Japan's $5 trillion economy has relied heavily on nuclear power for decades, with its reactors providing almost 30 percent of electricity needs, but last year's massive earthquake and subsequent nuclear crisis spurred a public backlash against atomic energy. Cabinet ministers have largely failed to win over the public to allow the restart of the country's plants - shut one by one for scheduled maintenance and unable to resume operations because of concerns about safety.
Japan's Asahi newspaper said public sentiment was "wavering between two sources of anxiety" - fear over the safety of nuclear power and doubts on whether Japan can live without it. "The public shouldn't just criticise (the government) but make its own decision on energy policy that involves burden and responsibility, such as through cooperating in power saving," the paper said in an editorial on Sunday. The government hopes to come up with an estimate by mid-May of expected shortages this summer, and will then produce a plan to conserve energy that could include compulsory curbs on use of power, Japanese media say. But setting a long-term energy policy or a clear timeframe for restarting the plants will take time given strong public opposition and a divided parliament that has paralysed policy-making, analysts say...
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/05/06/nuclear-japan-idINDEE84503H20120506
See also: Table showing status of 50 reactors with capacity of 46,148 megawatts:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-07/japan-nuclear-power-free-after-shutdown-of-last-reactor-table-.html
Showing posts with label current affairs - international. Show all posts
Showing posts with label current affairs - international. Show all posts
Sunday, 6 May 2012
Saturday, 5 May 2012
Politics and the internet: time to update our perspective
We need a politics of the internet focused as much on creativity and imagination as on structure, space and intersection
The meteoric rise in popularity of the Pirate Party in Germany, the place of Facebook and Twitter in the recent upheavals in the Arab world, the potential for e-government, serious games for economic progress and development, citizen journalism, and, last but not least, the viral KONY2012-campaign show all too clearly that the Internet is of increasing relevance in people’s life in general, and in politics in particular. As a result, it is a favoured topic for political analysts and commentators who offer theories as to the role of the Internet in and for contemporary politics. With each new civil society upheaval, the debate reignites asking whether the uses of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, are significant enough to merit the relabelling of these upheavals as ‘Facebook-’ or ‘Twitter-revolutions’.
More generally, there is an ongoing (at times heated) debate about if and how the Internet could be a solution for a number of democracy-related problems that analysts detect within the contemporary global context. Many of the commentaries comprising this debate are of value, including James Curran’s elaboration on ‘why the Internet has changed so little’, in the sense that it has failed to meet many of our expectations for political and social change. This and other analyses of the Internet offer rich and varied discussion of the relevance of the Internet for political analysis.
And yet, despite this, contemporary political accounts of the role and significance of the Internet are somewhat ‘tame’ or even ‘tamed’. There are two reasons for this...
We address these problems directly and suggest an alternative understanding of the Internet to trigger a rethinking and a re-configuration of the conceptual frame that has guided political analyses hitherto. We start from different premises. Two conceptual steps are at the heart of our endeavour. First, instead of conceptualising the Internet as a virtual space and/or tool for activism, or indeed as a ‘new type of territory’, we follow theorists of digital culture and suggest that the Internet must be understood as a ‘set of interactions in process’. This involves envisaging the Internet as a set of resources, engagements, relations and structures through which the world is constantly renewed – rather than as a material object or single entity. As we explain, this alternative conception of the Internet is a consequence of its two main features, namely its digital nature (which means that it is immaterial and constantly open to change) and the ‘ethos’ of Web 2.0 (which relates to a culture of sharing, editing, re-editing, producing, re-producing, creating new forms of relation, prosuming etc).
Secondly, instead of thinking of the Internet as a thing separate from the ‘real’ world, that is, instead of working with the notion of a ‘great divide’ between the offline and the online (real/virtual, material/symbolic), we suggest that scholars take recent studies seriously and acknowledge that the Internet today is fundamentally intertwined with socio-political structures and ‘offline’ lived realities.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/henrietta-l-moore-sabine-selchow/thinking-about-politics-and-internet-time-to-update-our-perspective
The meteoric rise in popularity of the Pirate Party in Germany, the place of Facebook and Twitter in the recent upheavals in the Arab world, the potential for e-government, serious games for economic progress and development, citizen journalism, and, last but not least, the viral KONY2012-campaign show all too clearly that the Internet is of increasing relevance in people’s life in general, and in politics in particular. As a result, it is a favoured topic for political analysts and commentators who offer theories as to the role of the Internet in and for contemporary politics. With each new civil society upheaval, the debate reignites asking whether the uses of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, are significant enough to merit the relabelling of these upheavals as ‘Facebook-’ or ‘Twitter-revolutions’.
More generally, there is an ongoing (at times heated) debate about if and how the Internet could be a solution for a number of democracy-related problems that analysts detect within the contemporary global context. Many of the commentaries comprising this debate are of value, including James Curran’s elaboration on ‘why the Internet has changed so little’, in the sense that it has failed to meet many of our expectations for political and social change. This and other analyses of the Internet offer rich and varied discussion of the relevance of the Internet for political analysis.
And yet, despite this, contemporary political accounts of the role and significance of the Internet are somewhat ‘tame’ or even ‘tamed’. There are two reasons for this...
We address these problems directly and suggest an alternative understanding of the Internet to trigger a rethinking and a re-configuration of the conceptual frame that has guided political analyses hitherto. We start from different premises. Two conceptual steps are at the heart of our endeavour. First, instead of conceptualising the Internet as a virtual space and/or tool for activism, or indeed as a ‘new type of territory’, we follow theorists of digital culture and suggest that the Internet must be understood as a ‘set of interactions in process’. This involves envisaging the Internet as a set of resources, engagements, relations and structures through which the world is constantly renewed – rather than as a material object or single entity. As we explain, this alternative conception of the Internet is a consequence of its two main features, namely its digital nature (which means that it is immaterial and constantly open to change) and the ‘ethos’ of Web 2.0 (which relates to a culture of sharing, editing, re-editing, producing, re-producing, creating new forms of relation, prosuming etc).
Secondly, instead of thinking of the Internet as a thing separate from the ‘real’ world, that is, instead of working with the notion of a ‘great divide’ between the offline and the online (real/virtual, material/symbolic), we suggest that scholars take recent studies seriously and acknowledge that the Internet today is fundamentally intertwined with socio-political structures and ‘offline’ lived realities.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/henrietta-l-moore-sabine-selchow/thinking-about-politics-and-internet-time-to-update-our-perspective
Friday, 4 May 2012
Ypsilanti Vampire May Day by PETER LINEBAUGH
Dracula
On May Day sometime in the 1890s, an ordinary Englishman boarded a train in Munich. His destination was a castle in Transylvania, a country wedged between the Danubian Provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. It was a dark and stormy night when he arrived. “Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things of the world will have full sway?” asked the landlady of a nearby hotel, and she implored him to reverse his course. Other commoners then warned him it was a witch’s Sabbath. Heedless, he persisted to the castle where pure terror awaited him in the personage of a bloodsucking monster. Count Dracula was at once as smooth, polite, and persuasive as President Obama, and as terrifying, shape-shifting, and diabolical as George W. Bush. He was undead - a zombie, or a werewolf - and lived only as long as he was able to suck human blood.
As for the crisis of our own lives, in 2009 Matt Taibbi assigned blame to the banks, calling Goldman Sachs “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”1 Reverend Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan, referring to the Emergency Manager which was wrapped around the face of his city, said “he’s for the corporations that suck the life out of people.” Banks, insurance companies, and corporations belong to the total circuit of capitalism whence the sucking originates. When Alan Haber, the first president of SDS, spoke last winter at the Crazy Wisdom Book Shop and Tea Room in Ann Arbor about his experiences at Occupy Boston and Occupy Wall Street, he concluded his remarks by reminding everybody that “Capital is dead labor, which vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”
As May Day 2012 approaches Ypsilanti, by all means let us tell stories of flowers and fertility rituals and of the ancient festivals on the commons; and let us, for sure, commemorate the great struggle for the eight-hour workday that reached a climax in Chicago at the Haymarket in May 1886, and gave birth to the holiday of workers around the planet, east and west, north and south. As the prospect of the appointment of an Emergency Manager (EM) looms over Ypsilanti—with powers to abrogate union contracts, close schools, sell public assets, expropriate municipal lands, and whose very word is law—we must also greet the day with the realistic gloom that comes from an uncertainty about health, roof, studies, and livelihood. The tooth is at our throat!
Our green parks are turned into toxic brownfields and our common lands have been laid waste as collateral for unspecified “development.” Our eight-hour workday is lengthened by multiple part-time jobs, or by the time-consuming caretaking of elders without pensions or children without day care. Our lives now are in the grip of mysterious forces called securitization or financialization, to which we submit in dumbfounded helplessness, though the blush on our faces reminds us that these forces are but the bloodsuckers of old. Voltaire wrote that “stock jobbers, brokers, and men of business sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight … these true suckers live not in cemeteries but in very agreeable palaces.”..
Read more: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/27/ypsilanti-vampire-may-day/
On May Day sometime in the 1890s, an ordinary Englishman boarded a train in Munich. His destination was a castle in Transylvania, a country wedged between the Danubian Provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. It was a dark and stormy night when he arrived. “Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things of the world will have full sway?” asked the landlady of a nearby hotel, and she implored him to reverse his course. Other commoners then warned him it was a witch’s Sabbath. Heedless, he persisted to the castle where pure terror awaited him in the personage of a bloodsucking monster. Count Dracula was at once as smooth, polite, and persuasive as President Obama, and as terrifying, shape-shifting, and diabolical as George W. Bush. He was undead - a zombie, or a werewolf - and lived only as long as he was able to suck human blood.
As for the crisis of our own lives, in 2009 Matt Taibbi assigned blame to the banks, calling Goldman Sachs “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”1 Reverend Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan, referring to the Emergency Manager which was wrapped around the face of his city, said “he’s for the corporations that suck the life out of people.” Banks, insurance companies, and corporations belong to the total circuit of capitalism whence the sucking originates. When Alan Haber, the first president of SDS, spoke last winter at the Crazy Wisdom Book Shop and Tea Room in Ann Arbor about his experiences at Occupy Boston and Occupy Wall Street, he concluded his remarks by reminding everybody that “Capital is dead labor, which vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”
As May Day 2012 approaches Ypsilanti, by all means let us tell stories of flowers and fertility rituals and of the ancient festivals on the commons; and let us, for sure, commemorate the great struggle for the eight-hour workday that reached a climax in Chicago at the Haymarket in May 1886, and gave birth to the holiday of workers around the planet, east and west, north and south. As the prospect of the appointment of an Emergency Manager (EM) looms over Ypsilanti—with powers to abrogate union contracts, close schools, sell public assets, expropriate municipal lands, and whose very word is law—we must also greet the day with the realistic gloom that comes from an uncertainty about health, roof, studies, and livelihood. The tooth is at our throat!
Our green parks are turned into toxic brownfields and our common lands have been laid waste as collateral for unspecified “development.” Our eight-hour workday is lengthened by multiple part-time jobs, or by the time-consuming caretaking of elders without pensions or children without day care. Our lives now are in the grip of mysterious forces called securitization or financialization, to which we submit in dumbfounded helplessness, though the blush on our faces reminds us that these forces are but the bloodsuckers of old. Voltaire wrote that “stock jobbers, brokers, and men of business sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight … these true suckers live not in cemeteries but in very agreeable palaces.”..
Read more: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/27/ypsilanti-vampire-may-day/
Thursday, 26 April 2012
Teacher Fired From Catholic School For In Vitro Fertilization
An Indiana teacher who says she was fired from a Roman Catholic school for using in vitro fertilization to try to get pregnant is suing in a case that could set up a legal showdown over reproductive and religious rights. Emily Herx's lawsuit accuses the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend and St. Vincent de Paul school in Fort Wayne of discrimination for her firing last June. Herx, 31, of Hoagland, Ind., says that the church pastor told her she was a "grave, immoral sinner" and that a scandal would erupt if anyone learned she had undergone in vitro fertilization, or IVF.
The Roman Catholic Church shuns IVF, which involves mixing egg and sperm in a laboratory dish and transferring a resulting embryo into the womb. Herx said she was fired despite exemplary performance reviews in her eight years as a language arts teacher. Legal experts say Herx's case illustrates a murky area in the debate over separation of church and state that even the U.S. Supreme Court has failed to clearly address. Diocese officials said in a statement issued to The Associated Press on Wednesday that the lawsuit challenges its rights as a religious institution "to make religious based decisions consistent with its religious standards on an impartial basis."
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in January that religious workers can't sue their employers for job discrimination because anti-discrimination laws allow for a "ministerial exception." But the justices failed to define who was and who wasn't a religious employee. "The Supreme Court didn't give us a kind of neat little on-off test as to who's a minister and who isn't," said Rick Garnett, associate dean and professor of law at Notre Dame Law School. In a similar case in Ohio, a federal judge last month gave the go-ahead for a trial in a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Cincinnati by a parochial school teacher who was fired after she became pregnant through artificial insemination, which the church is also against. The archdiocese fired Christa Dias in 2010, saying the single woman violated church doctrine...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/catholic-school-ivf_n_1453524.html
The Roman Catholic Church shuns IVF, which involves mixing egg and sperm in a laboratory dish and transferring a resulting embryo into the womb. Herx said she was fired despite exemplary performance reviews in her eight years as a language arts teacher. Legal experts say Herx's case illustrates a murky area in the debate over separation of church and state that even the U.S. Supreme Court has failed to clearly address. Diocese officials said in a statement issued to The Associated Press on Wednesday that the lawsuit challenges its rights as a religious institution "to make religious based decisions consistent with its religious standards on an impartial basis."
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in January that religious workers can't sue their employers for job discrimination because anti-discrimination laws allow for a "ministerial exception." But the justices failed to define who was and who wasn't a religious employee. "The Supreme Court didn't give us a kind of neat little on-off test as to who's a minister and who isn't," said Rick Garnett, associate dean and professor of law at Notre Dame Law School. In a similar case in Ohio, a federal judge last month gave the go-ahead for a trial in a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Cincinnati by a parochial school teacher who was fired after she became pregnant through artificial insemination, which the church is also against. The archdiocese fired Christa Dias in 2010, saying the single woman violated church doctrine...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/catholic-school-ivf_n_1453524.html
Sunday, 22 April 2012
'They're killing us': world's most endangered tribe cries for help
Logging companies keen to exploit Brazil's rainforest have been accused by human rights organisations of using gunmen to wipe out the Awá, a tribe of just 355.
Trundling along the dirt roads of the Amazon, the giant logging lorry dwarfed the vehicle of the investigators following it. The trunks of nine huge trees were piled high on the back – incontrovertible proof of the continuing destruction of the world's greatest rainforest and its most endangered tribe, the Awá. Yet as they travelled through the jungle early this year, the small team from Funai – Brazil's National Indian Foundation – did not dare try to stop the loggers; the vehicle was too large and the loggers were almost certainly armed. All they could do was video the lorry and add the film to the growing mountain of evidence showing how the Awá – with only 355 surviving members, more than 100 of whom have had no contact with the outside world – are teetering on the edge of extinction.
Also see: Campaign to save 'world's most threatened tribe':
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/25/colin-firth-campaign-awa
Trundling along the dirt roads of the Amazon, the giant logging lorry dwarfed the vehicle of the investigators following it. The trunks of nine huge trees were piled high on the back – incontrovertible proof of the continuing destruction of the world's greatest rainforest and its most endangered tribe, the Awá. Yet as they travelled through the jungle early this year, the small team from Funai – Brazil's National Indian Foundation – did not dare try to stop the loggers; the vehicle was too large and the loggers were almost certainly armed. All they could do was video the lorry and add the film to the growing mountain of evidence showing how the Awá – with only 355 surviving members, more than 100 of whom have had no contact with the outside world – are teetering on the edge of extinction.
It is a scene played out throughout the Amazon as the authorities struggle to tackle the powerful illegal logging industry. But it is not just the loss of the trees that has created a situation so serious that it led a Brazilian judge, José Carlos do Vale Madeira, to describe it as "a real genocide". People are pouring on to the Awá's land, building illegal settlements, running cattle ranches. Hired gunmen – known as pistoleros– are reported to be hunting Awá who have stood in the way of land-grabbers. Members of the tribe describe seeing their families wiped out. Human rights campaigners say the tribe has reached a tipping point and only immediate action by the Brazilian government to prevent logging can save the tribe...
...the Awá also face a more direct threat. Earlier this year an investigation into reports that an Awá child had been killed by loggers found that their tractors had destroyed the Awá camp. "It is not just the destruction of the land; it is the violence," said Watson. "I have talked to Awá people who have survived massacres. I have interviewed Awá who have seen their families shot in front of them. There are immensely powerful people against them. The land-grabbers usepistoleros to clear the land. If this is not stopped now, these people could be wiped out. This is extinction taking place before our eyes."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/22/brazil-rainforest-awa-endangered-tribeAlso see: Campaign to save 'world's most threatened tribe':
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/25/colin-firth-campaign-awa
Saturday, 21 April 2012
Neil Heywood: Death, corruption & intrigue in China
It has been a week like no other in China. There have been allegations of poisoning, corruption, extortion and political intrigue spanning three continents. Every day new shockwaves have rippled out from the death of British businessman, Neil Heywood, who is now at the epicentre of Beijing's biggest political earthquake since the Tiananmen protests of 1989. In Britain, MPs are demanding to know if Heywood was a UK government spy. David Cameron has held urgent meetings in Downing Street with China's propaganda chief, and foreign secretary William Hague has called for an internal investigation into the handling of the case by consular officials.
Washington is also being dragged into the morass, with details emerging this week of the terrified chief investigator Wang Lijun's bid for refuge at the US consulate in Chengdu in February – and the stand-off that followed as the building was surrounded by Chinese security personnel demanding he be turned over. Throw in additional – apparently untrue – rumours of military coups in Beijing, lovenests in Bournemouth and claims of murder and torture in Chongqing, and the story – shaped largely by leaks from the Chinese authorities – could come from a Le Carré thriller.
The victim is a Jaguar-driving British businessman with murky links to a corporate intelligence agency. The alleged villain is a Chinese lawyer, Gu Kailai, described by some as an unforgiving "empress". Her husband, Bo Xilai, was one of the most powerful men in China, who was betrayed by his closest ally, first to a foreign power and then to his rivals in Beijing. Key facts remain elusive. Evidence of a crime even more so. But enough details have emerged over the past few weeks to draw a timeline of the relationship between an ambitious British businessman and a powerful Chinese family that has resulted in the death of one and the downfall of the other....
The story might have then faded into obscurity were it not for a stunning appearance three weeks later at the US consulate in Chengdu of Chongqing's chief of police, carrying a bag full of documents about the case and asking for protection from Bo. Wang Lijun said his life was at risk because he had discovered evidence implicating Gu Kailai in Heywood's death, the New York Times reported this week. US officials pre-empted efforts to claim asylum but reportedly kept him safe from the security forces loyal to Bo who had surrounded the consulate until a senior Chinese official from Beijing came to take him out of his former master's stronghold.
The murder allegations became impossible to ignore. On 7 February, the UK government called for an investigation. Two months later, on 10 April, the Chinese government announced the detention of Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun for murder. Bo was removed from all party posts and investigated for a "serious breach of party discipline". Since then, no evidence has come to light to prove the allegations, but a drip-feed of leaks from the authorities has strengthened public perceptions of guilt. Unnamed sources said to be close to the investigation suggest Heywood was poisoned with cyanide after quarrelling with Gu over his commission for transferring funds overseas. Whether that is the truth may never be known...The scandal could hardly be more sensitive, coming ahead of a once-in-a-generation shift of power in China later this year..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/21/neil-heywood-murder-gu-kailai
Washington is also being dragged into the morass, with details emerging this week of the terrified chief investigator Wang Lijun's bid for refuge at the US consulate in Chengdu in February – and the stand-off that followed as the building was surrounded by Chinese security personnel demanding he be turned over. Throw in additional – apparently untrue – rumours of military coups in Beijing, lovenests in Bournemouth and claims of murder and torture in Chongqing, and the story – shaped largely by leaks from the Chinese authorities – could come from a Le Carré thriller.
The victim is a Jaguar-driving British businessman with murky links to a corporate intelligence agency. The alleged villain is a Chinese lawyer, Gu Kailai, described by some as an unforgiving "empress". Her husband, Bo Xilai, was one of the most powerful men in China, who was betrayed by his closest ally, first to a foreign power and then to his rivals in Beijing. Key facts remain elusive. Evidence of a crime even more so. But enough details have emerged over the past few weeks to draw a timeline of the relationship between an ambitious British businessman and a powerful Chinese family that has resulted in the death of one and the downfall of the other....
The story might have then faded into obscurity were it not for a stunning appearance three weeks later at the US consulate in Chengdu of Chongqing's chief of police, carrying a bag full of documents about the case and asking for protection from Bo. Wang Lijun said his life was at risk because he had discovered evidence implicating Gu Kailai in Heywood's death, the New York Times reported this week. US officials pre-empted efforts to claim asylum but reportedly kept him safe from the security forces loyal to Bo who had surrounded the consulate until a senior Chinese official from Beijing came to take him out of his former master's stronghold.
The murder allegations became impossible to ignore. On 7 February, the UK government called for an investigation. Two months later, on 10 April, the Chinese government announced the detention of Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun for murder. Bo was removed from all party posts and investigated for a "serious breach of party discipline". Since then, no evidence has come to light to prove the allegations, but a drip-feed of leaks from the authorities has strengthened public perceptions of guilt. Unnamed sources said to be close to the investigation suggest Heywood was poisoned with cyanide after quarrelling with Gu over his commission for transferring funds overseas. Whether that is the truth may never be known...The scandal could hardly be more sensitive, coming ahead of a once-in-a-generation shift of power in China later this year..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/21/neil-heywood-murder-gu-kailai
Thursday, 19 April 2012
The far right takes root in Europe
The bloodthirsty attacks perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway on July 22 last year (leaving 77 dead) provided a brutal awakening for all those in Europe who had been passively observing the rise of the Islamophobic far right. As the trial opens, around thirty political parties that openly call for a "pure European identity" are effectively in the process of consolidating their parliamentary positions (occasionally even signing agreements with mainstream right wing parties, as is the case in the Netherlands), and are claiming an ever greater media presence. These parties, following the example of the Nordic Forum, are adept at using new technology and social networks, which gives them an even greater platform to spread their messages of hate and bolster their national and international alliances.
Those responsible for this noxious propaganda always hide behind the principle of freedom of expression, and, when they are criticised for the speeches they deliver encouraging the Breiviks of the future, they assert that the carnage perpetrated by this “lone wolf" has nothing to do with the climate that they have helped to create. Indeed, they present themselves as victims that are being suppressed. They make out that Europe will ultimately lose its "Christian identity". These demagogues are active both inside and outside the electoral system: just as they have an elected presence in the parliaments, on the other hand they endlessly criticise democracies, accusing them of being far too liberal on the issue of immigration.
The European far right is seduced by the fantasy of a "pure" Europe as opposed to a real Europe, which is in fact successfully diversified. Like Anders Behring Breivik, thousands of individuals that haunt websites and blogs (Gates of Vienna, Brussels Journal), organisations such as the English Defence League, Platform per Catalunya, or Militia Christi, as well as religious leaders are all actively preparing fertile ground for the growth of extremism. A study at the University of Nottingham undertaken for Chatham House by Matthew Goodwin demonstrates that extremist parties are primarily characterised by their visceral opposition to immigration (particularly Muslim immigration), to ethnic diversity, and finally to multiculturalism, alongside social behaviours that they consider to be a great danger to Europe. Further, they think that mainstream political parties are far too "soft" in their responses to the issues surrounding immigration. Another study, by Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, shows that populist parties have always had their greatest electoral successes after integrating a strong anti-immigration strand into their speeches and manifestos.
These "new" populists carefully avoid the usual racist and anti-Semitic discourse, and prefer to position their stance more subtly, around questions of culture and identity..
http://www.opendemocracy.net/mariano-aguirre/far-right-takes-root-in-europe
Those responsible for this noxious propaganda always hide behind the principle of freedom of expression, and, when they are criticised for the speeches they deliver encouraging the Breiviks of the future, they assert that the carnage perpetrated by this “lone wolf" has nothing to do with the climate that they have helped to create. Indeed, they present themselves as victims that are being suppressed. They make out that Europe will ultimately lose its "Christian identity". These demagogues are active both inside and outside the electoral system: just as they have an elected presence in the parliaments, on the other hand they endlessly criticise democracies, accusing them of being far too liberal on the issue of immigration.
The European far right is seduced by the fantasy of a "pure" Europe as opposed to a real Europe, which is in fact successfully diversified. Like Anders Behring Breivik, thousands of individuals that haunt websites and blogs (Gates of Vienna, Brussels Journal), organisations such as the English Defence League, Platform per Catalunya, or Militia Christi, as well as religious leaders are all actively preparing fertile ground for the growth of extremism. A study at the University of Nottingham undertaken for Chatham House by Matthew Goodwin demonstrates that extremist parties are primarily characterised by their visceral opposition to immigration (particularly Muslim immigration), to ethnic diversity, and finally to multiculturalism, alongside social behaviours that they consider to be a great danger to Europe. Further, they think that mainstream political parties are far too "soft" in their responses to the issues surrounding immigration. Another study, by Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, shows that populist parties have always had their greatest electoral successes after integrating a strong anti-immigration strand into their speeches and manifestos.
These "new" populists carefully avoid the usual racist and anti-Semitic discourse, and prefer to position their stance more subtly, around questions of culture and identity..
http://www.opendemocracy.net/mariano-aguirre/far-right-takes-root-in-europe
Demand your data from Google and Facebook
World wide web inventor says personal data held online could be used to usher in new era of personalised services.. Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the world wide web, has urged internet users to demand their personal data from online giants such as Google and Facebook to usher in a new era of highly personalised computer services "with tremendous potential to help humanity". Berners-Lee, the British born MIT professor who invented the web three decades ago, says that while there has been an explosion of public data made available in recent years, individuals have not yet understood the value to them of the personal data held about them by different web companies.
In an interview with the Guardian, Berners-Lee said: "My computer has a great understanding of my state of fitness, of the things I'm eating, of the places I'm at. My phone understands from being in my pocket how much exercise I've been getting and how many stairs I've been walking up and so on." Exploiting such data could provide hugely useful services to individuals, he said, but only if their computers had access to personal data held about them by web companies. "One of the issues of social networking silos is that they have the data and I don't … There are no programmes that I can run on my computer which allow me to use all the data in each of the social networking systems that I use plus all the data in my calendar plus in my running map site, plus the data in my little fitness gadget and so on to really provide an excellent support to me."
Berners-Lee, who has been an outspoken defender of the "open internet", said big web companies were beginning to respond to consumer pressure to make users' data more easily recoverable. Google now offers users immediate access to all data it holds on them and Facebook will send users their data, though it may take as long as three months to recover all of it. Once the data outputs from different sites had been standardised, he said, our computers would be able to offer increasingly sophisticated services such as telling us what to read in the morning. "It will know not only what's happening out there but also what I've read already and also what my mood is, and who I'm meeting later on." http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/18/tim-berners-lee-google-facebook
See also Battle for the Internet: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/series/battle-for-the-internet
In an interview with the Guardian, Berners-Lee said: "My computer has a great understanding of my state of fitness, of the things I'm eating, of the places I'm at. My phone understands from being in my pocket how much exercise I've been getting and how many stairs I've been walking up and so on." Exploiting such data could provide hugely useful services to individuals, he said, but only if their computers had access to personal data held about them by web companies. "One of the issues of social networking silos is that they have the data and I don't … There are no programmes that I can run on my computer which allow me to use all the data in each of the social networking systems that I use plus all the data in my calendar plus in my running map site, plus the data in my little fitness gadget and so on to really provide an excellent support to me."
Berners-Lee, who has been an outspoken defender of the "open internet", said big web companies were beginning to respond to consumer pressure to make users' data more easily recoverable. Google now offers users immediate access to all data it holds on them and Facebook will send users their data, though it may take as long as three months to recover all of it. Once the data outputs from different sites had been standardised, he said, our computers would be able to offer increasingly sophisticated services such as telling us what to read in the morning. "It will know not only what's happening out there but also what I've read already and also what my mood is, and who I'm meeting later on." http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/18/tim-berners-lee-google-facebook
See also Battle for the Internet: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/series/battle-for-the-internet
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
John Cleese: Alerts to threats in 2012 Europe
The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Syria and have therefore raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross." The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.
The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.
The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France 's white flag factory, effectively paralysing the country's military capability.
Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."
The Germans have increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbour" and "Lose."
Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.
The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.
Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to "She'll be alright, Mate." Two more escalation levels remain: "Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!" and "The barbie is cancelled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the last final escalation level.
-- John Cleese - British writer, actor and tall person A final thought -“ Greece is collapsing, the Iranians are getting aggressive, and Rome is in disarray. Welcome back to 430 BC."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002555582
The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.
The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France 's white flag factory, effectively paralysing the country's military capability.
Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."
The Germans have increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbour" and "Lose."
Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.
The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.
Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to "She'll be alright, Mate." Two more escalation levels remain: "Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!" and "The barbie is cancelled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the last final escalation level.
-- John Cleese - British writer, actor and tall person A final thought -“ Greece is collapsing, the Iranians are getting aggressive, and Rome is in disarray. Welcome back to 430 BC."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002555582
Monday, 16 April 2012
A country coming out of the dark
In 1948 white SA made a catastrophic choice. In choosing to elect Daniel Francois Malan and his National Party with its policy of apartheid, SA was perversely turning against the entire tide of human history. With the revealing of the Nazi death camps and their millions of Jewish, Gypsy and other victims only a few years before, in 1945, at the end of World War II, the notion of racism being somehow a legitimate basis on which to formulate policy for a society was swept away in all its utter ghastliness. That white SA could proceed then to follow a party that legalised racism and discrimination across every facet of human life in this country is to our lasting shame as white people.
Since the advent of democracy, the unveiling of so many bitter truths in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and under the largely wise and moderate leadership of the ANC, history is moving on. The scars of the past are deep and remain extremely painful for black people, but in so many walks of life people of all colours are finding ways to reach out to one another and rebuild our once-divided and even, at times, shattered society.
It is now nearly 65 years later and new stresses and strains are beginning to take deep hold in our country. The ANC leadership is in increasing disarray, by many in the organisation’s own admission, and factionalism, corruption and incompetence are threatening the governance of our land. The growing gap between rich and poor, and poor people’s increasing dissatisfaction with the lack of job opportunities and service delivery, are deep-rooted problems that threaten the stability of our land.
However, since the worldwide economic crash in 2008, there is another, infinitely more hopeful, strain of thinking that has taken root here. SA has weathered this economic storm relatively well, and, while no one can deny our problems, the country has much stronger economic fundamentals than many others in the world. While the fallout from the crisis has certainly not receded entirely, and several dangers remain, in retrospect 2008 was a watershed year for this country.
After the disastrous choice that white SA made in 1948, the future of SA was always in doubt with the rapid imposition of the apartheid laws in the 1950s, the Defiance Campaign, the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, the jailing of Nelson Mandela and other leaders, the 1976 uprisings, the states of emergency in 1985 and 1986, the killing of Chris Hani and on and on. For generations South Africans grew up unable to believe confidently in the future.
For six decades, South Africans perceived their country and its future largely as a one-way negative bet. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million, skilled people emigrated or went into political exile. It was a societal culling of largely enlightened, decent people who had much to offer. That it went on for so long and that the country survived is the subject of many other articles. We lived in a country where white fear and black anger became twisted deeply into our national identity. We became a pariah state in the wider world.
We found a way out of this mess, largely thanks to Nelson Mandela, but still the negativity persisted, and it is by no means entirely gone. But since 2008, for the first time since 1948, South Africans have been able to look at their country and know that it is no longer a one-way bet.
This is a fundamental identity shift that in many ways is also a major generational swing. There are far too many people over 40 who are still stuck in the past. Many white people cannot bring themselves to believe that the country is, after all, working; many black people cannot look to a future where liberation from apartheid is not the only political reality that matters.It is, certainly, also a class divide. Class, rather than race, is slowly beginning to define the chasm in our society. In the past few years I have been consistently struck by the fact that everywhere I go, from Soweto to Polokwane to Cape Town, younger people who are middle class of all races feel a strong sense of confidence and optimism about the country.
The scars of apartheid run deep, significant differences remain between the experiences of many black and white young people, but there are growing numbers who increasingly have a shared background. Importantly, there is a strong sense among them of belonging here, in SA. They may want to travel to broaden their horizons, or to further their careers, but many of them, perhaps even most of them, come home. White children simply do not see Britain, or the US, say, as their ultimate cultural or political yardstick. Black children no longer look to sclerotic Cuba or the long-disappeared Soviet Union as exemplifying their hopes for the country. When they look at a country like Greece, they know very well how much better life in SA is for them. The middle classes have the opportunity to see our country in a completely different light from the past.
We need to unshackle ourselves from decades-old prejudices and worn-out ideological loyalties and continuously re-imagine our place in a rapidly changing world. We face problems, but there has never been a better time to be a South African.
http://www.iol.co.za/the-star/a-country-coming-out-of-the-dark-1.1276364
Since the advent of democracy, the unveiling of so many bitter truths in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and under the largely wise and moderate leadership of the ANC, history is moving on. The scars of the past are deep and remain extremely painful for black people, but in so many walks of life people of all colours are finding ways to reach out to one another and rebuild our once-divided and even, at times, shattered society.
It is now nearly 65 years later and new stresses and strains are beginning to take deep hold in our country. The ANC leadership is in increasing disarray, by many in the organisation’s own admission, and factionalism, corruption and incompetence are threatening the governance of our land. The growing gap between rich and poor, and poor people’s increasing dissatisfaction with the lack of job opportunities and service delivery, are deep-rooted problems that threaten the stability of our land.
However, since the worldwide economic crash in 2008, there is another, infinitely more hopeful, strain of thinking that has taken root here. SA has weathered this economic storm relatively well, and, while no one can deny our problems, the country has much stronger economic fundamentals than many others in the world. While the fallout from the crisis has certainly not receded entirely, and several dangers remain, in retrospect 2008 was a watershed year for this country.
After the disastrous choice that white SA made in 1948, the future of SA was always in doubt with the rapid imposition of the apartheid laws in the 1950s, the Defiance Campaign, the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, the jailing of Nelson Mandela and other leaders, the 1976 uprisings, the states of emergency in 1985 and 1986, the killing of Chris Hani and on and on. For generations South Africans grew up unable to believe confidently in the future.
For six decades, South Africans perceived their country and its future largely as a one-way negative bet. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million, skilled people emigrated or went into political exile. It was a societal culling of largely enlightened, decent people who had much to offer. That it went on for so long and that the country survived is the subject of many other articles. We lived in a country where white fear and black anger became twisted deeply into our national identity. We became a pariah state in the wider world.
We found a way out of this mess, largely thanks to Nelson Mandela, but still the negativity persisted, and it is by no means entirely gone. But since 2008, for the first time since 1948, South Africans have been able to look at their country and know that it is no longer a one-way bet.
This is a fundamental identity shift that in many ways is also a major generational swing. There are far too many people over 40 who are still stuck in the past. Many white people cannot bring themselves to believe that the country is, after all, working; many black people cannot look to a future where liberation from apartheid is not the only political reality that matters.It is, certainly, also a class divide. Class, rather than race, is slowly beginning to define the chasm in our society. In the past few years I have been consistently struck by the fact that everywhere I go, from Soweto to Polokwane to Cape Town, younger people who are middle class of all races feel a strong sense of confidence and optimism about the country.
The scars of apartheid run deep, significant differences remain between the experiences of many black and white young people, but there are growing numbers who increasingly have a shared background. Importantly, there is a strong sense among them of belonging here, in SA. They may want to travel to broaden their horizons, or to further their careers, but many of them, perhaps even most of them, come home. White children simply do not see Britain, or the US, say, as their ultimate cultural or political yardstick. Black children no longer look to sclerotic Cuba or the long-disappeared Soviet Union as exemplifying their hopes for the country. When they look at a country like Greece, they know very well how much better life in SA is for them. The middle classes have the opportunity to see our country in a completely different light from the past.
We need to unshackle ourselves from decades-old prejudices and worn-out ideological loyalties and continuously re-imagine our place in a rapidly changing world. We face problems, but there has never been a better time to be a South African.
http://www.iol.co.za/the-star/a-country-coming-out-of-the-dark-1.1276364
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
NUCLEAR RADIATION CRISIS: Fukushima to Burn Highly-Radioactive Debris
Fukushima will start burning radioactive debris containing up to 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram. The state will start building storage facilities for debris generated by the March 2011 tsunami as early as May at two locations in a coastal area of Naraha town, Fukushima Prefecture, Environment Ministry and town officials said Saturday. About 25,000 tons of debris are expected to be brought into the facilities beginning in the summer, according to the officials. If more than 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium are found per kilogram of debris, the debris will be transferred to a medium-term storage facility to be built by the state. But if burnable debris contains 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium or less, it may be disposed of at a temporary incinerator to be built within the prefecture, according to the officials.
Within the 20-km-radius no-go zone spanning across Naraha and five other municipalities along the coast, debris caused by the magnitude 9.0 quake and the subsequent tsunami has amounted to an estimated 474,000 tons, much of remaining where it is. How much radiation is that?.. The radioactive debris will be burned for years … through at least March 2014. Burning radioactive debris does not destroy the radioactivity. It merely spreads it. Gundersen says that radioactivity from the burnt debris will end up not only in neighboring prefectures, but in Hawaii, British Columbia, Oregon, Washington and California. Gundersen said that burning radioactive debris is re-creating the Fukushima disaster all over again, as it is releasing a huge amount of radioactivity which had settled on the ground back into the air.
Steven Starr – Senior Scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, who has advised numerous countries on issues of nuclear non-proliferation – writes: Burning radioactive debris will only serve to further randomly spread radiation across Japan, as well as the rest of the world. Not only will this lead to more morbidity and mortality within Japan, but it will further complicate epidemiological studies of the Fukushima disaster. Raising “acceptable” levels of radioactive fallout is a false solution to a serious problem. It is possible for the government authorities to do this because radiation is invisible to us, and at lower doses, the consequences of exposure do not manifest themselves for some time . . . thus it is a poison that is easy to hide and ignore. Sadly, the children of Japan will be those most seriously affected by this man-made environmental catastrophe.
It is bad enough that radiation from Fukushima is spreading across the Pacific to the United States through air and water, that the Japanese are underplaying the enormous threat posed by the spent fuel pools, and that the Japanese have engaged in a massive cover-up of the severity of the Fukushima crisis. But intentionally burning radioactive debris to try to cover up the problem – and spreading radiation worldwide in the process – is an entirely separate affront. In addition to burning radioactive debris, Japan intends to build tents over the leaking Fukushima reactors. While this sounds like a way to contain the radiation, it would actually funnel it straight up and spread it globally.. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30219
Within the 20-km-radius no-go zone spanning across Naraha and five other municipalities along the coast, debris caused by the magnitude 9.0 quake and the subsequent tsunami has amounted to an estimated 474,000 tons, much of remaining where it is. How much radiation is that?.. The radioactive debris will be burned for years … through at least March 2014. Burning radioactive debris does not destroy the radioactivity. It merely spreads it. Gundersen says that radioactivity from the burnt debris will end up not only in neighboring prefectures, but in Hawaii, British Columbia, Oregon, Washington and California. Gundersen said that burning radioactive debris is re-creating the Fukushima disaster all over again, as it is releasing a huge amount of radioactivity which had settled on the ground back into the air.
Steven Starr – Senior Scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, who has advised numerous countries on issues of nuclear non-proliferation – writes: Burning radioactive debris will only serve to further randomly spread radiation across Japan, as well as the rest of the world. Not only will this lead to more morbidity and mortality within Japan, but it will further complicate epidemiological studies of the Fukushima disaster. Raising “acceptable” levels of radioactive fallout is a false solution to a serious problem. It is possible for the government authorities to do this because radiation is invisible to us, and at lower doses, the consequences of exposure do not manifest themselves for some time . . . thus it is a poison that is easy to hide and ignore. Sadly, the children of Japan will be those most seriously affected by this man-made environmental catastrophe.
It is bad enough that radiation from Fukushima is spreading across the Pacific to the United States through air and water, that the Japanese are underplaying the enormous threat posed by the spent fuel pools, and that the Japanese have engaged in a massive cover-up of the severity of the Fukushima crisis. But intentionally burning radioactive debris to try to cover up the problem – and spreading radiation worldwide in the process – is an entirely separate affront. In addition to burning radioactive debris, Japan intends to build tents over the leaking Fukushima reactors. While this sounds like a way to contain the radiation, it would actually funnel it straight up and spread it globally.. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30219
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
US Threat to Internet freedom
More than two years after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her first speech declaring "Internet freedom" to be a major component of U.S. foreign policy, it turns out that many of the most sophisticated tools used to suppress online free speech and dissent around the world are actually Made in the USA... the U.S. government is the biggest and most powerful customer of American-made surveillance technology..
Inconveniently, governments around the democratic world are pushing to expand their own censorship and surveillance powers as they struggle to address genuine problems related to cybercrime, cyberwar, child protection, and intellectual property. Even more inconveniently, the U.S. government is the biggest and most powerful customer of American-made surveillance technology, shaping the development of those technologies as well as the business practices and norms for public-private collaboration around them. As long as the U.S. government continues to support the development of a surveillance-technology industry that clearly lacks concern for the human rights and civil liberties implications of its business - even rewarding secretive and publicly unaccountable behavior by these companies - the world's dictators will remain well supplied by a robust global industry.
American-made technology has turned up around the Middle East and North Africa over the past year -- from Syria to Bahrain to Saudi Arabia, from pre-revolutionary Tunisia to Egypt -- in contexts that leave no doubt that the software and hardware in question were being used to censor dissenting speech and track activists. While much of this technology is considered "dual use" because it can be used to defend computer networks against cyberattack as well as to censor and monitor political speech, some members of Congress are seeking to prevent its use for political repression...
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
Secular Turks protest "dynamite" education bill
“According to what constitution can you pass 19 articles in 20 minutes?”
ANKARA (Reuters) – Thousands of Turkish opposition supporters demonstrated in the capital Ankara on Tuesday against a government attempt to railroad a new education bill through parliament which secular parties say is designed to promote Islamic schooling. The government wants to overturn a 1997 law imposed with the backing of the military which extended compulsory education from five to eight years, but also stopped under-15s attending religious “imam hatip” schools. That led to a sharp decrease in the numbers at the schools which were originally set up to train Muslim clerics. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and nearly half his cabinet attended imam hatip schools. The main secular opposition People’s Republican Party (CHP) agrees on the need for education reform, but says Erdogan is seeking revenge for the 1997 law and attempting to bring about his stated desire to raise a “religious youth”.
A 2010 World Bank study showed only 16 percent of 15-year-olds in Turkey attend schools with average reading, maths or science test scores comparable to or above an OECD average. Relying on its large parliamentary majority, Erdogan’s AK party is to introduce the education bill to the assembly later on Tuesday and plans to complete voting on it by Friday, or if that is not possible keep parliament open over the weekend until it is passed.
In response, the CHP decided to hold its weekly meeting of parliamentary deputies in an Ankara public square, the first time this has happened in the history of the republic since it was formed in 1923. The AK Party called it unconstitutional. “The people and the CHP are claiming their rights in this national struggle,” CHP deputy leader Erdogan Toprak told reporters, accusing the AK Party’ of bulldozing the bill through the committee stage where it packed the room so that no one from the opposition could get in.
“According to what constitution can you pass 19 articles in 20 minutes?” Toprak asked. “Despite all our efforts in the committee, neither were our contributions accepted, nor was any tolerance shown.” Faced with government efforts to rush it through parliament, Toprak said the CHP would do its best to hold up the bill, calling it “dynamite planted under the Turkish youth”.
While the AK Party has won three elections since 2002 and remains popular, there is a large minority of urbanised Turks who are wary of its roots in political Islam and suspect it has plans to overturn, piece-by-piece, the secular republic. At least 5,000 people filled Ankara’s Tandogan Square, waving Turkish flags and carrying placards against the “4+4+4” education bill, so-called because it extends compulsory education to 12 years – four years primary, four years middle school, followed by four years of secondary school or vocational training. Imam hatip schools would count as vocational training, allowing a boost to the numbers attending. “4+4+4+Erdogan = 0,” read one of the banners.
“I am a child of the republic. I am thinking of the future of my grandchildren,” said 55-year-old Naciye Sahin. “This law will open the way to more headscarves and imam hatip schools. We don’t want to be a part of that. We are children of the republic and we want to stay that way.”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/03/27/uk-turkey-education-idUKBRE82Q0OU20120327
ANKARA (Reuters) – Thousands of Turkish opposition supporters demonstrated in the capital Ankara on Tuesday against a government attempt to railroad a new education bill through parliament which secular parties say is designed to promote Islamic schooling. The government wants to overturn a 1997 law imposed with the backing of the military which extended compulsory education from five to eight years, but also stopped under-15s attending religious “imam hatip” schools. That led to a sharp decrease in the numbers at the schools which were originally set up to train Muslim clerics. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and nearly half his cabinet attended imam hatip schools. The main secular opposition People’s Republican Party (CHP) agrees on the need for education reform, but says Erdogan is seeking revenge for the 1997 law and attempting to bring about his stated desire to raise a “religious youth”.
A 2010 World Bank study showed only 16 percent of 15-year-olds in Turkey attend schools with average reading, maths or science test scores comparable to or above an OECD average. Relying on its large parliamentary majority, Erdogan’s AK party is to introduce the education bill to the assembly later on Tuesday and plans to complete voting on it by Friday, or if that is not possible keep parliament open over the weekend until it is passed.
In response, the CHP decided to hold its weekly meeting of parliamentary deputies in an Ankara public square, the first time this has happened in the history of the republic since it was formed in 1923. The AK Party called it unconstitutional. “The people and the CHP are claiming their rights in this national struggle,” CHP deputy leader Erdogan Toprak told reporters, accusing the AK Party’ of bulldozing the bill through the committee stage where it packed the room so that no one from the opposition could get in.
“According to what constitution can you pass 19 articles in 20 minutes?” Toprak asked. “Despite all our efforts in the committee, neither were our contributions accepted, nor was any tolerance shown.” Faced with government efforts to rush it through parliament, Toprak said the CHP would do its best to hold up the bill, calling it “dynamite planted under the Turkish youth”.
While the AK Party has won three elections since 2002 and remains popular, there is a large minority of urbanised Turks who are wary of its roots in political Islam and suspect it has plans to overturn, piece-by-piece, the secular republic. At least 5,000 people filled Ankara’s Tandogan Square, waving Turkish flags and carrying placards against the “4+4+4” education bill, so-called because it extends compulsory education to 12 years – four years primary, four years middle school, followed by four years of secondary school or vocational training. Imam hatip schools would count as vocational training, allowing a boost to the numbers attending. “4+4+4+Erdogan = 0,” read one of the banners.
“I am a child of the republic. I am thinking of the future of my grandchildren,” said 55-year-old Naciye Sahin. “This law will open the way to more headscarves and imam hatip schools. We don’t want to be a part of that. We are children of the republic and we want to stay that way.”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/03/27/uk-turkey-education-idUKBRE82Q0OU20120327
The Catastrophic Threat Of Religious Capitalism In The U.S.
Several major Christian religions in the U.S. manipulate the notion of God to gain power and promote prejudiced agendas
Using emotional fear, artificial righteousness and hate as human currency to bend the will of government, industry and every day citizens is more dangerous to us as Americans than 100 black plagues combined. The manner in which several major Christian religions in the U.S. manipulate the notion of God to gain power and promote prejudiced agendas has reached a fever pitch so substantial that it threatens our united way of life. U.S. Religious Capitalism, humbly defined, is the buying and selling of American souls for the purposes of gaining political and economic power. The society-threatening byproducts of these heinous, godless actions include inequality, mass manipulation and insatiable emotional, political and fiscal greed. Disguising the thirst of churches for power as some kind of religious right is, according to the book of Matthew, sin filled.
If we've learned anything about the notion of capital, you have to have it to spend it. Judging by the actions of GOP presidential candidates, it seems religious capital is priceless. Rather than reinforce the separation of church and state, candidates are battling each other to claim the moniker of "most religious." And why? So that they can rally Christian conservative leaders and their followers on election day. Even Newt Gingrich, a serial adulterer and all-around not so nice guy, is touting his newfound personal affiliation with his evangelical Lord and Savior.
The U.S. Christian faith, of which I'm a member in God standing, has never posed more of a threat to the American way of life than it does today. Claiming that God gives them the authority, organizations are fighting to take away the civil rights of law-abiding compatriots to live their lives. Does affording gays the right to marry change how I live my life? No. But as a rallying cry, it can pull haters and homophobes and good God-fearing people mislead by their leaders off of the couch and into the voting box in the name of Jesus. The result? Powerful Christian groups that can use their voting currency to foot bind the nation to their way of thinking.
U.S. Catholic bishops, leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention and a host of other dominating denominations don't need to hold the country's highest office to assert their authority over our government. Instead, they spend their human voting capital to get concessions and blood oaths from candidates. When you're a presidential hopeful whose sole/soul focus is the most powerful job in the world, you might fool yourself into believing that some of the constitution provisions such as equal rights under the law aren't all that important. You might make excuses for changing your mind on choice, gay marriage or even the constitution, believing that "whatever means necessary" justifies the end of our democracy, bedrocked in the notion of equality for all.
Grand Old Party campaign stops have morphed into politicostal tent revivals, carelessly excluding Americans of differing faiths. Mormon Mitt Romney, afraid of backlash because of his faith, attempts to rationalize his beliefs so that his campaign can score support of the religious right. Gone are the days of JFK, who had to promise the American people that his Catholicism wouldn't enter into the decisions he made as president.
To understand the grievous behavior of the politically and powerfully motivated religious right, we need only look to the Son of God Himself. Jesus wore a dress and hung out with a prostitute. He didn't have any capital, other than His Godliness. He showed Himself on Earth as a Man of little means, not one in an ivory tower. He warned us in the Good Book not to lord over each other, but to act out of kindness. A man with no weapons, little money and no soldiers was hated and feared for His love, as it was more powerful a force than all of the world's armies combined. He believed we should not judge our fellow men and women, but serve them humbly as He did. And He believed everyone was someone, worthy of love and respect.
Raised a Catholic, I distanced myself from the Church when it started to weigh in on politics and politicians. I was taught in church that God gave us free will so that we'd have to choose how to live. Would we sin, or would we be of service? Well, that was up to us. Attempting to change and/or enact laws to take away Americans' personal rights isn't in keeping with the Christian God of my Catholic understanding.
There is no humility or love in trying to leverage the name of Jesus, or any other deity or "rallying cry" to promote prejudice, exclusion and fear mongering to win an election. And there is no humility or love shown by religious leaders who use their flocks to beat their agendas into candidates' platforms. Our Founding Fathers knew how wildly important the separation of church and state is to a united society of equals, as it would help guarantee religious freedom. They put protections in our governmental structure not because they didn't believe, but because they did.
Libyan Militias Turn to Politics, a Volatile Mix
TRIPOLI, Libya The militia leaders who have turned post-Qaddafi Libya into a patchwork of semiautonomous fiefs are now plunging into politics, raising fears that their armed brigades could undermine elections intended to lay the foundation of a new democracy. The militia leader from Zintan who controls the airport here in the capital has exchanged his uniform for a suit and tie and now talks about running for office - with his 1,200 armed men at his back. The head of Tripoli's military council is starting a political party, and the military council in Benghazi is preparing its own slate of candidates for local office.
Regional militias and the ruling Transitional National Council have already blocked the city of Bani Walid, once a bastion of support for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, from choosing its local government. Other militia leaders are volunteering their armed support as the military wings of newly formed parties.
Five months after Colonel Qaddafi's death, Libyans are counting on the ritual of the ballot box to end four decades of rule by brute force. The brigades formed to fight Colonel Qaddafi, and many others that sprang up after the fact, have thwarted the consolidation of a new central authority and become a menace to security, trading deadly gunfire in the streets of the capital, detaining and torturing suspected Qaddafi loyalists, and last week even kidnapping two members of the Transitional National Council for two days. Libya's interim leaders say they hope an elected government will have the legitimacy to rein in those militias, and the country is rushing to hold votes. The two largest cities, Benghazi and Tripoli, plan to hold local elections by May, while the Transitional National Council has promised elections in June for an assembly that will govern as it writes a new constitution.
Without a national army or police force, though, many civilians worry that the militias could bully voters, suppress votes or otherwise dominate the process, leaving Libya mired in internecine violence, torn by regional tensions or - as a recent poll suggests many Libyans may now expect - vulnerable to the rise of a new strongman. Even civilian politicians alarmed by the interplay of guns and politics say they may be powerless to resist it. 'We are very clearly saying we don't want to be part of that,' said Ali Tarhuni, a former interim oil minister and deputy prime minister now starting one of the new parties. 'But down the road, what can we do?'
Mr. Tarhuni and others say they fear that Libya could repeat the experience of Lebanon, where armed militias formed during its civil war became a permanent part of the political landscape. Already some brigades around the country, including the one at the airport, led by Mokhtar al-Akhdar, have developed independent sources of revenue, primarily from providing security services. 'Protection,' Mr. Tarhuni said. Others say Libya may yet confound the expectations of chaos on the various election days. The relatively homogeneous city of Misurata recently held peaceful elections. Here in the more divided capital and across the country, Libyan officials admit that they are banking on intangibles, like Libya?s tribal traditions, the unifying spirit of the revolution and the patriotism of its young militiamen, to maintain a degree of order. Nevertheless, Mustafa Abu Shagour, deputy prime minister of the interim government, said he expected to see guns in the streets. 'I am very worried,' he said...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/world/africa/libya-militias-turn-to-politics-a-volatile-mix.html?_r=1
A Crisis of Money: the demise of national capitalism
The crisis of the world economy is not merely financial, a moment in the historical cycle of credit and debt. In what follows I approach the crisis more generally as a moment in the history of money. The removal of political controls over money in recent decades has led to a situation where politics is still mainly national, but the money circuit is global and lawless. The crisis should be seen as the collapse of the money system that the world lived by in the twentieth century. This has been unravelling since the US dollar went off gold in 1971 ↑ , a new regime of floating currencies emerged and money derivatives were invented in 1972. As the need for international cooperation intensifies, the disconnect between economy and political institutions undermines effective solutions.
2011/12 is the political consequence of the financial crisis of 2007/8. There is still a tendency to see the potential disaster we are living through in economic rather than political terms. In this respect, neoliberalism’s detractors often reproduce the free market ideology they claim to oppose. The euro is by no means the only symptom of this crisis, but it may well be seen in retrospect as the decisive nail in the coffin of the world economy today. One way of approaching our moment in history is to ask not what is beginning, but what is ending. This is not straightforward.
What is ending is “national capitalism”, the synthesis of nation-states and industrial capitalism. Its main symbol has been national monopoly currency (legal tender or central bank money). It was the institutional attempt to manage money, markets and accumulation through central bureaucracy within a cultural community of national citizens. National capitalism was never the only active principle in world political economy: regional federations, empires and globalization are at least as old or much older...
Diego Garcia: the Chagos Islands 40 years on remain a black mark on Britain
By 1973, the entire indigenous population of the Chagos Islands was forcibly deported to Mauritius, to make way for a US military base. This month marks the fortieth anniversary of an outrage committed under wraps by the British, still fighting to prevent the return of the Chagossians.
Thirty years ago today, Argentina invaded the Falklands (Malvinas) Islands, sparking a 74-day war with Britain. While less in the headlines, this month also marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the US military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island of the British Indian Ocean Territories comprising the Chagos Archipelago. At the time of each event, the islands had settled populations of British subjects numbering around 2,000 each. It is salutary to mark the anniversary of the first by setting out the background of the second.
Diego Garcia is the largest island of the Chagos Archipelago situated about 5,000 nautical miles from London in the Indian Ocean. Until 1966 the archepelago was part of the self-governing British colony of Mauritius, when it was purchased for the princely sum of £3 million as part of the Mauritian independence settlement. The terms of the purchase allow for return to Mauritian sovereignty 'when the islands are no longer needed for defence purposes' Historically, there are many documented sightings by Western navigators (notably Spanish and Portuguese) dating back to the 1500's, together with various transient settlements as early as the late 18th century. Diego Garcia became a British colony following the Napoleonic wars, as part of the treaty of Paris in 1814. By the 1960's the population could claim continuous settlement dating back to at least the mid-nineteenth century (the same kind of time span as the Falkland Islanders), most notably - and convincingly - from inscriptions on their ancestral tombstones.
The eviction of the Chagossians: At the height of the Cold War the search was on for a US military base location capable of facilitating control of the main Indian Ocean shipping lanes and the approaches to the Persian and Arabian Gulfs. In 1961, by arrangement with the UK Foreign Office, this search brought Rear Admiral Grantham of the US Navy to Diego Garcia to survey its suitability. The visit was the precursor to a series of secret, jointly planned events and agreements that would, by 1973, see the entire indigenous population of the Islands dispossessed and forcibly deported to Mauritius over 1,000 miles away. John Pilger described the attitude of British officialdom throughout the period as one of "imperious brutality and contempt" for the Chagossians, a description amply evidenced in his award winning 2004 documentary "Stealing a Nation" and in official documents subsequently released by the UK and US governments.
Terms for a US lease on the prospective military base area were negotiated and agreed at $1 per year. They required the islands to be 'swept and sanitised' so as to be handed over uninhabited. In return, the UK was to receive continued support for its so-called 'independent nuclear deterrent' and a £14 million discount on the supply of its submarine launched Polaris ICBM system. As part of its 1968 UN mandated independence demands and in ignorance of the US/UK negotiations, Mauritius agreed to sell the archipelago to the UK. It became the new 'British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).
The deal was thus completed and the torment of the Chagossians began.
From then onward, the Islanders were subject to what amounted to officially sanctioned psychological warfare... Read more:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/peter-presland/chagos-islands-40-years-on-remain-black-mark-on-britain
Also see: https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Falklands_and_Chagos_-_A_Tale_of_Two_Islands#cite_note-19
and Paradise cleansed
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/oct/02/foreignpolicy.comment
There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie: John Pilger
Also see: https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Falklands_and_Chagos_-_A_Tale_of_Two_Islands#cite_note-19
and Paradise cleansed
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/oct/02/foreignpolicy.comment
There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie: John Pilger
Monday, 2 April 2012
Wave of Tibet immolations among history's biggest; Talks possible if Dalai Lama gives up independence demand: China
Read Tibet News blogspot: http://www.tibetnewsonline.blogspot.in/
Dozens of Tibetans have set themselves on fire over the past year to protest Chinese rule, sometimes drinking kerosene to make the flames explode from within, in one of the biggest waves of political self-immolations in recent history. But the stunning protests are going largely unnoticed in the wider world — due in part to a smothering Chinese security crackdown in the region that prevents journalists from covering them. While a single fruit seller in Tunisia who lit himself on fire in December 2010 is credited with igniting the Arab Spring democracy movement, the Tibetan self-immolations have so far failed to prompt the changes the protesters demand: an end to government interference in their religion and a return of the exiled Dalai Lama. Still, experts describe self-immolations as, historically, a powerful form of protest, and the ones in Tibet might yet lead to some broader uprising or stir greater international pressure on Beijing...
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As suicide bids continued unabated in Tibetan-inhabited areas seeking return of the Dalai Lama, China, for the first time in recent months, has indicated its willingness to reopen the stalled talks with him if he "truly gives up Tibetan independence." "The central government has also made clear its willingness for talks if the Dalai Lama truly gives up Tibetan independence. The door remains open to him," the state-run 'China Daily' said today.
This is perhaps the first time that an indication has come up in the official media after the previous dialogue between Chinese officials and representatives of the Dalai Lama failed to make any headway in 2010. It follows a barrage of criticism unleashed against him in recent weeks, with China alleging that he was instigating suicides, specially among the Buddhist monks in Tibetan-inhabited areas. Besides, he wanted his authority to cover all of Tibet, including, Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan. All these regions put together constitute one fourth of China's territory, Qu said. Though the Dalai says on one hand that he renounced the independence demand, his other demands that all troops and mainland Chinese should leave the areas amounted to seeking independence, he said. Asked about the prospects of the resumption of talks, Qu had said the Chinese Central Government can consider if the Dalai abandons his "independence political objective."..
Read more: http://www.tibetnewsonline.blogspot.in/
Dozens of Tibetans have set themselves on fire over the past year to protest Chinese rule, sometimes drinking kerosene to make the flames explode from within, in one of the biggest waves of political self-immolations in recent history. But the stunning protests are going largely unnoticed in the wider world — due in part to a smothering Chinese security crackdown in the region that prevents journalists from covering them. While a single fruit seller in Tunisia who lit himself on fire in December 2010 is credited with igniting the Arab Spring democracy movement, the Tibetan self-immolations have so far failed to prompt the changes the protesters demand: an end to government interference in their religion and a return of the exiled Dalai Lama. Still, experts describe self-immolations as, historically, a powerful form of protest, and the ones in Tibet might yet lead to some broader uprising or stir greater international pressure on Beijing...
********
As suicide bids continued unabated in Tibetan-inhabited areas seeking return of the Dalai Lama, China, for the first time in recent months, has indicated its willingness to reopen the stalled talks with him if he "truly gives up Tibetan independence." "The central government has also made clear its willingness for talks if the Dalai Lama truly gives up Tibetan independence. The door remains open to him," the state-run 'China Daily' said today.
This is perhaps the first time that an indication has come up in the official media after the previous dialogue between Chinese officials and representatives of the Dalai Lama failed to make any headway in 2010. It follows a barrage of criticism unleashed against him in recent weeks, with China alleging that he was instigating suicides, specially among the Buddhist monks in Tibetan-inhabited areas. Besides, he wanted his authority to cover all of Tibet, including, Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan. All these regions put together constitute one fourth of China's territory, Qu said. Though the Dalai says on one hand that he renounced the independence demand, his other demands that all troops and mainland Chinese should leave the areas amounted to seeking independence, he said. Asked about the prospects of the resumption of talks, Qu had said the Chinese Central Government can consider if the Dalai abandons his "independence political objective."..
Read more: http://www.tibetnewsonline.blogspot.in/
Sunday, 1 April 2012
What war does to us: Afghanistan - a soldier's view
"You'll see things you wished you never saw. Carry them around too long and you'll end up praying for a lobotomy"
Kenny Meighan served in Helmand, guiding his patrol through mines and ambushes. He survived, but would he, like his soldier father before him, struggle to find peace back home?
John had seen the world, known bravery and sacrifice, inspired unflinching loyalty among men. But he could not escape the drumbeat of his past. The things he had seen were destroying him.. For the past 12 years, he would lie in bed and wait for the memories – the torso of his friend Big Jim Houston twitching on a South Armagh road after being gunned down by the Provisional IRA. Houston had a chin like Bruce Forsyth and hours before his death John had stroked it teasingly, just like he always did. Now in the night, Big Jim's long face lay staring back, pale and wide-eyed on the Irish tarmac.
For 14 years and 47 days, Corporal John Meighan served his country with distinction. But he had seen what most could never imagine. He left the military because he couldn't risk seeing another corpse. The images of big-chinned Jim and mutilated Iraqis grew more real over time; they began visiting him in the morning, when he woke, in the afternoon and on the way to bed, gradually eclipsing everyday reality. John tried to obtain psychiatric help – counselling, medication, anything – to shoo away the dead, but no one wanted to know.
Kenny Meighan served in Helmand, guiding his patrol through mines and ambushes. He survived, but would he, like his soldier father before him, struggle to find peace back home?
John had seen the world, known bravery and sacrifice, inspired unflinching loyalty among men. But he could not escape the drumbeat of his past. The things he had seen were destroying him.. For the past 12 years, he would lie in bed and wait for the memories – the torso of his friend Big Jim Houston twitching on a South Armagh road after being gunned down by the Provisional IRA. Houston had a chin like Bruce Forsyth and hours before his death John had stroked it teasingly, just like he always did. Now in the night, Big Jim's long face lay staring back, pale and wide-eyed on the Irish tarmac.
For 14 years and 47 days, Corporal John Meighan served his country with distinction. But he had seen what most could never imagine. He left the military because he couldn't risk seeing another corpse. The images of big-chinned Jim and mutilated Iraqis grew more real over time; they began visiting him in the morning, when he woke, in the afternoon and on the way to bed, gradually eclipsing everyday reality. John tried to obtain psychiatric help – counselling, medication, anything – to shoo away the dead, but no one wanted to know.
In broad daylight, out shopping, he became lost in his visions. The waft of drains transported him outside a sewage works in the pissing rain. The smell of meat from a butcher's would make him freeze, incapacitated by the stench of death. During this period he stopped eating bacon because it smelt like burning flesh. The simplest things felt beyond him. His taut nerves failed him during the most mundane tasks. John overcompensated, planning trips to collect the morning milk with military precision.
Even then mysterious figures would appear from behind, forcing him to cross the road until the mother and child or the dog walker passed. Navigating the city grew increasingly terrifying. On 21 August 1996 he reached breaking point. That night was worse than any other. Big Jim, his brain like a grey cauliflower hanging from the side of his head, asked why? Why did you send me to the checkpoint that day?...
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/01/point-man-soldier-afghanistan
Kenny's "Bait Platoon" were sent out to lure the enemy into the open, where they would try and kill as many as possible. But the Taliban weren't biting. The only movement was the mechanical plodding of the platoon. Yet even then, before any of Bait Platoon had died, Kenny remembers feeling that the war was starting to touch him in a way that might be irreversible. He knew that he had gone through nothing compared to the horrors his dad had seen, but he also knew that was likely to change.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/01/point-man-soldier-afghanistan
BURMA: National League for Democracy says it may have won 44 seats in Parliament
Some good news at last!
Late Sunday night, NLD officials were cautiously jubilant, saying they may have won 44 constituencies in the historic by-election that places Aung San Suu Kyi in the center of opposition politics in Burma. Their forecast was based on unofficial results. Aung San Suu Kyi visited several villages and greeted voters in Kawhmu Township, where she stayed overnight prior to election day. She left the township to return to her home in Rangoon around 10:30 a.m. Aung San Suu Kyi issued a National League for Democracy (NLD) notification for all NLD candidates to be gracious in victory, and to be prepared to work with other opposition parties and the ruling government.
Late Sunday night, NLD officials were cautiously jubilant, saying they may have won 44 constituencies in the historic by-election that places Aung San Suu Kyi in the center of opposition politics in Burma. Their forecast was based on unofficial results. Aung San Suu Kyi visited several villages and greeted voters in Kawhmu Township, where she stayed overnight prior to election day. She left the township to return to her home in Rangoon around 10:30 a.m. Aung San Suu Kyi issued a National League for Democracy (NLD) notification for all NLD candidates to be gracious in victory, and to be prepared to work with other opposition parties and the ruling government.
The Union Election Commission said the official results would be certified in about one week. Surprisingly, the NLD said its candidates did well in Naypyitaw, the seat of the government-backed United Solidarity and Development Party. Based on unofficial results, the NLD said the vote count at polling station number 3 in Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township constituency indicated Phyu Phyu Thin easily won and will go to Parliament. Phyu Phyu Thin heads the NLD’s volunteer HIV/AIDS relief center in Rangoon.
An interesting sidelight: Former chief of Military Intelligence and former Primer Minister Khin Nyunt teased reporters on Sunday, saying that he cast his ballot for a party that is supported by many people. Khin Nyunt, along with his wife and son, went to a polling station at Ward No. 7 in Mayangon Township, Rangoon, about 9 a.m, said reporter Lin Bo Bo. Journalists asked him which party he favored, and he said a party that is popular. His son, Zaw Naing Oo, said that he voted for the “Fighting Peacock” [the NLD] - Read more..
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