Archive for March 2011
Dolphins, Whales And Kangaroos.
I should probably cover more environmental matters, as way of recompense, I thought my readers might like this, someone has developed toothpaste for kangaroos:
[H/T:Jennifer Lipman]
Elsewhere the news is not so good, it seems that dolphins and whales may have suffered more from BP’s negligence than was first thought, Mother Jones has more:
“Consider, for example, one sperm whale being detected as a carcass, and a necropsy identified oiling as a contributing factor in the whale’s death. If the carcass-detection rate for sperm whales is 3.4%, then it is plausible that 29 sperm whale deaths represents the best estimate of total mortality, given no additional information. If, for example, 101 cetacean carcasses were recovered overall, and all deaths were attributed to oiling, the average-recovery rate (2%) would translate to 5,050 carcasses, given the 101 carcasses detected.”
Julian Assange In L’Espresso.
The Italian and Internet readers of L’Espresso had the chance to question Julian Assange, a bit.
I haven’t read it but it might contain something interesting, please let me know if you find any nuggets.
Still, I wonder if we will ever get a full answer as to the communications and links between Assange and Israel Shamir, the Far Rightist.
Jhate And Mark Webber.
For anyone genuinely interested in antiracism the Jhate blog is required reading, it neatly covers the activities of an assorted bunch of cranks and racist, but also their underlying thinking.
I was particularly interested in a new post which mentioned Mark Weber of the IHR:
“Probably the most interesting part of the show was a monologue about American history school textbooks and how they had changed over the years. His choice of examples to illustrate how the textbooks had changed over the years were revealing: the Ku Klux Klan, which used to be accorded some respect by the textbooks; immigration, which used to be treated with caution but is now celebrated; and of course the Holocaust. Weber made much of the fact that textbooks didn’t discuss the Holocaust until the 1960s, when there was a “methodical, well-organized campaign to rewrite” them. Weber didn’t deny the Holocaust in this episode. The final section of the show was devoted to bashing Israel and the “Jewish-Zionist lobby” in the US and cheering for Helen Thomas.”
Don’t miss the piece on Society of St. Pius X.
Gao Zhisheng.
The Index on Censorship has a piece on Gao Zhisheng, his wife recalls:
“In 2007, officials subjected him to electric shocks, held lighted cigarettes up to his eyes and pierced his genitals with toothpicks. In 2009, the police beat him with handguns for two days. He has been tied up and forced to sit motionless for hours, threatened with death and told that our children were having nervous breakdowns.”
PJ Crowley On Bradley Manning.
Being sacked for saying what you know to be true is a bit more than annoying, and in this instance rather surprising when you consider what position in the State Department that PJ Crowley held.
He was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs.
He was the public face of the State Department, and so his criticism of Bradley Manning’s humiliating treatment holds all the more veracity and force.
PJ Crowley is not some chicken-livered-do-gooding-liberal, he’s an ex-military man who would like to see Bradley Manning prosecuted and presumably locked up for decades and decades.
But even he can see how the treatment meted out to Manning is not only degrading but stupid, he writes in the Guardian:
“Based on 30 years of government experience, if you have to explain why a guy is standing naked in the middle of a jail cell, you have a policy in need of urgent review. The Pentagon was quick to point out that no women were present when he did so, which is completely beside the point.
The issue is a loss of dignity, not modesty.
Our strategic narrative connects our policies to our interests, values and aspirations. While what we do, day in and day out, is broadly consistent with the universal principles we espouse, individual actions can become disconnected. Every once in a while, even a top-notch symphony strikes a discordant note. So it is in this instance.
The Pentagon has said that it is playing the Manning case by the book. The book tells us what actions we can take, but not always what we should do. Actions can be legal and still not smart. With the Manning case unfolding in a fishbowl-like environment, going strictly by the book is not good enough. Private Manning’s overly restrictive and even petty treatment undermines what is otherwise a strong legal and ethical position.”
Gaddafi Leaving?
There is a suggestion in the papers that Gaddafi might be leaving, which would be a good outcome overall for Libyans.
Where would he go? Maybe Latin America? Italy? Not sure he’ll want to remain in Africa as the Guardian suggests, lest his days are numbered.
The problem isn’t really him, and although we know that dictators cling on to the last vestiges of power to the end, the issue is, his sons.
One of his sons was destined to take over the family business of running Libya, much like the monarchies of old and that is something they won’t want to give up, so whilst it might be possible to pension off Colonel Gadaffi, his sons are a different matter.
Will they fight to the end? I don’t know, I hope not, but avarice and power are terrible masters.
The Real Consequences Of Anti-Muslim Bigotry.
From the English Defence League staging provocative events in northern cities, attacks on restaurants to scare stories in the media, the real consequence of anti-Muslim bigotry is violence against Muslims, and that should not be forgotten.
This is just one reported incident, Waltham Forest Guardian reports:
“RACIST abuse was shouted at worshippers at a busy mosque.
Police were called to Eastern Avenue in Gants Hill after reports of a group of men causing damage to parked vehicles in the road.
Six men were seen heading in the direction Redbridge roundabout towards Redbridge Islamic Centre, also in Eastern Avenue.
As they reached the mosque they shouted racial abuse and threw bricks at the building, which broke glass in the front doors.
The incident occurred at around 7.45pm on Thursday (March 24), near the start of evening prayers.
A number of worshippers had already entered the mosque but there were still some people outside the building when the attack occurred.
One man suffered a minor head injury but did not need any medical treatment.
Six men were arrested by police and remain in custody at Ilford Police Station.”
(H/T: Lancaster Unity)
There In Spirit, 26th March 2011.
I was there in spirit, but I will leave it to others to give their real impressions, Flesh is very good on the anti-cuts demonstration:
“I was really impressed by all the Labour and labour groups who joined the march without any pomp or circumstance, added their bodies to the many others on the streets, simply trudging (or sometimes shuffling) with their enormous and lovingly stitched banners, without anybody trying to use the occasion as self-publicity fodder. Good people.
…Violence drives people away. The thugs who committed acts of violence today did so simply because they enjoy violence. They need to fuck off back to the Bullingdon club or Marlborough or Guildsmiths or wherever they’re from and leave us alone. They’re nothing to do with the 500,000 people who shuffled through London today to protest the Conservative-led government’s cuts (and in many cases, the slightly less punishing but still deep cuts proposed by the opposition).
So I thought it an irresponsible and disheartening mistake for UK Uncut, asked in advance on BBC 2’s Newsnight about anticipated violence on the protest, to change the subject. They should have readily disowned it. Non-violent non-destructive occupations and flashmobs are sufficiently newsworthy without any acts of wanton destruction. To see the anarcho-syndicalist flag flying from the window of Fortum & Mason, and to hear that the atmosphere in there was festive, will make me smile for a good while to come. “
Here’s Jim’s take on events:
“Ed Miliband addressed the crowd from the end platform despite having written Labour’s cuts Manifesto for the last election and Labour councillors up and down the country voting, en masse, for cuts budgets.
In a move designed to annoy the Daily Telegraph UKUncut occupied Fortnum and Masons and there were a number of other peaceful direct actions, mainly against banks, and Anne Summers’ windows were smash in a targeted strike against, um… shops? This led some wags to comment that police were looking for “hardened protesters” and that this was the “climax of the demonstration”.
However, while the smashed windows seem pointless and, frankly, unrepresentative of the feelings of most of those turning out, the continuing direct action, which led to a number of protesters being arrested despite being completely peaceful, are a real benefit. Unlike the Iraq War march where the focus was simply on size it is very good to see that this protest was not just big, but lively and edgy too, with many people reporting a carnival atmosphere. “
Two of Peter Tatchell’s tweets seem to sum up the issues nicely in my mind:
“Ed Miliband admitted Labour would make cuts too. He offered no alternative to the ConDems, apart from cutting later #tuc #ukuncut #26march
Cuts are human rights issue. When social welfare is cut, people suffer. Shame on Cameron/Clegg. Miliband would cut 2 #ukuncut #tuc #26march “
A lot more of people’s experiences on the day can be found on Twitter, using the #26march key word.
Over In Syria And More.
Khaled Abu Toameh has had some thoughts on Syria:
“Just as Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Seif ul Islam, was once praised as the new, liberal and democratic hope of Libya, so Bashar was projected eleven years ago as representing a new generation of Arab leaders willing to break away from a dark and dictatorial past.
But the events of the last few days in Syria, which have seen unarmed demonstrators gunned down by government forces, prove conclusively that when push comes to shove, Bashar is actually not all that different from his late father. As some of his critic comment, “The apple does not fall far from the tree.”
His handling of pro-democracy protests that have erupted in several Syrian cities since March 15 is a reminder that Bashar is a dictator who, like Colonel Gaddafi and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, will not surrender power gracefully.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal several weeks ago, Bashar boasted that the Tunisian and Egyptian models did not apply to his country and that there was no fear for the survival of his regime. He was right in the first part of his analysis: both neither the Egyptian nor Tunisian presidents chose to fight their people to the last drop of their blood.
But the second part of his analysis is faulty: Syria is far from immune from the political tsunami of popular uprisings currently sweeping through the Arab world.
Syrian human rights organizations have expressed deep concern over the Syrian authorities’ ruthless and brutal crackdown. They note how in many instances children under the ages of 15 were arrested by the notorious “mukhabarat” secret service for allegedly painting anti-government graffiti on city walls.
In another incident that took place in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, Bashar unleashed his commandos against peaceful worshippers who were staging a sit-in strike in a mosque; he killed dozens and wounded many others.
Syrians are asking: Will the son go as far as his father in stamping down on all protests? The public has not forgotten the terrible events of 20 years ago in the city of Hama, when government forces using artillery and air power killed an estimated 20,000 civilians. “
Reuters’ live coverage on the Middle East is useful.
Bachmann And Fischer, No First Amendment Rights For Muslims?
Attacks on Muslims are not only physical there is an intellectual current at work too. This phenomena can be seen in North America with the comment of Bryan Fischer, Right Wing Watch has more:
“While the American Family Association claims that one of its founding objectives is to “defends the rights of conscience and religious liberty from infringement by government,” its chief spokesman r continues to show his contempt for religious freedom. Fischer, the AFA’s Director of Issues Analysis, repeatedly demanded that the US deport all Muslims and prohibit and purge Muslims from the military, and also called for the banning and destruction of mosques. Fischer today attempted to reconcile his ardent opposition to Muslim religious liberty with the Constitution’s First Amendment by claiming that the Constitution actually doesn’t apply to or protect Muslims at all:
Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.
Our government has no obligation to allow a treasonous ideology to receive special protections in America, but this is exactly what the Democrats are trying to do right now with Islam.
From a constitutional point of view, Muslims have no First Amendment right to build mosques in America. They have that privilege at the moment, but it is a privilege that can be revoked if, as is in fact the case, Islam is a totalitarian ideology dedicated to the destruction of the United States. The Constitution, it bears repeating, is not a suicide pact. For Muslims, patriotism is not the last refuge of a scoundrel, but the First Amendment is.
To Europeans and others this might seem like irrelevant nonsense, but the United States Constitution is key to political matters within the US of A and no more so than the First Amendment.
This is how Cornell Law School describes the importance of the First Amendment:
“The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from government interference. See U.S. Const. amend. I. Freedom of expression consists of the rights to freedom of speech, press, assembly and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and the implied rights of association and belief. The Supreme Court interprets the extent of the protection afforded to these rights. The First Amendment has been interpreted by the Court as applying to the entire federal government even though it is only expressly applicable to Congress. Furthermore, the Court has interpreted, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as protecting the rights in the First Amendment from interference by state governments. See U.S. Const. amend. XIV.
Two clauses in the First Amendment guarantee freedom of religion. The establishment clause prohibits the government from passing legislation to establish an official religion or preferring one religion over another. It enforces the “separation of church and state.” Some governmental activity related to religion has been declared constitutional by the Supreme Court. For example, providing bus transportation for parochial school students and the enforcement of “blue laws” is not prohibited. The free exercise clause prohibits the government, in most instances, from interfering with a person’s practice of their religion.”
Most American politicians, and certainly anyone remotely educated, in the US would understand that, as it is drilled into them in school and college, yet Fischer chooses to deny the accepted meaning of the First Amendment and applicable to all.
So why Michele Bachmann didn’t take this matter up with Fischer when she was interviewed on his show recently is a mystery, possibly her connection to the Tea Party overrides her commitment to the First Amendment?
Just in case any Tea Partyers read this, here’s a refresher:
“Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
That applies to all, including Muslims in the US and people should remember that.
An Update, The Hanley Mosque Fire.
The racial attack on the Hanley Road Mosque took place in December 2010 but it is only now that we’ve heard of an arrest or two, this is Staffordshire reports:
“TWO men were due to appear in court today accused of starting a fire at a mosque.
Simon Beech, aged 23, and Gareth Foster, aged 28, both from Stoke-on-Trent, have been charged with arson with intent to endanger life following the blaze at the mosque in Regent Road, Hanley on December 3.
Two other men arrested in connection with the incident have been released from their bail without charge.”
There is a suggestion on the web that at least one of them is connected to the English Defence League, I don’t know how true that is, but it seems probable.
Update 1: The Newstatesman has more on the Daily Star and the EDL.
Update 2: Andy looks at the Australian Defence League.
Twitter, The Middle East And Racism in Italy.
I find Twitter very useful for keeping up with events.
Of course, there is the danger of too much information and keeping track of things is sometimes hard. Still, certain issues deserve scrutiny, so here’s a selection of a few things I came across on Twitter recently.
Racism in Italy, or in any part of Europe is not new but the HRW’s documenting of it makes depressing reading, as if no lessons have been learnt:
“Instances of horrific racist violence in Italy have been widely reported on in the past several years. Some of the more notorious incidents include the October 2008 brutal beating of a Chinese man by a group of youngsters as he waited for a bus in Tor Bella Monaca, a district of Rome that has seen numerous attacks on immigrants. In this case, the attackers shouted racist insults, such as “shitty Chinaman.”[75] Seven teenagers were arrested hours after the incident.[76]
In February 2009, two adults and a 16-year-old attacked an Indian man in Nettuno, near Rome, beating him and then dousing him with gasoline and setting him on fire.[77] All three were convicted without the aggravating circumstance of racial motivation.[78] In May 2009, a Senegalese actor named Mohamed Ba was knifed in the stomach as he waited for the tram in MIlan.[79] Ba’s aggressor has never been identified or apprehended, according to Ba and a close personal friend.[80]
The focus on of immigration issues for political ends in an increasingly diverse society has created an environment for open expression of racist and xenophobic sentiment. “A particular kind of language has been dusted off … making it so that openly racist expressions in everyday conversation don’t provoke any kind of concern,” according to Deputy Jean-Léonard Touadi.[81] Francesca Sorge, a lawyer in a firm that represents victims of discrimination and racist violence, agreed, saying that “phrases like, ‘You foreigners go away,’ are taken as part of the common lexicon of normal urban rudeness.”[82]”
Derek Wall, Joel Kovel And The Green Party.
I have been following the subject of racism in the Green Party for some time, yet even I am surprised about this, Greens Engage has a piece on Derek Wall, a very senior Green figure:
“Since then he has busied himself “negating the various threads of [his] Jewish identity” (p7). You’ll come across similar books by ex-Muslims writing against existing Muslims, denying their diversity, saying “Trust me, I know these people – they’re all authoritarian chauvinists”. It is obviously wrong to make an association between what goes on in your family and what a group of people joined by religion or ethnicity do throughout the world. Joel Kovel is quite openly an antisemitic kook, and anybody who doesn’t realise that has their own prejudices to deal with.
Unfortunately Derek Wall feels so secure within the current anti-Zionist-anti-Jewish climate that to a recent commenter who raised concerns about antisemitism, the green activist, writer and economist responded simply and confidently:
That is unrecognisable as politics. It is simply hateful.”
[My emphasis.]
Exactly, hateful.
Surprising, as Wall is an educated man, a tutor at a private college and normally exceedingly well spoken.
Still, I suppose “some of his best friends are….”, no doubt he will say that soon enough.
Update 1: This is Mudar Zahran’s piece, well worth a read:
“Anti-Semitism and the image of the “evil Jew” find their roots deep in Europe’s intellectualism, from Shakespeare to Nietzsche, not to mention the fraudulent Franco-Russian Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The pretexts for Hitler’s Nazi ideology existed vigorously before he came to power. Hitler probably manifested more of a crude exposure of a public trend, exacerbated by a terrible economy, except that the suffering Hitler brought to the world was not limited to Jews. It took the destruction of entire nations and the deaths of millions for people to realize that racism and extremism can be as dangerous to the oppressors and the haters as it is the oppressed and the hated.
As a result, European societies of today collectively renounce racism and anti-Semitism, but even though the haters encountered rejection and exclusion, they were nonetheless able to find an alternative pathway by prospering on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. As it has raged — and continues to rage — for sixty years, the global media have found a lively source of news material that is endlessly interesting as a conflict between “two religions,” “two ethnicities,” and the line between the West, represented by Israel, and the East, represented by the Palestinians and Arabs in general. “
Update 2: Seemingly Dr. Wall’s political judgement has failed him for a number of years, he’s been an advocate of Cynthia McKinney for ages.
Readers will remember Ms. McKinney’s drift rightwards and association with some well known anti-Jewish racists, David Pidcock and Lady Renouf.
Adam Holland has documented Ms. McKinney’s decline:
Cynthia McKinney Interviewed on Far-Right Racist Radio Program
Cynthia McKinney and the Society of Supporters of the Green Book.
Update 3: Here is Ms. McKinney publishing Israel Shamir’s filth, courtesy of the American Green Party, I am in Turkey with Isreal Shamir. Anyone care to speculate what the shared connection between these people is?
ModernityBlog 