Entirely dissatisfied...

I've been a bit annoyed with blogger+haloscan for a while now, but when I actually got a comment (hi Helen!) at the post below, I realised just how awful the situation really is. A couple of hours spent trying to fix the code (and I can't code) later, I took a look at wordpress and realised what I'd been missing. So this blog is moving to wordpress - you can find me here from now on.

(That's http://jotamar.wordpress.com/ if you prefer to copy and paste links.)

I've moved all the posts over there, with links back here. Some posts got slightly edited (for clarity of meaning or for style) - seems you can take the woman out of the editing position but ...

Justice wins, this time

I was pleased to hear this afternoon that Salima Malik has won her appeal, and that the Crown Prosecution Service is not going to re-try her.

Salima Malik is the so-called "Lyrical Terrorist" who was sentenced in December following her conviction for possessing material which could be thought to provide assistance to terrorists. She had been acquitted of the more serious crime of actually wanting to use those materials.

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The reasons for the Court of Appeal's decision are not yet available on Bailii, but will be found here when they are.

From the media reports, it seems that the Court of Appeal has essentially said that, given the jumble of evidence thrown at the jury, there was real potential that they were confused about exactly what they were convicting Malik of. This supports a lot of the criticism that was floating around at the time: it seemed very much like she was being convicted because she wrote a few poems that suggested sympathy with jihadism, rather than for any actual crime.

The Crown Prosecution Service, of course, is not admitting any error in its decision to prosecute in the first place. Surprise, surprise.

ETA: Helen of the Cast Iron Balcony kindly left a comment below, and I realised how awful the blogger+haloscan situation really is. As you can see, the layout looks horrible and I can't figure out how to fix it. See the post above - I'm moving.

This makes me happy

Civil disobedience, community style.

The estate became home for hundreds of families escaping persecution and torture in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, Uganda and Congo. Most had their request for asylum in the UK turned down, and when the Home Office began coming to the estate at 5am to remove them, Donnachie and the rest of the residents looked on in horror. "It was like watching the Gestapo - men with armour, going in to flats with battering rams. I've never seen people living in fear like it," says Donnachie. "I saw a man jump from two storeys up when they came for him and his family. I stood there and I cried, and I said to myself, 'I am not going to stand by and watch this happen again.'"

She got together with her friend Noreen and organised the residents into daily dawn patrols, looking out for immigration vans. When the vans arrived, a phone system would swing in to action, warning asylum seekers to escape.

The whole estate pitched in, gathering in large crowds in the early-morning dark to jeer at immigration officials as they entered the tower blocks. On more than one occasion, the vans left the estate empty - the people they had come for had got out in time and were hidden by the crowd. The estate kept this up for two years until forced removals stopped. [my emphasis]

It's not clear whether it was the community action which directly caused the end of the forced removals, but my guess is that it made some contribution.

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And then this:

One reason why deportations are being challenged is that, despite reports to the contrary, many asylum-seeking families have successfully integrated. Inefficiencies in the system have meant cases have taken years to process, giving families, in particular, the chance to put down roots. Many of their children were born in Britain, go to school here and have close friendships with local children. The government does not allow asylum seekers to work, so many put in hours of voluntary work to occupy their time. They have forged strong links with locals, who have helped them fight to stay.

This recognition of humanity, this building of community, this "let's all work together to make the world a better place for everyone". This is what makes me, essentially, an optimist.

It doesn't completely solve the problem, which is recognised in the article:

Families here are also benefiting from the legacy programme, but not until after years at the hands of a system that Arnall says is cruel. "It is set up to believe that you're corrupt or that you're an economic migrant - rather than asking about what made people leave their homes and their families. These people are fleeing for their lives and, as humane people, we should make room for them." [my emphasis]

But hopefully, this community resistance is a step towards a humane society which does make room for everyone.

An exercise in passive voice

I don't know if I would have noticed this had it not been for Lauredhel's post all that time ago (and the various follow-ups), but I'm listening to a BBC piece about kidnapping, and I noticed something interesting.

One of the people interviewed was a woman who had headed up a unit in the Metropolitan Police which dealt with abductions. I assume she was referring to domestic abductions when she said that only a small proportion of abductees are killed.

She said (these are not verbatim):

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Abductees rarely die.

They die because of a botched abduction.

They die because of a botched rescue attempt.

They die because they might be able to identify their kidnappers.

And each time, I thought: NO. They die because they are killed.

They may rarely be killed. They may be killed for one of the reasons she gave. But the reason they die is because they are killed.

The interesting thing for me about this was that my reaction was instantaneous, visceral, even. It was so obviously wrong. I think this may have happened even without Lauredhel's post about the passive voice used when writing about women - I think about language a lot, I am used to using it carefully and I care when it is used badly.

And yet. I don't think I have quite the same instinctive reaction when women are pushed to the background by the use of passive voice. Don't get me wrong: I agree with Lauredhel's post completely, and do what I can to try to avoid the use of passive voice in inappropriate circumstances. But my reaction against that use of passive voice is learnt, to a far greater extent than my reaction against the use of passive voice in this instance.

That is, perhaps, my ingrained sexism, the sexism that we all have to fight against.

More Islamophobia

Maybe I'm just being a little too sensitive to this at the moment. But anyway. BBC Radio 4 on in the background, and they're talking about listeners' concerns that they (the listeners) might be eating halal meat without being aware that they are doing so. This based on the statistic that something like 25% of meat in the UK market is halal, but only 3% of the population is muslim.

There's an elephant in the room! (And I think it might be halal.)

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The reason given why so many people were worried about eating halal meat without being aware of doing so was the conditions of slaughter - in particular, the thought that animals might be concscious right up to the moment of slaughter.

My first thought: if you're so concerned about the welfare of animals in the time before they're killed for your delectation, well, either don't eat meat or find out where it comes from before you eat it. I find the fact that you're worried only when you find out that the meat might be halal somewhat empty if you don't normally care.

The radio segment was rational and factual - the gist being the majority (at least 90%) of halal-slaughtered animals are stunned by electric shock before slaughter.

My guess is that, given the mode of slaughter, they are actually reasonably well treated (eg at least handled personally) than animals in a conventional western abbatoir. The halal abbatoirs are probably also much smaller, which means much less stench of fear for and from the animals waiting to be slaughtered.

Me? I prefer my meat when it comes from the cows my parents raise, slaughtered at our local small abbatoir. That, or kangaroo meat, which is often killed by a bullet to the head by a gun and person unseen by the 'roo. If these aren't accessible, I try to eat organic meat, on the basis that, again, this is likely to have been slaughtered in smaller abbatoirs. I'd be quite happy to eat halal - or, for that matter, kosher - meat (although you can't get a decent rump steak because of the halal and kosher rules about blood).

If you care so much, find out - not just whether it's halal or not, but exactly what goes on at the abbatoir where your meat is slaughtered. If you only care because the phrase "ZOMG HALAL ICKY MUSLIM" explains your reasoning process, then I have no time for your bigotry.

Islamophobes in Australia

I grew up near Camden, NSW, so when I noticed this story the other day, my ears pricked up (figuratively speaking).

Essentially, the Qu'uranic Society Dar Tahfez El-Quran had lodged a planning application with Camden Municipal Council for an Islamic school that would cater for around 1200 students. The main reasons appeared to be: (1) it would occupy grazing land; (2) it would increase traffic; (3) it could potentially alter the cultural make-up of the area.

Note that there are quite a number of Christian schools in the Camden municipality, at least one of which was recently built (it wasn't actually a new school, but new buildings for an existing school) which did take up prime agricultural land and definitely increased traffic in the area, but I don't recall there being any controversy about that at the time. In addition, the local high school was moved a couple of years ago, and apparently the proposed school was quite close to the high school. Again, I don't recall any problems being raised about prime grazing land or traffic when the new high school site was approved.

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Camden also has some slightly odd planning restrictions, based on (at least, so I remember being told as a kid) Macarthur's notes from one of the high flood years. Camden is surrounded by floodplains, and before the most recent drought, I remember being cut off from school for a couple of days every year during the annual floods. Apparently Macarthur took notes of the water's height during these annual floods, the land is known definitively as floodplain, and there are supposedly restrictions on building there. (One of these days I've got to get myself to the Planning Office in Sydney and check out the actual zoning for those areas.)

Anyway, the council's decision is in.

The council decided, unanimously, to reject the application. The mayor, Chris Patterson, said:

"It is a site issue, clearly a site issue ... we said all along religious issues, nationalistic issues, will not be entered into."

He also encouraged the Qu'uranic Society Dar Tahfez El-Quran to resubmit the plans if they found a different site.

I can kind of believe that there may have been real planning issues, but I don't completely believe that the council was not affected by the social side quite as much as the mayor says.

I also find state MP Chris Lynn's statements that Camden is not racist fairly laughable. I think someone needs to give Chris Lynn some lessons about racism. Sorry mate, but this sounds pretty racist to me:

tensions reached a climax in November when two pigs' heads were rammed onto metal stakes and an Australian flag was draped between them at the proposed site.

So is this, from a resident:

"I've been rolled before and we came out here for the quiet life. The fact is that Camden has been a strongly white community for a long time and the people here are scared. I'm not a racist person - that's just a statement of fact."

(Saying it's not racist doesn't make it not racist, by the way. A racist fact is no less racist because it's a fact!)

And, of course, the pig heads and the "we want the quiet life" statements of racism are in addition to the fact that the protesters cheered the council's decision. Again: it's an expression of racism - people just haven't really cared one way or another about the other schools that have been built in the past 10 years or so, the difference is that this one is Islamic. That's racist!

The thing is, the resident who made that comment is probably right: Camden is a strongly white community, and people probably are scared. That it's true is no excuse. It just means they've been able to hide their racism for a long time, in much the same way I mentioned in the post below.

This story now has some international attention, although I doubt that will make any difference (except to Australia's image).

One thing that I found funny in that BBC piece, though, was the "children would have to be bussed in from Sydney, an hour away" thing ... ummm ... actually, probably most of them would come from about half an hour away, maybe Bankstown-ish. BBC's Nick Bryant needs to learn something about the geography of the place he's reporting from.

Good news puts Haven to shame once more

In some good news, the trainee lifeguards at the centre of the Alice Springs Haven Backpackers scandal have been granted a trip to Sydney - complete with free flights, accommodation, training and other perks - to complete their bronze medallions.

I'm always a little skeptical about grand gestures like this. Don't get me wrong: it sounds like an absolutely fantastic offer for the trainee lifeguards involved, and assuming they're happy with it, it's great for them, and I'm happy for them, and good on Royal Lifesaving Australia, which appears to be behind the deal.

However, it really makes me wonder whether they're only getting this because, as noted in the SMH article about it, their case got worldwide attention. But the Northern Territory's Anti-Discrimination Commissioner said at the time that he didn't think it was an isolated incident. And I doubt it's just about accommodation, either - my guess is that this is just the tip of the iceberg that is racist attitudes throughout the Northern Territory and the rest of Australia. It's just that most of us can pretend we're not racist towards Aboriginal people because we rarely come into contact with anyone of indigenous descent (and that fact, in itself, speaks volumes about the problems).

As a result: every now and then we get a scandal like the one involving Alice Springs Haven Backpackers, that gets worldwide attention, the group involved gets some sort of remedy (if not from the group involved), everyone gets to feel good about standing up against racism, and that's great.

But it doesn't change anything.

And I'm not sure how to feel about that.