I'm down on my Globe:
"UK officials evict nomadic group; Irish Travelers lose 10-year fight over settlement" by Jill Lawless, Associated Press / September 18, 2011
CRAYS HILL, England - Within days, baby Vivien and more than 200 others will be evicted from the settlement east of London, the losers in a decadelong battle between local officials and their community of Irish Travelers that has drawn attention around the world and concern from the United Nations.
The local authority says it is a simple planning issue - the 86 families lack permission to pitch homes on the land. The Travelers - a traditionally nomadic group similar to, but ethnically distinct from, Gypsy or Roma people - call it ethnic cleansing.
“There’s no need of it. There’s no need for them to treat us the way they are treating us,’’ said 23-year-old Kathleen Slattery, feeding her infant daughter a bottle of milk.
“They just want us gone. They want us to vanish in thin air,’’ she said. “They’re not even taking a 2-week-old baby into consideration.’’
The conflict over the settlement, known as Dale Farm, has raged since 2001, when Travelers bought and settled on a former scrapyard next to a legal Travelers’ site 30 miles east of London. The local authority waged a long legal battle to remove them, which it finally won at Britain’s High Court last month.
The evictions are scheduled to begin today, after an appeals judge on Friday rejected a last-minute legal bid by the Travelers.
The feud’s roots are much older, buried in centuries of mistrust between the nomads and the much larger settled community in Britain.
“There have always been conflicts between nomadic and settled communities,’’ said Jake Bowers, a Gypsy writer and editor of the publication Travelers’ Times. “I think it is made worse in this country. The British have a great deal of enthusiasm for their homes being their castles and there is a perception that Gypsies bring down property prices.’’
There are an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 Irish Travelers in Britain, where they are recognized as a distinct ethnic minority by the government. Their roots - and their broad brogue - lie in Ireland, but many have been in Britain for generations.
For centuries, Travelers roamed the country’s roads, finding work as itinerant laborers, scrap dealers, and horse traders.
But during the past few decades, laws limiting unauthorized camping, economic changes, and a desire to see their children educated led many to settle down - sometimes legally, on land provided by the government, and sometimes without permission.
They are rarely popular with the neighbors, who complain about crime and noise.
The eviction campaign appears to enjoy wide public support in the area. Local newspaper letter pages and Internet forums are largely hostile, with many commentators using derogatory terms for the group.
The site has few immediate neighbors, but Len Gridley, whose house backs onto Dale Farm, has said the Travelers have made his life hell for a decade. Last month, he was arrested after trying to set fire to a fence.
Traveler evictions are relatively common across Britain - but few are as large, or as high-profile, as that at Dale Farm. Academy Award-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave has come to the community’s support, and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination urged authorities “to find a peaceful and appropriate solution’’ to the crisis.
Yves Cabannes, a UN adviser on forced evictions, said last week that Britain was violating international laws by kicking out the Travelers.
Why do they not show such concern about Palestinians?
Tucked into the Essex countryside east of London, Dale Farm is a straggling six acre village of shiny trailers, and some larger permanent-looking homes, set along narrow lanes.
Most of the residents have been here for years; they have electricity, running water, and garbage collection. Their children attend the local school.
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While we are traveling around Britain:
"Body of fourth miner found in Wales" by Associated Press / September 17, 2011
LONDON - Rescue workers found the body of a fourth miner in a flooded coal mine in south Wales yesterday, dashing hopes that the last trapped miner would be found alive as a close-knit community was forced to confront the kind of tragedy it thought it had left long in the past....
Officials don’t know what caused the accident at the Gleision Colliery near Swansea, in south Wales, an area once synonymous with coal mining but where the industry all but disappeared since Britain’s labor strife of the 1980s....
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"Scotland Yard seeks hacking sources; The Guardian resists demands to reveal contacts" by Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press / September 17, 2011
LONDON - Police are demanding that the Guardian newspaper reveal its sources for the report that reignited Britain’s phone-hacking scandal, setting the stage for a court battle that comes at a tense time for relations between the country’s media and its largest police force.
The Guardian said yesterday that London’s Metropolitan Police was seeking a court order that would force the paper to unveil source material for a handful of reports, including a July 4 article that revealed the now-defunct News of the World tabloid hacked into the voicemail messages of missing British schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, who was later found dead.
Police confirmed that they were seeking evidence connected to potential breaches of Britain’s Official Secrets Act, which criminalizes the disclosure of state secrets and, in some cases, of police information.
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger condemned the use of the law, which is generally associated with espionage and national security issues.
“It’s such heavy weaponry to be used over something that’s not really about official secrets,’’ he told the Associated Press. In a statement carried by his paper, Rusbridger promised to “resist this extraordinary demand to the utmost.’’
The Guardian has been at the forefront of reporting on Britain’s phone hacking scandal, exposing Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid for routinely intercepting the voicemails of those in the public eye in its quest for scoops.
But it was the Guardian’s report that the tabloid had violated the privacy of a teenage slaying victim - and risked interfering with a criminal investigation - that most horrified Britons. The revelation sent shock waves across Murdoch’s media empire and London’s police force, both of which stand accused of trying to downplay the scandal.
London’s police force, known colloquially as Scotland Yard, has been stung by revelations that it repeatedly overlooked evidence of widespread illegal behavior at the News of the World - apparently in a bid to not antagonize Murdoch’s powerful media empire, which published the top-selling tabloid until it closed earlier this summer over the scandal.
Details of senior officers’ professional and social links to Murdoch’s newspaper arm have also embarrassed police.
A new investigation into the phone hacking allegations has since been launched, and two top officers from the Metropolitan Police have stepped down. On Thursday, the force’s incoming commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, promised that he would work to redefine the relationship between police and the media.
Rusbridger told the Associated Press that, given the context, the police demand for source information was “ill-judged, certainly in PR terms, and in terms of the relationship that the Met is trying to reset with the media.’’
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