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Trails of smoke from rockets fired from Gaza are seen after being fired towards a target in Israel
I found this news via The New Republic on UN Watch:
“The U.N. Human Rights Council plenary witnessed a dramatic face-off yesterday when the head of its controversial “fact-finding” mission on Gaza — in which Israel was declared guilty from the start — was unexpectedly confronted by one of his own witnesses.
In a surprise appearance arranged by the Geneva human rights organization UN Watch, Dr. Mirela Siderer — an Israeli doctor who was brutally disfigured in 2008 by a rocket attack fired from Gaza into her Ashkelon medical clinic — pointedly accused Goldstone of ignoring her July oral testimony in his report, and of failing to disclose material information concerning the prior statements of the Human Rights Council and panel members declaring Israel guilty in advance. Click for video. The speech was published in full today by Canada’s National Post, and covered widely in Switzerland, Israel and worldwide.
Sitting on the dais, Goldstone was visibly shaken by Dr. Siderer’s challenge and scrambled for a copy of her speech. His response to the plenary ignored 7 of her questions, and inadequately responded to the 8th. “”
For Siderer’s speech and Goldstone’s response Read More…
“I make no apology for feeling desperately sorry for him. The almost pornographic relish with which his critics are retelling the lurid details of the assault (strange behavior, one might think, for those who profess concern for the victim) makes it hard to consider the case rationally. Of course what happened cannot be excused, either legally or ethically.
But Ms. Geimer wants it dropped, to shield her family from distress, and Mr. Polanski’s own young children, to whom he is a doting father, want him home. He is no threat to the public. The original judicial procedure was undeniably murky. So cui bono, as the Romans used to say — who benefits?”
Read the New York Times op-ed piece here.
“To my mind, all these citizen journalists, in other words the bloggers and social network users, are simply the eye witnesses on which journalists have always depended. But they cannot be the world’s only source. We professional journalists, with a code of conduct and a professional work ethic, cannot be left out of the equation. Because if you do that, who is to know where the truth really lies? Thanks to modern technology it has become far easier to influence the dissemination and the content of information. The real point is, however, that it always used to be claimed that only evil people would use propaganda and try to give every news item their own twist. Whereas nowadays everyone does this.”
From an interview with Der Spiegel
I grew up close to here.
But never saw a scene like this.
Nor like this.
Afrikaburns looks fun.
(A friend emailed these uncredited pictures to me.)
Hatijah Aam, front left, and Nor Aziah Ibrahim, both wives of Ashaari Muhammad, with some of their extended family in Malaysia.
“We want to change the way people perceive polygamy so that it will be seen as something beautiful.”
Says Hatijah Aam, the founder of Malaysia’s Polygamy Club, on why she launched the 1,000-member-strong organization last month as quoted on Time.com.
Malala in his column yesterday asks “Where were the women last week?”
Well I was here, at my desk, for some of it. At home for most of it. Minding my own business. Keeping a low profile. Looking after my kids. Planting daisies… Not ironing. Nor cooking very much.
It’s not me he was looking for though – not directly. It was the Women’s League. Last week news broke that our former National Intelligence Agency director-general Manala Manzini beat his wife who is a senior ANC women’s League leader. He beat her, he says, because she would not cook for him or iron his clothes. What the hell? Who is this man? Is he from another planet? Did he marry her as a cooking and ironing service?
And then Malala retells the story a KZN man who married 4 women. Good competition among his wives. “They compete in everything, but it is healthy competition. From cleaning the home to respecting me, they are all so well behaved. I am always a happy man.”
And the Women’s League had nothing to say last week. Nor did the Department of Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities, I thought. But they did. In a letter to The Times, Minister Mayende-Sibiya condemned the abuse of Mavivi Mayakayaka-Manzini. The abuse was chauvinistic and unacceptable, she says.
The voices from women were meek and mild. I am ashamed. We should all have had had something to say, or more to say, and said it LOUDER.
Where was the noise? Where were our voices?
In his book The Last Resort, Zimbabwean-born Douglas Rogers chronicles the desperate efforts of his parents to survive in increasingly difficult and dangerous circumstances. Rogers now lives in the New York. I haven’t read the book, but I’ve read Martin Meredith’s review of the book in the Wall Street Journal and what struck me was this paragraph:
Yet still his parents cling on. Initially worn down by worry and fatigue, they find that the struggle for survival itself gives them strength. “The very predicament they had found themselves in, the very chaos engulfing them, had given purpose, reason to live,” Mr. Rogers writes. “Every day for the past eight years they had woken up to plot and plan their survival, and yet, instead of being crushed by this struggle, beaten down, they had been buoyed by it. In fighting back they had found a rare energy, passion and lust for life that had kept them young, active and alive.”
When I interviewed Ben Freeth, Mount Carmel Farm, a few weeks ago I was so curious as to why and how these farmers continue to live under siege. What drives them? What motivates them to continue their battle to survive these very difficult circumstances. I thought I had the answer. But I think Rogers’ answer is probably more accurate.
The arrest of the “auteur” Roman Polanksi in Switzerland on Sunday has inspired very interesting reactions. Today I blogged quotes from French politicians who were horrified by his arrest for the rape of 13-year-old girl in the 1970’s. The Guardian explained that the French have a history of treating artists differently from its average “Jo” citizen. They look after their creatives no matter what, the argument goes. Although some commentators are being careful enough to say it’s not the content of the trangression but the form of the hunt: he was arrested on his way to an international festival. And what has inspired many French people’s objections is not anti-Americanism but “anti-prudishness, anti self-righteousness”.
But in the Washington Post today, Eugene Robinson argues that plying a 13-year-old girl with champagne and drugs and having sex with her is grotesque. Robinson agrees “with the European view that Americans tend to be prudish and hypocritical about sex. But a grown man drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl? That’s not remotely a close call. It’s wrong in any moral universe — and deserves harsher punishment than three decades of gilded exile.”
David Gritten’s piece in The Telegraph is fascinating for those of us who aren’t familiar with all the detail of the story or of Polanksi’s life. He claims that if “every member of British rock bands touring America who seduced an underage girl had been arrested, our music industry would have been decimated.”
And what does the victim Samantha Gailey have to say about this whole business? At the time of the crime and the subsequent trial she said: “What happened that night, it’s hard to believe but it paled in comparison to what happened in the next year of my life … He did something really gross to me but it was the media that ruined my life.” The Guardian reports that as to what punishment she felt Polanski should now suffer, she said: “He made a terrible mistake but he’s paid for it.” The article by Duncan Campbell contintues:
She was and remains the victim in this case; and no amount of mentions of the fact that “it was the 70s” and people did things differently then can excuse the fact that a man three times her age had sex with a 13-year-old when she was under the influence of drink and drugs.
But, as Gailey has said herself, Polanksi has been punished.
His name is tainted. He has been publicly humiliated. His pregnant wife Sharon Tate was murdered by Charles Manson. Campbell argues that the real victim is asking for compassion but compassion isn’t fashionable at the moment. He says “child sex, like the Middle East, is a subject where the normal conventions of debate degenerate very swiftly into name-calling and deliberate misinterpretation.”
He has a point but’s very hard for me to change my mind. Polanski had sex with a 13-year-old girl.
I’ve always wondered about Lucy. Who is she? Was she a reference to somebody? Or was it just a direct reference to the drug, LSD?
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, is a song written by John Lennon for the Beatles Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, which was released in 1967. That’s 42 years ago. And it’s still a damn fine song.
Anyway, it turns out that Lucy was a childhood friend of Julian, John’s son. Julian one day brought home a drawing from school, showed it to his father and explained that it was “Lucy in the sky with diamonds”.
John had always claimed the phrase came from his son and wasn’t linked to a need to spell out spell out LSD.
Whatever…
For the Beatles star who was collecting material for the Sgt. Pepper’s album, this must have been a wonderful source of inspiration.
I am delighted to know that there is a Lucy of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. But sadly I learn this as I learn too that Lucy Vodden (nee O’Donell) has died of Lupus in a London hospital after a long battle with the disease. She was 46, and the mother of 3 children.
