Emma Thompson - tax protester

She and her husband are protesting not about paying taxes per se, but to the selective enforcement of the rules and the coddling of corporate entities such as HSBC:

Greg Wise, the actor married to Oscar winner Emma Thompson, has said he and his wife will refuse to pay tax until those involved in the HSBC scandal go to prison.

Wise spoke of his disgust with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the bank after the Guardian and other news organisations published leaked details of 100,000 accounts held by HSBC’s Swiss arm which showed how the bank had helped clients to move cash out of the country.

“I want to stop paying tax, until everyone pays tax,” Wise told the Evening Standard. “I have actively loved paying tax, because I am a profound fucking socialist and I believe we are all in it together. But I am disgusted with HMRC. I am disgusted with HSBC. And I’m not paying a penny more until those evil bastards go to prison.”..

“Em’s on board. She agrees. We’re going to get a load of us together. A movement. They can’t send everyone to prison. But we’ll go to prison if necessary. I mean it.

Good for them.  More details at Business Insider, with a discussion at Reddit.

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Fennec fox

This evocative photo by Bruno D'Amicis was one of the winning entries in the 2014 World Press Photo of the Year competition.  These are his notes:

An adult fennec fox crouches in a village sheep pen [in Tunisia]. The fox had been captured as a cub, and kept as a pet for over a year.

The fennec is the smallest of the Canidae (dog family) and is found in desert and semi-desert areas of North Africa. It is particularly well-adapted to desert conditions—its large ears help dissipate heat, furry under-paws provide insulation against hot sands, and it can live without water for long periods, deriving all it needs from its prey. Fennecs are not an endangered species, but—prized for their appearance—they are systematically being captured to be sold as pets, or used to make money from tourists wishing to pose for souvenir photographs.

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The UN Convention Against Torture

Several weeks ago The Dish live-blogged the release of the torture report.  It makes for difficult reading.  An important, earlier, related post provides a detailed rebuttal to those who defend the use of torture (boldface added):

It’s worth recalling in that context the actual words of the UN Convention Against Torture, which was signed by Ronald Reagan and torn to shreds by Dick Cheney. It guts both lines of Tenet’s purported defense. First up, there can be no attempt to craft techniques that are close to torture but designed to slip through a legal loophole. The Treaty’s full title is, for example, “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment“. The definition of torture is this:

any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Intimidation and coercion are also expressly forbidden, when implemented and authorized by an officer of state. President Reagan included the broad definition in his signing statement:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

In other words, the entire point of the Convention is to prevent any wriggle room around what torture is and to include inhumanity...

Just as important, the context is irrelevant. Tenet’s plea to understand the context he was working in has no place here:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

More at the links.

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What constitutes proper subject matter for postage stamps?

A couple weeks ago the Washington Post made note of some turmoil in the stamp collecting community regarding the selection of images to be used on forthcoming commemorative stamps in the United States:

As the U.S. Postal Service prepares to issue a stamp featuring Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer next week, a postal expert whose 12-year term on the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee ended earlier this year pleads with his former colleagues to resist the temptation to choose new stamp images “with the same profit motives as Big Macs, Slurpees, jeans or neighborhood tattoo parlors.”..

This airing of dirty laundry in the small but passionate stamp community... draws another fault line in an ongoing debate over whether the cash-poor Postal Service should pursue commercial stamp subjects to lure new collectors and revenue at the expense of more enduring cultural images...

The friction came to a head last fall, when the stamp panel grew concerned about how the Postal Service’s marketing staff was pushing pop culture that culminated with the release of stamps honoring Harry Potter...

“That said, while continuing to commemorate historic events and individuals, it is critically important that we offer subjects to interest younger generations and topical collectors into stamp collecting, such as Harry Potter, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and, most recently, Batman,” Saunder said.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer debuts at the National Postal Museum on Nov. 6.

I remember the Harry Potter stamp points of argument, which included not only the commercialization of philately, but also the "promotion" and "glorification" of witchcraft.  Then there was the controversy six years ago when a politically-correct stamp design took the cigarette away from Bette Davis.

I find it interesting that the current controversy over U.S. stamp designs follows by several months the apparently not-very-controversial issuance in Finland of postage stamps commemorating the artwork of "Tom of Finland," whose subject matter [see top image] is of a genre that would set off a firestorm of complaint in this country.  The Finnish stamps are available for purchase in the U.S., but of course not valid for postage here.

Last year the postal service in Finland issued a set of four stamps picturing the "prettiest outhouses in Finland."

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