Knowing Your Neighbour

"People are very careful about what they say about people from other categories. They’re really egalitarian, they try to be fair, but when we measure them in more subtle ways, when they’re not conscious of their responses and they’re not able to control them, then we find that racism is still quite prevalent in North America."
"Even though it might happen within the first 100th of a second, we know that downstream that can tell us whether you might hire a person, whether you have positive or negative associations with that person and whether you’re willing to interact with that person."
"Racism is still quite prevalent in Canada."
"Explicit racism and prejudice is decreasing, but if you talk to a lot of minorities – particularly black youth – racism is almost a daily occurrence."
Social Cognition Lab, York University, Toronto, Prof. Kerry Kawakami

Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The usual minds-eye picture of a racist is that of a bigoted slob, uneducated, anti-social, nursing personal grievances and finding solace in the company of others like themselves who need some other group to focus on to direct their hatred toward, to blame for everything they feel that has gone wrong in their personal lives, their relationships and in society at large. They come from deprived backgrounds with limited exposure to others and limited interest in knowing anything about those they love to hate.

It's a picture that has been studied intensively. One that doesn't quite fit with what reality informs us. That those who invest themselves with irrational claims about other ethnic groups, visible minorities, unique customs reflective of their heritage must of necessity be those of disadvantaged backgrounds are not necessarily and certainly not exclusively those from among whom leading activists both on the right and the left derive. Both are capable of hating and distinguishing themselves righteously from the other. The left is more attuned to character assassination.

The right indulges its passions in the commission of violence, and are not averse to actual assassination. And among them are people who have come from the echelons of the educated middle class, as well as the upper class; people who the naive might suppose would or should be more open and tolerant and accepting because their minds have been opened to educational opportunities. Yet their minds could still be closed to accepting others as equals, preferring to invest them with harmful attributes for whom isolation and violence is prescribed to persuade them they don't belong.

Some of these social misfits have had the privilege of attending outstanding academic institutions, earning the credentials that attest they have succeeded in their field of studies,  yet they have become psychologically tainted with bigotry and cling to its tenets. Richard Spencer, white supremacist, as example, president of the National Policy Institute, took his degree in intellectual history at Duke University. He is married to a woman with a doctorate from University of Toronto.

Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Alternately, in Germany most neo-Nazis are of the petty criminal class radicalized while in prison. "Contrary to a popular image of white nationalists living exclusively off the grid", explains Eric Ward, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Group, their ranks are comprised of teachers, lawyers, secretaries, soccer mothers and bus drivers. And, as he puts it succinctly "they are our neighbours".

In right-wing circles one element in common brings them together in a paroxysm of pure, unadulterated hatred; they are all anti-Semites. Albeit not exclusively. They have ample room in their hate-chest for others to be included as well. It is simply that virulent anti-Semitism reflects the core of the far-right-wing movement. In the 1960s, scholars in West Germany attempted to discover what the appeal of fascism might possibly be; they hazarded economic uncertainty, the dwindling influence of organized religion, and popular entertainment.

In a sense, the radical right-wing reflect the strategy employed by Islamofascists who integrate themselves superficially into the prevailing culture of leftist ideals to gain support and sympathy for their cause as a 'misunderstood' religious minority with a culture and values all their own, worthwhile and equal to the indigenous ones. It is an appeal of the underdog to the power of the majority and it works in their favour. In the instance of the radical right-wing, they choose to profess a linkage with conservatives who strain against the injustice of having to plead guilty for the sins of the past.

As well as those conservatives who find value in supporting the fundamentals of the past in honouring the traditional vision of marriage as a covenant between opposite sexes. And who decry the emphasis on giving minorities and/or women an increased representation reflecting their minority or gender status over men with superior qualifications, experience and numbers as an unfair advantage, disadvantaging them. The traditions that recognized differences in gender identification did not include the newly diversified gender identities. Their beliefs do not make them right-wing bigots.

Violence in a political grouping often has an earlier manifestation resulting from dysfunctional households where bullying and extreme punishments have taken place, disciplining the young to stern measures and violence. Which they in their mature years extract from the experience of their formative years and incorporate into their ideology of bigoted hatred and campaigns of exclusion. An 86 percent increase in anti-Semitic crimes in the past year has been noted by NPR.

Jews, the canary in the pathology of mass-popularized ethnic and religious recrimination, slander and hatred. First come the accusations, then the name-calling, and finally the physical confrontations, with violence growing out of the latter. The level of commitment to racist hatred has a grasp accommodating enough to include all people of colour and external foreign derivation.

As for the alternate? The left's contribution to blame, victimization and hatred?

"Antifa activists, who operate without any centralized leadership, told CNN that their goal is peace and inclusivity. They often denounce capitalism and government. Since Trump entered the world stage, they've condemned his push to tighten immigration rules and what some view as his tendency toward racism."

"While Antifa members don't fit a single category, they say many are millennials and many live on society's fringes: undocumented immigrants, transgender people, low-wage workers, those who don't conform to the traditional 9-to-5."

"And their methods are often violent. Antifa leaders admit they're willing to physically attack anyone who employs violence against them or who condones racism -- as long as force is used in the name of eradicating hatred."

CNN

Labels: Bigotry, Canada, Left, Racism, Right, United States, Violence

posted by Pieface @ Monday, August 21, 2017

A National Powder Keg

"It is as if the deepest fault lines of our democracy have suddenly been exposed, perhaps even widened."
"Dallas, I'm here to say we must reject such despair. I'm here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. And I know that because I know America. I know how far we've come against impossible odds."
U.S. President Barack Obama

Mourners attend a Monday candlelight vigil for five officers killed last week during protests in Dallas. CNN

Has a pathological virus of bigotry and reverse-bigotry suddenly manifested itself in a cycle of violence, white against black, black against white, deviating from the usual black-on-black and white-on-black? Weapons seem always to be at the fore. Children carrying toy guns and being shot on suspicion of doing harm because they are black and seem to be threatening. Blacks turning their backs and running rather than be apprehended by a policeman looking to interrogate him.

A policeman confronting a street vendor, convinced he sees a gun nestled inside the belt of his trousers, initiating a response whose end results cannot be reversed. A man, stopped in his car, telling a police interrogator that he has a firearm in his possession by license, an admission that so frightens the man in blue that he shoots, convinced the man he has stopped demanding to see his license, is reaching for his gun and he will be the target.

And Black Lives Matter calling upon society to reject the suspicion of blacks, since they're just like anyone else in that society though they may be over-represented as gang members in a community, as drug pushers, as weapons dealers generally averse to law and order, contemptuous of both the law and those who keep it in order with their blue uniforms and their propensity to shoot first, rue the impulse later.

The two contradictory statements above by President Obama aside, the circumstances and details leading to the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling at the hands of police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana, have galvanized public opinion with the horror of the casual transitory nature of life and death in America awash with guns and mired in black-on-white fears and suspicions and assaults and white-on-black privilege and reactions out of proportion to reality when reality is allied with death. 

Now there's something called intersectionality, where aggrieved groups make common cause with one another, making improbable, albeit welcomed links that seem to serve their agendas. Black Lives Matter, in asserting their claims to insufferable maltreatment by police in America, have found it useful to cast blame on other minority and ethnic/religious groups, like for example, Jews, who are always front and centre in causing trouble.

"In the past 48 hours another two black men have been lynched by the police.... We must remember that many US police departments train with #IsraeliDefenceForces. The same forces behind the genocide of black people in America are behind the genocide of Palestinians. What this means is that Palestinians must stand with our black comrades. We must struggle for their liberation. It is as important as our own. #AltonSterling is as important as #AliDawabsheh. Palestinian liberation and black liberation go together. We must recognize this and commit to building for it."

New York University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)

David Brown prays during a a vigil at Thanks-Giving square in Dallas on Friday, the day after the shootings. Photograph: Laura Buckman/AFP/Getty Images

Labels: Bigotry, Firearms, Human Relations, Prejudice, Threats, United States

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, July 14, 2016

Roma still second class citizens, despite EU efforts

BRUSSELS - Despite national strategies on Roma integration, many of Europe’s most discriminated minority are still being treated as second-class citizens.

Zoni Weisz, a 77-year old Nazi Holocaust survivor, on Friday (4 April) asked whether history is at risk of repeating itself.

“A civilised society respects human rights but still many Roma and Sinti are treated as second class citizens,” Weisz said at the third EU-level Roma summit in Brussels.

Weisz, who lost his entire family at Auschwitz concentration camp for being Sinti, warned EU and national governments against producing more piles of paper in their policy efforts to stamp out prejudice against minorities.

Problems remain pervasive and elusive for policymakers.

Three years ago, local authorities in Cluj-Napoca evicted Romani families from their homes and pushed them into a ghetto near a toxic waste dump where they remain to this day.

A Romanian court declared the eviction illegal but the families have nowhere to turn, according to the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC).

Romania’s president Traian Basescu, present at the summit, warned against anti-Roma discourse at the European level.

“We see at the European level that there are a number of political people that resort to such discourse,” he told the audience.

But Basescu was himself fined in February for making discriminatory remarks against the minority in 2010, describing a majority of the Roma at the time as lazy thieves.

At the summit, he said many are doctors, lawyers and businessmen but are too afraid to reveal their true identities due to the stigmas.

Romania officially has over 600,000 Roma but the true figure is reportedly likely to be higher since many mask their identities.

An estimated 12 million Roma live in the EU.

Member states, for their part, committed themselves last December to reduce Roma social inequalities in education, employment, healthcare, and housing.

In 2011, they each adopted the EU framework for national Roma integration strategies but pro-rights group complain little is being done in substance.

“The commitment to combatting discrimination and human rights abuses against Roma remains largely no more than a promise,” said the ERRC in a statement.

The EU, for its part, in a report released on Friday said some progress had been made since 2011.
It noted more Roma children are attending pre-school and that programmes are in place to improve access to healthcare, jobs, and housing.

EU-wide stigmas remain entrenched.
Last year, police in Greece and Ireland raided Roma families and abducted children with blue eyes and blonde hair.

Irish police returned the seven-year old after DNA tests confirmed the couple were indeed the biological parents. Accusations of human trafficking in the Greek case turned out to be unfounded.
Meanwhile, at the EU level, EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding described the Roma policy wrangling as a major achievement compared to a few years ago.

Few bothered showing up at the EU Roma summit in 2010 in Cordoba, Spain.
“There were only two ministers present and no interest at all about what should be done,” she told reporters.

She noted it took four years before dozens of ministers from member states began to speak out.
“You cannot have a change in the Roma population if the Roma population itself does not want to be integrated,” she pointed out.

Reding had also locked horns with French president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2010 for booting out Roma from the country. Ethnic-based deportations have since stopped in France, she noted.
But not forced evictions.

Last year, France kicked out 21,500 Roma from their homes, sometimes in the dead of winter.
“Where there are illegal settlements, they are illegal and it is possible, under the responsibility of the state, to dismantle those but it is also the responsibility of the national state to see that those people are cared for,” said Reding

Labels: Bigotry, Discrimination, Europe, Human Rights, Roma

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, April 09, 2014

Punishing Gays

"Experience from other jurisdictions with similar draconian laws, such as Nigeria or Russia, indicates that their implementation is often followed by a surge in violence against individuals thought to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender."
"The Ugandan government has not indicated any plans to counter such violence or to investigate potential allegations of abuse."
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission

Citing his annoyance at the interfering insistence of the West that he accede to their urgent calls not to sign the country's anti-gay legislation four years after its first introduction, Uganda's president signed the bill Monday. It will punish gay sex with the most severe penalties imaginable other than capital punishment. Ugandan police are certain to bring enthusiasm to implementation of the bill's punitive provisions.


Anti-gay sentiment is rife across the country. President Yoweri Museveni's signing of the bill could be read as much a pre-election ploy as a true conviction that gays present a threat to the honour and stability of the country. In so doing, he has given comfort to the huge numbers of Ugandans who look upon homosexuality and those that practise it as undeserving of life, in any event. People, in their ignorance simply need some group to hate.

The new Ugandan law will see first-time offenders sentenced to fourteen years in jail. Life imprisonment will be the rewarding maximum penalty for "aggravated homosexuality", represented by repeated gay sex practised between consenting adults -- and a nod to Russia's new repressive gay laws -- acts involving a minor, a disabled person or where one partner is infected with HIV.

The bill was signed at the presidential palace. Present were government officials, journalists, and Ugandan scientists. President Museveni had said he would hold off signing the bill, awaiting the result of Ugandan scientists' report on whether homosexuality represents a genetically endowed path, or an utterly disordered social pathology of choice. Scientists presented him with a report finding no proven genetic basis for homosexuality.

"They should rehabilitate themselves and society should assist them to do so" President Museveni generously declared, after signing the bill. Inevitably, the anti-gay law institutionalizes the dehumanization of gays, it makes bigotry acceptable, and societal aggression leading to violence against gays will result, leading the gay community to burrow deep underground in hopes of saving themselves.

Ugandan newspapers have been most helpful, publishing the photographs and names of known outspoken Ugandan gays.

Labels: Africa, Bigotry, Controversy, Homosexuality, Violence

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 26, 2014

No one in the world takes the unelected, unaccountable and non-transparent EU seriously, except its members -- least of all the Iranians, who benefit so much from their greed and naïevté.

The biggest farce in international politics is the European Union. Last week, the EU's international figurehead, Catherine Ashton, the "High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy," condemned new building projects in east Jerusalem. She argued that the projects would jeopardize the prospect of Jerusalem becoming the capital of two states – Israel and Palestine.
Ashton's argument should be discredited. Not only did she fail to protest in similar fashion Palestinian incitement to violence, but while adopting the Palestinian position that Jerusalem should be the capital of Palestine, she has so far refused to acknowledge that the city already is Israel's capital.

A second farce – and equally harmful to Israel's vital interests – is the deal that Ashton brokered last autumn between the West and Iran. It has allowed Iran to develop a nuclear program for so-called peaceful civilian purposes. Such a program makes no sense in a country that possesses the second biggest gas and oil reserves in the world. The reason why Iran wants to go nuclear is the opposite of peaceful. It wants to develop nuclear arms in order to "put down Israel," mostly likely among other countries -- in particular those still with no nuclear weapons but with tempting oil fields. Not to mention a nuclear-tipped warhead being aimed at virtually every capital of Europe; Iran would not even have to use them for any political or economic blackmail; a reminder should do the trick.

Rather than meddling in the building projects of the Jerusalem municipality or paving the way for Iran's nuclear program, the EU had better focus on the situation on its own doorstep. In the Ukraine, pro-Western citizens demanding closer European integration have been protesting for months now against the pro-Russian regime of President Viktor Yanukovych. His regime has violently attempted to end the protests, an effort that has resulted in several deaths. Apart from urging a "constructive dialogue" between the government and the opposition, Catherine Ashton and the EU diplomacy have not done much to resolve the crisis in Ukraine.

The United States has asked the United Nations Secretary-General to intervene diplomatically in the Ukraine, to mediate between the regime and the opposition. Ban Ki-moon will have to try to do what Catherine Ashton failed to do because she was too busy brokering nuclear deals with the mullahs in Iran.

"It would be great, I think, to help the UN glue this thing, you know, f**k the EU," Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was heard saying in a private telephone conversation with the US Ambassador to Ukraine. The tape of the conversation was leaked to the media, presumably by the Russians. Although Nuland's language was undiplomatic, to say the least, her exasperation with the EU is understandable.

After her remarks were leaked, Nuland apologized to Ashton and other European authorities, but it is doubtful whether she has changed her mind about the EU's diplomatic services. No one in the world takes the unelected, unaccountable and untransparent EU seriously, except its members -- least of all the Iranians, who benefit so much from their greed and naïveté.

EU High Representative Catherine Ashton, at left (source: European External Action Service). At right, Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (source: U.S. State Department).

The ineffectiveness of the EU need surprise no one. The international interests of the 28 EU member-states, including such bigwigs as France, Germany and the UK, are so diverse; the vital interests of countries with geographic locations as dissimilar as Poland and Cyprus, or Finland and Portugal, differ so widely, that it is simply impossible to combine them in one single international policy.
While the European Commission in Brussels, of which Catherine Ashton is a member, might think that "unity is strength," the reality is exactly the opposite. By attempting to unite what is incompatible, the EU is making a fool of itself on the international stage. No one takes Catherine Ashton seriously. When matters do get serious, it is the French, British, German and other ministers of foreign affairs who take the lead. However, whenever and wherever Ashton is allowed to interfere -- such as with regard to Israel or Iran, she causes considerable damage not only to the interests of the only democracy and the only Western nation in the Middle East, Israel, but, worse, to the interests of averting a major war throughout the region. That the EU member states allow this to happen, proves that to them the interests and the survival of Israel -- and even their own -- are of only secondary importance.

Meanwhile, throughout the major EU member states, a growing segment of the population is beginning to realize that the European unification process, embodied by the EU, might not be in their own interests. In the Netherlands, a poll last week revealed that 55% of the population wants the Netherlands to leave the European Union if leaving would be to the advantage of the country's economy. Also last week, Capital Economics, a renowned London based economic consultancy, presented a study assessing the economic impact of the NExit, or the Netherlands leaving the European Union. The study, commissioned by the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), found that a Dutch EU exit would, indeed, substantially benefit the Dutch economy.

The PVV, currently by far the largest party in the Dutch polls, is expected to win next May's elections for the EU parliament in the Netherlands. Other anti-EU parties, such as the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), the Front National, the Five Star Movement, and similar parties, are expected to win the European elections in, respectively, Britain, France, Italy and other EU member states.

As the Financial Times wrote in its February 7^th editorial about the NExit study: "The question of whether it is possible for countries to prosper outside the [EU] bloc is increasingly common in Europe. […] It is only right that policy makers take this issue seriously."

The question whether the democratic nations in the world – and especially Israel – would be better off without the EU diplomacy is easy to answer. And democrats such as the Ukrainian opposition who currently put their hope in the EU diplomacy, will not lose much if Catherine Ashton and her diplomatic services in Brussels cease to exist. They still have Ban Ki-moon and the UN.

Labels: Bigotry, Capitulation, European Union, Iran, Israel, Negotiations

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, February 13, 2014

  15 December 2013

Far Right in Eastern Europe Makes Gains as Syrians Arrive

By ANDREW HIGGINS

Labels: Bias, Bigotry, Conflict, Europe, Immigration, Refugees

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, December 15, 2013

Don't Have To Like It: It's Reality!

"I am afraid that violent economic centrifuge is operating on human beings who are already very far from equal in raw ability, if not spiritual worth. Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16% of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2% have an IQ above 130,. The harder you shake the pack, the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top."
"And for one reason or another -- boardroom greed or, as I am assured, the natural and God-given talent of boardroom inhabitants -- the income gap between the top cornflakes and the bottom cornflakes is getting wider than ever. I stress: I don't believe that economic equality is possible; indeed, some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity."
Boris Johnson, Mayor, London, England

The truth is, simply put, the morally elevating statement raised to the pinnacle of devotion to equality and in referred to hallowed in hushed tones as an "immortal declaration: that "all men are created equal" is all too often misunderstood. The American Declaration of Independence is a lovely document of high-minded assurance, but it is one that states simply that all men are equal under the law of the land and that they are free to engage in their pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, but there are no assurances that any of these aspirations will be achieved.

Nor does it mean that all of humankind is created with an equal endowment of genetic traits that would result in an even distribution of intelligence and capability among all persons. It is undeniable that within any society there are dullards incapable of grasping simple concepts, and there is the large middling group of individuals able to fend for themselves adequately, while beyond them exist those endowed with what might be considered more than their share of grey matter, enabling them to rise to the top of any society through their sense of curiosity, inventiveness and competence.

That rise does not necessarily result in people who assume power and more than their share of the goods of the world being outstanding citizens as human beings; many obviously are not, but they were capable of achieving office and riches by whatever means they employed, using their superior capabilities to attain what they set out to do. But to admit in polite company that we have more than our share of village dolts, and too few individuals interested in the world around them is to risk being labelled as indulging in "unpleasant elitism".

Mr. Johnson's speech which he addressed to the British Centre for Policy Studies as part of the Margaret Thatcher Lecture series, was as much and perhaps more, a cheering chorus for a free market economy and capitalism opening up the global economy to benefit as wide a range of populations as possible. Socialism and Communism were contrary ideologies attempting to counter capitalism and the end result was failure.

Individuals with disparate levels of intelligence and capabilities were to be treated as equal in the workforce, and they received, whether they were successful or failed at their enterprises, equal recompense. A kind of one-for-all and all-for-one. It didn't work. It is engrained in human nature that one is rewarded for the level of effort put into an economic-deriving activity. Those who were rewarded despite their lack of effort were complacently accepting, those who saw scant reward for prodigious effort were demoralized and stopped making the effort.

And lecturing them all, encouraging them on to perform and prove the thesis behind Marxism were the party faithful who used their hypocritical cunning -- in fact typical human behaviour --  to live in a manner nowhere near resembling that of the uncompetitive, unrewarding, dismal life of toil and scant self-respect they imposed on the great unwashed. To pave the way and ensure that no nuisance protests upset the apple cart as it was pulling into the town square, the intellectuals, the wealthy and the professionals were simply expunged from the scene.

There are two telling results from the experiment that took millions of lives and failed so spectacularly, an experiment in human and market manipulation that went gratingly against the grain that has been instilled in human nature from time immemorial. The Soviet Union eventually imploded. In North Korea, the old Marxist system prevails, the result being a grim police state, a shuttered kingdom as it were, an enforced misery of unfulfilled lives and malnutrition being the hallmarks, along with nuclear belligerence.

In China, North Korea's mentor-state, the elite were somewhat more discerning, but then they also had the burden of brutally manipulating infinitely greater numbers of people. The Chinese bureaucracy of Marxist ideology experimented just as the Soviet Union did, exhorting and exploiting their human capital and despite the deaths of millions of disposable people, who understood they must adore their tyrants or risk even greater numbers of people sacrificed to the prickly demands of their tormentors, finally surrendered to reality.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union led the remaining leadership to understand the depth of their dictatorial failure in a wholesale human-nature-manipulation experiment. Which hasn't stopped the current leadership from exerting a brutal autocracy that might be recognized as a kissing cousin to the former totalitarian rule; bullying and threatening and generally endearing itself to its former satellites who shudder uncontrollably at the very idea of having to resume that old union, frantically aligning themselves toward the West to fend off Eastern overtures.

China has recognized, just as Russia has, the advances to be made in the financial sphere through the relaxation of the old Communist ideals and the embrace of global capitalism. Their version is capitalism no matter the cause; unfettered and regulated only by the urge to grow itself into a giant of greedy entitlement, little different in fact from what is practised where the capitalist template was invented. And they have succeeded, perhaps beyond their wildest expectations. Hungering for even greater control of world trade.

Black Friday is becoming a universal event, to be celebrated not merely annually; but far more frequently. Capitalism makes a small percentage of those whose responding to its higher orders exemplifying success, rogues of immense wealth, social standing and power. Among them all or at least most of them there is a niggling sense of embarrassment at their own success. And this is the wretched little emotion that breeds philanthropy.

Apart from governments exerting the power of the state to exact a toll on such untold wealth in the manner of taxes so that a certain amount of those winnings can be redistributed at the state's will as it sees fit, grudging respect, as Mr. Johnson would have it, should be spared for the wealthy and no small amount of admiration at their success; they have earned it, in essence. By their determination, their enterprise, their capability, their intelligent manoeuvring.

"When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, they faced a top marginal tax rate of 98%, and the top 1% of earners contributed 11% of the government's total revenues from income tax. Today, when taxes have been cut substantially, the top 1% contributes almost 30% of income tax, and indeed the top 0.1% -- just 29,000 people -- contribute fully 14% of all taxation."
"That is an awful lot of schools and roads and hospitals that are being paid for by the super-rich. So why, I asked, innocently, are they so despicable in the eyes of all decent British people? Surely they should be hailed, like the Stakhanovites of Stalin's Russia, who half-killed themselves, in the name of the people, by mining record tonnages of coal?"

Envy, jealousy, two of the nastier emotions that humans are given to expressing when confronted by the good fortune of those who have managed to advance their aspirations into reality by sheer intent to succeed. But of course Mr. Johnson, a highly intelligent man and an accomplished one as well, knows that very well. Mr. Johnson is more than capable of not only describing and understanding a situation, and pointing out to others how that situation arose and why it should be accepted. But he also -- a rarity -- is able to offer a solution to those who begrudge others their earnings.

"It seems to me therefore that though it would be wrong to persecute the rich, and madness to try and stifle wealth creation, and futile to try to stamp out inequality, that we should only tolerate this wealth gap on two conditions: one, that we help those who genuinely cannot compete; and two, that we provide opportunity for those who can."

"Putin's Palace"

Labels: Bias, Bigotry, Biology, Britain, Charity, Controversy, Custom, Economics, Human Relations, Industry, Innovation, Intelligence

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, November 30, 2013

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh's granddaughter was returned to Gaza on Tuesday after being hospitalized in Israel. Doctors at Petah Tikva where she was treated determined that it was impossible to save her, reports AFP.

On Monday, one year old Amal Haniyeh crossed into Israel for treatment on a serious digestive tract infection.

Amal was returned to the Al-Nasser pediatric hospital in Gaza late Monday "still in a state of clinical death," according to her father Abdessalam Haniyeh.

The World Health Organization notes that every year thousands of Gazans receive medical treatment in Israel.
All this comes despite ruling Hamas's constant attempts to murder Israelis.

Just on Monday a top Hamas spokesman threatened Israel, saying "we will enter your homes, your schools, your positions and your strongholds." He added that Hamas now has rockets capable of reaching a 100 kilometer (62 mile) radius, putting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv within their range.

Israel's medical treatment of the Hamas leader's granddaughter also follows recent calls by his organization for Fatah, the party headed by Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, to "prepare for war" against Israel. In those calls Hamas said "jihad and struggle" were the only way to confront Israel.

Labels: Anti-Semitism, Bigotry, Conflict, Hamas, Health, Human Relations, Israel

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Anti-Semitism 'on the rise' say Europe's Jews

By Bethany Bell BBC News The survey of 5,847 Jewish people said 66% of those who responded considered anti-Semitism to be a problem.

Three out of four respondents, 76%, believed anti-Semitism had increased over the past five years.
The survey was carried out in 2012 in eight countries which are home to about 90% of the EU's Jewish population.

Respondents in Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Sweden and the United Kingdom were asked to give "their opinions and perceptions on anti-Semitic trends and anti-Semitism as a problem in everyday".

They were also asked about their personal experiences and worries about their own safety and that of family members.

There was particular concern about anti-Semitism online. About three-quarters of respondents considered that to be a problem which is getting worse.

A British woman in her 50s, quoted in the survey, said she had "experienced more anti-Semitic comments" since going on Facebook "than I ever have done throughout my whole life".

The survey found 29% of those surveyed had considered emigrating because of concerns about safety, with particularly high figures recorded in Hungary (48%), France (46%) and Belgium (40%).
It found one in five respondents had personally experienced at least one anti-Semitic verbal insult and/or a physical attack in the year before the survey.

Perpetrators of the most serious incidents were described as "being perceived as someone with Muslim extremist views, 27%, left-wing political views, 22%, or with right-wing views, 19%".
Respondents said the most frequent comments made by non-Jewish people in the UK were: "Israelis behave 'like Nazis' towards the Palestinians" and "Jews exploit Holocaust victimhood for their own purposes" (both 35%).

In France 52% of the Jewish people surveyed described anti-Semitism as a "very big problem" in their country, in Hungary the figure was 49%, while in the UK it was much less - 11%.

The survey showed significant differences between Western and Eastern European countries.
In Latvia, only 8% said the Israeli-Arab conflict had had a large impact on how safe they felt, but the figure rose to 28% for Germany and was as high as 73% in France.

FRA Director Morten Kjaerum said this reflected differing histories, as well as recent patterns of immigration.

"I think that there is across Europe... a traditional form of anti-Semitism that goes back in history for a long time," he said.

"But then we also see a particular sort of anti-Semitism reported by the respondents, namely the anti-Semitism which comes out of the conflict in the Middle East. And this is where you have to be careful: when do you have a legitimate critique of whatever your position may be in terms of that particular conflict and when would it be an anti-Semitic statement?"

The FRA said EU countries should work "urgently" to find effective ways to combat online anti-Semitism. It called on public figures to condemn anti-Semitic statements.

The President of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, welcomed the survey, but said "the fact that a quarter of Jews are not able to express their Jewishness because of fear should be a watershed moment for the continent of Europe and the European Union."

"The Jewish reality in Europe is of great concern and the authorities need to deal with incidents of hate and intolerance in a holistic manner, to really combat these manifestations before it is too late.
"We would like to see concrete steps being taken, including creating legislation to specifically deal with anti-Semitism and racism, bolstering law enforcement agencies and ensure a zero-tolerance approach to anti-Semitism, even, and perhaps specifically, when opinion-shapers and decision-makers engage in these forms of hate," he said.

Labels: Anti-Semitism, Bigotry, Britain, Europe, France, Human Relations, Islam, Judaism, Racism

posted by Pieface @ Friday, November 08, 2013

French Bigotry

"We know what the FM [far right Front National party] thinks: The blacks in the branches of trees, Arabs in the sea, homosexuals in the Seine, Jews in the ovens."
Christiane Taubira, French Justice Minister

Christiane Taubira (screenshot FranceTVinfo)

Likening France's justice minister to a "monkey" most certainly blights the political agenda of France's far right political party, with outright, unabashed racism.  For having made such a statement condemning the manner in which she has been racially slighted, the party is threatening to sue Ms. Taubira.

A FN mayoral candidate saw fit to compare her to a monkey, later stating she would "rather see her in the trees than in the government".

"The deep-seated racism that withstands time and words of order, not just within the FN but in the deepest part of French society", was damned by Harry Roselmack, the first non-white host of a French mainstream television news program. There, in a prominent high-profile public position for the very purpose of demonstrating just how unbiased France is.

"What was invisible has become visible" said Pascal Blanchard, a historian and author of the book La France Noire, in response to the backlash against the most recent demonstrations of racial bigotry aimed at blacks in France. "Words that were once scandalous have become commonplace. What you used to hear at soccer matches, such as monkey sounds, are now used against a minister."

It seems that in France it has become open season on minorities, in any event. Certainly, Jews who have long lived in France, have latterly seen their comfort levels in their safety disturbed hugely through their growing vulnerability to prejudice expressed and demonstrated in no uncertain terms. Largely they result from the hostility of newer immigrants coming from Islamic countries.

But they have infected the country at large, with native French returning to their old customs of degrading remarks against Jews and their purported effects on the society in which they have long lived as presumed equals. For Ms. Taubira, her elite government position has placed her front and centre; in an anti-gay marriage protest children waved banana skins at her when she visited Angers.

These attitudes do not suddenly and mysteriously erupt in the minds of young children. They are heard and they are cultivated when parents discuss among themselves and at the dinner table their opinions regarding the existence of other ethnic and religious and racial groups among them. Claiming their presence to be harmful to the future of the country.

"While it is false to say all FN voters and sympathizers are racist, it is equally false to say that there is no racism in this party", said Harry Roselmack writing an opinion piece in Le Monde. "Xenophobia and racism are the essential glue that binds it."  But it is by no means an isolated condition monopolized by followers of the far-right party.

Racism, bigotry and social bias infiltrate French society. It is kept tamped down as socially incorrect for a period of time and then resurrected during times of stress, such as high unemployment, national financial insecurity, and suspicion of the strangers living among the native French population through immigrants from abroad seem to be hostile to French values.

Labels: Anti-Semitism, Bigotry, France, Human Relations, Racism

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, November 07, 2013

Portuguese Roma?

"I'm still having trouble sleeping, it was a horrifying sight, seeing this little girl in her own excrement, not able to hold up her head, white as a sheet.
"We were deeply shocked because she didn't find this abnormal. We told her to remove the little girl [from the trunk] and give her something to drink right away."
Guillaume Iguacel, mechanic

Seems it might be time to give Europe's Roma a break. They raise their children in poverty, vulnerable to degraded living conditions and the contempt of the general society which views them as expendable, not fit for genteel company. Deserving of their state of unemployed welfare-seeking. A society and a culture whose customs and values are not fit to mingle with decent people.

Where the greater society suspects child abduction and human trafficking if a dark-hued mother is seen with a light-skinned child. A condition that clearly marks the adult as a criminal, and the child needing rescue from the malevolent keep of the only family she has ever known, to be taken from the parents who love her. Even if albinism created a genetic inheritance of light skin, or a child was given to parents whose biological parents pleaded for them to care for her.

In giving the Roma a temporary break from accusations, perhaps it's time to mark all Portuguese as cruelly child-abusing. Since a Portuguese mother of  three children, two boys aged nine and ten, and a four-year-old girl, also gave birth to a fourth child. Whom she decided -- on giving birth on her own, without, she claims, her husband suspecting she was pregnant -- not to produce; to hide, and where else than the trunk of the family car.

There she kept the baby, unclothed, uncovered, unloved and neglected, never taking it out of the car trunk for any reason.  "The car always stayed outside at night so if the little girl was inside it, we didn't see anything" said one neighbour in the couple's village of Brignac-la-Plaine, Correze, in France.

The condition of the child was discovered by automobile mechanics who were repairing the vehicle. Hearing strange noises from the trunk that the mother claimed were emanating from "toys" in the vehicle, they insisted on opening the trunk. And there they saw a small, dehydrated, feverish child, naked, lying in excrement she had extruded.

They called paramedics who took the two-year-old child to a hospital. "It appears that the child had been hidden from her birth, and even worse is seriously retarded", explained the prosecutor in nearby Brive-La-Gaillarde. The child's height, weight and mental development did not reflect normal conditions, appropriate to her chronological age. Nor can she speak. "It's a situation that defies the imagination", he said.

How can it be wondered that the child hasn't developed normally  -- physically, mentally. The baby had no exposure to normal child care, no opportunities to develop normally. If the child survives its ordeal it is possible that at her age steps can still be taken to encourage normal growth and human development.

She may be somewhat retarded in development, it may take awhile, but it is still possible that with the love and attention and emotional investment of a caring family she will develop. Unsurprisingly the couple's other three children have been taken into care.

The father, the mother claimed, was kept in the dark about the presence of the baby in the car trunk. Knowing nothing of her birth or of her presence, or her condition. An unemployed builder whom the mother appeared not to want to burden with the reality of another mouth to feed. So while the child may have been fed, it would not have been generously.

One must ask of the intelligence, the emotional stability, the psychological state of a woman who could endure the very thought of depriving a helpless child of comfort, warmth, love and care. The police were unable to question the father when he was taken into custody, since they claim him to have been inebriated.

"We didn't have much contact with them. She barely said hello, and they didn't really want to integrate into the neighbourhood. How could we have known?" said a pensioner living opposite the couple. How indeed....

Clearly, the Portuguese have much to answer for....

Labels: Bigotry, Child Abuse, Child Welfare, Family, Human Relations

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, October 30, 2013

The Palestinian Authority's "Israeli Affairs Committee"

What is really needed is a "Palestinian Affairs Committee" that would go to every mosque, school, university, village and refugee camp in the West Bank and Gaza to talk about peace and coexistence with Israel. To win the support of the Israeli public for peace, it should start by showing the Israelis that it is making every effort to convince Palestinians to support peace.

Instead of preparing Palestinians for peace with Israel, the Palestinian Authority leadership has decided to focus its efforts on winning the support of the Israeli public for a peaceful settlement based on the two-state solution.

In the context of its efforts to "convince" Israelis to accept the two-state solution, the Palestinian Authority recently established a special "Israeli Affairs Committee" with the goal of promoting the idea among the Israeli public.

The committee's main task, in fact, is to scare Israelis that failure to accept all Palestinian demands would plunge the region into another cycle of violence and bloodshed. The Palestinian Authority is hoping that to avoid another intifada, intimidated Israelis would put pressure on their government to comply with Palestinian demands.

Over the past few weeks, in a bid to "influence" public opinion in Israel, this committee organized a series of meetings between Palestinians and Israelis, Palestinian sources told the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper.

The Palestinian committee, formed by Mahmoud Abbas, includes top PLO and Fatah officials Yasser Abed Rabbo, Nabil Sha'ath, Jibril Rajoub, Hanan Ashrawi and Mohamed Madani.

"Why should any Israeli believe the Palestinian Authority when most Palestinians appear to be opposed to the resumption of the peace talks?" asks Khaled Abu Toameh. In this photo, U.S. Secretary of State Kerry, Israeli Justice Minister Livni, and Palestinian Chief Negotiator Erekat address reporters in Washington, D.C., on July 30, 2013. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]

Last week, the committee organized visits by Israeli parliamentarians to Ramallah, where they held talks with Abbas and other Palestinian officials to discuss prospects for peace in the Middle East.
One of the committee members explained, "Those we are meeting are the leaders of Israeli society and they will decide its fate. The Israeli public no longer knows what is happening here in the Palestinian territories."

It is always nice, of course, to see Israelis and Palestinians meeting and talking to each other.
But instead of devoting its efforts and energies to trying to persuade the Israeli public to support peace, it would be more helpful if the Palestinian leaders in the West Bank also tried to win the backing of their own people for the peace process.

Why should any Israeli believe the Palestinian Authority when most Palestinians appear to be opposed to the resumption of the peace talks?

Abbas does not even have the backing of the PLO and Fatah leaderships for his recent decision to return to the negotiating table with Israel, and returned to the peace talks with Israel against the advice of the PLO leadership.

Instead of inviting Israeli parliamentarians to Ramallah, Abbas might have tried to persuade the PLO and Fatah to support his efforts to achieve peace with Israel.

The Israeli parliamentarians who met with Abbas in his office last week already support the two-state solution and the peace process.
But most PLO and Fatah leaders remain opposed to the resumption of the peace talks.

As Abbas was meeting with the Israeli parliamentarians, thousands of Palestinians in the streets of Gaza City were demonstrating against the peace talks and two-state solution.

These are the people with whom Abbas needs to work to change their hearts and minds. These are the people who need to be told that peace with Israel will only do good for the Palestinians.
Why should any Israeli believe Abbas when his own supporters continue to wage a campaign to combat "normalization" with Israel?

While Abbas feels free to receive Knesset members in his Ramallah office, other Palestinians continue to receive threats for talking to, or doing business with, Israelis.
What is needed is a special "Palestinian Affairs Committee" that would work toward preparing Palestinians for peace with Israel.

The committee members should be asked to go to every mosque, school and university in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to talk about peace and coexistence with Israel.
The members also need to visit every village and refugee camp to talk to as many people as possible about the importance of peace.

They should also meet with representatives of all Palestinian factions to try to win their support for the peace process.

It would also be a good idea if such a committee would ask the Palestinian Authority to "lower the tone" and stop rhetorical attacks against Israel that drive Palestinians towards more extremism.
Inciting Palestinians against Israel through the media and mosques only serves the interests of Hamas and other radical Palestinians. Moreover, the anti-Israel rhetoric eventually undermines Abbas and anyone who conducts peace talks with Israel.

The Palestinian Authority has chosen to "educate" Israelis about the significance of peace while it has done almost nothing to persuade its own people to move towards moderation and pragmatism.
If the Palestinian Authority really wants to win the support of the Israeli public for peace, it should start by showing that it is making every effort to convince Palestinians to support the peace process.

Related Topics:  Israel  |  Khaled Abu Toameh

Labels: Bias, Bigotry, Communications, Controversy, Education, Human Relations, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Peace

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Errant Turn

"I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I'm sorry that they hurt the United States. At the time of my decision, as you know, I was dealing with a lot of issues, issues that are ongoing and continue to affect me.
"Although a considerable difficulty in my life, these issues are not an excuse for my actions. I understood what I was doing and the decisions I made. However, I did not fully appreciate the broader effects of my actions. Those factors are clear to me now."
U.S. Private Bradley Manning

Not his fault, poor young man. He was struggling with his sexual identity. A situation made far more complex by US military law that wanted to know nothing about the sexual orientation of its military members. Clearly the fault lies with society, with the confusion that it foists upon those considered not mainstream-gendered, and with a military apparatus that preferred not to complicate already complex relations between administration and human relations.

And then again, there is always childhood trauma to go back to; a mother who was raising a son while in a constant alcoholic stupor, and the very real possibility his "negative" personality traits represented a hallmark of fetal alcohol syndrome and Asperger's syndrome. That fairly well targets a full spectrum of social disadvantage and inherited misery. So, really -- not his fault.

The vulnerable state of this young man's persona came head-to-head with the "hyper-masculine" atmosphere prevailing in the military. His gender-identity disorder came full circle; a woman trapped in a man's body. And nowhere to turn. No release from pent-up confused emotions, no relief from the pressure, no one to confide to, nowhere to hide.

But it was within his capabilities, given his position, to take what others hid and reveal them. That might be construed as personal revenge against a system that made a mockery of the man uncertain of his malehood, feeling that nature and nurture had conspired to turn him inside out and upside down and spit him out a miserable hybrid whom society would despise.

Releasing diplomatic cables, war-zone logs and videos represented to someone who now claims to fully understand what he constructed in a monstrous lapse of intelligent judgement, a blueprint for emotional release, getting back at the system and at the society that made him something he was not and would not accept just what he was

He would prefer, at this juncture, not to be sentenced for life in prison, for the very thought of such a dread ending to a life deserving of some kind of break after serving a quarter of a century as a confused and vulnerable being, he would appreciate an life-saving alternative. Yes, he still disagrees about the choices his government made and the war its military fought.

But he realizes now that other alternatives were open to him, less spectacular and certainly far less punishing both to the country and to himself, as hapless victim of circumstances beyond his paltry control. He would like, please, to be permitted to attend college. Which would give him the opportunity to become a more "productive member of society".

In any event, his commanding officers should bear the brunt of responsibility for what poor Bradley Manning committed in betraying the trust of his country. Their oversight of the mentally-distressed young man should have yielded the realization that he was in no condition to be trusted and to be entrusted with the vital data he was permitted to manipulate.

So there, y'all.

Labels: Bias, Bigotry, Biology, Charity, Crimes, Discrimination, United States

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, August 17, 2013

Meting Out Justice

Revealing before a court of justice and a jury considered to be social peers of the accused, the details of evidence brought in a criminal trial resulting from an event that has raised the consciousness and related ire of both sides in a conflicting and ongoing issue of race relations, is the simple fact that race entered the trial unbidden by evidence. But in a confrontation between black and white in America, black sees itself as disadvantaged in any situation. So that even in situations which are person-to-person confrontations, race becomes an issue.

The jury of six women appointed to reach a just determination through their collective opinion resulting from exposure to the arguments and evidence brought forward by a prosecutor, challenged by a defence, reached their decision. And those who believe in the American system of justice believed that the matter was closed. The President of the United States of America declared that "A jury has spoken", and the matter was to be set aside, in the prosecution of George Zimmerman.

This man who was put on trial for second-degree murder was a neighbourhood watch volunteer of partial Hispanic extraction who confronted a young black teen on a dark, wet night inside a Florida gated community, convinced the youth was up to no good. Trayvon Martin had exited a convenience store where he had bought some snack items and was on his way back to the home of his father's girlfriend who lived in the community.

Just as an over-zealous George Zimmerman conceived that Trayvon Martin represented an obvious threat, the young man whose presence disturbed him also felt himself in turn to be in danger, followed by someone he didn't know, and whose purpose he didn't know other than, given the circumstances, must be a sinister one. George Zimmerman acted in a manner that was discouraged by the police with whom he was in telephone contact.

Trayvon Martin reacted in a manner urged upon him by someone with whom he was in excited, fearful telephone contact. He attempted to flee from the scene, only to find that his pursuer fled after him. When they did physically come in contact, Trayvon Martin felt he was fighting for his life, and so did George Zimmerman. George Zimmerman had initiated the situation, furthered it, and then concluded it by shooting to death someone he had no knowledge of

He was the direct cause of the untimely death of a young man. The crime was not racially motivated, but rather caused by suspicion born of thoughts of previous neighbourhood crimes, aided and abetted by bull-headed stupidity. George Zimmerman does bear guilt in the death of Trayvon Martin. But a jury has convinced itself that he was innocent of prior motivation in the death of the young man, that what resulted was spontaneous, and horribly regrettable. Acquitting him of murder.

The long history of racism, intolerance, bigotry, prejudice and discrimination in the United States against its black population, a history rife with humanity-degrading slavery, social indignity, incivility, human rights abuses, rape, lynchings, threats and brutally imposed social segregation which has long since been disavowed has left its festering resentment. People of the ilk of the Reverend Al Sharpton who has proven himself an able counter-racist have been busy stirring the black population to civil protests and violent acts of reprisal.

A current of threat  ripples throughout the country. The reality that within the country there is an underbelly of black youth who are uneducated, wildly uncivil, given to gangs and social deviance in drug dealing and violent crimes, most often taking place within their own communities, goes unremarked upon by either of the sparring communities. The black communities uncertain how to meet the challenge of turning black youth away from crime and violence, the white community unwilling to have charges of racism brandished should they raise the issue too loudly.

Into this toxic mixture comes the ambivalent reaction of the President of the United States of America and his administration. The black community has achieved the pinnacle of attainment and pride by the elevation of one of their own to the stature of the most elite executive administrator in the nation who has surrounded himself in powerful positions with other American blacks. As President of the United States his impressive status has a huge impact on the world at large.

Yet the spectre of past suffering and current slanders refuses to release them from the bonds of their own issues with racism. They see it where it does not exist. And their very own president who presides presumably equally to represent the best interests of all the people who inhabit the country most certainly empathizes with them. He has shared their pain. And he now has spoken in a manner geared to give impetus to the socially destabilizing reaction consuming his country.

"When you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away."
"Trayvon Martin could've been me 35 years ago." President Barack Obama made these statements yesterday, in defence of the nation's black reaction of outrage over the verdict.

"They,  they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn't a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't have to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put with every single day of their lives -- although that's what we tell ourselves -- but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger."

Sounds like a brooding, petulant, resentful young black man. And it was. Just one of many passages in President Barack Obama's memoirs, Dreams from My Father.

Labels: Bigotry, Crime, Crisis Politics, Human Relations, Hypocrisy, Justice, Racism, United States

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, July 20, 2013