The Red Top Tabloids who put Britain First Europe Last and support Our Boys and jobs for Our People have had all their xenophobic bells rung in the case of Omar Othman t/a Abu Qatada who they have labelled, on the basis of no evidence at all, as Osama Bin Laden’s representative in Europe. Very careful with the facts are our British Tabloids, no doubt they have obtained hacked voicemail evidence on this as they care so much about the “Public Interest.” To add to the tabloid interest Abu Qatada helpfully looks foreign, being one of those Mohamedan’s that the God fearing people of Britain have been warned about. Britain of course started interfering in the Arab world in earnest from 1914 onwards not because they cared about them or Arabs were going to arttack Britain but for its own entirely selfish purposes.
Now the radical cleric Abu Qatada has won his appeal against deportation from the UK to Jordan, at the European Court of Human Rights. The judges accepted the UK's deal with Jordan to protect the cleric from abuse was sound. But the court said he should not face trial for terrorism on evidence obtained by the torture of others. Home Secretary Theresa May said the European judges' decision was "not the end of the road". The British government can make a final appeal before the judgement becomes binding in three months' time. If it does not appeal, the cleric will have to be released from detention.
Abu Qatada, whose real name is Omar Othman, is one of the most influential Islamist clerics in Europe, supporting jihadist causes. British judges have described him as "truly dangerous". He has never faced trial in the UK, but has been detained without charge and had his movements restricted by a control order, a form of house arrest. The Palestinian-Jordanian preacher has been convicted in his absence of involvement in two major terrorism plots in Jordan, a country famed for its judicial standards, accomplished torturers and motivated hangmen.
European Court's Clare Ovey: ''There's a real risk that the evidence obtained from his co-accused by torture will be used against him at trial'' Abu Qatada says that those convictions were based on evidence extracted by the torture of co-defendants and he would face similar treatment if returned. He originally fled to the UK in 1993 after being tortured twice.
And so the “Putting Britain First” Tabloids are in arms against this foreigner with a hairy face who took the home of democracy to a nasty European Court who doesn’t understand the British way of doing things, such as participating in renditions and sending fuzzie wuzzies to other countries to be tortured.
Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi who was head of Interpol
Is this the same European Court of Justice they are talking about, set up by the victors (including Britain) in WW11 to stop the creation of Police States as happened under the fascists (low point Reinhard Heydrich, the NAZI's poster boy and chair of the Wanesee Conference was the pre-war head of Interpol) and of kangaroo courts which sentenced resisters to death. You remember them, don't you, as the Allies executed a number of Nazi judges even though they were following orders / Nazi laws? Is this the same ECJ which has nothing to do with the EU and which was championed by Winston Churchill?
Of course Churchill’s mind had been concentrated by the Holocaust. Before the “Final Solution” was put into effect the German public had come to accept the “Fog and Night” killings of the Nazi’s political opponents and the killing of 70,000 disabled and mentally ill people in the name of racial purity. Before all this happened the Nazi Reich had turned hospitals into places where people were murdered and Courts into places where the Law was denied. As Churchill was later to declare about the Holocaust;
"... and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilised men in the name of a great State and one of the leading races of Europe."
And is this the same Abu Qatada who is described by MSN as a "Terrorist" but who has NEVER been convicted of a crime in Britain (that actually might require evidence not “tainted by the poisonous fruits of torture” which has been banned by The Common Law for over 500 years) and has been under effective house arrest for over seven years in this "Freedom Loving Democracy."
Yesterday in Oslo, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, her compatriot and "peace warrior" Leymah Gbowee and Yemeni "Arab Spring" activist Tawakul Karman. They were awarded the prize for 'their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work'
These are three truly remarkable women and there have been too few women Nobel Peace Prize winners (18 in total) when women have to bear the brunt of the consequences of war and violence which is very rarely created by them. Of these three special women I would single out Tawakul Karman a 32 year old journalist and mother of three who by her personal integrity and courage has defied stereotypes and united a revolution which is taking place despite the indifference and double standards of the world. As she herself has written;
“What is truly regrettable, though, is that the world has not shown the least interest in what the Saleh regime does with Yemen and its revolutionaries. Despite this huge number of martyrs, despite the transformation of the country into a huge prison where citizens struggle to get even a drink of water for their children, and despite the use of heavy weapons against civilians, Saleh's regime did not even receive a token verbal condemnation from the United Nations or other world governments – despite our calls to impose sanctions. Yet harsh sanctions were imposed on other regimes that committed lesser crimes.”
Tawakul Karman
Tawakul Karman became the international public face of the 2011 Yemeni uprising that is part of the Arab Spring uprisings. She has been called by Yemenis the "Iron Woman" and "Mother of the Revolution."She is a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first Yemeni, the first Arab woman, and the second Muslim woman to win a Nobel Prize and the youngest Nobel Peace Laureate to date.
She stopped wearing the traditional niqab in favour of more colourful hijabs that showed her face. She first appeared without the niqab at a conference in 2004. Karman replaced the niqab for the scarf in public on national television to make her point that the full covering is cultural and not dictated by Islam. She told the Yemen Times in 2010 that:
“Women should stop being or feeling that they are part of the problem and become part of the solution. We have been marginalized for a long time, and now is the time for women to stand up and become active without needing to ask for permission or acceptance. This is the only way we will give back to our society and allow for Yemen to reach the great potentials it has.”
She has alleged that many Yemeni girls suffer from malnutrition so that boys could be fed and also called attention to high illiteracy rates, which includes two-thirds of Yemeni women. She has advocated for laws that would prevent females younger than 17 from being married. In an Arab world which in many places squanders the talents of half its people she is a rare and very clear voice.
Contrast the hope around these 3 women with the craven intimidation by the self appointed Chinese dictatorship who still imprison last year’s laureate Liu Xiaobo, his wife (without charge) and harass his family and supporters. Ahead of this year’s ceremony for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, past laureates and human rights groups announced a committee in support of Liu, a writer who is serving an 11-year sentence after writing a manifesto for democratic change. The committee - which includes South African anti-apartheid icon Archbishop Desmond Tutu - voiced fears that Beijing is silencing Liu's family and friends after first carrying out an "international wave of intimidation."
Liu Xiaobo
"The international community seems to have forgotten that a year after the award ceremony, Liu Xiaobo remains in prison in China and in harsh conditions," the committee said in its first statement issued Thursday. The committee calls on all those committed to freedom of thought and opinion to join the committee in its efforts to obtain the release of Liu Xiaobo," it said.
Liu Xiaobo's empty chair at the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony
Liu, a former professor, co-authored Charter 08, a bold petition calling for political reform in one-party Communist-ruled China. He was convicted of subversion and sentenced to 11 years in prison on Christmas Day 2009. China responded furiously to the Nobel Peace Prize and cut off political dialogue with Norway, which administers the award. Relations remain tense a year later. In the past year, rights groups say that Chinese authorities only allowed Liu to leave prison briefly when his father died and have put his wife, Liu Xia, under house arrest without charges.
Liu Xiaobo is the only detained Nobel Peace Prize winner. Myanmar last year freed peace laureate and democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi after she spent nearly two decades under house arrest. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued separate appeals Thursday for China to free Liu, with both advocacy groups fearing that Beijing is becoming more intransigent over human rights.
A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijing’s Cangan Blvd. in Tiananmen Square on 5th July 1989.
Congratulations and respect to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman. Congratulations and respect to Liu Xiaobo still fighting against the “Great Dictatorship” which continues to imprison him for peacefully expressing an opinion. What is right will win out.
“I do not feel guilty for following my constitutional right to freedom of expression, for fulfilling my social responsibility as a Chinese citizen. Even if accused of it, I would have no complaints.”
—Liu Xiaobo at his “trial” by the Great Dictatorship, 23 December 2009
I was saddened to hear of the premature death from Lung Cancer at the age of 67 of Suze Rotolo (1943-2011) in NYC. The principled daughter of two American Communists she inspired Bob Dylan’s radicalism and worked for Civil Rights during the period they were together. She appeared with him on the cover of his breakthrough album “Freewheelin' Bob Dylan” walking down a snowy Jones Street in Greenwich village and he wrote "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and "Tomorrow Is a Long Time." about her.
A CD of the music inspired by Greenwich Village featuring a picture of Washington Square Park with liner notes by Suze Rotolo
She was a 17-year-old art- and poetry-loving civil rights activist from Queens when she met the 20-year-old folk singer from Minnesota at an all-day folk concert at Riverside Church in Manhattan in the summer of 1961. "Right from the start, I couldn't take my eyes off her," Dylan wrote in "Chronicles: Volume One," his 2004 memoir. "She was the most erotic thing I'd ever seen." Dylan later wrote that meeting her "was like stepping into the tales of 1,001 Arabian nights", adding: "She had a smile that could light up a street full of people... a Rodin sculpture come to life."
After the sudden death of Rotolo's father in 1958, her mother took to drinking. The teenage Suze began to take Sunday trips to Washington Square in the Village, joining the folk musicians, poets and political activists who took on the establishment in verse and propaganda. At 17, she caught the subway from Queens to the Village for a final time, "without looking back".
While still in high school, Rotolo volunteered for the Congress of Racial Equality, marching on Washington for civil rights and desegregation. At the age of 20, she made national news when she and four other students stood up for the "free travel of free Americans" by, in defiance of the government travel ban, heading over to Cuba. The group spent two months touring factories and schools and met Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. It was an incredibly brave thing to do.
Rotolo later wrote that Dylan "made me think of Harpo Marx, impish and approachable, but there was something about him that broadcast an intensity that was not to be taken lightly." So began a four-year relationship that was immortalised on a wintery day in 1963 when photographer Don Hunstein captured the young couple walking down a snowy Greenwich Village street, Dylan's hands thrust in his pockets and Rotolo's hands wrapped snugly around his arm.
"It was freezing out," she recalled in a 2008 interview with the New York Times. "He wore a very thin jacket, because image was all. Our apartment was always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big, bulky sweaters. On top of that I put a coat. So I felt like an Italian sausage."
Paying my own personal tribute to Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo in Jones Street, Greenwich Village, NYC March 2012
The album displayed in a record store in Jones Street
The photo became the cover of Dylan's breakthrough second album, which includes the songs "Blowin' in the Wind," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and "Masters of War."
A Book Art piece by Suze Rotolo
Rotolo was born in Queens, N.Y., on Nov. 20, 1943, a so-called red-diaper baby whose parents were members of the American Communist Party. Her father died when she was a teenager, and she traded Queens for Greenwich Village after graduating from high school. She was working in the office of the Congress of Racial Equality — and had seen Dylan perform at a small club in the Village — when she met him at the folk festival. Rotolo, who moved into a tiny apartment on West Fourth Street in the Village with Dylan when she was 18, is credited with introducing him to modern art and poetry, avant-garde theatre and civil rights politics.
Suze Rotolo in 2007
She worked on the production staff at a local Greenwich Village theatre and when Dylan visited there to pick her up one day, he was introduced to the theatre work of Bertolt Brecht, the German poet, playwright and theatre director. In his memoir, Chronicles, Dylan recalled Brecht on Brecht, a musical revue he saw there. He said Brecht had an enormous impact on his development as an artist. "My little shack in the universe was about to expand into some glorious cathedral, at least in songwriting terms," Dylan wrote, describing his reaction to the music. "They were like folk songs in nature, but unlike folk songs, too, because they were sophisticated." Dylan was struck in particular by Pirate Jenny from The Threepenny Opera.
Rotolo married Italian Enzo Bartoccioli, a film editor who works for the United Nations, in 1970. Together they had one son, Luca, who is a guitarist in New York. In New York, Rotolo worked as an illustrator and painter, before concentrating on creating book art, making book-like objects which incorporated found art. Remaining politically active, Rotolo joined the street-theatre group Billionaires for Bush and protested at the 2004 Republican National Convention in Manhattan. Her friend and Village Voice critic Jim Hoberman wrote that she died in her New York apartment "and the arms of her husband of 40 years, Enzo Bartoccioli".
Rotolo appears in Martin Scorsese's film No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, a documentary focusing on Dylan's early career from 1961 to 1966. She was also interviewed nationally in 2008 by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air to promote her book, A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties.
Rotolo's book was published by Broadway Books on 13 May 2008. Rotolo recounted her attempts not to be overshadowed by her relationship with Dylan. She discussed her need to pursue her artistic creativity and to retain her political integrity, concluding: "The sixties were an era that spoke a language of inquiry and curiosity and rebelliousness against the stifling and repressive political and social culture of the decade that preceded it. The new generation causing all the fuss was not driven by the market: we had something to say, not something to sell."
Martin Luther King Jr. achieved much in his life before it was tragically cut short on the evening of April 4, 1968. Martin Luther King Day is on Monday January 18 2010, this year. It is a day that celebrates one of the greatest civil rights leaders the world has ever known.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I Have a Dream"
Delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
