British Serco private prison scandal

This video from Australia is called The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of. It is about private prison corporation Serco.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

POA: end shame of Serco jail

Tuesday 14 May 2013

by Paddy McGuffin and Adrian Roberts

Prison officers called today for a privately run London prison to be turned over to the public sector after inspectors exposed horrendous violence and all-day lock-ups.

HM Inspectorate of Prisons found that Serco-run HMP Thameside, which opened in March 2012, was riven by violence and had “one of the most restrictive regimes” inspectors had ever seen.

There was a high level of assaults and prisoners had little confidence in the inexperienced staff to handle violence or deliquency.

Inspectors found that guards used a high, but reducing, level of force, segregation and harshly limited inmates’ time out of their cells.

Six in 10 inmates were locked up during the working day with some shut up for 23 hours.

There were also far too few activity places to meet prisoners’ needs, inspectors said.

Chief Inspector of Prisons Nick Hardwick said the first stage in a new jail’s operation was “critical and demanding” and that Thamesmead staff and managers had faced “clearly evident” challenges “in bringing stability to this prison.

“The opening process had been hard work and very tough. There remained some big gaps at the prison and there was much to do before it could be seen as operating at its full potential.”

But prison officers union POA general secretary Steve Gillan said it was all too predictable.

Speaking from the POA conference in Southport, Mr Gillan said: “This is what happens when the government of the day has privatisation of the public sector at the heart of its agenda.

“Prisons must not be for-profit and Thameside should be given to the public sector.”

National Offender Management Service chief executive Michael Spurr tried to defend the prison, saying that it was “still in the very early stages of its development.

“Decisive action has already been taken to address the concerns raised.”

But Howard League for Penal Reform campaigns director Andrew Neilson said the government should be embarrassed.

“Less than a week after Justice Secretary Chris Grayling demanded that prisoners work harder to earn privileges, this flagship private prison is revealed to be locking up inmates for 23 hours a day because they don’t have anything constructive to do.

“This is what happens when you hand the justice system over to vast multinational corporations, who put cost-cutting and the interests of their shareholders ahead of concern for public safety.”

The sisters of two men who died in custody on a police-station floor pleaded with trade unionists in Glasgow today to join their fight for justice: here.

Related articles

• New prison criticised over violence (bbc.co.uk)
• Private prison is ‘shambolic failure plagued by violence’ (standard.co.uk)
• Thameside prison report criticises extended ‘lock-down’ (guardian.co.uk)
• When prisoners mean profit, the numbers don’t go down | Zoe Williams (guardian.co.uk)
• Privatised justice is no justice at all | Nina Power (guardian.co.uk)
• Serco profits rise as detention contracts hit $1.86bn (smh.com.au)
• The Best Business of Australia: What is Serco hiding? (thesail.wordpress.com)
• Grayling’s stricter prison rules ‘will cause deaths’ (morningstaronline.co.uk)

Japanese politician defends forced prostitution

This video says about itself:

March 4, 2013

This documentary aims to highlight the issue of “Comfort Women” or girls forced into sex slavery by the Japanese Army during World War II as grave violation of human rights that affected AND continues to affect women all across Asia and Europe.

The film begins in South Korea and moves on to meet victims in Wuhan, China, Shanghai, the Philippines and Australia.

It was aired on March 1st, 2013 on Arirang TV, Korea’s only global network.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Mayor claims ‘comfort girls’ needed for discipline

Tuesday 14 May 2013

A Japanese mayor claimed on Monday that the forced prostitution of women during the second world war was necessary to “maintain discipline” in the ranks and provide rest for soldiers.

Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, who is also leader of an emerging right-wing political party, controversially claimed that “to maintain discipline in the military, it must have been necessary at that time.

“For soldiers who risked their lives in circumstances where bullets are flying around like rain and wind, a comfort women system was necessary. That’s clear to anyone,” he claimed.

Up to 200,000 women from Korea and China were forced to provide sex for Japanese soldiers.

A South Korean government official said it was disappointing that the mayor “had revealed a serious lack of respect for women’s rights.”

Beijing said it was “shocked” and “angered” by Mr Hashimoto’s comments.

Spokesman Hong Lei said: “The forced use of comfort women was a severe crime … and is also a major human rights issue.”

Related articles

• Japanese politician defends use of sex slaves (abc.net.au)
• Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto Says Wartime Sex Slaves Were ‘Necessary’ (hngn.com)
• Japan Mayor Defends Use Of Wartime Sex Slaves (news.sky.com)
• Japanese ministers criticize Hashimoto for remarks on “comfort women” (english.kyodonews.jp)
• Japanese Mayor Defends WWII Prostitution (newsy.com)
• Japan WWII ‘comfort women’ were ‘necessary’ – Hashimoto (arunbabyveranakunnel.wordpress.com)
• Japan’s WWII sex slaves ‘necessary’ (bbc.co.uk)
• Toru Hashimoto, Osaka Mayor, Says Forced Prostitution Of Asian Women During World War II Was Necessary (huffingtonpost.com)
• Forced prostitution of women for use by Japanese soldiers during World War II was ‘necessary’ claims mayor of Osaka (warhistoryonline.com)

Fukushima nuclear disaster measured

This video from Japan says about itself:

Relationship between Yakuza gangs and TEPCO has become the closer for the accident

Oct 22, 2011

Syunsuke Yamaoka, representative of Access Journal, entered the site of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant illegally with a helping hand of the workers there and found Yakuza gangs arranged jobs there, especially jobs inside the buildings which would make the workers’ life get at stake and that the relationship between Yakuza gangs and TEPCO had got closer than that before the accident.

And he wrote a book ‘Fukushima Daiichi Genpatu Sennyuki (Book of Infiltration into Fukushima Daiichi Nuke Plant)’ about that with interviews with three workers working there.

Day laborers were deceived into removing highly-irrated rubble in the Fukushima, I heard: here.

From the University of Southampton in England:

Southampton researchers develop new tool to provide radiation monitoring in Japan

14 May 2013 Southampton, University of

A team of researchers from the University of Southampton have designed a new tool to intelligently combine nuclear radioactivity data in Japan. The technology harnesses the power of crowdsourced radiation data; an innovative resource which became available after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

During March 2011, the second-largest nuclear emergency since Chernobyl 1986 was caused by a magnitude nine Tsunami hitting the North-East coast of Japan and severely damaging the nuclear power plant of Fukushima-Daiichi. The consequent nuclear accident provoked radioactivity increases of up to 1,000 times the normal levels in the area of Fukushima with more than 488,000 people being evacuated from their homes for the risk of nuclear contamination.

In response, private individuals brought forward the unprecedented effort of deploying 577 Geiger counters across the country to help the public monitor the spread of the nuclear cloud. These sensors were mostly built using low-cost open hardware boards such as Arduino and were able to stream radiation data in real time connected through the Cosm web platform. This crowdsourced sensor network, also known as the Cosm network, came to life in less than two weeks after the Tsunami and provided very relevant data to both official authorities and local citizens for monitoring the evolution of the disaster. More recently, the network was extended to 1,024 sensors contributed by several other organisations such as Safecast and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (MEXT). All together, the Cosm sensors provided more than 27 million readings since the day of the Fukushima disaster.

According to the researchers, a key element in order to incentivise people to take part in crowdsourcing projects is to help them understand these large quantities of data. To help people gain such an understanding, it is important to close the loop and feedback the results to the data contributors.

For this reason, the researchers have developed the Japan Nuclear Crowd Map (JNCM http://jncm.ecs.soton.ac.uk/): a web platform that combines into a single database the sensor readings provided from the three main crowdsourced radiation monitoring services: Cosm, Safecast, MEXT.

Matteo Venanzi, from the University of Southampton, who developed JNCM says: “The platform automatically collects raw radiation data from the online sensors and uses a non-parametric Gaussian process model to fuse the data into a single radiation map over Japan. The estimates are then shown to the users as a heat map and an intensity map, showing the average radioactivity in each prefecture. The users can also search by postcode to find out the radioactivity in their neighbourhood based on the latest predictions.”

JNCM is also available for smartphones with the JNCM Android app. Through the app, the users can visualise the radiation heat map directly on their phones as data are collected and also know the radiation level at their current location.

Yuki Ikumo, also from the University of Southampton, who developed the JNCM Android app says: “JNCM aims to be one of the future technologies for disaster managements in which the large participation of people will play a crucial role in community-based sensing crowdsourcing environmental monitoring tasks.”

JNCM users can now perceive the usefulness of this technology by freely accessing a number of radiation monitoring services based on the data contributed by thousands of crowd members.

JNCM is developed within the ORCHID project based in Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, which investigates how human and software agents can work effectively together to collect the best possible information from a disaster environment. To find out more and try the platform, go to http://jncm.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ or download the app from Google play.

Related articles

• Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Tsunami Debris (usazorropress.wordpress.com)
• Good-bye Dubai? Bombing Iran’s Nuclear Facilities would leave the Entire Gulf States Region virtually Uninhabitable (thetruthseeker.co.uk)
• Plutonium found outside of containment in marine soil at Fukushima Daiichi (enformable.com)
• Fukushima Nuclear Crisis Update for May 10th to May 13th, 2013 (greenpeace.org)

Corporate destruction of Mayan temple in Belize

This video is called Mexico – Chichen Itza (Mayan Pyramids).

From Associated Press:

May 13, 2013, 7:30 PM

Bulldozers destroy Mayan pyramid in Belize

BELIZE CITY – A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize’s largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday.

The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe, said the destruction at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was detected late last week. The ceremonial center dates back at least 2,300 years and is the most important site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico.

“It’s a feeling of incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity … they were using this for road fill,” Awe said. “It’s like being punched in the stomach, it’s just so horrendous.”

Nohmul sat in the middle of a privately owned sugar cane field, and lacked the even stone sides frequently seen in reconstructed or better-preserved pyramids. But Awe said the builders could not possibly have mistaken the pyramid mound, which is about 100 feet tall, for a natural hill because the ruins were well-known and the landscape there is naturally flat.

“These guys knew that this was an ancient structure. It’s just bloody laziness”, Awe said.

Photos from the scene showed backhoes clawing away at the pyramid’s sloping sides, leaving an isolated core of limestone cobbles at the center, with what appears to be a narrow Mayan chamber dangling above one clawed-out section.

“Just to realize that the ancient Maya acquired all this building material to erect these buildings, using nothing more than stone tools and quarried the stone, and carried this material on their heads, using tump lines,” said Awe. “To think that today we have modern equipment, that you can go and excavate in a quarry anywhere, but that this company would completely disregard that and completely destroyed this building. Why can’t these people just go and quarry somewhere that has no cultural significance? It’s mind-boggling.”

Belizean police said they are conducting an investigation and criminal charges are possible. The Nohmul complex sits on private land, but Belizean law says that any pre-Hispanic ruins are under government protection.

The Belize community-action group Citizens Organized for Liberty Through Action called the destruction of the archaeological site “an obscene example of disrespect for the environment and history.”

It is not the first time it’s happened in Belize, a country of about 350,000 people that is largely covered in jungle and dotted with hundreds of Mayan ruin sites, though few as large as Nohmul.

Norman Hammond, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Boston University who worked in Belizean research projects in the 1980s, wrote in an email that “bulldozing Maya mounds for road fill is an endemic problem in Belize (the whole of the San Estevan center has gone, both of the major pyramids at Louisville, other structures at Nohmul, many smaller sites), but this sounds like the biggest yet.”

Arlen Chase, chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida, said, “Archaeologists are disturbed when such things occur, but there is only a very limited infrastructure in Belize that can be applied to cultural heritage management.”

“Unfortunately, they (destruction of sites) are all too common, but not usually in the center of a large Maya site,” Chase wrote.

He said there had probably still been much to learn from the site. “A great deal of archaeology was undertaken at Nohmul in the ’70s and ’80s, but this only sampled a small part of this large center.”

Belize isn’t the only place where the handiwork of the far-flung and enormously prolific Maya builders is being destroyed. The ancient Mayas spread across southeastern Mexico and through Guatemala, Honduras and Belize.

“I don’t think I am exaggerating if I say that every day a Maya mound is being destroyed for construction in one of the countries where the Maya lived,” wrote Francisco Estrada-Belli, a professor at Tulane University’s Anthropology Department.

“Unfortunately, this destruction of our heritage is irreversible but many don’t take it seriously,” he added. “The only way to stop it is by showing that it is a major crime and people can and will go to jail for it.”

Robert Rosenswig, an archaeologist at the State University of New York at Albany, described the difficult and heartbreaking work of trying to salvage information at the nearby site of San Estevan following similar destruction around 2005.

“Bulldozing damage at San Estevan is extensive and the site is littered with Classic period potsherds,” he wrote in an academic paper describing the scene. “We spent a number of days at the beginning of the 2005 season trying to figure out the extent of the damage …. after scratching our heads for many days, a bulldozer showed up and we realized that what appear to be mounds, when overgrown with chest-high vegetation, are actually recently bulldozed garbage piles.”

However small the compensation, bulldozing pyramids is one very brutal way of revealing the inner cores of the structures, which were often built up in periodic stages of construction.

“The one advantage of this massive destruction, to the core site, is that the remains of early domestic activity are now visible on the surface,” Rosenswig wrote.

Related articles

• Ancient Mayan pyramid destroyed by construction company in Belize (rt.com)

Dutch horse meat scandal update

This is a Dutch TV video on horse meat and rotting meat scandals at the Willy Selten meat processing plant in the Netherlands.

From DutchNews.nl:

900 restaurants supplied with potentially horse-contaminated beef

Tuesday 14 May 2013

More than 1,000 restaurants, shops and butchers in the Netherlands sold beef potentially mixed with horse from the Selten meat wholesaler company, Nos television reports on Tuesday.

Quoting food safety inspectors figures, the broadcaster says over 900 restaurants were supplied meat that may have been contaminated.

In April, the food safety body NVWA recalled 50 million kilos of meat traded by Selten because its origins were unclear. The meat was sold all over Europe between January 2011 and February 15 this year.

Eaten

Most of the meat delivered to the hospitality industry has probably been ‘served and eaten’, a spokesman told the broadcaster.

In total, 132 meat processing firms were supplied beef by Selten. Four of them have been fined for failing to cooperate with the investigation and one has had a written warning.

Ministers will report back on the recall at the end of this month.

The NVWA refuses to publish the names of the businesses to which Selten sold the meat.

Related articles

• New horsemeat scandal in the Netherlands (bigpondnews.com)
• Dutch horse meat scandal update (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Horsemeat scandal’s prime suspect revealed: Is this the tycoon who butchered the meat trade? (mirror.co.uk)
• 50,000 tonnes of beef may contain horse: Netherlands (dailystar.com.lb)
• You: UK abattoir linked to Dutch distributor investigated over horsemeat scandal (guardian.co.uk)
• Netherlands says 50,000 tonnes of beef may contain horse (thenewstribe.com)
• Dutch recall 50,000 tons of meat across Europe (newsobserver.com)
• Dutch recall 50,000 tonnes of meat (bbc.co.uk)

FBI withheld information on Boston bombing suspects from local police

This video from the USA is called Amateur footage Boston bomb attack.

By Barry Grey in the USA:

FBI, Homeland Security withheld information on Boston bombing suspects from local, state police

11 May 2013

The Boston police commissioner and a top Massachusetts Homeland Security official told Congress Thursday that the local and state police were never informed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Department of Homeland Security of multiple warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to the April 15 bombings at the Boston Marathon.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar are the only suspects to date in the twin bombings at the downtown Boston finish line of the race, which killed three people and wounded more than 160 others. Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police on April 19. Dzhokhar is under arrest at a prison medical facility outside of Boston.

Testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said his department had been unaware that the Russian government contacted the FBI in 2011 to warn of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s radical jihadist sympathies and his plans to travel to the northern Caucasus and link up with Islamist separatist and terrorist elements from Dagestan and Chechnya. Nor had he been told, he said, that the FBI had questioned the elder Tsarnaev brother and his family, or that Tamerlan subsequently, in 2012, spent six months in the volatile region of southern Russia.

Related articles

• FBI Didn’t Tell Boston PD of Their Inquiry into Tamerlan Tsarnaev Until After Bombing (news.softpedia.com)

Anti-racism and British students

This video from Britain says about itself:

An interview with Stephen Lawrence’s mother Doreen Lawrence

Dec 19, 2012

Doreen Lawrence has had a memorable year. Her 2012 began with the conviction of two of her son’s killers in January. In the summer she led out the Olympic flag and the year ends with her making plans to mark the 20th anniversary of her son’s death. She talks to Hugh Muir about her efforts to keep the Stephen Lawrence trust going and to maintain pressure to convict the other men involved in his murder.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

NUS leaders condemned for blocking anti-racism motion

Friday 10 May 2013

by Our News Desk

Anti-racists slammed National Union of Students leaders today for rejecting proposals to fight discrimination and fascism.

The NUS’s executive council shot down a motion calling on it to “actively challenge racism, Islamophobia, anti-semitism and fascism” in an eight to 11 vote on Thursday.

If passed, the motion would have committed the union to a massive student voter registration drive in a bid to unseat fascist Euro MPs Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons.

NUS president Liam Burns was among those who opposed the motion, as it mandated the union to work with Unite Against Facism (UAF).

Opponents cited the involvement of the Socialist Workers Party, which is currently embroiled in a rape scandal.

But black students officer Aaron Kiely labelled the decision “absurd” in the week that “Ukip make a breakthrough in the local elections and the government announces a new immigration Bill aimed at ramping up racist scapegoating.”

Mr Kiely, who proposed the motion, said the fact that Doreen Lawrence, mother of racist-murder victim Stephen, is honorary president of UAF should have given NUS members confidence to work with the organisation.

Labour MP Diane Abbott said: “I completely condemn the rape scandal that has tainted the SWP leadership.

“But I am still in general support of the good anti-racist work of the UAF.”

And UAF national secretary Sabby Dhalu told the Morning Star she was “deeply concerned” about the vote when “students and young people face some of the most violent manifestations of racism.

“With the far-right increasingly targeting campuses, and with this being the 20th anniversary of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, this vote sends the wrong signal.”

Britain’s Queen’s speech: Anti-immigrant rhetoric in support of austerity: here.

Related articles

• David Norris loses appeal bid against his conviction for the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence (dailymail.co.uk)
• Why practice Anti Racism (neymap5.wordpress.com)
• Doreen Lawrence: ‘I could have shut myself away, but that is not me’ (guardian.co.uk)
• Stephen Lawrence’s brother and sister are still affected by his racist murder, reveals his mother Doreen (dailymail.co.uk)
• Stephen’s death still hurts us 20 years on, says Doreen Lawrence as PM attends memorial service (standard.co.uk)

Uruguayan dictatorship torture general on trial

This video says about itself:

May 28, 2010

Tens of thousands of Uruguayans including President Jose Mujica marched in silence on May 20th demanding to know the fate of victims of the US-backed military dictatorship which led the country from 1973 to 1985.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Dictatorship general appeals jail sentence

Friday 10 May 2013

The first general convicted of human rights violations during Uruguay’s dictatorship has appealed his 28-year prison sentence, his lawyer has confirmed.

General Miguel Dalmao was found guilty on Wednesday of the 1974 murder of literature professor and communist activist Nibia Sabalsagaray.

Gen Dalmao’s lawyer dismissed the verdict as “speculation” and said he’d already launched an appeal on Thursday.

Uruguay’s military junta had previously accepted his claim that 24-year-old Ms Sabalsagaray hanged herself with a handkerchief from an iron peg in the wall just four inches above her head.

Her family were banned from seeing her body but a medical student reported signs of torture and inconsistencies with suicide.

Gen Dalmao has been in hospital for months and is unlikely to serve his sentence.

Related articles

• Uruguay: Former General Convicted for Murder During Dictatorship (alethonews.wordpress.com)

Greek nazis burn Roma people’s homes

This is video about homes of Roma people in Xanthi city in Greece, burnt by Golden Dawn neo-nazis.

The blog dawnofthegreeks writes about this:

racist hate attack against Roma people community of Xanthi

May 10, 2013

According to reports of journalists in Xanthi and the state TV station ET3, residents of the city have invited a group of neonazis to attack the community of Roma people. The excuse was more or less the same like other regions of the country. The residents talk about a number of small-robberies in their area which is increased lately. The residents together with the nazis set the half of the Roma people tents on fire. The local police didn’t show up during the pogrom incident.

Greek source: prezatv.

Also in Greece: According to the state media, two strawberry fields workers from Bangladesh in Nea Manolada went to request their salaries from their foreman last midnight. Both workers were beaten with a knife or other sharp object, one on the back and the other on the leg, and transferred to the health center (small hospital) of Varda. The foreman was arrested by the police: here.

Hate speech bill delayed by Samaras’ office: here.

Athens mayor makes complaint over Golden Dawn MP’s ‘attempted assault’: here.

Foreign students without stay permit to be excluded from Greek graduation exams. Punished for their parents’ unemployment: here.

Related articles

• Nine Roma receive prison sentences for “crimes against the nation” (politics.hu)
• Recommendation for integration of Roma people by the Council of Europe (delegatesdaily2013.wordpress.com)
• The plight of the Roma: A brief analysis (platformjournal.wordpress.com)
• UN rights expert: EU must do more to support Roma peoples (jurist.org)
• Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Thugs Clash with Roma in Kalamata Hospital Raid (dokmz.wordpress.com)
• Roma: Unwanted, Marginalized, Defiant And Freedom To Roam (VIDEO) (bravenewimmigrant.wordpress.com)
• Facing Discrimination, Roma Strive To Succeed (eurasiareview.com)
• Roma Nation Day actions planned for April (pslweb.org)

Israeli extremist violence against praying women

From the (Rightist) Jerusalem Post in Israel:

Haredim heckle and harass Women of the Wall during prayer

By JEREMY SHARON, JPOST.COM STAFF

LAST UPDATED: 05/10/2013 10:21

Protestors throw garbage, spit, shout insults at female worshipers as they legally pray for first time at the Western Wall; Three haredi men arrested for disturbing peace; two police officers lightly wounded.

Protests at the Western Wall in Jerusalem opposing the Women of the Wall prayer group ended on Friday morning with the arrest of three haredi men suspected of disturbing the peace, as well as two police officers who suffered light injuries and were treated at the scene. A large number of security forces were at the holy site, attempting to create a human barrier between the men and women‘s sections.

Haredi protesters threw water bottles and other objects and shouted insults at the Women of the Wall activists, according to Israel Radio.

Rabbi Susan Silverman, comedian Sarah Silverman‘s sister who prays with the Women of the Wall, was at the protest where she said that haredi men spit globs of spit on her three daughters. she told The Jerusalem Post. Silverman also said that the haredim threw coffee at the Women of the Wall activists and that a little girl next to her was hit in the head with something hard.

Silverman told the Post that the haredi protesters represent “A fundamentalism and a belief in a single and very narrow view of god that I believe is idolatrous.”

Women of the Wall Spokesperson, Oshrat Ben Shimshon told Israel Radio, “Orthodox rabbis have determined that there is no halachik barrier to women praying with prayer shawls and tefillin and reading from the Torah.” …

Several thousand yeshiva students and haredi school girls convened at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem to protest the monthly prayer service of the Women of the Wall.

The protesters shouted at the Women of the Wall activists as they were conducting their first monthly service without restrictions after a court ruling two weeks ago reinterpreted existing laws and allowed them to be able to perform their own customs, such as wearing prayer shawls and tefillin, without fear of being arrested.

The idea to send haredi school girls to protest the Women of the Wall was devised by MKs from the United Torah Judaism party earlier this week in consultation with principals of haredi girls schools, on condition the initiative received approval from the leading haredi rabbis.

According to a report on haredi website Kikar Hashabbat, spiritual leader of the haredi world Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman gave his blessing to the proposal on Thursday.

Many participants in the Women of the Wall services don prayer shawls and perform other customs usually performed by men in Orthodox practice, that has until now been prohibited by state law, and as of late, women have been arrested on a frequent basis for wearing prayer shawls during the WoW services.

A court ruling two weeks ago reinterpreted existing laws and the Women of the Wall will on Friday be able to perform their own customs.

At a hearing of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women earlier this week, a representative of the Jerusalem Police confirmed that the police would not act against the recent Jerusalem District Court ruling which decided that WoW’s customs did not contravene “local custom,” that has been the basis for outlawing the group’s non-Orthodox customs.

United Torah Judaism MK Yisrael Eichler expressed outrage during the committee hearing at what he referred to as the Women of the Wall’s “provocations.” He asked if the police would allow the right of protest and demonstration against the group’s prayer service.

The Women of the Wall issued a statement on Thursday celebrating their new found freedoms.

“We have the great merit that Israeli women will arrive in their masses tomorrow for the prayer service for the New Month of Sivan. We call on the public which supports us, women and men, to come and pray with us, to liberate the Western Wall and to turn it into to the home of everyone,” the group said.

Israel: The heads of the Reform and Conservative movements will demand that Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein investigate the involvement of rabbis on the government payroll in Friday’s violent demonstrations at the Western Wall: here.

Related articles

• Haredim Riot at the Kotel (failedmessiah.typepad.com)
• Jerusalem: Haredim stone Women of the Wall – Ynetnews (ynetnews.com)
• Haredi Orthodox youth mob Western Wall in protest of women’s prayer service (jta.org)
• Ultra-Orthodox clash with Women of the Wall at Kotel (timesofisrael.com)
• Government Decides To Circumvent Court Ruling, Effectively Ban Women’s Prayer Groups At Kotel By Fiat (failedmessiah.typepad.com)
• Arrests as women pray at Jerusalem’s Western Wall (newsinfo.inquirer.net)
• After Friday’s confrontation, are more haredi protests ahead? (blogs.jta.org)
• It ain’t over ’til it’s over: Women of the Wall edition (blogs.jta.org)