Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

GENEVA (10 October 2022) On the 20th World Day Against the Death Penalty, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Alice Edwards, and the Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial summary or arbitrary executions, Morris Tidball-Binz, issued the following statement, reflecting on the relationship between the death penalty and the absolute prohibition against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Although the death penalty is permitted in very limited circumstances under international law, the reality remains that in practice it is almost impossible for States to impose capital punishment while meeting their obligations to respect the human rights of those convicted. Abolition of the death penalty is the only viable path.

The death row phenomenon has long been characterised as a form of inhuman treatment, as has the near total isolation of those convicted of capital crimes and often held in unlawful solitary confinement.

A number of states continue to impose the death penalty for non-violent crimes such as blasphemy, adultery and drug-related offences, which fail the most serious crime standard for the application of capital punishment under international law. A growing trend of imposing the death penalty on those exercising their right to peaceful political protest is deeply worrying.

Furthermore, increasingly methods of execution have been found to be incompatible with the obligations to refrain from torture and ill-treatment, for inflicting severe pain and suffering.

Despite more than 170 States having repealed the death penalty or adopted moratoriums, there was a reported 20 percent increase in the number of executions last year.

States that retain the death penalty are urged to scrupulously apply exceptions for persons with intellectual disabilities, pregnant women and children, as required by various instruments including article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

All States are invited to consider ratifying the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR aimed at abolition of the death penalty. The Protocol currently has 40 signatories and 90 States parties.

ENDS

*The experts: Dr. Alice Jill Edwards, Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and Mr. Morris Tidball-Binz, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Proceduresof the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Councils independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

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UN experts warn of associated torture and cruel punishment - OHCHR

In 2018, former prison guard of the Texas Imperial State Prison Farm in Sugar Land, Reginald Moore, had his long-held suspicions proven. For decades, he maintained that the remains of some 100 formerly enslaved people and black prisoners, who had been forced to work during the states convict leasing programme, were buried on the prison grounds. In April 2018, construction workers found the remains on the site where folk legendLead Bellyhad been held prisoner in the late 1910s.

Lead Belly (real name Huddie William Ledbetter) was incarcerated at Imperial State Prison in 1918 to serve a 35-year murder and aggravated assault sentence. It is alleged that the virtuosic musician had shot a male rival in a fight over a woman. Texas immoral convict leasing programme, which often saw convicts worked to death while on lease to private parties, had only been discontinued eight years prior to Ledbetters arrival.

However, according to Moore, little else had changed since the 1910 abolition. It was horrific, he said, perHoustonia Magazine. The buildings were unsanitary, no good water, the food was bad, they were swarmed with flies and mosquitoes. The convict leasing was over, but Lead Belly lived in the same buildings black men before him had lived in, and he worked the prison fields.

At first, the erratic character Ledbetter attempted to escape the prison, but when these attempts failed, he opted to become a reputable prisoner. Its reported that he worked particularly hard and that his nickname stems from his brazen work ethic.

While imprisoned, Ledbetter was granted access to a guitar, and he began entertaining his fellow prisoners. It didnt take long for his talent to fall upon the ears of the warden, R.J. Flanagan. When he played for the warden, Moore remembered, He was playing about a block from the unmarked graves of the black men who had died in that system.

After Governor Pat Neff took office in 1921, he became one of several high-ranking political figures to be invited to Flanagans frequent soires. For added entertainment value, Flanagan began to welcome Ledbetter to his porch to perform in front of his distinguished guests.

The sharp folkie saw an opportunity and penned his now-classic song, Governor Pat Neff (Sweet Mary). The lyrics pleaded with the governor for his release so he could go home to his wife. If I had the Governor Neff like you got me, Id a-wake up in the mornin, I would set you free, he sang. Goin back to Mary, sweet Mary, the lyrics read.

Ledbetters objectives were audacious, to say the least, given that Neff had gained office with promises to right the wrongs of the previous governor, who had sold pardons to inmates. Alas, the tenacious Ledbetter continued to play for the governor and on Neffs final day in office in 1925, he granted the musician his freedom.

Lead Bellys story isnt the norm, Fred McGhee, an expert in African American archaeology, wrote of the feat. The story of the Imperial Prison Farm goes far deeper than Lead Belly. What happened for him, singing his way to freedom, that didnt happen for the majority of the quasi-enslaved African Americans who toiled there, many of whom died there.

Leadbetter spent the next five years as a free man, but his mischievous ways landed him back in the hands of the law in 1930. This time, he was imprisoned at Angola, the most notorious prison in the State of Louisiana, for charges of attempted murder.

While serving his term in Angola, Ledbetter wrote some of his mostwell-known songs, including Angola Blues. In the mid-30s, musicologists Alan and John Lomax tracked him down and recorded his performance of Midnight Special, the song that would ignite his rise to national acclaim. Just a few years later, in 1939, Ledbetter was turned loose early due to good behaviour and no doubt a helping hand from his rising fame.

It was that bad, Moore was quoted as saying. Lead Belly had talent that let things turn out differently for him. He won his freedom here. Most other people werent so lucky.

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How Lead Belly twice won freedom from prison through his music - Far Out Magazine

HAYS, Kansas Once again a Nobel Peace Prize was announced Friday, and once again a pope didnt win.

This years honor went to human rights campaigners in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, in whats widely been seen as an implicit condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin and both his war in Ukraine and his anti-democratic tendencies at home.

Russias Memorial organization, Ukraines Center for Civil Liberties and Belaruss Ales Bialiatski will share the prize money of 10 million Swedish krona, roughly $900,000, and will receive the award in a Dec. 9 ceremony in Oslo, Norway.

While four U.S. presidents have won (Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama), along with several prime ministers and statesmen from other countries, no pope has been honored since the inception of the prize in 1901.

Pontiffs routinely are nominated, as Pope Francis was again this year by Dag Inge Ulstein, Norways Minister of International Development, who cited the popes efforts to help solve the climate crisis as well as his work towards peace and reconciliation.

In the run-up to Fridays announcement, online oddsmakers had installed Pope Francis as about a 15-1 favorite to win the prize, more or less the same odds given to Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg and the UN Refugee Agency. Over the years, on several occasions Ive been asked to stand by on a TV platform someplace on the day of the announcement in case the pope wins; in each case, weve always had to stand down.

(Ive sometimes considered billing the prize committee for all the appearance fees I never collected, but somehow I doubt theyd pay the invoice.)

To date, four other Catholic leaders have received the Peace Prize:

Recently Belo has faced charges of sexual abuse and misconduct, which reportedly led to a previously undisclosed Vatican sanction in 2020. To date, however, theres not been any suggestion that his prize might be revoked.

Every pope has been nominated at one point or another since Benedict XV, who reigned from 1914 to 1922, but so far none of them have ever become Nobel laureates.

Why dont popes win?

To begin with, the Nobel Peace Prize is bestowed by a five-member committee selected by the parliament of Norway, a traditionally Protestant country where levels of interest and attention to popes arent especially high.

Its not that Norwegian parliamentarians are caught up in old debates over, say, Philip Melanchthon (whom many of them would probably think is a striker for Bayern) or the Diet of Worms. But in general, in a country where national identity was forged in part through the rejection of papal authority, giving such an award to a pope just isnt the most natural thing to do.

In some cases, the anti-papal bias is explicit. When Bishop Gunnar Stalsett of Oslo of the Church of Norway, who also served as leader of the countrys Centre Party, was a member of the Nobel Peace Prize committee from 1985 to 1990 and again from 1994 to 2003, he explicitly stated he would not support the candidacy of Pope John Paul II due to the Catholic Churchs position on contraception.

Many observers believed at the time that without Stalsetts informal veto, John Paul II likely would have been named a co-winner in 1990 along with Mikhail Gorbachev for their roles in the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet empire.

In part, the logic for not giving the award to popes also has to do with the fact that popes dont need the money, nor do they need the media spotlight the award always generates, whereas lesser-known activists and organizations can benefit immensely from both.

Of course, the same arguments could be made about giving the prize to presidents, prime ministers and other high profile public figures, which hasnt stopped the committee in the past from doing precisely that.

In the end, its probably fair to say that theres a vague secularist bias in the process which assumes that religion simply isnt as important, or as helpful, in global affairs as Realpolitik or civil society. Over the 121 years the prize has been awarded, relatively few of the laureates have been religious figures of any sort Swedish Lutheran Archbishop Nathan Sderblom in 1930, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa in 1984 and the Dali Lama in 1989 are among the handful of exceptions.

Naturally, its not that losing out on the Nobel Prize somehow diminishes a popes moral authority, or that popes themselves hunger for the recognition. Popes already get plenty of acclaim Francis, for example, has been proclaimed Times person of the year, he won the Charlemagne Prize for European unity, and hes even been on the cover ofRolling Stone.

On the other hand, its not as if the Vatican doesnt notice. During the John Paul II years, employees of Vatican media outlets sometimes were advised to downplay the prize announcement on the grounds that any winner who wasnt the pope was, de facto, an insult.

In any event, the statutes of the Nobel Peace Prize state that its to be awarded to those who have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

Its hard to believe that not once over the last 121 years has any pontiff ever qualified unless, of course, theres some reason the committee simply doesnt want to recognize a pope.

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Why don't Popes ever win the Nobel Peace Prize? - Crux Now

I can date quite precisely the end of my Britain and the beginning of somebody elses: 1 August 2002 in Scotland and 18 February 2005 in England and Wales. These were the dates on which traditional hunting was outlawed. Im not rehearsing here the arguments for and against hunting. My point is that these dates pulled the pin from four definitive political and social grenades. Pin out, lob, count to five and bang, Britain was reshaped.

First, the abolition of hunting was a key marker in the shift from a tolerant, broad-based society towards the intolerant constrictions of identity politics. On those abolition dates, I dont like or understand what you do but I respect your right to carry on doing it surrendered to I dont like or understand what you do so Im going to stop you doing it. The surrender was neither complete nor instant, but it was irreversible and led, in the end, to cancel culture.

Secondly, until the abolition of hunting, we, and, say, Gaston Phoebus (1331-1391) shared an understanding of the natural world as red in tooth and claw. We also accepted that although man is possessed of reason, he was part of that red in tooth and claw world. In this respect, Gastons world and our world, though dissimilar in many ways, were still recognisable one to the other. Outlawing hunting sundered those two worlds. On one side, man as part of nature and naturally one of natures hunters; on the other, man above nature, and adopting the mantle of natures (selective) guardian.

Thirdly, abolishing hunting contributed to the general decline in appreciation of the virtues integral to it: endurance, agility, thinking on your feet, tolerating without complaint extreme physical discomfort (rain trickling inside boots; frozen fingers) and, as Alphonso XI of Castile (1312-1350) neatly put it, the strength of character to conceal ones fear.Hunting generated and consolidated these virtues, particularly the last because hunting wasnt safe. Where I hunted, everything was unpredictable: the weather and terrain as well as the walls, gates and straggly hedges over which, if you wanted to keep up with the hounds, you blindly leaped, usually landing in a bog. Post-reform hunting is more measured. Runs are controlled, sometimes prearranged; obstacles tidier, bogs avoided. My hunting coat and bowler would look prehistoric in these days of body protector and skull cap. And what needtoconcealones fearif what generated the fear the unpredictability, the hovering of catastrophe has been neutered?

Hunting on a horse is always a risky business but the risks in todays hunting are much diminished. Of course, since only a tiny percentage of the British population went hunting, the abolition of real hunting didnt trigger our current paranoia about danger and our obsession with safety. But if it was possible to count how many times the word safe was used before real hunting hit the buffers and how many times afterwards, the result would be a clear win for the safety-firsters.

Fourthly, the abolition of hunting pitched all animals, not just hunted animals, into cuddly toy territory. Naturally, pets have always been much loved members of the family, and though hounds make rotten domestic companions, individual hounds have been equally loved. Prince John of Portugal (1537-1554) slept between his two favourites. Horses, too, have a special place in British hearts. Hanging in my study is a lovely portrait my grandmother commissioned of her beloved hunter, and the fate of the horses conscripted for use in the First World War exercised the British public as much as the welfare of returning soldiers. But its only since the abolition of hunting that Ive been aware of vets calling owners mum and dad, with pets deaths morphing from sad, often very sad but natural life-events, into full-blown tragedies requiring time off work and therapy.

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So, four grenades detonated by the abolition of hunting. Perhaps I should add another. Though hunting has always had its fair share of thrusters and shovers, idiots and felons, real hunting prescribed rules, manners and etiquette. These were not flummery. They expressed the respect demanded by huntings open and unambiguous purpose the killing, by hounds, of quarry. If you flouted the rules by overrunning the hounds, you would be sent home; if you were mannerless barging, shouting ditto. But rules, manners and etiquette have an empty ring when their underpinning has vanished. The purpose of post-abolition hunting is muddled, so flummery trumps authenticity, thus furthering the cause of Great British Fakery.

Hunting as I knew it was supposed to say something bad about us, but didnt it also say something good? Pre-abolition hunting was a genuine sport; a truthful sport with clear aims. Its demise ceded power to intolerance, severed us from nature, advanced no risk culture, boosted animal sentimentality and undermined authenticity. Perhaps these consequences are commendable aspects of mans civilising evolution.

Perhaps somebody elses Britain is a better Britain than my Britain. And after all, the rupture may not be so radical. Gaston Phoebuss observation that men desyren to leve long in this world in helthe and in joye is still relevant. But wait. And therefore be ye alle hunters, he continued, and ye shal do as wise men. Was he onto something? Along with everything else, did the abolition of hunting make us stupid? Maybe, but maybe thats what somebody elses Britain prefers.

Katie Grant is a novelist and political thinker.

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Hunting: Where the end began - Reaction

European Commission Vice-President for Values & Transparency, Vra Jourov, noted that during her recent visit to Athens she did not only receive firm assurances, but also confirmed herself, that the Greek government is sincerely intending to proceed with reforms in mass media, and also in protecting personal data, in full cooperation with the European Union.

Jourov was speaking in an interview to Athens-Macedonian News Agencys (ANA-MPA) President & General Director, Emilios Perdikaris, held in the European officials Brussels office.

Asked about her overall feeling after visiting Athens and holding several meetings there, she said that she returned to Brussels convinced that we did good work together, and that due to the commitments made, I believe that we will move forward, which is good when pursued not through interventions, but through dialogue.

Elaborating on the notion of dialogue and beyond it, she added that it was very important that I spoke with Prime Minister [Kyriakos Mitsotakis] and also with the main opposition party leader [Alexis Tsipras] a day earlier, so that I could compare what I heard from both.Furthermore, she said that she spoke with the justice minister, the governments representative, the ombudsman and also with the media task force -which was my final meeting- and which was the jewel in the crown, because there I saw significant commitment and a broad platform [of considerations].

Jourov noted that she met people who can make changes and bring results, and the result I wish for Greece is for journalists to be more secure in their work. Furthermore, it is a matter of security that illegal surveillance software is not used against them, and that the media does not succumb to financial or political pressure.

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Talking more about the commitments she was given by the Greek side while in Athens, she said that these concern, first and foremost, the rules and regulations regarding surveillance for reasons of national security, and the investigation of what exactly was illegal in recent cases; also about the Penal Code, which still contains the disinformation provision and the five years imprisonment, which I understand was adopted during the pandemic, but which now could have a negative impact on journalists, while I also heard the prime minister say that its abolition is being considered.

She then pointed out that she would like to see the media task force take concrete steps within a reasonable time frame, which can guarantee the safety of journalists.So I came back, and I thought that if Greek authorities do all this, then we will see a real improvement in the situation, which will have a positive impact on how others see the country, because problems in media concern the countrys reputation. There is one more issue: the use of spyware and the protection of personal data. The prime minister told me that there are plans to integrate EU legislation into Greek law regarding data protection and technology, and I take that very seriously, because when we see illegal software being used in several countries, then it becomes a serious problem for democracy in Europe.In other words, she emphasized, if you buy software to monitor political opponents or journalists, that is practically the end of democracy as we know it.

Therefore, she observed, the work has begun, and I want to be clear that there is satisfaction, but, at the same time, a lot of work still needs to be done on both sides, and we are partners in this. From this point of view, I am satisfied, because I feel that there is a [firm] will.

Jourov was then asked about the broader aim regarding these issues, with the question posed as being based on a recent statement of hers in which she had said that the problem with mass media is not exclusive to Greece, and that this is the reasoning for presenting the Media Freedom Act.

To this question, Jourov replied that mass media is under pressure everywhere, because advertisers give, say, their money to Google and all the other platforms. We see, everywhere, that citizens trust in the media is shrinking, which is happening in all countries but in varying degrees of intensity.

In countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Finland, trust is high, because there is not as much pressure from politicians on journalistic content, and the medias financial state is not that bad. But when we look at the map of Europe we see the media outlook getting worse as we move southwards and eastwards; this is a symptom of our times. And yes, all this is why we adopted the Media Freedom Act, which is not so much related to the financial state of the media, but it relates mostly to pressures from politicians, or from individuals, who seek political influence by purchasing media.

Perdikaris then asked Jourov if it is financial and political pressures alone that create these problems, or misinformation is to blame too, and how the latter should be dealt with.Considering this a very good question, she proceeded to answer it by saying that she sees a very close connection between the empowerment of the media and our ability to fight misinformation: when citizens trust in the media decreases, disinformation increases, proportionally, even more, and this is dangerous. We need strong media and professionals who must work with-and-through evidence and truths, who must be present where it is happening, and also be able to identify and understand facts correctly, professional journalists who will fight misinformation. Sometimes I hear from journalists that they are reduced to mere fact-checkers.

ANA-MPAs Director Perdikaris then asked her if misinformation concerns only mass media or social media too, to which Jourov said that social media belong with the platforms in the advertising industry, and that she would not so much label these as media: at the same time we push these [social media] to be more responsible for their content, and here the rules we have adopted are clear and must govern all types of media, that their ownership status be clean, that they should have moral standards, and therefore [be in a position to] enjoy a privileged treatment. The same applies to public media.

Continuing, Perdikaris noted that Jourov recently said that there exists a digital wild West upon which rules should be set, to which she replied that she could also say the same about the wild East, before she added that the digital world, for a long time, had no rules and standards, and in the last 20 years citizens turned to this world without any protection. This led to the production of money in the absence of citizens, with which everything can be bought, even political influence. But this is very, very dangerous, and thats what I mean by wild West.

Europe, Perdikaris said, is experiencing a war, while the energy crisis births fears about the upcoming winter, asking Jourov if Russias attempts in misinformation could worsen the situation, and how this could be tackled.

To this, she said that first of all, we, the democrats, must assure citizens that there will be no misinformation, and help them survive this winter, even with some sacrifices; that Europeans will stand by Ukrainians, and continue to strongly support them.People are willing to sacrifice a lot, but they dont want to freeze or starve. This is why I think that, above all, we have to guarantee their protection, safety, and a basic standard of living for them.

Putin is wrong when he says we are destroying ourselves with [our] sanctions [against Russia]. Sanctions are, indeed, successful, and we should explain to our citizens what we are doing, and assure them that they will be able to maintain a relatively good standard of living, Jourov asserted.

SOURCE; ANA-MPA

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Greece is committed to reforming its mass media and protecting personal data - Hellenic News of America

When then Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced plans for a new submarine base on Australias east coast last March, Port Kembla, Newcastle and Brisbane were proposed as suitable potential locations. The submarines will be part of the new nuclear-powered fleet announced under the AUKUS alliance agreement (see box).

It has been reported that of the sites being considered, Port Kembla in the New South Wales city of Wollongong is the Defence Departments preferred option. The Maritime Union of Australias Southern NSW branch immediately responded by condemning nuclear proliferation in the Illawarra, stating, The MUA has always stood for peace, internationalism and justice, and so condemns in any shape or form the proliferation of nuclear capability in any country, especially our own. This includes the development or proliferation of nuclear-powered defence vessels. South Coast Labour Council secretary Arthur Rorris told the Illawarra Mercury that unions and the Port Kembla community would fight tooth and nail to prevent putting a nuclear target on our city.

Port Kembla has a long history of resistance to militarism. Wollongong was declared a nuclear-free city in 1980, and in 2019 the Wollongong City Council signed the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Cities Appeal. In 1967, Port Kembla waterside workers and the Seamens Union of Australia refused to load the Jeparit and the Boonaroo bound for the Australian war effort in Vietnam. But this history of anti-war industrial action stretches back much further.

In October 1937, the Australian Council of Trade Unions called for a nationwide boycott of Japanese goods and an embargo on the export of iron from Australia to Japan in response to Japans invasion of China. In December 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army marched into Nanjing (at that time the capital city of China), methodically killed at least 200,000 unarmed civilians and disarmed soldiers, and systematically brutalised the living. It was an atrocity of mass murder and mass rape. (Shinzo Abe, the recently assassinated former prime minister of Japan, denied that the Nanjing massacre ever occurred).

The Victorian Trades Hall Council declared, Threats of retaliation must not deter [us] from exhibiting our deep-rooted opposition to the wholesale slaughter of defenceless civilian populations. The South Coast branch of the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) pledged to refuse to load any ship with or carrying war materials for Japan, passing a resolution viewing with horror the unprovoked and murderous attack of the Japanese militarists ... we as members of the Australian working class are prepared to assist the Chinese workers in their fight against Fascist Japan.

At the time, Japan was one of Australias most important trading partners. Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd (BHP) had a contract to supply the Japan Steel Works with 300,000 tons of pig-iron, to be used to manufacture high-explosive and incendiary bombs and other military materials for the undeclared war on China. The British steamship SS Dalfram had been chartered by BHP to take pig-iron to the Japan Steel Works. On 15 November 1938, when unionised wharf labourers at Port Kembla discovered and confirmed that the pig-iron was bound for military production in Japan, they immediately walked off the job, refusing to load the Dalfram. This strike was not about pay and conditions: it was in solidarity with the Chinese people against the brutal Japanese invasion.

The day after the dock workers walked off, the crew of the Dalfram went on strike, refusing to move the ship to another berth where non-union labour could be employed. The Seamens Union declared that no law in the world would compel them to carry the pig-iron to Japan. The Dalframs officers withheld the crews pay of seven months and cancelled all shore leave, turning the ship into a floating prison. Only after 11 days and a furious storm were the crew released.

Arab sailor Mohammed Goulah, leader of the Dalframs stokehold crew, was dragged off by police to a doctor to be certified as insane and under the influence of drugs. A leading psychiatrist found him to be quite normal. On his release a week later, Goulah told the press: I will never sail a ship that carries potential war material for Japan.

By boycotting a ship bound for Japan, the unions were seen by the conservative federal government as not only interfering in a commercial contract with Japanese businesses, but dictating the nations foreign policy. As Prime Minister Lyons articulated in parliament: The government cannot permit the usurpation of its functions by any section of the community. It alone has the full responsibility to determine what attitude it shall adopt with regard to the Sino-Japanese dispute, and cannot allow this responsibility to be taken from it.

Robert Menzies, then the attorney general and minister for industry, saw unions taking industrial and political action as a bigger menace than Japanese imperialism. Menzies called the ban a provocative act against a friendly power. At this point, according to the League of Nations, 1 million Chinese civilians were already dead. Putting the profits of BHP first, Menzies used the punitive Transport Workers Act against the Port Kembla dock workers, meaning only workers with a licence from government licensing officers could get work. Any worker not willing to load the Dalfram would be refused a licence, and workers could be forced, on pain of dismissal, to load cargo to which they objected. Unionists called it the Dog Collar Act. The licences cost one shilling, the same as a dog licence.

But the WWF refused to be intimidated and maintained the strike. Apart from managerial staff, only one licence was taken outby a union member who supported the ban. A public bonfire was organised in front of the Port Kembla Customs House to burn the only licence. The WWF was able to create such unity against the act as to make its application ineffective.

There was immediate support from other unions for the ban, and the wharves were declared black (banned). The Illawarra Trades and Labour Council set about reinforcing the 24-hour seven-day picket on the Dalfram, and established area committees to collect and distribute funds and food. The waterside workers received financial support from around Australia. Parties went out rabbiting and fishing to help feed the families of the striking workers. Chinese market gardeners in New South Wales rushed truckloads of fresh produce to Port Kembla to help sustain the struggle, and the Chinese immigrant community in Sydney shouted Christmas dinner and tea for the Dalfram crew. The Port Kembla wharfies received a letter of gratitude for their highly esteemed support from 34 unions in the city of Hankow in China, which was facing imminent invasion by advancing Japanese troops.

Production had been brought to a standstill by the dispute. BHP announced it was immediately sacking 3,500 steel workers and another 500 straight after Christmas. Four thousand workers were left without a wage.

Menzies was enraged by the intransigence of the Port Kembla dock workers. He came to Wollongong on 11 January and was met by a hostile demonstration of more than 1,000 people. The Labour Council committee had mobilised Illawarra for his arrival, with watersiders, miners, steelworkers, women and children forming a miles-long guard of dishonour for his ministerial cavalcade. Menzies snuck through the rear entrance into the Wollongong Hotel, and safe passage had to be organised by wharfies forming a rough path through the crowd to the Town Hall opposite for his meeting with union officials. It was here that Gwen Croft, a member of the local Womens Relief Committee, first called Menzies Pig Iron Bob. The name stuck and lasted throughout his political career.

Police threatened those out of work with arrest under vagrancy and consorting acts. The Union Bank of Australia (now part of ANZ, with BHP its biggest client at the time) foreclosed mortgages on strikers. Deserters from the multiracial Dalfram crew were arrested and imprisoned as illegal immigrants. With relief funds almost gone, the Labour Council committee recommended a return to work, and banned any handling in Illawarra of war materials. The South Coast branch of the WWF reluctantly agreed to the Labour Councils request on 21 January 1939. The Dalfram had lain idle in Port Kembla Harbour since 15 November 1938. The waterside workers had held out for 10 weeks and two days without pay, before they were forced back to work by the threat of starvation.

The dock workers loaded the Dalfram under protestwith just 8 percent of the planned scrap metal and pig-iron cargo. Under the terms of settlement, the Dalfram was loaded, the dog-collar licences were withdrawn, and none of the remaining 277,000 tons of pig-iron were shipped to Japan. The Transport Workers Act was never used again and was subsequently erased from the statutes. The Dalfram was the last ship from Australia ever to feed the Japanese war effortwhich was responsible for the slaughter of 20 million Chinese civilians through the eight-year Second Sino-Japanese War.

This is the history that should be remembered when nuclear-propelled submarines and a nuclear submarine base are slated for Australias east coast. Nuclear-powered submarines use highly enriched, nuclear-weapons-grade uranium. An accident or malfunction could result in a submarine becoming a floating nuclear bomb. In April this year, the Wollongong City Council reaffirmed itself as a nuclear-free zone, but the declaration is largely symbolic, and state or federal governments can overrule council decisions at any time.

A revival of the best traditions of internationalism and anti-militarism to build international solidarity of the working class against all warmongering governments is desperately needed. During the Dalfram dispute, the dockers in Port Kembla exercised their power as workers, withdrawing their labour and refusing to be complicit in a war on the Chinese. As imperialist tensions escalate and the Australian government prepares for future conflict with China, this history of solidarity between Australian and Chinese workers is the example we should be looking to for inspiration.

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Standing against war and nuclear catastrophe: lessons from Port Kembla - Red Flag

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The embarrassing footage from when Liz Truss was at the Treasury appears to contradict her 43billion plan to slash taxes, which will hugely increase the national debt

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Truss in 2018 appears to contradict her 43billion plan to slash taxes

A warning from Liz Truss that a tax cuts bonanza that ramps up borrowing would lead to boom and bust came back to haunt her tonight.

Newly unearthed footage of the PM appears to contradict her 43billion plan to slash taxes, which will increase the national debt.

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng spooked the financial markets after he announced a giant package of tax cuts in his mini-Budget last month.

Following a run on the pound he scrapped the abolition of the top rate of income tax, but is pushing ahead with proposed changes to National Insurance and Corporation Tax.

Experts have suggested the tax cuts will put the countrys finances on an unsustainable footing.

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Speaking in June 2018, the PM sounded the alarm about the problems that would be caused if Britain let fiscal responsibility slide.

Ms Truss, who was chief secretary to the Treasury at the time, told a gathering at the London School of Economics the country could carry out some regulatory and tax reforms and see an economic boost.

But she added: Also let fiscal responsibility slide and allow the deficit to balloon, weve been there before It leads to boom and bust.

It came as Ms Truss was today told to get a move on as it was revealed she may put off a decision on benefits for weeks.

Critics accused the dithering PM of leaving millions of families in a grim limbo as they wait to find out if she will snatch hundreds of pounds from those entitled to payments including Universal Credit.

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The PM wants to break a promise made by Boris Johnson to put up benefits in line with rising prices next April.

A single unemployed adult would lose 185, a single disabled adult would lose 380 and a working couple with two children would lose 752, if the increases match the rises in average earnings rather than inflation, according to the Resolution Foundation.

Ministers admitted today Ms Truss may not make a decision until as late as the end of next month, which would put further strain on struggling families worried about how they are going to make ends meet.

But Cabinet sources tonight suggested pressure on the PM over the issue could mean it is fast-tracked with an announcement in the last week of this month.

The Mirror understands Work and Pensions Secretary Chloe Smith is privately arguing the government must stick to its promise to increase payments in line with inflation.

Tory MPs last night urged the government to make a decision quickly to end the uncertainty as they face a backlash from worried constituents. One backbencher said: We cannot take any more pain.

As the benefits revolt got even bigger, former chancellor Sajid Javid became the latest senior Tory to demand they must stay in line with inflation.

Conservative peer Philippa Stroud, who helped set up Universal Credit, argued: You dont build growth in the backs of the poor as she warned a real terms cut would be blocked by MPs.

And Lib Dem Wendy Chamberlain warned the failure of Ms Truss to make a decision on the issue meant millions of people are left in a grim limbo.

In an attempt to appease his critics, Mr Kwarteng today bowed to pressure to bring forward his wider economic plan to Halloween.

He had said he would wait until November 23 to explain how he intends to balance the books alongside the publication of independent economic forecasts, but this will now happen on October 31.

A Government spokesperson said: The government is committed to fiscal responsibility and getting debt falling as a share of GDP in the medium term.

Through tax cuts and ambitious supply-side reforms, our growth plan will drive sustainable long-term growth, which will lead to more jobs, higher wages, and sustainable funding for public services.

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Liz Truss warned tax cuts like hers could lead to 'boom and bust' in unearthed 2018 clip - The Mirror

This is the speech given by Chris Hedges outside the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. on Saturday October 8 at a rally that called on the U.S. to revoke its extradition request for Julian Assange.

Merrick Garland and those who work in the Department of Justice are the puppets, not the puppet masters. They are the faade, the fiction, that thelongstanding persecutionof Julian Assange has something to do with justice. Like the High Court in London, they carry out an elaborate judicial pantomime. They debate arcane legal nuances to distract from the Dickensian farce where a man who has not committed a crime, who is not a U.S. citizen, can be extradited under the Espionage Act and sentenced to life in prison for the most courageous and consequential journalism of our generation.

The engine driving the lynching of Julian is not here on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is in Langley, Virginia, located at a complex we will never be allowed to surround the Central Intelligence Agency. It is driven by a secretive inner state, one where we do not count in the mad pursuit of empire and ruthless exploitation. Because the machine of this modern leviathan was exposed by Julian and WikiLeaks, the machine demands revenge.

"The real centers of power, in the corporate, military, and national security sectors, were humiliated and embarrassed by WikiLeaks."

The United States has undergone a corporate coup detat in slow motion. It is no longer a functioning democracy. The real centers of power, in the corporate, military, and national security sectors, were humiliated and embarrassed by WikiLeaks. Their war crimes, lies, conspiracies to crush the democratic aspirations of the vulnerable and the poor, and rampant corruption, here and around the globe, were laid bare in troves of leaked documents.

We cannot fight on behalf of Julian unless we are clear about whom we are fighting against. It is far worse than a corrupt judiciary. The global billionaire class, who have orchestrated a social inequality rivaled by pharaonic Egypt, has internally seized all of the levers of power and made us the most spied upon, monitored, watched, and photographed population in human history. When the government watches you 24-hours a day, you cannot use the word liberty. This is the relationship between a master and a slave. Julian was long a target, of course, but when WikiLeakspublishedthe documentsknown asVault 7, which exposed the hacking tools the CIA uses to monitor our phones, televisions, and even cars, he and journalism itself was condemned to crucifixion. The object is to shut down any investigations into the inner workings of power that might hold the ruling class accountable for its crimes, eradicate public opinion, and replace it with the cant fed to the mob.

I spent two decades as a foreign correspondent on the outer reaches of empire in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. I am acutely aware of the savagery of empire, how the brutal tools of repression are first tested on those Frantz Fanoncalledthe wretched of the earth. Wholesale surveillance. Torture. Coups. Black sites. Black propaganda. Militarized police. Militarized drones. Assassinations. Wars. Once perfected on people of color overseas, these tools migrate back to the homeland. By hollowing out our country from the inside through deindustrialization, austerity, deregulation, wage stagnation, the abolition of unions, massive expenditures on war and intelligence, a refusal to address the climate emergency, and a virtual tax boycott for the richest individuals and corporations, these predators intend to keep us in bondage, victims of a corporateneo-feudalism. And they have perfected their instruments of Orwellian control. The tyranny imposed on others is imposed on us.

From its inception, the CIAcarried outassassinations, coups, torture, and illegal spying and abuse, including that of U.S. citizens, activitiesexposedin 1975 by the Church Committee hearings in the Senateand thePike Committee hearings in the House. All these crimes, especially after the attacks of 9/11, have returned with a vengeance. The CIA is a rogue and unaccountable paramilitary organization with its own armed units and drone program, death squads, and a vast archipelago of global black sites where kidnapped victims are tortured and disappeared.

The U.S.allocatesa secret black budget of about $50 billion a year to hide multiple types of clandestine projects carried out by the National Security Agency, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies, usually beyond the scrutiny of Congress. The CIA has a well-oiled apparatus to kidnap, torture, and assassinate targets around the globe, which is why, since it had alreadyset upa system of 24-hour videosurveillanceof Julian in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, it quite naturallydiscussedkidnapping and assassinating him. That is its business.Senator Frank Church after examining the heavily redacted CIA documents released to his committee definedthe CIAs covert activity as a semantic disguise for murder, coercion, blackmail, bribery, the spreading of lies and consorting with known torturers and international terrorists.

All despotisms mask state persecution with sham court proceedings. The show trials and troikas in Stalins Soviet Union. The raving Nazi judges in fascist Germany. The Denunciation rallies in Maos China. State crime is cloaked in a faux legality, a judicial farce.

If Julian is extradited and sentenced and, given the Lubyanka-like proclivities of the Eastern District of Virginia, this is anear certainty, it means that those of us who have published classified material, as I did when I worked for The New York Times, will become criminals. It means that an iron curtain will be pulled down to mask abuses of power. It means that the state, which, through Special Administrative Measures, or SAMs, anti-terrorism laws, and the Espionage Act that have created our homegrown version of Stalins Article 58, canimprisonanyone anywhere in the world who dares commit the crime of telling the truth.

We are here to fight for Julian. But we are also here to fight against powerful subterranean forces that, in demanding Julians extradition and life imprisonment, have declared war on journalism.

We are here to fight for Julian. But we are also here to fight for the restoration of the rule of law and democracy.

We are here to fight for Julian. But we are also here to dismantle the wholesale Stasi-like state surveillance erected across the West.

We are here to fight for Julian. But we are also here to overthrow and let me repeat that word for the benefit of those in the FBI and Homeland Security who have come here to monitor us overthrowthe corporate state and create a government of the people, by the people and for the people, that will cherish, rather than persecute, the best among us.

You can see my interview with Julians father, John Shipton,here.

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Opinion | The Puppets and the Puppet Masters - Common Dreams

The War on Drugs has failed in its stated goal of reducing drug use and sale and has instead resulted in a devastating trail of trauma, pain, and suffering, for families, and communities, with communities of colour facing the harshest impact.

Globally, Black Brown and Indigenous people are disproportionately targeted for drug law enforcement and face discrimination across the criminal justice system.

The War on Drugs has provided the architecture, in many ways, within which racist and colonialist laws, policies and practices can operate. Our work to decolonise drug policy seeks to raise awareness of the racism and colonialism underlying international drug control, and its impact on the health and human rights of individuals and communities in order to begin to dismantle these destructive policies.

This conversation between Imani Mason Jordan, Gracie Bradley and Shanice McBean took place via Zoom on Wednesday 8th September 2021, as part of "Decolonising drug policy: British policing, the war on drugs, and the everyday impacts of colonialism," co-hosted by Release and Harm Reduction International.

Imani Mason Jordan is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, editor and facilitator.

Gracie Bradley is an activist, campaigner and writer and also the ex-director of Liberty.

Shanice McBean is an anti-racist organizer who has done, loads of wonderful work with Sisters Uncut, #KilltheBill, and CopWatch.

Imani Mason Jordan

The guiding question for our conversation today is: what can a deeper understanding of British colonialism teach us about contemporary policing and drug prohibition, and how can we use these lessons to better our organising work today?

As I have discussed in my own work and writing, the War on Drugs is driven by carceral and colonial logics across the continuum of policing, prison, detention, borders, surveillance... I've been particularly interested in what is made visible through the framing of the War on Drugs as a form of state violence, and the specific ways in which drug policy is used as a tool of racial and social control in the UK and elsewhere.

I have asked Gracie and Shanice both to join this conversation because I know that they are committed to working within anti-carceral, anti-colonial and anti-capitalist frameworks towards the horizon of abolition. And I really want to bring this conversation more deeply into the realm of drug policy and drug policy reform.

Gracie Bradley

What do we miss when we don't understand colonial legacies of policing? How can understanding those legacies improve our organising work? I spent a little while thinking about this and I thought it would be really useful to talk through the formation of the police in Britain.

There's a good faith view that policing, prisons and criminalisation are about public protection, about keeping us all safe from harm. There are those of us who know from our interactions with the police that that view is a fiction. I would say that it's something that is radically underappreciated and often intentionally ignored by people in policy spaces concerned with criminal punishment. Obviously, I was Director of Liberty for a while, I've had some interesting interactions with public officials, and there was a Senior Official at the Home Office who once asked me: "Why do Western nations have such difficulty with the police and their ethnic minority populations?". I didn't have the time or the institutional mandate to answer that for him then but it struck me how different our conversations and our understanding of the present day is when we see how colonial legacies continue to reverberate.

Policing has always been concerned with protecting wealth in the context of racial capitalism. It's always been concerned with the surveillance and discipline of suspect populations. And those techniques of discipline have been frequently developed in Britain's overseas colonies, and refined and redeployed on the British mainland, frequently against the descendants of colonised people, very often in the inner cities spaces that you might have heard dubbed "internal colonies."

If we understand the origins of British policing, we understand what policing is for: the surveillance and discipline of suspect populations in service of capital and the state. It's not something that was made to keep us safe. And when I say us, I am thinking about us in its most expansive sense. I think that Teju Cole, who's a writer and photographer, said it best: "I reject the poverty of a narrowly defined we". If we reject that narrowly defined we, and define it as something other than simply the ruling class, we define that as working-class people, racialized people, disabled people, people who use drugs, people of minoritized gender and sexual identities. It's at that point that that magical correspondence between policing and keeping us safe from harm, disappears. That was never the intention.

If we understand its colonial legacy, we can stop lamenting a broken institution and understand it as an institution that is working as it was supposed to, and we can stop pouring resources into that institution in the hope of reforming it, because it was never intended to be better than this.

Instead, we can spend our time, our energy, and our resources genuinely trying to respond to social problems and their causes. And I suppose, the last thing that I wanted to bring into my contribution here is just something that Mariame Kaba tells us, which is that not all harm is criminalised, and not everything criminalised is harmful. If we don't understand the colonial history of policing and criminal punishment, we can't properly appreciate the gap between harm and criminality. We can't really understand how the notion of criminality has been developed and deployed over time by the state to serve certain interests.

Campaign groups are really apt to expend a lot of energy claiming that certain people are not criminals. We hear it all the time: "asylum seekers aren't criminals," "protesters aren't criminals," "protest is not a crime," and so on. What all of that does is reify and legitimize the category of the criminal. It says there is really a criminal somewhere, it's just not us over here. And I think that for many reasons that leads us to a dead end, you know. Audre Lorde said it: we don't live single issue lives, and I think, if you're someone who is working because you want to protect the rights of people who use drugs, you have to appreciate that, and you will know that drug use is not all that somebody's life is. They're going to be exposed to violence across multiple different axes of their lives. We don't exist in silos.

Shanice McBean

I think it's important to talk about drug policy specifically, because policy is enforced, and how policy is enforced matters. That raises the question of who is it enforced against? And the police are the key way in which drug policy is enforced. They're no longer the only way drug policy is enforced, with counterterrorism policy and all sorts of other ways in which the state comes into our lives, enforcement by institutions beyond the police, schools, hospitals, benefits office, etc. But the police are unique amongst public services because they have a lot of tools to do this enforcing: intelligence-gathering, surveillance, arrest detainment, and particularly stop and search. And stop and search has been quite contentious as a strategy because of its disproportionality in Black communities.

But stop and search is also contentious because it doesn't really work, and because it doesn't work, we have to ask well, why do they use it? Because the government said so. In 2016 there was a really interesting study on stop and searches through use of Section 60, where police can stop and search people without suspicion that a crime is taking place. They can stop you for any reason. Obviously Black people were disproportionately stopped. They use Section 60's across London for the three years, prior to the 2011 riots. So from 2008 to 2011, the police had Section 60's across London day and night, stopping people relentlessly. And the government's own 2016 report on this period said that there was no significant impact of the increase in stop and search on crime. And in fact, the thing that affected crime rates most was the weather. There was more crime in the summer, than crime in the winter. So, this raises the question, why are the police empowered with these tools? And why do they specifically seem to use them against the Black community?

There's a recent report that was written by the U.K. Drug and Policy Commission and their research suggests that particularly Class A drug use is disproportionately used amongst white populations in compared to the Black population. The terms of Class A, Class B Class C, the rationalization behind this is it's about harm. We have these classifications because Class A is the most dangerous substance type, Class B is in the middle, Class C is less dangerous than B's and A's. If this is true, then by the state's own rationalization, you would expect policing to be more targeted in the white community. And even recently a report done by the Guardian suggesting that cocaine was found all over Parliament, but the police aren't there; there is no linear line between policing and the actual use of drugs in society.

I think it's really important to think about the police and policing as about social control and not harm reduction and how this intermingles will race is really important. Cedric Robinson said that race becomes largely the rationalization for domination, exploitation, and extermination of specifically non-European people; non-European because it was in these places that we had our colonies where we took labour for slavery from. And you can see this playing out today, even though we no longer have colonies outside of the nation; we still have colonies within the nation. You can see how this plays out with questions like knife crime, for example, which is correlated not with race, but solvable social political and economic problems. Mental health, domestic violence in the family, education and lack of educational opportunities, lack of job opportunities and poverty. And yet this idea of rampant drug use, rampant drug dealing, rampant lack of morality in Black families is reinvigorated as a racial stereotype to shift responsibility for violence away from the state and solvable social problems to Black families. So it's in this way that drug policy itself becomes a tool in which to enforce social control through race.

We often have this idea that as progressives, we need to grow the state. Our struggles for racial equality, for gender equality, sexual equality, should result in leaving our mark on the state through legislation, we need more legislation to protect us. But actually, I want to argue the law and policy is a tool of domination as Cedric spoke of in and of itself. And actually, we should be looking to get rid of these things to shrink the state, to shrink the state's use of law and policy as a tool of domination. And that means building a society that prioritises people and not prioritise power.

Imani Mason Jordan

I want to aska slightly challenging question to both of you just to think about how we translate that theory and that knowledge into action today. A lot of the people listening will be interested in reforming drug policy, not necessarily reforming the police. Both of you have such a detailed understanding of state policy so how do we use that to do exactly what you're saying? To think about a way of shrinking the power that the state have over us, rather than adding again and again, more layers of legislation, bureaucracy or domination when it comes to drug policy specifically and in our relationship to the state. So that's one question I have.

And then also one that I've been asked before that, I found very difficult to answer. It concerns this concept of rolling back or shrinking the state, and thinking about the way in which we, as people invested in a kind of abolition interested in reducing the role of the state in our lives. We have to be cognizant too of extremely right-wing organising principles or strategies that are also based on rolling back the state. Just this week, Boris Johnson spoke about shrinking the state. I wonder if you have any thoughts on that, either of you?

Shanice McBean

I'll be happy to jump in on the second question, because I've been thinking about it quite a lot, and it's quite an ideological question. So, one of the narratives of the right, is this idea of shrinking the state because then the state would have less control over our lives and we can therefore be free to pursue the logics of free market capitalism. We can go out and you know, run businesses and essentially do what we like. And the idea is that regulation is a hindrance to that individual freedom. And one of the ironies of this is that Thatcher was one of the great expanders of state, The state has hugely expanded since Thatcher and under every government, including Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and even Boris Johnson, like the 452 new laws brought in around COVID under him.

This idea that conservatism is about shrinking the state is an ideological one because what they're about is bolstering the state to make it harder for us as ordinary people to navigate it. For example, during COVID lockdowns, through the rampant stops and searches and fines under COVID there was this idea that the police just didn't quite understand the new legislation, that's why they made all these errors and mistakes. Similarly with immigration law as well, there are so many laws, and new laws around citizenship and immigration, it can be hard for people even working in these fields to understand what the lay of the land is. And this is really deliberate. It's intended to obscure power.

And so I think yeah, there's a need to reconceptualise the role of the state for people who want a more liberated future and break out of this binary of More State versus Less State, and actually ask what the function of state power or its resources is. In my ideal world, I'm not so fussed about how much I'm getting taxed, but I am fussed about how much power institutions have over people's lives, and I guess that's the difference between a left-wing and right-wing, if you want to use that binary.

Gracie Bradley

I was drawn to your second question. I mean, obviously, having been Director of Liberty through a pandemic, this is the line that I have had to have my eyes trained on so closely for a long time because there have been such massive overreaches in state power. This is a very light political philosophy nerd point, but it's not that conservatives they want a minimal state, but I mean, they love Robert Nozick, right? So actually, they're about the minimal state. They're basically like the state can just enforce threats to liberty, life, contract, property it's very different to the more progressive criticisms of state power during the pandemic that we try to advance. They're happy with the hostile environment, but they just don't want the COVID enforcement, right? Because it's about who gets to be protected and who doesn't. It's about who's viewed as a legitimate subject and who's not.

I have to say, I think I'm just still very ambivalent about the state generally, you know, Luke de Noronha and I've been working on Against Borders: The Case for Abolition and we never really got to that end of that question throughout the whole book. I mean, the nation-state should go, sure. But how do we organise caring for one another? And especially when that care might be, you know, really for very distant others, right? Not limited to just those near us on this tiny island. I think it's a really challenging question. I guess that the point is that abolition is about making certain practices and certain state practices obsolete. I think the really important thing there is that we're supposed to figure out new ways of relating to one another, and new ways of caring for one another.

Imani Mason Jordan

What I've heard in both of your responses is that there's something around this neoliberal ideology of shrinking the state is preoccupied with individual freedoms, versus a collective understanding of the people versus the state. So I don't want the state to do something to me that is not what I want, but I want it to provide a particular kind of "safety" for me as an individual. Safety is really like a stand-in for the ability to weaponise the state against specific people, or against something that causes me anywhere from mild discomfort to actual harm. Its the idea that the state works for my individual interests.

Question: In recent years, several police forces in Britain have started to co-opt the language of harm reduction to support diversion programs, carry naloxone or be involved in drug checking. Is there a role for the police in harm reduction?

Imani Mason Jordan

Just to caveat that in a lot of places where there is currently some really important harm reduction work going on, it is the police actors that actually are much more willing to be involved in this shift in practices versus, changing the law for example. It is much easier for advocates to get a police force to change their tactics, then it is to get a law to be changed. And so there's been this really uneasy relationship between harm reduction organisers and local police forces, because in some ways they've been the only state actors who have actually been wanting to involve themselves in the conversation and practice of change. Of course, I'm very suspect of this.

Shanice McBean

I don't mean to be facetious, but there is a role for police in harm reduction, and that's making themselves obsolete. Anyone is allowed by law to use Naloxone if its to save a life. I think that fact points to something really important about the already existing obsoleteness of policing, which is that we could do a much better job at their own stated aims.

So to give you an example, the first person who often hears or observes domestic abuse taking place is a neighbour. What would it look like if we lived in a society where neighbours took an approach of care, were trained, supported, and have the resources to be able to support people in their local community who are experiencing violence of some kind? The first people who sees someone collapse with cardiac arrest on the street is a citizen, not a paramedic who gets there on time. So what does it look like to actually empower communities, to give them the resources needed to protect each other from harm? It should be the case that everyone has Naloxone so when they're walking down the street, if any time they run into someone who's having an opiate overdose, they can administer it. These aren't things that we have to rely on the police for.

When you actually look at the roots of harm, they have social, political and economic causes that we could address differently in society. And who is it every time we try to change the world, who prevents us from doing so? It's the cops. The miners' strike, the uprisings in Black communities, uprisings in colonies, Black Lives Matter protests, anti-austerity protests, student protests. Who is preventing us from ushering in a new reality, where we could actually prevent these harms from taking place? It's always the cops. So to be frank, the best thing that they could do to reduce harm in societies to make themselves obsolete.

Gracie Bradley

One of the things that we haven't touched on is just this concept of non-reformist reforms.

I think it's really important to be clear that abolition is a lot more than non-reformist reforms. Its not reducible to non-reformist reforms, but there are reforms and other changes that we can pursue here and now that will bring us closer to that world that we want to see, or that at least will not make it more difficult for us to get there, versus those reforms that promise us some kind of change that is actually just going to reinforce and kind of consolidate the system we want to get rid of.

I think that the resource question is really integral and, and that's partly why the police want a role in harm reduction, right? Because it often means more resources for the police. So, a really key way of thinking whether a reform is going to be helpful or not is just thinking through, who's the money going to? Whos getting the resources? To the people who are most affected by these state practices? Is it going to organisations? Thinking about where the resources are going is very important. Thinking about whether it's adding more tools and tactics to the police's arsenal is also important. Which one do I think would do the least harm, would open the way to that different world?

Imani Mason Jordan

Thank you so much. Drug policy reform actually has a long history of advocating to redistribute funds away from criminalisation towards public health. But its quite easy to actually look at the calls for resource redistribution and the removal of policing from drug possession laws and call it defunding the police. The notoriety or supposed radicality of that is somehow uncomfortable in policy spaces, but this redistribution or reallocation of funds away from criminalisation includes things like exploring de facto decriminalisation instead of police diversion schemes.

Read more here:

Intersecting Drug Policy and Abolition: A Conversation - TalkingDrugs

Gender Minister Kim Hyun-sook speaks at a press briefing held Thursday at the governmental complex in central Seoul. (Yonhap)

According to the plans set out by the Yoon administration, the ministry would be shut down and its focus on youth, family and gender equality would be transferred to a bureau under the Ministry of Health and Welfare under the name of "Population Family Gender Equality Division." Functions regarding employment of women would be transferred to the Ministry of Employment and Labor.

Gender Minister Kim Hyun-sook said the ministrys roles would remain even after the transfer, in response to concern that the abolition would lead to neglect.

We will work on making sure that the ministry's functions such as the protection of youth, and policies related to families and women, will continue even after the ministry has been transferred, Kim said at a press briefing held Thursday.

Gender equality policies, which were focused on women, will be expanded into policies for both men and women, she added.

The reform, however, requires the approval of the Democratic Party of Korea, which holds a majority in parliament, with 169 out of 299 seats.

"Bringing up the abolition of the Gender Ministry seems to be an effort to turn the eyes of (the public) away from the president's hot mic incident," Rep. Jang Kyung-tae said on a radio show on Thursday.

According to the president's own press secretary, who said Yoon's derisive term recently caught on a hot mic referred to members of the National Assembly here, "Yoon does not think of the parliament as his partner in state governance," Jang said. "It is hard to understand the sudden reform of the government organization."

Jang was referring to President Yoon Suk-yeols alleged use of a vulgar insult to refer to a legislature during his trip to the US. Which legislature -- US or Korean -- and the exact words Yoon used is still subject to debate.

Lawmakers in the Gender Equality and Family Committee also warned the abolition could lead to a retrograde of gender equality policies due to the "lack of the control tower."

Yeh Yun-hae, vice spokesperson for the progressive Justice Party, also criticized the abolition plan.

The Yoon administration and the People Power Party are admitting that gender equality does not matter and they have no will to support women who are victims of violence, career-interrupted women and multicultural families, Yeh said. "They should stop the abolition of the Gender Ministry, which sets back women's rights and gender equality.

The People Power Party is to table a bill on the reform of the Government Organization Act. The bill, however, cannot pass the National Assembly without cooperation from the Democratic Party.

The ruling party is calling for the opposition party's cooperation.

"(The opposition party) has expressed its concern on the abolition of the Gender Ministry and adjustment of its roles," Rep. Joo Ho-young, floor leader of the ruling party, said at a party meeting held Thursday.

"Though the Democratic Party may not fully agree with (the abolition) it was the pledge of (our party) during the presidential election and a promise made with the people," Joo said. "Government will do the work. It would be nice if the government can decide on which organizations to work with."

Womens rights groups issued a statement Wednesday criticizing the abolition plan.

This is a time when women experience violence and are murdered at work, the statement read. We condemn the government and People Power Party who are mentioning abolition of the Gender Ministry to overcome their political crisis, setting back womens rights and gender equality measures at a time when the functions and responsibility of the Gender Ministry should be reinforced.

By Im Eun-byel (silverstar@heraldcorp.com)

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Rival parties to lock horns over Gender Ministry in government organization reform plan - The Korea Herald