Tagged with “perverted”, his blog-post explains how:

“The uncomfortable truth is that all these designers are either homosexual or entirely submerged in the “gay” culture that infects their industry.  They aren’t interested in designing for beautiful women.  They want pretty boys.

The vast majority of us have a healthy interest in beautiful women in beautiful clothes.  These trivial but talented individuals are out of step, out of time and out of any more excuses.  They are responsible for too much misery and suffering.  The modern prevalence of anorexia and bulimia is almost entirely down to these brightly coloured, beautifully tailored, perverted fools.

It is time that wiser minds with far better taste prevailed.  Do what you want to do in the privacy of your own homes but leave our young women’s minds alone and turn your talent in a positive direction.”

His original blog post is problematic on a number of levels:

1. The lack of understanding of gay culture. Gay culture is not homogenous entity wishing for “pretty boys” ( a sentiment which brushes dangerous close to the old “gay men are paedophiles chestnut), but a diverse culture which celebrates a variety of body shapes and sizes. Look up “bears”, if you don’t believe me!
2. Peter misses the point *entirely*. The size zero phenomena is the more extreme edge of a culture of patriarchy which ensures that womens bodies are objects for men and as such women should strive to attractive for men. What a society sees as a desirable body shape is based on class – the body types of the rich have always been “in vogue”. In the past when food was scarce and rich people didn’t go outside, portly pale bodies were attractive and people used to paint their faces white to chase after that ideal. Nowadays, personal trainers and holidays to exotic realms are symbols of a privileged life and so thin, tanned bodies are attractive.
3. Alongside the written text, he provides two images, one  of a rather thin fashion model captioned “poor, pitiful girl”, and another Anne Hathaway (I think…?) captioned with “A Real Woman”. Its nice that you can tell us what the standard for “real woman” is Peter, thanks. Its just a shame that Anne Hathway (or whoever it was) is no larger than a Size 4, which is a UK Size 8, and entirely conceivable that she is medically underweight.
4. Setting a standard of the “real woman” at a Size 8 is part of the problem and can only serve to make the situation worse, considering that the average UK dress size is 14 or 16, depending on where you shop. There are quite a lot of women falling outside your standard of a “real woman”.

Since the original blog post was flagged up as problematic by cannabis activists, Peter has added some text dealing with the criticisms:

“Recently I have been subject to a vicious hate campaign in which this post has been circulated around the internet to support the false allegation that I am homophobic…

I have carefully reviewed every word.I stand by it 100%.  It says very clearly “Do what you want to do in the privacy of your own homes” and that is precisely my position.  I would defend the rights of all consenting adults to whatever sexual activity they want to indulge in with other consenting adults. I can understand that the phrases “culture that infects” and “perverted fools” may upset some but this article was not written to be politically correct.  It was written to be provocative and to highlight the abuse that some gay men in positions of power are inflicting on vulnerable young women.  Homesexuality is a perversion from the norm and gay culture has been allowed virtually to extinguish heterosexual influence in the fashion industry. That anyone should choose to twist and distort my words in support of their vile allegations must say a lot about their motives and integrity.  I believe that their conduct is in fact far worse than that which they falsely accuse me of.  They are liars and dishonest, scheming perpetrators of a hate crime.  They seek to pervert the cause of gay rights for their own selfish ends. The principle instigator behind this abuse is in fact a major cannabis dealer who, though he promotes himself as pro-cannabis, actually seeks to sabotage the increasing success of my efforts as leader of Cannabis Law Reform (CLEAR).  His income depends on cannabis remaining prohibited and his record shows that over many years he has been responsible for fermenting conflict and division in the cannabis campaign..”

This response is also problematic, for a number of reasons.

1. Your original post is deeply homophobic, regardless of whether you support the “right to do what you want in the privacy of your own homes”. The fact that you seem to be making an (misplaced) attack on gay people which seeks to remove access to public life is homophobic.
2. You talk about “heterosexual influence” on the fashion industry as something that is preferable than “gay influence”, which is homophobic. Regardless, your original analysis of the “influences” at play is incorrect.
3. You seek to appropriate the term “hate crime”, a term used traditionally as a way to reference crimes based on prejudice (i.e. racially motivated, homophobic, etc.) as a tool to attack your critics with. It is not a “hate crime” to oppose homophobia. Nor is it a “hate crime” to attack a political opponent for reasons not relating to their membership of a minority group. Homophobia, however, is a hate crime, and one I would wager you stand guilty of.

A note: frankly, I couldn’t care less about the wranglings for political power within CLEAR. I don’t know the so-called “major cannabis dealer” who is apparently leading the “vicious hate campaign” against Peter, and I don’t really care to. I do care about homophobia, however, and since drug prohibition disproportionately effects LGBT people, I think the people who are leaders within our movement shouldn’t be homophobes.

1. People living in this country (and others countries) are not having their needs met so they can fully access society and meaningfully participate within it. In a pre-revolutionary society, the good things that CiN fund should be funded by the government, by raising taxes from the rich, and not be funded by the spare change and hard work of working class people who are already fucked over.

2. CiN give a platform for self-serving celebrities who are sitting on vast amounts of wealth the opportunity to extract money out of significantly less wealthy people watching them on tv. Of particular annoyance this year is the platform given to Gary Barlow, who a few months ago was telling everyone to vote for the tories, the party forcing disabled people into workfare schemes and making cuts to healthcare and welfare and now is asking working people to spare a little change to make up the difference now budgets are being slashed.

3. The charity model of disability is deeply flawed on a number of ways, not least in that it sets disabled people up to be pitied by non-disabled people, as victims of their impairments. The reality is that whilst impairments can be difficult to live with, what really stops people from accessing society is the barriers that society puts up; attutudinal, environmental and institutional. Is a person who cannot walk disabled if society is geared up to meet that persons access needs in a holistic manner? This is the basis of the social model of disability.

4. Lack of Agency – most charities taking on issues around disability are ran by non-disabled people. There is no agency here. The model of disabilty that pretty much everyone in the disabled movement advocate for is the social/rights based model, one which seeks barriers to access to be removed and disability to be seen as an issue of meeting peoples basic human rights and treating people with dignity. An organisation ran by disabled people themselves would be a much better to support. Imagine an anti-racism campaign ran by white people which promoted pitying people of colour and didnt give people of colour a decent role in the strategic direction of the organisation. Same deal.

5. The charity model promotes “disabled issues” as things that most people engage with by giving money once a year, instead of engaging with all year round to fundamentally change the attitudinal, environmental and institutional barriers that disabled people face. None-disabled people are then free to not engage with issues at other times of the year, or just sent money and not change their attitudes.

6. CiN actually waste fuck tonnes of money – its really not an efficient way of giving money.

7. Many charities actually fund institutions which directly harm disabled people, either through mistreatment or by taking decision power away from disabled people. The charity model largely sees disabled people as victims who should be “looked after” in “special institutions” which separate them from the rest of society, often without actually asking the disabled person how they want to live their lives.

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After Aaron Porters largely irrelevant reign as NUS President, it’s good that the left are putting up a credible candidate against the faceless Labour bureaucrats who are manoeuvring to succeed him.

As Mark says, the chances of him winning out in his bid for presidency is quite slim; since the 2008 governance review which reduced the delegate entitlements of students unions and the need for cross-campus ballots to elect them, the authority of the national conference has been largely eroded towards greater power for elected officials. Consequently the NUS has increasingly been controlled by Labour party members in its two factions; Labour Students and the ironically-named “Organised Independents”, which jointly dominate local student union politics, with ordinary students and anyone left-of-Labour largely being silenced in the national process.

Mark overplays the role of the SWP in organising the student movement during the protests, as you would expect from a party member, and sidelines the role played by occupations and anti-cuts groups across the country who organise more horizontally. However, the movement is far from leaderless, with traditional left groups like the SWP as well as occupations and anti-cuts groups taking collective leadership at demonstrations and actions, as well as putting in most of the leg-work in terms of organising.

Mark neatly dodges the question about the supposed “united left slate” and its leaving out of the Alliance for Workers Liberty and other groups in its discussions, the most glaring victim of this being AWL’s Jade Baker who, whilst more experienced and probably better suited to the role, was passed over for VP Union Development on the slate in favour of Workers Power candidate Joana Pinto, despite having registered interest in the role a while ago. This prioritisation of factional interests over what might be best for the student movement as a whole, as well as the way in which the slate was hashed out in backroom deals by a handful of leftist groups shows that even leftist interventions into the NUS are usually largely unaccountable to the wider movement.

Whilst the NUS is never going to be a progressive force, it is useful to have leaders in the NUS who pay more than lip-service to the anti-cuts agenda, and use their position and considerable budgets to forward the campaign. For this reason, we should critically support Mark in his bid for presidency.

In order to fully explore the debate around assisted suicide, we must look at the different ways in which society views disability and what the reality of life is like for people who have physical or mental impairments which affect the way they interact with the world. There are two major camps; the more dominant medical model and the less discussed social model as put forward by disability rights activists. The medical model conceptualises disability as intrinsic to the individual and as something to be cured or managed by the use of drugs or other therapy, often accused portraying disabled people as being something to be pitied and helped, rather than as people who happen to have impairments.

The social model put forwards an alternative view encompassing physical, social and environmental factors; that people may have physical or mental impairments, but it is society as a whole which disables the individual by the process of exclusion and neglect. For example, an individual with an impairment which effects their ability to walk would still be able to go about normal daily life if they had a wheelchair and everywhere they wanted to go was wheelchair accessible. They are only ‘disabled’ when their ability to do something is affected, which is usually because society has neglected to cater for their needs.

The social model is largely favoured by the disabled community, as not only does it offers more effective tactics to empower disabled people to access a higher standard of living in real terms, but it moves away from the idea of impairments being something to cure as opposed to something that is simply another aspect of someones life. This is especially relevant for people with hidden impairments, such as Aspergers Syndrome, whose “impairments” could more accurately be described as natural variance in the way people think as opposed to something that could be cured or would even warrant a cure.

Wheelchair-dancing scene from Glee! Disabled people are often ignored in the debate over euthanasia.

Often in the debate over assisted suicide, people with more ‘severe’ impairments, such as permanent neurological pain, who lead difficult lives are used to justify the pro-choice position. But the medical establishment who use disabled people as posterchildren for the pro-euthanasia cause are not passive observers of the suffering of the elderly or severely disabled people, their involvement in the treatment and care of individuals make them complicit in their suffering in their everyday life. When a person is institutionalised in a nursing home, care home or hospital; the right to choose when to wake up, what to eat, when to eat, what to do and where to go are taken away. When someone is disempowered to such a degree, no matter what their particular impairment, life must ultimately be made harder. It becomes a question of whether the care given by the medical establishment to elderly and disabled people is enough to allow people a life worth living.

Because the medical establishment often fall short of providing truly assisted living, but are often keen to propose assisted suicide, many people with physical impairments see euthanasia and assisted suicide as an attack on their community and actively campaign against it. The call for a state ban, whether it is by religious clergy or from disabled people themselves, lacks empathy for people who genuinely want to die; and often betrays a lack of understanding for long term mental health problems that include suicidal tendencies as part of their diagnosis, or the mental health problems that arise alongside a rapid deterioration of health when someone gets old. It also raises the issue of whether criminalising suicide is a useful tactic for
improving the lives of people who actively want to die.

Disabled people are frustrated with the debate, especially considering that it fundamentally decides whether they live or die and is
dominated by the clergy or medical establishment, who whilst polar-opposites in their position, share an ignorance of disability
issues and an unwillingness to listen to the voices of disabled people. The debate itself represents a false dichotomy; what is seen
as the ‘pro-choice’ position here doesnt give a viable option for disabled people to live lives worth living, and the pro-life side of
the debate hardly improves the lives of those wishing to die by criminalising them. The real ‘pro-choice’ position here is third camp; where disabled people are given assistance where they need it to live decent lives, and, if they require it, assistance to die.

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A small group of people who came out to meet the BBC reporter. You can see me if you look closely.

The has been minimal disruption to lectures, with many lecturers continuing normal timetabled lectures in the theatre. We figure that while we are using the space to organise against the attacks to our education, we should allow the space to continue to be used as a place of “normal academic learning” as much as possible. On Friday afternoon, when there were no timetabled lectures, we held our own. One in particular was a talk by Japhy Wilson about the crisis of capitalism which was fascinating. I have recorded the talks and discussion as audio files that are available to download below.

A group of students are continuing the occupation over the weekend. I’ve been delegated to go to the national co-ordinating meeting for the Education Activist Network on Sunday, so the best way to find out more about the occupation is to check out www.roscoeoccupation.wordpress.com and follow us on twitter at @mancoccupation You can also follow the Education Activist Network at @edactivistnet

Download the following file to hear Japhy Wilson’s talk today: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TWZHYLTW

Download the following file to hear the open floor meeting: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=97I3RS78

Note that the files might take a few minutes to become available on megaupload. Also note that I’m not really totally sure how reliable megaupload is on a large scale. I’ve only used it to distribute files quickly to mates before. We don’t really have anyone tech-savvy here!

these files are also available on the Roscoe Occupation website. www. roscoeoccupation.wordpress.com

General meetings are far from perfect, but the proposals that the “Yes” side of the online GM debate are putting forward fail to address the real problems with general meetings and may indeed make things a lot worse. They argue that if we shift the debates from Wednesday afternoon and put them online, that we will see and increase in participation due to the students that are currently locked out from attending on Wednesday afternoons, either from being on placement or by playing sports, turning up. The simple fact is that the thousandsof students who are available to attend GMs on Wednesday afternoons aren’t turning up, and this isn’t because the debates aren’t online,but because the politics of the student union are irrelevant and alienating to the average student. Now don’t get me wrong, the fact that the meetings are at a time that stops students with university commitments from attending is terrible, but solvable by moving the debates to the evening where students can have a genuine choice whether to attend meetings or not.

Democracy is more about ticking “yes” or “no”, but about getting actively involved. The proposals put forward decrease the quality and quantity of the debate; removing the opportunity for a student to stick their hand up in a meeting and spontaneously contribute to the discussion within the meeting itself, and remove many of the democratic processes that are essential to a balanced debate.

Participation in your union is about more than just ticking a box – vote NO to online general meetings and demand a democratic
alternative!

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The review itself was headed up Lord Browne, the former Chief Executive at BP whose savage cost saving cuts and subsequent health and safety corner-cutting there had him accused by some pundits as “the man most responsible for the BP oil spill”. It should come as no surprise to us that his review, which was instigated by the Labour Party, would follow his trend of maximising savings by slashing expenditure. The question remains, will his proposals be as devastating to the student movement as the oil spill was to the Gulf of Mexico?

Within a context of a 25% reduction in education funding, the clear winners in the proposals will be the elite universities who will be able to claw back their funding from the pockets of students paying increased fees. Other winners include part-time students who will finally be allowed to access some reliable form of education funding. The losers in the proposals are the less prestigious universities who can’t afford to put off students with a hike in fees and arts and humanities departments who are likely to be decimated by the proposals. Needless to say, students loose out on these proposals by paying more, but working class and some minority students will be worst affected by grants and scholarships not keeping pace with the increase in fees and living costs and being able to rely on the parental handouts.

the increasing costs of education may lead to students not being able to afford clothes

Whether Lord Browne’s proposals get the nod through Parliament largely depends on the whim of whoever is holding the party whip; but it is clear that the student movement needs to look beyond traditional party politics for it solution. The Liberal Democrats, once the darling of liberal students, are set to betray the movement by voting for an increase in tuition fees on top of their support for a 25% education budget cut. Whilst the Libdems might make a show of a small back-bench rebellion on the issue; it is proof, as if proof were needed, that the Libdems were never the “progressive” party they claimed to be.

With the Labour Party’s ranks swelling with Libdem defectors, and it enjoying a long history of support from the NUS bureaucracy, it seems likely that students will increasingly turn to Labour in search of a saviour. But, as the inventors of the Browne Review, can they really be trusted? It seems that a slash and burn approach to education funding would also be on their agenda if they had managed to make it into power again, and whilst they can (and no doubt will) criticise the ConDems from the relative safety of the opposition benches, they do not represent a viable, progressive alternative for us.

So, where next? With the National Union of Students flagship graduate tax seeming more and more like re-branded tuition fees, the rank and file of the student movement will have to look elsewhere for support in the fight for fair and genuinely free education. How we respond to the current attacks on our education will be key, and its clear from looking at our movements’ history we never got anything without fighting for it.

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The aviation industry is one of the few industries which has expanded under the global recession and is a significant contributor to the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. A 2005 conservative study attributed 6.3% of British CO2 emissions to aviation, with more recent studies concluding that 17% of the UK’s “climate change effect” is caused by aviation. With the greenhouse effect, there are lots of altitude-sensitive effects to releasing emissions, which actually increases the negative effect on the environment of emissions from aviation due to those emissions being at a high altitude.

locked on around the wheel of a plane

The government and some less progressive NGO’s encourage us to focus our attention on our individual greenhouse gas emissions, whilst ignoring the ever-expanding environmental impact of industry. Whilst cutting down on our individual carbon emissions is all very well, an individuals personal use of the aviation industry pales into nothingness when compared to that of the World Freight Centre at Manchester Airport which handles 170000 tonnes of freight a year, and the business giants that use such services. Climate change is a huge problem, but it is only a symptom of a greater disease – that of capitalism, the economic system that seeks infinite growth on a planet of finite resources.

Our action was one in a series of actions by the environmental movement targeting airports due for expansion. In 2007, the Camp for Climate Action targeted Heathrow Airport, blockading the headquarters of the British Airport Authority, whilst Plane Stupid activists boarded a barge transporting an Airbus A380 wing. In 2008, 57 Plane Stupid activists occupied a runway at Stanstead Airport, shutting it down and causing 56 RyanAir flights to be cancelled. In 2009, the Climate9 occupied the taxiway and terminal roof at Aberdeen Airport. They wore golfing clothes to highlight the millionaire Donald Trump’s support of  expansion in order to bring more business to his nearby golf course. The group have since launched a public campaign and have been harassed by the police and private detectives. Along with the hard work of local campaigns, these direct actions have been instrumental in stopping airport expansion at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stanstead. Whilst its important that our movement celebrates its success’, we must not rest on our laurels and let airport expansion through the back door at regional airports such as Manchester, East Midlands, or Aberdeen where there is less media interest.

(I'm on the right)

Its not just environmental problems that airport expansion at Manchester would cause. Airport expansionists argue that the plans to make Manchester the “Heathrow of the North” would support the local economy by bringing money into the area and providing more employment in the area. However, in his recent report, the economist and former advisor to the Treasury, Brendon Sewill calculates that Manchester Airport currently represents a total deficit of £2.2 billion to the local area, set to rise on airport expansion. Indeed, the construction of the Terminal 2 in the 1990′s promised to create 50000 jobs, but fell short; creating fewer temporary jobs that in no way helped create the sustainable, meaningful local economy it promised to do.

Our action coincided with the scheduled 5-day BA cabin crew strikes. Willie Walsh and British Airways turned to the courts to ban the action, a threat to everyone’s right to strike, which was later overturned by an appeal on behalf of the BASSA, the cabin crew union. The strikes arose out of a dispute over pay and conditions. BA has in turn harassed more prominent members of BASSA, and removed “travel perks” (considered essential by most workers) from those engaged in previous industrial action. At the time of our action, 5 BASSA branch officials had been fired by BA during the current dispute, and over 50 workers currently face disciplinaries relating to the strike, mostly on ridiculous issues such as participating in discussions on union forums or receiving and forwarding emails from private accounts. It is important to show solidarity with airport workers, especially those involved in the industrial disputes, whist arguing for a just transition to stave off global climate change. The changes needed to prevent climate change should not be used as an excuse to restrict workers rights and extract more profit.

World Frieght Centre blockade

The airport is by the Manchester Airport Group, which Manchester City Council has a 55% stake, and the other 45% is made up by 9 other local authorities. Manchester City Council plan to reduce Manchester’s carbon emissions by 41% by 2020, but refuse to take into account the airports emissions. With the council being complicit in the airports destructive behaviour, it seems that there is little that Mancunians can do within the “legitimate” channels of local democracy. Whilst the residents of Hasty Lane face loosing their homes, and the ancient woodland surrounding the airport facing the chop with the proposed plans of expansion, the council refuses to listen to the residents concerns in any meaningful way. With the councils lack of caring, and the urgency of the need to prevent climate change, concerned citizens have no choice to take direct and illegal actions to protect workers rights and the future of out planet.

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In order to examine what marriage is today, its important to see it within its historical and social context. Marriage first became something that fully involved the state when common-law marriage for practical purposes was abolished under the marriage act of 1753. Before then, legal marriage was mainly a practice of the aristocratic and bourgeois classes; its main purpose to secure business relationships between rich families and appropriate property away from women and the working classes.
As the UK moved from mercentilism to industrialism to a neo-liberal, ostensibly capitalist economic system, the way that legal marriage was used in society changed from being something that was used solely to secure business relationships between privileged families and something that was more accessible to some sections of the working classes. This is seen as a sign of liberal progression by some commentators, but I’m not convinced.

Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production within society is privately owned. The ruling class, who are the owners of the means of production, have the most economic power, and therefore more political power within our society. They seek to extend their economic and political power by exploiting those who don’t own the means of production, the working class, by forcing them to labour in order to produce surplus value, so they can extract profit. The ruling class seeks to ensure their continued domination by using a tactic of “divide and conquer”; encouraging racism, homophobia, disablism and other forms of bigotry to take root in communities, so the working classes are fighting amongst themselves as opposed to combating the root cause of their exploitation – capitalism and the ruling class.

You might be wondering what exactly this has to do with marriage. Well, the institution of marriage and the concept of “family” it supports, has evolved into another tool to divide the working class by splitting communities in to atomised nuclear family units. This isolates individuals from their neighbours, and decreases the shared resources within a community, increasing profits for those in power. The concept of the family is then further used to exploit a right wing agenda – one recent example being the attack on the LGBT community in defence of the “family” by members of the conservative party. Its interesting that most political acts which supposedly support the “family” could arguably be seen as attacks on the community, and the working class as a whole.
The notion of the family and the institution of marriage is part of this process of division alongside forces such as racism and misogyny, and in some ways they both depend upon each other for their very existence – division in one area of public life giving rise to another form of division. From 1753 onwards, the state entered our bedrooms in order to police our relationships; granting legal marriages to those that were deemed fit of privilege. Now the state wishes most people to enter into marriages, giving them minor financial incentives in order to further atomise the working classes t the benefit of those in power. Whilst I have no issue with people living together, or publicly showing commitment to each other, buying into the institution of marriage is essentially supporting and aiding your own oppression by the state and the ruling class. Whilst there might be a some rare cases in which the benefits of marriage outweigh the disadvantages, such as marrying an asylum seeker to save them from a greater oppression, in most cases marriage represents a misinformed backing of the state and capitalism*

On the subject of gay marriage, I’m sure others speaking tonight will talk about issues of assimilation and heteronormativity. It is my question to ask, then, is advocating incremental change in fighting for the ability of queers to marry progressive? If we ifght for so-called equality within a framework controlled by heteronormative elite, how are me liberated?Is it better then, instead of arguing for gay marriage, to argue for the abolition of marriage altogether, to take direct action against the root causes of our oppression and move towards a society in which hierarchy and division no longer exist and power is held by the community and not the ruling elite?

* In case some of you don’t know me personally, I am currently married, going through a divorce. I married my best friend to take advantage of a relatively large pot of money that would become available to us through student loans and various bursaries should we show we are “independent” of our parents. Obviously, at the time I thought that action was justified, and it has, and will continue (even after the divorce goes through) to massively improve my standard of living whilst I’m a student, and will be essential to my affording to do a masters after this current degree. Im obviously still campaigning for free education and grants for all students though!

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I recently joined formspring. Feel free to ask me things, and if your question is interesting enough, Ill write a blog about it: http://www.formspring.me/charliethescarf

There’s been a lot of talk about “terror” and a lot of people saying that what happened with the siege of the aid ship and the wars that continue to rage in Afghanistan and Iraq are nothing to do with students and should not be of concern. Well I’m a student and these issues do matter to me, and not only do they matter they effect me dramatically both personally and politically. While I don’t expect people to agree with me, I do expect to not have my experiences discounted. So for all of my fellow students who cannot speak out about their experiences of terror and the private outrage they feel that their experiences and views are considered “not relevant” I share my own:
What is terror? For me it’s something incredibly personal. The memory of my heart thumping, chest pumping, stopping and my blood running cold. It’s shouting, screaming, chaos. It’s watching people jump out of buildings twisting and turning grotesquely before hitting the ground, burning paper fluttering slowly down like a confetti parade and fireballs high above your head. It’s desperation. It’s “MISSING” notices which fill the square a few days later. It’s knowing most of them weren’t “missing” at all. It’s looking down into grey dust and seeing shoes and glasses and not remembering if I saw a body. It’s that police officer who saved my life by screaming at me to run the other way and not knowing if they perished themselves. It’s looking into the face of death and thinking “Ok, that’s it, I’m dead” and then always feeling a bit guilty that I actually made it. It’s the shopkeeper being threatened for being a “fucking terrorist” the next day as I stood there impotent. It’s the shame I felt at not having jumped to his defense. It’s the cowardice I felt at having hid my political books in a box under my bed the next day just in case they finally did make use of that file they’ve had on me since I was sixteen. It’s the fear of not having any idea which titles would be considered subversive. It’s yet another apocalyptic nightmare where I am trying to escape from more terror, bombed out city landscapes and US military jets never knowing if they are there to protect or harm. It’s the eternal sound of a screeching descending plane, PLANE #2, as it heads towards the WTC, a sound which relives itself daily, hourly in the flight path above my head. It’s wondering if the fear I feel upon looking up will ever leave or if I am stuck with it forever. It’s the inability to live without feeling terrible anxiety at low level noise, a horrendous rumbling like when they fell, a rumbling so loud it reverberates forever in my brain. It’s the embarrassment of jumping when there’s a sudden noise. It’s the shame of being unable to take a bus without a panic attack after 7/7 for weeks. It’s the shame of being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s the embarrassment of nearly passing out on the stairs during a fire drill because of having a flashback. It’s being monitored on the health registry watch list just in case we all get sick from breathing in the dust. What is terror?

What is terror? For me it’s something incredibly political. It’s the understanding that government officials on the television are telling me, yet again, that that horrible day is somehow a justification for the unleashing of shouting, screaming, chaos, descending planes onto others and that the context doesn’t matter, because it’s all to fight terror. It’s the feeling of helplessness that this appears to be accepted. It’s the mental images I get of people, people, people, huddled, scared, crying, thinking they will die, it is nightmares come to life. It is the apocalypse made real, but for others. It’s the media pumping out yet again more justification for terror. More terror, pure terror. It’s leftists telling me that they didn’t condemn 9/11 because there are lots of bad things happening in the world. It’s people telling me they shouldn’t condemn Israel’s attacks on Gaza because Israel is always against terror and the Palestinians are always terrorists. It’s my government telling me that I should support sending terror to Afghanistan and Iraq in order to end terror. It’s people calling me a supporter of terrorists because I oppose terror while using the actual terror that I’ve experienced as a reason for calling me a terrorist supporter. It’s every attempt by a regime to impose terror on its people. It’s every attempt by a group to terrorise others in an attempt to claim they are responding to terror by using terror. It’s getting screamed at as myself and other protestors stood on the streets of NYC to oppose the US war in Afghanistan because they say we support terror. It’s my great frustration with their belief that I was standing there to support terror when I was trying to oppose it. It’s fellow demonstrators yelling at me on anti-war demos because I tell them that their conspiracies about 9/11 are offensive, particularly when they don’t give a damn about supporting workers dying from the toxic dust. It’s Muslim students being harassed for being “terrorists” when they have never touched a weapon by those who have been trained in weaponry. It’s women having the hijab ripped off by racist thugs on trains. It’s people I love being considered suspected terrorists in the name of protecting me from terror. What is terror?

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