Posts Tagged ‘YouTube’
Assange And Žižek, A Kind Request.
Slavoj Žižek and Julian Assange recently conducted a session for the Frontline club and it is on YouTube, below.
Astute readers may have noticed that I am not blogging much at the moment, life’s a bit complicated and particularly like today, I don’t have much brain.
So I have a kind request to make of my readers. Could they, if they have the stamina, view the video and provide me with a summary (I’m happy to get several from different readers)? Ta very much.
No Update On Khaled al-Johani.
Been asked to produce an update on Khaled al-Johani, but sadly I can find very little on the web that is current, the best is BBC News from 24 May 2011:
“The only man to protest on Saudi Arabia’s day of rage has suffered in prison, his family say.
Khaled al-Johani was arrested minutes after going to the courthouse in Riyadh and giving a BBC interview in which he called for democracy and described the country as a big jail.
His family have now told the BBC that they were not allowed to see him for the first 58 days of his incarceration. And when they did see him, says his brother, Abdullah al-Johani, their concerns increased.
“He has lost a lot of weight. The situation is sad and he is depressed. He doesn’t have any of his own clothes and we can’t give him food or money.”
Khaled al-Johani is one of more than 160 dissidents who have been arrested by the Saudi authorities since February, according to Human Rights Watch.
On Tuesday a judge in Jeddah sent 40 people, charged with instigation and calling for protests against the ruler, to face a court that specialises in security and terrorism cases.
The interior ministry spokesman, General Mansour Sultan al-Turki is unapologetic.
“Saudis…do not have anything to demonstrate for. The Grand Mufti has talked about this and [protesting] is un-Islamic behaviour.” “
Free Manal al-Sherif.
The Washington Post reports that Manal al-Sherif was re-arrested after being released recently:
“CAIRO — Saudi authorities have re-arrested an activist who defied a ban on female drivers in the conservative kingdom, a security official said Monday.
Manal al-Sherif was accused of “violating public order” and ordered held for five days while the case is investigated.
The 32-year-old al-Sherif launched a campaign against the longtime ban last week by posting a video clip on the Internet of herself behind the wheel in the eastern city of Khobar.
Through Facebook, the campaigners set June 17 as the day all women should drive their cars. The page, called “Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself,” was removed after more than 12,000 people indicated their support for the call. The campaign’s Twitter account also was deactivated.
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women — both Saudi and foreign — from driving. The prohibition forces families to hire live-in drivers, and those who cannot afford the $300 to $400 a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them to work, school, shopping or the doctor.
Al-Sherif was initially detained for several hours on Saturday by the country’s religious police and released after she signed a pledge agreeing not to drive.
She was re-arrested on Sunday at dawn, said a security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “
Update 1: The 17th June 2011 could be an interesting day in Saudi Arabia:
“This law is simply a backward, visceral objection to the thought of a woman behind the wheel, a physical embodiment of a volition which is too offensive to enact. It is about maintaining some semblance of control, the erosion of which it is thought would be complete if women were allowed to drive.
There is this odd view of women in the kingdom as being always on the cusp of dissolute behaviour – reminiscent of an attitude towards slaves who would rebel and murder their owners if not kept perpetually oppressed. This is a ghastly spiral, where the worse the victim is treated, the worse they are likely to be pre-emptively repressed. When arguing against allowing women to uncover their heads or faces in public, some (men and women) respond that if that if this were to pass, women would surely walk around in semi-nudity.
It doesn’t occur to these people that public codes of dress do not exist in most other Arab countries, and women still manage to dress in a culturally appropriate way. Women are allowed to drive throughout the conservative Arabian Gulf, and these societies have not imploded in moral degradation.
The Saudi driving ban is a social, rather than political, issue, over which the authorities would rather not incur the religious establishment’s wrath or create controversy. But if there is one lesson Arab rulers would do well to heed, it is that withholding rights raises the chances of an explosion of dissent.
The arrest of Sharif certainly appears to have done nothing to dissuade the Women2Drive campaign from going ahead; if anything it seems to have garnered it more publicity. There are reports that the religious police are teaming up with traffic forces to patrol and stymie the campaign. If these are to be believed, then Saudi Arabia is in for a first-of-its-kind confrontation on 17 June. “
Driving In Saudi Arabia.
Women in Saudi Arabia can’t even drive their own cars, without a driver or a relative to do that job for them. Many are effectively prisoners in their homes, still some brave women are fighting back:
This is their channel on YouTube, ksawomen2drive.
Update 1: Manal al-Sherif has been detained for driving herself, AP has more:
“RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Authorities detained a Saudi woman on Saturday after she launched a campaign against the driving ban for women in the ultraconservative kingdom and posted a video of herself behind the wheel on Facebook and YouTube to encourage others to copy her.
Manal al-Sherif and a group of other women started a Facebook page called “Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself,” which urges authorities to lift the driving ban. She went on a test drive in the eastern city of Khobar and later posted a video of the experience.
“This is a volunteer campaign to help the girls of this country” learn to drive, al-Sherif says in the video. “At least for times of emergency, God forbid. What if whoever is driving them gets a heart attack?”
Human rights activist Walid Abou el-Kheir said al-Sherif was detained by the country’s religious police, who are charged with ensuring the kingdom’s rigid interpretation of Islamic teachings are observed.Al-Sherif was released hours later, according to the campaign’s Twitter account. The terms of her release were not immediately clear.
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world to ban women — both Saudi and foreign — from driving. The prohibition forces families to hire live-in drivers, and those who cannot afford the $300 to $400 a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them to work, school, shopping or the doctor.
Women are also barred from voting, except for chamber of commerce elections in two cities in recent years, and no woman can sit on the kingdom’s Cabinet. Women also cannot travel without permission from a male guardian and shouldn’t mingle with males who are not their husbands or brothers. “
Free Khaled al-Johani.
In an oppressive dictatorship, like Saudi Arabia, only the boldest dare to speak out, Khaled al-Johani was one of them.
Now he’s been arrested and has vanished, Dana Kennedy reports:
“Khaled al-Johani, who teaches religion to elementary school students in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is neither a revolutionary nor an activist, according to his brother. But even though no one in the country knew it at the time, the 40-year-old father of a 5-year-old autistic boy was imprisoned and cut off from his family after speaking out at last month’s planned “day of rage.”
…
His frustration over repressive Saudi laws and a lack of help from the government for his autistic son led him to show up at the “day of rage” one month ago today and let loose his anger in front of a BBC television crew, according to his brother. Because of the heavy police presence that squelched the March 11 protest, Khaled al-Johani was almost the only person there, Ali al-Johani told AOL News via Skype from Riyadh today.“I’m here to say we need democracy, we need freedom,” Khaled al-Johani said to the surprised BBC crew, which wasn’t expecting him and didn’t find his name on the list of activists from Riyadh.
“We need to speak freely. We will reach out, the government doesn’t own us. I was afraid to speak, but no more. We don’t have dignity, we don’t have justice! I have an autistic child, and they didn’t provide me with any support,” he said.
Khaled al-Johani said on camera that he knew he’d be arrested — and he was correct. After he returned to the home he shares with his wife and four young children, Saudi police arrived and arrested him in front of his family, Ali al-Johani said. He hasn’t been heard from or seen since. “
Listen to more at the Where is Khaled channel on YouTube.
Bush’s Speech.
If you don’t laugh at this I would be very surprised, Tyler Perry’s The President’s Speech:
Blair Kissing Gaddafi.
Just when you think that Tony Blair’s reputation can’t sink much lower, something new appears.
Take a look at the very first part of Charlie Brooker’s rant on Gaddafi, and you’ll see the warm greeting between Gaddafi and Blair.
Update 1: The NYT has an insider’s view of events:
“The younger Mr. Qaddafi promised journalists they would find the streets peaceful and his father beloved. Do not mistake the sound of celebratory fireworks for bursts of gunfire around the streets of Tripoli, he advised them.
The next morning, a driver took a group of foreign journalists to an area known as the Friday market, which appeared to have been the site of a riot the night before. The streets were strewn with debris, and piles of shattered glass had been collected in cardboard boxes.
A young man approached the journalists to deliver a passionate plea for unity and accolades to Colonel Qaddafi, then slipped away in a white van full of police officers. Meanwhile, two small boys surreptitiously offered bullet casings that they presented as evidence of force used on protesters the day before.
At another stop, in the working-class suburb of Tajoura, journalists stumbled almost accidentally into a block cordoned off by low makeshift barriers where dozens of residents were eager to talk about a week of what they said were peaceful protests crushed by Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces with overwhelming, deadly and often random force.
A middle-age business owner, who spoke on condition that he be identified only as Turki, said that the demonstrations there had begun last Sunday, when thousands of protesters inspired by the uprising in the east had marched toward Green Square.
Suddenly, he said, they found themselves caught between two groups of double-cabin pick-up trucks without license plates, about forty in all. Men in the trucks opened fire, and killed a man named Issa Hatey. He said neighbors had renamed the area’s central traffic circle “Issa Hatey Square” in his memory.
He and other residents said that over the past week neighbors had been besieged by pickup trucks full of armed men shooting randomly at the crowds, sometimes wounding people who were sitting peacefully in their homes or cars. At other times, they said, the security forces had employed rooftop snipers, antiaircraft guns mounted on trucks and buckshot, and the residents produced shells and casings that appeared to confirm their reports. Turki said that on one day he had seen 50 to 60 heavily armed men who appeared to be mercenaries from nearby African countries.
The neighbors built the low barricades on the streets to impede the trucks with guns. “They come and they kill whoever they can see,” he said. “We are just walking and we don’t have guns.”
After Friday Prayer, Turki and his friends said, a crowd of several thousand had gathered at Issa Hatey Square to march to Green Square. They raised what he called “the old-new flag,” the former tricolor of the Libyan monarchy that rebels have claimed as the flag of a free, post-Qaddafi Libya.
Two carloads of Libyan Army soldiers had joined them, he said, though they never used their weapons to avoid provoking a bloody retaliation.
But when the march arrived at the Arada neighborhood, they were ambushed by snipers on the rooftops. Some protesters said they had been attacked by the personal militia of Colonel Qaddafi’s son Khamis Qaddafi, which is considered the most formidable battalion in the Qaddafi forces.
At least 15 people had died there, he and others said.
A precise death toll has been impossible to verify. A Libyan envoy said Friday that hundreds had been killed in Tripoli. “
The National Front, Richard Edmonds And The Leader of the EDL.
Years ago, long before the current incarnation of the British National Party there was the National Front.
The NF lacked the intellect and polish of the BNP, but it more than made up with neo-Nazism and leaders that formed their views amongst the post-WW 2 dregs of the Extreme Right.
Today’s crop of Far Righters did not appear overnight, they have a history both intellectually and physically joined at the hip with Mosleyism and 1960’s British National Socialism.
Few antifascists can forget the picture of John Tyndall or Colin Jordon striding around in fake Brown shirt clobber, replete with Nazi insignia.
Which leads us to Richard Edmonds, long time fixture on Britain’s Extreme Right, who I ran across in the 1970s. He’s not the type of person you could forget, tallish with a grasping violent manner and a true neo-Nazi believer, as HOPE not hate details:
“Richard Edmonds was once a powerful figure in the BNP, the right-hand man to its founder, John Tyndall. Despite his marginalisation under the new “modern” BNP Edmonds remains an important figure whom Griffin cannot afford wholly to ignore, not for who he is but because of what he stands for. After Tyndall’s death in 2005 Edmonds took over as the personification of the “old” hardline, antisemitic BNP, with which many of its activists still identify.
A former member of the National Front, Edmonds was a teacher in Tulse Hill, south London where teachers and pupils alike were less than impressed by his political activities. He is a convinced antisemite and played a leading role in producing the Holocaust denial newspaper Holocaust News.”
The video below shows EDL leader, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon AKA Tommy Robinson lapping up Richard Edmonds’ racist rants with gusto.
As the antifascist YouTube channel, BNPinfo relates:
“This photo shows EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon with violent race-hate criminal, Holocaust denier and senior BNP and NF official Richard Edmonds, and with John Pater of an openly Nazi group called the November 9th Society.
Richard Edmonds published an extreme right-wing magazine called Holocaust News, which pretended Hitler never gassed Jews, gypsies, gays and disabled people in concentration camps, and is the person who famously admitted on TV that the BNP are “100% Racist”.
The Nov 9th Society is also known (ironically) as the British First Party, but takes the Nov 9th name from the date of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s failed 1923 beer-hall putsch in… Germany!
Despite what the EDL say about how immigrants should respect British laws, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is currently being investigated for money laundering and was jailed for attacking a police officer who tried to stop Yaxley-Lennon beating-up his own girlfriend. “
I think that tells us the type of company that the ex-BNPer and current EDL leader, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon AKA Tommy Robinson really likes to keep.
(Hat tip: FightBack UK)
Update 1: The JC has more on the November 9th Society:
“Kevin Quinn, leader of the extreme-right November 9th Society, was unequivocal about its policy when the JC called him. Israel, rather than Jews, was the enemy, he insisted, even if that contradicted a past advertisement in a virulently antisemitic publication.
When it was pointed out to Quinn that the majority of people in Israel are Jewish, he replied without a hint of irony: “I was under the impression that Israel was formed as a homeland for all Jews. I would invite all Jews to go back there.”
The society’s spiritual leader is Adolf Hitler and Quinn denies the Holocaust, claiming it was a “physical impossibility.” He contends that 300,000 died from typhoid and Allied bombing.
In any event, he is “not concerned with what happened to Jews or anyone else in a foreign country. I am concerned only with Great Britain and what happens here, with asylum seekers coming through tunnels, with pensioners who cannot afford to pay heating bills, with British soldiers coming home in body bags.”
These sentiments are repeated on the N9S website, which carries videos that, at the very least, are in poor taste.
Kevin Quinn — a 41-year-psychiatric nurse and father-of-four — maintains that the Society is “not Fascist. We are National Socialist.” He claims it has “about 940 members” and organises demonstrations “all over the country.” It hopes to field four or five candidates in next year’s local elections.
But one source who monitors far-right organisations questioned the membership claims. “When they do appear, they cannot muster more than about a dozen people. They like to dress up in uniforms but do not do much else.”
Quinn admitted to having worn a uniform in the past but claimed he no longer did so. He did not give Nazi salutes in public.
He dubbed the British National Party “Conservatives on steroids.” “
The EDL, A Trojan Horse For neo-Nazis.
A rather good video clip on the EDL has been released:
Better Than Any Report.
This YouTube video from the Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism covers antisemitic instances in 2009 with greater clarity than any report could:
ModernityBlog 