Weird things to be happy about

There's something wrong, and yet very right, about being cheered up by people's amazing strength and cheerfulness in response to horrible things happening to them. Fr'instance, there's Emily Henochowicz, the 21-year-old Jewish-American activist who had her eye smashed out by an Israeli high-velocity tear gas canister at a peaceful West Bank demonstration only a few weeks ago. One of her reactions to losing an eye, something which as an artist can't be great news, is to design a really fucking cool pair of glasses, with a beautiful pattern half-covering one eye socket. There's a picture of them on her blog here.
And then there's Tristan Anderson, who was also hit in the face by a high-velocity tear gas canister fired by an Israeli soldier against peaceful protesters (spot a pattern here?). Despite spending the first six months after the incident in what was often described as a coma but which was something which I guess to most of us would look similar, Tristan is now in a wheelchair, able to speak and function in many ways, although severely constrained in others. He's back in the USA and at a rehab centre, which is probably more than many of us who were following his situation from afar ever thought would be possible (and is of course very far from what most Palestinians who suffer similar injuries would ever be able to access). A Q&A on his progress is here.

On a completely different subject, this neat little site gives an easily digested run-through of why all the Tory cuts which are currently cutting a swathe through public sector and probably third sector employment in this country, as well as many not-as-useless-as-they-might-make-out services, are ill-conceived, economically damaging and hypocritically and ideologically selective.

The Dr Laura letter...

This round-robin email came to me again yesterday, and I thought I'd post it. Firstly because it's very funny.
Secondly because to certain people jumping on the Islamophobic bandwagon on the basis of Muslim homophobia, it's an appropriate reminder that while, yes, deeply unpleasant, backward and reprehensible homophobia is widespread amongst observant Muslims, it's equally common amongst the faithful of the other 'religions of the book,' and no amount of pinkwashing will cover that up. Homophobia, sadly, stems from social conservatism and the alarmingly popular practice of taking the word of 4000-year-old texts a bit too literally, and is not confined to one specific religious group.
And thirdly it's an entertaining highlight to the hypocrisy of the American Moral Right. The 'Dr Laura' mentioned at the start of the email is a Republican radio show host who has authored 'family-first'-type books with titles like: Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives and The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. This family-friendliness did not apparently extend to keeping her hands off the married father-of-three she's now hitched to, having started an affair with him while he was still the husband of someone else. She's also made herself deeply unpopular with the North American gay community, to the extent that "In May 2000 the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) ruled that her "consistent characterization of the sexual behavior of gays and lesbians as 'abnormal,' 'aberrant,' 'deviant,' 'disordered,' 'dysfunctional,' and 'an error' " constituted abusive discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and as such, were in violation of the human rights provision of its Code of Ethics. The CBSC found similar fault with her generalized statements that pedophilia is more prevalent among members of the gay community." She has also been the subject of various - in some cases successful - boycotts and campaigns, most notably StopDrLaura.com.
It's also worth noting that the letter below does not come from the guy whose name is at the bottom. But he seems to be generally sympathetic to it, and has put together an entertaining collection of his reflections on his accidental fame and of the letters - ranging from the bonkers homophobic to the amused liberal - he's received from people who did think it was him.

In her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance.

The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, written by a US academic and posted on the internet. It's funny, as well as informative:

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination ... End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of Menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I'm confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your adoring fan.

James M. Kauffman,
Ed.D. Professor Emeritus,
Dept. Of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education University of Virginia

PS (It would be a damn shame if we couldn't own a Canadian)

"Why Misogynists Make Great Informants"

"In January 2009, activists in Austin, Texas, learned that one of their own, a white activist named Brandon Darby, had infiltrated groups protesting the Republican National Convention (RNC) as an FBI informant. Darby later admitted to wearing recording devices at planning meetings and during the convention. He testified on behalf of the government in the February 2009 trial of two Texas activists who were arrested at the RNC on charges of making and possessing Molotov cocktails, after Darby encouraged them to do so..."

A very interesting and important article from Make/Shift magazine. Read the full piece here.

Paintballs or pepperspray?

I was bcc'd into this email last night, from a friend who is well-versed in the dubious delights of military and 'security' technologies to Jon Snow of Channel 4 news. They raise this point about the bizarre-sounding Israeli claims that some of their commandos were armed with 'paintball guns' (presumably not those who were armed with live ammo):

Hi Jon
I've just watched your interview with an Israeli spokesman (who didn't believe your assertion that Turkey was considering sending a warship to protect a further aid boat wishing to dock in Gaza).
Can I suggest that you investigate whether those paint guns much mentioned in the piece were actually going to be firing pepper spray? I'm told that these weapons are used by Israel, sold to them by the US. This would of course also explain why the Israelis were wearing what look like gas masks rather than some form of goggles to protect them from paint spatter.
For example see www.pepperball.com (you may not see the exact model here, but you will see what is on the market).
Best wishes

The deeply unpleasant military-spec page on pepperball.com is here. The 'law enforcement and corrections' page has some stuff that looks even more like paintball toys.
Which would perhaps also account for the 'strange-smelling gas' that some of the passengers on the attacked boats reported?

Greenpeace on the BP oil spill

Original here.

Be Very Afraid, and some updates...

Firstly, thanks to OA again for striking fear into my heart when I opened my email to this excerpt from a Financial Times book review:

The most shocking tales are about Sarah Palin, who last week took up a new role as a Fox News commentator, and whose recent book, Going Rogue, is selling in the millions. So uninformed was McCain's running mate that advisors had to give her junior school tutorials on the first and second world wars, Vietnam and the cold war. Palin insisted that Saddam Hussein launched the September 11 attacks. As the depth of her ignorance sunk in, as well as her total lack of interest in rectifying it, McCain's senior staff members were “ridden with guilt over elevating Palin to within striking distance of the White House.

And a couple of updates.

First, wahey! My boiler scrappage scheme voucher has arrived, and as I type the cats are cowering in the bedroom as the rest of the house descends in to a chaotic mess of disconnected pipes, lifted floorboards and men in boiler suits wielding bits of machinery. But that doesn't mean I'm retracting any of my comments on the equally chaotic implementation of the scheme, which I put down to the EST's political masters trying to create a bit of a warm (literally) fuzzy feeling before the electioneering really gets going.

The second one is a corker. Remember Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling declaring that Moss Side was like the Wire? A couple of journalists - a freelancer from Manchester and a crime reporter from the Baltimore Sun - decided to swap cities and see if he was right. So Baltimore blokey, from a city with several hundred murders a year, gets to spend a night with GMP in sunny Moss Side. Simon Binns reported the result in Crains:

Justin Fenton, the Baltimore Sun crime reporter, spent a week on a job swap with Northern Independent hack Mark Hughes in order to see if Moss Side really was like hit TV show The Wire, a recent claim made by Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling. Fenton was positively disappointed at the lack of excitement, however, after 14 hours with Greater Manchester Police. “The lack of action on my ridealongs has been quite ridiculous, especially since the press and the officers I rode around with in Manchester insist that these are tough streets,” he said. “Here's what I witnessed first-hand: a car full of teens who had just finished smoking marijuana; a kid whose furious bike riding raised suspicions but turned out to be nothing.” Furious bike riding is a suspicious activity now? Good news for Manchester's public image, though, and proof that cycling really has taken off since the Velodrome and Sir Chris Hoy's Olympic success.

Copenhagen

Thanks to my little-ray-of-sunshine husband for the cheerful, if accurate, image.

Exploitpatriots.com

Scanning through a list of posts from a writers' group on the LinkedIn networking site (probably the only 'social networking' site I've ever found professionally useful, although SheWrites looks like it may be competition), I noticed the following post, and feeling particularly masochistic followed it up:

Patriotic Supporters
Read wonderful comments made by users of HirePatriots.com.
By Mark Baird

(LinkedIn is, of course, a US site and therefore most of the posts are American-focused, in case you were wondering which 'patriots' we're talking about here.)
HirePatriots.com is a website which uses social networking technology to find work for US military veterans, which is a pretty worthwhile effort. I fully acknowledge that there are many US squaddies who are racist scumbags who do appalling things in Iraq, Afghanistan etc - but there are also a lot of young men with feck all else in the way of job prospects who end up in hideous situations for which they have no political, emotional or other preparation. What is a bayonet? A weapon with a worker at both ends. Etc.
But what's interesting about this predictably jingoistic website is the bizarre perspective on who it's peddling these demobbed squaddies to, and what for. The site - especially the element of it being plugged by Mr Baird as worthy of people going to read, ie the effusive comments of HirePatriots.com hirers - show just how that wonderful Free Market that sundry Yank squaddies get sent off to fight and die for, also seems to entail paying them absolutely squat once they get home - and bragging about it.
Take the comments by Ron & Dee N, who've "had two Camp Pendleton marines working for us at our home for the last 5 weeks."

"If we could have had employees like these two men at our different businesses, we would have been thrilled. Our point is: We ARE THRILLED we these two service men. They show up on time. They speak perfect English. They are hard-working, they are CLEAN and they clean up after each work period. They are happy and appreciative of the opportunity! They gladly work for us for $8.00 an hour- doing everything. Weeding, planting, painting, staining, electrical work etc. They don’t blast rap music and they DON’T WASTE TIME. They are here to do a job-and that is what they do. They arrive on time- they do their job- and they leave. We don’t worry about things going missing- or being broken."

Anyone notice that rate of pay? Yep, $8 per hour. I checked that on the Financial Times currency converter today, and that works out at about £4.70 an hour - well below UK minimum wage. Last time I checked the US cost of living was not significantly below that of the UK, and no-one outside the British Tory Party thinks that the minimum wage actually constitutes a living wage.
HirePatriots.com says that its primary role is "honoring our veterans for their valiant service." Maybe there is some massive UK-US cultural gap I'm missing here. Or maybe not.

Insomnia

Yep, it's 1am and I'm meant to be sleeping, but instead I'm being grimly amused as the Metropolitan Police re-implodes with trying to cover its arse as another video of coppers smacking people around at the G20 comes to light. With the stories I've been hearing from friends at the Climate Camp in London there must be a bunch more footage out there. Anyway, the actual film is here:



and Marc Roberts' usual genius take on things is here:



The Judi of Marc's cartoons is, by the way, named after the amazing Judi Bari, an environmentalist, feminist and labour campaigner who survived being blown up in an attempted stitch-up by the FBI, only to die of breast cancer in 1997. But she's a supremely inspiring example of the way that people with clear sight and integrity draw together the many oppressions which threaten our world, seeing the connections between the way that capitalist and imperialist forces work, rather than selecting single issues and exposing themselves to the 'divide and conquer' strategy by which states manage dissent.
And speaking of amazing women activists, I just wanted to flag up Sharyn's powerful writings from Gaza again. It may not be in the headlines, but the Israeli army is still killing and maiming people in Gaza, and still imposing the blockade which systematically and deliberately destroys the health care system, economy, polity, education and social life of an entire people. Sharyn's writings capture with humour and compassion the horror of the situation in Gaza and the dogged determination of people who seek only to carry on living their lives and raising their families with a bit of dignity. So I'll leave you with a little one of her vignettes from the last few days:

J insisted on driving us back to the village house, with his two little daughters, in the rickety trailer of a tiny tractor, one of the few working pieces of machinery recent attacks have left him. I kept being convinced I was about to tumble out.
“I’m too old for this sort of thing,” I said.
“I only got in because he winked!” replied E.
“As the actress said to the bishop,” I muttered, clinging on.

We drank tea, fielded the usual plans to get us married off to the locals to keep us firmly in the country, and then left for our next appointment, determined also to find L some crutches, because she can’t stand on either leg alone. Initial enquiries suggest this is something else there is a shortage of, especially since the war. The only option might be to buy her a pair, if we can even find any.

Inauguration Day

This morning, I feel like one of those X Files geeks: I Want To Believe. The little bit of me that isn't utterly tired and jaded is still looking around for excuses to get excited about Barack Obama. But I suspect I may be with Frank in Marc Robert's great cartoon. I'd left the Labour Party in 1995 (after being a member for a grand total of about 4 months), but I was still excited about Tony Blair's election in 1997, if only because it heralded the end of such a catalogue of hideousness and ineptitude under the Tories. The speed with which I was disillusioned then makes me very wary now.
And the evidence for why I'm going to be disillusioned if I do let much of that hope creep in is already strong. Even before the appalling massacres in Gaza over the past 3 weeks, Obama's position on Palestine was looking bad. He'd supported Israel's claims to the city of Jerusalem, 'undivided.' He'd appointed the former Israeli soldier Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff, and Hilary Clinton, whose election campaign included threats to bomb Iran to defend Israel, as Secretary of State. While Gazan civilians were blown apart and burnt and crushed under their homes, he remained silent but allowed his advisers to brief that he understood Israel's need to 'respond' to attacks on its civilians. And going further back, he'd supported many Israeli acts of aggression in the region.

On climate change, I'm deferring to those with more knowledge of both Obama's position and of international climate change policy, who seem to be at least a little bit optimistic about his grasp of the issue and genuine aspirations to reduce the USA's carbon footprint. Mind you, post-Bush anyone could look ok on this, with the possible exception of that rabid bitch Sarah Palin. God, I hate sharing a name with that woman.
I'm not denying the importance of the USA electing its first black president, though I am stunned by the naivete of the people I keep hearing claim that this indicates that America is no longer a racist society, which I'm sure will surprise many of the population of New Orleans who sat and waited for help after Hurricane Katrina, and yes I am betting that it would have got there a damn site faster if the people waiting hadn't been poor and black. Or the African-American women who can't access abortions because they're too expensive, or who get put on physically damaging long-term contraceptives while they're still at school. Or the Haitian guys who get shot and attacked by the New York police for having the effrontery to be suspected of something... anything.
The symbolism of Obama is amazing, but I also suspect I'm with those who reckon that his scope for doing anything to help the position of black people of all origins in the USA will be extremely limited by his need to save up political capital, to not be seen as 'favouritist.' The symbolism of him wearing a 'this is what a feminist looks like' t-shirt was also amazing, although the pose he strikes doing so also says a lot about what might be offered on that front - you need saving, li'l lady? Well here comes Superfeminist!
We're having a little inauguration party here tonight. Not so much a celebration, more an excuse to have some nice people round, and to have the coverage on. To recognise that this is a historic moment, but not to inflate the expectations and hopes we may each be harbouring. I think I'd be more hopeful if it wasn't for Obama's cowardly failure to speak out on Gaza - it would have been more honest of him to just spit out the fact that basically he's yet another US president who'll pander to Israel, instead of pretending that he was respecting the fact that he wasn't yet in power. But... fingers crossed.

The photo of Obama with an 'I love Sderot' t-shirt is courtesy of Electronic Intifada

The maths of lives

Here is an excellent post from Brian Candeland of Manchester Green Party, on the relative value of lives, be they Indian, Gazan, Congolese - or rich white Westerners.

On First World Nationalisms

Given the discussion today of the Tory poll on class and race resentment amongst the white British working class, the following quote sent to me by Marc seemed very apposite. It's taken from The Social and Political Thought of Noam Chomsky by Alison Edgley.

"America and 'first world' nationalisms are, it seems, highly successful at disguising themselves, particularly from political theorists. Their invisibility is suggestive of the extent to which their manifestation is taken as the norm. As black writers and feminists have argued, one extremely significant characteristic of racism and sexism is the extent to which the white male is taken as normal so that everything else is 'other', different, pathology. This is also true for state and nationalist propaganda. For the invisible to remain invisible and for the norm to remain the norm, the possibility of the 'other' must be quieted, removed. This means information, knowledge and rhetoric must secure these requirements."

Eeeeuuuuwwwwhhhhh

Yuck. Don't know where Marc Roberts finds this stuff, but viewing his terrifyingly prolific output of cartoons does nothing for one's faith in humanity. Western Civilisation is decadent and muct be destroyed...

The Onion sez it again

Best bits of US election analysis I've seen so far...
"Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job"
and
"Nation Finally Shitty Enough to Make Social Progress"

4th November 2008

God, I hate US elections.
I hate being stuck on the other side of the Atlantic not being able to participate usefully in something which is going to affect the whole world so profoundly.
I hate that I end up with wishy-washy liberal sympathies for politically horrible Democrat candidates just because they're less obviously maniacally dangerous than the Republican version, even though in the end I know they'll be equally vile on most of the issues that matter, and even if they're not all the other vested interests will scupper anything worthwhile they might do.
I hate how furious I end up being at the American population for electing murderous fucking nutters, and how on one level I know that there are so many people who are disenfranchised and maybe they'd have voted differently (although part of me can't help suspecting that The Onion was right on the button here). But the other part of me is just thinking YOU BASTARDS ELECTED BUSH - TWICE!
And I hate that the media seems to have nothing else to report (except for BBC talentless waste-of-oxygen celebs saying stupid things) when there are so many things going on in the world, but to people who don't have power/money/their own radio show.