Category Archives: Politics

Politics

An aboriginal reconquest?

May 25, 2007 – 8:04 pm

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald presents a seductive idea, that the Aborigines are reconquerng Australia, starting from the dry centre, where the “whites” are leaving due to the lack of economic opportunities.

It isn’t as simplistic as that; it does acknowledge that the Aboriginal communities do have enormous problems, flowing in part from that lack of opportunity, but what it also doesn’t address is the way the environment has been enormously degraded – mined you might almost say. The water has been used up, the vegetation over-grazed to the point of extinction, the soil eroded.

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Feminism

A ‘side-effect’ of war…

May 25, 2007 – 3:30 pm

… you might even call it collateral damage.

US military veterans are twice as likely to be jailed for sexual assault as similar non-veterans.

The department of justice says it can’t understand why…

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Environmental politics

Triumph for the jury system: Oxford Two ‘not guilty’

May 24, 2007 – 9:02 pm

A jury has found two men who attempted to stop a US B52 flying to Iraq from Britain on a bombing mission NOT GUILTY of conspiracy to cause criminal damage and various other offences.

Their defence was that they were trying to save people and property in Iraq.

The jury was out for only three hours in this, their second trial; the first last October resulted in a hung jury.

There’ll be another similar trial next month in Sudbury.

(That I’m linking there to Stars and Stripes only makes it the sweeter.)

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Feminism Women's history

From the inbox

May 24, 2007 – 12:34 am

A depressing but all too predictable report on sexual violence against women accompanying unrest in the Ivory Coast. (From Amnesty International)

A new blog, subtitled “News feminist philosophers can use”, and simply called Feminist Philosophers. (But in case the second word puts you off – it has its feet very firmly on the ground.)

Lest that should all prove a bit too depressing, the sort of thing that I’d love to see a great deal more of on the web: a scholar has transcribed, and presented for all to read, My Booke of Rememenberance”(sic): The Autobiography of Elizabeth Isham (PDF), who lived from 1609 to 1654, a lively period in English history of course, but her life was very inwardly focused, this fitting very much within the framework of spiritual biography.

One of the other interesting things about her is that she seems to have consciously chosen to stay single.

And she and her family suffer those tragedies so terribly typical of the time:

my sister broke her thigh againe which was a great grife to my frindes, who presently sent for Mr. Hales a man very skilfull in the art of bonseting but my Sister soune as she hard or saw his coming her teeth would chatter in her head for very feare hauing so much experiance of broken bones he stayed not long from her (because as he confessed he was troubled in his sleepe of her) but came againe to see her, where he found the bone amiss & was fa[i]nt to break it to make it right…”

(Hat-tip to Sharon of Early Modern Notes.)

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Environmental politics Politics

New Zealand outlaws smacking

May 16, 2007 – 6:22 pm

Interestingly on a Green Party MPs’ private bill, New Zealand has effectively outlawed the corporal punishment of children, and by an overwhelming majority.

“It is about our children and what I believe is their God-given right to grow up secure in the love of their family, valued as equal citizens to the rest of us and without the constant threat of legalised violence being used against them,” the law’s sponsor, Sue Bradford of the Green Party, said in parliament.

As you might expect, this also matched the policy of the Green Party of England and Wales.

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Feminism

Powerful news on domestic violence

May 16, 2007 – 3:00 pm

Intensive, integrated programmes to identify likely deadly stalkers can be hugely effective, according to data quoted by by Magnus Linklater in today’s Times.

If [UK] police and social services studied techniques now routinely used in countries such as America, Canada and Finland, but which are radically different from those deployed in Britain, 80 per cent of the deaths that are likely to happen over the next three years could be prevented. And since, on average, two women die each week in this country at the hands of a current or former partner, that is a substantial claim….Mosaic20, a computerised model that assessed the likelihood of an attack, placed it on a scale of one to ten and measured it against nationally compiled statistics. So accurate did their predictions become that San Diego, where such attacks were common, was persuaded to set up a family justice centre, where anyone believing that they may be at risk can go for expert assessment and, if necessary, protection. The centre has been instrumental in reducing the domestic murder rate from 12 a year to just one.

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