Photo: Ian Usher/Flickr
Yoga and politics: these are two words we don’t often see together.
This week Turkish riot police stormed Istanbul’s Taksim Square, where pro-democracy protestors have been demonstrating. Taksim Square backs on to Gezi Park where the protests began. Here, we have seen yoga and politics come together in a dramatic fashion as protestors held a mass yoga demonstration in the park.
As pro-democracy activists around the world seek new ways to promote non-violent protests, might this be a foretaste of things to come?
More than exercise or escapism
For many political activists, yoga may seem the antithesis of political activism: sitting cross-legged, chanting ‘Om’ and meditating while the class struggle passes you by. And there can be more than a grain of truth in such an observation. Many people, especially in the West, who practise yoga see it as just a form of exercise or as escapism from the stress of modern life.
And within some yoga philosophical traditions, you will find an apolitical stoicism. There is a Sanskrit saying: ‘As the mind, so the man: bondage or liberation are in your own mind’. If you feel bound, you are bound. If you feel liberated, you are liberated. Things outside neither bind nor liberate you: only your attitude towards them does that. Try telling that to those being tear-gassed in Istanbul!
But it doesn’t have to be like that. And for many yogis, it isn’t. I have been practising yoga for 14 years now and teaching regularly for the past six. I’ve found that the yoga philosophy is sympathetic to and compatible with a compassionate, radical and environmentally sustainable politics. In my experience, the majority of experienced yogis are broadly sympathetic to progressive and radical thinking.
Debates within the yoga world
I have noticed increasing interest from yogis to be involved in charitable and low key (non-party) political campaigns. At the same time, yoga has now become a multi-million pound business. Inevitably, this has led to more scandals about the commercialisation of yoga and of sexual exploitation by some of its well-known ‘gurus’.
The media’s focus on the growth of yoga in the relatively privileged and affluent Western world has tended to identify yoga as a very personal, even slightly self-indulgent, pursuit of physical and mental perfection. At a time of unprecedented economic and environmental crisis, it is time for the yoga community to stand together and to reassert its fundamental values – on the mat AND in society.
I have written a further article about Yoga and Politics, which has been published in the latest issue of the British Wheel of Yoga’s magazine, Spectrum. You can read more here: Yoga and Politics.
Most people’s image of renewable energy is a wind turbine or solar panel. Few are aware that the government’s ‘renewable energy’ vision consists in large part of burning carbon-based fuel in power stations. In 2011, 77 per cent of all renewable energy ‘inputs’ came from burning biomass and according to the government’s 2012 Bioenergy Strategy, up to 11 per cent of all the UK’s energy could come from burning biomass by 2020.
This would be almost three-quarters of the UK’s entire renewable energy target. The figure includes biofuels such as soya and palm oil that are linked to large-scale deforestation and land grabbing. However, the largest share is to come from burning wood, both in purpose-built new power stations and in coal power stations that are being fully or partly converted to wood pellets.
Can’t see the wood
If the true purpose of the government’s renewable energy strategy was to reduce carbon emissions and promote more sustainable types of energy then their priorities would seem senseless. Energy companies have announced plans to build or convert power stations which altogether would burn 81 million tonnes of wood every year. The UK’s total wood production (for all purposes) is only 10 million tonnes annually. Planning consent has been granted for five coal power stations to partly or fully convert to wood. Those power stations alone will burn almost five times the UK’s annual wood production every year.
Not surprisingly then, the UK Bioenergy Strategy confirms that 80 per cent of biomass is expected to be imported. Most imports so far are from British Columbia and the southern US, two regions where highly biodiverse and carbon-rich forests are being clearcut at an ever faster rate. US campaigners have proven that the pellets come from whole trees, not just residues as companies like to claim. And one scientific study after another confirms that burning trees for electricity results in vast carbon emissions which cannot possibly be absorbed by new trees for decades or centuries, if ever. Meanwhile in the UK, figures commissioned by the last government showed that 1.75 million life years could be lost in 2020 as a result of bioenergy expansion – or rather due to just one of the dozens of different pollutants released from burning biomass.
Lobbying
So how did electricity from biomass come to take centre stage in the government’s renewables policy when it is clearly disastrous for the climate, for forests and for people’s health? The answer is lobbying – primarily by the Big Six energy companies and Drax. All of the coal-to-biomass conversions are for power stations which would otherwise have to close under EU legislation because they breach sulphur dioxide rules (and biomass, though overall much as polluting as coal, releases less sulphur dioxide).
To keep those power stations open, energy companies have demanded – and received – guarantees of long-term subsidies for burning biomass paid under the Renewables Obligation – as well as other investment support. This includes loans by the Green Investment Bank, which are informed by government priorities. Their first big loan went to Drax, and secretary of state Vince Cable has praised their vital role in stopping Drax from shutting down. Thanks to the Green Bank, Drax can keep burning vast amounts of coal as well as imported wood for years or decades to come.
Documents received by Biofuelwatch through a Freedom of Information request illustrate the degree of collusion between Drax and the government. Drax were satisfied with government guarantees of long-term support for biomass conversion well before the crucial subsidy rules were proposed to parliament.
Without breaking big energy companies’ hold over government policy, even its renewable energy strategy will continue to make climate change, deforestation and air pollution ever worse.
www.biofuelwatch.org.uk
The Gezi Park library
Day 11 of the protests. There are thousands of people still in Gezi Park and Taksim Square, and hundreds staying overnight in tents. The same goes for other cities across Turkey. Everything seems quiet and peaceful, for now – but we know there is a long way to go.
Taksim is now closed to traffic. Barricades are still standing where they were built, blocking access to the city centre except by foot. Ironically, the renovation plan that sparked the protests included making the square a pedestrian area – yet they probably didn’t imagine it happening this way. Nor did the people.
The new unity
Everyone was taken by surprise by what has happened over the last ten days. We never expected such a big uprising from an ‘apolitical’ generation. Even the people taking part in the demonstrations have been shocked by their own attitude. It seems the police attacks on the park occupiers were the straw that broke the camel’s back.
People have been given plenty of reasons to stand against the government over the last few years. The ban on abortion and morning after pills. The prohibition of alcohol. The Roboski massacre. Rising violence against women. Hundreds of arrested journalists. Thousands of arrested students. Police violence. The privatisation of nature. The Reyhanlı bombing.
Now all political groups are together in the park, except the AKP supporters and Islamist extremists. Even conflicting groups like Kurds and Kemalists are sharing the same ground and working on ways to co-exist.
The great shock of the media blackout has woken up some middle and upper class people to what they have been missing on the Kurdish issue for the last 30 years. Kurds have some anger about this late-coming sympathy – and many Turks criticise Kurds for waiting five days before getting involved in the movement – but still, this collectivity can be a big step towards co-existence.
No leaders
In these days, Turkish people have experienced something very strange to them: people resisting without a leader, trying to stand together and show respect to one another. Even if white collar workers don’t come to the park every day, they protest in the malls and boycott the financial supporters of the government.
In the park there is free food, medical care, a kids’ area and a library. Young protesters’ mothers have started to come along to the park instead of begging the kids to go somewhere safe. Volunteers work hard to keep Taksim and Gezi clean. Artists, NGOs, unions, some political parties, and different working groups all give support.
The resistance has also created its own sense of humour. I feel sorry for the non-Turkish speaking rest of the world – you’re missing out! This is the supposed ‘me me me generation’ of Turkey showing how powerful they can be.
Despite the calm in Gezi Park, people are reminding each other that this is not yet a celebration, especially not with police brutality continuing in other cities. The government is still denying the resistance’s demands – and Erdogan, still prime minister, has not stopped his provocations.
Join No Dash for Gas for Reclaim the Power, a four-day participative action camp, August 16-20.
Climate activists from No Dash For Gas have today been sentenced to community service with some conditional discharge – as if they have not already done enough service to society by challenging the government's energy policy. However they will not face jail.
The protest targeted EDF, an immensely powerful energy corporation with a history of abuse of corporate power, from the role of French secret agents in blowing up the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand to illegally spying on Greenpeace activists to protect the company’s nuclear interests.
The UK is currently on a unsustainable path with its energy generation. On Tuesday, MPs voted against a 2030 decarbonisation target, that would have locked in investor certainty to invest in renewable energy, and generated sustainable jobs and taxes across the booming green economy. Our MPs no longer represent us. Our gas and oil prices are rigged, and nothing is done about it.
Against this backdrop of climate and political crisis, it is clear we need brave protesters like No Dash For Gas more than ever. As campaigner Danielle Paffard recently stated, ‘we don’t have big lobbying money with access to politicians and the media like EDF do, so we need to use all the tools at our disposal to compete.’
What No Dash for Gas have shown us is that corporations are not invincible, and by protest and clever use of the social media tools at hand, we can weaken these unaccountable corporations, by destroying their customer base. We can win.
Npower has recently seen thousands of customers tear up their contracts after the firms tax-dodging ways were revealed by UK Uncut, EDFoff and 38 Degrees, with CEO Volker Beckers departing to work for HMRC as the revolving door or corporate interest keeps on spinning.
64,000 people signed a petition to EDF to drop the vindictive £5 million civil law suit against No Dash For Gas. Hundreds have switched their gas and electricity to alternative providers like Ecotricity, Good Energy and Cooperative Energy. We need to support small-scale producers and co-ops that support us.
Through people power, we managed to shut down EDF’s private energy policy talkfest in London, and to force a reschedule until the autumn. This is just the beginning.
With expectations of jail there was a planned vigil for the activists at EDF HQ, Cardinal Place, Victoria St London - tonight 6pm. Now this looks like it will be more of a celebration.
This article first appeared on Occupy News Network
Two Eds... but their policies are no joke
They finally went and did it. Granted, the signs have long been there – not least in human form as Liam Byrne – but this week the Labour leadership finally capitulated to the Tory agenda on benefits once and for all.
This is what Ed Miliband said today: ‘The biggest item of expenditure, alongside the NHS, is the social security budget. The next Labour government will have less money to spend… Social security spending, vital as it is, cannot be exempt from that discipline.’ He came out in favour of a three-year cap on welfare spending.
As ever with an Ed Miliband speech, there is plenty of vague leftish waffle in there to sugar the pill – this time talking about housebuilding and tackling private landlords. But that should not distract us from the core of the message, full of disgusting phrases like ‘something for nothing’, ‘there is a minority who don’t work but should’ and ‘it is wrong to be idle on benefits when you can work’.
The more you read, the worse it gets. Miliband thinks that people should get lower unemployment benefits unless they have worked for at least five years. He proposes that parents should be forced (‘we should offer and demand’) into work-related training when their children are as young as 3. He supports Atos-style tests for disability benefit in principle. He says the retirement age should increase – again!
No opposition to cuts
All that comes after Ed Balls’ prelude earlier in the week. His plan to slash winter fuel payments was widely reported as only hitting ‘wealthy pensioners’. But this is to misunderstand the point of the principle of universal benefits.
As soon as you limit benefits to people on lower incomes, you introduce the nightmare of means-testing, where people have to fill in long forms and prove they’re poor to get the benefit. People feel stigmatised, and afraid that any error will carry a harsh punishment. The end result is that many leave money they are entitled to unclaimed.
Balls spoke of ‘iron discipline’ on spending – and said he would stick to the Tories’ spending plans after the election. In one deft move, then, Labour has not only given in over welfare but sold the pass on all public spending cuts for years to come.
Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee offered this explanation for his motive: ‘Swallowing the iron envelope hurts, but it has become a necessity since Labour's failure to win crucial arguments: Labour “overspending” has been successfully blamed for the size of the national debt... The hard truth is that the Tories and their mighty press have won the battle over the writing of that history, as victors do.’
But is it any wonder that support for welfare is slipping when the main social democratic party refuses to argue for it? Is it a surprise that people don’t ‘get’ universalism when there’s no voice putting it forward? Are we really supposed to believe that people are so easily led that the right wing press' myth-making can make them magically forget the entire banking crisis?
If Labour won’t speak up for the welfare state at the very moment when its existence is imperilled, then it’s up to us on the left to make sure we defend it more strongly than ever.
Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pictured above) has a simple message for the millions currently protesting all over Turkey. According to him, they are nothing more than ‘a couple of looters’ – and he doesn’t need their permission to do whatever he wants.
The truth, though, is that this kind of attitude is exactly the reason why so many people in Turkey are resisting on the streets – facing down serious and even fatal injuries, torture, arrests and police brutality. This movement was sparked by Gezi Park, but the causes have been years in the making as Erdogan’s rule has become increasingly authoritarian.
Witness Erdogan’s support of the police in previous protests when they used tear gas and brutality not as a last resort but as an initial reaction; Erdogan’s nonchalant, even blaming, attitude towards the fact that Turkey has more journalists in jail Iran and China combined; Erdogan’s patriarchic and ethnoreligiously exclusive discourse. All of these have contributed to the endurance and perseverance of the protestors.
On the streets, people from different ideological camps, different football teams (and, yes, that is a big deal), different religious, ethnic, sexual identities are protesting – and they are protesting against Erdogan’s rule.
Ideological morality
When Erdogan suggested that millions of people were just ‘looters’, he attempted to impose an ideological morality not only unto the protestors, but also to the country, to the land, to those observing. ‘Protesting as looting’ not only frames street politics as unethical, but also, and in contrast, suggests that ethical and exemplar behavior is one of compliance. It is not hard to deduce that if dissent against the state is unethical, the ultimate ethical behavior is, therefore, defending the state – the actions of the police.
This is the perfect moment to contrast the actions of the unethical ‘looters’, immoral dissenters, versus those champions of the state, knights of the king: the police.
Please note for the next protest: a positive, upbeat attitude; cleaning out the garbage; smiling; loving; speaking out your mind; rebuilding damaged city streets; offering food to the people who take pleasure in beating you to death; reading books; singing and playing instruments; helping those in need; being compassionate; demanding freedom and human rights – these behaviors are ‘unethical’.
On the other hand: beating unarmed and unarmored civilians; hitting another human being in the face with a gas canister; torturing; using chemical weapons against your fellow human beings; running over people with trucks, making the elderly bleed; sadistically beating a helpless person – these behaviors are ‘ethical’.
Incredible potential
Now we’ve got that straightened out, I want to say one more thing. This protest is an anno domini – a ‘year zero’ – for Turkish politics. It has shown the true face of the mainstream media in Turkey, as it kept silent while the real reporting happened on Twitter. It has shown that youth who were thought to be apathetic and apolitical can organise – without needing the banner of any political party, union or any other existing organising body.
And they hold an incredible potential to redefine Turkish politics, if they can go beyond hatred of Erdogan and frame who they are and their solidarity on the basis of ideals such as freedom, democracy, antimilitarism and plurality.
I thank the international media for their support, and hope for a bloodless victory for my sisters and brothers who struggle on the ground.
Ali E Erol is an expert on Turkey, social conflicts and new media. He is covering the Turkish movement at The Daily Direnis
Red Pepper is looking for a picture researcher to work on our bi-monthly print magazine. Around 15 hours' work per issue for a fixed payment of £150. Would suit someone resourceful, creative and with some knowledge of photography, politics and social justice issues.
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To my friends who live outside of Turkey: I am writing to let you know what is going on in Istanbul for the last five days. I personally have to write this because most of the media sources are shut down by the government and word of mouth and the internet are the only ways left for us to explain ourselves and call for help and support.
Four days ago a group of people who did not belong to any specific organization or ideology got together in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Among them there were many of my friends and students. Their reason was simple: To prevent and protest the upcoming demolishing of the park for the sake of building yet another shopping mall at very center of the city. There are numerous shopping malls in Istanbul, at least one in every neighborhood! The tearing down of the trees was supposed to begin early Thursday morning. People went to the park with their blankets, books and children. They put their tents down and spent the night under the trees. Early in the morning when the bulldozers started to pull the hundred-year-old trees out of the ground, they stood up against them to stop the operation.
They did nothing other than standing in front of the machines. No newspaper, no television channel was there to report the protest. It was a complete media blackout. But the police arrived with water cannon vehicles and pepper spray. They chased the crowds out of the park.
In the evening the number of protesters multiplied. So did the number of police forces around the park. Meanwhile the local government of Istanbul shut down all the ways leading up to Taksim Square, where Gezi Park is located. The metro was shut down, ferries were cancelled, roads were blocked. Yet more and more people made their way up to the center of the city by walking.
They came from all around Istanbul. They came from all different backgrounds, different ideologies, different religions. They all gathered to prevent the demolition of something bigger than the park: The right to live as honorable citizens of this country.
They gathered and marched. Police chased them with pepper spray and tear gas and drove their tanks over people who offered the police food in return. Two young people were run over by the tanks and were killed. Another young woman, a friend of mine, was hit in the head by one of the incoming tear gas canisters. The police were shooting them straight into the crowd. After a three hour operation she is still in the Intensive Care Unit and in a very critical condition. As I write this we don’t know if she is going to make it. This blog is dedicated to her.
No hidden agenda
These people are my friends. They are my students, my relatives. They have no 'hidden agenda', as the state likes to say. Their agenda is out there. It is very clear. The whole country is being sold to corporations by the government, for the construction of malls, luxury condominiums, freeways, dams and nuclear plants. The government is looking for (and creating when necessary) any excuse to attack Syria against its people’s will.
On top of all that, the government’s control over its people’s personal lives has become unbearable as of late. The state, under its conservative agenda, passed many laws and regulations concerning abortion, cesarean birth, sale and use of alcohol and even the colour of lipstick worn by the airline stewardesses.
People who are marching to the center of Istanbul are demanding their right to live freely and receive justice, protection and respect from the state. They demand to be involved in the decision-making processes about the city they live in. What they have received instead is excessive force and enormous amounts of tear gas shot straight into their faces. Three people lost their eyes.
Yet they still march. Hundred of thousands join them. A couple of thousand more passed the Bosporus Bridge on foot to support the people of Taksim.
No newspaper or TV channel was there to report the events. They were busy with broadcasting news about Miss Turkey and 'the strangest cat in the world'.
Police kept chasing people and spraying them with pepper spray to an extent that stray dogs and cats were poisoned and died by it.
Schools, hospitals and even 5 star hotels around Taksim Square opened their doors to the injured. Doctors filled the classrooms and hotel rooms to provide first aid. Some police officers refused to spray innocent people with tear gas and quit their jobs. Around the square they placed jammers to prevent internet connection and 3G networks were blocked. Residents and businesses in the area provided free wireless networks for the people on the streets. Restaurants offered food and water for free.
People in Ankara and Izmir gathered on the streets to support the resistance in Istanbul. Mainstream media kept showing Miss Turkey and 'the strangest cat in the world'.
***
I am writing this letter so that you know what is going on in Istanbul. Mass media will not tell you any of this. Not in my country at least. Please post as many articles as you see on the Internet and spread the word.
As I was posting articles that explained what is happening in Istanbul on my Facebook page last night someone asked me the following question: 'What are you hoping to gain by complaining about our country to foreigners?' This blog is my answer to her.
By so called 'complaining' about my country I am hoping to gain:
Freedom of expression and speech,
Respect for human rights,
Control over the decisions I make concerning my on my body,
The right to legally congregate in any part of the city without being considered a terrorist.
But most of all by spreading the word to you, my friends who live in other parts of the world, I am hoping to get your awareness, support and help!
Please spread the word and share this blog. Thank you!
This blog post is republished from defnesumanblogs.com. For further info and things you can do for help please see Amnesty International’s Call for Urgent Help.
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