Fun With Flags.

I don't want the job of devil's advocate full time. After all that's the role of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

However yesterday pictures were released of Dylann Roof - the suspected Charleston shooter - wearing a jacket bearing the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia. We were left to speculate on whether these were indications of racism. Conveniently the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) happened to ruling on just this issue in relation to the use of the Confederate flag on Texas vehicle license plates. Taken together these two issues have a massive significance to the current conflict in Ukraine.

The ethnically Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine have appropriated a version of the Confederate flag as the emblem of their new state - "Novorossiya." This has been used by the US to imply that the rebels are racist. However it's a bit more complicated then that. Although the US civil war was undoubtedly about slavery it was also a war of succession with the Confederate states wanting to succeed from the Unionist states whose far away government was trying to impose laws they didn't agree with. I think this story of succession would resonate with a bunch of Ukrainians who probably aren't experts in US civil war history.

The flags used by the US backed Kiev side of the conflict are even more frightening. The battle flag of the Azov battalion and the Svoboda political party they are formed from is the interlinked English letter's "N" and "I" symbolising "National Identity" superimposed on the Ukrainian national flag. The style of the lettering is known as runes familiar from the Nazi "SS." However we are constantly reassured that this flag is not inspired by the Nazi Swastika.

Another organisation that uses this type of rune design in their flag is South Africa's white supremacist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB). Their flag features three sevens (777) arranged in a circle sometimes imposed on a Swastika-style red and white circular background and sometimes super imposed on the national flag of the Netherlands which also made up the bulk of the apartheid-era South African flag.

It's widely suspected that Malaysia Airlines chose to crash flight MH17 over Ukraine because it was a Boeing 777 originating in the Netherlands. The intention being to make it look like the Russians did it as a form of protest against the US' support for Kiev's Nazi divisions.

Finally - proving that there is an episode of "Oz" for every occasion - the tattoos of the Aryan Brotherhood characters are pretty much an encyclopedia of coded references to Nazism. However the one they all share is an "N"and and "I" interlinked to represent "National Identity."

Yet the US State Department still can't see any connection between the Kiev government it backs and Nazism.

11:55 on 19/6/15 (UK date).

Edited at around 19:20 on 19/6/15 (UK date) to add;

Here in the UK we are around 5 hours ahead of the US east coast. As a result I have already started drinking. However that is no excuse for me missing the very obvious comparison between the TV show "Oz" and the Charleston Shooting.

At the start of the 4th season a black supremacist guard "Clayton Hughes" gives a gun to a black prisoner "Simon Adebisi." Adebisi then gives that gun to a vulnerable white prisoner "Tarrant" and encourages him to shoot and kill several black prisoners. Adebisi and Hughes then use this example of racist violence to demand the resignation of the unit manager so he can be replaced by a candidate chosen by black community leaders. This candidate then proceeds to banish the white prisoners for the specialist unit so Adebisi can be given free reign.

In the meantime Dylann Roof has appeared in front of Charleston's Chief Magistrate over the shooting. This was a brief hearing intended to establish whether there was a prima facia case to proceed with a trial. So essentially it was just a matter of whether an incident has occurred and whether there is independent witness tying the accused to the crime. Both of these things were confirmed but the Magistrate's conduct was still highly questionable.

For example he failed to ask the accused whether he had been mistreated in custody. He also failed to ask if the accused was aware that Charleston's Mayor had made the hugely prejudicial and intimidating public assertion that the accused would be denied the right to a fair trial and would never released from custody. He also failed to ask the accused if this threat by the Mayor had been used to coerce his co-operation - essentially "Do as you're told or we'll let the black prisoners rape and kill you."

The Magistrate then allowed relatives of the deceased to state on the public record that the accused was guilty of murder without challenge or cross examination. As the proceedings were televised live this, along with the Mayor's statements would clearly prejudice any prospective jury pool.

Despite this the Magistrate still felt that Charleston was capable of delivering a fair trial in the case and committed it to trial. 

19:45 on 19/2/15 (UK date).