BlogBlog
Do out-of-court settlements undermine justice?
Blog
20 May 2012
Great film by Michael Watts broadcast earlier this month on Al Jazeera looking at the problems caused when multinational corporations are allowed to settle cases of human rights complicity out of court. The example used is the suppression of local resistance to British company Monterrico's massive Rio Blanco copper mine in Peru.
International ‘Global Spring’ 12 May
Blog
11 May 2012
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world prepare to take to the streets this weekend as part of a global call for change.
The International ‘Global Spring’ Assembly – an international and inter-movement assembly formed of supporters of Occupy, Take the Square and Latin American, African, Asian and Middle Eastern social movements – has released the Global May Manifesto which calls for systemic change in the global economy: the radical democratisation of international institutions like the IMF, BIS and UN; the replacement of the G8/20 with a democratic UN assembly; a system of global taxation on financial transactions; and for the abolition of tax havens.
On 15 October 2011, more than 1 million people in nearly 1,000 cities around the world took to the streets to demand change. Resulting from the call for global resistance by the Spanish Indignados and the Occupy movement, on 12 May a similar action will take place in hundreds of cities worldwide. Visit the International website: www.may12.net for information on your city. Below are information for action in London and Brussels.
OCCUPY LONDON– Meet the 1%
In London, the Global Spring will start tomorrow (12 May) at 1pm at St Paul’s Cathedral, with a teach-out organised by the Tent City University before we visit those who:
- Gambled with our pensions and savings,
- Created financial nonsense to make money out of thin air,
- Brought the global economy to the brink of ruin and forced ordinary people to pay for their mess,
- Paid hundreds of thousands to wine and dine with our ‘elected’ representatives,
- Have taken more than £1tn in bailouts from the taxpayer and continue to pay themselves exorbitant bonuses,
- evaded billions in taxes,
- Determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce, and
- Are benefiting by the crisis by grabbing fat privatisation contracts of our public services
For more information: http://may2012.occupylondon.org.uk/?p=112#more
GLOBAL SPRING – Indignados march in Brussels on 12 May
In Brussels, the Indignados will march at 1pm from the Gare du Nord to the Palais de Justice tomorrow 12 May. They are calling for:
- global justice
- an economy which serves humanity
- a world where the population has control over its own life,
- in other words, real democracy now!
At the end of the demonstration, public meetings will take place on different thematic issues, including the Belgian public debt, the European Financial Stability Facility, agriculture, the environment, women’s rights, NATO, unemployment, basic income, housing, and illegal immigrants.
There will also be actions and workshops throughout the day. For more information, please visit the Global Change website.
ALBUM IN A DAY
Blog
08 May 2012
Here's the fantastic video from Sort Of... Films documenting how the wonderful people at Sheffield's G2 Studios made an album for War on Want in just 24 hours. Great film, great music. Thanks so much! (and you can buy it here)
The power of demilitarisation
Blog
26 April 2012
Nice video: 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias tells the story of how Costa Rica abolished its army, liberating hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent on genuine human security. End the business of war!
Death of two Burmese migrants in custody of Thai officials must be probed
Blog
23 April 2012
Two Burmese migrants, Mr Maungg Soe and Ms Ma Mi Lar, were found dead in an overcrowded deportation vehicle carrying 62 migrants from southern Thailand to Burma. War on Want urges you to join the Mekong Migration Network's (MMN) appeal for an immediate and comprehensive inquiry into the matter.
For more information, please visit MMN's website.
Radio debate on GMO trial!
Blog
10 April 2012
Following the announcement that Rothamsted Research will carry out a trial of GM wheat in the UK, War on Want has been invited by The Voice of Russia radio to participate in a debate about GM food.
Haidee-Laure Giles, Food Justice International Programmes Officer, recalls that genetically modified crops are produced by very powerful companies such as Monsanto, Cargill and Syngenta, with the sole purpose to produce profits for shareholders. They entice local farmers to buy on credit their local 'technology packages', promising high yields and wealth with less efforts. But the field pictures another reality. Farmers endebt themselves to afford the packages and become forever dependent on the big corporations. In India around 15,000 farmers have already committed suicide in the last 10 years, driven to this desperate act by a feeling of powerlessness and awareness that they had lost their capacity to manage their own livelihoods.
An increase in world hunger over the past decades is a visible sign that the current food system does not work, worse, GM crops, trade liberalisation are contributing to the food crisis! More GMOs and tecnhology is not the answer if the system keeps on being controlled by very few powerful money-making companies in the 'West'. War on Want and its partners, including the largest farmers movement worldwide, La Via Campesina, calls for Food Sovereignty, a set of principles which allows a full regain of control over our food system and a comprehensive answer to worldwide hunger.
Listen to the broadcast on You Tube.
See also Food Sovereignty Day: Reclaiming our food system.
Land Day Commemorations
Blog
01 April 2012
Check out this link to see some images posted by Aljazeera of the Land Day commemorations in Gaza and occupied West Bank.
Take the Flour Back! Mass action against GM wheat
Blog
28 March 2012
Meet on Sunday 27 May at 12 noon, in Rothamsted, Harpenden, Herts, to voice your opposition against GM coming back to the UK. 
Stop Adidas, Nike and Speedo from messing around with workers’ rights
Blog
28 March 2012
Your last chance to join the Playfair campaign’s call for Adidas, Nike and Speedo to respect workers’ rights.
Despite threats, Silwan celebrates Mother's Day
Blog
15 March 2012
Despite arrests, intimidation, and gunfire, Silwan will be celebrating Mother’s Day with a children’s performance of music, dance, and singing for parents. On Thursday 22 March, children in Silwan will gather to perform at the Madaa creative centre, on the site of their recently demolished playground.
Get your PC to fight poverty
Blog
14 March 2012
While your PC or laptop is sitting idle, it could be helping to raise money for War on Want
Eleven children arrested in Silwan
Blog
09 March 2012
Less than a month after bulldozers destroyed the only children’s playground in the area, last week 11 children were arrested in Silwan. The Israeli authorities appear to systematically target children in Silwan, an impoverished district of East Jerusalem where over half the population is under 18.
Video: JCB equipment destroys children's playground in Silwan
Blog
01 March 2012
British-made bulldozers have been caught on film destorying a Palestinian children's playground and community centre.
Global Day of Action to Occupy Our Food Supply
Blog
24 February 2012
Thousands around the globe will be taking direct action to stop multinational corporations Monsanto, Cargill, ADM and the likes on 27 February 2012. The Global Day of Action to Occupy Our Food Supply is bringing together people to fight back corporations’ control of our food.
The sustainable farming, buy local, slow food, environmental and occupy movements will be reclaiming unused bank-owned lots to create community gardens, hosting seed exchanges in front of stock exchanges, labeling products on grocery store shelves that have genetically engineered ingredients, building community alliances to support locally owned grocery stores and to resist Walmart megastores (ASDA), and protesting against food giants Monsanto and Cargill. From Brazil, Hungary, Ireland, and Argentina to dozens of states in the US thousands of people will be participating.
Read more: www.OccupyOurFoodSupply.org
Take Action: Stop JCB equipment destroying homes in Silwan
Blog
23 February 2012
At 6am on Monday 13 February, the Israeli authorities demolished the Madaa creative centre and children’s playground in Silwan, East Jerusalem. The demolitions, which will make way for a controversial tourist site, were carried out using UK-made JCB equipment.
War on Want has written to JCB demanding an investigation of the use of JCB equipment to demolish Palestinian homes and communities in Jerusalem. We're asking supporters to show solidarity with Silwan by emailing JCB and writing on the JCB facebook page.
Tax Justice Network - Taxcast
Blog
01 February 2012
I've just been listening to the inaugural podcast or 'TaxCast' from the Tax Justice Network. It's a quality 15 minutes programme with the latest news, research and analysis of events in tax evasion, tax avoidance and the shadow banking system. Somehow these issues seem to get missed by the mainstream media...
This month our friends at TJN look at the implications of the landmark Vodafone vs. India tax case, compare Bill Gates and Mitt Romney's attitudes to taxation and visit the Occupy camp outside St Paul's Cathedral in London.
South Africa’s ‘Secrecy Bill’ a blow to rights of the poor
Blog
16 January 2012
At the end of last year, South Africa’s National Assembly, the lower house of the parliament, passed the highly contentious Protection of State Information Bill. Better known as the ‘Secrecy Bill’, the proposed legislation relates to the “protection and preservation of all things owned or maintained for the public by the state” against foreign spies, but would in effect deny the country’s own citizens, particularly the poor, an accountable and transparent state.
War on Want’s partners Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, the Anti-Privatisation Forum, and Sikhula Sonke, have been outspoken in their opposition. South Africans have come together from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and universities to grassroots organisations and civil rights movements, including the Right2Know campaign, to oppose the bill that threatens to undermine democracy, freedom of expression and citizen rights.
The media has been particularly loud in its protests, fearing that the new law will severely hamper their ability to do investigative journalism and to act as a government watchdog. The fear is well-founded, as anyone found in possession of any information regarded as ‘valuable’ by the state is criminalised. Heads of any state organs may classify or reclassify information, and any person who publishes or discloses ‘state secrets’ can face up to 25 years in prison.
If the law is to be passed, worse affected than the media, will be the poor. After all, the media can rely on the backing of the elite and the middle class, those with resources, connections and a voice too powerful for the government to ignore. The poor, on the other hand, are likely to be even further marginalised, while demands for recognising their rights will most likely remain unanswered. If access to information “maintained for the public“ becomes even harder to come by, how can the poor keep the government accountable?
The Bill is yet to be discussed at the National Council of Provinces, parliament’s upper house, or pass the subsequent step of going to President Jacob Zuma for approval. Originally devised in 2008 to replace apartheid-era law, through its many amendments, the Bill is again beginning to resemble the laws of times past. For freedom of expression and protection of the rights of citizens of South Africa, particularly the poor, it is imperative that the Bill as it stands now is not set in law.
Now if that is not solidarity....I don't know what is!
Blog
01 December 2011
Yesterday War on Want staff went out on the pickets and march to support public sector workers on strike in London. We received the news that our Bangladeshi partners the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF), which organises sweatshop workers, had called a march in solidarity with striking workers in the UK.
Wow, we thought. Now that's solidarity!
They then sent us an amazing picture of the march with a banner reading "solidarity rally for brave striking workers of UK" which we tweeted to our followers from the picket lines. The news went a little viral on Twitter with some people not believing that it was true! The story was even picked up by the Guardian's strike blog.
We are incredibly proud and privilaged to work with the NGWF and other inspirational partners fighting for justice around the world. By sharing our experiences and stories, we can together build the movement for change. With friends like these another world IS possible.
Silwan: An example of the Palestinian struggle
Blog
15 November 2011
Earlier this year I visited Palestine for the first time. Ahead of my arrival, I found gaining an understanding of the situation almost impenetrable; the blur of arguments and counter arguments developed over a complex history left me feeling confused and uncertain.
The few days I spent around the West Bank silenced this uncertainty forever. I have worked in International Development for the best part of a decade and experienced extreme poverty up close. What struck me most about my time in Palestine was that the causes of poverty and injustice were clear to see and impossible to ignore. It is abhorrent that the world can sit by and watch as the calculating actions of an oppressive power are destroying the fabric of an entire nation.
While the Apartheid Wall is the most apparent symbol of the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people - up close it is absolutely massive, it towers over everything in the immediate area and stretches as far as the eye can see - it is just the tip of the iceberg. What I witnessed were the calculated actions of a ruling power eroding history and undermining the rights of Palestinians at every conceivable level. My visit to the Palestinian community of Silwan brought this into sharp focus.
Silwan is a small town in the shadows of Jesualem’s Old City. It has a population of 55,000 people and generations of families have lived there for hundreds of years. The inhabitants of Silwan fear for their future. In a complete disregard for international law the Israeli government has served many of the inhabitants with eviction notices, the reason being that there are plans to build a car park for a tourist attraction on top of their homes. Hundreds of years of family life are in danger of being erased to build a car park! The houses and the land has been laid claim to by the Israeli government, with the owners of the homes they have lived in for years being forced to pay fines equivalent to £170 per square metre. The people who live here have already lost their livelihoods and have no way of paying the fines. If the fines are not paid, they will be evicted and will be sent to prison. If they are evicted their houses will be razed to the ground, and to rub salt into the wounds they face the ignominy of having to pay for the bulldozers that will destroy their lives.
The imminent threat is wreaking havoc on a daily basis. Children are too scared to go to school. Women are scared to live in their own houses. Men, if they have work, can't go for fear of the family's safety. The community of Silwan is living in a state of psychological fear.
Murad, a Silwan local I had the honour of meeting, eloquently summed up the situation, “The problem is not just our houses but also our future. What future will our children have if they lose their community? They are not leaving us our future and are destroying our history. What we are asking for is peace. You can't imagine what will become of our children if we are thrown onto the streets. No school, no education. We can't imagine our future.”
The fears for the future are well founded as the Israeli police has begun to systematically target children. More than 763 children, some as young as 10, have been arrested. To add to the terror many of these children have forcibly removed from their homes and arrested. Murad gave me some insight into this, “They are terrorising our children, they take them to prison and terrorise them. They aim to break our families. If a child doesn't feel safe in their own home and knows that their parents cannot protect them, it destroys the fabric of our families. They are destroying the next generation now!”
The oppression of the Silwan people doesn’t stop there. Every step you take in Silwan is monitored, the Israeli military has also occupied people’s rooftops to set up heavily armed watch towers. There are private military and conscript soldiers permanently patrolling the streets in armoured vehicles to reinforce the suffocating presence of the controlling power. Also, on top the threat of evictions, the Israeli authorities are also tunnelling below the community of Silwan to build tourist tunnels linking historical sites across Jerusalem. These tunnels are destabilising the foundations of homes, and some of the houses have collapsed. At every level I witnessed the systematic destruction of a community that has stood for hundreds of years.
The courageous community members of Silwan, who War on Want has been working with to resist the destruction of their community, have set up a community centre. This gives people a place to come together, share their experiences, develop their plans to fight the battle for justice through the courts and organise demonstrations. The community centre also brings together the children who have been victims of police brutality. The centre helps the children overcome their fear and seek rehabilitation by building trust and confidence. Without this organised community resistance Silwan would have been demolished years ago.
Sadly the story of Silwan is not an isolated case. The tragic stories of injustice and oppression are replicated all across the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Now that I have seen the situation for myself I can see why fighting the Occupation is more important than ever – but this work simply isn’t possible without people like you on board. Please support War on Want’s work as we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people for justice and peace.
I will leave the final words to Murad: “We are calling on normal people across the world to support the Palestinian people and stop the destructive machine of Israel.”
APEC World Leaders Dinner Gets Occupied!
Blog
14 November 2011
Lots of interesting articles around at the moment, so thought I'd post yet another one : )
In this, a famous Hawaiian guitarist, invited to do background music at the recent APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting, instead opened his shirt to reveal an Occupy tshirt underneath and proceeded to play protest songs to politicians including Obama and Hu Jintao and Harper of Canada. Talk about taking it to the heart of the beast!
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