Friday, January 30, 2009
The reactionary right-wing politics of the Gaza demonstrations, by Francis Chartrand
Israel's offensive in Gaza is in the tradition of the US-British slaughter of Iraqi conscript soldiers retreating from their occupation of Kuwait at the end of the first Gulf war in 1991. An American soldier described that as "like shooting fish in a barrel". So in Gaza now.
Israel has immense technical superiority over Hamas. And the Hamas "fish" swim in the "waters" of a densely-packed civilian population. At least a third of the casualties, maybe far more, have, inevitably, been "civilians".
The demonstrations all over Britain since the Israeli offensive on Gaza began on 27 December have been heavily fuelled by justified outrage at the human cost to the Palestinians of what Israel is doing.
The disproportion between the damage being inflicted on Israel's people and what Israel is doing to the Palestinians of Gaza makes it seem beside the point that this is a two-sided war, that Hamas is waging war on Israel too. The slaughter in Gaza cancels out awareness of everything else.
The coverage in the press has focused heavily on the slaughter, on the horror, and on the number of civilians being killed in Gaza. So have the nightly images on the TV screens.
The Guardian and other media have done most of the work in conjuring up the demonstrations; and the "left", especially the SWP, have done much of the organising for the demonstrations.
But the politics of the demonstrations have been provided by the Islamic chauvinists. In terms of its politics - support Hamas, support Arab and Islamic war on Israel, conquer and destroy Israel - the big demonstration on 10 January in London was an Arab or Islamic chauvinist, or even a clerical-fascist, demonstration. Their slogans, their politics, their programme, echoed and insisted upon by the kitsch left, have provided the politics of the demonstrations, drowning out everything else.
The clerical fascists have politically hegemonised the demonstrations to an astonishing degree. These have not been peace demonstration, but pro-war, and war-mongering, demonstrations - for Hamas's war, and for a general Arab war on Israel.
Calls for a general Arab war on Israel have been the rhetorical stock-in-trade of George Galloway back as far as the demonstrations against the then-upcoming war on Iraq in 2002-3. On Saturday 10 January in Londo many placards portrayed Arab heads of state, depicting them as traitors for not going to the aid of the Palestinians.
In their political slogans and chants, the dominant forces on the demonstrations have been not only against what Israel is doing in Gaza now, but against Israel as such, against Israel's right to exist. Opposition to the Gaza war, and outrage at it, only provide the immediate justification for the settled politics of seeking the root-and-branch extirpation of Israel and "Zionism".
Such politics have long been a central theme of "anti-war" demonstrations, but my strong impression is that they are bolder, cruder, and more explicit now than they have ever been.
On 10 January SWPers on loudhailers chanted: "Destroy Israel". The chant "From the river to the sea/ Palestine will be free" - demanding an Arab Palestine that includes pre-1967 Israel - was pretty pervasive. Placards called for "Freedom for Palestine", which, for Arab and Islamic chauvinists and kitsch-left alike, means Arab or Muslim rule over all pre-1948 Palestine. It implies the elimination of the Jewish state, and since that could be done only by first conquering Israel, the killing of a large part of the population of Israel.
Placards denouncing Arab leaders for not attacking Israel - amidst the chants and other placards - meant more than just attacking Israel to relieve the pressure on the people of Gaza.
Placards equated Israel with Nazism, and what Israel is doing in Gaza with the factory-organised systematic killing of Jews in Hitler-ruled Europe. Placards about 60 years since the Nakba - though not many of those - complemented the chants about "Palestine... from the river to the sea" and pointed up their meaning.
The dominant theme, "stop the slaughter in Gaza", understandable in the circumstances, could not - in the complete absence of any demands that Hamas stop its war - but be for Hamas and Hamas's rocket-war on Israel. Even the talk of "the massacre" subsumed Hamas into the general population, and was one variant of solidarising with Hamas, its rocket war, and its repressive clerical-fascist rule over the people of Gaza.
Talk of "genocide" in Gaza implied an absolute equation of the people of Gaza with Hamas, and absolute solidarity with Hamas.
Even the most visible Jews on the Saturday 10th demonstration - Neturei Karta, a Jewish equivalent of Hamas, who for religious reasons want to put an end to Israel - fitted into the general clerical-fascist politics.
On the January 3rd demonstration, a group of political Islamists near me, some with faces covered by scarves or balaclavas with only eye and mouth holes, pointedly raised their fists and started to chant Allahu Akhbar (God is great) as we passed the House of Commons.
Platform speakers on Saturday 10th nonsensically equated Israel - pre-1967 Israel too - with apartheid, and told us that Israel could be eliminated as apartheid white rule was in South Africa.
The "left" and the ex-left were heavily represented on the platform on Saturday 10th. Andrew Murray of the Communist Party of Britain (chairing), Tariq Ali (the rich "fun revolutionary" of long ago, all suffused in a grey-white tinge as if he had been dug out of the freezer, the ghost of anti-war demonstrations past!), Tony Benn, George Galloway, and Jeremy Corbyn spoke. Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop The War Coalition, wore a vivid red coat, but that was the only thing red about either her or the platform.
No criticism of or even distancing from the Arab or Islamic chauvinism or Islamic clerical-fascism of so much of the demonstration. Only one-sided anti-war war-mongering - pro-Hamas; demanding, in different degrees of boldness and clarity, the end of Israel. Craig Murray, a former British diplomat, made the most clear-cut demand for the rolling-back of 60 years of history and the elimination of Israel.
There was no criticism of the Arab and Islamic regimes other than for their "treason" to the Palestinians in not making war on Israel. And no reference whatsoever to the Israeli working class or to the idea that (even if in the not-near future) the Arab and Israeli workers should unite.
Thus, the "left" was entirely hegemonised by the politics, slogans, and programme of Arab and Islamic chauvinism and, explicitly, of the clerical fascists of political Islam.
The current demonstrations have had a six to seven year build-up, during which that "left" has promoted the politics of Islamic clerical-fascism, and even its organisations, the British Muslim Initiative and the Muslim-Brotherhood front, Muslim Association of Britain. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The "left", from outside the mainly-Muslim communities in Britain - it is still very much outside: the evidence is that the SWP has gained very few recruits from Muslim backgrounds from its half-decade of accommodating to Islam and posing as the best "fighters for Muslims" - has done all it can to push the youth of the Muslim communities behind Islamist political and religious reaction. It has courted and promoted the forces of political, social, and religious reaction within those communities. Instead of organising anti-war movements on the basis of secular, democratic, working-class, socialist politics, it has organised an "anti-war" movement on the basis of the politics listed above.
Instead of advocating and building working-class unity on ideas and slogans such as "black and white - Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, atheist - unite and fight", kitsch-leftists have made themselves into communalists, the best "fighters for Muslims". On the political basis of Muslim communalism, no working-class unity could conceivably be built.
Instead of helping the secularising, rebellious youth of the Muslim communities to differentiate from their background, instead of using the anti-war demonstrations to give them a focus broader than their starting point, the kitsch-left has "related" to the communities as such, and to the conservative and reactionary elements within them - including clerical-fascists - and that has helped those right-wingers to control, and the political-Islamist organisations to recruit, the youth, including women.
It has to be said here that the flood-tide of world-wide political Islam has worked and is working against separating large forces of youth from Islamic reaction. The predominant form of "rebelliousness" there seems to be against assimilating, "moderate" forces, and for political-Islamist militancy.
Even so, much could have been done. Instead the kitsch-left committed political hara-kiri, coloured itself Islamic green - and helped ensure the domination of conservative, reactionary, Islamic-chauvinist politics in the Muslim communities.
Two seemingly contradictory things dominated the demonstration. The politics of Islamic chauvinism and clerical fascism gave it its political character - an Islamic chauvinist demonstration in which the forces of the kitsch-left sunk their identity, rather as the crazily ultra-left Stalinist German Communist Party in the two or three years before Hitler came to power sunk its own identity into fascist-led concerns with "liberating" Germany from the Treaty of Versailles.
And... it was a heavily a-political demonstration. A large part of the demonstrators, perhaps the majority, have not sifted through the politics of the Israeli-Arab conflict, considered the options, studied the implications of slogans, and made deliberate choices, but react "raw" to the horrors of the Israeli offensive in Gaza and take the slogans, ideas, and programmes stamped on the demonstrations by the Islamists and their "left" allies as things given.
For instance, "Freedom for Palestine", for many of the marchers, does not mean that they understand what the slogan means to those who raise it: Arab rule over all pre-1948 Palestine, slightly encoded. "Free Palestine", to such people, probably means freedom for the Palestinian-majority areas - Gaza and the West Bank.
The predominance of clerical-fascism on the demonstrations is in part a result of this political underdevelopment. The precondition for it - for making people who react "raw" into demonstration-fodder for clerical-fascism - is the politics of the kitsch left vis-a-vis political Islam.
The demonstrations have also been undisguisedly anti-semitic, more so than ever. Placards equating Zionism and Nazism and about Israel's "Holocaust" all have implications way beyond Israeli politics and Israel itself. Calls for a boycott of Israeli goods, understandable enough on the face of it, were pretty much central. The main argument against such a boycott is that it is an indiscriminate weapon against all Israelis, and that it would quickly become a targeting of Jews everywhere, in Britain too. A small event on 10 January illustrated the point: a Starbucks café was attacked by some of the demonstrators seemingly because some people thought that it is owned by Jews.
The 10 January demonstration shows that political Islam now has a serious political presence in Britain. Nor can socialists and secularists draw comfort from the experience in the first half of the 20th century when superstition-riddled Jewish communities quickly assimilated and generated large-scale left-wing commitment by secularising Jews. The heavy political-Islamist politicisation of the Muslim communities is not something specific to Britain, nor is it simply a movement of oppressed people.
The Muslim communities are part of a world-wide movement which includes states and some of the richest people on earth (in Saudi Arabia, etc.) This world-wide movement is, in political terms, very reactionary. It is not likely that it will soon shed its present reactionary character.
The serious left has to find ways of supporting the Muslim communities against racism, discrimination, and social exclusion, without accommodating politically or socially to their reactionary traits, and without falling into the suicidal idiocy of pandering to Islamic clerical-fascism. Involvement of Muslim workers and youth in the labour movement, combined with militant labour-movement commitment to defending the communities against racism and discrimination, is our chief method here.
Our keynote politics have to be of the type of "black and white, unite and fight", not the adaptive Islamic communalism that has reigned on the left for the last decade. Within that general approach we must fight Islamic clerical-fascism and help its opponents in the Muslim communities.
The kitsch-left has a lot to answer for over the last decade. There is no way of measuring exactly what could have been done to wean sections of Muslim youth away from political Islam, but if the "left" - in the first place the SWP - had maintained a principled working-class socialist, internationalist, secularist stand, and combined that with defending Muslims against racism and discrimination, for sure more people of Muslim background could have been won to socialism. The clerical fascists would not have had the virtually unchallenged political ride they have had, and still have.
It has to be said here that the flood-tide of world-wide political Islam has worked and is working against separating large forces of youth from Islamic reaction. The predominant form of "rebelliousness" there seems to be against assimilating, "moderate" forces, and for political-Islamist militancy.
Even so, much could have been done. Instead the kitsch-left committed political hara-kiri, coloured itself Islamic green - and did its best to help ensure the domination of conservative, reactionary, Islamic-chauvinist politics in the Muslim communities.
It has done everything it can to boost Islamic clerical fascism, promote it, and render it politically respectable in the labour movement. We are probably far from seeing the full consequences of the politicisation of sections of the Muslim communities under clerical-fascist hegemony that has taken place and continues now.
Link
Labels: Communism, Francis Chartrand, Human mistake, Islam, Religion and fanaticism, United Kingdom
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Rudd condemns Islamic cleric Samir Abu Hamza's comments on sex
KEVIN Rudd has demanded a Melbourne Islamic cleric apologise for reportedly telling male followers they can force their wives to have sex, and hit them if they're disobedient.
The Prime Minister said Samir Abu Hamza's comments had no place in modern Australia.
During a 2003 lecture also posted on the internet last year, Mr Hamza told followers that under Islamic law, men could demand sex from their wives, the Herald Sun reported.
Despite Australian laws requiring consent, it was impossible for a man to rape his wife even if she refused to have sex, he said.
He also reportedly said that Islamic law allowed men to hit their wives as a last resort, but were not allowed to leave them bruised or bloodied.
Mr Rudd said Mr Hamza should apologise.
“Under no circumstances is sexual violence permissible or acceptable in Australia - under no circumstances,” he told reporters in Hobart.
“Under no circumstances are other forms of violence, physical violence, acceptable towards women in Australia nor are they acceptable in my view to mainstream Muslim teachings.
“Australia will not tolerate these sort of remarks. They don't belong in modern Australia, and he should stand up, repudiate them and apologise.”
In the lecture, titled The Keys to a Successful Marriage, Mr Hamza mocks Australia's sexual assault laws that require consent for sex between a man and his wife.
“Amazing, how can a man rape his wife?” he asks.
Mr Hamza, a cleric in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg, told the Herald Sun a man could hit his wife on the hand or leg, but not on the head.
Link
Labels: Australia, Francis Chartrand, Islam, Religion and fanaticism
Great Britain - A deadly terrorist threat to prison if the guardians did not hide his presence, by Marie-Eve Marineau
He has a good chance to win ...
A deadly terrorist Al-Qaeda has sparked outrage after threatening to sue under the Act on the rights of the people if the prison guards do not veil in his presence.
Kamel Bourgass, 33, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2004 after stabbing to death the brave Special Branch officer Stephen Oake during a police raid.
Not only Bourgass now recruiting members to his cause twisted in Wakefield Prison, but he also claims that the custodians unveiled infringe his human rights.
He jokes in bad taste on the posthumous bravery medal awarded to DC Oake, saying it had been made with the metal from my knife. "
The Algerian was preparing an attack on ricin, a deadly poison, against Great Britain when Detective Oake, a father of three children aged 40, arrested.
Bourgass, the first Muslim fanatic to assassinate a British police officer, is in Wakefield prison last few weeks.
But insiders say that it has already begun to preach to prisoners Islamist hatred against the West.
With his long black cloak, he placed guards angry with his disgusting jokes on DC Oake.
A source inside the prison revealed: "It is very violent and aggressive towards staff and he said that the presence of women in the prayer meetings is a violation of their human rights."
"If they are in use, it requires that they wear the veil."
"We were told to monitor it closely because it preaches hatred for prayer meetings." ...
Labels: Human mistake, Islam, Marie-Êve Marineau, Religion and fanaticism, United Kingdom
Bruce Springsteen & Robert Plant
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
US: Steps to End Torture Set a New Course, par Iba Bouramine
(Washington, DC) - US President Barack Obama's executive order to end the use of torture sets a new course for US counterterrorism policy, Human Rights Watch said today. Obama's decision to issue this order within two days of becoming president signals the high priority the new president places on establishing legal and effective counterterrorism policies.
"For years, the Bush administration claimed, ‘We do not torture,' yet approved methods like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and prolonged exposure to cold," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. "President Obama's order rejecting such practices is a major step toward restoring America's moral authority around the world."
The executive order on torture issued today sets a government-wide single standard of humane interrogation, ends the use of secret CIA "black sites" for detention, and mandates that the International Committee of the Red Cross be granted access to all detainees held by the US outside of the ordinary criminal or immigration system.
Under the order, all government agencies are required to apply the Army field manual on interrogation - which has been used by the military since 2006 - without exception. The order also prohibits the reliance on any of the Bush Justice Department's legal opinions on interrogation or detention.
"This executive order makes meaningful the US commitment not to torture detainees," Daskal said. "President Obama has rejected the abusive practices of the last seven-and-a-half years."
The order also creates an interagency task force, led by the attorney general, to evaluate the interrogation practices allowed by the Army field manual, "and, if warranted, to recommend any additional or different guidance for other departments or agencies."
Human Rights Watch said that any new interrogation manual should apply a single standard across all government agencies. The manual should be public and include an exhaustive list of approved techniques that all follow the "Golden Rule" standard.
"Today, Obama made huge strides to put US counterterrorism policies on a legal and effective course," said Daskal. "He should now categorically reject the illogical claim that the standard for humane and effective treatment somehow varies across agency."
The order does not address the legality of what is known as rendition to torture - the practice of illegally transferring a person to a country where he or she faces torture or persecution - and instead leaves review of that practice to the task force as well. The best known case is that of Maher Arar, a dual Canadian-Syrian citizen arrested at New York's John F. Kennedy airport in September 2002, flown to Jordan, and then driven across the border to Syria, where he was detained in a tiny cell for almost a year and tortured repeatedly.
Human Rights Watch said that Obama repeatedly condemned the practice of rendition to torture on the campaign trail, and urged him to put an end to this illegal practice as well.
An executive order on Guantanamo, also issued today, sets January 2010 as a date certain for the prison's final closure, suspends the use of military commissions, and puts in motion a review of the detainees' files.
Another order creates an interagency task force to review detention and interrogation policies going forward. A fourth order mandates a review of the fate of Saleh al-Marri, a Qatari who was on the eve of trial for credit card fraud when he was declared an "enemy combatant" and transferred to a naval brig in South Carolina in 2003. He has been there ever since.
"At the end of the review period, we hope and expect that Obama will either return al-Marri to federal court or order his release," said Daskal.
Link
Labels: Human Rights Watch, Iba Bouramine, United States
DRC: ICC’s First Trial Focuses on Child Soldiers, by Renata Daninsky
(Brussels) - The International Criminal Court's (ICC) trial of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, scheduled to begin on January 26, 2009 in The Hague, marks an important stage in efforts to establish responsibility for the use of children in military operations, Human Rights Watch said today. Another Congolese warlord sought by the ICC, Bosco Ntaganda, remains at large.
Lubanga, the former leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) militia who operated in the district of Ituri in northeastern Congo, is charged with enlisting and conscripting children under the age of 15 as soldiers and using them to participate actively in combat between September 2002 and August 2003. Lubanga's UPC forces also carried out widespread killing, rape, and torture of thousands of civilians throughout Ituri, though to date the ICC has not charged him or any other member of the UPC with such crimes.
"This first ICC trial makes it clear that the use of children in armed combat is a war crime that can and will be prosecuted at the international level," said Param-Preet Singh, counsel in Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program. "Lubanga's UPC also slaughtered thousands, and those responsible should be held accountable for these crimes as well."
Lubanga's trial was originally scheduled to begin in June 2008. However, the judges of the trial chamber unanimously decided to stay the proceedings - suspending the trial - because the prosecution could not disclose a number of documents collected confidentially from information providers as permitted under the Rome Statute, causing concerns that Lubanga would not receive a fair trial. The prosecution worked with these information providers to address the judges' concerns, and in November 2008 the trial chamber allowed proceedings to resume.
The Ituri conflict and other conflicts in eastern Congo highlight the participation of non-Congolese forces. Ituri in particular became a battleground involving the governments of Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo. These governments provided political and military support to Congolese armed groups despite abundant evidence of their widespread violations of international humanitarian law. The ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, has repeatedly stated that he will bring to justice those who bear the greatest responsibility for serious crimes.
"Getting to the root of the conflict in Ituri means that the ICC must go beyond local war lords like Lubanga," said Singh. "We look to the prosecutor to investigate those who supported Lubanga and other militias operating in Ituri, including senior officials in Kinshasa, Kigali, and Kampala."
The ICC is faced with the challenge of making sure that the proceedings are meaningful for the communities most affected by the crimes in Congo. Human Rights Watch said that the Lubanga trial is a unique opportunity that the ICC cannot afford to miss and should make every possible effort to communicate with people in Congo about important legal proceedings in The Hague. To be effective, justice must not only be done but also must be seen to be done. Human Rights Watch will be looking very closely at the court's performance to this end.
Bosco Ntaganda Still Sought by the ICC
Bosco Ntaganda, who collaborated with Lubanga as chief of military operations for the UPC, has also been charged with war crimes by the ICC but remains at large. He currently serves as the military chief of staff of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), a rebel group that is now collaborating with the Congolese and Rwandan national armies in military operations against a Rwandan armed group in eastern Congo.
On November 4 and 5, 2008, CNDP troops under Ntaganda's command killed an estimated 150 people in the town of Kiwanja, one of the worst massacres in North Kivu in the past two years.
In early January, Ntaganda claimed he was taking over leadership of the CNDP from its former head Laurent Nkunda, and on January 16 he declared that instead of making war on the Congolese national army, he would join its troops in fighting the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Rwandan armed group some of whose leaders participated in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
"Bosco Ntaganda is not a viable partner for the Congolese or any other government," said Singh. "He is a war crimes suspect sought by the ICC, and he should be immediately arrested, not celebrated as a partner for peace."
The Congolese government, a state party to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, is obligated to arrest Ntaganda. Yet no such attempt was made last week when Ntaganda was in Goma alongside the Congolese minister of the interior and other senior Congolese military officers.
Background
In addition to crimes related to child soldiers, Thomas Lubanga's UPC, which purported to further the interests of the Hema ethnic group in the Ituri region of northeastern Congo, has also been involved in ethnic massacres, torture, and rape during the Ituri conflict.
In March 2006, Lubanga was arrested and transferred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges involving child soldiers. In January 2007, the judges of the ICC determined that there was sufficient evidence to move forward with a trial.
This trial is the first in which victims will be allowed to participate in international criminal proceedings. More than 90 victims who have been found eligible will participate through their legal representatives. While not parties, victims have certain rights in proceedings, provided their exercise is consistent with the rights of the accused and a fair trial. This may include the right to submit evidence pertaining to Lubanga's guilt or innocence and thus contribute to the search for truth.
The ICC has charged three other Congolese warlords with crimes related to child soldiers, including Bosco Ntaganda, mentioned above. Two others, leaders of militias of ethnic groups allied with each other but rivals of Lubanga's, are in custody. They are Germain Katanga of the Ituri Patriotic Resistance Forces (FRPI), a Ngiti-based group, and Mathieu Ngudjolo, of the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI), a Lendu-based militia. Both are accused of using child soldiers in attacking civilians in Bogoro village in early 2003, among other war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, sexual slavery, and rape.
Children are currently recruited and used in armed conflict in at least 15 countries and territories: Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), India, Iraq, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Philippines, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand, and Uganda. In the DRC, at least five parties to the armed conflict are known to use child soldiers. These include the Congolese army (FARDC), the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, pro-government Mai Mai groups, and the Lord's Resistance Army.
In addition to the ICC's cases, the Special Court for Sierra Leone has charged all nine of its original defendants, including former Liberian president Charles Taylor, with the crime of recruiting and using children under the age of 15 as soldiers. To date, the Special Court has convicted four defendants of this crime; those convicted are serving prison terms ranging from seven to 50 years. The Special Court's trial of Taylor is ongoing.
Ituri is one of the areas worst-affected by Congo's devastating wars. A local armed conflict between Hema and Lendu ethnic groups that began in 1999 was exacerbated by Ugandan military forces and through linkages to the broader conflict in the Great Lakes region. As the conflict spiraled and armed groups multiplied, more than 60,000 civilians were slaughtered in Ituri, according to the United Nations. Competition for the region's lucrative gold mines and trading routes was a major contributing factor to the fighting. Foreign armies and local militia groups - seeing control of the gold mines as a way to money, guns, and power - fought each other ruthlessly, often targeting civilians in the process. In their battles for gold, armed groups such as Lubanga's UPC were implicated in widespread ethnic slaughter, torture, and rape.
Human Rights Watch has been documenting human rights abuses committed in Ituri since 1999. Human Rights Watch published detailed reports in 2001, 2003, and 2005, as well as dozens of news releases and briefing papers detailing the widespread atrocities by all armed groups.
Link
Labels: Children, Congo, Human rights, Human Rights Watch, Renata Daninsky
Radical constructivism or how to build a reform of education on the sand, by Anne Humphreys
From an article by Normand Baillargeon, a professor in educational sciences at the University of Quebec at Montreal, published in the book "Against the educational reform", published recently in vlb editor. We recommend the purchase of this book to anyone interested in the education required for students in Quebec.
Normand Baillargeon is a former education columnist for Le Devoir. It attacks by radical constructivism is the cause of educational reform imposed by the monopoly of education in Quebec schools. Baillargeon libertarian who is progressive and is reminiscent of Alain Finkielkraut, both citing Hannah Arendt, for whom the real progressive policy requirement calls as a pedagogical conservatism.
The headings below are of us.
Ernst von Glasersfeld, tutelary figure of the current curriculum Quebec
Ernst von Glasersfeld (born 1917) is, among other things, a psychologist and cyberneticians. [...]
Glasersfeld but he is best known as the creator of an epistemological doctrine called him 'radical constructivism', which has held in Quebec, in contexts where they think the education, influence and has been for nearly three decades .
As such, Mr. Glasersfeld has on many occasions been invited to Quebec theorists of education, especially in universities, where the texts were widely read, disseminated and studied.
In 2002, he received the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM) the recognition of scientific merit. The university stressed that his participation in the work and activities of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Learning and Education Development (CIRAD), one of the places where it thought the current educational reform, and reminded that this "long-standing collaboration of the Center" had a great influence on the research conducted there. "
This influence is still recognized by this group of eminent academics and researchers from Quebec who in 2004 published a book in tribute to Glasersfeld. Their aim, say the authors, was to show "the impact of constructivism on research and educational practices" and to describe "his influence on curriculum reform and educational choices. "
Finally, Glasersfeld in 2006 received an honorary doctorate in education from Laval University.
Radical constructivism as hegemonic orthodoxy in Quebec
All this suggests the radical constructivism in Quebec has become a doctrine very influential at the highest levels of education. In fact, a kind of orthodoxy has installed an orthodoxy whose hegemony is reinforced by the fact that followers of radical constructivism do little contradiction and quickly, for all practical purposes, monopolized the discourse in Quebec and that the institutions of production and dissemination of research.
[...]
Varieties of constructivism in radical constructivism
Some feel that such socially that knowledge is constructed, particularly by social groups: their social constructivism is and others believe that it is the individual who builds and constructivism is individual. Some believe that this construction is a psychological phenomenon and that the study helps to understand how the mechanisms by which knowledge is constructed, while others believe that the very status of knowledge than a building, pushing some fairly in this way to achieve one form or another of idealism and epistemological relativism, claiming that knowledge, eg science, is a construction among other possibilities, no epistemic privilege. This is precisely the prospect of Glasersfeld.
Radical constructivism according Glasersfeld
[...]
The heart of Glasersfeld's position is contained in this presentation that often. From the perspective of it, he says:
- Knowledge is not passively received either through the senses or communication.
- Knowledge is actively constructed by the knowing subject.
- The function of cognition is adaptive in the biological sense of the term: to agree to viability.
- Cognition allows the organization by about the experiential world, not the discovery of an objective ontological reality.
These ideas involve various ontological and epistemological positions with the agreement of the author may be conveniently presented as follows:
- Knowledge is not a world independent of the observer;
- Knowledge is not such a world: theories of knowledge that knowledge is the real false;
- Knowledge is created by individuals in a historical and cultural context;
- It refers to individual experience rather than the world;
- It consists of conceptual structures of individuals;
- Conceptual structures constitute knowledge when individuals consider viable in their experience: constructivism is a form of pragmatism;
- There is no privileged conceptual framework: constructivism is a relativist doctrine;
- Knowledge is an order of a suitable experiential reality;
- There is no extra-experiential reality accessible to reason.
[...]
In fact, I do not deceive me by suggesting that many philosophers and epistemologists consider such concepts as contradictory, absurd, or highly questionable at best implausible.
[Radical Constructivism: relativistic and contradictory
Many criticisms have been leveled against the constructivist epistemology. The most common is that this theory is the bed of relativism, because it defines the truth as a "construction" depends on social society where it appears. This leads to accusations of internal contradiction: if what should be considered as "real" is relative to a particular company, then this constructive design itself must be true that in a given society. It could well be "false" in another company. If so, constructivism would be wrong in this society. In addition, this means that social constructivism can be both true and false. Critics of constructivism then recall this axiom of logic "if a proposal is both true and not true, it is not true", so according to the principles of social constructivism, it is false.]
[...]
Constructivism "repudiates the notion of truth"
[Some citations Glasersfeld:]
[F]rom a naive point of view which is that of common sense, the elements that make this complex environment are part of a real world consists of objects unquestionable, as real as the student, and these objects have an existence independent independent not only of students but also teachers. Radical Constructivism is a radical theory of knowledge which, for reasons that had nothing to do with the teaching of mathematics or education, does not accept the view of common sense.
The Radical constructivism is radical in that it breaks with conventions and he develops a theory of knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an ontological reality "objective" but only scheduling and organization of a world by our experience. Radical constructivism repudiated once and for all "metaphysical realism".
Elsewhere, it states that constructivism "repudiates the notion of truth as correspondence with reality".
[...]
Count the number of people: everything is relative
In one of his books, Philippe Jonnaert, a constructivist Quebec, provides an example of what an educator for the adoption of what he calls the "constructivist posture" and metaphysical idealism. A teacher of a class of first year of primary school requires its students to the number of boys and girls in the classroom with their first names. It has 23 labels, distributed as follows: 12 boys, 10 girls, 1 and that of the teacher.
But that's it. A student has 22 labels is that it does not the teacher. Another arrived at 24: he has the teacher and, as it is a great person, he counts for two. The observer of the scene, he has 23 labels.
You see, then decreed constructivist idealistic: there is no real, that representations, each doing its own without it being possible to declare one more objective than the other. "Everyone writes the author constructs his reality."
All that is hateful in the constructivist posture is here.
First, this extraordinary and unjustified quantum leap by which one moves from a triviality to a radical thesis in epistemology, the banality of the very psychological constructivism and radical constructivism very questionable metaphysics.
Then the sad conclusion that teaching draws. For what should be drawn from this story is just [...] it is essential pout the teacher to ensure that what he said is clear and can be interpreted in different ways. Here, the instructions clearly were ambiguous.
[...]
Utilitarianism of constructivism in the teaching of basic skills
"[T] o constructivists, writing an emulator Glasersfeld Quebec, the only possible to know a topic is the practical knowledge which enables it to survive, to carry out its projects and to deal with his desire." The same author stresses the content of these programs in secondary mathematics [which] should include the teaching of concepts a minority use the latest "and" knowledge that most will never be called upon to use their lives, because they do not meet the problems they are supposed to solve, and the teaching of "some sophisticated language written or spoken."
[...]
[T]his pragmatism, in my opinion, is an important part of the explanation for this obsession of skills that has gripped the world of Education of Quebec. Glasersfeld wrote: "It is extremely difficult to substitute the concept of" know how "to design a knowledge that should produce an image of the real world [...]. But it is precisely this substitution must be done to understand the basis of constructivism."
[...]
Endoctrinaire trend in the faculties of education
In short, a radical doctrine was very questionable and is still taught in an extremely biased and partisan students and future researchers in education. But there's more. Is that this doctrine was transmitted in an institutional context where join was (and remains) an essential condition for taking part in the intellectual community and progress. All this leads me to conclude that everything has been made to ensure that people who are targeted adhere to the doctrine presented.
There is, philosophy of education, a word and a concept specific to describe what I just wrote, namely the transmission of a doctrine with the intention to close the mind through the use of processes other than those allowed by the observance of the rationality of the subjects or processes as deplorable bias and the incompleteness of the information or the institutional and economic pressure. This concept is that of indoctrination. And I support, based on over twenty years in that environment, and that this is indeed a form of indoctrination constructivist positions (particularly radical) that has been practiced on a large scale in Quebec schools science education.
[...]
Summary: waste transfer and relativistic without legitimacy
Constructivism is a radical doctrine confused, delirious in some respects and does little philosophical interest.
[...]
If [the education] has allowed the practitioners of a discipline in search of recognition to establish legitimacy, the latter inspired by him, have helped to dump the school system in a very toxic cocktail made of idealism of epistemological relativism, pragmatism [utilitarianism], very much in the spirit of the times, but whose impact on the school and the children are dramatic.
At the same time, it was neglected and lost sight of important issues for any reflexive support of education, encouraged a weakening of the role of knowledge in education and its practitioners and neglected the vast and rich heritage of knowledge from the philosophy of education and science that can make an important contribution to our understanding of education materials and the most appropriate and most effective to train people educated.
[...]
In the meantime, I'm still looking, without quite finding the answer to a pressing question: what right, by what legitimacy, officials and researchers have been able to transfer this tremendous sense of education they have made? It seems that the arrogance and ignorance that led to the adoption of ideas that I just described had to play a role in this story.
Labels: Anne Humphreys, Science and theory
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Killing in a nursery in Belgium: a man charged, another crazy release, bravo to the tolerance of stupidity, by Francis Chartrand
The young Belgian 20-year-old was remanded in custody. He acknowledged Friday that he killed two babies and a nurse in a daycare Termonde in western countries.
The Belgian, 20 years was killed Friday morning two babies and a nursery nurse, Dendermonde, western Belgium, has been charged with murder and attempted murder and remanded in custody.
Arrested shortly after an act which has plunged the kingdom into the dismay and sadness, the young man, whose identity was not revealed, was questioned by police throughout the afternoon. It was presented Friday in the evening to a magistrate, who was charged and placed under arrest warrant, "said the floor of Termonde.
During the long interrogation, the man's face was heavily disguised in white and black, leaving some to think the character of the Joker in Batman-.
He gave no indication on the mobile of his act, "said a spokesman for the prosecutors. But he admitted the facts, however, after 10 hours of interrogation during which he "laughed several times with investigators, said Saturday that the popular Flemish daily Het Laatste Nieuws, raising the question of the mental state of aggressor.
No past psychiatric
The prosecution had denied Friday evening that the man had a past psychiatric a rumor circulating insisted in Belgium.
According to Het Laatste Nieuws, the man had on him at the time of his arrest, a second knife (the weapon used was found on site) and the name of a second nursery located three kilometers. "Another bloodbath was averted," said the daily.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, newspapers also questioned the need to strengthen security in places open to the public, and children in particular.
Friday Termonde, residents wondered how a man look so strange could enter without difficulty in the nursery of the "Land of Fables", which had a score of infants and six custodians.
"The temptation may be great, after such a tragedy to have the doors of our stadiums, our banks, our theater but also of our schools, our nurseries and why not our streets guards, soldiers, police ", says the French daily newspaper La Libre Belgique.
Ten children and two employees still hospitalized
The young man walked into the nursery and immediately appeal to children, witnesses told. A child and a woman were killed and another child died soon after from his injuries.
The twelve other victims, ten and two kindergarten children, were hospitalized with various injuries. A baby of 6 months and 3 years old child are in serious condition but their lives are not endangered, assured a spokesman for the University Hospital of Ghent, where they were made.
Saturday, a senior medical said that some of the wounded were "mutilated" and they had to be plastic surgery.
(Source AFP)
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Well, my comment now. That was the article in the newspaper Liberation, morning edition on Saturday January 24 with an updated Strait made the night or morning dawns, the European Time, six hours later than in Quebec.
Twenty-four hours later, it confirmed it is a schizophrenic. A schizophrenic who walks freely, there is a flaw somewhere. Killing in a nursery in Belgium: a man charged, another crazy release, bravo to the tolerance of stupidity by Francis Chartrand, the end of the text that I wrote, it's not for nothing, and I reason.
How is it, damn, that is tolerant of the mentally deficient and social (schizophrenia), in day care? Even children, infants I say, killed by mentally ill, and it is not the first time, nor in Belgium and elsewhere. I only think of the massacre in Scotland, the Dunblane massacre that claimed the lives of sixteen children, aged four to six years, and their teacher in 1996. Another carnage with a madman armed with a knife, in Osaka, where a man of 37 years, entered the property armed with a kitchen knife and stabbed several children and teachers. It killed a total of 8 students, 13 seriously wounded and two other teachers.
On this blog, many readers are of Belgian, British and French. Us in Canada, we experienced the shooting of Dawson College, which the perpetrator of the carnage was in psychiatric journey, and wrote on MySpace texts predestined to take action. He had even sent by FedEx from the USA an AK-47, come on.
The young man, described by witnesses as an individual rather tall, had on his blog site vampirefreaks.com many pictures of him brandishing weapons. "His name is Trench. you will come to know him as the Angel of Death, "he wrote on his profile. He expressed his hatred of society, ordinary people, teachers, according to officials of the many taxing (racketeering) suffered in the secondary, the "jocks" (derogatory nickname from jockstrap - "protective shell" - for athletes school), police, which he said the watch for months. He also responded to this question, "How do you die? "On his blog," Like Romeo and Juliet or in a hail of bullets. " He spoke on this web site just two hours before the event, without mentioning the actions he was about to perform. Today, its profile (nickname "fatality666) there is more.
Oh, another story about the mad in our schools. Thursday, May 13, 1993 at 9:27, a man dressed in black, his head hidden in a motorcycle helmet and a balaclava, burst into the kindergarten of the school group N8 Commandant Charcot, Neuilly-sur-Seine.
This man, armed with a pistol and warning of explosives, threatening to blow up if the room does not get a ransom of one hundred million francs. These threats are made credible by its past demonstrations because he had taken care before, to blow up several dustbins voluntarily leaving a signature. His hostages, twenty-one children and their teacher Laurence Dreyfus, are therefore at risk. RAID is quickly dispatched to the scene. Investigators seek to identify the hostage-takers, but they will not succeed before the end of the hostage crisis. The man was then known only as the "Human Bomb" (suicide bombers) or "HB", which he himself gave. It was not until the very end of the hostage-taking that his name is revealed.
The media seized on the case. Journalists camped outside the school. The taking of hostages is a national event. Nicolas Sarkozy, then mayor of Neuilly, is trying to negotiate with Erick Schmitt to release children, we see Nicolas Sarkozy on television out of school a child in arms.
During the negotiations, Schmitt Érick gradually frees most children do not keep up with six, despite the fact that he had said in his first ransom note that no child would be released before he received the sum requested. He had also threatened to execute children (by sticking) in the absence of rapid response of the authorities but the threat was not carried out.
After nearly two days without sleep tension in a suicidal state of mind, Schmitt Érick showing signs of fatigue. Raid decides to take action when asleep. The plan is to bring the men of Raid in the room during the sleep of the hostage-takers. While the two men held in play, ready to neutralize it if he wakes up, evacuate the other hostages out of the room. To ensure qu'Érick Schmitt will be asleep during the assault, the men of Raid pay a sleeping pill (whose effectiveness has been tested on a man Raid) in coffee regularly provided to the hostage taker . As a precaution, Evelyne Lambert (then medical Fire Captain Paris), which looked after the children, is in secret. It must ensure qu'Érick Schmitt is asleep, and a signal (unbutton his jacket before the goal of a mini-camera through the wall by Raid) to mean that the police can intervene.
On the morning of May 15, the hostage taker s'assoupit. Évelyne Lambert verify that he is sleeping in the shaking and making furniture move noisily by children. It remains inert. It is then the appropriate signal. At about 7:25, eight RAID police entered the classroom to extract the last six children. During the intervention, Eric Schmitt was killed by three bullets in the head from a meter by the police officer Daniel Boulanger. The circumstances of his death created a controversy.
Only after his death that the identity of those who came to call "HB" throughout the taking of hostages is known: it was Érick Schmitt, an entrepreneur in a difficult financial situation, intelligent, and depression . Finally, it was revealed to Laurence Dreyfus, a few hours before his death, which meant "HB": it was the initials of Human Bomb (human bomb).
We have this madman who has killed 3 people with a knife. Yesterday we learned that a man was beheaded with a knife in the cafeteria of a California college student ... therefore I call on the prohibition of dangerous weapon knife. We will have to legislate in order to determine the possession of the knife to a permit. Only professionals and amateurs (cooks, butchers) may be owners of knives under the condition of a criminal record, no history of psychiatric and obtaining a certificate of capacity to handle the knife. Others can use disposable plastic knives. It will change our culinary habits, but in an era of fast food and the liberation of women from the bondage to this place that the vile kitchen is no longer a concern.
Also plan to ban the car launched at a hundred km / h on the colorful crowd of a market day can also cause enormous damage humans.
You will understand that I am of irony to understand the stupidity behind this attitude consistently pointing responsibility of firearms in homicides in the USA. These hideous phenomena have nothing to do with the right to possession of a firearm to recall the contrast to an urban legend is not as permissive than that in most U.S. states.
He determined to kill can be done without or with a firearm. Even in a country where the possession of firearms is strictly regulated whoever wishes can still be obtained illegally, and the criminal power is of course not affected by these considerations of legality.
Updated Sunday afternoon, hours of Quebec.
But finally, when will we understand that a disturbed, it remains disturbed. It is confirmed, the patient in Belgium, had an opening File psychiatric 4 times that the Crown had asked for a serious réencadrement see internment.
"Well no, must be tolerant of our social deficient, they must be brought into society, we must let them adapt. Here, let it play with your children, he will learn quickly, you see. No, no sir, I assure you it does not re-offend his penis to show to your children, despite the eight rape previously committed by him for 10 years."
Bullshit, nonsense like this that we are responding to all NGOs working for the integration of the mentally deficient and social. I grant you, you can not blame these groups to have a bit of love for our case of "mental health", even me I have compassion for them, and I have always condemned any abuse mental and physical fact against them in a psychiatric institute. They are human like us. But we can blame the NGOs, but not widespread, cases of willful blindness, on behalf of integration and tolerance.
It's beautiful, diverse Mr. Mrs. everybody, dancing around the rainbow. That's what it is, tolerance of stupidity, it seems that no official of the tolerance of diversity of mental illness, had a child or motherfucker stabbed by a "reintegration" in society. I ass full of "socially unfit", worse, I have full ass who does not supervise, and we call in the street, 3 blocks of a school.
Francis Chartrand
Labels: Belgium, Francis Chartrand, Human mistake
Thursday, January 22, 2009
The Great Flood of Noah, by Noémie Cournoyer
The myth of the Great Flood described in the Bible?, Also called "Flood of Noah" is a mythological story to explain the nature of the relationship between the Jewish people and their God, YHWH? Thereafter, and that is the case with creationists, the flood has become the catch-all explanation when it comes to support the literalism? Biblical face geology.
First, the outline of the myth. Unhappy with his creation, YHWH decided to eliminate humans. But seeing that Noah and his family lead a good life, YHWH prevents it from the disaster to come, and it sends instructions to enable it to survive the flood by building a huge ship (Noah's Ark).
Following the flood, YHWH made a covenant with Noah that there will be no more disasters of this magnitude, in return for which men undertake to lead a good life. This alliance is characterized by the appearance of a rainbow, which illustrates the link between the earthly world and the celestial world.
Babylonian roots of the myth of the Flood
This myth is probably an adaptation of a Hebrew oldest Babylonian myth, the epic of Gilgamesh. In this version, the god of storms, Enlil decides to punish humanity corrupted by sending a deluge. The god of wisdom, Ea, decided to prevent Uta-Napishtim, a human particularly wise and virtuous. Uta-Naphishtim survive the flood by building an ark.
Posted to 2700 BC, the epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest stories known to date and above Genesis widely, even by the most generous dates (between 1200 and 200 BC.)
The following table shows some similarities between the story from the epic of Gilgamesh and the version presented in Genesis:
Babylonian version (1)
Hebrew (2)
(1) YHWH is angry against humanity corrupted.
(2) Enlil is angry against humanity corrupted.
(1) Noah favorite YHWH chosen to survive the flood.
(2) Uta-Napishtim, bookmark Ea chosen to survive the flood.
(1) An arch is built and loaded food and animals.
(2) An arch is built and loaded food and animals.
(1) After several days in the ark, Uta-Napishtim wants to know if the water level has fallen. It then sends a dove, a week later, a crow. The crow did not return, Uta-Napishtim knows that the flood is over.
(2) After several days in the ark, Noah wants to know if the water level has fallen. It sends a crow, and then a week later, a dove. The dove comes first with an olive branch, and is not at all. Noah knows that the flood is over.
(1) Uta-Napishtim is a sacrifice to the gods to thank for having saved the deluge. The goddess Ishtar sends a rainbow.
(2) Noah made a sacrifice to YHWH to thank him for having saved the deluge. YHWH sends a rainbow as a sign of the covenant.
Myths about a flood seem to be widespread. However, both because of the deluge that the protagonists and the outcome varies greatly from one to another myth. For example, in Paraguay, a myth tells that the earth was once flooded because there were too many people. The weight of humanity meeting was therefore sink the continent, which floats on water. Fortunately, some were rescued by a white bird.
In Canada, a myth from Cris tells people that a man has survived a flood in a canoe. It then sends a crow who could not find land. The crows were white. To punish the crow, the man had become the black.
It is interesting to note is that the myths from the eastern Mediterranean have more often the focus of the flood sent to punish humanity. Elsewhere in the world, because of the deluge is often not specified, or the result of a natural force.
The Great Flood of Noah and his theological embrouilles
The biblical myth seems to be an adaptation monotheistic? A pre-existing narrative. In the Babylonian myth of narrative coherence is ensured by the fact that the gods want to kill some people and others to save them. As against the "monothéisation" story leads to contradictions Hebrew as YHWH occupies both the role of executioner and savior.
This puts into question a central argument of Christianity, that God would allow evil in order to allow free will? It seems that the free will of contemporary Noah was not so important for YHWH.
It is also questionable from what Noah fired if his conduct exemplary. After all, the Ten Commandments were not even on the eve of being drafted. What set of rules, what moral code were (or were not) the people at the time of the Great Flood? The Christian belief that morality goes back to Moses (who seek the commandments on Mount Sinai) is well embêtée.
Another problem is posed by the existence of giants before the Flood. According to Genesis, these Néphilims would be the result of unions between demons and human women. Such watches have never had a place on board the Ark of Noah. Still, in post-biblical flood, it is still question of Nephilim. The famous Goliath fight that David, was not himself a giant?
This problem is resolved in the Jewish tradition by saying that one of the giants had hooked to the roof of the Ark (!), Which in the Hebrew story is a "box" and not a boat. As against this variant of the myth of the flood is not found in the Bible, which fails to explain how the Giants have survived the flood.
The impossibility of a global deluge
To achieve a good overall flood, only one ingredient: water, in very large quantities. Hence came the great flood of water? Several hypotheses have been proposed by creationists.
The water in the flood, according to the Bible
Before examining the assumptions contemporary look that tells the myth itself. According to the bible, there are two possible sources: the rain, and the sources of the abyss "mentioned in Proverbs 8:29:
Disposa heaven when I was there; When drew a circle on the surface of the abyss, when the clouds settled on the top, and that the sources of the abyss poured out forcefully when gave a limit to the sea, to ensure that water does not cross the edges when laid the foundations of the earth, I was at work with it (trans. LS)
Note in passing that, according to this passage, the earth is flat. Thus, water would have fallen through openings in the dome covering the earth, which is flat. This water would be attached to that from under the earth-disk.
After the Deluge
Outcome of the Flood also a series of problems that are presented here briefly:
Problem of genetic diversity: if there were only two animals how have they been able to reproduce without inbreeding problems? The same applies to Noah and his son. These four families are the only humans on the planet, they did not have the choice to reproduce them.
Mass migration: how the animals have found their habitat? For example, how kangaroos have earned Australia? And what do the animals have eaten during the first weeks after the flood? Carnivorous animals have been forced to eat some herbivores (two species), causing rapid extinction of all life on earth.
Problem of adaptive radiation: how species archetypal (or "[[baramin]") have they been able to generate as much diversity in such a short time (4000 years)?
No land on Earth! Following a comprehensive flood, there would be no black soil on the surface for plant growth. All debris was mixed randomly, there could not be a top layer composed of loose soil and fertile. As a result, the animals had nothing to eat.
Geological problems posed by a global deluge
Creationists often argue that the geological strata accumulated in a few hours, do not contain traces of activity (fourmillères, earthworms, roots, etc.) which would have required several years. It is indeed a prediction that should logically result from a global deluge.
Unfortunately (for jobs), hundreds of complete ecosystems have been discovered in strata supposed to have formed in minutes. Some creationists have tried to explain these tunnels by saying that animals and insects trying to escape landslides digging toward the surface to avoid being buried. If they were, there would only vertical tunnel, but almost all are parallel to geological strata.
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Labels: Creationism, Noémie Cournoyer, Religion and fanaticism
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