Big Mac

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

4 April 2012

SHOWCASED FOOD

Commenting on measures being adopted to ensure food and drink hygiene standards at the Olympic Games in London this summer, Sarah Appleby, head of enforcement at the UK’s Food Standards Agency, says in today’s Guardian: “We have so much fantastic food to showcase to Games visitors.” The main food and drink suppliers at the event will be games sponsors McDonald’s, Cadbury and Coca-Cola.

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

 1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Das Vierte Reich/The Fourth Reich (6 Feb 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

5. What would Gandhi have said? (30 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in UK | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Crocodile tears

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

 3 April 2012

SYRIA

The foot-dragging over what to do about Syria continues in diplomatic circles outside the country. Conference after conference is held, hands are wrung, but the result is zilch. Meanwhile, inside Syria the slaughter of opponents by the regime continues apace.

The sudden appointment in February 2012 of the Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general from 1997 to 2006, as UN-Arab League peace envoy to Syria should not have raised any hopes.

Annan’s tenure as UN secretary-general was mainly marked – in the time-honoured tradition of UN secretary-generals – by a studied deference to the interests of the great powers.

South Korean diplomat Ban Ki-moon, who succeeded Annan as UN secretary-general in 2007, has naturally given the Annan peace mission his backing. But Ban has a similarly undistinguished profile as a cautious prevaricator unwilling to take on the powers that be.

The 22-state Arab League is a squabbling talking-shop which has been largely ineffective since its formation in 1945.

Forget the crocodile tears being shed by grandstanding statespersons, such as Hillary Clinton, over the ongoing bloodshed in Syria. The principal interest of the great powers and their allies is that the  current violence should be contained within Syria.  For different reasons, Russia, China and the United States are prepared to turn a blind eye to the relentless slaughter provided that the conflict does not spill over into other countries of the Middle East. That is why they oppose the drive by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to arm the Syrian opposition. Moreover, in deference to the great powers, both Turkey and Jordan are preventing the transfer of arms across their borders into Syria.

Annan’s laughable peace plan reflects exactly this position – as it was bound to. Its main provision is the call for a “Syrian-led political process” with no requirement that the  dictator Bashar al-Assad step down or be tried for the slaughter he has perpetrated. At the end of last month the UN estimated the death toll for the year-long conflict at more than 9 000.

Today 3 April 2012 we learn that Assad has “agreed” to a cease-fire on 10 April. Why not today? Because, of course, he needs the time to take out the remaining pockets of resistance to his regime. As to his “agreement” to the cease-fire, well, we have been here many times before. Assad has a history of “agreeing” to many things that he has never had the slightest intention of doing.

“He is a liar,” Waleed al-Fares, an opposition activist in Homs, told Reuters today 3 April 2012. Fares said Assad was playing for time to gain the upper hand over poorly-armed rebel forces which have been driven from city strongholds in the past two months.Targets in Homs were coming under shelling [today], he said.

Another opposition activist, Mortadha al-Rashid, told Reuters from Damascus that the western border town of Zabadani was also taking a pounding.“The regime shows no signs of stopping. There are people being shelled in Zabadani right now,” Rashid said. “Where are Kofi Annan’s words? Because we have never seen them on the streets.”

Comment by Antigone1984.com:

Kofi Annan is not stupid. He must know that what he is doing, in deference to the wishes of the great powers, is allowing Assad time to mop up his opponents so that his tyrannical rule can continue once the resistance has been killed off. In the meantime, hothead states, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which want to arm the rebels, must be held back until there are no rebels left alive to arm.

That is the game plan of this UN-Arab League “peace initiative” fronted by the devious Annan.

As we have said previously, Antigone1984 believes that the sword is mightier than the pen.

Hence, we are in favour of armed humanitarian intervention to save the lives of human beings threatened with annihilation by brutal regimes.

In 2011 we supported armed humanitarian intervention in Libya – as did the “international community”. Unlike that same “international community”, we support it today in Syria.

Are the lives of Syrians less important than the lives of Libyans?

Or is it just that, compared with Libya, Syria has fewer oil reserves to be exploited by the international oil majors? 

 ———-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

 1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Das Vierte Reich/The Fourth Reich (6 Feb 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

5. What would Gandhi have said? (30 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in Jordan, Politics, Syria, Turkey | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Big Brother

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

 

2 April 2012

ORWELL

Today, 2 April 2012,  the print edition of the Guardian newspaper published an article by Robert Booth on UK government plans to introduce draconian monitoring of private telecommunications.  We reproduce in italics below an extract from it.

The chilling threat of unrestricted intrusion by UK secret police into the private lives of individual citizens conjures up the control mechanisms deployed in the totalitarian dystopia depicted by George Orwell in his novel “1984”. That novel provided much of the inspiration for the creation of this blog (see the beginning of our Mission Statement).

Readers should be aware that the current UK government consists of a coalition of the dominant Conservative (Tory) Party and its junior partner, the Liberal Democrats. The main opposition group is the Labour Party.

As readers can see from the Guardian text, both government and opposition appear to be at one in seeking a massive expansion in secret surveillance by the state of individuals’ private lives.

“SECURITY SERVICES TO GET MORE POWERS TO MONITOR EMAILS AND SOCIAL MEDIA

    

Ministers are to introduce a new law allowing police and security services to extend their monitoring of the public’s email and social media communications, the Home Office has confirmed.

It is expected that the new system will allow security officials to scrutinise who is talking to whom and exactly when the conversations are taking place, but not the content of messages.

Labour [when in government] tried to introduce a similar system using a central database tracking all phone, text, email and internet use but that was ditched in 2009. It followed concerns raised by internet service providers and mobile phone operators over the project’s feasibility, and anxieties over who would foot the bill.

The coalition’s proposals are likely to be introduced in the Queen’s speech on 9 May and will centre on internet service providers gathering the information and allowing government intelligence operatives to scrutinise it.

A Home Office spokesman said: “It is vital that police and security services are able to obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public.” The spokeman added that the plans would be brought forward “as soon as parliamentary time allows”.

“We need to take action to maintain the continued availability of communications data as technology changes. Communications data includes time, duration and dialling numbers of a phone call, or an email address. It does not include the content of any phone call or email and it is not the intention of government to make changes to the existing legal basis for the interception of communications.”

Civil liberties campaigners have strongly criticised the revival of the plan because of the risk it could breach the privacy of law-abiding people.“Whoever is in government the grand snooping ambitions of security agencies don’t change,” said Isabella Sankey, director of policy at Liberty.

The intention to introduce the new system was signalled in the Strategic Defence and Security Review, published in 2010. It was announced that, as part of efforts to counter international terrorism, the government would “introduce a programme to preserve the ability of the security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to obtain communication data and to intercept communications within the appropriate legal framework”.

Internet service providers have voiced concern at the plans, questioning the cost and practicality of installing systems to harvest the so-called “packet” data that shows senders, recipients and the times of messages. They are also worried that their customers would not tolerate the compilation of personal communications information.

UPDATE : the following is an extract from a report on the BBC website on 3 April 2012:

Home Secretary Theresa May said “ordinary people” would have nothing to fear. But “criminals, paedophiles and terrorists” would, she told the Sun [newspaper].

 David Davis, the Conservative MP and former shadow home secretary, countered Mrs May’s argument:

 “We already have a law which lets the secret services eavesdrop on suspected criminals and terrorists.

 “The new law does not focus on terrorists or criminals. It would instead allow civil servants to monitor every innocent, ordinary person in Britain, and all without a warrant.

 “If they want to see all this information they should be willing to put their case before a judge or magistrate. This will force them to focus on the real terrorists rather than turning Britain into a nation of suspects.”

Information Commissioner Christopher Graham’s office has said the case for retaining such data had yet to be made.

Nick Pickles, director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, called the move “an unprecedented step that will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance seen in China and Iran”.

Conservative MP Dominic Raab said it was “a plan to privatise Big Brother surveillance” and turned every individual “into a suspect”.

 ————–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

 1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Das Vierte Reich/The Fourth Reich (6 Feb 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

5. What would Gandhi have said? (30 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in Police, Politics, UK, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Mad Men

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

1 April 2012

MADISON AVENUE

A reader has drawn to our attention the shocking fact that a commercial advertisement has popped up alongside one of our posts without our being forewarned and absolutely at variance with the ethos of this blog.

Last night 31 March 2012 the reader in question was checking out our post “What is a Communist?” of 24 March 2012 when, all of a sudden, an advertisement for – of all things – Barclays Bank appeared alongside. The irony of an advertisement for a major international free-market bank appearing alongside a post in our radically anti-capitalist blog will not be lost on readers.

Clearly, we are both aghast and outraged and have asked our technical advisers to take appropriate action without delay. Until this solecism is put right, we crave the indulgence of any readers who find themselves in the unhappy position of being confronted with the ugly intrusion of consumerist publicity.

Our Mission Statement declares without ambiguity: “As an independent self-supported blog, we are not beholden to proprietors, editors, business interests, governments, political parties, trade unions, advertisers or individuals. We do not accept advertising or outside funding of any kind from any source.”

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

 1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Das Vierte Reich/The Fourth Reich (6 Feb 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

5. What would Gandhi have said? (30 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in Economics, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Cherry blossom

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

 31 March 2012

Cherry blossom, haikus and the temples of Kyoto – this is the stereotypical image of Japan that the country peddles abroad to encourage tourism.

However, there is a much more brutal and thuggish side to the Japanese state that is usually swept under the carpet – its love affair with the death penalty.

Three unnamed death-row inmates, all convicted of multiple murders, were hanged last Thursday 29 March 2012.

These were the first executions in Japan since two convicted killers were hanged in Tokyo in July 2010.

In the following month,  August 2010, the Japanese media were admitted for the first time to the execution chamber of  a jail in the Japanese capital. The BBC reported on the visit as follows:

“The 30-minute tour showed the red square on the floor where a convict stands with a noose around their neck before the trapdoor opens beneath them.

 

“The visitors were also taken to a room with a Buddhist altar, where condemned prisoners can meet a religious representative, and the viewing chamber.

 

‘‘There was the smell of incense. The impression was that of sterile objects in a clean carpeted room,’ said a reporter from broadcaster NTV.

 

“Footage also showed the room where three staff each push a button which releases the trapdoor – although no one knows which of them actually instigated the action.”

 

There are currently more than 100 people on death row, including Shoko Asahara, the mastermind behind the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway.

 

Human rights groups have condemned the conditions on Japan’s death row.

 

Amnesty International says the condemned have few visits, little exercise and are forced to spend almost all of their time sitting down in their cells. It claims that the harsh conditions on death row are driving inmates insane.

 

Prisoners are sometimes held for decades and are not warned in advance of the date on which they will be executed. As a result, as far as they know, every day could be their last.  Their relatives are told only after the sentence has been carried out.

 

Nonetheless, 85.6% of those polled in a government survey carried out in 2009 supported the death penalty.

Following this week’s executions, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has gone on record as saying:

“I have no plans to do away with the death penalty. Taking into consideration a situation where the number of heinous crimes has not decreased, I find it difficult to abolish the death penalty immediately”.

In what can only be seen as a deliberate snub to the human rights organisation, Japan executed the three death-row inmates only two days after Amnesty International published its annual capital punishment survey – covering the year 2011 – on 27 March 2012.

According to the survey, China is the world’s top judicial killer, although no figure is given for executions as the Chinese authorities refuse to release precise data.

With the exclusion of China, at least 676 judicial executions took place globally in 2011, compared with 527 the year before. At least 1923 people received the death sentence in 2011, taking the global total on death row to18,750.

Iran comes in second place after China, with at least 360 executions. Other leading executioners were Saudi Arabia (at least 82), Iraq (at least 68), the United States (43), Yemen (at least 41) and North Korea (30).

Antigone1984 comments:

As we say in our Mission Statement, this blog believes that no nation which commits judicial murder is civilised. By this token, China, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the USA and the other executioner states are firmly outside the pale of civilisation. That includes Japan as well, notwithstanding the cherry blossom, the haikus and the Buddhist temples.

Moreover, contrary to what is implied in the remark quoted above by the Japanese Prime Minister, there is no evidence that the death penalty deters individuals contemplating murder.

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

 1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Das Vierte Reich/The Fourth Reich (6 Feb 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

5. What would Gandhi have said? (30 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in China, Iraq, Japan, Justice, Saudi Arabia, USA | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Columbus

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

 

30 March 2012

Pity about Columbus.

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

 1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Das Vierte Reich/The Fourth Reich (6 Feb 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

5. What would Gandhi have said? (30 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in Politics, USA | Tagged | Leave a comment

EU waves white flag

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

 29 March 2012

EUROPE CAVES IN TO AMERICA

In their never-ceasing quest for more and more independent states to surrender their national sovereignty in exchange for “ever closer homogenisation” within the strait-jacket of the European Union, the German-dominated Brussels-based Euro-elite  invariably holds out the invariably specious promise that these states will have more clout on the world stage in an EU that can punch its weight alongside the big boys.

The reality is otherwise.

Take the EU’s reaction to the demand by the Americans – pathologically obsessed with national security since they failed egregiously to protect their “homeland” from terrorist attack in 2001 –  that the European authorities provide them with an extensive batch of intrusive personal data on every EU citizen that flies into or out of the United States.

Stringent laws exist in the EU to protect personal data and at first it looked as if Europe might have the guts to stand up to the Americans. In 2007 the European Parliament rejected an initial proposal to give the USA whatever it wanted.

Bully for the European Parliament, cried the defenders of Europe’s data protection laws.

Too soon!

The European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs has just approved a new text that will give the Americans just what they want.

What is more, the committee is said to have railroaded the new text through against the express wishes of its own chairperson, Dutch Liberal MEP Sophie in’t Veld, who reportedly believes that the new version does not comply with EU data protection laws.

According to the 29 March 2012 edition of French newspaper Le Monde, committee members ignored their chairperson on the grounds that the US was not prepared to make any further concessions.

“OK, you won’t make any further concessions, so we give in. Here’s our white flag.” That, one assumes, is how the negotiations went.

So much for the new Europe standing up to the big boys.

Once America waved the big stick, these valiant champions of civil liberty appear to have scuttled back into line.

The text approved by the committee is due to be adopted by the full parliament next month.

Mind you, a thought does occur to Antigone1984.

Why should anyone want to cross the pond in the first place?

 ————–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

 1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Das Vierte Reich/The Fourth Reich (6 Feb 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

5. What would Gandhi have said? (30 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in Europe, USA | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Extremism and moderation

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

 

28 March 2012

Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (1o6-43 BC). Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer and letter writer.

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

 1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Das Vierte Reich/The Fourth Reich (6 Feb 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

5. What would Gandhi have said? (30 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in Philosophy, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Paradox

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

 

27 March 2012

There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.

Albert Camus (1913-1960). French novelist and essayist, born in French North Africa (Algeria).

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

 1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Das Vierte Reich/The Fourth Reich (6 Feb 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

5. What would Gandhi have said? (30 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in Algeria, Literature, Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

After the revolution

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

 

26 March 2012

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). Political thinker.

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

 1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Das Vierte Reich/The Fourth Reich (6 Feb 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

5. What would Gandhi have said? (30 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment