, called Sus, will open at the East End film festival on 24 April. Based on a true story, Sus is a harrowing illustration of what can go wrong when police powers are insufficiently regulated. Set on the eve of the 1979 general election, Delroy's pregnant wife has been found dead in a pool of blood. He is brought in under the Sus laws as the main suspect and suffers a night of degrading humiliation from two racist police officers. Rather than seeking to establish the truth, they resort to a brutal interrogation which will shatter Delroy's world forever.

In recent years, a populist campaigning tool of the Conservative party has been to use a "pot calling kettle" rhetoric on Labour's attacks on civil liberties. In the Conservative draft manifesto, while maintaining they will abolish section 44's stop-and-search powers, they still seek to reintroduce old Sus-style searches, eliminating the receipt we are entitled to receive as evidence. Without the form, there is even less accountability and fewer safeguards for the person searched. From the manifesto:

A Conservative government will reduce the amount of paperwork that the police have to deal with, starting by cutting the stop form entirely and reducing the burden of stop-and-search procedures. Any search will still be recorded but by an officer radioing in, rather than filling in time-consuming paperwork.

"Radioing a search in", as the Conservative draft manifesto suggests, does not provide this safeguard. If a police officer needs to search, what appeal do we have against their decision? Submission to the process is the only option to avoid a potentially tense situation accelerating as the receipt demonstrates that we have co-operated fully with the procedure. In the power relations that necessarily exist between the police forces and the public, accountability is a necessary reassurance.

• Sus will open at the Rich Mix Saturday 24 April 8pm, followed by a panel discussion with the filmmaker, actors Clint Dyer, Rafe Spall and Ralph Brown, and guests Doreen Lawrence, Stephen Kamlish QC, David Akinsanya, Pennie Quinton and Corinne Ferguson

East End Blossom

2010-04-12T03:20:00.000-07:00

Pleated shadow

2010-04-06T04:38:00.000-07:00

Video from the NUJ international Women's day event now on line.

2010-04-05T01:38:00.000-07:00

Missing: 5000 women

http://www.londonfreelance.org/fl/1004iwd.html

THE MARCH London Freelance Branch meeting fell on International Women's Day, so we marked the occasion with a stellar list of speakers on the barriers women face in journalism - particularly broadcasting.

Dinah Caine speaks: watch video (QuickTime player required)

Video edited by Pennie Quinton / © email unmanageabletv@yahoo.co.uk

Dinah Caine is the Chief Executive of training organisation Skillset - which, as Pennie Quinton said introducing her, is "doing amazing work documenting the conditions women face working in TV and film".

The research findings she reported were not reassuring. The proportion of the "audiovisual" workforce who are women has fallen from 38 per cent in 2006 to 27 per cent in 2009. In television it fell from 45per cent to 41 per cent - which means 5000 women had left the industry, compared to 750 men.

This is despite the fact that more women in the industry are more qualified - 79 per cent are graduates, compared to 63 per cent of men. A clue to why and how this happened may lie in the proportion of women who were working as freelances; and in half the women in TV being under 35 years old.

Women are over-represented in fields like costume, wardrobe, makeup and hairdressing. The figure that illustrates the challenge to improving representation of women in media output is that only a quarter of those in "creative grades" are women.

More women than men have worked unpaid to get a foot in the door (47 per cent to 42 per cent) - as Dinah reported, this practice "is skewing the class profile, if not necessarily the gender profile" of the industry.

A year ago Skillset (www.skillset.org) started working with newspapers and publishing generally, so we look forward to more data.

Katharine Whitehorn speaks: watch video (QuickTime player required)

Video edited by Pennie Quinton / © email unmanageabletv@yahoo.co.uk

Columnist Katharine Whitehorn reflected on her 52 years in the NUJ: "there are ways in which things have got incomparably better for women," though she was "horrified" by Dinah's statistics. When she joined "the papers had a women's page, the rest of the paper was business and sport and news and foreign news - and sport."

In the 1950s that changed, almost entirely due to Mary Stott who, as a deputy sub on the Guardian, wrote a well-respected book on sub-editing - but was sent to the women's page because they had to train up a chief sub and that had to be a man.

In those days even male homosexuality had to go on the women's page, because it was the only place you could talk about human relationships, outside divorce proceedings. Observer editor David Astor found it difficult to hire women - so for that women's page he "hired George Seddon, who was a brilliant homosexual, as a sort of compromise."

Felicity Green, who started as a typist and ended up as deputy editor of the Daily Mirror, described the resulting broadening of coverage as "the feminisation of Fleet Street". "Never underestimate readers' intelligence," she said, "and never overestimate their knowledge". She was the first woman on the board of a Fleet Street paper - and left after another board member appointed on exactly twice her money.

Now, we have a woman foreign correspondent on the Times, a chief reporter at the Observer - and Julie Hillman "thought she'd made a great breakthrough" when she was allowed to report football as well as tennis.

Now, women are in many ways fighting the same battles as the men. Now women have the same trouble with sub-editors who won't see a joke without an appointment. And now people have no sense that it's in the least wrong to tell lies to women.

Everything is not, however, all right. "I think we're on to a different sort of fight," Katharine said, "which is how women are portrayed". We "had Blair's Babes... Can anyone imagine MPs like Eleanor Rathbone, who got family allowance paid direct to mothers, or Barbara Castle feeling they have to wear high heels or no-one would respect them?"

Kate Kinninmont speaks: watch video (QuickTime player required)

Video edited by Pennie Quinton / © email unmanageabletv@yahoo.co.uk

Kate Kinninmont arrived late, announcing "I've been waiting for this excuse all my career." The excuse was that she'd just been interviewed by Jon Snow, as Chief Executive of Women in Film and TV, (http{url:www.wftv.org.uk) about Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker getting six Oscars. As Dinah had already said, she's the first woman to win "best director" in 82 years of the awards.

With this news, "people are saying it must be better for women now. "No, it's got worse," Kate reported. Professor Martha Lauzen of San Diego State University does a study of the 250 top-grossing films, looking all the way through the credits. Just seven per cent are women. (See her research at jms.sdsu.edu/faculty_staff/bios/lauzen.html)

"When we discovered the 5,000 disappearing women" in UK TV, Kate was "shocked" She doesn't think people are consciously saying "let's just cut another woman out" - rather, "in this freelance world people appoint young men and young women, then think "she's around 30, she'll be having a baby'..." As a woman, "You have to work harder to count."

When Kate joined the BBC in Scotland in the early 1980s, having already had a professional career, people were asking "I can't place you - whose secretary are you?" After she'd left a woman approached her to say "I've always wanted to meet you: I was thinking about having a child and I was told there was a woman here once who had one..."

Yet women were in the forefront of the foundation of film. Among the first people to make a narrative film was Alice Guy in 1906. Then the movies moved to Hollywood and bankers and financiers came in: Film is high risk; they "see women are seen as higher-risk still".

Women, who are 51 per cent of the population, "cannot be satisfied with seven per cent telling the stories of human life and 13 per cent scriptwriting them".

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Sea at Wapping.

2010-04-04T05:12:00.000-07:00

The river was at high tide, a cold march day, walking and photographing and shivering.

Breaking through the Boys’ Broadcast Barrier

2010-02-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

http://media.gn.apc.org/fl/1003iwd.html

THE London Freelance Branch of the NUJ celebrates International Women's day with eminent journalists and leading campaigners for the recognition of women within the media industries: Dinah Caine, Kate Kinninmont and Katharine Whitehorn.

On Monday 8 March London Freelance Branch of the NUJ invites members to celebrate International Women's day at its monthly meeting: 7pm at Friends House, Euston. We'll examine the urgent issue of how to "break through the boys' broadcast barrier": in the words of journalist Laura Flanders women are the "Real Majority, Media Minority". See below for details of our speakers on this and more.

Flyer for the meeting by Pennie Quinton (from a photo listed as public domain) - click to download A4 printable version (1 MB jpeg)

Katharine Whitehorn

Born in 1928 in Hendon, Katharine Whitehorn is a British journalist, writer and columnist known for her wit and humour and as a keen observer of the changing role of women.

She was a sub-editor for a women's magazine in 1956 when Picture Post photographer Bert Hardy asked her to model for him. He photographed her for a story on loneliness in London: one Hardy photo of her sitting by a fire with a cigarette, as if thinking to write an article instead of being lonely, became an advertisement for the energy drink Lucozade.

She wrote for Picture Post just before it closed, then worked as a columnist for the Observer in London from 1960 until 1996. Her 1963 article on "Sluts", in the sense of "slovenly women" and identifying herself with the term, created a minor sensation.

She also served as the Rector of the University of St Andrews from 1982 to 1985. Since 1997 she has written a monthly column for Saga Magazine.

In 2009 she began presenting the short philosophical Friday evening programme on Radio 4 entitled A Point of View.

Dinah Caine OBE

Dinah Caine is Chief Executive Officer of Skillset, the Sector Skills Council for the Creative Media Industries whose mission is to "support the improvements to the productivity of our industry to ensure that it remains globally competitive". She previously worked in the Film and Video Workshop sector, at the British Film Institute and for the media & entertainment trade unions ACCT and then BECTU.

Until recently she was Deputy Chair of the Alliance of Sector Skills Councils and continues to chair their work in London. In that capacity she sits as an Advisor on the Mayor's London Skills and Employment Board.

She is currently a member of the British Screen Advisory Council and was until recently a Board Member of the joint Board of the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen. She has also previously been a Board Member of the Northern Ireland Film and TV Commission and the Central London Training and Enterprise Council.

She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was awarded Fellowship of the Royal Television Society for her outstanding contribution to the Television Industry in 2002.

She was awarded the OBE for her services to the Media Industries in the Queen's Golden Jubilee Honours List in 2002.

See: www.skillset.org

Kate Kinninmont

Kate Kinninmont is Chief Executive of Women in Film and TV, "the premier membership organisation for the women in the industry", part of an international group with a membership of 10,000 around the world. As an award-winning TV producer and director, first with BBC then as a freelancer, Kate has filmed all over the world - from the dacha of Yevteshenko in Moscow to the bamboo hut of an aboriginal family in the tropical jungles of Malaysia.

For almost 20 years she has been an active volunteer with WFTV, running their Events Committee and chairing the Board of Directors for six years. She is a member of The Directors Guild of Great Britain, BAFTA and the NUJ, and is now delighted to be WFTV's full-time Chief Executive.

See: www.wftv.org.uk

2010-02-18T04:45:00.001-08:00

Police spotter card P: Pennie Quinton

2010-02-18T04:39:00.000-08:00

Journalist and human rights campaigner,

Police spotter card P Pennie Quinton Photograph: Public Domain

"I was almost certainly on the card because I had been stopped and searched under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 while reporting on the DSEi arms fair in Docklands on 9 September 2003. As a result of being detained I was unable to film a key part of the protest.

"With Liberty, I took the Metropolitan police to the European court of human rights. The case was heard on 12 May this year after a six-year trek through the British justice system. I am still waiting to hear the Strasbourg finding.

"And now I am on a database as a domestic extremist. So what is that? Is it like extreme ironing?

"As a result of reporting on protest, my face is now stored on a series of overlapping IT systems for police eyes only. I am not happy. And, yes, this is a possible breach of my right to a private life, Section 8A of the European Convention on Human Rights.

"The cost of policing DSEi in 2005 was £4m, but the arms trade is worth billions in income to the British economy, arms are one of 'our' most important exports.

"For all 'our' liberal chatter about a 'right to protest', elsewhere in the world we are selling advanced technologies to melt and stir fry 'other' people who exist a long way away from the Palace of Westminster.

"There's the rub: if as ordinary people we dislike what our decision makers are doing, we hit the street to make our displeasure felt, can we wait for the media to hold the powerful to account?

"So the decision makers then organise a database of those who question the status quo, decision makers in general do not like to be criticised or challenged. See the work carried out by the International Federation of Journalists on press freedom.

So who really gets to benefit from the information stored on these databases, and is there any process for properly assessing the truth of police officers' carefully entered observations?

"Standing around protesting, or disrupting an arms dealers' corporate dinner in such a context is hardly extremism – merely inconvenient. I suppose budget allocation would not be so promising if the chiefs of police referred to protesters as 'domestic inconveniences'."

Rebranding protest as extremism

2010-02-15T06:01:00.000-08:00

The label 'domestic extremists' helps the police justify abusing anti-terror laws to target legitimate protest

Are British law enforcers working in a culture where they routinely associate protest with terrorism? The scene is set by a Guardian investigation that revealed secret C011 databases holding information on "domestic extremists".

Unlike terrorism, defined in the UK by the Terrorism Act 2000, there is no equivalent legal definition for domestic extremism, as the home secretary admitted yesterday. So is domestic extremism merely an "on the hoof" concept devised in a culture deeply suspicious of protest?

The National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit, Netcu says:

These people and activities usually seek to prevent something from happening or to change legislation or domestic policy, but attempt to do so outside of the normal democratic process.

By their own definition I would regard the setting up of NECTU – an offshoot of an unaccountable private company, the Association of Chief Police Officers – as an example of domestic extremism, as it sits outside the democratic process.

Just as worrying as the world of surveillance databases is the range of anti-terror legislation used to target legitimate protest. The Terrorism Act 2000 has made London a city of "flying checkpoints" a term more commonly used to mean soldiers and jeeps pitching up by the side of a road, stopping vehicles, searching those that pass without reason other then that they are viewed as a security risk.

This power which allows police officers to stop and search any individual, without reasonable suspicion, has been used at protests to intimidate demonstrators.

I believe I came to be labelled a domestic extremist – eventually ending up on a police spotter card – after being stopped under section 44 in the Docklands in 2003 DSEi protests. I was prevented from filming protesters being pulled to the ground by officers as they ran towards the EXCEL centre.

Despite showing my press card, verifiable with Scotland Yard, to the WPC who detained me, I was prevented from going about my business. With the aid of the human rights campaign group Liberty I have been seeking remedy for what I perceive to be wrongful detention. It has taken six years and we still await the European court of human rights's (ECHR) findings.The problem is not just my specific grievance but that the actual legislation is problematic. The police do not have to provide justification for stop and searches under section 44.

When they rejected our appeal the House of Lords advised that if we felt wronged we could seek remedy in the county court. This proved unsatisfactory, as the police are unanswerable for any searches carried out under this legislation so cannot be questioned regarding their motives.

Domestic remedy exhausted, the remaining and costly alternative is the ECHR in Strasbourg. These processes take time and cost vast sums of money making this avenue of redress too expensive for most people to pursue.

So lets unwrap this, section 44 stop and searches can be carried out in any designated area where a special authorisation is in place. In London where many protests are likely to occur the police have carried out more than 150,000 section 44 searches since 2007. At demonstrations police officers, already deeply suspicious of the culture of protest, freely use this legislation. They can use reasonable force to detain someone to carry out the search if the person refuses to comply, they may even refuse to tell the person if a section 44 authorisation is in place, as this may benefit any wannabe terrorists in the area. There is clearly a cultural crisis in the policing of protest.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/oct/30/spotter-card-stop-and-search

Halt the erosion of our civil liberties

2010-02-15T05:54:00.000-08:00

SO DO European governments view protest as a situation equivalent to a "state of emergency" in which rights to privacy and freedom of movement are expendable?

Pennie Quinton reflects on the background to her European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling that Section 44 of the Terrorism Act is illegal.

Image © Conscience de Pravity

AFTER SIX years, and with the crucial support of civil rights campaign group Liberty, the ECHR has ruled, in favour of Kevin Gilliam and myself, that section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is a serious breach of Section 8a of European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to private life.

We were both searched under S44 during protests at the DSEI (Defence Systems & Equipment International) arms fair in September 2003.

I believe S44 was misused to prevent my filming police assaulting protestors at the demonstration. This "emergency" legislation gives police officers the power to stop and search anyone without reasonable suspicion.

It is heavily overused, as statistics produced by Lord Carlile's reviews of the Act and others show.

Through our many hearings over the six years it became apparent that the police are unanswerable for any searches carried out using this legislation.

On the ground it is a relatively paperless power, for ease of use in any situation.

The stop-and-search power given by S44 was intended as an exceptional measure to protect the public from the threat of terrorism. So why are protests in the UK policed using this legislation?

Lord Bingham, ruling against us in the House of Lords, said that British citizens should be prepared to sacrifice a little of their privacy in the face of the current terror threat: but we should be more aware the sacrifice we are being asked to make.

If an officer wishes to search under S44 we have no right to refuse. Refusal means the officer may use "reasonable force" to ensure that the search is carried out. Reasonable force has the following vague definition:

A degree of force that is appropriate in a given situation and is not excessive. The minimum degree of force necessary to protect oneself, ones property, a third party, or the property of another in the face of a substantial threat.

As a freelance journalist I experienced one police officer's interpretation of reasonable force while covering the demonstrations that erupted across the capital on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I was picked up bodily by a PC, then thrown at a moving vehicle passing Charing Cross police station. Meanwhile officers attacked protestors inside awaiting news of those arrested.

Is unquestionable submission to reasonable force yet another small sacrifice of all our civil liberties, and is it one we should be prepared to make in these "exceptional times"?

All professions must be accountable for their actions - including law enforcement.

Being stopped under Section 44 in Docklands at the 2003 DSEI protests prevented my filming protestors running towards the EXCEL centre and being pulled to the ground by officers - despite having shown the WPC detaining me my press card.

Interference with freedom of the press is of course another important factor of my test case.

As members of the NUJ we must work together to prevent the erosion of our civil liberties while continuing to hold the powerful to account with the best of all of our professions' abilities.

The government is extremely unhappy about the ECHR ruling: it has announced it will refer the judgment to the Court’s Grand Chamber. It has until 12 April to lodge this "appeal". Many feel this is a ruse to avoid implementing the judgment immediately - so watch this space.

Pennie Quinton

http://media.gn.apc.org/fl/1002pq.html

Lights at Christmas time

2010-02-01T11:56:00.001-08:00

Mermaid's egg.
Dragon bunker below here

Spectre walks the bridge

Sea faeries.
This is where the emotion map amd spectres roam in the mermaid story.
Recycled christmas decorations

Sleeplessness

2010-01-28T11:03:00.000-08:00

At the time of the Gaza shelling in December 2008, it was hard to deal with so much death and despair.
There seemed no appropriate way to express horror at the massacre without burdening people more so I found myself praying to cope with the horrific nature of the war and I was praying because I was so powerless.

She is here with her great and infinite beauty.

Only love can stop this pain and only in love can there be beauty.

Beauty lies within in all things and to grow needs love.

Practise pointing out beauty everyday for when heart broken and bitter it is hard to see beauty.

When searching for something misplaced or lost it is important to look thoroughly and carefully.

When carrying the burden of pain sometimes it seems nothing or no one can ease it

but ask for help and what is needed will come.

Do not look to the pain for answers

but look to the strength of the person bearing up under pain

and help them stay strong rather than dissolving with them in tears and sorrow,

Love plants, love trees and love to care for them, gardens are a symbol of love and need to be honoured.

Buildings should be gardens of stone places for hope to grow.

Deep pain such that over whelms must seek love to quell its flow

but beware of pain’s residue if left penetrates strength unnoticed.

Seek love and beauty no matter how hard it is to find.

Road to Nablus from Sebastia and Al Bidan

2010-01-23T16:02:00.000-08:00

On the road to Al Bidan is a rusting fair ground and a landed jet, the only Palestinian plane in the West bank.

A restauranteur set it up as an eatery in the hills, he was just ready to serve up when the Israelis established a check point next to his jet and so no one came for lunch, the jet and big wheel sit on the hillside alone amongst the dust and the rubbish near the now deserted check point.

The check point near the only Plane in Palestine.

The way back to Nablus from Sabastia.

Father and son out for a ride on this beautiful spring day.

I miss the light in Palestine the most I think, I love its intensity and how it makes thistles shine silvery purple in the midday sun.

I photographed so many thistles and other spikey plants...

River at night time

2010-01-23T14:36:00.000-08:00

Steps from the fore shore on the north side of the Thames.

London is full of bizarre safety notices.

...and security guards

...and weird women in woolly hats

... and light reflections

... a brown gravy river

and pink neon strip lights.

Home at last by the river and an Inventory of my room.

2010-01-23T14:13:00.000-08:00

Watching the Thames at low tide.

I am back in London now and it feels like watery soup after the dense intensity of Palestine. Something is missing and life feels diluted.

By the ghost bridge.
Cannon street Bridge
Tower Bridge
My room just before I bought a bed.

In my room there is a flying mermaid heading in the direction of Bow road, she is armed with mirror and comb, to serve as her sword and shield.

To her North from the white wall a carved wooden sun grins down upon a shelf-bound mermaid who reclines with mirror tucked between her head and shoulder.

A day of the dead skeleton, glitters suave in orange ribbons and a pink felt witches hat sits upon the grey crown of the rubber gas mask overlooking a mandolin.

The murder of Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahmah by Israeli soldiers firing on peaceful demonstration on 17th April 2009. RIP Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahmah

2009-04-18T00:58:00.000-07:00

On Friday the 17th of April 2009 the Israeli military shot and killed Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahmah aged 30, during the weekly nonviolent protest against the Wall in the West Bank village of Bil'in.

Here is an image of him taken just over a year ago on the 11th April 2008 marching with the rest of the men of Bilin to hold the weekly non violent protest against the illegal wall built on their village lands.

Just before the start of the demonstration he showed me barrels of used CS gas cartridges and remnants of sound bombs that the Israelis had fired during the protests.

Used CS gas cartridges.

Remnants of sound bombs.

All collected by the villagers from the lands around Bilin following the protests.

Palestinian killed in Bilin protest

Local demonstrator seriously injured by tear gas canister hit to his chest during anti-fence rally, dies of wounds shortly after reaching hospital. IDF says protest was violent. Demonstrators: We're like sitting ducks; soldiers fire at anything that moves; army, PA investigating

Ali Waked and Anat Shalev

Palestinian sources reported Friday that a local demonstrator was killed after being hit in the chest by a tear gas canister during a protest against the separation fence in the West Bank village of Bilin.

The man, 30-year-old Bassem Ibrahim Abu-Rahma from Bilin, was evacuated to a Ramallah hospital in serious condition, where he then died of his wounds. The army confirmed the report of Abu-Rahma's death.

Representatives of the IDF and the Coordination and Liaison Authority met with Palestinian officials later in the day as part of the joint investigation into the incident.

Follow the link to see video:

http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3702569,00.html

http://imemc.org/article/60009

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=37179

M returns to the prison where he was held, as a political prisoner periodically from the age of 13 until 25.

2009-04-10T15:21:00.000-07:00

The picture below shows the Palestinian residential youth activities centre at Al Farah village in the north of the West Bank. During the 1980s the centre was operated by Israeli forces as a prison for juvenile political prisoners.

It was originally built by the British during the mandate between 1923 and 1947.
It remained in this capacity under the Jordanian mandate from 1948. After the state of Israel invaded the West Bank in 1967, it used the site to imprison boys involved in student protests against the Israeli occupation.
Soon there were so many prisoners that tents were erected entirely filling the grounds.

Situated in the heart of Al Farah village, the prison became the centre of many clashes with Israeli forces.

The Israelis abandoned the prison following the 1993 Oslo agreements. The village re-occupied it and used it for youth activities - to prevent any other authority using it as a prison. The village had suffered many losses due to its close proximity.

This is M a friend of mine from Nablus. He is standing in the doorway of what was the interrogation block of the Israeli operated juvenile prison in Al Farah village in the northern West bank.
M was imprisoned by the Israeli authority for various periods from the age of 13 until 25 for taking part in student demonstrations against the Israeli occupation in the West bank during the 80s and 90s.
He was tortured here during his many long interrogations.

"Originally this prison was just for youth but then the Israeli army arrested all the Palestinian school teachers and imprisoned them with us in the cells. We had lessons crammed in all together," he said, laughing bitterly: "the teachers made us sing all day."

We walked down a white washed corridor of the interrogation block, looking into narrow cells just 1 metre deep and scarcely wide enough for one person to stand with their arms stretched out to the sides. These cells had one window high up in the back wall.

"We could be in here for days and days," M recalled. "If we were lucky, we were allowed to use the toilet for two minutes a day. Otherwise, we were forced to go in the cells."

There were 3 squat toilets at the end of the corridor, they had no running water.
“I used my two minutes as an opportunity to have a quick wash down with a bottle of water.
This place stank, when the Israelis left they had to burn it to clean it.
It is good that it has been preserved to show what happened here”

On one of the walls a prisoner had scratched a calendar.

"Many bad things were done to us here and we have preserved it so we will never forget", said one of the youth centre workers who was also imprisoned and tortured at Al Farah.

“This is the interrogation room,” said M pointing to a slightly larger room opposite the tiny cells.
“They would put us in the cells opposite so we could hear the others being tortured, sometimes they would just pretend to torture somebody so that we would be terrified when it came to our turn. We would never know if the screams were for real or not”

The isolation room outside was even smaller then the punishment cells. It has no window.

It is just a cupboard 50 cm deep that faces out into the yard. When the door is shut the inmate is enclosed in a dark space exposed to the extremities of temperature.

"If they put us in here, sometimes they would just forget about us, leaving us without food or water for days at a time."

In the yard was a type of backless concrete chair.

“ They used to put us here for hours, days sometimes, rain or shine and tie our hands like this.”
M demonstrates how he was tied.

The youth worker accompanying us, showed us the wall hooks opposite the concrete back-less chairs where boys would be tied in a crouching position for long periods of time.

Convention against Torture.
This convention bans torture under all circumstances and establishes the UN Committee against Torture.
In particular, it defines torture, requires states to take effective legal and other measures to prevent torture, declares that no state of emergency, other external threats, nor orders from a superior officer or authority may be invoked to justify torture.
It forbids countries to return a refugee to his country if there is reason to believe he/she will be tortured, and requires host countries to consider the human rights record of the person's native country in making this decision.
The CAT requires states to make torture illegal and provide appropriate punishment for those who commit torture.
It requires states to assert jurisdiction when torture is committed within their jurisdiction, either investigate and prosecute themselves, or upon proper request extradite suspects to face trial before another competent court.
It also requires states to cooperate with any civil proceedings against accused torturers.
Each state is obliged to provide training to law enforcement and military on torture prevention, keep its interrogation methods under review, and promptly investigate any allegations that its officials have committed torture in the course of their official duties.
It must ensure that individuals who allege that someone has committed torture against them are permitted to make and official complaint and have it investigated, and, if the complaint is proven, receive compensation, including full medical treatment and payments to survivors if the victim dies as a result of torture.
It forbids states to admit into evidence during a trial any confession or statement made during or as a result of torture.
It also forbids activities which do not rise to the level of torture, but which constitute cruel or degrading treatment.

http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html

A Rainy Friday in Nablus

2009-02-27T12:05:00.000-08:00

Poem in progress

Raining day today the lemons are getting washed
Lurching, on storm tossed stems, bright yellow diamonds
dance with hills wearing Shrouds, rain cascading in frills
through Fridays old city empty of trade

every awning is flowing a transient flood
silhouettes shimmer in archways, then vanish
martyrs faces on posters melting in memory

washing off paper hanging torn on the walls.

On Mount Gerizim, thinking about Gaza, timeless occupations and endless ethnic cleansings

2009-02-06T05:47:00.000-08:00

Over the December period, Israel started shelling Gaza in a major offensive against the civilian population who individually paid the price with massive fatalities, dismembered limbs and phosphorous burns penetrating skin to bone.

Sharp blades of all sizes and shapes, lethal slivers raining down slicing and piecing, amputating; arms from bodies, heads from necks...

Gazans were prevented from leaving the strip, trapped inside as the knives and fire rained down.

In Nablus people clung to their TV screens, eyes spread- eagled wide, unable to work as the seemingly endless deformities of destruction paraded night after night.

The Nabulsi viewers compulsively searched for evidence of relatives amongst the piles of rubble, unable to tear themselves away from Al Jazeera's continuous reels of war porn, knowing through bitter experience that on the ground in Gaza it was hell well beyond this nightly TV spectacle.

In the West Bank meaningful acts of resistance to the massacre seemed impossible.
The political divisions and rivalries prevented any public showing of grief that were not disrupted by the chanting of rival slogans or fist fights between party activists.

Utter futility in the face of Israel's plague on the house of Hamas.

The disturbing footage of dazed child survivors staring blankly into space while doctors removed their bandages for the cameras, revealing the effects of phosphorus burning skin down to bone was terrible to see.

I have experienced full thickness burns on 10 % of my body, so as I saw these images I recalled the excruciating sensation of nerve endings growing back, the intense agony of mere air touching flesh. Wincing as doctors removed the child's bandages, remembering that even large doses of dia-morphine did not block the electric agony of thousands of vibrating nerves reacting to air on wound and that this maddening sensation would continue for up to two hours after the exposure, despite the numbing effect of opiates.

I also recall that the major concern of medical staff was controlling bacterial infections that could attack healthy as well as damaged skin, eating it back to the bone.

When wounds are so intensive, infection is near impossible to prevent.

In my pristine burns unit, the nurses banned lettuce and flowers because these carry the staphylococcus bacteria.

When viewing the state of hospitals in Gaza and the reports of water and fuel shortages I despair for the wounded chances of survival.

Day after day the number of dead and mutilated victims rose to 2300 fatalities and over 5000 serious injuries.

Gaza has been left, following this massacre with 600,000 tonnes of rubble from 14, 000 destroyed homes and buildings.

Living and working in Nablus at this time is strange: people here are traumatized generally from the occupation and constant exposure to violence but this latest offensive in Gaza has shown just how much Israel despises Arab humanity and I am very afraid for the future.

Nablus Solidarity demonstration for Gaza

2008-12-27T07:51:00.000-08:00

Girls and women thinking of suffering in Gaza.
Youth make banners in English to share their peace message with the world.

A very young peace activist.
Woman with toy pistol, trying to look scary.

Today the Israelis have begun shelling Gaza once more, the death count as I type is over 150 people on the 27th December. We can only expect more deaths as Israel look set to continue on this illegal collective punishment of the people of Gaza.
Around 500 people in Nablus held an impromptu demonstration following today's' massacre. The demonstration marched around the centre of town and through the narrow alley ways of the old city with people calling for an end to internal divisions, saying that the Israeli military wants all Palestinian's dead regardless of their political affiliation.

2008-12-14T11:26:00.000-08:00

2008-12-14T11:12:00.000-08:00

Roof tops of Cairo

2008-12-14T10:23:00.000-08:00

The inevitable tear gas : (

2008-12-01T13:49:00.000-08:00

Sick games boys with stones ducking bullets, more of the same!

2008-12-01T12:37:00.000-08:00

Weekly demonstration called in Nilin village against illegal Israeli settlement being built on Nilin land.
Arrived late for demonstration, internationals gone , found a bunch of boys, catapulting stones in the general direction of tear gas clouds.
Whole area ended up being drenched in tear gas, regardless of involvement.

One last shot of Fox

2008-12-01T12:22:00.000-08:00

I guess this blog has got a little Fox orientated, so one last shot.

Fox in silver screen :)

2008-12-01T11:53:00.000-08:00

The amazing adventures of Fox!

2008-12-01T11:05:00.000-08:00

OK so now everyone tells me not pick up street dogs and adopt them! It's too late the deed is done.

"Eeek diseases, eek! Rabies! " etc etc.

I find an emaciated puppy with a fractured rear tibia, take him home, feed him tuna, and fall in love .

In a good will gesture am driven to Jerusalem by a burly British security specialist, who drives like the very devil.

Am refused rabies vax booster by Doctor in Israeli ministry of health, on account that I have adopted dog (now called Fox) and would just be re-exposed if Fox is infected so have to wait until I start frothing and then I have 72 hours, er but don't kill the dog, bring alive in secure basket!

So picture this scenario...

"Er hello Israeli soldier at check point, er yeah, it's a rabid dog and I am er taking it into 48"

Should I not be deported at this point for being a biological threat to the state of Israel, my next mission is to overcome Palestinian cultural aversion to dogs.

Shared taxi station post check point.

" Marhaba! er may I please put my dog in your vehicle? What's the matter with it?
Oh its' fine just a bit peaky, the froth, oh don't worry about that, its nothing, nothing!"

Only a further three Israeli check points to cross in shared taxi ferrying barking mad hound pardon the pun, whilst knowing all the while that I have hardly any time to get myself vaccinated before facing horrible death.

Mmmm interesting advice doctor.

Anyway Fox seems healthy and is gaining weight, as you can see!

Al Aqsa Mosque the third most holy place in Islam

2008-11-08T09:02:00.000-08:00

Jaffa Port

2008-11-04T11:14:00.000-08:00

War Dreams

2008-11-04T09:29:00.000-08:00

War dream three

Am awakened by the dream’s vividness in the early hours of the morning.

Afghanistan. Gentle green hills, a dusty road running through the countryside, the light is soft. The land beautiful but for the sense of danger all around, for this is a war torn country. I am a child I am wandering alone. I do not know if I am a boy or girl, I am malnourished and my clothes are ragged, I look down at myself and I see I am wearing torn red trousers.

Rumbling sounds vibrate through the yellow earth, a tank is coming.

I crouch down near the edge of the road in the dust. The tank inevitably comes with the soldiers riding on top. English, they speak English, they say something I don’t know what.

I am afraid, they make me crouch down lower, they point guns at me, I say nothing do nothing just crouch there, like they said.

Then they go on their way, their tank rolls away, taking them and their guns further along this endless road though nowhere.

I stand up and start along in my hesitant walking crouching run along this endless dusty track relieved to have survived an encounter with soldiers.

Once more the ground starts to rumble beneath my feet, another tank is coming.

A ruined house just a wall of stones with windows shot out, a line of four evenly spaced rectangles show the sky.

The rumbling is getting louder soon the tank will appear from around the bend. I do not want to encounter any more soldiers.

I crouch down once more, behind the wall with the evenly spaced rectangles.
The sky is a soft grey and the silky grass is taller than me a lush blue green.

The ground shakes and then ceases, the tank has stopped by the wall, more English voices.
“Come out we know you’re there! Come out, or we’ll blow you and this building to pieces!”

The sound of the gun starting up, I crouch down to make myself yet smaller, please let them pass; please let them not mean it. Maybe I will survive this!

I wake it is still the dark early hours of morning.

War dream 2

I am a girl of ten years. The Taliban has taken over Shoreditch high street on horseback. The Taliban herd all the women and children inside a cobbled goods yard near the church and lock the metal gates higher then a two-storey building.

We all lie down together on the cobbles and huddling and clutching each other wrapped up in our gauzy dresses.

From outside the gates we hear the sounds of a massacre-taking place; we cling to each other more tightly trying to shut out the screams and the gun fire.

I imagine catching all the bullets fired in the hollow of my wrist preventing them from penetrating flesh and killing.

Scarlet blood flows beneath the gate into the goods yard it soaks into our gauzy dresses. We lie there and wait.

The gates are opened the massacre has finished.

I return home to my family’s small apartment. I stand by the kitchen window looking across London holding my left wrist, which suffers from a sharp pain, from where I clenched it tight imagining catching the bullets.

The dream cuts to a voice over and now I am watching the girl stand by the window looking out at the grey sky.

Voice Over, "Shortly after she died of a constricted vein where she had caught the dream bullets in her wrist, her heart just stopped."

War Dream 1

Wembley stadium. I am working as a journalist. The stadium is being used as a torture centre; we are trying to get footage out to international media.

Vomit and blood flows everywhere, people are screaming. I wade through the blood and crawl along huge heating pipes to try and get shots of what is happening.

I look out across the pitch, people are running, black figures against green. Helicopters circle, firing at the fleeing stick figures, mines are dropped, which explode as the people run across the playing field.

“Oh god they are killing them!”

As the black mines penetrate the grass I know there is no way out of here. I rush towards windows on the other side of the building and look across the city.
London is a vast sea of bill board sized screens, frantic with moving images which all erupt into one single image of Goddess Kali screaming with laughter blood dripping from her mouth as she howls with pleasure at the carnage and death all around.

My Nabloosi leery pumpkin head!!

2008-11-04T07:46:00.000-08:00

So it is Halloween and I am in Nablus, if I mention Halloween to anyone here, the most common response is, " oh like in America?"

And I say yes, like in America but different to America.

Of course Halloween is big in America, there everything is bigger.

But Halloween has for me specifically UK associations, a certain type of mysterious light at dusk, big orange spiders that suddenly hang in bushes and doorways. A certain sadness that winter is coming and the yearning for summer past, often a summer that never appeared.

Halloween in the UK is still seen as something sinful a bit naughty as well as being a commercial festival to encourage more punters to drink in bars on the 31st of October.

Halloween my favourite festival, mysterious and picaresque unlike the blatent in yer faceness of the Yule season.

So every Halloween I carve my pumpkin head and make my wishes for the new year commencing on the 1st of November and say farewell to the year just past.

The orangey glow inside the jack o lantern, the small flame like my embryonic excitement of things to come.

Student Council Elections in a Northern West bank University

2008-11-04T04:11:00.000-08:00

Survey of student travel at An Najah University Nablus

2008-11-02T04:35:00.000-08:00

The northern West bank city of Nablus sits in a valley and the only way in or out of the city is through check points manned by Israeli soldiers. The Palestinian population suffer terribly from this in terms of trade and travel restrictions. Human rights of Palestinians are violated at every level. http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/W_report/English/2008/30-10-2008.htm

Within the Right to Education Campaign at An Najah National University we are setting up systems for the collection of data on human rights abuses at check points. Student volunteer field workers on the campaign handed out a survey devised by researchers in partnership with Bethlehem University. The above images show the students at work on campus collecting and sharing data.

Above the misty soup

2008-09-17T06:42:00.001-07:00

Those who live in the valley of Nablus woke and saw only mist.

Misty Nablus Morn

2008-09-17T06:42:00.000-07:00

Methada in the Jerusalem Desert

2008-09-12T11:48:00.000-07:00

Where I can be found very soon.....

2008-08-21T08:53:00.001-07:00

Standing on the steps of the Sacre Coeur

2008-08-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

Standing on the steps of the Sacre Coeur, the highest point in Paris looking across the city, just hours after we wandered the catacombs the city's deep dark foundations.

Paris Catacombs a unique civil monument

2008-08-21T08:19:00.000-07:00

The Paris Catacombs...
....as the cemeteries fill so the long time dead were moved and stored in the labyrinthine passageways beneath the city.
Skulls and bones join the foundations of Paris, once a citizen of Paris always a citizen of Paris, alive or dead.

Strange train stations...

2008-08-04T05:07:00.000-07:00

Grey grey grey ......

2008-08-04T04:53:00.000-07:00

London through a rain spattered bus window

2008-08-04T04:42:00.001-07:00

Tower Bridge

2008-07-28T16:57:00.000-07:00

2008-07-28T16:42:00.000-07:00

From Tower Bridge on a Friday Night

2008-07-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time I lived on Tower Bridge Road and at any time of day or night tourists can be found taking photographs of the bridge.
Because I is a Londoner I disdained to take pictures there, but one Friday as the sun set I sucumbed...

Beach leaves & Faerie grass

2008-07-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

Dried out woody arteries

2008-07-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

Disembowled Savernake beasty

2008-07-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

Mossy savernake beasty

2008-07-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

Tree beasts of Savernake

2008-07-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

Dancing on mud to f stop 6.7

2008-07-24T05:20:00.000-07:00

Bridges and dykes

2008-07-24T04:02:00.001-07:00

Leigh on sea becomes a series of small marshy dykes and tidal inlets that meander into the stenchy marshes of Pitsea, Fobbing and Rainham.

Muddy shoes

2008-07-24T03:52:00.000-07:00

I do like to be beside industrial sea side

2008-07-24T03:41:00.000-07:00

At Leigh on Sea prawns and shell fish are vacuumed up from black mud, and the oil refineries of Canvey Island and the Isle of Grain glimmer across the estuary.

It's me fuming rights init!

Special Report | Why world peace needs women

Tectonic movements in the British media

Society is bigger than government

Running through riotous London - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Audio of Debate "Why does Street Photography make us paranoid."

Audio and Video highlights of Debate organised by 'the London Festival of Street photography' on why does street photography make us paranoid.

[Audio] http://londonstreetphotography​festival.org/uploads/whydoesst​reetphotographymakeusparanoid_​debateaudio.mp3

http://saveKEMP.com

"Free Gaza have a great day" Graffiti @ Gunnersbury train station

Full Moon over Tower blocks

'Unsung hero' Brian Haw, 1949-2011

The revolution in heaven will not be televised

PENNIE QUINTON:

Canal Art one Sunday April 2011

The Magician he sparkles in satin and velvet, you gaze at his splendour with eyes you've not used yet" Donovan lyric from Sunny Goodge Street

The Magician he sparkles in satin and velvet, you gaze at his splendour with eyes you've not used yet" Donovan lyric from Sunny Goodge Street

The street of the definite article

Vale Vittorio Arrigoni, 'hero of Palestine'

Vale Vittorio Arrigoni, 'hero of Palestine'

Black Block on the move in London

Sunset over Bow February 2011

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/94998

Tadamon: Images Of Solidarity And Strength In Palestine

Tadamon Exhibition: images of solidarity & strength in Palestine

The great balcony flowering.

Thames at dawn

TUC Welfare protest and 1st picnic of 2010

Blossom

Apple blossom Victoria Park

Bishops road blossom

Danger of Tory Sus-style searches

East End Blossom

Pleated shadow

Video from the NUJ international Women's day event now on line.

Missing: 5000 women

Sea at Wapping.

Breaking through the Boys’ Broadcast Barrier

http://media.gn.apc.org/fl/1003iwd.html

Katharine Whitehorn

Dinah Caine OBE

Kate Kinninmont

Police spotter card P: Pennie Quinton

Rebranding protest as extremism

Halt the erosion of our civil liberties

Lights at Christmas time

Sleeplessness

Road to Nablus from Sebastia and Al Bidan

River at night time

Home at last by the river and an Inventory of my room.

The murder of Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahmah by Israeli soldiers firing on peaceful demonstration on 17th April 2009. RIP Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahmah

Palestinian killed in Bilin protest

M returns to the prison where he was held, as a political prisoner periodically from the age of 13 until 25.

A Rainy Friday in Nablus

On Mount Gerizim, thinking about Gaza, timeless occupations and endless ethnic cleansings

Nablus Solidarity demonstration for Gaza

Roof tops of Cairo

The inevitable tear gas : (

Sick games boys with stones ducking bullets, more of the same!

One last shot of Fox

Fox in silver screen :)

The amazing adventures of Fox!

Al Aqsa Mosque the third most holy place in Islam

Jaffa Port

War Dreams

My Nabloosi leery pumpkin head!!

Student Council Elections in a Northern West bank University

Survey of student travel at An Najah University Nablus

Above the misty soup

Misty Nablus Morn

Methada in the Jerusalem Desert

Where I can be found very soon.....

Standing on the steps of the Sacre Coeur

Paris Catacombs a unique civil monument

Strange train stations...

Grey grey grey ......

London through a rain spattered bus window

Tower Bridge

From Tower Bridge on a Friday Night

Beach leaves & Faerie grass

[Audio] http://londonstreetphotographyfestival.org/uploads/whydoesstreetphotographymakeusparanoid_debateaudio.mp3