New probe into racist killing of NRI waiter
From Prasun Sonwalkar
London, Jan 31 (PTI) Over 13 years after he was killed, the Scotland Police have been instructed to reopen the probe into the racist killing of Indian origin waiter Surjit Singh Chhokar, who was killed in a town near Glasgow in 1998.
No one was convicted after two trials at the time, even though three persons were arrested.
The reinvestigation has been ordered following the recent reform of Scotland”s ancient double jeopardy law, which means that the men originally accused of the murder could face a retrial.
The decision to investigate the Chhokar”s killing was announced during a meeting between his family and the Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland and the Solicitor General for Scotland, Lesley Thomson, in Edinburgh last week.
Chhokar, 32, died of multiple wounds in Overtown, North Lanarfkshire, on 4 November 1998.
One of the arrested persons, Ronnie Coulter, was acquitted in 1999 after blaming his nephew Andrew Coulter and another man, David Montgomery, for the murder.
Coulter and Montgomery, faced trial in 2000 but were also cleared after they claimed Ronnie had killed Chhokar.
The case has been likened to that of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, whose racist killing in London 1993 led to prolonged inquiries and charges of the police being institutionally racist.
Two inquiries were ordered in the aftermath of failed prosecutions.
John Terry due in court over racist language charge
England football captain John Terry is due before West London Magistrates’ Court later charged with using racist language towards Queen Park Rangers player Anton Ferdinand.
The Chelsea captain is alleged to have made racist comments during a Premier League game on 23 October last year.
The Crown Prosecution Service said Mr Terry, 31, was accused of a racially-aggravated public order offence.
He has denied the charge and said he had campaigned against racism.
Police questioned Mr Terry under caution in November and a file on the matter was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service at the beginning of December.
The decision to charge Mr Terry was taken after police received a complaint from a member of the public.
The maximum sentence for the offence is a fine of £2,500.
As a summary offence under the Crime and Disorder Act, it will be fully heard in a magistrates’ court.
Yesterday the German daily Die Welt reported that detectives have information that the trio of German neo-Nazis who murdered at least nine immigrants and one police officer between 2000 and 2007 planned to flee to the Republic of South Africa. Police say that Beate Zschäpe was against the idea. Zschäpe, the only member of the “National Socialist Underground” (NSU) still alive, is now in custody.Die Welt cites testimony from a police informer on the German ultra-right from April 2001, just after the group had committed its first attacks, about their plans to move to South Africa. “While [Uwe] Böhnhardt and [Uwe] Mundlos agreed with the plan and worked on getting South African permanent residence, Zschäpe did not want to go abroad and planned to report them to authorities after their departure,” the informer said.
After Zschäpe vetoed the idea, the other members of the NSU remained in Germany. According to the available information, they did not leave the country until the group was discovered last November, when Böhnhardt and Mundlos committed suicide to avoid arrest and their fellow-traveler turned herself in to police. Die Welt reports there was speculation that the group lived for quite some time in either Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic or Hungary, but the paper now reports that this seems to have been almost entirely ruled out. The authorities are assuming that the NSU members hid out in various apartments in the Saxon region on the border with the Czech Republic. Der Spiegel magazine also devoted yesterday’s issue to the case of the neo-Nazi murders. The magazine reports that police officers spoke with Zschäpe in 2007 in the Saxon town of Zwickau, where the trio was hiding last. Zschäpe gave them a false name and birth date and denied living in the apartment they were investigating. The magazine reports that the ultra-right assassins moved to their last hiding place shortly afterward.
In addition to the murders of immigrants and a police officer, the NSU was responsible for two bomb attacks in Turkish neighborhoods of Cologne in 2001 and 2004, resulting in 23 injuries. They were also behind 14 bank robberies. The group claimed responsibility for the crimes in a video recording discovered by detectives last year.
Israel says it will deport South Sudanese migrants
Now that their country has gained independence, thousands of migrants from South Sudan must leave Israel or face deportation, Israel’s Interior Ministry said Tuesday.
Some 7,000 South Sudanese are believed to be in Israel, part of a larger influx of some 50,000 African economic migrants and asylum seekers who have poured into the country in recent years.
Sabine Haddad, an Interior Ministry spokeswoman, said the South Sudanese migrants will be offered voluntary deportations that include a $1,300 grant and a plane ticket home. After March 31, those caught will be deported, she said.
“Now that South Sudan has become an independent state, it is time for you to return to your homeland,” a ministry statement said.
South Sudan gained independence from Sudan last July.
William Tall of the United Nation‘s High Commission on Refugees said Israel must individually screen asylum applications by South Sudanese to see if they are genuine refugees. Otherwise, Tall said, Israel would be in violation of agreements it signed about asylum seekers.
With the help of paid smugglers, Africans have been sneaking into Israel through its porous border with Egypt‘s Sinai desert since 2005.
Their numbers have surged as word spread of safety and job opportunities in the relatively prosperous Jewish state
. Most have come from Sudan and Eritrea, where many fled persecution and abuse.
Israel has offered protected status to the Sudanese and Eritreans because of abuses there, allowing them to stay and work in Israel. Many have found their way to the impoverished southern neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, an area with so many migrants that Israelis have labeled it “little Africa.”
The influx has sparked a national debate. Some Israelis fear the migrants will compromise the state’s Jewish character and have become an economic and social burden. Others don’t want their country, which grew out of the Nazi genocide of Jews in World War II, to turn away people escaping persecution.
Israel is trying to cut down on infiltration of migrants by building a a 150-mile (250-kilometer) barrier along the border with Egypt, expanding its detention facility and threatening stiff punishments to people who assist or employ them.
Leonardo da Vinci‘s drawing of a male figure perfectly inscribed in a circle and square, known as the “Vitruvian Man,” illustrates what he believed to be a divine connection between the human form and the universe. Beloved for its beauty and symbolic power, it is one of the most famous images in the world. However, new research suggests that the work, which dates to 1490, may be a copy of an earlier drawing by Leonardo’s friend.
Another illustration of a divinely proportioned man — the subject is Christ-like, but the setting is strikingly similar to Leonardo’s — has been discovered in a forgotten manuscript in Ferrara, Italy.
Both drawings are depictions of a passage written 1,500 years earlier by Vitruvius, an ancient Roman architect, in which he describes a man’s body fitting perfectly inside a circle (the divine symbol) and inside a square (the earthly symbol). It was a geometric interpretation of the ancient belief that man is a “microcosm”: a miniature embodiment of the whole universe. Leonardo and other scholars revived this vainglorious notion during the Italian Renaissance.
After decades of study, Claudio Sgarbi, an Italian architectural historian who discovered the lesser known illustration of the Vitruvian man in 1986, now believes it to be the work of Giacomo Andrea de Ferrara, a Renaissance architect, expert on Vitruvius, and close friend of Leonardo’s. What’s more, Sgarbi believes Giacomo Andrea probably drew his Vitruvian man first, though the two men are likely to have discussed their mutual efforts.
Sgarbi will lay out his arguments in a volume of academic papers to be published this winter, Smithsonian Magazine reports.
The key arguments are as follows: In Leonardo’s writings, he mentions “Giacomo Andrea’s Vitruvius” — seemingly a direct reference to the illustrated Ferrara manuscript. Secondly, Leonardo had dinner with Giacomo Andrea in July 1490, the year in which both men are thought to have drawn their Vitruvian men. Experts believe Leonardo would have probed Giacomo Andrea’s knowledge of Vitruvius when they met. And though both drawings interpret Vitruvius’ words similarly, Leonardo’s is perfectly executed, while Giacomo Andrea’s is full of false starts and revisions, none of which would have been necessary if he had simply copied Leonardo’s depiction. [Early Christian Lead Codices Now Called Fakes]
Other scholars find the arguments convincing.
“I find Sgarbi’s argument exciting and very seductive, to say the least,” said Indra McEwen, an architectural historian at Concordia University who has written extensively about the works of Vitruvius. “But [I] would opt for the view that Giacomo Andrea and Leonardo worked in tandem, rather than Leonardo basing his drawing on Andrea’s.”
Rather than competitors, the two Renaissance men were colleagues working together to bring a beautiful, ancient idea back to life.
“Whose was the ‘original’ drawing is a non-question as far as I’m concerned. Much as it is a preoccupation of our own time, I don’t think it would have been an issue in Leonardo’s day,” McEwen told Life’s Little Mysteries.
Patrice Le Floch-Prigent, an anatomist at the University of Versailles in France who has analyzed the anatomical correctness of Leonardo’s famous work, noted that, for both drawings, “the source is Vitruvius.”
Furthermore, regardless of their chronology, Leonardo’s work is an improvement on Giacomo Andrea’s, McEwen said: “Leonardo is by far the superior draftsman, with a far superior understanding of anatomy.”
Leonardo’s is also more faithful to the text, she explained.
“Nowhere does Vitruvius say that the man is positioned inside the circle and the square at the same time. ‘A man lying flat on his back, can be circumscribed by a circle if his hands and feet are outstretched,’ writes Vitruvius. Similarly, his height is equal to his arm span, ‘just as in areas that have been squared with a set square.’”
Giacomo Andrea’s figure has only one set of arms and legs, which are simultaneously circumscribed by a circle and outlined by a square, while “Leonardo deals with [the two propositions] by having the position of his man’s arms and legs change. That, I would have to admit, makes his drawing a closer approximation to the textual description than Giacomo Andrea’s,” McEwen wrote.
One thing is certain. The better Vitruvian man gained international fame, while the simpler but possibly more original one was left to languish in a library for five centuries. That may have to do with the very different fates met by Leonardo and Giacomo Andrea. When the French invaded Milan in 1499, the former fled tosafety and went on to achieve eternal renown. The latter stayed in Milan and was hanged, drawn and quartered by the French, and largely forgotten by history — until now.
Wolves attacking livestock, say ranchers
Ranchers in the North Thompson say wolves have moved into their area and are preying on livestock.
Brenda Jones owns a ranch in Louis Creek, B.C., north of Kamloops. She says wolves were never a problem until about two years ago.
Now, the predators regularly prey on her herd.
“There’s tracks everywhere, there’s scat everywhere. Our cows are nervous all the time,” said Jones.
“We had a cow come that had been chewed on, like the whole back end had been ripped and the tail had broken off.”
She says the threat leaves her livestock in constant fear.
“They’re quiet, they hide in the side of the road in the bushes where they can’t see them and they don’t move, because if they move the wolves can find them. They just know that they are being watched all the time,” said Jones.
She says the stress means her calves aren’t putting on weight as they should. She estimates her ranch lost more than $7,000 last year because lighter calves went to market.
Conservation officer Kevin Van Damme says there have been no official wolf counts in the area but he says, anecdotally, that does seem to be the case
“Hunters, loggers and ranchers, they are seeing more wolves. They are seeing more tracks more signs than they have in the past years.”
In August, the provincial government declared an open season on wolves in the Cariboo-Chilcotin.
The decision came as a relief to ranchers in that area, who said the predators were preying on their herds, but the open hunting season doesn’t extend to the North Thompson
Call to drop anti-Islam speaker
WASHINGTON – A leading Muslim advocacy organisation Monday joined a coalition of Iraq and Afghanistan ex-servicemen, in asking the US Military Academy at West Point to retract an invitation to a retired American general, who is known for his anti-Islam, to speak to cadets during a national prayer breakfast next month. He is scheduled to speak at the West Point event on February 8. In a letter, sent to Lieutenant General David Huntoon, Nihad Awad wrote in part:“In his public speeches, Gen. Boykin promotes a host of false and misleading ‘facts’ about Islam.”
THIS election means that the circle is now complete. And the question at this time is: what are the aims of this opposition and its leaders?
It is a fight for an idea – a Weltanschanung: and in the forefront stands a fundamental principle: Men do not exist for the State, the State exists for men. First and far above all else stands the idea of the people: the State is a form of organization of this people, and the meaning and the purpose of the State are through this form of organization to assure the life of the people. And from this there arises a new mode of thought and thus necessarily a new political method.
We say: a new mode of thought. Today our whole official political outlook is rooted in the view that the State must be maintained because the State in itself is the essential thing; we, on the other hand, maintain that the State in its form has a definite purpose to fulfill and the moment that it fails to fulfill its purpose the form stands condemned. Above everything stands the purpose to maintain the nation’s life – that is the essential thing and one should not speak of a law for the protection of the State but for the protection of the nation: it is of this protection that one must think…. In the place of this rigid formal organization – the State – must be set the living organism – the people. Then all action is given a new untrammelled freedom: all the formal fetters which can today be imposed on men become immoral directly they fail to maintain the people, because that is the highest purpose in life and the aim of all reasonable thought and action.
If today our action employs among its different weapons that of Parliament, that is not to say that parliamentary parties exist only for parliamentary ends. For us Parliament is not an end in itself, but merely a means to an end . . . we are not on principle a parliamentary party – that would be a contradiction of our whole outlook – WE ARE A PARLIAMENTARY PARTY BY COMPULSION, UNDER CONSTRAINT, AND THAT COMPULSION IS THE CONSTITUTION. The Constitution compels us to use this means. It does not compel us to wish for a particular goal, it only prescribes a way – a method, and, I repeat, we follow this way legally, in accordance with the Constitution: by the way laid down through the Constitution we advance towards the purposes which we have set before us.
Never can Constitutions determine for all time the content of a purpose, especially when this content is not identical with the vital rights of a people. If today the Constitution admits for its protection laws which are headed, ‘Laws for the Protection of the Republic,’ then it is demonstrated that the most which our present Constitution can prescribe is nothing but the protection and the maintenance of a form, and that does not touch the maintenance of the nation, of a people. This purpose is therefore free: this is the goal which we proclaim and to which we shall attain. . .
From blood, authority of personality, and a fighting spirit springs that value which alone entitles a people to look around with glad hope, and that alone is also the condition for the life which men then desire. And when that is realized, then that too is realized for which today the political parties strive: prosperity, happiness of the individual, family-life, etc. First will come honor and then freedom, and from both of these happiness, prosperity, life: in a word, that state of things will return which we Germans perhaps dimly saw before the War, when individuals can once more live with joy in their hearts because life has a meaning and a purpose, because the close of life is then not in itself the end, since there will be an endless chain of generations to follow: man will know that what we create will not sink into Orcus but will pass to his children and to his children’s children. And so this victory which we have just won is nothing else than the winning of a new weapon for our fight…. IT IS NOT FOR SEATS IN PARLIAMENT THAT WE FIGHT, BUT WE WIN SEATS IN PARLIAMENT IN ORDER THAT ONE DAY WE MAY BE ABLE TO LIBERATE THE GERMAN PEOPLE….
Writing Jews Out of History: The Sounds of Silence
Last Friday was Holocaust Remembrance Day. A British associate of mine sent me the link to Archbishop Rowan Williams‘ message, which was distributed to honor that occasion. Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is Primate of All England and spokesperson for the worldwide Anglican Communion, which includes the Episcopal Church. He is a man of extraordinary good will and an advocate for religious diversity. And yet, he managed to get through almost his entire speech without mentioning the word “Jew.” This is astounding! How does one commemorate the Holocaust and fail to mention the major group that was singled out for obliteration?
The Archbishop’s message focused on a powerful theme: the need to speak up for the “stranger” and the “neighbor” and to turn “strangers” into “neighbors.” But, in many of the countries in which they were murdered, Jews were not “strangers.” They were “neighbors” — fully assimilated Germans, Poles, French, Dutch, Greeks, Scandinavians.
The only group Archbishop Williams singled out in his remarks was survivors of contemporary genocides whom he encountered on a recent visit to the Congo. All the horrific genocides that followed the Holocaust must be acknowledged. But on Holocaust Remembrance Day, this doesn’t justify omitting any reference to the Holocaust against the Jews. (It was not until the end of Archbishop Williams’ remarks that Jews were mentioned, and that was only in an oblique reference to the good work of the Council of Christians and Jews in the U.K.)
Archbishop Rowan’s omission is only the most recent in a worrisome trend. In Rostov-on-Don in Russia, a new Holocaust memorial plaque fails to mention Jews. In Poland, the Gorodische Holocaust memorial makes no mention of Jews. Yet, it was in the notorious concentration camps of that country — Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka — that most of the 6 million murdered Jews were systematically wiped out during the Holocaust. Ironically, when Auschwitz was first turned into a museum in 1947, there was no mention of Jews in the official decree. It simply stated: “On the site of the former Nazi concentration camp, a monument to the martyrdom of the Polish nation and of other nations is to be erected for all time to come.”
In explaining the impact of this trend, it wasn’t a scholar or Holocaust memoirist who made one of the most eloquent statements that I’ve seen. It was Polin Travel, a guided tour and genealogy company. “The striking thing is that when you visit those places today, almost nothing is visible of those camps’ former existence. The German crime was not only the murder of those people, but also the eradication of the memory of their very existence and the manner in which they were killed. This was meant to be the perfect crime, and its cover-up took a tremendous effort.”
This poignant observation applies equally to Archbishop Williams’ well-meaning statement. Such omissions make us complicit in the eradication of memory.
Failing to acknowledge the unique targeting of the Jews in the Holocaust effectively does what the Nazis failed to do. It eradicates the Jews by writing them out of history. This seems to reflect a new form of political correctness. In the interest of “inclusivity,” we create equivalence between the Holocaust against the Jews and the wide net in which Hitler snared so many other victims.
Holocaust denial runs along a continuum. At one end are the mad rantings of Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who, contrary to vast troves of historical evidence, denies that the Holocaust occurred at all. At the other end are the well-meaning people who acknowledge that something terrible happened, but gloss over the primary target of that evil — the Jews. This end of the continuum is, in some ways, more insidious than the extreme position of our Iranian nemesis, because it seems so benign and egalitarian.
The world stood silent when 6 million Jews were annihilated. In his Holocaust Memorial Day remarks, Archbishop Williams speaks movingly about the need to speak up. But by omitting any mention of Jewish suffering during the Holocaust, we are once again committing the sin of silence.
Norse God LOKI
God of Hokey Pokey and one of the world’s major Trickster Gods.
In his early days LOKI was a rascal; crafty, sneaky, silly and malicious — a Loki The Lad. The son of two Giants, he was so outrageously mischievous that he even sneaked his way into becoming a God. He was the first Anti-Hero, quick-witting his way out of the tight corners and confrontations caused by his misdeeds. But as time wore on he became increasingly nasty.
His first escapade was a very rampant romp. When the Gods were struggling to build ASGARD, they found they’d run out of funds. Which is not surprising as money and banks hadn’t been invented yet. All the basic construction had been completed but they needed a large protective wall to keep the riff-raff out.
LOKI came up with the plan of contracting a Giant to do the job. As payment, the Giant asked for the Sun and Moon and also the GoddessFREYA if the work was completed to schedule. The Gods were not too sure. “Don’t worry,” advised LOKI. “He’ll never manage it on his own, even if he works night and day — and the deal will be off. We’ll let him keep the wheelbarrow or something.”
Alas, the Giant was not on his own. He had a huge stallion called Svadilfari, which could haul boulders like there was no tomorrow. With three days to go, FREYA was in distress and the Gods aghast.
Now LOKI, like fire and smoke, was a shape-changer from the word go. A talent he’d developed to make him the shiftiest transmogrifier of all time — from flea to fish to fast flying feathers in 0.3 seconds. So he changed himself into a mare and seduced the Giant’s stallion. By whinnying and prancing off into the woods, Svadilfari was led far away from the stone pile.
With his horse missing, the Giant didn’t quite make the schedule. Seething with rage, he tried to take FREYA by force — until THORcracked his skull with his hammer.
Meanwhile LOKI was having a fine old time frolicking in the fields. In fact he became pregnant, and decided to sample the joys of motherhood. He gave birth to a fine baby boy stallion with eight legs. He gave this as a gift to ODIN and it was called SLEIPNIR.
LOKI was now well in with top God ODIN and his son THOR, with whom he shared numerous adventures. THOR, the perfect fall guy, was persuaded to appear in drag as the prospective bride of a giant and other embarrassments. THOR could always be relied on to supply the muscle when corners became too tight for trickery.
LOKI had many run-ins with the dwarves, which he cheated at any opportunity until they stitched him up. Literally. They stitched his mouth shut, which kept him quiet for quite some time.
LOKI never missed an opportunity to take advantage of any Goddess, despite already having had three wives. The first not many folk know about, and it is only by assiduous research we have discovered GLUT, who bore two daughters EINMYRIA and EISA.
Next was ANGRBODA, a giantess who spawned FENRIR the Giant Wolf, JORMUNGAND the Earth-encircling Serpent, and HEL the Underworld Goddess. Finally there was his wife SIGYN, who produced their ill-fated sons NARVI and VALI(2).
For further LOKI adventures, click your way to ANDVARI, FAFNIR,GEIRROD, THIASSI and BALDUR. And check out our Loki Trickster Wearables! We are still investigating the mysterious theft ofFREYA‘s precious necklace Brisingamen when a flea was seen to flee the scene. As a well-known God of bed-hopping, fingers of suspicion are already pointing at you-know-who.
As the most scandalous God of all time, LOKI was seldom out of the Nordic News or the Sunday Runes. But his tricks came to an end after causing the death of BALDUR. Now he’s trapped in eternal punishment until RAGNAROK rolls around.
