Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre

Angie Zelter, founder-member of the anti-nuclear weapon campaign group Trident Ploughshares,has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Mairead Maguire, who won the award in 1976.
 
Nominating Angie Mairead said: "Angie Zelter has dedicated her life to building peace and working for world nuclear disarmament. Her life is committed to working to prevent nuclear mass murder, and by her own personal example and through her organizational skills, she has inspired and empowered many people to mobilise to prevent their governments from nuclear genocide, and begin seriously the work of abolishing all nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction.
 
From peace groups, demonstrations, vigils, street theatre, to nonviolent civil disobedience, imprisonment for non-violent protests, Angie Zelter's activism and life of numerous acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against nuclear weapons qualify her to be a worthy nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize."
 
Angie is currently engaged in supporting the villagers of Gangjeong on Jeju Island, South Korea who are resisting the destructive development of a naval base on the island that will become part of the U.S. missile defense system to contain China.
 
For Trident Ploughshares Jane Tallents said: "We are delighted at the recognition this nomination gives to Angie's work and to the vital importance of non-violent civil resistance in the face of injustice, environmental destruction and the murderous insanity of nuclear weapons. As Angie herself has pointed out, we must see ourselves as global citizens who can never be fully human while others continue to suffer."

Angie is the author or editor of three books, Trident on Trial, Faslane 365 and Trident and International Law, all of which can be borrowed from the Peace and Justice Centre library.

You are cordially invited to a talk by Sophie Buxton, former Peace Brigades International Staff 19.00, Thursday 15th December, Edinburgh Quaker Meeting House, 7 Victoria Terrace Sophie Buxton was a civilian peacekeeper in Nepal during the recent conflict between Maoist rebels and the Royalist government. She worked with Peace Brigades International in rural areas among families of those who were "Disappeared" and observed elections and the development of the peace process with the the Carter Center. She will speak on the peace process and give an assessment of current efforts to establish a Constitution. First in a series of talks on non-violence, alternatives to war and human rights organised by Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre. For Further information, contact the Peace and Justice Centre

Protest Dawn Raids on families with children

Monday 21 November, 10.00 am at Festival Court, Glasgow

Following the dawn raid on two families early last week Unity is calling for a protest outside the UKBA headquarters of the Immigration Enforcement Team. Unity hopes to make it clear once and for all that the UKBA using dawn raids and the detention of families is just not acceptable.

The dawn raids were carried out on families with young children who were asleep when immigration officials forced their way into the homes. The children were woken up by immigration officials wearing uniforms and stab-proof vests only to see their mothers being handcuffed. This barbaric treatment of families who have not been convicted of any crime had disappeared following widespread community protest and opposition from all Scottish political parties in 2006.

 Join the protest outside the UKBA office on Brand Street from 10am on Monday 21 November. The protest will continue into the afternoon so come along when you can.

Monday 21 November is the next working day after the UN’s Universal Children’s Day on 20 November – a day set aside for promoting the welfare of the children of the world. (http://www.un.org/en/events/childrenday/).

Dawn Raids in Glasgow and the Detention of Children

2005                Widespread protests in Glasgow against the dawn raiding,  detention and subsequent removal families seeking asylum.

                        Dawn raids are comdemned by the Scottish Parliament.

2006                Local communities in Glasgow hold dawn vigils to protect their neighbours from being taken by UK Border Agency Staff, detained and deported.

2010                In response to continuing outcry from refugee action groups, UK coalition government, led by the Liberal Democrats, promise to end child detention.

Feb 2011        New Family Returns Process is launched, which is supposed to give those refused asylum two weeks to prepare for their removal, avoiding the use of force, handcuffs and dawn raids.

July 2011        Nick Clegg tells UK Parliament that detention of children is a moral outrage.

Nov 2011        Two young mothers and their children are detained in two separate dawn raids in Glasgow.  The tactics are again condemned by members of the Scottish Parliament.

If you cannot make it on Monday please send messages to your elected representatives about the issue.

For more info contact

The UNITY Centre, 30 Ibrox Street, Glasgow. G51 1AQ
 
0141 427 7992
www.unitycentreglasgow.org
info@unitycentreglasgow.org

What you can do:

Contact your MSPs and to First Minister Alex Salmond

Members of the Scottish Parliament have often voiced their condemnation of these practices, as have members of the Glasgow communities where asylum seekers live, and the wider Scottish public.  Demand that the Scottish Government take this issue up with the UK Government.  Send an e-mail or go to an MSP surgery and make your view known.

Find your MSPs here:  http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/msps.aspx

Contact to your MP and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg

The UK Government promised to end child detention.  They haven’t.  In fact, they’ve just put back again the date by which they will do this.  Demand that Nick Clegg keeps his promise to end child detention.  Send an e-mail or go to you MPs surgery and make your views known.

Find you MP here: http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/

Contact the Children’s Minister Sarah Teather

Demand that the Children’s Minister respects the rights of ALL children, including asylum seeking families. Send an email to: teathers@parliament.uk

Join the Protest!       Come to the demonstration at Brand Street Immigration Centre, 10am on Monday 21^st November – the day after Universal Children’s Day  - and add your voice to the growing outcry against these practices.

The UNITY Centre
30 Ibrox Street
Glasgow
G51 1AQ
 
0141 427 7992
www.unitycentreglasgow.org
PLEASE NOTE NEW EMAIL ADDRESS: info@unitycentreglasgow.org
 
The UNITY Centre is run entirely by volunteers and funded completely by donations from our supporters. We need your help! If you would like to help by making a donation or by volunteering you can find more details on our website. Thank you! UNITY!

Don't let the government brush arms sales to repressive regimes under the carpet!

When the Campaign Against the Arms Trade helped expose the UK's arms sales to Libya, Bahrain and other repressive regimes earlier this year, the government was forced to revoke more than 150 export licences. Now that the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa no longer dominate the media headlines, the UK government hopes its role in arming the region's repressive regimes will be forgotten. But it is still arming dictators and human rights abusers today.

Early Day Motion 2166 is a parliamentary petition calling for an end to arms sales to repressive regimes. Please go to the CAAT website and help raise the profile of this issue in Parliament by asking your MP to sign EDM 2166: http://www.caat.org.uk/campaigns/this-is-not-ok/take-action-dsei.php#EDM

Torture and other human rights abuse continue under Egypt's military rulers. Last month, one prisoner was tortured to death and 27 people were killed when protesters were mown down by armoured vehicles. The UK government continues to issue licences for arms exports to Egypt, as well as to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other authoritarian states. Within days of Gaddafi's death the UK announced its plans for an arms sales trip to Libya. Even before the dust has settled on the conflict, and while huge stocks of weapons already in the country remain unsecured, the UK's priority seems to be considering how to sell more. As arms sales Minister Gerald Howarth has said: "Frankly I want to see the UK business benefit from the liberation we’ve given to their people."

CAAT supporters have contacted 150 MPs already and 45 have signed so far. Please contact your MP today and help CAAT reach 100 signatories this month.

This week, while protesters in cities around the world are symbolically occupying Wall Street, Indigenous Kuy people in Cambodia are "occupying" the forest that means life itself to them - Prey Lang ("Our Forest").
Right now, Kuy men, women, and children are holding vigils at sites throughout Prey Lang where bulldozers are slashing the forest to build new roads, rubber plantations, and mines. They are beseeching the invaders to stop their destructive activities and preserve this unique primary forest -- one of the last of its kind remaining on the Indochina peninsula.

For generations, the Kuy people and their neighbors in the villages surrounding
Prey Lang have protected the forest with its sacred areas where spirits dwell and its places
for gathering fruits, medicinal plants, housing
materials, and resin. Their use of forest resources is sustainable, but now their livelihoods and the
life of the forest itself are under attack.
The government has issued a dizzying patchwork of concessions to road builders, mining companies, and agro-industries. Bulldozers are slicing huge swaths through the forest, clear-cutting enormous blocks of land for rubber and other plantations and mines. Right now the companies are gearing up for the dry season, their season of forest destruction.

The Kuy people are desperately trying to persuade the government to stop the destruction and allow them to protect and manage Prey Lang, before it is too late.

We can amplify the Kuy people's voices by sending letters to Cambodian authorities. As Thai Bunleang, a Kuy elder and Prey Lang Network activist told us, "Prey Lang is our forest, but it is your forest, too. You can help save it."
http://www.culturalsurvival.org/take-action/cambodia/email

Border Work : Nogales, Mexico.
Alice Myers is a locally based photographer who studied and photographed the 1500 people who are expelled from the US into Mexico each day, because they have no paper.
Nov 13th to 24 November at Filmhouse cafe. There will be a discussion on the 24th Nov at 8.30pm at the cafe.
http://www.alicemyers.net/index.php?/project/nogales/

Poppy Music for Remembrance Day. You are cordially invited to the launch of a new radical song night in Edinburgh. We will be gathering once a month to listen to singers of radical songs and to share songs, stories and poems with each other. Entry will be free, with raffle and donations collected for a different charitable cause each month.
Music from Karen Dietz, David Ferrard, Geordie McIntyre, Alison McMorland, Eileeen Penman, Lisa Rigby and Penny Stone.
All Welcome. The Village. South Fort St. 18.00 - 22.00.

Enlightenment Lecture: Population - Can We Begin to Talk Sensibly? Our Changing World lecture by Professor Aubrey Manning
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 from 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM (GMT)
Please join us for an Enlightenment Lecture: Population - Can we begin to talk sensibly? By Professor Aubrey Manning, zoologist, writer, broadcaster and Emeritus Professor of Natural History, University of Edinburgh

Climate deniers are joined by population deniers at every turn. Can we begin to recognise that because we are faced with huge and complex immediate difficulties - grotesquely unequal resource distribution being an obvious one - it is folly not to take steps now to consider the long-term? Because it is manifestly not sufficient, to address methods for the reduction of population growth and its eventual reversal, is nevertheless absolutely essential. To do so acceptably will require us to revisit a number of currently accepted 'human rights' examining them with biological imperatives in clear view.

Doors open at 6.00pm.

Please note:

This event may be photographed and/or recorded for promotional or recruitment materials for the University and University approved third parties.

For further information please contact the organiser: Jamie Chalmers, jamie.chalmers@ed.ac.uk

The new government in Libya had to deal with a surprisingly tenacious last-ditch resistance by ‘forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi’, with heavy casualties on both sides. As in all wars, the cost in terms of death and destruction is difficult to assess accurately, but it ought to prompt the question of whether it was necessary to have the war at all. And the war in Libya was the result of deliberate choice. It did not have to happen.

In mid-February this year the insurgents could have accepted the offers by the African Union and by Turkey to mediate between them and the Gaddafi regime. These offers were turned down because the insurgents, buoyed up by the euphoria of the ‘Arab spring’ and the widespread condemnation of Gaddafi’s repressive reaction to it, were confident they could win outright. They dismissed the African Union delegation as merely a group of ‘Gaddafi allies’, not genuinely an independent third party.

It is true that the Gaddafi regime provided one fifth of the AU’s income, a deliberate investment in efforts to increase Libya’s influence in Africa. But in spite of the power of Gaddafi’s patronage, this did not prevent the AU’s Peace and Security Council at its February meeting from coming out against the intolerable brutality shown by the Libyan government. It strongly condemned the indiscriminate use of force against peaceful protesters, and gave unreserved support to aspirations towards democracy and political reform. The Libyan ambassador to the AU was furious, but his fury had no effect. In the final analysis, Libya needed the AU more than the AU needed Libya. The insurgents’ claim that the AU was simply a Gaddafi front organisation was a misrepresentation with tragic consequences.

While acceptance of AU mediation would have meant that Gaddafi was still in place, he would have been considerably weakened, and bound to defer in some measure to the groundswell of reform sweeping through the Arab world. The normal business of life could have continued uninterrupted, and thousands of people’s lives would have been spared. Horrifying incidents like the deaths of two hundred hospital patients, abandoned by the medical staff during the fighting, would not have happened. And there would have been a prospect of better things to come, particularly given Gaddafi’s track-record of drastic policy U-turns. He has shown himself to be a wily and ruthless operator, and coping with him would have been an exacting test of the opposition leaders’ diplomatic skills. But given such skills, Gaddafi might well have been brought to the point sketched in one of his recent utterances, that he would like to be a figurehead head of state, just like the British Queen!

The civil war in Libya, in fact, is yet another example of the seductive but treacherous appeal of decisive military action, battering its way to victory. It is still a prevailing culture in a world where immense resources are invested in weaponry and relatively little in conflict resolution. It is an investment that blinds people to its horrifying casualties, though perhaps not to its financial cost, at least so far as France and Britain are concerned in the present economic climate. Now that the bills are coming in there may be some salutary reflection going on in the rooms off the corridors of power.