Paloma Faith & Josh Weller – Its Christmas And I Hate You
Paloma Faith and Josh Weller – Dilemma
October 25, 2009
We Want Your Soul – Adam Freeland. Perfect! Just heading off to YouTube to check out more stuff from Freeland.
H/T for link and lyrics (under the fold) to funkhausen – CIF commenter on Doth I protest too much? by Mark Thomas. (more…)
October 24, 2009
Anna North blogs about that idiot self-help guru Marcus Buckingham with reference to Barbara Ehrenreich and an column by Judith Warner. Apparently women should all out-source everything – well I guess Buckingham isn’t talking to all women then, only the ones that can afford servents. Note how Warner substitutes caretaking for parenting, and work for paid employment. Parenting isn’t work, doh!
Sadie Stein blogs about how we love to censure parents with reference to the Heene parents (balloon boy), the Gosselin parents (well one of them is and the other is a total twat with hairplugs!) and Nadya Suleman (Octomum).
Jenna introduces a menstrual flow-chart which looks fun, if a little rigid – not everyone’s cycle marches to the same beat.
Margaret Hartmann blogs an entry regarding Lubna Hussein’s co-accused, who have been were sentenced to 20 lashes and a $110 fine yesterday for wearing pants. (As does Anne of Carversville.)
Latoya blogs about the new trend of attacking women for their money in Afghanistan, concluding with a paragraph that Nicholas Kristoff would be advised to consider:
Reports like these underscore how important it is to take a full, comprehensive approach to solving a societal problem. As wonderful as microloan programs like Kiva can be, if women are persecuted for exercising these opportunities or for growing their businesses, all of our best efforts will be for naught.
Cover Lies tell the real story of the magazine covers designed to appeal to the ladies - every issue, in gory detail. Enjoy!
October 24, 2009
October 23, 2009
Via Feministing
Sara Kruzan: Life Without Parole for Killing her Pimp
*Content is triggering*
This story speaks for itself. From the free Sara Kruzan action page at change.org:“Life without parole means absolutely no opportunity for release,” said Senator Yee. (of California) “It also means minors are often left without access to programs and rehabilitative services while in prison. This sentence was created for the worst of criminals that have no possibility of reform and it is not a humane way to handle children. While the crimes they committed caused undeniable suffering, these youth offenders are not the worst of the worst.”"As a society we’ve learned a lot since the time we started using life without parole for children,” said Elizabeth Calvin, a children’s rights advocate with Human Rights Watch. “We now know that this sentence provides no deterrent effect. While children who commit serious crimes should be held accountable, public safety can be protected without subjecting youth to the harshest prison sentence possible.”
Watch. Listen. Weep. Take Action.
Also, read our previous coverage on prisons.
Perfect example of self-defence in my opinion. But then again, Sara is black, female and poor which equals prison for life. Wrong.
October 23, 2009
Via The Independent
Hundreds of Afghans living in Britain face being deported after immigration judges ruled that their home country’s bloody conflict did not make the region an unsafe place to return failed asylum-seekers. The test ruling opens the way for deportation flights to southern parts of the war-torn country where thousands of civilians have lost their lives since the toppling of the Taliban in 2001. (more…)
October 23, 2009
“We’re black, white, Asian and Jew, BBC shame on you”
Posted by earwicga under Uncategorized1 Comment
La risa del pueblo
Many different views on Nick Griffin’s appearance on BBC’s Question Time. Mostly negative and mostly to be forgotten by next week. I more often than not watch Question Time, but not this week.
I strongly believe in NO PLATFORM FOR FASCISTS, NO EXCEPTIONS. Much like Peter Hain who has repeatedly voiced his opposition to the BBC’s invitation to Nick Griffin. In a Guardian article written after the fascist’s appearance Hain said:
For me, putting the BNP on Question Time was never about who performed best or ‘won the argument’ as if it was some kind of tv talent show. That the BNP has publicly thanked the BBC for putting it on Question Time says it all. The BBC should be ashamed of single-handedly doing a racist, fascist party the biggest favour in its grubby history. Our black, Muslim and Jewish citizens will sleep much less easily now the BBC has legitimised the BNP by treating its racist poison as the views of just another mainstream political party when it is so uniquely evil and dangerous.
My argument was never about censoring or banning the BNP as BBC bosses have disingenuously maintained. It was always about handing them a badge of legitimacy and respectability by lining up Nick Griffin — who has a conviction for inciting racial hatred — alongside democratic party figures as is if he and his party were just another one of them.
Those who supported the BBC just don’t get it. In Griffin’s words they have hit the ‘big time’, achieved the lift off they craved.
• Peter Hain MP is Secretary of State for Wales
By changing the format of the show, the BBC tried to make it into a special – an opportunity to get the odious politician. It made me feel uneasy reading the twitter thread (I didn’t watch the show – I’m not a hypocrite), and this comment below the article linked to above sums up my uneasyness (I’ve edited an unnecessary comment on Griffin’s appearance):
All I saw was a shifty, (clearly) uncomfortable, less-than-polished, under-rehearsed spokesman for the native “folk communities” making a complete arse of himself and his intellectual platform
I, also, saw [... him] attacked by representatives of a discredited and bankrupt political class that has, largely, been abandoned by scores of white working-class communities across the country. These same communities will rally round the BNP and Mr Griffin . . . it will be a sympathy vote for the “little guy” fighting against the corrupt and uncrupulous in their bear-pit
Mr Griffin walked away this evening intellectually-exposed, but, having enhanced his credentials as the un-official spokesman for a section of the electorate that will identify with the politics of the BNP stronger than ever before
Nothing to celebrate really. Griffin is an intellegent man, what with his Cambridge education and all, so it did surprise me a little that he came off as stupid. Are the BBC going to make a special each and every time they invite the BNP onto Question Time? Of course they won’t. But it’s all about the ratings isn’t it. Pissed that I paid for this programme to be made. And I still don’t understand why Griffin didn’t just join the tory party – it would have been perfectly acceptable with his views.
Btw, the title of this post was one of the chants demonstrators employed outside Television Centre. I’d like to thank each and every one of them for travelling to London, and other BBC centres across the UK, and speaking for me today.
Unite Against Fascism were one of the organisers for today’s demos, and write this on their website:
Up to 2,000 anti-fascist demonstrators turned out on the streets of west London today to protest outside the BBC Centre against BNP leader Nick Griffin being invited on to the BBC’s flagship Question Time programme. The crowd was young, lively and multi-racial – a manifestation of the society that Griffin and his gang of Nazi thugs would like to see crushed.
The Unite Against Fascism demonstration spilled out into the road, bringing traffic to a standstill and delaying the start of the filming of Question Time. The size of protest led Griffin to refuse to use the main gate to the BBC. He was smuggled in through a back entrance instead. Across the country people held local anti-fascist protests at their BBC offices.
A rally in the streets at the London demo heard from speakers including Andrew Slaughter MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP and Jerry Dammers, founder of The Specials. Trade union leaders also backed the protest and spoke at the rally, including Jeremy Dear of the NUJ, Gerry Morrissey of Bectu, Christine Blower from the NUT, Steve Hart from Unite and Tony Kearns of the CWU – representing postal workers who started their strike today.
Unite Against Fascism called the demonstration as an expression of the widespread public anger at the BBC’s decision to roll out the red carpet to Griffin. We do not accept the BBC’s justifications for this decision. Griffin is a convicted racist and lifelong Nazi. The BBC’s public duty to protect our multi-racial society should take precendence over its hunt for ratings and fake controversy.
Weyman Bennett, joint secretary of UAF, said: “Today’s demonstration was a brilliant example of a fine tradition of mass mobilisation against the Nazis. This is the tradition that has defeated fascism in the past – the Blackshirts in the 1930s and the National Front in the 1970s. In contrast, giving platforms to the fascists simply boosts their profile, as happened to Jean-Marie Le Pen in France in the 1980s.
“We should remember that friends of David Copeland, the London nailbomber, said he was a normal person before he joined the BNP. How many more David Copelands have joined the BNP tonight as a result of the prestigious platform the BBC has granted to Griffin?
“Griffin’s supporters – his army of racist thugs – will draw strength from his appearance, and they will use this confidence to get on to the streets and attack ethnic minorities. For make no mistake – it is black and Asian people who will pay the price for the BBC’s disgraceful decision in the weeks and months to come.”
Harpymarx was there and has pics.
October 23, 2009
Not a defeat over punishment – but an amendment regarding how to punish!
Posted by earwicga under UncategorizedLeave a Comment
The House of Lords succeeded with an amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill today. Good thing you might think, and it is in a very small way – but not good enough!
New Labour; Shower of Shit wished to dock benefits for single parents with children under 5, if they do not play ball with the training/punishment regime. It was argued that other forms of punishment would be more acceptable.
Well, fuck the lot of them!!!!!
Bringing up a child of any age is WORK. Bringing up a child as a single parent is even more WORK. That is what should have been challenged, but of course – they are all the same greedy fuckers who have no idea about life as it’s actually lived by the majority of the population. Fucking monsters.
Update: I heard some of the fucking monsters debating on the radio so have looked up the Hansard of the debate which is here and here (and was stupidly difficult to find).
The Government was defeated in the Lords today as peers backed a move that will prevent single parents of children under five suffering financial sanctions if they fail to take part in work-related activity.
Proposals in the Welfare Reform Bill will require lone parents with a youngest child older than three to start complying with measures aimed at making them ready for work by the time the child is seven.
But Tories and Liberal Democrats combined as peers voted by 103 to 97, majority six, to limit the parents who could be the subject of financial sanctions.
For Tories, Lord Freud, a former Government welfare adviser, said the measure would be a “safety brake”.
He suggested other sanctions such as “controls on how and in what form” single parents could spend their benefits.
“It always seemed illogical to come in with the full force of financial sanctions against a community that is subsisting on the breadline in many cases,” he said.
“What are you expecting, for people to starve. There must be more imaginative ways of running this sanctions regime.”
But Labour’s Baroness Hollis of Heigham, a former work and pensions minister, challenged him on why he believed it was still acceptable to impose sanctions on a single parent with a child as young as one who failed to attend a work-focused interview, as opposed to a work-related activity.
Lord Freud replied that the current regime under which sanctions could be imposed was a “light” regime as opposed to the new regime which “could be onerous”.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester, for Liberal Democrats, said: “We know that many lone parents of very young children lead very chaotic lives. Is it right to dock their benefit if they fail to attend an episode of work-related activity?”
She said that imposing sanctions sent out a signal to single parents that “looking after their own children in a hands-on full-time way during the child’s first five years is not as important to society as their preparing for the world of work”.
Lord McKenzie said that a lone parent whose youngest child was under seven will not be required “to be available for or actively seeking work” but the Government’s proposals would “help parents in their journey” towards getting a job.
He added: “Given the broad spectrum of activities that count as work-related activities we would hope that in most cases customers and advisers would be able to find suitable activities.
“However, if a lone parent fails to take such activities despite all the safeguards we would want the ability, as a last resort, to impose a sanction until they comply.”
Lord McKenzie, the junior Work and Pensions minister, indicated that he would look at a Liberal Democrat move to exempt all single parents of a disabled child under the age of 16 from having to take part in work-related activity.
At present only parents of children on the highest forms of disability living allowance would be excused from the activities.
But Lady Thomas moved an amendment that would extend the exemption to single parents of children on any form of the allowance.
Lord McKenzie said he would see if he could find a solution at third reading that “meets the requirements” of the Liberal Democrat amendment.He later formally introduced Government proposals which provide exemptions for single parents, such as not forcing them into work before their youngest child is seven. He said they provided the “assurances and safeguards” peers had been seeking.
Lord Freud said the Government amendments went “a long way to satisfying” Tory concerns expressed at earlier stages in the Bill.
October 22, 2009
