Interview with British peace activist Walter Wolfgang

This video from Britain says about iself:

19 November 2006

Walter Wolfgang – a Jewish refugee from Nazi anti-semitism in Germany speaks out against the wave of anti-Muslim racism unleashed by the military disasters in Iraq & Afghanistan.

From British daily The Independent:

Walter Wolfgang: ‘We saved the world’

He was there at CND’s birth 50 years ago. As Russia warns of a new arms race, the world needs him more than ever

Interview by Cole Moreton

Sunday, 10 February 2008

Walter Wolfgang is an awkward customer – so awkward he should get an awkwardly shaped gold watch from the Awkward Squad for half a century’s loyal service. You may remember him as the old boy thrown – forcibly – out of the Labour conference two years ago for responding to a Jack Straw speech with the shout, “Nonsense!”.

The sight of party goons hauling an obviously frail man out on to the street for daring to dissent said a great deal about the dying days of the Blair administration. “I didn’t want to protest at all,” says the 84-year-old gruffly. “I was just sitting there listening. But Straw talked a lot of complete rubbish, then he went on to Iraq and said, ‘Well, we are only there for one reason, and that is to bring democracy to the country.’ So I burst out.”

The awkwardness of Walter Julius Wolfgang goes back a lot further than that, though – all the way back to bothering Hugh Gaitskell in the Fifties and being a founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which held its first ever public event 50 years ago this week. A conference in London on Saturday will mark the occasion, with a reception for surviving originals. “We wanted the speedy removal of British nuclear weapons,” recalls Mr Wolfgang. “It is taking a bit longer than we thought, eh?”

Quite. The little black-and-white badge on his lapel carries an iconic image, also taken up as a symbol of resistance to wars from Vietnam to the Gulf. At times the badge has been compulsory for the young and the dissident, with mass CND protests in the Sixties and Eighties expressing the national mood. But Polaris and Cruise missiles arrived anyway. The invasion of Iraq happened despite more than a million people taking part in an anti-war march jointly organised by CND. Now the Government plans to replace the Trident missile system. “There is no reason to give up,” insists Mr Wolfgang, despite this evidence. “We have helped to change the world for the better, in our way.” …

There were 5,000 people at the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster for the first big meeting on 17 February 1958, and Walter Wolfgang was one of them. Born in Germany, he had been sent ahead to this country by his Jewish parents as a 14-year-old in 1937.

Related articles

• CND: The Symbol on the Highstreet
• Beating The Bomb – Full Length Documentary
• Unilever abuses peace sign to sell deodorant

Defeats for McCain and Clinton in US primaries

This video from the USA is called John McCain vs. John McCain.

From British weekly The Observer:

Barack Obama inflicted shattering defeats on Hillary Clinton tonight in Washington state and Nebraska, beating her by a margin of two to one.

He was also won Louisiana, though by a narrower margin.

Although votes were still being counted, the projected gap between Obama and Clinton was large enough for US television companies to call all three contests in his favour.

To complete his night, he also picked up a win in a caucus in the US Virgin Islands.

In the Republican race, there was embarrassment for John McCain only days after declaring himself to be the Republican nominee. He suffered an overwhelming defeat in Kansas at the hands of Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, and was involved in a race too close to call in Louisiana.

Obama’s victories tip the balance in his favour in the battle to rack up delegates, who will choose the Democratic nominee at the party convention in August.

Update: McCain lost Louisiana to Huckabee as well.

See also here. And here.

Obama victory in Maine: here. And here. And here.

US trade unionists against the Iraq war

This video from the USA is called Gene Bruskin Speech, USLAW Cleveland Conference – Part 1.

By Alex Bainbridge in Australia:

Interview: US unionists organise against the war

8 February 2008

During the war against Vietnam, it was not until 1970 that the US union movement took protest action in an organised manner. And even then, it was a pro-war demonstration called by New York’s Building Trades Council in support of President Richard Nixon. However anti-war unions responded to that demonstration — held on May 20 and drawing 50,000 workers (many of them paid to attend) — with a protest of their own. While it only drew half as many people, it was a significant milestone — it was the first time that US unions formally organised an anti-war demonstration.

However, already in the nineteenth century, United States trade unions had anti war, pro peace principles.

May 1970 marked the end of the united front on the war by US unions, which had either remained silent on the issue or vocally supported it. It is in this tradition of anti-war dissent with the political establishment that US Labor Against the War was formed. Kathy Black, a USLAW leader who is conducting a speaking tour of Australia in the lead-up to Palm Sunday protests against the Iraq war, explained how “late in 2002 or early 2003, a handful of progressive labour leaders, old friends and veterans of the anti-Vietnam War campaigns, began talking together about what seemed to be the inevitable march to war and what could be done within the labour movement to stop it”.

Bill Onasch, a Kansas City unionist, noted in an October 2003 ZNet article: “By the time the invasion of Iraq was actually launched on March 20, labor organizations representing almost one-third of all organized workers in the US were on record opposed to the war.”

Black told GLW that the idea of a unionist-based anti-war network “caught fire”. In late October 2003, 154 delegates — representing, according to a ZNet account by Kim Scipes, half a million unionists — met in Chicago for USLAW’s first national assembly. A mission statement adopted at the assembly committed the organisation to “advocate, educate and mobilize in the US labor movement” around the principles of “a just foreign policy”; an end to US occupation of other countries; the redirection of US resources away from military spending towards meeting the “needs of working families”; “Supporting our troops and their families by bringing the troops home now”; “protecting workers’ rights, civil rights, civil liberties and the rights of immigrants”; and building solidarity with workers and unions around the world.

Great cormorant eating fish

This is a video about chaffinches.

Today, again a walk along the old canal in Hilversum.

Chaffinches singing; early in the year.

Also, great tit.

Sounds of nuthatch, robin, long-tailed tit, and great spotted woodpecker.

In the trees, magpies, wood pigeons, and many jackdaws.

In the water: mallard, moorhen, and a lone mute swan.

On our way back, like yesterday, a great cormorant. Close to us, it caught several fish. Including a sizable fish of over 20 centimeter. Not as big though, as the pike photographed in England being eaten by a great cormorant.