Radio Free Brighton

Here are some of the upcom­ing events for the next month and a bit tak­ing place in and around Brighton and Hove and London.

Thursday 8^th March, 6.30pm (for 7pm start) to 9pm @ BMECP Resource
Centre (Lagoon Room)

If your group works in, with or for one of Brighton & Hove’s many,
var­ied and won­der­ful patches of pub­lic green space, then you may be
inter­ested to come along to this meet­ing to link up, learn from and
share with other green space groups from across the city.

Thursday 8^th March: Sus­sex Equality Group — The Friends Meet­ing House, Brighton, 7pm

Dis­cover how you can play your part in pro­mot­ing a health­ier, hap­pier, more sus­tain­able society.

Sat­urday 17^th to Sunday 18^th March: Veg­fest UK — The Hove Centre at Hove Town Hall, 11 am – 6 pm

Admis­sion free. More inform­a­tion: www.vegfest.co.uk

Until Feb 29^th

Brighton Sci­ence festival

Aimed at 7+ to 70 +, the Fest­ival has many inter­est­ing ses­sions, for example: Sat 18^th Feb 10–4 What can pos­sibly go wrong? Eco dis­asters and how to avoid them – at Latest Music Bar, 14–17 Manchester Street, Brighton, BN2 1TF.

Details: www.brightonscience.com/2011

Sunday 4^th March

Palestine: Res­ist­ing oppression

Brighthelm Centre, North Road, Brighton, 11.30am – 3.00pm

An inform­a­tion, dis­cus­sion and action event.

Itaf Njoum Karma from Jordan Val­ley Solidarity
will speak on Res­ist­ance in the Jordan Valley

Free entry,
vegetarian Palestinian lunch provided (£3)

Thursday, 29^th March

Future of the Com­mons: Bey­ond Mar­ket Fail­ure and Gov­ern­ment Regulation

Speaker: Prof. Elinor Ostrom of Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity, win­ner of the 2009 Sveriges Riks­bank Prize in Eco­nomic Sci­ences (some­times incor­rectly called a Nobel Prize).

Annual IEA Hayek Memorial Lec­ture, (6:30pm for) 6:45–8:15, Recep­tion 8:15–9:00

Church House Con­fer­ence Centre, West­min­ster, Lon­don SW1P 3NZ

Details: www.iea.org.uk/events/annual-iea-hayek-memorial-lecture-1

To book, e-mail hayek@iea.org.uk or call 020 7799 8900.

Wed­nes­day 7^th to Sat­urday 10^th March

Reclaim the Fields Spring Gathering

Work­shops, guer­rilla garden­ing, pub­lic open day

Wil­der­ness Centre, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire

Reclaim the Fields is a con­stel­la­tion of people and col­lect­ive pro­jects will­ing to go back to the land and reas­sume con­trol over food production.

Details: www.reclaimthefields.org.uk

Enjoy! And feel free to email us if you know of any import­ant events going on around the city that people should be aware of — jaki.chase@gmail.com

Shaker Aamer, the last UK res­id­ent remain­ing in Guantanamo, is still being held, without charge, after 10 years impri­sion­ment. The con­di­tions of his incar­cer­a­tion are appal­ing, he described them to his Amer­ican law­yer as “decrepit, filthy and dis­gust­ing”, and his impri­sion­ment has lead to his increas­ing ill-health. There are now real fears for his life due to this and the ongo­ing lack of med­ical treatment.

“The Save Shaker Aamer Cam­paign demands that the Brit­ish Gov­ern­ment does everything pos­sible to secure Shaker’s release and return to the UK and also remem­bers all those who have suffered from a dec­ade of mass slaughter and destruc­tion in illegal wars – the mil­lions that have been killed, injured, and dis­placed, and the unknown num­ber unjustly imprisoned, and tortured.

In Feb­ru­ary 2002, Shaker Aamer, a Brit­ish res­id­ent, was illeg­ally “rendered” to Guantanamo. There he became a respec­ted spokes­per­son for other detain­ees against the unjust con­di­tions there and, as a pun­ish­ment, he was held in extreme sol­it­ary con­fine­ment in Camp Echo in the harshest of con­di­tions. He has spent many years on hun­ger strike and cruelly force-fed with tubes thrust through his nose. Shaker has never been charged with any offence. He is cur­rently on hun­ger strike, along with a num­ber of other pris­on­ers, high­light­ing the inhu­mane treat­ment tak­ing place in the con­cen­tra­tion camp. They have declared their inno­cence of any crime.”

All con­cerned are encour­aged to join the let­ter writ­ing cam­paign to put pres­sure on the author­it­ies to release him. Please write to:

DAVID CAMERON, 10 DOWNING STREET, LONDON SW1A 2AG

For fur­ther infor please visit thier web­site here.

The Observer prin­ted this har­row­ing art­icle on the 17^th September.

by Jamie Doward and Alex Binley.

‘Organ­isers of the UK’s lead­ing arms fair, which last week attrac­ted some 25,000 vis­it­ors from around the world, are under pres­sure to explain why the event was used to pro­mote illegal tor­ture equip­ment and cluster bombs.
A stall at the Defence and Secur­ity Inter­na­tional fair (DSEi) in London’s Dock­lands pro­moted equip­ment by a com­pany called CTS-Thompson that included leg cuffs, waist chains and an “enhanced trans­port restraint sys­tem” that com­bines chains and cuffs.
The DSEi web­site states the sale of “leg irons, gang chains, shackles and shackle brace­lets” are pro­hib­ited.
It was not until Amnesty International’s inter­ven­tion that the stall was closed.
The rev­el­a­tion is par­tic­u­larly embarass­ing for the DSEi as it has been forced to shut down stalls pro­mot­ing sim­ilar equip­ment in the past.
“It is totally unac­cept­able that this illegal equip­ment should yet again be advert­ised at a UK arms fair,” said Oliver Sprague of Amnesty Inter­na­tional.
Two com­pan­ies, Pakistan Ord­nance Fact­ory and Pakistan’s Defence Export Pro­mo­tion Organ­isa­tion, dis­played pro­mo­tional mater­ial for artillery-launced cluster muni­tions.
The DSEi said it wass invest­ig­at­ing. It said its “robust and appro­pri­ate” action shows its com­mit­ment to domestic and inter­na­tional law.’

Brighton and Hove Palestinian Solid­ar­ity Cam­paign: Pub­lic Meeting

Thursday July 21^st
Friends Meet­ing House
Ship Street Brighton
7:30PM

Palestinian Polit­ical Pris­on­ers with a cam­paign from Ad Dameer, the human rights organ­isa­tion for Palestinian polit­ical prisoners

Ad Dameer (Arabic for con­science) Pris­on­ers Sup­port and Human Rights Asso­ci­ation is a Palestinian non-governmental, civil insti­tu­tion which focuses on human rights issues. Estab­lished in 1992 by a group of act­iv­ists inter­ested in human rights, the center’s activ­it­ies focus on offer­ing sup­port for Palestinian pris­on­ers, advoc­at­ing the rights of polit­ical pris­on­ers, and work­ing to end tor­ture through mon­it­or­ing, legal pro­ced­ures and solid­ar­ity campaigns.

Radio Free Brighton will be present and record­ing the meet­ing. For those who can’t attend, it will be played for The Spe­cial Interest Story on Fri­day July 22^nd at 12pm.

Tune in this week to the Human Rights Watch on Sat­urday 25 June at 8PM for a thought pro­vok­ing inter­view with Yvonne Rid­ley, who speaks about how her time under the cap­tiv­ity of the Taliban led her to read the Quran and sub­sequently become a devout Muslim. She addresses mis­con­cep­tions of Islam and Islam­a­pho­bia, dis­cusses her work with Viva Palestina and her recent exper­i­ences in Egypt and Libya, and provides a crit­ical ana­lysis of the Obama Admin­is­tra­tions inter­na­tional policies. If you can’t tune in on Sat­urday, find repeats of the show through­out the week­end on the RFB shed­ule.