In case you missed it; the first story is about Mary Bale or “Evil Cat Woman” as she is known all over the Internet. She gained this name due to CCTV footage that records her placing a cat in a wheelie bin. It is an act of senseless cruelty that deserves condemnation. Mary Bale received more than condemnation and ended up being placed in protective custody.

The second story involves musician Morrissey, who in response to China’s mistreatment of animals stated,

Absolutely horrific. You can’t help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies (source: The Guardian)

There is some furore in the papers regarding this racist statement but Morrissey is not in protective custody.

The message that seems to be coming out of these stories is that any violent, malicious, or offensive action is justified if the intended victim has violated the rights of an animal.

This really does not sit well with me but I think at the root of all of this is the fact that we live in a society that seems comfortable with the idea of assigning personhood to animals even it results in our dehumanisation; and I witnessed this first hand last weekend.

Background

It is no secret that I am not a fan of dogs. I don’t hate dogs. I do however have a healthy fear of dogs, especially big dogs. I am not scared of all dogs; in fact once I spend time in the company of a particular dog I find that I can get on quite well with that dog. This makes sense to me because all animals are different; some are friendly, some are not. I have had a hard time explaining this distinction to certain dog lovers and dog owners who seem aghast that I will not join them in their public display of affection for a dog whose owner’s name they do not know.

“Oh but he looks so cute”; they say, as they proceed to ruffle the fur of this stranger’ pet. This is often followed by many questions about why I do not like dogs. I must have had some traumatic experience to explain my irrational fear of an animal that has the capability to maul a person to death.

Disclosure:
Yes as a young child in Kenya, while walking home from school, I was chased by a pack of dogs and the owner stood there and watched. But…even before the dogs chased me, I remember seeing them, feeling very scared and then running for my life. So it wasn’t the dog chasing incident that made me scared of dogs, all it did was prove me right that some dogs are vicious and it is far easier to avoid them all then to risk life or limb trying to work out which ones are not.

Last Weekend
I was at a pub that is a favourite for dog owners and I endured my regular grilling on why I am not a dog lover. I then asked a few questions of my own such as why would anyone take a dog to a bar? The discussion went on for a while until we reached the point that I always dread. The part where someone will argue that owning a dog is no different to being a parent and that children and pets are not only the same thing but interchangeable.

A parent is NOT the same as a pet owner.
I cannot understand how anyone can argue that dog and baby equals the same thing. In my mind babies and by extension human beings are not the same as animals and I often use a simple test.

If I had one plate of food before me and I had a hungry dog and a hungry child I would feed the child. If I had to save a drowning man or a drowning dog, I would save the drowning man.

Why? Because human beings are not comparable to animals.

I am not condoning the abuse of animals. I am also not arguing that every person who cares for an animal will take to attacking the likes of Mary Bale. What I do recognise however is a connection between how easy it is for Morrissey to dehumanise an entire nation and how easy it is for an individual to dehumanise a baby all in the name of animal personhood.

reconnect people’s everyday lives with politics through collecting and sharing stories of when people first became aware of the bigger world around them.

I grew up in a very political household so trying to identify my first memory is complicated. When I look back to my “politically formative years”, which I place somewhere between the ages of 4 and 7 all I see is a kaleidoscope of memories.

Is my first political memory to be found in the pages of my book collection that included titles such as “Nelson Mandela for Kids”, “Harriet Tubman for Kids”?

Or did it start with the curtain call that preceeded my role in the Wazelendo Players’ production of Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s The Trial of Dedan Kimathi?

Perhaps it is in the tune of Bandiera Rossa; a song I learned to sing without so much as knowing what language it was in!

Maybe it lies within the pixels that made up the was the framed poster of Malcolm X in our living room?.

I was about six years old at the time and I was used to going on both leisure and protest walks with my parents, which often ended with me eating an Orange ice lolly (if the weather was nice) or a pack of Opal Fruits and/or Jaffa Cakes. For the most part there was nothing special about this particular walk until we got to Number 10. The crowed stopped and in unison began a call and response chant that went like this:

Caller: Maggie, Maggie, Maggie!!
Crowd: Out, out, out!
Caller: Botha, Botha, Botha!!
Crowd: Out, out, out!!

At the age of six, to be part of the 15,000 people who chanted in unison was an amazing experience. At the time I must admit that I thought we were calling for them to open the door and step outside. It was only as I grew older, as I started to learn more about Apartheid and Thatcherism, that I was able to connect the dots. It was this demonstration that helped me understand that Apartheid as an ideology and as a regime did not exist in isolation. In 2010, as the Conservative Party rolls out its “I’ve never voted Tory before” campaign, I can respond and say,

I’ve never voted Tory because they supported Apartheid

What is your first political memory? Get sharing!
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With thanks Mark Pack for his LDV post – ‘cos that’s how I learned about this!

Sometimes, you can just hop in the back of someone’s cab and tell them what they’re supposed to do. Other times, you have to let him look out at the ocean for a while.

– Jacob, Lost Season 6

Zuqka’s feature on MamaJunkYard is the literal equivalent of hopping into my cab and telling me I need to get back to blogging. This is what Kamau Mutunga wrote:

Her relationship status is “not on the market.” Unless you’re Thierry Henry. She likes Tia Maria, coffee, purple, travel, family and God, though not necessarily in that order. She hates balloons, pumpkins and prejudices. Her interests are race, gender, sexuality and critical legal theories. Her first pets were rabbits, and she has two tattoos and six body piercings. Bloggers rarely describe themselves with much detail, but there you have a bio peek at Kui, Mrs Cooper or to her blog fans, Mama Junk Yard.

Indeed, Mama Junk Yard’s rants about anything under and over the sun. Kui has lived abroad, but works in Nigeria. From how foreigners talk and silly questions about one’s country. So, her entries are observations of a footloose, uprooted Kenyan. You will learn that “Kubwa” might be Kiswahili for “big” and “Nyanya” is grandmother, but why does it also mean tomato? Well those two are names of places in Naija too. And “well done” doesn’t connote congratulations. It is a greeting. When feeling unwell don’t be shocked when asked “how you body de?” “How far” is not about distance, but “how is it going.” And when someone flashes your phone, don’t call back. They were “just de greet you O!” Mrs Cooper hasn’t been blogging actively, and her archives might give a better impression of Mama JunkYard.

There are few things there that need updating, e.g. I am no longer in Nigeria….but that’s even more reason for me to get back to blogging!

The North West win has not come as a surprise. In the run up to the election nearly every other party tried to convince the electorate that a vote for them would count as an anti-BNP vote. The threat of a BNP win was real. What is unreal is this seeming unwillingness to accept that there are racist people in the UK (at least 132,094 live in the North West) and that on June 4th these racist people exercised their democratic right and duly sent not one but two -Nazis to represent the rest of us in Brussels.

Apparently all this is the fault of the mainstream political parties. It was they who alienated and excluded “regular voters” from the political and democratic process. That the BNP win is a direct result of the frustration that “regular voters” feel and have felt for a long time – they have expressed this frustration by way of a protest vote.

Rubbish. Utter rubbish.

Firstly, if Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are deemed mainstream political parties, the remaining eight options on the North West ballot paper should have provided sufficient choice for those seeking an alternative view. Failing that, the right to invalidate one’s ballot paper is the ultimate protest vote but it comes as no surprise that BNP voters did not take this course of action. Those who voted in favour of Griffin’s party were not protesting; they were endorsing a hate group that has unfortunately been allowed to masquerade as a political party.

Secondly, to assume that a sense of disillusionment and disenfranchisement is reason enough for a “regular voter” to lend his or her support to a hate group is a leap in a logic that I am unwilling to take. Unless of course regular voters” is code name for “racist, homophobic and xenophobic white voters.”

If the BNP’s relative success in the European Parliamentary Election shall be discussed along the lines of finding fault and apportioning blame then I have no problem in placing all the blame on the BNP voters around the UK but in particular those in the North West and York and Humber region.

Whatever forms the discussion will take; there is no room for those who argue that the BNP supporters are unaware of the party’s racist, homophobic and xenophobic beliefs, or that BNP voter is well meaning but ill educated person who has been duped. If condemnation for the BNP party is (almost) universal then the same should be true of its supporters.

We certainly should not attempt to portray them as victims; they seem to be doing a good job of it themselves. Listening to Nick Griffin citing the Race Relations Act as the basis of potential law suits against employers who sack BNP supporters is reason enough for us to raise the level of the debate surrounding the BNP and its existence as a political party.

One reason why I detest the BNP so much is because I, like so many others, can see through the name change that transformed the National Front into its present form. Comparisons have been made between the BNP and the Ku Klux Klan and I could not agree more with these comparisons. Yet unlike the KKK, the BNP has been granted political party status, which has resulted in what Mshairi describes as a schizophrenic relationship between the rest of the nation and the party and its supporters.

That is why on the one hand the BNP can appear on a ballot paper yet its members are denied the right to openly associate with their party of choice. It is the same flawed logic that saw the other North West MEPs refuse to share a stage with Nick Griffin as he gave his victory speech despite the fact that they will be sharing a forum in Brussels.

I think our leaders and law makers need to decide where they stand on the issue of the BNP and should that day ever come, I hope they are bold enough to place BNP in the same category as all other hate groups and revoke their political party status. Until that time our discussion of the BNP and its increasing support be limited by this rather bizarre cycle of misplaced blame and unwarranted empathy.

On June 1st 2006 Kenyans everywhere will be celebrating Madaraka Day. Madaraka Day commemorates the day that Kenya attained internal self-rule following an important milestone on the road to independence. To mark this event I have joined my fellow Kenyan Blog Webring (KBW) members as we blog in unison under the banner ‘Kenyan Bloggers’ Day’.
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I have always admired the work of Dennis Hwang. He is the man behind the Google Holiday Doodles. I had so much faith in their holiday logos to the extent that I did not consider a day a holiday unless Google had doodled it.

Today, the day Kenya attained internal self-rule, I expected Google Kenya to be all doodled out in black, green and red. But alas, there was no Madaraka Day Doodle!

So in the true Madaraka spirit, I decided to use the freedom that comes with having access to the Internet to create and share my own Google Doodle!

Happy Madaraka Day.

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Credit:

• Dr Mich – who refuses to get a blog but seems to enjoy helping me on mine – worked with me on this Mockoogle Logo.

UK soul singer Lynden David Hall, passed away yesterday (February 14th 2006) and his death has struck me on so many levels.

Firstly the cause of his death has brought to the fore an issue that Guess has discussed (more than once I think?)Black and Minority Ethnic Group donors. Prior to his death, Lynden David Hall battled for two years with Hodgkins Lymphoma, a rare form of cancer. Like many other forms of cancer, the survival rate relies on (amongst other things) bone marrow transplants. As Guess pointed out in her post, there is a shortage of black and minority ethnic group donors in the UK. Lynden David Hall was aware of this and launched Lynden’s Wish, a fundraising event held at the Jazz Cafe last November. Losing Lynden further highlights how important it is for us as black people to register as donors.

Secondly I am saddened at the low level of publicity surrounding his passing. The BBC and Radio 1 Xtra (they have a wonderful tribute section) both have the story on their sites but that appears to be it. Tonight, the music world gathered in London for what is the biggest musical award show in the UK The Brits. One would expect that on a night like this, focus would not just be limited to the winners but also to those artists who have influenced today’s winners. After all Lynden was a 1999 Brit Nominee and as Lemar thanked tonight’s audience for his Best Urban Act Brit award one can not help see the similarity in style between the two singers. And who can forget Lyndens cameo as a wedding singer in Love Actually? Surely his soulful rendition of the Beatle song All you need is love? is reason enough for the UK media to realise the gap in UK music that now exists. Lynden was a talented individual who wrote all his songs played a host of instruments and had a voice that many likened to DAngelo and I feel that there should be more in the news.

Thirdly, and this is perhaps the most painful part of all this, a family is mourning the loss of a son and a brother. I went to school with Lynden’s younger brother and have been friends with him ever since. I can only imagine what he and his family are going through at this time and I pray that God will guide them through this.

This blog article is my little tribute to a great man who shall be missed by music lovers all around the world. A man who at 31 years old has gone too soon but shall be remembered for achieving a great deal in such a short time.