Sam PF's Journal
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Sam PF" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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09:40 pm
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Folky history geekery
Excellent. Billy Bragg sings a protest song about constitutional reform to the tune of the old Northern Ireland Unionist song Lillibullero!
Tags: folk music, politics
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08:39 pm
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Peace at any price?
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Nitanyahu has finally uttered the words Obama was waiting to hear - "Palestinian State" - with a few strings attached. Such a state must be completely demilitarized. It must have no control over its airspace. And it must "recognise Israel as a Jewish state".
In other words, he's offering the Palestinians a vassal state, subject to Israel's every whim, that can be re-occupied at will or have its communications cut off if it so pleases its masters.
Oh, I think a demilitarized Palestinian state would be a good idea. What possible threat could a Palestinian army be to Israel anyway? I also think a demilitarized Israel, Egypt and Syria would be a good idea. But no state has a right to dictate to another what arrangements it makes for its own defence.
And what of "recognising Israel as a Jewish state"? What does that mean? Where does that leave Israel's Palestinian, Bedouin and other non-Jewish citizens? "All citizens are equal, but Jewish citizens are more equal than others?" Or does it just mean "A state with Saturday as its Sabbath and a few bureaucratic-institutional ties to Judaism"? Much like having the Church of England established in England (a bad idea, but causing little concrete harm.) If the latter, then why the heck does this state of affairs need to be "recognized" by any other state? It's up to the Israelis to decide, and no business of anyone else's, as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said.
But of course it really means the former, a state in which Palestinan citizens are barely tolerated, notionally equal before the law, but in practice rigorously and systematically discriminated against. Ineligible for military service, debarred from owning the large swaths of land owned by the Jewish National Fund, receiving massively less funding per person for education than Israel's Jewish majority, effectively never given building permits (making "natural growth" of the Palestinian population rather tricky), their parties never included in any governing coalition. Fundamentally, Israel as a "Jewish state" means that the state is not for them. Demanding recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state" means demanding recognition and legitimization of racism, pure and simple.
To say nothing of the fact that any state Netanyahu plans on offering would be a moth-eaten rag split into bits by Israeli settlements, which he shows no sign of agreeing to freeze, let alone ever dismantle.
Let's see whether Obama buys into this pile of shit.
Fuck you, Netanyahu, you vicious racist asshole.
Tags: israel, palestine
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12:58 pm
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Blowing own trumpet
Squee! The launch of the SIPRI Yearbook 2009 is currently the second item on the BBC News front page. And I'm quoted! They've also directly quoted large chunks of our press release sections on military expenditure and on arms production, the parts of the yearbook I was involved in.
Launch press conference was this morning. Some very good presentations by members of our staff and governing board - including new board member Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi; my talk also seemed to go down well. I will probably be appearing on Swedish TV channel 4 this evening, as I had an interview with them afterwards.
Tags: peace, sipri, war, work
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01:02 am
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Obama in Cairo
Well, I have to say I was rather impressed by President Obama's 'reaching out to Muslims' speech in Cairo today.
It is, of course, only a speech, and we already know he's good at those. There's also lots of things one could justifiably criticize about the speech from a progressive perspective, things he said, more particularly things he didn't say - for example:
( The less good )
( The mood music )
( Israel/Palestine )
There was also some nice practical stuff about education exchanges, economic co-operation, microfinance and so forth.
And the ending, well it was pretty magnificent, again all easy stuff to say, but rather good that the President of the US does say that sort of thing, rather than the lanaguage of Bush. And the way he says it does bring out the goose bumps.
Obama's speech did not present much by way of new policies, not on the big issues. It was just a speech. In the end it may yet turn out to be no more than warm words. It remains to be seen whether he actually means it. Or rather, whether there will be enough of a tide of opinion to make him follow through.
Critically on Israel/Palestine, the question is whether he will actually use the levers at his disposal (such as ending the automatic veto on Israel's behalf in the UN Security Council or cutting military aid) to pressure Israel to follow what he's advocating.
But one thing's for sure, if he doesn't follow through, if it does all just turn out to be warm words, he's going to look bloody stupid a few years down the line. That in itself - that he should put his credibility on the line to such an extent - is an encouraging sign.
Tags: obama, palestine, peace, politics, war
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11:37 pm
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Thought crime in Sri Lanka
Apparently now the Sri Lankan government intends to put the doctors on trial who continued working within the war zone where Tamil civilians were trapped with the remaining Tamil Tigers (LTTE) in the last phase of the government's assault, attempting to provide treatment under the most desperate conditions imagineable. The UN called these doctors "heroic", but according to the Sri Lankan government, their actions give rise to "reasonable suspicion of collaboration with the LTTE".
Why is there not more outrage about this?
Of course, the doctors' real crime is that in a situation where journalists, aid workers, UN officials and everyone else were denied access to the trapped Tamils, the doctors were the only people able to bear credible witness to the deaths of civilians at the hands of the government bombardment.
The best, though, is saved for last, when the Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary is quoted talking about the 250,000 Tamils held in internment camps. (In my last post I linked to a report saying they'd be held for two years - I've seen subsequent reports where the government says nost of them will be 'resettled' within 6 months - but who knows?)
So back to the Foreign Secretary:
He said everyone there had to be carefully screened, adding that it was "quite likely" that even many elderly people were "with the LTTE, at least mentally".
(Emphasis mine).
There are no words.
Tags: sri lanka, war
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04:24 pm
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Sri Lanka concentration camps
This is truly unspeakable.
There has been a great deal that is utterly horrific about the conclusion of the Sri Lankan government's war with the (LTTE) Tamil Tigers - at least 7,000 dead according to the UN, I've seen estimates of 15,000 from health officials inside the war zone.
But according to this latest story, the Sri Lankan government has declared its intention to hold a quarter of a million Tamil civilians in internment camps for 2 years to "weed out Tamil Tigers".
INTERNMENT CAMPS, FFS!
They say it may take that long to decide whether people are LTTE members who have put down their guns and taken off their uniforms. Well, that's OK then.
Meanwhile there are widespread reports of malnutrition and generally appalling conditions within the camps. The Red Cross has been forced to suspend aid deliveries because the authorities will not let them in.
Sri Lanka has obviously learned their lesson well from the "Global War on Terror" ideology - perhaps even taken it a little further than its progenitors intended: if you say that you are after "terrorists", then there is nothing that you cannot do, no measure that you cannot take against the civilian population from which they come that cannot be justified.
Tags: war
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01:14 am
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Sam P-F's schooldays.
On a post of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) midnightmelody's I happened to mention that I went for a couple of years to a vaguely Summerhill-like school before it all went wrong, and she asked me what I meant by 'went wrong'. But as it is a rather long story, and as I have not posted on this before (except briefly in passing), I thought I would make my answer to a wider audience. For it is indeed a truly remarkable story which, even were it inscribed with a needle on the corner of an eye, yet would it serve as a lesson for the circumspect.
The school was called Monkton Wyld, in the wilds of West Dorset, not far from Lyme Regis.
( read on... )
Tags: life, politics, religion
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08:36 pm
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Fail, fail and fail again
Another episode in RaceFail, which has got me thinking.
In this thread (hat-tip ![[info]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) keeva), SF/F writer Lois Bujold is responding to a discussion about PoC in genre fiction, and comes out with the breathtakingly obtuse line,
The other and more hopeful point is that never before have so many Readers of Color existed to *have* the conversation, or been able to communicate with each other to do so. When I went to my first midwestern convention in 1968, there was exactly one black fan, male...
She is then swiftly called out by numerous PoC fans pointing out that they were reading and talking about SF/F looong before the advent of the internet, and just because they weren't doing so in front of the overwhelmingly white SF/F establishment or at conventions doesn't mean they weren't there.
To give Ms. Bujold some credit, she did not try to argue with this, but posted a subsequent comment to the effect that she clearly needs to go away and have a serious think about all this.
As do I.
One of the responses talked about the unwritten "whites only" signs at SF/F conventions, and this made me start thinking about other circles I move or have moved in that have, or may very well have, similar unwritten "whites only" signs. I've o occasion come to ponder these before, indeed once I almost made an LJ post about one such (gimme a cookie!), but then forgotten about.
The fact is, most of the social, cultural and even political circles I've moved in have tended to be overwhelmingly white.
Folk festivals.
Choirs, like the Hackney Singers I was in for a while ('cos Hackney is such a monocultural area).
Go tournaments, when I went to them. (OK, that is blatantly false, in that there were large numbers of people of Chinese/Japanese origin there. But next to no black or Asian people.)
The Catholic Justice & Peace conference (of which I posted briefly before). That's the one where I almost made an LJ post on the race thing, because I couldn't but be struck by the contrast between the diversity of the RC Church across the country (and especially somewhere like London), and the almost unbroken sea of white faces (apart from a few invited guests from overseas) at the conference. The conference of fluffy liberals (and not-so-fluffy radicals) devoted to Making the World a Better Place.
Even, to a considerable extent, Campaign Against Arms Trade. We did a little better, as there were from time to time people from or with a connection to places affected by conflicts assisted with British arms. But again, whether in the office or at national gatherings or the like, non-white British faces were a rare sight.
So now I'm seeing all of these in a row, and wondering just how large and loud and daunting are the "whites only" signs in front of these places, unwritten, invisible and ignorable though they may be to the privileged white people like myself that attend them.
One can make excuses of course, some more failsome than others. "Well, you wouldn't expect to see many black people at an English/Celtic folk or classical music event, because that comes very much from white European culture. Black people have their own music." Well, there are indeed differing musical traditions, and English/Celtic folk is not everyone's cup of tea. But then there's not a few white people into "Music of Black Origin", be it Jazz, blues, reggae, hip-hop, etc... and the assumption (so easy to not even realise you're making it) that white people can be eclectic in their tastes while non-white people stick to music from their own culture is racist.
A valid point is the intersection between race and class, and the fact that most of the activities I've described are rather middle-class dominated. Which shifts some of the problem to a different category - but it is not a sufficient explanation.
So I wonder, how does one go about tearing down those "whites only" signs? Where do they come from? How much is inertia, the fact that if a grouping starts out all-white or almost all-white that in itself makes it hard for someone who is not white to break into, and how much is it consciously or unconsciously reinforced by the participants? What needs to be done differently?
One of the hardest things to realise is that good intentions are not enough. I might not have intended to, but (at the very least by omission) I helped write those signs, and they have the same effect as if I did.
Tags: go, life, music, politics, race, religion, sf/f
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06:42 pm
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Caledonian roads
So last I updated I'd reached my sister's place in Edinburgh. Had a relatively quiet time of it there, which was rather well needed after all the running around down south. The Monday we didn't do much apart from a trip to IKEA to procure a whole load of kitchen and bathroom stuff for our mum's new flat in Juniper Green, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. She was returning (just last week), along with Blackie the dog, to live in Scotland after three years in Bulgaria. Tuesday I paid a trip up to my stepdad's near Brechin.
Wednesday involved getting up horribly early to catch a train to Glasgow, and thence to Fort William, where I was met by strongtrousers and sunlightdances, who (via lunch and a big Morrisons shop, and a brief stop at the Glenfinnan monument) convoyed me to Portuaik in Ardnamurchan to join the rest of the party.
mirabehn periodically organises such holidays for her and mostlyacat and miscellaneous friends on the Ardnamurchan peninsula (Ardnamurchan point is the most westerly point on the British mainland). I was there once before, four years ago. This year I was a late replacement for someone for the second half of the week, hastily rejuggling my planned UK visit to accommodate. There were twelve of us this time, in two cottages, with a rather squelchy path providing a shortcut down the twisty road between the two.
The next couple of days were much fun and most relaxing, a mixture of scrambling over rocks round bays, hill climbing, playing Articulate and Apples to Apples and Singstar and Paper Telephone, an Under Milkwood readthrough, and of course plenty of eating and drinking and general merrymaking. The scenery there is unspeakably beautiful (see photos from old entry. The hills are in much the same place we left them last time.) And was very good to see people.
Back to Edinburgh all too soon last Saturday, where me and Sarah met brother Angus at the airport, also returning to Scotland after a year living in California. Something of a convergence. The next day mum came round for lunch, with all her descendants assembled in one place for the first time in some while.
Flew home Monday, after a brief wander round Edinburgh. Met up with mum and showed her the excellent music shop on Southside where a decent second-hand piano can be procured for £250, and the adjacent excellent Jordanian deli with all manner of delicious vegan produce.
Some of you may recall the trouble and strife I had when the screen on my bright spangly new phone cracked the day I got it. Well, it happened again while I was in Ardnamurchan. I was an idiot. It happened (probably) while I was clambering over rocks by Ardnamurchan point. There wasn't even any point in having it with me, as there's no reception. So I thought "Here we go again" with all the ambiguous insurance doom the last time it happened.
Then while wandering round Edinburgh I passed one of those cheap phone repair/second hand/unlocking etc. places, the Phone Box on South Bridge to be precise. So I thought, maybe I can pick up a cheap 3 phone instead of going through all the insurance claim rigmarole. Or just maybe they can even repair it, or at least do a trade-in or something. So I went in, took out the phone and started to explain the problem. Quick as a flash, the woman behind the counter says "£29.99, it'll be about 20 minutes." And she was as good as her word.
AAAAGHHHHH! I COULD HAVE HAD IT DONE FOR £29.99 AND HAD IT BACK IN 20 MINUTES, AND INSTEAD I PAID MORE THAN THAT ON THE DEDUCTIBLE, AND WAS WITHOUT MY PHONE FOR FOUR! FRICKING! MONTHS!!!!!
They don't seem to have those sort of cheap dodgy places in Sweden. This is one of the things I miss about Britain. The second hand, make do on the cheap, culture. Ah, well. Now I know. I also bought a hard plastic fascia case so as to prevent this happening again, whilst retaining full functionality.
(This means, of course, chiefly for the benefit of those who were at Ardna, that my UK phone number which you have is back online.)
Well, all in all a really good holiday, managed to take in a rather good number of friends old and new, and good to have the family all in one place again. Somewhat exhausting though. I was sleeping (or in some cases failing to sleep) in eight different places in 17 days. "Holiday" - ur doin it rong.
Tags: family, life, scotland, travel
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10:46 pm
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Dreamwidth again
I am now, thanks to wychwood, on Dreamwidth. Same user name. (I know, it's not a very convenient one, but having the same one at least makes me easily findable. When I think of the killer new user name, I'll maybe change both at once.) I've started adding people that I've seen posting their DW name to LJ, but have almost certainly missed some.
My current intentions is to retain LJ as my primary posting journal, while keeping up with those now posting exclusively to DW. This may change if I see LJ gradually dying due to mass migration, but probably not otherwise. I have a permanent LJ account, and while LJ has its problems and occasional failures and DW seems a worthy initiative, they don't seem sufficiently pressing to me to give me an incentive to move. I know they're all ethical and community spirited, and yay for that, but thing is I've already paid what I'm ever going to pay to LJ, and LJ still seems to have the bulk of the network I value.
Meanwhile, I am curious about to what extent people are migrating. So here's something I can't do on Dreamwidth:
Poll #1395926
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All1) Do you have an account on Dreamwidth? 2) Posting intentions: my current intention is to: 3) Reading intentions: my current intention with regard to reading other people's posts is to:
And a separate brief poll:
Poll #1395927
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: NoneI have a DW account and wish to tell you my username, which is:
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11:11 pm
[Link] | Have now reached Edinburgh in my whistle-stop tour of the UK, where I am staying at my sister's prior to joining various folks in Ardnamurchan. I'm actually going to be in the same place for three day.
The first 5 days were in London, staying with ancient uni friends Iain & Rachel, then khalinche followed by shreena. Also managed to catch up with an old CAAT friend for lunch, as well as of course unexpectedly catching up with a whole load of people at the surprise party metioned in the last post.
Went with khalinche to see Let the Right One In (Låt den rätta komma in), aka "The Swedish vampire movie" on Monday night. (While it may seem perverse to come to Britain to see a Swedish film when I live in Sweden, this way I get English subtitles.)
We both agreed it was pretty awesome - both very tender and incredibly fucked up. More would be to spoil. The action takes place in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockolm, which is just a few stops along the Green Line from where I get off to get the bus to my island.
During the days I did my usual London wanderings, managed a couple of visits to the British Museum, one for the Shah Abbas of Iran exhibition, one for their new Medieval Europe room which includes things like the Lewis chessmen. I think my favourite exhibit though was the Tring tiles, which depicts fictional episodes from Christ's childhood. Many of these show children playing with Jesus and dying as a result (shown by the unfortunate kid being upside down), then Jesus resurrecting them after his mother tells him off. Others depict anxious parents locking their kids away in castles or ovens to prevent them playing with Jesus.
Also a trip to the Tate Modern and some shopping in Covent Garden and browsing in Forbidden Planet.
Next was Birmingham where I stayed with my dad for a couple of days, but also managed to meet up with other ancient Uni friend Ruth, then a visit to Roger and Chandra and kids in Derby. Yesterday we went to Cromford, a few stops past Belper (of readthrough fame) on the Matlock line, the site of Arkwright's mill. We spent most of the afternoon though at Scarthin Books, a place of awe and wonder, four floors of a Tardis-like maze of twisty little passages of bookshelves stuffed with new, second-hand and antiquarian books of all descriptions. They even have bookshelves in the toilet on the top floor. They also have a highly delicious vegetarian cafe.
Later on, Roger and I went round strangederby2 and violent_blue's for a game of Arkham Asylum, where we actually succeeded in defeating Yig (one of the lesser Elder Gods) when he arose from the deep, while drinking much beer.
Limited internet time up to now, so have been just barely keeping up a browsing brief on LJ. Bit more time now, but then away from the internets completely for three days in Ardnamurchan.
Tags: family, film, history, life, travel
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12:17 pm
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Surprise!
Have embarked upon my much-needed post-Yearbook frenzy holidays - two and a half weeks in Blighty visiting various friends in London and the Midlands, then family in Scotland plus a few days in Ardnamurchan with various other friends.
The trip started with a most unexpected and highly lovely surprise 24-days-early 40th birthday party on Saturday evening, the result of a sinister conspiracy between Iain, one of my most ancient friends, and khalinche, one of my most recent. I was staying at Iain & Rachel's for the weekend, and Iain spun a story about a board games evening with some people he knew at a pub in Haringay. I wondered about this, because I knew there was a Haringay sister pub to the Pembury and that some of my friends frequented this also, but I couldn't remember it's name ('twas in fact the Oakdale Arms), and I put it down to the boardgaming world probably being a fairly small one. (The fact that it was 24 days before my actual birthday - the occasion chosen as my nearest London time to the date - also kinda threw me off the scent.)
So I think my face must have been quite a picture when I saw everyone there and they all started singing Happy Birthday. ("Huh? How come all these people I know are here? And who's birthday is it?")
Anyway, it was very touching, and it was great to see everyone. Thanks to all who came, and especially to the very lovely khalinche for organising it all.
Also rather good in that this has taken away much of the dreadful anticipation from turning 40, in that I have been preemptively fortyfied.
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12:08 am
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Good law bad law
News from my adopted land.
The Swedish Riksdag voted yesterday by an overwhelming majority to legalise same-sex marriage in churches. Shamefully, the only party voting against (with one exception) was the Christian Democrats. This despite the fact that the Swedish Lutheran Church (to which 74% of Swedes nominally belong) supports the new law. The churches still need to decide whether to conduct same-sex marriages themselves, and the Lutheran Synod will decide in October. I'm presuming, given the above, that they're likely to vote yes. But not holding my breath for the RC Church to come to a similar decision.
Social Democrat leader Mona Sahlin celebrated the passing of the new law by publicly snogging (pdf link) the Vice-Chair of the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights. (Some have complained that this cheapens it, as Sahlin is, as far as we know, straight.)
Less positively (IMO), a new IPRED (Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive) law came into force yesterday, allowing copyright holders to require ISPs to disclose details of file-sharers. It led to a 30% fall in internet traffic on the first day.
Well, this is admittedly a rather selfishly-motivated response on my part, as er... someone I know really, really well downloads episodes of House and stuff using BitTorrent, and yes artists do need to be able to make a living... but well, privacy and giving power to corporations and stuff and... well I kind of think that it's a case of sticking one's finger in the dyke, and that actually in an age when data exchange is virtually cost-free, society kind of needs to come up with a better way of rewarding creative artists. Also not convinced that downloading necessarily adversely affects sales in all cases - like quite a lot of people, including this person I know really well often buy CDs/DVDs of something having first got it through file-sharing.
Hum. Well, all the reports say they're going to be going after the major users and the uploaders rather than minor downloaders like... this guy I know really well, but still probably best for such folks to use Pirate Bay's new anonymous surfing service.
In rather more pleasing legislative news, Stockholm's public transport provider, SL, has apparently banned standing on the left on the escalators. There's always been signs telling people to stand on the right, which most people observe most of the time, but now it's BACKED UP WITH FINES!!! Of up to 500 Kröner (about £42). As a Londoner at heart (and a rather impatient blighter at times), this pleases me immensely.
Tags: politics, religion, stockholm, sweden, swedish politics
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01:32 am
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Flooded, and a debate
I subscribe to too many Palestine-related lists.
They're all very worthy. But the result is I get flooded with emails containing various news stories, comment articles, and calls to action, far more than I can remotely hope to deal with. With the result that typically I do nothing about any of them. Which is a suboptimal strategy.
(This Yahoo group "Academics for Justice" is particularly bad for my mental health. It advertised itself as a "low traffic" group when I subscribed. Hah! Well, I suppose it's fairly low traffic, maybe 5-10 a day. But there's this one guy who collects EVERY LINK ABOUT PALESTINE HE CAN FIND and posts them all in one huge email.)
So anyway, I thought, well, how about doing something about ONE of the multitude of links you get every day. Which seemed like a good suggestion.
Trawled a bit further back through my inbox today, and picked up:
To Boycott Israel or Not
A debate between Naomi Klein and Rev. Arthur Waskow in In These Times magazine. The debate is about what is the most effective strategy for bringing about a just peace in Israel/Palestine - the two are pretty much on the same page as each other (and as I am) about what's going on there and what needs to happen, it's a debate about campaigning strategy. I have to say I find both rather convincing. Klein has long been one of my favourite people. Rabbi Waskow of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia I'd not encountered before, but is becoming one of my new favourite people.
Gosh, well that only kept me up till 1.47am. *groan* New strategy still has kinks to iron out.
Tags: israel, palestine, politics, religion
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11:24 pm
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Book rec
I am rather biased on this one, I must admit: Katherine Wills Perlo, better known to me as "mum", has just had the book based on her PhD thesis published by Columbia University Press:
Kinship and Killing: The Animal in World Religions.
Current Mood:  pleased
Tags: family
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01:42 am
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Ill-timed
Ah, Earth Hour is tomorrow! (Saturday). When we're all supposed to turn off the lights for an hour to make ourselves feel better about how we're destroying the planet.
I somehow managed to convince myself it was Thursday. Also wasn't sure if it was just lights, or everything electric. I went for everything (except fridge), though I missed one radiator. Just as well, as it's gone back to sub-zero with bucketloads of snow here. (Last year was incredibly mild. This year, a bit of a blip in the trend.)
It was strange, all dark, no computer, no TV, no keyboard to play... but I was very tired, so I just slept for an hour.
We have a leaving party tomorrow evening for someone in our project. So I don't know if we'll be observing Earth Hour for that. I dunno. Could play "Murder" or something.
Apparently, the Royal Palace in Stockholm is observing EH, but the City Hall is not. Ironic, given that Stockholm was awarded the title of Europe's Green Capital recently.
Well, it's a bit corny, but I guess anything that generates a bit more awareness probably isn't going to do any harm at least. Unless it gives people the impression that saving the planet requires going without electricity, which would probably be counter-productive.
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10:50 pm
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Barclays tax memos - ungagged
The Barclays internal memos detailing massive tax-avoidance schemes, revealed by the Guardian but subject to a legal gagging order, are available on Wikileaks.
The back story: on 16th March, the Guardian revealed that a Barclays whistleblower had sent the series of memos - which reveal a complex scheme involving a series of offshore accounts designed to avoid hundreds of millions of pounds in tax - to Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Vincent Cable.
Barclays are one of many banks benefiting from the UK government's bailout scheme, having played their part in the trashing of the world economy.
They posted the documents on their website, but Barclays obtained a gagging order from a High Court judge, ordering the Guardian to take the documents down, and forbidding them from revealing where the documents were published. The ruling was upheld on appeal, and further forbidding the Guardian from encouraging anyone else from publishing them.
I had a look round at the time, presuming that someone would have uploaded them somewhere else, beyond the reach of British judges, but it seemed like no-one else was spilling.
However today, Lib Dem spokesman Lord Oakshott used Parliamentary privilege to reveal where the documents could be found.
Among other places, Wikileaks.
More Guardian material on the tax avoidance issue, Barclays-related and otherwise, here.
So, fuck you, Barclays.
The Wikileaks page gives a quote from one financial analyst who read the memos. Couldn't put it better myself (apart from the until now having been a supporter of the finance industry):
I was lucky enough to read through the first of the Barclays documents...
I will say it was absolutely breathtaking, extraordinary. The depth of deceit, connivance and deliberate, artificial avoidance stunned me. The intricacy and artificiality of the scheme deeply was absolutely evident, as was the fact that the knew exactly what they were doing and why: to get money from one point in London to another without paying tax, via about 10 offshore companies. Simple, deliberate outcome, clearly stated, with the exact names of who was doing this, and no other purpose.
Until now I have been a supporter of the finance industry - I work with people there regularly and respect many of them, and greatly enjoy the Financial Times and other financial papers. However this has shone a light on something for me, and made me certain that these people belong in jail, and companies like Barclays deserve to be bankrupt. They have robbed everyone of us, every single person who pays tax or who will ever pay tax in this country (and other countries!), through both the bailouts and schemes such as this.
Tags: politics
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01:30 am
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Slouching towards genocide
Probably everyone's seen the news about Israeli soldiers, discussing the recent war in Gaza, admitting to deliberate shootings of Palestinian civilians - not just as a frew rogue acts, but under orders, and under a very permissive (to say the least) set of rules of engagement. The story was reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and unusually seems to have made even the American press.
(I don't know. I tend to assume everyone's seen these things, but typically this assumption is erroneous.)
To say nothing about the more general, increasingly well-testified accusations of war crimes coming from the UN and others - the intense bombardment of tightly packed civilian areas from which people had no means of escape, the use of white phosphorous and experimental Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) weapons causing horrific injuries.
A further chilling article in Haaretz a few days ago reports how IDF soldiers are getting T-shirts printed for themselves with pictures of dead Palestinian babies, a pregnant Palestinian woman in crosshairs with the caption "One shoot, 2 kills", and other charming images.
A further disturbing report - another one actually making the New York Times - highlights the increasingly explicit religious dimension to the war from the Israeli side, the idea that they are fighting a 'holy war' to expel non-Jews from the land of Israel, and pamphlets circulated by the chief military rabbi urging soldiers to "show no mercy".
If all that wasn't enough, here's one from the marvellous veteran peace campaigner Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom. (Avnery, an octogenarian former Knesset member who fought in Israel's army in the 1948 war, has always somehow managed to keep an optimistic outlook on the situation, believing that in the end a relatively just 2-state solution is inevitable, despite a very clear-eyed picture of how things are right now. Of late even his unquenchable optimism seems to have faltered, which in itself is scary.)
Anyway, this article reports on a challenge in Israel's Supreme Court to a particularly racist law that was passed a few years ago, banning Israeli citizens who marry Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories or 'hostile' Arab states from bringing their spouses to live in Israel. (A move targeted at Israel's Palestinian minority, many of whom marry within extended clans that may cross the Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank.)
So various Palestinian and Jewish peace groups are attempting to get this law overturned as violating the "Basic Laws" which (theoretically) guarantee equal rights for all citizens.
The Israeli Government's lawyers have presented their counter-argument. And herein lies the rub, for it contains this sentence:
The State of Israel is at war with the Palestinian people, people against people, collective against collective.
Not with the PLO. Not with Hamas.
People. Against People.
In many ways that's not so extraordinary, I mean it's basically just the logical conclusion of Zionism.
But to see it stated so openly, not by some marginal group of fanatics, but by the government's own legal department - that's quite something. And the thing about ideologies and logical conclusions? Often it's really best if they're not taken to them.
Oh, and this is the outgoing government of Ehud Olmert, the 'centrists', who are about to be replaced by an even more right-wing government, which will have the ultra-Nationalist Avigdor Lieberman as Foreign Minister, who wants Israel's Palestinian citizens to have to swear a loyalty oath or be stripped of their citizenship, and who called for Palestinian prisoners to be drowned.
Tags: israel, palestine, war
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12:06 am
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Who profits
Who Profits is a website dedicated to detailing the companies, Israeli and worldwide, that directly profit from the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
It includes companies producing and exporting goods made in illegal settlements (e.g. crops grown on expropriated Palestinian land in the Jordan Valley), companies involved in the construction of settlements, providing infrastructure for them (like Veolia, who are building a light rail link between West Bank settlements and Israel proper, and who recently lost their contract to run Stockholm's public transport - though how much influence the campaign against them had is unknown), companies like Caterpillar providing destruction equipment used to destroy Palestinian homes and land, companies like EDS providing electronic security equipment and services for checkpoints, and many more.
The one area it doesn't cover is companies selling arms to Israel, a topic which is fairly well covered elsewhere. (Although many arms companies are listed as they also provide civil 'security' equipment and services.)
Tags: israel, palestine
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01:23 am
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Race Fail vs Cultural Appropriation
OK, so I've recently started making some efforts to follow and understand some of the issues behind Race Fail 09. I've read a fair number of posts by now, obviously one can't read them all, even all the good ones, and probably I've already read more than is good for my work-life-sleep balance. But I must confess to some confusion about an aspect of this debate, which I hope you folks may be able to enlighten me on.
I am probably going to get some stuff wrong in what follows. If so, please do call me on it, and I will do my best not to get defensive and stupid and stuff.
So, Race Fail 09 has also gone, in some circles, by the alternative name of "The Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM!" However it's clearly not just about cultural appropriation, as numerous people have specifically pointed out, it's about privilege and oppression in general, "colourblindness", stereotyping and racial tropes in literature, and much, much more. But what I'm trying to get a handle on is just what is meant by the aspect of it that is "Cultural Appropriation".
( The detailed discussion )
Soooo.... to cut a long story short... what do y'all understand by the term "Cultural Appropriation"? When is it a problem? How does one avoid it?
Tags: buffy, cultural appropriation, fanfic, race
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