Three gay teenagers are on death row in Iran: please help to try and save them
Iran is preparing once again to execute young gay men arrested while they were a minor.
Guilty of ‘lavat’ (i.e. sexual conduct between two men, regardless of penetration), the three teenagers do not yet have dates set for their state-sponsored murders, but according to Human Rights Watch and Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees it could happen any day with no warning.
They are Mehdi P., from Tabriz; Moshen G., from Shiraz; and Nemat Safavi, from Ardebil and who has been detained for over three years.
Under Iranian law lavat is “punishable by death so long as both the active and passive partners are mature, of sound mind, and have acted of free will” — something that not only conflicts with the boys’ age at the time of the alleged ‘offenses’, but also a gross violation of international law, which forbids, under any circumstance, the executive of juvenile offenders.
In 2008, the Deputy Attorney General of Iran announced that Iranian judicial authorities would ban the juvenile death penalty for non-murder-related offenses, effective immediately, pending parliamentary approval. Iran has signed two international treaties on the protection of children.
Nemat Safavi is part of the list maintained by Amnesty International of minors tried and awaiting execution in Iran. The European Parliament, the UN, and the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi have all urged Iran to end juvenile executions.
Read more about the cases in the Human Rights Watch report.
What can I do
This blog (in Spanish) is devoted to the cases http://nematsafavi.blogspot.com/ and has suggestions on what can be done, primarily:
- alerting the media (there has been virtually no media coverage)
- contacting Iranian embassies (it has links)
It also has an avatar (‘I ♥ Nemat’) for use in social media.
Spanish, French and Italian gay sites as well as some progressives in those countries and a few elsewhere have been reporting their cases.
IRQR are asking for donations which they say will help with the legal case in Iran. They are also calling for “all human rights organizations to take up this urgent cause. We ask that people write, fax, call, or email to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and any LGBT and/or international organizations to support Nemat and vigorously oppose his execution and the laws against homosexuals.”
There is a Facebook group: Save Nemat Safavi
Youtube video about Nemat (in Spanish)
If there is any action you can take please do. As far as we are aware, these gay kids haven’t been hung yet.
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Gays, Smith, Harman and other Labour ‘feminists’
This is a repost from exactly a year ago about the government’s policing and crime bill, which contains provisions to outlaw the purchase of sex from ‘coerced’ prostitutes and should become law next year.
Whilst looking at the follow-up to the Guardian’s revelations about the government’s misinformation around the trafficking of women I thought I’d check to see if the impact on gay men had acquired any mentions following my year-old post. Bar a brief mention in an Iain Dale post I could not.
In comments on a Catherine Bennett piece defending the legislation such as this one the actual impact on prostitutes of policing is outlined:
The woman from the ECP didnt defend the sex industry on Newsnight. She said the anti-trafficking crusade, premised on false statistics, has been used, first of all to justify raids, prosecutions and convictions of sex workers working together from flats. It seems that immigrant women have been particularly targeted as anti-trafficking laws have been used as an extension of immigration controls to get them deported. www.prostitutescollective.net. Secondly, she said that this crusade has been used to justify the Policing and Crime Bill which under the guise of targeting demand, that is clients, would push prostitution underground and sex workers into more danger.
Those who claim that the Policing and Crime Bill would somehow increase womens safety say nothing about the other measures which would: change the definition of soliciting on the street to make arrests easier, introduce forced rehabilitation of those arrested, and the targeting of brothels for raids and closure (It is well established that working from premises is much safer than working on the street, as women can work collectively and support each other), increase police powers to take sex workers hard won earnings.
Where are the expressions of concern or action to oppose this increased criminalization from those that claim to be concerned about victims? Did those women stop being victims when they decided to sell sex? What about the women working in Soho who were all raided a few months ago and were shouted at, called liars, threatened with prosecution. Or the women near Oxford Circus, one of whom had to lock herself in the toilet to stop the police taking (probably) illegal photos of them. Or the women in Baker Street who are raided three times in the last few months and who think they are being targeted because they are Black. Or the Black women from Leeds who was dragged out of her home in handcuffs where she worked ON HER OWN and prosecuted for running a disorderly house. Or the Brazilian woman who was convicted for trafficking for working with a few friends who she helped come over from Brazil, got imprisoned, nearly lost custody of her young son and is now facing deportation. Abuse of women doesnt seem to count with some people, who claim to care about victims, if the abusers are the police.
Convictions for offences like brothel-keeping (used against women working together with others) are soaring. More and more women are getting criminal records for what is essentially consenting sex, preventing those who may want to leave prostitution from getting other jobs, even when they are qualified for them. When New Zealand decriminalised prostitution five years ago the most dramatic change was that sex workers felt like they had more rights both to report violence but also to take action against harassment from employers. It seems that more women are saved from traffickers by other women in the sex industry than any government anti-trafficking crusade (especially if, when you look at how victims are treated, protecting vulnerable women doesnt seem to even be the aim.)
It is no accident that the Policing and Crime Bill is happening at the same time as the Welfare Reform Bill. That Bill abolishes Income Support, the only benefit single mothers and other carers have been able to rely on. Most prostitute women are mothers, especially single mothers. How many will be driven into prostitution by benefit cuts? So feminist ministers proud record will be to have driven women onto the streets with one bill, and arrest them with another.
Is this happening to gay male prostitutes, particularly migrant ones? I simply don’t know but there’s no reason to think it might well be. And, given the widespread disinterest, infact the frequent hostility, shown towards similarly marginalised LGBT asylum seekers, even those from places like Iran, there’s no reason to think that the ‘gay community’ would rush to defend them if it did.
~~~~~~~~~
Re-post
News that Jacqui Smith – bless – has found a compromise and will outlaw hiring prossies who have pimps.
This is a somewhat watered down version of what was being pushed by various Labour ‘feminist’ MPs – the so-called Swedish model of ‘prostitution law reform’, which completely outlaws paying for sex.
I’m indebted to blogging colleague Cosmodaddy who has dug up research showing that this ain’t working:
Again it’s a seductive argument, but bear in mind (which Prostitution Reform do not) that although the criminalisation of men using female prostitutes in Sweden (the model being adopted by Jacqui Smith) was accompanied by legislation decriminalising the selling of sex, there have been undesirable outcomes:
When the prostitution market disappears underground it is harder for the authorities to intercept the persons that really need help. In Gothenburg many young women seek help to detoxify because of their addiction to heroin and almost all of them have sold sexual services. But the city’s prostitution group (social workers) seldom comes in contact with these women because they don’t show up on the streets today.
The risk of infection have gone up because if a sexseller gets infected with a sexually transmitted disease, and the authorities advise customers to the sexworker to contact them, many are afraid to do so.
If a client meets a sexworker that he/she suspects is in need of help the client is scared to contact for example the social services. Anf if a customer meets a sexworker that he/she suspects is the victim of sexual trafficking that person is today scared of going to the police. Before you could obtain evidence against traffickers and pimps based on customer’s testimony. These days they aren’t likely to participate in trials and if they are forced to testify as the same time they are prosecuted for buying sex their testimony are not credible in the same way.
I used to work in HIV prevention, OF COURSE driving sex underground isn’t a good idea! Any HIV worker worth their salt will tell you this.
If you want to stop trafficking of women the answer is policing of criminals. Full, stop. Anything else (‘let’s make a law!’) is showboating.
But further, I found the original proposals from Harman et al anti-gay. Yes, anti-gay. Not ‘good for the gays’ as the Jews might put it.
I immediately thought when the Labour ‘feminists’ trumped up this idea – they’re forgetting the gays. Again.
Gay male prostitution is not generally pimp-driven, it’s a small business. Of course there are issues (self esteem and body fascism to name but two) but just as with Andrea Dworkin and her 80s fantasies about what gay male porn was it’s not the equivalent of the heterosexual version.
Largely from my Australian experience, I had numerous friends who dabbled or supported themselves for a while or did it for a one-off. It didn’t make them community outlaws. The experience wasn’t damaging, as it might be with women. Yes, some guys on heroin do it but they weren’t even gay. Gay male prostitution is part of a sexualised culture which many feminists plain don’t like.
Just as with Dworkin the collateral oppression of gays passed Harman et al by. That they actually have ‘oppressive’ power – despite being supposedly power-less women, despite being cabinet members – passed them by.
Must be the gay=male thing.
And they were trusting that Laura Norder will play fair (if they were thinking of us at all, which I doubt). When experience tells us otherwise (just look at Terror law misapplication).
Feminists are not always the allies of gay men. Lesson.
Postscript: I note that this proposed law apparently has something about funding ‘drug dealers’ in it – that is. it’s not just about pimps. Laura Norder will make a meal of gay prossies using this ‘law’. Bless Ms. Harman + Smith et al for creating this … not.
Postscript: Harman and Smith’s incompetence gets more obvious:
Human trafficking police unit to close
Britain’s only specialist police human trafficking unit is to be shut down after two years because of a lack of funding, the government said today.
A Home Office spokeswoman confirmed that money for the Metropolitan police team, which totalled £1.8m in the first year and £700,000 in the second, would no longer be available after April.
Experts and campaigners reacted to the move with dismay. Denise Marshall, the chief executive of the Poppy Project, which helps trafficked women after they have been rescued, said she was appalled at the decision, which would have a “hugely detrimental impact”.
“This is at best foolhardy and at worst discriminatory,” she said.
Postscript: I shall be continuing this meme on pinknews. In the meantime, my friend Tania Hurst has a few thoughtful comments (nod, well worth quoting in full):
At the moment in this country it’s widely seen as socially acceptable for men to pay for sex (whether with women or other men). In current law it is the prostitute selling sex who is viewed as the criminal – not the person buying the sex.
Whether a prostitute has “freely chosen” a sex industry profession, or has been forced into it (by pimps or traffickers) is largely seen as irrelevant and unimportant by the customer.
The question is: how does one change the perception that having sex with a man or woman who has been “forced” into prostitution is wrong – and that this is effectively rape? One way is to make a law against it.
This law is making a distinction between prostitutes who’ve “chosen” to work in the sex industry from those who are being “forced” to have sex (by pimps or traffickers).* [see note below]
The new law isn’t criminialising everyone who pays for sex, but it is saying buying sex from women (or men) who have been “forced” to have sex (by pimps or traffickers) is not acceptable. This woman (or man) has not freely chosen to have sex with you – you are raping them. You have a responsibility to recognise this and to know the difference when you go out to purchase sex.
I’m in agreement with (what I think is) the motivation behind this law: 1) making it socially unacceptable to purchase sex from someone who’s been forced into it. 2) reducing the demand for and ultimately the numbers of prostitutes who are being forced to have sex.
The real question is whether this law is the right way to achieve the objectives? Can the negative impacts that your article has highlighted, be mitigated? For example, maybe customers could be exempt from prosecution if they report to police that they believe a woman they had paid-for-sex with was trafficked or pimped? Are there other ways of getting HIV and substance-abuse services to prostitutes?
Or are there other better forms or combinations of legislation? Closing down the Human Trafficking police unit doesn’t seem particularly helpful if you’re trying to reduce the numbers of trafficked women. But prosecuting traffickers alone hasn’t changed the perception that it doesn’t matter whether the prostitute you pay for has been “forced” to have sex with you or not.
—————-
I have a couple of issues with your original article:
1. The UK law appears to be different from the Swedish law: the Swedish law is criminialising everyone who pays for sex; the UK one criminalises the purchase of sex from a prostitute who’s been forced to have sex. This is very different – and you can’t assume that the negative impacts will be the same.2. I don’t see how this law is prejudicial against gay prostitution (although I accept that the original proposals criminialising all paid-for sex may well have been). If a man buys sex from a male prostitute who isn’t being forced into having sex, then no criminal offence will have taken place. If gay male prostitution is not generally pimp-driven as you say, then this law doesn’t sound like it’s going to have any impact on gay prostitution and their customers at all!
* [I've put "chosen" and "forced" in quotes: I'm not going to get into a debate about whether a heroin addict and/or a previous victim of child abuse is really making a free choice when they sell themselves; nor am I going to discuss the varying levels of exploitation/protection that may occur in prostitute-pimp relationships]
As I said in discussion with Tania this, (my point) isn’t about heterosexual prostitution (which I may have an opinion about), it’s about the ‘collateral impact’ of law on the gay ‘community’. Tania’s point “it’s widely seen as socially acceptable for men to pay for sex” is worth quoting because I don’t think this is true and another example of something I don’t think is true in the gay community!
This idea underlines the gulf in understanding of how this issue relates in these two worlds.
And this community isn’t going to give much of a s**t about people like prostitutes – there is zero comment already on this proposed law. There are a lot of issues here, but it’s unlikely that many of them in relation to gay prostitutes are being even vaguely considered. That’s my point.
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Iran prepares to execute a young man accused of sodomy
Source: Tetu
By Blaise Gauquelin
(Google translation)
Nemat Safavi was 16 when Iranian police arrested him. Convicted of sodomy, was sentenced to death and still awaiting his execution.
Reportedly, Iran is preparing once again to execute a young man arrested while he was a minor. Nemat Safavi, who was convicted of having practiced “sex acts that are not admitted, was sentenced by the court of Ardabil in Iranian Azerbaijan, the death penalty. Detained for over three years, he now expects that the supreme court approves the sentence and no information is given by the justice of his fate.
Iran has signed two international treaties on the protection of children. The country has pledged not to execute any citizen minor when the facts repprochés. Nemat Safavi is part of the list maintained by Amnesty minors tried and awaiting execution in Iran. The European Parliament, the UN, the Nobel Peace Shirin Ebadi urged Iran to end juvenile executions in vain.
Two other young men disappeared
Furthermore, in February 2008, two young men, ages 18 and 19, were arrested under the same conditions and in the same region. Identified as the Loghman Hamzeh-for and Hamze Tchave initially, these two Iranians have since given most of their new friends.
L’Iran s’apprête à exécuter un jeune homme accusé de sodomie
Par Blaise Gauquelin
Nemat Safavi avait 16 ans lorsque la police iranienne l’a arrêté. Reconnu coupable d’acte de sodomie, il a été condamné à mort et attend toujours son exécution.
Selon nos informations, l’Iran s’apprête une nouvelle fois à exécuter un jeune homme arrêté alors qu’il était mineur. Nemat Safavi, reconnu coupable d’avoir pratiqué «des actes sexuels qui ne sont pas admis», a été condamné par le tribunal d’Ardabil, en Azerbaidjan iranien, à la peine de mort. Détenu depuis plus de trois ans, il attend désormais que la cour suprême valide la sentence et aucune information n’est donnée par la justice sur son sort.
L’Iran a signé deux traités internationaux portant sur la protection de l’enfance. Le pays s’est engagé à ne plus exécuter aucun citoyen mineur au moment des faits repprochés. Nemat Safavi fait partie de la liste tenue à jour par Amnesty des mineurs jugés et en attente d’exécution en Iran. Le Parlement européen, l’Onu, la prix Nobel de la Paix Chirine Ebadi ont demandé à l’Iran de mettre fin aux exécutions de mineurs, en vain.
Deux autres jeunes hommes disparus
Par ailleurs, en février 2008, deux jeunes hommes, âgés de 18 et 19 ans, ont été arrêtés dans les mêmes conditions et dans la même région. Identifiés sous le nom de Loghman Hamzeh-pour et de Hamze Tchavi dans un premier temps, ces deux Iraniens n’ont, depuis, plus donné de nouvelles à leurs amis.
Statement by Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees
Nemat Safavi, 21 years old, has been sentenced to death by the juvenile court in Ardebil, a city northwest Iran.
Queers in Iran are put to death and persecution by their government, simply for being who they are.
Now more than ever we need your help.
According to the Human Rights Activist Group in Iran, Nemat was detained by Iranian authorities when he was 16 years old because of his homosexual acts (Lavat). He was sentenced to death after being tried in the court of Ardebil. Mr. Safavi spent time since his arrest in a ‘rectification and education’ centre, and is now being kept in the division of youths in an Ardebil prison.
A final determination of Nemat’s fate will be made by Iran’s Supreme Court. However, these sentences frequently stand as decided.
Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees calls on all human rights organizations to take up this urgent cause. We ask that people write, fax, call, or email to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and any LGBT and/or international organizations to support Nemat and vigorously oppose his execution and the laws against homosexuals.
Your donation to IRQR helps us pursue every legal avenue to save the lives of people like Nemat Safavi. The fight is far from over.
Please, donate now: http://irqr.net/donation.htm
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Notes on #janmoir – Don’t ‘Blame’ Fry
I’ve seen a few media reports now on yesterday’s unprecedented new media revolt against the Daily Mail.
Of all of them the Huffington Post’s takes the biscuit for ‘worst take’. They reckon it’s about a fight between the Daily Mail and The Guardian. Seriously. I suspect a showbizzy intern selected their quote heavy, googled contribution.
A meme in practically all the reports is the role of Stephen Fry. This has now culminated in a Telegraph piece titled ‘Don’t laugh – Stephen Fry is giving the orders now.’
Those, like Fry, who are “deeply dippy about all things digital”, argue that the internet is the ultimate tool of democracy. But it could just be that historians – if they are so permitted – might look back on this period as the moment when the techno-savvy few seized control of the minds of the many.
The blogger Guido Fawkes seems effectively to run British politics. Ashton Kutcher – actor and tweeter with over three million followers: “life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift” – is our spiritual leader. And Fry? Well, he’s bigger than both of them.
Where to start? Iain Dale has a lot more blog traffic than Guido. Not sure what Kutcher’s in there for save to keep the ‘celeb’s rule’ idea going (and his Twitter following like that of other Hollywood celebs doesn’t seem to translate to followers automatically watching their shows). And as for Fry?
I was actually dipping in-and-out of the #janmoir Twitter stream yesterday and very, very few of the tweets were Fry Retweets. Sure, his numbers are huge but the ‘Twitosphere’ is far, far, far huger. Presumably far too huge for most journalist’s to get their minds around.
By 2010, 26 Million (1 in 7) U.S. Adults Will Use Twitter Monthly.
Edited to add: Thanks to to commentator Ian Hopkinson for pointing to some evidence.
Here’s the trendastic tracking of #janmoir
Showing it peaking at 11am – @stephenfry first tweet on #janmoir was at 12:27pm.
What the ubiquitous Fry mentions in their reports are about is a journalistic laziness and the ever-present need for a celeb mention. A real piece of good work would be to actually track #janmoir all the way from where the first rock was thrown out to the furthest reach of the ripples.
Such as the excellent American analyst Evgeny Morozov‘s tweet:
notes on the new public sphere: Twitter has shrunk the Atlantic and purely local UK scandals are now global news
That’s why HuffPost bothered putting Gately on the front page – #janmoir was number one or two trending topic when they woke up, and it had that celeb angle they love.
It’s notable that they’ve ignored what it by far the most game-changing event on Twitter this week, #trafigura – something which Gill Hornby in the Telegraph thinks is also down to Mr Fry.
From his palm-top device .. he struck a major blow for press freedom – when the Dutch company Trafigura won an order preventing the press from discussing the impact of its pollutants on the African coast, Fry tweeted the details to his vast audience and the gag was lifted.
Sigh.
Real danger of far-right terrorism
Nick Griffin
Johann Hari has a piece in today’s Independent warning of a real danger of right-right extremists planting bombs.
The campaign I am talking about is not being planned by jihadis or fringe Irish nationalists but by white “neo-Nazis” who want to murder Asians, black people, Jews and gays in the bizarre belief it will trigger a “race war”.
They have struck before. Exactly a decade ago, a 22-year-old member of the British National Party called David Copeland planted bombs in Brixton, Brick Lane (where I live), and a gay pub in Old Compton Street. He managed to lodge a nail deep in a baby’s skull, and to murder a pregnant woman, her gay best friend, and his partner. He bragged: “My aim was political. It was to cause a racial war in this country. There’d be a backlash from the ethnic minorities, then all the white people would go out and vote BNP.”
Hari says that the police have made a number of arrests recently but this have received virtually no media attention. Bombing methods and encouragement circulate on far-right websites.
What has received attention, of course, is jihardist plots. But those who have taken this attention as a reason to blame all Muslims for the actions of a tiny minority are reluctant to apply the same arguments to themselves.
If Martin Amis was consistent, he should now declare: “The white community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from Hampshire or from Surrey … Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children.”
Saying that the BNP should be allowed into forums like BBC Question Time – so “sunlight” can be shone in their face – he suggests that people like Nick Griffin should be forensically challenged over far-right violence because it tolerates it within its ranks.
He claims he is “strongly” opposed to these freelance attacks – yet he has kept violent attackers in his senior team.
His chief lieutenant for years was a man called Tony Lecomber, who was jailed for three years in the 1980s for plotting to blow up the offices of a left-wing political party. After he was released, he and a gang then beat a Jewish teacher unconscious. When he was freed after another three years inside, he was swiftly promoted through the BNP ranks. He was only ditched after he approached a Liverpool hitman to discuss how they could “take out” a cabinet minister.
One of the leading figures in the BNP’s online operation, Lambertus Nieuwhof, tried to blow up a mixed-race school in South Africa in 1992. The BNP is happy to have him nonetheless. Nieuwhof says: “Everybody should be allowed to make a mistake.”
The BNP is not directly organising violence, but it has tolerated violent madmen in its midst, and its arguments have encouraged violence. Griffin has demanded “rights for whites with well-directed boots and fists”. He reacted to the Soho nail-bomb by one of his own party’s members by attacking the victims, saying they were “flaunting their perversion in front of the world’s journalists, [and had] showed just why so many ordinary people find these creatures disgusting”.
Let Griffin speak his filth to the nation, and sweat under David Dimbleby’s forensic questioning. He will only discredit himself.
Calling for far more attention on this very real threat, Hari says “the next person to bomb Britain might not look like Mohammed Sidiq Khan – he might look like me.”
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Mugging the rich bastard lawyers
If the famous media gaggers, the libel law firm Carter-Ruck, scourge of Private Eye, thought they’d scored another famous victory (these guys are big on bragging) suppressing news they hadn’t reckoned with social media.
#trafigura is as I type the #1 trending topic on Twitter (that’s in the whole world). The Spectator has already broken the wall between what the blogs will say and what the print media thinks it can get away with … and many, many more people are now aware of the very story a very rich set of bastards running a polluting company is paying them – presumably – many millions to kill.
In a few hours American bloggers will start picking up on the story enmasse. What’s Carter-Ruck going to do then? As @ElrikMerlin just pointed out to me ‘this is Streisand Effect in action’ – something which I have blogged about before.
When Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov tried the same trick, and created the same effect, it generated this quote from Boris Johnson (one of those inadvertently whacked by Usmanov’s ‘take-down’ action):
We live in a world where internet communication is increasingly vital, and this is a serious erosion of free speech.
This is what Carter-Ruck did:
The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.
Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.
The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.
This feels like another significant turning point for social media.
My updates throughout today
Nick Clegg has tweeted ‘Very interested concerned about this #trafigura / Guardian story the @LibDems are planning to take action on this’
Carter-Ruck to be Flash Mobbed.
Twitter panics over Trafigura:
Trafigura was deleted from trending topics, despite the fact it was obviously the top-trending topic. One minute it was top, the next it had vanished. Twitter’s trend explanations were also absent from any topics relating to Trafigura.
I don’t blame them, British libel laws are notorious for being swingeing, and Carter-Ruck’s efficacy in the area is well-know.
[#trafigua has now come back up trending topics]
@arusbridger #Guardian editor tweets: hoping to get into court today to challenge ban by #carterruck on reporting parliament. Watch this space
Wikileaks has updated on the report lying behind the attempted Guardian gag.
BBC finally reporting #guardiangag , fourteen hours after Guardian published.
Telegraph peeks out, surveys on #trafigura
Carter-Ruck are on Twitter (nb: could possibly be imposter). The tweets are unreal:
@carterruck is looking for a new slogan. “Defending the indefensible” #carterruckslogan
LibDems have tabled an urgent question.
The huge US liberal website Daily Kos is now onto #trafigura.
We want to put the Streisand Effect to work, and make hashtags #carterruck and especially #trafigura the top trending topics on Twitter. Please include these hashtags in your tweets of the next 24 hours.
First satirical take: Carter-Ruck successfully preserves Trafigura’s online reputation:
“We at Carter-Ruck are proud to be so effective in protecting such deserving clients, and look forward to working just as effectively for the reputations of similarly environmentally well-behaved companies around the globe,” said Carter-Ruck’s new directors of marketing George Monbiot and Julian Assange.
Guardian reports today’s legal action by them.
MP, who Guardian is currently prohibited from identifying, said he would ask the Speaker to consider taking action against Carter-Ruck for contempt of parliament.
The media lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said Lord Denning ruled in the 1970s that “whatever comments are made in parliament” can be reported in newspapers without fear of contempt.
He said: “Four rebel MPs asked questions giving the identity of ‘Colonel B’, granted anonymity by a judge on grounds of ‘national security’. The DPP threatened the press might be prosecuted for contempt, but most published.”
The right to report parliament was the subject of many struggles in the 18th century, with the MP and journalist John Wilkes fighting every authority – up to the king – over the right to keep the public informed. After Wilkes’s battle, wrote the historian Robert Hargreaves, “it gradually became accepted that the public had a constitutional right to know what their elected representatives were up to”.
Ungag the Guardian twibbon campaign.
Sky News Niall Paterson blogs:
Should there be any restrictions placed on the reporting and analysis of what is said (and written) in the Palace of Westminster? I’d argue not, save perhaps for those rare occasions when national security is truly at risk.
Yet this “sensitive” question appears on the Order Paper and the answer will appear in Hansard.
Gagged? This journalist is gagging at the court’s decision.
Carter-Ruck now under attack on Google Maps
Guardian report on lifting of gag.
journalism.co.uk commentary and background on past Carter-Ruck gagging attempts.
Number Ten petition to the Prime Minister:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to enshrine in law the absolute right of the media to report the proceedings of The House in full at all times.
Plus campaign website on same set up:
Tell your MP to stand up for the media’s right to report on politicians in Westminster: e-mail them in two minutes, now.
BBC: Guardian claims victory on ‘gag’ :
Newsnight will report on this case and the prevalence of media laws being used by large companies to restrict information on Tuesday 13 October 2009 at 10.30pm on BBC Two.
BBC media correspondent Nick Higham for BBC website, When is a secret not a secret?:
In the anarchic, anything-goes world of the internet, where freedom of speech is a frequently heard rallying cry, injunctions banning publication of anything are unpopular. This one seems to have acted like a red rag to a bull.
There is no doubt that the events of the past day have been profoundly democratic, entirely in keeping with the Bill of Rights’ sweeping away of kingly powers and its assertion of the primacy of openness among the governors of the people. In a parallel universe, attempts to muzzle parliament might be seen as treasonable – but while we’ll never have libel lawyers hearing the axe being sharpened in the Tower, the end result – a chilling effect on the silencers – is just as welcome, and welcomingly just.
Tweet from @wikileaks : Remember the UK press is STILL GAGGED from saying the toxic dumping report is on WikiLeaks HERE: http://bit.ly/v5rDJ
James Mackintosh for Financial Times, People power 1, Carter-Ruck and Trafigura 0:
Let’s hope Jack Straw, secretary of state for justice, listens: the trend towards ever-wider gagging orders gives big companies and the rich and powerful yet another way to strangle investigative journalism – as if the overly-restrictive libel and confidentiality laws were not bad enough.
Oil-trading company Trafigura knew that waste dumped in Ivory Coast in 2006 was hazardous.
Trafigura had persistently denied that the waste was harmful but internal e-mails show staff knew it was hazardous.
…
The chemical waste came from a ship called Probo Koala and in August 2006 truckload after truckload of it was illegally fly-tipped at 15 locations around Abidjan, the biggest city in Ivory Coast.In the weeks that followed the dumping, tens of thousands of people reported a range of similar symptoms, including breathing problems, sickness and diarrhoea.
Mark Pack spots an unfortunate quote being served up on the Carter-Ruck homepage and says I think Carter-Ruck might be changing this quote, don’t you?.
NBC News’ @AnnCurry tweets:
Victims of alledged toxic waste dumping by Trafigura Co. Its legal firm CarterRuck tried to stop this story: http://bit.ly/3jU0vD
Ian Douglas for the Telegraph, Context overcomes the law for Trafigura and the Guardian:
A search in Google News for Trafigura yielded the Guardian’s piece reporting the order, despite the word never being mentioned. So many people had linked to it using the name of the company that there was no need for the Guardian to break the order themselves, as the search engines determine the subject of a page by analysing those that link to it as much as the page itself.
Tweet from @BristleKRS:
Today’s twictionary words: 1: to #CarterRuck up; vb tr, to fail in exponential relationship to invoiced fee
Tory Politico is reporting that The Independent has removed a story, published on September 17, relating to Trafigura’s dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast. The story is still available through the google cache of the page.
Techpresident, The Internet as Toxic Avenger: Trafigura and the Ungagging of the Guardian:
Here you can see how the gagging of the Guardian was rapidly overwhelmed by mentions of Trafigura on Twitter, via Trendistic.
BBC Newsnight [Video], Dirty tricks and toxic waste in Ivory Coast.
Philippe Naughton for the Times, Twitter-power wins gagging victory over Carter-Ruck and Trafigura:
“Wow,” said one Twitterer among the deluge of comments. “Never heard of Trafigura before today.”
Tweet from Guardian Editor @arusbridger : Now support #Newsnight which is being sued by #Trafigura and #carterRuck over toxic waste expose http://tinyurl.com/pqf4dt
[Via PoliticsHome]: In the Commons this afternoon, Speaker John Bercow was urged to block future legal attempts to prevent the reporting of parliament, or to curtail MPs parliamentary privilege to speak freely.
Labour MP Paul Farrelly, whose question regarding Trafigura was the subject of the gag, asked Mr Bercow to investigate whether the Trafigura’s reprentatives, Carter Ruck, had acted in contempt of parliament.
Other members, including Lib Dem frontbencher David Heath and former shadow home secretary David Davis, also raised concerns.
Mr Bercow told MPs he would reflect on the matter, but insisted that the moves to gag The Guardian, which were dropped this afternoon, “in no way inhibited” parliamentary procedure.
“There is no queston of our own proceedure being in anyway inhibited. If the honorable member wants to pursue this as a matter of principle there is of couse, as he will doubtless know, an established procedure of raising it with me in writing,” he said.
#trafigura has now dropped off the top ten Twitter trending topics.
Marc Ambinder for The Atlantic Online, The Guardian Gets To Speak, But Britain Deserves A Free Press:
In practice, when compared to, well, almost every other country in the history of the world, Britain’s press has flourished. But it has done so without the type of prior right that gives the press in the U.S. its moral force. While the press cannot print anything it wants in either the U.S. or Britain, it is much easier in Britain for an entity to obtain a pre-publication injunction, or for some to win a libel lawsuit, or for parliament to bottle up debate, or for government to prevent journalists from publishing secrets. It is much harder to obtain information from the government. Still, it should be remarked that, believe or not, the Supreme Court of the United States did not formally agree that the government could not prevent the press from revealing “scandalous and defamatory” matter until 1933, in Near v. Minnesota.
It’s not so much that an expressed free press right would have resolved this dispute the right way.We’re still debating the limits of the bill of rights in this country. And in the U.K., the right to report on what someone says in parliament — or on the questions submitted to be answered by a minister of government — is already established in statute. But the existence of a constitutional right would shift the burden away from the interests with relatively less power than the state, the lawyers and the company.
Ian Reeves for Centre for Journalism, The injunction that failed, thanks to Twitter:
The digital revolution is about to lead to a legal one.
Tweet from @DistantHopes : Holy crap. Unless I miss my guess, check out how the disgraced #Trafigura literally had its name wiped from Twitscoop. [YouTube] 
Associated Press, The truth is already out there: Twitter users thwart oil company’s attempt to gag media.
LONDON (AP) — Bloggers and Twitter users thwarted a legal attempt Tuesday to stop Britain’s media from reporting the questions posed by a lawmaker in a parliamentary debate, spotlighting the power of new media to influence public policy.
Alan Brookland, My advice to Trafigura – just wait it out:
Before everyone gets too self-congratulatory, does any of this brief flirtation with online interest ever actually change anything? True, right now, lots of people who had probably never even heard of Trifigura will now be reading up on the dumping story, but, come tomorrow or next week, how many will still remember much about it? The bloggers will chalk up a victory and in this case the gagging order was actually lifted, but this is still an on-going case and nothing will have actually changed.
Sites like Twitter are excellent for catching a wave and occasionally rallying a large number of people behind a cause, but it’s yet to become the force for social change that it’s being made out to be. Real issues sadly aren’t resolved in an afternoon and a normally more complicated than 140 characters. If social media is really going to make the impact that it could, then we all need to keep an eye on the issues which we find important and persue them, not just jump on while it’s in the news and let it quietly die. Nag your MP, pester the mainstream media and ask the annoying questions, not just when the issue is in the news, but repeatedly. It’s only by proving that we can stay interested in an issue that change happens, otherwise people will just wait till the dust settles and everything will stay the same.
[PDF] The letter Index on Censorship sent to the courts in support of the Guardian.
Tweet from @pauloCanning : BBC #Radio4 news *finally (and briefly) reporting #gagcarterruck Fry gets quoted
Mike Butcher for Techcrunch, There’s nowhere to hide if your name trends on Twitter. Is there, Trafigura?
With the traditional media gagged, the new media had kicked in. That created a story which plenty of trad media outlets and blogs outside the UK could not ignore and started reporting on.
In other words, this kind of censorship is over. And I hope that British Libel law will change as a result. It must now move into the 21st Century and reflect new technology. After all, there is now a new defence. Feel libelled? You can defend your case just as much as the other guy online. Except of course if you are dumb enough not to register @carterruck, for instance.
Today’s UK Parliamentary questions over #trafigura gag order [YouTube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_J4ypytxaE
Guardian, Trafigura gag attempt unites house in protest:
Labour MP Paul Farrelly told the speaker, John Bercow, attempts by lawyers Carter-Ruck to gag the media could be a “potential contempt of parliament”.
The Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris said there was a need to “control the habit of law firms” of obtaining secrecy injunctions, and his colleague David Heath told the Commons a “fundamental principle” was being threatened: that MPs should be able to speak freely and have their words reported freely.
On the Conservative side, David Davies criticised the rising use of “super-injunctions”, in which the fact of the injunction is itself kept secret. He said courts should not be allowed to grant injunctions forbidding the reporting of parliament.
CharonQC, Lawcast 155: The Guardian Gag affair with Carl Gardner.
Catherine Mayer for Time: Twitter Triumphant: Attempts to Gag Newspaper Are Thwarted By Tweets:
Twitterers across the world colored their avatars green to show support for the protestors who took to Iran’s streets after the country’s disputed elections earlier this year. Users of the micro-blogging site might now consider overlaying their avatars with a film of sludge brown as a mark of their spontaneous, collective action to help undermine an attempt by the international oil traders Trafigura to gag a British newspaper reporting on a toxic dumping case.
Daily Mail, Law firm’s ‘Kafkaesque’ bid to block reporting of Parliamentary question is defeated – makes no mention of either Trafigura or Twitter!
Professional journal The Chemical Engineer has also been served with an injunction by Carter-Ruck for Trafigura.
Channel Four News report, Parliamentary question ban lifted.
Jon Snow talked to Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and asked him what had happened after the publication of this morning’s paper.
He told Channel 4 News: “The blogosphere went berserk about a story that we published on our front page this morning, in which we said we can’t report a story for reasons we can’t tell you.
“After which there was about 16 hours of mayhem out there in the Twitter-sphere; and about an hour before we were due in court we received a letter from the lawyers saying ‘we give in’.
“What has changed was that for the past six weeks we have been faced with an injunction – a so-called super injunction – which not only meant not only could we not tell anyone we had been injuncted, but that we could not mention the company involved either – I think this is a very dangerous phase in English law.”
Tweet from @friendsofdarwin No mention of #trafigura or #carterruck on BBC 10 o’clock News. 5 minutes about racehorse’s retirement. #bbcfail
Gillian Shaw on canada.com, Twitter backs Guardian newspaper in fight for free speech: A win for all:
Today marked a watershed moment in which social media stepped in to quash an attempt to gag a newspaper.
Guardian, How super-injunctions are used to gag investigative reporting:
Libel lawyers Carter-Ruck and Schillings have proved adept at persuading judges that injunctions should now be granted on privacy grounds. Some tabloid newspapers are being served with “a handful” of such orders each week, according to media lawyers. The Guardian has been served with at least 12 notices of injunctions that could not be reported so far this year, compared with six in the whole of 2006 and five the year before.
The motivation is straightforward, according to Mark Stephens, a partner at law firm Finer Stephens Innocent. “As the libel and privacy capital of the world, people are coming here [to London] to bully the media and NGOs into not reporting on their nefarious activities,” he said.
Financial Times, Web’s effect on media law put to test:
Media lawyers, however, focused on the fact that the rulings of UK courts were not enforceable in the US.
Many of the servers hosting websites such as Facebook and Twitter are based in the US, meaning information cannot be suppressed.
Keith Ashby, head of litigation at Sheridans, said: “The difficulty is that injunctions cannot readily be obtained in the English courts against overseas internet service providers which would prevent them making the information available.”
Mr Ashby added: “If people get a whiff that publication of information has been injuncted in the print media, they are getting more canny about how to find the information on the internet.”
Michael Smyth, head of public policy at Clifford Chance, said: “We should not be surprised that the law finds it difficult to keep pace with technological advance and it is no answer in an era when judges are required to act proportionately to make a blanket order directed at the whole world.
“It is common practice for an injunction obtained against one newspaper to be copied to the whole of Fleet Street so that the market is aware of its terms and also bound by it. That’s the easy bit. What, however, of electronic publishers offshore about whom one knows next to nothing?” he added.
Mark Stephens of Finers Stephens Innocent agreed: “The issue with Twitter and SMS [text messaging] is that injunctions are not enforceable as you can’t stop people talking and in any case the servers which host these websites are in the US and outside the jurisdiction of the English courts.”
He pointed out that the order covering The Guardian was enforceable in England and Wales only, meaning that the Scottish and Irish media could report the parliamentary question.
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LGBT history making in DC: Inspirational, evocational, provocational
Sunday’s march for LGBT equality in Washington DC was a non-stop fest of speech making. From the fantabulous youth to the glorious head of the NAACP to ‘Let the sunshine in’ (and virtually all stops in-between). It was a Call To Action and then some. It made me teary, it would make anyone who believes in civil rights, human rights, teary.
Here are my tweets (back to front):
- pauloCanning #NEM ‘Let the sunshine in’ frm Hair perfect finish
- pauloCanning: RT @ChefMark ‘A free and Equal people do not tolerate prioritization of their rights. They do not accept compromises’ Cleve Jones #NEM
- pauloCanning: #nem Cleve Jones IS the mountaintop!
- pauloCanning: RT @MEGAFamily Urvashi Vaid: ‘Battle for the direction of this country’ #NEM < she’s talkin revolution baby!
- pauloCanning: RT @jdillman http://twitpic.com/l5wjw – @jdillman, @jtrybus #”Homomentum!” #NEM < :}}}
- pauloCanning: #NEM very moved by Julian Bond citing LG he worked alongside in 60s as reason for his solidairty now
- pauloCanning: @SunnyStokes I’m right with you! #NEM She was inspirational
- pauloCanning: Who is Staceyann Chin? #NEM Jamaican superstar http://bit.ly/4xatwu (expand
) It takes a poet
- pauloCanning: Michelle Clunie quoting Coretta Scott King #NEM If she were alive she would be there but NAACP head still to come
- pauloCanning: RT @teebalicious I’m old enough to remember the Silence = Death days + I am in love with this beautiful sea of #LGBT people #NEM < say it!
- pauloCanning: #NEM severe drought of older white men on this platform. This is why it’s making such an impact
- pauloCanning @Becky_R My pleasure! I’m from UK like Billie Myers, watching on C-Span and so moved by #NEM
- pauloCanning: @Frannyo nope! http://bit.ly/PqY7X (expand) #NEM
- pauloCanning: Katharine Lee Bates, the lesbian who wrote America The Beautiful http://bit.ly/1fzxOs (expand) #NEM
- pauloCanning: RT @AngryQueer America the Beautiful was written by a lesbian – #nem
- pauloCanning: Hah! Billie Myers just said ficking on C-Span! #NEM
- pauloCanning: Lady GaGa ‘Obama: ARE YOU LISTENING!!!!’ #NEM
- pauloCanning: As LadyGaGa takes stage remember was 11 years ago today, Judy Shepard was watching as Matthew lay in a coma in Fort Collins, Colo. #nem
- pauloCanning: #NEM the announcer reminds me of a character from Best in Show
- pauloCanning: RT @unitethefight Kim Coco Iwamoto, ‘Our children are learning to discriminate. Our children are learning how to hate themselves’ #NEM
- pauloCanning: @toastedgrrl #NEM I related when he spoke about AIDS and what it was like – many there would be remembering (and honouring)
- pauloCanning BBC reporting already on #NEM http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8301791.stm
- pauloCanning RT @malik_photog dan choi is a powerful speaker. and WORK for quoting kahlil gibran! #NEM
- pauloCanning: #NEM Dan Choi just read a poem in Arabic. Incredible
- pauloCanning: #NEM loudest cheer yet for Judy Sheppard. She is a f*cking saint. ‘Evrybody smile. You should be so proud of yrself”
- pauloCanning: Go Cynthia Nixon! #nem
- pauloCanning: RT @unitethefight: More pics of hundreds of thousands on Washington Mall! http://bit.ly/Zlb40 (expand) #NEM < + Lt. Dan Choi
- pauloCanning: #NEM Sam Sussman young straight #equality champion speaking is making me tear up! Wow! ‘In our America we will not tolerate prejudice’
- pauloCanning: RT @hardcorps80204 “How many more tears must be shed” David Mixner #NEM
- pauloCanning: @toastedgrrl David Mixner now speaking #nem about the reality of AIDS in the 90s. Incredibly moving
- pauloCanning: RT @rodmccullom #NEM #Latino #gay youth activist Richard Aviles http://twitpic.com/l5bpx //very inspirational < totally!
- pauloCanning: #socitm09 @liz_azyan sorry Liz no follow :’ #NEM LGBT Washington march is history, wonderful, amazing speakers
- pauloCanning: #NEM C-span not showing speakers names, find them here > http://bit.ly/49sMT5 (expand) #NEMrally
- pauloCanning: RT @LauraAndRudy WOW, Aiyi’nah Ford (co-host ListenUp internet radio program) is giving one HELL of a speech at #NEM right now!! < she’s FAB
- pauloCanning RT @Ameriqueer Just took a pic w/ Cynthia Nixon! http://twitpic.com/l4i4h #NEM #NEMrally
- pauloCanning: RT @jacobbrwr Either the gays are in control of Twitter or the #NEM is actually a big deal. Either way, it’s an exciting day < both :]
- pauloCanning: RT @ahideg RT @dcconcierge Now I’m marching at #NEM with Lady GaGa (and her bodyguards)!!! http://twitpic.com/l4yl3
- pauloCanning: So many young people on stage @ #NEM This is wonderful
- pauloCanning: RT @elideep ‘I say to Barney Frank, you are out of touch from the seat of power you hold.Does this march matter?’ >earth-shaking cheers #NEM
- pauloCanning: RT @just_someguy RT @toastedgrrl: They just called out Barney Frank. #nem – YES THEY SURE AS HELL DID! < Good!
- pauloCanning: #nem #NATIONAL #EQUALITY #DC live now on C-Span http://c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN_wm.aspx
- pauloCanning: RT @bethannon RT @LAmaleCA: Fox News just estimated the #NEM crowd at 2.5 million people. Congrats, guys! / SRSLY? FOX??
- pauloCanning: RT @veganindigo beautiful RT @dsrbroadway http://twitpic.com/l4oad – There is an actual rainbow above us @broadwayimpact AMAZING!!! #NEM
- pauloCanning: RT @LAmaleCA http://twitpic.com/l55c1 – in my lifetime our marriage was illegal too. #nem #NATIONAL #EQUALITY
You can watch the whole thing here and I will add video highlights as I find them.
UPDATE
Video from the day. added here.
Obama derangement syndrome
As always, perfect sense from Rachel Maddow on Obama’s Nobel – it echoes my feelings about the shock announcement.
Michael Moore has more to say on exactly why Obama desrves the Nobel.
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“Don’t tell me to wait for my freedom”
During the campaign for the Democratic nomination Obama gave one interview to an LGBT publication in which he said the following:
Anybody who’s been at an LGBT event with me can testify that my message is very explicit — I don’t think that the gay and lesbian community, the LGBT community, should take its cues from me or some political leader in terms of what they think is right for them. It’s not my place to tell the LGBT community, “Wait your turn.” I’m very mindful of Dr. King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” where he says to the white clergy, “Don’t tell me to wait for my freedom.”
He repeated this point, as President, in his speech tonight to the Human Rights Campaign.
Here’s my tweets as I listened to his speech.
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner “I love you Barack” “I love you back”
pauloCanning:#hrc dinner Obama: “It is a privilege to be here tonight to open for Lady GaGa”
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner He’s referencing Stonewall as ‘inspiring’
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner simple message “here with you in that fight”
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner ‘it’s not for me to tell you to be patient’ – as with civil rights – now I’m teary
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner ‘you know – and I know – we don’t want to be defined by one part of us that makes us whole’
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner ‘Do not doubt the direction we’re heading +the destination we will reach’
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner ‘we will put a stop to discrimination against gays and lesbians’
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner ‘we’re pushing for a employee non-discrimination bill. we’re ging to put a stop to it.’
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner ‘we are rescinding the ban on entering US based on HIV status’
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner ‘I will end DADT, that’s my commitment to you’
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner ‘I’ve called on Congress to repeal DOMA’
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner ‘It’s about our common humanity, our ability to walk in someone else’s shoes’
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner now he’s talking about PFLAG ‘that’s the story of America’
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner ‘tonight somewhere in America a young person … ‘ THAT’S leadership
pauloCanning: #hrc dinner brilliant rhetoric, worried by the look on his face
The speech was amazing. Historic.
Like the audience, who spent most of their time on their feet, I was really moved to hear a US President say what he said. His last flourish, which stuck progress of LGBT equality firmly into the mainstream of the ‘American dream’, I couldn’t capture quickly enough. It was his classic rhetorical end flourish and he stuck it firmly onto the LGBT cause.
But, but … perhaps that’s why I noticed the look. He wasn’t smiling. He knew that outside the cheering crowd he faced weren’t just pissed LGBT at the lack of actual progress on issue after issue but a mountain of opposition to everything he’d pledged.
Remember, this was the day on which he’d been awarded the Nobel. On what he represents he’d got that acknowledgment and that’s a f*cking heavy burden.
I wish I’d captured that exact look as he walked off the stage because it seemed to me one of a man who believed what he’d said, every word, but understood fully what ‘change’ actually means.
A bitter, bitter fight lies behind “don’t tell me to wait for my freedom”. As always, it’s accompanied by the background/backroom faint (to some) buzz accompanying it in the LGBT movement between those who would be inside and those who’d be outside, demanding.
Tomorrow’s LGBT march on the Capitol is for the demanders and something tells me Obama is with them.
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Find out about LGBT asylum issues via Twitter
LGBT Asylum News (formally Save Mehdi Kazemi) is now on Twitter. Follow us to get notified of all new posts.
You can also subscribe via RSS or email.
The site, which welcomes new contributors, covers general asylum issues as well as news from all over the world – largely the third world – which relates to LGBT asylum seekers.
The Eight Stages of Genocide
How can we predict and prevent genocides? Greg Stanton outlines his groundbreaking theory on the eight stages of genocide: classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination and denial.
Genocide in Darfur, he argues, has proceeded through these stages before our eyes. Genocide could have been prevented by means of intervention at any one of a number of critical points in the past, but the international response has amounted to too little, too late.
This has always been the case and I don’t see this changing anytime soon, despite the best efforts of fantastic groups like Avaaz though groups like them remain our best hope, as does the work of people like Stanton who help people understand that – yes – things can be done and that genocide is not some ‘natural, unstoppable force’ like an earthquake or a tornado.
One starting point would be for those responsible for doing nothing to be seen to learn lessons and admit their errors. For ‘never again!’ to mean anything, it’s essential. This is why the campaign around Belgium, for example, to own up to its horrific history in the Congo is so important, as important as for Serbia to own up to its role in the Balkan’s genocides in the 90s.
It’s also close very close, to home. This is from a post if mine last year about Hillary Clinton’s claim that she tried to stop the Rwandan genocide.
Rewriting history over Rwanda
The Americans weren’t alone. The British, the French, the Belgians and much of the rest of Africa all either didn’t do anything or actively stopped aid. They all looked for their own interests and none had any interest in stopping genocide.
It was Britain’s ambassador to the UN, Sir David Hannay, who proposed that the UN reduce its force. A year after the slaughter, the Foreign Office sent a letter to an international inquiry saying that it still did not accept the term genocide, seeing discussion on whether the massacres constituted genocide as “sterile”. Then Ministers John Major, Douglas Hurd, Malcolm Rifkind and Lynda Chalker have never even been asked about their role.
Virtually no-one emerges heroically (Canadian peacekeeper Roméo Dallaire is one and his view on Clinton’s claims would be interesting to hear). In fact I would urge anyone to make themselves read the harrowing background as an object lesson in international power politics and its victims – a million of them in Rwanda. There’s a blog which covers the 100 days before and during the slaughter in detail. ‘A People Betrayed’ by Linda Melvern is very good.
For Hillary to now try to adopt that heroic mantle is, as commentators have noted, worse than ‘monstrous’.
Almost – almost – as monstrous as this comment from Gordon Brown:
Hat Tip: Domino
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Why they are screaming ‘socialism’
A commentator to Andrew Sullivan’s blog gives some background on the right-wing American ‘tea baggers’ which is essential information for anyone wanting to understand WTF is going on.
It’s worth quoting in full:
Of course they are screaming ‘socialism’. They’ve been doing that since the 50s at least. They’re not talking about economic redistribution of wealth – they never have been. They’ve been talking about redistribution of privilege this whole time. They called MLK a communist because he wanted blacks to have the same rights as whites, and to them that was a redistribution of the privilege that whites had ‘earned’.
In their view, white, Christian, heterosexuals have earned something that gays, non-Christians, and non-heteros have failed to work hard enough at. It’s been a class war from the outset, just not one based around income or net worth – mostly because the whites in the south were economically pretty bad off and blacks in the north were catching up to them.
This picture shows they were pushing the same buttons half a century ago that they are today. Anti-christ, communism – it’s all the same as it is today and is well known code. It’s why the protesters will decry socialism today but wouldn’t have under Bush – it’s all tied to race and other social objectives and has nothing really to do with taxation, deficits, and big government. You probably missed it when you came to the US, but this is pretty old game – particularly to guys like Carter that grew up around it.
Past posts by me on the ‘teabaggers’:
- US health ‘debate’: the dangers of rhetoric and the need for responsibility
- Daily Mail has joined the American lunatic fringe
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Where is Twitter on the genocides happening right now in the DR of Congo? Or the slaughter of indigenous people in Peru? Where is Brown? Where is Sarah Brown!?
Here is a list of the genocides taking place now in the world.
The media doesn’t give a damn and, unfortunate but true, neither do most Twitter users.