Resist Much, Obey Little
The Spokesman 116 - A collection in honour of Ken
Coates
We dedicate this issue of The Spokesman to Ken Coates, the journal’s editor for forty years, from 1970 to 2010. During those decades he oversaw the publication of more than one hundred issues, notching up the ton in 2008 with this comment about the military industrial complex and NATO:
‘If we continue to generate another hundred issues of this journal, while we have breath left, we shall resist these embodiments of militarism, and continue to devote our energies to laying the foundations of the peaceful commonwealth which will come into existence with the abolition of war.’
So it is that we begin this little collection with two previously unpublished pieces from Ken’s own hand. They may have been works in progress, but they have all the hallmarks and attributes of luminous Coates’ prose. (Ken was very heartened when he heard that his friend, the playwright Trevor Griffiths, had said ‘no one writes like Ken Coates’.)
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Turkey versus Democracy
His recent paper Turkey versus Democracy given on the 3rd February at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London can be read in full on the Russell Foundation website.
The full article is available as a PDF.
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine can promote peace, truth and reconciliation
Desmond Tutu and Michael Mansfield, guardian.co.uk
Thursday 3 November 2011
Opportunities to break seemingly intractable and deadlocked situations are rare – especially on a scale which has rapidly developed this year from the beleaguered cries of citizenry across North Africa and the Middle East. There is a palpable consensus that the provenance of this movement is lodged firmly in the fundamental prerequisite for meaningful democracy: self-determination. All conventions on human rights have this tenet as a core rationale. Where it is repeatedly denied and suppressed there will never be peace or justice, let alone stability.
The full article is available on our Russell Tribunal page.
Ayse Berktay imprisoned in Turkey
Ken Coates
Many spontaneous tributes to Ken Coates were published when his death was announced in June 2010.
We reprinted, in Reinventing Socialism, a small selection, together with excerpts from those made at Ken’s funeral in Chesterfield, which was attended by more than 200 people.
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Russell Tribunal on Palestine
“No Peace Without Justice”
The London Session of the Russell Tribunal
on Palestine
By Frank Barat and Michael Mansfield QC
Countless United Nations Security Council
and General Assembly resolutions have been
passed and violated; The Goldstone Report
has been attacked and dismissed and the
recent UNHRC fact finding Mission on the
Freedom Flotilla incident, condemning Israel’s
actions in the strongest possible terms,
has been rejected as biased by Israel and
was hardly mentioned in the higher spheres
of the UN. The reason most often given to
explain this lack of political action being
that ‘it will harm the peace process.’
We are made to believe that the Israel/Palestine
conflict is a never ending one and that,
when it comes to this issue, International
Law is irrelevant.
But civil society knows better. This conflict
is about International Law and nothing else.
Not harming the peace process means not
harming more than 17 years (from the Oslo
agreement in 1993 until now) of settlement
building, bombing, murder and assassination,
Israeli army aggression, land grab, US vetoes,
dispossessions and humiliation of the Palestinians
living in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel.
Civil society also knows that under a facade
of bland statements ‘condemning’ Israel’s
actions, the EU, the USA and the whole international
community are in fact actively complicit
in those crimes.
That’s where the Russell Tribunal on Palestine
(RToP) comes in.