http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/10/vote-for-change-voting-system

Change in the voting system will not come from parliament – we have to galvanise popular anger, and drive change through

Last night's Vote for a Change rally in Westminster Central Hall launched the campaign for a referendum on a new voting system, to be held at the same time as the next general election. An alliance of a wide range of parties and groups was there: odd to see Lib Dems, Greens, climate change activists, pensioners groups, votes-at-16 campaigners, fair traders and a plethora of others sharing a platform with a Ukip MEP. Who wasn't there? The two old parties whose stranglehold on Westminster is only maintained by the first past the post electoral system – though Labour has always had some reformers, and John Denham spoke for them. Not one Tory can be found, alas, in or out of the Commons.

KT Tunstall and Billy Bragg sang, and Blur's drummer Dave Rowntree made a foot-stamping speech. This campaign can only work if it can galvanise all the popular anger against the current political system and direct it towards an unstoppable demand for constructive change. Can it be done? It's a tall order in a short time. If you support it, text Change to 60013 and recruit as many others as you can. Go to the website for news on events being set up around the country. Help is needed now.

I asked CiF posters to send in questions for the Vote for a Change platform and these were chosen. Here they are, with a few answers:

ABasu asked: "What does the panel think about making voting compulsory?" Peter Tatchell replied: "No. If politicians can't persuade voters, then voters have a right not to turn up." Dave Rowntree (though Blur's drummer, he is now a Labour candidate, radical rat-joins-sinking-ship), says: "No. It sounds too Soviet to me. I'd go for votes at 16, get people used to the habit of voting young." Ken Ritchie, head of the Electoral Reform Society: "I'd want no part in forcing people to vote, especially under the present system where most people's votes are useless anyway. I want people to vote because it's important, not because they'll be fined if they don't."

Davidabsalom asked: "How can you get MPs to have more allegiance to their constituency than their party?" DeadTapeCollector's question amounted to the same: "Are there any proposals for the removal of an MP by their constituents?" Tatchell replied: If 30% of constituents sign a petition, the MP should have to submit themselves to a vote. Rowntree: PR would go some way to help, especially with STV [single transferable vote] in multi-member constituencies, where several MPs compete to represent their voters. Ritchie: Under PR if your MP is, say, some fox-hunting Tory, at least you have another choice, either with STV or with the AV-plus system, where you can choose someone else from an open list.

WheatfromChaff asked: "What would be the question asked in such a referendum?"

Tatchell and Rowntree said: Ask two questions on the referendum paper. First, should there be a change in the voting system so the number of seats more closely corresponds to the number of votes? The second question lays out several options including STV and AV-plus.

Ritchie said: Politicians will be partisan, so we need a citizens convention to hear all the evidence and choose the best questions for the referendum ballot paper.

Sign up now! No pressure for change will come from parliament, where the beneficiaries of the present system sit.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/10/alpha-course-religion-science

I'm taking the Alpha Course, Christianity's answer to philosophy classes. Follow my progress every Friday over the coming weeks

"Is this it?" asks the back of the 276. It's an advert for the Alpha Course, Christianity's pseudo-philosophical middle class recruitment drive, public transport again being the preferred method of mass communication for religious matters.

Alpha is officially described as being an "opportunity for anyone to explore the Christian faith in a relaxed setting". It was created in the 1970s at the Holy Trinity Brompton, a big church in South Kensington, but was revamped in the 90s and has since become a global phenomenon. They claim that 2 million people have attended in the UK and 13 million worldwide. That makes it a significant movement in modern Christianity. Alpha's enormous wealth, mostly from private donations, is most visible in its advertising, not just on buses, but also on big and small screens.

But within and without the Christian faith Alpha is controversial. It operates as a franchise with a basic curriculum, open to interpretation by church leaders. Thus there is denominational variation in how the course is taught. Contentious issues include its prescriptive charismatic slant. Midway through the 10 week course, participants may be urged to allow the Holy Spirit to fill them up such that they enjoy glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. It's a bizarre thing to watch, and certainly not to every Christian's taste. Furthermore, some of its evangelical practitioners betray a nasty homophobic attitude.

Over the next 10 weeks I shall be blogging each session of the Alpha Course at St Mary's in Islington, and exploring it as a phenomenon. Before the first, I feel weirdly nervous. Am I entering a lions' den? I nip across the road to the Kings Head for a solitary sharpener.

The gate to the crypt is locked, but after wandering around, I find a room with about a dozen men chatting. There's an oddness to entering such an enclave of peace in the midst of the post-work drinking yahoos of Upper Street. But I'm surprised that most of the group are also young and trendy: all neat beards, sharp jackets and absurd trainers. There are a couple of older guys who could do with a proper shave. One of the neat beards smiles warmly and says hullo, asks my name, and then asks:

"Is this your first time at Alcoholics Anonymous?"

I'm in the wrong room. I overhear a chap next to me say that he's been dry for 6 weeks. I wonder if he can smell the Talisker on my breath, poorly disguised with chewing gum.

Upstairs in the church, the Alpha group is not dissimilar to look at, although there are some women. Toby Hole is the leader of the course and a curate at St Mary's. He is as bright as a button and thoroughly nice, in a young vicarly sort of way. One of the key aspects to Alpha is having a slap up meal before getting stuck into Christianity, and lo, there is bountiful pizza, and it is good. We make small talk, I am open that I am blogging about the course, and that I am an orthodox atheist.

Toby introduces the course with a spiel about Christianity in the modern world. He wants to emphasise that Alpha is a way of showing us that Christianity is none of the three following popular misconceptions: boring, untrue and irrelevant. Framing it thus seems to me to be setting up at least two straw-men. We shall see.

This success of Alpha has been put down to us, the "de-churched". These are, like me, a generation of people who were raised within a Christian cultural context, at school, home, or wherever, but who now do not engage in formal church-based religion. The currently emerging generation may be referred to as "un-churched", in that they don't have those cultural inputs. Simply put, the de-churched know who Jesus was, the un-churched may not.

The group comprises nine de-churchers, including a young couple, and a mix of late 20s/early 30s middle class people and one older Sri Lankan man who casually quotes the Buddha, the Qur'an and Jainism.

The couple, John and Lucinda, explain that they both come from evangelical Christian families, but are doubtful believers searching for that faith clincher for themselves. Both have attended Alpha before. I've heard that repeaters are common, which somewhat calls into question that claim of 20 million attendees worldwide. In the first session I am paired with Barbara, who within minutes is talking sincerely about the death of her father to me, a complete stranger. It seems there is robust cynicism filter on the door.

Toby says the course is about Jesus and his teachings. To my mind the Jesus character in the Bible is a pretty sound bloke, someone with conviction, compassion and a touch of rebellion. These are all traits I respect. But Toby asserts that Jesus was definitely a real person who died but defeated death. I have issues with both of these statements. I ask about the notion of a historical Jesus. "Does anyone here doubt that Jesus was a real man?" I am firmly told that this is the subject of next week's discussion.

The nearest I've come to a religious experience recently is my nightly dose of the Wire. Ain no thang. But I leave St Mary's looking forward to next week's session. I spend precisely no time with people openly discussing their faith in a very personal way. Mostly when I think about religion it's the foolish edicts of preposterous old men in dresses. But sitting down with people who choose to spend a sunny Tuesday evening discussing the meaning of life with strangers seems to be a much more interesting insight into what makes people of faith tick. We shall see.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/10/berlusconi-guardian-italy

I'm sorry for our prime minister's predictable reaction to a story about G8 summit preparations, please keep the spotlight on Italy

As a member of the Italian parliament and former magistrate who ensured that many corrupt politicians and businessmen were brought to justice in the 1990s, I wish to apologise to the editor and staff of the Guardian newspaper for the utterly predictable reaction of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and our foreign minister, Franco Frattini.

The Guardian does its best to keep the public informed. In Italy this government is not accustomed to free debate, or to hearing the truth being told. While sections of the article dealing with preparations for the G8 summit may be debatable, the rest of it contains little that can be refuted.

However, there is one classification missing from the list in the article, one published by Freedom House, which puts Italy 73rd place for freedom of the press. The real problem in our country is that information is firmly in the grip of one individual, namely our prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi – which must be one of the worst cases of conflict of interest ever recorded in any country in the western world.

Berlusconi's control over the media is exercised via his ownership of the largest Italian publishing house, Mondadori, as well as via the country's six television networks: three private Mediaset channels owned by Berlusconi himself and three channels of the public broadcaster RAI which Berlusconi indirectly controls and influences, with very rare exceptions I might add, through managerial staff appointments.

His virtually total control of the media allows him to maintain a dominant position and provides an endless source of revenue that helps to consolidate his position within the institutions via a wide-ranging system of patronage. In the past, these revenues were made possible by the tacit approval of previous governments that refused to address the issue of obvious conflicts of interest. Currently Berlusconi pays the Italian government a mere 1% of turnover in return for the television broadcasting frequencies conceded to him and now used for Mediaset transmissions. Since the centre-right coalition government came to power, a number of major parastatal companies have diverted their advertising expenditure from the RAI public television networks to the private networks belonging to the prime minister.

In addition to the media issue, there is now also another, namely the scourge of the "unconstitutional" government reforms. The first of these was a law known as the Alfano bill, which was ordered by Silvio Berlusconi himself as his first act after coming to power, which prohibits the prosecution of himself and the incumbents in three other senior government posts.

The provisions of this law mean Berlusconi did not have to appear in a trial in which he was facing charges of bribing a witness. David Mills, his lawyer and former husband of Blair government minister Tessa Jowell, has been sentenced to four years and six months imprisonment for accepting a bribe. On 6 October, the constitutional court is due to issue a ruling regarding the constitutionality of the Alfano bill and, should the court rule that it is indeed unconstitutional, then Berlusconi will be obliged to stand trial for allegedly bribing Mills.

I would like to conclude by appealing to the Guardian and the other foreign press not to allow the spotlight to move away from Italy and to continue to perform the same vitally important task that they have always performed in the past, namely the task of informing the public, a role that most of our media have abdicated from because they are no longer being allowed to do their job.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/10/germany-murder-marwa-sherbini

Egyptian protests over the murder of Marwa al-Sherbini have shocked Germany – but not driven home its true significance

The first news agency reports on the murder of Marwa al-Sherbini informed the German public that a defendant had murdered a witness in the district court of Dresden. The reason was a quarrel in a children's playground.

No mention that the witness was a Muslim woman. No mention that the playground quarrel had culminated in the defendant shouting at the woman "Islamist", "Muslim bitch" and "terrorist". The German press reported on the case on the back page and fell asleep. A few days later it was awakened by thousands of Egyptians who protested vociferously against the "Islamophobia" of the Germans. Islamophobic? Us? Suddenly the German federal government, which had kept silent for nearly a week, found words of sorrow. And journalists started to write long articles about the astonishing reactions in Egypt.

I don't think Marwa's murder proves German "Islamophobia". But it proves a lack of interest in the reality of today's German society that is disturbing. And the more one thinks about it, the more disturbing it gets.

Marwa had worked in a pharmacy in Dresden and her husband worked at the Max-Planck-Institut for pharmacology. Why didn't their colleagues stand up and call the whole incident what it was: a scandal? And why didn't the press ask any questions? There was reason enough. As the Berlin-based newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel, has now reported, the defendant, the Russian-German Alexander W, had asked Marwa in the courtroom: "Do you have a right to be in Germany at all?" Then he threatened her: "When the NPD comes to power, there'll be an end to that. I voted NPD."

The journalists could have reminded their readership that the extreme-right NPD had secured 5.1% of the votes in council elections in Saxony in June 2008. Dresden, where the murder took place, is the capital of Saxony. They could have reminded their readers that nearly 50% of east Germans and a quarter of west Germans agree with xenophobic statements – as a study by the Friedrich Ebert trust found in 2008. The journalists could have written about the poor integration of Russian-Germans, but also about their racism. They could have asked if Marwa would have been killed had she not worn a headscarf... and what that means for German society. They could have asked – as an Egyptian did – why Marwa's husband, while he was trying to help his wife, was shot and wounded by a policeman in the courtroom. Because he was not blond-haired?

And the journalists could have asked why the spokeswoman of the court, in her first press release, did not mention the nationality and religion of the victim – which in this special case played a significant role in the murder.

But no such questions were asked. The press treated the case as if it was something banal. Just one of these tragic incidents one cannot really understand. It was not until the demonstrations in Cairo that the details were published. And then the German press very quickly had other worries. One day after the demonstrations a radio host called Karim al-Gawhary, the Cairo correspondent of a German newspaper, and asked him: "How dangerous is it now for German tourists in Egypt?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/09/economic-crisis-state-intervention-banks

Only a radical increase in state intervention to control banks and boost investment can meet the scale of this crisis

Only by grasping the scale of the economic problems we face is it possible to judge how radical the solutions needed to deal with them will be. Realism is not helped by misleading claims that economic recovery is around the corner.

There is a theory that "confidence" is the key to economic recovery. Every positive economic development is, therefore, seized upon and exaggerated, in the belief that recovery will follow a resulting rise in "confidence". The reality is the reverse. The worst economic crisis since 1929 created loss of confidence – not the other way around. The facts are clear. The world has seen the biggest financial collapse since 1929. This has been followed by a fall in international trade – which is, so far, actually more rapid than after 1929 – and dramatically falling economic output in every major economy in world except China and India.

It is important to understand what is leading this economic downturn. Its driving force is a collapse in private investment in the US and all major economies. While the GDP of the G7 countries has fallen by 4.4%, their investment has dropped by 13.4%. In the UK GDP has declined by 4.9% but investment has fallen by 14.7%. The situation is far worse in housing, where investment is down by 26.5% and investment in transport equipment is down by 27%. As economic studies show, investment is the critical determinant of economic growth; this sharp fall in investment, if not reversed, will result in either stagnation or continuing falls in economic output.

While the present rate of economic decline will not continue indefinitely, we face, without radical action, a prolonged period of stagnation at best, accompanied by dramatically rising unemployment, falling living standards and pressures to cut spending on public services. There is no evidence that the private sector, if left to itself, could turn this situation around and the proposals of the Tories to actually cut public spending would therefore be disastrous.

These facts require radical alternative economic policies to protect the great majority of the population who have no responsibility for the crisis they now face.

The proposals announced this week to reform UK financial regulation don't remotely grasp the scale of the problem. The approach of bailing out bank shareholders with billions of pounds of taxpayers' money while leaving the same people and policies in charge has been a failure. Even though the government effectively now owns the core of the financial sector, it has chosen to exercise no direct control over it in the bizarre belief that the bankers know best. As Vince Cable has rightly said, present policy towards the banking sector seems dictated by the goal of privatising the banks to the people who created the mess in the first place, not using a nationalised banking system to revive the UK economy. As a result, lending has dried up, freezing the housing market and depriving businesses of the credit they need to survive, driving up unemployment.

The seriousness of this economic situation dictates that far more radical measures than any tried so far will be necessary. They include:

• Nationalisation and direct control by government of the core of the banking sector to restore lending

• A major programme of public investment to reverse the decline in overall investment

• Large-scale public intervention where the private sector has failed – as in house-building and transport

• Re-examination of the priorities of public spending to protect public services, education and training while eliminating waste by reducing the overall level of military spending at least to that of Germany, abandoning the proposed new generation of nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers and scrapping ID cards and other areas that contribute nothing to social justice or economic growth

• Introduction of a more progressive system of taxation to help meet the pressure on public finances, including the need to equip people with the most advanced possible skills through continuing to expand student numbers and funding to remove the class barriers that continue to exclude large numbers of young people from higher education

• Re-orientation of the London and British economy to the most dynamic parts of the world economy, above all China and India, and pushing forward those economic sectors that can benefit from, and contribute to, growth.

• Public intervention to help put Britain at the cutting edge of the emerging new economy around the creative industries, the internet and environmental and the most technologically advanced manufacturing sectors

The Thatcherite doctrine that deregulated banks and privatisation would deliver prosperity has proved totally wrong. Only a radical increase in state intervention to control the financial system and boost investment can meet the scale of the crisis that ideology has produced.

Ken Livingstone will be appearing at a Progressive London conference on the Global Economic Crisis on Saturday 11 July at Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, WC1. More details and advance registration here

http://www.dailycoyote.net/index.php/?p=1447

photos taken March 2009

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=7530

Oh god why am i awake

I WILL TELL YOU WHY! Because it is Friday, it’s just gone noon, and it’s FREAKANGELS, all for free!

alasdair

Shut up and listen to the clever man.

frozen_in_honey

[	Tags	|	photography, pirates, poetry, self, shoes	]
[	Current Location	|	Home	]
[	Current Mood	|	amused	]
[	Current Music	|	Little boots	]

Beauty and the Beast | Jaimes Alsop

1. The Beast

Knowing how you loved the birds

I fixed them to the trees

so they wouldn't fly away.

So you would stay.

And you remained silent

and never questioned my bloody palms

or reproached me the birds

because they didn't sing.

It couldn't last, of course.

No new birds came and those crucified

were taken by small animals or simply

disappeared from the nails.

I was sure then that you would leave me.

Finally I confessed.

Trembling, I brought you the hammer

and showed my broken fingers.

Leaves and branches in my hair,

the diagrams of Autumn

on the sky.

And you smiled and said it didn't matter

about the birds

and drank at my tears

like a rare and fragile wine

that they too would not be wasted.

2. Beauty

I came to you so carelessly

there were those who thought I had not been warned.

I could only point to the false lovers who carried marks

where you had pressed coins into their palms

and admit I was impatient for your scars.

The rumours followed us as easily

as if you murdered me every night;

hemlock in my evening wine,

a loosened bannister on the stair.

The dull villagers and daft princes

waited still and at distances

for grave news and relentless

until I could only point again

at their jealous eyes and whisper

I had discovered why you handled me

as though I were made of glass.

I know they want to know about our bodies.

Our virginity confuses them

and they are reduced to words and silences.

What shall we allow them to believe?

We are a thousand years old, no histories

and nothing to confess.

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/07/10/daily-mail-wants-nigerian-criminals-to-remain-in-britain/

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/07/10/top-stories-friday-10th-july/

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/07/10/right-whingers-and-newsnight/

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090709.html

Born in supernovae, pulsars are spinning neutron stars,