Οι δρόμοι της βίας

του Κωστή Παπαϊωάννου

Τα Νέα
22 Μαρτίου 2012

Συγκλονιστικά στοιχεία παρουσιάστηκαν χτες από το νεοσύστατο Δίκτυο Καταγραφής Περιστατικών Ρατσιστικής Βίας. Η πρώτη πιλοτική καταγραφή κάλυψε έναν εξαιρετικά περιορισμένο γεωγραφικό χώρο (στην Αθήνα την περιοχή Ομόνοιας, την Πλατεία Αττικής, τον Αγιο Παντελεήμονα, επίσης ορισμένες περιοχές της Πάτρας). Αρα τα αποτελέσματα δεν αποτελούν ούτε καν την κορυφή του παγόβουνου. Τα θύματα φαίνονται απρόθυμα να καταγγείλουν τις επιθέσεις ακόμα και όταν έχουν νωπά τα σημάδια της βίας πάνω τους, είτε λόγω φόβου σύλληψής τους (εάν δεν έχουν νομιμοποιητικά έγγραφα) είτε επειδή το θεωρούν μάταιο. Και όμως, σε ένα τρίμηνο έχουμε την αναλυτική τεκμηριωμένη καταγραφή 61 βίαιων ρατσιστικών επιθέσεων. Συχνά έχουμε περισσότερους από έναν θύτες, συνήθως οργανωμένες εξτρεμιστικές ομάδες που προκαλούν βαριές ή απλές σωματικές βλάβες αλλά και την καταστροφή περιουσιακών στοιχείων ή καταστημάτων. Σημαντικό εύρημα είναι επίσης η αυξανόμενη ομαδική βία με τη συμμετοχή ανηλίκων. Καταγράφεται οργάνωση στον δημόσιο χώρο (πλατείες κ.λπ.) και χρήση αυτοσχέδιων κυρίως όπλων, ωστόσο δυνάμει φονικών. Επιπλέον, προκύπτει η πρακτική «περιπολίας» από μαυροφορεμένους μοτοσικλετιστές, με κράνη ή καλυμμένο πρόσωπο, οι οποίοι επιτίθενται εν κινήσει, συνήθως σε στάσεις λεωφορείων. Αλλες ομάδες, συχνά με τη συμμετοχή γυναικών, χρησιμοποιούν μεγαλόσωμους σκύλους για εκφοβισμό. Οι επιθέσεις κατά των γυναικών ενέχουν σαφή απειλή της γενετήσιας αξιοπρέπειάς τους. Ειδική κατηγορία, τέλος, αποτελούν τα πολλά περιστατικά όπου συνδέεται η αστυνομική με τη ρατσιστική βία, όταν ένστολοι, κατά την άσκηση των καθηκόντων τους και σε επιχειρήσεις ρουτίνας, καταφεύγουν σε έκνομες ενέργειες και πρακτικές άσκησης βίας.

Είναι γνωστό πως σπανίως τα περιστατικά ρατσιστικής βίας καταγγέλλονται και ακόμα σπανιότερα διερευνώνται. Οι ένοχοι παραμένουν στη συντριπτική πλειονότητα ασύλληπτοι, αν και πολλές από τις εγκληματικές τους πράξεις διώκονται αυτεπάγγελτα, ενώ όταν προσαχθούν αφήνονται σύντομα ελεύθεροι. Η καταδίκη για εγκλήματα με ρατσιστικά κίνητρα είναι έννοια άγνωστη στη χώρα μας. Τα παραπάνω αποκτούν ιδιαίτερη σημασία στη δίνη της μεγάλης οικονομικής και κοινωνικής κρίσης. Η υποβάθμιση και η αυξημένη παραβατικότητα σε περιοχές με μεγάλο αριθμό περιθωριοποιημένων μεταναστών και προσφύγων αποτελούν πρόσφορο έδαφος για εντάσεις, ξενοφοβικές συμπεριφορές και ανοχή απέναντι στη ρατσιστική βία.

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Mything the point on Sweden

by Casey Lartigue, Jr.

Korea Times
March 13, 2012

The message was clear: "Don’t do what we’re doing" when it comes to welfare and economic policies.

That’s what (former) Senator Franco Debendetti and lawyer Alessandro De Nicola of Italy, and University of Athens professor Aristides Hatzis said in policy forums organized by the Center for Free Enterprise (CFE) in Seoul last August and October. Professor Hatzis took it one step further, in a speech that caught the attention of Korean president Lee Myung-bak: "If you see Greece doing something, then do the opposite thing."

"But what about Sweden" was the response from those pushing for universal welfare policies in Korea. That has become the common refrain from politicians and academics around the world for several decades in the West and recently in Korea. "What about Sweden?"

With that in mind, CFE invited Johnny Munkhammar, a member of the Moderate Party in the Parliament of Sweden, to Seoul from March 5 to 7. Munkhammar surprised the audience and Korean media with his talk, "Sweden's Welfare State: Fact and Fiction."

Munkhammar said the lesson to learn is that free markets created success in Sweden and that the country’s turn to bigger government led to an array of problems that Sweden is trying to recover from now. He cites the 1870s as a turning point in Swedish history, when, rather than hiding behind trade protectionism and the "infant industry" argument favored by popular Korean author Chang Ha-joon, Sweden opened its economy to the world with free trade and economic freedom.

That continued for a century until the 1970s when the welfare state was greatly expanded and increased regulations and taxes were imposed on the economy. Sweden began to reverse that in the 1990s, implementing reforms that would have made Adam Smith proud: state-owned enterprises were sold; public monopolies in health and education were replaced with free competition; product and financial markets were deregulated; and the central bank was made independent.

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Guantanamo: "Whatever the Government Says..."

by Geoffrey R. Stone

Huffington Post
March 13, 2012

Nations at war have always had the legal authority to detain captured enemy soldiers ("prisoners of war") to prevent them from returning to the battlefield. Similarly, the U.S. has the legal authority to detain captured "enemy combatants" in the War on Terror in order to ensure the safety of the nation.

Central to the legality (and morality) of this authority, though, is the determination that the person detained is, in fact, an enemy soldier or combatant. In conventional warfare, this is usually easy, because soldiers wear uniforms. In the War on Terror, however, enemy combatants do not wear uniforms. This is a problem, because it requires us to determine in some fair and reasonable manner whether particular individuals are in fact affiliated with the enemy. It would be unjust and counter-productive for us to detain people who are not actually a threat to us but were innocently swept up in the inevitable chaos of war.

In part for this reason, the Supreme Court has held that individuals detained at Guantanamo have the right to habeas corpus -- that is, they have the right to ask a federal court to determine whether they are being lawfully held. Put simply, the military cannot legally detain an individual at Guantanamo unless it can show by a "preponderance of the evidence" that he is in fact an enemy combatant.

This is, of course, a much more lenient standard than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" requirement we apply in criminal cases, but it is designed to ensure that there is at least a reasonable factual basis for holding an individual indefinitely in a military prison thousands of miles from his home.

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What You Lose When You Sign That Donor Card

by Dick Teresi

Wall Street Journal
March 13, 2012

The last time I renewed my driver's license, the clerk at the DMV asked if she should check me off as an organ donor. I said no. She looked at me and asked again. I said, "No. Just check the box that says, 'I am a heartless, selfish bastard.'"

Becoming an organ donor seems like a win-win situation. Some 3.3 people on the transplant waiting list will have their lives extended by your gift (3.3 is the average yield of solid organs per donor). You're a hero, and at no real cost, apparently.

But what are you giving up when you check the donor box on your license? Your organs, of course—but much more. You're also giving up your right to informed consent. Doctors don't have to tell you or your relatives what they will do to your body during an organ harvest operation because you'll be dead, with no legal rights.

The most likely donors are victims of head trauma (from, say, a car or motorcycle accident), spontaneous bleeding in the head, or an aneurysm—patients who can be ruled dead based on brain-death criteria. But brain deaths are estimated to be just around 1% of the total. Everyone else dies from failure of the heart, circulation and breathing, which leads the organs to deteriorate quickly.

The current criteria on brain death were set by a Harvard Medical School committee in 1968, at a time when organ transplantation was making great strides. In 1981, the Uniform Determination of Death Act made brain death a legal form of death in all 50 states.

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Free speech under fire

by Jonathan Turley

Los Angeles Times
March 9, 2012

The recent exchange between an atheist and a judge in a small courtroom in rural Pennsylvania could have come out of a Dickens novel. Magisterial District Judge Mark Martin was hearing a case in which an irate Muslim stood accused of attacking an atheist, Ernest Perce, because he was wearing a "Zombie Mohammed" costume on Halloween. Although the judge had "no doubt that the incident occurred," he dismissed the charge of criminal harassment against the Muslim and proceeded to browbeat Perce. Martin explained that such a costume would have led to Perce's execution in many countries under sharia, or Islamic law, and added that Perce's conduct fell "way outside your bounds of 1st Amendment rights."

The case has caused a national outcry, with many claiming that Martin was applying sharia law over the Constitution — a baseless and unfair claim. But while the ruling certainly doesn't suggest that an American caliphate has gained a foothold in American courts, it was nevertheless part of a disturbing trend. The conflict in Cumberland County between free speech and religious rights is being played out in courts around the world, and free speech is losing.

Perce was marching in a parade with a fellow atheist dressed as a "Zombie Pope" when he encountered Talaag Elbayomy, who was outraged by the insult to the prophet. The confrontation was captured on Perce's cellphone. Nevertheless, Martin dismissed the charge against Elbayomy. Then he turned to Perce, accusing him of acting like a "doofus." Martin said: "It's unfortunate that some people use the 1st Amendment to deliberately provoke others. I don't think that's what our forefathers intended."

For many, the case confirmed long-standing fears that sharia law is coming to this country. The alarmists note that in January, a federal court struck down an Oklahoma law that would have barred citing sharia law in state courts. But there is no threat of that, and certainly not in Oklahoma, which has fewer than 6,000 Muslims in the entire state. Rather, the campaign against sharia law has distracted the public from the very real threat to free speech growing throughout the West.

To put it simply, Western nations appear to have fallen out of love with free speech and are criminalizing more and more kinds of speech through the passage of laws banning hate speech, blasphemy and discriminatory language. Ironically, these laws are defended as fighting for tolerance and pluralism.

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I have no ancestors of that gifted people

Letters of Note
March 7, 2012

In 1938, some months after the initial publication of The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien and his British publisher, Stanley Unwin, opened talks with Rütten & Loening, a Berlin-based publishing house who were keen to translate the novel for the German market. All was going well until, in July, they wrote to Tolkien and asked for proof of his Aryan descent. Tolkien was furious, and forwarded their letter to his publisher along with two possible replies — one in which their question was delicately side-stepped, and one, seen below, in which Tolkien made his displeasure known with considerable style.

It is unknown which reply was sent.

(Source: The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien; Image: Tolkien in 1955, via; Thanks to William Vodrey.)

25 July 1938
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and

remain yours faithfully,

J. R. R. Tolkien

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Μονοπώλιο θανάτου;

του Νίκου Δήμου

Lifo
7 Μαρτίου 2012

Καλά να είναι δύσκολες οι επιλογές στη ζωή - αλλά να είναι ακόμα δυσκολότερες οι μεταθανάτιες;

Σε αυτήν τη χώρα, όπου οι ελευθερίες όλο και στενεύουν, όπου δανειστές, πολιτικοί, συνδικαλιστές, μας πιέζουν από κάθε πλευρά, έρχονται τώρα αρχιερείς και Φαρισαίοι να μας επιβάλουν τη μεταθανάτια μοίρα μας.

Την ιστορία ίσως την έχετε ακούσει. Ομόφωνα το Δημοτικό Συμβούλιο Μαρκόπουλου είχε αποφασίσει τη δημιουργία αποτεφρωτηρίου νεκρών. Ομόφωνα.

(Υπενθυμίζω πως ο σχετικός νόμος έχει ψηφιστεί εδώ κι έξι χρόνια. Και όλα τα σχετικά διατάγματα, υπουργικές αποφάσεις κι ερμηνευτικές εγκύκλιοι είναι έτοιμες από καιρό).

Αλλά ο Μητροπολίτης Μεσογαίας Νικόλαος, ο θεωρούμενος και εκσυγχρονιστής, αλλιώς αποφάσισε. Από τον άμβωνα ξεσήκωσε τους χριστιανούς να πολεμήσουν: «Με πρόφαση τα όποια οικονομικά οφέλη, εντελώς αβίαστα κάποιοι επιδιώκουν να εισαγάγουν πρωτόγνωρα ήθη, ποδοπατώντας διαχρονικές, ιερές παραδόσεις και περιφρονώντας την εκκλησιαστική μας συνείδηση».

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