Politics

NOVANEWS by Laura  It has come to light this week that the internal Disputes Committee within the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) held a hearing to address a rape case involving a young female party member and a senior male member. The accused was ruled not to have raped the complainant. The Disputes Committee reported back to the party conference on Saturday 5 January, where the issue was discussed. A transcript of this discussion has been leaked and published online. That it was deemed appropriate to deal with such a serious issue outside of the criminal justice system is in my view bad enough, particularly considering that the worst punishment the accused could apparently have faced if found guilty of rape was his expulsion from the party. But the details of the Disputes Committee hear...

NOVANEWS Julian Assange must face rape charges, not US revenge   by Tom Walker Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder being protected by the Ecuadorian embassy in London, appeared on a low balcony last Sunday to make a speech. He seemed to be almost mocking the British police, who could not touch him. Among other things, he talked about the case of Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of leaking state secrets to him. “If Bradley Manning did as he is accused, he is a hero, an example to all of us and one of the world’s foremost political prisoners,” Assange said. He is right about that. Bradley, 24, has now spent more than 800 days behind bars without trial in military prison. For much of the time he has been in solitary confinement for 23 to 24 hours a day and denied clothes and bla...

NOVANEWS Tom Walker, (now former) Socialist Worker journalist, argues that the time has come to leave the SWP Martin Smith: cause of much controversy The Socialist Workers Party is in deep crisis - as it has been for several months now. The reason is simple: an allegation of rape against Martin Smith, the then central committee member now referred to on some parts of the internet as comrade Delta, and the way it was handled by the party. This case, as several speakers at conference noted, was in reality the sole reason for the four expulsions in the run-up to conference, the sole reason for the formation of two factions, and the sole reason for the split in the CC which resulted in an alternative slate being put to the conference, removing two CC members who had attempted to challenge the...

NOVANEWS When it comes to sexual violence, why should progressive organisations be held to different standards? BY LAURIE PENNY 11 JANUARY 2013 An anti-rape protest in India. Photo: Getty How do we deal with sexual violence on the left? Here's a case study. The Socialist Workers' Party, for those who aren't familiar with it already, is a political organisation of several thousand members which has been a prominent force on the British left for more than 30 years. They are at the forefront of the fight against street fascism in Britain, were a large organising presence in the student and trade union movement over the past several years, and are affiliated with large, active parties in other countries, like Germany's Die Linke. Many of the UK's most important thinkers and writers a...

NOVANEWS Trotskyist group exonerated official because it doesn’t believe in ‘bourgeois court system’ to deliver justice JEROME TAYLOR   11 JANUARY 2013 The Socialist Workers Party was engulfed in crisis tonight over allegations that it set up a “socialist sharia court” to investigate rape allegations against a senior member instead of reporting them to the police. The scandal, which has opened up deep splits within Britain’s largest far-left party, emerged this week when disaffected members leaked minutes of a controversial disciplinary meeting which exonerated the official accused of rape and sexual assault. The furore has led to the expulsion of key members and multiple resignations. Today Tom Walker, a journalist at the party’s paper, Socialist Worker, became t...

NOVANEWS by Laura Stuart I really love this piece. It's so simple and truthful but also exasperated yet affectionate. And it's amazing how, though the time and the place were so different, Jews were much the same. For those who read the Quran the description of the Bani Israel and their behaviour and character is so encompassing of the issue we hardly need anything else. There is one very very long chapter in the Quran called 'The cow' and it is all about the Israelites. It is so amazingly descriptive but you can't read it just from the Quran, you need also to read the Tafsir which is the explanation and the stories behind the verses, like what had happened that led to those verses. If you believe that there is one God and he is the creator of everything, then who better to know his creat...

NOVANEWS   Mark Glenn http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com “I have been sent to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and to release the oppressed.” —Jesus of Nazareth They say that understanding the present requires you first understanding the past… That being said, it’s amazing where you find yourself while on such a treasure hunt. For me, trying to better understand why my country has been Shanghaied into fighting two bankrupting wars in the Middle East and why I basically have to be subjected to a near-full body search before boarding a plane headed for Nowhere, North Dakota, I wound up in 10th century China, of all places. No, not that the Chinese are to blame for this mess. After all, the spies and operatives responsible for yanking the leash of every US President since Lyndon Baine...

NOVANEWS CNN host Piers Morgan just called to discuss his interview last night with Alex Jones, the conservative radio host and gun advocate who went on a tirade against Morgan, gun control legislation, and a litany of government conspiracies. “He was the best advertisement for gun control you could wish for,” Morgan told POLITICO. “That kind of vitriol, hatred, and zealotry is really quite scary. I didn’t feel threatened by him, but I’m concerned that someone like him has that level of influence,” Morgan said. “There’s got to be a level of discourse that can rise above what happened last night. It was undignified, unedifying.”  In what Morgan described as a “big, long rant,” Jones — the man who started the White House petition to deport Morgan — shouted questions about gun control le...