Del.icio.us links for September 20th through September 27th:
- Revealed: the hidden army in UK prisons – The number of former servicemen in prison or on probation or parole is now more than double the total British deployment in Afghanistan, according to a new survey. An estimated 20,000 veterans are in the criminal justice system, with 8,500 behind bars, almost one in 10 of the prison population.
Tags: britain armedforces veterans crime prisons law imperialism - G20 protesters blasted by sonic cannon – Only a few hundreds protesters took to the streets of Pittsburgh to mark the opening day of the G20 summit of world leaders, but the police were taking no chances.
Tags: police protest activism g20 USA technology - G20 Protests – One of the better comments I’ve seen about the repression of the G20 protesters points out that when the ‘Teabaggers’ inspired by Glenn Beck turned out to protest over healthcare reform, they could bring a gun and cite the second amendment, without being harrassed. G20 protesters get beaten up and exposed to top notch military technology if they just cite the first amendment.
Tags: police protest activism leftwing rightwing USA - LRB · Roy Mayall: Diary – According to Royal Mail figures published in May, mail volume declined by 5.5 per cent over the preceding 12 months, and is predicted to fall by a further 10 per cent this year ‘due to the recession and the continuing growth of electronic communications such as email’. Every postman knows these figures are false.
Tags: britain royalmail publicservices bureaucracy privatisation politics management lies statistics - There will be no ‘invasion’ from ‘jungle camps’ – At a moment when the Labour home secretary, Alan Johnson, expresses his “delight” at the pitiful sight of hundreds of French police rounding up mainly Afghan asylum seekers in a makeshift camp in Calais, it is time to defend the right to claim asylum in Britain. Johnson, in language that seems more concerned about the Daily Mail front page than the wording of the 1951 Geneva convention on asylum, pre-judges the issue by talking about protecting “genuine” refugees but insisting they should not be allowed to come to Britain to have their claims decided.
Tags: immigration britain france europe asylumseekers racism xenophobia rightwingbullshit war refugees imperialism - Blurred boundaries for teachers – Following the jailing this week of Helen Goddard, the teacher who had a sexual relationship with a pupil, Jon Henley looks at how texting, emailing and social networking sites are radically changing the teacher-pupil relationship
Tags: britain schools education teaching relationships profit - The very British values of John Enoch Powell – Enoch Powell is the subject of reactionary encomium wherever the issues of race, integration and post-colonial Britain arise. They say that he wasn’t a racist, just a decent English patriot who was saddened by the dilution of national identity. They say that he was right. They say that the current multicultural situation is intolerable and perverse, and that this was foreseen by Powell. ‘They’ talk an incredible amount of rubbish.
Tags: britain history racism patriotism xenophobia nationalism farright immigration rhetoric - Sabra and Shatila – To destroy the basis of Palestinian nationhood, Israel had to crush every manifestation of civil society, political and military development among the Palestinians living in border areas and miserable refugee camps, from 1949 onward. Repeated incursions into Jordan, including the bombing of Irbid, and the ethnic cleansing of one and a half million people from the Suez Canal area in 1970, was a logical corollary of this. The Hashemite kingdom of Jordan had been the Zionists’ key ally in the originary purge of 700,000 Palestinians that enabled the Israeli state to come into being.
Tags: israel palestine jordan lebanon middleeast politics genocide stateterror - Alas, poor Trotsky – When neoconservatives perish, do they share the same circle of hell as Leon Trotsky, or that of Joseph de Maistre? Is their sin one of revolutionary hubris, or militant reaction? It is a staple of both liberal and right-wing critics of neoconservatism that it is a mutation of Trotskyism, a ‘foreign’ revolutionary doctrine overthrowing classically American conservative discourse.
Tags: neoconservatism trotskyism politics ideology history - Wicca Lies (conclusion): An Unsupportable Pack of Lies – You see, there isn’t much actual magic in Wicca 101. There’s not much psychic development, just basic grounding and centering, maybe a few breathing exercises and some chants. There’s not much on group dynamics, on working with a group and managing the needs of such a group. And there’s certainly no push to encourage students to study primary source material. So given these deficits, it’s obvious that these should be the agenda for any classes beyond Wicca 101. However, there’s an intractable problem that any would-be Wicca 200 (and above) course developer faces. If such a class were to be in any way honest, then class 2, lesson 1, sentence 1 would have to be this: “OK, all of that stuff we taught you in Wicca 101? Forget it. None of it was true.”
Tags: wicca paganism religion spirituality belief politics history - Gin, servants and bloodlines for royalty’s Alf Garnett in a tiara – It must be exhausting to be a monarchist, forever finding ways to pretend a family of cold, talentless snobs are better than the rest of us. They have to make gold out of mud. The system of monarchy – selecting a head of state solely because of the womb they passed through, and surrounding them with sycophants from the moment they emerge – produces warped and dim people and demands that we scrape before them. What’s a poor monarchist to do? They can only lavish a thick cream of adjectives – “dignity”, “charm”, “majesty” – over the Windsor family in the hope that some of us are fooled.
Tags: britain monarchy aristocracy class imperialism racism royalfamily - Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam – Three years in the making, this feature documentary follows the progression of the Muslim Punk scene: from its imaginary inception in a novel written by a white-convert named Michael Muhammad Knight to a full-blown, real-life scene of Muslim punk bands and their fans.
Tags: punk music islam counterculture USA muslims rebellion - The Decade Of Custom, Made To Order Products – Me and DIY go way back. Through running Big Scary Monsters Records, a label born, bred and sustained through ‘do-it-yourself’ ethics and ideas, I’ve taught myself the ropes and learnt lessons the hard way over the past 7 or 8 years.
Tags: DIY music labels musicindustry business - Rory Henderson (American Steel) – American Steel are in full on support mode for their most recent Fat Wreck Chords release, Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts. Tonight we bring you an interview between our own John Numbskull and American Steel’s Rory Henderson.
Tags: band music interview - ‘Let Them Know – The Story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records’ by Various Artists – The compilation for the LA punk label’s 25th anniversary features some of the best in the genre covering each other’s songs, including one of Pennywise’s last recordings with their original lineup. (Full album stream here!)
Tags: music stream - Apologies, I Have None – A stream of the excellent London punk duo’s latest EP.
Tags: band music - Black Wine on MySpace Music – Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Videos – 80s-style US alt-rock band feat. ex-Ergs! guitarist.
Tags: band music - Burning Love on MySpace Music – Ex-Cursed! Dirty rock & roll combined with crushing hardcore.
Tags: band music hotdamn! - DIE EMERGENCY [2006-2009] on MySpace Music – Awesome ex-ANOTKTWR punk band.
Tags: band music hotdamn! - Why are we the naked ape? – RIGHT from the start of modern evolutionary science, why humans are hairless has been controversial. “No one supposes,” wrote Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man, “that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man: his body, therefore, cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection.”
Tags: evolution biology paleontology humanity history research studies theory - Dollhouse, Joss Whedon, and the Strange and Difficult Path of Feminist Dudes: Some Thoughts – Dollhouse is, pretty much specifically and entirely, a show about consent. It’s built around an organization – the titular Dollhouse – which erases volunteers’ personalities and memories and renders them childlike and passive, in order to implant them with new, built-to-order personalities custom made for wealthy clients who wish to order the “perfect” person for a specific job.
Tags: television review criticism analysis identity rape power control society politics josswhedon - Dollhouse, Joss Whedon, and the Strange and Difficult Path of Feminist Dudes: Some Thoughts – Dollhouse is, pretty much specifically and entirely, a show about consent. It’s built around an organization – the titular Dollhouse – which erases volunteers’ personalities and memories and renders them childlike and passive, in order to implant them with new, built-to-order personalities custom made for wealthy clients who wish to order the “perfect” person for a specific job.
Tags: television review criticism analysis identity rape power control society politics josswhedon - Asking the Wrong Questions: Alpha and Omega – Hey, you know what show could really use a bit more online discussion? Dollhouse! “Echo,” the original, unaired pilot for Joss Whedon’s by no means triumphant return to television, and “Epitaph One,” the shelved thirteenth episode of its first season, are now viewable through various and sundry means. Taken together, they paint a very different picture of the show from the one arising from the first season. Not simply because they are both well-written, engaging hours of television–hardly stellar on either count, but certainly head and shoulders above most of the season’s conventionally aired episodes–but because they illustrate how wide the gap is between the show Whedon envisioned and tried to create and the show he was allowed to make.
Tags: television criticism review analysis josswhedon rape identity - Strange Horizons: Two Views: Dollhouse, season one, reviewed by Bernadette Lynn Bosky and Gianduja Kiss – Dual review of season one of Dollhouse from Strange Horizons. Worth a read if you’re interested in the show.
Tags: television criticism review - 5 Real Life Soldiers Who Make Rambo Look Like a Pussy – “We all understand that action movies are cheesy escapism. After all, could one commando really take out a whole compound full of bad guys? Actually, yes. It turns out the history books are full of stories of soldiers doing things so badass they’d hesitate to put them into a film for fear of killing the realism. Like these five, for example.” Insane.
Tags: soldiers military war history heroism insane - Hark, a vagrant: 213 – Jules Verne <3 Edgar Allan Poe.
Tags: comics literature history funny