Volcanic Icelanders

Rebecca Solnit: A New Era of People Power in the Streets?

Can a Hedge-Fund Island Lose Its Shirt and Gain Its Soul?

Iceland is now a country whose currency, the króna, has collapsed, whose debt incurred by banks deregulated in the mid-1990s is 10 times larger than the country's gross domestic product, and whose people have lost most of their savings and face debts and mortgages that can't be paid off. Meanwhile, inflation and unemployment are skyrocketing, and potential solutions to the crisis only pose new problems.

The present government may differ from the old, but not as much as the Icelandic people differ from their pre-October selves. They are now furious and engaged, where they were once acquiescent and uninvolved.

American dream turns to nightmare

In Florida, Despair and Foreclosures

Desperation has moved into this once-middle-class exurb of Fort Myers, where hammers used to pound. Its straight-ahead stare was hidden amid the chatter of 221 families waiting for free bread at Faith Lutheran Church on a recent Friday morning; and it appeared a block away a few days earlier, as laid-off construction workers in flannel shirts scavenged through trash bags at a home foreclosure, grabbing wires, CDs, anything that could be sold.

“I knew it was coming,” said Gloria Chilson, 56, the former owner of the house, as she watched strangers pick through her belongings. “You take what you can; you try not to care.”

Welcome to the American dream in high reverse. Lehigh Acres is one of countless sprawling exurbs that the housing boom drastically reshaped, and now the bust is testing whether the experience of shared struggle will pull people together or tear them apart.

Holy war

Did the Israeli Army Wage a Jewish Jihad in Gaza?

Jonathan Cook - Nazareth:
Extremist rabbis and their followers, bent on waging holy war against the Palestinians, are taking over the Israeli army by stealth, according to critics.

In a process one military historian has termed the rapid “theologisation” of the Israeli army, there are now entire units of religious combat soldiers, many of them based in West Bank settlements. They answer to hardline rabbis who call for the establishment of a Greater Israel that includes the occupied Palestinian territories.

Their influence in shaping the army’s goals and methods is starting to be felt, say observers, as more and more graduates from officer courses are also drawn from Israel’s religious extremist population.

“We have reached the point where a critical mass of religious soldiers is trying to negotiate with the army about how and for what purpose military force is employed on the battlefield,” said Yigal Levy, a political sociologist at the Open University who has written several books on the Israeli army.

The new atmosphere was evident in the “excessive force” used in the recent Gaza operation, Dr Levy said. More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, a majority of them civilians, and thousands were injured as whole neighbourhoods of Gaza were levelled.

“When soldiers, including secular ones, are imbued with theological ideas, it makes them less sensitive to human rights or the suffering of the other side.”

Sunday Papers 8th Feb '09

Saturday Papers 7th Feb '09

Is it coz I'm Jewish?

normblog: One-Eyed in Gaza

I have waited till now to set out my thoughts on this subject, because when the air was thick with fury and denunciation, charge, counter-charge and denial, the chances of being calmly heard were small.

He needn't have bothered. It's the same old predictable bollocks:

To hold Israel to the standards of international humanitarian law, the elementary standards entailed by codes of human rights, is only right and proper. But to hold Israel to those standards, but not also its regional adversaries, suggests a special hostility towards it that needs some explanation. Not all of this hostility can be accounted anti-Semitic. But some of it is. Only the blindest can ignore the plain manifestations of anti-Semitism now evident both amongst Israel's regional adversaries and within the worldwide protests against Israel's actions in Gaza and disfiguring them. As worrying is the fact that the same liberal-left aforementioned that populates these protests and in doing so looks away from the crimes of Israel's opponents, a liberal-left that is, to a man and a woman, proud of its anti-racism, proud of its sensitivity to 'Islamophobia', is silent about this growth of anti-Semitism, shamefully silent, having forgotten in just the one case its avowed duty of solidarity with the victims of prejudice everywhere.

Via Sullivan

Toughen 'em up with a good piss-take

Sarah Ebner: Just say no to anti-bullying campaigns?

Dr Helene Guldberg:

For some children – a very small minority - bullying is a profound problem. Some stories about the extent of children’s suffering are heartbreaking – and they are precisely why we need to handle the issue with care and, above all, with some proper perspective. Today’s knee-jerk call to eradicate all bullying can do more harm than good.

Much that is defined as bullying today is not bullying at all. It is boisterous banter or everyday playground disputes that could and should be resolved without adult intervention. Of course, being called names or ridiculed may not feel very pleasant, and may indeed be traumatic for some children. When I was nine years old and moved from Bergen in Norway to Trondheim further north, I was laughed at and teased about my distinctive accent. To me – a rather oversensitive child - it was absolutely mortifying. I was deeply unhappy and longed to move back to Bergen. But I got through the experience – without adult intervention - and maybe toughened up a little.

Here is my response to Ms Guldberg:

As an adult would you have put up with having your accent mocked by adult colleagues? Of course not! So why should children have to put up with it based on the spurious reasoning that it might toughen them up? Part of growing up is to learn good manners and respect for other people. It would be preferable if this were achieved at home but, alas, we know that in some families this is just not going to happen. So schools now have to deal with it by applying rules of behaviour.

Children should not have to put up with behaviour which adults find unacceptable. That includes physical punishment, teasing, mockery and bullying in all its forms. The fact that experiencing these things might just 'toughen' up some children is, frankly irrelevant.

Toughen 'em up

Sarah Ebner: Just say no to anti-bullying campaigns?

For some children – a very small minority - bullying is a profound problem. Some stories about the extent of children’s suffering are heartbreaking – and they are precisely why we need to handle the issue with care and, above all, with some proper perspective. Today’s knee-jerk call to eradicate all bullying can do more harm than good.

Much that is defined as bullying today is not bullying at all. It is boisterous banter or everyday playground disputes that could and should be resolved without adult intervention. Of course, being called names or ridiculed may not feel very pleasant, and may indeed be traumatic for some children. When I was nine years old and moved from Bergen in Norway to Trondheim further north, I was laughed at and teased about my distinctive accent. To me – a rather oversensitive child - it was absolutely mortifying. I was deeply unhappy and longed to move back to Bergen. But I got through the experience – without adult intervention - and maybe toughened up a little.

Here is my response to Ms Ebner:

As an adult would you have put up with having your accent mocked by adult colleagues? Of course not! So why should children have to put up with it based on the spurious reasoning that it might toughen them up? Part of growing up is to learn good manners and respect for other people. It would be preferable if this were achieved at home but, alas, we know that in some families this is just not going to happen. So schools now have to deal with it by applying rules of behaviour.

Children should not have to put up with behaviour which adults find unacceptable. That includes physical punishment, teasing, mockery and bullying in all its forms. The fact that experiencing these things might just 'toughen' up some children is, frankly irrelevant.

"All Americans, out. Period"

The Sickening Arrogance and Condescension of Empire - Arthur Silber

President Barack Obama said Sunday that the United States is in a position to place more responsibility in the hands of the Iraqis following provincial elections and a reduction in violence there.

"In conversations that I've had with the joint chiefs, with people, the commanders on the ground, I think that we have a sense now that the Iraqis just had a very significant election, with no significant violence there, that we are in a position to start putting more responsibility on the Iraqis," Obama told NBC television.

I don't think Silber has much time for Obama or his views on Iraq:

Listen up, Obama, you cheap, lying fraud: the United States government launched a criminal war of aggression against a nation that never threatened us. It continues a bloody, murdering occupation which does nothing but worsen the agony of the Iraqi people. We have no right to be in Iraq at all. We never did. The actions of the United States government have led to a genocide of world historical proportions.

Genocidal murderers and those who support and enable them -- as you do, Obama, since you vote to fund this continuing crime -- do not get to "ask" one single goddamned fucking thing of their victims. Not. One. Single. Goddamned. Fucking. Thing.

Get it, you pathetic little asshole?

The party is over

William Bowles: Living (and dying) in the age of barbarism

All of our major politicians are either in bed with big capital or will be once their public offices come to an end. We call it revolving door politics. They sit on the boards of corporations, retained as 'consultants’, become lobbyists and/or are part of an intricate network of cross-connected directorships and thinktanks...

Many are overtly corrupt, receiving kickbacks and payoffs for 'services rendered’, in short a Corporate Mafia that makes the 'mafia’ of the movies small potatoes indeed as the recent revelations concerning the House of 'Lords’ shows...

Without any kind of oversight except lip service to the idea of transparency or accountability, never mind absolutely no democracy, over time they have become brazen in their contempt for the working man and woman, flaunting their wealth in our faces. The examples are everywhere especially of late with literally billions being paid to what are actually a bunch of cheap crooks and shysters, these so-called captains of industry.

In the final analysis however, it is our own total lack of political participation that has allowed this situation to come to pass. It is argued that we have no real choice when it comes to who we have to vote for, but the vote is only a small part of the democratic process, it’s what leads up to your vote that counts.

For nearly a century we fought for the universal franchise, eventually forming our own political parties that we trusted to represent us and fight for our interests, a trust that has been betrayed over and over again. Thus we have become cynical and fatalistic about the political process to the point where we have opted out in our droves, preferring instead to consume. But the party, as they say, is over.

"Snow is seminal" says wanker

HARRY PHIBBS: It snows and the whole nation is paralysed. Where's our true grit (and the gritters?)

So it snows and suddenly all the London buses are cancelled. Tubes and commuter rail lines are closed. Both runways at Heathrow airport shut down. Millions of workers give up the ghost and hunker down for a cosy day at home.

All London buses have been withdrawn from service due to 'adverse weather and dangerous driving conditions.' Why withdraw ALL the buses? Is it really impossible for any of them to cover any of their routes?

Of course road accidents take place even in the best conditions but at the time of writing Scotland Yard report that while the weather has caused many minor accidents nobody has been seriously hurt.

Stopping all the buses is yet another example of our society being disproportionately risk averse. But after all it's a monopoly so sod the passengers. Let them walk to
work and never mind the danger of crashing to the ground in the 'adverse weather.'

So, nobody has been seriously hurt in accidents on the road despite the treacherous conditions?

Erm, let me see, that wouldn't, by any chance, be because there is virtually NO FUCKING TRAFFIC?

You tosser!

Shame on Yoo

The Last Chance Democracy Cafe: John Yoo — a scholar and a war criminal

Yoo’s crime was in writing legal memorandums that provided cover for torture later carried out by the Bush Administration in the name of the United States. Like Ernst Janning’s wrongful court judgments at issue in the movie, Yoo’s torture memos, on their face, probably had the appearance of proper legal process. But they were a fraud.

That waterboarding is torture has been settled for decades. The United States has punished people from other countries severely for using it against our people. Anyone with legal training, especially someone who claims to have taken the time to research the point, who would say otherwise, is a liar — and worse still an enabler of evil.