Texting + driving = death

This video, produced by Brynmawr filmmaker Peter Watkins-Hughes in conjunction with Gwent Police and Tredegar Comprehensive School, has quickly become an international viral hit. Featuring young women from the school it has very little dialogue so has featured on blogs all over the world because the visual message is extremely impactful (literally).

'Cow' tells the tale of Cassie Cowen, ‘Cow’ to her friends, whose life is changed forever after an horrific crash.

Since the film had its premiere in June, it has attracted attention from the BBC and it is hope the film will become part of the core schools programme across Wales and the UK.

This is the viral hit but it's only one part of a 30' short film which covers the crash itself and its emotional aftermath.



Texting while driving makes you more than five times as likely to end up in an accident.

I understand that some car manufacturers are developing vehicles which will automatically disable mobile phones.

It's not the grunts, it's the generals who need prosecuting

As the sirens close in on those who designed the torture regime in the Bush administration, this is a quite astonishing interview with one of its key actors.

Janis Karpinski ran Abu Gharib prison in Baghdad, source of those awful photos as well as jail sentences for some of the grunts who worked in it. Karpinski ended up getting demoted.

As the paper trail gets longer she unleashes on those who wouldn't defend those grunts at the time: Rumsfeld's cabal. Those who spoke of 'bad apples'

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here's Karpinski on the Daily Show.

I feel pretty much the same about the police officers who assaulted people at the G20 demos.

Those grunts were allowed to do what they did by both their superiors and by politicians (not just Jacqui Smith but Boris and Ken before him). All in an atmosphere, like that created by Bush and Cheney for US troops and contractors, of free reign for the police created by Blair.

Anyone who exercises the sorts of powers - lethal powers - that soldiers and police officers have needs to be well-managed as it should be obvious from human psychology and several thousand years of experience that they will abuse them if they are not managed. They are ultimately responsible for their actions but, like with a manslaughter charge, their superiors are equally culpable.

Tony Blair said in 2004:

"We asked the police what powers they wanted, and gave them to them."

Not what they 'needed', what they 'wanted'. Very important distinction.

In some ways you could say that Ian Tomlinson was a victim of Tony Blair.

Gawd help me, I'm going to quote a Tory, former home secretary Willie Whitelaw from the 1980s.

He boasted how after any security lapse, the police would come to beg for new and draconian powers. He laughed and sent them packing, saying only a bunch of softies would erode British liberty to give themselves an easier job. He said they laughed in return and remarked that "it was worth a try".

This is entirely the right approach - and I just love the reference to 'softies'.

Crime in the UK: new perspectives

Current.tv is hosting a great series of short videos about crime in the UK.









This is one more outlet which can host your point of view. There is life beyond YouTube.

Can't also resist posting this one which appears on the thread (and is related) about an hilarious spambusting exercise:

G20 death: witness statements

An innocent bystander, Ian Tomlinson, died at the G20 protests and today's release of damming video in The Guardian has the police banged to rights.



Another angle from Channel Four:



These eyewitness statements make the point that the protester who provided the medical aid to Tomlinson which was lacking from his 'protectors' was "very brave" in the face of police charges.

CBE?



Lots more stinks about what happened which deserves a bigger inquiry. The beat-up in the media about 'expected violence' in the period before by police PR, the presence of hundreds of media cameras at the exact spot where a window was broken, why one branch of RBS went without being boarded up despite being in a spot protesters were known to be converging on, how the totally peaceful climate camp was violently broken up after media withdrew. The latter has several videos which show peaceful protesters being battoned and beaten.

We know from the policing of the Kent climate camp that police lie. Ordinary Brits need to know that it's not a fringe group which is being assaulted here but their own freedom to speak out against 'the powers that be'. It is quite powerful to see that in the initial reaction to the release of the Tomkinson video in The Guardian that 'middle England', as represented by Daily Mail readers, seems to be quite aware of just whose side the cops are on: not theirs.

Fools and bullies

On Mark Lawson's excellent interview series on BBC4 he just spoke with the screenwriter GF Newman. Newman made his name with the 70s series Law and Order, which for the first time showed the massive levels of corruption endemic in the police at that time.

He also spoke of his boyhood experience of a local copper stealing from him and hitting him so hard he became deaf in one ear.

Power corrupts was his thesis and experience and Newman's suggestion was that police uniforms become pink and that they're renamed 'public assistance officers'.

Two scenes from yesterday's protest made me think that nothing's really changed in thirty years. Any chance any of this violent bullying lot will be charged with anything? I think not.

Comment from Dave Hill's LiveBlog from the G20 Protests:

I'm a media photographer employed by a large photographic agency. I carry a
press card at all times, which states that I'm recognised by the Assoc of Chief Police Officers as a "bona fide newsgatherer".

After a few hours covering the protest, I needed to exit the area in order to go and wire my pictures back to the agency. Met by a wall of unmoving and seemingly mute police officers, who gruffly refused to respond to any questions, I made my way down to one very small point where it seemed people might be being let out.

I showed my card to one officer who stated (and as a newsgatherer, I Quote...) "I don't care who you are, you shouldn't be here". When I pointed out that he was obstructing a member of the free press from doing their job, he said (without seeing the irony) "I'm just doing my job."

Numerous City workers appeared and just by waving their building access cards, were allowed through the cordon (funny kind of proof if you ask me- just cos you work there, you're immediately innocent). Well, not all- at least two were challenged by officers with "You don't look like you work there" (referring to how they were dressed). One quite rightly pointed out that he'd been told by his work to dress down.

One man was allowed through the cordon simply because he waved a foreign passport (Mexican), which I again found odd, as a large number of the masked and dressed-in-black 'anarchists' were French and Spanish (I know because I asked them).

I repeatedly asked a few of the officers why we were being detained, and more specifically, why I was being detained. Of those who even responded (silence seemed to be the order of the day when confronted by this question), most did so in a thoroughly intimidating manner, two even threatening my arrest if i did not move back.

An older journalist appeared beside me- thoroughly middle class and wearing a suit- also producing his card for the police. He too was told that they didnt care if he was a journalist.

Everyone around me was getting very agitated, some people shouting at the police and hurling insults. Apparently, the police tactics were to PREVENT A BREACH OF THE PEACE... which is funny, because it seemed to be pissing people off rather a lot. A hell of a lot in fact. To the point where you might think it was being done deliberately to provoke... call me cynical....

After 45 minutes of waiting at this point, I began to become a little worried by the piles of riot helmets that were being stacked against one wall, while more police vans arrived and the lines were joined by more cops.
For the N'th time I waved my card in the (apparently) senior cop's direction, pointed out I was a member of the Press, and why was I being held? This prompted a great response - "The more times you ask me that, the more I'm going to ignore you."

1.5 hours of waiting, and suddenly the cop goes "OK, you can go through now. See, I told you someone would deal with you in due course," and they parted and off I went. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the hundreds of others stood around me.

While I realise that they're attempting to contain some troublesome elements in a certain place, the police's attitude was thoroughly confrontational, suggesting they WANTED an excuse for violence. Their attitude toward the press was also very dubious- but then we kinda know that anyway.

Frankly, the whole experience just left me with a rather bitter taste in my mouth- why should anyone respect these fools and bullies when their attitude is that a uniform gives them the right to do as they please?

Beforehand I'd have disagreed with the many of the protestors' view of the police.
Now, I kinda agree with many of them- Facists and BullyBoys.

I'm glad my taxes are well spent....

Here they are attacking entirely peaceful people at the climate camp on Bishopsgate - the campers have got their hands UP and are chanting "Peaceful Protest" in a show of non-violence:

Despite assurances made on Tuesday morning by Commander Broadhurst to climate campers in the office of David Howarth MP, at 7pm riot police violently attacked the camp, injuring many peaceful campers and bystanders who were not allowed to leave the area.

Despite this incursion, the atmosphere at the Camp remained calm and happy until around midnight, when riot police again moved in and aggressively dispersed the Camp.

A LibDem blogs here about what happened at the Camp:

This country is founded upon the peaceful right to protest – as I said to one of the riot police who would not let me leave. We are not a police state. Whoever was responsible for the police operation here deserves to be condemned, but then I suppose encouraging violence justifies their ever spiralling security budgets.

Of course all police aren't fools and bullies but the ones who aren't end up covering up for the ones who are.

The hard and long fought for right to protest publicly in this country is, bit-by-bit, slipping away.

• More footage of the violent police break-up of peaceful climate camp

Police vs Hoodies

From deepest Surrey. The white stuff brings out the kid in the most surprising people.

Republikan police state

You may not have read this - because no UK MSM is covering it, including the Guardian (typical coverage by the Times) - but protesters at the Republican convention are being preemptively raided with automatic weapons shoved in their and their children's faces. Just like Genoa with a bit less physical violence

Here's a guest post from my good mate from New Jersey Toby Grace.

Other Thoughts

If there was any doubt that the United States is fast becoming as restrictive a police state as many in the Third World, the policies and behavior of law enforcement surrounding both political conventions should put it to rest. Though the Denver police were restrictive, the police in St Paul [twin cities with Minneapolis], acting in concert with state and federal agencies, can only be described as thugs.

Un-remarked by corporate media, the police staged preemptive raids targeting every form of alternative media such as (no surprise here) IWitness, which video documents police behavior, particularly at such large events as rallies and Conventions. Staff members were handcuffed and arrested, held in detention for days without charges, equipment mysteriously disappeared and all of this took place with guns drawn.

Police informants were inserted undercover in every counter-cultural group that was possible to infiltrate from Vegans to Veterans against the war. Protestors were supposed to be confined to a “Free Speech” zone fenced off a long way out of the sight of convention goers.

We had been under the perhaps erroneous impression that the entire United States was a free speech zone. That, at least was what Miss Blau, our Sixth Grade teacher at Matawan Grammar School impressed on us. Miss Blau took free speech and the rest of The Bill of Rights very seriously indeed. She made us memorize the whole thing and recite it standing up at attention. She had good reason. As a little girl in Poland, she had watched her entire family machine-gunned by the NAZIS as they tried to flee from their village. She never mentioned that fact in class but Matawan in those days was a small town and Miss Blau was a well-known and greatly respected teacher. We knew the story.

Bush, Cheney, McCain, Fox News, innumerable police authorities and the mind-numbing, dumbed down machine of the corporate media have been doing their best to convince us we must surrender much of our basic liberty to win this endless, amorphous “war on terror,” but you know what? We believe Miss Blau. You don’t defend liberty by surrendering it.

Video interview with Michelle Gross, President of Communities united against police brutality (a community organisation in the twin cities) describing the raids:



Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! (a news show online and also on public broadcasting in the US) arrested for disagreeing with a cop.



This clip shows best the difference between them and us. A obviously harmless, peaceful woman perceived as some sort of threat by a policeman enforcing orders from above. She is a journalist and TV host, not a Anarchist Black Cross organiser.

Good summary from the local paper.

Daily Show: A Lovely Afternoon Stroll Through the Police State of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Firedoglake has more on the Sheriff giving the orders, a Republican being investigated for corruption.

Here's one possible reason for the arrests, from a live blog post made during the raids by an iwitness and TV producer:

We are suffering a preemptive video arrest. For those that don't know, I-Witness Video was remarkably successful in exposing police misconduct and outright perjury by police during the 2004 RNC [Republican Convention in New York]. Out of 1800 arrests, at least 400 were overturned based solely on video evidence which contradicted sworn statements which were fabricated by police officers. It seems that the house arrest we are now under and the possible threat of the seizure of our computers and video cameras is a result of the 2004 success.

Postscript: Just made the point back to Toby that this isn't like Genoa (the G8 summit where police beat peaceful protesters within an inch of their life and killed one) - that really was fascism in action. Being able to see, live, what's happening in St Paul is the difference the web's making in real life. The police know full well they are being watched and that's precisely why the ones being targeted are those recording and reporting what's actually happening (they can control the MSM).

Postscript: pictures and video now emerging of beatings of protesters. Note the boot print, and this is on a 17yo.

Google Reader clips catch up

Roy Greenslade has been doing lots of reports from WAN 2008, a newspaper gathering in Sweden.

He says that many small newspapers are doing very well with hyper-localised sites.

"News travels fast in small villages but the news in our village never made it into the local newspaper, it was considered to small to make it in," Olofsson said. That changed one year ago when she established Heartproject, a series of eight hyperlocal sites, one for each community in the region. Online reporters file local news for the sites, which had at their heart have 101 reader blogs. The 101 bloggers were given set of rules about blogging and asked to write about their local village. None are paid.

My point, exactly. Hyper-local is a logical web growth point.

Rue89.com is a very successful online only French news site with a unique use of 'citizen journalists'.

The motto is "information with three voices, journalists, experts and readers, working together in the news-gathering process," Haski said. One third of the content comes from non-professional sources, in the form of alerts, testimony and commentaries, but professional journalists have the final say on what goes online.

Young people are consuming news differently, and badly.

One fascinating insight: news stories, by their nature, lack resolution, unlike sports and entertainment which generally have a rapid middle and end. This lack of a conclusion is a major reason for boredom among the young.

The study has certainly been taken up enthusiastically by AP. Kennedy says the agency has since designed a new model for news delivery to meet the needs of young adults.

It has resulted in what he calls "1-2-3 filing," starting with a news alert for breaking news, followed by a short present-tense story for the web. The third step is to add details and to format stories in ways most appropriate for various platforms. (This echoes the way in which the Daily Telegraph - and, to an extent, the Financial Times - have approached integrated daily news strategies).

But Greenslade notes that the over-riding theme at the conference was 'Publishers and editors clash over illusion and reality'.

They genuinely believe that digital missionaries, like me, have helped to influence investors and advertisers to turn their backs on newsprint. (I just wish we had that kind of power). They are right to say that newsprint is still the most profitable media sector, as it will be for at least the next five years. But the trend, the future, is online. Editors know that, which is why so much of the forum was taken up with presentations about multi-media journalism.

Simon Dickson picked up on the BBC’s Jem Stone's perspective on BBC blogs:

[Dickson] There are very valuable lessons here for many similar ‘transparency through blogging’ initiatives, not least in government and politics:

[Stone] We’ve found that [engagement with readers' feedback] is possible (and I’m talking about the BBC mgt internet blog here but I’d say it applies to other similar propositions) but only when we’ve had two factors in place:

a) Strong ownership (buy in from senior management even when criticism from users is a “s**tstorm” as Ashley Highfield dubbed the initial BBC iPlayer/Mac period the other day) and

b) Investment in community facilitation, monitoring and hosting. Monitoring feedback and having the antennae to alert issues to teams (and thus the knowledge of the tools that makes this now a lot easier) is often overlooked. Doing this well can’t be done by magic.

Simon also noted the lack of quality amidst the New Statesman's New Media Awards this year.

Most nominees have only received a single nomination, in many cases by themselves, judging by the frequent use of the words ‘I’ and ‘we’. Most are pretty straightforward uses of off-the-shelf technology, by ‘one man band’ operations. And from a technical and/or creative perspective, most frankly aren’t great.

James Ball picked up on some investigative reporting in The Times that found that the Culture of spin costs UK police £39m.

Police forces have stepped up spending on marketing since the Home Office began measuring their performance against public perceptions of crime. Senior officers insist that most marketing is aimed at crime prevention and providing accurate information to inform the public. But there are concerns that forces are withholding information about serious crime in an effort to manipulate the news agenda.

ClickZ on TechPresident reports that the online ad spend by Obama is rapidly evolving, though others have noted how small it is proportionally in marketing spend and others have noted how Clinton ignored it completely and this may have been because of Media Directors vested interests.

Like countless commercial advertisers, the Obama camp has gravitated towards performance-based ad buys, and not only on Google. The other top recipients of his campaign's online ad dollars specialize in cost-per-action ads as well.

While it appears the bulk of Obama's online ad budget was spent on Google and other performance-based media, a small portion did flow towards direct buys on Web sites including Politico ($36,000), CNN.com ($24,000), and Gothamist ($2,800). Those most likely involved CPM-based display ads.

Jack Pickard picks up on a report which says: "a 10-minute ebreak a day can have significant benefits but, despite this, many bosses are banning them in the fear they distract employees."

If you ban your employees from using the net for personal use, you’ll actual harm productivity… and that the British economy is potentially being damaged to the tune of £ 4 billion per year because of this.

One nation?

Somehow, I can't imagine this happening in large swathes of the UK.

The Metropolitan Police Service has this morning 21 May 2008 carried out raids across London to tackle domestic, homophobic and race hate crime.

Operation Athena is running to mark the International Day Against Homophobia and is designed to put the focus on the offenders, and bring them to justice.

A/Detective Superintendent Gerry Campbell, heading Operation Athena, said:

"Athena is now in its eighth year, and we remain committed to improving our service to victims of domestic violence, homophobic and race hate crime, and identifying, taking on, arresting and prosecuting perpetrators of this violence.

"We have community safety units in every London borough who are dedicated to the investigation of these crimes, and 213 LGBT liaison officers.

"Today's operation sends out a clear message that violence in any form is unacceptable. We do not require a statement from a victim in order to arrest and charge a perpetrator.

"Through engaging and understanding the needs of all London's many diverse communities, we remain committed to being an employer of choice and an organisation for everyone."

And it's not their first ...

Police promise more raids against gay hate

By Marc Shoffman • December 7, 2006

The dawn raids, named Operation Athena, last Thursday, were part of a two-week initiative to put the fear back onto the offenders, and encourage victims to report crimes

The dawn raids, named Operation Athena, last Thursday, were part of a two-week initiative to put the fear back onto the offenders, and encourage victims to report crimes

Last week's police raids in London targeting suspected perpetrators of domestic, race hate and homophobic violence will not be the last, a member of the Metropolitan Police's Violent Crime Directorate has warned.

DCI Gerry Campbell said last week's operation signals the Metropolitan Police Service's commitment to taking on hate crime offenders, but added that it is not a one off job.

West Midlands Police finally apologise ...

... but only after being taken to court.

Last year I covered how Channel Four's 'Dispatches' sent undercover reporters into British mosques and filmed preachers saying amongst other things:

“Do you practise homosexuality with men? Take that homosexual man and throw him off the mountain.”

“If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy dogs that should be murdered, that’s my freedom of speech isn’t it? They’ll say: “No”, I’m not tolerant. But they feel that it’s okay to say something about the Prophet.”

"Whoever changes his religion from Al Islam to anything else – kill him"

And how, after a ridiculous 'investigation', West Midlands Police (and the Crown Prosecution Service) instead of prosecuting these people for inciting violence made a complaint to Ofcom about the editing of the programme claiming it was 'stirring up racial hatred'. A complaint which itself was technically odd.

I noted that this was the same police who had a fraught relationship with their local gay and lesbian community.

And how police in general had had to be forced into taking action against murder music, dancehall reggae which is all about how to kill gays and lesbians.

I even found myself on the same side as the Editor of the Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore, who said:

I do not know whether the Dispatches programme is right in every detail. But it clearly raises serious, important questions - about extremists in our midst, about the way apparently moderate organisations give them shelter, about the Saudi Arabian network that supports them.

What security agencies call "thematic analyses" show that, at present, the problems of Islamist extremism are particularly acute, especially in prisons and universities, in the West Midlands area.

Yet the West Midlands police and the Crown Prosecution Service decide that the target of their wrath should be not people who want to undermine this country, but some journalists who want to expose them.

Are they fit to protect us?

Late last year, Ofcom threw the complaint out and Channel Four then decided to launch a court action for defamation.

Andy Duncan, Channel 4 chief executive, said at the time:

West Midlands Police acted in a calculated fashion - they made no attempt to discuss their concerns about the film with us in advance of going public with their complaint to Ofcom knowing that an allegation of 'fakery' would generate significant media interest. Their action gave legitimacy to people preaching a message of hate to British citizens.

After being dragged to court, this apology and £100k payout is the result (half of the payout covers costs, the other goes to the Rory Peck Trust for freelance news gatherers and their families in times of need).

Following an independent investigation by the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, we now accept that we were wrong to make these allegations. We now accept that there was no evidence that the broadcaster or programme makers had misled the audience or that the programme was likely to encourage or incite criminal activity. A review of the evidence (including untransmitted footage and scripts) by Ofcom demonstrated that the programme had accurately represented the material it had gathered and dealt with the subject matter responsibly and in context.

We accept, without reservation, the conclusions of Ofcom and apologise to the programme makers for the damage and distress caused by our original press release.

[CPS apology]

I think they should apologise to the gay and lesbian community - infact the whole community - as well, for 'wasting police time'.

The people who were responsible and should suffer some consequences are:

• CPS lawyer, Bethan David
• Assistant Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police, Anil Patani
• West Midlands Chief Constable, Paul Scott-Lee

Amongst others who weighed in against Channel Four were

• The secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, Muhammad Abdul Bari
• Press spokesperson of the Muslim Council of Britain, Inayat Bunglawala
  

I would also be interested to know who, if any, of Birmingham's MPs supported Channel Four.

And whether any prosecutions for 'incitement to violence' against the hate preachers exposed in the documentary will ever follow.

How embedding video will help the BBC

The BBC has said that it is investigating embeddable videos as part of their upgrade allowing videos to be played in-page.

The screenshot above is of 'Survivors of the Titanic' audio, a radio interview from 1936 with the most senior surviving officer Commander CH Lightoller from the huge archive. It's a really good example of how allowing embedding instead of the current 'share it' options will potentially massively boost their traffic — wouldn't it help sell this content and encourage further clicks to yet more previously 'hidden' content if you could click and play this audio right here? And as they are to show ads to overseas viewers (for which the technology is now fairly well developed) embedding will, potentially dramatically, increase their revenues.

The Titanic is a subject of huge enduring interest and the BBC's online archive is stock full of gems. I wonder what the actual number of plays where it's currently located, buried in the archive, gives it. When I went to Digg it, I saw no-one had done this before. Hardly surprising.

People do create viral BBC content already.



The top one - Amy Winehouse on Jools Holland's show has 8.5m views. Currently, Mitchell + Webb clips are viral, and that show is thus being promoted on BBC World.

Their top viral - 640 blog posts is a lot and that's how the ViralVideo Chart ranks - is the Panorama show 'Sex crimes and the Vatican' from 2006. It has been deleted in the version appearing in the chart - but has reappeared elsewhere in an embeddable version. The subject area appears heavily policed on YouTube - see the number of deletions in this list - but less so on Google Video. It's hard to understand why one arm of Google removes and another allows. But with the appearance of sites like LiveLeak, policing distribution is much harder anyway.

I'm not sure whether the BBC had any role is asking for copyright material to be removed in that instance some while back but there is so much copyright material already being distributed now that the conclusion can only be that it's policy not to bother policing it. Though some have been - a Doctor Who clip and something from BBC London about the London 2012 Olympics Logo — deleted on YouTube but there on LiveLeak, the Doctor Who clip simply reposted to YouTube. Perhaps policed (not at all effectively) by others than the BBC. And perhaps that's the point, the resources needed can only come from dedicated people like the Scientologists.

What can only hugely benefit them is deliberately encouraging viral distribution, rather than forcing people back to a website to view, or hiding the viral options alongside other, less valuable, distribution methods like email. Some of the US Networks, especially NBC, are doing exactly that and get the benefit from their own ad plays, wherever the video's playing.



What these networks do is police though. They want you using their embed, not something taped off TV. This allows not just ad play but also cross-promotion and anything else you might develop and throw down the pipe - the pipe you control. Is the BBC going to be thus changing their policy and throw resources at policing once they get embedding started?

This is early days - even for, for example, networks like NBC who are leading the pack they don't seem to be encouraging complimentary marketing like these parodies of Heroes on their official site and thus helping foster a community.

The BBC said back in March, in an aside, and reinforced this in response to my comments, that allowing embedding would "eventually" happen. The BBC has so much great content, including huge amounts of archive content of huge interest like their holdings about the Titanic, which is of wide, world-wide, interest that, especially with them adding in ad plays to monetise, they just can't lose.

And it's not just attracting overseas viewers but also through UK social networks - what a great way to get the benefit potential of BBC news content being seen by younger people for example. I think this should come right up their list of priorities from asides about 'eventually' to 'by around this date' ...

NB: Neither ITV or Channel Four have any interest in allowing embedding. More fool them.

Previous: Embedding video: why isn't it obvious to the MSM?

What's getting worse for British gay people?

A couple of new reports show how life for many gay people in Britain is actually getting worse.

• A landmark poll commissioned by Stonewall says school bullying is worse than twenty years ago - this ruins life chances
  
• More gay men are acquiring HIV than ever before - ruining life expectancy.

Both of these run against the grain of assumptions: pass some laws and life improves. It's notable that Stonewall make a point of criticising 'smugness' over discrimination. It's certainly my experience than many people think that life for gay people isn't like 'what it used to be'. This isn't a 'glass half empty' argument, here's some numbers:

The YouGov poll of 1,658 gay adults found homophobic bullying in schools is more prevalent now than in previous decades. Two-thirds of lesbian and gay people under 19 said they were bullied at school on grounds of sexuality, compared with half of those aged 35-44 and only a quarter of those over 55.

Said Stonewall's Ben Summerskill:

Last spring we heard from a 14-year-old girl who had - incautiously - shared with a teacher at a faith school the thought that she might be gay. Subsequently the girl has been required to sit outside the changing room at the beginning and end of sports lessons while the 'normal' children get changed.

• A significant minority of gay people expect to be treated less well at a GP surgery or during an emergency admission to hospital.
• Around 30% of lesbian and gay people expect to encounter discrimination if they were to try to enrol a child at primary or secondary school, and 80% believe they would have difficulty if they were to apply to become a school governor.
• One in four think they will be treated less fairly by police if they become a victim of hate crime.
• One in five expect to find it harder than a heterosexual person to get social housing.
• Nine in 10 expect barriers to becoming a foster parent.
• Nearly nine in 10 think they would face such barriers to becoming an MP from the Conservative party, 61% from the Labour party and 47% from the Liberal Democrats.

The school experience chimes for me - I wasn't bullied, even when I came out (though my brother was). I had a experience last year around the housing issue when 'more houses for families!' was raised by a politician. This sounded exactly like 'there goes my slim chance' but when criticised the response involved the words 'political correctness'. Just because there are some gay families with kids doesn't mean most of us don't - and where does that leave us.

According to the Treasury's actuary department 6% of the population are gay, lesbian or transgender — 3.6 million people.

Last year Stonewall produced another landmark report which detailed not only how badly lesbians and gays fare in the BBC but just what that means — and it's linked to the school bullying issue.

What was notable about their report was that they interviewed as many heterosexual people and they wanted more characters and coverage.

• Gay people are contributing almost £190 million every year towards BBC programming.
• Gay people and their lives are five times more likely to be portrayed in negative terms on the BBC.
• Gay life is most likely to appear in entertainment programmes, and is rarely featured in factual programmes, like documentaries and the news.
• BBC programmes frequently use gay sexuality for making jokes or as an insult, and rely heavily on clichéd stereotypes.

Gay and straight people ... told us they wanted to see:

• More documentaries to help everyone understand lesbian and gay lives - and not just ones focussing on negative issues.
• More positive role models for young gay people.
• More realistic and non-sensationalised/clichéd gay characters in soaps and drama.
• A more diverse range of lesbian and gay identities, beyond the urban stereotypes.
  

The HIV numbers - highest ever in the UK - just make me scream. I'm not the only one, I've heard a number of gay men my age repeat on air that we can't believe we're going through this again.

One of the worst things I've seen recently which is not helping was a campaign on HIV last year by the BBC which was aimed at young heterosexuals - the focus, money and support for gay men is getting less, not more. That campaign (but most I see when I do see them) only vaguely addressed the persistent myth that 'well, there are pills for it now'. What's needed is much more hard-hitting.

My experience of the epidemic was in Australia and I still haven't dealt with it properly: I lost dozens of friends and 'survivor guilt' as a HIV- gay man of my generation is very real. Within the community here as well as there I was and am sick of hearing HIV+ men dominating the debate. Being HIV- is not a promoted identity here and never has been. By contrast in Australia they had a real debate and formed a proper relationship and coalition, as part of a prevention strategy. When I did this work it was impossible to raise the sort of issues Australia has since dealt with.

Here, there couldn't be a greater contrast. The horror of 'barebacking' is defended when it should be shouted down. I can well understand 'condom fatigue' and there should be wariness about blaming gay men (when straight men are just as bad about condoms) and especially blaming HIV+ men, but HIV kills people and neither is an excuse for avoiding hard-hitting.

All the drugs do is extend life expectancy from extremely low to less than average — I tried finding some figures and couldn't but from memory it's maybe 21 years, so if you're 21 expect to die at 42. When did you (or I) see a message pointing that out? And when, by contrast, did you see lots of stories about people walking around after twenty years. They should be proud of themselves because that takes work, but this emphasis makes me angry because there are many others who aren't walking around. HIV is a bastard virus.

'I could not make my peace with the power imbalance'

“Ruth Henderson,” a former booking agent for incredibly high-priced Manhattan 'call girls' explains how it all works for Pajamas Media.

Show me a rich and powerful man between the ages of 35 and 60 who has never paid an escort for sex, and I will show you a man who is a very rare exception.

Why would a rich, powerful and handsome man pay for extra-marital sex? Aren’t there tons of women waiting to throw themselves at him for free? Yes, there are. But those women always want something: they want attention, intimacy and romance. They want to enjoy the high of sleeping with a powerful man. Escorts don’t want or care about any of those things.

The simple act of ordering up an anonymously pretty 22 year-old girl to do your bidding in the salubrious confines of a luxury hotel suite is an act of power.

'Difficult clients'

Take, for example, the CEO of an international airline who was a cocaine freak. Once a month, usually over a weekend, he would check into a suite at the Pierre, call the agency and book a dozen or so girls. He would book the girls for four hours each, staggered over the following two days. According to the girls, all he did was sit half-naked on his bed next to a mountain of cocaine, which he snorted constantly while crying about his divorce and the stress he endured at work. As the hours progressed, he would become increasingly paranoid and irrational.

I did not inquire into the fate of the girls who sort of faded away. I did not want to hear about their loneliness and poverty.

So the value of the escorts declined rapidly as they aged. Meanwhile, the value of the clients increased because they accumulated more money and more power. I could not make my peace with the power imbalance.

I had a really hard time dealing with the dawning understanding that the very men I’d been taught to value — my peers, as it were — were pretty atavistic types. They seemed to prefer whores in the bedroom and ladies in the salon.

Elliott Spitzer's wife

The mask of hypocritical social propriety has been ripped off. Her female friends are all looking at their husbands, knowing that they dodged a bullet. And Mrs. Spitzer must figure out how to maintain her dignity in the face of mainstream America’s hypocritical opprobrium.

Does anyone really think 'that doesn't happen in the UK'? Are these rich men the ones that Harriet Harman has in her sights or just kerb-crawlers?

Her crusade, and it is a crusade, will also inadvertently recriminalise some gay men, which won't be lost on some police. Something Ms. Harman doesn't give a shit about — somewhat of a tradition with some feminists.

As a former HIV prevention frontline worker, I know as well that crusades just drives human activity like prostitution further away from services like needle exchange and sexual health. Again, Harman doesn't seem to give a stuff.

Prostitution is never going to disappear. It should be legalised and regulated. The best way to challenge that 'power imbalance'.

State violence in the Kenyan crisis

A photograph flashed around the world showing a screaming child left terrorised by the murder of his young mother in the outbreak of tribal violence in Kenya. Tracy McVeigh found the boy after travelling to a village near Nairobi and, in this compelling dispatch, pieces together the tragic story behind the callous killing that ripped his family apart.

• Newsnight also carried a report on state violence in the Kenyan crisis this week, which covers the state's introduction of the feared Mungiki gang into the crisis - VIDEO.
• The government's spokesperson — the appalling Alfred Mutua — responds: 'it is preposterous' - VIDEO.

Much of the violence and deaths in the recent crisis were not 'tribal' but carried out by the state, at last some proof is emerging.

Joseph Karoki has been amongst those trying to help this family.

~~~~~~

Since the Launch of the Operation Save Baby Brian, Jeremiah has been able to conduct a postmortem and bury his wife Grace. Baby Brian still needs your help. Please donate below.

to Donate using Paypal go to VUMA KENYA and click on the PAYPAL BUTTON under Baby Brian’s picture.
For direct Bank Deposits in the US:

Bank Name: Citizens Bank
Account name: Vuma Kenya Initiative
Account number: 1311-791-911
Routing number: 211-070-175

For Bank Deposits in Kenya:
Bank Name: EQUITY Bank
Account Name: Jeremiah Mungai
Account No: 0200190674408
ID No. 7156255.

Annan dispels ghosts of Rwanda / Saving baby Brian

Kofi Annan has succeeded in securing the power-sharing agreement which will end Kenya's crisis and the violence.

In this, he dispels the ghost of Rwanda.

If you read the background, virtually no-one and no country comes out well. Bill Clinton, most prominently, has publicly got on his knees to apologise for what he didn't do. Then UN GenSec Boutros Boutros Ghali hasn't. Neither has John Major or Douglas Hurd, to my knowledge. The heroes of Rwanda are very, very few. I am sure that Annan, amongst others, is literally haunted by people hacked to death. That would be very African.

The agreement has received universal support across the Kenyan blogosphere, although the still unresolved issues which it throws up, mainly to do with the Constitution, worry some.

Gordon Brown made a particularly patronising statement about it:

"Kenya's leaders have reached a power-sharing agreement that represents a triumph for peace and diplomacy, and a renunciation of the violence that has scarred a country of such enormous potential".

iHaveNoTribe.com - I Am Kenyan

I think blogs have played a role in pushing democrats and anti-tribalists to the fore. This has helped greatly to undermine the power-dealers behind the scene, dramatically changing information sources. Evidence of this could be seen in the attempts by those in-power to inject themselves into the blogosphere.

Mwananchi Mkenya has analysed the deal and makes some interesting points:

There are some who would like to claim that Kenya’s Democracy was a sham and that the ongoing crisis is evidence that democracy never really took root in Kenya.

I couldn’t disagree more!

CDF [Constituency Development Funds]: This has been an incredible triumph for home-grown democracy even though I would like to see the process of allocation further democraticed. I’m keen to find out exactly what ODM [opposition]proposes to change about CDF

The fact that Kenyans came out to vote in massive numbers, in direct contrast, for example, to what happens in the U.S. where only about 40% of the eligible population even bothers to vote.

Organizations such as the Kenya Human Rights Commission still function in Kenya. I remember a time when nobody could even investigate such things… A vibrant civil society is critical to democracy and Kenya certainly has not lost that!

Kenya Blog Awards 2008
This post looks further at the growth of the blogosphere

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Operation Saving Baby Brian

Joseph Karoki's photo blog was where I originally saw this photo


This women is Grace Mungai. She was shot to death by police in her home. The baby in the crib is called Brian. The photo was republished around the world — though not, to my knowledge, in the UK.

Joseph wanted to do something and tracked her family down. He has raised the money to lay her to rest.

He is now raising money to support Brian — here's how you can help make a difference for one person.

Joseph:

Thank you for donating and drop me a line at josephkaroki@hotmail.com and let me know that you have supported Baby Brian and I will keep you personally informed of how your donation changed Brian’s life.

To Donate using Paypal go to VUMA KENYA and click on the PAYPAL BUTTON under Baby Brian’s picture.

For direct Bank Deposits in the US:

Bank Name: Citizens Bank
Account name: Vuma Kenya Initiative
Account number: 1311-791-911
Routing number: 211-070-175

For Bank Deposits in Kenya:

Bank Name: EQUITY Bank
Account Name: Jeremiah Mungai
Account No: 0200190674408
ID No. 7156255.

As Sharon O would say, 'every little helps'.

30th Sydney Mardi Gras? I must be old

It was the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras on Saturday night. For those who've never heard of it (must be a few), around 700,000 watch the parade for a mile and a bit up one of Sydney's main drags, ending at the Showgrounds where the party's held. Several thousand participate and there are over 100 floats and marching groups.

The parade assembles in the city centre then turns into the main drag, Oxford Street — 'Dykes on bikes' lead, doing teaser runs up and down, warming people up— that moment when you hit the drag is like hitting a wall of ecstasy. The next two hours is a continuous rush.

Lots and lots of straight people both participate and watch — it's truly an event for all Sydney. The party had to introduce 'prove you're gay' measures one year because the party was so popular.

I was in a dozen parades, so have a few memories :]

There was the 'indigenous' year, when local Aboriginal elders led the parade in a very fancy old sports car. We made thousands of 'healing hands' and the reception was astonishing. Some of the national Aboriginal leaders participated, very butch blokes, but they had a wail of a time alongside Aboriginal drag queens. People always do. Politicians often come and I suspect it's for the good time rather than the votes. Seeing how they dress for the occasion is often fun. Even the evangelicals who pitch up with their banners have smiles on their faces.

There was the year we did a 'live' broadcast, which amounted to using phone boxes along the way (this was pre-mobiles!). At the party, where we took the DJ feed, around 4am I had a break and one nutty volunteer came on and ranted about the organisation - a Sydney tradition. I didn't find out until a pugnacious Board member complained :[

There was the year I pushed a very heavy robot all the way (not recommended). One year I watched from a prime spot and that year it poured down. Rain doesn't stop it because it's so warm and the spirit so high.

There was the year Julian Clary MC'd and spoilt things by being a bitch (maybe he was jetlagged). Rural groups always participate and they weren't quite as polished: doesn't matter, Clary totally missed the spirit of the thing. You rarely see these mobs in the pictures which go around the world, but they're the heart of it in many ways. It's wonderful to see 'community' in action: Muscle Marys alongside fat old queens alongside elder lesbians alongside asian drag queens: all encouraging each other.

What else? Imelda Marcos' shoes was a classic which everyone who saw it remembers. One hundred shoes on poles chased by a giant papier-mâché head of Imelda. That was the genius of David McDiamid and Peter Tully, gay artists lost to AIDS. David was inspired by the Mexican 'day of the dead' and did a very edgy but successful entry in the height of the crisis with "Dance of Death" puppets.

Then there was their giant Fred's Head on a giant platter — this was the local evangelical state senator, with a perchant for leather from his biker days, who protested every year. David and Peter's genius inspired a later float which spiked Pauline Hanson's monoculturalism. 'Fred's Head' actually survived and was brought out for the 20th Parade.

Individuals could make just as much of an impact. 'Miss New Zealand' achieved this with a floral print dress, flowery hat and a 'New Zealand' sign. Very Antipodean 1950s. My friend Brenton Heath-Kerr did this at the party with the most astonishing, inventive costumes I have ever seen such as his famous Tom Of Finland, the classic butch cartoon fantasy figure. He 'wore' the cartoon and was completely covered. He looked exactly like a cartoon. He also did Imelda. And Liza. And 'Wood Woman', a bizarre woodland creature, completely ... wood.

The party's is 20,000 or so past dawn. The Showgrounds ("where the country comes to town") is now sound stages for film but in the 80s you could wander into the pig stalls and the rest. Much shenanigans (or so I've heard ;] ) The party goes on until Monday. There's a tradition of the morning after gathering behind a pub which I don't know still goes on but the 'after parties' are legendary.

After 2000 there was a year when it was thought under threat. A giant Arts Festival had grown up around February, with massive corporate sponsorship. This ended up collapsing and possibly taking the parade with it. Mass 'no! ways!' stopped that. The show will go on.

I did a London Pride parade when I came back in 2000. Depressing. Very little music, the fun stuff was spotty and subdued. I did a version of Fred's head on a platter with friends. We made a papier-mache Tony Blair and posters of Blair as Pinocchio - this was before he'd got around to gay law reform. But it was all a bit sad after Sydney.

• Postscript: The 2008 party featured Olivia Newton-John finally taking to the Mardi Gras stage to perform Xanadu. Cyndi Lauper closed the party with Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Other legends tickling my memories were Kings Cross drag queen Carlotta and DJing from Paul Goodyear. Out of 700,000 parade watchers there were 25 arrests made. One arrest was for a man who attempted to set fire to the tail of a police horse. Parade hits included the marching together of Jewish and Arab groups who were met with a huge cheer, as were the 100 Reverends, a group of church members apologising for the past treatment of gay and lesbian Christians. A school also organised a parade entry.
  
  
• Surviving webpage about the 1998 Aboriginal float and parade entry
  

'Undercover mosque': police hit with lawsuit

Hallelujah seems to be the appropriate response to the news that Channel Four is supporting a libel claim against West Midlands Police.

These are the mob (WM police) which took Channel Four to law over their broadcast of a documentary featuring footage of British preachers calling for homosexuals to be killed, espousing male supremacy, condemning non-Muslims and predicting jihad.

• Archive: Support Channel Four over 'Undercover Mosque (this post includes Youtube clips/links of the whole documentary)
  

These are also the same police who have received consistent criticism by West Midlands lesbians and gays for homophobia. I blogged last year about how West Midlands Labour councillors (it's a Labour fiefdom) were running anti-gay campaigns using a local gay sex meeting place as an excuse. There's plainly a homophobia problem which lives in the West Midlands.

So hurrah for Channel Four. They have a bloody good case.

Jacqui Smith is complicit in murder

A post of mine from last year on Iranian executions of gays has been consistently getting hits from people looking for information on that subject.

The link at the end is to the Iraqi LGBT exiles organisation — where you can donate to efforts to save people's lives.

I've now come across a similar group for Iran. They're supporting 'safe houses' and campaigning against asylum seekers being sent back to their deaths.

[Iran is not alone. Athough gays suffer murderous persecution ( a 'deathzone') in Iraq and many other nations, these are the ones with the death penalty in the statutes: Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Yemen and Nigeria. NB: The UAE includes Dubai, home to numerous supposed 'friends of the gays', such as the Beckhams, as well as the massed slave labour building those skyscrapers.]

Last year, some British MPs, to their credit, told the Iranians what they thought of them to their face during an official visit.

The Iranian Minister Mohsen Yahyavi (who is the highest- ranked politician to admit that Iran believes in the death penalty for homosexuality) told British MP’s at the Inter-Parliamentary Union in May this year, that homosexuals should be executed [he initially said tortured but changed it to executed].

However the UK is still deporting gays and lesbians back to Iran.

One was Pegah Emambakhsh, who was saved last year by the intervention, amongst others, of the Prime Minister of Italy.

Nineteen year old Seyed Mehdi Kazemi is yet another that Jacqui Smith wants to send to his death. I have just discovered his case. He is arriving at Heathrow tomorrow and it is not clear whether he will be held or put straight on a Tehran flight.

Hearing this is heartbreaking - literally - because, as one anonymous commentator put it:

It could be any of us who are LGBT, who is in that position, if not for the roll of the dice that allowed us to be born in the West.

Here is his story:

Seyed Medhi Kazemi was born in Tehran and is not yet 20. On September 15th, 2005 he set off for the United Kingdom after applying for a student visa. At first he lived with his uncle in London and attended an English course. In November 2005 he moved to Brighton where he enrolled at the Embassy CES College of Hove. He renewed his student visa to November 2006, with the intention of returning to his family in Iran once the course was over.

Medhi loved a boy back in Iran called Parham, with whom he had shared a secret relationship since the age of 15. Medhi and Parham regularly wrote to each other via e-mail until December 2005, when Parham suddenly stopped writing. In late March 2006, Medhi’s uncle informed him that his father had found out about his homosexuality and his relationship with Parham: the boy had been arrested by the Iranian authorities after being caught with a peer and accused of “lavat” (sodomy).

During the interrogation he was forced to give the names of all the boys he had had relations with, including Medhi himself. Medhi’s father had then received a visit from the Tehran Police, with an arrest warrant for his son as they wanted to put him on trial. In late April, Medhi’s uncle told him Parham had been put to death.

At this point, Medhi decided to apply to the British Home Office for refugee status, as a similar fate awaited him back in Iran: a death sentence for lavat, and maybe even mohareb, followed by hanging in an Iranian prison (seeing executions are no longer being carried out in public places after the decree signed by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hasemi on January 30th, 2008). His application for asylum, however, was turned down by the Home Secretary.

Medhi, terrified at the idea of being deported back to Iran - where a death sentence awaits him – attempted to flee to Canada, but he was stopped by the German border police. After telling them his story, he was sent to Holland (a country known for granting refugee status to Iranian homosexuals) and handed over to police custody. However, the United Kingdom then sent an official request to Holland, according to the Treaty of Dublin, asking for Medhi’s return, in order to proceed with his deportation to Iran.

On February 13th, 2008, Medhi informed his uncle of his whereabouts, he was being held in Venlo police station in Holland and had been told he was soon to be transferred to Rotterdam. Medhi’s uncle says he last heard from his nephew on February 15th. Medhi was in the detention centre at Rotterdam Airport, and according to the boy, no one had told him what his fate would be, nor when he was to be returned to Britain.

Omar Kuddus, from the Gay Asylum UK association, tells EveryOne Group that he received a phone call from Medhi, on February 18th, informing him that the flight that is to take him back to Britain has been arranged for Tuesday February 26th: it will leave at 8 a.m. (Dutch time) from the Amsterdam Airport of Schiphol, and arrive at Heathrow, London at about 8.30 a.m. (British time).

Medhi is at present in a precarious state of heath and suffering from deep depression. Several days ago he started a hunger strike.

Hearing yet another story like this makes me ASHAMED to be British and ASHAMED of the Labour Party I voted for. UK gays should note as well yet another Italian protest against Britain, at the Rome Embassy on Monday.

Jacqui Smith heads the Home Office, whose policy appears to be to send people back and hope for the best. They, contradicting the Foreign Office, continue to deny murderous persecution of gays and lesbians in Iran. Smith, and her predecessors, have consistently failed to take leadership in this area, which campaigners have been raising for years.

Jacqui Smith is the responsible party and needs to be called to account as complicit in murder.

This is the same as when her predecessors in the 1930s knowingly sent Jewish children fleeing Germany back to their deaths.

The Rt Hon Jacqui Smith MP
House of Commons, Westminster,
London, SW1A 0AA
By Telephone and Fax :
01527 523355
By E mail
smithjj@parliament.uk

Please contact her and/or tell others about Seyed Mehdi Kazemi.

YOUR HELP MAY SAVE HIS LIFE

• medhikazemi.com for all news updates

Australia: the apology

Kevin Rudd with Nana Nungala Fejo, the Northern Territory great-grandmother named by the Prime Minister in his historic apology to the stolen generation

The apology by Australia's new Labor Prime Minister to the Stolen Generations [Aborigines removed en masse from their parents] was a well-hyped moment. Coming at the beginning of the new Parliament it was received by large crowds of Aboriginal people who descended on Canberra.

It's way over due. Way past Canada or New Zealand or Brazil in their approach to their indigenous citizens. And it comes with - deliberately - no compensation (although the courts may see more compensated, it's unlikely because the evidence trail is cold), unlike those other countries. Plus there is still large scale opposition and complete denial, in particular to anyone raising the concept of 'genocide'.

Here's what this means in practice:

I do not know if Rikki Davis (Letters to the Editor, NIT Issue 144 ‘In defence of Brough’) is Aboriginal or non Aboriginal but this is exactly what I mean; no such thing as cultural genocide indeed? I know there is, cause I can’t speak MY language or practice MY culture because some whitefulla told my grandfather that he cannot do that “it is the old way” and to ensure he never did he was beaten every time he spoke one of the five or so more languages he could speak.

So he had to do it in secret, never to pass it onto his children for fear he would “hold them back”.

He also had the fear of a foreign god forced into his psyche to aid the cultural genocide policies of the times.

Like many Indigenous Australians, I couldn't get too excited. It's just (carefully calculated) words.

Labor in Australia is not, traditionally, that friendly to Aborigines. Inspiring figures like ex-Labor PM Keating ('we poisoned the waterholes') are rare. PM Rudd, as well, has form from his time as a Queensland civil servant in working against Indigenous interests and in the lead-up to the election Labor backed former PM John Howard's shocking, paternalist and colonialist 'intervention' in remote communities for electoral advantage. The States have been largely in Labor hands for years and they have done b****r all for Indigenous Australians. The Labor States have in particular fought the allied issue of 'stolen wages' - years of failing to pay or underpaying Indigenous workers.

Labor has done part of The Right Thing To Do but until they start serious spending to reverse the gap - which is enormous, many Aborigines live in Sub-Saharan Africa circumstances - and propose real constitutional change I ain't convinced by their sincerity.

The UK should also apologise, being the ultimate responsible party, but we have a historic antipathy to indigenous people within the UK establishment, focused on the Foreign Office, which most Labour supporters wouldn't be aware of.

We apologised to the Irish for the potato famine but apparently Australia's Aborigines living in our 'Terra Nullius' (empty land) don't have enough clout.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~


From ENIAR:

Between 1910 and 1970 up to 100,000 Aboriginal children were taken forcibly or under duress from their families bypolice or welfare officers .

Most were under 5 years old. There was rarely any judicial process. To be Aboriginal was enough. They are known as the ‘Stolen Generations’.

What happened to them?

• Most were raised in Church or state institutions. Some were fostered or adopted by white parents.
• Many suffered physical and sexual abuse. Food and living conditions were poor.
• They received little education, and were expected to go into low grade domestic and farming work.

Why where they taken?

They were taken because it was Federal and State Government policy that Aboriginal children - especially those of mixed Aboriginal and European descent - should be removed from their parents.

Between 10 and 30% of all Aboriginal children were removed, and in some places these policies continued into the 1970s.

• The main motive was to ‘assimilate’ Aboriginal children into European society over one or two generations by denying and destroying their Aboriginality.
• Speaking their languages and practising their ceremonies was forbidden
• They were taken miles from their country, some overseas
• Parents were not told where their children were and could not trace them
• Children were told that they were orphans
• Family visits were discouraged or forbidden; letters were destroyed.

What where the results?

• The physical and emotional damage to those taken away was profound and lasting:
• Most grew up in a hostile environment without family ties or cultural identity.
• As adults, many suffered insecurity, lack of self esteem, feelings of worthlessness, depression, suicide, violence, delinquency, abuse of alcohol and drugs and inability to trust.
• Lacking a parental model, many had difficulty bringing up their own children.
• The scale of separation also had profound consequences for the whole Aboriginal community - anger, powerlessness and lack of purpose as well as an abiding distrust of Government, police and officials.

A National Inquiry was set up in 1995. Its 1997 Report ‘Bringing them Home’ contained harrowing evidence.

It found that forcible removal of indigenous children was a gross violation of human rights which continued well after Australia had undertaken international human rights commitments.

• It was racially discriminatory, because it only applied to Aboriginal children on that scale, and
• It was an act of genocide contrary to the Convention on Genocide, (which forbids ‘forcibly transferring children of [a] group to another group’ with the intention of destroying the group.)