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Posts Tagged ‘Mosques’

Best Hopes and Prayers for the Victims of Daesh Attack in Manchester

May 23, 2017

Like everyone else, I’ve been stunned and horrified by the suicide bombing last night of a concert by Arianna Grande in Manchester. From what I gather from the news, it’s left 22 people dead and 59 injured.

Jo, one of the great commenters here, posted this on one of my other posts earlier today, which expresses my own feelings and, I’m sure, those of all the other people who read and comment on this blog. She said

I would like to offer my condolences, Hopes and Prayers to all those touched by this tragic and cowardly attack! My heart goes out to all who are suffering!

Mike over at Vox Political has also expressed his disgust at this atrocity in a piece supporting a post by the Angry Yorkshireman. Both Mike and Tom Clarke are afraid that the extreme Right will start using this attack to spread racist and Islamophic bile. From reading the great people, who have commented on Mike’s blog, it appears that the Scum’s resident troll, Katie Hopkins, and Stephen Lennon, AKA Tommy Robinson, formerly of the English Defence League and Pegida UK, have already done so. As has Alt-Right ideologue and hate monger, Stefan Molyneux. Mike also mentions a Twitter thread in which one bigot recommends setting up concentration camps.

Mike states

This Site – This Writer – is horrified by the incident in Manchester and my thoughts and sympathies are with the families and friends of those who have died or who have been injured.

But the way to answer it is to share important messages that provide support, like this one:

[Here he includes a Home Office message and link to a page that will provide help for people who have been affected by this attack.]

Nobody should answer hate with hate. That is what terrorists want.

And we should not shut down our political discourse either – they want that too.

Defy them. Drown their hate-filled messages. Offer hope instead.

Terrorists commit their atrocities not just to spread fear amongst their enemies, but also to provoke the government and authorities into retaliating harshly. They hope that the government and people of Britain will attack and persecute other Muslims, as they believe that this will radicalise Britain’s Muslims in turn in a vicious cycle of hate and violence.

The best way to respond to this attack is not to let them lure or provoke any of us, whatever our religious beliefs or lack of them, into hatred. Their actions and beliefs are not supported or representative of the majority of Muslims, both in Britain and throughout the world. One of the contributors to Counterpunch, an Arab, pointed out in an article there that cleric after cleric in Muslim nations and communities across the world have issued fatwas condemning ISIS. A few years ago the biggest Muslim organisation in India issued a denunciation, supported by something like 200 members of the Islamic clergy.

As well as killing non-Muslims, Daesh have also murdered ordinary Muslims. They constitute the majority of their victims. Daesh has also done its level best to destroy Muslim shrines and erase centuries of Muslim scholarship, culture and learning, when they decide it’s not ‘Muslim’ enough for them. So we’ve seen mosques and shrines desecrated and destroyed along with Christian churches in Iraq. And a few years ago Islamist militants tried to burn down the medieval library of the west African city of Timbuktu. As well as being a fabled centre of the west African gold trade, Timbuktu was also a site of Islamic learning, and its library contained a wealth of ancient texts, including scientific books.

And it would not surprise me even remotely if many of the victims of last night’s attack were also Muslims, just gone, like the other people there, to have a good time.

I also have the deepest sympathy for Grande herself. She has stated that she feels deeply sorry for what happened. This must be a very hard blow for her, as every entertainer or performer goes out on stage hoping to give people a good time. The last thing they want is for the people who appreciate and support their music to be murdered by some fanatic.

I also have the utmost respect and praise for the doctors, nurses and emergency services, who responded so quickly and promptly to this emergency. According to the news, many people came back from their leave or days off in order to help, to the point where one hospital was turning them away.

We are so lucky to have such dedicated professionals in Britain, and it is a scandal that May and the Tories are treating them with such derision, that there are now nurses forced to use food banks.

Hope Not Hate are also compiling a message of hope, peace and tolerance on their site, which they hope people will sign. If you wish to do so, and add your own personal message to it, you can find it at

Go there and then follow the link.

Manchester’s a great city with a great people. I wish them the very best, and have every confidence that they won’t give in to the bigots and preachers of hate, whether from the British xenophobic Right or the Islamists.

We will never be divided!

The Ancient Near East as the Birthplace of Democracy

May 15, 2017

This is a bit of a rejoinder to Boris ‘Mugwump’ Johnson. Johnson, as a public schoolboy steeped in the Classics, believes that everything great and good began with ancient Greece and Rome. But a few years ago I put up a blog post about a book, The Origins of the Democracy in the Ancient Near East, which argued that the roots of democracy went further back, and further east, than ancient Greece. It began instead in the popular assemblies, which governed ancient mesopotamian civilisations such as the city state of Mari.

I found this passage about the democratic nature of ancient near eastern civilisation in the entry ‘Law (Mesopotamian)’ in Charles F. Pfeiffer, The Biblical World: A Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology (London: Pickering and Inglis Ltd 1966), 356-359. This states

The pattern of society in early Mesopotamia has been described as “primitive democracy”. There was an assembly (Sumerian ukkin, Akkadian puhrum) of the elders and young men with whom they chieftain or leader (antecedant of the later king) must consult. All major decisions were put to a vote. In addition, the cheiftain was obliged to give to his tutelary deity an annual account of his conduct of authority during the previous year. No doubt here also, as in the case of Egypt, there was drastic modification in practice especially in later years when, for example, such strong men as Sargon of Akkad, Hammurabi of Babylon or Sennacherib of Assyria ruled. But the principle remained in daily life as a unique characteristic of Mesopotamian civilization and spread into Syria and Anatolia as well. 356.

I don’t doubt that in the half century since the book was published, this view of ancient near eastern society as democratic has been revised. I think the book that came out about it a few years ago said that these states weren’t democratic. However, popular assemblies did exist.

Mesopotamia was the old name for the area that is now Iraq, and I wonder how much of its ancient history and precious archaeology has survived the western invasion by Bush and Blair, sectarian conflict and the destructive fury of ISIS. Nicholas Wood in his book, The Case Against Blair, describes how the Americans trashed Babylon when they chose to make it into one of the bases. And the barbarians of ISIS released a vide of them levelling Nineveh and destroying priceless antiquities in one of Iraq’s museums.

And their fury against anything they judge to be un-Islamic isn’t confined to the ancient past. They’ve also desecrated and destroyed Christian churches and the country’s Muslim shrines and mosques. And this is besides the horrific carnage and destruction which the war and its aftermatch have unleashed on the region and its people.

Iraq was one of the major centres of world civilisation, and the destruction of its ancient monuments and artefacts is a massive loss. And all because Bush, Blair and the Saudis wanted to steal the country’s oil and other state-owned industries for American big business.

Richard Seymour’s Refutation of Sexism Smears against Corbyn

April 14, 2017

A few days ago I put up a piece about Richard Seymour’s book Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics (London: Verso 2016). Seymour’s analysis of the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, and what it means for the Labour party, is very much his own. Seymour points out that one of the reasons why Corbyn was able to take the Labour leadership was because the right-wing Labour vote was divided between three opposing candidates. He sees the Labour party as never having really been a Socialist party, and that Corbyn’s election as leader was part of a process of political stagnation and degeneration both within the Labour party and generally in British politics.

However, in the introduction and first chapter, he does attack the ‘Project Fear’ campaign launched by the Blairites and the press against Corbyn, and refutes the smears against him – that he and his voters were unelectable and anti-Semitic. The Blairites and their toadies in the press also tried smearing Corbyn and his supporters as misogynists, just as Killary had smeared Sanders and his supporters in the US in her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. And just as Killary’s smears against Sanders were lies, so were the accusations against Corbyn and his supporters. Seymour writes

One of the main methods of obloquy from the centre-left papers – aside from the claim that Corbyn’s supporters were either spaniel-eyed naifs, gently prancing around in cloud cuckoo land, or dangerous ideological zealots – was to bait Corbyn’s supporters as sexist. The Guardian had backed Yvette Cooper for the leadership, partially on the grounds that she would be the first female leader, bringing ‘down-to-earth feminism’ to the role, and challenging austerity policies that hurt women. Its leading columnist and former Social Democratic Party (SDP) star Polly Toynbee seconded the endorsement, announcing: ‘Labour needs a woman leader.’ This prompted a reply by the seasoned feminists Selma James and Nina Lopez, who pointed out that Cooper not only supported ‘sexist austerity’ but had also implemented it in government, abolishing income support and extending work-capability assessments for the sick and disabled. Nonetheless, having supported Cooper as a ‘feminist’, it didn’t require much imagination to notice that Corbyn was not female and thus to indict his supporters ‘brocialists’. Suzanne Moore complained that as Corbyn was ‘anointed leader’ – that is to say, elected leader – ‘not one female voice was heard’. The remarkable thing about this complaint was that Corbyn won among women by a landslide. The polls showed that 61 per cent of women eligible to vote in the election supported Corbyn, while the two female candidates, Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper, gained 4 per cent and 19 per cent respectively. The polling company YouGov pointed out that ‘women who are eligible to vote are dramatically more likely to vote Corbyn than men’. What Moore meant was the she hadn’t listened to the women who supported Corbyn, an important distinction.

This campaign spread to the Independent,which published a surreal piece headlined, ‘If it’s truly progressive, Labour will have voted in a female leader – regardless of her policies’. It was also mirrored by the Telegraph, which gleefully wondered if Corbyn had a ‘women problem’. Cathy Newman, a Channel 4 News reporter who had recently made headlines by falsely reporting an example of sexist exclusion at a mosque, authored a piece for the Telegraph which sneered ‘Welcome to Jeremy Corbyn’s blokey Britain – where “brocialism” rules’. Newman’s complaint did not concern policy, on which Corbyn was difficult to attack, but representation. She alleged that none of the ‘top jobs’ went to women. Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, it must be said, was notable for being the first to have more than 50 per cent of its posts occupied by women – as opposed to the pathetic 22 per cent representation that women have in wider public life. The shadow ministries of Defence, Business, Health and Education were all run by women. The shadow cabinet was, in other words, more gender-egalitarian on this front than any previous Labour shadow cabinet. It is perfectly fair comment to lament that important posts such as shadow chancellor have never been held by a woman, but the force of the point is blunted if it is simply used in an opportunistic way to belabour Corbyn. Likewise, the New Statesman’s effort to pour cold water on Corbyn’s victory, with the headline ‘Labour chooses white man as leader’, would have been more convincing if the publication had not generously supported every previous white man elected as Labour leader.

From this it’s very clear that the accusation of sexism and misogyny against Corbyn were merely another opportunistic smear by a group of entitled, wealthy Blairites. It was monumentally hypocritical, as these women were perfectly happy with promoting policies that actively harmed – and under the Tories, are still harming women. The ladies, who supported Corbyn knew better, and voted for substance, rather than the specious feminism of a female candidate, who was only interested in promoting herself and not improving conditions for women as a whole.

Andre Vltchek’s Pictures and Plea for Understanding for Syria

April 13, 2017

On Wednesday, Counterpunch contributor Andre Vltchek published some of the pictures and comments about Syria from Yayoi Segi, a foreigner, who has been living and working there for three years, and is passionate about the country and its people. Segi states

“Syria is not what the mainstream media wants us to believe it is. One has to see it, to understand. Seeing is believing! It is an extraordinarily exceptional country. All that we have been told about Syria and its people is a lie.”

She talks about how the Syrian people are decent, warm people trying to get on with their lives despite the horrors and inconveniences of the war. She is also impressed by their manners and respect for education and culture.

“Syrians are the most hospitable, gentle people. When we meet, we never talk about the war, the conflict. It is a tremendous civilization… They always talk about their life, the future. They discuss their poets and their thinkers. People in Syria are very well educated. They know what is going on, on our Planet. Despite what some parts of the world have done to them, they are extremely respectful and polite to everybody. I never heard them speaking ill of others. They appreciate that you come and work with them, and they are confident.”

She also remarks that all of the international conferences and debates about the situation in Syria have carried on without reference to the wishes or ideas of the Syrians themselves.

“There have been so many seminars, conferences and meetings on Syria, yet the Syrian people are very rarely invited. All these events are ‘about them’ but without even inviting them, and without listening to them.”

Segi works for the national education system, and describes the system’s resilience and high quality compared to other nations.

“On the education front, the system was one of the best in the region, before the crisis began. Now, despite more than 6 years of horrendous war, the system is still standing and strong. Syrians know exactly what they want, and they have the capacity to implement their aspirations. Like in Aleppo; after the victory, the government immediately moved in and began opening schools.”

Her photographs show the devastation caused by war. But they also show people enjoying themselves in cafes and restaurants, as well as one of the great medieval fortresses and a sculpture, which looks like it may well come from the ancient past. Several of the photos are of schoolchildren. These show a mixed class of little boys and girls, smiling and dressed in western style clothing. There’s also what looks like a crowd of sports fans – football? – heading towards a match, and a sign with spells out in coloured letters ‘I heart Damascus’.

There is much that Vltchek writes with which I disagree. He’s of Czech-Russian ancestry, and is a film maker specialising in the Developing World. His fierce attacks on western exploitation of the undeveloped world is well meant, but sometimes he goes too far in attacking the Developed World and the needs and desires of its ordinary citizens. It’s also struck me several times that he has a far too optimistic view of the Soviet past. Russia and the eastern bloc did make some truly vast, impressive achievements under Communism, but this was at the cost of a vicious political repression which under Stalin resulted in deportations, massacres and a system of forced labour, which claimed tens of millions of lives. The Soviet Union also dominated and exploited the satellite countries conquered by Stalin from the Nazis during World War II.

But Vltchek’s article is in this case exactly right, necessary and welcome. Syria is a repressive state. Even in the 1980s it had something like eight different secret police agencies. But under the Ba’ath party it is a modern, secular state, where Christians and Muslims live in peace. As for its education system, a few years ago the BBC screened a documentary about the Syrian school system, following the pupils in one particular school through a school day. At the end of the documentary the Beeb informed viewers how they could join a scheme that would link schools in this country with those in Syria.

As for the high regard for its poets and intellectuals, several of the books I’ve read on Islam and the Arabs have said that poetry has a very high status in the Arab world, to the point where newspapers may be written in a distinct, half-poetic style. As for its antiquities, you can still walk down the Street called Straight, mentioned in St. Paul’s Epistles in the Bible. The country has monuments from a succession of ancient civilisations, such as Palmyra, going all the way back to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The tombs of some of the kings mentioned in the Bible have even been found.

It’s people are not monsters, and while Assad is a dictator, his government is surely better than the Islamist regime, which the rebels – al-Qaeda and ISIS – hope to impose. This would mean the destruction of ancient monuments, as has happened in Iraq and those parts of Syria, which fell under ISIS’ rule. Women’s rights would be attacked and withdrawn, the secular education system and rule of law swiftly dismantled. The country isn’t quite as tolerant in the religious sphere as it could be. From what I’ve heard on programmes about the country and its history on the Beeb, the Sunni Muslim majority is oppressed. But the Ba’ath party in Syria was founded as a secular, Arab nationalist party, which included both Christians and Muslims. If it is overthrown, the country’s tolerance of peoples of different sects and religions will also go, to be replaced by the type of vicious, genocidal persecution ISIS carried out in Iraq. Dan Snow’s programme on the country, broadcast by the Beeb, featured chilling footage of a foaming rant by an Islamist mullah calling for the genocide of the Alawis, the ruling Muslim sect. And as we’ve seen in Iraq, the Islamists not only persecute non-Muslims, they also viciously terrorise and butcher other Muslims for their religious beliefs. Historic mosques as well as Christian churches were destroyed and desecrated by ISIS in Iraq, and ordinary Muslims, whose only desire was to live in peace with their fellow Iraqis, were also murdered for not being what the Islamists considered proper Muslims.

I and many other bloggers have said repeatedly that the American regime and its western allies and lackeys aren’t interested in punishing Assad for his war crimes. This is all about geopolitics. It’s about making sure a Qatari oil pipeline goes through Syria, not one built by the Russians, and about removing a key ally of Russia and Iran. The American military-industrial complex has done its level best to overthrow secular Arab nationalist governments in the Middle East from the 1950s, as they were seen as being too close to Communism. Quite apart from the challenge they posed to western imperialism and its attempts to dominate and exploit the Middle East and its oil.

I therefore urge anyone, who has doubts about the justice of Trump’s attack on Syria, and the sabre-rattling of the western political class demanding regime change, to go and read Vltchek’s article and look at the pictures of Syria and its people. And look at the faces of the people, who will suffer if the oil lobby and the military-industrial complex have their way, and send American troops in. These are ordinary, decent people, who will be massacred by the hundreds of thousands, just like the people of Iraq.

The article’s at: http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/12/reflecting-on-syria/

TYT Nation on Calls for the Deportation of Jews & Immigrants and ‘Liberal Genocide’ at Trump Rally

March 12, 2017

More militant racism and hate from Trump’s Fascistic supporters. In this piece from TYT Nation, Jeff Waldorf, the host, comments on a video produced by Dan Cohen of the Real News of a pro-Trump rally at Maricopa County. This is only part of a much longer report by Cohen, which Waldorf urges his viewers to see. The clip shows some of the attendees, speakers and the emcee, Tim Horn, pouring out their hatred of the above groups. One man states that America is a Christian country, and that if immigrants don’t like it, they should leave. Another man, a Vietnam War veteran, claims that the Communists and ‘sharia law Muslims’ are in cahoots to bring down America, and that when ‘Sharia law Muslims’ enter a classroom, they kill all the children and other people in it. One of those interviewed is the 13 year old boy, who proudly claims to have started the chant ‘Build that wall!’ at one of the Orange Generalissimo’s rallies. As he’s speaking, the lad looks aside for one moment, and casually comments, ‘If she’s really that Jewish, she should go back to her own country’. One man also rants about how gays should go to Gaza. One of the speakers also declares that if they want to take their country back, they should free a few people from prison, and jail some others.

Horn claims that the Democrats are really ‘the Socialist Party of America’, because ‘liberals hate this country’ and have got into the schools and universities to brainwash its children and destroy it. One man even comments that he ‘can’t wait for that Liberal genocide’.

Waldorf makes some highly incisive observations on the way these people have themselves been misinformed and deliberated deceived by their leaders, the rich. The Left doesn’t hate America. They want to introduce free healthcare and better opportunities for the poor and immigrants, because they love their country and its people, and want everyone to benefit, including Republicans. He also points out that there are no plans to murder Republicans, but if we’re talking about Communists and Muslims, well, Ronald Reagan and the Republicans armed the Mujahideen to fight the Russians when they invaded Afghanistan. He goes on to say how these people are terribly afraid, afraid of anyone different from themselves, to the extent that they want to build this wall around America. It’s a fear based on ignorance. And as for that wall, it’s supposed to cost $25 billion, although no-one knows how that money is going to be raised, and it may well cost more far more. And that wall is not going to protect the rest of the country. ‘Good luck with building ‘sky-walls in New York to defend the city from planes’, Waldorf remarks sarcastically.

As for the Jewish girl, who’s supposed to go back to her own country, well, how can she? She’s an American. This is her country.

He also makes the point that the rich are behind this, deliberately creating and stoking this fear in order to keep the poor and middle class divided, so they can pick their pockets.

There are a number of points that leap out looking at this video. The first is the conspiracist thinking that believes that ‘the Left’ hates America, and has a deliberate policy of infiltrating America’s educational institutions. This is the old rubbish about ‘cultural Marxism’ trying to introduce ‘Communism’ by attacking European and American Christian, capitalist White culture. As for the stupid theories of an alliance between Islamists and Communists/ Leftists, the British novelists Anthony Burgess believed in that load of nonsense. Back in the 1980s he wrote a riposte to George Orwell’s great dystopian novel, called 1985. In this wretched book the trade unions ally with radical Muslims to bring about a totalitarian revolution. Burgess was one of the great figures of 20th century British literature, and used to make a great show of his erudition. Thus Private Eye called him, ‘the most pretentious man in English literature’. Well, it doesn’t matter how great a literary giant he was, he was still talking nonsense with that book. More recently, writers like Frederick Raphael have been spouting the same nonsense about how the remains of European Socialism will unite with the Muslims to start another holocaust of the Jews. Raphael gave a glowing review of a book with just this theme, set in the 2020s, about a decade ago in the page of the Spectator.

As for ‘sharia law’ Muslims killing children in American schools, no, they won’t. From what I’ve heard over here, much of the information warning the authorities of possible attacks from the Islamists comes from Muslims, who would like to live under Islamic law. There is clearly a problem here, as implementing such law would be divisive and deprive liberal or secular Muslims of the opportunity and ability to integrate into wider British society. Nevertheless, the point needs to be made that just because a Muslim believes in sharia law does not mean that they automatically support terrorism.

But if we are talking about extremely conservative Muslims, who have killed schoolchildren, then we should mention Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a country governed by an extremely narrow and intolerant version of sharia law. Its armed forces have deliberately killed children, and other civilians in attacks on mosques, hospitals, factories and schools in neighbouring Yemen as part of their campaign against Shi’a Islam. The weapons they have used in these atrocities, including cluster bombs, which are banned under international treaty, have been sold to them by America and Britain.

Waldorf is also correct when he says that these fears are being stoked by the rich to divide America in order to pick the pockets of ordinary people. This is absolutely correct. Since Margaret Thatcher in England and Ronald Reagan in America took power at the dawn of the 1980s, there has been a massive transfer of wealth upwards from the poor and middle class to the rich as welfare programmes have been closed down, and industries privatised and deregulated. Wages have been deliberately kept stagnant. The earnings of the rich 1% have been massively inflated as they have enjoyed generous tax cut after tax cut. Meanwhile, those taxes have been transferred to the poor.

This policy is continuing under Donald Trump. Trump is repealing Obamacare, which will see millions of poor Americans deprived of affordable health insurance. He has done this in order to give even more tax cuts to the rich, while the poor will receive absolutely nothing of the kind. This is because corporations and the rich fund America’s politicians, who respond by doing exactly what their paymasters want. And what they want is a poor, cowed workforce deprived of all but the most minimal rights. It’s also the guiding vision of the British Conservative party.

The way to give prosperity back to ordinary Americans – and Brits – is for the ordinary people to unite, and not let themselves be deceived by lies and fearmongering about ‘liberals’, non-Whites, Jews and Muslims. We need to stand together, whatever our race or religion, to make sure that ordinary people, of whatever religious or non-religious persuasion or colour, have decent jobs, a proper welfare support infrastructure, and proper healthcare. Everything, in fact, which Trump in America and Theresa May in Britain wishes to deprive them.

Paul Nuttall Photographed with Another Islamophobic Racist

February 11, 2017

Last Friday, Hope Not Hate posted a piece reporting that Paul ‘Eddie Hitler’ Nuttall had been photographed grinning with yet another member of the British Far Right. The national press had reported last May that he had posed with Andrew Edge, a violent thug from the English Defence League.

Now he is photographed smiling with Wayne Riley, an islamaphobe, who has regularly gone on far right protest marches and abused Asians in Bolton in Lancashire. He has been convicted of using threatening or abusive words or behaviour likely to cause alarm or distress on election day 2015. He apparently got so violent when his case was heard that he had to be removed from court. At the anti-mosque demo last November the Nazi youth group, National Action, threw Nazi salutes, while Bolton paraded around in a niqab with his dog draped in the Union Flag. And last month he put a video of himself on Facebook abusing local Asian men, vowing that he would ‘fight these retards until I die’.

The Kippers have a policy of not tolerating members from the racist right, but they keep on turning up, again and again. This is why the residents of Stoke on Trent, when they were interviewed by Chunky Mark this week, expressed fear and dismay at Nuttall trying to get elected as their town’s MP. Nuttall’s only there because three other towns have conspicuously failed to elect him as their parliamentary representative. He has no connection to the town and in their view, does not care about its diverse people. One gentleman interviewed said that he was only cause division, while one of the ladies observed how hurtful his lies about immigrants only coming to Britain to claim benefits must be to those migrants, who hadn’t. Which constitute the great majority according to the stats.

Whatever Nuttall says to the contrary, he clearly likes the company of extreme right-wing thugs, with whom he seems to share a racist hatred of immigrants.

Canadian Socialist Leader Denounces Trump, Calls for Stronger Action from Trudeau

February 3, 2017

This is a short clip from Sam Seder’s Majority Report showing Thomas Mulcair, the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, denouncing Trump’s Muslim ban in no uncertain terms in parliament. Mr Mulcair states that on his side of the House, there is no doubt about condemning singling people out because of their religion, discrimination against people based on their religion, executive orders and government by decree. He states he thought he would never see the day. But there is no doubt what happens if you do not stand up against such racist, Fascist behaviour. He states that his party is not afraid to stand up and be counted, and call a spade a spade. It’s time to say ‘No’ to Donald Trump, yes to human rights, and for the government of Canada to stand up to these racist policies.

To which the programme’s host, Sam Seder, adds merely ‘Save us a couple of places up there.’

The New Democrats are, very roughly, the Canadian equivalent of the Labour party over here. They were formed as a Socialist party in the 1960s. Despite the conservative dress fitting parliament, for a long time the party did have something of the ’60s ‘flower power’ hanging around it, or so I’ve read. It therefore comes as no surprise that Mr. Mulcair and his party heartily condemns Trump and his racism.

Of course, this is quite apart from the fact that Canada is multicultural democracy and that this week the threat of domestic right-wing racist terrorism was horrifically made very real by Alexandre Bissionette’s attack on a mosque which left 6 six dead and 17 wounded. Bissionette was previously unknown to the police, but he was on the internet, where he ranted against feminism and supported Trump.

Around the world, statesmen and political leaders are denouncing Trump’s Muslim ban, while Theresa May remains silent. Their unequivocal condemnation of Trump’s racism shows her up as the coward she is through her unwillingness to do the same.

George Takei Condemns Trump’s Plan for Muslim Registry

November 22, 2016

A few days ago, one of Trump’s stormtroopers caused massive outrage by citing the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as a precedent for the imposition of a Muslim registry. This is a clip from an American news programme, in which George Takei, who played Mr Sulu in Star Trek, along with many other roles, condemns this vile proposal. Takei’s a Japanese-American, and he and his family, like about 120,000 others, were interned. He states this was a terrible crime, and reminds the viewer that Ronald Reagan publicly apologised for it and paid reparations to the surviving victims in the 1980s. He states clearly that America is a country of law and due process, which internment and Muslim registration massively violate. He makes it clear that Japanese-American internment should never be used as a precedent, as it can only be such for persecution and injustice. He states further that he has been speaking about Japanese-American internment for most of his life, including recently at Penn State college, in the hope that it would never happen again. Now this seems a real threat, and he urges all Americans to come together to prevent his occurring.

The programme also shows that Trump has no clear idea how to go about it either. When asked if he would just register Muslims by going to the mosques, Trump merely says, ‘No, but other places’. Takei rightly condemns this as the criminalisation of entire religion.

The Empire Files on the Foundation of Israel and Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians

November 21, 2016

This is part of a longer piece from The Empire Files, no. 37, presented by Abby Martin, formerly of RT and now, I think, a presenter with Telesur English. This tells the story of the shrinking of Palestine from the foundation of the early Zionist settlements to the carnage of the foundation of Israel in 1948. It’s a grim, ugly picture of organised, imperialist brutality, meted out by people Albert Einstein and other western Jewish critics compared to the Nazis and the Fascists, a view also held by one of the Israelis’ own army officers.

It’s entitled The Untold History of Palestine and Israel, and Martin states that this is the history that is not taught in schools. She and her team had been there filming the Israeli occupation of the West Bank for two weeks. It’s a brutal occupation that is funded by the US taxpayer to the tune of $30 billion in aid. But Israel is presented to Americans through the images of ‘Birthright Tours’, which show Israel as a fun-loving, peaceful land threatened by militant Muslims.

Palestine was originally a province of the Ottoman Empire. During Ottoman rule, it had a population of 500,000 people. 75 per cent of these were Muslims, 20 per cent Christian, and 5 per cent Jewish. Nearly all of them were Arabs. Its cities were centres of intellectual culture and art, drawing visitors and scholars from across the Middle East. Even before it had borders, Palestine constituted a distinct, recognisable nation through its peoples shared customs and culture.

Martin explains that the Zionist movement began in the late 19th century as a reaction to the anti-Semitic violence and pogroms, which broke out in eastern Europe. She correctly states that Zionism was the belief in an exclusively Jewish state. I make this point here, because Nazis used the term incorrectly to mean their stupid and imaginary Jewish conspiracies to enslave gentiles. The Zionists were at this point only a small minority within the Jewish people. Most Jews wanted to stop to anti-Semitism in their own countries. This is illustrated with an article from the New York Times about Jewish Ukrainians organising to stop anti-Semitism in Ukraine. Many Jews resisted leaving Europe on the grounds that this would be giving in to the anti-Semites.

Zionism became a fervent movement under its Theodor Herzl, who claimed to be its father. Herzl was an Austrian atheist. He first considered homelands in Argentina and Uganda, before finally deciding on creating a Greater Israel in the Middle East. As shown on a map, this would include not just Palestine, but also the whole of Jordan and Lebanon, and parts of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and a tiny section of Turkey. Herzl spent his time travelling around the West trying to gather support and sponsorship for his scheme. He wrote to the Duke of Baden, for his aid, saying

If it is God’s will that we return to our historic fatherland, we should like to do so as representatives of western civilisation and bring cleanliness, order and well-established customs, … to this plague-ridden, blighted corner of the Orient.

The Zionists promised to make Palestine a vanguard against barbarism, which meant that it would be an extension of western military power, and ‘build highways of the civilised peoples’, which meant trade for western millionaires. Their slogan was ‘A land without a people for a people without a land’. But the Zionists were all too aware that the land already had a people, and were determined to cleanse them. Another Zionist leader, Israel Zangwill, said

Palestine is not so much occupied by Arabs as overrun by them.

From the first the Zionists planned on the expulsion of the indigenous peoples. Much of the country was semi-feudal, with tenant farmers labouring for absentee landlords away in the cities of Jordan or Syria. From 1892 onwards the Zionists began purchasing this land. In many cases the new, Jewish owners evicted the original inhabitants. Jews, Christians and Muslims had lived in peace and harmony in the region for thousands of years, but these purchases and expulsions resulted in immediate conflict.

New opportunities for the further expansion of the Jewish settlements arose during World War I. The Zionists were aware that the Russians, British and French were planning to carve up the region. The infamous Syke-Picot agreement divided the Middle East between the French and British. Britain was given control of Palestine by the League of Nations. The British government, composed of lords, then issued the Balfour Declaration, which pronounced the British government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The British Mandate resulted in riots in Jerusalem by the indigenous Palestinians, who naturally resented having their homeland given away without their consultation.

Again, the Zionist settlers were planning the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. In 1924 the US envoy stated

The Zionists look forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine.

At this point, settlers comprised 10 per cent of the population. But this was already producing a refugee crisis. This section of the film shows a picture of rally of Palestinian refugees in Syria from 1929. Already there were 50,000 of such people, thrown out of their homes. As more land was purchased, and people evicted, David Ben Gurion, the future prime minister and mascot of Ben Gurion airport, declared

We were not just working. We were conquering, conquering, conquering land. We were conquistadors.

From 1920 to 1939 the settler population rose from ten to thirty per cent. Ben Gurion himself laid out the settlers’ plans for ethnic cleansing:

We must expel the Arabs and take their places.

This policy naturally produced a rise in clashes between the Palestinians and the Zionist settlers. In 1936 the Palestinians launched a general strike against British rule. This was initially peaceful, until the British declared martial law, and recruited Zionist settlers to attack dissidents and Arab villages. This provoked the strike to become an armed uprising. The British in response embarked on a policy of blowing up Arab homes. 200 were destroyed in the Arab village of Yaffa. The rebellion was eventually crushed three years later in 1939. The death toll was 5,000 Palestinians against 300 settlers and 250 British soldiers. The Zionists formed their own armed forces, which were later used in the war of independence. These comprised the Hagana, the official force recognised by the British authorities, and various unofficial militias, the largest of which was the Irgun. These militias began by attacking the Palestinians, before moving on to British soldiers. It was the Irgun which bombed the Kind David Hotel, killing 91 people, including 17 Jews. This was so popular that one of the militias’ leaders, Menachem Begin, later became president of Israel.

Abroad, many Jews were far less impressed. Albert Einstein and a group of other Jews wrote a letter to the New York Times condemning Begin’s movement. They wrote that it was

A political party closely akin in its organisation, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.

But the Zionists continued with their plans for the country’s ethnic cleansing. Joseph Weitz, the head of the Jewish National Fund, wrote in 1940

There is no room for both people in this country … and there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to neighbouring countries, to transfer them all.

… We must not leave a single village, a single tribe.

The terror created by the Holocaust with its six million Jewish dead, along with the mass murder of other peoples, political prisoners and gays, propelled Zionism from the political fringe to a mass movement. In 1947 the British turned Mandated Palestine over to the UN. This finally gave in to 70 years of Zionist campaigning, creating the state of Israel. The new state was given 70 per cent of the area’s land. Palestine was divided into three zones. However, the new Israel still had a population that was forty per cent Arab. This was a situation that the Israeli founders and leaders were determined to remove. Ben Gurion announced that

There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of 60 per cent.

In 1948 the tensions culminated in a full-blown war, during which the Israelis launched Plan Dalet for the mass terrorisation, murder and expulsion of the Palestinian people. This was the Nakba, the Palestinian term for the destruction of their homeland, a word which means, ‘disaster’ or ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic.

This section of the film describes some of the massacres that were committed, and the atrocities perpetrated against innocent civilians. One of the villages targeted for extermination was Deir Yassin, where there had been no terrorist attacks committed against the settlers. Israeli soldiers murdered nearly the entire population, raping the women before butchering them. One survivor described seeing his entire family lined up to be shot, including his mother, who was breastfeeding a baby. 200 people were murdered. A Red Cross official stated

Here the cleaning up had been done with machine guns, then hand grenades. It had been finished with knives.

!2 days after this, the Zionists attacked and massacred the people of Haifa. At the same time the Israelis broadcast radio messages intended to terrorise the Arabs. These included recordings of women wailing, and the message ‘Flee for your lives. The Jews are using poison gas and nuclear weapons.’ In Abu Shusha, the Palestinians who remained in their homes were raped, then hacked to death with axes. Those who tried to flee were shot on sight. 110 people were killed. At al-Dawayima 450 were killed, with a further 250 missing. In another village, the mosque was bombed, killing the 80 people, who had sought refuge within it. The remaining villagers were rounded up in the town square and shot, leaving a further 70 dead. In Lydda the Zionists massacred around 250-500 people, 250 of which were killed in about half an hour. This was supposedly in response to gun shots being fired from the local mosque. John Bagehot-Howe, a British army officer, commented

It would be an exaggeration to claim that great numbers were massacred. But just enough were killed, or roughly handled, to make sure all the civilian population took flight.

A senior Zionist officer, Joseph Imani, saw Palestinians shot after they came out of their homes waving white flags and carrying food. He said

Where did they come by such a measure of cruelty, like Nazis. Is there no more humane way of expelling the inhabitants than such methods?

During this period 800,000 Palestinians fled their homes, comprising 80 per cent of the Palestinian population of Israel. 500 villages were razed to the ground.

This is the history that you will mostly definitely not find taught in schools, as Abby Martin says. Nor will you see it covered on the mainstream news, whether in the US or over here, by the BBC. Lobster has remarked on the way the Beeb ‘ties itself in knots’ trying to tell itself that it is not biased towards Israel, while being biased towards Israel. And that monster and apologist for mass murder, Mark Regev, the Israeli ambassador, would scream blue murder if anyone in the mainstream media dared to do so, or called those responsible for these atrocities what they are – butchers and mass murderers. As Einstein and the other Jewish critics said, the Zionists responsible for such atrocities and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians are very much like the Nazis and Fascists. But Regev will scream that you’re an anti-Semite or ‘self-hating’, if you’re Jewish, if you dare to mention this.

But we do need to be aware of these atrocities, if we are to understand the paranoid mindset of the Muslim radicals in Britain today. Kalim Saddiqui, a vile bigot, who was one of those responsible for the hate campaign against Salman Rushdie in the 1980s and 1990s, was filmed at his mosque by the Beeb telling his congregation that

British society is a monstrous killing machine, and killing Muslims comes very easily to them.

When the documentary team challenged him on this, he tried to bluff his way out of it by blustering about how Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses had been published as part of a propaganda campaign to prepare for a ‘holocaust of Muslims’. It’s a risible, stupid slander. But to some Muslims, it has a terrible verisimilitude. Many mosques do cover the atrocities committed against Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere around the world in their equivalent of Christian parish magazines. They’re acutely aware of campaigns of terror against their co-religionists. Hence such hysterical claims over here. But these atrocities are deliberately kept hidden from us, so that Islamic terrorism can appear as completely irrational, and Muslims presented as violent terrorists and butchers, killing for the sake of it. That is, admittedly, true to a certain extent of Daesh and al-Qaeda, though even with these cases there is more to it than simply that. If there is ever to be a just peace in the Middle East, we need to know about the real history of the region, how it has been conquered and its people brutalised by western imperialism and the rapacity of multinational corporations. Not only do we need to defeat the Islamists, we also need to defeat the thugs, genocides and corporate despoilers in our own societies.

ITV Sees Evidence of British Cluster Bombs in Yemen

November 2, 2016

This is another scandal. I found this piece from ITV news posted on YouTube. It’s a report on some of the cluster bombs, that have been dropped in Yemen in Saudi Arabia’s campaign against the Houthis. Cluster bombs are illegal. According to the human rights organisations and the Yemeni authorities interviewed by ITV, these bombs were made over here. The Saudis claim that they were made before the weapons were banned, but ITV states that they look recently made. Here’s the report:

This is disgusting. Cluster bombs are an horrific weapon, and its with very good reason that they’re banned under international law. However, I have absolutely no difficulty in believing that these were made over here. Indeed, they may well have been part of that ‘wonderful kit’ Cameron was praising to the skies when he visited that armaments factory in the north of England to promote British exports. Over the years Private Eye has exposed case after case of the British aerospace and armaments industries – mostly BAE – producing weapons banned under international law, like electrified riot shields. Despite the Eye’s best efforts here, I don’t doubt that they’re still being produced somewhere, and exported to the Gulf.

Cameron was, like Blair and Thatcher and Major before him, very keen at promoting British arms sales, particularly to Saudi Arabia and other nations with a history of brutally suppressing any dissent. In the case of Saudi Arabia, 70 per cent of the Yemenis killed by them are civilians, and the Saudis are actively targeting them in schools, mosques, hospitals and factories. If this report is correct, we have absolutely no business helping this brutal regime kill more innocents with illegal weapons.


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Tag Archives: sunday

Relaxing Waterfall Sounds for Studying, Meditation, Sleep or White Noise

Hey everyone, how are YOU doing?

Since exams are always happening and the end of the semester is quickly approaching, I thought I would share this youtube video I made using waterfall sounds with YOU! It also works really well for meditation, sleep or white noise in general, whatever YOU might need!

It’s on my NEW hypnosis youtube channel, Hypnosis with Emily.

This channel will have a variety of videos pertaining to hypnosis and relaxation such as hypnosis demonstrations, hypnotherapy/relaxation, soothing & relaxing sound videos such as ocean waves, waterfalls etc & interviews with other hypnotists about various hypnosis topics! I can’t wait to share this passion with YOU! Have a stress free & relaxing day!

Here is the link to the video:

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by Affirm

Wear Your Used Rolex or Pre-Owned Luxury Watch Like You Have Been There Before

If you wear a watch, regardless of the brand name, wear it with pride. If you put your Rolex or Breitling on a pedestal and do some showboating, then you simply come across as crass. Wear your used Rolex or pre-owned luxury watch like you have been there before. Don’t be that guy who does that ridiculous dance in the end zone after a two-yard touchdown run, act like you have been there before. Whether you wear a Swatch or a Rolex, the brand of watch you wear says a lot about you.

Timex is an all-American watch brand founded in the 19th century in Connecticut. But like so many American products, most of Timex movements are made somewhere in Asia. But that doesn’t mean Timex watches aren’t popular, quite the contrary actually. With the rich history Timex offers, they are a great brand that offers nice watches and a bit of history at quite an affordable price. If you wear a Timex, you probably own a pickup truck and enjoy hunting, fishing and football.

If you wear a Casio watch, you might be an active type of guy who loves the outdoors, or you could be a guy who just doesn’t know how to properly dress. You might even be wearing that Casio because you are still stuck in the 1980s, hairstyle, Member’s Only jacket and all.

If you wear a Rolex, you understand how a watch can be an incredibly masculine accessory. You understand the importance of timeless classics. You wear a Rolex because you are a proud and powerful man and you realize your Rolex is merely an extension of yourself.

So, which type of man are you? Check out our line of used Rolex watches now.

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Come Home To Me by Peggy L. Henderson (A Review)

Come Home To Me (Second Chances, #1)

Jake Owens is tired of life on his parents’ Montana ranch, catering to city folk who want a taste of old-fashioned country living. He enjoys life in the fast lane, with fast cars and even faster women. When he falls in with the wrong crowd and is accused of murder, a stranger’s bizarre offer at a second chance might be his only hope to clear his name.

Rachel Parker is highly devoted to her family. A tragedy prompts a daring move to the Oregon Territory for a fresh start in a new land. After meeting the wagon train’s scout, the meaning of a fresh start may be more than she ever imagined.

Jake can’t believe he’s been sent back in time to act as scout for a wagon train headed for Oregon, and given the added burden of keeping one emigrant woman safe during the journey. He and Rachel are confused by their attraction to each other. Jake’s ill-mannered, unconventional ways are overshadowed only by his notorious reputation. Rachel’s traditional values and quiet, responsible character are the complete opposite of what attracts Jake to a woman. When their forbidden attraction turns to love, what will happen at the end of the trail?

A Review by Beckey
Time travel…love has no bounds even thru the sand of time… Second chances happen in this time traveling historical romance.. When Jake finds himself in little bit of trouble with the law and a gentleman visits him while he was incarcerated to offers him a second chance in exchange for him to help one person with a task… The adventure didn’t  go as the gentleman planned… Along the way love is discovered.. Oh there is more but…
Overall slow down kind of read that was interesting to point even with the errors on the kindle version.  4 stars.


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17 February 2012

No designer paper...

When I first started scrapping, I tended to shy away from patterned paper, but now my collection is so huge and varied that I rarely make anything without it. So, this week's theme at C.R.A.F.T. Challenge did push me a bit to look beyond my papers and use NO DESIGNER PAPER:

I used: Cuttlebug 'Jules Jewells' EF, and Affirmations quotation card

I'm also posting my card in the following challenges:

# Allsorts ~ Free & easy February
# Crafty Cardmakers ~ Monochrome magic

16 February 2012

Jasmine's card

Jasmine loves joining in as a Junior DT at CRAFT Challenge.  This week she made a Valentine's Day card for her best friend, using NO DESIGNER PAPER:

Jasmine used Bazzill cardstock and some foam hearts, which we found in our local craft store.

This card is also for:
Dream Valley ~ Valentine
Hooked on Craft ~ Hearts

09 February 2012

Love, love, love...

All you need is love...

I've had a break from crafting over the past little while, due to some events beyond my control.  I really missed the peace and relaxation that creating something brings me, and it's fabulous to be able to return to something I love.

This week at CRAFT Challenge, we have a Valentine's Day theme.  I wasn't able to create a card in advance or to use any of our fabulous sponsor images, but I did alter a little gift bag to use for the occasion, using some fabric scraps.  Here it is:

I'd like to submit my gift bag for the following challenges:

# Hooked on Craft ~ Hearts
# Crafting for all Seasons ~ Love is in the Air


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Archive for ‘Daily Life’

September 10, 2013

Toronto District School Board census 2011: Unsettling picture of inequality revealed

English: Park School studentsClose to 90,000 parents, or sixty-five per cent, of elementary school parents answered the Toronto District School Board’s census sent home last fall. The results are coming out now and reveal the unequal opportunities which children of different family backgrounds enjoy. A recent TDSB research report presents a startling picture of class and racial inequality among our youngest city residents.

 As part of gaining a snapshot of its students, parents were asked to report their family’s total income. Divided into five income groups for comparison, the report shows
  • 28% families reported a family income of less than $30,000/year.
  • 21% reported $30,000 – $49,999/year.
  • 15% reported $50,000 – $74,999/year.
  • 10% reported $75,000 – $99,999/year.
  • 26% reported $100,000+.

When this data was broken down by each family’s racial background, the differences became even more unsettling:

Bar graph showing self-reported family income of school board students by racial background.

TDSB research report on 2011 census of parents with children in Kindergarten through Grade Six.

The impact of these different family income levels was also reflected, as would be expected, in the out-of-school experience of children. Parents in each income group were asked about their children’s extra-curricular and pre-school activities.

Consistently, income was tied to children’s experiences outside of school. The following presents some of these marked differences. (Although the Board’s analysis covers all five income groups, figures for the lowest, middle and highest income groups are reported here as the pattern remains the same across each category.)

Child care centre (before Kindergarten)

  • 25% children in lowest income families enrolled their child in a child care centre.
  • 29% children in the middle-income families enrolled their child in a child care centre.
  • 45% children in highest income families enrolled their child in a child care centre.

Pre-school program

  • 25% children in lowest income families attended a pre-school program.
  • 34% children in the middle-income families attended a pre-school program.
  • 56% children in highest income families attended a pre-school program.

Sense of safety on their street or in their neighbourhood

  • 80% parents in lowest income group said their child is safe on their street or in their neighbourhood.
  • 90% parents in the middle-income group said their child is safe on their street or in their neighbourhood.
  • 95% parents in highest income group said their child is safe on their street or in their neighbourhood.

Sports & Recreation

  • 64/% children in the highest income families are involved in sports or recreation activities outside of school.
  • 54% children in the middle-income are involved in sports or recreation activities outside of school.
  • 38% families in the lowest income bracket participate in sports or recreation activities outside of school.

  • 59% children in the highest income in arts activities outside of school.
  • 32% children in the lowest income families participate in arts activities outside of school.

The patterns are not isolated to Toronto. Noted social commentator Robert Putnam explains, “Kids coming from upper middle-class backgrounds are living in a different world now from kids coming from working-class or less well-off backgrounds.”

However, the second part of the survey was more heartening. When parents were asked about their child’s experiences in school, the differences, by income group, were much smaller, showing only a percentage point or two difference around such things as feeling safe or welcome in the school. This area is an improvement from the 2008 census, a period in which the school board has worked to make improvements.

Opportunity. It’s a powerful idea, that everyone should have an equal chance, that every child should have an equal start. It underscores our sense of civic sense of fairness. Now, as ever, our school system must face this challenge outside its doors too.

read more »

December 2, 2012

The function and art of underground entrances: Metros, subways and the tube

Entrance to Old Street Underground station, London, England

Entrance to Old Street Underground station, London, England

On a trip through Europe, I once took a picture of some cows. “Why!?!” I wondered when I got home. “They’re cows.” My more creative sister did a bit better, producing a series on the various toilets we encountered through our travels.

My eye has sharpened just a bit now, I hope, and on my recent trip to London, England, in part for the First International Convention of Neighbourhood Bloggers, I focused on built form and urban space.

The accessibility of this subway entrance, near my hotel in the east end, caught my eye: stairs for when I was in a hurry, and a gently sloped ramp for when I was dragging my luggage. Wheeled conveyances welcome. (With over eight exits onto the Old Street roundabout, however, I did get lost.)

To confirm this strange new obsession, today’s U.K. Telegraph Travel section has published a photo series of the “most impressive underground subway stations” which looks at the artistic side of the transportation hubs.

The Moscow stations are baroque in their style, the London Underground industrial, the Scandinavian countries organic. The Italians are almost ready to unveil a subway entrance in Naples which could be described, in polite company, as a pair of lips.

Among the most playful example in the Telegraph series was this entrance to the Bockenheimer Warte metro station in Frankfurt:

Bockenheimer Warte U-Bahn
Everywhere, though, commuters look very work-a-day, bored as they make their way through these incredible spaces.

April 20, 2012

Gentrification signifiers: A story of one neighbourhood

When two grandmothers stopped on my street recently to tell me their adult children had bought a nearby house, I didn’t tell them why the young family who lived there was moving out. They had moved in with high hopes to this freshly-painted and pot-lighted house, ignoring the “as is” in the stipulations. The house had undergone a quick flip from a man who bought it after a house fire burned out the tenants who lived there. The house attached to them had also suffered fire damage, but those tenants, renting rooms, stayed on in a more deteriorated house.

And then last summer, it got bad. A man with a violent criminal history moved in — and took over. We neighbours sat on our porches and watched the drug deals and solicitation. It had happened before on the street. The normal knock-and-run behaviour of drug buyers played out on the sidewalks where kids pedaled past on their bikes, part of the ballet that Jane Jacobs described. But this time was scarier.

Physical fights became the norm, and the local men became protective, taking to long smokes on the ends of their porches. The police raided the house almost weekly through those hot months. By-law officers arrived and three days carting refuse away. The landlord, a former neighbour, was rumoured to be incapacitated, unable to intervene or maintain control. Then, too late, a woman died of an overdose. The house was padlocked and put up for sale.

I couldn’t tell this to the cheery women I met. But I recognized their story — their children had got “such a good deal”! But I did recognize this stage of gentrification – the grown children had moved eastward, having rented in Kensington Market – and had  been not able to afford a home closer to the downtown core.

When neighbourhoods shift from working class neighbourhoods to higher income ones, several signs and stages are notable.

Neighbourhood Market

Neighbourhood Market (Photo credit: omegaforest)

First arrivals were people like me, my partner and new baby. We had some family connections to the community, but while comfortable here, we were no longer working class. Higher education had boosted out prospects. But our arrival acted as a signal, that the neighbourhood was “safe.”

Others like us soon came, and the occupations of my neighbours switched from taxi drivers, mill workers, and train conductors, to book editors, teachers, and non-profit workers. Single women thronged to the neighbourhood’s small houses, and young families used the low housing prices as a launching pad until they could afford a larger place. Homes which had housed multiple children (and sometimes a couple of families) were converted to single households. Population density dropped, and racial diversity paled. As housing prices rose, residents told each other this neighbourhood was “arriving.” (One elderly neighbour, disbelieving the rising house prices, chortled to me, “Diane, we’re quarter millionaires,” as housing prices rose over $200,000 for a 12.5 feet wide lots.)

Next come the speculators. Housing flips are common in the neighbourhood now. Another couple, lured by granite counter tops and a street-front entrance, all at the price of a condo, has moved in across from us, but lawsuits have ensued as the rotted timber by the new drywall been discovered. Our neighbourhood had become a bit of a destination point.

As a critical mass of newcomers builds, another sign emerges: residents’ associations. Their focus is often on remnant parts of the neighbourhood: ‘common’ concerns such as traffic flow, garbage, run-down properties (like the ones up above), and most often the desire to “clean up” the neighbourhood. Every couple of years, these small citizen efforts have emerged. GECO (eerily echoing Michael “Greed is Good” Douglas’ character in Wall Street) is the most recent incarnation, springing out of some of the sentiments expressed in the comments section of BlogTO’s recent article, What ails Little India?.

One of GECO’s members explained to me she thought it was important to have “more diversity” in the neighbourhood commercial strip, that there are “too many sari shops.” Toronto Life described this more diplomatically as “new businesses…revitalizing a dreary stretch of empty storefronts, noodle houses, laundromats and hair salons.” Others explain they hope for a Starbucks or “nice” set of restaurants like nearby (upper-income) neighbourhoods have. After all, they say to me, they have paid a lot of money for their homes and they want the neighbourhood to look good. A neighbourhood blog cooed “A few more cool shops on gerrard (sic) and even the Queen Street hipsters will allow us Northerners to be part of Leslieville.” Academics have described this as commercial gentrification. In fact, some have described how Toronto’s “ethnic neighbourhoods” can act as a branding mechanism, in the same way artists do, attracting others and driving up housing prices. It’s a familiar process to those who know Little Italy or Greektown, where many of the original ethnic stores are closing and residents have moved on.

But tolerance for social difference is limited. Another long-time resident, one of the original working-class residents who’d watched these changes with more good humour than me, reported one of new neighbours were discomfited to learn a gay (!) couple lived next door. So he explained to the new couple that good people lived up and down our street. But the revanchist sentiment has grown.

The final stage of gentrification is when the higher income folk arrive, when the place has been made “clean” and “safe.” Cleanliness is defined by such amenities as granite rocks and Japanese maples in the front garden and new windows adorning the home. Safety is not the definition of old, of neighbours knowing when a new neighbourhood child has gotten a tooth or who can be depended upon to hold a spare key for nearby neighbours. Safety is more about beaming spotlights and alarm codes. This final stage concentrates wealth to the point that some researchers call it super-gentrification.

More and more of the neighbourhoods in the old City of Toronto are undergoing this transition. Affordable housing stock is disappearing. The latest move by Toronto Community Housing to sell off single family units means the touted of ideal of mixed-income neighbourhoods will be further away. New developments aggravate the problem, filled with homes all in the same high price range, inclusive zoning not yet a practice. Driven by individual choice, we are losing a common good.

As income inequality is carved into our housing structures, our neighbourhoods suffer. Those who work in neighbourhood shops, filling our coffee orders, or the education assistant in our children’s grade school, won’t live in our neighbourhood, won’t be our neighbours. Our children won’t know difference. This is not Toronto, our motto “Diversity, our strength.”

read more »

May 2, 2011

The habit of voting: start early, vote often

rick mercer makes a pursed point

Image by clang boom steam via Flickr

Rick Mercer has been suggesting youth take a date to the federal election today. His earlier rant, at the beginning of the campaign, sparked vote mobs on campuses across the country. His words carry the weight of research.

Being eighteen-years-old is about the worst time to introduce youth to voting, according to a University doctoral student I met recently at a farewell reception for the now-defunct Centre for Urban Health Initiatives. Likely to be at a more tumultuous time of their lives, living in a new community, eighteen-year-olds are less likely to vote than the former age-of-majority, twenty-one-year olds. And when we don’t vote, she explained to us gathered around, it becomes a habit.

So the call to drop the voting age to sixteen makes a lot of sense. Youth, normally still living in familiar surroundings, would make their first foray into voting on more stable ground.

In fact, our grad student’s own research focuses levels of voting among immigrants. She is finding that those without the culture and habit of voting are less likely to exercise their franchise when they come to Canada.

“If  I were king of the world,” she said, “I would make voting at least once a pre-requisite for citizenship.” Her doctoral work, not yet complete, gives weight to calls to allow city residents, despite their citizenship status, to vote in municipal elections.

March 5, 2009

Are hospital visitors targeted for parking violations, or are we just negligent roadhogs?

My parents go to the hospital so frequently that the last time I escorted them, they carefully coached me in how to avoid getting a parking ticket. It’s energy well-spent, given the frequency with which parking tickets are handed out around hospitals from York region, to Ottawa, from Newfoundland to Australia.

Whether you are visiting, attending a doctor’s appointment, or rushing there for an emergency, parking tickets are a common part of the hospital experience, along with high parking fees, shortages of spots, and meters which expire in short intervals.

A recent piece in the Toronto Star highlighted how frequently hospitals visitors are stung by the green hornets here in Toronto. The streets around hospital made up half of the top ten sites for parking tickets in 2007. The Ottawa Citizen found similar patterns in their examination of the issue in 2007. The Vancouver Sun also found the same, to a lesser degree.

It’s the sort of thing that drives people crazy, filling Bulletin Boards and other blogs (see here for a hilarious list of the ten worst parking tickets ever issued).

Some places in the world are trying to find a solution. Scotland now offers free parking at most of its hospitals, and Wales is considering the same, while recognizing the complexity of such an endeavor, and wondering how to discourage “freeloaders” without setting up another expensive bureaucratic layer.

Some argue, perhaps fairly, that if you own a car, you need to take responsibility for it. Residents who live near hospitals have to put up with slackers on a daily basis. It must grow tiresome.

However, hospitals are one of the likeliest places in the city where some administrative discretion should be used. People attending hospitals are often ill, or escorting those who are, and they have little control over the sorts of delays they may face once inside.

I have my bias in answer to the question: I remember a sweet and random act of parking kindness  I received at my local hospital once, when I raced, daughter in my arms, son at my side, into the emergency room. When we left, all safe a few hours later, I realized that I had parked by the entrance and not even noticed the meter by my car. But there sat my car ticket-less.

Someone had put some money into the meter.

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Easter Brunch

Next Sunday, April 16, 2017, Easter will be upon us, which means our annual event in celebration of it is just around the corner.

The day is showcased with a beautiful buffet of food by Chef Alaun and his Team, featuring prime rib, glazed ham, lamb, salmon, seasonal sides and salads, scones, pastries and desserts.

To top off the fun, we will also have an Easter egg hunt and face painting.

BCC Members:  $42 (Dining minimum applicable)

Non-members:  $60 | Children 5-14:  $29 | 3 and under:  Complimentary

Face painting:  11:30am – 1pm | Egg hunt:  1:15pm (Bring your baskets!)

Reservations available, but going quickly

Contact Julia’s for reservations at 510.280.1547 or julias@berkeleycityclub.com

Easter Brunch

Easter Sunday will be here this weekend and we have a great day in the works.

Easter Brunch 2016.jpg

It is sure to be a great time for all ages, with delicious food, an egg hunt and complimentary face painting, it is an occasion not to miss.

Give us a call or send our Team an email by tomorrow, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 at 6pm to make your reservations.

510.280.1547 | julias@berkeleycityclub.com

Easter fun

Spring will be in full effect this coming Sunday, April 5, 2015.

With our Annual Easter buffet, complimentary face painting and an egg hunt, there will certainly be fun for all!

Fresh flowers always make for a beautiful space.

And, complimentary face painting by Coralline’s Playtime!  She is always a hit with children and her outfit is guaranteed to wow.

And, of course the Easter Bunny will make an appearance.  Can you spot him here?

Reservations are still available for this Sunday.  Book on Eventbrite by midnight tonight.

Face painting will be from 11:30am – 1pm

Egg hunt at 1:15pm

We would love to see you there!


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Customs and Immigration (C&I) has put together some key reminders for you:

1. Plan early and apply for your BFG NOVA.

The BFG NOVA is the special certificate of authority to bring a personally owned and BFG registered vehicle to the United Kingdom permanently. Although C&I cannot enter data onto the HMRC database to generate the NOVA until 28 days before it becomes valid, they will accept applications before this point.

2. Selling your tax free car in the UK.

When you return to the UK, you must keep your tax free car for at least 12 months after initial BFG registration. You will find this date on your BFG registration document (BFG 73). If you sell your car before this point; you will receive a tax bill and may be subject to follow up action by line management or chain of command.

3. Impact of lapses in BFG Vehicle Registration.

If your BFG registration lapses on a tax free vehicle eg for non-payment of insurance premium, the unregistered period is added on to the 12 months for taxation purposes. This means you will have to keep your vehicle longer, before selling it as failure to do so, would result in you receiving a tax bill.

Contact Information

For more C&I information, contact your local C&I office:

HQ C&I BFG - Tel. Bie Mil (81) 2635.
Gütersloh & Bielefeld Stations – Tel. Bie Mil (81) 2577 or (mobile) 01722173780.
Paderborn Station - Tel. Pad Mil (79) 4279 or (mobile) 0173 2096411.
ISODETs - Tel. Bie Mil (81) 2577 or (mobile) 0172 2173780.


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Ir-responsible Al-Jazeera

Mary Ann Jolley taking Al-Jazeera viewers on the imagination trip on 'Murder in Malaysia'

Mary Ann Jolley taking Al-Jazeera viewers on the imagination trip on ‘Murder in Malaysia’, by inter-twining between facts and fabrication

The recent ruckus of highly acclaimed 101 East show on Al-Jazeera featuring a story by so-called ‘Independent Journo’ Mary Ann Jolley about the mystery of the murder of Mongolian national Altantuyaa Shaariibuu is utterly distasteful and brought the highly regardly international news channel on the Gulf States into gutter tabloid level.

The fact is that, the story is build against many so-called mysteries, which already have been addressed.

Probably Jolley, the features and chief editors of Al-Jazeera conveniently or were obtuse about the complete case of PP Vs Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar.

The fact still remain, Chief Inspector Azilah and Corporal Sirul did shoot and murder the deceased. They did then blew her corpse up and tried to conceal the remains.

They admitted to this when they were originally interviewed by CID Police Officers and as Police officers themselves who are conversant with CPC, they signed the cautioned statement.

Sirul who is now a fugitive in Australia, admitted receiving money, to ‘eliminate’ Altantuyaa.

Another fact is that how she was implicated with the process of acquisition of the submarine is also baffling. The deal signed between Malaysian Government and DCNI and Thales where Perimekar was the advisor, on 5 June 2002.

One was present at the event, in Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur.

Lembaga Tabung Angkatan Tentera then had interest in Perimekar. LTAT MD Tan Sri Lodin Wok Kamaruddin signed on behalf of Perimekar at the signing ceremony.

Soon after Perimekar got the contract from the Malaysian Government to undertaken the training and management of resources for the Project Team and the actual two sets of crew and ancillary staffs.

The Project Team numbering 20 Royal Malaysian Navy officers stationed in Cherbourg, Normandy, France where the Perdana Class submarines were built and their families from the commencement of the project till delivery (Late 2003 – mid 2010).

The two sets of crew of the Scorpene submarines underwent rigourous training in NAFVCO Brest, Britanny, France numbered 156 officers and men, were trained from 2005 – 2010. June 2010 was when the crew of KD Tun Razak, the second of the Perdana Class submarine set sail for her new home at TLDM Lumut.

She arrived in July 2010.

Abdul Razak Baginda, who was the controversial figure in this mystery (and still being made so, till present day), admitted that he started seeing the deceased by November or December 2004. Whether or not she had extra marital relationship with Razak is not a concern of anyone in the general public.

However it is baffling how Altantuyaa could be involved with any part of the project since all the deals were concluded and some of it were being implemented and rolled up even before Razak met her. And yet, so many people gullibly bought into these lies and still being repeated over and over again.

One even received a called from Jolley pretending to be “An independent Journalist”, to talk about people involved with Perimekar in Cherbourg since one actually was in Cherbourg in June 2004 and met some of the Project Team members. Of course, she did not get much.

Now that we can see the product of Jolley’s work, one can’t help to think that she is part of the apparatus now in motion incessantly out to demonise Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Mohd. Najib Tun Razak. What is baffling, why is Al-Jazeera as a credible news channel perceived from a Muslim country, is game into all these strategic agenda by the New Con Jews.

The fact is that Jolley, like the media outlet as per Sarawak Report, is echoing many of the lies and manipulation which already have set the in minds of many, including the learned ones, opinion makers and those of affluent society.

It is all too clear, quad erat demonstratum. All the onslaught cannot present itself at the same time just by chance.

It is a concerted effort. There are NGOs being funded by Neo Con Jewish establishments systematically working with Opposition and pro-Opposition NGOs and activists, out to demonise Prime Minister Najib and topple the UMNO/BN led Malaysian Government.

It ashamed if no one actually comes up with the right story to correct all these wrongs based on facts and evidences, and make Al-Jazeera to air it. Of course, Al-Jazeera is compelled to be a news channel that carry ‘A balanced news’.

*Updated 1830hrs

Published in: on September 14, 2015 at 16:00  Comments (5)

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  1. No wonder Al-Jazeera journalists were detained over a long period by the Egyptian government. Fork-tongued self-righteous twats. They should actually send more journalists to help the Syrian refugees, who are the victims of the so called “democratic” Arab-Spring. Cakap je pandai, buat hampas jugak. Nurul Izzah once said Malaysians to do the same thing at Dataran Merdeka, based on what happened in Tahrir Square. What? She wants this country to end up just like her marriage? In chaos and Malaysians had to swim to Hawaii for protection?

  2. If Najib had not engaged dubious outfits such as Razak Baginda and Jho Low in government dealing, I would not had much difficulties defending BN and UMNO from DAP evangelistic agendas.

    • Noted.

      To be fair to PM Najib, he had been employing the consultancy services of Abdul Razak Baginda for a long time before he was involved with the Mongolian woman.

  3. Al Jazeera trying to be like CNN, do so-called investigative journalism, puts out aggressive and hard hitting kind of reports. Like they did when reporting on MAS 370. They repeated so many times the footage of a past Republican Presidential candidate shrieking on stage such that the poor guy withdrew from the race. But looks like they won’t dare do that kind of thing to billionaire Donald Trump.

    Al Jazeera trying for a bigger market share or wider audience. Now puts up a new show called Up Front with hard hitting comments on international issues. But even BBC will cease the “Hard Talk” kind of programme soon – surveys in UK show listeners find the overly penetrating kind of questioning offensive and boring.

    So, Al Jazeera tries the Aussie woman kind of investigative reporting. Salleh Said Keruak should have engaged her but no more opportunity now that she is already deported. The alternative is to sue her/ Al Jazeera.

  4. Why not choose them?

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After Tumblr is WordPress next?

Is WordPress in anyone's sights?

Is WordPress in anyone’s sights?

Yahoo paid US$1.1 billion for Tumblr. That business is small beer compared with WordPress, which accounts for 20 percent of all websites.

Could the blogging giant be the next takeover target?

Writing at the Guardian, Dan Gillmore thinks not.  On the subject of WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg he says:

WordPress isn’t like the other products I just mentioned, and Mullenweg, who told me late last year he has no intention of selling out, is a different kind of founder. I consider WordPress to be the most important platform around because it is a) open and b) controlled by a young man and team whose hearts and minds, from my perspective, are precisely in the right place at the right time. I admire them enormously.

There’s much to admire about WordPress and Mullenweg. WordPress makes large sums of money as it is and Mullenweg doesn’t seem to be waiting to cash out of the business.

And yet I’m certain many of the big online players have done more than run a ruler over WordPress. It’s possible someone will turn up and offer the right mix of money and a promise to keep the idealistic components in place. We’ve certainly seen that happen before.

This site is on the company’s commercial service. I run other sites using the open source software. Like millions of other WordPress users, I’d be concerned if a giant like Yahoo acquired the business. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen.


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This was truley a great evening of leadership advice from a Christian prospective. Thank you to a Grayson County native Mark Smith for his vision as President of Ohio Christian University and the wisdom shared by Dr. John Maxwell and Cal Thomas for blessing us with there teaching. If all our leaders had ears to hear what the Lord has revealed through the teaching of these men we could turn America back around in the right direction!!

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Visit to Abingdon Heath and Rehab facility today meeting a dedicated staff and and patients that actually love the service that they are provided. These Men and Women are truley sharing their God given Spiritual gift of caregiving may they be richly Blessed for the job they do!!

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———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Joy Anderson <>
Date: Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 5:00 PM
Subject: Pictures 4
To: "" <>

Again Thank you for coming to the facility today. We look forward to seeing you in the future. I will be sending several emails with pictures. Take Care. ****

[image: Description: H:AdministrativelogosFinal LogosjpgAbingdon_4C proc C.jpg]****

Joy Anderson****

Director of Activities****

Abingdon Health & Rehab****

15051 Harmony Hills Lan****

Abingdon VA 24211****

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email, including any attachments, is intended for the designated recipient(s) only, and may be confidential, proprietary, non-public, protected by the attorney/client or other privilege. Unauthorized reading, distribution, copying or other use of this communication is prohibited and may be unlawful. Receipt by anyone other than the intended recipients(s) should not be deemed a waiver of any privilege or protection. If you
are not the
intended recipient or if you believe that you have received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete all copies, including any attachments, from your computer system without reading, saving or
using it in any

Attending a leadership conference at Ohio Christian University with my Pastor Ron Hill, Mitch Smith the president at Ohio Christian University’s brother and my brother in law Jon Sweet. John Maxwell is the speaker for the conference.

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Ohio Christian University leadership conference.

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Congratulations to Bristol’s own Sherry King, who won the National Distinguished Principals’ award as Virginia’s Principal of the Year. She was the principal for six years at Greendale Elementary before moving to High Point Elementary School. Job well done!….html


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Several opportunities are available for those who wish participate in team sports. If you we don’t have the league you want give us a call and we’ll see if we can’t get one started.

Men’s Softball – June to August
Coed Volleyball – September to December
Coed Pickleball – Coming Soon

2016 Softball Champions:
Team Crown Royal defeated Slainte 13-12 on July 27 in the Championship game in extra innings and just before it got too dark to play anymore.

Softball Champions 2016

Team Members: Tyler George, Jerry Marquez, Daniel Rapada, Jimmy Boure, Aaron Lawrence, Chris Miller, Luis Serrato, Andrew Joe, Chris Sullivan, Tanner Cheyney, Jeff Purser, Nick Wood, Johnny Chiquiti, Michael Bellinger, Chad Reynolds, Kauika Peleti, Tino Peleti, Chad Kakela, Pete Corpuz, Mike Matayag, Gene Tabafunda.