Author: Mick Hartley

echniques beloved of paranoid totalitarianism: lie and bluster in public, arrest and torture in private. China is the Security Council member most actively promoting inaction on Darfur, where (in the most significant long-range military deployment in five centuries), it has 4,000 troops protecting its oil interests. Kim Jong-Il of North Korea is an international threat only because Beijing licenses him as a provocateur with which to torment Washington and Tokyo, in the way that a mob boss will send round a mentally unstable heavy. This is not the behaviour of a psychologically healthy state. […]

The internal contradictions of Commie-capitalism will, in the end, scupper the present arrangements in Beijing. China manufactures the products for some of the biggest brands in the world, but it’s also the biggest thief of copyrights and patents of those same brands. It makes almost all Disney’s official merchandising, yet it’s also the country that defrauds Disney and pirates its movies. The new China’s contempt for the concept of intellectual property arises from the old China’s contempt for the concept of all private property: because most big Chinese businesses are (in one form or another) government-controlled, they’ve failed to understand the link between property rights and economic development.

China hasn’t invented or discovered anything of significance in half a millennium, but the careless assumption that intellectual property is something to be stolen rather than protected shows why. If you’re a resource-poor nation (as China is), long-term prosperity comes from liberating the creative energies of your people – and Beijing still has no interest in that. If a blogger attempts to use the words “freedom” or “democracy” or “Taiwan independence” on Microsoft’s new Chinese internet portal, he gets the message: “This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech.” How pathetic is that? Not just for the Microsoft-spined Corporation, which should be ashamed of itself, but for the Chinese government, which pretends to be a world power but is terrified of words.

couldn’t classify, so socially moderate overall. She has gotten criticism on the left and the right – even within her own political party – for certain views in this arena. MP Hirsi Ali is pro-choice on abortion, supports gay rights, supports ‘positive discrimination’ (known as affirmative action in USA) for women, and believes that an obsession with sexual morality has crippled Muslims. She would abolish religious schools, and use state power to forcibly integrate Holland’s increasingly segregated schools and neighborhoods. However, her conservative side comes up as a staunch critic of multiculturalism, critic of victimology rhetoric, her belief that cultural differences and not racism mostly explain different employment rates in Holland, and her staunch defense of Western values. As many people across the ideological spectrum hold similar views, we couldn’t classify her opposition to female and male circumcision, haranging health authorities to examine schoolgirls for evidence of genital mutilation, her status as a champion of free speech, support for immigration but also assimilation of immigrants into Dutch society, and support for strict separation of church and state (which definitely cuts across the ideological spectrum in Europe).

On foreign policy:

MP Hirsi Ali has 71% conservative rating on foreign policy issues. She supports the War On Terrorism and the war in Iraq, opposes Turkey’s ascension to the European Union, is pro-Israel, and is one of Europe’s most vociferous critics of Islamism. We were unable to find any liberal positions from her in this arena, although 29% of her views are unclassifiable: she supports the European Union constitution, and supports E.U. power to crack down on ‘honor’ killings on the continent.

Further evidence of confusion with regard to Ms.Ali (via Butterflies and Wheels):

In a series of “Letters to Hirsi Ali” published this spring in the newspaper De Volkskrant, several well-known, mostly male writers charged her with poisoning the political atmosphere with her strident attacks on Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. They argued that by pandering to Dutch prejudices and putting Muslims on the defensive, she contributes to the very Islamic radicalization she claims to want to stop. In a book rushed into print in February, the popular historian Geert Mak went so far as to compare Submission to Joseph Goebbels’s infamous Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew. He warned that the Netherlands could be on the road to civil war. “When the time comes for us to tell our grandchildren, how will we tell the story of the last months of 2004?” Mak asked breathlessly. “The tone, the new tone that suddenly had taken hold? Where did it all begin?”

From the Scotsman:

Hundreds of thousands of Iranian football fans flouted the Islamic state’s moral codes as they took to the streets after qualifying for the World Cup.

The national side’s 1-0 win over minnows Bahrain booked Iran’s place at the 2006 finals in Germany, and set off a country-wide party.

Some women breached the strictures of Islamic rule by taking off their mandatory headscarves, waving them in the air and dancing with young men.

Once more, football served as a vehicle for reform in the Islamic republic: more than 20 young female fans forced their way into the stadium before the game, defying a 26-year ban on their presence in the stands.

“Freedom is my right, Iran is my country,” they chanted.

One woman, Mahboubeh Abbas-Gholizadeh, missed the game after breaking her leg when guards tried to push the women out by closing a gate at Tehran’s Freedom Stadium.

But it was worth it, she said: “A leg gets broken, but maybe it will lead to a change in the law. Or an issue regarding women’s rights might be brought to attention.”

arty Congress has just demonstrated to one and all that the Syrian Regime is defunct. Yes, it can still crackdown, imprison, kill and destroy, but it cannot reform itself or the country. The Baath is no longer a viable institution. As hard as it wants to, the regime can no longer lean on it. In fact, it has just collapsed under the regime’s weight.

How long will it take for the Syrian people to accept and acknowledge the collapse of the Baath Party and the death of the regime?

gas reserves outside Russia and 7 per cent of the world’s oil, Iran suffers chronic unemployment, economic malaise and corruption. […]

Former revolutionaries and foreign diplomats agree that the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, which cost Iran 500,000 lives, allowed the revolution to be hijacked and diverted, handing the regime the chance to dispose of dissidents and critics behind the call for national unity.

Mr Mirdamadi said: “Everything became overshadowed by the war. Everything was affected by it. Then, only one year after it ended, Khomeini died. His influence could have brought groups together but his death left us a vacuum of such a personality.”

The political aftermath has caused such disillusion that a large proportion of the electorate seems certain to boycott next week’s vote.

There are eight candidates, chosen by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the unelected Supreme Leader, and his 12-strong Council of Guardians. Of the eight, four of them are hardliners. Only one is a reformist. The winner will draw a Cabinet from a parliament already refined by the Council of Guardians.

Reform is unlikely to have any significant leeway in Iran just yet. Foreign observers and Iranians suggest that the combination of disillusionment, fear, war-weariness and a lack of viable political alternative has eroded the chance of a new revolution. Meanwhile, veterans do not even enjoy their revolution nostalgia.

One said: “My friends and I sit around at night talking about the violent protests of 1979.

“We say, ‘Hey, you remember when you started fighting with the police or did such and such in this street or that? Yeah, you idiot, look where it got us’.”

Then, only one year after it ended, Khomeini died. His influence could have brought groups together but his death left us a vacuum of such a personality. Ah, the nostalgia of revolutionaries: if only Lenin hadn’t died so young….

):

The 5ft model, believed to be an original from the cult BBC Dr Who series, was taken from Wookey Hole Caves near Wells on Monday.

On Thursday, staff found the plunger arm and a ransom note on a doorstep.

The note read: “We are holding the Dalek captive. We demand further instructions from the Doctor.”

The group, signing themselves Guardians of the Planet Earth, added: “For the safety of the human race we have disarmed and removed its destructive mechanism.”

been used three days earlier. After 30 days in jail he was released, but his passport and US documents have been confiscated and he has been told that he will never be allowed to leave Cuba again.

“This is a nightmare,” Bernardo said in Havana. “I feel as if I were in prison. This is revenge. They know that to live in this country is so bad and depressing that that is the punishment. The immigration officials said to me, ‘Your brother left, so you stay here’. I don’t feel I committed a crime. I helped my brother become a free man.”

Bernardo now spends most of his time in his brother’s Havana home, with Fidel’s wife and son. The only contact he has with Angela Marie, his daughter, is a home video of her that he brought to Cuba to show her off to the family. He made another attempt to leave Cuba last month, by raft, but it capsized and he had to swim seven miles back to shore. “I’m not as young as I used to be,” he said.

l would be proud.

This bill is a complete and utter disgrace and once again reinforces that this government believes people of religion are superior to people of no religion. It offers too much protection to the kind of legitimate, reasonable criticism of religion that is so badly needed when there are so many conflicts at home and abroad caused by religion. This will only give more power to the kind of people who want to ban any plays, films or television programmes that contain anything that challenges their belief. It has absolutely no place in a supposedly liberal democracy.

es were being fought with the police in Glen View and Hatcliffe. “So things are happening, but in a chaotic and uncoordinated manner.”

Just don’t expect any help from neighbouring countries.

President Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania is reported as having strongly defended the policies of President Mugabe of Zimbabwe at a press conference in Cape Town this week [from a letter to the Times].

Since Eric announced that he’d be giving up blogging, his rate of posting has increased dramatically. Maybe it’s just something he had to go through….