Why me?

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Consortiumnews

"Iniquities of War, Inequities of Life" by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who describes how his bout with cancer has influenced his view of the grotesque injustice of war and the more mundane injustice of American medical care:

For the oppressors, what is worthwhile is to have more — always more — even at the cost of the oppressed having less or having nothing. For them, to be is to have and to be the class of the ‘haves.’ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

The cutting was over; the stitches were in; the pain was slight; and there I was, wide awake in a comfortable hospital room, welcoming 2008 with painful questions.

For the hundredth time I found myself asking, Why me? But wait — it may not be what you’re thinking.

The troubling question was why was I privileged to have prompt access to the best in medical care, when such is not available to most of our veterans and some 50 million sisters and brothers in America. We are called to be concerned about our brothers and sisters. It did not seem fair.


It's that T word again

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Suchitoto 13: El Salvador’s “American-made” Terrorism Act in Corporate Play

In July Last year a group of protesters was attacked by police and military units in Suchito and several were arrested.

The “Suchitoto 13,” as the defendants are known, were initially charged with public disorder, but Attorney General Garrid Safie quickly upped the charges to “terrorism” under the country’s “Decree 108: The Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism” enacted in 2006. Judge Fuentes de Paz ordered the Suchitoto 13 to be held for three month in preventative detention to allow the prosecutor time to gather evidence supporting the charge of terrorism. Released in late July on conditional liberty, the defendants still face the possibility of 60 years in prison if convicted as “terrorists.”

....The fate of the Suchitoto 13 should be of particular interest to Americans* who value the right to lawful dissent and free speech. El Salvador’s Decree 108 was not only modeled on the USA PATRIOT Act, but the vagueness and ambiguity of its language rivals that used in the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December 2007 by a 404-6 vote and which is currently being considered in the Senate. The language in both countries’ anti-terrorism legislation has been crafted so that constitutionally protected dissent can, with a corporate nod, be prosecuted as acts of terrorism and result in draconian sentences.
*And not just Americans...



The Planet's Worst Refugee Crisis

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TomDispatch
Between March 2003 and today, a number of reputable sources place the total of Iraqis who have fled their homes - those who have been displaced internally and those who have gone abroad - at between 4.5 million and 5 million individuals. If you take that still staggering lower figure, approximately one in six Iraqis is either a refugee in another country or an internally displaced person.

Now, consider the equivalent in terms of the U.S. population. If Iraq had invaded the United States in March 2003 with similar results, in less than five years approximately 50 million Americans would have fled their homes, assumedly flooding across the Mexican and Canadian borders, desperately burdening weaker neighboring economies. It would be an unparalleled, even unimaginable, catastrophe. Consider, then, what we would think if, back in Baghdad, politicians and the media were hailing, or at least discussing positively, the "success" of the prime minister's recent "surge strategy" in the U.S., even though it had probably been instrumental in creating at least one out of every ten of those refugees, 5 million displaced Americans in all. Imagine what our reaction would be to such blithe barbarism.


Hacked off

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The Pirates Can't Be Stopped
A teenager hacked into the outfit charged with protecting companies like Sony, Universal, and Activision from online piracy—the most daring exploit yet in the escalating war between fans and corporate giants. Guess which side is winning.

"In the beginning, I had no motivation against Monkey Defenders," Ethan tells me. "It wasn't like, 'I want to hack those bastards.' But then I found something, and the good nature in me said, These guys are not right. I'm going to destroy them." And so he set out to do just that: a teenager, operating on a dated computer, taking on—when his schedule allowed—one of the entertainment world's best technological defenses against downloading. The U.S. movie industry estimates that it loses more than $2 billion a year to file sharers; the record industry, another $3.7 billion. "Piracy," intoned Dan Glickman, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America trade group, to Congress in late 2006, "is the greatest obstacle the film industry currently faces." Instead of figuring out whether there is a way to make online distribution work—to profit from downloading—the industry has obsessed for years with battling it. Yet it took only a few months for Ethan to expose just how quixotic that fight has become.
These corporate guys are morons. There are tens of thousands of high-school kids out there that will outsmart these idiots every time. But the really shitty thing about these media coporations is the hypocrisy. They prattle on about theft when, of course, between ripping off the customer and short changing the artists, they are the biggest fucking crooks around.
This is Ian McLagan of The Small Faces:

Since the band broke up our records have sold consistently, and we'd all be rich boys today if the record industry wasn't even more corrupt than politics. Apparently, if you want to get paid in this line of work you have to sue, which means you have to be rich in the first place. It's a sad fact that Steve Marriott never saw a penny of his hard-earned dosh from Decca Records, the company that pissed and moaned about paying us a decent royalty, and in spite of not paying us at all between 1965 and 1991.
And it's taken the screenwriters three months of striking to get a measly 2% of the money generated in online sales of their work from those greedy bastards. The sooner these media dinosaurs become extinct the better for everyone, artists and consumers alike.


Old men in long robes

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Not surprisingly The Daily Mail has been leading the pack in its objections to Sharia law and the comments of the Archbishop of Canterbury. This is the title of a piece which appeared in The mail last Friday. 

A brutal beating and justice meted out in a humble back street cafe: how sharia law already operates in Britain.

What does the headline seem to suggest? That some form of justice was 'meted out' by fanatical bearded men sitting around a formica table and that this 'justice' somehow involved a brutal beating? You would be forgiven for thinking that some poor young man hobbled from the cafe thankful that he still had both his hands intact. In fact you'd be completely mistaken. In this case an argument at work resulted in a man being severely beaten and hospitalized. The perpetrator was brought before a 'court' of elders where he admitted his offence, and he and his entire family apologised to the victim and agreed to pay him compensation of £10,000. 

The verdict achieved a number of things not often achieved in the standard criminal proceedings. The perpetrator readily admitted his guilt (no slippery lawyers trying to play the system), he apologised and showed genuine remorse, he and his family, were shamed in the eyes of the entire community, pressure from the community and the family makes it much less likely that the perpetrator will reoffend and finally, the victim received some meaningful compensation.

Contrast that with this story which appeared in The Mail on the very same day:

'Feral' yob who killed trucker with a concrete missile jailed for just three years


His face a picture of defiance as he gestures obscenely outside court today while smoking a cannabis joint, this is the feral yob who killed a lorry driver by dropping a 44lb breeze block off a bridge.

Dean Ingram, 15, was named by order of a judge yesterday as he was locked up for three years and four months after admittin manslaughter...Even after the late night spree of "aimless anti-social behaviour" which culminated in the death of Laurence McCourt, 68, when the breeze block smashed through his windscreen, Ingram laughed about the tragedy as he tried to chat up some girls, Northampton Crown Court heard...

On that night, July 27 last year, Ingram and two friends had stolen bicycles before arriving at the Doddington road bridge over the A45 dual carriageway near Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, at about 3.30am. Prosecutor Nicholas Dean QC described the youths as 'feral'. He said one, Jamie Winter, also 15, urinated off the bridge then threw a breeze block on to the hard shoulder, leading Ingram to insult him for not aiming it at the road.Winter then fetched another breeze block. Ingram took control and pushed it from the safety barrier on to the road at the moment Mr McCourt's lorry was passing underneath.

Mr McCourt, originally from Northern Ireland, was known as Len. Henever married and lived alone in Sandwell, West Midlands. Last nighthis family described him in a statement as "a quiet, peaceful and veryprivate man" who had continued to work part-time as a lorry driver after retiring.
Remorse? Compensation? Shame? Family involvement? Rehabilitation? Community opprobrium? Do me a favour!

And before any moron decides to email me with something like 'Oh, I suppose you advocate the complete dismantling of the British legal system and its replacement with Sharia law and kangaroo courts do you?'  may I just say in advance - FUCK OFF!

Mo(b) blogging?

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Chicken Yoghurt: The values of nothing
Just look at them though, queuing up to have a pop at Rowan Williams. The ‘I’m not racist but’-ers and the ‘I am racist, and’-ers, the bandwagon jumpers and the vested-interests, the wilfully ignorant and the woefully ignorant, newspapers with no more care than tomorrow’s circulation, minority audience 24 hour news channels trying to outdo each other, radio phone-in shows and speak-your-brains comment boards entertaining the barely articulate and the barely literate, those who use political correctness as a stick to beat rather than words to sooth.

Then there’s the fools, tools and mules, bloggers, muggers and self-tuggers, demagogues, demi-demagogues and attack dogs, the has-beens, never-beens and wannabes, the purblind, unsound of mind and the axe to grind. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. How many, you have to wonder have read the speech or heard the interview? Or have a view of Sharia law beyond some vague imagining of hand-chopping and women-stoning?

See also, Septicisle, (here and here), thabet and DD.
Justin has always been one of my favourite bloggers. It doesn't hurt that he can actually write! I did despair a while back that he might just say 'fuck it' and throw it all up (as others seemed to be doing or threatening) but then something happened down there in Brighton and Justin burst back on the scene with renewed vigour and enthusiasm. The result is the best UK political blog of the moment, achieving that elusive combination of quantity and quality and a unique, independent-minded view head and shoulders above most of the tedious, predictable stuff out there. Get the email alerts or follow him on Twitter or, at the very least, read the blog!


Wot? Another rape acquittal?

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Presenter cleared of raping man
BBC Radio 4 presenter Nigel Wrench has been cleared by a jury at the Old Bailey of raping a man he met at a New Year's Eve Party. Mr Wrench, 47, from Finsbury Park, north London, had denied a charge of rape, saying he had consensual sex with the man in January 2007.
Somehow I suspect there won't be much fuss made about this particular acquittal from the 'all men are rapists' brigade. I wonder why not?


Camera shake killer

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Make yourself a 'tripod' for a few pence

Even though many modern digital cameras have anti-blur technology camera shake is still ruining otherwise decent snaps. Those slim, sleek little point and shoot cameras slip easily into a shirt pocket or handbag so it doesn't make much sense to then drag a bloomin' great tripod around with you. Even simple strategies, like using a bean-bag can be rather inconvenient if you are nipping out in just shorts and a T shirt.

This video shows you how to solve the problem for a few pennies.

Also check out this piece on string tripods.

And don't sneer: "Dutch star photojournalist Theo van Houts once used a contraption like this to capture a candid shot of the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm."

So there!