The Largest Minority

June 29th, 2008 @ 6:47am by John Geraghty

Silvio Berlusconi’s return to the helm as Italy’s prime minister has seen an unprecendented level of government overbearing. The most startling piece of legislation, since the collapse of Romano Prodi’s center-left government,  is a law requiring the fingerprinting of the countries entire Roma population, including 80,000 children. The Roma are what we might call gypsys, and were a targeted minority during the holocaust, losing 250,000 of their kind.

The Roma population is blamed for a disproportionate amount of crime in Italy, this usually consisting of pick-pocketing and other minor misdemeanors.

Berlusconi is also having talk with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi about the countries use as launching point for illegal immigration into Italy. These are the classic right wing xenophobic policies carried out to scare a populace. Putting blame on the ‘other’ is the oldest and most sinister political trick in the world. I remember a time when Gaddafi used to be the boogyman of Africa, the old Osama Bin Laden. Now, Sarcozy is sharing military information with him, and Berlusconi is scratching his back in return for some political capital.

Segregative techniques like these are fascistic, there is no other way to put it. Mussolini himself said that fascism was the coming together of the government and corporatism, well Berlusconi is the largest corporate magnate in Italy and the prime minister, what does that tell you? Incidentally, let us not forget that Berlusconi shares these views with Allesandra Mussolini, grand daughter of Benito, who once said that “all Romanians are criminals”.

Fascism doesn’t have to come goose-stepping down the street in a wehrmacht uniform, it is far more clever than that.

BBC Video

Source

Edit: any misspellings can be attributed to my faulty laptop keyboard!

June 28th, 2008 @ 3:27pm by D.C.

Warning: This post may contain a Canadian point of view.

Grouping of copyright and Supporting PaperworkCopyright Symbol and Supporting Paperwork Printed copyright symbols over registered copyright forms, document frames

GH Wise ©2007

Did you ever wonder why Canada introduced a new Copyright Bill recently even though in the past the public disapproval of a similar bill caused it to be squashed? Well there is a very good article on Canada.com that purports the United States has a hand in getting the maple leaf nation to quickly pass a controversial copyright law.

Michael Geist (the very same Michael Geist that started a Facebook group petitioning against the original changes to the Copyright legislation) argues:

The public campaign was obvious. U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins
was outspoken on the copyright issue, characterizing Canadian copyright law as
the weakest in the G7 (despite the World Economic Forum ranking it ahead of the
U.S.).

The U.S. Trade Representatives Office (USTR) made Canada a fixture on
its Special 301 Watch list, an annual compilation of countries that the U.S.
believes have sub-standard intellectual property laws. The full list contains
nearly 50 countries accounting for 4.4 billion people, or approximately 70 per
cent of the world’s population.

Most prominently, last year U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and John
Cornyn, along with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, escalated the
rhetoric on Canadian movie piracy, leading to legislative reform that took just
three weeks to complete.

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June 27th, 2008 @ 12:28pm by evmonk

Global Voices, a unique blogging project started by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, is holding their yearly conference in Budapest for the next two days. Today the conference panels are focused on the censorship and freedom of expression online. Tomorrow there will be a number of panels on citizen media and the use of web2.0 to improve the political process, build community, and bridge the language barrier. The entire even is being streamed and liveblogged, and archived video of every panel is available here. If you’re interested in this stuff, there are some great speakers and discussions. But remember that these are bloggers and technophiles, so their presentations aren’t always the most entertaining.

If you haven’t heard of Global Voices, check them out. They aggregate and review blogs from around the world and then organize the best posts by region and topic, in addition to having a general feed.

June 26th, 2008 @ 12:56pm by Sam

Is Ralph Nader “starting to talk white supremacist [sic]?” According to John Aravosis he is.

In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News, Nader noted that Obama has not addressed issues fundamental to African-Americans, namely the need to crack down on “economic exploitation in ghettos,” including “Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, [and] lead.” Nader, pointing out the obvious, says that Obama is attempting to assuage white fear by “talking white” and avoiding the stigma of being “another politically threatening African-American politician.” Nader goes on, “Basically he’s coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it’s corporate or whether it’s simply oligarchic.”

So let’s try and follow Aravosis’s logic here: a) Candidate A points out that Candidate B is avoiding discussion of issues pertaining to the oppression of blacks in America so as to assuage white voters. b) Pointing this out is tantamount to being a white supremacist, or “talking white supremacist,” therefore c) Candidate A is a white supremacist.

If we apply Aravosis’s logic elsewhere, we also must conclude that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are white supremacists, or “talking ‘white supremacist.’” After all, earlier this year Jackson accused Obama of “acting like he’s white,” and Sharpton criticized Obama for trying “to grandstand in front of white people.” Jackson also pointed out that he felt John Edwards was “the only candidate addressing African-American problems.” Now, I’ve heard Jackson and Sharpton called a lot of things, but I don’t recall “white supremacist” being among them, though if the premises of Aravosis’s argument are true, then it would seem that this would be the only appropriate conclusion.

(H/T Curt Meinhold)

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June 24th, 2008 @ 12:00pm by D.C.

It is difficult to face the rising cost of oil prices these days, but is it really worth it to tap into oil supplies that would destroy a protected wildlife reserve? I think the preservation of the environment should be foremost in the minds of the United States government. They protected these areas for so long, and to give it up now seems to be a slap in the face to people that lobbied to have them saved in the first place.

 Besides, the oil that would be produced from this new oil source would not become available right away and would take years for the effects of the newly introduced oil to take effect. This oil crisis is making sane people act irrationally. We do not need to lose sight of the important things. It makes no sense to fix a problem in the present, but only to create a bigger problem in the future.

June 23rd, 2008 @ 12:14pm by Sam

June 23rd, 2008 @ 10:46am by Sam

To any Obama supporters out there who still consider Obama a “people’s” candidate, a Washington outsider, or a grassroots candidate after last week’s decision to forgo public financing, the first presidential candidate to do so since the system was put in place, or his support for the pathetic capitulation of House Democrat’s over the FISA Amendements Act of 2008, I think I finally understand what you mean when you say he gives you “hope.”

You hope he’ll do the opposite of what he’s saying and doing now once elected.

You hope he’ll withdraw from Iraq, even though his plan for Iraq maintains the Green Zone, our embassy (built on slave labor), and the puppet government the Bush administration has propped up, while keeping a residual force for counterterrorism operations.  Obama himself has explicitly stated that he would not commit to unconditionally withdraw all occupation forces by 2013.  But you hope he’ll end the war in Iraq.  Yeah.

You hope he’ll represent the people’s interests in Washington, even though he receives disproportionate contributions from the richest 1%, who own 40% of our nation’s wealth and account for 80% of contributions over $250.  Through April 2008, Obama received $89 million from contributors contributing $1,000 or more, just $8 million short of McCain’s total funding.  His top 12 contributors are as follows:
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June 23rd, 2008 @ 12:32am by Sam

From the Associated Press:

A publicist for George Carlin says the legendary comedian has died of heart failure at a hospital in Santa Monica, Calif.

Jeff Abraham says Carlin went into St. John’s Health Center on Sunday afternoon, complaining of chest pain. Carlin died at 5:55 p.m. PDT. He was 71.

Although Carlin’s prime may have slightly preceded my generation, I would be remiss to not mention the profound influence watching his old HBO specials had on the development of my own personal political consciousness. Carlin’s scathing critiques of American foreign policy, capitalist “freedom,” and religious dogma provided a hilarious and often profound respite from mainstream political dialogue before I discovered alternative media and other radical forums for interpreting and discussing our modern world.

Witness Carlin in a guest spot on Bill Maher’s Real Time perfectly dissecting what “choice” means in a capitalist democracy. (see video below the fold)

(Image courtesy of georgecarlin.com)

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