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The Watch reports on that evil dictator currently ruling Venezuela, Hugo Chavez:

Chavez has not engaged in bloody pogroms. He has not turned the army back into the instrument of rural terror that it used to be. Has not, to my knowledge, pursued the detain-and-torture policies of the man he tried to overthrow. He did not take over by force television stations that broadcast all-coup-all-the- time programming, or violently break up the resultant protests that halted virtually every aspect of national commerce. All in spite of the fact that he has, at this point, the full loyalty of the military behind him. Something that other leaders in similar situations have abused no end.

In fact, such restraint is exceptionally rare in developing nations with income inequalities as bad as Venezuela’s. In the mid-90s, Brazil tried to solve the problem of too many street children by having the police shoot them. And they were just looking for a meal and somewhere to sleep. So really, in a region plagued by drug murders, guerilla kidnappings, paramilitary death squads, brutal police forces, peasants being poisoned with aerial pesticides, civil wars, etc., is the house arrest of someone known to have been plotting a coup that big a deal? Come on.

(He seems to be doing better than the current U.S. government in fact…)

New to the left

Each day I list the blogs new to the linklist. Want to be added? Use the
form, Luke. Entry does not guarantee winning. No purchase necessary. Offer void where prohibited. You must either be a fiery liberal spirit or in the vanguard of the workers revolution to participate. At a pinch we’ll take dedicated left anarchists and the like as well. No wishy washy centrists need apply. The decision of the judges is final.

Pedantry

Everything that bored you to death in high school.

Shock and Awe

A two sided blog: “Shock” details assaults on civil rights and freedom, while “Awe” celebrates those heroes who stand up against oppression. By Kynn Bartlett.

Inland Anti-Empire

Progressive News and Views from Southwest Riverside County. By Kynn Bartlett

25 February 1941

This post is aimed at those who feel uncomfortable with Communists and Socialists leading the protests
against Bush’s War.

Amsterdam, 25 february, 1941. It had been almost a year since the Nazis had invaded and occupied The Netherlands.
It would be almost a year before the USA entered the war. Officially Germany and the USSR were still allies.
On the other side of the North sea was the only free fighting country in Europe, still fighting for survival.
the Jewish population of occupied Europe started to suspect the ultimate fate the Nazis and their cronies would
have in store for them. Just two days before, the first large scale razzias had been held in the traditionally
Jewish neighbourhoods of Amsterdam. Tensions were high. Already there had been sporadic resistance against the
Jewbaiting practised by the occupier and their Dutch collaborators. Members of the Dutch nazi party, the NSB had
been beaten up when they attempted to molest Jews. The razzias had been revenge for this.

But Amsterdam was never a city to cower in the face of brutality. Nor did it this time. On 25 februari, exactly
62 years ago, a general strike broke out in the city, to support its Jewish inhabitants. All trams stopped; those
who did attempt to ride were pelted with stones and chased back to their garages. Other council services also
striked and Amsterdam workers took to the streets, chasing the German ordnungspolizie out of the
city. The strike went beyond the Amsterdam borders, to other parts of the province of Noord-Holland. For a moment
it seemed it would be succesful and then the Nazis struck back, mercilessly. Several of the organisers and
participants were arrested, tortured and killed.

Who they were? They were Communist. It was the Dutch Communist Party who started the strike, who were amongst the
first to go into resistance against the occupiers and many of whom paid the ultimate price for it.

Today we remember them and all those others who fought beside them against the Nazi oppression during those late
february days in 1941.

Charlie’s Diary is worried about our children’s future:

Ivan Illich came up with some interesting and challenging observations on education (as well as some outright rubbish). One of his points that struck me as probably valid was that the social structure imposed by a school (circa 1960-1980) was designed to habituate the inmates to the conditions of working life in an industrial society for the majority of the population. That is, it resembled an abstraction of a factory: you had to be there at a set time, follow meaningless and arbitrary rules, perform tasks set by a supervisor, divide your time by the ringing of a bell, clock in and clock out to order, and so on. The system in this form dates to the 19th century, and after a few years in a school run along these lines the environment of an industrial age factory wouldn’t seem so strange.

If we apply Illich’s concept to what Manchester City is doing to its classrooms, we get a rather scary picture: unintentionally or otherwise, they are habituating their children to a regime of omnipresent surveillance. Children in the modern classroom may have internet access, but it’s censored (by filters that are as good at blocking access to reference sources on biology as they are at blocking access to porn). Physical contact is policed with inappropriate rigour and the full weight of law imposed, so that on occasion children as young as eight have been suspended from school or even prosecuted for “sexual assault” — playing in the playground with members of the opposite sex. Running and other forms of energetic activity which might result in injury (and a lawsuit) are forbidden. In a heightened atmosphere of social fear over child abductions, the vast majority of parents won’t even let a 14-year-old travel across their home town to go to school on their own; they’re chaperoned everywhere except among their schoolmates. And now we’re adding universal omnipresent surveillance.

Leanleft on the inherit fallacy of The Bell Curve:

Try it this way. Duke Ellington is a genius. Dr. Carver is a genius. John Rocker is a moron. History demonstrates that all races are capable of producing genius, and all races are capable of producing people so stupid you wonder if they will forget how to breathe, and of producing both in large numbers. In both “races”, history shows us that genius is rare but not unknown, stupidity is less rare, and the vast majority muddle along in the middle. From a practical stand point, it does not matter if the median white is dumber than the median black. As a society, you must allow for the geniuses of both groups to flower, and build institutions to contain the damage the morons of both groups could do. To do otherwise would be to doom your society, in the long run.

(Not to pick on Kevin overtly much, but the above is also a good example of the false dichotomy of US race relations, which is
almost entirely viewed in black and white: other ethnic/racial groups often seem to be ignored in discussions like this.)