"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat.
"I don’t much care where- " said Alice.
Then it doesn’t matter which way you go, said the Cat.
"- so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
Oh, you’re sure to do that, said the Cat, if you only walk long enough.

Yasuni, Ecuador: Huge ecological wealth is at risk

Why so few vegetables in Sri Lanka?

Migrants have become the objects of a new, obsessive field of inquiry, like bird watching, based on research and mapping

Jeremy Harding

the triumph of violence depends upon the production of armaments

- Engels

ICG have a new report, Dynamics of Violence in Papua

The BBC, apparently.

@stavvers @mediocredave lol @ the nazis "corrupting" eugenics fucking hell

— BORG OSBOURNE (@_stux_) August 9, 2012

On a recent summer evening 11-year-old Mazlum Akay left his home in Yüregir, a predominantly Kurdish neighbourhood in the southern Turkish city of Adana, to buy sweets at the local corner shop.

Nearby, clashes had broken out between riot police and local youths demonstrating against the solitary confinement of Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Öcalan...the schoolboy was struck on the head by a police teargas cartridge. Eight days later, on 5 August, Mazlum died from his wounds and became the 501st child killed by Turkish security forces since 1988, according to Turkish human rights organisations.
here

HRW in India: The Maoists and government forces seem to have little in common except a willingness to target civil society activists

Yemen: 'multiple crises'.

The WFP reports that half of Yemen's children are chronically malnourished and that one out of ten does not live to reach the age of five.

THIS

11 yr old girl shot with rubber bullets in Madrid today. Markets perky.
— Gavan Titley (@GavanTitley) July 11, 2012

'An alarmingly high number of children under the age of five are dying in parts of Central African Republic'

'"The results show the mortality rate in the overall population is high, and almost 50 percent of the deaths during the survey period were children," says Till Kinkel, MSF’s health adviser for the Central African Republic. "This tells us that, on average, in this area, almost 200 out of every 1,000 children die before the age of five."'

here

THIS

Overspill from Frank's Café blocked a road in Peckham last night. If that had been black kids or Millwall fans imagine the police reaction.
— Robert Peter Vaughan (@vornstyle) July 1, 2012

(for background)

This piece ('What is progressive about David Cameron?') is from early 2010, but the money quote is especially relevant in a week in the UK in which Tony Blair is hawking himself around, talking up his desire to perhaps become Prime Minister again one day.


The question is how did such claims even become vaguely intelligible? How did 'progress' as a discourse become a byword for reaction? The obvious answer is that New Labour made this possible. On every theme I've mentioned above, every objectionable facet of Tory policy, there is a New Labour counterpart - not exact, and not necessarily as extreme, but very real nonetheless.

At the start of July, the refugee health care programme in Canada will change; cuts to services will affect children and adults - more here.

On Tuesday during a speech in suburban Vancouver, Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (Con, Calgary Southeast) was heckled by protestors who cried Shame at him (there are certainly Canadian doctors against him, incidentally).

Kenney labelled these hecklers "extremists".

So, anyone who disagrees with the minister is now extremist?

couple of quotes to excerpt from the Friday 22nd June 2012 edn of the London Mirror (the only mainstream British newspaper to correctly urge a vote for the Labour party at the last UK general election, as opposed to those who wrongly urged votes for the Tories or the Tory-lite liberals) (source: my copy)

Energy prices differ between regions by up to £92 a year - and some of the highest costs are in unemployment blackspots.
Bills which average £1,373 in Merseyside and North Wales, areas of high unemployment, are £79 less in the South East, says a survey by energyhelpline.com, which has condemned the "cruel irony of the postcode lottery".

and in recent days in the UK the NatWest bank has had some sort of electronic/technical cock-up which means lots of payments due in to people's accounts (wages, for instance) didn't go through for a few days, obviously fucking shit up grievously for many, many NatWest customers.

i thought the following vox-pop - in a week in which the UK government (many of whose senior members are millionaires in their own right) has unveiled plans to withdraw housing benefit for those aged under 25 (!) - says it all.

Bob Spearman, from Petworth, West Sussex, said his tax credit payment had not been paid into his NatWest account.
He said: "We, like many other low-income families, live from week to week and the Child Tax credit weekly payment is a lifeline on which we rely."

THIS.

I will never tire of seeing Andrew Lansley, a *politician*, claim that doctors are self interested, over paid and don't contribute enough.
— M D (@MediocreDave) June 21, 2012

South Tel Aviv: a state of fear for African residents.

When you reap the harvest...do not reap to the very edges of your field...Leave them for the poor and the alien.

Leviticus 23

Quote here from Jonathon Porritt (part of a longer essay discussing the environmental movement, but seems to hold very true for any opponent of this appalling UK coalition govt)

Two years into this Government, it's now clear that if the environment was any further down its list of priorities, it would have fallen off the bottom. Any thought on the part of our NGOs that "working the corridors of power" is still the best way of defending the environment is folly. Regrettable though it may be, it's hard to imagine that this Government is going to be influenced by anything other than unremitting, full-on confrontation.

Just came across this cool graphic on the 21st century African land rush twitter.com/lesley_warner/…
— Lesley Anne Warner (@lesley_warner) June 7, 2012

This is all wrong.

British citizens with foreign-born partners are to be given the choice of indefinite "exile"...or face the breakup of their families if they want to remain in the UK, under radical immigration changes to be announced next week, MPs have been told.

The home secretary, Theresa May, is expected to confirm that she will introduce a new minimum income requirement for a British "sponsor" without children of up to £25,700 a year, and a stringent English speaking test for foreign-born husbands, wives or partners of UK citizens applying to come to live in Britain on a family visa.

Immigration welfare campaigners say that the move will exclude two-thirds of British people – those who have a minimum gross income of under £25,700 a year – from living in the UK as a couple if they marry a non-EU national. They estimate that between 45% and 60% of the 53,000 family visas currently issued each year could fall foul of the new rules.

[...]

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) has sent MPs a dossier of 13 detailed cases of families who would face serious consequences under the proposals, "to provide a snapshot of the reality of the lives of ordinary British citizens and settled people who want their husbands, wives, civil partners and in some cases children to join them in the UK"...The JCWI says that the dossier shows how the ordinary circumstances of life, such as pregnancy, accidents at work, disability, low pay, poor currency exchange rates and nationality laws in foreign countries could penalise people if the proposals make it into Britain's immigration rules.

The dossier also highlights how an extension of the probationary period for those granted family visas could trap more women in violent marriages and suffering domestic abuse in silence because of the fear of being deported if they complain.

"When, if ever, is it acceptable for British citizens to be placed in a position where they are effectively indefinitely exiled from their own country on account of choosing to have a relationship with a non-European Economic Area national?" asks the JCWI pamphlet, United by Love/Divided by Law?

more here.

Kingston, May 2010.

Jamaican strongman Christopher “Dudus” Coke will face a prison sentence of up to twenty-three years in federal court...at least seventy-three civilians died in the process of getting Coke out of Jamaica and into U.S. custody. At the time, the Jamaican security forces claimed that most of the dead were gunmen who died defending Coke inside the barricaded neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens. But for these seventy-three supposed gunmen, the security forces only recovered six guns. Three of the dead were women. One was a U.S. citizen. Most appear to have been unarmed civilians, rounded up and massacred after the neighborhood was already under control.
Coke has admitted to serious crimes. He barricaded his neighborhood to avoid arrest, and deserves much of the blame for the Tivoli killings. But did seventy-three civilians have to die for the arrest of one drug trafficker, no matter how powerful?
The U.S. government knows, but it isn’t saying.

rest here.

MT @gregorydjohnsen: US "is now taking charge of restructuring (Yemeni) army." bit.ly/M5Y42D // Sweet—our record w/this is awesome.

— Gulliver (@InkSptsGulliver) June 4, 2012

KUWAIT CITY, June 1: An unidentified Asian maid who tried in vain to end her life by jumping from the third floor of her sponsor’s apartment in Maidan Hawalli has been admitted to the intensive care unit of the Mubarak Al-Kabir Hospital, reports Annahar daily.
She is suffering from fractures and bruises all over the body. Police are investigating the incident.

Maid commits suicide: The remains of an unidentified Asian who allegedly committed suicide by hanging herself with a rope inside her sponsor’s home in Qortuba, have been referred to Forensics, reports Al-Rai daily.
The death was reported to the police by the sponsor when he found the corpse hanging from a rope.
The sponsor has been detained for customary interrogation.

source

The extraordinary financial power of an emerging class of super-rich has been revealed in a wealth survey highlighting Britain's poshest postcodes.
One London borough has seen such an influx of the fabulously rich that the average household income there has topped £100,000 for the first time.
As a result, Kensington and Chelsea has been named as the richest borough in the land by far.
The wealth league was compiled by Barclays, whose figures suggest the numbers earning more than £100,000 a year in the UK have rocketed in the past two years from 411,000 to over a million.

Despite Kensington and Chelsea's position at the top of the table, the area has wide extremes of affluence and poverty.
The multi-million pound mansions of Holland Park and fashionable Notting Hill stand in stark contrast to the deprivation of the North Kensington tower blocks.

---

Camberwell and Peckham is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like other such constituencies, it elects one Member of Parliament (MP), using the first-past-the-post voting system.
It is a safe seat for the Labour Party and the current MP is Harriet Harman, the former Acting Leader of the party and former Leader of the Opposition.

The constituency incorporates the areas of Camberwell, Peckham and Nunhead, in the London Borough of Southwark, together with parts of Walworth, East Dulwich, South Bermondsey and a small part of Rotherhithe. It has the distinction of having a higher proportion of poor people than any other constituency in the country in 2000.

"Apple products have become an essential part of how students learn at Flitch Green Academy, a public elementary/middle school located just outside..."

In today's global economy, innovation is the engine of economic growth.

Kong Cho Ha, 2006

It is amazing to me the degree of inequality that exists without people really getting upset

Warren Buffett

Thousands more unemployed people will be forced to work for free or lose their benefits under controversial plans to be announced by the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, as the government is warned its drive to get people back into work appears to be floundering.

The scheme, under which the jobless are obliged to accept an unpaid work placement for a month to keep their benefits, will be "significantly extended" within the next two weeks, according to Whitehall sources.

[...]

The number of people claiming housing benefit has also shot past the five million mark for the first time, with more than 90% of new claimants since the 2010 general election being those in low-paid, part-time work.

here.

Class war is fought downwards.

Everything else is defensive action.

How did genocide denial become a doctrine of the internationalist left?, by George Monbiot

London 2012 Games: wise and true.

Before the end of Time will be the end of History. Before the end of History will be the end of Art.

Hegel

"Translating the printemps érable is a volunteer collective attempting to balance the English media's extremely poor coverage of the student conflict in Québec by translating media that has been published in French into English. These are amateur translations; we have done our best to translate these pieces fairly and coherently, but the final texts may still leave something to be desired."

Visit them here.

(via.)

The reality behind Britain's 'austerity myth'

The Ethiopian sniper who defected from the Ethiopian army base on Friday has embraced Islam. All praise is due to Allah twitter.com/HSMPress/statu…

— HSM Press Office (@HSMPress) May 20, 2012

The world's quite simple really

Peter Ryley on Greece

(yes i am very late to this party)

"Slackk loves house music’s rhythm and grime’s sonics"

September, 2010: Tom Lea writes

Wiley’s ‘Ice Rink’ is pretty hard to describe if you’re not actually Wiley. Those sounds are embedded deep in the consciousness of anyone who ever liked grime, but I couldn’t tell you what they are for the life of me, and Wiley would probably tell you to stay out of it.

Maybe Slackk can. Following the lead of many grime producers, he’s turned to the self-facilitating Bandcamp website to release his new single, an uncompromising refix of ‘Ice Rink’. Wiley’s original fired off those harsh sounds in all directions, but Slackk narrows the track’s focus, taking one of the best tracks ever designed for the cipher and re-jigging it for the dancefloor. It’s a simple change, but the results will knock out a club where it stands.

Q. 

What are the biggest assumptions and misconceptions about dance music that a person writing about it must challenge or at least consider?

"That it's not real music. That it takes no skill. That the musicians are untalented. That it is somehow worth less than other forms of music. That you have to be high to like it. That it's just drug music. That's it's going to be over and dead within a few years. That it's gay music. That it's shallow. That it's just disco for the year 2001 (and we all know "disco sucks")."


Tricia Romano


"That dance music is mindless, that dance fans are not listening closely--a dancer is "listening" with every sinew and muscle and nerve ending in his/her body."


Simon Reynolds


I like dance very much. Dance is an extraordinary thing


Matisse

Rather than take steps to correct the humanitarian crisis created by Alabama’s anti-immigrant law, the state legislature appears poised to pass another law as ill conceived as its predecessor.

Time is running out for the state that passed the nation’s toughest anti-immigrant law. This is the last week of the legislature’s regular session and, astonishingly, the effort to reform the state’s anti-immigrant law – and repair the damage it has done – is being led by the very people responsible for the disaster that is HB 56...Other state legislatures have come to see the Alabama debacle as a cautionary tale of what not to do.

[...]

This so-called “reform” bill is nothing more than window dressing – apparently aimed at appeasing the state’s business leaders even though the majority of small businesses and the state’s farmers will continue to suffer. And, in some areas, the bill actually makes the original law much worse.

SPLC here: the full piece is shocking.

The Sewer Rats.

Oliver Craner, marvellous as ever.

Eric Toussaint: 'Europe Gets Shock Therapy like Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s'

The New York Times yet again last week displayed a disquieting pattern of presenting dead Africans on the front page of its great newspaper, while refusing to present dead Americans in the same fashion...The disturbing photo might seem appropriate - unless one considers that the children killed by, for instance, American drone attacks in Yemen or Pakistan, never receive similar photographic display.

rest here

"The US Labor Department has caved in to Big Agriculture and their allies in Congress to abandon the most vulnerable working children in America...Instead of protecting child farmworkers, the Labor Department will look the other way when children get crushed, suffocated, and poisoned on the job."

An utter fucking disgrace.

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me

Orwell

in any case, system collapse does not necessarily lead to progressive outcomes

Jim McGuigan

Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality...Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor

- Adam Smith

Mega-rich Formula One showman Bernie Ecclestone is describing the situation in Bahrain as peaceful ahead of the forthcoming F1 race there.

Earlier today BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner reported on what appears to be disturbing new footage of Bahraini police targeting and ransacking a Shia-owned shop.

Perhaps Bernie should read this report from Physicians for Human Rights, which documents '34 reported tear-gas-related deaths in Bahrain since the uprising began a year ago.'

He is 100% right in one important sense, of course.

But what he elides in his remarks are a universe of human suffering and voices.

There can be no friendship between the brave and the effeminate. We are regarded as a cowardly people. If we want to become free from that reproach, we should learn the use of arms.

- Gandhi, 1918

I believe that it could be cut through and made into an island in two days. I do not think this is necessary, however, for these people are very unskilled in arms.

- Christoffa Corombo, son of a weaver from Genoa

The politicians want us to live in 1992, but I don't want to live in 1992.

'Bosnian war 20 years on: peace holds but conflict continues to haunt'

As one respondent put it, 'You have to be twice as good as the men.'

- Gill Dunne, 1996

We do know, finally, what "water-boarding" is, though it is not clear what version of this torture the Americans are applying. There is, for example, the version French policemen and soldiers used on prisoners during the Algerian War, as in this account from Bechir Boumaza, a thirty-one-year-old Algerian interrogated in Paris in 1958:

I was taken off the bar [on which he had been hung and subjected to electric torture] and my guards started their football again [beating and kicking him], perhaps for a quarter hour. Then they led me, still naked and blindfolded, into a neighbouring room on the same floor. I heard: "We'll have to kill him, the bastard." ...dirty water and urine, probably...
From time to time one of them would sit on my back and bear down on my thighs. I could hear the water I threw up fall back into the basin.

[...]

The Latin American version, called el submarino, uses a wooden table, an oil drum filled with water, and a set of hooks...as a Uruguayan army interrogator put it, "There is something more terrifying than pain, and that is the inability to breathe."

- Mark Danner, 2004

i really like how David Wearing nails Vince Cable in this tweet here.

The chutzpah of Cable. Supports most regressive economic policies in decades, then poses as voice of enlightened reason

“If you keep teaching here, you are going to die and we won’t be responsible for your death.”

All nationalisms are gendered, all are invented, and all are dangerous - dangerous, not in Eric Hobsbawm's sense as having to be opposed, but in the sense of representing relations to political power and to the technologies of violence.

- Anne McClintock

Why don’t you tackle directly the excessive rents being charged by private landlords rather than making tenants the victim?

- Tony Blair MP, 1995

There’s a building in the Cayman Islands that houses supposedly 12,000 US corporations. That’s either the biggest building in the world or the biggest tax scam in the world.

- Barack Obama

The field of vision has always seemed to me comparable to the ground of an archaeological excavation.

- Paul Virilio

Mr Jozef Smole, the head of the Slovene Socialist Alliance, accused Mr Milosevic of 'pouring manure' on Slovenia in a speech that portended a Serbian 'crusade' against the northern republic, widely viewed as the most liberal part of the country. 'I am deeply offended,' said Mr Smole. 'One would not expect the president of Serbia to lower himself to such slander.'

- Ian Traynor from Vienna, in The Guardian, 25th May, 1989

'Out of Afghanistan: incredible stories of the boys who walked to Europe'

devastating - here

It is undeniable, however, that foreign influence in the forms of militarism and tourism has played a very prominent role during the past few decades in making prostitution a prominent industry in Thailand.

- Sinith Sittirak

---

"It's the last place in the world where you can still be a white man"

(German bar owner resident in Thailand.)

Mr Corbett disclaimed having started anything new. The sanctuary movement had been around for more than 3,000 years, he said, strengthening or fading according to the demands of the time. As the countries south of the United States border have become less brutal, the movement has faded. In Europe, the widespread hostility to those seeking asylum from countries as far away as China and Afghanistan has touched some consciences, perhaps presaging another sanctuary movement. But a new Jim Corbett has yet to emerge to speak of the unity of humanity and such unpopular themes.

(via and).

Gëzuar Ditëlindjen!

now you are four

Class war in Britain, 2012.

To live in Westminster is a privilege, not a right

(via CH.)

Evening 11th April, 2003:

a pair of RAF CH47 Chinook helicopters swept over Iraq's western desert towards a remote rendezvous point beside Route 10, the highway that begins life on the outskirts of Baghdad before running for mile after mile towards the border with Jordan...The helicopter crews had been told that a number of detainees were under armed guard at the side of the highway. They were to pick them up after dark and take them to a prison camp. What followed was far from routine: before the night was out, one man had died on board one of the helicopters, allegedly beaten to death by RAF personnel.

[...]

By the time the helicopters had reached their destination, two of the prisoners "were found to be unresponsive", according to the squadron leader, while "there was some commotion at the front of the aircraft" because a third prisoner, a disabled man, had somehow parted company with both his prosthetic legs.

here.

Once upon a time there was a river which flowed into another river which one day men would call the Rhine. But in those days there were no men, no names and no North Sea and no island called Great Britain and the only beings who knew this river which flowed into the nameless Rhine were the fishes which swam up and down it

- Graham Swift, 15. About the Ouse, 'Waterland'

The last speaker of an ancient language in India's Andaman Islands has died at the age of about 85, a leading linguist has told the BBC.
The death of the woman, Boa Senior, was highly significant because one of the world's oldest languages, Bo, had come to an end, Professor Anvita Abbi said.
She said that India had lost an irreplaceable part of its heritage.

about two years gone

chasing the wrong priority

Back to front: Jennifer Rubin in the WaPo with her appending of Polisario and Western Sahara to a laundry list of Islamist grievance.

obviously, what else should we expect from Rubin? fair rejoinder. i have no answer.

a quote from her own column, though, lights the way.

i mean, really.

He warns: “No. 1 is the humanitarian issue.And No. 2 is the national security issue,”

here we are.

He warns: “No. 1 is the humanitarian issue.And No. 2 is the national security issue,”

fixed that for ya.

also: Polisario bundled with AQIM.

yeah?

i mean.

Andrew Lebovich: "Ask yourself why only b-siders and Rubin talk so much abt the Polisario and terrorism in North Africa"

harsh employer employee relations (coercion, punitive) in the informal economy

in the wider setting of racialised structural inequality *

(see chapter 4 of Sen's Development as Freedom for discussion of the higher death rates for African-Americans over white Americans, adjusted for income factors, and certainly not just in the category of violent deaths of young males, but all men and women, "more explanation is needed than violent deaths can provide".)

great scene



technical side-note: in the question of British and Irish actors enjoying major roles in The Wire the American accent that Idris Elba (above) takes off is some way better than that of Dominic West's plod McNulty, or Aidan Gillen's city pol Tommy Carcetti

* this would be news to Newt Gingrich, who completely elides structural racialised inequality and deprivation in his native USA in his analyses of individuals and the market

one current obsession. (appropriate to pathologise ardent pre-occupations with 'obsessive'? flip side: aged 32, grow up and find that measured middle ground? flip flip side: stop constructing deliberate binaries you cheap cunt, the stock-in-trade of the water cooler pseud. this all in inverted commas, right?)

anyway.

opening 40 seconds or so of this track from the American band Tennis (in particular, though the song in general hits me in the mush), from their 2011 album Cape Dory; this is the title track.

pregnant possibility, wonderful guitar lines of Patrick Riley augmenting Alaina Moore's language of promise and intent, anchoring everything as she forms worlds, then along comes James Barone, fuller this time, to his kit, love it love it love it.

Wiki: (with bibliography)

King Philip's War, sometimes called the First Indian War, Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, or Metacom's Rebellion, was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day southern New England and English colonists and their Native American allies in 1675–76. The war is named after the main leader of the Native American side, Metacomet, known to the English as "King Philip"

[...]

According to a combined estimate of loss of life in Schultz and Tougias' King Philip's War, The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict (based on sources from the Department of Defense, the Bureau of Census, and the work of colonial historian Francis Jennings), 600 out of the about 80,000 English colonists (1.5%) and 3,000 out of 10,000 Native Americans (30%) lost their lives due to the war.

There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it;

Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man. Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.

- Ecclesiastes 9: 14-16

The settler's town is a strongly-built town, all made of stone and steel. It is a brightly-lit town; the streets are covered with asphalt, and the garbage-cans swallow all the leavings, unseen, unknown and hardly thought about.
The settler's feet are never visible, except perhaps in the sea; but there you've never close enough to see them. His feet are protected by strong shoes although the streets of his town are clean and even, with no holes or stones.
The settler's town is a well-fed town, an easy-going town; its belly is always full of good things. The settler's town is a town of white people, of foreigners.

The town belonging to the colonized people, or at least the native town, the Negro village, the medina, the reservation, is a place of ill fame, peopled by men of evil repute. They are born there, it matters little where or how; they die there, it matters not where, nor how. It is a world without spaciousness; men live there on top of each other, and their huts are built one on top of the other.
The native town is a hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of light. The native town is a crouching village, a town on its knees, a town wallowing in the mire. It is a town of n*****s and dirty arabs.

- Frantz Fanon, 1961

whatever happens, we have got
the Maxim gun, and they have not

We have left undone those things which we ought to have done,
And we have done those things which we ought not to have done,
And there is no health in us.

- The Book of Common Prayer

Fishing Season
1st February - 30th September
Temporary start 1st March

River Dee known for its quantity of fish, not necessarily for their size

The River Dee rises in the Cairngorms, it has a catchment area of 825 sq miles,
is 90 miles in length which makes it the 6th largest river in Scotland

What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve about

River Tweed is the second largest river in Scotland.

It has a drainage area of 1,925 square miles, and a course of nearly 100 miles.

Fishing Season
1st February - 30th November

FROM THE MOMENT I HEARD about Bidder #70 raising his paddle inside a BLM auction to outbid oil and gas companies in the leasing of Utah’s public lands, I recognized Tim DeChristopher as a brave, creative citizen-activist. That was on December 19, 2008, in Salt Lake City. Since that moment, Tim has become a thoughtful, dynamic leader of his generation in the climate change movement. While many of us talk about the importance of democracy, Tim has put his body on the line and is now paying the consequences.

here

(via.)

General Suharto and his successors built fortunes from West Papuan rainforest timber concessions and mineral resource wealth, operating a network of enterprises of no benefit to the local population. The security forces justify their presence, and benefit financially, from a continuation of hostilities.

re-up and a broadcast over a year old now, but the Radio 4 programme Cambodia: Country for Sale is apposite listening set alongside the post here yesterday

The Ethiopian government under its “villagization” program is forcibly relocating approximately 70,000 indigenous people from the western Gambella region to new villages that lack adequate food, farmland, healthcare, and educational facilities...State security forces have repeatedly threatened, assaulted, and arbitrarily arrested villagers who resist the transfers.

[...]

The villagization program is taking place in areas where significant land investment is planned or occurring. The Ethiopian government has consistently denied that the resettlement of people in Gambella is connected to the leasing of large areas of land for commercial agriculture, but villagers have been told by government officials that this is an underlying reason for their displacement. Former local government officials confirmed these allegations to Human Rights Watch.

One farmer told Human Rights Watch that during the government’s initial meeting with his village, government officials told them: “We will invite investors who will grow cash crops. You do not use the land well. It is lying idle.”

[...]

From 2008 through January 2011, Ethiopia leased out at least 3.6 million hectares of land, an area the size of the Netherlands. An additional 2.1 million hectares of land is available through the federal government’s land bank for agricultural investment. In Gambella, 42 percent of the total land area is either being marketed for lease to investors or has already been awarded to investors, according to government figures. Many of the areas that have been moved for villagization are within areas slated for commercial agricultural investment.

“The government is killing our people through starvation and hunger. It is better to attack us in one place than just waiting here together to die. If you attack us, some of us could run, and some could survive. But this, we are dying here with our children. Government workers get this salary, but we are just waiting here for death.”
–Elder in recently relocated village, Abobo woreda, May 2011

“There is a psychological impact on children. No learning is happening. There was a school in the old village, here there is none. No one is going to school now, as they are afraid. Who will protect them going to the old village? Even the children themselves are refusing to go.”
–Anuak woman from new village discussing the lack of promised school in Abobo woreda, May 2011

---

(re: land, see also)

Stop and search 'racial profiling' by police on the increase, claims study
Analysis shows that black people are now 30 times more likely to be stopped by the police than white people























Police perform a stop and search procedure on a group of young people in London.
Photograph: Jason Alden / Rex Features

fucking days

you know when you realise about something?

and someone points that out, and then you realise?

yeah, that.

they stopped it

since he has been in power in Rwanda, Kagame has been responsible for many abuses.

that is fact.

(Rwanda may actually even be responsible for genocide - or crimes approaching the threshold of genocide - in the neighbouring DRC.)

however, none of this changes the central fact of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and who is to blame for the genocide; granted, you do get fruitloops attempting to totally invert what happened there, usually for their own agenda, which has nothing to do with the people of Rwanda.

referencing the latest report into the matter (there have been others), earlier today Oliver tweeted a very, very important point to remember.

Remember: the genocide was a Hutu Power plot and the RPF did not start it, they stopped it, and no one else was going to do that.

"they stopped it, and no else was going to do that".

that is the central point.

it is how the Rwandan genocide was stopped when it was stopped, instead of continuing until it stopped.

this is the central point.

it is the only point.

and no else was going to do that

A further 800,000 homes will be put out of reach of people on housing benefit because of government welfare cuts – leaving low income families the choice of cutting spending on food to pay the rent or moving out, according to a study by housing experts.

[...]

It is unlikely that the poor will be able migrate to cheaper parts of the capital: in Newham, east London, there will be twice as many claimants as there are low-cost homes. In Croydon, 17,000 people will be chasing 10,000 properties.

The effect will be felt not just in south-east England. Before today, Birmingham had more than 37,000 homes with rents affordable on welfare. Now 34,500 housing benefit claimants will be chasing 23,000 low-cost houses, according to the analysis, carried out for the Guardian. On the Mersey, 21,000 people collecting local housing allowance will only be able to afford 12,000 homes in Liverpool.

Because welfare is set at Westminster, the cuts will also be felt in Scotland. In Glasgow there will be a thousand more benefit recipients than there are properties which can be rented with the government's reduced housing subsidy.

Class war in Britain in 2012.

The World Bank's annual development reports are marked with much media hoopla, but have no direct policy implications.

- David Moore, 1999

'Bahrain Special: Identifying The Tear Gas Companies Who Profit While Bahrainis Suffer and Die'

(via and.)

The Elizabethan legislation was intended to help the 'settled' poor who found themselves out of work (for example) because of illness, or during a hard winter or a trade depression. It was assumed that these people would accept whatever work or relief the parish offered, whether that was indoor or outdoor relief. Neither method of assistance was seen as punitive or harsh. It was intended to deter or deal with the 'sturdy beggars' who were roaming the roads, robbing travellers and generally posing a threat to civil order. The increase in the numbers of beggars was probably the historical background to the nursery rhyme

Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark!
The beggars are coming to town:
Some in rags, some in tags
And one in a velvet gown

The 1601 Elizabethan Poor Law