January 2007

(Remember the coming week is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity!)

This week, I received from the European Commission a book Energy Futures: The role of research and technological development (ISBN 92-79-01639-3; available at the EU Bookshop). It was disappointing, full of hot-air and bad PowerPoint-style figures. Some better books on this topic are Energy Beyond Oil by Paul Mobbs (ISBN 1-905237-00-6) and, from a more personal aspect, How We Can Save the Planet by Mayer Hillman and Tina Fawcett (ISBN 0-141-01692-2). Read the rest of this entry »

• South Bend: “Four Murdered Homeless Men Found Blocks from Our Apartment”, Dave Griffith writes. I knew one of the men slightly.
• Candy Scotsman:
  

  the candy inside this weird hatchet-wielding scotsman is completely disgusting, which has to be one of the most-often-true non-self-reflexive statements in the history of the english language.

• Even More Advice For Konnie Lukes: A crazy performance by Nat Needle. See also his possibly-crazy “proposal for the revival of the Worcester Memorial Auditorium.”
• Juice: Those guys who sell pomegranite juice have been doing ridiculous animal tests. So Whole Foods decided to stop selling it. So the juice guys stopped the tests.

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(Background: Darfur Genocide on Trial)

The brief for the appellants (former defendants) has been filed. It was about 38 pages long with a 29 page appendix.

The District Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia has until the 2nd of February to file its brief and then the appellants have 15 days after that to file a rebuttal brief if they so desire.

After this, the DC Court of Appeals will schedule oral arguments before three judges in DC. Their ruling will come sometime in the following six months.

Robert Hollander, the attorney who advised the defendants at trial, said that he believes this appeal has a strong chance of success. If it prevails, and the verdict is overturned, this will be a major victory for the campaign against genocide in Darfur and also for activists who hope to use the necessity defense to justify nonviolent civil disobedience.

Many lower courts have upheld necessity, but no court of appeal has done so for cases of civil diosbedience. The precendent would be very significant.

The (UK) House of Commons defence select committee took evidence yesterday from Bruce Kent who quoted the Pope about His Holiness’s objection against nuclear weapons, according to BBC‘s Today in Parliament. Sadly, the evidence has not been transcribed on the web (yet), but readers can take a look at the report in the Guardian.

Yesterday there was a discussion on a motion on Darfur at the Transitional Assembly in Belfast. There was a remarkable and encouraging consensus on this issue in the chamber.

Here are the Commons (Westminster Hall) debate and the Dáil debate on a similar topic late last November, and the debate in the European Parliament last September.

The Guardian has a thread of reports on arms trade being investigated by the (British) Serious Fraud Office. Readers might also want to check out the Campaign Against Arms Trade.

There was a column in yesterday’s paper about the public meeting regarding the Worcester Youth Center’s executive director using the n-word when dealing with youths.

The author mentions that Youth Center board of directors president Allen Fletcher rambled on about race for awhile, alienating many of those present, and then left.

What the author doesn’t mention is that, immediately before walking out of the meeting, Mr. Fletcher got into an argument with another person about what he (Mr. Fletcher) considered a racist (anti-white) incident at the Youth Center. (I got the impression there was a lot of background here, none of which I am privy to.) So it was even more dramatic than the column describes.

Also, to be fair to the members of the board who spoke after Mr. Fletcher, I had the impression that they leapt to his defense in spite of his comments, not because they necessarily agreed with what he said.

In any case, while this incident was the most memorable part of the night, it wasn’t the most important. It’s disappointing that the columnist gives two sentences to the comments of the non-board members at the meeting. Because that was what touched my heart. I am proud to live in the same city as these folks.

You don’t need me to tell you what they think. You can watch the uncut video of some interviews taped after the meeting. Bits of this were also part of the latest Worcester Indymedia news video.

Lest this post be too negative, here are three nice things: Drupal 5 is out, I started a page on playing with Worcester’s webcams, and my roommate insists I link to Faith Browser. So there you go.

I have not read MLK‘s autobiography; nor have I read M. K. Gandhi‘s The Story of My Experiments with Truth or Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom.

New Left Review 42 (November/December 2006) is out. Au Loong-Yu of Globalization Monitor said therein: “Chinese peasants can endure a tremendous amount. If they do become violent and burn your property, it is nearly always your fault.”; “Filipinos and Indonesians working in Hong Kong can mobilize in far greater numbers than local Chinese, which is rather shameful.”; and

In my view, supposed gains such as in the case of Wal-Mart are largely meaningless. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions pockets union dues without providing the workforce with any bargaining power. It presents a very convincing façade to organizations such as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, but does not permit workers to speak freely to foreign delegates. The official unions are not run for the benefit of the workers. Their Western counterparts should really oppose recognition of the ACFTU, and refuse to talk to them unless they allow people independent trade union rights.

JoAnn Wypijewski’s review on Louis Uchitelle’s book Disposable Americans is one of the many articles worth reading, as readers can expect from any issue of NLR.

All this (and today’s committee meeting of the local of my trade union, the University and College Union) reminded me: Our esteemed regular contributor, Adam Neil Maximilian Villani, was in a band that wrote the hymn “God Bless the Labor Movement”. I wonder if I should get permission to reprint it here. I am not praying for the Movement nearly enough!

A friend described the espresso at Worcester Polytechnic Institute with one word: “Ew.” So we had to check it out. WPI student “Drew” was our guide.

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Media: The Globe and T&G are cutting jobs. Michael Ball considers this. Worcester Indymedia debuts a video newscast about the Thursday Lincoln Square peace vigil and a community meeting in response to a controversy at the Youth Center.

Church: The Diocese of Worcester has reportedly cut its annual deficit by 90% in the past three years. I know nothing about the backstory here. In other news, at least one Vatican official digs Oscar Wilde:

Our role is to be a thorn in the flesh, to move people’s consciences and to tackle what today is the No 1 enemy of religion — indifference.

City: “Back Alleys Become Commons.” I’ve seen some of this in Worcester, and would like to see more. Over at WCCA, two new videos: the latest performance from teen guitarist Desiree Bassett, and a report from another peace vigil. Finally, it’s been suggested that someone compile a list of Worcester residents not running for Mayor. The web seems an obvious place for this. Suggestions?