lamp-post-form

FAIR: Down the Memory Hole

2006-07-30T01:47:00.000+02:00

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media Advisory
Down the Memory Hole
Israeli contribution to conflict is forgotten by leading papers

7/28/06

In the wake of the most serious outbreak of Israeli/Arab violence in years, three leading U.S. papers—the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times—have each strongly editorialized that Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were solely responsible for sparking violence, and that the Israeli military response was predictable and unavoidable. These editorials ignored recent events that indicate a much more complicated situation.

Beginning with the Israeli attack on Gaza, a New York Times editorial (6/29/06) headlined "Hamas Provokes a Fight" declared that "the responsibility for this latest escalation rests squarely with Hamas," and that "an Israeli military response was inevitable." The paper (7/15/06) was similarly sure in its assignment of blame after the fighting spread to Lebanon: "It is important to be clear about not only who is responsible for the latest outbreak, but who stands to gain most from its continued escalation. Both questions have the same answer: Hamas and Hezbollah."

The Washington Post (7/14/06) agreed, writing that "Hezbollah and its backers have instigated the current fighting and should be held responsible for the consequences." The L.A. Times (7/14/06) likewise wrote that "in both cases Israel was provoked." Three days and scores of civilian deaths later, the Times (7/17/06) was even more direct: "Make no mistake about it: Responsibility for the escalating carnage in Lebanon and northern Israel lies with one side...and that is Hezbollah."

As FAIR noted in a recent Action Alert (7/19/06), the portrayal of Israel as the innocent victim in the Gaza conflict is hard to square with the death toll in the months leading up to the current crisis; between September 2005 and June 2006, 144 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israeli forces, according to a list compiled by the Israeli human rights group B'tselem; 29 of those killed were children. During the same period, no Israelis were killed as a result of violence from Gaza.

In a July 21 CounterPunch column, Alexander Cockburn highlighted some of the violent incidents that have dropped out of the media’s collective memory:

Let's go on a brief excursion into pre-history. I’m talking about June 20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car. Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded 15.

Back we go again to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a van in another attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.

Now we're really in the dark ages, reaching far, far back to June 9, 2006, when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing eight civilians and injuring 32.

That's just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip over the bodies of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded, all of them Palestinians, most of them women and children.

On July 24, the day before Hamas' cross-border raid, Israel made an incursion of its own, capturing two Palestinians that it said were members of Hamas (something Hamas denied—L.A. Times, 7/25/06). This incident received far less coverage in U.S. media than the subsequent seizure of the Israeli soldier; the few papers that covered it mostly dismissed it in a one-paragraph brief (e.g., Chicago Tribune, 7/25/06), while the Israeli taken prisoner got front-page headlines all over the world. It's likely that most Gazans don’t share U.S. news outlets' apparent sense that captured Israelis are far more interesting or important than captured Palestinians.

The situation in Lebanon is also more complicated than its portrayal in U.S. media, with the roots of the current crisis extending well before the July 12 capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. A major incident fueling the latest cycle of violence was a May 26, 2006 car bombing in Sidon, Lebanon, that killed a senior official of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group allied with Hezbollah. Lebanon later arrested a suspect, Mahmoud Rafeh, whom Lebanese authorities claimed had confessed to carrying out the assassination on behalf of Mossad (London Times, 6/17/06).

Israel denied involvement with the bombing, but even some Israelis are skeptical. "If it turns out this operation was effectively carried out by Mossad or another Israeli secret service," wrote Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s top-selling daily (6/16/06; cited in AFP, 6/16/06), "an outsider from the intelligence world should be appointed to know whether it was worth it and whether it lays groups open to risk."

In Lebanon, Israel's culpability was taken as a given. "The Israelis, in hitting Islamic Jihad, knew they would get Hezbollah involved too," Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at Beirut’s Lebanese American University, told the New York Times (5/29/06). "The Israelis had to be aware that if they assassinated this guy they would get a response."

And, indeed, on May 28, Lebanese militants in Hezbollah-controlled territory fired Katyusha rockets at a military vehicle and a military base inside Israel. Israel responded with airstrikes against Palestinian camps deep inside Lebanon, which in turn were met by Hezbollah rocket and mortar attacks on more Israeli military bases, which prompted further Israeli airstrikes and "a steady artillery barrage at suspected Hezbollah positions" (New York Times, 5/29/06). Gen. Udi Adam, the commander of Israel’s northern forces, boasted that "our response was the harshest and most severe since the withdrawal" of Israeli troops from Lebanon in 2000 (Chicago Tribune, 5/29/06).

This intense fighting was the prelude to the all-out warfare that began on July 12, portrayed in U.S. media as beginning with an attack out of the blue by Hezbollah. While Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers may have reignited the smoldering conflict, the Israeli air campaign that followed was not a spontaneous reaction to aggression but a well-planned operation that was years in the making.

"Of all of Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared," Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, told the San Francisco Chronicle (7/21/05). "By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board." The Chronicle reported that a "senior Israeli army officer" has been giving PowerPoint presentations for more than a year to "U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks" outlining the coming war with Lebanon, explaining that a combination of air and ground forces would target Hezbollah and "transportation and communication arteries."

Which raises a question: If journalists have been told by Israel for more than a year that a war was coming, why are they pretending that it all started on July 12? By truncating the cause-and-effect timelines of both the Gaza and Lebanon conflicts, editorial boards at major U.S. dailies gravely oversimplify the decidedly more complex nature of the facts on the ground.

Feel free to respond to FAIR (fair@fair.org). We can't reply to everything, but we will look at each message. We especially appreciate documented examples of media bias or censorship. And please send copies of your correspondence with media outlets, including any responses, to fair@fair.org.

Brian Haw: The Polished Mirror

2006-07-10T17:27:00.000+02:00

by Sean M. Madden
iNoodle.com
10 July 2006

Tony Blair is forced to drive past Brian Haw’s five-year-long peace vigil on the eastern edge of Parliament Square each time the prime minister travels from Downing Street to the House of Commons. Yes, Virginia, there is justice in this world after all. We needn’t wait for God nor history to judge the PM, as he suggests.

For nearly half a decade, Mr Haw has shone for all of us as a highly polished mirror, reflecting back our individual and collective conscience, to our delight or dread. To gain a better sense of Mr Haw’s commitment to his, our, cause, ask yourself, “Where was I on 2 June 2001, the day Mr Haw came to the Square?”. What have you accomplished over the course of these years? What has transpired in your life these past 1,864 days? Throughout, Mr Haw has lived, “24/7”, outside in the Square, through heat, rain, snow and freezing cold.

Despite the UK government’s varied attempts to rid Mr Haw as an irreverent and impervious gadfly to Mr Blair’s and certain MPs’ consciences, the former still resides in the Square. However, in the dark, wee hours of 23 May, Mr Haw’s 40 metres of demonstration was reduced by 78 police officers to three metres, the limit set by the conditions imposed upon Mr Haw after the 8 May ruling.

On 8 May, the government won its case at the Court of Appeal, which found, in contrast to the High Court ruling in July 2005, that Mr Haw is not exempt from Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA) which requires police authorisation to hold a demonstration within the designated area within one kilometre of Parliament Square. The High Court had ruled that he and his displays could not be removed from the Square because his continuing protest was in place prior to SOCPA’s passage. Yet, now that the Court of Appeal has overruled the High Court in favour of the government, Mr Haw—who refuses to end his demonstration—was left to either apply for permission, in which case the Metropolitan Police were likely to impose conditions on his demonstration, or be removed by police from Parliament Square. In co-ordination with his solicitor, Mr Haw decided to apply for authorisation. As the two anticipated, the police imposed conditions which led to the 23 May nighttime police operation to remove his banners, placards and flags as well as other personal possessions. Many of the displays were given to Mr Haw in support of his protest.

Mr Haw began his one-man demonstration on 2 June 2001 in protest of the, then, nearly eleven-year-long sanctions against Iraq which UNICEF reported in 1999 were responsible for the deaths of half a million children, under five years of age, during the eight years between 1991 and 1998. His protest on behalf of the Iraqi people continued when the economic sanctions turned to armed warfare and, then, occupation.

When I interviewed Mr Haw on 2 April at the “Naming the [Iraqi civilian] Dead” demonstration—another unauthorised and, thus, criminalised peaceful protest—in Parliament Square, he said the following:

I came as one individual to begin with, with Mom and Dad—Mr and Mrs God—holding my hands. There’s somebody upstairs who loves and cares, you better believe it. I came here, as I was told to, on June 2nd 2001 because somebody cares. Since I’ve been here, who hasn’t joined me? The real world has joined me—glorious people from every country in the world. The best of America. The best of Greece. The best of the world!

His choice of named countries is striking: two of history’s greatest democracies whose democratic principles, if not their actions, continue to inspire many throughout the world. Britain, too, along with France, was such an exemplar, producing some of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers and writers whose aspirations live on. In the interest of full disclosure, however, I must say that Mr Haw’s choice of named countries likely had more to do with the fact that he was speaking to an American—me—and to a woman, a poet-songwriter, from Greece whom Mr Haw introduced to me and who joined our conversation, and recited poetry and sang, thereafter.

The eyesore which Mr Blair and at least some of his colluding ministers and parliamentarians see as they pass by Mr Haw on their way to the Commons is a horrifying reflection of themselves and their illegal war which they must shudder to see. For some of us, however, Mr Haw shines as a true beacon of democracy, in sharp contrast to the simulacra which waver and flicker like candle flames as seen from storm-tossed ships at sea.

On Sunday, 14 May, democrats of all stripes gathered in Parliament Square in support of all that Mr Haw has done for us to raise the voice of humanity in Britain in contravention to the wishes of the British government, to stand resolved in the face of power, to speak truth to it, and to insist that the democratic freedoms which the British government professes to export to places like Iraq and Afghanistan apply to us at home.

This is to put it blandly.

Let us, rather, listen to the brass ringing of Brian Haw’s own words, as he described to me, on 2 April, the significance of the government’s appeal to the High Court ruling which was scheduled to begin the following day. In response to my suggesting, then, that tomorrow was an important day for him, he replied:

It’s an important day for our country, an important day for humanity, isn’t it? Because the story is, can one single person be outside the Parliament of genocidal Britain to speak his piece without having to get permission from the police? How about that? And to have permission to protest—does that sound right? There’s genocidal Britain and the United States of Assassins bringing freedom and democracy to the world, and now it comes down, finally, after nearly five years, if you please, five years.

When Mr Haw speaks of Britain and the United States in this way, he refers not to the people of these countries—the majority of whom, like Mr Haw, are against the ongoing war and occupation in Iraq—but to the governments of these two nations and their foreign policies, and the domestic policies which follow.

Finally, let us listen to, and weigh, the following words from Mr Haw, which also stem from our 2 April interview and speak not only to the policies of the United States, but to those of the United Kingdom as well:

Can you imagine if they [America] gave instead of took from the world? Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the 1.3 trillion [dollars] squandered on weapons and arms when a mere 80 billion [dollars] is enough to provide for all the needs to food, health, clothing, education—all the needs of all the world’s poor? 80 billion. Can you imagine?

Come on, let’s have compassion! Let’s have bread instead of bombs!

Brian Haw is due to appear at Horseferry Road Magistrates’ Court on Monday, 24 July at 10 a.m. for not complying with conditions placed by police on his demonstration, which now falls under SOCPA oversight. According to the Parliament Square Peace Campaign, Mr Haw’s supporters will join him at the Court.
________________

Sean M. Madden is an American writer-journalist living in East Sussex, England. He may be reached via sean@inoodle.com, or via his weblog at iNoodle.com.

A Book Review of Milan Rai's "7/7: The London Bombings, Islam and the Iraq War"

2006-07-08T12:39:00.000+02:00

In Search of Truth at Home and Abroad

by Sean M. Madden
iNoodle.com
July 6, 2006

Book Reviewed:
7/7: The London Bombings, Islam and the Iraq War
by Milan Rai (Pluto Press, 2006; ISBN: 0-7453-2563-7; 196 pp.)

“A word of truth uttered in the presence of an
unjust ruler is a meritorious form of jihad.”
~ The Prophet Muhammad
So reads the closing statement, inconspicuously tucked away behind the final chapter, the endnotes, the glossary and the index, of Milan Rai’s new book. It is an apt close, for this is just what Mr. Rai himself does—he utters truth in the presence of the unjust Blair’s conspicuous disregard for it.

I am an American residing in Britain, where Mr. Rai also lives and where the four separate but coordinated attacks on July 7, 2005 were perpetrated. Although I was safely tucked away atop a mountain in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the time—enrolled in a master’s program in classical Eastern philosophy, theology and literature, at St. John’s College—my British wife and our daughter were living in the South East of England, an hour’s train journey from London, and where we now live together. So, the London bombings which took the lives of 52 people, plus the bombers, resonated.

Rewind nearly four years.

On the morning of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the three of us were living in Northampton, Massachusetts, again tucked away from harm’s way, this time on the Smith College campus, where my wife had just begun the final term of her undergraduate studies in history and Russian civilization. It should go without saying that the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings which took the lives of approximately three thousand people also resonated. Reverberated may be closer to the mark.

I draw a parallel between the 7/7 and the 9/11 attacks with good reason.

In both cases, the public was, and remains, far from satisfied that their respective governments are telling we the people the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. On May 22, a Zogby International survey—sponsored by 911truth.org, a “coalition of researchers, journalists and victim family members working to expose and answer the hundreds of still unresolved questions concerning 9/11”—found that 42% of Americans believe that “the US government and its 9/11 Commission concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence that contradicts their official explanation of the September 11th attacks, saying there has been a cover-up”. An additional 10% are not sure.

In the days following 9/11, one question was denied us. It was precluded by a prefab official narrative which whiplashed the American public from sheer horror to settled fact without thought. The question: “Why?”

This is the great-great-granddaddy of all questions, the one which has made philosophers marked prey down through the ages, because it is the question which leads us towards understanding. The Bush government—aided and abetted by a complicit corporate media—robbed us of our natural right to know, to understand, to put two and two together to make four. We, the American public, still demand truth, an explanation. The childish narrative of the freedom-hating terrorists holds no water.

Similarly, the British public demands an explanation. The crux of Mr. Rai’s book is a search for that explanation, the truth behind whether British foreign policy, generally, and the Iraq war, specifically, were connected to the decisions made by four young British men to murder, en masse, their fellow citizens, while taking their own lives in the process. This is the very connection which Blair and those closest to him have contorted all logic to try, in vain, to preclude the public from making.

The author says this best, on the opening page of his introduction, entitled “We Need Explanation, Not Narration”:

In the immediate aftermath of the bombings on 7 July 2005, one explanation for the tragedy was firmly ruled out by the British government. Tony Blair denied any connection between the July attacks on the one hand, and the ongoing war in Iraq, or British foreign policy in general, on the other. The Prime Minister failed to acknowledge the contents of secret documents leaked to British newspapers over the next few weeks, documents which demonstrated that his own government accepted exactly this connection, as we shall soon discover.

There is a central question: how young men born and bred in Britain, with all the rights and freedoms a British citizen enjoys, could decide to blow themselves up on London’s public transport system, killing fellow citizens. The British government has ruled out holding an inquiry into this critical question, despite calls from 7/7 survivors, from relatives of those who died, and from prominent Muslims. We have been promised instead a ‘narrative’ of the attacks. What the British people want—both Muslim and non-Muslim—is not ‘narration’ but ‘explanation’. This book is an attempt to supply a first draft of that explanation, an investigation into precisely the areas that the Blair government wishes to obscure and conceal.

The promised “narrative” has since been published by the Home Office, on May 11. On the same day, a separate report by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) was presented to Parliament. Although at face value the latter report would seem to have been written by a group which is impartial to the PM, the following statement from the ISC’s website would seem to belie that naïve notion:

It [the ISC] operates within the ‘ring of secrecy’ and has wide access to the range of Agency activities and to highly classified information. Its cross–party membership of nine from both Houses is appointed by the Prime Minister after consultation with the Leader of the Opposition. The Committee is required to report annually to the Prime Minister on its work. These reports, after any deletions of sensitive material, are placed before Parliament by the Prime Minister.

Regardless, neither of the two government reports has satisfied inquiring minds amongst the British public, including those of survivors and the families of victims who were not so fortunate, who remain frustrated that the seemingly obvious connection between British foreign policy—and the Iraq war in particular—and the 7/7 bombings has not been clearly established. Yet, the Blair government continues to deny the public a full-scale inquiry. Crispin Black, a “former intelligence official in No. 10 [Downing St., referring to Blair’s government]” is quoted in 7/7, the book, as saying “[t]he only people who do want an inquiry are the public—the targets of the attacks”. Indeed.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. 7/7 was published before the release of the two reports. However, as the public has yet to get their full-scale inquiry, Mr. Rai’s book remains perhaps the next best thing. In it, he pursues answers—in an “attempt to supply a first draft” of an explanation—in the great British empiricist tradition. He bases his quest for truth not on axioms, or assumptions, but on an inductive process whereby he identifies particulars—facts and Baconian “negative instances”—and attempts to identify patterns amongst them. He starts with questions. Preeminent, again, is: “Why?”

He carefully, sensitively, guides the reader through modern Islam and how it is playing out amongst various generations of Muslims in Britain. He walks us through the lives of the four suicide bombers, all the while seeking out what may have triggered their resolve to kill civilians and themselves. And in doing so, he keeps their humanity intact, while in no way excusing their actions. He, likewise, provides brief biographical sketches of each of the 52 individuals who died in the attacks, and does so in such a way as to lift each one beyond victimization to a realization of their individual humanity.

The epigraph of 7/7 is a quote from Rachel North, a survivor of that day’s deadly attacks. Her below statement exudes wisdom and leads us to ask why the four young bombers embodied such despair:

As a vicar’s daughter and former theology student, I am asked about evil. I think the bombers were not born evil: it is because they fell into a trap of hate and despair and alienation. I believe that any of us could fall into the same black hole, but there is a way out of the darkness.

My way is to admit I am afraid, and to ask for help, to draw strength from my fellow humans instead of fearing them and drawing away from them.

Both Britons and Americans show a determination beyond their respective governments’ wishes to explore unanswered questions by way of substantive, independent inquiries which are grounded in facts, not political rhetoric. Inquiries into truth, that is, which can help to make us all more secure, by helping us to root out the seeds of violence rather than to breed yet more of the ignorance which perpetuates both non-state and state violence—terrorism—which the wide world of humanity witnesses daily.

________________
Milan Rai’s previous works include Regime Unchanged: Why the War on Iraq Changed Nothing (Pluto Press, 2003); War Plan Iraq: Ten Reasons Against War on Iraq (Verso, 2002); and, Chomsky’s Politics (Verso, 1995). Mr. Rai is also an active organizer and campaigner for peace. On April 12—the day of his official book launch for 7/7—he became the first person to be convicted of organizing an unauthorized protest (held October 25, 2005) in the designated area within one kilometer of Parliament in London. He was convicted under Section 132 of the highly controversial Serious Organised Crime and Prevention Act 2005, known as SOCPA. According to Justice Not Vengeance, co-founded by Mr. Rai, “Bailiffs are currently trying to seize his property to pay his fine. He is expecting to go to prison for his part later on in the year.”

###
Related Web Links:

Justice Not Vengeance (co-founded by Milan Rai):
www.j-n-v.org

Intelligence and Security Committee:
www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/intelligence

Intelligence and Security Committee report on 7/7 bombings (.pdf format):
tinyurl.com/hazzn

Home Office report on 7/7 bombings (.pdf format):
tinyurl.com/g9r7r

Zogby International survey for 911truth.org:
tinyurl.com/ponth

911truth.org

________________

Sean M. Madden is an American writer-journalist living in East Sussex, England. He may be reached via sean@inoodle.com, or via his weblog at iNoodle.com.

Lamppost Movement Manifesto

2006-06-21T18:47:00.000+02:00

Draft version now available here.

Please provide feedback.

Lamppost Campaign - Manifesto Suggestions

2006-06-16T14:01:00.000+02:00

As most bloggers have put up their lamppost I suggest that we move on to the next phase of suggesting what should be included in the Manifesto. Leave your comments here.

Indian Proverb

2006-06-11T07:31:00.000+02:00

Why do you HATE me? I never even helped you.

Season's Greetings

2006-06-08T18:13:00.000+02:00

One

2006-06-08T11:58:00.000+02:00

Racism rears its head

2006-06-08T10:51:00.000+02:00

The Malta Labour Party has always been anti-racist in its policies and statements. It was for this reason that I felt genuinely shocked when I came to learn that a local right-wing lobby group came out strongly against the local Jewish community on their website, hinting that Maltese society is victim of a covert Zionist conspiracy.

I was equally shocked by the stone silence with which such an onslaught on ordinary members of Maltese society was met by the local media even though the MLP took a formal position of condemnation in this regard.

This has nothing at all to do with the illegal immigration issue which certain new right movements are using as a platform.

Tomorrow it will be undiluted racism of the kind we are already being treated to when certain exponents speak of safeguarding the European race and culture.

Living as we happen to do in a multicultural society we cannot accept the premise that each culture should keep developing in isolation. Such statements make it easier to understand the Islamophobia we experienced recently as well as the anti-Muslim sentiments that were expressed, neatly cushioned under the cover of a clash of cultures and blending of incompatible beliefs.

In saying so I am neither debasing nor trying to run down the European and Mediterranean culture that I believe in.

Such attacks as we experienced recently go far beyond the deplorable and condemnable attacks against members of the local press who were merely exercising their right to freedom of expression. They are meant to undermine confidence in our political system in the hope of creating a power vacuum where such new elements could thrive and prosper.

I believe that the illegal immigration issue is being used as a pretext because both major political parties on the island have long been making a clear distinction between the rights of refugees and the influxes of illegal economic immigrants. For this reason alone decisive EU action on the illegal immigration issue is called for as otherwise a weak-kneed approach will merely provide fertile ground for such right wing movements, even if they might still happen to be in their infancy.

When the problem recently reached an almost explosive magnitude in the Canary Islands a senior policy adviser in the regional government of the Canaries made it clear that this is a big problem that requires military resources, intelligence resources, economic assistance and medical aid.

The clarion call was loud and clear.
"Europe has to wake up and stop staring at its belly button."

I do not believe that certain movements are just a real threat to the duopoly of our political system. They are far worse than that as they constitute a threat to Maltese society in general as well as to its values and core beliefs. How can one accept the argument that it is unnatural that children are being bombarded with messages not to be racist when people were "racist" by nature?

Europe cannot merely sit back and react to racism when it happens and spreads its wings wide. It must pre-empt certain racist developments before they happen by taking decisive and positive action that shows that when it speaks of solidarity it literally means it rather than merely using it as a buzzword to pay lip service through it.

It is even more worrying when so-called moderate right wing movements emerge, which claim they are closer to the mainstream political parties than to the extreme right movements in our midst. Proof that illegal immigration is being merely used as a pretext by these people was provided in the columns of this newspaper when a spokesman for a self-defined moderate right wing movement stated categorically that they are a multi-issue group and that they will continue to grow even if the immigration issue is solved. It is a pity that while the National Alliance has ostensibly moderated its political views in Italy through such exponents as Gianfranco Fini, who is nowadays even welcomed in such countries as Israel as much as he was welcomed in Arab Middle Eastern countries, we are seeing such movements emerge in our midst by trying to project themselves as a new mainstream party while, at the same time, resorting to racist platforms. If there is one thing that unites Malta's three major political parties that is a deep resentment of racial intolerance.

The MLP's position is clear as recently expressed by its leader. Fascism and Nazism cannot be tolerated. It is for this reason that last year I had accepted the Council of Europe's task to serve as rapporteur of a study on the excesses of Francoism in Spain.

Before talking of one's right to express oneself politically one first has to check a movement's credentials, particularly as far as respect for fundamental democratic values are concerned.
It is not for me to try and quantify what kind of support a right wing movement might have. It is incumbent on us all to ensure that no fertile ground is provided for their emergence and ideological spread.

From my contact with the electorate I can tell that a certain degree of xenophobia is real and present. This can only be neutralised if the competent authorities do not allow certain perceptions and attitudes to evolve into real threats. For this reason I genuinely call for concerted action both on the domestic front and on the international level.

As a full EU member state we might have our obligations but we also have our expectations, particularly in the light of the recent turn of events in Spain. For a start, Europe must show it can come up with a serious policy for Africa.

Mr Brincat is the main opposition spokesman on foreign affairs and IT.
leo.brincat@gov.mt

Essenzjalment

2006-06-06T18:36:00.000+02:00

(Wara l-kumment ta' Neebother fuq il-blogg J'Accuse)

Essenzjalment

"Malta has always been, and will always be,

essentially European."

Malta This Month, Mejju 2004

Malta hija essenzjalment Ewropea

u l-Maltin huma essenzjalment Ewropej.

Il-Mediterran huwa banju bl-ilma

u nahseb naf essenzjalment minn fejn gej.

Il-kliem li nitkellem huwa essenzjalment Malti

u tista' tghid illi dejjem johrogli minn halqi,

u avolja mhux kollu essenzjalment Ewropew,

meta nkun barra minn Malta

kulhadd jghidli xi hlew

ghax forsi mhux dejjem jinstema'

appuntu Ewropew.

Qed nahseb li forsi miniex Malti tassew.

U int ukoll, nahseb ahjar ticcekkja sew.

Adrian Grima, mill-ktieb Rakkmu, 2006

Lamppost Campaign

2006-06-06T11:34:00.000+02:00

It's all about tolerance. Postform will be transforming into lamp-post-form for the duration of the pro-active campaign advocating more tolerance in the Maltese islands. This campaign is intended as a positive reaction to the negative wave of intolerance that is currently being witnessed in the Maltese islands. We believe that the source of intolerance is misunderstanding and misinformation and that the best way to combat intolerance is to inform and communicate positively.

We believe that the darkness is at the source of all the negativity and it is the light of information and positive thinking that can break through the barriers of misinformation. It is for this reason that we have adopted the lamppost as our symbol. Every individual is a potential lamppost whose light fills in another corner of darkness.

European Identity: Immigrants & Victimology

2006-06-02T09:10:00.001+02:00

INTEREST/OPINION
from: www.signandsight.com

2006-05-30

Europe's politics of victimology

Flemming Rose, cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten and publisher of the Muhammad cartoons, clarifies his position on the conflict he set off.

The worldwide furore unleashed by the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that I published last September in Jyllands-Posten (comprehensive press review her e), the Danish newspaper where I work, was both a surprise and a tragedy, especially for those directly affected by it. Lives were lost, buildings were torched, people were driven into hiding.

And yet the unbalanced reactions to the not-so-provocative caricatures—loud denunciations and even death threats toward us, but very little outrage toward the people who attacked two Danish Embassies—unmasked unpleasant realities about Europe's failed experiment with multiculturalism. It's time for the Old Continent to face facts, and make some profound changes in its outlook on immigration, integration, and the coming Muslim demographic surge. After decades of appeasement and political correctness, combined with growing fear of a radical minority prepared to commit serious violence, Europe's moment of truth is here.

Europe today finds itself trapped in a posture of moral relativism that is undermining its liberal values. An unholy three-cornered alliance between Middle East dictators, radical imams who live in Europe, and Europe's traditional left wing is enabling a politics of victimology. This politics drives a culture that resists integration and adaptation, perpetuates national and religious differences, and aggravates such debilitating social ills as high immigrant crime rates and entrenched unemployment.

As one who once championed the utopian state of multicultural bliss, I think I know what I'm talking about. I was raised on the ideals of the 1960s, in the midst of the Cold War. I saw life through the lens of the countercultural turmoil, adopting both the hippie pose and the political superiority complex of my generation. I and my high school peers believed that the West was imperialistic and racist. We analysed decaying Western civilization through the texts of Marx and Engels and lionized John Lennon's beautiful but stupid tune about an ideal world without private property: "Imagine no possessions/ I wonder if you can/ No need for greed or hunger/ A brotherhood of man/ Imagine all the people/ Sharing all the world."

It took me only 10 months as a young student in the Soviet Union in 1980-81 to realize what a world without private property looks like, although many years had to pass until the full implications of the central Marxist dogma became clear to me.

That experience was the beginning of a long intellectual journey that has thus far culminated in the reactions to the Mohammed cartoons. Politically, I came of age in the Soviet Union. I returned there in 1990 to spend 11 years as a foreign correspondent. Through close contact with courageous dissidents who were willing to suffer and go to prison for their belief in the ideals of Western democracy, I was cured of my woolly dreams of idealistic collectivism. I had a strong sense of the high price my friends were willing to pay for the very freedoms that we had taken for granted in high school—but did not grasp as values inherent in our civilization: freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and movement. Justice and equality implies equal opportunity, I learned, not equal outcome.

Now, in Europe's failure to grapple realistically with its dramatically changing demographic picture, I see a new parallel to that Cold War journey. Europe's left is deceiving itself about immigration, integration, and Islamic radicalism today the same way we young hippies deceived ourselves about Marxism and Communism 30 years ago. It is a narrative of confrontation and hierarchy that claims that the West exploits, abuses, and marginalises the Islamic world. Left-wing intellectuals have insisted that the Danes were oppressing and marginalising Muslim immigrants. This view comports precisely with the late Edward Said's model of Orientalism, which argues that experts on the Orient and the Muslim World have not depicted it as it is but as some dreaded "other," as exactly the opposite of ourselves—and therefore to be rejected. The West, in this narrative, is democratic, the East is despotic. We are rational, they are irrational.

This kind of thinking gave birth to a distorted approach to immigration in countries like Denmark. Left-wing commentators decided that Denmark was both racist and Islamophobic. Therefore, the chief obstacle to integration was not the immigrants' unwillingness to adapt culturally to their adopted country (there are 200,000 Danish Muslims now); it was the country's inherent racism and anti-Muslim bias.

A cult of victimology arose and was happily exploited by clever radicals among Europe's Muslims, especially certain religious leaders like Imam Ahmad Abu Laban in Denmark and Mullah Krekar in Norway. Mullah Krekar—a Kurdish founder of Ansar al Islam who this spring was facing an expulsion order from Norway—called our publication of the cartoons "a declaration of war against our religion, our faith, and our civilization. Our way of thinking is penetrating society and is stronger than theirs. This causes hate in the Western way of thinking; as the losing side, they commit violence."

The role of victim is very convenient because it frees the self-declared victim from any responsibility, while providing a posture of moral superiority. It also obscures certain inconvenient facts that might suggest a different explanation for the lagging integration of some immigrant groups—such as the relatively high crime rates, the oppression of women, and a tradition of forced marriage.

Dictatorships in the Middle East and radical imams have adopted the jargon of the European left, calling the cartoons racist and Islamophobic. When Westerners criticize their lack of civil liberties and the oppression of women, they say we behave like imperialists. They have adopted the rhetoric and turned it against us.

These events are occurring against the disturbing backdrop of increasingly radicalised Muslims in Europe. Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 ringleader, became a born-again Muslim after he moved to Europe. So did the perpetrators behind the bombings in Madrid and London. The same goes for Mohammed Bouyeri, the young Muslim who slaughtered filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam. Europe, not the Middle East, may now be the main breeding ground for Islamic terrorism.

What's wrong with Europe? For one thing, Europe's approach to immigration and integration is rooted in its historic experience with relatively homogeneous cultures. In the United States one's definition of nationality is essentially political; in Europe it is historically cultural. I am a Dane because I look European, speak Danish, descend from centuries of other Scandinavians. But what about the dark, bearded new Danes who speak Arabic at home and poor Danish in the streets? We Europeans must make a profound cultural adjustment to understand that they, too, can be Danes.

Another great impediment to integration is the European welfare state. Because Europe's highly developed, but increasingly unaffordable, safety nets provide such strong unemployment insurance and not enough incentive to work, many new immigrants go straight onto the dole.

While it can be argued that the fast-growing community of about 20 million Muslim immigrants in Europe is the equivalent of America's new Hispanic immigrants, the difference in their productivity and prosperity is staggering. An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development study in 1999 showed that while immigrants in the United States are almost equal to native-born workers as taxpayers and contributors to American prosperity, in Denmark there is a glaring gap of 41 percent between the contributions of the native-born and of the immigrants. In the United States, a laid-off worker gets an average of 32 percent compensation for his former wages in welfare services; in Denmark the figure is 81 percent. A culture of welfare dependency is rife among immigrants, and taken for granted.

What to do? Obviously, we can never return to the comfortable monocultures of old. A demographic revolution is changing the face, and look, of Europe. In an age of mass migration and the Internet, cheap air fares and cell phones everywhere, cultural pluralism is an irreversible fact, like it or not. A nostalgic longing for cultural purity—racial purity, religious purity—easily descends into ethnic cleansing.

Yet multiculturalism that has all too often become mere cultural relativism is an indefensible proposition that often justifies reactionary and oppressive practices. Giving the same weight to the illiberal values of conservative Islam as to the liberal traditions of the European Enlightenment will, in time, destroy the very things that make Europe such a desirable target for migration.

Europe must shed the straitjacket of political correctness, which makes it impossible to criticize minorities for anything—including violations of laws, traditional mores, and values that are central to the European experience. Two experiences tell the tale for me.

Shortly after the horrific 2002 Moscow musical theatre siege by Chechen terrorists that left 130 dead, I met with one of my old dissident friends, Sergei Kovalev. A hero of the human rights movement in the old Soviet Union, Kovalev had long been a defender of the Chechens and a critic of the Russian attacks on Chechnya. But after the theatre massacre, he refused to indulge in politically correct drivel about the Chechens' just fight for secession and decolonization. He unhesitatingly denounced the terrorists, and insisted that a nation's right to self-determination did not imply a free ticket to kill and violate basic individual rights. For me, it was a clarifying moment on the dishonesty of identity politics and the sometime tyranny of elevating group rights above those of individuals—of justifying the killing of innocents in the name of some higher cause.

The other experience was a trip I made in the 1990s, when I was a correspondent based in the United States, to the Brighton Beach neighbourhood of Brooklyn, N.Y. There I wrote a story about the burgeoning, bustling, altogether vibrant Russian immigrant community that had arisen there—a perfect example of people retaining some of their old cultural identity (drinking samovars of tea, playing hours of chess, and attending church) while quickly taking advantage of America's free and open capitalism to establish an economic foothold. I marvelled at America's ability to absorb newcomers. It was another clarifying moment.

Equal treatment is the democratic way to overcome traditional barriers of blood and soil for newcomers. To me, that means treating immigrants just as I would any other Danes. And that's what I felt I was doing in publishing the 12 cartoons of Muhammad last year. Those images in no way exceeded the bounds of taste, satire, and humour to which I would subject any other Dane, whether the queen, the head of the Church, or the prime minister. By treating a Muslim figure the same way I would a Christian or Jewish icon, I was sending an important message: You are not strangers, you are here to stay, and we accept you as an integrated part of our life. And we will satirize you, too. It was an act of inclusion, not exclusion; an act of respect and recognition.

Alas, some Muslims did not take it that way—though it required a highly organized campaign, several falsified (and very nasty) cartoons, and several months of overseas travel for the aggrieved imams to stir up an international reaction.

Maybe Europe needs to take a leaf—or a whole book—from the American experience. For a new Europe of many cultures that is somehow a single entity to emerge, as it has in the United States, will take effort from both sides—the native-born and the newly arrived.

For the immigrants, the expectation that they not only learn the host language but also respect their new countries' political and cultural traditions is not too much to demand, and some stringent (maybe too stringent) new laws are being passed to force that. At the same time, Europeans must show a willingness to jettison entrenched notions of blood and soil and accept people from foreign countries and cultures as just what they are, the new Europeans.

*

The article was originally published in German in Der Spiegel on May 29, and in English in Blueprint Magazine on May 17, 2006. We would like to thank Blueprint editor Peter Ross Range for his consent.

Flemming Rose is cultural editor at the Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest newspaper.

Independence is not Impartiality

2006-05-11T12:07:00.000+02:00

From The Times of Malta
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Independence is not impartiality
by Ranier Fsadni

"Which opinion-maker in Malta," the Malta Labour Party's general secretary once asked on Bondiplus, "is really politically independent?" I did not hear any one in the studio answer his question. I wished I could have been there to say: "Quite a few of us. Being politically independent is no great intellectual or moral achievement."

Jason Micallef's question carries an assumption that independence implies neutrality; or that at least one cannot show consistent partiality. The assumption spouted up again a few days ago, when Alfred Grixti, editor of the MLP's online newspaper, criticised The Times (according to the report carried in The Sunday Times) for "giving more space to Nationalist-leaning articles in its editorial content than those favouring the MLP". That is, the newspaper was not being true to its declared independence.

I suspect the assumption is shared by the majority in Malta, and that most people follow Mr Micallef in reasoning that few, if any, people in Malta are therefore truly politically independent, since most people have a preference for one party over another. So it is worth spelling out why both assumption and inference are mistaken.

But first, an observation: on the foregoing grounds, virtually all serious opinion-formers in Euro-America cannot be considered to be independent: general political preferences are one factor usually governing their selection. And it is a rare, good opinion columnist whose political outlook is unknown. How could it be otherwise when political philosophy is central to political appraisal?
William Safire, the former New York Times columnist, was (and was meant to be) the libertarian conservative voice on the mostly liberal (in the US sense) newspaper. Most Guardian columnists are fulfilling their role, and not compromising it, by individually representing one of the various positions that is encompassed by the liberal left: George Monbiot is the green liberal, for example, and Polly Toynbee the libertarian social democrat. It would be difficult to find a major European newspaper or political magazine whose columnists and editorialists do not have an established political profile.

Yet, no one seriously questions their independence on these grounds. Independence is not confused with partiality or bias. Nor is it confused with intelligence. One can be independent and bigoted, as well as independent and stupid. What is so impossible about being an independent elitist, racist, homophobic, male chauvinist bigot without two intelligent ideas to rub together? Independence simply means not being dependent on a person, organisation or institution, which usually means being in a position to take no orders and no money.

In practice, Maltese newspaper readers recognise the character of independence. Much (by no means all) of the interest generated by the columns of Lino Spiteri and Alfred Mifsud arises because they give readers that rare thing: a Labour viewpoint that is free from MLP control. Their political independence is not just a result of their state of mind: when they were active within the MLP, they were respectively the same person, with the same mind, but not independent, because they had to keep within the limits of party discipline; and it showed.
Independence does not mean that one has to steer or tack between different sides of the political debate. Indeed, over-caution can be the sign of fear, caused by a lack of independence.

A journalist can show complete partiality and still be independent. Does it follow that l-orizzont, the General Workers' Union newspaper, could qualify as politically independent even if it poured scorn on the Nationalist Party (PN) in each edition? Yes. I doubt that newspaper's independence not because it is virulently anti-PN but because it gives me the firm impression that it is not independent of the MLP leadership.

Sometimes a news organisation is both independent and impartial. The BBC, for instance. But the distinction between the two characteristics is clear within the Beeb. Its former political editor, Robin Oakley, who came over from The Times, was known to have Conservative sympathies. His successor, Andrew Marr, had a long paper trail of liberal opinions: he had been editor of The Independent and a columnist (he called the Catholic and Anglican bishops, on one occasion, a bunch of silly fools). But no one questioned their independence. Some questions were raised, in Mr Marr's case, about his ability to be or appear impartial - but he succeeded, and was a popular political editor.

The distinction also emerges when one considers organisations that are impartial but not independent - the PBS newsroom, for instance. The MLP questions its impartiality, of course; but an outbreak of PBS newsroom independence would unite the political parties in their opposition to the outrage.

Understanding the nature of journalistic independence is not the same as practising it. But it is necessary to understand if one is to value and defend it.

AD CONDEMNS ARSON ATTACK ON NEWSPAPER EDITOR

2006-05-04T01:51:00.000+02:00

PRESS RELEASE 03/04/06

ALTERNATTIVA DEMOKRATIKA CONDEMNS ARSON ATTACK ON NEWSPAPER EDITOR

Commenting on the latest arson attack which took place on Wednesday morning, Dr Harry Vassallo Chairperson of Alternattiva Demokratika-The Green Party said that the spate of arson attacks apparently aimed at terrorizing critics of the extreme right-wing have continued with an arson attack at the home of a newspaper editor.

"Saviour Balzan will not be intimidated by such cowardly acts and will set an example to those who are in effect the real target, onlookers who may be tempted not to voice their support for a reasonable immigration policy and humane treatment of all immigrants," Dr Vassallo said.

"The arsonists are effectively injuring the whole community through these attacks which are a clear form of terrorism since they are aimed at spreading fear and making cowards of all onlookers."

Dr Vassallo invited all those who had not yet spoken out clearly on the immigration issue to make their voices heard. "Silence and prudence will give victory to those who seem to be inebriated by their ability to strike with impunity so far. They must be left under no illusion that the whole country wants them caught and punished," stressed Dr Vassallo. "What is at stake is far more than the issues they seem to be obsessed about but our capacity for peaceful co-existence, the basis of our democracy. Such political violence cannot be tolerated without inviting others to follow suit with political violence on other issues. This criminal practice must be nipped in the bud," Dr Vassallo concluded.

Can blogs revolutionize Progressive Politics?

2006-04-28T12:23:00.000+02:00

By Lakshmi Chaudhri in In these Times

We have no interest in being anti-establishment,” says Matt Stoller, a blogger at the popular Web site MyDD.com. “We’re going to be the establishment.”

That kind of flamboyant confidence has become the hallmark of blog evangelists who believe that blogs promise nothing less than a populist revolution in American politics. In 2006, at least some of that rhetoric is becoming reality. Blogs may not have replaced the Democratic Party establishment, but they are certainly becoming an integral part of it. In the wake of John Kerry’s defeat in the 2004 presidential elections, many within the Democratic leadership have embraced blog advocates’ plan for political success, which can be summed up in one word: netroots.

This all-encompassing term loosely describes an online grassroots constituency that can be targeted through Internet technologies, including e-mail, message boards, RSS feeds and, of course, blogs, which serve as organizing hubs. In turn, these blogs employ a range of features —discussion boards, Internet donations, live e-chat, social networking tools like MeetUp, online voting—that allow ordinary citizens to participate in politics, be it supporting a candidate or organizing around a policy issue. Compared to traditional media, blogs are faster, cheaper, and most importantly, interactive, enabling a level of voter involvement impossible with television or newspapers.

No wonder, then, that many in Washington are looking to blogs and bloggers to counter the overwhelming financial and ideological muscle of the right—especially in an election year. Just 18 months ago, the New York Times Magazine ran a cover story depicting progressive bloggers as a band of unkempt outsiders, thumbing their nose at party leadership. But now, it’s the party leaders themselves who are blogging. Not only has Senate Minority leader Harry Reid started his own blog—Give ‘em Hell Harry—and a media “war room” to “aggressively pioneer Internet outreach,” he’s also signed up to be the keynote speaker at the annual conference of the top political blog, Daily Kos.

Stoller predicts that as an organizing tool, “blogs are going to play the role that talk radio did in 1994, and that church networks did in 2002.”

An Internet-fueled victory at the polls would certainly be impressive—no candidate backed by the most popular progressive blogs has yet won an election. But electoral success may merely confirm the value of blogs as an effective organizing tool to conduct politics as usual, cementing the influence of a select group of bloggers who will likely be crowned by the media as the new kingmakers.

Winning an election does not, however, guarantee a radical change in the relations of power. Technology is only as revolutionary as the people who use it, and the progressive blogosphere has thus far remained the realm of the privileged —a weakness that may well prove fatal in the long run.

In 2006, the biggest question facing blogs and bloggers is: Will their ascendancy empower the American people—in the broadest sense of the word—or merely add to the clout of an elite online constituency?

The birth of a revolution
Alienation may not have been the mother of blogging technology, but it most certainly birthed the “political blogosphere.” The galvanizing cause for the rapid proliferation of political blogs and their mushrooming audience was a deep disillusionment across the political spectrum with traditional media—a disillusionment accentuated by a polarized political landscape.

In the recent book Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business and Culture, Web guru Craig Shirky links the rise of political blogs to the sharpening Red/Blue State divide. Both 9/11 and the Iraq war reminded people that “politics was vitally important,” and marked the “moment people were looking for some kind of expression outside the bounds of network television,” or, for that matter, cable news or the nation’s leading newspapers.

Progressives were angry not just with the media but also with Democratic Party leaders for their unwillingness to challenge the Bush administration’s case for war. That much-touted liberal rage found its expression on blogs like Eschaton, Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo, and continues to fuel the phenomenal growth of the progressive blogosphere. Like the rise of right-wing talk radio, this growth is directly linked to an institutional failure of representation. Finding no mirror for their views in the media, a large segment of the American public turned to the Internet to speak for themselves—often with brutal, uncensored candor.

As blogs have grown in popularity—at the rate of more than one new blog per second—they’ve begun to lose their vanguard edge. The very institutions that political bloggers often criticize have begun to adopt the platform, with corporate executives, media personalities, porn stars, lawyers and PR strategists all jumping into the fray. That may be why Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, the founder and primary voice of Daily Kos, thinks the word “blog” is beginning to outlive its usefulness. “A blog is merely a publishing tool, and like a tool, it can be used in any number of ways,” he says.

But for many, to rephrase director Jean Renoir, a blogs are still a state of mind. To their most ardent advocates, blogs are standard-bearers of a core set of democratic values: participation, egalitarianism and transparency. Books like Dan Gillmor’s We the Media, Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs, James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, and Joe Trippi’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised have become the bibles of progressive politics. Taken together, they express the dream of Internet salvation: harnessing an inherently democratic, interactive and communal medium, with the potential to instantaneously tap into the collective intellectual, political and financial resourcesof tens of millions of fellow Americans to create a juggernaut for social change.
According to Moulitsas, “The word ‘blog’ still implies a certain level of citizen involvement, of giving power to someone who is not empowered”—especially to progressives who, according to a study released last year by the New Politics Institute, have overtaken conservatives as the heavyweights of the political blogosphere.

Vox Populi
Political blogs have often been most effective as populist fact-checkers, challenging, refuting and correcting perceived errors in news coverage.

“Independent bloggers have challenged the mainstream media and held them accountable, whether it’s with Judy Miller or Bob Woodward,” says Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington. The most significant effect of this “we can fact-check your ass” credo has not been merely to put journalists on notice, but to change the way public knowledge is produced on a daily basis. “It’s hard now for an important story to hit the front page of the New York Times and just die there,” says Huffington. A news article is now merely the beginning of a public conversation in the blogosphere, where experts, amateurs and posers alike dissect its merits and add to its information, often keeping it alive long after journalists have moved on.

Popular understanding of what blogs are and what they can do has been muddled by an inevitably hostile relationship between political bloggers and traditional media. Writing in the Dec. 26 issue of The New Republic, Franklin Foer took bloggers to task for nursing “an ideological disdain for ‘Mainstream Media’—or MSM, as it has derisively (and somewhat adolescently) come to be known.” But Foer, like so many traditional journalists who criticize blogs, failed to grasp the very nature of his intended target.

Blogs are literally vox populi—or at the least the voice of the people who post entries and comments, and, to a lesser extent, of their devoted readers. Telling bloggers that they’re wrong or to shut up is somewhat like telling respondents to an opinion survey to simply change their mind. When journalists reject bloggers as cranks or wingnuts, they also do the same to a large segment of the American public who seeblogs as an expression of their views. Such dismissals feed the very alienation that makes blogs and bloggers popular.

The irony is that bloggers are most powerful when they work in tandem with the very media establishment they despise. “Bloggers alone cannot create conventional wisdom, cannot make a story break, cannot directly reach the vast population that isn’t directly activist and involved in politics,” says Peter Daou, who coordinated the Kerry campaign’s blog outreach operations. Blogs instead exert an indirect form of power, amplifying and channeling the pressure of netroots opinion upwards to pressure politicians and journalists. “It’s really a rising up,” says Daou.

Can this online rebellion lead to real political change? The prognosis thus far is encouraging, but far from definitive.

Can the netroots grow the grassroots?
If television made politics more elitist and less substantive, blogs—and more broadly, netroots tools—have the potential to become engines of truly democratic, bottom-up, issue-rich political participation.

Blogs allow rank-and-file voters to pick the candidate to support in any given electoral race, influence his or her platform, and volunteer their time, money and expertise in more targeted and substantive ways. Democratic candidates in the midterm elections are already busy trying to position themselves as the next Howard Dean, vying for a digital stamp of approval that will bring with it free publicity, big money and, just maybe, a whole lot of voters.

When Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) decided to take on Iraq veteran Paul Hackett in the Democratic primary for the Senate race in Ohio, he moved quickly to neutralize his opponent’s advantage as the unquestioned hero of the progressive bloggers. The ace up Brown’s sleeve: Jerome Armstrong, founder of the influential MyDD.com and veteran of Howard Dean’s online campaign. Brown’s next move was a blog entry on The Huffington Post titled, “Why I am a Progressive.”

But not everyone is convinced that blogs can be as influential in a midterm election, when there are a large number of electoral contests spread across the country. “Raising money at a nationwide level for a special election is one thing,” Pew scholar Michael Cornfield says, “but raising it and developing a core of activists and all the ready-to-respond messages when you have to run hundreds of races simultaneously—which is what will happen in 2006—is another thing.” Moreover, the ability of the Internet to erase geographical distances can become a structural weakness in elections where district lines and eligibility are key.

An effective netroots strategy in 2006 will also have to master the shortcomings of the Dean’s campaign, which stalled mainly because it failed to grow his support base beyond his online constituency—antiwar, white and high-income voters. In contrast, the Bush/Cheney operation used the Internet to coordinate on-the-ground events such as house parties, and rallies involving church congregations.

Cornfield describes the Republican model as, “one person who is online and is plugged into the blogosphere. That person becomes an e-precinct captain, and is responsible for reaching out offline or any means necessary for ten people.”

This time around, Armstrong is determined to match the GOP’s success. GrowOhio.org, which he describes as “a community blog for Democratic Party activists,” will coordinate field operations for not just Brown but all Democratic candidates in each of Ohio’s 88 counties. Its primary goal is to reach rural voters in areas where the campaign cannot field organizers on the ground.

“This isn’t just about using the net for communications and fundraising, but for field organizing,” Armstrong says.

What is also new in 2006 is the effort to redirect attention from the national to the local. “It’s not just about focusing the national blogosphere on Ohio, but about building from the ground up in Ohio,” Armstrong says. “Over 90 percent of our signups on GrowOhio.org are Ohio activists, and we will soon have Internet outreach coordinators in all 88 counties.”

But many like Daou remain skeptical about the power of blogs to directly impact politics at the grassroots level. “You’re not going to go out there and mobilize a million people and have them all come to the polls and donate money. Blogs will never do that,” he says.

And they may be even less effective in areas that are traditionally not as internet-savvy as the rest of the country, be it the rural red states or impoverished inner cities. Creating a virtual “community center” is unlikely to compensate for the Democrats’ disadvantage on the ground. Due to the eroding presence of unions, Democrats no longer possess a physical meeting place where they can target and mobilize voters—unlike Republicans, who rely on a well-organized network of churches, gun clubs and chambers of commerce.

What is clear is that the 2006 elections will test the claim of blog evangelists that online activism can radically transform offline politics—a claim that is central to their far more ambitious vision for the future. In their book Crashing the Gate (to be released in April), Moulitsas and Armstrong envision blogs as the centerpiece of a netroots movement to engineer an imminent and sweeping transformation of the Democratic Party:

We are at the beginning of a comprehensive reformation of the Democratic Party—driven by committed progressive outsiders. Online activism on a nationwide level, coupled with offline activists at the local level … can provide the formula for a quiet, bloodless coup that can take control of the party. Money and mobilization are the two key elements of all political activity, and if the netroots have their way, the financial backbone of the Democratic Party will be regular people.

Whether a truly decentralized and “leaderless” netroots can function like a political party is debatable, but the latest wave of technological innovation does offer unprecedented opportunities for constructing a progressive movement for the digital age. Such an outreach effort would use the Internet very much like conservatives such as Richard Viguerie used direct mail to build a powerful political force. But in order to craft a genuinely democratic form of politics, the progressive blogosphere will have to overcome its greatest weakness: lack of diversity.

The rise of the blogerati
In Newsweek, Simon Rosenberg, a beltway insider who lost the DNC chair to Dean, described the progressive blogosphere as the new “Resistance” within the Democratic Party, engaged in a civil war to wrest power from a craven and compromised beltway leadership. According to Rosenberg, the leaders of this “resistance” are the top progressive bloggers, more specifically the most popular and increasingly influential Moulitsas. Rosenberg told the Washington Monthly, “Frankly I don’t think there’s anyone who’s had the potential to revolutionize the Democratic Party that Markos does.”

Yet both the progressive blogosphere and the “revolutionaries” who dominate its ranks look a lot like the establishment they seek to overthrow.

The report by the New Politics Institute—which was launched by Rosenberg’s New Democracy Network—notes: “Clearly, blogging is a world with a handful of haves, and a nearly uncountable number of have-nots. There are likely a few hundred thousand blogs in this country that talk about politics, but less than one-tenth of one percent of them account for more than 99 percent of all political blogging traffic.”

For better or worse, traffic numbers have become an endorsement of the political agenda of specific individuals. While A-list bloggers repeatedly deny receiving any special treatment, the reality is that both the media and political establishment pay disproportionate attention to their views, often treating them as representative of the entire progressive blogosphere.

In a Foreign Policy article, political scientists Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell cheerfully note, “The skewed network of the blogosphere makes it less time-consuming for outside observers to acquire information. The media only need to look at elite blogs to obtain a summary of the distribution of opinions on a given political issue.” Why? Because the “elite blogs” serve as a filtering mechanism, deciding which information offered up by smaller blogs is useful or noteworthy. In effect, A-list blogs get to decide what issues deserve the attention of journalists and politicians, i.e., the establishment.

The past two years have also marked the emergence of a close relationship between top bloggers and politicians in Washington. A number of them—for example, Jesse Taylor at Pandagon, Tim Tagaris of SwingStateProject, Stoller and Armstrong—have been hired as campaign consultants. Others act as unofficial advisers to top politicos like Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-Ill.), who holds conference calls with preeminent bloggers to talk strategy. When the Senate Democrats invite Moulitsas to offer his personal views on netroots strategy—treating him, as a Washington Monthly profile describes, “a kind of part-time sage, an affiliate member”—the perks of success become difficult to deny.

Armstrong sees the rise of the blogger-guru—or “strategic adviser,” as he puts it—as a positive development. Better to hire a blogger who is personally committed to the Democratic cause than a D.C.-based mercenary who makes money irrespective of who wins.

But the fact that nearly all these “advisers” are drawn from a close-knit and mostly homogenous group can make them appear as just a new boys’ club, albeit one with better intentions and more engaged politics. Aside from notable exceptions like Moulitsas, who is part-Salvadoran, and a handful of lesser-known women who belong to group blogs, top progressive bloggers tend to be young, well-educated, middle class, male and white.

Reach, representation and credibility
The lack of diversity is partly a function of the roots of blogging in an equally homogenous tech-geek community. Nevertheless, women and people of color constitute the fastest rising segment of those joining the blogosphere. Feminist and female-authored political blogs like Feministing, Bitch Ph.D, Echidne of the Snakes, and Salon’s Broadsheet made considerable gains in traffic and visibility in 2005, as did Latino Pundit, Culture Kitchen, and Afro-Netizen. Better yet, they’re forging networks and alliances to help each other grow. There is no doubt the membership of the blogosphere is changing, and will look very different five years from now. “We’re just a step behind, just like any other area,” says Pandagon’s Amanda Marcotte.

But while the growth of the blogosphere may increase the actual traffic to a greater number of blogs, it also makes visibility far more scarce and precious for each new blogger. As one of the top women bloggers, Chris Nolan, noted on the PressThink blog, “The barrier to entry in this new business isn’t getting published; anyone can do that. The barrier to entry is finding an audience.”

Elite bloggers can play a key role in generating that audience. As Marcotte points out, “A lot more women are moving up in the Technorati rankings” (Technorati is a search engine for the blogosphere) because A-listers like Duncan Black and Kevin Drum in 2005 made it a priority to promote female bloggers. But when someone like Moulitsas decides to stop linking to other blogs—as he has recently done because he doesn’t want to play “gatekeeper”—or when top bloggers repeatedly cite their fellow A-listers, it has enormous consequences. “It’s pretty darn hard today to break in to the A-list if the other A-listers aren’t linking to you,” says Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon.

If blogs derive their credibility from being the “voice of the people,” surely we should be concerned about which opinions get attention over others. The question of representation affects not just who is blogging—and with great success—but also the audience of these blogs. What kind of democratic consensus does the blogosphere reflect when the people participating in it are most likely to be white, well-educated men?

Yet when it comes to issues of diversity, A-list bloggers like Moulitsas and Stoller can get defensive, and at times, dismissive. “Take a look at what you have today. Take a look at the folks who’re leading the party, dominating the media, or even within corporations. Do you think the top ranks of any of those institutions is any more representative?” responds Stoller, his voice rising in indignation.

Where Stoller openly acknowledges the problem—describing blogs in one of his posts as “a new national town square for the white progressive base of the Democratic party”—and the need to take steps to tackle the disparity, Moulitsas is less generous. In his view, it’s simply absurd to demand what he sarcastically describes as an “affirmative action of ideas” within an inherently meritocratic medium such as the blogosphere: “I don’t see how you can say, ‘Well, let’s give more voice to African American lesbians.’ Create a blog. If there’s an audience, great. If there isn’t, not so great.” Besides, he suggests, if a Salvadoran war refugee—in his words, a “political nobody”—like him can make it on the Internet, there’s nothing stopping anyone else from doing the same.

As for the relative paucity of top female progressive bloggers, Moulitsas is indifferent: “I haven’t given it a lot of thought. I find it totally uninteresting. What I’m interested in is winning elections, and I don’t give a shit what you look like.” It’s an odd and somewhat disingenuous response from an advocate of blogging as the ultimate tool of democratic participation.
Keith Jenkins, who authors Good Reputation Sleeping and works a day job as the picture editor at the Washington Post, says the low barriers to entry do not in themselves offer a sufficient guarantee of equal participation. “It’s less about actively stopping and standing in the way and more about affirmatively enabling access, which was the underlying argument of civil rights movements and freedom movements across the board,” he says. “It’s about affirmatively making it possible for everybody to have a seat at the table, which benefits not only the people who are sitting down, but also the people who are already seated.”

“We need to be encouraging a more diverse group of people to blog,” agrees Global Voices’ MacKinnon. “But we also need to be linking to them and giving them traffic so that they have a chance to make it to the A-list.”

While the organic growth of the blogosphere may resolve issues of race and gender over time, it will do little to address its overwhelming bias toward urban professionals. And that can’t be good news for a party that is already being punished at the polls for its weak connection to working-class Americans.

“For me the greatest problem is low-income people,” Cornfield says. “The irony is that it’s not because they don’t have money to get a laptop—especially with the $100 laptop now. It’s that people who are poor don’t have the civic skill sets and motivation to go online and do these sorts of things. That will take a concerted effort.”

At a time when the visible digital divide may be shrinking as increasing numbers of Americans come online, it may be replaced by an invisible version that benefits those who are well-educated, well-connected and organized.

Stoller does not think that it’s important for blogs to reach a less-affluent audience: “Not everybody has to be part of that conversation. If someone wants to have access to those discussions, they should be able to do that. But for the most part, people—like that person working two shifts—will go on with their lives knowing that good people are making good decisions and policies on their behalf.” Bloggers like Moulitsas—who is equally unconcerned that his blog will never reach “someone working at the DMV”—are likely betting that the cadre of activists they reach will be able to form connections across those differences within their community.

Perhaps sites like GrowOhio.org will prove them to be right if it manages to mobilize a constituency—e.g. rural voters—that is least likely to be wired, and in a region where the party’s on-the-ground resources are weak. But any such strategy is unlikely to work if those in charge of crafting it—be they bloggers, politicians or so-called netizens—show little interest in expanding the reach of the progressive blogosphere to include the largest, most diverse audience possible. If the blogs are unable to bridge the class divide online, there is no reason to think they can create a grassroots movement that can do so in the real world.
“If you do make an active effort, it is easier to accomplish through the Internet than through pretty much any other medium including direct mail,” Cornfield says. “But it will not happen on its own. It has to be a concerted effort.” Social movements are built by people not ghosts in some virtual machine.

The Washington Monthly profile of Moulitsas included a revealing quote, in which he expressed disappointment at not being able to fulfill his dream of making it big in the tech industry back in 1998: “Maybe at some time, Silicon Valley really was this democratic ideal where the guy with the best idea made a billion dollars, but by the time I got there at least, it was just like anything else—a bunch of rich kids who knew each other running around and it all depended on who you knew.”

The danger is that many may come to feel the same way about the blogosphere in the coming years.

Aktar nirien

2006-04-11T12:07:00.000+02:00

Tema: Ir-razziżmu u l-vjolenza
Sors: Times of Malta

Gli idioti dell'orror fan più e più rumor...

Arson attack on JRS' lawyer's car, house [11/04/2006]

A vehicle and the façade of a house in St Pius Street, Sliema, were extensively damaged after they were set on fire, the police said. Both vehicle and the house belong to Jesuit Refugee Service's lawyer Katrin Camilleri, who at the time was at home together with her husband and two children, aged three and six. Another car parked in the vicinity and the façade of another house were also damaged. The police said that members of the Civil Protection controlled the fire. Further investigations are being carried out.

Costas

2006-04-09T10:41:00.000+02:00

Tema: L-ispekulazzjoni tax-xtut
Sors: El País

- Tikkostruwixxu fuq il-kosta ta' Valencia sakemm tqażżeż 'l Alla li ħalaqha, u mbagħad? X'se tagħmlu?
- Inkunu sinjuri biżżejjed biex inqattgħu s-sajf f'kosti protetti.

MEPs to make proposals to help Malta with immigration problem

2006-03-30T13:11:00.000+02:00

Tema: L-immigrazzjoni
Sorsi: El País, EU Observer

MEPs to make proposals to help Malta with immigration problem
30.03.2006 - 09:30 CET By Aleander Balzan

EUOBSERVER/BRUSSELS - Members of the civil liberties committee in the European Parliament are to make proposals to amend an EU asylum law in a bid to relieve pressure on Malta, where they say refugee numbers are "overwhelming".

The MEPs will present this proposal after having visited detention centres on the island last week.

They were shocked by the conditions.

"I have never seen something comparable in my life" French socialist MEP Martine Roure told EUobserver. "The migrants are locked away in what could be described as cages. They have nearly no possibilities to get out."

"I would not spend one minute in those conditions, let alone 18 months. So the government's detention policy is, in part, contributing to an escalation of the situation," said Italian leftist MEP Giusto Catania.

But the MEPs also noted that Malta, the smallest member of the union, is not getting enough help from the EU.

"Malta is not helped enough by the EU. The number of immigrants arriving in comparison to its population is overwhelming, "said Ms Roure.

The MEPs are going to suggest a change to EU law, so that illegal immigrants who stop in Malta, but then move to the continent, should have their refugee application processed in another country.

This means that other member states should take refugees who have landed in Malta.

Currently, EU law prescribes, under the so-called Dublin Two regulation, that the first country which receives immigrants should process the application.

Ms Roure is calling for a derogation of Malta from the Dublin Two regulation.

"I want to ask Commissioner Frattini to improve the Dublin Two regulation so that small countries like Malta do not have to deal with refugee problems alone," added Ms Roure.

Vice-President of the Civil Liberties Committee, Stefano Zappala, also intends to propose that Malta is considered as a transit state.

The Committee will also call up on EU justice ministers to have one of their regular meetings in Malta rather than Brussels so they can see the situation with their own eyes.

Currently, more than 1,100 immigrants are being detained in Malta – which has a population of about 400,000.

Grandiosa corrida de focas

2006-03-28T08:09:00.000+02:00

Tema: Il-kacca tal-foki (jew bumarini)
Sors: El Mundo

"It is the market that is determining the amount of seals killed:

if people didn't buy fur there would be no market"
Eric Hovius, Ontario, Il-Kanada

Aktar tagħrif minn BBC News:

- Canada hunters head for seal cull
- Canada 'hindering seal observers'

Unscheduled Outage

2006-02-07T11:59:00.000+01:00

Ideas run dry? Or are we just a bunch of lazy nerds?

Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey — by Steve Connor

2005-12-22T22:39:00.000+01:00

Category: SHOUTRAGE
Subject: UK Domestic Surveillance
Source: The Independent

Introduction by Sean/iNoodle.com:

WHAT?!

Where's the widespread public outrage to this obscene intrusion into our private lives?! " ... every journey by every car will be monitored"?!

*****
From 2006 Britain will be the first country where every journey by every car will be monitored

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
The Independent (UK)
22 December 2005

Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.

Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.

The network will incorporate thousands of existing CCTV cameras which are being converted to read number plates automatically night and day to provide 24/7 coverage of all motorways and main roads, as well as towns, cities, ports and petrol-station forecourts.

By next March a central database installed alongside the Police National Computer in Hendon, north London, will store the details of 35 million number-plate "reads" per day. These will include time, date and precise location, with camera sites monitored by global positioning satellites.

Already there are plans to extend the database by increasing the storage period to five years and by linking thousands of additional cameras so that details of up to 100 million number plates can be fed each day into the central databank. [...]

Click here for the full Independent article.

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This post was originally published by Sean M. Madden on iNoodle.com.

An Incredible Day in America, Indeed—But, Will We Seize the Day, Or Let It Pass?

2005-12-18T02:33:00.000+01:00

Category: Shoutrage
Subjects: US Crimes (Torture/Surveillance)/Complicit Corporate Media/Impeachment/Presidential Prerogative/Fascism
Sources: Huffington Post, New York Times

by Sean M. Madden
iNoodle.com
December 17, 2005

In a fine Huffington Post article published yesterday, Martin Garbus, a leading American trial lawyer, unequivocally states that Bush has committed an impeachable crime in authorizing domestic surveillance without a court-issued warrant, and has, in conjunction with Congress, legitimized torture for the first time in US history.

Yet, again, the corporate media has failed to inform the citizenry of the implications of these illegal acts. Indeed, the corporate media has failed to present these acts for what they are, forget the reporting of implications. Obfuscation seems the preferred practice.

Mr. Garbus says that "most of the media missed it and got it wrong." Perhaps.

But, given the complicity of the corporate media in the war crimes committed to date by the US (and UK), and their willingness to disseminate government propaganda, to keep dissenting opinion on the fringes, and to steadfastly remain uncritical of the war crimes committed thus far, why should we assume that the corporate media's failing in this instance is an honest mistake?

The New York Times is apparently doing their best again today—by way of their top story, entitled Behind Power, One Principle as Bush Pushes Prerogatives—to provide (pseudo-) intellectual cover to turn what is an impeachable crime into a debatable topic, this time concerning presidential prerogative. This, two days after the New York Times admitted that they sat for a year on this story of unlawful surveillance, after the Bush administration requested that they not report on this illegal practice.

At what point will the New York Times' reading public dismiss the newspaper as a propagandist rag which is deep in the pockets of a war-criminal administration and an anti-democratic, and thereby anti-American, corporate-political elite, whether Republican or Democratic?

At what point does creeping presidential prerogative become incipient dictatorial fascism?

Will a majority of Americans know when such a point has been reached; and, if so, will they then have the will and the power to halt fascism's progress and regain freedoms lost? Or, will they continue to deny that fascism could possibly be visited upon their complacent, apolitical and corporatized version of democracy? Or, finally, will a majority of Americans wallow in their particular breed of fascism as they have long since wallowed in their particular breed of imperialism, undaunted by world opinion or international law?

Regardless, willful ignorance will not suffice should an excuse be sought in retrospect.

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This article was originally published by Sean M. Madden on iNoodle.com, and has since been published on Information Clearing House. This article replaces an earlier version posted on Postform on 17 Dec 05.

Encore Plus Democracy in America (SHT)

2005-12-14T11:30:00.000+01:00

Category: Shoutrage
Subject: US Crimes/Democracy/
Source: BBC, Council of Europe

The Stage: the Council of Europe
The Theme: Report on Allegations regarding secret detention centres in Europe
The Rapporteur: Dick Marty, Swiss Senator

From the Council of Europe page:

"Information gathered to date has “reinforced the credibility of allegations concerning the transfer and temporary detention of individuals, without any judicial involvement, in European countries”, according to Dick Marty, the Swiss parliamentarian looking into allegations of secret detention centres. In a statement today to PACE’s Legal Affairs Committee, Mr Marty said legal proceedings in certain countries “seemed to indicate that individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for legal standards”, although he said it was too early to assert there had been complicity of member states in illegal actions. He noted that the allegations had never formally been denied by the US."

From the BBC:

"In his statement, Mr Marty said it was "still too early to assert that there had been any involvement or complicity of member states in illegal actions." But, he warned, if the allegations proved correct any European states involved "would stand accused of having seriously breached their human rights obligations to the Council of Europe"."

***

The EU has not initiated any investigation of its own though it has warned that any of its states found with secret detention centres on its territory will have its voting rights suspended. Funny isn't it. The main instigator of all this damage is that great democracy across the ocean. It seems that the only one whose hands will not be slapped will remain the great law abiding US of Duh.

Remember the playground chaos as a child? Remember all the mothers rushing to the action and your mum getting "medieval on your ass" for having joined the general fun in torturing Johnny? Remember your anger when you noticed that Alex got away with it because his mum was "too relaxed" to do anything about it. And remember how your anger doubled when you pointed out this failure to punish to your mum and she answered "Yes, but Alex is not my son."

Seems like US of Duh will be getting away with this too.

Whose sons are they?

Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture: "Art, Truth & Politics"

2005-12-09T18:43:00.000+01:00

Category: Shoutrage/Action/Design
Subject: US & UK War Crimes/Democracy/Corporate Media (Propaganda)
Source: Nobelprize.org

"What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed."
~Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Laureate, Literature

Please gather family, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens to watch, together, this extraordinary Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

What Mr. Pinter says in this 46-minute videotaped lecture should be shouted from rooftops worldwide (particularly within the US and UK, where the message is most urgent), considered in the privacy of our own minds, researched to our heart's content, and discussed everywhere we gather: in our homes, at our workplaces, in the marketplace, in public and private gardens, in places of worship and spirituality, in cafés, bars, pubs and restaurants, on the streets, in town meetings and city halls, in university classrooms and lecture halls, in schoolrooms, on the editorial and op-ed pages of our local and national newspapers, in the blogosphere and other internet meeting places, and on community radio and television programs, until such time as the complicit corporate media is forced to speak truth to the citizenry rather than boldfaced lies on behalf of an anti-democratic corporate-political elite.

Let us carry within us, and communicate to the world, words of truth such that no dark, dank place is left for our war-criminal, corporate politicians and their propagandists to hide. Let us, then, begin to usher in true democracy, in which—for the first time in history—the citizenry, we, are self-respecting and respected, critically educated, and empowered to mature as whole human beings, unshackled, finally, from the corrupting effects of political paternalism.

Due to his presently undergoing cancer treatment, Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture was pre-recorded, and shown on video December 7, 2005, in Börssalen at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.

His videotaped lecture is available for both high- and low- bandwidth internet connections. The lecture is also available in text format in the following languages: English, Swedish, French and German.

Click here to access the lecture in these various formats via the official Nobel Prize website.

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This post was originally published by Sean M. Madden on iNoodle.com.

Farewell Punch (and Judy)

2005-12-07T11:44:00.000+01:00

CATEGORY: OPINION
SUBJECT: POLITICS/JOURNALISM
SOURCE: THE TIMES, TIMES OF MALTA

David Cameron is the new leader of the Conservative Party in the UK. Our own, Maltese, Times dedicated its editorial to this new appointment - which only goes to show that somebody at Strickland House still labours (or conserves) under the illusion that The Times of Malta is an independent conservative establishment of its own right.

But back to young David (I am ready to wager that it will become Dave soon). At 39 he is young indeed and has already (like Blair in his time) begun to draw comparisons to that myth called William Pitt the Younger. What I like about Dave is his intention to break with the past... which does take some guts when you are head of a party called Conservative. Reading today's Times (the original) we could hear about the person without experience who was elected to head the party. As always we hear the idealistic story, the one the person sets out with before facing the realities of politics. It is pleasant to hear but one cannot help but ask "How long will this idyllic wishing last?".

I loved the Punch and Judy politics quip. It is an ideal that I share with a passion. Here is what Cameron said:

"And, in a swift illustration of his determination to reclaim the centre ground for the Conservatives, he broke with the legacy of Thatcherism, declaring that there was such a thing as society, and promised a new style of politics that would mean the Tories backing the Government if they thought it was right for the country. He told his party to stop grumbling and to accept modern Britain as it was. With the authority of his massive victory behind him, Mr Cameron prepared to lay down the law to MPs, saying that he wanted an end to "Punch and Judy politics — the name-calling, backbiting, point scoring and finger pointing."

Apart from the beautiful middle-finger to grammatical convention by the Times contributor who starts a sentence, nay, a paragraph, with the word "And", this Grand Plan of Cameron cannot but be appreciated. Stop the bickering and become real, mature, responsible politicians. The joke (and irony) is on us. On the electors of democratic governments worldwide. Because (yes I start sentences with Because too) you see, we are now come to a point where electoral promises and promising politicians are simply what they were meant to be in the first place.

There is such a thing as society indeed.... good luck David!

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This post was originally posted on J'Accuse