UK seeks torture “assurances” from Jordan

Posted on March 5, 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. 

 5 March 2012

PONTIUS PILATE

It’s that man again, Abu Qatada. He just won’t go away.

And in particular he won’t go away to Jordan, where the Brits want to dump him.

Like Pontius Pilate, they are curiously desperate to wash their hands of him.

Actually, in the case of Abu Qatada, they do in fact need to wash their hands very thoroughly.

Abu Qatada has been held in British jails without trial for over eight years. He is alleged to be a dangerous fanatic who supports terrorism.

However, mirabile dictu, no charge has ever been laid against him in a British court.

If he is such a dangerous alleged criminal, why on earth has he been kept in prison for over eight years without being charged?

The answer from the UK government is a resounding silence.

A Jordanian citizen, he was admitted to Britain as an asylum-seeker in 1993.

The government has said it wants to deport him back to Jordan as quickly as possible.

However, European Court of Human Rights recently ruled this out on the grounds that in Jordan he risks facing charges based on evidence obtained under torture.

As a result, the British Interior Minister Theresa May is today Monday 5 March 2012 in Jordan seeking assurances from the Jordan government that no charges will be brought against him based on torture evidence.

It seems she is having a hard time getting what she wants – and plans to stay in Jordan till Wednesday.

Her understrapper, junior interior minister James Brokenshire went there a few weeks ago on a similar mission and came back empty-handed.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has spoken with King Abdullah of Jordan to get these assurances – and again no progress appears to have been made.

So now Brokenshire’s boss Theresa May has interrupted her busy UK schedule to fly in person to Jordan in pursuit of the golden fleece of these assurances.

This is all very odd.

After all, Abu Qatada is only one person. He is not an army or a guerrilla force. He is subject to a 22-hour curfew and under 24-hour surveillance. He can hardly be a threat to any one at present.

The amount of effort the UK government is putting into getting him back to Jordan is extraordinary. Why not just charge him in court?

There might be a reason. Some sections of the press have suggested that a trial in Britain might lead to the disclosure of evidence of alleged British mistreatment of suspects that would seriously sully the country’s image.

Now let us consider these “assurances” that Britain is seeking from Jordan.

There is no state in the world that will not given an assurance that they do not use torture. And that includes those states that do use torture. The practice of torture is not something that you go out into the streets and wave flags about.

So they will get their “assurances”.

However, the UK government is worried that these assurances will not be convincing enough to pull the wool over the eyes of the judges at the European Court of Human and persuade them to lift the ban on the deportation of Abu Qatada to Jordan.

A month ago the BBC’s George Alagiah interview Prince El Hassan of Jordan, uncle of King Abdullah, about the case.

El Hassan: “if this man has committed crimes which is presumably why he is being held in England, I don’t know what kind of court one has to offer to the Europeans. Does it want a juvenile court?”

 

Mr Alagiah: “They want a court in which evidence brought about by torture is not admissible.”

 

El Hassan:”That is rich coming from a country that believed in rendition agreements.”

Rendition is the transfer of suspects by the Americans, with the help of their allies, to countries where the rule of law does not apply in order that these people can be interrogated under torture. Jordan is alleged to have been a rendition destination. Hence, Prince El Hassan’s remark.

The executive director of the human rights group, Cageprisoners Limited, Asim Qureshi, does not believe Abu Qatada could get a fair trial in Jordan. “Jordan is a patently unsafe country to send people. It’s known for systematic violations of human rights,” he said.

Abu Qatada is wanted in Jordan on terrorist charges. He was convicted in Jordan, in his absence, of alleged involvement in a plot to target Americans and Israeli tourists during the country’s millennium celebrations.

However, the question must be asked: was torture or evidence based on torture involved in the trial leading to his conviction?

Ayman Odeh, the Jordanian legislative affairs minister, has said his country passed a constitutional amendment in September 2011 to ban the use of evidence obtained through torture.

However, Abu Qatada’s convictions in Jordan date to 1999 and 2000 – long before September 2011 when the Jordanian government thought it politic to ban the use of torture-tainted evidence.

Comment by Antigone1984:

 

Antigone1984 does not take a view as to whether Abu Qatada is guilty or not of the crimes of which he is apparently accused. However, Antigone1984 is very much of the view that people should not be held in prison for over eight years without trial or charge.

 

We repeat here what we said in our blog on this subject on 14 February 2012:

The interest of this case for Antigone1984 is the fact Abu Qatada that has been held in British gaols for over eight years without charge or trial. Many allegations of the utmost gravity have been made against this man by the British Government and these have received blanket coverage in the media, but no evidence of any crime has been submitted against him in a British court. The detention of Abu Qatada flouts British legal traditions based on the right to a fair trial that date back to the signing of Magna Carta in 1215 AD. The much-vaunted British concern for “fair play” means that a person is deemed innocent until he or she is proven guilty in a court of law. Moreover, the law of Habeas Corpus means that persons suspected of an offence cannot be kept indefinitely in detention without being charged and brought before a judge. These age-old traditions, the cornerstone of English criminal law, have been egregiously disregarded in the case of Abu Qatada.

For further information on this case, see our three earlier posts in the JORDAN category of the sidebar on our Home Page.

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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 Jordan, Torture, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rinascimento

Posted on March 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. 


Paris, 4 March 2012

 

After launching the blog experimentally on 7 October 2011 and then for real on 1 January 2012, today we publish our 100th post.  For this post, we have selected a key extract from Walter Pater’s Conclusion to his “Studies in the History of the Renaissance”(1873). Aesthete and critic, Walter Horatio Pater was a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, who lived from 1839 to 1894. The text below is variously regarded as one of the greatest passages of mandarin prose in the English language or, alternatively, an egregious purple patch of turgid Victorian tosh. A vous de choisir.

4 March 2012

A HARD GEMLIKE FLAME

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us,–for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life……it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist’s hands, or the face of one’s friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening.

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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 Literature, Philosophy | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Qualunquismo

Posted on March 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 March 2012

SO WHAT?

“The times are out of joint, but we were not born to put them right, nor does it matter very much whether they are put right or not.”

 

Unknown author. Discuss.

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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 Italy, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

God and Mammon

Posted on March 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 March 2012

GOD AND MAMMON COLLUDE TO STAMP OUT PROTEST

Bailiffs protected by police evicted the Occupy camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London, the UK’s financial district, in a midnight raid this week.

The protesters’ tents were thrown into garbage trucks and 20 people were arrested.

The camp was set up in October as part of an international campaign to highlight the injustice of a world in which the ultra-rich 1% of the global population trousers an obscene proportion of the world’s riches, thereby condemning the remaining 99% to relative or absolute poverty.

The bailiffs, who moved in on 28 February 2012, were acting on the instructions of the Corporation of the City of London with the tacit acquiescence of the (acting) Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral.

To no one’s surprise, the UK courts had earlier given the corporation the green light to turf the Occupants out of their encampment, part of which had been on land belonging to the City of London and part of which had been on land belonging to the Cathedral.

The main concern of the authorities in the west is to prevent the development of a protest movement that could, by emulating the tactics of rebels who pioneered the Arab Spring, pose a threat to the established order in so-called western democracies.

Protest camps similar to the one in London have been dismantled by police at Zuccotti Park in New York (the Occupy Wall Street movement) and at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid (where “los indignados” kicked off the Occupy protests in Europe).

Other events not wholly unrelated to the concerns of the Occupy protesters also featured this week.

  • The European Central Bank in Frankfurt loaned a gob-smacking €530 billion to 800 banks over a three-year term with a paltry 1% coupon.
  • It emerged that HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, handed out over £1 million each to 192 of its top staff in 2011, a year in which the bank’s profits fell by 6%.
  • Barclays Bank is being forced to pay back to the UK Treasury £500 million in taxes that it had tried to avoid through questionable accounting wheezes.

Expect to hear more about the Occupy movement in the spring. The protesters are down but not out. As we have just demonstrated, the injustices to which they are opposed have not gone away. The advocates of the 99% will be back.

Giles Fraser resigned from his post as canon chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral in protest at plans to remove the protesters by force. Citing the poet Shelley, he said after this week’s eviction: “You cannot evict an idea.”

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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, Religion, Spain, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Voltaire vindicated

Posted on March 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 March 2010

FRENCH GENOCIDE LAW OUTLAWED

The French Constitutional Council has thrown out a law passed by the French Parliament on 23 January 2012 making it a crime to deny that Turkish mistreatment of Armenians in 1915 amounted to genocide.

The law penalised denial of Armenian genocide with a €45000 fine and/or a one-year prison sentence.

On 28 February 2012, the Constitutional Court ruled that by outlawing Armenian genocide denial “Parliament has – contrary to the Constitution – undermined the principle of free speech”.

The court based its decision, in particular, on Article XI of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, stating that “freedom to express ideas and opinions is one of the most important human rights”.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he will propose a new version of the law which takes account of the court’s decision.

However, the two-stage French presidential election takes place in April and May this year and Sarkozy is currently trailing behind his Socialist rival François Hollande.

If Hollande is elected, he has undertaken to review the issue “in a spirit of conciliation”.

Both the government party, UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire), and the Socialist opposition supported the Armenian genocide law in a cynical ploy to win them votes in the presidential election from the half a million ethnic Armenians resident in France. The law was also backed by the tiny Communist Party and its allies in the Parti de Gauche.

What did free speech matter  – this, in the land of Voltaire – when they might finagle a few extra votes?

However, the law was opposed by many eminent historians, including Pierre Nora, who argued that it was not for Parliaments to decide what people may or may not think about what happened in history.

It was also opposed by the former President of the Constitutional Council, Robert Badinter, a Socialist, who said that what happened in Armenia in 1915 had nothing to do with France.

Turkey takes the view that the killing of Armenians in 1915 did not constitute genocide.

Voltaire, a leading philosopher of the 18 C Enlightenment, is said to have been outraged when De l’esprit, the work of a rival philosopher, Helvétius, was condemned by the Sorbonne and burned publicly in 1759. Referring to Helvétius, he is reported to have said: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it“.

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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 Armenia, France, Turkey | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Not in our backyard

Posted on February 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 February 2012

RIOTS IN CHINA, EGYPT AND BRITAIN: SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

There have been protests in south-west China recently, particularly in Sichuan Province, by ethnic Tibetans seeking greater local autonomy from the central government in Peking.  Rejecting assimilation by the Han Chinese majority, they want to maintain their distinctive Tibetan culture and religious practices. Of late a number of Tibetan monks have set fire to themselves to draw attention to their cause.

The Chinese central government has always regarded calls for autonomy, particularly from Tibetans, as the first step towards demands for independence from China and has cracked down heavily on such protests, stationing large battalions of police in the troubled areas and arresting demonstrators.

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom last August, many cities, particularly London erupted in a frenzy of looting by poor rioters, many of them of ethnic origin, stealing mainly cheap goods from local stores. The riots provoked a fierce and righteous reaction from the UK judiciary, which dispensed what appeared to be summary justice in double-quick time, handing down (it seemed) exceptionally severe sentences for minor thefts (stealing a bottle of water, for instance) that would normally not have attracted such harsh punishment.

It can surely not be coincidental that the Arab Spring was still proceeding at full tilt at that time. Western public opinion was almost unanimously behind the heroes of Tahrir Square – street disturbances were wholly to be approved in North Africa – but not over here, not in our own back yard, thank you very much.

Musing along these lines, we were struck by a letter in the UK’s Guardian newspaper on 22 February 2012 from Dai Qingli, spokesperson at the Chinese embassy in London. The bold type is ours.

“I am writing with regard to a letter (Remember Tibet, 7 February), which gave a groundless and distorted account of the recent incidents in some Tibetan areas of China. In one of those incidents, a handful of rioters gathered illegally at some parts of Sichuan Province. They smashed and looted stores and ATMs, and damaged two police cars, two fire trucks and several other cars. Some of them even attacked police with knives and guns, injuring nearly 20 officers. The police exercised the utmost restraint, but eventually had to fight back in self-defence, shooting and killing two mobsters. Thanks to the support of the local people, these incidents were addressed properly and public order was restored.

 

The Chinese government is duty-bound to combat crimes and safeguard public order. We have seen the British government doing the same when rioting occurred in some parts of England last August, as is the common practice of all countries acting to protect social stability.”

 

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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, Egypt, UK | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Voting till they get it right

Posted on February 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 February 2012

Ireland to hold referendum on European fiscal pact

The news broke this afternoon that Ireland is to hold a referendum on a German-inspired fiscal compact that will impose a permanent budget corset on 25 of the European Union’s 27 member states.

The news will be greeted with gloom and despondency by orthodox policy-makers throughout the European Union.  The budget treaty was deliberately drafted to avoid the need for a referendum in Ireland.

The last thing the Eurocrats promoting the treaty wanted was that it be subject to the mercy of a popular vote. That is not how they do things in the European Union.

Ireland is the only EU country in which a referendum is required when treaties are signed which impinge on the state’s Constitution. All the other signatory countries can ratify international agreements in a parliamentary vote stage-managed by their political parties.

The Irish Government, which pulled out all the stops to avoid calling a plebiscite, had to cave in when Irish Attorney-General Máire Whelan, the country’s senior law officer, advised the Cabinet this morning that “on balance” a referendum was required to ratify the treaty.

The date has yet to be announced.

Those opposed to the treaty should not rejoice too soon, however.

On the one hand, they should not assume that the Government will lose the referendum. The Irish and European establishments will now mount a no-holds-barred publicity campaign to persuade voters to vote yes, warning that the country will be turfed out of the single-currency eurozone – and lose access to European funding – if it votes no.

On the other hand, treaty opponents should be mindful of the basic European rule governing plebiscites. This is the principle of successive plebiscites.  It means that voters are invited to vote in a succession of referendums until they get it right, ie until they come up with the result that the establishment wants.

Irish voters rejected the Nice referendum in 2001. But neither the Irish Government nor the European Union accepted this result. A further referendum was held in 2002, at which point the people gave in and voted yes.

In a subsequent referendum in 2008 Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty. They were obliged to vote again the following year, when the treaty was approved.

The general view in Ireland then was: “What is the point of voting no if the Government won’t accept the voice of the people?”

What indeed?

More trouble ahead for the treaty, meanwhile, in Britain. The British Parliament is to debate whether the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is legally entitled – as the Eurocrats wish – to adjudicate in matters involving the fiscal treaty.

The ECJ was set up to lay down the law in disputes within the European Union. The fiscal compact is outside the union, since two EU states, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic, are not party to it.

This story will run.

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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.

  —————

Posted in Economics, Europe, Germany, Ireland, Politics, UK | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

He’s all right, Jack

Posted on February 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 February 2012

BREAD AND DRIPPING

With due respect to Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged, not only in Bath, that the poor need poverty to motivate them, the rich riches.

The poor need rock-bottom wages, insalubrious working conditions and the threat of instant dismissal to get them out of bed in the morning.

The rich, by contrast, need pots of moolah to get them to shake a leg.

Otherwise, by jingo they might decide to stay put on their country estates and go huntin’ and fishin’ and then see what would happen to the  country. A bankers’ strike. Now that would put the fear of God into the lower orders!

The bonus season is now in full swing in the City of London. The fat cats are getting fatter, the banks near to bursting with wonga.

When a banker gets money for nothing, it’s called “quantitative easing”. When a poor sod needs money to buy bread and dripping for his sickly wife and eight children, he falls in hock for life to a loan shark.

The difference between what the banker earns and what the pauper earns is called a pay differential. Pay differentials are necessary to motivate the people at the top and to demotivate those at the bottom.

Most people get a wage or salary for doing a job and that’s it. Bankers would not get out of bed in the morning for a wage or a salary. They need the additional incentive of bonuses running into millions of pounds.

You see, you need to pay top whack to get the best talent. Anyone can be poor but not everyone can be rich. That’s why the rich need more money than the poor. Because otherwise they would not be rich. Stands to reason, dunnit?

Funnily enough, a lot of banks have just posted massive losses in their annual accounts. So the “best  talent” doesn’t have to produce the best results, is that it? Yes, that’s it.

Whatever the results, the bankers’ bonuses are sacrosanct. That’s how the City works, you see. It’s one of their traditions.

And here’s another thing. As I suppose you have noticed, there are a lot of layabouts sitting around these days too lazy to lift a finger. They sit around all day drinking beer and smoking fags and wouldn’t know what a day’s work was if it rolled up and biffed them in the face.

Oh yes, and they live on state benefit. They are what we call “benefit scroungers”.

Well, in the United Kingdom – which, mercifully, will not be united for long if the Scots get their way – the authorities have hit upon a cunning wheeze for dealing with that lot.

They are downsizing their benefits, turfing them out of social housing – and making them work for nothing.  They call it work experience. We used to call it slave labour. But then the current UK Prime Minister won his spurs in public relations. Not for him to call a spade a spade when he can call it a shovel.

Mr Cameron, the PM, has also found another way to crack down. Send the halt and the lame out to work – including chemotherapy patients and the terminally ill. If they don’t work, they won’t eat. Sick and needy and a burden on the state, that’ll learn them!

The economy is now in recession and the jobs market in free fall. The unemployed and the unemployable are being forced into jobs which don’t exist. Some might call it surreal. Others might use a harsher expression.

Mr Cameron is doing quite nicely himself, mind you. An Eton education, a stockbroker father, family descended from King William IV, and a posh wife from the aristocracy. He’ll be all right, Jack.

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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.

   ———————

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

Garden of Eden

Posted on February 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. 

OBEDIENCE AT WORK

26 February 2012

Antigone1984 has always been impressed by the following passage on page 758 of One Hundred Years of Socialism by Donald Sassoon published by I.B. Tauris in 1996. However, we do not entirely share Sassoon’s pessimism as to the possibility of change for the better.

 

As I write, all advanced capitalist countries are governed according to the principles and rules of liberal democracy. The market for consumer goods appears to be the economic counterpart of politics: individuals exercise their consumer sovereignty by walking up and down the aisles of supermarkets, opting for Daz over Persil, before casting, as sovereign citizens, their ballot for the Left or the Right. Yet, as Terry Eagleton has written: “…..What goes on in the supermarket is nothing at all like what happens in the chapel or the crèche.” I would add that what goes on in the supermarket is nothing at all like what happens at work, the place where consumers, metamorphosed into producers, earn the money which empowers them to be consumers. In the world of production, authority, hierarchy and discipline prevail. We vote for whomever we like, we buy whatever we can afford, but at work we do as we are told. Socialists have traditionally tried to intervene in the world of work and, after one hundred years of struggle, producers – in Europe at least – work a little less, and in far more salubrious circumstances, than they did a century ago, and perhaps with greater dignity. But they have not increased their control over their conditions of work at a pace remotely comparable to the expansion of political democracy, the increase in material prosperity, the extension in social welfare, or the advance in science and technology. Controlling capitalism has proved far more difficult than controlling anything else, because capitalism is a system based on the control of the many by the few – the reverse of the conventional definition of political democracy….It may well be that the only way back to the Garden of Eden, towards freedom and individual autonomy, would be to eliminate work or, at least, to work as little as possible. That hierarchies may never be eliminated does not make them any less undemocratic or unpleasant. Rape may always have existed and may never disappear; yet we continue to view it as an act of outrageous brutality.

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

Graffiti

Posted on February 25, 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. 

 

25 February 2012

The water can come back to a dried-up river,

But what about the fish that died?

 

 

This distich is the English translation of verse written in Pashto at the foot of a staircase inside the blackened ruin of Kabul’s cultural centre.

Nearby is the spray-painting of a woman in a blue burqa.

The graffiti artist is Shamsia Hassani, 24, an associate professor of sculpture at Kabul University.

In an article by Emma Graham-Harrison in the UK’s Guardian newspaper today 25 February, Shamsia Hassani  said: “When I heard this poem, I thought how it was about the situation in Afghanistan. A lot of people died in the war; now the situation is better, but those people cannot come back.”

Certainly, those who have died in the current decade-long war will not be seen again.

But the situation in Afghanistan has improved? The associate professor of sculpture may have spoken too soon.

Here is what the BBC website is saying this evening:

Nato pulls out of Afghan ministries after Kabul attack

 

Nato has withdrawn all its personnel from Afghan ministries after two senior US officers were shot dead in the interior ministry building in Kabul.

 

Nato said an “individual” had turned his gun on the officers, believed to be a colonel and major, and had not yet been identified or caught.

 

The shootings come amid five days of deadly protests over the burning of copies of the Koran by US soldiers.

 

The interior ministry was put in lock-down after the shootings, officials said.

 

Early reports suggest the two officers were shot in the ministry’s command and control centre.

 

The BBC’s Orla Guerin in Kabul says eight shots were reported inside the building, which should be one of the safest in the capital, and that any Afghan who carried out the attack would have had the highest clearance.

 

Local media reports said the gunman was an Afghan policeman but this has not been confirmed.

 

Meanwhile, angry protests over the burning of the Korans continued [today 25 February], with a UN compound in the city of Kunduz set alight. Four people were killed and dozens injured in clashes in the city, according to local doctors.

 

Nearly 30 people have died since the protests began on Tuesday.

 

US personnel apparently inadvertently put the books into a rubbish incinerator at Bagram air base, near Kabul.

Editorial note: For further information on the burning of the Korans, see the post “Fahrenheit 451” published yesterday 24 February 2012 by Antigone1984.

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