Lock & Load

Shiny Beasts

2007-10-12T17:27:00.000+01:00

I'm dizzy with excitement. I have just taken delivery of the most expensive CD I have ever owned. Yep, in a moment of madness, I paid £49.99 plus p&p for a single CD album. It's not especially a good album either. Mostly it got tepid reviews, but it brings back memories for me of lolling about in my buddy Carl's bedroom after school and listening to 'albums'.

Those were teh days when you we actually played LPs to death - quite literally wore out the grooves. I wish I still did that. Perhaps I've changed, perhaps music has changed, perhaps adulthood has brought with it the ability to just fork out a tenner for a new CD without the ceremony and ritual that went along with the internal debate on how to best dispose of pocket money.

Anyhow, spending a silly amount on one album has brought back so many of those giddy joys.

What is it? Well, it's a CD copy of Crosby, Stills & Nash's 'Allies'.

For some contractual reasons I can't fathom, it was only briefly released in Germany and Japan in the late 1980s and then deleted. Copies are like hens teeth. Believe it or not, fifty quid was a bargain. I've seen it going for over $200.

My friend David Toube thinks this is rather extreme behaviour. But he is not a fan of CSN - "maybe a bit of "Heart of Gold" and that stuff, he says. I suck in my breath. A copy of Allies was the missing album in my now complete CSN(Y) collection.

David Toube is Morrissey's #1 fan. I bet he'd pay through the nose for this!

The Man Trap

2007-03-23T12:40:00.000Z

In South Africa, crime is a national obsession. It touches everyone. If you're not actually a criminal yourself, you're a victim of a criminal, and if per (slim)chance you're neither, it's a certainty that you know someone who is. No dinner with friends is complete without the customary audit of whose been robbed, burgled, mugged, assaulted, hijacked or murdered since you you last met. A strange noise outside interrupted dinner? You can bet that several of your guests will jump up from the table, weapons drawn, while your host fingers the 'panic button' that summons the Armed Response service - a service which South Africans subscribe to as routinely as satellite TV or the Sunday papers.

The South African imagination for dealing with criminal threats knows no bounds. I was particularly impressed with one invention - and flirted with the idea of getting it installed myself - which bolted to the chassis of the car and, when you hit a specially installed button with your foot, would trigger a flame-thrower, roasting anyone within a metre or two of your car. It sounds gruesome, but what other line of defence does one have when a gang of car-jackers thrusts an AK-47 through the driver's window at the 'robots' (traffic lights)?

But finally, I have seen an invention to top that. I can't decide how to feel about it, but it is regrettable that someone thought it necessary to invent.

It is essentially a latex 'femidom' (female condom) with fish hooks inside. It allows the insertion of a penis, but not it's extraction without surgery. It is marketed as an anti rape device. It's called Rapex.

The tragedy is that it has a ready market. In South Africa, there is a rape every 26 seconds - that's over 50 000 a year. Even babies are raped. and with some studies estimating that as much as 25% of the population is HIV+ a rape could be a death sentence.

Some critics have denounced the device as "medieval and barbaric". Perhaps it is, but frankly, I have no concern for the welfare of a rapist caught - or hooked, as it were - in the act. “A medieval device for a medieval deed!” says Sonet Ehlers, the inventor.

A concern that perhaps should be taken more seriously is that being painfully snared by the Rapex device might enrage the rapist and escalate his violence towards the woman. Still, he'll have some explaining to do when he goes to the ER to have it removed.

Promoters of Rapex point out that the difficulty of removing the device from the penis will help identify rapists. They dismiss the criticism of potentially escalating violence by saying that any attempt by a woman to defend herself could be similarly criticised.

Crude Christian anti-gay propaganda

2007-03-19T19:36:00.000Z

A crude, insulting and factually false propoganda video has been produced to promote a Christian protest in Parliament Square at noon on Wednesday 21 March to protest the introduction of the Sexual Orientation Regulations.

The video claims that "the government is determined to pass a law that will, among other things, force shools to teach homosexual sex and relationships to children of all ages in schools".

In spite of having been exposed as liars, these Christian fundamentalists continue to push the idea that the Sexual Orientation Regulations apply to the content of school lessons. It is false! The SORs have nothing to do with school curricula. They are concerned only with the provision of goods and services. This means that a gay student cannot be denied admission or expelled because of their sexual orientation. That's all.

Bizarrely, since the video features a 'teacher' reading about 'homosexuality' to a group of primary schoolers, it comes with a warning that no one under 18 should view it. What did they do? Send the kids they'd used in the making of the video to re-education camps?

New death threat against Taslima Nasreen

2007-03-19T12:09:00.000Z

Taslima Nasreen, the Bangladeshi feminist writer who spoke in London at an International Women's Day event a fornight ago has had a Rs 500,000 (£6000) bounty put on her head by an Indian Mulsim group, the All India Ibtehad Council.

According to the Daily Times in India, Taqi Raza Khan, the president of the council affered the reward to anyone carrying out the "extermination of this notorious woman", saying "Taslima has put Muslims to shame in her writing. She should be killed and beheaded and anyone who does this will get a reward from the council."

Taslima Nasreen fled Bangladesh in 1994 after Muslim fundamentalists declared her writings blasphemous and demanded her execution.

A website billed as "Islam Under Scrutiny by Ex-Muslims" offers more background information on the death-fatwa againts Nasreen and others.

Keillor Savaged

2007-03-15T13:28:00.001Z

And if I seem angry, you fucking motherfucker, it’s because I am. Angered and shocked. I’m used to being attacked by right-wingers obsessed with gay sex and fixated on anti-gay stereotypes. It’s a new and different sensation to be attacked so crudely by a man of the left—particularly when that man’s fat ass squats in a large glass house.

So says a very angry Dan Savage as he, as my friend Brian said, "basically rips the large intestine out of Garrison Keillor and strangles him with it".

What has made columnist and author Savage so angry?

Well, radio personality Garrison Keillor wrote in his regular Salon column thus:

"Under the old monogamous system, we didn’t have the problem of apportioning Thanksgiving and Christmas among your mother and stepdad, your dad and his third wife, your mother-in-law and her boyfriend Hal, and your father-in-law and his boyfriend Chuck. Today, serial monogamy has stretched the extended family to the breaking point. A child can now grow up with eight or nine or 10 grandparents—Gampa, Gammy, Goopa, Gumby, Papa, Poopsy, Goofy, Gaga and Chuck—and need a program to keep track of the actors...

... And now gay marriage will produce a whole new string of hyphenated relatives. In addition to the ex-stepson and ex-in-laws and your wife’s first husband’s second wife, there now will be Bruce and Kevin’s in-laws and Bruce’s ex, Mark, and Mark’s current partner, and I suppose we’ll get used to it. "

Trouble is, as Savage explains:

Keillor has been married THREE TIMES. He has children from two of his marriages, children who presumably need a computer program to keep track of their step-siblings, half-siblings, and sprawling extended families, children that have to be “apportioned out on Thanksgiving and Christmas.” Okay, fine, whatever. Keillor can recognize marriage, life-long commitment, and less complicated family structures as the ideal, even if he himself has failed—failed spectacularly—to live up to that ideal himself. It might have been nice, however, if the withered old hypocrite had admitted to Salon readers that he has failed to live up to the ideals he’s espousing. How about a little full disclosure, Garrison?

But not only has he married three times, he's also had long-term affairs. In fact, his second marriage failed because of his adultary.

Garrison Keilor is the author of books like Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From the Heart of America. The book opens:

"I AM A Democrat, which was nothing I decided for myself but simply the way I was brought up, starting with the idea of Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which is the basis of the simple social compact by which we live."

Hypocrite!

But there is nothing I can really add to the majesty of Dan Savage's full reply. Read it here.

And many gay Americans still think the party that gave America DOMA and DADT is a friend to the gay community. In broad strokes, the difference between the Left and the Right on gay issues is that the Right will tell you they hate fags to your face. That's about it. Vote Democrat to get rid of that idiot Bush by all means, but don't fool yourself that the Dems will do jackshit for gay folk.

And just to underscore this point. When Hillary Clinton was asked today by ABC News whether, in light of General Peter Pace's outburst, she though gay people were immoral, she managed to muster this:

"Well I'm going to leave that to others to conclude."

Keillor himself has advised the Democratic Party to "jettison" issues that the Republicans use to "divide" them. He said in a radio interview in Kansas recently:

“I think that gay marriage is also an issue that does no good for us and I want to see us divest ourselves of this,” Keillor says. “The symbolism of gay people marrying is terribly potent, terrible powerful, and we ignore this at our peril in our party."

With friends like these, as Brian - a former supporter of Howard Dean - says, as he looks elsewhere.

Still, as Savage says, it always is "a different sensation" when crude attacks come from the Left. Sadly, he'd better get used to it.

Women's Rights, the Veil and Islamic and religious laws

2007-03-13T17:43:00.001Z

GHQ-Multimedia Presents: The speeches from the seminar "Women's Right, the Veil and Islamic and Religious Laws" held at the University of London Union in London on 8 March 2007 to mark International Women's Day.

Listen online or download the speeches in MP3 format by Sohaila Sharifi, Taslima Nasreen, Maryam Namazie, Mina Ahadi, Sonja Eggerickx and Ann Harrison.

"This was a superb and exhilarating evening. I cannot say how much admiration I have for these courageous women. They sense that they are at the head of a growing movement and that the women of Iran are aching to be freed from the confines of the 'medieval rag' and all it represents," said Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society and the media spokesperson for the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association (which publishes GHQ).

The seminar was co-sponsored by the International Campaign in Defence of Women's Right in Iran - UK, the National Secular Society and the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association.

About the speakers:

Sohaila Sharifi is a member of the Campaign in Defence of Women's Right in Iran - UK, and chaired the meeting. She also translated for Mina Ahadi.

Taslima Nasreen is a physician, writer, radical feminist, human rights activist and a secular humanist. Her first book of poetry was published in 1986. Her second became a huge success in 1989. Next she started writing about women's oppression. In 1992 she received the prestigious literary award Ananda from West Bengal in India for her Selected Columns, the first writer from Bangladesh to earn that award. Islamic fundamentalists launched a campaign against her in 1990, staging street demonstrations and processions. In 1993, Soldiers of Islam issued a fatwa against her, a price was set on her head because of her criticism of Islam, and she was confined to her house. Taslima has been living in exile. She has written twenty eight books of poetry, essays, novels, and short stories in her native language of Bengali. Many have been translated into twenty different languages.

Maryam Namazie is a rights activist, commentator and broadcaster on Iran, the Middle East, women's rights, cultural relativism, secularism, Humanism, religion, Islam and political Islam. She is the National Secular Society's 2005 Secularist of the Year award winner and an NSS Honorary Associate; producer of TV International English; Director of the Worker-communist Party of Iran's International Relations Committee; co-editor of WPI Briefing and Vice President of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association. She is also involved in the Third Camp against US militarism and Islamic terrorism. She has been threatened by Islamists as a result of her defence of rights and freedoms.

Mina Ahadi was born in Iran in 1956. She started her political activities by setting up discussion clubs and performances when she was only 14. She was actively involved as a university student in the 1979 Iranian revolution. When the Islamic government gained power and Khomeini issued a fatwa for compulsory Islamic veiling, she organised meetings and demonstrations against the government. Mina is the founder and coordinator of the International Committees against Execution and Stoning. Mina Ahadi has lived in Europe since 1990. Recently she has founded the Central Council of Ex-Muslims to expose Islamic laws and its affects on people. She is currently under police protection for her activities.

Sonja Eggerickx was born in 1947 in Brussels. She studied Moral Sciences at the State University in Ghent (Belgium) and was active with the humanist youth, the feminist group and later the humanist union. She has been a teacher of what is called "non-confessional ethics" for 23 years, as well as a school inspector for the same subject. She is President of the Flemish Union of freethinkers/Humanists, co-president of the Belgian umbrella organisation Central Laïque committee and is currently the president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

Ann Harrison, currently a Researcher on Iran, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, has worked for Amnesty International in the Middle East and North Africa Programme for a total of about 10 years, first in the 1990s and most recently since June 2005. She has worked on a number of countries in the region, beginning with Israel and the Occupied Territories and Jordan, and later Lebanon and Syria. She has worked on human rights issues in Iran for almost four years.

Listen to the speeches.

Mugabe's mielie-mouthed media's moral maize

2007-03-12T10:24:00.000Z

While Zimbabwe starves, Robert Mugabe's state-controlled media feeds the people a staple diet of bullshit.

According to Reuters, this weekend, Zimbabwean police arrested several opposition leaders, including Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai, and shot another man dead while breaking up a prayer meeting held "to address the deepening political and economic crisis".

Of course, normally I'd scoff at people praying to achieve anything, but of course, Mugabe has banned political gatherings. And, since all rational avenues to effect change in the country seem to have been explored, it is no wonder that people might request divine intervention - even if only as a means to discuss the national catastrophe inflicted upon the country by Mugabe. Imagine inflation at 1700% and over 80% unemployment.

However, state-controlled Zimbabwe Herald reported the story thus:

"ONE person was shot dead by police and three police officers severely injured during an attack by MDC thugs, while opposition faction leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara were arrested for inciting people to engage in violence."

For me, this is nothing new because I remember the State of Emergency in South Africa. In fact, I wonder if Mugabe didn't buy surplus BOSS and CCB textbooks at auction.

SciFi GHQ now out!

2007-03-07T10:32:00.000Z

The new print edition of GHQ is in the post to subscribers, but it is also available as a free PDF download from the GHQ website.

The cover story looks at how Science Fiction on television (like Star Trek, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica) deals with themes of Humanism vs religion.

There are also stories about 'The Festival of Blight' (where religious fundamentalists protested outside the House of Lords in opposition to the inclusion of gay people in anti-discrimination legislation) and a report back from the recent Faith, Homophobia & Human Rights conference, including the text of a speech by Ali Hilli who details the latest atrocities against LGBTs in Iraq by Islamist militias.

Keith Porteous-Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society explains why secularism is good for everyone - even the religious. There is also an op-ed from Humanist author Barbara Smoker on free-speech, respect and religion.

There are also details about the GALHA Film Festival starting this weekend.

Download the new issue, enjoy, fume, etc...

Women's Rights, the Veil and Islamic and religious laws

2007-03-05T10:51:00.001Z

To mark International Women's Day, a seminar entitled Women's Rights, the Veil and Islamic and religious laws will be held at the University of London Union from 6 - 10pm.

The seminar is co-sponsored by the International Campaign in Defence of Women’s Right in Iran-UK and the National Secular Society and the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association.

The speakers are:

Sonja Eggerickx: President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union
Ann Harrison: Researcher, Middle East and North Africa Department of Amnesty International’s International Secretariat
Maryam Namazie: Director of the Worker-communist Party of Iran’s International Relations Committee, 2005 National Secular Society’s Secularist of the Year Award, Winner and producer of International TV.
Taslima Nasrin: Physician, writer, radical feminist, human rights activist and secular humanist

In Iran yesterday, over 30 women were arrested and charged with endangering national security, propaganda against the state and taking part in an illegal gathering after protesting outside the court where 5 women were being tried for organising a protest last June against laws discriminating against women.

There will also be a showing - for the first time - of a short film “In the name of honor” by Reza Moradi.

Reza Moradi famously errupted in anger during Tony Benn's speech at the The War Coalition's "Time To Go" rally when some of the "peace demonstrators" in the crowd started waving Iranian flags. "We will not allow it! We will not alow the Islamic Regime to be represented here!" Moradi exclaimed, while attempting to explain what the Islamic Republic of Iran's flag meant to socialists, trade unionists, human rights activits and others who had been on the receiving end of torture, imprisonment and execution. His protestations, of course, fell on deaf ears, as the StWC stewards pushed him around and allowed the triumphant fascists to wave the flags in his face.

Admission is free

University of London Union
Room 3D, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY
(Nearest underground stations: Russell Square, Goodge Street)

For more info, call 07719111738 or 07950924434

Banish the Bishops

2007-02-28T19:59:00.001Z

If ever there was a slap in the face to the idea of a separation of Church and State, it is the privileged position of the phalanx of Bishops in the House of Lords - a deeply undemocratic institution to begin with.

Next week the House of Commons will be debating House of Lords reform and the British Humanist Association is calling on people to let their MPs know their views on the place of Bishops in a 'reformed' House of Lords.

The BHA says:

"The Government proposes to retain the right of Bishops to sit in parliament and even to give the Church new powers to decide precisely which Bishops will represent them. The BHA and our supporters in Parliament will be arguing that the right of Bishops to sit in the Lords must be removed."

The BHA has also produced a briefing paper on the issue, which is worth reading. It sets out all the arguments for giving the bishops the boot.

They are urging people to write to their MPs urging them to support initiatives to remove the bishops from the Lords, especially by adding their name to EDM 998.

For those with limited time, the BHA has produced a pro forma letter which can be automatically sent to your MP with two or three mouse clicks. It literally takes 30 seconds to do.

Also encourage your friends to write in. We can be fairly certain that the organised religious groups will be engaged in heavy lobbying. This is a rare opportunity to get this unelected and unrepresentative group out of parliament.

Little Atoms

2007-02-20T11:46:00.000Z

A few Friday's ago I was invited onto the Little Atoms radio show to discuss various humanist and secularist issues: the new SORs, communalist politics, the rise of the religious right, the pitfalls of standing up for secularism when some cynically conflate race and religion, etc... you know, my usual hobby-horses.

The show, which airs on Resonance 104.4 FM is hosted by Padraig Reidy and Richard Sanderson.

You can listen to the show here. (The talking starts after about 1:30 of really spacy/trippy new-age theme music.)

Past shows can be downloaded from their audio archive. Guests have included Harry from Harry's Place, as well as Johann Hari, Nick Cohen, David Aaronovitch, Jon Ronson (twice) and A.C. Grayling.

Jews and Gay Adoption Law

2007-02-13T11:17:00.000Z

In my capacity as editor of Gay Humanist Quarterly, I was invited to write a comment piece for Totally Jewish on the issue of exemptions for religious groups from having to provide services to gay adoptive parents, following a feature they ran in the previous edition.

I argued that the Jewish community, particularly, should support anti-discrimination issues and should be very wary of so-called "conscientious" opt-outs:

"It’s hard to accept, but antisemites also have consciences. Should anti-Jewish discrimination be overlooked if the perpetrators claim it is a conscientious objection to Jews, not blind prejudice? If so, all manner of far-right bigots would suddenly become very pious indeed."

The full article is here.

Call on PM to be Ruthless

2007-01-24T12:15:00.000Z

When Ruth Kelly - who abstained from or voted against key gay equality issues - was given the 'Equalities' portfolio in May last year, George Broadhead of the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association warned:

“Ms Kelly’s equivocal answers to these questions [about homosexuality] bring into question her appointment to this sensitive post. She says that she will make her own mind up about the issues and follow the Government’s policy, but how can we be sure that she will be able to put her deep attachment to this extremist Catholic group to one side when making decisions?”

Peter Tatchell of OutRage! commented:

"Tony Blair would never appoint someone to a race-equality post who had a lukewarm record of opposing racism."

Despite the warnings that it made no sense to appoint someone in charge of equalities who had already thrown in her lot with the chief group seeking exemptions from compliance with equality legislation, the government plowed ahead and gave Kelly, a member of the ultra-conservative Catholic organisation, Opus Dei, the job.

Now Kelly finds it impossible to put aside her personal views and is helping to drive 'a horse and coaches' through equality legislation.

"It's not acceptable to exempt gay couples before considering whether they are suitable... You can't have an equal rights law with exemptions like that - you either have equal rights law or you don't," said Eagle.

The Number 10 website allows one to directly petition the Prime Minister. Now it is hosting a petition to remove Ruth Kelly. I've signed it.

By signing it, I am not suggesting that anyone with strong religious beliefs is unfit to hold office. They are - but not this one. It is an obscenity that the person put in charge of the now-combined equalities portfolio shills for the one lobby that seeks exemptions.

As I said in an earlier post on a similar issue: either everyone is protected or no-one. It is absurd that it is illegal to discriminate against people on the basis of their religious faith but they are exempt from having to return the courtesy.

Labour MEP, Michael Cashman, is backing calls for Ruth Kelly to resign.

New GHQ Out Now!

2006-12-05T12:56:00.000Z

It's shameless plug time again. The Autumn edition of GHQ is now available for free download from the Gay Humanist Quarterly website. It is a PDF a smidgen over 2mb.

In this edition, there is an interview with long-standing GALHA secretary, George Broadhead on the occasion of his National Secular Society Lifetime Achievement Award, and an article about a project that demonstrated that 'traditional marriage' isn't necessary the in the 'tradition' that some think it is - by reconstructing the medieval Church's same-sex blessing ceremonies.

There is a primer on Hizb ut Tahrir's unsavoury constitution and Peter Tatchell writes about why he whiffs hypocrisy in those who do not want their religious beliefs ‘offended’.

In an op-ed, I explain why I think that some gay Muslims are misguided in their assumptions about other faiths, particularly when attempting to draw parallels with their experience of religious homophobia.

Terry Sanderson reviews the life and art of Marlene Dietrich and Tony Challis reports back from the Edinburgh Festival.

Warren Allen Smith provides gossip from across the pond, while Brian Miller dissects the recent US elections while noting that both the Republicans & the Democrats use cynical homophobia as an election ploy.

And of course, the usual round-up of news, views and reviews, blasphemy, sacrilege and godlessness in this "certified 100% faith free" quarterly.

PS: If you ever wondered what evangelical preacher George Hargreaves produced in his former life as a writer of disco anthems, or you're curious about what newbie Scientologists are told in their 'orientation' programme - or you just want to see the miracle of Jesus appearing in a dog's bottom... then you'll find details enclosed

Religious Rights vs Gay Rights

2006-10-04T12:48:00.000+01:00

Debate/Panel Discussion:
Religious Rights vs Gay Rights:
Should the Gay Police Association be prosecuted for inciting religious hatred?

Date: Friday, 13 October 2006
Time: 7:30 PMVenue: The Library, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RLMap: http://www.conwayhall.org.uk/where.htm
Nearest Tube: Holborn

ALL WELCOME – Free Admission

The Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association is hosting a panel discussion around thethreats to prosecute the Gay Police Association (GPA) following their advert linking religious belief to homophobic incidents.

The panellists will consider the issues the advert raises and discuss the rise ofreligiously-motivated homophobia in general and the increasing clash between religion and gay rights.

Evangelical Christian, Rev George Hargreaves – who is planning to bring a private prosecution of the GPA – will join the panel. This will ensure a lively debate around one of the most important issues facing the LGBT community today.

The panellists will include a representative from the Gay Police Association, Ted Brown of Black Gays & Lesbians Against Media Homophobia and Savi Hensman of the Lesbian & Gay Christian Movement.

The Gay Police Association advert pictured a Bible next to a pool of blood with the text:

“In the last twelve months, The Gay Police Association has recorded a 75% increase in homophobic incidents, where the sole or primary motivating factor was the religious beliefs of the perpetrator.”

Was the advert justified? What is the extent of religiously-motivated attacks on gay people? Does the advert incite religious hatred? Is there a basis for the prosecution? Are too many people – both religious and gay – being investigated for simply speaking their minds?

Come along to Conway Hall on Friday 13 October and find out!

There will be a period for the panellists to be challenged by the audience, so join the debate.

Kids on Fire: The American Madrassas

2006-09-28T12:06:00.000+01:00

"Where should we be putting our efforts? I'll tell you where our enemies are putting theirs. They're putting it on the kids. They're going into the schools. You go to Palestine... they're taking their kids to camps like we take ours to Bible camps and they're putting grenades into their hands, they're teaching them to put on bomb belts, teaching them how to use rifles and machine guns... It is no wonder with that kind of intense training and discipling that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam."

So, given the shocking picture the speaker has presented, where does she think her community should be putting their efforts? Promoting secualar rationalism? Perhaps calling on people of faith to chill out? Not bloody likely. She wants to get in on the act.

"I want to see young people who are committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the cause of the Gospel as they are in Pakistan, in Israel and Palestine and all those different places."

That is, as they say, some scary shit!

A new documentary "Jesus Camp" shines a light on the Evangelical Christian version of the Islamic madrassas we keep hearing about. Clearly, fundamentalists of all stripes are preparing for Armageddon.

According to ABC News, the camp teaches children - as young as five - how to be "true Christian soldiers" and to "take back America for Christ". One has to wonder how long the 'take back America' will take to mutate into 'take back the world'! "God's Boot Camp?" asks the LA Times.

Here is the trailer:

There's a lot more shocking coverage made available by the miracle of YouTube. Watch the ABC special report here, and there are more clips from the documentary here, here and here.

See also the film's official website.

[HAT TIP: Brian M.]

It's all over if the fat lady doesn't sing

2006-09-27T14:24:00.000+01:00

The ball of self-censorship has started to roll. The Berlin Opera has cancelled a run of Mozart's Idomeneo.

The problem is that, along with the heads of Poseidon, Jesus and Buddha, the head of Mohammed is also depicted.

So, after a warning from the security officials that the 200 year old opera "could provoke dangerous reactions" and pose a threat to the safety of opera goers (and presumably others), Kirsten Harms, director of Berlin's Deutsche Opera decided to pull the plug on the production. German politicians are not happy.

According to Reuters, Berlin's mayor, Klaus Wowereit, rightly says, "Our ideas about openness, tolerance and freedom must be lived on the offensive. Voluntary self-limitation gives those who fight against our values a confirmation in advance that we will not stand behind them."

And, according to the International Herald Tribune, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Wednesday that "self-censorship out of fear" would not be tolerated.

"This is about art, not about politics. "We should not make art dependent on religion — then we are back in the Middle Ages." said Kenan Kolat, a leader of Germany's Turkish Community, adding that it was time Muslims accepted freedom of expression in art.

Strong words all round, but will we have the courage of our convictions to stand behind them? I predict that the rationalisation that an opera (or a book, or a poem, or a painting, or a photograph, or a play or a film or a TV programme) isn't worth the life of a nun will gain currency. Of course, that's exactly right: very little is worth trading for a human life. But it's a false dilema.

By failing to assert the right to free expression in a free country, we're bargaining away a lot more than the life of a nun... or a director, or a tourist, or whoever else's blood Islamists decide must be spilt in retribution for free thought and free expression.

One Last Nail To The Coffin Of Independent Media in Iran

2006-09-15T15:58:00.000+01:00

The National Secular Society's Newsline has just popped into my inbox and it contains a story that passed me - and I suspect a lot of others - by this week.

Iran's most prominent reformist newspaper has been closed down for failing to remove an executive accused of publishing "blasphemous" articles and insulting officials. The country's press supervisory board, run by the culture ministry, ordered the closure of the Persian daily paper Sharq on Monday after it failed to replace managing director Muhammad Rahmanian. The board said the paper had been given one month to replace him, but after the deadline ran out on Sunday he remained at the helm. "Because of 70 cases of violations, including insulting officials, religious and national figures, publishing blasphemous articles and also articles creating discord ... the board demanded the replacement," the board said in a statement.

Their competitor (I imagine) The Tehran Times ran the announcement with practically no background or reaction, but the online Iran Press Service (which publishes in English from abroad) gave a lot of background in their article One Last Nail To The Coffin Of Independent Media in Iran.

Describing Sharq as "the country’s most influential and popular newspaper", they noted:

“We are in a vicious circle, for, as a result of these pressures, closures and crackdowns, more Iranian intellectuals, journalists, scholars and others take refuge with outside-based media to express themselves and are immediately accused of collaboration with foreign media and arrested.”

Sharq is just the latest victim of a concerted attack on the media. The Guardian report on the issue notes that "another Iranian newspaper has also been closed down - political monthly Nameh has also been shut for blasphemy and insulting religious figures. The paper's editor, Majid Tavallaei, said it was closed for publishing a poem by dissident female poet Simin Behbahani, according to an Associated Press report."

The Guardian story also noted that "Iranian courts have closed more than 100 publications since 2000, most of which were reformist."

In their report, South African online news portal News24.com says that another paper, the State-owned Iran was closed in May for publishing a cartoon that offended the Azeris and led to several days of unrest in northwestern Azerbaijan province. The cartoonist and the editor-in-chief of the daily remain in jail.

What's going on here?

2006-09-15T15:37:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday afternoon, I was showing a friend from South Africa around London. As we walked from Charing Cross station towards Trafalgar Square we heard quite a commotion coming from the opposite pavement. Being a journalist, she was quite eager to see what it was all about. "Good heavens," said I, "that's right outside South Africa House!"

I took the snap above on my camera phone (hence the poor quality) as we approached.

The protest was by a group of Zimbabweans angy that Thabo Mbeki will not take the lead in a regional effort to do something about Robert Mugabe's regime.

The Institute of War and Peace Reporting has a critical piece outlining exactly what Thabo Mbeki's failings on this issue are. And this is why Zimbabwean activists have moved down The Strand from the Zimbawean embassy towards South Africa House.

Of course, no noddy badge for guessing which UK politician is swanning around on the world stage (literally) with Mugabe!

What to do about Darfur

2006-09-12T11:10:00.000+01:00

Sunday 17 Spetember 2006 is the Global Day for Darfur.

While a great deal of activity is proposed for this day to draw attention to the criminally under-reported situation in the region, I sense that there is a shortage of ideas about what to do about the situation itself.

At the public meeting organised by the Euston Group last week, some of the ideas - especially those proposed by the Aegis Trust, like boycotting produce from the Sudan, writing to one's MP and protesting to the Sudan embassy - would, in my opinion, be limited in their effectiveness. A government this shameless cannot be shamed into acting (or not acting, as the case may be) and the economic pressure of a boycott most likely will be felt by the farmers, not the corrupt politicians transferring hard currency by the suitcase full into European banks.

Did the collapse of the Zimbawean economy stop Robert Mugabe's shopping sprees in Paris and Rome, for example?

That is not to say that symbolic gestures can't be galvenised into a wider and more effective programme of action. They are important as a component of consciousness building, which is perhaps the first step to something more concrete.

But, what's next? What needs to be done on Monday the 18th and beyond?

Peter Tatchell has some ideas, which I present now for discussion.

Last year, Tatchell helped organise a "die-in" outside Downing Street in which 250 Darfurian refugees and some supporters participated.

Tatchell proposed the following programme of action:

Enforce a no-fly zone over Darfur to halt the Sudanese bombing of African villages
Send into Darfur a 15,000-strong UN peace-keeping force to protect the civilian population and aid workers, keep the warring factions apart, and disarm the militias
Provide food, clothing, shelter and medical care to the victims of the conflict, and provide the refugees with assistance to leave the camps, return to their homes and rebuild their lives and communities
Impose sanctions against the Sudanese government leaders and the leaders of the Janjaweed militia, including an arms embargo and arraignment before the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes, torture and crimes against humanity

"Darfur is a needless, preventable humanitarian tragedy, caused by the complacency and inaction of the UK government, the African Union, the United Nations, and the European Union. The international community has Darfur’s blood on its hands," said Tatchell.

More controversially, Tatchell ascribes the lack of action on the Left to the fear of being branded "Islamophobic".

"The threat of being labeled "Islamophobic" is inducing a new wave of moral paralysis, as evidenced by the way most leftists ignore the role of fundamentalist Islam in the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, where racist Islamists are exterminating the black African population."

Of course, this is fear is neither insubstantial or unsubstatiated. Ian Donovan wrote in "What Next?" journal (edited by Bob Pitt of Islamophobia-Watch notoriety). Criticising Harry's Place, the Alliance for Workers Liberty, and the Communist Party of Great Britain for supporting Tatchell, Donovan wrote:

"What these opportunists did not print, however, or even mention or criticise, was Peter Tatchell’s public call for Iraq-style sanctions against Sudan, and for a blue-helmeted, United Nations imperialist armed force to invade that country and "sort out" the communal conflict and ethnic cleaning that is going on in Darfur. As everyone knows, this would mean the US and its allies under another flag, as in the Korean and 1991 Gulf Wars," said Donovan.

No wonder they had no ideas to save the lives of the 400 000 now dead and a million more waiting to die.

Once again, sections of the Left give priority to Muslim oppressors at the expense of the Muslim victims of that oppression. Let us be clear: what is happening in Sudan has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with racism and racial supremacy. Arab Islamists are "ethnically cleansing" black Africans - most of whom are also Muslims (but Muslims of the wrong race).

But there is no need for us to be paralysed by this poison. Wearing a blue hat on Sunday must be a start to a robust plan of action. Argument is better than silence, so let the debate begin.

What I shall say to Stephen Green

2006-09-07T20:06:00.000+01:00

I’m looking forward to ‘meeting’ Stephen Green on Saturday. I shall be in Canterbury to attend the AGM of the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association, whose magazine – GHQ – as you know, I edit.

We have been tipped off by an evangelical Christian in Canterbury - whose loathing of Mr Green marginally outweighs his loathing of gays and “pagans” (as he calls Humanists) - that Green is intending to hijack their ‘peaceful demonstration’ against our AGM.

The group, which calls itself “Christian Family & Youth Concern Fellowship” had been planning to register their protest against our supposed aim of “promoting sexual deviancy and paganism” in a “holy city” and their leader, a Rev Darryl Griffiths, wrote to the hotel hosting the event in an attempt to get them to either cancel the event or allow their mob to wave banners in the car park. Fortunately they were told to get knotted and that no molestation of the hotel’s guests would be tolerated.

So they decided to hold a “pray-in” instead. Enter Stephen Green.

Re G&LHA Conference, Canterbury.
Sorry not to be in touch before. I should be interested in the hymn-singing vigil you mention, and could advertise this and support it with people. I'll be pleased to send you the latest Christian Voice newsletter if you would be kind enough to email me a note of your land address and church attended ...
May God bless you.
Yours sincerely,
Stephen Green, M.A
National Director, Christian Voice

But, says Rev Griffiths in his correspondence with GALHA:

“Unfortunately, I learned yesterday afternoon that one of our members, a bit of a ‘loose cannon’, has taken it upon himself to alert Stephen Green of Christian Voice to the G&LHA conference (sic). This was done without consulting me, or other fellowship members. Stephen Green is well-known within the Christian Community for his outspoken views and for a somewhat strident approach to those with whom he disagrees. Our concern is that he may well organise his own protest, which is certainly against our wishes.”

As an aside, I’d take Stephen Green’s approach any day. It is far less insidious than Rev Griffith’s alternative. Griffith says:

“Our fear, is that Stephen Green may turn up anyway, undoing all the valuable outreach work we have done in helping gays who seek salvation through prayer and Christian fellowship. If he does, we wish to make it clear that he does so without the approval or encouragement of the FYC fellowship. We oppose stridency from any quarter, as it's always counter-productive in bringing the wayward back to the fold.”

What is his vehicle for this? Why, the Alpha Course, of course!

“[W]e will be contacting local newspapers in order to advertise the Alpha Course and encourage homosexuals to turn away from the dark path they have chosen,” says Griffiths.

The Alpha Course targets people who want to “explore the meaning of life” – in other words, people who feel lost, alienated, depressed and directionless. People who are emotionally vulnerable: like many lesbian and gay people whose minds have already been brutalised by The Church. Alpha is to religion what McDonald’s is to cuisine – and they have just as stringent branding rules. So successful is the commodifying of evangelicalism that they now advertise on London busses. (This is no surprise, since half of London’s busses are run by Stagecoach – owned by another homophobic religious nut. But I digress…

Stephen Green is in all sorts of trouble at the moment. He’s facing a prosecution for “using threatening words and behaviour” at a Cardiff gay pride event. From what I can ascertain, this didn’t amount to much more than doling out ‘turn or burn’ type leaflets.

An unrepentant Green claims that his “rights to free speech have been challenged”.

And, he’s absolutely right. I’ll go on record as saying that I support his right to express his views in a peaceful manner. The police and the courts have no moral right to pursue people for simply expressing their thoughts and opinions, as long as they do not incite violence or make violent threats.

But, since Stephen Green only speaks the language of fundamentalists, I would have to refer him to what Jesus says (as reported in Matthew 7:5):

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Stephen Green is no supporter of freedom of speech. I shan’t rehash the disgraceful tactics he used to try to shut down Jerry Springer: The Opera, since I covered it on the GALHA blog at the time.

Of course, Green and his ilk don’t balk orchestrating prosecutions of “religious hatred” when some sad facts are pointed out at their expense. The Gay Police Association is facing a possible prosecution after they revealed in an advert that the majority of homophobic incidents reported to them had a religious component.

As Peter Tatchell pointed out yesterday in his Comment Is Free piece:

“The GPA advert has reportedly prompted thousands of complaints to the Metropolitan Police by supporters of religious pressure groups, as well as by die-hard fundamentalists. They have expressed no concern about the death threats, but they want the ad banned and are demanding the prosecution of the GPA. The Met is now investigating whether the GPA advertisement constitutes an anti-religious hate crime. It has referred the complaints to the Crown Prosecution Service.”

Isn’t this all getting a bit too much? I have no illusions that the bulk of homophobia is generated by men in frocks. I want the right to confront them without the fear of prosecution. I do not fear their ludicrous tracts – bring ‘em on I say – because they can be defeated with persistent reason and clear-headed logic. I don’t need the long arm of the law to protect me from Stephen Green. But, if he has the courage of his convictions, he needs to explain why he needs the law to protect his beliefs from me.

So I shall tell Mr Green that, in this instance at least, I’m prepared to act on Jesus’s advice (also in Matthew 7), even as he so flagrantly defies it. I shall do unto others as I would have them do unto me. If he arrives on Saturday with his slogans and leaflets, I shall intercede if the Canterbury police emulate their colleagues in Cardiff. I shall say:

“For f…reedom’s sake, officer, let the man speak his mind!" – and, if necessary, I shall offer to be arrested along side him.

This madness has to be challenged.

Wear a blue hat on September 17

2006-09-06T12:56:00.000+01:00

September 17 2006 is the Global Day for Darfur.

Individuals and organisations around the world will join peaceful demonstrations, rallies, marches, and other events to draw attention to the criminally under-reported plight of the people of Darfur. September 17 marks the first anniversary of the signing of the UN World Summit Outcome Document, which enshrined the international doctrine of the "Responsibility To Protect"

Despite the pledge: “to take collective action …if national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”, the violence in western Sudan has not stopped; in fact, in some parts of Darfur, the violence has grown worse.

"People are still being killed and raped and displaced - every single day," say the Day For Darfur organisers.

On September 17 people around the world will take part in the Global Day for Darfur to show world-wide support for the Darfuri people and to put pressure on our Governments to protect the civilians.

We hope that you will be able to join us on the Global Day for Darfur.

Wear a blue hat on September 17th, and joining in protests and events to help the people of Darfur.

To view with Quicktime click here

Government ghaners church’s support

2006-09-04T16:30:00.000+01:00

The clergy in Ghana are backing their government’s decision to ban a conference for gay men and lesbians. The government has pledged to take “disciplinary action” on anyone “breaking the law”, reports GayWired.

Because homosexuality is illegal in Ghana, this has been widely interpreted as referring to anyone attending the conference.

Information Minister Kwamena Bartels, said in a statement that “Government would like to make it absolutely clear that it shall not permit the proposed conference anywhere in Ghana… Unnatural carnal knowledge is illegal under our criminal code. Homosexuality, lesbianism and bestiality are therefore offences under the laws of Ghana.”

While he has the backing of the clergy (surprise, surprise) apparently some members of the public have used radio phone-in programmes to (anonymously) criticise the government’s lack of respect for freedom of speech. But of course, others support the Church’s stance.

Once again, when draconian measures are taken to deny LGBT people their legal rights, religious leaders can be counted on to cheerlead the persecution.

The South African edition of The Independent, reports that the Ghanaian government claims that allowing the conference will undermine the country’s “culture and morality”.

In a statement that quite clearly contradicts his own stance, Mr Bartels told The Independent: “It's not illegal for them to meet and talk, but we in Ghana don't want to encourage it. They can go and do it elsewhere.”

Another report stated that the conference centre had denied that any such conference was planned. One might speculate that the government and the church made it all up in an effort simply to create a moral panic and stir up homophobia.

News from a Bubble

2006-09-04T13:14:00.000+01:00

My friend Vincent Maher, currently the director of the New Media Laboratory at Rhodes University’s School of Journalism & Media Studies in Grahamstown, South Africa (my old stomping ground, when I taught there in the late 90s, and studied there in the late 80s) has developed an innovative way to ‘aggregate’ the day’s news.

Check out NewzBubble.com

The site aggregates news - categorised into technology, world, US, UK and South African - and converts the stories into tags and renders them as floating bubbles where the size of the bubble is determined by the frequency of the tag. It also shows which tags are the most clicked on by users.

What it basically does it create differently sized balloons which inflate according to the frequency of certain keywords. In today’s news aggregation, we see that keyword “police” has made the largest bubble, while terms like “Climate” and “rainfall” have made teeny-tiny little ones.

The application is still in ‘beta’, but says Maher, “It’s like a dog, every day I wake up and train this thing - I have to train it which words to keep and which to discard.”

He says he didn’t create it intentionally. He’d been thinking about new ways to aggregate the news and “had some bubble code lying around”. “I just started messing about”, he says.

It might not be the most efficient way of searching the news, but it is loads of fun, turns up unexpected stories and has loads of potential to visually demonstrate both news priorities and reader interest as Maher develops the technology.

Paul Simon's Surprise

2006-09-04T12:18:00.000+01:00

Paul Simon’s new album ‘Surprise’ (which can be previewed here) has some interesting observations about the direction religion is going. In one song, ‘Wartime Prayers’, he notes:

Prayers offered in times of peace are silent conversations, Appeals for love or love's release In private invocations But all that is changed now, Gone like a memory from the day before the fires. People hungry for the voice of God Hear lunatics and liars Wartime prayers, wartime prayers In every language spoken, For every family scattered and broken.

In another song ‘I don’t believe’, he sings:

I don't believe we were born to be sheep in a flockTo pantomime prayers with the hands of a clock

The albums title track opens provocatively with the song “How can you live in the Northeast?”

How can you live in the Northeast?How can you live in the South?How can you build on the banks of a riverWhen the flood water pours from the mouth?How can you be a Christian?How can you be a Jew?How can you be a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Hindu?How can you?Weak as the winter sun, we enter life on earth.Names and religion comes just after date of birth.Then everybody gets a tongue to speak,And everyone hears an inner voice,A day at the end of the week to wonder and rejoice.If the answer is infinite lightWhy do we sleep in the dark?

Of course, it being Paul Simon, you’re not going to get any unequivocal statements and his meaning is often obscure.

As a long-time fan, I must say, I don’t rate this album as anything approaching his best work. It’s competent, but, from what I heard on the preview, is rather pedestrian. But “People hungry for the voice of God, Hear lunatics and liars” – what a line!

Homophobic terror: The Talibanisation of Iraq

2006-09-04T11:00:00.000+01:00

Peter Tatchell reveals the targeted execution of gay Iraqis by Islamist death squads

(as published in) Tribune - London, UK - 1 September 2006

Parts of Iraq, including some Baghdad neighbourhoods, are now under the de facto control of Taliban-style fundamentalist militias. They enforce a savage interpretation of Sharia law, summarily executing people for ‘crimes’ like listening to western pop music, wearing shorts or jeans, drinking alcohol, selling videos, working in a barber’s shop, homosexuality, dancing, having a Sunni name, adultery and, in the case of women, not being veiled or walking in the street unaccompanied by a male relative.

Iraq is sliding fast towards theocracy and is likely to end up similar to Iran. The power and influence of fundamentalist militias is growing rapidly. Two militias are doing most of the killing. They are the armed wings of major parties in the Blair-backed Iraqi government. Madhi is the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, and Badr is the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is the leading political force in Baghdad’s ruling coalition. Both militias want to establish an Iranian-style religious dictatorship.

Despite this goal of clerical fascism, the Socialist Workers Party and the Stop The War Coalition support Muqtada al-Sadr. They invited his representative to speak at the anti-war rally in London on 18 March. Not to be outdone, the July issue of the left-wing monthly Red Pepper gave over a whole page to white-washing al-Sadr’s crimes against humanity.

The terrorisation of gay Iraqis by these Islamist death squads is symptomatic of the fate that will befall all Iraqis if the fundamentalists continue to gain influence.

Under Saddam Hussein discrete homosexuality was usually tolerated. Since his overthrow, the violent persecution of gay people is commonplace. It is actively encouraged by Iraq’s leading cleric, the British and US-backed Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. He issued a fatwa ordering the execution of gay Iraqis. His followers in the Islamist militias are now systematically targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, as indicated by the following reports received from my clandestine gay activist contacts inside Iraq:

Wissam Auda was a member of Iraq’s Olympic tennis team. His dream was to play at Wimbledon this year. He had been receiving death threats from religious fanatics on account of his homosexuality. On 25 May, his vehicle was ambushed by fundamentalist militias in the al-Saidiya district of Baghdad. Wissam, together with his coach Hussein Ahmed Rashid and team mate Nasser Ali Hatem, were all summarily executed in the street. Their crime? Wearing shorts. An Iraqi National Guard checkpoint was about 100m from the site of the ambush, but the soldiers did nothing, according to eye-witnesses.

The father of 23 year old Baghdad arts student, Karzan, has been told by militias that his son has been sentenced to death for being gay. If his father refuses to hand over Karzan for execution, the militia has threatened to kill the family one by one. This has already happened to Bashar, 34, an actor. Because his parents refuse to reveal his hiding place, the Badr militia murdered two of his family members in retribution.

Nyaz is a 28-year old dentist who lives in Baghdad. She is terrified that her lesbian relationship will be discovered, and that both she and her partner will be killed. They have stopped seeing each other. It is too dangerous. To make matters worse, Nyaz is being forced by the fundamentalist Mahdi militia to marry an older, senior Mullah with close ties the Mahdi leader, Muqtada al-Sadr. If she does not agree to the marriage, or tries to run away, Nyaz and her family will be targeted for ‘honour killing’ by Sadr’s men.

Gay Iraqis cannot seek the protection of the police. Iraq’s security forces have been infiltrated by fundamentalists, especially the Badr militia. They have huge influence in the Interior Ministry and the police, and can kill at will and with impunity.

Fourteen year old Ahmed Khalil was accused of corrupting the community because he had sex with men. According to his Baghdad neighbour, in April four men in police uniforms arrived at Ahmed’s house in a four-wheel-drive police pick-up truck. They wore the distinctive face masks of the Badr militia. The neighbour saw the police drag Ahmed out of the house and shoot him at point-blank range, pumping two bullets into his head and several more bullets into the rest of his body.

In the chaos and lawlessness of post-war Iraq, hundreds of young boys are being blackmailed into the sex industry. The sex ring operators lure the boys into having gay sex, photograph them and then threaten to publish their photos unless they work as male prostitutes. If their gayness was publicly revealed, the boys would be executed by the Islamist militias. They are trapped.

Wathiq, aged 29, a gay architect, was kidnapped in Baghdad in March. Soon afterwards, the Badr militia sent his parents death threats, accusing them of allowing their son to lead a gay life and demanding a £11,000 ransom. The parents paid the money, thinking it would save Wathiq’s life. But he was found dead a few days later, with his body mutilated and his head cut off.

The UK gay rights group OutRage! is working to support our counterpart organisation in Baghdad, Iraqi LGBT. Despite the great danger involved, Iraqi LGBT has established a clandestine network of gay activists inside Iraq’s major cities, including Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla and Basra. These courageous activists are helping gay people on the run from fundamentalist death squads; hiding them in safe houses in Baghdad, and helping them escape to Syria and Lebanon. The world ignores the fate of LGBT Iraqis at its peril. Their fate today is the fate of all Iraqis tomorrow.

* Iraqi LGBT is appealing for funds to help the work of their members in Iraq. They don’t yet have a bank account. The UK gay rights group OutRage! is helping them. Cheques should be made payable to “OutRage!”, with a cover note marked “For Iraqi LGBT”, and sent to OutRage!, PO Box 17816, London SW14 8WT.

More info on Iraqi LGBT: http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com/

A Quack's Charter

2006-09-01T11:26:00.000+01:00

It's outrageous. And yet another cowtowing to irrational superstition. Once again the touchy-feelies trump evidence-based science. The modern-day medicine-show carpet-baggers who call themselves "homeopaths" will now be allowed to display their absurd claims on the box under the National Rules System. This insane move, apparently, "is designed to bring homeopathic remedies into line with licensed medicines".

According to The Guardian:

Packaging on homeopathic products will be allowed to describe the illnesses they claim to be able to treat under a controversial licensing scheme introduced by the government today. The National Rules System is designed to bring homeopathic remedies into line with licensed medicines - but doctors and scientists say it will legitimise products that have no scientific evidence to support their claims.

Perhaps, if the government wants to bring homeo-potty into line with licensed medecines, it should start by requiring that it comply with clinical trials and peer-reviews to verify and replicate its medicinal claims!

Evan Harris MP is entirely correct to say that this move has "diluted and polluted" the regulation of medicine.

While the government's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency claims that "this is a significant step forward in the way homeopathic medicines are regulated. Products authorised will have to comply with recognised standards of quality, safety and patient information," Michael Baum, emeritus professor of surgery at University College London quips: "This is like licensing a witches' brew as a medicine so long as the bat wings are sterile."

If you think about it, what other products - medical or otherwise - are allowed to make untrue or unverifiable claims?

The horror is that an uninformed person will buy a homeopathic product based on the snazzy packaging and the claim on the box, not realising that it is not the equivalent of Savlon, or any other clinically tested and known-to-be-effective remedy and then use it in an emergency. If your toddler burns her hand or bumps his head, do you want to be unknowingly administering some play-play salve that requires a belief in mumbo-jumbo and an outer-body experience to be effective?

Hopefully some consumer advocacy group will turn this insanity to its advantage and bring a case against products which cannot demonstrate that they do what they claim to do.

Study after study has shown that so-called homeopathic "remedies" show little significant differences as a treatment that sugar pill placebos.

Recently a wealthy sceptic, James Randi, offered $1 Million to anyone who could provide convincing evidence of the effects of homeopathic "medicine". The BBC's Horizon programme went to great legnths to win the money, but failed miserably. The concluded:

"To Randi's relief, the experiment was a total failure. The scientists were no better at deciding which samples were homeopathic than pure chance would have been."

So why is the government flying in the face of solid evidence? WHy are euphimisms like "complementary therapies" being drafted in to obscure the bleedin' obvious? Perhaps Prince Charles is running the country. We should be told.

Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society has allerted me to a related incident. In the US, reports The Washington Post, "small but growing number of practices around the country that tailor the care they provide to the religious beliefs of their doctors". Brochures advertise services by doctors who blend "the best of modern medicine with the healing presence of Jesus Christ."

Jesus, of course, believed that "unclean spirits" were the cause of medical complaints.

How long before the UK starts allowing the Gideon Society to make medical claims too?

Religion = Honesty?

2006-08-24T11:08:00.000+01:00

Religion = Honesty?

By now, even people – like me – with very little interest in sport will have heard about the controversy surrounding the cricket test match between England and Pakistan. Long story short: Pakistan were accused of ‘ball tampering’ and the dispute that followed led to a stand-off between the team and the umpires and Pakistan ultimately forfeited the match.

I’m sure there’s more to it in the detail, but to use an obvious pun, I don’t really give a toss. Let’s face it, in sport, these controversies arise all the time. Hardly a month goes by without some news of an athlete stripped of their medal because they’d been taking some hay fever medication with a banned ingredient, or some Grand Prix driver forced to start from the back for some reason unfathomable to the layperson. And then of course there’s football…

At the end of the day, it all seems rather over-inflated… grown men either whacking balls (or each other) away or chasing after them for whopping great salaries.

But two responses to the England-Pakistan match in the media caught my eye. Both leave unpleasant tastes in the Humanist mouth.

Firstly, The Guardian made it a race/religion issue. In it’s leader on Monday, the paper said:

“The dispute was not between England and Pakistan, which may allow the forthcoming one day series to continue. But it can only fuel the alienation felt by some British Muslims at a time of great strain.”

Shahriyar Khan or the Pakistand Cricket Board and Bob Woolmer, the Pakistan coach seemed keen to run with this theory and appeared to accuse Darrel Hare, the umpire, of fomenting WW III.

In a very sensible editorial, The Times took them to task:

Shahriyar Khan, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, appears most confused. “What a wonderful sight it is to see cricket between Pakistan, a Muslim country, and England, where the majority are Christian. Why destroy this over a technicality?” he asked. With respect, Shahriyar does not know his technicalities from his elbow. The rules of cricket are not a technicality; Muslims and Christians, in this context, are. The most stupid, the most catastrophically misguided aspect of this debate is the one that insists on bringing the world of religious politics into a row about cheating in a cricket match.
Hair, we are told, has added to the volatile relationship between East and West. So, presumably, the next time London or Bali goes up, we can attach his decision to the list of liberal hand-wringing explanations for the atrocity. “Iraq, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon — and that Aussie bloke who called Pakistan for ball-tampering at the Oval. Well, what did we expect?” It is shocking the way a decision made purely in a sporting arena has been so self-servingly transferred to the political.

“All the Muslim players are sensitive individuals who are very opposed to terrorist activities,” Bob Woolmer, the Pakistan coach, said. “To accuse Pakistan of cheating brings these tensions to the fore. I wonder whether Darrell realises the consequences of his actions.”

What consequences? What tensions? Are we meant to applaud Woolmer’s Pakistan team for their sensitivity in not endorsing mass murder? Are we meant to worry that, having been accused of ball-tampering, they now will?

Pure insanity. Or political opportunism. Either of which, rational people ought to knock for a six.

Secondly – and this is what really got my goat – former cricketer Geoffrey Boycott writes in The Telegraph:

“Ball-tampering is a sensitive issue for the Pakistanis and that is why they staged their protest yesterday. They wanted to make a statement because the reputation of the team and the integrity of Pakistan cricket had been called into question. You have to remember that the Pakistan players are deeply religious and pray five times a day, so an allegation of cheating hurts them.”

Eh?

What on earth makes Boycott think that the more religious people are, the more they will be hurt by accusations of cheating or dishonesty? Does he really imagine that non-religious people are any less concerned about being thought of as fair and honest?

Why do we have this knee-jerk assumption in society that religious people are automatically more virtuous than the rest of us? (Let’s face it, the evidence is often quite the reverse.)

Is it not perhaps the very fact that this common assumption exists that religious groups are allowed to get away with so much? If people aren’t apologising for them, they’re cultivating an ever growing blind-spot. Even people who are not religious have some ‘reverence’ for the vicar. Instead of mocking their insane moonbattery, many of tend to think that the pious are more “spiritual” than their neighbours, more “virtuous”…

And of course, it is this tosh that allows religious commentators to tell politicians with a straight face that - even if people don’t believe in a god - religion instills essential ethical and moral concepts in the developing mind. Without our CofE grounding, even Atheists would be morally adrift… or so they say.

No, the fact that the Pakistan team is very religious should in no way be relevant to assessing their propensity to cheat (or not to cheat) or the level of offence they take at the accusation.

The fact is, no one likes being called a cheat.

Summer GHQ out now!

2006-08-22T20:35:00.000+01:00

The summer edition of Gay Humanist Quarterly is now available.

It can be downloaded (free) as a PDF... or you can subscribe and receive the print edition.

Issues covered in this edition include: the butchering of gay, lesbian and transgender people at the hands of Islamist militias in Iraq; the on-going persecution of gays in Iran a year after the hanging of two teens in Mashhad; the failure of the High Court challenge of the government's policy of not recognising foreign same-sex marriages; the general uselessness of the Democratic Party in the USA on LGBT issues; the dangers of 'Creationism' entering UK schools and US-style Televangelism coming to the UK; the attacks on the gay communities of Eastern Europe; Dr Qaradawi's insights into why Bush won the election; and more news, views and reviews, including Spielberg's 'Munich'.

See http://www.gayhumanist.com/index.html for a detailed content listing (and to download the mag - or subscribe)

Back-issues are also available as PDF downloads.

As the name suggests. GHQ is published four times a year and covers issues around sexuality, politics, humanism, atheism, liberalism and free thought, particularly (but not exclusively) from a gay and lesbian perspective.

Off with their heads!

2006-07-14T16:39:00.000+01:00

There has been a lot of focus in the media about the 'cash for peerages' scandal following the arrest of Lord Levy.

But two questions have been bothering me.

(1) Why is a Labour government embroiled in this discredited social system at all?

The more cynical among us might note dryly that peerages are a corrupt system, so it's only logical that they be further corrupted.

In fact, shouldn't we have swept the aristocracy away by now - liberté, fraternité, égalité-style?

Now, some might argue that the modern peerage is just a glorified Noddy badge for services to the country - a nod and a nice new woggle for your cub's uniform.

But that leads me to my second question.

(2) Why, if it is just a bit of recognition for a job well done, are people willing to pay up for a peerage?

The answer seems obvious to me. There must be social and financial rewards (in whatever round-about way) that accompany the 'honour' that are well worth paying up for - if you can afford it, of course. It's an investment - in the narrowest financial sense too. It's also an opportunity to lord over us all from a seat in the undemocratic and unelected House of Lords.

A Labour government should be moving to dismantle the aristocracy, not touting for new recruits.

That a Labour government could see peerages as a state asset to be eBayed off to boost the party coffers, is - needless to say - an even bigger scandal. A new peer gets social status and a permanent say in the political affairs of the country, but the party - rather than the society to which the new peer is responsible - acrues all the reciprocal benefits from the transaction. It's despicable. It makes me think that like vehicle registrations and TV licenses, peerages (while we're stuck with them) should be subject to an annual renewal fee!

Of course, it can't be long before government spin doctors claim that this was a move to aid class mobility (you've gotta start somewhere, right?) and also a means to boost the left-leaning contingent in the HoL so that in future noble moves like banning fox hunting and repealing of Section 28 will go more smoothly.

This government promised Lords reform. Is this their best effort?

Embracing Yehuda Levin

2006-07-06T11:41:00.000+01:00

An American rabbi, Yehuda Levin (of the radical Meshugina sect) has promised violence if World Pride goes ahead in Jerusalem.

"I promise there's going to be bloodshed -- not just on that day, but for months afterward. In America, we are outraged and disgusted over this event. There are millions of people who, with their bodies, souls and money, will stand against this..." said the rabbi.

Despite my disagreement with Rabbi Levin's sentiments, I feel that we should not unequivocally condemn him for the following reasons.

(1) I must maintain dialogue with representatives of the World's Great Religions (TM).

(2) As a rabbi, he is a respected authority on theological issues.

(3) Jews are a persecuted minority and as such, condemnation of Rabbi Levin will only contribute to a rising tide of antisemitism.

(4) There are many references to bloodletting in the Torah, so we cannot know that the rabbi is speaking literally.

(5) The source for the story is a "gay" website, so it is naturally biased.

(6) Rabbinical scholars disagree on the precise course of action. Some believe simply that "we must do everything to banish this disgrace from the Holy city.” There is thus a wide range of opinion.

(7) Rabbi Levin was quoted selectively: note the use of ellipses in the extract above.

(8) Many leaders of all the World's Great Religions (TM) hold similar views. (cf. Fred Phelps and Yussuf Qaradawi).

(9) Rabbi Levin is constrained by the tenets of his religion and thus cannot be seen to contradict orthodox theology. We do not know what his private views are.

(10) I'm completely off my rocker.

Williams a 'humanist mole'?

2006-06-29T12:32:00.000+01:00

An um, ‘interesting thesis by Andrew Brown in The Guardian to explain the ‘liberal’ Rowan William’s betrayal of lesbian and gay Christians.

One is reminded of Conquest's law, that all organisations are headed by the secret agents of their opponents. Perhaps the archbishop is actually taking his orders from Richard Dawkins, and acting to discredit the notion that a decent Christian can ever say clearly what he means, or mean honestly what he says. But even that, if it were true, would demand an explanation. Before he took this office, Dr Williams had a considerable, and deserved, reputation for straightforward eloquence and direct symbolic action. He had a great many gay friends, not all of whom were celibate or pretended to be. Now that he has turned against them, we have to ask: was he a sleeper for the British Humanist Association all along?

Still, who knows why Anglicans want to remain “in communion” with each other when their views are evidently mutually loathsome!

My thesis is that Williams was chosen as Archbishop of Canterbury precisely because his years as an armchair academic left him with a weakened backbone.

Now we see what they're after

2006-06-24T06:51:00.000+01:00

The "Right" Rev. Peter Akinola, bigoted canon of the African Anglican churches, has made quite a bit of news recently on his efforts to bully the American church into rejecting gay people. The US Episcopal church's nomination of a female leader, coupled with its studied rejection of efforts to force out gays, has driven the third-world denominations into paroxysms of rage.

The Advocate offers this fascinating quote:

Nigerian archbishop Peter Akinola, head of the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa, said in the letter that Anglican primates from the developing world would meet in September to give a more detailed statement on the U.S. church. Akinola, one of the church’s most outspoken voices against gay rights, said that the African bishops have carefully followed what has been said at a U.S. Anglican convention this week in Ohio.

“We have observed the commitment shown by your church to the full participation of people in same-gender sexual relationships in civic life,, church life, and leadership,” he said on behalf of African bishops in a statement dated Thursday. “Our churches cannot reconcile this with the teaching on marriage set out in the Holy Scripture and repeatedly affirmed throughout the Anglican Communion.”

Akinola's rage must be overcoming his regular PR filter, since his objection to the US Episcopals' declaration on gays is total -- he believes that even allowing gay people to participate in civic life, or secular political and daily life, is "incompatible" with and "cannot be reconciled" by the Anglican Communion. This is not a complete surprise to anyone who has watched the situation in Nigeria, where Akinola has been a primary sponsor of a bill which would imprison gays simply for worshipping or congregating together.

However, it does represent a dire form of cultural imperialism -- just not that which is regularly decried by apologists for the third world. Akinola is trying to bully the American (and Canadian) communities into doing to gays what he's trying to do in his own corrupt polity -- including push them to lobby for stripping away their civic participation in secular/daily life.

This is already shocking enough. What elevates it into the absurd is Akinola's appeal to Biblical literalism and Anglican tradition. After all, he was also one of the driving forces behind getting the Anglican Church to recognize and honor polygamous marriages in Africa -- which not only fly in the face of Anglican tradition, but which are expressly forbidden as adulterous in the expressly Christian part of the Bible, the New Testament.

However, that's not likely to faze Akinola and company. It's not religious purity they're truly after, but rather, a justification of their own hatreds by leveraging doctrine to present themselves as pure, morally superior beings. I am sure Christ himself would have a few words to say about that.

Negative Advertising

2006-06-13T11:19:00.000+01:00

I’m boycotting Goodfellas frozen pizza.

Admittedly, it’s never been my first choice, because usually even the house-brand at Tesco or Sainsbury’s is better, but occasionally when it’s been on special or other brands are out of stock, I’ve bought their brand.

But the advert I saw on TV last night was so disgusting it made me sick to my stomach. And no, it wasn’t just the sight of pepperoni (which to these vegetarian eyes is pretty grim). It was the attitude of the advertiser.

The advert shows a mock interviewer following an increasingly desperate restaurant owner around a supermarket. He’s apparently attempting to hide or steal or by a range of means, obstruct customers’ attempts to buy Goodfellas pizza.

The “interviewer” asks him how business is going, and when he replies that he has a meeting with his bank manager, the “interviewer” gloatingly asks who called the meeting. The restaurant owner has to confess that it was the bank.

The adverts suggestion is that their frozen pizza (ha-bloody-ha) is driving pizzerias out of business. That is mean-spirited to begin with, but what is worse is the agonising delight they appear to take as they show the increasing desperation and panic of the restaurateur as he faces losing his livelihood.

It is shameful and despicable.

That a giant corporation can, through its advertising agency, ask us as viewers and consumers, to collude in this disgusting display is unforgivable. Perhaps soulless corporate bean-counters get some joy in watching a small business owner being ground down and humiliated by their mass-market junk food, but I don’t.

That the advertising agency even thinks that frozen pizza is in competition with pizzerias is a laughable conceit.

They’re mean-spirited, arrogant bullies and I shan’t be buying their product anymore, and I hope you will consider joining me. Let’s make it “closing time for Goodfellas”.

More gay marriage travesty

2006-06-12T02:30:00.000+01:00

My home state of Pennsylvania has voted to ban gay marriage. Interestingly, the state itself is a microcosm of the country -- legislators from Philadelphia and its environs, as well as Pittsburgh's metro region, were generally amongst the "no" votes. Legislators from rural areas, such as "God's country" in the centre of the state and the dying rust-belt towns in coal country and the Erie coast, were in favour. The phenomenon is not uncommon -- the trend is best summed up by the popular cliché that "Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh separated by Alabama."

While the party-line vote was slightly skewed towards Republicans supporting establishing gay Pennsylvanians as second-class citizens, Democratic "support" for gays against the bill was far from consistent. In general, geography told more of a story than party affiliation.

My local representative, a Republican, voted against the measure. . . likely to the ire of his party committee.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia's economic recovery -- driven heavily by the city's reputation as a burgeoning yet gritty bastion of urban culture returning from its horrifying forty-year decline -- is in jeopardy. With New Jersey and New York right across the river, why are gay folks going to bother to take a chance on Philly? It's still suffering from crime, urban blight, property investment risk, and assuming the Republican state senate passes this amendment, a legal framework which makes partner benefits and personal arrangements of gay couples legally iffy. This is a dreadful situation for a city whose comeback has been heavily reliant on gay couples restoring once-abandoned homes in once-blighted neighbourhoods, and which relies heavily on gay tourism to the point where it markets itself as "a place to get your history straight and night life gay."

New Jersey and New York, in comparison to Pennsylvania, offer healthier economies, provisions under the law for gay couples (New Jersey even has a civil partnership law), lower taxes, and in New York's case, a more prestigious address in its largest city. Philadelphia, meanwhile, remains chained to the revenants in Harrisburg.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's government -- and rural legislators in particular -- have not only gleefully taken a swipe at gay Pennsylvanians, but also undermined the hard-won comeback of my hometown. The political and economic price to be paid will be severe, and for Philadelphians and Pittsburghers alike, undeserved.

French vote to boycott British universities

2006-05-31T12:10:00.000+01:00

Yeah, it’s a good headline, but actually it’s nonsense. I had an idea to write a spoof of yesterday’s NATHFE conference decision to boycott Israeli academics (unless they sign a McCarthyite declaration of the political opposition to the Israeli government). Briefly, the idea was that the French universities had voted to cut off ties with any British academics who refused to sign a declaration opposing the UK government, principally over the war against Iraq.

But then it hit me. The types of people supporting the boycott of Israeli Jews would probably welcome such a move by the French. They’d probably happily sign a declaration and denounce their own colleagues who refused to sign. So, writing such a ‘spoof’ would be a waste of time.

Of course, if this type of witch hint ping-pong took off, all sorts of pressure groups could enter the fray. I can think that some might decide that retaliation against the French on the issue of the secularism might be a good idea. Perhaps French academics might be required to disassociate themselves from the ban on conspicuous religious symbols and attire in secular spaces after successful lobbying of the NATHFE by religious groups backed by the SWP. And that’s just getting the ball into play.

Picking up this ball and running with it will be any number of pressure groups for various causes, who would (rightly) cry foul if the NATHFE (or rather its soon-to-be successor, the UCU) refused to include their concerns. Perhaps an academic will eventually have to spell out quite a wide-ranging ideological position.

“I can’t peer-review Dr Smith’s paper on Christopher Marlow because she will not sign a declaration stating her opposition to abortion, said Professor Jones of Southport University, a prominent member of the Christian Academic Pro-Life Association.”

Of course, we should not fall into the trap of thinking this is all a new development. We have been here before, as Professor Ellen Schrecker noted in 1999 in her paper Political Tests for Professors.

What is most worrying now is that a group called the British Committee for Universities in Palestine, is offering advice on how to ‘anonymously’ support the boycott. This sounds even more ominously McCarthyite. What do they want people to do? Anonymously inform on their colleagues? Backstab, scuttle and nix other academics work and associations all from behind the veil of anonymity?

Film directors who do not want to put their name to projects use the moniker “Alan Smithee”. Perhaps BRICUP could create a persona or two for this purpose. I suggest Professor Torquemada and Dr Cohn. The second one can be used by those anonymous academic informers who want to further obscure their anti-Semitism by sounding “Jewish”.

I won’t belabour the points about why this move is such a bad idea, since they are covered in great detail elsewhere, but I will end by saying that the spectre of wider political tests interfering with academic freedom is quite disquieting. More than ever, I have a sense that the Authoritarian Left would like to see all manner of political tests applied to enforce political and moral conformity.

As such, a spoof article about a French boycott of the UK’s universities over Iraq would not be parody. It would be a road map.

HOMO Pride, OMOH shame

2006-05-30T11:27:00.000+01:00

Sometimes a designer can’t resist the urge to flip a photo because it looks better in terms of composition and page layout. That is to say, they print a mirror-image of the photo. One of the reasons is the design principle that it is always better to have a person looking into the page. It is very rare to find a (competent) page layout where the person photographed is looking out of the page. It always creates the impression that they’ve turned their back on the text. (Okay, I used to teach newspaper design, so I’m a bit of an egghead on the subject!)

Still, in news photography, the practice is considered unethical, because in subtle ways it may change the perception of events. In non-news contexts, though – while less of an ethical problem – it can create small and jarring effects: why is Jimi Hendrix playing right-handed? Why are they driving on the wrong side of the road in Paris?

One group (who, one would hope, are too ashamed to look in the mirror to have noticed before) that doesn’t stand up well to this flipping technique is the notorious Russian security police force, OMON.

Keep in mind that in the Cyrillic alphabet, an “N” is written as an “H”.

Now, the OMON were drafted in to suppress the gay pride march in Moscow this weekend. They certainly lived up to their reputation of “rash actions and excessive and indiscriminate use of force”, but in all the chaos, the sharp-eyed could not help noticing this irony when the scene was mirror-imaged:

See what I mean?

eBaying at the moon

2006-05-30T00:07:00.000+01:00

Well, anyone who has been cheated on eBay will relish this tale of sweet revenge.

The moral of the story is, if you’re going to cheat someone by selling them a broken laptop, make sure you’ve erased the hard-drive. Don’t leave behind your personal details, much less your personal antics or your um, personal tastes and kinky (and possibly illegal) personal fetishes.

For some strange reason, laptops seem particularly prone to eBay fraud. Some people use blogs to fight back against repeat offenders, while others even manage to get successful prosecutions.

In a way, I’m envious that I didn’t think of this jungle-justice in cyberspace myself. A few years back, I got cheated out of a minor amount – only ₤10 or ₤20, if I remember correctly – for the ‘Complete Superman’ DVD boxset. This was when I was still quite naïve about Malaysia’s place in the DVD universe – the epicentre of DVD scams and piracy. I no longer risk buying anything off-shore. But what angered me the most (apart from the feeling of being had) was eBay’s response. I did some cyber-sleuthing and discovered that the person who cheated me had registered a dozen other fake accounts and had generated his excellent rating by bogus buying and selling between his fake personas. Indeed, emailing any of the various “sellers” got form responses from the same Hotmail account. Naively (again) believing that eBay would be interested in all this, I compiled and forwarded the detailed evidence to them. They couldn’t have cared less.

I was so angry that I stopped using eBay for two years. Recently I was tempted back, but the experience hasn’t been much better. Every time you hear the clunk of a DVD through the post box, you open it with trepidation. Is it actually a Chinese knock-off or is it the genuine article as promised? Worse, on two occasions this year, I have received DVD copies burned onto Tesco-brand blank disks with home-made covers. It is pointless reporting this to eBay because they do nothing! Many of the traders selling off multiple copies of the same titles continue to trade after numerous complaints by buyers in the feedback section.

And here is the most infuriating thing. Scam sellers now blackmail legitimate users with bad feedback! Yes! They will give YOU bad feedback if you blow the whistle on their scams, secure in the knowledge that you have no recourse to the powers that be at eBay.

Three months back, a scam-artist called Chav7 sold me a DVD box set that he did not actually own (a clear violation of eBay T&Cs). Weeks went by and emails of complaint went ignored before promises of “sourcing it from the supplier” and similar excuses delayed the process. I eventually asked for a refund (since I’d actually paid for the item via PayPal within 24 hours of the auction closing). The refund also took weeks. All told, Chav7 sat with my money for non-existent goods for over a month. But here’s the rub: I gave him “neutral” feedback. Since I had eventually received a refund, I though “negative” was too strong. But what did the bastard do? He sent me an email demanding that I retract the feedback or he’d give me a “negative” rating. Which he did. He also reported me to eBay for “non payment”. This is bizarre. Because of a bug in eBay’s software, people who have received a refund appear not to have paid in the first place. I then had to jump through hoops for eBay to prove that I was not a non payer… plus I got a negative rating – all for a transaction in which I was a prompt payer, and THE VICTIM.

So, the net result is that I no longer give neutral or negative feedback. If the transaction has gone badly and the seller is a crook, I simply decline to give any feedback at all because I don’t want to ruin my own rating. Other people I know who use eBay have said the same thing.

Of course, this means that the whole feedback system falls to pieces. Since eBay is notoriously bad at defending the rights of buyers, the only real guide buyers have is the feedback system, but since many buyers are now bullied into self-censorship, we can’t see who the crooks are.

A cynical explanation for eBay’s inaction when it comes to helping the buyer is that – in effect – they are cut in on the deal by the scammer. For every dodgy sale that goes through, eBay still collects their fee. It is therefore in their interests to be biased towards the seller, rather than the buyer. So, you may be left fuming over your “genuine DVD” filmed over someone’s shoulder on a camcorder, but since eBay get their cut of the sale, what incentive do they have to go to bat for you?

Since PayPal has been introduced, things do seem to run more smoothly (though it is not without its problems), but it is still the aggravation factor that turns people off. Some have come up with alternative ways of using the internet to dispose of unwanted bric-a-brac, while others are still angry.

Still, there is some sensible advice on how to handle disputes from various sources, but its all for nought unless the fold at eBay start taking buyer complaints seriously – and by “seriously”, I mean cleaning up their site of clearly illegal items and banning repeat offenders. It talks tough, but as an MSNBC investigation proves, doesn’t follow through.

As the bloggers who have taken extreme steps prove, people want justice – not just their money back.

Gas attack in Moscow

2006-05-27T11:36:00.000+01:00

A group of 20 neo-Nazi thugs burst into the conference venue hosting an international gay conference in Moscow spraying an “unidentified” gas at the assembled delegates, according to this morning’s Times.

The violence follows a similar attack on a Moscow gay club a fortnight ago where elderly religious ‘protestors’ chanted antigay incantations while a small army of skinheads hurled bottles and attacked patrons.

Veteran US jouralist Doug Ireland is providing on-going coverage on his blog of the stand-off between the Mayor of Moscow, assorted religious leaders (who have issued death threats), right-wing skinheads and Russia’s embattled gay community.

Russian gays are hosting an international conference and staging the first Russian Pride today, defying banning orders and threats of violence. 1000 police officers have been dispatched by the Mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, to stop the march.

British campaigners Derek Lennard of the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association (who is the UK co-ordinator for the International Day Against Homophobia) and OutRage! activist Peter Tatchell are in Moscow to attend the conference and join the march.

Also in Moscow is Oscar Wilde’s grandson, and Human Rights Watch director Scott Long. Scott is publishing a diary as events unfold.

GHQ Magazine, (just out) has a cover story on Russian Pride. An electronic (PDF) version is available here.

Nevertheless, Russia’s gay community is divided. Some fear that the backlash will not be worth it, while other believe that a stand must be taken. This is not a new debate, nor a debate specific to oppressed gay communities. It is always the first debate that any civil rights movement has. The same debate was had by religious minorities over the centuries, by the women’s suffrage movement, by the black civil rights movement in the US and by those who stood up to Apartheid.

What is too often painfully clear is that there is rarely progress without blood in the streets.

Scott Long says in his diary that the foreigners left the room to allow the Russians to debate the next step. They voted to march!

I don’t have prayers, but today my thoughts will be with my comrades in Moscow.

UPDATE:
Over 50 activists have been detained by Russian police, including march organiser Nikolay Alexeyev.

UPDATE #2
I've just heard from Derek Lennard in Moscow and he's safe. He's waiting to hear from French activist Louis-Georges Tin and Peter Tatchell, who were part of a different delegation going to City Hall. Derek confirms that Nikolay Alexeyev has been arrested. He adds that at least the tomatoes he had thrown at him seemed fresh organic and thankfully "good enough to eat". It seems Russian neo-Nazis haven't forgotten their manners altogether.

UPDATE #3
A German MP, Volker Beck, and a French Green Party official have been injured in clashes with police and neo-nazi thugs. Apparently, a delegate from the Paris Mayor's office was one of the gay activists arrested today.

If you know your history

2006-05-26T11:42:00.000+01:00

Well, this charming missive just in from Joe “Ganster by birth” Tex. What’s a “ganster”? A sort of hip goose? Anyhow, at least he got my title right…

From: JOE TEX <rattapang@hotmail.com

Hey Mr. Battyman promoter

All you can do is sit behind your desk and write.... but if you love battyman so much come to jamaica and just press you luck! because if you belive there is a God..... believe this you would not last 5 minutes and Capleton who you want to ban from the US would not have nothing to do with it.

I am a Jamaican and we stand for a lot of shit! but in our country we have no place for such activities. I am not saying your kind is not there, however if they should come from under their rock where they are hiding ..... more blood a shed by gunshot, machette, a little gasoline with a match and the list goes on-yu get di driff.

But I dare you and your gay rights associate(s) to come and promote your sick behaviour and let us see if you will go back where you come from alive.

WE/I live to kill Battyman/Lesbian and thats a right in Jamaica.... and no Human Rights Organisation can change that....

It has Nothing to do with our music. Its in our culture to kill fags and thats ghetto law.Ganster by birth

Wow. That’s kinda mean, Joe. But I hold no grudges. Let me introduce you to some groups that share your world outlook. Maybe you’ll get on with them, maybe you won’t. But at the very least you could exchange war stories and um, ‘techniques’.

How about these guys?

They’re really good at using your suggested techniques against people they hate. Look and learn, Joe. See what you’ve become, Joe.

If you know your history,
Then you would know where you coming from,
Then you wouldn’t have to ask me,
Who the eck do I think I am.
- Bob Marley

Christian Hospitality

2006-05-25T14:18:00.000+01:00

The Times reports that the Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Reverend John Gladwin, and 20 curates have been abandoned somewhere “in Africa” after the Anglican church in Kenya discovered the bishop’s “liberal” views on homosexuality – and deserted them!

According to The Times, things were going well during the visit to rural parishes, but then...

“[T]he Archbishop of Kenya, the Most Reverend Benjamin Nzimbi, has withdrawn his hospitality because of Bishop Gladwin’s support for homosexuals. He said in a statement that the Kenyan church was “unable to continue with advancing the lined-up activities with the diocese of Chelmsford”.

Bishop Gladwin is the chair of Christian Aid and has recently become a patron of Changing Attitude, an Anglican LGBT group.

Gladwin had to call off a visit to the Caribbean last year after a ruckus over his support for gay Christians.

Not so sharp

2006-05-25T00:14:00.000+01:00

Can someone explain the “knife amnesty” to me?

The police are providing special wheelie-bins for people to turn in knives that can be used as offensive weapons without fear of prosecution. But so much of it makes no sense.

According to a report in The Guardian:

“The amnesty involves all legal knives - such as kitchen knives - and offensive weapons, including flick knives, butterfly knives and swords.”

Legal knives? Why would you need to turn in a legal knife, much less require ‘amnesty’ for doing so?

The Guardian pictures a knife similar to the one used in the recent murder of Nisha Patel-Nasri. It’s a common kitchen knife. In fact I have one very similar. I have a whole block on sharp knives that I’m sure could kill just as easily as they carve Quorn roast and chop garlic. Am I meant to turn them in?

Perhaps they mean to refer to only those legal knifes put to illegal use, but even then the message is garbled:

“Scotland Yard said only those weapons believed to be significant to police inquiries would be forensically examined.”

Presumably that means that knives thought to have been used in violent attacks will be examined, presumably with a view to a prosecution (hopefully, or else what’s the point?) But if that is the case, what good is the amnesty?

Surely the advice should be – if you have a legal knife that you’ve been carrying around for non culinary purposes but haven’t actually used in anger, put it back in the kitchen drawer where it belongs?

If you have used a legal knife to commit a murder or assault, surely you’re not being offered amnesty from prosecution for your crimes if you turn in the weapon? In which case, certainly you’d want to be throwing it into The Thames, not a police wheelie-bin for forensic officers to rifle through?

I just don’t get it – (a) how can an amnesty apply to a knife that is legal to own; and (b) why would anyone turn in a knife connected to a crime knowing it will be forensically examined; and (c) if such a knife were turned in, how would the amnesty affect its use as evidence towards a successful prosecution?

Still, garbled message or not, it seems to work, Apparently when this was tried in Scotland in 1993, knife possession and use in violence and murder dropped by about a quarter for the 12 months following the amnesty. The report doesn’t record whether the Scottish police’s amnesty offer actually made sense though. This one doesn’t.

Speaking in Ridleys

2006-05-24T13:10:00.000+01:00

I see Yvonne Ridley is scheduled to speak at the SWP-sponsored “Marxism 2006”. Her talk will be “Sleeping with the Enemy”. I must confess, when I first heard that I assumed she’d be talking about being seduced by the Taliban, but I see it has something to do with “embedding the media” rather than “bedding the Muhajadin”. Disappointing.

Interestingly, Ridley – who once described Abu Hamza as “sweet” – refused to criticise the crackpot cleric because, she says glibly, “As a Muslim, I don’t think it’s constructive to criticise other Muslims.”

Fair enough. Although I guess she must mean “… other Muslims, as long as they’re not Lesbians.”

Ridley did not mind attacking Muslim author Irshad Manji on a recent Islam Channel programme.

“She's a lesbian with a chip on her shoulder who wants to take a dig at Islam,” said ‘sister Yvonne’ of the Canadian author who campaigns for an Islamic Reformation.

Sure, Yvonne, hold you tongue about race-hate and violence promoting Hamza, but queers are fair-game right? Even if they are “fellow Muslims”.

Church cross as Madonna’s cross crosses line

2006-05-23T17:56:00.000+01:00

The Church of England is angry, according to the BBC, at Madonna after her appearance on a cross to kick off her latest tour in Los Angeles.

David Muir of the Evangelical Alliance accused the singer not only of "blatant insensitivity", but added that the use of Christian imagery is “dangerous”.

Well, it is, you could fall off, scratch yourself on a rusty nail, or have your side split… by the silly protestations of EA vicar.

‘The Cross’ is a western meta-narrative. It belongs to our communal literary tradition. It is not the property of only the dwindling bunch who still believe.

Protest: Stop deporting gay refugees

2006-05-16T10:54:00.000+01:00

17 May is International Day Against Homophobia

Protest: Defend Gay Asylum Seekers
Date: Wednesday, 17 May 2006
Time: 12 – 2 PM
Place: The Home Office, 2 Marsham Street, London SW1

Attending the protest in defence of gay asylum seekers will be lesbian and gay refugees who will tell their stories of victimisation in their home countries and abuse in the UK by the Home Office.

To mark the second International Day Against Homophobia, Lesbian and gay people will protest outside the Home Office to highlight the plight of gay asylum seekers who have fled homophobic persecution in countries like Pakistan, Uganda, Sudan, Jamaica, Iran, Belarus, Algeria, Iraq, Nigeria and Egypt.

The Home Office is being called to account for its five failings:

No training on sexual orientation issues for asylum staff and adjudicators
No official policy supporting the right of refugees to claim asylum on the grounds of sexual orientation
No action to stamp out the abuse of gay refugees in UK asylum detention camps
No accurate, up-to-date information on the victimisation of gay people in violently homophobic countries
No adequate access to proper legal representation for gay asylum applicants

"On this International Day Against Homophobia, we want to express support for gay people in other countries who are suffering arrest, imprisonment, torture and murder. We are demanding that the UK government offers refuge from persecution," said Derek Lennard of GALHA, UK coordinator of IDAHO.

Research by OutRage!, based on its work with gay asylum claimants, shows that the Home Office is failing lesbian and gay asylum seekers.

"The Home Office does not explicitly accept persecution on the grounds of sexual orientation as a legitimate basis for gaining asylum," said Brett Lock of OutRage!, who is currently documenting a major expose of homophobic bias in the asylum system.

"Low legal aid funding means most gay asylum applicants fail because they have sub-standard representation at their asylum hearings. The Home Office information on homophobic persecution around the globe is poorly researched and often downplays the true scale of anti-gay victimisation.

"The shocking stories of homophobic abuse and inhumane conditions inside the UK's asylum detention centres are a national scandal," said Mr Lock.

Liar, liar, cassocks on fire!

2006-05-15T14:37:00.000+01:00

So… after writing a self-serving load of old cobblers to The Times, saying:

“Homosexual people are first of all persons, and have the same entitlement to legal rights as anyone else.”… and …“The Church has consistently spoken out against any discrimination against homosexual persons, and will continue to do so.”

… Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Catholic head honcho could surely have waited a little longer for his lie to take root before committing an act that exposed him as the lying liar that he is.

What’s he done? Well, he’s fired a gay press officer for um, being gay.

What a great way to reinforce the church’s belief that gay people have “the same entitlement to legal rights” and what a way to have “spoken out against any discrimination against homosexual persons”.

Yeah, the very definition. Cormac, of discriminating against people on the basis of their sexual orientation and of depriving them of legal rights is to sack them because they’re gay! Jesus Christ, Cormac, are you too stupid to see the contradictions between your public statements and your actions, or are you such a practiced liar that you believe your own porkers?

But then again, when you’re the regional leader of a church that lies about everything – and then some, it’s no wonder that you can keep your office, but not your story, straight.

Ministerial Mayhem

2006-05-11T15:04:00.000+01:00

I figured I'd pop in with a couple of observations:

The Ruth Kelly situation is indeed disturbing, especially the willingness with which the folks at Stonewall overlook her rather questionable voting record when it comes to issues Stonewall would characterise as important.

However, I'm going to put my libertarian hat on here and point out something which elicit some discomfort -- is anyone truly surprised that this situation has come about?

The ostensible role of a government-appointed "equality" minister is to ensure that people are "equal" in some regard (whether economically, politically, or otherwise). However, contemporary politics are a zero-sum game, and in Tony Blair's Britain, some people are "more equal" than others -- usually based upon how many faithful voters they can bring to the polls on election day.

In a populist democratic system, it's well-nigh impossible to expect a government minister to put the interests of every minority group at exactly the same level. We've seen this already with "hate speech" legislation that specifically excludes gays, and now gay people get to look forward to more of the same.

Here's a radical proposition to consider: rather than count on populist government ministers to censor anti-gay speech out of existence through laws, and guarantee our economic and political "equality," why not consider an approach which liberalises the political climate and allows gays to advance through our own merits? Looking at our community and its accomplishments, I think we'd go a lot further under our own power than under the "protection" of the Benevolent New Labour Order.

Are Stonewall Kelly’s heroes?

2006-05-11T14:21:00.001+01:00

I am absolutely furious with Stonewall!

It goes without saying that they do some tremendous work for which I, as a gay man, am eternally grateful, but they’re running the risk of becoming another Labour QUANGO. Their defence of the appointment of Ruth Kelly as Equalities Minister is beyond the pale!

Ruth Kelly is a member of the conservative Catholic sect, Opus Dei, whose attitude to homosexuality is in line with the Vatican’s clear antigay stance.

When asked whether she personally thought homosexuality was sinful, she refused to answer.

Not only that, but she has absented herself (“as a matter of conscience”) from almost every single parliamentary vote on gay equality issues – ever.

Except two: One was a quite fairly uncontroversial vote to address homophobic bullying regardless of Section 28, but disgracefully she voted with the Anne Widdecombe and the other homophobic Tories on an amendment to specifically EXCLUDE gay couples from adopting children.

This is not the type of person we want championing equality, but still she has received the backing of Stonewall’s chief, Ben Summerskill. Summerskill told The Independent:

“We accept Ruth's assurances that she is absolutely committed to delivering the policy of the Labour Party and the Government.”

I checked on the Stonewall website. There’s nothing about Ruth Kelly at all. Not a word of criticism, not even a murmur of disquiet or concern.

I don’t suppose the fact that Summerskill’s previous job was as a Labour councillor has anything to do with this misplaced loyalty?

Summerskill should ask himself whether Trevor Phillips of the CRE would be an apologist for an Education minister who, when asked for their view of the controversial subject of differences in intelligence between the races hedged their answer with an evasive “I’m not going to get into that,” instead of giving a clear and resounding answer in favour of equality. Would anti-racist campaigners accept that a minister’s private view would not affect their professional performance? I doubt it – especially if the minister concerned had absented themselves from every parliamentary vote on racial equality (“as a matter of conscience”) and indeed had voted in favour of racial discrimination on one of the rare occasions they’d actually bothered to vote.

Would the Government even try to get away with it? Of course not, which demonstrates their dismissive attitude to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people when our community is deemed an inconvenience.

Stonewall do a sterling job of standing up for the gay community on almost all fronts. It’s a pity their judgement is blurred when it comes to New Labour. Surely Summerskill can see in a single equalities unit, when Ruth Kelly has an Archbishop or Cardinal demanding one concession (or exemption) on one side, and the gay community is seeking full equality on the other side, she’s unlikely to be impartial. If, deep down, she thinks we are sinners, how on earth is she going to identify with or empathise with gay issues?

When the single equalities unit was mooted, the first thing most gay campaigners wondered was how our community’s interests would find parity with the demands of religious groups. The religious organisations are the only ones actively campaigning in favour of inequality and for exception from compliance with equality legislation. I guess they now have their champion, and we have our answer.

Surely, ‘equalities’ is an important portfolio which relies on community confidence. The government simply cannot afford to place a person with such a controversial and equivocating background in that role. Surely?

UPDATE:

The head of the Catholic Church in Britain, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor has written to The Times in defence of Kelly.

He says:

“Homosexual people are first of all persons, and have the same entitlement to legal rights as anyone else.”

Thanks CCMC. That’s a step forward. But you also say…

“The Church has consistently spoken out against any discrimination against homosexual persons, and will continue to do so.”

… which is quite simply untrue. Laughably so!

In 1992, the Vatican issued a declaration, which remains in force, calling on all Catholics to oppose lesbian and gay equality. In the UK, prominent Catholic leaders have consistently opposed the repeal of Section 28, same-sex adoption and civil partnerships. Ruth Kelly, of course, absented herself from two of these votes. The one she did turn up for, but only in order to vote in accordance with Church policy.

SOUNDBITE:

Ruth Kelly’s job is to champion equality. Yet she has absented herself from some of the most important equalities bills in recent history on “conscientious” grounds. She is quite simply not suitable for the job.

Pink News stands its ground against MCB

2006-05-11T14:21:00.000+01:00

Congratulations to Pink News for standing up to the MCB’s attempts to wriggle out of their controversial U-Turn on gay rights issues.

Pink News intends to sue the MCB over that organisation’s claim that tPink News journalist Marc Shoffman fabricated the story about a plan by the MCB to start looking into homophobia. The MCB put out a statement saying the story run in Pink News was “entirely fictional”.

The story was written based on an interview with Mohammed Aziz, the MCB’s representative on the Equality and Diversity Forum following minuted commitments he made at the forum to start looking into homophobia within the MCB. Mr Azis had apologised at the meeting on “a personal level” for the “pain and hurt” that (MCB chief) Sir Iqbal Sacranie’s remarks about homosexuality had caused.

The MCB have since tried to distance themselves from Mr Aziz, describing him as a “representative” (on some bodies), a “consultant”, a “legal advisor” and even a “preferred partner”, but yet somehow not a “spokesperson”.

Whatever the complictated and ever-shifting relationship the MCB has with Mr Aziz (Faizal Bodi has a stab at working it out), the fact of the matter remains that when Pink News phoned to discuss the issue (of the plan to combat homophobia referenced in the EDF minutes), they were referred to him. The MCB’s regular spokesperson, Mr Bunglawala said he would “always be too busy” to speak to them.

So, what do Pink News want out of the legal action? Editor Ben Cohne explains:

“We just want them to admit we were right — I don't know why they think we would just make a story up for the sake of it.”

Quite so!

Zuma - 101 Uses for a condom

2006-05-10T15:07:00.000+01:00

Following on from my entry yesterday, I couldn't resist posting this cartoon (which has just arrived in my inbox) by the Mail & Guardian's political cartoonist, Zapiro.

For more of his work, see the Zapiro archives or the 'Unofficial Zapiro' website.

Also of interest, the Mail & Guardian have published the full transcript of the Zuma trial judgement (in PDF format) and a report, "Sunny with patches of cloud" assessing the HIV/AIDS situation in South Africa.

Ahmadinejad beats around the Bush

2006-05-10T14:31:00.000+01:00

Well, this is most interesting. The full text of President Ahmadinejad’s letter to President Bush has been posted on Indymedia. It makes for some interesting reading. Mr Ahmadinejad says he is prompted to “discuss some of the contradictions and questions” he has with Bush’s policy. Of course, there are many, many, but something tells me Ahmadinejad isn’t exactly the person to be pointing them out.

On Iraq, he says: “[B]ecause of the possibility of the existence of WMDs in one country, it is occupied, around one hundred thousand people killed, its water sources, agriculture and industry destroyed, close to 180,000 foreign troops put on the ground, sanctity of private homes of citizens broken, and the country pushed back perhaps fifty years.”

Excuse me? Remind me, which country fought one of the bloodiest wars on the 20th century against Iraq, lasting almost a decade? Were the casualities not over 1 Million? Ah yes, it was Iran!

Sure Iraq started it, but they withdrew and the war continued with enthusiasm on both sides, including the enthusiastic use of chemical weapons.

“At what price? Hundreds of billions of dollars spent from the treasury of one country and certain other countries and tens of thousands of young men and women - as occupation troops - put in harms way, taken away from family and love ones, their hands stained with the blood of others,” lectures Ahmadinejad.

Well, tell that to the 650 000+ who died on both sides of the Iran-Iraq conflict after an estimated 1.2 TRILLION was spent on the war.

I suppose at least he concedes that Saddam Hussein was a murderous dictator.

The next part of his lecture focusses on human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay. Of course, people being held without trial and the suspension of habeas corpus, together with other lallegations of ill-treatment is a scandal for which the United States should be ashamed, but look whose giving the lecture!

“There are prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that have not been tried, have no legal representation, their families cannot see them and are obviously kept in a strange land outside their own country,” he says.

This from a man whose country executes teenage girls for flirting!

“I could not correlate the abduction of a person, and him or her being kept in secret prisons, with the provisions of any judicial system,” he coos. What!? What!? What!?

Then, of course, we’re in for a bit of the stock-standard Holocaust Denial. (Okay, let’s be generous, ‘Holocaust Scepticism”), for he says: “After the war, they claimed that six million Jews had been killed. Six million people that were surely related to at least two million families,” but then adds for rhetorical effect: “Again let us assume that these events are true.”

And then to top it off, he askes: “The question here is ‘what has the hundreds of billions of dollars, spent every year to pay for the Iraqi campaign, produced for the citizens?’ As your Excellency is aware, in some states of your country, people are living in poverty.”

1.2 TRILLION in 8 years, people! He’s one to talk, what with scenes like this.

He then poses a list of further questions:

“Did we manage to bring peace, security and prosperity for the people or insecurity and unemployment? Did we intend to establish justice, or just supported especial interest groups, and by forcing many people to live in poverty and hardship, made a few people rich and powerful - thus trading the approval of the people and the Almighty with theirs'? Did we defend the rights of the underprivileged or ignore them? Did we defend the rights of all people around the world or imposed wars on them, interfered illegally in their affairs, established hellish prisons and incarcerated some of them? Did we bring the world peace and security or raised the specter of intimidation and threats? Did we tell the truth to our nation and others around the world or presented an inverted version of it? Were we on the side of people or the occupiers and oppressors? Did our administration set out to promote rational behaviour, logic, ethics, peace, fulfilling obligations, justice, service to the people, prosperity, progress and respect for human dignity or the force of guns.”

Answers on a post card, please.

The letter ends with: “Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things.”

Yes, god help us all!

DISCLAIMER 1: Of course, the letter was published on IndyMedia… so whether it is authentic is up to you. Me, I have my doubts. Surely this man cannot be this delusional?

DISCLAIMER 2: Yes, just as I oppsed the invasion of Iraq, I oppose a war with Iran. But that does not mean I have to be blinkered to the lunacy of Ahmadinejad and the brutality of his regime either. Support the Iranian democtratic opposition in its efforts. Do not allow knee-jerk anti-Americanism to set this nutter up as some sort of anti-Imperialist hero. Too many doors are closing in the faces of Iranian democrats because some believe that oppsing Ahmadinejad is supporting Bush. It isn’t.

NOTE TO AMERICAN READERS:
Don’t give hypocrites like Ahmadinejad another stick to beat your country with. Sign the ACLU petition against torture. It reads: “As an American, I will not stand for torture. The universal prohibition against torture must be upheld, and enforced, today.”

UPDATE:
The Guardian have given Ahmadinejad his own blog! What next? The Postumous Pol Pot Podcast?

David Lucas is a sick bastard

2006-05-10T00:37:00.000+01:00

David Lucas, a Suffolk farmer, sells "Multi-hanging Execution Systems" at ₤100,000 a time to despotic countries, according to a BBC report.

“Business is business,” he says as he ships off his vehicles of death – trailer-mounted gallows – to countries like Zimbabwe – for over ten years!

Of course, with a galloping inflation rate of 450%, the David Lucas’s contraptions set back Mugabe’s treasury ZM$ 18,876,146,875 – yep, almost 20 BILLION Zim-Dollars. Why is a country with grinding poverty and run-away inflation spending so much money on gallows?

Another question is: how did David Lucas get to tender for these? How do you get a contract to build execution apparatus for dictators?

Did he send out a brochure? What in the world gave him the idea to start manufacturing these devices in the first place?

In my humble opinion, if anyone has been executed on one of his devices and can be shown to have been killed in a way (how can I put this) ‘not compatible with international law’, then Mr Lucas should be charged as an accessory to murder.

Peter Tatchell has already attempted to arrest Robert Mugabe for torture. Mugabe was protected as a head of state and by unwillingness on the part of the UK and the EU to pursue the charges. I doubt a Suffolk farmer has the same ‘protection’ from prosecution.

A new EU law will make the sale of execution equipment illegal from July 2006.

Jacob Zuma's shower scene

2006-05-08T18:30:00.000+01:00

Well, Jacob Zuma has beaten the rape rap. I haven’t been following the sage closely enough to have an opinion on his guilt or innocence, but for those interested enough in the minutiae of the case, Johannesburg’s Mail and Guardian has a special report and there’s more on Wikipedia.

Nevertheless, what he should be standing trial for is stupidity so dangerous that it is arguably a public menace.

After admitting to having had sex with an HIV+ woman without practicing safe sex, Mr Zuma declared that he had indeed taken precautions to stop the spread of AIDS. He’d taken “a hot shower”.

Of course, the effects have been brilliantly set up in the popular Madam & Eve satirical cartoon series that is syndicated to many South African newspapers…

(For more Madam & Eve, see their online archive or order the books.)

… but the damage may be much more serious.

The rate of HIV infection in South Africa is pushing 1 in 3. It is on the increase by about a percentage point per annum. In 2000 it was almost 25% and by 2005 it was alreadt 29.5% and going up.

What’s worse, is that not only is Jacob Zuma’s ex-wife, Dr Nkosazana Zuma, the former minister of Health, but he himself has an honorary doctorate from the Medical University of Southern Africa.

But this is the clincher… and it’s hard not to swear… he was the Chair of the South African National AIDS Council. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

Now, Jacob Zuma has a long and distinguished political career. He has proven to be a very influential and capable leader, committed to his country. After all, he sacrificed ten years of his life on Robben Island in the cause of freedom.

But his recent political career has been rocked by financial scandal – and now this.

Equally as troubling are his comments - the excuse of many rapists - that:

"You cannot leave a woman if she is already at that stage (of sexual arousal)."

Women's rights group POWA have reacted angrily, saying ‘Zuma’s acquittal does not mean he is innocent." The group accused the defence lawyer of subjecting the woman to "a relentless and invasive cross-examination aimed at discrediting her as a witness and cast doubt on her ability to distinguish between consensual and non consensual sex".

Now, obviously Mr Zuma is entitled to the most robust defence he can muster and the issue of consent vs non-consent is of compelling interest, but given Mr Zuma's own statement (above), it is perfectly clear that he himself doesn't understand the boundries between 'yes' and 'no'. On the balance of probabilities, therefore, POWA are proabably right. Full marks, too, for POWA taking an interest in this case and reasserting the fact that women certainly do have the right to say 'no' - at any point.

However, even though he's beat the rape charge, the revalations about his own sexual stupidity and, given his position as a government AIDS supremo, staggering ignorance about basic safe-sex practice cast doubt not only on his own reputation, but on the entire government's anti-AIDS programme. Beyond concern, beyond crisis, beyond catastrophy, South Africa heading for an AIDS calamity.

Zuma has, in the words of journalist Moyiga Nduru, literally turned on ‘The Shower That Washed Anti-AIDS Efforts Down the Drain’.

The problem with stopping the BNP…

2006-05-08T10:11:00.000+01:00

… is that, in the current state of our democracy, it’s too easy to get elected.

Let me explain.

Nick Cohen’s incisive piece on the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog, posed the question: Bigots, racists and worthless buffoons - so why do they keep getting elected?

Cohen warns of the dangers of communalist voting following communalist campaigning. This got my mind ticking over, and having just run the election results for my own ward through a spreadsheet, I realised that – with the right motivation and certain conditions – it is pretty damn easy to get elected.

Now, in no way do I wish to denigrate the amount of effort put in by the various candidates because I’m sure they’ll be the first to tell you that it isn’t that easy at all… and 12 of the 15 candidates didn’t get in, so it can’t be that easy! Right?

Wrong. Bear with me while I start at the beginning.

The first thing to note is that in a ward of almost 10 000 eligible voters, fewer than 3000 people bothered to vote. Yes, the poll (i.e. voter turnout) was a dismal 29%. That means almost 3 out of every 4 voters simply did not care enough about the issues presented by the political candidates to trot down the road to cast a vote.

But let’s get specific. Because each person has three votes, there were 8229 votes cast out of 27717 possible votes. But here’s the shocker. Of the votes cast, all a candidate needed to win a seat on the council was just under 1000.

Yes, to win a seat under current conditions, all you have to do is persuade a thousand people to vote for you. You merely have to attract a piddling 3.5% of the total votes cast by persuading 10% of the total population to vote for you.

Now hold that thought, because I’m going to come back to it and explain why this is so dangerous when a group like the BNP wakes up to this.

The other shocker is that ‘democracy’ while it may be seen to be in action, it’s just a mirage – it’s (literally) taking a nap or watching TV while giving every appearance of being hard at work. And that’s not a metaphor. Democracy is not an abstract idea. It is the will of the people, and instead of voting on Thursday, 3 out of 4 people were willing to do something else instead. Democracy went home and watched TV.

For example, the winning candidates in my ward got 1118, 997 and 929 votes respectively. As I said, it means that they each managed to secure 10% of the total number of possible votes or a third of the actual votes. But wait. Candidates who didn’t win got 5320 votes between them, so two thirds of the actual votes cast, or 20% of the total population of the ward did NOT want those councillors.

So this is the state of our democracy. To win a seat, all you need is to corner 10% of possible votes. Roughly double the number of votes for you will go against you (but they will be distributed over the many losing candidates) and 70% of possible votes will never be cast, because people – ‘The People’ – simply don’t care about any of the candidates’ platforms.

So how does this help the BNP fascists get in while we’re having a nap?

Well, typically fringe parties with a particular communalist axe to grind will get a very high proportion of their supporters to the polls, while the average middle ground of (usually) decent, moderate opinion, doesn’t get off its collective arse.

The nightmare scenario in any ward like my own is that they manage to find 1000 people to ‘motivate’. That’s all it takes. And since those 1000 people can vote for three candidates and are likely to vote for the same party, they would be almost assured of getting at least 2 of the 3 elected, while the rest of the vote is split between not only the three big parties, but the several left-wing alternatives as well.

But there are a few things to consider that might avert disaster. Communalist politics tends to burn very bright very quickly, instead of the slow-burn politics – backed up by hard work and solid social policy – that characterises more sane politics. While groups like the BNP might theoretically need a very small threshold (1000 people, remember) to take over a ward, they will be batting above their weight: they will be using the top end of their support base, while people of goodwill are lethargic. Moderate and progressive parties are only mining a small seam (29% of eligible voters) with a large potential for growth if they can find a way to motivate and activate these people.

(Sadly, they appear to be squabbling over the spoils instead. Fighting to capture a larger share of an ever shrinking pool of reliable voters, the main parties are failing to capture the imaginations of the vast majority of the electorate. Sure, the electorate may seem lethargic and indifferent, but whose fault is that?)

The trick then, considering the fascists have a far more finite support-base which they use up more quickly, is to get the middle-ground interested in politics again. The people who are going to stop the BNP, aren’t the voters. They’re the people watching TV or taking a nap. The people who could be voters.

While the school halls drafted in to serve as the polls echo with the occasional scratching of solitary pencils, the army of democracy is snacking oven chips and fiddling with the remote. Who is going to lead them into battle?

Long story, tall story

2006-05-05T13:18:00.000+01:00

… Or why I decided not to vote for the Socialist Party.

You know those websites with the domain names based on common mis-spellings of popular websites? You accidentally transpose two letters and instead on getting the site you wanted, there’s some lame site covered in banner adverts trying to hard-sell you something. If you’re like me, you probably make a mental note never to buy those products. Why? For the simple reason, that no one likes being deceived, mislead and made a fool of. And that’s why I decided not to vote for the Socialist Party in my local elections.

My decision had nothing to do with their policies or record. In fact, I was seriously considering giving them my vote. For 24 hours, I’d actually decided to vote Socialist. So what happened?

Well, I had planned to vote Green as my first choice and Socialist second, but then a leaflet came through my door saying the Greens were asking their supporters to vote for the Socialist Party.

The leaflet said:

“As a green socialist, I would strongly urge potential Green Party supporters in Telegraph Hill ward to consider voting for Ian Page, Chris Flood and Jess Leech in Thursday’s council elections.

Ian and Chris have a proven track record of working with Darren Johnson on Lewisham council. Jess Leech is a committed housing campaigner who has played an important role in working with tenants to defend council housing.

For the first time in many years there is a real prospect of a number of green and socialist councillors being elected and working together to put forward radical policies to defend both the environment and working people. New Labour have abandoned both, locally and nationally.

In Telegraph Hill ward, green voters should recognise that defeating New Labour is key. And I would ask socialists in the neighbouring Brocley ward to vote Green.”

Nick Long
The Green Party’s parliamentary candidate for Lewisham West in the 2005 general election

Cool, I thought, no problem. Obviously the Greens and the Socialists had entered an election pact. Obviously, though I’d decided to vote for them, the Greens weren’t running candidates in my ward (or they’d withdrawn), and since it was okay with them, the Socialists could have my vote. Problem was, it was bollocks!

I only smelt a rat when I brought this up with my boyfriend when we were making arrangements to go and vote after work. He said “but the Greens are fielding candidates”. Really? So I checked. They were.

I smelt a rat because this was extraordinary! Why would a party put candidates forward and then instruct their supporters to vote for another party? So I phoned Darren Johnson and put the question to him. He said it was “absurd” and that the Greens certainly had not put out a call to its supporters to abandon their candidates and vote Socialist instead.

So the whole thing was a scam by the Socialist Party. My current theory is that Nick Long has left the Green Party and joined the Socialist Party, but is so dishonest that he’s willing to pass himself off as a Green.

Sure, the wording “The Green Party’s parliamentary candidate for Lewisham West in the 2005 general election” does not technically – in the strictest legal sense – mean that he is a current member of the party, but legal technicalities are not the essence of good faith. It is obvious that the average person would reasonably infer that he spoke on behalf of the party. It is also a no-brainer that this is what the Socialist Party intended the reasonable person to infer.

So they lost my vote. I don’t like being lied to, misled and deceived. If that’s what it takes to win an election, I have to doubt that that’s what it will take to stay in office. And who needs another lying, cheating and deceiving politician?

If Nick Long is still in the Green Party, then I hope he’ll be chucked out. What he did is nothing short of a betrayal of his colleagues. If I were Kathleen Easton, Dan Hudson or Nick Stone I’d be hopping mad! What is the point of securing your Party’s endorsement as candidates, putting everything into fighting an election, only to be undermined by another (supposed) colleague calling for your natural support base to vote for a rival party.

Disgraceful.

On "The Trouble With Gay Men"

2006-04-25T23:17:00.000+01:00

I had an opportunity to catch part of the broadcast of Stonewall co-founder Simon Fanshawe's documentary "The Trouble With Gay Men" earlier this week. While I did not see the entire show (and plan to tape and view the Saturday morning re-broadcast), it did seem that the documentary was a bit disjointed in parts and lacked a consistent central message.

However, Fanshawe did bring up two issues which are persistent bugbears in the gay community -- the near-epidemic use of drugs in the urban club and bar scenes, as well as the "promiscuity/monogamy divide." While I am not going to comment on the virtue of his presentation of the content in this post, I do note that the debate he's attempting to participate within is an old one -- and the same old retorts of years past are emerging from the more libertine corners of gay culture.

Let's face it, gay culture is not very friendly -- and is very Darwinian. Most gay men in the urban scene "know what they want," and more often than not, it's not a coffee with an interesting fellow they've met over a discussion about the latest exhibition at the Tate. This sex-oriented urban culture, when mixed with drug use, results in a deadly cocktail, as the soaring rate of HIV infections amongst gay men in Britain indicates quite starkly.

Common sense, and the experience of many gay men, suggests that perhaps monogamous relationships aren't such a bad idea, especially amongst seronegative persons. They effectively halt the spread of HIV, they're lower risk (when truly monogamous), they help individuals achieve greater stability in life (when healthier relationships), and studies have even indicated that people of all genders in long-term relationships are both happier in life (on average) and earn slightly greater sums of money.

So why is this idea so relentlessly attacked by the usual suspects in the urban scene? I have no idea. It's not as though gays are being forced into long term relationships, they're simply being invited by many other gays to consider the possibility. However, there's often so little a place for monogamous gay couples within much of gay culture (and most certainly the gay media) that unsurprisingly, many (if not most) simply choose to "drop out" of gay life after establishing long-term bonds. Hence, the stereotype of the "boring suburban gay homemakers." I suspect many of those folks simply don't find gay venues to be very welcoming once they're coupled and it's clear they're just after socialising rather than eros. This is "tolerance and diversity?" We can do much, much better, I think.

I do know that such virulent rejection of coupled gays, and rejection of new ideas about stable and self-affirming gay relationships in the age of HIV and other debilitating STDs is a tragedy. As is the situation of the man who buys into the high-fashion, high-drama, low-commitment mythology and discovers that, 20 years or two stone later, he's now one of the "undesirable trolls" cast out into the outer darkness of urban gay life -- devoid of mainstream participation because he's no longer "hot" or "in style."

An introduction

2006-04-25T23:12:00.000+01:00

Greetings! I am lucky enough to be the first guest blogger on Lock and Load, and this is a quick post introducing myself.

I'm an almost thirty-something gay man and US citizen residing in the UK, a "small-l" and "Big L" Libertarian who has been active in gay politics in the USA (and now the United Kingdom) for almost a decade. Hopefully, my contributions to the blog will serve as interesting and thought-provoking, and stimulate discussion around the issues. It's an honour to be invited by one of Britain's foremost gay activists to post here, and I hope all readers find my contribution to be useful reading.

Amnesty skews execution statistics

2006-04-21T13:31:00.000+01:00

I was shocked, to say the least. I’ve been doing a lot of work recently campaigning around the issues of executions in Iran and Saudi Arabia of gays, women, secularists and others. The BBC reports that according to Amnesty International, 180 people have been executed in these two countries in the last year. Shocking, right?

Well, not as shocking as this: 80% of executions worldwide were carried out by one country: China. That’s right, folks. Over 1700 people were executed in China alone last year. Naturally, the moral relativists among us – like a certain Mr Livingstone, who compared the Tiananmen Square massacre to the Trafalgar Square poll tax riot – might want to point out that Britain hanged thirteen 17-19 year olds for murder between 1868 and 1899.

The USA also figures in there – responsible for 60 executions. Indeed, Amnesty dramatically – and I’d venture dishonestly – declares in the executive summary of their report:

- at least 2,148 people were executed in 22 countries
- 94% of them were killed in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the USA

What this type of reporting does, is ‘spread the load’ in the casual reader’s mind. But let’s break this down sensibly.

Firstly, as is noted, China was responsible for 80% of this figure. That leaves Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US responsible for the remaining 14%.

But dig deeper, and you discover that even of this 14%, the US contributed the least, 60 people compared to Iran’s 94 and Saudi Arabia’s 86.

Quibbling over nothing, you might be thinking… but what does this mean in per-capita terms?

The US population is almost 300 000 000.

In contrast, Iran’s population is 69 500 000 and Saudi Arabia’s a mere, 24 500 000.

That’s right. Their combined population is less than a third of the United States, but their execution rate is THREE TIMES HIGHER!

Now, China, of course (apparently the worst offender) is 4 times bigger than the US. So at the US rate, they would have executed about 250 people – not almost 1800!!

So, let’s level the playing field here and compare the PER CAPITA execution statistics.

According to my spreadsheet, the executions per capita are:
China: 0.000134514
Iran: 0.000135223
Saudi: 0.000349978
USA: “E” - Too infinitesimal for MS Excel to calculate.

So, let’s give Excel some help. Let’s remove the last “000” from the population figures so we can get a result:

China: 0.13
Iran: 0.13
Saudi: 0.35
USA: 0.02

This gives a different picture doesn’t it? In per capita terms, not only does the US figure remain comparatively insignificant, it shows that Iran and China are about the same and Saudi Arabia is actually the worst offender by a factor of three!

For every person executed in the US, Saudi Arabia is executing 18, and Iran and China are executing 7 each.

But there’s another note-worthy point. In the US, only first-degree murderers are executed, and only then after appeals and judicial reviews sometimes lasting over a decade. Unlike the other countries, people are not executed for political or ‘moral’ crimes. People are not executed in the US for disagreeing with the government or for being “unchaste” or renouncing their religion.

Also, a quarter of US states have dropped the death penalty, and there is a vocal and well-resourced anti-death penalty lobby in the US which goes about its business, with access to the media and celebrity endorsements, but most importantly, without the fear of death itself!

So why, one has to ask, is Amnesty dishonestly including the US in their headline-grabbing statistic at all? Could it be there is growing cachet in this dubious moral relativism? We can’t be seen to be condemning gross human rights violations anywhere without having a dig at the US too?

Indeed, the dishonesty is such that on a per-capita basis they don’t mention that with a population of only 22 million, North Korea outstrips the US by far… as does Jordan and Libya, and even the tiny Palestinian Authority (pop: 3.7m) has a higher execution rate than the US. But they’re not included in the statistic. And these are just a few examples. It is likely - though Amnesty doesn’t give the data - that many of the other 18 countries mentioned in the Amnesty report that make up the remaining 6% of executions also have a higher per capita rate of executions than the US.

It would be more statistically honest to say that 92% of the world’s executions come from THREE countries (removing the US barely changes the stats!). It would be honest because on a per capita basis, Iran and Saudi Arabia are comparable with China (the Saudis in fact are far worse in these terms).

I must make it perfectly clear that my gripe is NOT with Amnesty International’s opposition to the death penalty. I myself am opposed to capital punishment. I condemn all executions, including the 60 that took place in the USA.

BUT… I loathe the knee-jerk moral relativism. Yes, Amnesty must campaign against the death penalty in the US, but lumping the US with China, Iran and Saudi Arabia is simply wrong, and transparently plays down the crimes of the other three countries. Why are they so afraid to condemn unequivocally without the de rigueur America-bashing to soften the blow?

Now I’m sure that Amnesty’s strategists are thinking that the US, being essentially a liberal democracy, might be embarrassed into doing something about the death penalty in those states that still retain it.

They are quite rightly concerned that 1 or 2 people on average is executed every year in the US states that retain the death penalty – even if it is only for first-degree murder. It should be zero. They are particularly right to be concerned when some of those executed might not have been mentally competent to stand trial or understand their sentence.

Perhaps Amnesty feels that the US Government will be shocked into action when it sees its name alongside China, Saudi Arabia and Iran on the list of worst offenders. But if this is the strategy, it isn’t a very effective one. As I have shown, the fallacy is so easily exposed and demolished by anyone with a rudimentary understanding of arithmetic.

The other thing that risks being demolished as a consequence – tragically – is Amnesty International’s own moral authority and credibility. The average American – and indeed the average person that has visited America or has American friends – knows very well that the US is neither Iran nor North Korea. Political dissidents aren’t put before a firing squad, and adulterers are not stoned in the streets.

Amnesty might be making a valiant rhetorical point. The US should know better. It should be more humane – even if those it executes are exclusively violent murderers. But this point can’t be made effectively by ‘cooking the books’. The ends are laudable, but the means are counter-productive. Moral relativism, whether misguided or deliberately manipulative, helps no one – least of all the suffering and the oppressed.

Ask yourself, how many asylum seekers have been sent back to their countries to face torture and death because the adjudicators in their cases have bought into the rhetoric “Iran is no worse than America… Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Jordan, China… they’re really not much worse than America.”

It reminds me of the time I was told by a speaker at an LGBT student conference I also spoke at, that the hangings of gay Iranians were bad, but we should not forget Matthew Shepard. Yes, Matthew Shepard, whose murder outraged the nation, whose killers were swiftly brought to justice, whose parent’s own intervention spared his murderers the death penalty… in America. But it’s the same as teens hanged the street by Revolutionary Guards in Iran. Yes…. I can see it…. no… no, actually I can’t… because I’m NOT INSANE! But I digress…

The good news, of course is:
The European Union – population: 450 000 000; Executions: 0.

It's a sin

2006-04-19T21:04:00.000+01:00

Ah, more correspondence from ‘Let’s get it on’ Don. He reveals himself as a bit of a scholar, with his eloquent critique of my article on lawat and zina. So, he’s up for a good flogging for his pre-marital sex apparently, but maybe he likes a bit of spanking. In any event, he apparently believes that Muslim men can have as many “white chicks” as they like (as long as they’re “unbelievers”, he hastens to add). Tad racist, Don.

Well, Don may not be an unbeliever, but he sure is unbelievable!

So over to you Don….

-- -- -- -- -- --

Dear Bastard Scum,

May I congratulate you on your internet research pertaining to my adverts, bet you feel well chuffed and think you have "outed" me as some kind of degenerate on a par with you.

You couldn't be further from the truth. You made some fundamental errors in your article on zina, the proscribed punishment for pre-marital (I'm not married - adultery is a huge sin that condemns one to eternal damnation) sex is flogging and not death, like it is for the filthy homosexual lifestyle you espouse.

You completely missed the point of my previous email, what gays do in the privacy of their germ ridden homes is entirely up to them. What I am opposed to is the attempt by reprobates like you and Tatchell to legitimise this vile lifestyle and market it as an alternative to heterosexuality, which of course it can never be, cos poofs like you can't procreate can you?

Any sins I have commited are superior to the sin you commit every day by having another man as a bedfellow. I would never contemplate gay sex ever, you repulsive creature.

I love white chicks and we muslim males can have as many of your non-believing women as we want as handmaidens to do what we want with ok.

Although I think the holocaust was one of history's darkest chapters, Hitler demonstrated remarkable foresight in gassing gays, and I would love to do the same. I wish you pain and anguish my dear dirty gay bastard of a scumbag - don't ever try to equate my "sins" with yours, piece of shit!

Don

Tanks kill hundreds in Trafalgar Square

2006-04-10T12:53:00.000+01:00

Ken Livingstone never fails to amaze me. Some say he speaks without thinking (or that he is sometime ‘tired and emotional’) but I think that the reason he doesn’t need to think before speaking is because his politics are rigidly imprinted. What people mean when they say he speaks before thinking, is that he speaks before his brain has necessarily had the chance to put a savoury spin on his politics. His politics, however, remain so deeply unsavoury that they assault the senses and leave a bad taste in the mouth.

I understand and accept that he takes his job promoting London and ensuring the smooth running of the city seriously. But is everything fair-game in the pursuit of this?

The signal that he’d become a bureaucratic utilitarian came early. When the RMT union called a strike, he encouraged scabbing to ensure that Christmas shoppers were not inconvenienced.

And now, in an effort to court Chinese investment in London, he’s downplayed and dismissed the Tiananmen Square Massacre – calling it “a riot” comparable to Poll Tax protests in Trafalgar Square, according to The Telegraph.

When challenged about the crassness of this comparison – since no one died in Trafalgar Square, he started equivocating.

"If you go back to some of the early instances you will find many cases where innocent protesters were hacked to pieces with sabres - the Peterloo massacre, for example. There is no such thing as one country with a perfect record," spake our Ken.

Of course, the Peterloo Massacre was almost 200 years ago, and only about a dozen people died compared to the more than 600 (or perhaps as many as 3000, according to the Chinese Red Cross) that perished in Tiananmen Square. But then of course, an antique local militia armed with swords is nothing compared to a mechanised army tank brigade, is it?

But when Ken says “There is no such thing as one country with a perfect record.” It sets off little alarm bells in my head. Of course it is true. But it is also the stock-in-trade of sections of the post-modernist Left - moral equivalence and neo-racism.

It says that “we” cannot criticise human rights abuses in other countries or cultures because “we” don’t have an unblemished historical record.

But we were nothing 200 years ago. We were not even alive. I simply do not buy into this ‘sins of the father’ nonsense. We did not support the Crusades, the Inquision or Slavery, nor did we (apart from a few surviving veterans) defeat Hitler and Nazism. We only make moral judgements and take actions based on our world in our lifetimes. The notion that there is a collective race-responsibility is dangerous. It denies that the present generation can ever be better than the preceding.

If you think about it. It is just as preposterous to say that we were responsible for slavery as it is to say that we were responsible for abolishing it. In the neo-racist collectivist sense, both statements would be true. But is it not sufficient that today “we” share an abhorrence of slavery – regardless of what our forebears did – and because of the efforts of another generation of our forebears, are prepared to speak out against slavery wherever it manifests itself? The idea that because one group of our forebears traded in slaves (ignoring for a moment our other forebears who fought to abolish it) that we cannot speak out against slavery today leads only to one thing – moral paralysis!

So, the dismissal of the massacre as part of Tiananmen Square’s “interesting history” rather than denouncing it for the outrage it was is disgusting. The idea that this outrage should not be unequivocally condemned because of a (a fraction of the scale) massacre on British soil almost 200 years ago, is pathetic.

It is this neo-racist outlook that is responsible for the sorry state of human rights in the world today. It is neo-racist because its proponents are just as willing to box and isolate by race as David Duke and Eugene Terre’Blanche are. When I denounce a human righst outrage, I do so not as a white, western male, but as an Earthling. And when Livingstone and his friends spout this bull-crap, someone needs to say “Hey! Earth to Ken!”

That Ken Livingstone wasn't around in 1819 to condemn the Peterloo massacre is regrettable. Bit it is no reason why he should hesitate to condemn a massacre in vivid, full-colour, living memory, while people still weep for the dead and the scarred and mutilated still walk among us.

Lawat and Zina

2006-04-09T21:58:00.000+01:00

Dear Don

I thought I should do a post especially for you, since you’ve taken the trouble to write to me.

Now, dear boy, at the risk of sticking my nose in where it isn’t wanted, I thought I’d point you towards some lectures on ‘zina’ (or ‘fornication’ – not the warrior princess) from some eminent Muslim scholars of the Sharia.

Indeed, Dr Qaradawi himself says:

“What Islam prohibits in the sphere of sex includes looking at a member of the opposite sex with desire; for the eye is the key to the feelings, and the look is a messenger of desire, carrying the message of fornication or adultery.”

Now, Don, you may wonder why I’m telling you all this. Well, let me rephrase that – other readers may wonder why I’m telling you this, because I’m sure you know perfectly well that you’ve been a very naughty boy.

What smutty thoughts were going through your brain when you posted this here:

Hi Girls Im a 25 year old asian male seeking no strings fun with chicks of any age/race but must be goodlooking lol so photo a must, mine available on request. Im pretty openminded and funloving so email me direct and see what happens! DON5383@HOTMAIL.COM

Well girls, don’t delay, because Don is quite anxious to have a few sexy romps for fun. So much so, that he’s spread his virtual wild oats here too:

I'm a 25 year old asian male from Birmingham, while not really interested in witchcraft, I do think witches are seriously sexy! Anyway if there are any witches out there looking for a hot young guy, then I'm your man! I'm very openminded and discrete, so get in contact, nothing shocks me! I have a photo so you have nothing to lose. Email me direct on: DON5383@HOTMAIL.COM

Witches, eh, Don? Kinky! Come on girls – pleasure him with your broomsticks! But wait, ooh! Don’s been spilling his cyber seed on some more rocky ground…

Hi Ladies, Im a 25 year old asian male living in bham, uk. Im really fascinated by k9 and want to meet a likeminded female. I have a photo, im openminded and discrete, and overall a nice guy! So ladies dont be shy email me direct at: DON5383@HOTMAIL.COMWoof Woof!

Woof, woof, indeed Don! And that website – ‘Pet Lovers’ – what’s that about, you fox!

And what’s ‘K9’ (can anyone enlighten me?)

Ah, but it’s not all fun and games. Do you know what the penalty for ‘zina’ is, Don? This is scary shit! It’s not fun at all. It’s death.

Now, here’s the thing, Don. While you’re flashing your cock around the Internet, I’m at home enjoying a monogamous and loving relationship with my partner of 8 years. But, I understand, you’re a young guy, you have raging hormones, big tits excite you, yada, yada, yada., wink-wink, nudge-nudge…. And I wish you well in your sexual escapades. Hey, have fun, get your rocks off. I would urge you, of course, both to use proper protection and to respect your sexual partners. But the one thing I won’t do, is wish you harm.

More importantly, I hope no one takes such personal umbrage to your sex life – as you have to mine – and threatens you with torture and death. (and I hope you don’t kiss the witches with that potty-mouth!)

By the way, in for a penny, in for a pound (as they say)… did you know that many Muslim scholars hold that the penalty of lawat (sodomy) and zina (fornication) is the same. So if you’re going to be done for the one, you may as well go the whole hog. (I use hog figuratively here, Don – not like on the ‘Pet Lovers Personals’ site you hang out on).

Yes, the whole hog… since you are so sexually, “open-minded” and “nothing shocks you” (as you put it), why not try a little anal sex? Witches may be magic, but only another hot guy can lend you their wand. (Teehee – now you’ve got me being all naughty too!)

What have you got to lose? You might be surprised. Some may call it sodomy, but we call it fabulous!

Regards

“Scum”

Love Letter

2006-04-06T00:48:00.000+01:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: The Last Don <don5383@hotmail.com>
Date: 06-Mar-2006 11:59
Subject: Ref: How Dare You

Dear Scum,

Together with Peter Tatchell, you are one of the more prolific homos in this country, promoting your vile lifestyle, when really you should just join the pits of humanity and take your repugnant filth with you. You make such a noise about your sexuality and your whole identity is based on your sexuality. Why don't you walk around with pink stars, if your so desperate for everyone to know you're gay.

Even worse I hate the way you and Tatchell stick your nose into the business of the Muslim community. We will never accept you, even moderate muslims like me, can't stand the sight of you sick fucks. It's not just your perversion that gets to us, its your insolence, be fucking gay but at least admit it's wrong. You won't ever gain acceptance, we will fight you every inch of the way. Look at you, you complain muslims are so antigay, but not even the secular west has fully accepted you, don't see them using a gaycouple advertising milk tray (and all because the homo loves milk tray), do you?

Sick gay fuck, die and burn in hell, I would gladly torture and torment you, how does that make you feel, boom bye bye batty bwoy!

Don

Pro-Islamist left wants gays on their knees (and not for what you think)

2006-04-05T00:10:00.000+01:00

Kirsten Hearn is really good at getting the short end of the stick and then beating around the bush with it. Even better than Messrs Truman & Pitt over at IslamophobiaWatch. In her long diatribe against OutRage! in Tribune, conveniently republished by I-W, she rants that Peter Tatchell is trying “to portray the Muslim and LGBT communities as polarised from each other.

It is not Tatchell who is suggesting gays and Muslims are polar opposites. Remind me who said just shortly before the UAF conference that gays were socially destructive spreaders of disease?

Oh yes, it was Iqbal Sacranie.

In contrast to Sacranie’s bigotry and divisiveness, it Peter Tatchell who said: “Both the Muslim and gay communities suffer prejudice and discrimination. We should stand together to fight Islamophobia and homophobia."

Here’s the crucial question for Kirsten: Where is the equivalent statement of mutual solidarity from Sacranie?

Sacranie condemning homophobia? Don’t be silly. He won’t do it, which is why his apologists have to blame someone else. For example, Pitt (using his nom de guerre, ‘Martin Sullivan’) blames the press for blowing Sacranie's comments out of proportion, but doesn't have a single bad word to say about Sacranie. Sacranie can abuse gays, but let anyone object and it’s because they're 'Islamophobic'.

If Sacranie really wants to unite with gays against fascism, he has a funny way of showing it.

And Mr Sullivan/Pitt obfuscates things further with the lie that Sacranie’s views are religious - but where in any scripture does it say that "gays spread diseases"? It doesn't. Indeed, Sacranie was quoting from a right-wing antigay (pseudo) medical journal - not the Quran - to support his bigoted claims.

And if his homophobia is religiously inspired – so what?Hearn repeats the bald-faced lie that OutRage! targets Islam bit not other religions. What twaddle! What is OutRage! most famous for? Oh yeah, storming Canterbury Cathedral during the Archbishop’s Easter service. And who picketed the Pope’s wake reminding the world about his homophobia and the AIDS catastrophe his lies caused? Oh yeah. OutRage! And at the risk of boring you, who disrupted a live TV broadcast of the General Synod? Right… that was OutRage!

So, here’s another question. Why is it that gays are always asked to sacrifice their dignity in order to form alliances? And why are some like Kirsten Hearn always ready to do so?If some right-wing Zionist group made comments that Muslims were destroying the fabric of society and spread diseases, I can't see Hearn arguing to line up with them to fight the BNP because "the BNP also targets Jews". And I can't see Pitt & Truman cheering her on either!

Hearn then flaps into hyperbole. She claims:

“To suggest we jettison the Muslim community from the anti-fascist movement at a time when the fascists are advancing by attacking Muslims is obscene.”

Who said that? Neither Tatchell nor OutRage! have ever excluding the Muslim community from the fight against fascism. Hearn flagrant dishonesty shows the depth to which the pro-Islamist-left and their hanger-ons will stoop.

All we’re asking for is a little quid pro quo. Is it too much to ask that in the name of unity, Sacranie thinks before he speaks? Is it too much to ask in the name of unity that the MCB stops lobbying against gay rights?Yes, Kirsten, a BNP success in the local elections would be catastrophic, but frankly, given current indicators, the success of an MCB-aligned candidate could be equally disastrous for gay people, especially lesbian and gay Muslims.

I'm all for standing with the MCB against the BNP, so is Peter Tatchell and the rest of OutRage! All it'll take is an apology from Sacranie and a hint that he respects our dignity as gay people a little more than the BNP does. But of course he's silent - because once again it's THE GAYS that must make all the compromises in the name of unity.

-----

As a footnote: The blog run by the bizarre ‘StraightWay Foundation’ (that group of ‘ex-gay’ Muslims who supported Ken Livingstone’s drooling over Qaradawi) put Ms Hearn in her place. They say:

“We have noted the potential problem of Muslims supporting any LGBT activist, from a political angle. Some may say that such concerns are petty. But in the case of a "gay Muslim", the problem is much greater, again for political reasons.”

What political reasons? Oh dear, legitimising the identity of “gay Muslims” of course, and the danger that gay Muslims might achieve prominent positions within the Muslim community and in the wider society and become role models. Can’t have that!

As we all know, the StraightWay foundation and the pro-Islamist Left demand that gay people – especially gay Muslims – should know their place… and that is begging on their knees.

Free speech v Socialst Action

2006-03-28T11:11:00.000+01:00

When Denis Fernando of the so-called ‘Lesbian & Gay Coalition Against Racism’ opens his mouth to proclaim the “truth” about something, the listener can usually rely on what follows to be a tapestry of distortions and misrepresentations.

Mr Fernando, a member of  the secretive far-left ‘Socialist Action’ group – brilliantly exposed here – specialises in sowing discord and confusion, much like the green-eyed dwarf Tortuous Convolvulus in the Asterix comics. For sowing discord, Convolvulus was thrown to the lions – but the lions ended up eating each other! Which is, naturally, exactly what Convolvulus expected.

Green-eyed Denis has recently infiltrated the gay Muslim group Imaan. Even though he’s not a Muslim himself, he has been retained as their “political consultant”.  At last year’s Pride London parade he was seen to be cheerleading and orchestrating the Imaan contingent, giving many bystanders the impression that he is himself a Muslim, rather than the lapsed Catholic he really is.

The previously clean-shaven Mr Fernando has recently started sporting a beard. Perhaps this is just a fashion statement, but some wags have wondered if this isn’t another attempt to pass himself off as a Muslim and ingratiate himself with the most devout of the devout.

Denis last week succeeded in getting Imaan to sign up to his press release entitled “’Don't support the BNP’ - the truth about the Freedom of Expression rally”, which, if he suffered from a Pinocchio affliction would allow him to generate enough lumber to stock a regional branch of B&Q.

Of course, the non-Muslim Fernando is the only person quoted by name. The other bit in direct quotes is attributed to “an Imaan spokesperson”. This anonymity is not surprising, since Imaan’s last spokesperson to venture into the mass media did so only on condition that she could don a burqa and have her voice electronically altered. Actually, I don’t blame her. I know enough people who live with death threats to appreciate the position she was in. So sad, then, that Denis manipulates Imaan into defending the very people that force them to hide themselves in a mental ‘panic room’.

So, let’s give the LAGCAR press release a good fisking…

The headline suggests that the Freedom of Expression rally was in reality a BNP rally. The truth is that it was organised by a group of liberal bloggers who solicited support for a perfectly reasonable statement supporting the universal right to free expression. The BNP, including their thinly disguised front-group, ‘Civil Liberty’, were told in no uncertain terms right from the start that they were unwelcome and unwanted.

The organisers said in a statement:

“We have never at any time suggested that their [the BNP] freedom of expression should be denied but we do assert our right to refuse to allow our campaign to be associated with their racist outlook. They are perfectly at liberty to organise their own events. Furthermore, the fascist fringe of British politics, including the BNP, has a history of consistent association with political violence and we are campaigning against exactly that.”

Fascists don’t believe in freedom of expression, and thus were explicitly banned from the march. Indeed, the organisers described the BNP’s fake concern for free speech as “a Trojan horse”. They stated firmly on the free expression blog:

“The principle of freedom of expression is used, by some, as a trojan horse, as a proxy for racism and islamophobia. Not by me. Not by us. Not by this campaign.”

To those who complained that this was anti-free speech and a u-turn, the march organisers took the “good riddance” approach, snapping back:

“To those who are annoyed, I ask what part of this did you not understand:
This will be a march in favour of free expression, not a march against Muslims”

Does any of this sound even vaguely like promoting a BNP agenda?

Of course not! And so, on the day, the BNP were nowhere in sight.

Of course, LAGCAR/SA’s real objection was that the event would include criticism of the same right-wing Islamist reactionaries to which they have hitched their wagon. Just as they pressured Imaan to support the murderously homophobic cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, now they’ve managed to use Imaan to attack gay groups who support free speech and push the bald-faced lie that this was a closet BNP rally.

But of course if you’re going to tell one porker, you may as well carry on. Fernando’s next claim is:

“Peter Tatchell is now speaking at a rally which is being built and supported by the BNP and the Libertarian Alliance.”

The truth is the BNP had nothing to do with this rally.

Tatchell’s speech roundly condemned the BNP’s homophobia and Islamophobia, expressing solidarity with the Muslim community. .

It is true that the Libertarian Alliance were invited to speak. Fernando’s objection to the Libertarian Alliance is this:

“[The Libertarian Alliance Director Sean Gabb] defended the right to free speech of an evangelical Christian in Sweden who had been convicted under that country's anti-hatred legislation after describing homosexuality as abnormal, a horrible cancerous tumour in the body of society.”

Excuse me? But didn’t LAGCAR defend Sir Iqbal Sacranie only a month back for saying essentially the same thing? Sure, they said they didn’t agree with him, but they were still willing to share a platform with him. They certainly didn’t support calls for Sir Iqbal’s  prosecution. So, it’s okay for Muslims to insult gays, but don’t dare suggest that Christians have the same right? What a hypocrite Fernando is.

Naturally, once you’ve opened the door to Lies, you may as well let his cousin Misrepresentation in too. For example, Fernando cites OutRage!’s call for the Unite Against Fascism conference to withdraw its invitation to Sacranie as an attack on Sacranie’s free speech. But this wilfully misses the point entirely. OutRage! never said that Sacranie should be shut up, banned, or silenced. In fact, we criticised the police investigation into his comments. Our point was that he was an inappropriate speaker for an anti-fascist conference, echoing, as he does, the BNP’s bigoted view of homosexuality. It seemed absurd – and still does – to ask LGBT activists to stand up to the BNP together with groups who share the BNP’s homophobic attitudes to gay people.

Another favoured trick of far-left sectarian propaganda is the twisted logic that if Group A supports a policy of Group B, then necessarily Group B supports Group A. Watch out for it, it is a favourite trick in their arsenal.

In Denis Fernando’s press release, they claim that because the twits in UKIP have signed a statement supporting free speech that necessarily everyone else who supports the statement must therefore support the UKIP agenda. How absurd is this! Should every person concerned with privacy abandon their opposition to ID cards simply because UKIP are opposed to them too? Is every group that is critical of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank colluding with the anti-Semitic David Duke – or, to bring it closer to home – the Jew-hating BNP?

The relevant thing, as some of the Muslim speakers at Saturday’s event suggested, is that free speech is the greatest ally of religious minorities and of women’s rights and gay rights. It is precisely free speech that has enabled misogyny and homophobia to be challenged.

The same ‘blasphemies’ that make irreligious cartoons ‘objectionable’, also make gay Muslims proclaiming their identity a ‘blasphemy’.

The gay community was the last target of a successful prosecution in the UK under the (Christian) blasphemy law. Do gay Muslims want to be the next victims if the law is extended instead of abolished? I doubt it.

As one of the few organised groups of gay Muslims, Imaan had better watch out. They will always be targets of opportunists and entryists with other agendas. The LGBT human rights groups OutRage! has first-hand experience of this. In Ian Lucas’s definitive history of the group from 1990 – 1996, a section is devoted to the trouble-making of LAGCAR (see p 126 onwards):

“Throughout the year, OutRage! meetings were being bogged down by report-backs, factionalism and accusations of ‘entryism’. In particular, LAGCAR(F) was seen as a disruptive element and intent on using OutRage! meetings for it’s own ends… They were putting forward very politically correct arguments but in a very disruptive and divisive way. The meetings were full of accusations, completely unfounded, malicious accusations of sexism and racism… to the point where people were driven away from the group.”

So, nothing ever seems to change. Over 10 years later, Denis Fernando and his Socialist Action entryists are still at it, sowing divisions, and diverting gay groups away from their  core objective of struggling against homophobia – and diverting gay Muslims away from defending themselves against the Islamists who threaten their very existence.

Moscow Gay Pride banned

2006-02-17T10:03:00.000Z

Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has announced that the city government will not allow a gay parade “in any form” and any attempt to hold a gay event will be “resolutely quashed”

The Mayor’s dictat follows statements by the Russian Chief Mufti threatening violence if the Pride parade went ahead.

Chief Mufti of Russia’s Central Spiritual Governance for Muslims Talgat Tajuddin said:

“Muslims’ protests can be even worse than these notorious rallies abroad over the scandalous cartoons,” Chief Mufti of Russia’s Central Spiritual Governance for Muslims Talgat Tajuddin said.

“The parade should not be allowed, and if they still come out into the streets, then they should be bashed,” he added.

Tajuddin declared: “Sexual minorities have no rights, because they have crossed the line. Alternative sexuality is a crime against God.”

He then called on Russian Orthodox members to join Muslims in formulating a violent response to Moscow Pride.

Not to be left out, Russian Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar said that if a gay pride was allowed to go ahead it "would be a blow for morality". He stopped short of calling for violence, but the Jewish community would not stand by silently. "Sexual perversions", he said, did not have a right to exist. Lazar said that gay pride marches were “a provocation” similar to cartoon depictions of Mohammed.

Moscow Pride organiser, meanwhile, has said that attempts to prevent the march will be challenged with court action, if necessary, all the way to the European Court ofhuman rights in Strasbourg.

Russian gay and lesbian activists announced in July that they would apply for a permit to hold pride celebrations in Moscow next May. If it is granted it would be the first pride parade ever held in the Russian capital. The projected date is May 27, 2006 — the anniversary of the abolition of Soviet laws against homosexuality in 1993.

Many well known gay rights campaigners from around the world will attend the first ever Gay Pride Parade in Russia, which coincides with the first International Day Against Homophobia conference. These include the British campaigners Michael Cashman MEP, Peter Tatchell of OutRage! and UK IDAHO co-ordinator Derek Lennard.

Also attending are the Deputy Mayor of Paris and several members of the European Council. Representatives from more than 30 countries will attend the Moscow International Gay Festival, which as well as Pride and the first IDAHO conference will include a series of talks by Mervin Holland, the grandson of Oscar Wilde, and a day of “Russian and Scandinavian homoculture”.

Derek Lennard, UK Correspondent for the International Day Against Homophobia said “The first Pride in Moscow is of enormous and enormous importance particularly to the LGBT communities in the Baltic and Eastern European Countries. All those who are able to take the freedom to organise Pride for granted will surely want show their support for the LGBT community in Moscow”

Peter Tatchell said: “These attempts by the Russian state and religious leaders to suppress the right to protest are a throwback to the bad old days of czarist and communist totalitarianism. No amount of threats and intimidation by the Mayor of Moscow, the Chief Mufti or the Chief Rabbi will halt the gay freedom struggle in Russia. The right to sexual self-determination and the right to protest are fundamental human rights that every democratic humanitarian nation must respect.”

The event is a week after the start of the Russian Presidency in the Council of Europe and just before the summit of G8 leaders in St Petersburg. President Putin has not commented on Pride or the threats of violence from religious leaders.

For further information:

The IDAHO-UK website is at: www.idaho-uk.orgThe international IDAHO website is www.idahomophobia.orgFor more information, email Derek Lennard at info@idaho-uk.orgFor info about Manchester events, email manchester@idaho-uk.org

ENDS

Free the bomber-jacket guy

2006-02-08T21:03:00.000Z

It’s been reported that the Omar Khayam, the man who dressed as a suicide bomber look-alike at the “Cartoon” protest in London last Friday has been sent back to prison for violating his parole conditions. Khayam is a convicted drug dealer.

Now, I think his stunt was ill-considered (for the reasons I gave in my previous post) and the chairman of his local mosque is probably spot on the mark when he describes him as “a bit of an idiot”.

For all I know, he may have been making an ironic statement by depicting himself as the very worst stereotype that Muslims are portrayed as. There is nothing wrong with that in principle, but it was a strategic blunder, chiefly because the memory of real suicide bombers is still fresh in London’s memory – so the image isn’t one that resonates exclusively as a stereotype at this moment in time. The strong reaction was almost certainly guaranteed to overshadow the political point.

On the other hand, (again, for all I know) he may have simply wanted to appear threatening and provocative. But this is neither here nor there.

But he has now apologised. So that should be the end of the matter.

But it isn’t, because Khayam now faces the prospect of having to serve out the rest of his drugs conviction sentence.

I now find myself agreeing with Anjem Choudary, formerly UK chairman of the radical Islamist group al-Muhajiroun. He told The Guardian:

"If it is correct that he was dealing drugs, he has already been punished, his character is changed and he is amending his life. He has not done anything that merits him being put back in jail."

I don’t know if his character has changed or whether he has amended his life, but that is irrelevant, nevertheless Choudary is absolutely correct that Khayam has done nothing that merits putting him back in jail.

If it isn’t a crime to protest – even so insensitively and provocatively – then it seems to me that the authorities are using his parole conditions as a convenience. If a person with no criminal record could get away with his actions (with or without a heart-felt apology), then so should Khayam. If he attempts to rob a bank, mugs and old lady or sells more crack – you know, something criminal – by all means send him back to the slammer.

But for being “a bit of an idiot”, I don’t think so! And it’s not doing the image of British justice any good. In fact, like Khayam, the British justice system is also acting out its worst stereotype. Is no-one learning anything?

Cartoon Islam

2006-02-04T21:16:00.000Z

Is this cartoon Islamophobic?
Does it incite religious and racial hatred?
Should it be banned?
Does it cause offence?
Is it insulting to Muslims?
Does it stereotype followers of the Islamic faith as hateful, violent and intolerant?
Does the cartoon cause offence and exceed the boundries of responsible free speech?
Should a newspaper or TV programme be allowed to publish/broadcast this cartoon?

In fact, the above cartoon is only a cartoonised version of real-life Muslim extremist protestors who were demonstrating against cartoon depictions of the Prophet Mohammed on Friday, February 3, 2006 in central London (see original screen images below).

The cartoon above was not created by a graphic artist. It was created by running a Photoshop filter over a screen grab of live TV footage of the protest. The captions were literally cut and pasted from placards carried by the marchers.

Why are some Muslims and their appeasing liberal/left allies getting so het up about fantasy cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, while ignoring real-life murderous insults and threats by Islamist fundamentalists (depicted in the photo below) in London, Europe and many other parts of the world?

One cannot help but reflect on the irony, as journalist Sarfraz Manzoor did on BBC News 24, that it is perhaps not the best way to protest the way one is depicted in a cartoon by behaving the way one was depicted in the cartoon. “In a way it confirmed the stereotype,” said Manzoor. “The reaction is doing more damage than the original offence.”

Of course, the vast majority of Muslims, while being offended by the cartoons (much like I imagine most Christians were over Piss-Christ) , will no doubt be exasperated with the “rampaging mobs and hysterical nutters” (as Sunny of the progressive Asian blog ‘Pickled Politics’ described them).

Legislators will be in a bind now about whether to prosecute those wielding slogans inciting racial hatred and violence like “Slay those who insult Islam”, “Butcher those who insult Islam” and “Europe will pay, demolition is on its way”.

I’m sure it’s mostly bravado, and the protestors will discover that they too are the beneficiaries of free speech.

On the other hand, the BBC is in a flap over whether to show the cartoons or not. Anyone interested in seeing the original cartoons can find them on Iranian communist Maryam Namazie’s blog.

The loathesome BNP, it doesn’t take a sage to predict, will waste no time in exploiting these TV news images. But in a weird way (or perhaps not so weird), they speak the same language as these protestors. It’s the clash of un-civilisations.

Neo-Nasties have gays on their radar again

2006-01-30T19:16:00.000Z

While most political parties – big and small, Tories and all – have expressed the view that it was not revelations of homosexuality per se that is causing a stir in the LibDem leadership race, one party predictably filled the gap left when naked homophobia excused itself from polite company a few years ago. Yes, the BNP has declared the LibDems a “party of perverts” in a press statement (which I won’t bother linking to).

It could be that they just have a kneejerk reaction to the words “liberal” and “democracy”. Almost a decade after the equalisation of the age of consent, they say that this removal of discrimination was “charter to lure overseas perverts to prey on our youngsters and should be strongly opposed by all parents”. They’re still singing from this silly hymn-sheet in 2006. What provoked this latest denunciation of gay equality? News that gay tourism agencies promote the UK as a great destination. One of the selling points being a non-discriminatory age of consent.

Of course, the BNP is obsessed with “children”, disregarding all credible evidence that you can’t teach someone to be gay – but you can teach them to be tolerant. Griffin’s goosesteppers are now targeting LGBT History Month, which they describe as “Labour's gay sex plan for British schoolkids”.

But, we should remember that this type of language from this source – while easily ridiculed – is very dangerous. There are a lot of groups who spout forth varying degrees of homophobic bilge, but only one group has inspired a follower to plant a bomb in a gay bar, killing a pregnant women and her unborn child.

So who’s a greater threat to families and children?

Another tabloid homophobe emerges

2006-01-27T15:47:00.000Z

Lowri Turner, a writer for The Western Mail – which declares itself rather grandly 'The National Newspaper of Wales' has stated rather bizarrely that “there is indeed a great deal of homophobia in this country”.

No shit!

I’m not going to argue with that. It is not her statement itself that is bizarre – it’s the context. The headline of her article is:

“However much I love my gay friends, I don't want them running the country”

What the hell is this? Tough love? It’s fine to love your gay friends, Lowri, but do you need to patronise them too?

Do you think that because you “love” your “gay friends” you’re not a bigoted homophobe?

Taylor clearly hasn’t worked out the the “B” in “LGBT” stands for bisexual either. Bisexuals apparently don’t exist in Lowri-world:

“Frankly, I don't trust a man who says he swings both ways, unless he is a spotty teenager who hasn't sorted himself out yet. Oaten is 41 and Hughes is 54. If they think they are old enough to run the country then surely they are old enough to work out which gender they fancy?”

Or if they do, they’re not to be trusted!

Indeed, Turner continues:

“Personally, I have to say that I don't think gay men make good party leaders or Prime Ministers. This has nothing to do with what they do in bed but everything to do with their lives in general.”

What? All gay people lead similar lives? Is this not the very basis of prejudice? But before you can get to splutter an objection, Turner counters defensively:

“Before I am accused of prejudice, I should say that not only are some of my best friends gay, but probably most of them are.”

Like we haven’t heard that old chestnut before!

Yes, apparently, we gayers are “different”. Presumably we don’t have the same concerns as “normal” folk. We’re “divorced”, apparently, from the reality of “normal” people’s lives and experiences.

“It is precisely because I know such a lot of gay men that I can say that I don't think many of them are capable of representing the interests of the vast majority of people.
Their lifestyles are too divorced from the norm. They are not better or worse, but they are different.

People, this is raw homophobia. Plain and simple.

It gets worse.

“Gay men face challenges of their own, but they do not face those associated with having children which is the way most of us live. I have gay friends whose biggest headache is whether to have a black sofa or a cream one. If they have a child it is a dog.”

I’m sure the members of Pink Parents, a support group for gay people with children, will be surprised that Turner thinks their kids are dogs.

“Without these experiences at the sharp end of our public services, they do not know how they function. This makes them completely out of their depth in administering them,” she pontificates.

“I think gay men are ill-suited to representing the interests of the population in general. However much I love my gay friends, I don't want them running the country.”

Does Lowri Turner really think that having children gives a person some special insight into running a country? Perhaps this is what people mean by “the nanny state”.

Has she ever stopped to wonder why many gay MPs get re-elected time and again? Does she really think their constituents share her views? Indeed, is there the slightest bit of evidence to suggest that gay town councillors or members of parliament have let their heterosexual constituents down? Have even Simon Hughes’s constituents suffered because he has no children. Has he neglected the schools and clinics in Bermondsey? Where are the facts to back up this claptrap?

I hope that Turner’s gay friends tell her where to put her sanctimonious patronage. Bring back Littlejohn-style antigay rants. I’ll take frothing-at-the-mouth homophobia any day over this pathetic apologia for prejudice.

Simon says…. I’ve had sex with men

2006-01-26T14:05:00.000Z

Well, that confirms more than two decades of speculation. LibDem leadership candidate Simon Hughes has finally decided to be ‘open’ about his sexuality. I suppose it could be argued that he’s not actually saying he’s gay (neither did Elton John, at first) because he says he’s had sex with men and women in the past. So, if we take him at his word, he’s technically admitting to being bisexual. Whatever the case – welcome to the LGBT community, Simon!

At least Mr Hughes has done it with confidence and dignity – even if it did take 23 years. There was no tearful ‘admission’ and to his credit, no shocked wife and kids to tell.

Now, of course, Simon Hughes presented himself as “the straight choice” in that notorious Bermondsey bi-election in 1983, in what is acknowledged as the most homophobic election campaign in living memory. The Labour candidate – a pre OutRage! – Peter Tatchell was relentlessly smeared and attacked over his sexuality both by his rivals in Labour and by Liberal canvassers. Tatchell documented the whole sorry saga in his book The Battle for Bermondsey.

However, despite a (somewhat unfounded) reputation for ‘outing’ public figures, OutRage! never outed Hughes, despite having the ability to do so. Why? Well, because he wasn’t a hypocrite. It is only acceptable to ‘out’ someone if their public pronouncements are at variance with their private lives. That is to say, if they’re spouting homophobic crap and voting for antigay laws while hiding a secret gay life. Hughes did not do that.

Still, he’s being accused of “lying” by the straight media. I suppose technically that’s true. But I’m not convinced that the straight media either appreciate the difficulties many gay people have in coming out, or – more importantly – the media’s role in creating those difficulties.

The tabloid press are beyond the pale. The Sun used the term “LimpDems” in their story.

Sky News glibly referred to it a “scandal”, though perhaps they meant that it was a controversy because Hughes had denied being gay in the past. The Sky News story also confirms that The Sun were behind the ‘outing’. One has to wonder what the legitimate public interest is. Obviously I’m always glad when more people exit the closet, but I must confess to being ambivalent when the agent of that action is the Tabloid press who have no genuine interest in destroying the closet.

For gay people – even in “the 21st century” – the question of coming out or not is still a difficult one, and it isn’t just politicians, Hollywood actors and others in the public eye worry about. Will I get that promotion if the boss knows I’m gay? Will I be allowed to see my nephews if my sister knows I’m gay? Will I get harassed by the neighbours of they know I’m gay? These are questions that everyday gay people aske themselves… well, everyday. Even those, like myself, who are very ‘out’ – because every new day brings a new situation where one has to decide whether to out oneself or not.

Of course Simon Hughes should have come out. Of course, these days, even the Tories have openly gay MPs. But if there has been any hypocrisy, it’s been from a media that frames the question as if the answer is self-evident. To many, unfortunately, it isn’t. Homophobia and prejudice is still very much with us.

But, the only way we can begin to confront homophobic prejudice is to ‘out’ it. And, the only way to ‘out’ prejudice is to expose ourselves to it by coming out ourselves.

Peter Tatchell has forgiven Hughes for his part in the homophobic Bermondsey bi-election a quarter of a century ago. Tatchell is right to do so. In coming out, Simon Hughes is now one of us, and as such, we should protect and nurture him - as we must do when the estimated 50 other gay MPs who are still deeply in their closets decide to do the right thing.

Labour's design for Respect

2006-01-11T11:26:00.000Z

As a graphic designer, I’ve always been as offended by the Respect Party’s logo as I have with their election shenanigans. Let’s face it, it looks like a drunk person designed it ten minutes after the print deadline had passed using some freeware fonts and Printmaster for Dos 3.2.

Let’s face it, it’s UGLY!

So, they must be thrilled that the far better resourced Labour Party have not only had a go at a redesign, but have used it on their own material.

With the slogan “Everyone is part of everyone else” one can only surmise that a Labour copywriter got the short end of the stick and is doing his best to break down inter-party identity recognition.

What next? A Labour's recruitment leaflet with have the slogan"Join Labour - Socialise, Work... and Party!"

Or perhaps they'll do a PowerPoint presentation "'Liberation for Democracy" on why they thought they should invade Iraq and advertise it with posters asking:

"Have you seen The Lib-Dem today?"

Frankly, their ad-agency should be fired. “Coke Gives You Pep?” I don’t think so! I cannot see that getting through QC. SO who dreamt up a Labour campaign named after one of their yapping-at-the-heels opponents?

Nevertheless, the probably won’t be, because the author of the document exhibits simlar symptoms of being divorced from reality.

“I am pleased that an ASBO is now a household expression – synonymous with tackling antisocial behaviour,” says one Mr T Blair, employed to write the forward. Is he mad? Surely he must realise that the image the average person has of ASBOs is of petty neighbours behaving like they’re on a reality TV show and of OAPs prosecuted for a range of activities that OAPs have meldrewed the rest of us with for eons. ASBO’s may very well have had a positive effect, but to trot out this feel-good nonsense certainly isn’t making the case.

But oh, it is not all that feel-good and inclusive. One community is excluded with a stern rebuke. “There is no room for cynicism”, the writer warns. I guess cynicism is anti-social – and we know what anti-social behaviour get slapped with!

But if cynics were worried only by the preachy tone of an otherwise common-sense collection of truisms, the scary part comes later on.

“The causes of disrespectful behaviour are harder to pin down. Many people feel that broad economic and social trends have led to changes in family structures such as the extended family and ‘good neighbourliness’.”

No disagreement there. Of course dysfunctional families and a lack of economic and social opportunity contribute directly to anti-social behaviour. If people don’t feel they have a stake in their community, they’re going to act out accordingly. It’s a no-brainer, really! But wait! That’s not the argument they’re making. Nope!

This is not the cause of anti-social behaviour,apparently. This is the cause... of the cause. The actual cause is, wait for it…

“a decline in the social influence of the Church and other faith communities…”

What?

Is this really what a supposedly secular socialist political party is arguing? Not that socio-economic factors alone can contribute to the failing of social cohesion, but that a lack of faith is the real factor? They seem to be saying that the primary glue of a community is the Church, Synagogue, Mosque or Temple but that the influence of the Church, Synagogue, Mosque or Temple in holding a community together is undermined by socio-economic factors.

Mark my words, this will just provide an excuse and opportunity for religious groups to gouge more government money to fund their proselytising in the name of “community work”.

Why oh why can’t a socialist party not simply argue that a lack of socio-economic opportunity is in and of itself a sufficient cause of community breakdown?

Protest to free jailed Iranian union leader

2006-01-06T13:08:00.000Z

12-2pm, Saturday
7 January 2006
BBC Persian Section
Bush House
The Strand
London WC2B 4PH(nearest tube: Holborn)

Bus workers in the Iranian capital Tehran have called for a worldwide day of action this Saturday, 7 January, to press for the immediate release of their union leader, Mansoor Ossanlou, who is being held without any charges in Evin Prison.

Labour movement, Iranian exile and solidarity activists will be protesting outside the BBC’s Persian Section in London to raise the issue.Bus drivers in Tehran will put up a poster on their screens with the words “Mansoor Ossanlou must be released” and drive with their lights on all day.Ossanlou, the head of the Union of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (Sherkat e Vahed), has been held without any charges since 22 December.

So far negotiations with Tehran’s Mayor, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, for his release and over a series of other demands have produced no results.

Activists are gravely concerned that the regime is buying time and is planning to frame Ossanlou and other activists on trumped up charges. Following a successful strike on Sunday 25 December in protest at the arrests, a number of their imprisoned colleagues were released. The workers have appealed to labour movement organisations around the world for support.

Galloway on Big Brother – an elaborate hoax?

2006-01-06T01:10:00.000Z

A man of George Galloway's stature would never lower himself to appear on a trashy TV show for c-list celebrities.I believe it will be revealed soon that the person on the show is an impostor: a jobbing Scottish actor, possible hired by the Channel4 bosses and MI5 to discredit Mr Galloway.

CLICK HERE to reveal the true identity of the man on Celebrity Big Brother.

The new Littlejohn?

2006-01-05T19:35:00.000Z

Entertainment columnist Adam Yusef’s ‘desert island disc’ must be “I’ll follow The Sun” – because he’s clearly showing signs of wanting to be the new Richard Littlejohn or Gary Bushell.

In a column in the Birmingham-based weekly entertainment magazine, Desi Xpress (Issue 42, December 2005), Mr Yusef writes:

"Hmmm...gay weddings... Gay people and committment? I don't think so... They'll be shagg*ng the neighbours before they even cut the cake. Bad idea I'm afraid. Great way of evading tax though..."

I wonder if he’s the same Adam Yusef described in Socialist Worker as “a leading Respect supporter in Birmingham”? If so, perhaps he needs to learn the meaning of the word.

New GALHA magazine launches

2005-12-20T14:49:00.000Z

Sexuality, Politics, Humanism, Atheism, Liberalism and Freethought.

The Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) is proud to announce the launch of its new magazine - Gay Humanist Quarterly.

Editor, Brett Lock, says: “We hope to bring you quality writing, incisive analysis, oodles of fun and an all-round good read. Our aim is to produce a magazine taking a view of the world from a queer, free-thinking, humanist perspective, championing secularism, reason, and human rights.”

In the launch issue:

Lee Stacy, the new chair of the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association introduces himself, the new magazine and outlines the year ahead.
We ask the question “Are religious groups getting superpowers?” and note that across the UK, Europe and North America, religious groups are pushing for more power and influence in the running of the country - and getting it.
Brett Lock speaks to Wilf Mbanga, an exiled Zimbabwean newspaper editor who has vowed to keep publishing - from the UK.
Warren Allen Smith gives the low-down on what's up across the pond in the USA.
We take a critical look at Christian Voice, run by Stephen Green and his loopy mob.
Derek Lennard interviews Louis-Georges Tin, the founder of the International Day Against Homophobia.
Guest columnist David T investigates the disturbing trend of racist groups using religion as a proxy for race.
We rummage around the web for what might be in the atheist’s Winterval stocking and also discover the hilarious ‘Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’.
Houzan Mahmoud writes about how free speech is increasingly under threat from religious pressure.
Andrew Copson lets the government know what LGBT secularists expect from the Equality review.
Is Jesus really the reason for the season? We investigate that too.

The magazine is also packed with news, views and reviews of the latest books and films.

Lee Stacy, the new Chair of GALHA says: “Congratulations to the editors of this brand new magazine! And as chair of the well-established organization it’s representing, I’m honoured to be associated with it. This debut issue is stunning, and I look forward to future issues matching the wide-ranging, stimulating, and entertaining articles found here. I also applaud my fellow Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) committee members for laying the foundation for Gay Humanist Quarterly. “

Gay Humanist Quarterly is published quarterly. It is free to members of the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association, and available to non-members by subscription or from selected outlets. Copies cost £1.50 + P&P each or £7.50 (inc. P&P) for an annual UK subscription. International subscriptions are £12.50 (inc. P&P). Subscriptions and orders can be place online.

The magazine’s website is http://www.gayhumanist.com/

An electronic version of the debut issue is available for download from the website.

Why is a murder not a murder?

2005-12-16T18:50:00.000Z

The verdict in the David Morley murder trial has left me puzzled. And I’m not alone in this. There has been quite a bit of confusion and anger in the gay community (and elsewhere, no doubt) as to why the perpetrators of this crime were not found guilty of murder, but rather the lesser crime of manslaughter.

I think it is appropriate that the CPS, The Metropolitan Police and other agencies involved take some time to clearly and patiently explain the outcome of this trial to the public.

This is what confuses me:

According to the BBC’s “jargon buster” (which is very useful to laypeople like myself) these are the relevant definitions::

Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of another human being without the intention to kill or cause grievous bodily harm. The legal definition used to describe this accidental act of murder is violence 'without malice aforethought'.

Murder is the unlawful killing of another human being with the intention to kill or cause grievous bodily harm. The legal definition used to describe the act of murder is violence 'with malice aforethought'.

Now – according to reports in The Times (and even The Sun):

The four, all from Kennington, South London, were also convicted of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm and remanded in custody until sentencing.

Now this makes no sense to me. If you conspire to commit and act, and then you commit an act, how on earth was it successfully argued that they had no intention to commit the act – and thereby escape the murder charge?

Furthermore, can there be any doubt that a gang which had agreed an “attack” codeword and had video-capable mobile phones at the ready to film the attacks, and who were serial attackers acted with anything other than 'with malice aforethought'?

Was it that the defence was super-good – or that the prosecution was half-hearted? This may be an unfair assessment – for all I know the prosecution gave it all they’d got – but this is a lingering question that many are now pondering. We need an answer.

Another issue which throws up more questions than answers is why the police no longer consider this a homophobic attack. The judge is still out on that issue and will rule in January, but most media sources, including the BBC, are reporting that homophobia was not a motive. How can the media be so sure? What facts lead them to the conclusion that homophobia was not a contributing factor?

After reading dozens of media reports, the only thing I can find to suggest that homophobia was not a motive is that the accused said so. But surely their solicitor would have warned them of the extra penalties if this were judged a hate crime? Forgive me if I don’t find their say-so convincing. I think it was homophobic for a number of reasons. Let’s look at the facts.

The gang’s usual modus-operandi appears to have been this:

Happy slapping: they’d suddenly violently slap, punch or kick a random stranger and film their startled reaction.

Numbers: they typically attacked a lone person as a group of four – using their superior numbers as a weapon.

But the Morley attack was different in several aspects:

Firstly (and most obviously) the attack was ferocious and sustained – unlike the other assaults. Indeed, the frenzied nature of the attack bore all the hallmarks of a typical queer-bashing, rather than a mere “happy-slapping”.

Secondly, as a scrawny teenage gang of four, they elected to attack two adult men.

We know from David Morley’s friend, Alistair Whiteside, (who was the other person attacked) that the two of them were sitting on a park bench as he consoled Morley (who had been suffering depression as an aftermath of the Admiral Duncan bombing, Morley had been the barman on duty when the bomb went off).

Now, picture one man consoling another. This would suggest intimate body language, close proximity, touching, hugs… all the hallmarks of a gay couple on a bench. To homophobes, such a scenario is an invitation as clear as a surfboard silhouette to a great white shark.

The gang usually attacked lone individuals because they had a strategic advantage in numbers. Why did they, in case of David Morley and Alistair Whiteside, decide to give up this advantage and attack two people instead of one?

Another common factor in attacks on gay people is the ferocity of the violence. For example, the official motive for the murder of Jamaican gay rights activist Brian Williamson, was robbery. However, any criminologist will tell you that the violence used in the commission of a robbery is typically no greater than what is required to take possession of the goods. Williamson was hacked and stabbed repeatedly in a frenzied attack.

Similarly, unlike their usual modus-operandi of a quick slap, punch, kick or two (as happened in the other attacks that night) the gang attacked Morley and Whiteside with great savagery in a sustained attack, one of them even admitting to returning to aim another kick to Morley’s head.

Why was this not simply a “happy slap” like the other attacks? Was it the sight of two men appearing to be intimate that triggered the gang to go berserk and way beyond the normal scale and duration of their attacks?

The thrill and amusement they derived from violently attacking total strangers may have been their primary motivation, but – logically – this says nothing about their criteria for actually selecting their victims. Nor does it necessarily mean that they were always consistent.

For example, gay men are often targeted by muggers whose primary motivation is robbery. However, the selection of victims is underpinned by homophobia. They may believe that gay victims will get less sympathy, that gay men are weaker and unable to fight back, or that gay men are less likely to report being a victim of crime, or simply that gay men “deserve” it.

So, it is perfectly reasonable in this instance to ask the question: what prompted them to deviate from their regular pattern of behaviour – to attack two men together instead of a person on their own; to sustain the attack and escalate the violence so far beyond their routine attacks as to cause death?

One report quotes killer Darren “Neekie” Case as boasting: "David Morley, that dickhead, that's the one I killed.''

If Morley had truly been a random stranger and attacked for no reason other than random selection, why would Case personalise the attack and describe the victim as “a dickhead” – what could Morley have done to suggest to Case that he was a “dickhead”? Since Morley’s only engagement with Case was to receive fatal blows, the answer can only lie in Morley’s perceived identity.

I hope that in due course, the authorities connected to the trial will explain why it was not murder and why they no longer believe it was homophobic. People will want answers.

MacHatemail

2005-12-16T12:21:00.000Z

I picked up a newspaper on the train yesterday. For a brief second, I thought I’d hit pay dirt – a genuine British Empire newspaper from 1805. But I was disappointed to discover that it was just the Daily Mail from 2005. I know the Mail is conservative, but do they really need to still be banging on about events from 140 years ago?

How does this crap get published and who finds it funny?

Perhaps we can expect an editorial castigating the Labour government for not taking a firm enough stance on Napoleon soon.

Their “award winning” cartoonist Mac, seems to specialise in cartoons that like this and this, which are eerily similar to cartoons like this.

Mayor's office gives thumbs up to Catholic-bashing

2005-12-14T15:05:00.000Z

Last week at a “forum” meeting of London’s LGBT groups at City Hall, one of Ken Livingstone’s advisors, Anni Marjoram, said in response to a report back on a Gay Rights march in Poland (which noted that the antigay protestors on the side of the road included priests and neo-Nazis in equal measure) that it was “not surprising… especially given the Pope’ s history”. She went on to blame “the Catholic lobby” for stalling equalities issues in the EU parliament.

Later in the same meeting, she lectured that criticism of Islam “at a time like this” is “racist”. Quite how criticism can be “racist” based on when it is said, rather than on what is said, was never explained.

Now I don’t disagree with her estimation of the Catholic Church. I think it is spot on. What concerns me is the hypocrisy. That she can openly infer that the Pope is a Nazi and blame Catholics for holding back progress on social issues in the EU in one breath, but then denounce any criticism of Islam on similar grounds as “racist” is just jaw-droppingly absurd.

Of course, as we all know by now, the chief beef that the Mayor’s office has with gay campaigners is their denunciation of Dr Yusuf Qaradawi as “reactionary” on women’s and gay rights. Of course, no one has yet called him a Nazi – that clearly is a slur reserved for the Mayor and his staff to fling about.

Another thing which stirred Ms Marjoram’s ire was the description by George Broadhead, secretary of the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association of Islam as “a barmy ideology”. At least Mr Broadhead is consistent and has said the same about the Catholics, and indeed Christianity in general.

I pointed out that in an interview with ‘Something Jewish’ magazine, the Mayor himself had made similar remarks. He had said that religion was “mumbo jumbo” which he had rejected in favour of “rational science”. He then went on to describe how some of his peers had been traumatised because they’d attended faith-schools where they were subjected to “brutality and beatings”.

Furthermore, he seemed to suggest that religion was a disease, when he said it was something he didn’t “suffer from”.

Again, as a strident secularist, I don’t disagree. But I don’t pick and choose which religions to criticise, nor do I choose to describe Mr Livingstone or Ms Marjoram as racists (or other types of bigots) for having a go at Catholics.

I can’t help wondering if Mr Livingstone would have been so upfront about his atheism – or would have chosen such a dismissive term about religion (“mumbo-jumbo”) if this had been an interview for a Muslim publication rather than a Jewish one. I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he would. But would he have to face the pursed lips of Ms Marjoram the next day?

The slow mainstreaming of Holocaust denial

2005-12-14T12:25:00.000Z

The slow mainstreaming of Holocaust denial

It begins.

According to a report on the BBC, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry is a "myth".

*sigh*

But this is very worrying.

Binary thinking is bad news. There are many who think that US foreign policy is immoral and stupid. Think no further than Oliver North as the personification of the US’s shameful shenanigans around the globe. In many cases it is just wrong, wrong, wrong. But – and this is news to certain self-styled Leftists – that does not mean that, in the current stand-off, Iran is right.

But, already you have a group of twits who troll Indymedia and rush in and denouncing any criticism of Iran’s human rights abuses as supporting “US Imperialsim”.

And of course, such is the burgeoning antisemitism, that is it now no longer unusual to find extended tracts of Holocause denial on Indymedia either, though mercifully “hidden” by the overworked moderators.

So what will happen when these two threads become intertwined? All that’s needed is a catalyst, and Ahmadinejad has now delivered one. He says:

"They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets."

"If someone were to deny the existence of God... or prophets and religion, they would not bother him. However, if someone were to deny the myth of the Jews' massacre, all the Zionist mouthpieces and the governments subservient to the Zionists tear their larynxes and scream against the person as much as they can."

Ahmadinejad has given the green light to faux “anti Imperialists” to start mainstreaming Holocaust denial.

If criticising the Iranian regime for its persecution of gay people, women, political dissidents, trade-unionists, students and “apostates” puts one in league with US Imperialism, I can hardly bear to think what denouncing this latest outburst of antisemitic rubbish will make one.

Perhaps some of these people need to visit Auschwitz, as my boyfriend did earlier this year as a guest of the Holocaust Memorial Trust, to see the warehouses of human hair and confiscated shoes. It didn’t come from nowhere.

If we can rightly mock George “Dubya” Bush for his pig-ignorance, what form of rebuke remains for a cretin like Ahmadinejad?

Sharia - don’t like it

2005-12-11T10:40:00.000Z

So, according to the ridiculous Islmophobia-Watch blog, the gay human rights group OutRage! (of which regular readers know I’m a member) is in the same category as the BNP because, we oppose sharia law.

They have made the same charge against The Worker-Communist Party of Iran, who we can safely assume know a thing or two more about sharia law than Mr Bob Pitt of London, the proprietor of the blog.

Now, I think there is a great need for a blog monitoring Islamophobia. Sure, it is a flawed term since it can too easily conflate an antipathy towards Islam as a religion with discrimination against, and demonising of, religious people or communities – and indeed – be used as a proxy for racism (as it clearly is by the likes of the BNP). But, when it is used as a proxy for racism, and when it demonises people rather than ideas, it should be denounced. That is the real “Islamophobia” – good old-fashioned racism – not the bogus kind where women, gays, secularists and others complain of the oppressive forces of religion. Alas, Pitt and friends appear to wilfully ignore the difference and thereby collude with religious oppression.

Lesbian and gay people have a very good reason to fear and hate sharia law. It criminalises us and threatens us with very harsh punishments.

So, I asked Bob Pitt if he agreed with this estimation. He replied:

“As with adultery, I think it's not homosexuality as such that's an offence but the sexual act itself. And you need four independent witnesses for a conviction. The evidentiary requirements for offences meriting so-called hudud punishments are set so high that these punishments are in practice inapplicable.”

That’s a great comfort, Bob.

I could suggest that he’s “in a bloc” with the crackpot religious-right in America, the Catholic Church and ‘Christian Voice’ because he appears to differentiate between “homosexuality” and “the sexual act” – as if heterosexuality and the heterosexual “sex act” could be separated. Can you imagine if every heterosexual on the planet were forced under pain of death to be celibate? How would that work? It doesn’t even appear to work for those few (like Catholic clergy) who choose to give it a go. Why does Pitt appear to think that gays and lesbians can live under those conditions?

“Don’t worry, it’s okay to be gay or lesbian under sharia law – as long as you don’t have sex,” appears to be the subtext of his argument.

Furthermore, what a law says on paper and how it is actually practiced are quite different. An Iranian acquaintance of mine tells me that this “four witnesses” requirement is often waived if the accuser is the head of the household (a father, for example) or a Mullah. But I don’t even want to get into this because it is largely irrelevant. The law is there to suppress lesbian and gay people, and those who are discovered can be punished, often lashed or stoned, sometimes to death.

Surely Pitt and his Islamophobia-Watch crew know and understand this. How can they expect a gay human rights group NOT to oppose sharia law – a law which criminalises, menaces and – too often – kills our kind?

And if they understand this, why the snide and slanderous suggestion that we’re in league with the BNP or other right wing fascists?

Lesbian and gay people have a right to stand up to the forces and laws that oppress and threaten us. By seeking to oppose and challenge legal systems that persecute us, we are not in league with Nazis – in fact, quite the opposite.

Islamophobia-Watch’s childish slurs could quite easily be answered by asking a similar question. The BNP are viciously homophobic, but so are the sharia-promoting Islamic Party of Britain. Since Pitt and crew are so astonished that a gay human rights group would oppose sharia law, will they be launching “a joint campaign” with these groups sometime soon to counter gay equality?

The People's Politician

2005-12-09T11:15:00.000Z

When George Galloway swept to power under, rather on a cloud in May this year, he dramatically vowed that he would represent “the people that New Labour has abandoned… [and] speak for those who have no one else to speak for them… the trade unions, the immigrants, the poor, the people who prefer peace to war”.

But, reports Private Eye, “his constituents may be wondering how his ambitious project is going”.

They cite some interesting statistics:

He has tabled only one written question since the election

He has spoken in the commons a mere four time

He has voted in only 18 out of 112 divisions – worse than any other MP without a good excuse – like they’re deathly ill or the Prime Minister.

He’s the most consistent absentee

No doubt he’ll claim that a parliament is not a democratic institution – or some other soundbite.

Private Eye reveals more: Even when the issue is something close to his heart, he’s more bluster and action. When it was alleged that the US was planning to bomb the al-Jazeera TV station, Galloway grandly announced that he would demand a confirmation or denial from our government. But he didn’t get round to it. Asking the hard questions was left to Labour MP, Peter Kilfoyle (remember Labour – they’re the one’s who abandoned the people with only George to speak for them). 38 other MPs were quick to co-sign both Kilfoyle’s early day motions on the issue – but not George Galloway.

Perhaps he was away…. speaking…but for whom?

Cruisin’ for a bruisin’

2005-10-20T15:10:00.000+01:00

I guess I was. I should have known better. What was I doing sitting at my desk at 6:59 this morning? When the ambush came I should have seen it coming, but it was all a blur, and then it was over.

It started the evening before – at about six – as I was halfway out the door. My mobile rang. It was a producer from LBC radio’s Nick Ferarri Breakfast show. Had I read Peter Tatchell’s article in the Evening Standard in defence of “cruising”?

No I hadn’t.

What were my views? Would I be prepared to defend Tatchell’s article? (Peter was out of town, so couldn’t go on himself.)

I said that I wouldn’t be the best person to do so because I had no strong feelings on the matter. I had never been cruising nor was I likely to. It seemed a bit unseemly, in my opinion, but on the other hand I believe that anything that goes on between consenting adults and causes no harm is fine by me – so I had no reason or desire to denounce cruising either, adding that no matter how wishy-washy my views on this subject were, I most emphatically held that people should be able to conduct their affairs in safety!

I then suggested a few people who might be better than I would. Alas, he’d tried most of them and they were either unreachable or unavailable. As I helpfully do in these circumstances, I ended with a “Well, if you absolutely can’t find anyone else, I guess you can call me back” and listed related issues that I did feel confident to talk about concerning gay-bashing.

An hour and a bit later, The LBC producer phones again. He’s had no luck, so would I mind doing it.

Okay then, but as I said, I don’t really have any strong feelings on the subject.

We spend 15 minutes doing a “briefing” on what I’m willing and able to talk about. I reiterate that I have neither knowledge or experience of cruising. I tell him that I’m happy to point out that it is not an exclusively gay activity, though it is almost always characterised as such – as if only gay men have outdoor sex. For example, so-called “dogging”. I point out that heterosexuals tend to give their outdoor sex areas romantic names like “lover’s lane”. They also have sex with strangers, as the “swinging” phenomenon proves. Gay men are simply scapegoated and a release valve for straight society’s own ‘shame’.

I mention that gays don’t need to go cruising to get bashed. David Morley, for example, a victim of a fatal gay-bashing a year ago was simply on his way home from a dance club. According to reports in The Guardian and The Independent, the figures are bleak. There are hundreds of gay-bashings every year and a fatal one roughly every two months.
I point out that one of the reasons a lot of gay-bashing might take place near cruising areas is that those who cruise are seen as soft-targets. Some are closeted – or even married – and others fear the associated stigma so these crimes are significantly under-reported, giving the attackers more confidence. Also there is the obvious factor of the dark and being out of sight. I add that many authority figures – like fundamentalist preachers and bah-humbug politicians – indulge in hate-filled denunciations of gays, as do hysterical tabloids, and this sends a signal to certain elements in society that gay-bashing is not frowned upon, or even tacitly approved of.

I tell him about how measures to tackle homophobic bullying in the schoolyard are not adequate, that the playground is the incubator for homophobia and gay-bashing and that the fact that the suspects in both the Jody Dobrowski and David Morley murders were teenagers bears this out.

And for a good 15 minutes we discuss issues that I’d be happy to talk about. “I’ve noted all this and I’ll brief Nick” he tells me at the end of our conversation.

So, I wake up just before 7 am and tune in via the web.

Then the phone rings and a minute or two later, we’re on air.

“A bit irresponsible of Peter Tatchell, isn’t it Brett?”

Oy vey! Here we go. I try to explain that there’s no point in encouraging a hysterical reaction of the scale of Jaws. Yes, every year a few people are attacked by sharks, but that doesn’t mean people should stop swimming and that Peter is probably right when he says that 99% of the time, cruising is a happy experience. I then point out that David Morley was murdered by gay-bashers nowhere near a cruising area.

“But surely the wise advice would be to say ‘don’t go cruising’ until the police find whoever is responsible, but Peter Tatchell has said that 99% of the time its sexy, pleasurable and exciting, so go out on do it. That’s irresponsible, Brett.”

Gee, what can I say. I’ve been ambushed. What can I do but soldier on, trying to make a case for something I explicitly said I didn’t want to do. But ho hum, it comes with the territory, I suppose.

While I’m angry that I was ambushed after making it explicitly clear that I was only going on because they were stuck for someone to talk about the issues and went through the charade of a “briefing”, I am most angry with myself. Nick Ferarri, I suppose, was only doing his job in having some controversial pot boiler on the stove for breakfast. I know the theory: Decide what you want to say and say it no matter what the questions. Of course that’s easier to remember after some coffee and toast. So, the lesson is, it is irresponsible to lurk around radio talkshow hosts before breakfast!

Nevertheless, the show sparked off an orgy of homophobia. Someone suggested inventing a “poofter-scooper” to clean up the parks. On the scatological theme, another person phoned in to say that what she objected to most was the piles of human shit (she meant this literally, if its any consolation) left behind by cruisers. Apparently, and she explained this very delicately, one has to evacuate one’s bowels before anal sex and men do it in her park.

Now I couldn’t believe this. This is not something I’d ever heard before so I signed on to OutEverywhere (a gay community discussion list) and asked if anyone had ever heard of this. Most said it was preposterous – surely anyone who went out cruising would go “prepared” and have made all the necessary arrangement before leaving the house, and before dabbing on some aftershave. Only one person said they’d heard of this, but that it very uncommon. Most of the crap in the park is left by people walking their dogs – and, no, not in the euphemistic sense.

So another urban legend is born. The steaming heaps in the park are the fault of the gays. More reason to bash gay people on the radio, and, sadly, more reason for some twisted minds to beat the shit out of gay people in the streets. Thanks luv.

No God’s, No Masters

2005-10-19T12:09:00.000+01:00

An opportunity to get to know the Secular, Anti-Capitalist & Feminist Resistance in Iraq & Iran is on offer at the Anarchist Book Fair in a workshop at 5 PM on 22 October. The workshop will feature talks by Azar Majedi of the Organisation for Women's Liberation-Iran (OWLI), The Iranian Secular Society, (ISS) and Priya Reddy from Solidarity with the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (SOWFI), and others.

Topics for discussion will include why it is critical for activists to oppose the religious Right both in the West and in Iraq and seeking to establish relationships of mutual aid with secular resistance movements in the Middle East.

The flyer for the event is avaialable at IndyMedia. It states:

Support the brave women and men of Iraq who oppose both the terroristic U.S/UK led occupation of their country as well as the terror of theocratic fundamentalist Political Islamic groups. We do not often hear from secular activists in the Middle East who dare to demand a secular, pro-worker, pro-woman society.

WHERE:
London Anarchist Book Fair The Resource Centre, 356 Holloway Road, London (Room 4, 1st Flr.)
WHEN:
Saturday October 22, 2005, 5-6 PM

Bono cavorts with faecal matter? You’re shitting me!

2005-10-13T13:32:00.000+01:00

There’s a story going round.

Rock group U2 will, according to some reports, be playing a $1000 a ticket fund-raising concert for Republican Senator Rick ‘santorum’ Santorum. The word ‘santorum’ has entered popular parlance as the term for – wait for it – "the frothy mix of lube and faecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex". The honour of having a sex-related definition linked to his name was inspired by gay columnist Dan Savage after the senator declared that homosexuality belonged to the same group of sexual deviancies as paedophilia and bestiality. He further stated that, in his view, there was no constitutional protection for privacy when sex acts were involved. But you can read all the details on Wikipedia.

Senator Santorum is an extreme homophobe and right-winger who consistently votes against civil rights reforms. He has an appalling voting record on a range of issues, not just limited to gay and civil rights. Surely Bono would at least take issue with his stance on welfare and poverty? For example, Santorum voted to put a cap on foreign aid at only $12.7 billion, making poverty his story, I guess.

So why is Bono doing it?

Well, here’s a theory: Bono is a staunch Catholic who once described the late Pope as "an Italian who knew the right person to get into heaven". (Of course, JPII was Polish, but never mind…) In a tribute to the Pope, Bono hung a set of rosary beads given to him by “the holy father” on his mike stand. And so is Santorum.

Here’s another (well, let’s change ‘theory’ to ‘fact’): According to the BBC, he’s not. Neither Bono nor U2 have anything to do with it. According to the BBC, they’re being used by politicians who book private boxes at stadium shows and then swap places in their boxes in exchange for donations to their campaign.

"U2 concerts are categorically not fundraisers for any politician," said a band spokesman.

The band issued a statement on their official website saying:

'Throughout the U2 tour, politicians from both sides have been organizing fundraisers at the venues or around specific shows. Neither DATA or Bono are involved in these and they cannot be controlled. The U2 concerts are categorically not fundraisers for any politician - they are rock concerts for U2 fans.'

This is good news. I’ve just bought Rattle & Hum on DVD and I’ve hated to have to bin it. I still miss my old vinyl Tea for the Tillerman, but one has to do what one has to do.

Train in vain

2005-10-11T00:09:00.000+01:00

I’ll never really understand what drives the authoritarian personality – you know the one that enforces ridiculous rules instead of trying to understand why people are breaking them and finding a solution.

I must say, I have a lot of sympathy for Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in her confrontation with jack-booted train conductors. I had a similar encounter a few months ago on a direct train between London and Oxford where I was heading for a speaking engagement. I had a standard class ticket (paid for by my hosts) but the train was absurdly overcrowded. Of course there were no seats and even the standing room was so claustrophobic that even Gulag guards on a train to Siberia would have balked at the travelling conditions on Human Rights grounds. However, 1st Class was half empty.

I don’t understand something. I thought the point of trains was that the length (and hence number of seats) could be modified to meet the demand. Most commuter-trains are hopelessly overcrowded making commuting – the first and last public experiences of the day – an unspeakably unpleasant daily exercise. No wonder people arrive at work drained and irritable and arrive home in the evening furious and antisocial. The impact on our society cannot be underestimated.

Another thing I don’t understand is why commuter trains have first-class sections at all. Usually there is no difference besides the little tissue paper on the headrest – which can barely justify the price! Why “class” anyway? Why can’t there simply be reserved and unreserved tickets. The former would guarantee one a seat and the other would be down to luck. This system would allow conductors at their discretion to open up unused “first-class” seating when the train was clearly oversubscribed. But this system would be practical and would require common-sense decisions – so has no hope in hell of being implemented.

Anyhow – to cut a long story short – a group of us, myself, two elderly women, a younger woman and two middle-aged men in business suits – quite rightly – thought the situation ridiculous. It was an hour and a quarter commute and, quite frankly, it was a major health and safety risk to be standing under those conditions. So, we sat down in an unused part of the first-class section. Let’s face it – even when aeroplanes are overbooked, people get bumped up to business class, so why ever not on a rattly commuter train? It’s not as if we were harming (or alarming) anyone or claiming anything we hadn’t paid for. As I pointed out to the conductor, we had paid for a seat on the train, which they were unable to provide, but took our money nonetheless! In the end we insisted we would not move unless we were provided with the seats in standard-class (perhaps that should be ‘standing’ class) that we had paid for. To facilitate this, the conductor spent the next half hour bumping up other people to first-class in order to clear 6 seats in standard-class so that we could spend the last 10 minutes of our journey in steerage. Petty, to say the least.

But it wasn’t reading of Yasmin’s confrontation that sparked this train of thought. No, it was switching on to BBC1 earlier to find some programme on (The War The Door) which, contrary to expectations, was not about any serious political threat, but about the canonisation of petty officials charging around London to unleash mundane ‘justice’ on otherwise law-abiding citizens.

Digression: Have you seen these signs up at stations warning of severe penalties for any verbal or physical abuse of railway personnel? Has it ever occurred to the authorities that these might be minimised if they didn’t expect these officials to enforce silly rules that fly in the face of common sense so much that they enrage further an already furious commuter community? For example: I witnessed an exchange at the barriers a few days ago where the official was refusing to allow a man (who was already late, thanks to delays that seem to leapfrog over other delays and timetabular catastrophes) to exit. The man explained that he’d clearly been issued with the wrong ticket by the ticket office even though it was quite evidently the same price as the ticket he’d asked for and was in good faith attempting to use. The barrier guard was having none of it. Voices were raised arms were waved and as a consequence, the police were summoned… an utterly unnecessary escalation of a pointless dispute.

Another case, which I have discussed with people waiting in line at my local station, is that there is now a fine for buying one’s ticket upon arrival at London Bridge (even though there is a ticket office inside of the barriers ostensibly for this purpose) instead of at one’s small local station where there are often ticket-office malfunctions and arbitrary window closures, leading to queues snaking out onto the pavement outside. In the past, rather than miss one’s train, one could board and then pay for the ticket on arrival. No longer. Now there is a ₤10 fine on top of the ticket price for doing this. One is expected to miss the train, be late for work or miss appointments instead. What makes this doubly irksome is that this is a punishment for honesty. Those genuinely wishing to evade paying for a ticket aren’t affected (they take their chances), it is only those who of their own free will report at the ticket office to pay for the journey who are caught thus and fined. So honesty is penalised. No wonder people lose their tempers and fisticuffs with platform führers erupt.

End of digression. So, this ‘The War At The Door’ programme… The programme seems to concern dumping. One segment sees a council official trying to track down the “owner” of a used carpet and a few floorboards left on a pavement, probably by the carpet fitters. A fine will be issued if the “owner” is traced. Pantomime ensues as the council official braves barking dogs, bothers neighbours, attempts to communicate with a non-English speaking potential witness and eventually establishes that the probable owners are in Zurich – a dead end. Why does this man have a job? Surely the money invested in his department could be better spent on a white-van man who could simply whip around and collect this sort of non-threatening refuse which almost everyone has from time to time. Wouldn’t that be a more profitable expenditure of our council tax? You know, on a service that actually serves us rather than persecutes us?

A second insert dealt with a sting operation to apprehend and prosecute (₤4000 penalty) fly tippers who (gasp!) have dropped inappropriate items next to bins intended for recycled materials. The ‘sting’ involved two council officials, with several more in unmarked cars waiting nearby and four police officers. Their fist victim? A man who dumps a broken TV and a small wooden stool. Their second, a man who spends ten minutes shredding cardboard and dropping it into the appropriate bin (disappointed sighs) but then victory!! As a last act, he leaves a single verboten black garbage bag behind. Jubilation! Another arrest! Then a third, for an armful of builder’s rubble.

Now, fly-tipping can be a serious problem and degrade an area. But this was in an area designated for garbage of one sort. So these people were making an effort to dispose of it in a semi-appropriate place. There were already a row of large skips for cardboard, glass, etc, so how hard could it be for the council to add another one for non-recyclable rubble? Not hard at all! But it is apparently easier to do Starsky & Hutch-style stakeouts involving half-a-dozen council officials and several police officers to catch Mr Jones who needs to get rid of that broken chair and thinks “I know, I’ll take it down to where all those bins are”. The scoundrel!

Isn’t that the point? These people aren’t indiscriminately dumping. They’re taking the junk to where – perhaps misguidedly – they believe it can conveniently be collected. Instead of multiple signs threatening them with penalties, why aren’t there educational signs explaining where this type of rubble can legally – and conveniently - be disposed of? If there is a place, tell people! If there isn’t a place, why not? Why is the council wasting our taxes and police time instead of making a plan? People have broken chairs and old carpets. They need to get rid of them. Tell them where to take them or how to have them collected! But it’s easier to rush around like The Sweeny isn’t it?

To really underline this failure of common sense, in the third insert, an intrepid council sleuth in Glasgow has to track down some lout hurling nappies of the poo-variety around an estate. Just when she thinks the trail’s gone cold (no pun intended) the culprit – some spotty teenager (face mercifully blurred by the camera) comes in and confesses. Does he get a tongue-lashing, a lecture, a strong rebuke? Is he asked to show he’s truly sorry by going around cleaning up his mess? Is he asked to do community service to cover the cost of the damage? Is he even asked for his name and address? Hell no! He’s given a wishy-washy “thanks for owning up” talk and sent on his way. The insert ends with the council officer tippy-toeing through the mud in unsuitable shoes picking up the smelly nappies herself.

And the lesson is? People who take stuff to the bins land up in court, but teenagers who hurl shit-filled nappies around their estate can play x-box while a woman from the council cleans up after then. And the “nanny state” takes on yet another meaning.

When people say they want justice, usually they don’t mean this in some huge philosophical sense that can only be notated in Latin. They simply mean that they want authority to be reasonable, measured and conducted with common sense. We pay for it. Why can’t we have it?

Hamas is not a liberation movement

2005-10-07T16:25:00.000+01:00

Hamas is not a liberation movement. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been told that they are and that women’s rights and gay rights are not priorities in the struggle to end the Israeli occupation.

I can accept they’re not priorities, but what these apologists for oppression of another sort fail to acknowledge is that these are priorities for Hamas. They are priority enough for the group to have a stated policy on these issues. And this is what worries me.

If it were simply a case that these issues were ignored and we really had no clue what Hamas’s vision of a post-liberation Palestine was, all good and well. But we do know – and it isn’t a pretty picture.

The idea that they should be supported now and then a new struggle for women and gay (and other) human rights should be begun “after liberation” is bollocks. After liberation, those who dare to criticise the new free Palestinian government’s policies will be accused by the same apologist for undermining the government and for wanting to prolong imperialist intervention.

This is of course what they’ve accused campaigners highlighting human rights abuses in Jamaica and Zimbabwe of doing.

The African National Congress (ANC) has been one of the few genuine liberation movements who have acted in a statesmanlike ‘government-in-waiting’ manner and whose political programme included comprehensive provisions not only for racial, but religious, gender, disability and sexuality-based non-discrimination and protection. Indeed, in 1955 –almost 40 years before liberation – the ANC adopted the far-reaching Freedom Charter as the basis of their political programme – and post-liberation vision.

A year earlier, the ANC-supported Federation of South African Women published the Women’s Charter which stated: “We women do not form a society separate from the men. There is only one society, and it is made up of both women and men. As women we share the problems and anxieties of our men, and join hands with them to remove social evils and obstacles to progress.

This formed the basis for an open and equal society. But what do we have from Hamas?

Not very much, according to a report in The Independent. Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas leader in Gaza told The Independent that if Hamas were to win control of the Palestinian Authority in coming elections, it would ban men and women from dancing together and deny specific rights to gay people. He also predicted that under Hamas any Palestinian State would be a strictly Islamic one.

The Times report has slightly more amplification on this, again from Dr Zahar. On the issue of gay rights he said:

“Are these the laws for which the Palestinian street is waiting? For us to give rights to homosexuals and to lesbians, a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick?”

Well, presumably at least gay Palestinians might be waiting for these rights!

His views on fraternisation of the sexes are even more peculiar:

“A man holds a woman by the hand and dances with her in front of everyone. Does that serve the national interest?”

Recently Hamas gunman stopped a rap band playing in Gaza, while an Hamas dominated council banned a dance festival. Dr Zahar defended these actions. Still he denies that Hamas wants a “puritanical regime”.

So, as long as you don’t call it that it doesn’t matter if in reality that’s exactly what it is. It is time people ask those who claim to be working towards ‘liberation’ what sort of liberation they mean – and liberation for whom?

Straight men? For the majority, that’s no liberation at all.

Guardian takes off my head

2005-10-07T15:00:00.001+01:00

“Your picture’s in The Guardian,” my boyfriend called to say while I was in Tesco yesterday. “Oh cool!” I said. “Don’t get too excited,” he replied, “only I would recognise you – they’ve cropped off your head.” Thanks guys!

Ah yes, I think that photo was taken at a demonstration outside Westminster Abbey at the consecration of two new bishops when there should have been three – openly gay (but celibate – not that it should matter) canon Jeffrey John was meant to have been consecrated as the Bishop of Reading – but was axed at the last minute because, well, you know, he’s gay.

Anyway, The Guardian were more interested in my placard “Defend Gays – Fight Christian Bigots!” than my mug. Though I was wearing a nice tie.

Nevertheless, it was a very encouraging story about the installation (I think that is the right word) of Dr John Sentamu as the new Archbishop of York. African clergy are usually associated with the most stridently homophobic wing of the Anglican communion, but Dr Sentamu appears more outspoken on gay and women’s issues than Rowan Williams himself.

According to The Guardian story, Dr Sentamu delivered this very sensible advice to The Church:

"Some of our disagreements are not Christian really ... It seems to suggest that all the great evils of the world are being perpetrated by gay and lesbian people, which I cannot believe to be the case. What is wrong in the world is that people are sinful and alienate themselves from God and you do not have to be gay to do that. To suggest that to be gay equals evil, I find that quite unbelievable.

"Is somebody saying a gay and lesbian can't live in Christ? What matters in the end to me is to do what my mother said to me as a little child: John, never point a finger at anybody because when you do three other fingers are pointing back at you. All of us are sinners, all of us have baggage. Why should my baggage as a heterosexual be more acceptable than the baggage of a gay person?"

While it is African bishops like Akinola of Nigeria who are the most outspokenly antigay, it is also African clergy, like Dr Sentamu, Njongonkulu Ndungane, Archbishop of Cape Town, and his predecessor, the great Desmond Tutu who are the most outspoken in favour of embracing gay Christians. So why are the British-born Bishops so wishy-washy?

As a non-Christian I’m not really interested in the frayed fabric of the Anglican Communion. I’m only interested in the socio-political influence the Church has, and to my mind having church leaders who speak their minds – whether friend or foe – is better than the soppy equivocations characterized by the Williams regime.

Respect candidate would execute gays

2005-10-04T22:22:00.000+01:00

I have never had any doubt watching George Galloway’s histrionics and Lindsay German’s equivocations that the Respect Party would make an alliance with Scarabaeidae Deltochilum gibbosum if they felt that its ball of shit would add anything to theirs.

When Ms German notoriously warned that gay rights shouldn’t be a shibboleth in forging alliances with reactionary religious groups many said that she was just being practical… I mean, a little homophobia is surely tolerable in the interest of a greater cause. Isn’t it?

Well how much is a little and how much is too much?

Enter Dr Mohammed Naseem.

According to the Electoral Commission, with whom all registered political parties are obliged to share financial statements, the single largest donor to the Respect Party’s election war-chest was Dr Naseem. He paid £ 15 457.00 towards Respect’s Election drive, a whopping 29% of their total budget of ₤ 53 486.67 and more than 50% more than the next largest single donor – three times what George Galloway contributed.

You can check these facts and figures here. Just select “Respect” from the drop-down.

He was also the Respect candidate for Birmingham Perry Barr and a member of the party’s executive committee and an active campaigner. He is also the chair of the Birmingham Central Mosque.

But this is all bland compared to his other day job: on the executive of the Islamic Party of Britain and their Home Affairs spokesperson. As such, laws about homosexuality fall under his ambit.

So what is the IPB’s position on homosexuality?

Well, it is neatly explained here. But here’s the executive summary:

Of course, they sport the usual right-wing religious fundamentalist hallmarks, the linking of homosexuality to paedophilia and saying both are “a danger to society” and revealing a great big gay conspiracy. This is so stock-standard that it’s hardly worth mentioning. Is this what Lindsay German means by shibboleths?

But now things really get serious.

They would ban gay organisations, or to put it in their words, they would “safeguard public decency by preventing any public advocacy for homosexuality”. Any violation of this law would fall under “public incitement”, which leads us to their next point – how to deal with public displays of homosexuality or “lewdness witnessed by several people” as they quaintly put it. The penalty for that is death!

So, far from having a chuckle on Oprah, George Michael would have been stoned to death in Piccadilly Circus – or perhaps Dr Naseem had something more creative in mind – I shan’t try to second-guess what method of execution he’d advocate.

How – or rather why - does Respect take money from this man and field him as a candidate? The home affairs policy of the other party he represents as the home affairs spokesperson is that gays should be executed!

Why are we not hearing the tell-tale clunking sounds of falling shibboleths?

Why? Because none are falling, and even if they were you wouldn’t hear them amidst the nitter-natter of equivocation. I can hear it now: oh he doesn’t think all gays should be killed, and it’s only under certain conditions, yada-yada-yada…

Respect claim on their website (though I’ve never seen it in their printed material) that they support LGBT rights. So how does this square with having as a donor, and executive member and as a candidate a man that would kill us?

Even when you’re right, you’re wrong

2005-10-03T15:31:00.000+01:00

The producers of Panorama have been ‘listed’ on the Islamophobia-watch website run by Mr Bob Pitt and Mr Eddie Truman. The pair of them delight in listing anyone who says anything critical about Islam – whether they are Muslim, ex-Muslim, a women’s or gay rights activist, a secularists, a political dissidents from the Middle East, an exile from the Islamic Republic of Iran, or a refugees from the GIA – you name it: say anything vaguely critical of Islamic fundamentalist or political Islamism, and according to Pitt and Truman you’re an “Islamophobe”.

So this was no surprise. What they didn’t respond to however was the Panorama team’s perfectly reasonable reply to the objections cited by the Muslim Council of Britain to the programme ‘A Question of Leadership’ – which I covered after it aired in August.

Not satisfied, the good ol’ Pitt standby of “smear by association” kicked in. According to Bob, the Panorama team must be wrong because, (gasp) a journalist writing for the Telegraph agreed with them. Of course, Pitt-logic dictates that if a centre-right newspaper comes to the same conclusion as you do, then you must be a neo-Nazi sleeper agent.

Of course, the MCB have a fresh set of grievances against Panorama. I suspect these won’t get any further since the first batch was rubbish, so why would the backup plan be any better?

Of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve pointed out the absurdities of Islamophobia-watch (and I’m sure it won’t be the last).

There is no point in defending yourself or providing evidence. It will all be ignored, Panorama. For Islamophobia-watch, even when you’re right, you’re wrong.

UPDATE: Hahahahaha! Now this article has been ‘listed’ on Islamophobia-watch. Notice how once again Pitt tries to smear by association: Panorama’s John Ware must be wrong and must be an Islamophobe because some guy called Anthony Browne supports him, and of course because I also thought Panorama’s response was reasonable… so I must be an Islamophobe for thinking it was reasonable and then they must also be Islamophobic because only an Islamophobe would support them, and oh gawd why bother…

For a reasonable discussion about Islamophobia (not Pitt’s fantasy version where ideas are defended instead of people) see this article by Paul Anderson and this one by Phil Edwards.

Celebs back Iran protest against executions

2005-10-03T12:48:00.000+01:00

Little Britain star Matt Lucas, actor Simon Callow and singer Boy George are supporting the axm and OutRage! 'Homophobia Kills' protest against the recent homophobic executions in Iran. Actor Jeremy Sheffield, comedian Scott Cappurro and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell will attend the protest outside the Iranian Embassy in London:

1pm tomorrow, Tuesday 4 October 2005:
Embassy of Iran, 16 Prince's Gate, London SW7 1PT

Getting there:
The Iranian Embassy is near the Royal Albert Hall, by the junction of Kensington Road and Exhibition Road. Nearest underground stations are South Kensington and Gloucester Road.Tuesday’s protest is being organised by gay magazine axm, and by queer rights group OutRage! Thousands of axm readers have signed the axm 'Homophobia Kills' petition, which will be handed over to the Iranian Ambassador.

Endorsing the protest, Matt Lucas said:
'Recently in Iran two teenagers were executed for being gay. This is just one example of the constant persecution of gay and lesbian people by the Iranian government. I support efforts to put pressure on the Iranian government to stop this persecution. While gay visibility has grown in Britain in recent years we cannot forget the plight of those in more hostile parts of the world who live with the daily risk of jail, torture and execution for no other reason than their sexuality.'

Simon Callow states:
'I'm sorry, I can't make it to the Embassy on the 4th: I'm filming all day. But I unreservedly condemn this savage and barbaric treatment of homosexual men in Iran. It is inconceivable that we should have diplomatic relations with a country which betrays its citizens in this way.'

Two gay teenagers were publicly executed in Iran on 19 July 2005 for the 'crime' of homosexuality. The youths were hanged in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad, in North East Iran. They were sentenced to death by Court No. 19. Iran enforces Islamic Sharia law, which dictates the death penalty for gay sex. One youth was aged 18 and the other was a minor under the age of 18. They admitted to having gay sex (probably under torture) but claimed in their defence that most young boys had sex with each other and that they were not aware that homosexuality was punishable by death. Prior to their execution, the teenagers were held in prison for 14 months and severely beaten with 228 lashes. Their length of detention suggests that they committed the so-called offences more than a year earlier, when they were possibly around the age of 16.

“Although the Iranian government claims the youths were executed for the rape of a 13 year old boy, underground gay groups inside Iran tell us that the two teenagers were lovers,” said Peter Tatchell of OutRage!.

“They point out that the Iranian government routinely makes up allegations of sexual abuse, drug-taking and spying to discredit the people it executes and to discourage public protests”.

The executions in July and ongoing revelations of continued anti-gay atrocities in Iran have shocked and mobilised axm readers who are travelling from as far afield as Scotland, Cornwall and Yorkshire to attend the protest onTuesday.

According to axm magazine editor Matthew Miles:
'The shocking images of the executed Iranian teenagers have galvanised our print and online readers, with thousands of people signing our petition in a ten day period. As LGBT people in the West finally gain most of the rights we deserve, it seems we are proving that there is such a thing as a global gay community by focusing on the struggle for equality in more hostile parts of the world. Protest is only a step but, as organisations such as Amnesty International and OutRage! have proved, it can and does bring change and that's why, along with OutRage!, axm magazine will be protesting against the Iranian Government from 1pm on Tuesday 4 October.'

Sign the petition against Iran online, or by post.
Online: http://www.axm-mag.com/
Post: Iran Petition, axm magazine, 2 Charlotte Road, London EC2A 3DH

Police shoot own foot and egg Labour’s face over terror

2005-09-30T14:17:00.000+01:00

The police seem hell-bent on embarrassing the government that gave them the extra powers to combat terrorism by using the powers as a convenient way of stopping any civil dissent, no matter how peaceful and obviously non-threatening it may be.

In other words, when they’re too lazy to think of a legitimate reason to detain someone or too mean-spirited to let them proceed, the plods whip out an anti-terror citation.

The stupidity of this was demonstrated in full glare of the media at the most inopportune moment the government could have feared when an 82 year old man was manhandled out of the Labour Party conference in Brighton for shouting “Nonsense!” during a speech by Jack Straw about the decision to invade Iraq. The octogenarian was then barred from re-entering the conference under anti-terror laws. Disgraceful.

Why do I relish the fact that this absurdity was highlighted in the most embarrassing way possible? Well. I have been a victim of it too.

Earlier this year, Peter Tatchell, myself, and a group of our colleagues from OutRage! headed down to Windsor to watch the ‘Royal Wedding’™ procession and to display posters which said “Charles can Marry Twice – We Can’t Marry Once” in protest at the ban on allowing same-sex couples to wed. We were briefly detained under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act despite it being a well known fact that OutRage! is not a violent organisation and that Peter is not a terrorist. They threatened to confiscate our posters and remove us from the area if we tried to display them again. Had it not been for Peter’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the laws of free speech and protest, the might have succeeded in intimidating is into complying.

Of course, all this was recorded by several TV crews who converged on the commotion.

But the question must be asked: If this happened to us, and it happened to an old aged pensioner at a Labour conference, how many other people who didn’t happen to be in shouting distance of a TV camera has this happened to?

Quite apart from the sensible debate to be had about the substance of this legislation, lazy police officers flinging it around like a trump card in a childish board game will do far more damage to the credibility of the government’s anti-terror proposals than any other factor.

Brother will you pay me to sign?

2005-09-30T11:12:00.000+01:00

Here’s an interesting titbit of information sent to me by my American friend Brian who lives in Massachusetts and who is following the fight to preserve the equal marriage rights for gay and straight people in that State. It’s from the KnowThyNeighbor blog.

It seems that the Right-wingers are bussing in unemployed people from out of state, sending them off to shopping malls and paying them $1 per signature to get antigay initiatives onto the ballot.

Even more cynically, they’re doubling up. First they stop a member of the public and ask them to sign a seemingly innocuous petition to allow alcohol to be sold in supermarkets (hardly a Right-wing priority, which is why it is all the more dishonest), then, while the person has the pen in hand they ask them to sign a second ballot petition in support of “traditional marriage”.

The company that employs these out-of-state folk is itself an out-of-state company. This begs the question: who is behind trying to scuttle equal civil rights in Massachusetts?

For the full story, see: Government BUY the People.

The blog is a compendium of interesting information about the battle over marriage. For example, in another story, they reveal that a Catholic priest was removed for speaking out against the right-wingers initiative.

"The priests of this parish do not feel that they can support this amendment. They do not see any value to it and they see it as an attack upon certain people in our parish, namely those who are gay."

His superiors didn’t agree. According to a report in the Boston Globe, the priest’s "hands were slapped very publicly".

We survived with a helluva lot of pain

2005-09-25T22:42:00.000+01:00

I was very pleased to find a special edition double-disc edition of the two James Whale ‘Frankenstein’ movies on sale at HMV yesterday, and would have watched at least one of them last night had my boyfriend not found another ‘is-he-or-isn’t-he-a-monster?’ movie (not on sale) instead.

We were quite excited to find the movie about the South African bank robber, André Stander, which we’ve wanted to see for some time. There aren’t that many international films made in or about South Africa, and when they are, they’re generally about the big ‘A’ – which is quite annoying. That isn’t to downplay the enormity if the big ‘A’ or its symbolic significance to the world. But imagine if the only films depicting America were ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ and ‘Mississippi Burning’. So I hope you see where I’m coming from.

Before I continue, let me get something off my chest. If the world is going to use our national catastrophe, our shameful contribution to the world’s political lexicon, please at least learn to say it right. The big ‘A’ is not pronounced ay-pard-hide, it is uh-part-hate. ApartHATE.

And perhaps now would be a good time to mention that ‘Stander’ is pronounced stun-duh to rhyme with wonder, not gander. Yes indeedio, this is the first thing (for there are three) we South Africans worry about when watching a film about our country – will the US and UK actors drafted in over the locals manage the accent. Well, that should be plural. There are 11 official languages in South Africa before we even get started on the regional differences.

True, Hollywood thinks that the British only have 2 accents – Michael Caine or Hugh Grant, and of course a third that will do for either Scottish or Irish… but I digress.

So far the two best impersonations of South African accents have been Ian McKellen’s in ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ (though to be honest, McKellen’s natural accent sounds a bit South African) and Arabella Weir’s deranged cosmetic rep in ‘The Fast Show’. Don’t get me started on Val Kilmer’s in ‘The Saint’, though to be fair, he did base it on my artist friend Bowen Boshier – whose voice is, shall we say, atypical… as if Anthony Hopkins had studied Gerry Garcia to play Richard Nixon… but once again, I digress.

American Tom Jane did a marvellous job in the title role. Okay, he struggled here and there with an Afrikaans word or name, but very convincing generally. Londoner Dexter Fletcher who played gang member Lee McCall did a pretty good job too, especially since as a Londoner he had to play a South African attempting to pass himself of as Australian for a part of the movie. David O’Hara from Glasgow as Alan Heyl, Stander’s No 2, wasn’t that good in the accent department. The rest of the case was made up of local talent, and it was quite fun to spot the everyone-who-is-anybody in South African film playing Bank Manger #2, Commissioner of Police or Man in Shebeen.

Oh dear, with all this stream of consciousness musing, I’ve forgotten to tell you what the movie is about. In a nutshell, white police captain André Stander is badly affected after shooting an unarmed man during a demonstration in a black township. He realises that the police seem more geared towards suppressing growing black anger at the injustices of Apartheid rather than on solving crime. His growing disillusionment with his role is all of this leads him to act out one day and rob a bank. It seems he wanted to test his theory that a white person good get away with anything because the police were too involved in suppressing township protests. He gets away with it, and tries another, and then another. Eventually he is caught and sent to prison, but escapes with two friends he’s made while inside – McCall and Heyl. They form a gang and embark on a crime spree that had the authorities baffled for years, becoming sort of folk heroes. But I won’t give everything away because I think you should see this movie.

The second thing is Apartheid. Will it be a caricature or will it be realistically depicted? Often the half-century is condensed into the few weeks covered by the story. The real thing was often tragically mundane, as the machinery of oppression often is. As shocking as violent confrontations like the 1976 riots depicted at the start of the movie were, Apartheid was actually in the details – in the nuances of daily life between the “big” events – like the “non-white queue here” sign in the bank, like the casualness of racist language in idle conversation.

It is easy to forget that amidst this all, people – both black and white – had lives, had jobs, fell in love, brought up children, had a favourite brand of toothpaste… the story of South Africans isn’t just about this one thing, although ‘The Big A’ is the bone that contains the marrow of our lives and the meat of our stories.

The lyrics of a Jennifer Ferguson song come to mind. “Letters to Dickie’ tells the story of a women writing to her fiancé who is in the army doing his national service. It really sums up how the routine and the monstrous combine to form the mundane realities of our lives – ordinary people in an extraordinary place which – for us – was still ordinary.

Dickie baby, your mother and me,
We’ve been shopping for a white dress for our wedding
and now we’ve got a colour TV
They say some terrible things are happening in the townships
I’m glad that you’re not there
There are bombs going off in the dustbins here in Jo’burg
I’m feeling so scared and alone, Dicky Baby.

I hope I remembered that right. I haven’t played that LP in a while. Not since I became ‘British’ and started fighting different battles. Jennifer, by the way, became an ANC MP later on.

The first time Apartheid affected me in a personal way was mundane. I suppose it is obvious that it had been affecting me my whole life – but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about the retrospective weirdness of going to an all-white school in an all-white area, or being brought up by a black woman whose Anglicised name was not her own or whose last name I never learned. No, I’m talking about that “oh shit” moment when you realise “this is actually real, this is actually happening”. Liberal universities – like Rhodes, the one I went to - were “multi-racial”. Rhodes is largely residential, being, as it is, squirreled away in a small town. My first friends in my first year there were Graham and Miles. Miles was black and Graham was white. We had a lot of the same classes and we were in the same residence so we hung out a lot. The moment I remember most clearly was when I realised that while we could take the same train home for the holidays, the three of us would not be allowed to travel together. See, a mundane detail. Unlike in the movie, there was no huge historic moment with the news cameras rolling and the smoke and the dogs and the screams and the blood and the death. No, for me, just 18, it was a simple logistic: one of the hundreds or thousands of petty rules that tore our country apart – into separate queues, separate trains and separate lives – for one more decade.

Stander, while acknowledging the huge impact Apartheid had on the South African psyche – on individual South Africans – manages not to grandstand. It manages to make it the backdrop, the mood, the menace, even, but not the story… and that is no mean feat.

And that third thing we look for? I can’t remember. I had some smart-arse idea which I lost along the way. I think it must be this: we look for landmarks. When you grow up with a diet of foreign media – British and American films – the locations seems so exotic. Car chases past Trafalgar Square? Spies using payphones in Liverpool Street Station? These places, iconic places, now too seem mundane as I walk past these spots every other day. So to watch a movie and see the video store in Yeoville, Johannesburg where I hired my first gay movie in the background of a crime caper… once mundane, now seems special.

In Quartz Straat hoor ek ‘n meisie my roep,
daar’s ‘n Hare Krishna wat vra wat ek soek
En ken ek vir Jesus? Vra ‘n man op die stoep,
tussen Hillbrow records en Estoril Books
En dis lank na twaalfuur, en die Hillbrow toring stuur
Sy seine in die nag, sy sein in die nag…

En die ligte gaan aan in die Chelsea Hotel,
en stemme en musiek klink in elke woonstel.
Ons sit in die son, drink wyn,
Ons survive met ‘n helse lot pyn in hierdie land, ja
Kom ons drink op die een wat sy drome oorleef,
op die een wat kry wat hy vra…

Aah, Johnny K…

Yes but, no but, Hizbut

2005-09-24T12:30:00.000+01:00

The Guardian was caught giving a column on Islam-related issues to a journalist who was a prominent member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir without requiring him to declare his interests to readers. They say they didn’t know he was a member of HuT and dropped him when he refused to renounce certain of their more unsavoury policies that clashed, they say, with the ethos of the paper.

However, this must have been done with a huge dollop of guilt, because it now seems the paper is compensating by whitewashing this group of clerical fascists whose constitution openly declares their intention to execute apostates.

First they published a pathetic hand-wringing diatribe by Natasha Walter describing Hizb-ut-Tahrir as peaceful and the proposed ban on them as an attack on free speech, and then they published a silly article by some nutcase who claims they saved him from the BNP because he couldn’t “disprove” the Quran. Anyone who falls for that is an idiot.

But I’ll get back to that. What concerns me is that in-between these two pieces appearing, my OutRage! colleague, Peter Tatchell, sent them a letter challenging Walter’s assertion that the groups was “peaceful”. They did not print it, so here it is:

Letters to the Editor
The Guardian

The UK leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Jalaluddin Patel, asks: "Has there ever been an instance on campus where our members have broken the law, incited violence or engaged in subversive 'extremist' activities?" (Letters, 20 September).The answer is: yes. During the 1990s, Hizb ut-Tahrir distributed on university campuses, and elsewhere, a leaflet inciting the murder of homosexuals. They subjected me to repeated death threats because I spoke out in defence of gay Muslims who were being abused by members of their organisation.Since this thuggery was exposed, Hizb ut-Tahrir has sought to project a less extreme public image. But I have no doubt that many of its members continue to hold violently homophobic views.

Hizb ut-Tahrir endorses the barbarism of Sharia law, which stipulates the death penalty for gay and lesbian Muslims, apostates, unchaste women and others.

Peter Tatchell
OutRage!
P.O. Box 17816, London. SW14 8WT

What’s more, an investigation into Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s campus activities was commissioned in the mid 1990s by National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education after 71% of calls to a campus hotline to report fascist activity on campus complained about Hizb-ut-Tahrir specifically. The report, written by Peter Purton, revealed that the group is “in equal measure anti-democratic, anti-Semetic, anti-Hindu, anti-feminist and homophobic'. The group's campaigns involve distribution of homophobic material, particularly at gay and lesbian society meetings, and harassment of individuals."

The National Union of Students took the decision to ban them on campuses after numerous complaints of intimidation and harassment from students, including Muslim students.

Yet Walter argues that they are “peaceful” and that banning them would be an attack on free speech. However, allowing groups that intimidate and harass other groups and individuals to operate does not further the cause of free speech; it allows the bullies to shit free speech down!

Still, I am not in favour of a ban by the government. This will not be practical and will simply drive these people underground. It is better to have them vaguely in the open where ordinary decent people can be disgusted by their fascist agenda.

But not wishing them to be banned is a long way from white-washing them and giving them a PR-makeover.

Another article in The Guardian presents the 'debate' about whether HuT deserve to be banned. Their propagandist, Imran Waheed, claims that HuT "are not looking for a Taliban state or one that oppresses women."

But their constitution clearly says:

"Those who are guilty of apostasy (murtadd) from Islam are to be executed according to the rule of apostasy" and "Segregation of the sexes is fundamental, they should not meet together except for a need that the shar’ allows" and "nothing of the women’s body is revealed, apart from her face and hands, and that the clothing is not revealing nor her charms displayed" and "Any [political] party not established on the basis of Islam is prohibited".

Is that Taliban-like and oppressive to women. You decide if Mr Waheed is a liar.

Waheed also said: "The aim was for a caliphate, an Islamic authority, to govern in Muslim countries but the group was not seeking to introduce one into Britain."

However, the official Hizb ut Tahrir website says in the 'Aims' section:

"It also aims to bring back the Islamic guidance for mankind and to lead the Ummah into a struggle with Kufr, its systems and its thoughts so that Islam encapsulates the world. "

Is Britain not of this world, or is Mr Waheed lying again? Why did The Guardian print this drivel if 2 minutes of Googling allowed me to check his claims against the group's stated aims and constitutional proposals?

The second Guardian article is just ridiculous. What’s the story? A person attracted to one extreme and unhinged group falls out with them and joins another similarly extreme and unhinged group. Is The Guardian really suggesting that Hizb-ut-Tahrir - a groups that according to its constitution wants to kill apostates, eliminate gays, subjugate women, oppress non-Muslims and silence political dissent - is the antidote to the BNP?

The balance to lunatic fringe groups is not more outrageous counterweights on the opposite side, but the huge flywheel of common sense, humanity – and sanity – that drives reasonable people of goodwill. That’s where we should be putting our weight. That’s where I’m laying down my burden. That’s where I’m planting my flag.

Hamas wants no peace

2005-09-24T10:58:00.000+01:00

Amazing! Israel pulls out of one of the three occupied territories as a show of goodwill that almost tore its society apart. Any reasonable person would have seen the withdrawal from Gaza as a trial run for the eventual withdrawal from the remaining territories and – presuming they had a commitment to lasting peace in the region – would also commit to giving Israel the reassurances it seeks for just such a move.

But oh no, not Hamas. No, their first thought is to ship in truck loads of explosives into Gaza. Then, when through mishandling, one of these trucks blows up killing 26 and injuring 80 of their supporters, do they fess up? Nope. They blame Israel.

But, reports the BBC: The ruling Palestinian Fatah faction said it held Hamas responsible for the explosion at Friday's rally, when a truck carrying gunmen and home-made weapons blew up.

If anyone had any doubt that Hamas intended to cause mischief with these weapons, this fact was confirmed when they fired 21 rockets at Israeli towns from Gaza. Others in Gaza are trying to improve the region and inspire people to build for the future, but Hamas seem only interested in bringing on Armageddon. They are the flip-side of the mad Christian evangelists who want the same outcome.

Not to be left out, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for firing 10 home-made rockets into Israel on Friday.

It is clear to me that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are not interested in peace. They are not fighting for an end to the occupation; they’re fighting for the destruction of Israel. There is massive international support, including by the Israeli Left, for an end to the occupation. However, if Hamas and Islamic Jihad are unable to match goodwill with goodwill, why should Israel believe that pulling out of the other two occupied territories will bring peace and security?

I want to believe that it will, but I’d be lying if I said I was sure it would.

But there’s something else that needs to be unpacked – repeatedly. I say repeatedly because the only way to confront a lie that is repeated and repeated is to do the same with the truth.

Ken Livingstone says he understands Dr Qaradawi’s support for suicide bombing that targets Israeli civilians because while Israel had fighter jets and tanks, the Palestinians "only have their bodies" and no other way to "fight back".

So what’s with the truckloads of weapons and explosives? What’s with the rocket attacks? Only their bodies, Ken? It’s a lie, it’s a lie, it’s a lie! Anyone can see it’s a lie.

How to deal with terrorists

2005-09-23T11:05:00.000+01:00

In 1999, a year after leaving shamefully low-paying jobs in academia for moderately more lucrative jobs in New Media consulting in Johannesburg, my boyfriend and I were at last able to afford satellite TV. At this time, international shows like “Jerry Springer” were still a novelty and we’d never seen anything like it. One particularly thrilling Springer show – before we realised that almost all episodes ended in fisticuffs – involved Irv Rubin of the Jewish Defence League (and minders) confronting the Grand Dragon (Dragon? Warlock, Wizard, Pixie, whatever!) of the Ku Klux Klan (and his minions)..

At the time it was nothing more than pantomime and I thought of Rubin as that guy who tried to hit the Klansman with a chair. But years later, it transpired that Rubin had more sinister ambitions. In 2002 he was indicted after an FBI investigation found he and an accomplice been conspiring to bomb a mosque to make some political point which, frankly, I don’t care to understand. It was also meant to be “a wake-up call”, though, again for what we shouldn’t actually give a fuck – bombing mosques is not a legitimate way to make that call. A pipe-bomb is not a tickey-box.

The fact that they never got round to executing their evil action is a minor mitigation.

The founder of the Jewish Defence League, Meir Kahane, left the US to form a political party in Israel. It was banned by the Israeli government for its racist message, and listed by the US State Departments as a terrorist organisation.

Anyway, enough history. The long and the short of it is that Irv Rubin committed suicide (though of course there are the obligatory conspiracy theories) in prison while awaiting trial. His co-defendant, Earl Krugel, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, reports Al Jazeera.

And deservedly so.

What is interesting is that the country’s most well known anti-Semitism watchdog, the Anti Defamation League, did not seek to justify or explain Rubin’s actions. They did not say that they were understandable given the hostility towards Jewish people in the world and in America. In fact, in a statement, they said the opposite.

They accused the JDL founder of promoting a “gross distortion of the position of Jews in America” and of fear-mongering. They denounced Rubin as having “a long track record of intimidation and bullying tactics” and for engaging in “contemptible activities“. They “applauded” the FBI’s arrest of Rubin on terror charges. They said:

If the current allegations about the JDL are true, ADL abhors and condemns this potential terrorist plot to attack members of the Los Angeles community. This incident is one more example of how organizations expressing hatred often turn to violence. We praise the diligent work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney's Office that led to the arrest. We have full confidence that this case will be thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice.

They did NOT say:

'We cannot say we pat these misguided boys on the back but we do want to listen to them. They have gone astray so we want to treat them in a way that will set them straight... we want to treat them the way clerics treat their students, the way fathers treat their sons.'

They did NOT dismiss evidence against Rubin and Krugel thus:

"We are in the 21st Century. The cows can be made to look as dancing, the horses can speak like humans, so these things can be doctored or can be produced."

The correct response to terrorists is to denounce them unequivocally, to applaud when the police arrest them and applaud even louder when the courts bring them to justice.

Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents

2005-09-22T20:42:00.000+01:00

Bloggers have made an invaluable contribution to getting information out of repressive countries, often at great personal risk. Bloggers like Mr Behi – who blogs from the Islamic Republic of Iran - provide valuable insights and information into human rights abuses there. The power of online communication is recognised by repressive governments like the one Mr Behi lives under. They use online agent provocateurs to entrap people – like Amir, a young gay man found out to his cost.

The Internet giants Yahoo! and Microsoft have been embroiled in a controversy after it agreed to help Chinese officials censor online information.

But now, The Times reports:

Would-be webloggers living under repressive regimes from China to Iran can now download an online handbook on how to become a successful "cyber-dissident".

Reporters sans frontières have published a Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents which is available for download from their website. They say:

Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.
Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.

Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.

The Handbook, which is also available to read online, deals with technical issues like setting up and running a blog, and how to ensure anonymity, as well as covering theoretical issues like media ethics and stylistic niceties.

Well worth a read for anyone who writes. According to The Times story:

"Seventy-five cyber-dissidents are currently in prison for trying to post independent news online, some of them serving sentences of more than 10 years."

Sobering.