Abu Qatada
Every picture tells a story. This one more than most. It is credited to the RAF (Royal Air Force), MoD (Ministry of Defence) and the Press Association. Though it is presented as though it was taken secretly by a photographer keen to alert the world to an important event. In the event, it was stage managed.
Abu Qatada is now in Jordan having for eleven years fought extradition from the UK where he faces no charges. In Jordan he was wanted in connection with a “terrorist bombing conspiracy”.
The British Government has spent a lot of time and money trying to deport him. But attempts to deport him have been consistently adjudged to be in contravention of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This Article relates to the prospect of a free and fair trial, something which the European Court and the UK Supreme Court both concur is not possible in Jordan for this case.
The solution is threefold. Leave the jurisdiction of the European Court in order to deport people to places where they may be tortured or ‘evidence’ arising from confessions of others under torture is admissible; change the law and agree a Mutual Assistance Treaty with said country; or both.
Edward Snowden and Prism
The treatment of Edward Snowden and those who might give him asylum, tells us as much as we need to know about in whose interests states act and where the current balance of power lays. In the name of anti-terrorism, we are all being monitored. They say that they are only collecting “meta data”; i.e. data about who ‘citizens’ contact rather the content of that contact. The usual guff comes from politicians – ‘if you have done nothing wrong, then there is nothing to fear’.
The vilification of Edward Snowden – the whistleblower – is clear. The US state brands him as a traitor, a fugitive from justice guilty of treason and much of the media is aligned with this position. The latest post from Medialens gives Snowden their usual treatment: http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/alerts-2013/737-snowden-surveillance-and-the-secret-state.html
And then there is the Latin America situation. The denial of Evo Morales’s plane access to key parts of European airspace on 2 July is extraordinary. Morales, let us not forget, is President of Bolivia and was attending a legitimate energy conference in Moscow. Clearly pressure had been put on European states from the US. But it is interesting that ‘they’ – whoever they are – thought that Snowden was on the plane; he may well have been stupid with respect to whistleblowing and his own safety, but he is not, surely, going to do the obvious (as he demonstrated by not being on the plane to Cuba a couple of weeks earlier)?
Charging gadgets at Brussels Midi
You know the scenario, battery low and nowhere to recharge. The three people pictured left are charging phones and laptops with their own kinetic energy at the Thalys terminal at Brussels Midi station. Essentially, pedal and you generate electricity that can be transferred to your device. Neat?
One wonders. First, this is discriminatory. I was surrounded by a lot of elderly people who, to be fair, would struggle to get on this contraption, let alone pedal. Likewise if one is in a wheelchair.
Second, how much energy went into making it relative to what it generates? I cannot help but think that it really would not cost that much to put in a bank of sockets that are attached to solar panels located on the roof for travellers who pay enough to ride the trains.
Striking refuse workers in Brighton and Hove
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Brighton and Hove, Equality, low pay, refuse workers
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Brighton and Hove refuse workers started a week-long strike on Friday (14 June) to defend their wages against a cut of up to £4000 as a result of a pay review by the Council. I am perplexed by this.
The refuse collectors have been working to rule over the past few weeks and the uncollected rubbish is noticeable (see below). Coastal towns suffer particularly as the gulls are constantly scavenging. But that is not for the refuse workers who, by definition, earn relatively low wages for their ‘unskilled’ but essential work.
What is going on? It is clear that the Council sought to bust the strike using agency workers. The leader of the
Council – a Green – has withdrawn this threat after protests within and without of his party – including Brighton’s Green MP, Caroline Lucas. At first, I thought the strike was purely about austerity cuts – managing a budget being squeezed by declining Central Government grants and limited scope for local tax raising. But seemingly not. It is about ‘equality’. As one observer put it, the policy that led to the cut was “a noble attempt to equalise pay between male and female staff leading to up to £95 a week income reductions for the (largely male) CityClean workers” (Josiah Mortimer, http://tinyurl.com/kv6bea4). Equalising pay down is neither progressive nor right.
The GMB union, which represents the refuse workers, reports the origins of the strike thus: “The dispute began in January when the Council’s Green Party leader, Jason Kitcat, gave full authority to its £150,000 Chief Executive, Penny Thompson, to negotiate and implement a revised pay and allowances package without any recourse to councillors. This led to a final offer being made in April, which included cuts of up to £4,000 a head from some of the council’s lowest paid employees.” (See more at: http://union-news.co.uk/2013/06/brightons-bin-men-begin-week-long-strike/#sthash.2YLfD9oB.dpuf).
In my small way, I want to lend my support to the refuse workers. I am a former member of the Greens in Brighton and Hove. I left the party on a point of principle regarding Caroline Lucas’s nomination as the candidate for the parliamentary seat of Brighton Pavilion which she went on to win. In light of these events, I am pleased to see her on the picket line and in solidarity.
Donations to the fighting fund can be made from the following link: http://www.gmb-southern.org.uk/no-to-green-cuts-at-brighton-hove-city-council/
Pictures:
New crop of cigarette advertisements
Filed under: Cigarette advertising | Tags: Gauloises, John Player Special, L&M, Lucky Strike
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Cigarette advertisers have finally launched their summer campaigns. Four are now visible on the streets of Munich. Galloises (pictured left), L&M (below right), John Player Special (below left) and Lucky Strike (below right).
The new Galloises campaign is not new at all. It continues to align smoking with the good urban – Parisien – life. Like its predecessor (see post 5 June 2012) there is leisure, urban greenery and attractive young people. Only one of them smokes. The emphasis continues with the ‘natural’ sense of the product and that it is without additives.
Meanwhile, the L&M brand pursues two distinct approaches. First, and similar to Galloises, the natural line (right). The greenery is there, there are no additives, the packaging is recycled. Surely one should try them? Compelling, don’t you think?
However, that may not be compelling enough. So, in parallel, L&M have the good value approach (left). A big choice and a good price. Presumably these do have additives at no extra cost?
John Player Special continues with the ‘Just Free’ theme. Previously in this campaign, three young people stride forward from
the shackles of ordinary life towards cancer (see post 23 March 2013). The latest edition has a lone young man jumping over these exact same shackles.
And not to be outdone – or maybe an afterthought – women can jump over them, too.
A winning campaign if you ask me.
And finally, Lucky Strike. What is going on here (right)?
The strapline reads – assuming my translation works again – Almost as good as the original – with the ‘almost as good as’ struck out. Luckily, no doubt.
There are two more in this series – ‘taste the difference’ (left) and ‘taste is everything’ (right). In advertising terms, it is a bit of a mystery how these are 
supposed to achieve customers. Is it something about making the viewer work a little to get the point? Or is it that they are seen to be clever?
Echt! As they say.
Buying rail tickets online in the UK
Friday last was a bit of a challenge on Southern Railway – there seemed not to be any staffed ticket offices on the stations that I visited and a number of ticket machines were also out of order. I intended to travel to Gatwick Airport on Thameslink (First Capital Connect) – never a good idea to travel without a ticket. So I went online and bought a ticket for the journey. When using online booking sites – in my case Southernrailway.com – one has to designate a machine from which to receive the ticket after purchase. I did this, only to find that the ticket machine was not working.
I arrived at Gatwick Airport and sought guidance from a ticket inspector at the gate. I showed him the receipt for the transaction from my mobile. I asked him how I could get my ticket. Easy, apparently. All that stuff about designated machines is nonsense. Tickets can be printed from any machine on the network. This simple piece of information could have saved me some grief.
Tandem, Summer 2013
It is nearly tandem-riding time. Having just got it suspended from the ceiling in the garage, it will soon be lowered to take us from Dresden to Rotterdam via Hamburg.
Details to follow. So far the ferry to England from Rotterdam is booked. Dresden to Hamburg will be along the Elbe, paths permitting after the recent flooding which is still affecting this region. Then we take a train from Hamburg to Leer, just on the German side of the border with the Netherlands. From Leer we follow the coastline to Rotterdam.
This year we have a navigation system. I have bought a Garmin 800 and have downloaded the necessary maps from an extraordinary website: http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl
Instructions can be found here: http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/05/download-garmin-705800810.html
Killing on the streets of Istanbul
At face value, the violence surrounded a small park (Gezi) in the central district of the European side of the City. The park is being destroyed to make way for a shopping mall and a reconstructed ‘barracks’ that was once on the site. That does not explain the extreme violence meted out to the protesters.
The Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is not known, seemingly, for tolerance and accepting criticism. Secularists in particular seem to be under pressure from the Government. There were violent clashes also on May Day. The Government has also instituted legislation against the consumption of alcohol raising fears of increasing desecularisation, something which has been defended since the establishment of the secular state by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923. He also seeks to establish an executive presidency by changing the constitution.
I’m struggling to download any pictures, but in the first instance please go to http://imgur.com/q3XfOFf from where I have extracted the following pictures and captions. There are many disturbing images.
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Additional video footage can be found here: http://webtv.radikal.com.tr/Turkiye/3653/yorumsuz.aspx
The Guardian newspaper in the UK now has a photo strip of demonstrations in Istanbul and Ankara: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2013/jun/02/protests-istanbul-ankara-pictures?picture=409969309#/?picture=409969309&index=0
The Prime Minister seemingly now blames the opposition and ‘social media’ for the unrest.
I travel more than I could ever have thought possible in my youth. I recently visited Istanbul as a tourist. Events there yesterday are shocking in their own terms; the fact that I have been to the city and the locations of the police violence against citizens makes it particularly so. My ignorance about the politics of Turkey and Istanbul reflects the nature of tourism.
Killing on the streets of London
Filed under: Journalism and News Reportage, Politics, Religion |
Leave a Comment The covering of this story by the British media has been shameful. Readers of this blog know that I have no time for religion, and if there is a religious dimension to this killing, then I have no time for it. No God is a justification for killing. But if it is about ‘an eye for an eye’ and British State’s contempt for people in other countries in which an occupying army is present – as indicated by the perpetrator – then there is something to hear. And we are not hearing it.
The BBC, again, leads the charge. The Today programme on 24 May wasted time first on the ‘radicalisation’ debate of young men and then getting muslim religious leaders again to condemn what has happened. And any equivocation is pounced on as tacit endorsement for the act. Wrongly. And now it is reported that one-hundred British imams have signed a letter condemning the Woolwich attack in the name of ‘our’ religion.
BBC Newsnight on 23 May interviewed ‘radical cleric’ Anjem Choudary and – not surprisingly – he refused to condemn the killing despite repeated requests by presenter Kirsty Wark. According to the Guardian newspaper “he said he was “shocked” by the murder of Lee Rigby who was killed on Wednesday afternoon but pointedly refused to say he “abhorred” the attack.” What is the point in this kind of questioning?
Radio 5 Live employs a gang of inept journalists to cover the ‘latest’ from the story. ‘The streets of Woolwich are eeriely quiet, but one can sense a change in attitude in the last few minutes’ – excuse my paraphrasing of nonsense heard on Wednesday’s blanket coverage. (This particular ‘journalist’ is skilled in this respect.); David Cameron is cutting short his visit to Paris to chair a meeting of COBRA. He leads us in condemnation and facing up to the ‘threat’ posed by terrorist
s.
The vocal man with the bloodied hands – Michael Adebolajo (right) – makes his case pretty coherently. He uses all of the sources open to him – in this case the ability and willingness of witnesses to use their mobile phones to record the aftermath. It seems clear to me what the motive was; but I have yet to hear a discussion on the grievance and how that translates to killing in the street. I have heard no parallel news stories dealing with the carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan; made all the more surreal with President Obama talking on the same day and almost in the same breath about drone strikes – soldiers in the USA attacking citizens of far-away countries from the safety of a military base on the US mainland.
The British public respond with a tacit endorsement of Fascists who are quick to get onto the streets to stir up unrest. They also then give the charity ‘Help for Heroes’ their best fund-raising day since establishment.
Politicians and journalists revel in these kinds of stories. There’s capital to be made.
Since writing this post, Mehdi Hassan in the New Statesman has written a piece drawing on the link between foreign policy and violence. This piece – which is not available on the New Statesman Website – has elicited a response suggesting that it is half right. Readers of this blog can access this argument here: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/why-mehdi-hasan-half-right-and-half-wrong-foreign-policy-cause-terrorism; It is right to point out that there are many different groupings within Islam and one may not be able argue that violence against Shia muslims in Iraq equates with violent reprisals by Sunni muslims in the UK.
Hotel decoration
When in Brussels, we stayed in the relatively new Park Inn adjacent to Midi station. It was a very comfortable hotel; a bizarre relationship to breakfast – in bed or not at all. But we found better alternatives to a hotel breakfast in the city.
Design always intrigues me. Park Inn apparently is a brand (above left). Those colours under the 
word ‘park’ are critical. So much so that a design/decor firm sold the idea of incorporating them into the internal decor of each room. The result is a sticker that goes up the wall like a London Tube map and then blooms on the ceiling. I can assure you this is disconcerting when one first wakes up.
Be informed 