WOMEN FIGHTING FOR THEIR LIVES IN EGYPT

Women activists in Egypt are more than concerned about threats to rights, about threats to their lives, and they are taking to the streets in Cairo to say so.  They are upset about the blind eye the State turns toward violence against women, and they are worried about the new constitution which may pretty much subject them to oppression under Sharia law, as interpreted by the top men of Egypt.

The New Women's Foundation has reported, for example, on the recent sexual harassment in downtown Cairo of two young women who were beaten when they objected.  

On Thursday, September 27, two Egyptian girls were walking in the commercial center of downtown by the infamous al-Shawarby street at around three in the afternoon. One of the girls was attacked suddenly when a seller jumped on her, kissing and hugging her by force.

She screamed and fought him, only to have him call his friends to join in the battering and abuse frenzy.

The two girls were beaten with a stick and pulled by the hair. Deciding to take the men to the police station, they fell into a web of bureaucracy.

“This incident is not the first and will not be the last that women face sexual harassment then be subjected to further violence because they refused to be silent on these crimes,” said the New Women Foundation and the al-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence in a joint statement on Wednesday.

“We appeal to all state agencies to address the crime of sexual harassment and the allocate a hotline to receive complaints about sexual crimes against women,” the statement continued.

Activist Samya Jaheen told Aswat Masriya that there needs to be a law against physical violence, pointing to the increase of sexual harassment in Egypt's streets in recent years. 

The Fouda Watch initiative's Fathy Farid asked for a law criminalizing sexual harassment to be issued immediately, pointing to Assiut's victim who was killed during her attempt to defend herself from a sexual offender. 

Dozens of women's organizations will join in a march on thursday to the Presidential Palace demanding that the new draft constitution include a law criminalizing sexual harassment.

Meanwhile hundreds of women rights and  human rights activists gathered in central Cairo yesterday demanding that women's rights in general be protected in the new constitution.  They are particularly alarmed to the adding of the phrase "to be consistent with the provisions of Sharia" to articles regarding to women's rights.

Egypt Independent reports:

Protesters, who gathered outside the Shura Council where the Constituent Assembly drafting the charter meets, said that the reference to compatibility with "Sharia rulings," would allow for different interpretations by Islamic scholars that may curtail rights of women. 

Article 36 has been of particular concern for women's rights activists. Excerpts of draft text reveal that it seeks to lower the marriage age, legalize female genital mutilation and use Islamic jurisprudence in a way that could limit women's rights to work and education.

Critics say that such phrasing of Article 36 would open the door to violations of women’s rights by extremist views and interpretations of Sharia.

One of the marchers, Sabah Fawwaz Ibrahim told AFP:

"All the leaked articles are terrifying. There is no basis for equal citizenship rights for men and women.   The constitution is being written behind closed doors. They will write it and then go to the mosques and tell people to vote ‘yes’" in a referendum on the constitution."

The controversial draft clause suggests that the state will reinforce gender equality in all spheres but in accordance with the interpretations of Sharia (Islamic law).  The writing of the constitution is dominated by hard line Muslim fundamentalists.  The process of drafting a new constitution  has been widely criticised for being shrouded in secrecy.

According to the Facebook page calling for the protest, supporters of the cause include:

Political parties: The Egyptian Social Democratic Party, the Popular Socialist Alliance Party, the Free Egyptians Party, the Egyptian Popular Current, the Constitution Party, Egypt Party, the Justice Party, the Tagammou Party, the Nasserist Party and Freedom Party.

Unions and Fronts: The National Front for Defending Egyptian Women, the Alliance of Organizations, the Egyptian Feminist Union, the Feminist Voice, Baheya Ya Masr, Min Haii (It's My Right), the Egyptian Woman, the Egyptian Women's Movement for Change, You're a Free Egyptian Woman, Speak Up Movement, the Coalition for Women of the Revolution, the Voice of the Nubian Woman, the Egyptian Women Lawyers for Steps Forward Movement, the Enlightened Egypt Movement, the Front for Defending Creativity and the We Can See You Movement.

Feminist and Legal Foundations: The New Woman Foundation, the Women and Memory Forum, the Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, the Foundation for Egyptian Women Issues, the Association of Mothers for Legal Custody, the Alliance for Arab Women, the Legal Foundation for Family Assistance, the General Association for Women's Associations for Health Promotion, the Solidarity Foundation for Funding Azhar, the Center for Communications for Development (ACT), the Women's Parliament, the Life is Not Complete without the Ta (female pronoun) Movement, the Egyptian Democratic Institute, the Egyptian Democratic Association, the Center for Supporting the Law State, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, the National Initiative for Positive Involvement.

Public Figures: Dr. Mohamed Abul-Ghar, Dr. Hussam Eissa, Amr Mousa, Dr. Amr Hamzawi, Dr. Jalal Amin, Dr. Mohamed Nour Farhat, Dr. Abdel-Galeel Mostafa, Dr. Ziyad Bahaa El Din, Dr. Hazim El Beblawi, Mr. Ahmad El Ghandour, Dr. Abdel-Azeem Hammad, Dr. Sameer Murqos, Mr. Basem Kamel, Ms. Niam El Baz, Ms. Shuhra Ameen Elalam, Mr. Khalid Hal, Dr. Mouna Zulfikar, Dr. Essam Elislambouly, political activist George Ishac, Writer Gamal Fahmy, Writer Abdallah El Sinnawi, Writer Sakina Fouad, Director Khalid Youssef, Director Hala Khalil, Artist Fayrouz Karawya, Attorney Ameer Salim, Ms. Inas Mekkawi, Dr. Houda Badran, Dr. Fatma Khafaji, Ms. Niveen Ebeid, Ms. Amal AbdelHadi, Dr. Rajia Omran, Dr. Anisa Hassouna, Mr. Rami Shaath, Dr. Nadia Abdel Wahab, Mr. Ahmad Fawzi, Ms. Farida El Shoubashi, Mr. Farid Zahran, Ms. Amani El Khayyat, Dr. Hana AbulGhar, Mr. Yasser Rizk, Ms. Fadya Mougheeth, Ms. Shahinda Maklad, Ms. Nourelhouda Zaki, Ms. Nahed Eissa, Ms. Azza Balbaa, Ms. Kareema El Hefnawi, Ms. Souad Hammoudah, Ms. Safa El Sawi, Ms. Fatin Mohammad Ali, Ms. Shams El Atrubi, Attorney Hala Fouad Riyad, Dr. Manal Omar, Mr. Hussein AbdelGhani, Dr. Mouna Abul-Ghar, Dr. Nouhad Abul Qumsan, Ms. Mouna Moneer, Dr. Niveen Mousad, Ms. Buthaina Kamel, Writer Mohammad Salmawi, Dr. AbdulGhaffar Hanneish, Dr. Fawzi El Aryan, Mr. Alaa AbdulMonem, Mr. Mustafa El Guindi, Mr. Mohammad Youssif, Dr. Fathiyya El Assal, Ms. Samira Ebrahim, Ms. Samya Jaheen, Mr. Mohammad ElEjatty, Ms. Ghada Shahbandar, Shaheeda Al baz, Ne3m Al baz, Safaa Zaki Mourad, Ahmed Saied, Amr Al Shobaky and Emad Abo Ghazi. 

The following is from Human Rights First.  It includes some links, including one to a detailed report documenting human rights abuses against women in Egypt, found in the post below are worth checking out.

Women in Egypt: Fighting for Space in Tahrir Square and Beyond

By Diana Sayed
Human Rights Defenders

Last February women and men stood shoulder to shoulder in Tahrir Square to call for an end to Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship.  These women had many motivations, but among them was the hope that their lives, and the lives of all Egyptian women, would be better under democratic leadership.

And yet in the months after Mubarak’s resignation, the repression continued, this time at the hands of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).  Not only were women beaten and sexually assaulted by the SCAF but they also fell victim to humiliating “virginity tests.” They have been driven from both the public space as well as the public arena – the post-revolution Egyptian Parliament contained fewer women than had held seats during the Mubarak era (the parliament has since been dissolved by the SCAF).

Nazra for Feminist Studies, an NGO based in Cairo, issued a report, “One Year of Impunity,” detailing the violations committed against women human rights defenders in Egypt from August to December 2011. The report outlines how women who dare to challenge social conventions, by chanting against the regime or taking part in a strike, or simply walking at night, are vulnerable to sexual violence, threats, and derogatory public accusations aimed at discrediting their moral character.

Masa Amir, a researcher in Nazra’s Women Human Rights Defenders program told Human Rights First, “[t]he violence used against women human rights defenders in a matter of five months, from August to December, witnessed a rapid escalation in its intensity and brutality. From beatings in August to violent sexual assault and attempts to suffocate women human rights defenders to stripping a woman on the street and stomping on her chest, a sense of growing desperation on the part of the state was obvious. The targeting of women human rights defenders and the use of unprecedented violence are by no means just acts of senseless brutality, but are committed for political reasons – the disciplining of the national female body.”

Women’s rights have again come under attack in a section of Egypt’s draft constitution.  Article 36 of the “Rights and Duties” section states that “[t]he state is committed to taking all constitutional and executive measures to ensure equality of women with men in all walks of political, cultural, economic and social life, without contradicting the precepts of Islamic Law.”  Political parties, civil society coalitions and public figures issued a joint statement expressing their “deep concern” for the draft article’s wording, saying it could compromise the rights that women have been fighting for in the past few decades.

Mona Eltahawy, a prominent journalist and blogger, was sexually assaulted last year while she was held in detention for attending a pro-democracy rally before parliamentary elections.  The attack left her with two broken arms. Despite this, she continues to remain optimistic that women will eventually be better off after the uprising.  “Under those so-called secular regimes every first lady would adopt a feminist cause and it actually hurt feminism because it became associated with the dictator’s wife, but now we are taking feminism away and making it of the street and not of the dictator’s wife.”

Nazra’s report recommends halting the smear campaigns carried out against women human rights defenders, which are a blatant attempt to remove them from the public sphere.  The report also calls for an investigation against perpetrators of the violence in order to end impunity and seek justice for the victims.

ECOCIDE SHOULD BE AGAINST THE LAW

Polly Higgins, Lawyer for the Earth, is the founder of the campaign to make Ecocide the 5th international Crime Against Peace.   I never heard of her, or her campaign until about ten minutes ago when I ran into it when searching the web for an article for the blog.  While I don't place much faith in international law, I admit that I find the idea here interesting.  We need to do a whole lot more than make international laws, even good ones, but hey, it won't hurt...and it might help.

Explaining her campaign just a little, Molly writes at The Permaculture Research Institute website:

"Our cycle of damage and destruction is spiralling onwards and upwards with increasing speed. This is Ecocide. The impacts are enormous and over a very short period of time we can see the consequences. Morally we know now that causing mass damage and destruction is wrong. This is why I am calling on the United Nations to make Ecocide an international crime."

  "Ecocides occur when we take far more than our fair share, which affects both our people and our Earth. To ensure we live within our planetary limits, a law of Ecocide creates a legal framework that can ensure we all live in peaceful enjoyment." 

 "Our lives are under threat from rising greenhouse gas emissions; do we leave a legacy that is life-affirming or a non-life-affirming legacy?  Where there is no consideration for future generations and their well-being, it cannot be said that the legacy fosters life. The focus of climate negotiations is on the fast return of profit — markets made out of hot air. Dollar signs are being drawn in the sky. In the meantime, the voice of the Earth has been silenced."

You must admit that it is incredible that causing mass damage and destruction is not a crime.   You must admit dollar signs are being drawn in the sky.  You must admit the Earth has been silenced.

Ecocide is only a crime in ten countries at the moment (and I don't remember any prosecutions, but maybe I missed them).  In these countries’ penal codes, Ecocide stands alongside the other four international Crimes Against Peace: Crimes Against Humanity; Genocide; War Crimes; and Crimes of Aggression.

Who knows, I may not agree with Polly's specific way of going about things, but who cares, she has my support anyway.  

How can I disagree with her vision:

 "Imagine a world where the rivers run clear, the fish are abundant, the skies are unpolluted, the soils are untainted by pesticides, a world where the trees grow strong and healthy, the food on our table is fresh, local and organic, the fuel to heat, light and transport us is clean and ever-renewable. Man-made pollution, seen and unseen, no longer exists."

I desperately want to imagine such a world, but it is hard, very hard.

I am going to include two, count em, two posts here.  One about a year old and one much more recent.    The first is an interview with Polly found on the Permaculture Research Institute site from last year.  It gives a much more detailed accounting of where all this is coming from.     The more recent article taken from Ecocide is short. It is the first one I read which got me here.  I'll count it as a news story.

The Power of International Law to Create the New World – An Interview with Polly Higgins

Alternatives to Political Systems, Biodiversity, Community Projects, Consumerism,Deforestation, Economics, Ethical Investment, Global Warming/Climate Change, People Systems,Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss, peak oil — by Maddy HarlandAugust 18, 2011

Maddy Harland meets Polly Higgins, a barrister who is campaigning for the United Nations to adopt an additional crime against peace: Ecocide.

by Maddy Harland, editor of Permaculture magazine – inspiration for sustainable living

In my two decades working for Permaculture magazine I have met many fascinating and wonderful human beings but my recent meeting with the barrister and campaigner,Polly Higgins, was a turning point. She prompted a leap in my understanding of the power of law and our collective capacity to change the world overnight. I had heard of Polly’s campaigning work but I had not fully realised the far-reaching potential of international law. Polly deftly stretched my worldview. Bear with me if the subject of ecocide sounds grim… the outcome of these meetings was utterly inspirational.

What is Ecocide?

There are already four international Crimes Against Peace: Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes, and Crimes of Aggression. Polly says there is a missing 5th Crime Against Peace and that crime is Ecocide: the destruction of large areas of the environment and ecosystems. Obviously ecocide can be caused by severe weather events like tsunamis and volcanic eruptions, not directly attributable to specific human activity but there is another category: Ascertainable Ecocide. This is the destruction, damage or loss to the territory, caused by human activity – people, corporations, and nations. Activities such as nuclear testing, the exploitation of resources, mining practices like tar sands extraction, the dumping of harmful chemicals or the use of defoliants, the emission of pollutants or war. Examples of ascertainable ecocide affecting sizeable territoriesinclude:

• The Athabasca Oil Sands in northeastern Alberta, Canada
• The deforestation of the Amazonian rainforest
• Water pollution
• 
  

So who is Polly Higgins and how did she become such a force for nature? Polly’s earlier career was in art but at the back of her mind was a persistent voice that called her to study law. She tried to ignore it whilst studying for her Masters but it became more and more insistent. Six years later whilst working as an art dealer in London, the call became non-negotiable and she applied for a scholarship. She won. Doors opened. More scholarships followed and she eventually became a barrister. All was well until a few years later she realised that if the Earth was a client in law, it would have no rights. This was one of those life-changing moments. “I didn’t know what I was doing anymore.” That night she went home and told her husband what had happened. They decided to take holiday and ‘go up a mountain’. “When I came down I had decided to leave the Bar.” At the time she thought, “It’s the Earth that really matters here… there are enough barristers that can do the job inside courts, but nobody is doing anything out there. I need to get out and look at the bigger picture.”

By now I am realising that I am in presence of an extraordinary human being….

I asked Polly what took shape after this. “In 2007-2008 I was thinking why don’t we have a legal duty of care for the Earth? If I was to represent the earth in court as a barrister, how could I? My client doesn’t have any rights. A barrister’s tools are the law which we use to fight the case. It occurred to me that the Earth needed rights. The Earth is a big being so it wasn’t just a matter of the rights in one country. This needed to be universal, rather like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In July 2008, I dropped everything, treated it like a legal brief, and researched how it could work. At one of the UN’s top climate change conferences in November 2008 I gave the speech about how we needed to put this law in place. It was as if I dropped a huge boulder in a still pond – the ripples went very, very far. Within ten months Bolivia got in touch. I had got together a team of lawyers to create a draft document of rights which is what Bolivia has now adopted. They renamed it, quite rightly, the Universal Declaration of Mother Earth Rights because they’re coming from an indigenous place.”

So how did the concept of Ecocide arise? “When I was at the Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen at the end of 2009, talking about the Declaration it occurred to me that you can be shouting for your rights but it’s an absolute waste of time if you can’t exercise some form of criminality over those who are trampling over them. For instance, my human rights to life are governed and protected by the crime of murder. If someone takes my life, they have committed a crime and they can be put on trial in the courts. If this is on a mass scale, it’s genocide. If the Earth as a being has the right to life, how would we govern it? We need a new language in the form of an international law akin to genocide.

“What would the crime of ecocide look like? The four existing international crimes are known as crimes against peace. How would ecocide sit with these? I discovered that all it would take is an amendment to a pre-existing statute, so we don’t even have to write up a whole new statute, we can amend the one that houses all the four crimes against peace. When there is destruction that leads to loss of resources, which leads to conflict, which leads to war – Darfur was a war about water, Iraq was a war over oil – that’s what I call ecocide and ecocide is a crime against peace.”

Polly realised that the additional amendment for ecocide is absolutely vital. It is the missing link. The UN recently published a report saying we’re reaching a tipping point due to system collapse. They did a number crunching exercise last year, which all governments sponsored, demonstrating that in 2008 the top 2,000 global corporations had caused $2.2 trillion of damage and destruction (a conservative estimate). In 2009 it had almost doubled to $4 trillion. For 2010 they think it will be $8 trillion. 

“Somewhere along the line we’re escalating completely in the wrong direction and that’s largely due to corporate ecocide. This is destruction we deem to be the norm. Corporations are not deliberately destroying habitat but, as a result of their activities in pursuit of profit, they’re causing enormous damage and they’re not taking responsibility for it because there are no laws to make them do so.”

At this point Polly tells me that when the Abolition of Slavery was proposed, the companies using slaves to produce crops like sugar in the West Indies predicted a collapsed in trade due to the increase cost of wages. This never happened and the world was changed overnight by this law. Slavery still exists, of course, but now it is entirely unacceptable. There is no reason why ecocide shouldn’t become similarly unacceptable. Roll on civilization!

The new world

I really wanted to know, however, what the world would look like when the crime of ecocide is adopted by the UN? Polly replies, “We are not very good at looking at the new world, we’re always looking at the nightmare rather than the vision. The flow of money goes into damaging, destructive activity, which has been normalised under legal contracts. All our big banks invest millions and millions of pounds and dollars into the Athabasca Oil Sands in Canada. One in six pension funds in the UK has the majority of their finance coming from Athabasca Oil Sands investments. By creating a crime of ecocide, we close the door. We say you can’t invest there and so the money then has to flow elsewhere.

“CEOs will no longer be able to invest in ecologically destructive businesses. They will risk prison, as will the board of directors. Banks will no longer finance them. It will be too risky. Heads of state will no longer condone ecologically devasting projects. Corporate subsidies will be pulled.

“Imagine I’m a CEO and you’re one of my directors and I am telling you, ‘If we invest our money, time and energy into the extraction of oil from the Athabasca Oil Sands, we are at risk of going to prison. Our shareholders will find it untenable to support criminal activity. The banks will also no longer finance this activity and the head of state will no longer support this policy because it’s a crime.’ Suddenly, companies, banks and governments will have a direct incentive, both legal and financial, to change direction. “These large corporates have power and we need them to switch from being the problem to becoming the solution.

“What we will see is a huge incentive to create energy sources locally rather than huge centralised solutions with big land grabs and solar panels out in the desert. We’re obviously going to need some of that but there will be a lot of industry on a ground level, on a localised level, on a national level. This is hugely important, because at the moment we don’t have government policies supporting this. Our governments have their heads in the sand and they are looking for a technological fix. It’s not going to happen, so the sooner we put laws in place, the sooner we can plan a structured fossil fuel power descent. This is really about the biggest job creation scheme in history: the big, green, clean economy in the world. It is about facilitating this and rolling up our sleeves and getting practical. It is about a far healthier, far cleaner society on a macro as well as micro level.”

In essence this is an overnight shift in worldview. “Commercialising and qualitising the planet is not going to work. Greenhouse gases are the symptom of a larger cause. There’s some very good number crunching being done which identifies that the top 173 companies have created 70% of excess greenhouse gases in the last 20 years. We really need to turn the tap off upstream….

“This is about the developed world taking responsibility. The planet is not there for us to commoditise. Once we view the planet as a living being, we recognise its intrinsic value rather than placing an extrinsic value on it. How we have come to view the planet is deeply flawed, certainly within the western consciousness. This needs to be realigned and law is a powerful tool to begin this process.”

Ecocide Mind Map
Click for larger view

Giving voice to our intent

As we were talking I felt myself shift. I could clearly see that making ecocide a crime could indeed be a vital turning point in our history, akin to outlawing slavery and genocide. These crimes still happen, but law renders people and nations accountable. Polly has deep insights into the nature of positive change. I asked her what happens when people start ‘to give voice to their intent’, to use her words.

“It is a kind of a magic. When you give voice to what you want to see happening in the world and when it comes from a place of caring, especially if you are collaborating with other people, it creates a process of new future visioning. Once we start giving it language it makes it happen. Doors of opportunity open and the right people appear. We each have a role in creating the new world and giving voice to the world we want to see, literally getting back to Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’. He spoke about that dream and galvanised thousands and thousands of people around the world.”

I tell Polly that Permaculture magazine is very much about dreaming up the solutions, it’s not about investigating the detail of what’s wrong. Sometimes we are accused of being idealistic and intellectually lightweight but this is a very conscious policy that we’ve held since 1992 — to give voice the dream.

“Permaculture is about seeding the new world, quite literally as well as metaphorically,” Polly replies. It is vital that we raise enormous public awareness around closing the door to destruction so that the new world vision becomes the norm, not the exception. At the moment it’s the exception.”

Polly and her team are building a huge global campaign around ecocide in the run up to the Earth Summit in June 2012, 20 years on from the original Earth Summit. “We are going to put in the laws that create the clean, green new world.” For many, the yearning for change is intense and painful. The tipping point on our planet has been reached and we cannot afford to sit back and do nothing. “I want millions and millions of people around the world to call on their governments to say this needs to be made law, not just ecocide but also the Universal Declaration of Mother Earth Rights. This is a new body of earth laws that are needed to help protect people and the planet.”

I realise that this is possibly the most important conversation of my life and deep inside me stirs again the passion for this beautiful planet and the poignant yearning for the new world. Polly leaves me with the words, “Giving voice is very empowering. It’s about getting connected in the community, engaging in the ideas and giving voice to the new. It is about dreaming the dream and then putting it into action. Something that a lot of indigenous people know and understand is that once we can find language for the vision, we de-mystify it, we give it a name and the healing begins.”

I urge you wherever you are in the world to find out more. Join the campaign and lend your voice to this work. A new world is indeed possible.

======================================================

UN documents say Ecocide was to be the 5th Crime Against Peace

Polly reports on a groundbreaking discovery; Ecocide was examined for decades by the UN to be included as the fifth Crime Against Peace.

Imagine my surprise when a journalist called me a year ago to ask for my comment on the news that a law of Ecocide had been considered an international crime over 15 years ago. All we had was one document that referred to 3 countries who had objected to it being included as Crime Against Peace.

Today we have a paper trail that takes us back to 1972. The call to make Ecocide an international crime is nothing new – over 7,000 people took to the streets in Stockholm in 1972 to demand that ecocide be a crime. It was the time of the Vietnam War and world leaders had met in Stockholm to resolve environmental issues at an international level for the first time. At the same time, The People’s Forum brought together some of the top experts of the day to discuss ecocide.

Fast forward a decade; 1985 saw the flame of the Law of Ecocide burn brightly again. Most significantly was the draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind (precursor to the Rome Statute) which included Ecocide. For a further 11 years the United Nations partook in concerted debate, discussion and research -  one researcher even drafted theEcocide Convention. What happened next is set out in the research paper, Ecocide is the Missing 5th Crime Against Peace.

This explains why there are already ten countries with national laws in place to make Ecocide a crime.

Launched 19th July 2012 by The Human Rights Consortium at the School of Advanced Studies, University of London, The Ecocide Project will continue to unravel the question as to why it was shelved. Dr Damien Short, who has just taken up the post of Director of the Human Rights Consortium said “the paper provides a foundation of understanding on which we must build; there is more vital work to be done.” The report draws attention to the preamble of the draft Ecocide Convention, where there is the explicit recognition that Ecocide is not always a crime of intent – and that Ecocide is caused in both times of war and peace.

These are words that have just as much relevance today as they did when they were written in the draftEcocide Convention in 1973:

“Man has consciously and unconsciously inflicted irreparable damage to the environment in times of war and peace.“

My dream is for a world of peace, a world where mass damage and destruction no longer exists. I believe we can live in peaceful enjoyment where both people and planet are put first.

Like the name of the research paper, Ecocide is the missing 5th Crime Against Peace – just imagine; when we close the door to mass damage and destruction a new door will open. When it does close, our world of conflict will end. What will open is the door to the world of peace.

PORTLAND: BIKE CO-OP HAS JEW HATING PRESIDENT...AND TOO MANY PEOPLE JUST DON'T GIVE A DAMN

SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE

Portland, Oregon always sound like a nice progressive town.  And in this nice progressive town we find Citybikes, this great worker co-op.  Uh, well, what if you were told that in this nice progressive town, this nice happy worker co-op's President Tim Calvert was a nasty anti-semite who hangs out with white supremacists.  Doesn't just hang out with them, he organizes crap?  Then what if you heard that Citybikes, although it had been presented with evidence of this rather unprogressive behavior  over three years ago still refuses to do diddly about it?  What if I told you that Citybikes President Tim Calvert helped recently, like three weeks ago,  to organize a gatheirng of the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance along with a nice fellow named Fritz Springmeier who as reported on IndyMedia is:

...an Oregon-based conspiracy theorist and author of such books as Bloodlines of the Illuminati. Springmeier's works attempt to draw attention to what he perceives as massive conspiracies for global domination by hidden cabals and their "Illuminati" bloodlines. Springmeier's research focuses in particular on family names such as the Rothschilds, commonly used as stand-ins for "the Jews" within antisemitic conspiracy discourse. However, Springmeier is far from shy about his beliefs concerning Jewish power, arguing for example that "the core of the conspiracy of power is Jewish" in Bloodlines. 

Oh , yeah, Springmeier also did nine years for a bank robbery with his partner Forest Bateman, anice neo nazi.

Oh, and about that 9/11 Truth Alliance, IndyMedia reports:

The Alliance has previously organized support for other racist extreme-Right organizers, as our organization for example pointed out in 2009 when the 9/11 Truth Alliance hosted self-described "white separatist" Valdas Anelauskas in Portland, and when a few months later the Alliance sent a contingent to support the Portland tour stop of notorious Holocaust-denier and Naziphile, David Irving.

And about Tim Calvert of the progressive bikes IndyMedia says:

 Calvert's activism involves both organizing of events for far-Right speakers, and also his own spreading of antisemitic propaganda. Rose City Antifa believe that a key factor enabling Calvert's activism is the support he receives from his workplace at Citybikes Workers' Cooperative, as well as the apathy and tacit acceptance of large segments of the regional co-op movement towards Calvert's Judeophobic organizing. 

What is really disgusting is, again from IndyMedia, the following:

In general, the co-op movement on the West Coast has stood with Calvert. Many attempts were made by genuine anti-racists within the Western Worker Cooperative Conference (WWCC) to discuss Calvert's activities and to educate about antisemitism. Some members of the WWCC were sympathetic, but Calvert was never formally asked to leave the WWCC Board. The WWCC Board formally refused to discuss any reprimand for Calvert. Calvert nonetheless resigned from the Board of his own free will in early 2011, having never been censured. The clear majority position within WWCC leadership was that Calvert's star power within that community trumped his questionable political trajectory. In fact, Calvert's clout in these circles enables him to more effectively recruit and gives his proto-fascist leanings both cover and credibility. The WWCC website continues to pay tribute to Calvert as a conference founder, stating nothing about Calvert's extreme politics. 

Something is horribly wrong with an alleged "progressive" cooperative bike operation sitting comfortably in the biggest city in the "progressive" state of Oregon whose "boss" is a notorious anti-semite.  Something is horribly wrong that so few people seem to understand this.  How can something that smells so putrid draw so little attention?  I don't get, and maybe I am missing something, how the bike workers in a bike coop are going about their business as if all is well in the little corner of the world.  

And something is also horribly wrong with those "free speech" advocates who think spreading a Jew hating message is something to defend.  I am sick of that nonsense.  I am sick of those who will come back at me and equate fighting Jew hating and racist speech with the government cracking down on anti-racists, or on those who stand up against injustice.  Get a life!  We live in a real world where real things really happen.  We live in a real world where hate speech, hate organizing, racism and white supremacy are things to destroy not to coddle and defend in the name of freedom.  Maybe for some nice middle class white people, or for happy white hippies, or for whites bicycling around the park hate speech seems somehow removed from the results of white supremacy, racism, anti-semitism and the like out here in the real world.  Maybe those people can feel good about themselves as they make a "courageous moral stand" for freedom of speech and "objectivity".  I am NOT one of those people.  I know what those who give fiery speeches against others because of their race, or their religion, or their ethnicity, or their gender, or their sexual orientation ultimate goal is.  What I can't understand is how many times does history have to prove to everyone that organizing in the name of racism and white supremacy, and all the other bigoted hatism has to be stopped at the get go, has to be met everywhere it rears its ugly head by those committed to erasing it from history.  

A Jew hating president of some local bike co-op in Oregon may seem like nothing to get excited about, but then neither did the first guy to don a white sheet, or the first German to put on a nazi armband.

I applaud the work of Rose City Antifa.

I should mention that the posting on Indymedia was from Rose City Antifa.  You can read lots more at   http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2012/09/417943.shtml

Meanwhile the following I found at the One People's Project, but you can guess where it came from originally.

PORTLAND BIKE CO-OP MAINTAINS ANTI-SEMITIC PRESIDENT; ANTFA CALL FOR BOYCOTT OF BUSINESS

Rose City Antifa

Since 2009, Citybikes Workers’ Cooperative in Portland, Oregon has known about the deep involvement of a key figure of their co-op in antisemitic organizing--political work done in collaboration with white supremacists, Holocaust-deniers, and others on the extreme-Right. Tim Calvert, the Citybikes President at the time of writing, is defended and promoted by the rest of the co-op, who attempt to maintain a progressive image while propping up their antisemitic President. Anti-racists first raised the issue of Calvert’s antisemitic organizing in 2009, after Calvert and his cohorts in the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance hosted a speech by Valdas Anelauskas, a racist organizer who proclaims that evidence for the Holocaust is “shaky.” Citybikes mishandled its response during 2009, making excuses for Calvert and declaring that no problem existed after Calvert issued a bogus apology, even though Calvert’s organizing against Jewish people continued unabated. In September of this year, anti-racists again drew attention to Calvert’s antisemitic organizing. In particular, we noted that Calvert twice gained venues for Fritz Springmeier, an antisemitic author convicted of bank robbery charges alongside a white supremacist accomplice. (Springmeier’s 1997 robbery plot also involved detonating a bomb at an adult video store as a diversion.) Footage of the Citybikes President giving an extreme antisemitic speech was also pointed to at this time, and Rose City Antifascists provided an extensive chronologyof organizing by Calvert and his Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance organization. Now, Citybikes having discussed their President’s organizing yet again, the co-op has refused to take substantive action on this escalating community problem.

On the morning of Monday, September 24, 2012, Citybikes held a meeting regarding the latest revelations concerning their President’s antisemitic organizing. A representative of Rose City Antifascists contacted Citybikes later that day, asking for clarification about any plan of action the Citybikes co-op may have to finally address Calvert’s bigoted activism. Citybikes refused to give any clarification regarding the co-op’s position, despite having several years ago made an empty statement that it “recognize[s] the need for communication” on this matter. Silence from this business is unsurprising, given that Citybikes has already spent three years being negligent on this issue and supporting its antisemitic President. Citybikes' refusal to take any action (even in the face of much new information on Calvert’s political work and associates) now compels an anti-racist response.

When we first alerted the community to Tim Calvert’s extreme-Right organizing back in 2009, the initial response of the Citybikes Board of Directors was not only to side with and praise Calvert, but to label our organization as “fascist” for criticizing Calvert’s antisemitic activism. This Citybikes statement accused anti-racists of “shutting down disparate voices” by mentioning and speaking out against Calvert’s work with a white supremacist. Ironically, it was the Citybikes collective who shut down disparate voices: their business later retracted its first statement because it was “was not released with consensus from all members of the Board, nor did it pass through the hands of each and every worker.” Citybikes also insisted that it would be illegal to fire Calvert, a clear misrepresentation of Oregon as well as federal law for the business’ own purposes. The Citybikes business later issued a vague and noncommittal statement about “the need for communication”. Citybikes proceeded to stand by Calvert as he publicly complained that his critics were on a “Stalinist” (later also described as “Zionist”) crusade against him.

Some critics of Rose City Antifascists defend Tim Calvert’s antisemitic organizing as a free speech issue. The First Amendment and related free speech laws protect citizens from state interference, not from criticism by the public. Our organization has always been clear that we do not call for any sort of government intervention regarding hateful speech, by Calvert or anyone else. We aim to address issues of racist and extreme-Right organizing within communities, not to trust or engage the courts, or to ask for government action. We oppose calls to fight fascist movements through increases of state power, as this firstly treats the state as an allegedly neutral tool and conceals institutional racism. Furthermore, increases in state investigative and prosecutorial power against alleged “extremism” can facilitate crackdowns on protest and social change movements in general, which we oppose.

Our organization believes that communities should unite in opposition when white supremacist, fascist, or antisemitic organizers attempt to target sections of the population. We believe that when white supremacists and fascists organize, they inevitably try to exert their strength against those they perceive as enemies--people of color, Jewish people, workplace organizers, sexual minorities, Leftists, and other groups. Watchfulness on the part of communities is therefore appropriate, including strong responses to antisemitic agitation--such agitation has historically tended to explode into sudden and extreme violence when allowed to spread. Organizing such as Tim Calvert’s, in spreading lies about Jewish people, creates favorable conditions for such violence. Tim Calvert, who twice secured meeting locations for an extreme-Right bomber, should not play innocent about the climate he is creating and its consequences.

Our organization is a militant one and we believe that force may at times be a necessary component in resisting fascist and white power organizing, if the alternative is simply to stand by and allow assaults, organized persecution, bombings or killings to take place unopposed. Our campaign in documenting and drawing attention to Tim Calvert’s activism, however, has been one of ideological confrontation. Through his Jew-hating activism Tim Calvert made himself a public figure, and thus became subject to public scrutiny and criticism. Calvert should expect antifascist criticism to be loud and unrelenting.

Rose City Antifascists asked Citybikes--a business with a progressive and community-oriented image--to say that antisemitic agitation and racist propaganda do not serve their community. We requested that the business take a concrete stand against such agitation, when a central co-op member worked for years spreading antisemitic lies and hosted a white supremacist. Calvert gains activist prestige and political credibility from his co-op work, because his workplace is falsely viewed as a progressive institution. This prestige and power is then used by Calvert to promote hatred of Jewish people, and to organize with racists and anti-gay bigots. If Citybikes is unhappy about the antisemitic organizing of their President, then it should certainly take action about this. 

In Rose City Antifa’s first discussion of Calvert’s organizing, we argued that “If a collective or co-op can't deal properly with an anti-Semitic activist within its ranks, then it does not deserve to be supported.” We stand by these words over three years later. We have seen that quietude and tacit acceptance only allow antisemitic organizing to continue, escalate, and grow even more extreme. Silence and denial are not the answers. We call for a complete boycott of Citybikes. 

Some Things You Can Do to Support the Citybikes Boycott

(1) Remove any links to Citybikes on your website or Facebook page. If you have been giving advertising to Citybikes, tell them why you are stopping.

(2) Discuss problems of antisemitism in your community group. Antisemitism thrives when concealed, excused, or treated as “not an issue.” Make a commitment to educating yourself and others in your community.  

(3) Tell your friends why you are supporting other Portland bike shops, and mention this when making purchases at these other establishments.

(4) Organize in the co-op community to oppose racist, antisemitic, anti-gay, transphobic, and anti-women politics. Realize that these problems affect participation within the co-op movement, and erode any claims of equitable workplace involvement. 

(5) Keep an eye out for updates and share them with your friends, community organizations, as well as bike-related social groups.

(6) Contact Rose City Antifascists about any responses from Citybikes, or updates on Calvert’s bigoted organizing. Our voicemail number is 971-533-7832 and our email is fight_them_back [at] riseup [dot] net.