30 seconds lads

Roskilde, Friday December 26th, 2008.

three mates done for by a bomb in Helmand.

the three Danish soldiers killed by an IED on Wednesday were due to end their tour in August.

"In other violence, four private Afghan security guards were killed on Tuesday when they were attacked while escorting trucks that supply foreign forces bases in southern Afghanistan, police said.
"The guards returned fire. The fighting between them lasted for one-and-a-half hours. Four guards were martyred," deputy provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Shaheedani told AFP."

BobFromBrockley, we salute you:

'For a spectacular example of the left getting it wrong, we turn to our old friend George Galloway, defending the Ahmadinejad theocracy. (H/t Ent/JohnnyG.) A slightly softer version comes from John Wight at Socialist Unity, wondering (in an article which, I have to say, is pretty good in places) if what we are seeing is a "counter-revolution" because it is middle class people doing the protesting. (Odd that when Palestine Solidarity action, university occupations and throwing eggs at BNP leaders is done by middle class people in the UK that doesn't make it counter-revolutionary.) He also uses the uprising as an opportunity for facile anti-Americanism'

British American Tobacco has beefed up its stake in the massive Indonesian smokes market (250 billion tabs produced annually).

Kretek cigarettes, a blend of clove and other flavouring ingredients directly mixed with the tobacco, are incredibly popular there, and make up about nine tenths of all cigs smoked in Indonesia.
(it's also an industry responsible for an awful lot of jobs.)

Indonesia is the only country in Asia that has not signed up to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

CAR: 'Who's who with guns'

SOAS cleaners - "5.Amnesty for all those involved." - brilliant campaigners win through occupation

Noreen Jong-Il explains Juche

in the Korengal Valley with the American Battle Company last October

"Transitional government officials have confirmed Wednesday that the police commander of the TFG was killed in in Hadan district in Mogadishu where heavy fighting between Islamist forces and government soldiers was continuing...The residents expressed concern about the fighting that is going on in Hodan district in Mogadishu as more heavy weapons could be heard in and around the Somali capital."

50. On or about 30 October 2002, in Boy-Rabé, Bangui, MLC soldiers arrived at REDACTED’s residence. They immediately demanded money, stating “donner argent, pas tuer”. Thereafter, the MLC soldiers immediately entered the house, vaginally raped her, stole money, and looted the residence. The MLC soldiers shot and killed REDACTED when he tried to prevent the theft of his REDACTED.

51. On or about 8 November 2002 at or near PK 12, MLC soldiers arrived at the REDACTED family compound and fired their guns. REDACTED was sodomized by multiple MLC soldiers on the ground outside, in front of his family. The soldiers then vaginally raped REDACTED’s wife, REDACTED. Several MLC soldiers also took REDACTED, and threw him to the ground. REDACTED died. MLC soldiers also vaginally raped REDACTED’s three daughters (REDACTED, REDACTED and REDACTED). At the same time, the REDACTED’s compound was looted by MLC soldiers. When MLC soldiers came to REDACTED’s home in the same compound, MLC soldiers vaginally raped her. When REDACTED, tried to intervene in the rape, he was tied up and beaten.

39. In the locations identified in paragraph 38, the MLC troops looted, raped, and killed CAR civilians. Civilian properties were systematically looted, and civilians were forced to cook and clean for the MLC troops against their will and with no payment. Men, women and children were raped by multiple MLC perpetrators in their homes, raped in front of family members, forced to watch rapes of family members, and raped in public locations including streets, fields and farms. Many of the women victims of rapes and gang-rapes contracted HIV, and became pregnant as a result of these rapes. Civilians that were killed included those who tried to prevent or resist rapes, attacks or lootings.

32. Between the 11 to the 29 of October 2002, MLC troops attacked the city of Mambasa located in the Ituri province, DRC. BEMBA directed the Mambasa operation by communicating through the Chief of Staff, or giving orders directly to commanders.

33. During the Mambasa operation, MLC troops committed the crimes of looting, rape and murder. Promises of looting and rape were given to the combatants prior to the attack, and they were subsequently permitted to rape and loot for a few days.

16. The MLC troops entered the CAR from the DRC. On or about 26 October 2002, MLC troops crossed the Oubangui River and entered Bangui where they were deployed to the battlefront. Upon their arrival, MLC troops participated in five days of intense fighting in and around Bangui. As the rebel forces withdrew from Bangui, the MLC troops advanced into former rebel-held areas including Point Kilomètre (hereinafter referred to as “PK”) 12, on the outskirts of Bangui. PK 12 is the cross point for two roads; one that leads to Bossembélé (axis north-west), and the second that leads to Damara (axis north-east).

15. At all times relevant to this Amended DCC, BEMBA was the Commander-in-Chief and President of the MLC. REDACTED REDACTED. REDACTED. REDACTED.

13. On 25 October 2002, François Bozizé (hereinafter referred to as “Bozizé”), the former Army Chief of Staff of the CAR armed forces, Forces Armées Centrafricaines (hereinafter referred to as “FACA”), led forces towards Bangui in an effort to unseat Patassé. In response to Bozizé’s attack, Patassé mobilized the CAR national armed forces, including the remaining FACA, as well as the Unité de Sécurité Présidentielle (hereinafter referred to as “USP”) and Abdoulayé Miskine’s (born Martin Koumtamaji, hereinafter referred to as “Miskine”) mercenaries to launch a counter-offensive.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has committed for trial the former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Jean-Pierre Bemba, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, rape and pillaging.

The alleged offences were committed by Bemba when he commanded militia of his Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC) during fighting in the Central African Republic (CAR) between October 2002 and March 2003.

Bemba was arrested by Belgium in May last year and transferred to the International Criminal Court in July. The warrant on which he was arrested said that the MLC acted in concert with CAR forces to engage in rape, torture and looting.

The ICC declined to prosecute Bemba on the torture charges.

At the time of Bemba's arrest, the ICC said that a particular feature of his case was "the number of rapes carried out with shocking brutality." The prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, alleged: "He had done it before in CAR, he had done it before in the DRC. He had to be stopped."

The ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber II has referred Bemba's case to a trial chamber. No date for the trial was announced.

press release here.

re the post where i write "severe consequences" yesterday; clearly, that part was certainly a tad overheated..

Breaking news

EXTRA EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Thick Tory in 'uselessly conflates imprecise analogies to attack straw men partly for partisan domestic reasons' shock!

Edwina Currie pens "Fearless women of Iran show up our feminist whingers" piece in London Daily Express!

(This announcement brought to you by recognition of the fact that silliness from Caroline Flint etc does not necessarily negate prior aspects of Harriet Harman's legislative agenda etc)

Gaia and the FSC also here stating the obvious

good to see Peter Ryley in agreement with John Vidal about land grabs, the war against aboriginal peoples resources, and so on.

where ever resources, be they a mineral, or oil, or precious metals, or timber, are extracted from the earth at the unjust expense of someone, somewhere (certainly those communities that have been treated badly, or not been paid off to a decent tune, at the very least, and of course, that in itself is incredibly problematic, often viciously so: the many sad, broken tales you can encounter in the Canadian north are just one heart-breaking example), and you can include the land itself, territory, in this formulation, you can guarantee more powerful, wealthier people are making a dime.

scouring the earth - akin to defiling a church for observant Christians i imagine (except of course this analogy is quite offensive in its simplistic stupidity, as scouring the earth is not only many, many times more worse, it is far worse in questions of degrees, not just times worse, to something as relatively insignificant as my analogy, the magnitude far more monstrous, obviously*), in the case of some indigenous populations that, historically, viewed the planet in some awesomely sacred manner, some holy being in itself - has severe consequences environmentally, politically, and morally, for every single person there is.

* with respect to all the Christians out there..

ICE Case Studies
Number 193, November, 2006
Christina Kaiser. Plagues in Niger

wrt tonight's show - "As the US apologises for the recent killing of civilians in air strikes on the Farah province of Afghanistan, Dispatches examines the effect these military operations are having on US-Afghan relations" - Joshua Foust, as is so often the case, gets to the heart of the matter from the American pov.

One of the more confusing aspects of the air strike at Azizabad...is the snippets of evidence that the compound hit, and the men killed inside, despite being written off as Taliban militants, had badges to work at the nearby U.S. base. Locals had even complained of this, saying that the tragedy was not just that innocent people died but that the U.S. killed one of its own collaborators.

Now Hamid Karzai’s spokesman is claiming that is exactly what happened, and that not a single Taliban fighter was killed in the strike. ...An hourlong, in-depth documentary, previewed by the Associated Press and to be broadcast by Channel 4, includes scenes from a Herat provincial court trial in which a leader from the rival village was sentenced to death for murder for having given false information leading to the deaths of 91 innocent Azizabad civilians. Despite that court ruling, the U.S. Central Command maintains its position that the Americans killed 22 Taliban fighters, along with 33 civilians.

The British broadcaster will also report that U.S. special forces are not cooperating with local police seeking three men from Kalask, the rival village, in the torture death of an Azizabad man. The suspects are guards at the U.S. base in nearby Shindand.

among the young girls crying as they recount tales of friends blown up - one little girl saying even their names have now been lost to the ground - and the patient woman from HRW explaining about a child being buried in the arms of its mother (a rejoinder to one aspect of the third American investigation into the above tragedy which counted only 30 or so new graves around the village after the attack), the incident referenced in Foust's last sentence above concerns a man being taken by Special Forces - in perfect health, according to a local police officer who was present - and then his body being released from the care of the U.S. Special Forces facility four hours later.

he had been beaten to death, and tortured.

his chest was caved in, metal knuckle dusters had apparently been used to hit his skull, and both his hands were broken. there were allegations of electric shocks.

Foust's piece does reference this article about the Americans moving to change detention practices in Afghanistan, and certainly the changes discussed are a step in the right direction.

1999, Columbia Records




























2009, Columbia Records

run.

now.

run.

are you carrying?

why do you carry it like that?

that will be of no use.

no, no good.

no good at all.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki led mourners on Saturday at the funeral of lawmaker Harith al-Obaidi, who was shot dead a day earlier in a Baghdad mosque

'After dabbling in the fashionable abstract expressionist style of the late 1980's that celebrated individualism, Scott formulated a reactionary position designed to question the basic concept of originality. Inspired by the black paintings of Ad Reinhardt and the date paintings of On Kawara, Scott created a series of "target" paintings consisting of black and white concentric circles that appear identical with only slight variations, intending to remove the aspect of qualitative judgment from the viewing experience. After Scott felt he had reached an endpoint with this body of work, he moved on to a series of black and white line paintings driven by the concept of making works so intensely optical that in theory they would be impossible for the human eye to view, a complete inversion of the traditional function of painting. Scott differentiated these works from the Op Art movement of the 1960's because their focus was on content rather than aesthetics. Once he felt he had exhausted this critique of opticality, Scott moved into a series of color line paintings that embrace their own viewing rather than deny it. These new works display a heightened emphasis on humanism, showcasing the presence of the artist's hand as well as a more automatic painting method. The works rely less on mechanical perfection and more on the inherent imperfections that occur in the intuitive process of creation. These brightly colored works on aluminum and wood that compose the current exhibition constitute the most ambitious series of Scott's work today. Accordingly, he has titled the exhibition "and then he tried to swallow the world."'

One count of genocide.

Three counts of crimes against humanity, including persecution on political, racial and religious grounds and the sniping campaign against the civilian population of Sarajevo.

Five counts of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, including the unlawful confinement of civilians in detention facilities, the extensive destruction of property, the appropriation and plunder of property and the unlawful taking of United Nations peacekeepers as hostages and using them as human shields.

Seven counts of violations of the laws and customs of war, including the unlawful confinement of civilians, shelling civilian gatherings, destruction of sacred sites, appropriation and plunder of property, sniping at civilians in Sarajevo and the unlawful taking of United Nations peacekeepers as hostages and using them as human shields.


The second Indictment was originally filed on 14 November 1995 and was confirmed by Judge Riad on 16 November 1995. This twenty-count Indictment charged the Accused with:


One count of genocide.

Ten counts of crimes against humanity, including extermination and murder.

Nine counts of violations of the laws and customs of war, namely murder.


The Prosecutor’s Amended Indictment, filed on 11 October 2002, consolidated the first and second Indictments and reduced the total number of charges, leaving only the most serious counts. In the Prosecutor’s view, these amendments were more in keeping with the current charging practices of the Office of the Prosecutor and reflected the evolving jurisprudence of the Tribunal. The Prosecutor also submitted that the Amended Indictment would provide an appropriate basis for a motion of joinder with the Amended Indictment against Radovan Karadzic.


The Amended Indictment charges Ratko Mladic under Articles 7(1) and 7(3) with:


One count of genocide. One count of complicity in genocide.

Seven counts of crimes against humanity, including persecution on political, racial and religious grounds, extermination, murder, deportation and other inhumane acts.

Six counts of violations of the laws or customs of war, including murder, unlawfully inflicting terror upon civilians, taking of hostages and other inhumane acts.

Fouad Ajami on the Syrian dictatorship

"Though Mr Deeb, 40, is not the self-pitying type, the reaction of his colleagues was understandable. For among the many thousands of Gazans bereaved by the war, few lives can have been as shattered as his. Alerted by phone, he had rushed back from work on the afternoon of 6 January to find the family home in Jabalya hit by two Israeli 120mm mortar shells in the same series of attacks that killed up to another 30 civilians outside the UN Al Fakhoura school a mere 100 metres away. The 11 dead included five of his six children, aged between four and 22, his wife, his mother, one of his brothers, two of his nephews, and a niece.
...
Mrs Samouni, whose husband Tawfiq was killed and whose one-year-old daughter Jumana lost three fingers, gave precise – and often inevitably gruesome – testimony by telephone to the Israeli human rights organisation Btselem the next day: testimony which has held up in every subsequent inquiry by reporters and human rights organisations.

One shell killed the three men, and as Tawfiq, a former bulldozer driver who was trying to make ends meet by running a grocery business from his home, ran to help, another missile hit the roof, killing another 26 people. Even today she swiftly corrects a reporter's reference to 30 being killed in one of the worst events of the war. "It was 29," she says, adding of her testimony, "details are important."
...
Equally resilient in his own way is Khalil al Jadili 16, whose two legs were amputated after what the family insist was a "random" shelling attack which at 3.10pm on 16 January killed his younger bother Mohanad, 8, and destroyed with shrapnel the left eye of another brother Abdel Hadi, 15, as they all sat in their grandmother's house across from their own home in the crowded Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Before leaving through Egypt for the Czech Republic where he hopes to have artificial legs fitted, Khalil, who had been a keen footballer and basketball player before the attack which changed his life, said: "I hope to come back walking." Although his mother Nabila, 39, says Khalil, has been "very angry" a lot of the time since then, all the family, including Khalil, smile cheerfully in the presence of visitors and joke about Khalil's recent decision to take a photograph of himself having cardboard "legs" fixed to his stumps and clothed them in jeans. "I wanted to see what I would look like with artificial legs," he explains."

+

“I believe the title of pirates should be given to those who come to our waters illegally,” he told The Times after shuffling into a room at the British colonial-era Mandheera prison, 40 miles south of Berbera, wearing plastic sandals, a T-shirt and a length of printed material wrapped around his skinny waist.

-

As debris from the blasts sprayed over us in a ditch it seemed implausible that anyone could survive. But, the Talibs were heard on the radio reporting "they have dropped a big bomb on us" as they resumed their firing.

_

tells us of this slipping of the senses as young men knew, simply knew, that they were going to die. (And other young men knew they were going to kill them. So very easily.)

x

"in a typically wacky recent comment he said the immigrants sent back to Libya were fortunate, because the immigrant reception centres within Italy were "very similar to concentration camps".

Gaddafi is equally unmoved by their plight. At a news conference in Rome this week, he declared: "The Africans do not have problems of political asylum. People who live in the bush [or] the desert don't have political problems... [They] don't have a political identity; they don't even have a personal identity."

The views of both men can be summarised succinctly: who cares what happens to these blacks?"

+

Jawad Tawfiq, a 52-year-old Gazan actor and director, was dubious at first, but his nephew insisted. If they could scrape together enough money, the nephew said, large profits could be made from investing in the tunnels that snake beneath the Egyptian border.

"They were liars," Tawfiq said bitterly last week. "They took my money to put in their own pockets. And we are being offered a fraction of what we gave them."
...
The operators also speak of corrupt Hamas security officials who have become wealthy by turning a blind eye to some of the more questionable goods coming under the border, not least Tramadol, a highly addictive prescription drug currently wreaking havoc in Gazan society.

---

RIP Ra’ed Sawalha

Space is curved, the earth is curved, everything on earth is curved.

the BBC have a 38 second video here of street scenes following the car bomb explosion in Bathaa, southern Iraq, that killed at least twenty eight people earlier.

humans are crying.

percentage of British voters who voted for a neo-nazi party last week, by region (source: the BBC NEWS website)

Yorkshire and the Humber in northern England - 9.8%

north east England - 8.9

east midlands of England - 8.7

west midlands of England - 8.6

north west England - 8

east of England - 6.1

Wales - 5.4

London - 4.9

south east England - 4.4

south west England - 3.9

Scotland - 2.5

though of course less dismal, the stupid and bigoted shower the Tories wish to align themselves with in the European parliament and hypocritical Ukip's self-congratulatory press conferences were two other dispiriting British troughs (granted, the Tory issue is far more serious than what bits of paper Nigel Farage waves around)

"President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo may boast of sustained economic growth since she assumed office nearly a decade ago but she failed her most important challenge: lifting hungry and jobless Filipinos out of poverty.

President Arroyo, the country’s second-longest serving president since Ferdinand Marcos, “clearly failed" her mandate of ensuring that more Filipinos live decent lives, economist Solita Collas-Monsod of the University of the Philippines (UP) said.

“Although the GDP (gross domestic product) improved at a faster pace but this did not get reflected on incomes. It seems that the increase in income went to everybody else but the poor," said Monsod during the launch of the Philippine Human Development Report (PHDR) 2008/2009."

here. (via.)

(both worth reading in full.)

just when you thought Colombo had already stooped to all the possible new lows

'Nowhere to Turn is a report documenting the scope and long-term impact of rape and other sexual violence experienced by women who fled attacks on their villages in Darfur and are now refugees in neighboring Chad.'

singing The Internationale

the fucking nerve of the Daily Express telling its readers not to vote BNP (fair play for that, as if this needs stating here), when the Express - for years - with its distortions and disingenuousness regarding asylum seekers and immigrants to the UK, has been acting as a recruiting sergeant for the cunts, an albeit unwitting outrider, and unwitting only in the fact that people like Macer Hall and Patrick O'Flynn are fucking dozy bastards, filled with stupidity and rank political values

what a shower of bastards, fucking arseholes the lot of them

RIP Tajudeen Abdul Raheem.

"a giant is lost on African Liberation Day"

final one from me today

as user klaxonklaxon says 'Scientist remix of Michael Prophet's "You Are A No Good"(Gunman LP)'

(this from user Jon Gersdorf)

“We’re on terra incognito,” said Rashid Abdi, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit group that tries to prevent deadly conflicts. “Before, everything was clan. Now we are beginning to see the contours of an ideological, sectarian war in Somalia for the first time, and that scares me.”
...
“We respected the Shabab for helping drive out the Ethiopians,” said one woman in Dusa Marreb who asked not to be identified for safety reasons. “But when the Ethiopians left and the Shabab kept the war going, that to us didn’t make sense.”
...
“We have jihad, too,” said Sheik Omar, a tall man with a long beard and warm eyes. “But it’s inner jihad, a struggle to be pure.”

here

got to love the vocal

look a boom look a boom, that great line descending down, snazz in the background

big, big tune- every song on this LP is

How do I know all that?
How can I know all that and not know who I am?

Dear Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor,

bye.

James Albert Corbett

in which Peter Ryley completely owns Marcel Berlins

Dear Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor,

bye.

'However the BBC's Natalia Antelava, in Baghdad, says many people in the capital feel the situation is deteriorating and could get worse once US troops withdraw from Iraqi cities at the end of June.'

as Ollie would say,

In November 1995, The Wire published an article titled "Advice to Clever Children." In the process of producing the interview, a package of tapes containing music from several artists, including Aphex Twin, was sent to Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Stockhausen commented:

I heard the piece Aphex Twin of Richard James carefully: I think it would be very helpful if he listens to my work "Song of the Youth," which is electronic music, and a young boy's voice singing with himself. Because he would then immediately stop with all these post-African repetitions, and he would look for changing tempi and changing rhythms, and he would not allow to repeat any rhythm if it [was] varied to some extent and if it did not have a direction in its sequence of variations.”

Aphex Twin responded: "I thought he should listen to a track of mine: 'Didgeridoo,' then he'd stop making abstract, random patterns you can't dance to."

seen

Dear Hiam Abbass,

I am comfortably the age to be your son, so, i had best not finish this sentence, although anyone reading this sentence knows what i am saying, and i apologise for the tone which is blatantly objectifying (yes, i know all about that) and i hope you do not find it too crass or such..

i'm just going off the last 101 songs you adore post that a chum hipped me to on Facebook (why did i delete my Myspace?! gah), so here goes, and yes, fashion industry, the real world, structural politics, Marxism, yadda yadda, and, yes, i love this song more than i have words to say

fuck me i love this tune to death

"A CANDIDATE standing in the European election for the extremist right wing British National Party has posted racist comments on the internet.

Eddy O'Sullivan, the Salford organiser of the BNP, wrote a series of offensive comments about non-white people on his Facebook profile."

DA DA DA

Anastasia Baburova

born on the 30th of November 1983 in Sevastopol,
died on the 19th of January 2009 in Moscow.



Stanislav Yuryevich Markelov

born on the 20th of May 1974 in Moscow,
died on the 19th of January 2009 in Moscow.

In the central town of Mahas, witnesses said Shabaab fighters beheaded a local elder and burnt his body on Sunday.

"We have carried his bones and some of his burnt flesh and had a burial this morning," resident Ahmed Farah told Reuters.

"They always do this when they want to terrorise residents."

Jon and Matt both light the way for Sonic Youth

'Mr Rajapaksa added that Sri Lanka was now "a country that has been totally freed from the barbaric acts of the LTTE"'

let's hope so, you appalling, vicious phoney.

Dini, whose group monitors children, said 60 of the 150 dead and 125 of the more than 300 injured were children.

i am honour bound to hold up my hands and laud this piece from Martin Jacques as the bloke is always slagged off around here.

because - thanks to my dear friend Oliver - i've just started on Renzo Felice's fascism introduction (with fine dialogue from Michael Ledeen), i am going to have to say a few of the terms Jacques bandies about are perhaps a bit much, but the central thrust of his byline, about opponents of Berlusconi being increasingly beleaguered, is correct, and this thesis has very worrying implications.

he makes a sensible point about populism.

Meanwhile, he has systematically fought to discredit the judiciary, accusing the judges of being agents of the left, to the point where, from being heroes of the “Tangentopoli” scandal in the early 1990s, they are now widely discredited. Or, to put it another way, bit by bit the separation of powers, so crucial to the well-being of any democracy, is being undermined and replaced by an extraordinary concentration of power in the hands of one man.

let us be clear: Berlusconi is no joke.

he is serious.

he needs to be taken seriously (these comments apply to his interior minister, Roberto Maroni, equally).

they need to be opposed.

'The dire situation that has provoked people to protest in Tbilisi is not being addressed because there are no mechanisms or "rules of the game" that can be the foundation for a collective effort to find answers'

i can send someone to kill your child

in stark contrast to Woodhead the insightful sage, the regrettable Christie Blatchford is here

blessed are the meek, for if they sit around long enough in their own filth, endlessly trying to work out the linkage between kullas in south east Europe and the forty year or longer struggle of an elderly great uncle to fix up a roof that has always needed it in north west Europe (those excuses on his lip, or time-worn reflection, or shall we cut a nuanced, humane, empathetic break?), whilst perhaps sucking on some pastilles, well, they will invariably sit around long enough for the great and wise Chris Woodhead to saunter over and explain absolutely everything

"Yet, in its haste to reap short-term financial gains and to replenish its dwindling foreign exchange reserves, the government of Pakistan seems to be ceding control over the country's cultivable lands."

'Child traffickers are targeting the UK because of the ease with which they can move victims through British ports and local authority care homes, the chairman of a parliamentary inquiry into human trafficking has warned.
...
Cautious estimates suggest five suspected victims of child trafficking go missing from care around ports and airports in the UK every week.
...
Vaz also said there was "a growing connection" between local authority care facilities and trafficking, exemplified he said by the case exposed in the Guardian last week of 77 Chinese children missing from a single care home next to Heathrow airport since March 2006, only four of whom have been found. Two girls had been exploited as prostitutes in the Midlands, and others were suspected of having been forced to work in the drug trade and illegal labour.'

copy of Islamism and its Enemies in the Horn of Africa (Hurst, 2004), edited by de Waal and with contributions from him and three others, who are Roland Marchal, M.A. Mohamed Salih and A.H. Abdel Salam.

i'll just put a few quotes down here (not read it yet), for an introductory flavour from the earliest sections, and note any seeming lack of nuance below is nothing to do with the authors and all because i'm cherry-picking to an extent, and so some other contextual paragraphs directly related to the ones below may not be shown.

The shortcomings of Islamism are intellectual, social, political and military. These failures are evident not just to political scientists and analysts, but to the citizens of the countries concerned. For example, at the time of writing there is widespread popular support in Sudan for an American-led initiative to end that country's civil war and establish a more representative and less Islamist government. The disastrous experience of political Islam is part of every Sudanese's personal experience. [pp.1-2]
...
One of the persistent themes of this book is that political Islam in its various manifestations - organisational, philanthropic, military - is poor at moving from a micro-level to a wider national level. Islamism appears to operate well as an ideology of resistance, nourished by allegations of conspiracy and by the martyrdom of its adherents, but fails when it exercises power. [p.8]
...
Despite the vision of its advocates, that Islamism is a vibrant alternative, with the potential to promote democracy and civil society, contributing a comprehensive and humane vision that mixes private enterprise, community and social welfare, the record of its 'big project' has ultimately been one of failure. And this failure is eroding the gains of its 'little projects' [things like local charity - s]...
But two caveats are in order. The first is that Islamism's enemies in the region have also failed. Authoritarian patrimonial states such as Egypt have nothing to offer. The radical militarised left that took power in many African countries between 1986 and 1997 briefly offered an energetic alternative, but also failed, descending into a series of wars. The second is that time has moved on...Islamism too is fated to take on new forms. Undoubtedly, new variants of political Islam will continue to appeal to Muslims, especially the young and marginalised. They will translate into political agendas of resisting a global order that is currently offering them nothing. [p.21]

that'll do for now.

i must apologise for the incredibly mean-spirited and wounding words i directed toward Mia Farrow and the like the other day; it was out of line, small, puny and dumb.

critiques of the Save Darfur campaign are all well and good but i think my usage of the word "worthy" was, arguably, misplaced. (who knows? not me, obviously.)

fair play to the Pope on calls for an independent Palestinian state.

shells falling on the head

shells falling on your head

shells falling on your head and killing you

shells fired by the Sri Lankan army on your head and the heads of your children, who are small and young and physically weak and exhausted

shells fired on that mute man over there

shells fired on that woman over there whose heart is rent by love-melancholy

north in the same region Islamists are pouring acid on the face of your daughter.

they do this because they do not like women.

the Prophet did not say this but there are stupid, vile old men who do not like women who maintain the Prophet said this.

they are lying.

they are all lying.

everybody lies.

so you take a gun.

Osler: 'Let extremists visit Britain'

briefly, wrt Mahmood Mamdani's Saviors and Survivors the man himself admirably says during his first right of reply to critics that "I hope to do this in a way that may contribute to taking the discussion forward, rather than freezing it in a defensive posture".

it is obviously necessary to criticise the idiocies of celebrity advocates like Mia Farrow and somebody taking aim at the reductions of the 'Save Darfur' movement is clearly a worthy project (activism can often use a fairly easily understandable public message, no, for reasons of tactic, for better or worse), but so far, on the crucial subject of objections from specialist Alex de Waal and historian Martin W Daly about Mamdani's take on the history of Darfur and Sudan, the author has not convinced in covering his own back. (but let's see what else he comes up with, tbf.)

i was struck by one particular part of an account from Mamdani's own Columbia University of a debate, about practical ways to ease the Darfur crisis, that he had with one-time ICG man John Prendergast.

Instead of providing new solutions for Darfur, Mamdani diverted the discussion from examining the actual problems in Sudan to the external problems affecting Sudan . How unfortunate during this critical time, he chose to focus his energy on messaging, statistical analysis and semantics, when 2009 has wracked the people of Sudan with the harshest realities on the ground imaginable.

(it should also be noted the write-up finishes with "So sadly, just as it began, the debate ended as if on two separate roads and the original purpose was again drowned out by the flashier, sexier side of who’s really to blame for Africa’s problems.")

from an absurdly parochial left-wing wealthy democrat pov, i hope readers do not confuse straw-men (i am sure the following people do actually exist but i've no interest in talking to them and have never read any, so apologies for the tone) who apparently have simplified the conflict to the extent of 'black Africans versus evil Arabs and nothing more than that' with the respectable commentators who have a broad view of the Darfur crisis and still find aspects of Mamdani perhaps tendentious.

this is not to downplay Mamdani's points where he seeks to link the War on Terror with liberal interventionism but rather to recall that sectarians - sometimes disingenuous - will seek to partially use new work for their own, not necessarily noble, ends.

Alex de Waal has another good point when he notes "Is interesting to note how Mamdani’s book resonates in Africa: it speaks to people’s worries about the humanitarian imperium, while they are equally concerned that this critique will let abusive leaders off the hook."

it was, of course, de Waal who said that what has happened in modern Darfur (the purposeful fault of Khartoum, for the most part, to paraphrase myself) is not genocide, but no less serious than genocide.

this blog intends to address the long-running spat between the laudable (if somewhat absolutist) Eric Reeves and de Waal in time, so doubtless there will be another post or so on Mamdani later, more in-depth.

Emerald Bile on Americans

Americans make a real meal of it when things go wrong. They made a terrible fuss about 9/11 and still harp on about it ...They have a real problem with the shops being closed as well, and this is not the fault of americans, it is the fault of the television and those shows where people get upset about something, and instead of shouting, or going to the pub

and the English

"No, St George did not do a particularly good job at pest control, especially compared to his highly efficent, holy neighbour St Patrick, and that is the real reason for his fete not being a public holiday in England. Don't say that to anyone English though, or they will cut you."

and the news desk on the UK's 'least wanted' list

Italy on Thursday cheered a "historic" deportation of 227 migrants who were intercepted at sea and sent directly back to Libya before touching shore, in what one rights group said was a violation of international law.

this is very bad.

this is collecting a group of people who are not Libyan or EU nationals (but came through Libya) and not even allowing them to land to process them, to see if there are any asylum claims to be made, and so on.

this is turning people back to the tender embrace of the Libyan state.

it is shockingly bad.

appalling.

(h/t: Will.)

Peter Oborne wrote a large-hearted column in today's Mail, for which he must be commended.

it concerned the tragedy and brutality of civilian casualties - and the potential for such - the Pakistani army ('brave men all', as he put it, or respectful words to that effect) was responsible for, or in danger of wreaking, during its fight with insurgents.

there was at least one misstep though, that i would like to mention.

Oborne mentioned massive modern civilian tragedies classified by region, ie the Balkans ("10 years ago") and Darfur ("five years ago").

of course, ongoing crimes are still taking place in Darfur, and largely the purposeful fault of the regime in Khartoum, a government that has many friends in world capitals.

'The Canadians also slam their opponents for regularly using adorable white-coated seal pups in their fundraising and promotional material even though the harvesting of whitecoat seals has been banned in Canada for more than two decades.'

(from here)

Rouge's Foam riffs on from David Stubbs, whilst SR provides a 'nuum checkcard and Dan moves things forward (check the Paul Gilroy stuff!)

Jonathan Freedland reviews the anthropologist David Vine's Island of Shame at the NYRB, and it's a good 101 on the Chagossians.

(there's a small reference to the original episode of killing all the dogs living in Diego Garcia back in the day that Granta's 2001 piece on same - once noted here - by Simon Winchester covered so effectively.)

points worth flagging, not Chagos Islander specific (the details about them are awful enough).

In Vine's persuasive telling, it is from the expansionist instincts of the military services, rather than the conscious decisions of civilian policymakers, that the imperialist project draws much of its energy.

He estimated that as many as 150 tanks, armored personnel carriers, heavy artillery, and engineering vehicles were kept in the hold of cargo vessels, safely away from the corrosive sea air. Every year or so, Mates was told, the entire fleet is sailed back to the US, where the vehicles are unloaded, driven around to make sure they still work properly, then reloaded onto the ships and sailed back to Diego Garcia.

There is a further, more intriguing difference between contemporary US officials and their imperialist forebears. The ancients would be surprised to see that their current counterparts have reversed the previous driving logic of empire. Following the lead of the Romans, London once dreamed of coloring the map pink, ruling the world by conquering as much territory as it could. But its US successor seeks to do the opposite, to rule by holding, directly at least, as little terrain as it can.

i had the immense good fortune of eating some left-over takeaway food from the other day, this evening.

i put the lamb tikka dupiaza and chana rice in a Pyrex dish and cooked it through on a low heat for about three and a half hours and it was heavenly.

just now i ate a Cadbury Creme Egg.

you know when you eat something and then it makes you want to scoop out your insides, perhaps scrape them with some bladed implement?
as if it would be alright if you could just attack yourself, somehow press things in your body down, iron yourself out.

make everything entirely flat, everywhere, like an unbroken landscape.

yeah.

Fred Williams again, and the desolation of the Australian desert.
there is beauty there, and death, but it would mean not having to worry about ironing oneself, trying to pluck things out of your stomach, you useless piece of shit.

like that.

this brilliant post - and DaveM's comment at 3:18 pm

Diana Henry is a sexy Irishwoman who writes about food for the Telegraph.

i want to quote the following three lines as they're positively pornographic:

Six years ago I found myself sitting on a pier by one of those cute Swedish wooden houses, the sun reluctant to set, with a platter of roast beetroot on the table. There was also hot-smoked salmon, boiled potatoes glossy with butter and flecked with dill, and a bowl of sour cream. The sweet, soft flesh of the beetroot was a revelation.

War on the Displaced
Sri Lankan Army and LTTE Abuses against Civilians in the Vanni

FEBRUARY 20, 2009
This 45-page report is based on a two-week fact-finding mission to northern Sri Lanka in February. The government has prohibited journalists and human rights monitors from going to the battle zone in the Vanni, making access to information difficult.

the exuberance of youth

right i'm off.

RIP Delara Darabi

---

(thx afp)

(thx afp)

Martin Jacques has been banging this sort of drum for years.

tsk.