Monthly Archives: December 2008

Jewish Voice for Peace statement on Gaza attacks

December 31, 2008Blog, Middle East, RealpolitikAlan Thomas

Statement taken from the JVP site which is here. Jewish Voice for Peace is an organisation seeking to build cross-border solidarity for peace in Israel and Palestine. Amongst other activities they have organised support for the Shministim, young Israelis who were prepared to refuse to fulfil their military service in the occupied territories (thus several were jailed), who are latter day heroes in my view.

Jewish Voice for Peace joins millions around the world, including the 1,000 Israelis who protested in the streets of Tel Aviv this weekend, in condemning ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza. We call for an immediate end to attacks on all civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli.

Israel’s slow strangulation of Gaza through blockade has caused widespread suffering to the 1.5 million people of Gaza due to lack of food, electricity, water treatment supplies and medical equipment. It is a violation of humanitarian law and has been widely condemned around the world. Continue reading →

Christopher Booker’s scientific credentials

December 31, 2008Blog, Environment, Humour, MediaNeil Robertson

Rejoice, people! Whatever you may’ve read, however many chilling predictions you may have heard, however frequently Al Gore might haunt your dreams, telling you that the world will end in a torrent of fire because YOU don’t use energy-saving lightbulbs, I can promise that all those fears are unfounded. For as people across the world glance at 2009 with such foreboding and dread, Christopher Booker has made the jolly discovery that instead of getting much, much worse, climate change doesn’t actually exist all!

Now, I understand that there’s a great deal of misinformation out there in BlogLand, and since I’m not a scientist (well, neither is he, but he sure seems to know a lot more than ‘real scientists’), I have to make sure that all my sources are of the highest calibre. So I did whatever any forensic time-deprived blogger would do, and checked him out on Wikipedia. Without further ado, and just to show how seriously you should take his scientific acumen, here are some of Booker’s greatest hits:
Continue reading →

Not concealing their enjoyment of the bombing

December 31, 2008Blog, Foreign affairs, Middle East, RealpolitikSepticisle

One thing I’ve noticed over the last couple of days is that despite the predictable calls for revenge from ordinary Gazans, none have been openly celebratory about the prospect, or felt that such actions would be completely praiseworthy, let alone worth cheering. If anyone has, drop them in the comments.

How different this seems to be to quite a few Israelis quoted, not to mention some newspaper editorials. We’ve had the woman from Sderot who said what was happening in Gaza was “fantastic”, the civil defence official that said he would “play music and celebrate what is happening” and Yoei Marcus in Haaretz who writes:

I will not conceal my enjoyment of the flames and smoke rising from Gaza that have poured from our television screens. The time has finally come for their bellies to quiver and for them to understand that there is a price for their bloody provocations against Israel.

Continue reading →

An international environmental court?

December 30, 2008NewsNewswire

A former chairman of the Bar Council is calling for an international court for the environment to punish states that fail to protect wildlife and prevent climate change.

Stephen Hockman QC is proposing a body similar to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to be the supreme legal authority on issues regarding the environment.

The first role of the new body would be to enforce international agreements on cutting greenhouse gas emissions set to be agreed next year.

But the court would also fine countries or companies that fail to protect endangered species or degrade the natural environment and enforce the “right to a healthy environment”.

The innovative idea is being presented to an audience of politicians, scientists and public figures for the first time at a symposium at the British Library.

… more at The Telegraph

Why regional minimum wages are a bad idea

December 30, 2008Blog, Economy, Equality, Local GovernmentDavid Semple

Over any holiday, online reading material tends to accumulate. Christmas 2008 has been no exception even though no few blogs are on vacation. One that I really wanted to challenge was the post over at Mil’s place entitled, “The Petri Dish Philosophy of Politics“. Mil makes the argument that we should import regional minimum wages into the UK, allowing say Birmingham or Manchester to experiment with a higher minimum wage.

The problem is that, as often as not, what we grow in a Petri dish is harmful.

Regional minimum wages exist in the US, where there is a federal, a state-by-state and in a few cases a city-based minimum wage. The San Francisco Chronicle carries an article about how the SF minimum wage is about to climb to $9.79 per hour, against the wishes of local employers, but much to the appreciation of SF workers. Economists on the other hand think it helps keep the unskilled unemployed.
Continue reading →

Justice for Hich

December 30, 2008Blog, Civil liberties, Our democracy, TerrorismUnity

Lib Con has picked up on the ongoing case of Hicham Yezza (Hich to his friends and supporters) on a couple of previous occasions in daily news round-ups, but events over the last few of weeks necessitate giving the story a bit more detailed coverage.

And we need your help in highlighting this.

In May 2008, Hich, an Algerian national who’s lived and worked in the UK for more than decade, was arrested at his office at Nottingham University’s School of Modern Languages under the Terrorism Act 2000, as was his friend, Rizwaan Sabir, a postgraduate student researching terrorism at the university’s School of Politics and International Relations.

As for the events leading to their arrest, it emerged, several days after they were arrested, that Sabir had downloaded an alleged Al Qaeda training manual from the website of the US Department of Justice, where it had been openly available since December 2001. Sabir obtained the document in question, which had already been extensively edited/censored by the US DoJ before publication, in order to use it in his research and had done nothing more with it than forward it to Hich for printing to save himself a few quid.

For this ‘crime’ both were arrested and held by the police for six days before being released without charge, at which point Sabir was free to return to his studies, while Hich was immediately rearrested on Immigration charges and, a mere three days later, made subject to a fast-tracked deportation order which was scheduled to be executed on June 1, a mere eight days after it was issued – and all this despite Hich having publicly declared his intent to fight the charges against him.
Continue reading →

Gaza invasion: today’s press coverage

December 30, 2008Blog, Foreign affairs, Middle EastNewswire

The Guardian
Gaza and long-term goals divide Israeli analysts
Islamists urge pro-western regimes to act

Independent
Five sisters killed while they slept
Sami Abdel-Shafi: Israel puts security before peace
Mary Dejevsky: Don’t overlook Israel’s vulnerability

BBC News
Israel pounds Gaza for fourth day
US tacitly backs Israeli action
Rockets plague Israeli towns
Continue reading →

Nadine Dorries’ sex education ‘policy’ in tatters

December 30, 2008Blog, Conservative Party, Education, Feminism, Sex equality, WestminsterSunny Hundal

Conservative MP Nadine Dorries doesn’t like politically correct health advice such as teaching children about contraception. In a blog-post on her website in April, titled ‘Beyond the School Gates’, she said:

Throughout the session it struck me that the discussion focused on dealing with the consequences of teenage sex, in the form of STIs and pregnancy; whereas the fundamental problem, the fact that sex is now regarded as a recreational pastime, no relationship required, is largely ignored. Much easier to focus on how quickly we can get treatment to an infected sixteen year old, than how we get the same sixteen year old to think twice before having sex again, until at least within the confines of a stable relationship.
…
The money that the Department of Health spent on their campaign could have been used on developing a national standard for sex education within schools, which taught the principles of self respect and at least began to address the issue of values, morals and ethics within education and wider society.

Ahh yes, I smell thinking along the ‘silver ring thing‘ phenomena. Except, new research from the US now shows these gimmicks don’t work.

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a “virginity pledge,” but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

(via NHS BlogDoctor). In other words, not only does trying to teach abstinence of responsibility not work, but it leads to even more unprotected sex. Despite the evidence however, I doubt a minister who regularly hangs around with Christian fundamentalists is likely to take any heed.

Liberal Conspiracy

Left-wing news, opinion and activism