19 Friday Jul 2013
Posted in Free Speech, Journalism
Tom Hundley, the Pulitzer Center’s senior editor and a former foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, is more blunt: “This great mass of freelancers who are depending on grants from us and working on pitiful fees from brand-name outlets—I mean, this just isn’t going to work.”
18 Thursday Jul 2013
At first glance, the protests and coup in Egypt have little in common with the Syrian sectarian violence. Yet less than a month before the coup, Morsi called Shiite Muslims “filthy” while on stage with hardline clerics.
18 Thursday Jul 2013
Great Britain is in the throes of a rape and pedophilia epidemic unlike anything the country has experienced in living memory.
Many of the sex crimes are being perpetrated by Muslim child grooming gangs responsible for drugging, raping and torturing hundreds and possibly thousands of British girls.
Kern, Soeren. “UK Taxi Rapes: ‘No Woman is Safe in a Cab’.” Gatestone Institute, July 17, 2013.
Astria Berwick was jailed for 16 months in Nottingham Crown Court yesterday after admitting to perverting the course of justice by wrongly accusing Mohammed Asif of rape on February 20, the Telegraph reports.
Alys, Francis. “Taxi driver uses phone app to expose false rape claim.” 9 News World, July 5, 2013.
This tawdry bit of potential but not proven bigotry goes back a couple of years, at least, with a look-see request for appropriate statistics (request denied: data not compiled and therefore not available).
In 2009, The Guardian’s Sandra Laville reported “Taxi rapist may have attacked more than 100” and the “perp” was known: John Worboys (Wikipedia reference), and of Warboys, Laville went on to write, “. . . 51, a licensed London cab driver, was told yesterday he faces a “very substantial” jail sentence after a jury convicted him of 19 charges of drugging and sexually assaulting 12 of the women, in one case raping his victim.”
Sensational reading, that, but, alas for the anti-Jihad, not Jihad reading.
Brief web searching turns up a few stories about Muslims and cabs, this one involving a driver’s unprofessional behavior — Robinson, Martin. “Muslim taxi driver dumps family out of his cab after spotting an unopened bottle of wine saying it was against his religion.” Mail Online, April 14, 2012 — and this one an assault by a passenger on a Muslim driver: “Accrington bank boss assaulted taxi driver,” Lancashire Telegraph, January 18, 2013: “Shorrock, 43, of Dill Hall Lane, Church, pleaded guilty to assaulting Talib Hussain.”
The name “Talib Hussain” shows up in another, more recent report:
“A 62-YEAR-old taxi driver has appeared before Blackburn magistrates charged with indecently assaulting a 16-year-old girl.
The court heard the alleged assault happened outside a house in Accrington.”
Talib Hussain was to have appeared before the court yesterday (July 17, 2013), but I see no reports (yet) on that appearance.
Another incident cited, that involving Mohamed Hacene-Chaouch of “Catfor, south-east London” has been in the news recently — Duell, Mark, “Unlicensed Algerian cab driver is jailed for rape nine years after being cleared of near identical attack,” Mail Online, June 24, 2013 — and it turns out he had been cleared of similar charges a decade ago but not on the recent ones that have brought him a seven-year sentence.
Soeren Kern’s Gatestone piece, which is burning across the anti-Jihad web, however, goes on to list 27 cases backed by news reports, but, even so, in at least one case, what does one do with, “The attacker is described as Asian, around 40, 5ft6in tall and with a big stomach”? (Stenhouse, Kate. “Taxi drivers ‘sickened’ after cabbie sexually assaults teenage passenger,” Nottingham Post, June 12, 2013).
Unless a throaty “Alahu Akhbar!” was involved, the emphasis on “Asian” seems to me more xenophobic than analog, and then underscored perhaps by the British colloquial use of the term “Asian” to refer to the southeast Asian Islamic quarter.
Still, 27 cases minus one (or two — I’m not checking them all, and may gods of journalism have mercy on this humble old blogger) paint a picture:
Khalile Maqsood raped the 20-year-old at knifepoint after driving her to a deserted car park in Billingham last September.
He said the young woman, who refused his advances after he picked her up as she walked alone to a party, had led him on and had been “really up for it”.
MacKnight, Hugh. “Jail term for taxi driver rapist Khalile Maqsood.” The Independent, April 13, 2012.
Still, one might ask, who else is in jail on similar terms and perhaps white with strawberry freckles and as Christian as the Queen?
In January 2013, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Home Office released its first ever joint Official Statistics bulletin on sexual violence, entitled An Overview of Sexual Offending in England and Wales.
It reported that:
Source: Rapecrisis England and Wales.
The source references a report from the Office for National Statistics. A summary bulletin offering an “Offender histories” section provides no reference to demography: the histories refer to “previous offending of offenders convicted for sexual offences.”
The search string “Gatestone British taxi rape story” Googles up Iron Burka, Keep the shuttle flying, Silo Breaker, Bare Naked Islam. Other similar search will yield other, similar coverage or replays like that on Frontpage.
I’ve no doubt the egocentric qualities, malignant and narcissistic, represented in the quotation caught by Hugh MacKnight, “He said the young woman, who refused his advances after he picked her up as she walked alone to a party, had led him on and had been “really up for it” denotes an attitude that has itself a story behind it, and it’s that story about attitudes toward women, temptation, locus of control and responsibility, and lack of restraint or containment of impulses that disturbs the civil state and most certainly works in the background to promote Soeren Kern’s report.
An attitude may reveal itself through the mouth (by words) or behavior (the “grope and rape” facet coursing around the last, most recent spate of demonstrations in Cairo), but it does not wear a badge, a skin color, an ethnicity, or a religion, although it may express itself through the qualities designed into or emphasized in that last item.
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The kafir bring an unopened bottle of wine into a Muslim cabby’s domain, and he ejects them for violating the tenets of his religion. In such a way, perhaps, he had felt his faith tested by what God, the commander of fate, had thrown into his path, albeit the rear bench of his work place.
A young drunk women needs a ride home, and perhaps the Muslim cabby — not all Muslims, not all cabbies, not all Muslim cabbies — sees in her a whore, an opportunity, an excuse for indiscretion, and what he’s going to do is not really his fault in any case . . . and then he does what he does and has the temerity in court to say what is or is equivalent to, “she led him on and was really up for it.”
Sure she was.
And you had a wife.
And children.
And work.
What were you thinking?
And in Her Majesty’s fine prison, what are you thinking now?
Dodd, Vikram. “Is child grooming and sexual abuse a race issue?” The Guardian, May 14, 2013.
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18 Thursday Jul 2013
17 Wednesday Jul 2013
Tags
Published in 1999:
Well, what do you expect, reply the claimants, when so many of these cases refer to stolen assets? “We are not talking about putting a price on those who died, but on what was stolen from them,” declares Elan Steinberg, the executive director of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in New York.
The Economist. “Putting a price on the Holocaust.” November 25, 1999.
Published today, July 17, 2013:
Holocaust survivors and victims’ heirs have received $1.24 billion from a Swiss fund set up after a scandal over dormant accounts of Jews killed in World War II, a magazine said Monday . . . The banks were accused of keeping money owned by Jews who had hidden funds in secret accounts in neutral Switzerland but then perished in the Holocaust, and of having given heirs the cold shoulder when they tried to track down the money.
AFP. “Swiss Banks ‘Shoah fund’ paid out $1.24B'”. YNet News, July 17, 2013.
I often repeat Hillel the Elder‘s “prime directive” — if I may borrow from Star Trek’s language — as he distilled it from the study of the Torah: “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another.”
That one thought, among other of Rabbi Hillel’s many judgments and observations, has provided not only Jews but a vast portion of the modern world with an outlook expressed in contemporary legal philosophy and liberalism. However, there seems to me also a more roughly spoken basis for justice and peace between often adversarial and contentious humans: “Because it could happen to you!”
“Because it could happen to you,” the best law that we may develop between us must serve us both.
There are corollaries, including that ages old punch-the-shoulder game between brothers (“If you hit me, I’ll hit you back twice as hard”).
That one leads to equal bruising and a very doubtful “winner”.
As a language string, “It could happen to you” has a small life online as the title of a movie, also a domestic abuse blog, and a gay rights video produced in relation to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) recently savaged by the U.S. Supreme Court, and as a line in a song sung by Frank Sinatra.
“Because it could happen to you” barely exists at all.
And yet what is our sense of fairness, of justice, if not wrapped around “because it could happen to you” integrated with “because it could happen to me”?
If not immediately involved in a crime as either criminal or victim, we are continuously engaged with the ethical and moral choices available to both. )As an aside, I would note the best storytellers find the twisting moral core of their stories right fast).
Back on beam, Hillel the Elder also observed by way of a question, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, who am I?”
Again, “because it could happen to you” and you / I / we could wake to a world absent of compassion, empathy, measure, and reason.
“Because it could happen to you,” don’t make me wake up in that world, and because it could happen to me, it’s incumbent upon me to see that you not wake up in such a world either.
What Hitler’s poison did to Germans and then what the Nazis did to the Jews and others by way of theft of labor, property, and life has found some justice in reparations, and, however reluctant, Swiss cooperation in the restoration of funds left abandoned by way of Nazi murder has also contributed to justice.
I could end this post with this from The New York Times:
On Thursday, Mr. Kent opened his speech with a quotation from a German poet, Heinrich Heine, who converted to Christianity from Judaism. Mr. Kent drew a parallel, reflecting how the process of working with the former enemy toward a common goal has altered his perception.
“We survivors and the Germans of today are together united,” Mr. Kent said. “Both of us do not want our past to be our children’s future.”
As sweet as sentiment may be and whatever good has come from a necessary and responsible reconciliation, one may wish not to set aside the Roma, who today with the Jews are again in the cross-hairs of a resurgent Hungarian nationalism, nor the Poles who got caught in the Nazi vice — with those in addition to losses, one wonders at the memories left in the forests and carried into the present by the now elderly remnant of World War II.
We have a long way to go, and not necessarily with reparations but with one another and a sturdy enough central concept of justice to serve the coming ages.
With basic Wikipedia references in the area of justice, mention of Lassa Oppenheim (no relation to me, so far as I know), Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, I’ve included a little more in this section that I would usually; however, through the Holocaust story, from its 1930s prelude to its now 2010s epilogue, one may see also a window into a future with an international law and legal structure that better ensures fairness and justice for thee and me — perhaps because we should regard what we do to one another as part and parcel of what we do to ourselves — across the broadest cultural, ethnic, national, religious, and tribal global campus.
Jewish Virtual Library. “Holocaust Restitution: German Reparations”:
On Sept. 20, 1945, three months after the end of World War II, Chaim Weizmann, on behalf of the Jewish Agency, submitted to the governments of the US, USSR, UK, and France, a memorandum demanding reparations, restitution, and indemnification due to the Jewish people from Germany for its involvement in the Holocaust. He appealed to the Allied Powers to include this claim in their own negotiations for reparations with Germany, in view of the “mass murder, the human suffering, the annihilation of spiritual, intellectual, and creative forces, which are without parallel in the history of mankind.”
Powers, Charles. In the Memory of the Forest. Penguin Books, 1998.
Telushkin, Joseph. Hillel: If Not Now, When? Schocken, 2010.
Tzvi, Rina. “Hungary Signs New Holocaust Survivor Reparation Deal.” Arutz Sheva, July 7, 2013.
Wikipedia. “Distributive Justice”.
Wikipedia. “Hillel the Elder”.
Wikipedia. “L. F. L. Oppenheim”: “Lassa Francis Lawrence Oppenheim (March 30, 1858 – October 7, 1919) was a renowned German jurist. He is regarded by many as the father of the modern discipline ofinternational law, especially the hard legal positivist school of thought. He inspired Joseph Raz and Prosper Weil.”
Wikipedia. “Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany”:
The Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany(German: Luxemburger Abkommen, Hebrew: הסכם השילומים Heskem HaShillumim) was signed on September 10, 1952,[1] and entered in force on March 27, 1953.[2] According to the Agreement, West Germany was to payIsrael for the slave labor and persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, and to compensate for Jewish property that was stolen by the Nazis.
Wikipedia. “Restorative justice”.
16 Tuesday Jul 2013
Tags
Syria has one thing going for it today: the world cares. If it continues on its course, if civil and internecine war continue “building down” Syrian infrastructure and social structure along lines more familiar to Mogadishu than Damascus, the world — the communities of the caring and of the politicos — may shift attention to containing the meltdown while letting the fighting move around in its own wasteland.
The UN had this to say today:
Since fighting began in March 2011 between the Syrian Government and opposition groups seeking to oust President Bashar Al-Assad as many as 100,000 people have been killed, almost 2 million have fled to neighbouring countries and a further 4 million have been internally displaced. In addition, at least 6.8 million Syrian require urgent humanitarian assistance, half of whom are children.
I’ve little to add to that except, perhaps, to call the Syrian Devolution a war between criminals, brigands, liars, and thieves, from the top offices of the state right down to its blood-spattered fields and streets.
Aid groups and United Nations officials are pleading with the Syrian government and armed opposition groups to allow access to unarmed civilians, saying crimes against humanity “are the rule” as fighting rages on in the Syrian civil war.
VOA News. “UN Officials: War Crimes Now ‘The Rule’ in Syria.” July 16, 2013.
Salim Idris may be the one decent presence on the ground in Syria, but he is bucking atop a wild horse badgered or infiltrated by Al Qaeda / Taliban-type (“Islamist”) fighters.
There are times I wonder why “unarmed civilians” remain unarmed and “moderate rebel units” seem unable to prove themselves as vicious and ruthless as the immoderate forces that have appeared to undermine them.
I’ve updated reference at the top of a recent post, “Syria Taliban–Brief Aggregation,” (July 15, 2013) as the more stable governments involved seem to be missing intelligence, or trying to catch up, within the Syrian theater.
Dettmer, Jamie. “WFP Seeks More Money to Cope with Syrian Crisis.” VOA, July 16, 2013.
Euronews. “UN: Syrian conflict is the worst humanitarian crisis in nearly 20 years.” July 16, 2013.
Tutu, Demond. “We are all shamed by Syria’s suffering.” The Elders, March 25, 2013.
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16 Tuesday Jul 2013
Tags
“I Am Malala (Official Music Video)”
Fasten your seat belt!
Politics has found its way back to music and the Information Flyway has just brought you the kick-off of “The Malala Generation”.
Bourgeoisie in a great way, brave, concerned, inclusive, intellectual, liberal, progressive . . . .
Of course, not everyone likes that.
Ignoring the text of her speech, which spoke out for the rights of girls and women and implored world leaders to choose peace instead of war, the naysayers tore down the young woman, her father, and Western nations for supporting her in her quest for education.
Shah, Bina. “The Malala backlash.” Dawn, July 16, 2013.
Nonetheless, to reach back for the drift, last October, the BBC ran the header, “Malala Yousafzai will ‘inspire a new generation,” and you wish it could set you right on the ponies too.
As a young Canadian, I admire her. Only 19-years-old myself, I’ve been lucky to have seen some amazing and eloquent speakers in the past, including both Bill and Hilary Clinton and the former Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. Nonetheless, speaking just after the UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon, Malala resolutely took the stand. Not a single of those mentioned could even touch the inspiration coming from this girl from Pakistan.
Khan, Jaxson. “What a young Canadian heard when Malala spoke.” The Nation, July 16, 2013.
Gulf Times. “Malala effect sparks courage in villagers.” July 13, 2013.
Malala’s refusal to climb down in the face of death threats from the Taliban not only challenged their gender based discrimination, but broke the ancient code of silence (the ‘shut up and put up’ code) enforced upon girls. Despite the danger, she refused to be unvoiced. Malala demonstrated that nothing is more powerful and influential against the misogynistic and extremist narrative of the Taliban than the voice of a young girl.
Kay, Marylou. “Malala: The uplifting brand of a young world leader (Video). Examiner, July 15, 2013.
Siddiqui, Fazeela. “10 Muslim Women Every Person Should Know.” The Huffington Post, March 24, 2012. While Malala is not (yet) a part of Siddizui’s listings, the notables mentioned may be illuminating along similar lines.
Spiegel Online Staff. “Girl Rising: Malala Fires Up a New Generation.” Spiegel Online, July 12, 2013.
7: how many times more that Pakistan invests in military spending than in primary schooling. This coming fiscal year, Pakistan has increased its defense budget by 15 percent, to $6.4 billion, while education spending has decreased from 2.6-to 2.3-percent of GNP over the past decade. Only seven other developing countries in the world spend less than Pakistan does on education.
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Posted to YouTube March 19, 2013:
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Make of the juxtaposition what you will!
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15 Monday Jul 2013
Tags
conflict, Islamic Small Wars, journalism, numbers, Syria, Taliban, war
Officials will catch up with the war just as soon as it moves farther away from them and far into the Twilight Zone of Language in which lying may tell more about states of affairs — and the character of motives involved — than truth telling.
* * *
Al Jazeera. “Pakistan Taliban says its fighters in Syria.” July 16, 2013.
PTI. “Pakistan verifying reports of Taliban fighting in Syria.” DNA, July 16, 2013.
VOA. “Pakistan Denies Local Taliban Has Sent Hundreds of Fighters to Syria.”
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So awful has the Syrian melee become, but this precisely in the manner of the Islamic Small Wars’ “hot zones”, that even eagle-eyed satellites probably can’t tell much about who (from where) is fighting whom (from where).
Send in the spies and wish them luck because if any get out information — much less survive — on behalf of any of the interests involved, that data has to come from either direct witness or a additional primary sources that may well be lying themselves.
Most travellers (STET) must have a visa to enter Syria; the only exceptions are citizens of Arab countries. Obtain a visa before arriving at the border, preferably in your home country, well before your trip. Avoid applying in a country that’s not your own or that you don’t hold residency for as the Syrian authorities don’t like this.
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/syria/practical-information/visas#ixzz2Z94ewuqn
Ahmed Ressam, the focus of this FRONTLINE report, was somewhat of an expert in fake passports. He used a counterfeit French passport to enter Canada and apply for political asylum. While living there, he supplied fake Canadian passports to other Algerians. And he used a fake Canadian passport under the alias of Benni Noris in his failed attempt to enter the United States and bomb Los Angeles International Airport.
Apparently, the lawful go to the bother of obtaining authentic passports and entry visas while the unlawful do much the same in pursuit of inauthentic passports and visas.
🙂
As with proposed firearms laws in the U.S., the lawful are to have the registered and traceable weapons, leaving the unlawful with unregistered and less traceable weapons.
No news here, huh?
😦
The appearance of the Taliban in the Syrian theater underscores the notion (mentioned here several times) that Syria is “dark energy”, an imploding star, the black hole of the Islamic Small Wars: it sucks in energy and plainly burns without end in sight.
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However, one may ask, who has gotten out?
Russia has evacuated the last of its personnel from Syria, including from its Mediterranean naval base in Tartus, in a move that appears to underline Moscow’s mounting concerns about the escalating crisis.
Of course, the figures of who has been trying to get away from combat in Syria hovers around four million in combined internally displaced and refugee persons.
If the dead may be considered those who also left, then add about 100,000 to whatever the total figure may be of persons unavailable for fighting.
At the moment, there seem to be about 200 civilians trapped in a Damascus mosque (e.g., Sky News, “Syria: 200 Civilians ‘Trapped in Mosque’,” July 15, 2013).
Gulf News / Retuers reports, “In Qaboun, Republican Guards troops detained hundreds of people in public places to prevent rebel fighters from hitting government troops as they breached rebel defences and entered the district, activists said” (“Syria: Bashar Al Assad’s forces advance on rebel-held Qaboun,” July 15, 2013).
If the above sentence said to you other than “Assad’s forces use human shields,” please remark on the alternative reading.
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Ye know the co-producers by their music!
What happens in Syria should stay in Syria.
Update 1/22/2014: the music was Russian, grand, so I recall. Evidently, the suggestion has been removed. I’ll leave the pulled-abandoned tiles up for a while. / I believe Mr. Putin holds the keys to Syria, an old Soviet client, now a potential New Russia Secular state because Russians, foremost, and most everyone else have no want of who’s been laying down the law lately in some Syrian enclaves:
Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists impose Islamic rules, ban music, shisha in Syrian province — RT News – 1/21/2014.
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But it doesn’t.
The wounded refugees were kicked out of the hospital by force, thrown on the side of the adjacent roads, despite the presence of seriously wounded and paralyzed individuals.
Nmsyria. “Wounded Syrians Kicked Out of Lebanese Hospital.” July 15, 2013.
Related video:
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While many clearly oppose the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his security forces, others appear indifferent. Abu Hamza, a driver, now lives with his family in a dusty canvas tent. “I didn’t go to protests. I’m not political,” he says. “We left because of the shelling and the sniping”.
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Syria has become a death camp.
It has become the place between a decayed Soviet-Era dictatorship and a boisterous but malignant and deeply narcissistic global totalitarian religious assault.
Syria has become the place where fighters go to fight — nationalist, Islamists, Sunni rebels, Shiite militants — and the place of catastrophe for four million lives disrupted and uprooted “because of the shelling and the sniping.”
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AP. “Pakistan’s religious extremists leave for ‘greener pastures’.” Dawn, July 15, 2013.
Leigh, Karen. “War Comes to a Damascus Private School.” Syria Deeply, July 1, 2013.
Roggio, Bill. “Pakistani Taliban establish ‘base’ inside Syria.” The Long War Journal, July 12, 2013.
RT. “Syrian rebels’ Damascus chemical cache found by Assad army – State TV.” July 14, 2013.
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