This persecution of Gypsies is now the shame of EuropeUKWatch.net - 10 Jul 2008At the heart of Europe, police have begun fingerprinting children on the basis of their race – with barely a murmur of protest from European governments. Last week, Silvio Berlusconi’s new rightwing Italian administration announced plans to carry out a national registration of all the country’s estimated 150,000 Gypsies – Roma and Sinti people – whether Italian-born or migrants. Interior minister and leading light of the xenophobic Northern League, Roberto Maroni, insisted that taking fingerprints of all Roma, including children, was needed to “prevent begging” and, if necessary, remove the children from their parents. The ethnic fingerprinting drive is part of a broader crackdown on Italy’s three-and-a-half million migrants, most of them legal, carried out in an atmosphere of increasingly hysterical rhetoric about crime and security. But the reviled Roma, some of whose families have been in Italy since the middle ages, are taking the brunt of it. The aim is to close 700 Roma squatter camps and force their inhabitants out of the cities or the country. In the same week as Maroni was defending his racial registration plans in parliament, Italy’s highest appeal court ruled that it was acceptable to discriminate against Roma on the grounds that “all Gypsies were thieves”, rather than because of their “Gypsy nature”. Official roundups and forced closures of Roma camps have been punctuated with vigilante attacks. In May, rumours of an abduction of a baby girl by a Gypsy woman in Naples triggered an orgy of racist violence against Roma camps by thugs wielding iron bars, who torched caravans and drove Gypsies from their slum homes in dozens of assaults, orchestrated by the local mafia, the Camorra. The response of Berlusconi’s government to the firebombing and ethnic cleansing? “That is what happens when Gypsies steal babies,” shrugged Maroni; while fellow minister and Northern League leader Umberto Bossi declared: “The people do what the political class isn’t able to do.” This, it should be recalled, is taking place in a state that under Benito Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship played a willing part in the Holocaust, during which more than a million Gypsies are estimated to have died as “sub-humans” alongside the Nazi genocide perpetrated against the Jews. The first expulsions of Gypsies by Mussolini took place as early as 1926. Now the dictator’s political heirs, the “post-fascist” National Alliance, are coalition partners in Berlusconi’s government. In case anyone missed that, when the Alliance’s Gianni Alemanno was elected mayor of Rome in April, his supporters gave the fascist salute chanting “Duce” (equivalent to the German “Fhrer”) and Berlusconi enthused: “We are the new Falange” (the Spanish fascist party of General Franco). So you might have expected that Berlusconi would be taken to task for his vile treatment of the surviving Roma of Europe at the G8 summit in Japan this week by those fearless crusaders for human rights, George Bush and Gordon Brown. Far from it. Instead, Bush’s spokesman issued a grovelling apology to the Italian prime minister on Tuesday for a US briefing describing his “good friend” Berlusconi as “one of the most controversial leaders of Italy … hated by many”. It has been left to others to speak out against this eruption of naked, officially sanctioned racism. Catholic human rights organisations have damned the fingerprinting of Gypsies as “evoking painful memories”. The chief rabbi of Rome insisted it “must be stopped now”. Roma groups have demonstrated, wearing the black triangles Gypsies were forced to wear in the Nazi concentration camps, and anti-racist campaigners in Rome this week began to bombard the interior ministry with their own fingerprints in protest against the treatment of the Gypsies. But, given that the European establishment has long turned a blind eye to anti-Roma discrimination and violence in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania, along with the celebration of SS units that took part in the Holocaust in the Baltic states, perhaps it’s no surprise that they ignore the outrages now taking place in Italy. The rest of us cannot. There are particular reasons why Italy has been especially vulnerable in recent years to xenophobic and racist campaigns – even while crime is actually lower than it was in the 1990s (and below the level of Britain). The scale of recent immigration from the Balkans and Africa, an insecure and stagnant job market and the collapse of what was previously a powerful progressive and anti-fascist culture have all combined to create a particularly fearful and individualistic atmosphere, the leftwing Italian veteran Luciana Castellina argues. But the same phenomena can be seen to varying degrees all over Europe, where racist and Islamophobic parties are on the march: take the far right Swiss People’s party, which on Tuesday succeeded in collecting enough signatures to force a referendum on banning minarets throughout the country. In Britain, as Peter Oborne’s Channel 4 film on Islamophobia this week underlined, a mendacious media and political campaign has fed anti-Muslim hostility and violence since the 2005 London bombings – just as hostility to asylum seekers was whipped up in the 1990s. The social and democratic degeneration now reached by Italy can happen anywhere in the current climate. Italy has a further lesson for Britain and the rest of Europe. Berlusconi’s election victory in April was built on the collapse of confidence in the centre-left government of Romano Prodi, which stuck to a narrow neoliberal programme and miserably failed to deliver to its own voters. Meanwhile, centre-left politicians such as Walter Veltroni, the former mayor of Rome, pandered to, rather than challenged, the xenophobic agenda of the rightwing parties – tearing down Gypsy camps himself and absurdly claiming last year that 75% of all crime was committed by Romanians (often confused with Roma in Italy). What was needed instead, as in the case of other countries experiencing large-scale immigration, was public action to provide decent housing and jobs, clamp down on exploitation of migrant workers and support economic development in Europe’s neighbours. That opportunity has now been lost, as Italy is gripped by an ominous and retrograde spasm. The persecution of Gypsies is Italy’s shame – and a warning to us all.
News International Threatens Media Lens with Legal and Police ActionUKWatch.net - 10 Jul 2008On June 28 and July 3, Media Lens received repeated threats of both legal and police action from Alastair Brett, legal manager of News International?s Times Newspapers. Noam Chomsky described the threat, pithily, as ?pretty sick.? (Email, June 28, 2008) David Miller, professor of sociology at the University of Strathclyde and founder member of Spinwatch, commented: ?The response from the Times is an absolutely outrageous attempt to bully and censor you. It is not – unfortunately – surprising though, as the Murdoch empire is determined to attempt to snuff out those voices which try to bear witness to the truths of our age. Those that unmask naked power will be targeted by the Murdoch empire and its hench people. Maddox is the latest in a long line and is evidently a well networked member of the political elite – being a governor of the shadowy Ditchley Foundation. It is simply laughable that sending emails to complain about her distorted coverage constitutes harassment. Frankly, the drumbeat for war with Iran, to which she adds her voice, is much more like harassment, but of a whole nation. Its consequences are already more deadly serious for the people of Iran than any amount of emails from Medialens readers.? (Email, July 8, 2008) Brett claimed Times journalist Bronwen Maddox had been subject to ?vexatious and threatening? emails from Media Lens readers, which constituted ?harassment?. If this did not stop, Brett told us, he would notify the police who might wish to investigate the matter with a view to bringing a criminal prosecution. As former New Statesman editor, Peter Wilby, noted in his Guardian article on the Times threat, this was no joke – prosecution for criminal harassment ?can lead to six months’ imprisonment or, if a court order is breached, up to five years?. Maddox claimed to have received “dozens of emails, many abusive or threatening”. (Ibid) Beginning with our very first media alert, published seven years ago yesterday, we have always advised our readers to treat journalists with respect: ?The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.? As usual, many emails were copied or forwarded to us. We saw precisely one that could conceivably be described as ?vexatious and threatening?. The email read: “You have know [sic] idea who you are dealing with here. But I do like to help. I suggest that you read this [an inaccessible Facebook website entry] very, very carefully and fully. You have until 4pm Monday to respond to my original email or I will deem you to be fired.” This was also the only email offered up as evidence to Wilby for his Guardian piece. Unprompted by us, the offending emailer had earlier written to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, informing one executive: ?If you take more than 1 working day to reply to this email without a reason that I consider acceptable you can consider yourself fired.? He also wrote to around 40 senior UK editors and journalists in June describing Media Lens as ?a pack of absolute tossers?. Ironically, we have been subject to far worse abuse than Maddox and Brett, and at the hands of mainstream journalists. Before becoming editor of the Independent, the former Observer editor, Roger Alton, asked one of our readers: ?Have you just been told to write in by those c*nts at medialens?? (Email forwarded, June 1, 2006 – original uncensored. Changed here to avoid triggering spam filters) An online Observer article by Peter Beaumont described Media Lens as ?a curious willy-waving exercise… Think a train spotters’ club run by Uncle Joe Stalin.? (Beaumont, ?Microscope on Medialens,? June 18, 2006) We have always found these insults more chucklesome than vexatious. Chomsky was once asked for his reaction to the abuse he receives: “Man: ?Noam… You’ve been called a neo-Nazi, your books have been burned, you’ve been called anti-Israeli – don’t you get a bit upset by the way that your views are always distorted by the media and by intellectuals?? ?Noam: ?No why should I? I get called anything, I’m accused of everything you can think of: being a Communist propagandist, a Nazi propagandist, a pawn of freedom of speech, an anti-Semite, liar, whatever you want. Actually, I think that’s all a good sign. I mean, if you are a dissident, typically you are ignored. If you can’t be ignored, and you can’t be answered, you’re vilified – that’s obvious: no institution is going to help people undermine it. So I would only regard the kind of things you’re talking about as signs of progress.?” (Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power, The New Press, 2002, pp.204-5) Questions Of Copyright Brett also claimed that we would be acting unlawfully by publishing an email from Maddox without permission. We sought advice and one legal expert told us: ?The Times has no case over the confidentiality of email correspondence. Email correspondence, in itself, is not considered confidential – unless the precise contents of an email are confidential.? Another suggested that the law is less clear and that the Times might carry out its threat. Another reminded us: “Added weight to your cause is that the statements expressed and reproduced on your site represent important ?political commentary? (as opposed to artistic or commercial commentary). Political commentary is the most heavily protected type of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (via the Human Rights Act 1998 in the UK).” Another lawyer cited a barrister friend who nutshelled his view of the credibility of the Times?s case: “Tell them to f*ck off.? Douwe Korff, Professor of International Law at London Metropolitan University and an expert on the European Convention on Human Rights, commented: “I find the stance of the Times appalling in moral terms and flimsy at best in law. Their legal position, if endorsed by the courts, would severely limit freedom of the press over issues of major public concern. Is that what they want? I have little doubt their arguments would be kicked out by the UK courts if they pursued them here; they would certainly not be upheld by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. This is simply an attempt by a heavy-weight corporation to brow-beat a small freelance news operation that dares to be critical of its editorial line. It is quite scandalous. The Times should be ashamed of itself.” (Email to Media Lens, July 8, 2008) Having minimal resources for fighting a court case, either in terms of time or money, we decided to delete Maddox?s email from our media alert, ?Selling The Fireball?, as demanded. You can see the amended version here We also published a message on our website emphasising the need for respectful communication with journalists. Coincidentally, we had previously discussed the issue at length in ?Compassionate Media Activism,? an interview with former Buddhist monk, Matthew Bain, published this week on the new Elephant Skin website. The happy result of this episode is that a number of high-powered legal minds have offered us their services free of charge should the need arise in future. Peter Wilby wrote about the Times? threat in the Guardian: ?We journalists are accustomed to dishing it out, but have the thinnest of skins. At the merest hint of criticism, we are apt to turn to our lawyers. One reason for this professional sensitivity, I suppose, is that journalists are insecure egotists who like to occupy the high moral ground. Criticism assaults their sense of self-worth and, since their colleagues and potential employers are assiduous consumers of print, it may damage their future prospects.? Wilby quoted from the banned email, perhaps thereby indicating his own feelings on the matter. But his piece was ?balanced?. He criticised us for not providing a link to Maddox?s original article, for not urging readers to always read journalists? work before writing, and for not making clear to Maddox who we were when we wrote to her. He contrasted these ?failings? with the Times?s ?professional sensitivities?, which he suggested were over-developed. There was something missing from Wilby?s article, however: the human catastrophe that provides the moral backdrop to the entire debate. George Monbiot alluded to it in 2004 when he wrote: “the falsehoods reproduced by the media before the invasion of Iraq were massive and consequential: it is hard to see how Britain could have gone to war if the press had done its job.? Like the rest of the British media, the Times played a vital role in selling the public a pack of outrageous government lies that presented a totally non-existent and obviously risible ?threat? as somehow serious, plausible, and even (god help us!) urgent. Many of the most sophisticated philosophies of human culture contend that rational understanding is the result, not just of wisdom, but also of compassion. This is certainly true of the current discussion. Brett?s complaints that our actions caused distress to one of his journalists, and Wilby?s ?balanced? response, can seem almost reasonable, until we focus our minds and hearts (if we are able) on a single overwhelming fact. In significant part as a result of the actions of the British media, more than one million human beings are now lying dead in Iraq. In fact, the entire country has been subject to unrelenting destruction and slaughter by two decades of Western policy rooted in selfish greed. All of this has been buried in official propaganda, media silence and compromised ?balance? – it barely exists for the public. And of course there is more and worse. Almost unbelievably, the media?s Iran focus 2008 is near-identical to the media?s Iraq focus 2002-2003. It is entirely possible that hundreds of thousands of people will soon be lying dead in Iran as a result of sanctions and war, just across the border from Iraq. The point is that we are unable to perceive the obscenity of the media silence surrounding this mass slaughter if we are unable to perceive the truth of those one million Iraqi deaths. And we cannot experience the truth of those deaths unless we have some compassion for our victims. To understand what we have done to the Iraqi people, to feel something of their torment, casts the media silence in a very different light. It transforms, utterly, the actions of people like us trying to break that silence, as it does the actions of those who seek to stop us on the grounds that emailing journalists is ?not proper behaviour? and makes ?a mess of their inboxes?. (Brett) In truth, the steps we have suggested are pitiful in their timidity. We have always seen media activism as a small, energising contribution intended to inspire much wider, much more profound, political organisation and activism. What we have done to Iraq is not a video game; it is not a Hollywood invention. We really have destroyed an entire nation and brought misery to millions. About that, this whole country should not be writing a few emails; it should be in uproar.
