Are they hooligans, or are they the victims of a racist society? Do they not want to assimilate, or are they not being given the chance to assimilate? Is this the start of a civil war, or just a spot of bother in the banlieus? Mindless mayhem by a few Muslim malcontents, or an orchestrated orgy of planned and premeditated pyrotechnics?
Or perhaps you’re just sick of the sight of burnt-out cars and useless politicians. Ah, imagine….
This will do little to ease Iran-UK relations:
Ethnic unrest has broken out in Iran’s Arabic-speaking province of Khuzestan, according to Iranian media.
One newspaper reported that around 200 protesters gathered in the city of Ahvaz to shout anti-government slogans.
Iranian news agency Mehr said protesters in traditional Arabic dress threw bottles and rocks at police before ringleaders were arrested.
Iran blamed bomb blasts last month and in June across the region, which borders on Iraq, on UK agents.
In April, days of rioting by Arabs in the oil-rich province led to several deaths and hundreds of arrests after protests at government plans to encourage more ethnic Persian Iranians to move to the province.
The province is home to about two million Arabs.
Iran said the violence in the province was foreign-instigated, adding that several people with links to the UK had been arrested.
ke him some enemies, if it has not already. All the more reason to support this man and his work and spread his message, because if there was not some truth to it no one would be getting upset now would they…
I haven’t counted, but there must be over 400 of these encomiums. What an extraordinary coincidence, that all these people should feel moved to endorse Trudeau’s book just at this particular time.
Julie Burchill on Prince Charles:
[C]leaving to Islam is the one way that men who wish to appear liberal and enlightened can promote reactionary ideas. Monarch-worshipping, woman-oppressing, non-democratic — what’s there not for Charles to like!
Well no, it’s not the funniest cartoon I’ve ever seen:
A chief constable has condemned the portrayal of Muslims in a police magazine cartoon, describing it as offensive and sacrilegious.
The Police Federation magazine cartoon shows officers taking their shoes off outside a mosque, as a bearded man escapes clutching bags of explosives.
Bedfordshire’s chief constable Gillian Parker has written to complain.
The magazine’s editor has apologised and said there was no intention to cause offence.
The cartoon was seen by Bedfordshire Police as an attempt to mock the force’s advice to officers to remove their shoes before entering Muslim properties.
Ms Parker wrote: “The stereotypical portrayal of religious communities and the use of places of worship in a sacrilegious manner are bound to offend.
“Insensitive actions only serve to make our life more difficult.”
She said: “We have worked hard over an extended period of time to achieve relationships and I feel that the stereotypical portrayal of Muslims as terrorists has unnecessarily jeopardised this.
“Where it is feasible to do so we continue to consider the individual customs of all communities when we enter their homes and places of worship; I make no apology for this.”
And now it’s on the BBC website where thousands more will see it.
No doubt the PM will shortly be receiving demands from Muslim ambassadors that he take “necessary steps” against the “defamation of Islam”.
From the Scotsman:
Chinese authorities have blocked a pro-democracy web-log after it was nominated for a freedom of expression award.
The blog, Wang Yi’s Microphone, dealt with “sensitive subjects” and was maintained by a teacher from Sichuan province, the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders said.
China’s communist government encourages internet use for education and business, but blocks material deemed subversive or pornographic.
Dissidents have been arrested under vaguely worded security laws for posting items critical of the government. Reporters Without Borders said Wang’s blog was ordered to close by authorities in Hainan province, home of the site’s host company, Tianya.
The site was nominated for a Best of the Blogs award in the freedom of expression category by the German international radio station Deutsche Welle.
On its website, the radio station described Wang as an “anti-government Chinese intellectual” who used the blog to fight for justice. It gave no details.
Reporters Without Borders said one of Wang’s most recent posts dealt with a campaign by peasants in Guangdong province to remove a village chief accused of corruption.
Update: see this about the arrest of an Egyptian blogger (via lgf).
ction in the early Nineties is not something to be proud of, it hardly ranks as a crime on the same level as the massive slaughter perpetrated by the Turkish government from the 1890s through to 1915 and beyond. The British, French and Dutch weren’t cheering on the Serbs: they (foolishly) believed that intervention would only make matters worse. Indeed Britain under Tony Blair was later instrumental in putting a stop to Serbian aggression, a point surely worth mentioning when trying to find a moral equivalence between Turkish behaviour towards its Christian minorities with Western European behaviour towards its Muslim minorities.
And the Irish Famine? Comparable to the Armenian Genocide?
There’s more special pleading:
One of Akçam’s most illuminating explanations [he’s reviewing this book by Taner Akçam] for contemporary Turkish genocide-denial is that the victorious British and French statesmen who pressed the issue, following their victory over the Ottomans in World War I, conflated it with anti-Turkish imperialist agendas. The Armenian Genocide had been the work of the nationalist ‘Committee of Union and Progress’ (CUP) – or ‘Young Turks’ – that ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Following their defeat in the war, the next generation of Turkish nationalists under Mustafa Kemal – who actually included many of the same individuals – was initially ready to recognise the crimes against the Armenians and to prosecute some of those responsible, as the price for international approval. Yet as Akçam shows, the anti-Turkish vitriol of the British and French leaders; their determination to punish not merely the perpetrators of the genocide but the entire Turkish nation; and their attempts to dismember what was left of the Turkish state, caused a sea-change in Turkish attitudes.
It is tempting to suggest that ninety years later, certain Western politicians are still manipulating the Armenian question for cynical anti-Turkish purposes.
So anti-Turkish vitriol was responsible – and continues to be responsible – for the failure of the Turks to admit responsibility. Nothing to do with the Turks themselves.
Hoare concludes his article:
Akçam argues that confronting the fact of the Armenian Genocide is a necessity if Turkey is finally to complete the transition ‘from Empire to Republic’; i.e. the transition to a democratic state. He is undoubtedly right: Turkey should recognise the genocide. Yet the EU has no right to demand that it do so, so long as the Western European states themselves fail to recognise both their own historic crimes and the historic crimes committed against Europe’s indigenous Muslims.
But why should a Turkish admittance of guilt be dependant on a Western European mea culpa? Why is Hoare so determined to play down what happened, to put it into context: to argue, in effect, that in the end, and considering how brutal recent history has been, it was really nothing special. All that matters, surely, is the question, was the Armenian Genocide a crime against humanity, or was it not?
Alexander Yakovlev, who’s just died aged 81 in Moscow, isn’t exactly a household name, but according to this article in Commentary, he deserves a place in the history books:
Even inside Russia it’s probable that very few people know that the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the end of communism in Europe were due in large measure to a fortuitous combination of chance and Yakovlev’s (fortunately) wrong ideas about how to reinvigorate and tidy up Marxism.
He thought greater freedom of expression would enable Soviet Communism to correct its mistakes, and so take its place at the forefront of history. In a chance meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev he managed to convince the new Secretary General of the Communist Party of this.
It turned out he was wrong.
The ordeal of Akbar Ganji, Iranian journalist and writer, continues. His hunger strike “was ended under unknown conditions”, according to this comprehensive Wikipedia article. Now, from Human Rights Watch:
The imprisoned Iranian journalist and dissident, Akbar Ganji, said that Judiciary officials have tortured him to renounce his writings. Human Rights Watch today expressed grave concern for his physical well-being and urged the Iranian government to release him immediately and unconditionally.
“Ganji’s situation is now extremely critical,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities are exerting tremendous pressure on him to disavow his writings.”
The Judiciary has held Ganji in solitary confinement since September 3 in a special ward of Tehran’s Evin prison known as Alef-2. The authorities barred his family and lawyers from visiting him except for one brief visit on October 18 by his wife, Massoumeh Shafii, and one of his lawyers. Afterwards, his wife published a letter detailing Ganji’s account of his mistreatment by Judiciary officials.
In addition, the Judiciary detained one of Ganji’s other lawyers, Abdolfattah Soltani, on July 30. Since then, he has been held without charge, mostly in solitary confinement. Soltani is a co-founder of the Center for Defense of Human Rights, an independent rights organization in Tehran.