Journalism vs Truth
Here are four items:
1. Fraser Nelson says “The internet is the perfect medium for lie-detecting”, whereas much of the MSM has allowed Gordon Brown’s lies about spending to go unchecked.
2. PZ Myers complains about a BBC report that doesn’t question creationists sufficiently. He says:
Every article about creationism needs to eschew the subtleties and pound hard on the obvious, that creationism is bunk and its proponents are ignorant.
3. In last week’s Radio 4 Feedback (5’30″ in), Roger Bolton asked why the BBC hadn’t checked whether UKIP’s claim that three-quarters of our laws start in Europe. The Beeb’s Rick Bailey replies that this claim isn’t a matter of fact but of political dispute.
4. Gaby Charing complains that the Guardian is not taking a stand on whether Caryl Churchill’s play Seven Jewish Children is anti-semitic or not.
There’s a common theme here, about the nature of journalism. In all four cases we have a complaint that journalists are not reporting the truth, but merely putting both sides of the story, and leaving their audience to make up their mind.
Italian government to legalise vigilantes…
…And guess who’s already volunteering?
With the controversy surrounding Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi’s love for young female company and his ill-conceived invitation of new best pal Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi, the international press have plenty to talk about.
However, perhaps due to all of the above, something more sinister is taking place away from the limelight. The Italian government has just issued a White paper on law and order that gives the go-ahead to private vigilante groups. While the paper states that such groups will have to sign up to a licensing scheme, it’s interesting to take a peek at those who are enthusiastically jumping at the opportunity.
Enter the Guardia Nazionale Italiana, whose website is currently recruiting “true Italian Nationalists and Patriots, people who are able to wear their uniform with pride and dignity, and for everything that it represents, are able to serve our land and the Italian people”.
You may be excused if it rings familiar: black trousers with yellow band, black hat donning the Imperial Eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, khaki shirt carrying both Italian flag and a certain symbol (a black sun that is popular amongst German neo-nazis), black armband, black tie and black boots.
Yet any allegation that it may echo a certain period in history are dismissed as ‘nonsense’.”It’s a legitimate way of combating crime”, says Home Secretary Roberto Maroni. So why the garish outfits?
The answer comes the moment you take a peek at the people behind the vigilantes. Amidst retired carabinieri and assorted military, there he is, the founding member of the far-right Social Movement (MSI-DN, the group that rose from the ashes of the Fascist Party following Mussolini’s death in 1945) and leader of the Italian Nationalist Party, both groups possibly to the right of the BNP.
So next time you hop to Venice, Florence or Milan for your long weekend break, don’t be surprised if you spot vigilantes squadrons marching along la piazza. You may have to get used to it. And quick.
Click here to find out more about why Italy is currently the most right-wing country in Europe.
Portugal after the euroelections: ingovernável?
LISBON: I haven’t visited the Portuguese capital since 1989, and had half expected to find it substantially tarted up, much in the same way that some parts of London have been transformed over the past two decades.
I needn’t have worried. Lisbon is still recognisably its loveable scuzzball faded fascist self. Admittedly, the working girls have either been turfed off the main drag or are putting in rather later shifts, and there is now a visible homelessness problem reminiscent of the days of cardboard city under Thatcher. Otherwise, it’s just the way I left it.
I was flicking through Diário de Notícias, the leading national newspaper, earlier this evening – which I can do, because I have halfway decent Spanish, and when you know Spanish, Portuguese gets thrown in free – and was struck by a piece on the op-ed page, in which a rightwing pundit pondered whether or not the extent of support for the far left is making the country ‘ungovernable’. It’s just the kind of talk I last heard in Britain in the 1970s.
While Labour fiddles…
More on sheltered housing warden cuts in Barnet – an example of the sort of Tory public service cuts we’ll see more and more:
We go now to a tall, brutalist council building in Barnet’s Totteridge and Whetstone, where yours truly is holed up at a cabinet meeting in a large committee room, watching Cllr Mike Freer, the spiritual void who runs Barnet council, brush aside the concerns of elderly sheltered housing residents who are about lose their cherished onsite warden service in Freer’s latest cost-cutting wheeze.
As reported here recently, Barnet council and its financial team – that group of fiscal legends best known for investing (riskily) £27m in Icelandic banks, where the whole pile tanked – claim they need to find £12m in savings to balance books compromised by inadequate central government settlements (ie, it’s Labour’s fault – a point that Labour rubbishes, for what it’s worth), inflation, and a desire to keep council tax increases below three percent as local and national elections loom.
The council believes it can save £950,000 (re-forecast to £400,000 in a rapidly revised proposal for this evening’s meeting) by removing onsite residential wardens (whose tasks include dealing with health and security emergencies, organising GP visits, organising social activities, and checking on residents at least once a day) from sheltered housing scheme. They’d be replaced with a ‘floating’ support service where support workers based at hubs would visit elderly people who met eligibility criteria. continue reading… »
Condom ‘optional’?
There’s much I don’t understand about the porn industry: the poor writing, the implausible plotlines, the baffling belief that a man reaching orgasm near a woman’s face is somehow erotic. But of all these many mysteries, nothing causes quite as much amazement as discovering that the industry is averse to contraception.
It turns out that California is suffering from something of a porn panic after an actress recently tested positive for HIV. People who have worked with the woman are being told to lay off the heavy thrusting for a while and the state’s health & safety folks are busy trying to discover the source & stop it spreading. This might not be the easiest thing to do, however, for it turns out that safe sex isn’t sexy:
After an HIV outbreak in 2004 spread panic through the industry and briefly shut down production at several studios, many producers began making condoms a requirement. But they said both actors and audiences quickly rebelled.
Review of Home Education is Published
This article is by author Elizabeth Mills
A few months ago I wrote about how the government was planning to make changes to home education.
The review has just been published.
Mr Balls likes it and says the Government will implement the recommendations.
There are a few positive things like such as giving us easier access to exams and forcing Local Authorities to consult with Home Educators.
It advocates compulsory registration and annual assessment of home educated children, who should be seen by LA officials without their parents present. Looks like our children will have more rigorous (and more expensive) individual assessment than those children who are at school.
Israel, Unison and antisemitism
The news that Unison has banned Trade Union Friends of Israel from having a stall at its annual conference is disturbing.
I keep meaning to write a piece here about why the left should support a two state solution to the Middle East, but I never get around to it because the arguments just seem so obvious. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the creation of the state of Israel sixty years ago, it now expresses the legitimate right of its people to self-determination. This right should be exercised alongside the right of Palestinians to live within their own state, the precise borders of which need to be negotiated by the two parties. Pressing both the Israeli Government and the Palestinian’s elected leadership towards mutual recognition and supporting the forces of moderation on both sides is the only way to get that agreement. This seems to me a no-brainer.
Given that it is the Palestinians who are currently being denied their right to self-determination, it is correct for the left to concentrate their criticisms on the Israeli Government. The appalling conditions in which the people of Gaza are living, the war crimes committed during Israel’s recent assault there, the illegality of the wall being constructed across the West Bank, and the attempts to change the demographics of East Jerusalem are all issues on which progressives should speak out loudly and clearly.
Yet in voicing these criticisms we need to also show that we understand that – as in all conflicts – there two sides, both of which have committed human rights violations and both of which have often behaved with stubborn unreasonableness. I can fully understand how the conditions in which people are living in Gaza has led them to support Hamas, but I also understand why the people of Israel have just voted for Benjamin Netanyahu. Too often the left seems to only be able to contextualise the former and not the latter.
This could partly be down to the sheer unpleasantness with which some supporters of Israel argue their case. Harry’s Place website, for example, is notorious for its ad hominem attacks and the gross distortions that it puts on other people’s views. Reading the comments beneath some its articles is like contemplating the contents of an un-flushed toilet. Yet just as we can distinguish between the need to defend ordinary Muslims who are been victimized in the current political climate and supporting the vile views of Islamic fundamentalists so we should surely be able to see why so many ordinary Jewish people regard attacks on the existence of the state of Israel as attacks on their own identity.
I am not Jewish and it is always difficult to write about issues of race, gender, ethnicity or other forms of identity from second-hand experience. I am also not a Zionist, in that I have no fixed opinion about whether or not the creation of the state of Israel was the best response to the situation in which Jews found themselves in the late 1940s. However, I do not find it all difficult to understand why so many Jews after centuries of dispossession, discrimination and persecution – which culminated in the Nazi Holocaust, should have concluded that their rights, interests and safety could best be safeguarded through the creation of a Jewish state. I can also understand why the Jewish diaspora remain concerned about the safety of that state – and their friends and relatives living in it – surrounded, as it is, by hostile neighbours one of which may soon have nuclear weapons.
My strong view is that it is in Israel’s own best interests to trade land for peace and I hope that President Barack Obama can succeed in making that case where so many others have failed. There are genuine liberal, moderate voices in Israel, although the size and influence of this group is clearly diminishing. We need more critical engagment, open debate and dialogue. Bans and boycotts achieve precisely the opposite effect.
UK Finally Ratifies CRPD
I’ve been waiting for this moment since November 2008. On Monday, 8th June 2009, the UK government finally ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
The Convention is a landmark agreement that aims to give the world’s 650 million disabled people full equality, and ratification means that a country accepts its legal obligations under the treaty and ensures that any necessary laws are passed.
But what rights are guaranteed for disabled people by this Convention? Well, in summary, it’s about protecting our rights when it comes to making our own decisions; saying no to being placed in an institution; saying no to medical or psychological treatment; and living in the community. It also seeks to remove barriers to participation in daily life and enable equal opportunities for all.
This story has, unfortunately, been ignored by the mainstream media. So ignored that I’ve only just found out the news from the blog at the BBC disability website, Ouch. But, no matter what, this means real progress for the UK’s DisAbled population. As a DisAbled person, I am thrilled to hear it, and know that many of my friends are as well. To borrow the words of a very famous astronaut, this one small step for the mainstream is a giant leap for DisAbility.
The curious voting patterns across London
This is an analysis piece by blogger Political Animal
If the patterns emerging on the map below (apologies for the atrocious reproduction quality) look slightly familiar, it’s probably because, like me, you spent some time last year poring over maps like this or thiswhich showed clearly the inner/outer London divide in voting in the Mayoral elections.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that last week’s European elections produced similar results – voting patterns aren’t likely to change that much in 13 months – but they are evidence of the re-emerging political disconnect between the ‘two Londons’. The dominance of New Labour did much to smooth over that disconnect. It may be the case that its death throes are widening the gap further than ever before.
continue reading… »
Radical democracy and imagination – catch openDemocracy at the Compass conference
This is a guest post by Guy Aitchison
The word “crisis” is perhaps one of the most over-used in the lexicon, but when it comes to the astonishing collapse of political and economic orthodoxies in recent months it rings undeniably true.Is it a "good" crisis? Established modes of
thinking and organisation have been de-legitimated but it's not yet clear that anything radically new or different is going to take their place. Thinkers like Jeremy Gilbert have joined a growing call for new democratic forms to give individuals more meaningful control over their own lives, but so far the response from the political elite can best be described as “reforming so as to preserve”.
Can anything positive be taken from the simultaneous collapse in trust in the political system and the financial markets? How do we build beyond this crisis to secure much better liberty and democracy in the 21st century?
This Saturday at the Compass conference a panel of thinkers and activists will discuss these questions and more at a workshop on "Radical democracy and imagination: people and power after the meltdown". Come and join the discussion.
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or RSS feed. You can also get them by email and through our Facebook group.
» The real agenda behind Telegraph’s abortion investigation
» How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists
» When disabled people want to work – employers can hold the back
» Revealed: the reality behind Workfare and why it doesn’t work
» Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
» Why country-by-country reporting matters to our wellbeing
» If Unions want to become stronger, they need to modernise
» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
» Five things you need to know about the NHS bill
» Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier. More Racist.
» Laziness levels in Britain getting lazier, wails government
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