Legalised Terroism

An Israeli General has come out against the terrorism Israeli settlers are performing against the Palestinians in the West Bank (Link).

What I ask is how can we continue to support a regime that refuses to step in against this and still claim to have a 'War on Terror'?

Israel has repeatedly ignored international law (the West Bank settlements are considered illegal under international law) and refuses to keep their citizens in check to protect the native population. Not only that but when the Palestinians strike back - they bomb them with advanced military weapons. We just sent troops to Libya to aid rebels fighting against just this kind of situation.

We cannot have one rule for our friends and another for those we don't like. Right is Right and what is happening in the West Bank is not right by any stretch of the imagination. There should be a call for international sanctions against the terrorist regime in Jerusalem.

We (meaning the UK/US/UN) created the problem when we created Israel after WW2, we then turned a blind eye during their wars of expansion (though they claimed it was to increase their area of defence).

We have ignored repeated bombing and retaliation, and the Palestinians being subjugated and trodden underfoot. Enough is Enough!

Yes what happened to the Jews in WW2 was terrible and must never be allowed to happen again - but that doesn't give them free reign to  terrorise others.

All it takes for evil to win is for a good man to remain silent - so lets shout at the top of our lungs that we as a civilised society will not accept this!

We need to bring sanctions against Israel and protect the Palestinian population. We need to force Israel to come to the table for discussions.

Please join the facebook group I just created to work towards this Bring sanctions against Israel!

Other Stories in the News

Hidden between the lines of the Hacking Scandal are a couple of important other stories.

University Charges

1/3rd of university's have been given the go ahead to charge £9000 but the fees office. Students will be in uproar - while failing to see the bigger picture. This policy is going to cost the government - not save. As students will be earning more before they have to start repaying. The numbers going to university haven't been hugely effected, so there will still be far more graduates than jobs.

We need to seriously look at the goals we set - with UCAS trying to get the school league tables based on university attendance, more pressure is put on schools to get kids in to university, rather than looking at what is best for the student.

We need to remove the fallacy that our society has created, that if you don't go to university you have failed and look at life skills and the job market. University should be for the academic elite, what ever their social background - not for everybody we can cram in.

As I have said before - cut the number of places - increase the entry requirements, and fully fund them all. Degrees become valuable again and the government saves a fortune.

Equality Commission

The equality commission want the legal definition of discrimination expanded to include religion, as the result of 4 cases going through the courts.

For 2 of the cases I agree, though I would like to see the details.

A British Airways Clerk was sent home for refusing to take off a necklace with a cross. I have to agree with this one, would they have done it if it was a different religion, and what she was wearing had no bearing on her being able to perform her duties.

A nurse was given a desk job for similar reasons - I would be interested in the details of this, as they did not stop her working, and it could have been on hygiene grounds, with no one being allowed to wear necklaces - if this is the case I don't have an issue, if it was just because it was a cross then it is a different matter all together.

The next two are more complex.

A relationship councillor was sacked for refusing to give advice to gay people. So he was being discriminated against for discriminating against other people. Unlike the earlier two, this has a direct effect on his being able to do his job - something he was refusing to do. If his religion had said he couldn't give advice to black people, there would have been no question about his being fired - why should gays be any different?

The last one is similar, with a registrar refusing to conduct same sex civil ceremonies.

The question here is one of where should the line be drawn - I have some pretty specific opinions on this. If the clerk was insisting on wearing the necklace visibly, where there is a rule that no one is allowed to do this, then she doesn't have a leg to stand on, as long as she would have been able to place the pendant under her uniform.

For the nurse, the same apples - though there would be a hygiene reason not to be allowed to wear it at all (but that would have to apply to everyone and all jewellery, including wedding bands)

For the last too, I see no excuse - if a job is going to make you do something against your religious belief, take a different job. If you were in the police, and your religion said you could not take any form of action against another member of your religion - you would not be allowed to stay in the job - letting a criminal go because they were of the same religion would not be acceptable. If your religion says you are not allowed to drive, you don't take a job as a taxi driver.

Religion shouldn't be an excuse to flout general rules - as long as the rules have sound reasoning and don't discriminate specifically. Equally the law should come first (if the law says you cant carry a knife, and your religion requires you too - British law comes first, if the law is fundamentally wrong, it should be changed rather than bypassed for a small group).

If you are not allowed to discriminate against someone because of their religion, why should they be able to discriminate against you.

Hacking scandal shows a society in crisis.

As more details of the hacking scandal emerge - the amount of power the media has over our society is shown in its full light.

Details of senior members of the police force allowing the prior investigation to remain unchallenged, and the head of the original investigation now being a well paid columnist for News International in The Times (Link).

David Cameron having ignored people from all sides (including the now Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Lord Ashdown) to employ Andy Coulson as his Director of Communications and until the last day or so refusing to try and stop their take over of BskyB.

Tony Blair and Gordon Browns governments were equally in bed with the media, with memo's being leaked showing them trying to silence questions from with in their own party.

News International have lied to the police, lied to parliament and there is evidence that there was a deliberate cover up on behalf of News International (Link).

That a single section in society, and one that should be there to protect has run so rampant shows the peril we are in. The media's ability to hold people in prominent positions to a level above the norm led us down this track. 

MP's are supposed to represent real people, but we try and hold them to unrealistic ideals. Reports on their personal lives don't effect their ability to govern, but do have real effect on their friends and family, people we all strive to protect. We need to crack down on the media, while giving them the freedom to report - they need to be able to be held to account, and prove that what they do to people lives are in the public interest, not just in the interest of selling more papers.

Currently the only party with out immediate and direct links to the Media, and specifically news international are the Liberal Democrats. We are the only ones that can bring about this change with out bias or Rupert Murdoch pulling the strings behind our backs!

Nick Clegg agreeing to back Labour in the defeat of the BskyB deal is a start down this road - hopefully the other partys will follow us towards a fairer and more open society.

Newspaper Crisis

The News of the World is soon to depart our news stands - a casualty of a greedy empire out of control.

Hundreds of jobs, and a long (168 years) and illustrious history are being sacrificed to save one woman, who should have already been fired. Rebekah Brooks was Editor at the time, and was either in collusion or completely incompetent if that level of criminal activity was happening in her news room.

This is also a bid to save the deal that will extend the empire, the purchase of BskyB in full - a deal already fraught with competition questions, and now with the extra slap of a big question over the integrity of News Corp.

Even the integrity of our two main partys is called in to question over this, with Andy Coulson (the former head of communications for David Cameron's Conservative Party, and Deputy Editor at the time of the hacking) possibly being arrested today. 

Labour don't get away clean though, despite Ed Miliband demanding change and that the government needs to be seen to take a firm stand to bring the press back in to line - but his own head of strategy, Tom Baldwin is another former News International Journalist who urged the Shadow Cabinet in January not to say anything "which appears to be attacking a particular newspaper group out of spite" and not to associate hacking to News Corporation's attempt to takeover BSkyB.

How did we let this happen? Over recent years the press have gained more and more control over our country, with politicians too scared of bad headlines and exposes to stand against them. 

Now we end up with Trial by Media (luckily two newspapers (The Sun and The Mirror, with The Sun being another News International paper) are being tried for contempt of court over reporting of the Jo Yeates case), and the news papers running riot over anything they think will sell a paper.

Do not get me wrong, I believe in freedom of the press, and that they have to have the power to investigate and keep government and business honest. That requires a degree of honesty, integrity and control that they no longer seem to possess though. There is a big difference over what is in the public interest and what the public is interested in.

Unfortunately our papers can no longer be trusted to do this - they have become the big business that needs investigation, rather than warriors for truth and justice keeping our society honest.

Breaches of the law and privacy aren't calculated against the good they will do, but will the extra advertising and sales be worth the fines they will incur.

What we need is a restructuring of press controls, and independent organisation with real power. A Committee made up from the Judiciary, various aspects of the media, the government and the common people. One with real power to investigate and then act on the investigations, weather that is to forward on to the Police, the Government or to place realistic fines themselves.

The fines would have to be large, most large media organisations will not notice a million pound fine, a large expose will generate far more income than that - the fines need to be large enough to hurt, to remove all profits make by that article and then some. That might make the media stop and think before acting.

If we fail to do this, then we risk the media gaining more and more control over our country, till the government become little more than puppets for the all powerful news barons . . .