Oh yay, Amanda Marcotte has a poke in the eye for the people who think Shakespeare was just the front guy for the Earl of Oxford or some other more aristocratic type because how could a nobody from the provinces possibly be Shakespeare?

Newsweek has a surprisingly sympathetic piece about Shakespeare truthers, republished here at Raw Story, and I just have to take some time to point out that, like with other conspiracy theories and denialist obsessions, there’s more going on here than some kind of legitimate dispute over the facts. For those who are unaware, Shakespeare truthers are people who believe that William Shakespeare was just a half-literate actor who was the cover story for some no doubt wealthy nobleman who secretly wrote the plays and didn’t want credit because, as we all know from our fairy tales, wealthy noblemen are noble, honorable creatures who have small egos and little desire for respect and adulation.*

*This is sarcasm, truthers.

Seriously. Shakespeare truthers drive me batty, because there are so many reasons not to think anyone other than Will Shakespeare, co-owner of one of the two great acting companies of Elizabethan London, colleague of Richard Burbage et al., colleague and rival of Ben Jonson et al., published author of two long poetic narratives, wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare. He was known to a shit-ton of people, and a good few of those people left written records of him.

Newsweek treats the controversy as if it were mostly one of competing camps who are arguing over facts, with only a whiff of acknowledgement of the political forces that are driving this controversy and always have. The one acknowledgement is dismissive: “Yet no matter how much the scholastic Shakespeare establishment insists that the doubters are fruit loops, flat-earthers or simply snobs, who can’t bear the idea that the world’s greatest poet was a mere grammar school boy and not a glamorous aristo, the case against Shakespeare is as vociferous today as at any time since it first gained credence in the mid-19th century.”

Of course it’s as vociferous! There are a lot more people, for one thing, and there are always a lot of people who don’t know their ass from their elbow and so are suckers for dopy conspiracy theories. So what? That doesn’t make the theories reasonable.

The implication that a theory cannot be crackpot because it persists is handily disproven by the existence of all major religions. The same political desires that drove Shakespeare trutherism back in the day have not gone away, however. It’s still fueled by an unsavory classism and hostility to bohemianism that manifests in an unwillingness to accept that someone could develop as a great poet without a formal education but merely by practicing through his work as a writer and actor.

It’s true that it’s mysterious how Shakespeare got to be Shakespeare, but you know what? It would be no less mysterious if he were Edward Vere or Elizabeth Tudor or John Dee or anyone else. He’s a one-off, and a childhood in a big house would not explain him. In fact a childhood of that kind would make him a good deal more of a puzzle, because in that case why would he have been doing something so vulgar as writing plays for the big theatres where any ruffian could enter? If an aristocrat, he should have been at most writing unpublished sonnet sequences, not plays.

The notion that being an educated or erudite person precludes being suckered by bullshit is bound up in the same knee-jerk respect for wealth and authority that gives rise to Shakespeare trutherism to begin with. Granted, Mark Twain is a bit of a surprise in there, but he wrote his anti-Shakespeare screed a year before he died, deep into his cranky old rich man years. Wealthy, educated people are just as prone as any other group of people to falling for conspiracy theories that flatter their sensibilities, and a conspiracy theory that purports to prove that great poets cannot come from the masses just so happens to be exactly what many rich, educated people want to hear.

Thought leaders. Only rich men can be thought leaders. It’s common knowledge.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

And another such chain of girls-showing-tits drinking and dining establishments, courtesy of Orac commenting on the last one. This one is called, winsomely, Tilted Kilt. I thought it must be the flipped version, with male servers in kilts and nothing else. How silly can you be? Of course it’s not.

While the Tilted Kilt concept has its roots deep in the rousing tradition of Scottish, Irish and English Pubs, it actually first came to life in America’s own sin city, Las Vegas. The brainchild of successful restaurateur Mark DiMartino, Tilted Kilt was conceived to be a contemporary, Celtic-themed sports Pub staffed with beautiful servers in sexy plaid kilts and matching plaid bras.

Well actual – “Celtic” – kilts are worn by men rather than women, but whatever. The point is the matching plaid bras anyway. (Or tartan, if you want to get it right, which they don’t.)

There are three years’ worth of Kilt Girl calendars, so you can check out their levels of hottitude.

Also, they have food, and beer.

Welcome to Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery, where good times are always on tap. That’s because we’re more than just a restaurant, and so much more than a sports bar. Our fun, festive atmosphere makes us the go-to place to watch sports, enjoy a cold beer and hang out with friends.  We offer a delicious, mouth-watering menu, more than 30 draft and bottled beers to choose from and an extensive spirit selection.  All this, plus year-round, nonstop pro and college sports action on all of our HD screens.

Of course, there’s also our World Famous Tilted Kilt Girls.™ Beautiful and ever so friendly, everyone is eager to put a smile on your face and an ice cold beer in your hand. So, when you’re in the mood for fine Pub food and cold beers, get into your nearest Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery. All across America, everyone agrees that “A Cold Beer Never Looked So Good.”®

It’s interesting how both the kilt place and the bikini place insist on the friendliness of the beautiful wait staff. Clearly the customers are being assured they will have no trouble fantasizing that their server would happily serve them in any way they asked, maybe out back next to the dumpster once the clients have eaten their TK Irish Nachos.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

So this is something I didn’t know about – a chain of “sports bars” called Bikinis Sports Bar & Grill. “Bikinis” isn’t the name of the owner but what the servers – all women, of course – wear.

How “America’s Only Breastaurant®” got started…

It all started back in the winter of 2001. Weary of the technology world, and discouraged by the “dot-com” implosion that was happening all around him, Doug Guller packed his bags and headed to Australia for a much needed vacation.

While sitting at a bar on the Australian coast, watching some rugby on a small TV nearby, an attractive server approached and asked, “Wanna beer, mate?”

At that moment, all Doug could do was smile. Life suddenly made sense to him. He thought to himself, “This is a nearly perfect combination: relaxing, drinking, sports, girls, service. … plus great food.

The idea behind the Bikinis Sports Bar & Grill® concept was soon born.

There are a few words left out. It should be “an attractive server in a bikini approached.”

It wasn’t long afterward that the first Bikinis Sports Bar & Grill® location opened in Austin, Texas.  The popularity of the concept which offered an unbeatable mix of sex appeal, sports, and delicious food soon led to the opening of 10 more locations over the next 5 years… in Texas and beyond.

Bikinis Sports Bar & Grill®, “Americas Only Sports Breastaurant!®”

Well not exactly “sex appeal” tout court. The sex appeal is, obviously, for straight men. It’s a Breastaurant!®, after all; there are no men in bikinis shown or mentioned. It’s like Hooters only – well no it’s just like Hooters.

There are eight of them. They’re all in Texas. Or, if you look at the Careers page, there are ten, or eleven if there are two in Austin as the Location page says, and one of the ten (or eleven) is in Oklahoma City. There are some manager jobs and some server jobs. The managers wear shirts and the servers wear bikini tops.

Let’s look at the job requirements for servers (who are also bartenders).

Purpose

Bikinis Babes at Bikinis Sports Bar and Grill are more than your average food and cocktail servers. They are the physical embodiment of Bikinis Sports Bar and Grill: sexy, fun, friendly and entertaining. The environment you create is the reason our customers choose to spend time with us.

Basically sex workers, but paid less.

Job Duties

• Provide customers a fun, entertaining and visually appealing experience.
• Greet and attend to customers in friendly, upbeat and welcoming manner.

Then there’s some strange alien bafflegab about serving food and explaining menu items and shit, but nobody cares about that when there are tits to look at.

Then there’s how to deal with problem customers.

• Visit with customers, as time permits, to ensure they have a good time—take an interest in them and be able to converse about current sports events.
• On occasion, a customer may conduct himself/herself in an rude, offensive or inappropriate manner. Such conduct may, at times, be due to excessive drinking. Such behavior is not condoned. When this occurs, please notify your coach or another manager, who will handle the situation.

It’s like this. We put you out there, in your bikini top and your sexy fun friendly entertaining physical embodiment of Bikinis Sports Bar and Grillitude, and the result is that some customers grab your bum or your tits or maybe just plain try to yank your pants down. Such behavior is not condoned. (By whom? Oh, that would be telling, we can’t answer questions like that. It just isn’t, that’s all.) When it happens – as it will, because of the way we present you – tell someone else rather than emptying a pitcher of ice water on the guy’s head.

Requirements

• Must wear Bikinis Babes uniform, and present herself in a favorable, appealing manner to our customers. Must be well groomed, and maintain good personal hygiene.

And Bikinis Babes uniform is? I bet you can figure it out.

Then there’s a bunch of palaver about showing up on time and serving customers while remaining sexy – but of course all that is way second to wearing the Bikinis Babes uniform. First duty: show us your tits!

The last item is interesting though.

• Able to handle difficult customers, or any customer complaints, in a tactful, courteous and professional manner.

The difficult customers we set you up to have to deal with by making you serve people food and alcohol while wearing a bikini.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Gawker has an entry in the Brand Names News category.

On Friday, The New York Times profiled some of the Chinese companies that have taken nonsensical branding to its postmodern conclusion, selling products under Western-inspired names like “Biemlfdlkk” and “Marisfrolg.”

Other brands mentioned in the article:

• Frognie Zila
• Helen Keller (a sunglasses maker)
• Chrisdien Deny
• Adidos
• Orgee
• Cnoverse
• Fuma
• Johnnie Worker Red Labial Whiskey

With ginger ale!

Of course, giving your company a meaningless, foreign-sounding name can present unique challenges when dealing with journalists.

A Biemlfdlkk saleswoman in the southern city of Guangzhou explained, “It’s a German name.” An employee at another Biemlfdlkk shop had a different explanation: “It’s the name of a French designer.”

Ah yes, Jean-Pierre Biemlfdlkk.

Non. C’est Jean-Claude.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A Fox “News” personality wondered on live tv if it might be the metric system that caused the AirAsia flight to go missing.

Fox News host Anna Kooiman speculated on Sunday that an AirAsia flight could have gone missing because international pilots were trained using the metric system.

During breaking coverage of missing Flight QZ8501, Kooiman asked former FAA spokesperson Scott Brenner if the “real reason” the plane had disappeared was because of the “different way other countries train their pilots.”

“Even when we think about temperature, it’s Fahrenheit or Celsius,” she pointed out. “It’s kilometers or miles. You know, everything about their training could be similar, but different.”

Also? They’re upside down. That must make it hard to fly planes correctly.

Plus they’re probably Mooslims.

In addition, they eat unfamiliar food items.

Too, they’re far away from here.

And furthermore they probably don’t watch Fox News.

So no wonder.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

One more good point, this one from Mychal Denzel Smith.

The rhetoric Lynch, Giuliani and others employ only reinforces the message protesters have been trying to get across. Lynch and Giuliani can see the tragedy of Liu and Ramos’s deaths, but do not extend that same sympathy to the families of those killed by police officers. The lives of officers Liu and Ramos are held up as more valuable than the lives of Garner, Brown and so on. That’s the reason the protests must continue, despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s call for them to be suspended.

But also, you’d have a hard time convincing me that the reason Lynch and Giuliani mourn Liu and Ramos is because of their humanity.

By all accounts, Liu and Ramos were well-liked members of their community, but that’s not what has inspired Lynch to attribute the violence that killed them to nonviolent protesters. Liu and Ramos were police officers. Their jobs represent institutional power. The protests are a challenge/threat to that power.

I think it’s also runaway tribalism though. Esprit de corps. Out of control in-group loyalty.

The protests are not meant to be a challenge/threat to the lives of police officers, which is why it is disingenuous to link the actions of Brinsley to the movement. Activists, organizers, protesters involved in this fight for justice are not looking for more blood in the streets. They are seeking an upheaval of the American system of racism.

And yes, that directly implicates the police. The police are a violent and racist arm of oppression. That’s not because every person hired to be a police officer is a violent racist. It’s simply the job they’ve been given by the American people.

And why is that? Because that’s how the country started out, for one thing – with racist oppression – and the legacy is still very much there. And because the country favors inequality, for another thing, and inequality has consequences, such as high rates of crime. That has to be “managed” and the police are hired to do the managing. It’s a depressing arrangement.

The rejoinder to that assertion is typically some form of “not all police are bad/there are good cops.” There are certainly good people who are police officers. But good people sign up to do terrible jobs every day. They don’t, however, deserve to be killed for doing so.

As such, we all should mourn the deaths of Liu and Ramos, as well as send supportive energy to a recovering Shaneka Thompson, whose shooting has been lost in all of this. But that mourning doesn’t mean we become less critical of the police as a violent and racist tool of oppression.

I don’t suppose we could consider tackling the inequality itself? No I didn’t think so.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Patricia Williams, of The Nation’s Diary of a Mad Law Professor column, also makes a useful point.

…given clear evidence that Ismaaiyl Brinsley was mentally unsound, it is remarkable that the media could assign direct cause-and-effect to the atmospherics of news. If Brinsley had tweeted that William Shakespeare made him do it, would Fox & Friends be blaming teachers’ unions for troubling the waters?

It is its own kind of madness to blame these murders on those who do no more than debate the proper use of force by police, as Fox and others have done.

(As in: guns don’t kill people, public discourse and protestors without guns do.) This response chills freedom of expression, not least by using one psychotic individual as the stand-in for a national debate in desperate need of actual resolution. If Brinsley becomes the embodiment of “Black lives matter” or the Willie Horton–ized face of “Hands up, don’t shoot!”, then no use of force by the police can ever seem too excessive. No wonder we need stop-and-frisk—“they” are executioners!

Exactly. This whole “the protests killed Ramos and Liu” ploy is just a way to shut down all protest against excessive force by cops.

Lest we lose sight of the issue: approximately 80 percent of African-American men between 16 and 24 have endured unsolicited stops by the New York Police Department. Only 10 percent of whites in the same age cohort have. This does not reflect inherent criminality, but rather a pattern of discrimination. To observe that much, to discuss it and to push to change it is not the equivalent of “stoking hatred.”

And I for one find it frightening that police officers high up in the chain of command are claiming it is the equivalent.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The editors of The Nation are also disgusted at the police grandstanding and defiance of civilian rule.

Police-union leaders and their allies, however, chose this moment to talk not of peace but war. “The mayors hands are literally dripping with our blood because of his words actions and policies and we have, for the first time in a number of years, become a ‘wartime’ police department. We will act accordingly,” declared a now-infamous memo attributed to the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.

The PBA disavowed the memo, but its president, Patrick Lynch, clearly relished its imagery, speaking of “blood on the hands” repeatedly to reporters. Joining this twisted chorus were, among others, former NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly and former governor George Pataki, who called the killings “a predictable outcome of divisive anti-cop rhetoric” of Eric Holder and Bill de Blasio.

Where to begin? If anyone’s words could have a dangerous “predictable outcome,” they are those of Lynch, Pataki, Kelly and others, whose inflammatory statements contradict the message they otherwise seek to send: that the police are not the enemy but serve to protect the public. Of course, this is not how New Yorkers of color have experienced policing in the era of stop-and-frisk, which Mayor de Blasio pledged to end. Indeed, Lynch may have provided a service of sorts in so clearly articulating the occupying-force mentality that the protesters have been denouncing all along.

Yes, there’s something to that. I for one hadn’t been paying any particular attention to the New York police until the grand jury ruling in the Garner case and then the fascist reaction detailed above. I didn’t know they saw themselves as an occupying force until then.

But, it would be better to have a police force that didn’t see itself as an occupying force. Awareness of the problem is second best to not having the problem at all.

Outrageous as it is to blame democratic protests for the singular act of a mentally ill individual, it’s also true that highly charged political debates sometimes attract unstable, paranoid and untreated minds. But Brinsley has more in common with Sydney hostage-taker Man Haron Monis, or schizophrenic abortion-clinic shooter John Salvi in 1994, than he does with peaceful protesters against police violence. If anything, this tragedy is a reminder of why the underlying issues in this debate are so urgent—why good policing is tied to gun control and a better mental-health safety net; and why a new contract between police and communities is necessary. For the protest movement, it’s both good policy and good politics right now to focus on specific demands: abandon “broken windows” policing, abolish arrest quotas[,] and push for independent prosecutors when abuses occur. Those are reforms that will help keep everyone safe.

The harsh reality is that the US favors inequality because it’s good for rich people. The fact that it creates whole neighborhoods of impoverished people with little to lose and a lot to resent is not the rich people’s problem.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The police fascism in New York is still ongoing. Yesterday at the funeral of Rafael Ramos it was on display again.

While mourners inside the church applauded politely as Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke, hundreds of officers outside turned their backs on him to protest what they see as his support for demonstrators angry over killings by police.

They’re “protesting” against civilian and democratic authority over the police, and that’s fascism. When the police get to call the shots, that’s a police state.

Sgt. Myron Joseph of the New Rochelle Police Department said he and fellow officers turned their backs spontaneously to “support our brothers in the NYPD.”

They need to stop doing that.

A block from the church, retired NYPD Officer John Mangan held a sign that read: “God Bless the NYPD. Dump de Blasio.”

No police department can or should be treated as beyond criticism. Cops can screw up. Individual cops can be flawed. Whole police departments can be infected with bad attitudes toward the people they work among. The self-pity and tribalism need to stop.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Remember Junaid Jamshed? The former pop star turned reactionary preacher who had to flee Pakistan for London when he was accused of blasphemy by another reactionary preacher?

First, more about him from the BBC three weeks ago.

…the BBC’s Shaima Khalil in Islamabad says what makes Junaid Jamshed’s case so unusual is the fact that he is a high-profile, wealthy Muslim preacher.

As opposed to a Christian peasant woman like Asia Bibi.

In his video broadcast, which has since been widely shared, he appeared to make negative remarks about the Prophet’s youngest wife Ayesha.

He described how Ayesha demanded attention from the Prophet and how one day she faked an illness.

The video led to another Muslim group, Sunni Tehrik, filing the blasphemy case.

Junaid Jamshed – who is called “Disco Mullah” because of his role with the Tablighi Jamaat organisation – released a further video after the incident pleading for forgiveness.

But the blasphemy law isn’t about forgiveness, is it.

But the complainant, Sunni Tehrik spokesman Mohammad Mobeen Qadri, told BBC Urdu that an apology could not stop the legal process once blasphemy had been committed.

Before embarking on his religious career, Jamshed was a member of Vital Signs, a number of whose songs and albums topped the charts.

And now he has a third career: hiding from religious zealots.

Now an article by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid last week suggests that his case could be a way into reforming the blasphemy law.

‘Scholars’ who had dubbed blasphemy an unpardonable sin are seeking pardon, when Asia Bibi, Rimsha Masih, Shama and Shahzad Masih and countless others weren’t even given the chance to apologise. The same individuals who eulogise Shariah law and scorn secularism are taking refuge in secular realms, vying to dodge the ramifications of the same jurisprudence they tout as the foundation of the Islamic Utopia. Not to mention the fact that it was the narration of a religious scripture that summoned the blasphemy accusation in the first place.

The paradox, hypocrisy and irony in this entire episode are self-evident and have been thoroughly highlighted.

But given the realities, he says, the need is not to rejoice in Jamshed’s capture in a trap he has helped to set, but to use him as a lever to make the trap less lethal. If an apology can get him off the hook, then it should be able to get others off the hook.

Notwithstanding the allure of watching a despicable man fall in a trap that he’s set for others, many of us do not perceive the bigger picture here. We don’t realise the utility of the mullah in what is a rare opportunity to revamp the ugliest side of Pakistan.

After the virulence that JJ has been propagating in the garb of religion, it’s difficult to have any compassion for him; definitely not after watching the loathsome apology that he has recorded.  But we need to recognise the fact that it’s not just about one single detestable nut-head, and his brazen duplicity. It’s about the fate of those that have already suffered cataclysmic repercussions amidst the frequent Islamic spasms.

If the blasphemy law can gobble up a Jamshed it will be even more ravenous toward everyone else.

If the Pakistani establishment is as keen on curbing religious fanaticism as it has been peddling via the ISPR, and the touted casualty count of Islamist terrorists, it possesses the necessary muscle to use mullahs like Junaid Jamshed – and by correlation Tariq Jameel – into showcasing alleged blasphemy as a ‘pardonable sin.’ Once that happens, countless Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis and even the Shia, would be spared the wrath of the mullah and his personal toy that the blasphemy law has become.

In the ideal world no one should be forced to apologise – let alone be massacred – for holding any religious beliefs – or none whatsoever – but in Pakistan, one of the farthermost domains from the ideal world, giving blasphemy-accused the opportunity to apologise for a non-existent crime – one they never committed – would be a massive step towards eventually making said apology superfluous.

If an ‘Islamic scholar’ like Junaid Jamshed, with decades worth of indoctrination under his increasingly protracted belt, can ‘err’ into ‘unintentional blasphemy’, surely a non-Muslim, can make a similar mistake. This should be the official tagline for the reformist movement designed to save innocent lives from the murderous allegation of blasphemy.

In other words to reform it, the reformers have to take it on its own terms, at least for now. That must be a bitter pill to swallow.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

And now that we’ve revisited Vulliamy’s and ITN’s visit to Omarska, let’s revisit their libel suit against Living Marxism for saying it was all a fabrication. Ed Vulliamy again:

Some will say that Living Marxism won the “public relations battle”, whatever that is. Others will cling to the puerile melodrama that ITN’s victory in the high court yesterday was that of Goliath over some plucky little David who only wanted to challenge the media establishment.

But history – the history of genocide in particular – is thankfully built not upon public relations or melodrama but upon truth; if necessary, truth established by law. And history will record this: that ITN reported the truth when, in August 1992, it revealed the gulag of horrific concentration camps run by the Serbs for their Muslim and Croatian quarry in Bosnia.

The law now records that Penny Marshall and Ian Williams (and myself, for that matter) did not lie but told the truth when they exposed this crime to the world, and that the lie was that of Living Marxism and its dilettante supporters who sought, in the time-honoured traditions of revisionism, to deny those camps existed.

Of course Living Marxism was unable to offer a single witness who had been at Trnopolje, the camp they claimed to be a fake, on that putrid afternoon of August 5, 1992. Indeed, they were unable to produce any witnesses at all. Unlike any member of Living Marxism or their sympathisers, I was there with ITN’s cameras that day. We went to two camps: Omarska and Trnopolje.

Living Marxism. Remember them? They’re still around, under new names – spiked and the Institute of Ideas, for two.

When ITN sued in pursuit of these aims, the company of course ran the risk that such action would draw attention to LM’s revisionism. But no one could have predicted the degree to which, rather than be dismissed as a foul revisionist trick, Living Marxism’s claims would become a matter for voguish tittle-tattle among bored intellectuals on the sofas of the Groucho Club.

LM played its hand well but the rot in the British intelligentsia made it easy for them to do so. LM succeeded in entwining the two issues of the libel writ and denial of the camps. Some of their supporters argued that they accepted the truth of the genocide but nevertheless felt compelled by ITN’s supposedly heavy-handed use of the libel laws to speak out in favour of those who denied the carnage. But such distinctions were utterly unconvincing. Those who helped LM cannot fail to recognise that by doing so they also stirred the poison LM had dropped into the well of history, playing their own role in denying a genocide.

By this entwinement, genocide was devalued into a “media debate”, something to chitter-chatter about over grilled sea bass and pale Belgian beer.

Hungry for controversy, a sizeable portion of London’s intelligentsia lined up to support Living Marxism. They rallied round those who had named me and others as liars in the name of free speech – so why not name them too, the great, the good and the up-and-coming? Fay Weldon, Doris Lessing, Harold Evans, Toby Young, and even a handful of contributors to this newspaper. A diverse coterie, eager to sip Living Marxism’s apparently excellent claret at the ICA, to eat their canapés and run alongside the rotten bandwagon of revisionism.

And they’re still flourishing, still passing around the claret.

As is by now well-known, Living Marxism has become adept at finding or placing supporters in what it regards as influential positions in the media. This is all perfectly above board: the Times was desperate enough to offer LM’s editor, Mick Hume, his own column. The signatories of LM’s letters are familiar bylines across Fleet Street.

And they still are. Brendan O’Neill is one. See note 19 in a 2009 piece by George Monbiot:

19. In 2000, Brendan O’Neill sent out a mass email with the following content: “The people who brought you LM magazine will be back in late 2000 with a new online publication called spiked.”

Genocide-deniers as media stars. It’s a strange world we live in.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Bosnia Institute News tells us that Omarska is being wiped from memory.

On 9 May, a group of survivors came to Omarska, near Prijedor in Bosnia, to lay a wreath for those who perished there in 1992. It was Victory Day – a Bosnian holiday to mark the defeat of fascism in the World War II – and also, for them, an opportunity to commemorate the victims of numerous detention camps from the more recent conflict. They did so last year and in the years before at this place, now an iron ore mine but once notorious as a place of torture and death for several thousand Bosnians at the hands of Bosnian Serb forces.

But guards hired by ArcelorMittal, the largest steel producer in the world and the current owner of the site, did not allow them to place flowers at the gate. They were acting in accordance with the wishes of Prijedor’s hard-line Serb mayor Marko Pavic and ArcelorMittal’s new policy, which has suspended a previously expressed commitment to fund a memorial and allow survivors unrestricted access to this site of remembrance. A corporate giant that recently invested 19.2 million pounds in the London ‘Orbit’, and that has sought to project an image of corporate responsibility, ArcelorMittal has shown a different face in a troubled land from which some of its profits come.

The images of the emaciated inmates of Omarska broadcast in the summer of 1992 to the world by a group of British journalists shocked the international public, bringing back memories of Nazi concentration camps. The evidence of torture and killings of detainees at Omarska, collected by a UN Commission of Experts, led to the establishment of the first international war crimes court since Nuremberg and Tokyo – the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Some 20 Bosnian Serbs, including guards, commanders of the camp and local political leaders, have been convicted of crimes against humanity committed in Omarska.

As peace set in and foreign investors picked through state-owned assets in Bosnia, Mittal Steel decided to purchase the site of the concentration camp, together with a complex of rich ore mines and facilities around Prijedor (including the locations of mass graves where the bodies of murdered Omarska inmates were dumped by Serb authorities). It was a logical purchase, following the earlier acquisition of the huge steelworks in Zenica in central Bosnia.

Fearing a possible backlash and bad publicity, Mittal agreed with camp survivors that certain buildings at the Omarska complex would remain untouched and accessible to survivors and victims’ families. The agreement was followed by a promise that a memorial would be built on the site and financed by Mittal. This was in 2005, but things have changed dramatically since then.

Mittal’s promise was made at the height of hopes that Bosnia was heading in the right direction, towards a reckoning with the legacy of atrocities committed during the nineties. The project of Omarska Memorial, led by a UK-based group ‘Soul of Europe’, contracted by Mittal to facilitate discussions between Bosniak, Croat and Serb representatives in Prijedor, was hailed internationally as an example of Bosnia finally coming to terms with its ghosts. Not everybody was happy with the proposed memorial, but it seemed to be a breakthrough in a community ravaged by a brutal fratricide.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I’ve been re-reading Samantha Power‘s A Problem From Hell, and I feel a need to revisit what happened in Bosnia in 1992 and after.

Power cites the work of Ed Vulliamy of the Guardian. We could start with his Shame of camp Omarska.

The internees are horribly thin, raw-boned; some are almost cadaverous, with skin like parchment folded around their arms; their faces are lantern-jawed, and their eyes are haunted by the empty stare of the prisoner who does not know what will happen to him next.

The prisoners, or internees, emerge from a huge rust-coloured shed, 30 at a time, into the sun and heat.

They are lined up by a prison guard, a civilian policeman, and then, as part of some pathetic camp drill, they run in single file across a courtyard and into the camp canteen, under the watchful eye of a beefy policeman with a machine gun in a glass observation post. There are no barked orders; they know the drill only too well.

In the well-kept kitchen they line up again and wait for their ration: a bowl of beans augmented with breadcrumbs and a piece of bread, which they wolf down in silence at the metal tables, before quickly and obediently forming another line by the door, and then running in line back across the yard, into the aluminium shed.

The meal takes five minutes. It appears to be their only one of the day. If they ate even twice as much they would be only slightly less gaunt and withered. Some take their bread with them to eat later. Then the next 30 appear, and jog across the yard.

You can Google “Omarska” and check Images to see what Vulliamy describes. Bosnian Institute News has this familiar photo:

Vulliamy was the first to document this.

Omarska is an old iron mine and ore processing plant. It is now the most notorious on a list published by the Bosnian government naming 57 of what it calls ‘concentration camps’.

Neither the International Red Cross nor the United Nations – nor any press – had visited it before we arrived on Wednesday, although the international agencies have expressed acute concern about the Bosnian-Muslim allegations.

They weren’t given free access, of course.

Most of the inmates are too visibly terrified to talk. We decline to interview people selected by the authorities, preferring to try finding our own inmates to talk to, but we are bundled away upstairs for a briefing.

Omarska, they tell us, is an ‘investigation centre’ for men suspected of being in the Muslim irregular army. They are rounded up or arrested, then ‘screened’ to determine whether they are fighters or civilians.

And while they were “screened” they were also starved.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Another horror out of Pakistan.

Gunmen in a Punjab village shot dead a member of the Ahmadi religious minority on Saturday, five days after a Muslim leader denounced Ahmadis on a popular television show.

Luqman Ahad Shehzad was shot in the back of the head near Bhiri Shah Rehman village, a small community of Ahmadis in the Gujranwala district, said Saleemud Din, a spokesman of the community.

He is the eleventh person killed for being Ahmadi in Pakistan this year.

Should we be grateful the number is “only” eleven when it could be in the thousands? Or furious that it’s more than zero?

In 1984, a Pakistani law declared them non-Muslims and made it possible to jail Ahmadis for “posing as a Muslim” or “offending a Muslim’s feelings”.

They are often denounced by Muslim clerics and targeted by violent extremists. Some clerics promise that killing Ahmadis earns the killer a place in heaven and distribute leaflets listing their home addresses.

So it’s pretty amazing that the number isn’t in the thousands.

Clerics who urge their listeners to kill people for adhering to the wrong religion? Not good people to listen to.

On Monday, Muslim leader Syed Arif Shah Owaisi appeared on a popular morning television show hosted by Pakistani host Aamir Liaquat Hussain.

“This enemy is a common enemy and is an enemy of all of Pakistan. And this enemy is the sect of Qadiyani,” Owaisi said, using a derogatory term for Ahmadis.

“They are the ones blaspheming against the holy prophet (pbuh). All us Muslims should recognise that enemy.”

Blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan. Scores of people have been lynched after being accused of blasphemy.

So a popular tv show in Pakistan hosts someone who basically sends a message to watchers to kill a certain kind of person. Free speech.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

There was a heated discussion on a post of Tom Flynn’s at the CFI blogs about whether or not to celebrate Christmas because it is or isn’t a Christian festival. I don’t really have a position on that, but it prompted me to try to figure out if I ever really saw it (or felt it) as a religious observance. I may be misremembering, but for the life of me I can’t dredge up any real religious associations with it. By “real” I mean ones that I personally experienced as religious, as opposed to elements that I was aware were religious.

It’s odd, really, because there were a good few of the latter, but to me it’s as if they were just decoration. I somehow sidestepped the real religiosity.

Like: my mother always went to this thing called “midnight mass” at the Episcopal church, and my older sister and brother always or usually went with her. I wasn’t eligible to go because it was, you know, midnight, and by the time I was old enough…I don’t remember but the custom must have stopped, because I never went. It’s as if there was this odd little cliff between my siblings and me.

Another example: one of the rituals was for us to join up with an uncle and aunt and their four boys to drive around singing carols and looking at the Christmas lights. It sounds both boring and corny but I loved it. I loved ritual as a kid, and had a habit of trying to enforce it on the elders. Now obviously a lot of those carols were religious…but I can’t remember experiencing them as such. I knew they were religious, but it didn’t make any difference I can detect.

Or there was another ritual, this one at my school, which was private and in some sense Anglican: it was called “candlelight” and we walked in a procession holding candles and singing, and then we recited the nativity bit of whichever gospel that is, the one that starts with And there were, abiding in the fields, shepherds, keeping watch over their flocks by night. I can still recite the whole damn thing, with all the pauses and emphases just as we were taught them so that the recitation would be united. Well – that’s pretty damn religious. And yet to me it was just this pretty thing. I don’t remember feeling pious about it, but I also don’t remember feeling rebellious about it. It was just a pretty performance.

I wasn’t some kind of thoughtful atheist child. Hell no. I was a daydreamer and fantasist, not a thinker. But…I was all the same a godless child. It just bounced off me somehow.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

You have got to be kidding.

Ex-NYC-cop and blogger John Cardillo has a message for us:

Late last night I was contacted by a coalition of NYPD cops, Detectives, and supervisors hundreds strong and asked to disseminate the following statement on their behalf. They requested I wait until after the plane towing a banner which reads “DE BLASIO, OUR BACKS HAVE TURNED TO YOU” was airborne.

At 08:50 I received word that the plane was in the air and asked to release the statement and photo below.

The plane was in the air, towing a message to all of us:

As a large and unified group of current and retired NYC Police Officers, Detectives, & Supervisors, we are outraged by the mayor’s incendiary rhetoric, and for facilitating the current hostile climate towards the NYPD. We understand that the department and even our own unions can only go so far in their public condemnation of the mayor as to not irreparably damage the working relationship with the city, or future contract negotiations.

It is our opinion that Mayor deBlasio’s dangerous and irresponsible comments about his and his wife’s concern for their son’s safety at the hands of the NYPD fueled the flames that led to civil unrest, and potentially to the deaths of PO Wenjian Liu and PO Rafael Ramos, as well as the continued threats against NYPD personnel. The Mayor shows us no respect, and encourages the public to follow his lead.

We no longer have confidence in Mayor deBlasio, nor in his ability to lead New York City and promote the values that both the NYPD and the good law abiding citizens of the city hold dear. Mayor deBlasio turned his back on us long before we turned our backs on him.

That’s their message to us. Nothing about the killing of Eric Garner, just sympathy for themselves. Nothing about the need to be accountable to the people they boast of protecting, nothing about the need to use restraint and caution while they do their jobs, nothing about the responsibility they have to use those big guns they have with care.

Fascism.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

News from Ireland: the high court has ruled that that unfortunate woman who was being kept “alive” after brain death because she was pregnant can – and in fact should – be allowed to die the rest of the way.

The woman’s family had asked the court to allow treatment to be withdrawn so she could be put to rest.

Doctors would not grant their wishes as they were unsure of the legal status of the unborn child under the Constitution.

The woman in this case was declared dead on 3 December.

The court heard evidence that her body was deteriorating and the outlook for her unborn child was very poor.

Her family wanted the life support machine to be turned off.

It’s almost as if women aren’t actually incubators. It’s almost as if there actually is a difference between a woman with a brain and a woman without one.

Lawyers represented the unborn child and the woman herself.

The lawyers for the unborn told the court that it had to satisfy that there was no real possibility of the unborn child surviving before allowing the machine to be turned off.

But there is no child. There’s no such thing as an “unborn child.” That’s a political slogan, not an accurate label. It’s grotesque having lawyers “representing” a fetus at all.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Meanwhile Erdogan is changing the subject by telling Europe to do something about “Islamophobia” before criticizing Turkey’s approach to freedom of the press.

Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan slammed European countries on Friday for criticizing deteriorating press freedom in Turkey and said they should instead try to find a solution for what he said was increasing Islamophobia in the continent.

Turkish police earlier this month raided media outlets close to US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Erdogan accuses of forming a ‘parallel state’ to undermine his rule and orchestrating a graft scandal targeting his inner circle.

The European Union, which Turkey has been seeking to join for decades, said the media raids ran counter to European values, a criticism already dismissed by Erdogan. On Friday, the President repeated his discontent, with a visibly harsher tone.

Well, maybe he’s embarrassed about that schoolboy arrested for saying something harsh about him.

“We are not Europe’s scapegoat,” Erdogan told a symposium of civil servants. “We are definitely not a country that Europe can point its finger at and scold. Instead of criticizing us, Europe should find a solution to increasing racism and Islamophobia.”

Meh. “Europe” isn’t a thing that can point a finger or scold anyway, but if it were…it could do that. The EU can do that, the ECHR can do that, heads of state can do that, journalists can do that, rights activists can do that. Actually, anybody at all can do that…unless they’re actually in Turkey, of course.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The teenager who “insulted” Erdogan is out of jail pending trial. Oooh really? How can they be sure he won’t insult again? It’s terrifying and reckless to let such a violent insulter walk around freely when at any moment he might say something hostile about the president of Turkey omigod.

Turkey’s penal code makes it a crime to insult the president.

As he left the courthouse in Konya, the boy said: “There is no question of taking a step back from our path, we will continue along this road.”

There has been growing concern amid rights groups in Turkey at what they see as a clampdown on freedom of speech.

Ya think?

The boy was arrested at school on Wednesday and taken for questioning.

His speech, given to commemorate the killing of a Turkish soldier by Islamists in the 1920s, was recorded on video and broadcast by Dogan News Agency.

In it, he defended secularism and the principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic.

He reportedly called Mr Erdogan the “thieving owner of the illegal palace”, referring to a controversial 1,150-room palace inaugurated by the president in October.

And for that appalling crime, the police went to his school and arrested him.

The arrest sparked fierce criticism of Mr Erdogan, with Attila Kart, a member of opposition party CHP, saying the president was creating “an environment of fear, oppression and threat”.

Mr Erdogan, who was elected president in August after serving as prime minister for 11 years, has faced several corruption allegations in recent years.

He insists they are baseless and part of a “dark plot” to oust him from power by influential cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is in self-imposed exile in the US.

An influential cleric is not what Turkey needs.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Why not celebrate Xmas or solstice by signing the petition to tell the Duggars they’re homophobic bigots?

The new law the Duggars want repealed would prohibit business owners and landlords from unjustly firing or evicting someone because of their sexual orientation, gender identity and other characteristics.

According to finance and expenditure reports filed this week with the Washington County Clerk’s office, Fayetteville candidates have raised more than $44,000, **almost one-fourth of which came from Springdale residents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar.**

The Duggars, who are featured in the TV show “19 Kids and Counting,” have so far donated $10,000 toward the campaigns of the three most outspoken opponents to Fayetteville’s new Civil Rights Administration ordinance. The Duggars gave $2,000 to John La Tour, and $4,000 to both Joshua Crawford and Paul Phaenuef.

The ordinance was passed by the Fayetteville City Council on Aug. 20, but a group called Repeal 119 gathered enough signatures to put the new law to a Dec. 9 public vote.

They present a nice sunny exterior but they’re reactionary theocrats who should have been left in obscurity.

Happy holidays.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)