Friends of Borges

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[Photo above, from left: Jovita Iglesias [assistant to Adolfo Bioy Casares and to Silvina Ocampo], Jerónimo Grondona, Lic. Juan Antonio Lázara [biographer and publisher], Silvia Renée Arias [journalist], interviewed in Argentina Radio on behalf of The Worldwide Society of Friends of Jorge Luis Borges following the Award of the Academy Vocation Prize in The International Book Fair of Buenos Aires 2003]

2012

"Borges and the Other"
a new opera by composer Matthew Welch

Friday 11th May 2012, at 8pm
at ROULETTE

HM the Queen welcomes the Cutty Sark rebirth in the Royal Borough of Greenwich
Opening: Wednesday the 25th April

Was gesagt werden muss
Das Gedicht von Günter Grass

Warum schweige ich, verschweige zu lange,
was offensichtlich ist und in Planspielen
geübt wurde, an deren Ende als Überlebende
wir allenfalls Fußnoten sind.

Es ist das behauptete Recht auf den Erstschlag,
der das von einem Maulhelden unterjochte
und zum organisierten Jubel gelenkte
iranische Volk auslöschen könnte, weil in dessen Machtbereich der Bau
einer Atombombe vermutet wird.

Doch warum untersage ich mir,
jenes andere Land beim Namen zu nennen,
in dem seit Jahren - wenn auch geheimgehalten -
ein wachsend nukleares Potential verfügbar
aber außer Kontrolle, weil keiner Prüfung
zugänglich ist?

...read the complete text in Süddeutsche Zeitung - El Pais -

More information El Mundo - The New York Times - Haaretz - AlJazeera - The Telegraph - Die Spiegel - The Jerusalem Post - The Guardian

Lux in Arcana
A brief light in the Vatican's Secrets

Open February to September 2012
The Vatican's Secret Archive: selected papal documents go on display in Italy
Includes letter sent by English to Pope Clement VII in 1530 demanding Henry VIII be allowed to divorce Catherine of Aragon...

The Vatican Secret Archives reveals itself http://www.luxinarcana.org
Filmed inside the Vatican Secret Archives, it shows rooms and bunkers in the Archive of the Popes, together with some of the 100 original documents that will leave the Vatican City for the first time in history. 12 centuries of history, 400 years of life, 85 kilometres of shelving: the world's most famous Archive reveals itself in the extraordinary halls of Rome's Capitoline Museums. Conclaves, heresies, popes and emperors. Crusades, excommunications, ciphered letters. Manuscripts, codices, ancient parchments. An exceptional and once-in-a-lifetime chance to learn History through its sources.
...more in The Guardian - El Mundo - Le Figaro - La Repubblica - Reuters - The Telegraph
Read also:
Vatican Secret Archives reveal abdication letter of 'hermaphrodite' Swedish queen: is one of 100 unusual documents from the Vatican Secret Archives which will go on display on Wednesday in an unprecedented exhibition...

Cesare deve morire (Caesar must die)
inspired on Shakespeare's Jules Caesar
by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani

SYNOPSIS
The performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar comes to an end and the performers are rewarded with rapturous applause. The lights go out; the actors leave the stage and return to their cells. They are all inmates of the Roman maximum security prison Rebibbia. One of them comments: ‘Ever since I discovered art this cell has truly become a prison’. Filmmakers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani spent six months following rehearsals for this stage production; their film demonstrates how the universality of Shakespeare’s language helps the actors to understand their roles and immerse themselves in the bard’s interplay of friendship and betrayal, power, dishonesty and violence. This documentary does not dwell on the crimes these men have committed in their ‘real’ lives; rather, it draws parallels between this classical drama and the world of today, describes the commitment displayed by all those involved and shows how their personal hopes and fears also flow into the performance. After the premiere the cell doors slam shut behind Caesar, Brutus and the others. These men all feel proud and strangely touched, as if the play has somehow revealed to them the depths of their own personal history.

...more in Berlin Film Festival - The Guardian - BBC - Al Jazeera - France 24

Documentary on Marguerite Yourcenar

Documentary (english spoken, with danish subtitles, broadcasted at TV2, Denmark app 1991) about the french/belgium/american writer Marguerite Yourcenar (June 8, 1903 - December 17, 1987). The name "Yourcenar" is an anagram from her original surname Crayencour. (Try shifting the letters round) In 1951 she published "Memoirs of Hadrian" and in 1980 she was elected as the first female member of the Académie française ever! She lived much of her life at Petite Plaisance in Northeast Harbor on Mount Desert Island, Maine. Petite Plaisance is now a museum dedicated to her memory. It is known that Grace Frick was her lover and soulmate but Yourcenar has not (to my knowledge) been specific about this point. But after all she once said that "A writer should leave trace, not proof". Maybe that statement refered to her homosexuality?

The legendary singer Etta James dies: a voice to sing Life remains

US soul singer Etta James, best known for the tracks At Last and for I'd Rather Go Blind, has died aged 73.
It was announced last year that the singer had been diagnosed with leukaemia and was undergoing treatment.
The star began singing in a group aged 14, before she embarked upon a solo career where she signed to the legendary Chess Records label.
She went on to win six Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
Legendary producer Jerry Wexler once called her "the greatest of all modern blues singers". Etta James The singer died from complications of leukaemia
James' manager said she died at Riverside Community Hospital in California with her husband and sons at her side.

...more BBC - CNN - The Washington Post - The Telegraph
'At Last' performed by Etta James, Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera

2011

Most complete display of Leonardo Da Vinci's rare surviving paintings at the National Gallery, London

The National Gallery's Leonardo exhibition promises a unique chance to view his finest paintings and drawings. It also offers a glimpse of the artist's true spirit.
Renaissance man though he undoubtedly was, Leonardo da Vinci was very much a part-time artist. Among the wrecks and ruins and dubious attributions, Leonardo produced very few paintings – around 20, about some of which scholarly debate continues. There are nine in the National Gallery exhibition, all dated from his years in Milan, as well as Giampietrino's almost 8 metre-wide 1520 scale copy of Leonardo's 1492-8 Last Supper.
What Leonardo paintings are left are in varying states of incompletion, over-restoration and decay. Varnish has browned and grown opaque, paint layers have been scrubbed away, colour (particularly the lapis lazuli blue) has gone out of whack, and restorers and improvers as well as time have done their work.
About a third of the way into the National Gallery's thoughtful, vital Leonardo show is an engraving of a circular pattern at whose empty centre lie the words Leonardi Academia. Perhaps the engraving is the seal of an academy in Milan, where humanists, poets, artists and musicians, supported by the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo's patron, gathered. Or maybe it is an emblem of Leonardo's workshop.
No one knows if he made the engraving himself, but Leonardo undoubtedly drew the design. The engraving is an endlessly turning and criss-crossing knot, a sort of visual knitting whose repeated swirls and flourishes recall Islamic patterns, well known from imports to Italy in the 1400s. The wall label would like us to regard this gorgeous pattern as a precursor of abstract art. It bursts before us and sucks us in. It is a visual labyrinth, an optical game. The severity of the engraving and the pleasure of the pattern are as one.

...more in The Guardian - The Telegraph - BBC - The Independent
And in the website of The National Gallery

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Only foolish snobs don’t believe in William Shakespeare

What do Shakespeare, Keats and Dickens have in common, apart from being great writers, and masters of the English language? The answer is pretty obvious. None of them went to university: to some extent, all three were self-educated. Ben Jonson said that Shakespeare had “small Latin and less Greek”, and likewise I don’t think Dickens and Keats, despite the latter’s Ode to a Grecian Urn, had much of either.
Who is the odd one out, then? Just as easy? Nobody, I think, has ever suggested Keats didn’t write that ode and others, or that Dickens wasn’t the author of Bleak House and Great Expectations. But Shakespeare – ah, Shakespeare – there’s a whole industry devoted to trying to prove that somebody else wrote his plays. So here we go again, with a movie from Roland Emmerich, director of Godzilla, called Anonymous, opening on Friday. The “Shakespearean thriller” hands the authorship to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, whom the movie, incredibly, has as the love-child and incestuous lover of Queen Elizabeth.
Never mind that Oxford died in 1604, some years before Shakespeare’s last plays were written and produced. Such considerations are a mere bagatelle when conspiracies are being revealed. Never mind that nobody at the time attributed the authorship to anyone but the man from Stratford. Evidently, they were all fooled, even Ben Jonson, a fellow playwright who knew William Shakespeare and was not devoid of jealousy.

...read the excellent article by Allan Massie in The Telegraph - The Spectator

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The Anatomy of Influence
by Harold Bloom

There is much to admire and infuriate in Harold Bloom's 'final reflections'
What is the most apt image of literary influence? According to Borges we invent our precursors, while TS Eliot had it that great poets are thieves, not imitators. If Harold Bloom is correct – and he's been quite sure of himself for almost 40 years – the placid scene of influence is in reality a brawl, with writers engaged in pugilistic agon against their aesthetic progenitors. The great merit of Bloom's 1973 book The Anxiety of Influence was to have turned a weak critical term – the word itself having declined from its Shakespearean sense of inspiration – into a call to arms. For a time, the unclubbable Bloom ("I am a department of one") was ranked with his Yale colleagues Paul de Man and Geoffrey Hartman as an American critical iconoclast to match those visiting-prof affronters, Barthes and Derrida.
Reading The Anxiety of Influence as a student in the late 80s was a revelation; the seamless begetting of literary tradition suddenly looked like the most rancorous of Freudian family rows. But already (and especially in light of his slightly comical notion of the "strong poet") one suspected Bloom of being, or having become, another sort of critic: ruinously addicted to ex cathedra pronouncements, and a deal less given to actual argument than you'd hope for in a writer whose hobbyhorse was the intricate drama of doubt and persuasion itself. The Anatomy of Influence has some of the strengths and all of the faults of Bloom's subsequent work.

...read the review in The Guardian and watch his interview of Harold Bloom with Paul Holdengräber on the closing day of the PEN World Voices Festival

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Lucian Freud, the Artist who recreated painting, enters the Island of the Blessed at 88

Tributes paid to grandson of Sigmund Freud who lived to paint and 'redefined Art'
Lucian Freud, widely acknowledged as one of the greatest, most influential and yet most controversial British painters of his era, has died at his London home.
News of his death, at the age of 88, was released by his New York art dealer, William Acquavella. The realist painter, who was a grandson of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, had watched his works soar in value over recent years and, in 2008, his portrayal of a large, naked woman on a couch – Benefits Supervisor Sleeping – sold at auction for £17m, a record price for the work of a living artist.



Born in Berlin, Freud came to Britain in 1933 with his family when he was 10 years old and developed his passion for drawing. After studying at art school, he had a self-portrait accepted for Horizon magazine and, by the age of 21, his talent had been recognised in a solo show. He returned to Britain after the war years to teach at the Slade School of Art in London.
Over a career that spanned 50 years, Freud became famous for his intense and unsettling nude portraits. A naturalised British subject, he spent most of his working life in London and was frequently seen at the most salubrious bars and restaurants, often in the company of beautiful young women such as Kate Moss, who he once painted. A tweet from the writer Polly Samson last night reported that Freud's regular table in The Wolseley restaurant was laid with a black tablecloth and a single candle in his honour.
The director of the Tate gallery, Nicholas Serota, said last night: "The vitality of [Freud's] nudes, the intensity of the still life paintings and the presence of his portraits of family and friends guarantee Lucian Freud a unique place in the pantheon of late 20th century art.
"His early paintings redefined British art and his later works stand comparison with the great figurative painters of any period."





...more in The Guardian - The Telegraph - The Independent - El Mundo - Libération - Le Figaro - ABC - The New York Times

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Neruda's driver claims Chile poet killed by Pinochet as he was about to take refuge in Mexico

A longtime associate of Pablo Neruda has caused a media stir claiming that the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet was assassinated by the regime of former dictator Augusto Pinochet.
The Pablo Neruda Foundation still insists the poet died on September 23, 1973, from prostate cancer aggravated by emotional distress, after seeing Pinochet overthrow Neruda's friend Salvador Allende in a coup 12 days earlier.
But Manuel Araya, Neruda's secretary, personal assistant and driver, has alleged in recent interviews that the poet was assassinated by the new military regime, which feared he would go into exile as a high-profile dissident.
"Pinochet was a murderer. He killed Neruda so he wouldn't leave the country, because he was an intellectual that (Pinochet) did not want to have as an opponent," Araya, 65, told AFP on Wednesday.
Araya, who was at the poet's bedside until a few hours before his death at the age of 69, said that he had been hospitalized at the Santa Maria Clinic in Santiago "not because of worsening health, but for his security."
He said Neruda was "anxious and tense," that he believed the new regime was bent on eliminating him and was alarmed by an injection administered at night by a doctor.
Araya said Neruda had planned to fly to Mexico on September 24, but died the night before.

...more in Yahoo News - Straits Times - El Mundo - Libération

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2010

The poetic, intellectual drive of Marylin Monroe in quest for her unkown father

Marilyn Monroe's Writing To Be Released In Collection This Fall:
Musings about life, literature and other rarely seen writings by Marilyn Monroe will be published this fall. Farrar, Straus & Giroux announced Tuesday that "Fragments" would come out in October. Editor Courtney Hodell said the book would include poems, photographs, reflections on third husband Arthur Miller and other men in Monroe's life, and references to works by Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and numerous other authors.
"I think the book will show that she was a really thoughtful person with a real interior life," Hodell said. "She was a great reader and someone with real writing flair. There are fragments of poetry that are really quite beautiful, lines that stop you in your tracks."
The book features a long essay about Monroe's first husband, James Dougherty; notes about acting and the roles she was working on; lists of resolutions and a letter to acting coach Lee Strasberg. Monroe wrote on everything from spiral bound notebooks to stationery from the Waldorf Astoria.
The writings date from 1943, when Monroe was a teenager, to near the end of her life. Monroe was found dead in her Los Angeles home in 1962 at age 36, her death ruled a probable suicide, although theories of murder have proliferated.
...more in The Hufftington Post - The Guardian - El País - And in the website of Marylin Monroe

The man in whose room Borges wanted to spend his nights

Oscar Wilde new love letters discovered:
A collection of affectionate letters written by Oscar Wilde to a young male magazine editor have been revealed for the first time.
Penned in his own hand, the revealing letters appear to show the poet struggling with his homosexuality at a time when it was punishable by prison.
In one he muses: "This is all wrong isn't it."
In fact eight years after he wrote these letters Wilde began his famous two years in HMP Reading for "gross indecency" with the son of a lord.
The intriguing collection is now expected to fetch £10,000 or more when it goes to auction later this month.
During his time writing and editing for Society Magazines in London Wilde wrote a series of letters in 1887 to fellow editor Alsager Vian inviting him for 'cigars and Italian wine'
The letters are expected to fetch more than £10,000 at auction.
The main content relates to the business that would take place between an editor and his writers.
However, after the first letter Wilde continually invites Vian to visit him: "Will be at home tomorrow afternoon, so glad if you come down for tea.
"We must have an Evening together soon over our journalism article."
In the final letter Wilde goes to great lengths to encourage a meeting.
"Come and dine at Pagani's in Portland Street on Friday 7.30pm. No dress, just ourselves and a flask of Italian wine.
"Afterwards we will smoke cigarettes and Talk over the Journalistic article, could we go to your rooms, I am so far off, and clubs are difficult to Talk in."
"Till Thursday night. This is all wrong, isn't it. Truly yours, Oscar Wilde"
The small but revealing group of letters sent are to be sold by Fine Art Auctioneers Bamfords of Derby on the September 24.
...more in The Telegraph

David Guest wins the Chekhov Short Story Competition awarded by The Verb, at the BBC:
We're delighted to announce that the winner of our Chekhov Short Story competition 2010 is David Guest, for his story The Lottery Ticket. Well done to David.
Ian McMillan and Janice Galloway also enjoyed stories by Tricia Durdey, Joe Hakim and Adrian Benson - who all went for the title Difficult People - you can read all of them below.
A big thank you to everyone who sent in entries.
...Ian McMillan, presenter of The Verb, has been a poet, broadcaster, commentator and programme maker since 1981. He has explored language & communication with schoolchildren, students, teachers, education policy makers, politicians, public services & corporate businesses.
...read The Lottery Ticket, an award winning short story by David Guest, clicking on the title. And more information in The Verb at the BBC website

Franz Kafka and Max Brod safety deposit boxes being opened and inventory for the first time:
After months of legal wrangling, one of the 10 safe deposit boxes in which documents belonging to the writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924 ) and his close friend Max Brod (1884-1968 ) were hidden for 40 years was opened Monday in Tel Aviv.
A delegation of smartly dressed lawyers arrived at the entrance to the Kikar Hamedina branch of Discount Bank at 10 A.M., holding a court order stating the safe deposit box must be opened. The contents, however, cannot be publicly revealed as the owner of the deposit box, Eva Hoffe, petitioned the court for a ban on publication. Haaretz has requested that the court, through the law offices of Lieblich-Moser, lift the ban.
A year ago the Tel Aviv Family Court, where the case is being heard, accepted the newspaper's petition that the hearings be opened to the public; until then, they had been held behind closed doors.
The process of opening the safe deposit boxes will take a week. They are held in six different vaults in different banks in Tel Aviv, as well as four others vaults in a bank in the Swiss city of Zurich. Witnesses who had been inside the bank at Kikar Hamedina when the team of lawyers arrived said Eva Hoffe burst into the building in an attempt to prevent the safe from being opened, shouting "It's mine, it's mine!" The boxes are being opened in the presence of a battery of lawyers appointed by the court: the executors of the estates of Max Brod and his secretary and heir, Esther Hoffe; a representative of Hoffe's daughter, Eva; and a representative of the custodian general.
The team of lawyers will draw up an inventory of the documents they find in the boxes and present it to the Tel Aviv court. Judge Talia Pardo Kupelman will then determine the documents' status - whether they are the private property of the Hoffe sisters, who can then do with them whatever they want, or whether they constitute a literary treasure that must be transferred to a public archive.
...Hoffe and her sister inherited the safety deposit boxes from their mother, Esther Hoffe - Max Brod's longtime secretary and friend. Esther Hoffe died about three years ago; since then an emotional legal battle ensued over the Jewish National and University Library's demand that Hoffe hand over the manuscripts. At the same time, the German Literature Archives in Marbach, Germany is also interested in obtaining the documents and has been negotiating with Hoffe to buy them. The opening of the vaults was facilitated by the executors of Esther Hoffe's estate, Shmuel Cassouto, Dan Novhari, Rami Hadar and Dan Zimmerman, who were responsible for handling the technical and bureaucratic difficulties involved in carrying out the court order.
Dr. Aviad Stollman of the [Jerusalem] national library told Haaretz: "We are happy to hear that the process of revealing the contents of the vaults in which the manuscripts were hidden for decades has begun. We were sorry to learn that a request was submitted to prevent the contents of the vault from being revealed. It is a shame that Ms. Hoffe is not prepared to let the public be party to these important literary treasures, and that she is trying to thwart the clarification of the truth."
...more in Haaretz - El Mundo - El País - Libération

The finest Portuguese writer of his generation, José Saramago, has died today 18 June 2010, age 87: The Portuguese novelist José Saramago, who explored Portugal's troubled political identity in a series of novels published over the last four decades and won the Nobel prize for literature in 1998, died today at the age of 87.
An outspoken atheist and communist, he challenged the orthodoxies of post-dictatorship Portuguese life with novels such as Baltasar and Blimunda, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis and All the Names, but reached his widest audience with the 2008 film of his 1995 novel, Blindness, directed by Fernando Meirelles. He spent the last years of his life in Lanzarote after the Portuguese government had vetoed the nomination of his novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ for an EU literary prize in 1992.
His translator Margaret Jull Costa hailed his "wonderful imagination" and his focus on the "dignity of the ordinary man".
"He was the greatest contemporary Portuguese writer," she said, "a complete original. It's been an enormous privilege to have translated his work."
Born in 1922, he worked as a car mechanic and a journalist before devoting himself to fiction in his 50s. His breakthrough came in 1982 with his fourth novel, Baltasar and Blimunda, a story of the love of a maimed soldier for a young clairvoyant in 18th-century Lisbon. Giovanni Pontiero's 1988 English translation brought his work to a international prominence.
His reputation grew through the 1980s and 90s as he published a series of important and fantastical novels, written in a flowing mellifluous prose which follows the rhythm of speech. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, first published in 1984, is widely acknowledged to be his masterpiece – an account of the return to Lisbon of an imaginary character invented by the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa after the death of his creator. The Stone Raft, first published in 1986, imagines the Iberian peninsula cut off from Europe and adrift on the Atlantic, while All the Names (1997) turns a registry office clerk into a hero as he sets off in pursuit of an unknown woman.
Praised by the Swedish Academy for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony", the award of the Nobel prize in 1998 took his fame to a new level.
Saramago's editor at Harvill Secker, Rebecca Carter, found it "hard to take in the fact that someone as vibrant should have left us", and saluted his body of work as "one of the most important of the last century – radical, witty, humane, endlessly challenging and questioning".
...more in The Guardian - The Independent - Haaretz - BBC - Washington Post - New York Times
And in the following webs: Jose Saramago Foundation

You Will meet a Tall Dark Stranger:
Woody Allen's fourth London film is an elegant return to form
His new ensemble comedy starring Naomi Watts and Anthony Hopkins is his sprightliest for years.
Unveiled with a world premiere at Cannes last night, Woody Allen's You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger is the best of the four films the director has now made in London.
Even Allen's most dedicated fans have had their faith in the 74-year-old New Yorter's powers sorely tested by some of his late-period output, but the new ensemble comedy, starring Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin and Lucy Punch, is his most assured and sprightly work for many years.
It marks a return to filming the British capital for the director following Match Point, Scoop and Cassandra's Dream. He followed that trio with the Spanish-set comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona and a brief return to New York for Whatever Works, but Allen seems finally to have discovered a feeling for London dialogue, locations and people – at least a certain fairly wealthy section of them – with this latest work.
Watts plays a woman working in an art gallery with a crush on her boss (Antonio Banderas) that threatens her marriage to a struggling author (Brolin). Meanwhile, her mother (Gemma Jones) becomes hooked on the advice of quack fortune teller Cristal Degiorgio (Pauline Collins), after being left by her wealthy father (Hopkins) in favour of a bimbo escort girl played, in a star-making turn, by young English actress, Punch.
Allen creates a dense network of well-drawn, beautifully acted characters whose individual actions have imperceptible yet adverse effects on each other and whose familiar neuroses are nicely teased by fate and fortune. The title refers to the familiar advice dished out by fortune tellers and also to, as Brolin's character puts it, "the tall dark stranger we all eventually meet", in the shape of the Grim Reaper.
...Shot by cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, London looks natural yet romantic, a city of cultural spaces, promising little windows, old book shops and wet west London streets.
Allen refuses to put his films in competition, but its premiere is nevertheless a highlight of this 63rd Cannes. Asked if he had altered his philosophical position on death, Allen replied: "My relationship with death remains the same: I'm strongly against it."
...more in The Guardian - International Film Festival of Cannes - Le Figaro

Pulitzer Prize success for online news websites:
Online news organisations have for the first time won coveted Pulitzer Prizes, the top awards in US journalism.
A journalist writing in a collaboration between online news service ProPublica and the New York Times magazine won an award for investigative reporting.
Meanwhile, Mark Fiore of the San Francisco Chronicle's website won the award for editorial cartooning.
Pulitzer Prizes are awarded annually by Colombia University to honour the best in US literature, journalism and music.
Sheri Fink of ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism service, picked up one of two investigative journalism awards for her report about the urgent life-and-death decisions made by doctors at a New Orleans hospital in the days after Hurricane Katrina.
The article was co-published by The New York Times magazine - and was the first such collaboration to be recognised by the Pulitzer Prize.
"We are starting to see more and more of these partnerships," Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, told the BBC.
"I expect we are going to see more of it in the years ahead, as organisations face tougher financial situations."
The award for Mark Fiore marked the first time internet-only based work has been recognised by the Pulitzer Prize committee.
His animated cartoons showed "biting wit, extensive research and ability to distill complex issues", setting "a high standard for an emerging form of commentary", the Pulitzer Prize board said.
The Washington Post picked up the most awards, winning the categories of international reporting, feature writing, commentary and criticism.
...more in the BBC - Washington Post - San Francisco Chronicle - Al Jazeera - And the websites of Pulitzer Prizes and of Cartoon Artist Mark Fiore

Alexander McQueen, British fashion designer of international fame, found dead in London: Alexander McQueen on winning British designer of the year in 2003 One the UK's most influential fashion designers, Alexander McQueen, has been found dead at his London home. The death of Mr McQueen, 40, is not being treated as suspicious, the Metropolitan Police said. Reports that the four-time British designer of the year winner had taken his own life have not been confirmed. His family are said to be "devastated" at the "tragic news", according to a statement which added that they shared "a sense of shock and grief". In a message on his Twitter page on 3 February, Mr McQueen said his mother had passed away. Mr McQueen won the distinction of being named British designer of the year four times between 1996 and 2003 and was also awarded the CBE.
... The London-born designer started his career as an apprentice in Savile Row with Anderson and Sheppard before going on to work for Gieves and Hawkes. Alexandra Shulman, editor of British Vogue: "He wasn't afraid to push at the boundaries of fashion" In 1996, the man nicknamed "the hooligan of English fashion", with his close-cropped hair and Doc Martens, was named head designer at the Paris couture house of Givenchy. ...more in the BBC - France 24 - The Guardian - The Independent - El País - El Mundo - The Times - The Telegraph - Al Jazeera - Factual - And in Alexander McQueen website

Chopin's 200th anniversary around the world: This year is the 200 anniversary of Frédéric Chopin birth, thus many cities are paying tribute to one of the most well known composers of romantic music in the world with hundreds of events organized throughout 2010. Celebrations start in his native Poland January 7, but concerts, exhibits and competitions will also take place this year in France, Austria, England and China among many other countries. The official opening of the Chopin celebrations in Poland start on Thursday, January 7 with a concert at the Warsaw Philharmonic by Chinese pianist Lang Lang. The international appeal of the pianist and composer echoes his personal life, as he was born in a small Polish village on March 1, 1810 to a father with French origins; he lived in Warsaw as well as Vienna and Paris. Chopin the European will be feted in March in Paris with a series of 15 recitals organized by Cité de la musique in the French capital and the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw, with international pianists performing Chopin's complete works in their original form. Acclaimed performers such as Pierre Goy and Nelson Goerner will take part. The Austrian capital is organizing an exhibition dedicated to the time the composer spent in Vienna in 1829 and 1830-31 at the Vienna Haus der Musik from March 30 to April 30. The exhibit includes documents, photographs, posters and letters, and will also present live concerts by students of the Vienna Conservatory and the Academy of Music in Kraków, Poland. London's International Piano Series, an important platform for international solo piano recitals, highlights Chopin's oeuvre this season, with various Chopin concerts, a Chopin Forum, and six pre-concert talks focusing on Chopin's musical innovations, taking place between January 19 and June 8 in London's Southbank's Centre. Talented pianists will be able to register in the 16th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition taking place in Warsaw between October 2 and 23. The competition's winner will perform in Beijing in December to close the year's celebrations in a series of concerts that will include live performances by Jean Neuberger, Stanislav Bunin and Garrick Ohlsson at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing.
More information can be found on http://chopin2010.pl , the official website available in Polish, English, French to this day and soon in Japanese and Chinese. ...more in The Independent - Le Figaro - The Times - and in the web of Daniel Barenboim

Read also 'Chopin’s true sound can be heard at last after discovery of his piano in the UK'

2009

How Many People Can Live On Planet Earth?
In a BBC Horizon special, naturalist Sir David Attenborough investigates whether the world is heading for a population crisis. In his lengthy career, Sir David has watched the human population more than double from 2.5 billion in 1950 to nearly seven billion. He reflects on the profound effects of this rapid growth, both on humans and the environment. While much of the projected growth in human population is likely to come from the developing world, it is the lifestyle enjoyed by many in the West that has the most impact on the planet. Some experts claim that in the UK consumers use as much as two and a half times their fair share of Earth's resources. Sir David examines whether it is the duty of individuals to commit not only to smaller families, but to change the way they live for the sake of humanity and planet Earth.






More in The Optimum Population Trust

Mystery relic found during London excavation is linked to Shakespeare: 16th-century pottery found with face resembling the Bard. The bearded Tudor face, framed by long hair and a ruff, certainly looks familiar. As the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust prepares today to unveil what it says is a portrait of the Bard painted during his lifetime, archaeologists may have beaten them to it. A team from the Museum of London archeology service (Molas) working on the site where Shakespeare learned his trade has discovered a piece of 16th-century pottery that features a face resembling that of the great man. It was found during excavation work in Shoreditch, east London, at the site of what used to be The Theatre, lost for more than 400 years and where Shakespeare performed as an actor, as well as staging his earliest plays. Archaeologists unearthed the Tudor structure last summer while working at the site – which, by coincidence, is to be turned into a new theatre. There is no proof that the face on the fragment of Beauvais pottery is that of the Bard's, but insiders are excited by the discovery. "We knew we would be somewhere near Shakespeare's theatre when we got this site for our new building, and that was thrilling enough," said Penny Tuerk, a director of the Tower Theatre Company. She added jokingly that the face could have been from an ale mug sold in The Theatre's souvenir shop - and that it could make another appearance one day when the new Tower theatre opens in 2012. ...more in The Guardian - The Times - The Independent - The Telegraph - BBC - France 24

Homoeroticism in Shakespeare's sonnets: Shakespeare's lyrical poetry has long been considered marginal to his plays - is it because he addressed his poems to a man? In the latest exclusive online essay from the London Review of Books, Stephen Orgel examines how scholars over the centuries have dealt with Shakespeare's erotic sonnets. In his own time, Shakespeare was much better known to the reading public as a poet than as a playwright. Venus and Adonis went through 10 editions before his death in 1616, and another six before 1640. His other long narrative poem, The Rape of Lucrece, was less popular, but it, too, circulated far more widely than any of the plays, appearing in six editions during his life, and in two more by 1640. The most popular of the plays were Richard III and Richard II, each of which went through five editions before 1616. Romeo and Juliet went through four; Hamlet appeared in three. For readers since the 18th century, the narrative poems have been at best marginal to the Shakespeare canon. The sonnets, on the other hand, which were the least known of his non-dramatic poems until the end of the 18th century, had by the 20th century become essential to the construction of the canonical Shakespeare. This transformation, to be sure, involved a good deal of revision, emendation, and especially elucidation, for which the 18th-century editor Edmond Malone, who did more to define what we mean by 'Shakespeare' than anyone since the editors of the First Folio, is chiefly responsible. Malone's versions of the most problematic of these poems vary significantly from the original texts, but they have essentially replaced them. Since the publication of the First Folio in 1623, the canonical Shakespeare has been Shakespeare the playwright; which makes one wonder how Shakespeare would appear to us had his poems been included in the Folio - had the Folio been a volume of Complete Works, rather than Complete Plays. We are always told that the model for the First Folio was the first folio of Ben Jonson's Works, published in 1616. But this is, in a crucial way, incorrect: Jonson's folio comprised not only plays but poems, masques, entertainments and a good deal of prose commentary. Indeed, it was his epigrams that Jonson designated "the ripest of my studies", and he endured a certain amount of scorn for presuming to include the plays at all, for claiming the status of Works for scripts from the popular theatre. The Shakespeare Folio is evidence enough that by 1623 Jonson had made his point, and in that sense Jonson's Works were indeed an enabling precedent. Still, Jonson is for literary history as much a poet as a playwright, and his involvement in the world of aristocratic patronage and connoisseurship, amply revealed in his poems and masques, is an essential element in our sense of his career. Had Shakespeare's poems been, from the outset, part of the canon, we might at the very least take seriously his involvement in that same social world of patronage, erudite readers and aristocratic admirers. The dedications to his two long narrative poems, and the care with which they were prepared for and seen through the press, make clear that his ambitions extended beyond the stage. Why weren't they included in the First Folio? Probably for practical reasons. The volume was put together by the King's Men, the acting company of which Shakespeare had been a principal shareholder, playwright and performer, as a memorial to their most admired colleague. What they owned the rights to - and what chiefly concerned them - was the plays. Since the narrative poems were still selling well in 1623, to have acquired the rights to reprint them would have been difficult, if not impossible. As for the sonnets, who knows? The quarto volume published in 1609 was the only edition in Shakespeare's lifetime, and it seems to have generated little interest: so little that a second edition, published in 1640, was able to imply that the poems had never been printed before. Perhaps the sonnets were simply not considered worth including. The editorial history of Shakespeare's poems is an index to how complex and conflicted our sense of Shakespeare the poet has been. The first quartos of Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594) were well printed, elegant little books. They addressed an audience of readers who knew the classics, both Latin and English; they recalled, in both their physical presentation and versification, recent editions of Ovid, Spenser and Sidney. Both poems include fulsome dedications to the Earl of Southampton, a glamorous young aristocrat (he was 19 when Venus and Adonis appeared) who was also the ward of William Cecil, Lord Burghley. This is the way ambitious Elizabethan poets got on in the world: they found a generous aristocratic patron, whose taste, praised in a lavish dedication, in turn constituted a marketable endorsement. That this worked for Shakespeare, at least initially, is indicated by the fact that the Lucrece dedication is significantly warmer than the dedication for Venus and Adonis; conversely, the fact that there are no further dedications to Southampton implies that it ultimately failed to pay off. Southampton was liberally endowed with taste and charm, but when at the age of 21 he came into his inheritance, it turned out to consist of debts: artistic patronage does not live by taste alone. Venus and Adonis was witty, inventive and stylish; it was also daring, erotically explicit, even amoral. Though it seems to us sexually more comic than pornographic, its immense popularity was cited frequently in Shakespeare's own time as an index of the decline of morals among the young, or the literate classes, or - extraordinarily - the Roman Catholic church. Thomas Robinson, a lapsed friar, in a pamphlet published in 1622 called The Anatomy of the English Nunnery at Lisbon, described the comfortable life of a father confessor to the nuns there: "Then after supper it is usual for him to read a little of Venus and Adonis, the jests of George Peele, or some such scurrilous book: for there are few idle pamphlets printed in England which he hath not in the house." The Rape of Lucrece is less obviously licentious - and certainly much less fun - but for all its moralising, there is a good deal here to feed the Renaissance erotic, and sadistic, imagination. Moreover, the elements that we find tiresome in the two poems - their formality, dilation, extensive description and digression; in short, the sheer undramatic quality of these narratives by our greatest dramatist - would have been a good part of what contemporary readers admired: these were the things that put Shakespeare, as a poet, in the league of Spenser and Marlowe. At the same time, their focus on the political implications of rape, on the one hand, and the sexual power of women, on the other, have a striking relevance to our own social and political history. Jonathan Crewe, in the recent, excellent Pelican Shakespeare Narrative Poems (1999), is particularly good on the sexual politics of these works, and the new and complex critical life they have taken on. The sonnets are, editorially and bibliographically, another matter entirely. They were, to begin with, not a book. At least some of them circulated initially in manuscript - the miscellaneous writer Francis Meres in 1598 praises Shakespeare's "sugared sonnets among his private friends", and while it is difficult to imagine 'sugared' applying to such poems as "They that have power to hurt and will do none" or "Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame", the adjective certainly describes many of the sonnets written to the beloved young man. There was nothing secretive about this mode of publication; manuscript circulation was a normal form of transmission for much lyric poetry in the period. Even Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, Marlowe's Hero and Leander and Donne's Songs and Sonnets, all of them monuments of Elizabethan verse, were initially conceived as coterie literature: the poet was writing for an audience he knew. Donne refused to allow his lyric poetry to be published in his lifetime because he would then have no control over who read it. The Shakespeare who wrote the 'sugared sonnets' is the Shakespeare of the social world implied by the dedications to Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. As for those tougher nuts, the obscure courtly allegory The Phoenix and the Turtle and the Spenserian lament A Lover's Complaint, they have seemed bafflingly unlike the Shakespeare of the plays, and it is only in the past few decades that A Lover's Complaint has been accepted as Shakespeare's at all; but if we look at them in the context of Shakespeare's other poetry, we will see that they are entirely consistent with its literary ideals and intellectual milieu. ...more in The Guardian

2008

July

Millions of Europeans and citizens all over the world welcome Barack Obama: Back home in the US polls have Barack Obama and John McCain running neck-and-neck. But here in Europe, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Democratic candidate has already won the election. As he begins the second leg of his foreign jaunt, Europe's adoration for Obama comes freighted with a strange sense of irreversibility – as if this week is the beginning of a six-month handover from George Bush, and the business of voting is little more than a pesky formality. An Obama victory in November is no fait accompli. But if they form their impressions from American expatriates in the great capitals, it's no wonder Europeans might think that the Illinois senator has already closed the deal. Sixteen months after this protracted election began, I've met one fellow American in Europe who voted for Hillary Clinton, which she confessed in a whisper. I'm sure that there are also, somewhere, expats who are prepared to vote McCain, but to call them scarce is an understatement. So hooray, Barack's coming to town. But it's striking, even amusing, that Obama's travels have commanded so much attention, not just from the foreign press – which the candidate treats with indifference, ignoring phone calls and allowing only one written Q&A with an Israeli paper – but from the American media as well (the anchors of all three evening news programmes are joining the junket, proof that increasing irrelevance puts no dent in travel budgets). This election, as all Americans and far too few Europeans are aware, is hinging on domestic issues: economic slowdown, the housing bust, the price of fuel and milk. Images from this week of Obama à la commander in chief may prove important, but the content of his proposals will come second. Few voters will be casting their ballots come November because of what one candidate says in London about recalibrating the terms of the special relationship. So far as foreign policy enters into the minds of voters, it starts and largely stops with national security: the one issue on which McCain consistently outpolls his opponent. Hence Obama's photo-op in Afghanistan on Saturday, flanked by men in camouflage and standing under the protection of a bald eagle statue. Hence the trip to Sderot, Israeli ministers by his side in a helicopter, and the funny turn of phrase by which he condemned rocket attacks: "If missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that."

Hence, also, the feeling that Obama's layovers in Europe constitute the fag end of his trip, the diplomatic necessity after the real work in the Middle East has been done. Lately Obama has been trying to broaden his opposition to the Iraq war into a larger narrative about safety and leadership. In that narrative, European partners are certainly welcome, but to imagine them as equals is foolhardy. Yet while changes to transatlantic diplomacy under a President Obama might not be sweeping, that doesn't mean the transatlantic relationship itself will remain unaltered. Fittingly for this most symbolic of candidates, the change that Obama offers is predicated on an emotional shift, one that takes hold from the bottom up. The view of the US from London and Paris is still grim, not much better than in the worst days of the war. We know that these past years have been bad if not disastrous – an astonishing 78% of us think something's out of joint – but the American abroad must confront the cataclysm of the Bush era on a near-daily basis, and in terms that can be extremely painful. One still hears the indignity that the 3,000 people who died in my hometown, on a day my father abandoned his apartment and fled for his life, were insignificant or even deserved their fate. The days of Nous sommes tous américains, the famous Le Monde headline from 9/13, are long behind us. Which makes European Obamamania all the more remarkable, and perhaps less problematic for the candidate than some here have suggested. He is still struggling to convince voters that he is "one of them", and Republicans have wasted no time in declaring that the first black candidate for the highest office in the land seems suspiciously un-American. ...more in The Guardian - The Times - MSNBC - The Washington Post - The Telegraph - The Independent - BBC

June

Courageous shadow home secretary David Davis is resigning as an MP to protest against the Government's suppression of Habeas Corpus, which is the base of Human Rights and Democracy created by England: The surprise move follows what sources called an “angry row” between Mr Davis and David Cameron, the Conservative leader over the party’s stance on counter-terrorism. Mr Davis had driven the Tories’ opposition to Gordon Brown’s 42-day plan, which was narrowly endorsed by the Commons on Wednesday night. In a Commons meeting in the wake of that result, Mr Davis and Mr Cameron are understood to have disagreed about how strongly the Tories should continue to resist the 42-day move. Some of Mr Cameron’s inner circle are known to worry that opposing the new terror law puts the party on the wrong side of popular opinion. Mr Davis’ move panicked the Cameron inner circle and cast a shadow over an annual summer party Mr Cameron held for senior MPs at his London home on Wednesday night. As in previous years, Mr Davis had not been invited to the gathering. In statement delivered on the steps of the House of Commons today, Mr Davis said he was protesting against the "insidious and monstrous" erosion of civil liberties in Britain. He announced he will refight his Haltemprice & Howden in a by-election on July 10 on a civil liberties platform. The Lib Dems will not contest the seat. Mr Davis said: "Up until yesterday I took the view that what we did in the House of Commons, representing our constituents was a noble endeavour because with centuries of forebears we defended the freedoms of the British people - well we did up until yesterday." ...more in The Times - The Guardian - The Independent - The Telegraph

Read Mr Davis courageous speech in the House of Commons in Habeas-Corpus.net

Also read and watch ‘It really is psychological torture.’, the testimony of Lee Glendinning spoke to a 23-year-old student about what it is like to be detained under the existing terrorism legislation... in The Guardian

Footnote in history: Clinton campaign dies in chilly Dakota: After 16 months of rallies and debates and over $200m spent, former first lady addresses 200 people at an Indian reservation. It was a raw, windswept afternoon when Hillary Clinton appeared on what would have to pass for a stage. There were no warm-up chants, no triumphalist campaign songs, no celebrity supporters, just five local women awkwardly flapping blue Hillary signs. The audience at this Indian reservation - about 200 counting 14 students on a class trip from Massachusetts and their teacher, who said they were all Barack Obama supporters - was so small Clinton did not even attempt the politician's hoax of pointing to faces in fake delight. This is what it looks like for Clinton at the end, the last gasps of a dying presidential campaign. When she launched her campaign in January last year, she cast herself as the inevitable Democratic nominee. "I'm in it to win it," she said. Now Obama looks like the inevitable candidate. Clinton's chances of a miracle recovery evaporated on Saturday when the Democratic party decided to recognise primaries in Michigan and Florida, but halve their voting power at the party's nominating convention. ...Despite the courtship by the Clintons, Obama was endorsed by the entire tribal leadership of South Dakota, and was adopted as a son of the Crow tribe in Montana. Obama also has the money to pour resources into South Dakota and Montana. Clinton's coffers are beyond empty. Her campaign, now $20m in debt, has no money for the prime venues that she favoured in the early months of the campaign. Almost all of her campaign events are held outdoors despite unpredictable weather. At one rally, Clinton's only stage prop was a giant cottonwood tree. She has little money to get voters to the polls - a huge liability on the reservations where poverty and long distances depress turnout. Clinton also has little money for advertising. Her first television ad in South Dakota went on air less than a week ago. The ad, despite her own insolvent campaign, attacks President George Bush for running up the national debt. Her entourage on the campaign trail is similarly shrunk. Her assistant, Huma Abedin, once deemed so glamorous she was given a Vogue photospread, remains along with a couple of other aides. News outlets have scaled back their coverage. Camera crews once used to jostling for positions on risers now have yards of space to themselves. ...read the full article by Suzanne Goldenberg in The Guardian

May

Amnesty International present 2008 Raport stating the failure of the Human Rights Declaration after 60 years of their worlwide adoption: Amnesty International today called for Guantánamo Bay to be shut by the end of the year. The human rights organisation's secretary general, Irene Khan, said she hoped the next US president would announce its closure on December 10 - the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "It would be a great occasion for the new US president to announce the closure of Guantánamo on that day," she said. As the charity published its annual report, Khan said all three presidential candidates had pledged to shut down Guantánamo Bay. She also accused western governments of failing to do enough to tackle human rights abuses. The organisation's annual checklist of human rights outrages showed people were still tortured or ill-treated in at least 81 countries. Men and women also faced unfair trials in at least 54 countries and were denied free speech in at least 77, the report said. "The reason why the Amnesty International report highlights the role of the United States is because the US is the world's superpower and as such its performance sets the standard for other governments around the world," Khan said. "That's why we have high expectations that the new US president will set a new direction that the US will engage positively with human rights and will begin first by setting its own house in order." Amnesty challenged world leaders to "apologise for six decades of human rights failure" and to make a new commitment to work for improvements. The report renewed criticism of the UK for its policy of deportations to unstable countries, secret terror hearings and failing to fully investigate alleged state collusion in killings in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. ... more in The Guardian / And in the web of Amnesty International / Click here to read the full 2008 Report

Hope for release of Aung San Suu Kyi as Burma donors meet to pledge billions:

Representatives of more than 45 governments will meet in Rangoon today to pledge money to help Burma's cyclone survivors, but with tough conditions attached - particularly that the country's military rulers give access to disaster zones and ensure that aid reaches those who need it. It comes as supporters of the democratically elected leader of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, have been speculating that the junta is planning an easing of her house arrest conditions or even a release, as part of its concessions to huge international pressure. The detention order that confined her to a fifth consecutive year of incarceration expired last night. Three weeks after Cyclone Nargis killed an estimated 134,000 people and left more than two million in the Irrawaddy delta homeless, diplomatic wrangling between the Burmese regime and the international community seemed to be coming to a conclusion with the junta's announcement on Friday that 'all aid workers' would be let in and that small boats would be allowed to deliver medicines and food. Until now Burma had blocked significant amounts of aid and refused visas to foreign specialists, apparently afraid their presence could loosen the regime's 46-year grip on power. Charities fear they may be 'held to ransom' by Burma, which hopes to see an $11bn aid package pledged today, and say the military government must spell out exactly what its promise meant. 'We have to see that this is transmitted into reality, into practice,' Surin Pitsuwan, secretary-general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said. 'If the agreement given to the secretary-general of the UN cannot be implemented in spirit, then we will have problems delivering assistance.' ... more in The Guardian - The Irriwaddy - Mizzima - The Times - France 24

Clinton - the lier, the bitch - unvails her hope that Obama be assassinated in June like was Robert Kennedy in 1968: Hillary Clinton forced to apologise for staying in race ‘in case of an assassination’ of Obama. Hillary Clinton rushed out an apology last night after citing the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy as a reason for her to remain in the race against Barack Obama — an extraordinary admission which caught her campaign aides off guard. Mrs Clinton, dismissing the idea of abandoning her increasingly longshot attempt to win the Democratic presidential nomination, said in South Dakota: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don’t understand it.” She added that she did not understand why, given this history, some Democrats were calling for her to quit. The former First Lady had been responding to a question from a newspaper editorial board. ...more in The Times - MSNBC - The Guardian - The Washington Post - The Independent - The New York Times - The Telegraph - BBC - France 24

And click on the followin screen to watch journalist Keith Olbermann lucid analysis on the hideous wishes uttered -time and time again- by Hillary Clinton.

The shameful inaction of UN and Europe: Britain to back air drops to deliver aid to Burmese cyclone victims:

Britain would support unilateral humanitarian intervention in Burma if the military government’s refusal to accept foreign aid for the victims of Cyclone Nargis results in epidemics and widespread deaths, Lord Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Office Minister, told The Times yesterday. Lord Malloch-Brown was in Rangoon, the former Burmese capital, as part of an international effort to break the deadlock which has left many of the 2.5 million victims of the cyclone bereft of food, shelter, fresh water and medical care. The United Nations’ humanitarian chief, Sir John Holmes, arrived in the city last night and Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, will also travel to Burma this week to make the case for an aid operation fronted by SouthEast Asian nations, India and China, but containing a strong UN component. But Britain has not ruled out supporting action under the terms of the UN’s 2005 New York declaration, which sets out the “responsibility to protect” populations from crimes against humanity using “appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means”. In a radio interview on Saturday, Gordon Brown referred to the possibility of unilaterally dropping international aid to stricken areas of the Irrawaddy delta, where as many as 129,000 people are believed to have died a fortnight ago. “As far as air drops are concerned we rule nothing out, and the reason we rule nothing out, is that we want to get the aid directly to the people,” Mr Brown told the BBC. Asked under what circumstances Britain would invoke the responsibility to protect, Lord Malloch-Brown said: “How do we define if it [the plan for Asian-led aid] isn’t working? If there are massive outbreaks of disease and secondary deaths, or if it gums up and no aid is delivered.” Western governments and international aid organisations appear to have accepted that the solution they would have liked to bring to Burma – a massive humanitarian aid operation by western NGOs under UN leadership, such as the one mounted in Aceh, Indonesia, after the 2004 tsunami – is out of the question. The generals who rule Burma know full well the contempt with which they are regarded in the West, and view its aid workers, especially from the former coloniser, Britain, as a Trojan Horse that could undermine even further their legitimacy in the eyes of their own people. Instead, they are being offered a face-saving compromise in which India, China and the members of the Association of SouthEast Asian Nations (Asean) would work with the UN. “They’re not going to agree to a lot of British and American aid workers fanning out across the delta,” Lord Malloch-Brown said after meetings with a series of Burmese ministers. “We’ve got an emerging model where the likes of us will work within a framework, led by Asean, other Asian nations and the UN. ...more in The Times - The Independent - The Guardian - Democracy Now - The Washington Post - The Telegraph - The Irrawaddy - Mizzima - France 24 - Al Jazeera - Burma News blog

Barack Obama tightens his lead as Hillary Clinton falters: Barack Obama's grip on the Democratic nomination tightened tonight after he decisively won the North Carolina primary and appeared to have restricted Hillary Clinton to only a narrow victory in Indiana. Mr Obama's big win in the Tar Heel state robbed Mrs Clinton of the "game changing" victory she badly needed to alter the course of the Democratic nomination battle, while the closeness of the race in Indiana added to the sense that she is rapidly running out of time to wrench the nomination from her rival's grasp. Mr Obama was heading for a 14 point win in North Carolina, while Mrs Clinton's apparent margin of victory in Indiana was narrow although most US networks refused to call the result. Mr Obama appeared to concede Indiana and Mrs Clinton declared victory in the state but, after they both spoke at primary night rallies, the tally dramatically tightened to within a few thousand votes. ...In a speech before a cheering crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina, Mr Obama predicted that Republicans will attack him over his race. He said they will "label and name call" - a reference to recent controversies including the incendiary remarks of his former pastor - and declared: "I trust the American people's desire to no longer be defined by our differences." He added: "That's why I'm in this race. I love this country too much to see it divided and distracted at this moment in history. I believe in our ability to perfect this union because it's the only reason I'm standing here today. And I know the promise of America because I have lived it." ...Hillary Clinton's hopes of winning the race for the Democratic nomination for president are dwindling after she failed tonight to close the gap on Barack Obama in two key primaries. She won the Indiana primary but saw that outweighed by his win in North Carolina. Clinton needed to win both North Carolina and Indiana to stand a chance of reining in Obama. It was her last opportunity after battling it out in state after state since Iowa on January 3. ...With 85% of the vote counted in Indiana, Clinton had 554,261 (52%) and Obama 514,909 (48%). In North Carolina, with 86% of the vote counted, he had 782,549 (56%) to Clinton's 583,700 (42%). ...more in The Times - The Guardian - The Telegraph - The Washington Post - The Independent - BBC

A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for John McCain:


A leading Democratic super-delegate switched his support from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama yesterday, saying that their long nomination battle had made one White House hopeful particularly competitive: the Republican John McCain. The defection from Mrs Clinton of Joe Andrew, a former leader of the Democratic National Committee, reflects growing fears within the party that her marathon nomination fight against Mr Obama is helping Mr McCain, who in new polls appears increasingly threatening. Mr Andrew, appointed the party chairman in 1999 by Bill Clinton near the end of his presidency, said in a letter to other super-delegates: “John McCain, without doing much of anything, is now competitive against both of our remaining candidates. A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to continue this process, and a vote to continue this process is a vote that assists John McCain.” The Arizona senator, who wrapped up the Republican nomination almost two months ago, is running nearly even against both Democrats in head-to-head comparisons, at a time when public approval of the Republican Party is the lowest in a generation. ...more in The Times - The Independent

March

Spain halts election campaigning after ex-councillor killed by ETA terrorists but Zapatero and his naZionalists allies refuse to promise never more to negotiate with the terrorists: Spain has suspended campaigning for Sunday's general election after a former local politician was shot dead in front of his wife and young daughter today. Isaias Carrasco, a 42-year-old ex-councillor, was killed as he left his home in the Basque town of Mondragón with his family, sending shockwaves through the country. Carrasco died after being rushed to hospital. He had been shot several times, twice in the back of the head, the interior minister, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, said. Rubalcaba blamed the Basque armed group ETA for the killing. The Spanish president, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and the leader of the opposition Popular party, Mariano Rajoy, immediately agreed to suspend campaigning throughout the country. "This is a vile and cowardly act which deserves our total rejection," Rubalcaba said. "[It is] a vile and cowardly act by a band of murderers who are never going to conquer the will of Spanish democracy." Spain has been on high alert. Last month, Rubalcaba said that although Eta was believed to be much weakened, he expected it to attempt a deadly attack before the election. Since 1977, Eta has killed 20 people in the run-up to elections to try to set the political agenda. Carrasco, a former councillor with the Socialist party, did not have bodyguards and lived in a quiet street away from the centre of the town, making him an easy target, Basque police said. An unidentified neighbour told CNN television that she was in her bedroom when she heard three shots. "I looked out of the window and I saw his wife and daughter on top of him shouting 'Daddy, Daddy' and 'murderers, murderers'," she said. ....more in The Times - The Telegraph - The Guardian - The Independent

With child scaring tales Clinton succeded in manipulating the electorate as did Bush and other tyrans along history: Hillary Clinton vowed she would win the Democratic nomination this morning after securing desperately-needed victories in Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas, a triple triumph that means her titanic struggle with Barack Obama will continue into the Spring - and possibly to the nominating convention this summer. "Ohio has written a new chapter in the history of this campaign and we're just getting started," she declared after arriving in a storm of confetti at a party for wildly celebrating supporters in the state capital of Columbus. Her win in this big, blue collar state halted Mr Obama's momentum after his 12 straight victories and threw doubts over whether he will after all emerge as the Democratic nominee from their epic and historically-charged race. A couple of hours later, news organisations declared her the victor in a close battle for Texas, the other big state voting yesterday. Mr Obama's campaign was swift to point out that it is still virtually impossible for her to catch him in elected delegates. With a third of the Texas delegates being picked by post-primary caucuses - which he was expected to win - Mr Obama's three-figure lead is unlikely to be dented significantly. It could even be extended further with anticipated victories over the coming days in Mississippi and Wyoming. But, on a night where Mrs Clinton also convincingly won Rhode Island despite losing to Mr Obama in Vermont, she has earned the right to carry on campaigning into the next big contest in Pennsylvania on April 22 and beyond. ....more in The Times - The Independent - The Washington Post - The Guardian - The Telegraph

Texas and Ohio could end Clinton hypocrisy: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are braced for election results tonight which may prove decisive in determining the outcome of their titanic battle for the Democratic presidential nomination. After 11 consecutive wins, Mr Obama leads in the race for convention delegates by a margin of 1,386 to 1,276, according to an estimate from the Associated Press. But Mrs Clinton shows little sign of relenting, saying she is just getting "warmed up" while her campaign is vowing to pursue their opponent over his links to a former friend on trial for fraud. A total of 370 delegates will be awarded proportionately from Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont tonight. Candidates need to secure the votes of 2,025 delegates to win the nomination. Mr Obama's camp believes that even if Mrs Clinton wins the big states voting today it is almost impossible for her to close this gap before the convention this summer. He said today: "The theory was they had to blow us out in Texas and Ohio and I don’t think that is going to happen." Mrs Clinton said she "never under-estimates the intelligence of the voter," adding, "I feel good about both states." She told an interviewer: "Granted, I am a little older and I have earned every wrinkle on my face and I feel just as energised about what we are doing." ...Despite the upbeat message from the Clinton team, the stresses inside her campaign were exposed yesterday. In an astonishing lapse of discipline, Penn sent an email to the Los Angeles Times at the weekend in response to a story being prepared about internal rows. In it he claimed he had "no direct authority in the campaign", suggesting he is preparing the ground to avoid blame if she fails to secure the nomination. Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson, sent another email to the paper saying Penn did have direct responsibility for strategy. Clinton has mounted a very aggressive campaign in the past few days and hit Obama hard yesterday over his links with Tony Rezko, the property developer whose trial for alleged corruption opened in Chicago yesterday. She also exploited a leaked memo suggesting Obama had been lying about adopting protectionist policies, a hot issue in recession-hit Ohio. Obama has been saying publicly he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, which many Americans blame for job losses. But the leaked memo from the Canadian government quotes one of his economic advisers, Austan Goolsbee, saying threats to renegotiate "should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans". The smaller New England states of Rhode Island and Vermont vote today as well. The Republican frontrunner, Senator John McCain, could move closer to wrapping up his party's nomination in the contests. McCain is expected to beat his last remaining major challenger, the former Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee, in all four states. ...more in The Times - The Independent - The Telegraph - The Guardian - The Washington Post
And click on the screens to watch the latest campaign news

February

From Manchester to London, quake -5.3 magnitude- shakes Britons out of bed: Large areas of England from London to Manchester suffered tremors just before 1am last night as an earthquake measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale rumbled through the country for several seconds. There were reports of power cuts in some cities and of buildings shaking - in Hull students ran into the street for fear of falling masonry - but no reports of injuries. According to the US Geological Survey, the earthquake struck at 12.56am at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles) with an epicentre 205 km (127 miles) north of London and 30 miles south of Kingston upon Hull. The Guardian received calls from startled readers from London, Bedfordshire Yorkshire, Manchester, Blackpool and Leicester. The North West Ambulance Service said its crews had reported feeling the tremor from Macclesfield to Southport but they had not heard of any injuries by 1.15am. A spokeswoman said: "We felt the tremors here in our control room in Anfield. We have had a few of our vehicles reporting that they felt the tremors as far as Macclesfield and up towards Southport but no actual calls from the public." Merseyside police and Merseyside fire and rescue service confirmed they had received reports of tremors but no reports of injuries. Alex Ferrier, 22, a marine biology student from Hull, said: "It was quite scary ... we live in a road of large terraced houses and I was woken up and looked out of the window and there were loads of people on the streets." ...more in The Guardian - The Independent - The Times - The Telegraph

Dr. Aung San Suu Kyi critical of Burma junta talks without content nor goals: The detained Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is frustrated at a lack of talks on political reform with the ruling military junta since last year's bloody crackdown on dissent, her party has said. Following the fifth meeting between Ms Suu Kyi and the junta liaison minister Aung Kyi, Ms Suu Kyi's spokesman Nyan Win said she held out little hope that unprecedented international pressure on the generals would bear fruit. She had also been allowed to meet leaders of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party. "Let's hope for the best and prepare for the worst," he quoted her as saying, adding she worried that yesterday's meetings might give rise to "false hope". Mr Win said she had told Mr Kyi, appointed as go-between after the September crackdown, that talks must include representatives of Burma's many ethnic groups, which have been struggling for autonomy for five decades. Ms Suu Kyi, who has been in prison or under house arrest for more than 12 of the past 18 years, also told her colleagues she feared she was being strung along by the junta, a group of generals who have refused to acknowledge their election defeat in 1990. "She is not satisfied with meetings with Aung Kyi and with the lack of any time frame," said Mr Win. The NLD's vice-chairman Tin Oo, who has been under house arrest since May 2003, was barred from attending the meeting, which was held under heavy armed guard. ...more in The Independent - BBC - Burma Today - Christian Aid - The Irrawaddy

Protests over Beijing Olympics games 'will grow' in the struggle for Democracy: This is just the beginning, activist warns, as China tries to limit damage. For six years, the organisers of the Beijing Olympics have been planning an event that will restore China to the centre of the world stage. No expense has been spared, no detail overlooked. Beijing has splashed out $440m (£224m) on the spectacular "Bird's Nest" stadium to underscore its rising economic power and ambition. Organisers have drawn up a guest list of the global great and the good to witness the re-emergence of this ancient civilization. And to entertain them and emphasise the openness of modern China, they hired the biggest name in Hollywood to help choreograph the festivities. But with less than six months to go, this celebration of Chinese resurgence is threatening to degenerate into an opportunity for critics to land some blows on the communist leadership. The stadium architect, Ai Weiwei, refuses to attend the opening ceremony because of the "disgusting" political conditions in the one-party state. The VIP list will not include Prince Charles, a friend of the Dalai Lama, who told the Free Tibet movement that he will be absent. And now, in the biggest blow yet, Steven Spielberg has resigned as artistic consultant, saying his conscience will not let him choreograph an event for a country that has done little to use its influence to ease the slaughter in Darfur. The Chinese leadership is scrambling to limit the damage and prevent the Spielberg boycott from escalating into a wider movement. A top Communist party official, Xi Jinping, has been parachuted in to lead preparations, it emerged yesterday. ...more in The Guardian

Fire rips through historic Camden Market: Scotland Yard said today that it was too early to pin down the cause of a blaze that ripped through a large part of Camden Market last night and gutted a local pub generally considered to be North London's trendiest watering hole. More than 100 firefighters battled for more than three hours to bring the blaze under control after it erupted at about 7.10pm on Chalk Farm Road. No one was reported to have been hurt in the fire. Crowds of revellers from the pubs and bars of Camden Town were moved away as the flames took hold and leapt as high as 30 metres into the night sky. The worst-hit areas were storage properties for the Canal Market and the Hawley Arms, which was formerly popular with Hell’s Angels but which is now a hangout for musicians and celebrities including Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss. Various flats and small businesses were also affected. The pub's landlady, Ruth Charles-Ridler, arrived at the scene this morning to assess the damage. She said: “In a word I’m devastated. Everyone I’ve spoken to is in complete shock. This was a good community pub where everybody knew everybody else. It is a great loss to Camden Town. ...Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, said: “Our thoughts are with those people affected by the fire in Camden Market — one of the most thriving markets in London and of enormous importance for the economy of the local area and beyond. “Yet again the emergency services deserve our thanks for the speed and professionalism with which they have responded to tackle the blaze. Thankfully, there appears to be no one injured, despite the fact that it is a dense area and on a Saturday evening would have been crowded.” ...more in The Times - The Independent

The brillant candidate of ethical change, Barack Obama, gets the support of 12 USA estates, and the candidate of the corporatist status quo, Clinton, wins in another 9 estates, supported by hispanic population - so proclive to demagogic caudillos as in their own countries: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won victories over Sen. Barack Obama in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York last night, giving her presidential campaign a crucial boost. But Obama countered by winning of a string of states, including the general election battleground of Missouri, in the seesaw race for the Democratic nomination. The results ensured that the fierce contest for delegates will continue into critical primaries in Texas and Ohio on March 4, and possibly beyond, in what has become the party's most competitive race in at least a quarter of a century. Clinton claimed four of the five biggest prizes in Super Tuesday's 22-state Democratic competition. She also captured Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Those victories helped stem what appeared to be gathering momentum around Obama's candidacy since he won in South Carolina on Jan. 26. But Obama won in more places than his New York rival, racking up victories in his home state of Illinois, as well as Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota and Utah. His narrow victory in Missouri came after Clinton appeared on the brink of winning there. Only the outcome in New Mexico remained unresolved early this morning. In many of the states Clinton won, Obama had surged from far behind to narrow the gap in the days before Super Tuesday. Her ability to hold off his charge brought a sense of relief to her campaign advisers, but the likelihood that neither would emerge with a significant advantage in delegates was a sign that their roller-coaster competition would continue. ...more in The Guardian - The Independent - The Times - The Washington Post - The Telegraph - The New York Times - Democracy Now - And in the web of Barack Obama for America

Maria Shriver and Keillor and Stevie Wonder and Oprah Winfrey and Caroline and Edward Kennedy as all those who wants ethical change in the USA and the world endorse Barack Obama for President: California first lady Maria Shriver endorsed Barack Obama for president on Sunday, calling him inspirational and a natural leader. "I thought, if Barack Obama was a state, he'd be California," Shriver said, addressing thousands of people at a rally headlined by talk show host Oprah Winfrey. "Diverse, open, smart, independent, bucks tradition. Innovative. Inspirational. Dreamer. Leader." Shriver's support comes after her uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy, issued his own endorsement of Obama, and her husband, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, backed GOP candidate John McCain. Shriver told an audience of 9,000 at the University of California, Los Angeles, that she decided at the last minute to come to the rally, which also featured Obama's wife, Michelle, and Caroline Kennedy, daughter of former president John F. Kennedy. Other family members are supporting Clinton. Maria Shriver, the wife of California's Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and a member of the powerful Kennedy clan, yesterday gave a surprise, last-minute boost to Barack Obama's bid to clinch the delegate-rich state, Super Tuesday's biggest prize. Michelle Obama, Caroline Kennedy, Maria Shriver and Oprah Winfrey Mrs Obama, Miss Kennedy, Miss Shriver and Miss Winfrey appeared on stage together The first lady of California, an unannounced guest at a get-out-the-vote rally hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama, urged a crowd of around 3,000 to back the Illinois senator in tomorrow's polls, stressing the critical role Californians will play in the battle for the White House. The latest polls show Mr Obama and rival Hillary Clinton locked in a dead heat for the key state, which will award a leading 370 delegates of the 2,025 needed to secure the Democratic nomination. "(This election) is not just a moment for the United States of America; this is not just a moment for the Democratic Party. This is a moment for California," Miss Shriver told the cheering crowd at a sports hall at the University of California, Los Angeles. "The more I thought about it, I thought, you know, if Barack Obama was a state he would be California," Miss Shriver added, to thunderous applause. "I mean, think about it - he's diverse. Open. Smart. Independent. Bucks tradition. Innovative. Inspiring. Dreamer. Leader!" After every word, the crowd screamed "yes!" "He's not about himself, he's about us," she said. "He's about the power of us and what we can do when we come together. ...more in The Times - The New York Times - The Telegraph - USA Today / And in the web of Barack Obama for America

January

A President Like My Father
by Caroline Kennedy
OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama. My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals. Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible. We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama. It isn’t that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960. ...more in The New York Times - The Independent - The Guardian - The Times - The Telegraph - The Washington Post

A better future triumphs in South Carolina: Barack Obama won a resounding victory over Hillary Clinton in a bitterly fought South Carolina Democratic primary last night. Taking more than twice as many votes his rival for the White House, it was a stunning victory that up-ended predictions about the Democratic nomination process. Black and white voters came out in droves to repudiate the much criticised race-baiting tactics of former President Bill Clinton. As a result Mr Obama is now level pegging with Mrs Clinton and his strong victory should restore the flagging spirits of his idealistic young supporters. The final result gave Mr Obama 55 per cent of the vote, Mrs Clinton 27 per cent, and Mr Edwards 18 per cent. The stage is now set for a fight across 22 states on 5 February or Super Tuesday, as it is known. But the battle to win the party’s presidential nomination is expected to rumble on for several more months at least. Speaking to a jubilant crowd Mr Obama gave one of his most powerful speeches of his campaign. “Tonight, the cynics who believed that what began in the snows of Iowa was just an illusion were told a different story by the good people of South Carolina,” he said. “After four great contests in every corner of this country, we have the most votes, the most delegates and the most diverse coalition of Americans we’ve seen in a long, long time.” Supporters interrupted his speech with chants of "Yes, we can!" and "Race doesn't matter!" Mr Obama told supporters that there were huge challenges ahead and in a nod to the ugly squabbling that has taken place with the Clinton campaign he said, "This is our chance to end it once and for all." ...more in The Guardian - The Independent - The Times - watch the BBC

Dr. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been awarded the “Abogados de Atocha” international prize of the Castilla-La Mancha region in Spain: The award ceremony has taken place this evening in Toledo , Spain . U Bo Hla Tint, Member of the Council of Ministers of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB) accepted this privileged award on behalf of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. more in the web National Coalition Government of Burma in exile

Myanmar's detained Dr. Aung San Suu Kyi taken to state guesthouse: Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was taken to a government guesthouse on Friday where she is believed to have met a senior junta official, witnesses said. "I saw the car enter the guesthouse and leave an hour later," one witness told Reuters. There was no immediate word from the military government or Suu Kyi's party, but she probably met Aung Kyi, a senior member of the ruling military junta. If confirmed, it would be their fourth meeting since Aung Kyi was appointed go-between after last September's crackdown on pro-democracy protests triggered global outrage. They last met on November 19 when diplomats speculated their talks might have focused on the junta's preconditions for negotiations between Suu Kyi and regime leader Senior General Than Shwe. He has offered direct talks if Suu Kyi abandons confrontation and her support for sanctions against the military, which has ruled the former Burma for 45 years. ...more in The Washington Post

Colombian narco-marxist rebels free 2 hostages but remain 774 persons in captivity:

Two women hostages freed by Colombian rebels are being flown out of the jungle, the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, said today. Chávez had organised a rescue mission to pick up Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez after hostage leaders sent authorities the coordinates of where the two could be found. They are expected to arrive in Venezuela later today. The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed the two women were handed over by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) in what was being called the most significant hostage release since 2001, when Farc freed 300 soldiers and police officers.
..."We thank you from our souls for being with us," Rojas, a Bogotá lawyer and politician, told Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez by satellite phone in a conversation recorded by the Telesur network and broadcast live across Latin America. "We are being reborn," she said. "Imagine our happiness when we saw the helicopters." Handed the phone as the two stood near the guerrillas, Gonzalez, a former lawmaker, told Chávez: "Mr. President, a thousand thanks for your humanitarian work. Please, president, don't drop your guard. The ones left behind wanted you to get that message." The liberation was a resounding triumph for Chávez, who just last month suffered an unexpected political blow when Venezuelans rejected a proposed constitutional reform that would have expanded his powers. An earlier effort by Chávez to win the Colombian hostages' freedom unraveled on New Year's Eve. But the president's fortunes changed Thursday, as Rojas and González were flown out of the jungle and to the Venezuelan capital. Telesur, a station run by the Venezuelan government, filmed every stage of a dramatic process that had people across the region glued to their television sets.
...more in The Guardian - The Times - The Independent - The Washington Post
The second screen shows a recent interview by France 24 channel to a manager of the "caviar" left wing association France Amerique Latine, you will hear a perverse apology about the terrorists of the FARC as if they were a faire tale "Robin Hood" of poor Colombian when, in matter of fact, if the FARC would succeed in taking power such undemocratic narco-mafia would make of Colombia another "socialist republic" of Burma.

What is there to celebrate in Burma?: Sixty years of 'freedom' (Independence Day) finds a war-ravaged land, a weary people _ and a buoyant energy sector, thanks to complicit neighbours. ''Let us rejoice at the independence which has come to us today, the result of sacrifices undergone by us and those who preceded us in the years that have passed.'' Those are the words of Burma's first president, Sao Shwe Thaike, in his independence message on Jan 4, 1948 when the country gained its independence after nearly 100 years of British rule. What has the 60th anniversary of Burma's independence brought in 2008? Did it bring freedom, prosperity and happiness? Sadly, little of that can be found in the country today. Instead, we find more oppression, poverty and misery. On Independence Day, the then-prime minister U Nu also said: ''There is no room for disunity or discord _ racial, communal, political or personal _ and I now call upon all citizens of the Burma Union to unite and to labour without regard to self and in the interest of the country to which we all belong.'' In contrast, a few months after the country gained independence, civil war broke out between the government and communist and ethnic rebel groups. Since then, civil war has continued to rage across the country. About 10 years after independence, a coup occurred that, in effect, cut off any real chance for freedom and prosperity. From then on, the military has had a firm grip on the reins of power. In the past 60 years, Burma had opportunities to create a democracy with a good economy, but failed. Instead, the country has devoted its energy to in-fighting and disagreement, based on differing political ideologies. We have to speak honestly. Burma today has few things we Burmese can be proud of. Politics is a disgrace. Economics is a tragedy. Society itself is exhausted. Seemingly, everyone in the world knows something about Burma, but it's mostly negative. What will 2008 bring? Sadly again, the future looks like the past. ...Actually, Burmese society is chronically ill. Twenty years ago, Mrs Suu Kyi described the 1988 nationwide pro-democracy uprising as a ''second struggle for national independence''. The second independence struggle is still struggling to keep its momentum against the all-powerful military government. U Nu, Burma's first prime minister, said on Jan 4, 1948: ''No one will blame us for being jubilant on such an occasion, on such a day, but nevertheless for most of us it is a day for solemn thought. Burma is again free, but we must be fit to maintain that freedom, and we must be ready at all costs to keep Burma free and to make her great.'' Today after 60 years of independence, little _ if any _ jubilation can be found in Burma. It has slowly evaporated over the course of our independence, gained 60 years ago. ...read the article by Kyaw Zwa Moe in the Bangkok Post

Vietnam War veteran Oliver Stone tells his part in child hostage Colombian saga: Oliver Stone, the maverick American film director, speaks exclusively about his bizarre role in the abortive attempt by Hugo Chavez to release hostages held by the Colombian terrorist group Farc. Oliver Stone, the maverick Hollywood director, has returned from the jungles of Colombia to launch a scathing attack on America's 'secret war' in the country and blame US President George Bush for the failure of an international mission to free hostages held by armed rebels. Speaking exclusively to The Observer, the Oscar-winning maker of films including Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and Wall Street gave the first full eyewitness account of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's effort to secure the release of captives from the rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). Stone also spoke out in defence of Chavez, whom he called 'an honest man, a strong man and a soldier', and condemned the United States for treating Latin America like a backyard to 'throw trash, piss, do whatever the hell they want'. Farc said last month that it was prepared to release into the hands of the left-wing Chavez two women politicians - Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez - held hostage for six years, as well as Rojas's four-year-old son, reportedly born of a relationship with a guerrilla fighter. Colombians hoped it might be a step towards peace in their decades-long civil war. If Farc was willing to make this gesture, many believed, it could pave the way for a broader agreement for the release of all 46 hostages, including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, three American defence contractors and dozens of local politicians and military and police officers. ...more in The Guardian

Hopes of Colombian hostage release fade amid row over child Emmanuel Rojas who was taken into care over 2 years ago under the false name of Juan David: Colombia's protracted hostage crisis took a new twist yesterday when it emerged that the youngest captive held by leftwing rebels - a three-year-old boy born to a female hostage and an unknown guerrilla - could have been secretly spirited away to foster care in Bogotá. Colombians gripped by the tale of Emmanuel, whose mother was a vice-presidential candidate when she was kidnapped in 2002, were on tenterhooks yesterday as they awaited the results of a DNA test on a boy in the capital who, the government said, might be the hostage-child. Emmanuel was supposed to have been released along with his mother, Clara Rojas, and a third hostage last month. But after a succession of delays the handover was frustrated this week when the Colombian government said that the boy might not be in the care of the rebels at all. Officials took DNA samples from Rojas' mother and brother on Tuesday. The test results should be known in several days' time. The credibility of both the Colombian government and Colombia's largest rebel army, Farc, is at stake, analysts say. Emmanuel's existence was first disclosed by a Colombian journalist in 2006 and confirmed by an escaped hostage six months ago and in videos. According to the accounts, Emmanuel was raised by the rebels in jungle camps and was only allowed to see his mother occasionally. On long marches the hostages were often forced to take, they would take turns carrying the boy on their shoulders. Both hostages and guerrillas reportedly made clothes for the boy. However the Colombian government says it now has strong indications that the child was handed over to a peasant in the remote town of San José de Guaviare in 2005. That man, in turn, gave the boy over to the Colombian Family Welfare Institute, which transferred him to foster care in the capital, Bogotá. ...The first ADN test realeased today, 4th January, gave credibility to this hypothesis ... new test will be carried in other countries to check identity ....more in The Guardian / And much more in Spanish in Habeas-Corpus.net

Scotland Yard detectives to assist inquiry: Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, bowed to pressure both at home and abroad yesterday and called in Scotland Yard to support the investigation into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto."With the grace of God, this team will immediately be coming to Pakistan and helping us with our investigation," the president said during a televised address. He added that the officers would be providing technical assistance, and "will ... solve the confusion". The main aim of the Metropolitan police will be to help the Pakistani authorities identify those behind the killing. The presence of Met police detectives in Pakistan may also help Musharraf reassure voters that the investigation is beyond reproach, after opposition politicians claimed that Bhutto was murdered by elements within the Pakistani state. A spokeswoman said the officers would travel to Pakistan as soon as possible but that the Pakistan authorities will lead the investigation. Specialist officers will arrive to find a crime scene that was hosed down shortly after the attack and then reopened to the public. They will also discover that no thorough tests were conducted on the car in which Bhutto died until four days after the attack. ...more in The Guardian

Democracy is looking sick: ...At the start of 2008 Churchill's nostrum that it is the worst form of government "except for the others" is being tested close to destruction, assassinated in Pakistan, sabotaged in Kenya, massacred in Iraq, strangled in Russia, ridiculed in South Africa and purchased in America. But then it depends on what you mean by democracy. This week the "better" democracies are wagging fingers at worse ones, like 17th-century popes reprimanding missionaries in the distant jungle. They tut-tut over a stuffed ballot box in Nairobi, a banned radio station in Islamabad or a murdered journalist in Moscow. They condemn a riot here, a bombed polling booth there and an imprisoned politician somewhere else. How dare these "developing" peoples corrupt the sacred rites of mother church? ...Democracy has never been perfect. From the moment self-government lost touch with "self" - departing the agora of Athens, the althing of Reykjavik and the town meeting of New England - it adapted itself to nations and peoples. Its institutions depend more on local history, culture and geography than on Madison, Mill and De Tocqueville. This week the rituals of heredity, not democracy, decided the leadership of the Pakistan People's party. Most Asian and African democracies are ballots qualified by assassination, corruption and inheritance. Yet we still grace them with the term. Students of politics are taught to tick off the qualities that award the status of democracy to a polity. Are there free and fair elections? Can the franchise turn a regime out of office? Are there supporting institutions such as an open parliament, security of public assembly, elected local government, a free media, the rule of law? No one of these is either sufficient or necessary for democracy, which is rather a sliding scale of liberties, to which constitutions and regimes ascribe varying degrees of priority. ...read the article by Simon Jenkins in The Guardian

Year 2007

Decembre

A Buddhist monastery that provided a hospice for AIDS patients has been closed down by the dictatorship in Burma (Myanmar): which is also still arresting dissidents, the top U.S. diplomat in the country said Friday. The monastery, in the biggest city Yangon, was raided Thursday. "Apparently, it was ordered closed. No one knows why," said Shari Villarosa, charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar. She was speaking to reporters during a visit to Bangkok in neighboring Thailand. Three military trucks arrived outside the Maggin Monastery and told everyone inside to leave, according to the online edition of The Irrawaddy, a news magazine run by Myanmar exiles in Thailand. The AIDS patients were moved by the authorities to an unknown location, it said. The monastery, which also gave AIDS treatment, was raided during the junta's crackdown on pro-democracy activists in September for involvement in monk-led protests. "Arrests are continuing. We are getting reports on a daily basis of people being picked up," Villarosa said. "It raises questions about the sincerity of the military in pursuing what we will consider to be a genuine dialogue leading to national reconciliation." Amnesty International said earlier the junta had arrested a dozen activists and Buddhist monks this month, despite assurances that the crackdown had stopped. At least 15 people were killed and nearly 3,000 people detained during the September crackdown. The regime says all but 90 people have been freed, but Amnesty said 700 were still in custody. The abbot of Maggin Monastery, U Indaka, was among those still detained, The Irrawaddy said. Monasteries in Yangon remained deserted, Villarosa said, adding that she believed a "considerable number" of monks were detained. Meanwhile, the U.N. envoy to Myanmar said Friday the junta must free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest if it is serious about reforms."Now we are saying very clearly that if Aung San Suu Kyi is to become part of the solution and a partner in dialogue, then it is very essential that she should be released from detention," Ibrahim Gambari told reporters in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh at the end of a two-day visit. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been detained for 12 of the past 18 years. "Any further arrests of people will run counter to the spirit of national reconciliation and ... to the efforts to promote dialogue between the opposition and the government," Gambari said. He spoke shortly after Myanmar Prime Minister Lt. Gen. Thein Sein arrived in Cambodia. The two did not meet and officials said the timing of the visits was coincidental. Gambari is to return to Myanmar next month on his third mission since September to try to push the junta toward reconciliation talks with the opposition. ..more in Associated Press - and in The Buddhist Channel TV /
Also click on the screens to watch a tribute and Dr Aung San Suu Kyi speaking at a rally in 1996

Captured videos revive hopes for Ingrid Betancourt and 600 hostages by the FARC terrorists: Tape seized after arrest of Colombia rebels. Evidence follows end of Chávez mediation effort. Videotapes of hostages held by rebels in the dense jungles of Colombia were released yesterday in the first proof in years that they were still alive. The videos show an emaciated Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate who holds dual French-Colombian citizenship, three US state department contractors, and Colombian politicians and soldiers, some of whom have been held for as long as a decade. The Colombian government, which aired the videos with no sound, said the evidence had been seized after the arrest on Thursday of three suspected urban members of the leftist rebel group Farc, which is holding the hostages to pressure the government to free jailed guerrillas. The videos show 16 of the hostages. The evidence was recovered a week after President Alvaro Uribe abruptly ended the latest efforts to broker a hostage-for-prisoner swap with Farc. In August Uribe had invited Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, to mediate with Farc, which admires the firebrand leader. But his efforts were cut short after the Venezuelan leader failed to present the proof that the hostages were still alive he had announced he would hand over to France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The French leader has taken a close interest in the fate of the hostages, especially Betancourt. Sarkozy said the video was "undeniable" evidence that she was alive. "This encourages us to boost our efforts to win her release," he said. The new images of Betancourt contrast starkly with the video of her in 2003, where she was defiant, demanding the government secure her release. In the new video, which had a date stamp of October 24 2007, Betancourt kept her head bowed, her waist-long hair hanging limply over her left shoulder. She appeared to be chained and did not speak. ...
Backstory:
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Farc, have been fighting the state for more than 40 years in the name of Marxist revolution. The peasant-based army has shrunk from 17,000 troops to no more than 7,000 and retreated to mountain and jungle outposts in the five years since President Alvaro Uribe undertook his "democratic security" policies. They want to exchange the 45 hostages for about 500 jailed rebels but have demand a safe haven. After the failed experiment of granting Farc a demilitarised zone, Uribe has said he would not cede one centimetre. ...more in The Guardian - Christian Science Monitor - The Times - The Telegraph - The Independent / And click on the screen to watch the video captured dated 24 Oct 2007

November

Shut up, Spain's king tells president Chavez at the Ibero-American summit in Chile: Spain's king Juan Carlos told Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez to "shut up" as the Ibero-American summit drew to a close in Santiago, Chile. The outburst came after Mr Chavez called former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a "fascist". Mr Chavez then interrupted Spanish PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's calls for him to be more diplomatic, prompting the king's outburst. Latin American, Portuguese, Spanish and Andorran leaders were meeting in Chile. 'Democratically elected' Mr Chavez called Mr Aznar, a close ally of US President George W Bush, a fascist, adding "fascists are not human. A snake is more human." Mr Zapatero said: "[Former Prime Minister] Aznar was democratically elected by the Spanish people and was a legitimate representative of the Spanish people." Mr Chavez repeatedly tried to interrupt, despite his microphone being turned off. The king leaned forward and said: "Why don't you shut up?" According to reports, the king used a familiar term normally used only for close acquaintances - or children. 'Democratically elected' Mr Chavez called Mr Aznar, a close ally of US President George W Bush, a fascist, adding "fascists are not human. A snake is more human." Mr Zapatero said: "[Former Prime Minister] Aznar was democratically elected by the Spanish people and was a legitimate representative of the Spanish people." Mr Chavez repeatedly tried to interrupt, despite his microphone being turned off. The king leaned forward and said: "Why don't you shut up?" According to reports, the king used a familiar term normally used only for close acquaintances - or children. Mr Chavez (r) called Mr Aznar a fascist Later, Mr Chavez responded to the king's rebuke. According to the Associated Press news agency, he said: "I do not offend by telling the truth. The Venezuelan government reserves the right to respond to any aggression, anywhere, in any space and in any manner." The theme of this year's 22-nation summit was "social cohesion". ...read more and watch the video on the BBC - The Telegraph

Aung San Suu Kyi 'optimistic' over UN-backed talks to achieve Democracy in Burma: The detained Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is "very optimistic" about the UN-promoted process for reconciliation between the military junta and pro-democracy forces, leading members of her party said today. The comments came after three executive members of the National League for Democracy, along with a party spokesman, were allowed to meet her for the first time in more than three years. Burma's government allowed the meeting after the UN special envoy to the country, Ibrahim Gambari, completed a six-day visit to promote a dialogue between the ruling junta and Aung San Suu Kyi. Party spokesman Nyan Win, speaking after he and his colleagues had met the 62-year-old, who is under house arrest, said she believed the military authorities now had the will to achieve national reconciliation. Aung San Suu Kyi also held talks with Aung Kyi, who was appointed the junta's minister for relations with her amid global outrage over a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests. Yesterday, leading Burmese generals unexpectedly announced that she would be allowed to meet her party's top officials. Their statement came hours after Mr Gambari ended his second mission to broker negotiations between the regime and pro-democracy leaders. He met Aung San Suu Kyi for an hour yesterday, issuing a statement on her behalf after leaving Burma. "In the interest of the nation, I stand ready to cooperate with the government in order to make this process of dialogue a success," the statement said. "I am committed to pursue the path of dialogue constructively and invite the government and all relevant parties to join me in this spirit." The statement appeared to be her first since her latest spell of detention began four years ago. International pressure on the junta to begin a dialogue with opposition figures increased sharply after its crackdown on pro-democracy protests in September. ...Washington reacted with skepticism to the latest Burmese announcement. "What needs to happen in Burma is that there needs to be a serious, sustained, peaceful, democratic dialogue," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "That is not something that we have seen." The Burmese government has continued to jail and harass suspected organizers of the protests over the past month and recently ordered the United Nations' top official in Burma, Charles Petrie, to leave the country for expressing support for demonstrators. ...more in The Guardian - The Telegraph - The Independent - The Washington Post

A piano for an accomplished artist and Nobel Peace Prize Aung San Suu Kyi: Like all grand romantic gestures, this one has little regard for practical restraint. A band of British wellwishers are planning to ship a piano down river to Aung San Suu Kyi, the elected Burmese leader who has spent 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest. Suu Kyi is an accomplished player but her piano is broken, partly through wear and tear and partly after she pumped the pedals too hard. It is also thought that she accidentally ruined some keys in anger in 2004 when she heard that her friend, the Burmese poet U Tin Moe, had been placed under house arrest. The piano has been of enormous comfort to her over many years as well as to the people of Burma, who would stand outside her house to listen to her play. If they heard the piano they knew she was still alive. Suu Kyi loves to play Bach and Scarlatti. But her favourite piece is Pachelbel’s Canon. She played it for her British husband, Michael Aris, on his last visit to her in 1997. He died two years later after she was prevented from visiting him. Now a group of British women from the world of arts and entertainment plan to deliver a new piano to the Nobel peace prize winner. The gift is being organised by the actress Maureen Lipman, who has for years been an ardent supporter of Suu Kyi, along with Annie Lennox, the singer, Norma Heyman, the film producer who is the mother of David Heyman who makes the Harry Potter movies, and Joyce Hytner, the arts fundraiser who is the mother of Nicholas Hytner, director of the National Theatre. “It just seemed a good and nice idea,” said Lipman, who starred in The Pianist, the Oscar-winning Roman Polanksi film. The money for a new piano has already been raised, although it is important to ensure that the one purchased can withstand the tropical humidity of Rangoon and the plagues of white ants. Sheet music has also been organised. ...Suu Kyi’s piano could be transported by boat all the way, as Rangoon is a port on a river estuary, about 50 miles from the coast. First it would have to be flown to India or Singapore and then transferred to a ship. One idea is that Lipman and some other friends would accompany the piano and present it to Suu Kyi, who was elected democratically as the country’s leader in 1990 but has never taken power. “The idea of a piano for her is a marvellous thought,” said Martin Morland, a former British ambassador to Burma who now chairs the charity Prospect Burma, which provides money to educate young Burmese. ...“I think she’d see the piano as a gesture of solidarity with her supporters in Burma itself and with those overseas,” said Richard Shannon, whose play about Suu Kyi, "The Lady of Burma", will open at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, west London, on Thursday. ...more in The Times

[Click on the first screen to enjoy Les solistes du Choeur de Chambre de Namur playing the Canon of Pachelbel, directed by Jean Tubéry; and on the second screen to enjoy a version for piano by a young girl named Abigal.]

Seven Europeans released after Sarkozy flies to Chad for talks on fostering case: Three French journalists and four Spanish flight attendants detained in Chad over an alleged illegal attempt by a charity to fly African children to Europe were released yesterday after the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, flew to Chad. The freed men and women were flown to Paris on the presidential plane after Mr Sarkozy had talks in the capital, N'Djamena, with the Chadian president, Idriss Déby. The seven were among those held after a French charity was accused of plotting to take African children from their families and transport them to Europe for adoption. It is the second Sarkozy intervention in an international legal dispute. This summer, the president's then wife, Cécilia Sarkozy, flew to Libya to escort home a group of Bulgarian medics who had been imprisoned after being accused of infecting children with HIV. ...more in The Guardian

Chad case prompts Sarkozy visit to care for Europeans: French President Nicolas Sarkozy is on his way to Chad to discuss the detention of 17 Europeans accused of child abduction, his office said. The French, Spanish and Belgian nationals are held in connection with an alleged attempt to kidnap 103 African children. Six of the arrested are members of a charity, Zoe's Ark, which says the children are orphans from Darfur. But international aid agencies have cast doubt over the claim. Mr Sarkozy will meet his counterpart, Idriss Deby, in the capital, N'Djamena. They will discuss "the situation of our compatriots and the other European citizens being prosecuted", a statement from the Elysee Palace said. Mr Deby said on Thursday TV he hoped the three journalists and air crew members who are among the 17 European accused would be released soon. Meanwhile, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has asked Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Defence Minister Herve Morin to launch an investigation into the affair. Mr Sarkozy was involved earlier this year in negotiations with the Libyan President, Muammar Gaddafi, in the case of six Bulgarian medics sentenced to death in Libya, who were eventually deported to Bulgaria and then released. ...more in BBC - The Guardian - The Times - The Telegraph

Burma's dictatorship is expelling the top UN diplomat in the country: he military regime told UN Burma country chief, Charles Petrie, his mandate was not being renewed. The news comes a day before UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari is to return to Burma for a second visit since the army suppressed anti-government protests. The US said the expulsion of Mr Petrie, who has criticised the violent suppression of the protests, was an insult and an outrage. It is not clear when Mr Petrie, who began his posting in Burma in 2003, will have to leave the country. ...more in BBC - The Guardian -

Support Dennis Kucinich for President, the real alternative to regenerate Democracy and Justice in USA: a weekly update for Monday, October 22nd. This is our latest installment on a regular series of reports to keep you informed on Dennis's race to the Presidency. ...Meanwhile, The Oxford Research Group, a highly respected British think tank, issued a report that underscores and corroborates all of the major points that Ohio Congressman Kucinich has been making for years regarding the war in Iraq and the disastrous consequences of starting a war with Iran. The report found that, the war on terror is failing, and instead fueling an Increase in support for extremist Islamist movements. It called, for the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq, coupled with intensive diplomatic engagement in the region, including with Iran and Syria. And, said one of the authors, Going to war with Iran will make matters. Far worse, playing directly into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region. Dennis's campaign tour was in full swing last week as he and his wife Elizabeth visited four Southwestern states in four days. As the Congressman had duties to attend to back in Washington D.C., Elizabeth continued to tour New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada, meeting with local Mayors, citizens and Native American community Leaders. ...more clicking on the screen and in the web Kucinich for President

October

Hundreds of brave Buddhist monks begin fresh protests in Burma: More than 100 Buddhist monks marched and chanted in Burma today in the first public demonstration since the military junta crushed last month's anti-government protests, several monks said. The monks in Pakokku made no political statements and shouted no slogans, but their march, which lasted nearly an hour, was in clear defiance of the government. "We walked around the town and chanted ... We are continuing our protest from last month as we have not yet achieved any of the demands we asked for," one monk told the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Norway-based radio station. "Our demands are for lower commodity prices, national reconciliation and immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all the political prisoners." ... Up to 100,000 people joined last month's protests which were brought to a brutal end when troops fired on protestors on September 27 and 28. At least 20 people were killed by the government's own count, including a Japanese photographer. Opposition groups claimed as many as 200 people may have been killed in the crackdown, which drew international condemnation and new sanctions against the regime. Pakokku, a centre for Buddhist learning with more than 80 monasteries, is about 630km north-west of the commercial centre of Rangoon. It was the site of the first march by monks last month as they joined, and then spearheaded protests against raised fuel prices, which turned into the biggest anti-government protests in nearly two decades. ...Reports at the time that troops had beaten protesting monks in Pakokku rallied monks around the country to join the burgeoning marches. The junta has admitted it arrested nearly 3,000 protesters during the crackdown and that hundreds had been interrogated. It said it had only released those who had signed pledges not to protest against the regime. The government announced today that it had released seven members of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party who were detained last month. The releases last night came ahead of a visit by the UN special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, to seek reconciliation between the junta and democratic forces. An NLD spokesman, Han Tha, said at least 150 party members out of nearly 300 who had been arrested since September remained in detention. He said many had been denied proper medical treatment and were living in harsh conditions. Aung San Suu Kyi held surprise talks with a representative of the military rulers last week, although no substantive details of the meeting have emerged. ...more in The Guardian - The Times - Democracy Now

Burma'a dictatorship forces children into combat as adults desert army: The Burmese junta is making more and more use of child soldiers, some as young as 10, according to a Human Rights Watch report published today. Finding it increasingly hard to recruit adult soldiers, and trying to cope with high desertion rates and a constantly expanding demand for fighters, army recruiters pick on children at bus and train stations and force them to join up. The brutal military regime has long been accused of using children to fight the insurgencies and liberation movements challenging the regime on Burma's borders. Last month it drew the condemnation of practically the whole world after its vicious suppression of peaceful protests by tens of thousands of Buddhist monks and ordinary citizens. Soldiers were forced to beat and abuse Burma's highly revered monks and at least one senior officer deserted, fleeing to Thailand because he refused to carry out those orders. ...more in The Independent - The Washington Post

On Visit to France, Donald Rumsfeld Hit with Lawsuit for Ordering, Authorizing Torture: The complaint was filed with the Paris prosecutor’s office as Rumsfeld arrived in France for a visit. This is the fifth time Rumsfeld has been charged with direct involvement in torture since 9/11. We speak with two attorneys with the plaintiffs -- Center for Constitutional Rights president Michael Ratner and Jeanne Sulzer of the International Federation of Human Rights. U.S. and European human rights groups filed a lawsuit in France today charging former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with ordering and authorizing torture. The plaintiffs include the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights. They say Rumsfeld authorized interrogation techniques that led to abuses at US-run prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. ...more in Democracy Now / And visit the web of the Center for Constitutional Rights to support the judicial investigation by France

The full horror of Burmese dictatorship's repression of monks starts to emerge: The hidden crackdown is as methodical as it is brutal. First the monks were targeted, then the thousands of ordinary Burmese who joined the demonstrations, those who even applauded or watched, or those merely suspected of anti-government sympathies. "There were about 400 of us in one room. No toilets, no buckets, no water for washing. No beds, no blankets, no soap. Nothing," said a 24-year-old monk who was held for 10 days at the Government Technical Institute, a leafy college in northern Rangoon which is now a prison camp for suspected dissidents. The young man, too frightened to be named, was one of 185 monks taken in a raid on a monastery in the Yankin district of Rangoon on 28 September, two days after government soldiers began attacking street protesters. "The room was too small for everyone to lie down at once. We took it in turns to sleep. Every night at 8 o'clock we were given a small bowl of rice and a cup of water. But after a few days many of us just couldn't eat. The smell was so bad. "Some of the novice monks were under 10 years old, the youngest was just seven. They were stripped of their robes and given prison sarongs. Some were beaten, leaving open, untreated wounds, but no doctors came." ... Human rights organisations estimate that up to 6,000 protesters were rounded up at the height of the protests and that hundreds were killed. ... Today Human Rights Watch urged the UN security council to impose and enforce an arms embargo on the country. India, China, Russia and other countries are supplying Burma with weapons that the military uses to commit human rights abuses and to bolster its power, the group said. "It's time for the security council to end all sales and transfers of arms to a government that uses repression and fear to hang on to power," Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. ...more in The Independent - The Guardian - and in the Web of FreeBurmaRangers.org

Burma's dictatorship shuts down last communication links and arrested 5 generals and 400 soldiers who refused to kill monks. Also a diplomat at Burma’s embassy in London has resigned to protest his country’s “appalling” crackdown on monks: Ye Min Tun, a second secretary at the embassy according to British government records, said Burma’s military leaders had ignored the people’s wish to negotiate. “I have never seen such a scenario in the whole of my life. The government is arresting and beating the peaceful Buddhist monks,” he told the BBC, adding that he had sent a resignation letter to the embassy in London. ...Satellite phones seized in information blackout. Crackdown reflects worry over world opinion. French and occidental embassies cannot received phone calls... Burma's dictatorship is targeting the last remaining communications links that brought images of the bloody crackdown on the recent pro-democracy protests to the outside world. Exiled dissident groups in neighbouring Thailand say up to 10 satellite telephones and countless computers earlier smuggled into Burma have been seized, the last lines of contact after the government shut down the internet and blocked mobile and fixed-line telephones. Officials from Burma's foreign affairs ministry and home department security officers also visited a UN office in the Traders Hotel in downtown Rangoon late last week and demanded to see the organisation's permits for its satellite phones. ... Despite the apparently conciliatory gestures, the arrests of those suspected of taking part in the 100,000 pro-democracy marches were reportedly still continuing in Rangoon. Among those taken were the owners of computers suspected of being used to transmit images and testimony to the outside world. Yesterday the British and US embassies in Rangoon, reachable by phone until late last week, were impossible to get through to from outside the country. British ambassador Mark Canning and US charge d'affaires Shari Villarosa were outspoken critics of the regime's actions. ... Burma is ranked the world’s fourth-most corrupt country. The official value of exports is £1.7bn, rated 110th globally. Those close to the junta can buy heavily subsidised goods, which are then sold – or smuggled abroad – for huge profit, creating a black market equal in size to its legitimate counterpart. A private soldier earns 30,000 kyat a month, officially £2,300 but in reality only enough to buy one and a half bags of rice ...more in The Guardian - The Independent - The Times - The Telegraph - The Washington Post

Tough-talking Nicolas Sarkozy spells out terms of new relationship to Vladimir Putin: President Putin of Russia has made a big shift towards Western efforts to dissuade Iran from building nuclear weapons, President Sarkozy claimed in Moscow last night. The French leader emerged with the news after a three-hour private dinner that was the first test of his resolve to add a harder edge to his country’s recently cosy relations with Moscow. Chatting in his hotel, “Super-Sarko” appeared delighted with the success of his “frank and passionate” session at Mr Putin’s dacha on the outskirts of Moscow. The session had been billed as a test of wills between the powerful Russian boss and the would-be new strongman of Western Europe. ...Mr Sarkozy’s tone towards the Russian leader shifted sharply from his tough talk of recent weeks, in which he has accused him of “brutal” use of Russian energy supplies as a weapon and criticised his assertive stance abroad. After dinner, Mr Sarkozy said that he had been impressed by Mr Putin’s courage, intelligence and understanding of the world. ...Mr Sarkozy, in ebullient form, appeared to believe that he had gained Mr Putin’s ear on several contentious issues in their first extended conversation since his election last May. He said that he had detected new Russian openness on Kosovo, which Europe wants to become independent from Serbia, against Russian wishes. He had also broached his worries about Moscow’s human rights record, including the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the campaigning journalist, and the arrest of homosexual demonstrators. “I told him that the world has high expectations of a unified Russia and it was a pity that they should be tainted,” Mr Sarkozy told The Times. ...more in The Times

West unites in call to end Burma dictatorship and its Human Rights abuses: Cities across the world launched a day of protests against Burma's junta yesterday, as the military regime admitted it had detained hundreds of Buddhist monks when troops turned their guns on pro-democracy demonstrators. The protests came as Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged an extra £1m to fund emergency humanitarian aid for the Burmese people and UN Security Council members continued to deliberate their reaction to the clampdown that saw members of Burma's army - the Tatmadaw - and the hated Lon Htien riot police fire into crowds of demonstrators, killing at least 10 people that the junta admits. Opposition groups claim the real number of dead may run to scores. ...Meeting Burmese campaigners yesterday, Brown said: 'We will not tolerate the abuses that have taken place. And I want all the other leaders of the world to work with us, to achieve the progress that all of you want to achieve in Burma - an end to abuse of human rights.' International condemnation of Burma's junta had intensified at the United Nations on Friday, with the US warning it would push for UN sanctions against Burma if it failed to respond to demands for democratic reforms. Pro-democracy demonstrators have called off street protests amid massive round-ups of monks and night-time raids by soldiers on the homes of suspected activists. Opponents say that with most of Rangoon's monks now off the streets - detained or sent back to their villages - the regime's main targets are journalists or anyone with recording or equipment or a mobile phone with a camera. The junta's treatment of the Buddhist monks - who are revered in this deeply religious nation - is an issue that could further inflame the people and anger soldiers loyal to the military rulers. ...more in The Guardian

UN envoy outlines Myanmar (Burma) 'abuses' by the ferocious dictatorship supported by China and Putin's Russia: ...He (Ibrahim Gambari) said abuses tookplace "particularly at night during curfew, including raids on private homes, beatings, arbitrary arrests, and disappearances." ..."We cannot go back to the situation before the recent crisis," Gambari said, adding that the underlying socio - economic and political factors must be addressed. ...Gambari's comments came shortly after Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, spoke before the council, urging Myanmar's military rulers to "take bold actions towards democratisation and respect for human rights." "I must reiterate that the use of force against peaceful demonstrators is abhorrent and unacceptable," he said. Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to the UN, told the council: "If the Burmese government does not take appropriate steps... the United States is prepared to introduce a resolution in the Security Council imposing sanctions. "We must all be prepared to consider measures such as arms embargoes." ...he militar dictators claims 10 people were killed in its crackdown but western commentators say the toll is likely to be far higher. It is thought as many as 10,000 people, many of them Buddhist monks, have been rounded up. Burma's ambassador to the UN, Kyaw Tint Swe called for "patience, time and space" and promised the further releases of political prisoners. ... Burmese pro-democracy activists vowed to fight “to the death” to overthrow the military junta yesterday, even as the generals continued their crackdown against the protesters. ... They denounced the United Nations, and its special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, for cosying up to the junta. “We hoped for so much and what we feel is that he achieved nothing,” said a female activist, who identified herself by the name Khaind. “He should have visited the places of the demonstrations — like Pakkoku [where Burmese monks first demonstrated] and the Shwedagon Pagoda. He should have visited Insein Prison [in Rangoon], then he would have seen the truth. ...more in Al Jazeera - The Guardian - The Times

Satellite Images Corroborate Eyewitness Accounts of Human Rights Abuses in Burma, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences Reports: A new analysis of high-resolution satellite images completed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) pinpoints evidence consistent with village destruction, forced relocations, and a growing military presence at 25 sites across eastern Burma where eyewitnesses have reported human rights violations. The research by AAAS, a non-profit, non-partisan organization and the world's largest general scientific society, offers clear physical evidence to corroborate on-the-ground accounts of specific instances of destruction. It is believed to be the first demonstration of satellite image analysis to document human rights violations in Burma, also known as Myanmar. AAAS had previously used the same technology to assess destruction in Darfur and Zimbabwe. The latest research was supported by the Open Society Institute and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. ...watch and read more in the web of The American Association for the Advancement of Sciences

Burmese army major defects to Thailand: A Burmese army major defected today, raising renewed hopes of dissent in the armed forces that is seen as crucial to bringing down the ruling junta. The unnamed officer fled to Thailand apparently in disgust after being ordered to beat Buddhist monks protesting against the regime last week. ..."[The demonstrators] were very peaceful. Later when I heard they were shot and killed and the armed forces used teargas, I was really upset and I thought the army should stand for their own people," he said, according to the BBC. He added: "I knew the plan to beat and shoot the monks and if I stayed on, I would have to follow these orders. Because I'm a Buddhist, I did not want to kill the monks." ...It quoted him as saying that peace and prosperity is impossible under the ruling military. His defection comes amid a number of reports suggesting signs of mutiny in the army. Anna Roberts, the acting co-director of the Burma Campaign UK, said: "We are getting reports from eastern Burma of an increase in defections. And even before the current uprising there were signs of dissent in the army. ...Burmese exiles claimed last week that the disgruntled officers had formed a group backing the protesters. They released a letter claiming to be from the Public Patriot Army Association urging the army to defend the monks. On Monday, the Daily Mail reported that a senior official in the regime called Hla Win had defected and claimed that hundreds of monks had been killed by the regime. The Asia Times also claimed that Than Shwe, the junta's number one general, had clashed with his deputy, Maung Aye, over the use of force. It added that some soldiers refused to shoot protesters. ...The security forces were reported today to be hunting down protesters who took part in the demonstrations. Shari Villarosa, the acting US ambassador in Burma, said: "From what we understand, military police ... are travelling around the city in the middle of the night, going into homes and picking up people." According to the New York Times, one of those arrested today was a staff member of the United Nations in Burma. The arrests follow a four-day visit to Burma by the inefficient UN special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari. ... Agence France-Presse reported a junta official telling them that 1,700 protesters were being held at the Government Technical Institute campus in Rangoon, near Insein prison. They included 200 women and one 10-year-old child, a novice monk. They are being held in a windowless warehouse, and many of the monks are said to be refusing to eat. Monks have been disrobed by their captors, a sacrilegious act they have resisted, and made to wear civilian prison dress. ...more in The Guardian - The Independent - The Times - The Telegraph - The Washington Post - The American Association for the Advancement of Sciences

UN envoy leaves Burma after meeting with supreme dictator and only 15 minutes with Dr. Aung San Suu Kyi, the elected president imprisoned the last 18 years :: Thousands of protesters and monks missing by dictatorship in Burma's secret gulag: With its rusty barbed wire fence, dense tropical foliage and acreage of decaying buildings, the former Government Technology Institute in Rangoon would be a spooky place at the best of times. But in the past week, if reports circulating are correct, it has been transformed from an abandoned ruin to a place of mass suffering and repression. According to Western diplomats and at least one Burmese government official, the technical institute has become a temporary concentration camp for 1700 of the victims of last week’s brutal suppression of the democracy uprising. It provides a partial answer to one of the hanging questions about the Burmese junta’s crackdown: where are the monks, democracy activists and journalists, so many of whom have been rounded up and spirited away over the past six weeks? Despite the intense international attention given to the quashing of the anti-government marches, the crackdown remains undocumented and unquantified. Apart from admitting that 13 people have died, a figure regarded by most observers as an underestimate, the authorities have given no details of the numbers of those arrested and detained, or their whereabouts. Most people have vanished without a trace, many of them the Buddhist monks who formed the backbone of the enormous marches of tens of thousands of people which turned out last week in Rangoon, as well as the city of Mandalay. ...more in The Times - The Guardian - The Washington Post - The Independent - The Telegraph - Democracy Now - Democratic Voice of Burma

King Juan Carlos of Spain takes a battering: Never, in three decades on the throne, has he seen anything like it. Protesters near Barcelona have hung his picture upside down and set it ablaze. Cartoonists have lampooned his son, the crown prince. A radio station owned by the Roman Catholic Church, no less, has called on him to abdicate. This week King Juan Carlos of Spain broke his silence on the issue and said that enough was enough. He said that the monarchy had provided “the longest period of stability and prosperity in democracy” since it was restored after the death of the dictator, General Francisco Franco, in 1975. The royal household let it be known that those attacking the King were attacking the very nation itself. That the King should address the issue publicly was seen as a sign of how seriously he views the recent spate of attacks from both the Left and the Right. For the past three decades, even the mildest criticism of the royal family has been considered taboo. Journalists feared that their careers would be cut short if they displeased the royal household, while “insulting the crown” remains a criminal offence punishable by up to two years in prison. Until recently, the law had little occasion to be used. Opinion polls show that the King is liked and respected by most Spaniards, who admired his role in quashing an attempted military coup in 1981. But the affection towards the King does not always extend to the institution itself. In a country with a strong republican streak, many pointedly call themselves Juancarlistas – supporters of Juan Carlos – not monarchists. In July a weekly satirical magazine, El Jueves, caused a sensation by printing a crude cartoon on its cover depicting the crown prince having sex with his wife, Princess Letizia. The two cartoonists responsible are to stand trial next month. Born in Rome, Juan Carlos was groomed by General Franco to perpetuate his regime after his death, and crowned in 1975 on the dictator’s orders. His wife, Princess SofÍa of Greece and Denmark, converted to Roman Catholicism to become Queen. They and their three children, Elena, Cristina and Felipe, moved into the royal palace, restoring the line of Bourbon kings to Spain. ...With just three months until the King’s 70th birthday, his most pressing problem is how to ensure that that affection is transferred to his heir. Prince Felipe’s wedding in 2004 to Letizia Ortiz, a divorced former television presenter, did not go down well with the public and some have questioned his fitness to govern. With the collapse of Spain’s last great taboo, persuading Spaniards of the contrary could become a good deal harder. ...more in The Times

September

Demonstrate
in solidarity with the Burmese people,
for Democracy and Human Rights:

There is a demonstration outside the Burmese Embassy in London every day from 12-1pm

Embassy of the Union of Myanmar
19 A CHARLES STREET
LONDON W1J 5DX
Nearest tube Green Park

For campaigns in other countries please check here

We must protest also at the China and Russia embassies because their authorities support Burma's dictatorship and at North Korea's

visit the web of The National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (in forceful exile because of the militar dictatorship)

Burma dictatorship blocks UN meeting with Dr.Suu Kyi while Buddhist monks in prison start hunger strike: A crucial UN mission to meet with detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is facing failure after generals refuse access. A crucial United Nations mission to Burma is facing failure before it has even begun, after the country's ruling generals refused to allow a meeting with the detained democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. UN, Chinese and western diplomats are attempting to pressure the Burmese generals to allow Ibrahim Gambari, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative on Burma, to meet Ms Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has been held under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years. Such a meeting is regarded by western governments as crucial in urging reform on the junta, which for the time being at least appears to have successfully suppressed weeks of rising demonstrations by monks and ordinary Burmese. Mr Gambari is coming under pressure to refuse to meet Burma's leading general, Than Shwe, if he is denied a separate meeting with Ms Suu Kyi. "What Gambari's got to do is be prepared to provoke a crisis," a western diplomat told The Times in Rangoon this afternoon. " ...more in The Times - The Guardian - The Washington Post - The Independent - The Telegraph -
And listen Radio

Democratic Voice of Burma, everyday news (operating from Oslo) in English and Birmanese

"The Saffron Olympics" The slaughtered monks of Burma will haunt China: By now China's Communist rulers must have realized that one unintended consequence of hosting the 2008 Olympics is unprecedented global scrutiny of Beijing's retrograde foreign policy. For decades, one pillar of that policy has been the cynical political and economic exploitation of rogue states that most of the rest of the world shuns -- notably North Korea, Zimbabwe, Sudan and Burma. Under growing international pressure, and with the looming threat of a besmirched Olympics, Chinese policy is slowly changing. But not fast enough, as this week's events in Burma demonstrate. In the past three days, Burma's ruling junta has carried out a bloody and criminal crackdown on a peaceful protest movement led by thousands of Buddhist monks. The regime admits that 10 people have died in the volleys of gunfire and the baton charges its soldiers have directed at demonstrators. More likely is that the death toll is in the scores. Hundreds of monks and democratic opposition activists have been rounded up at night and trucked away to unknown fates; troops have occupied and ransacked monasteries. ...read this excellent article in The Washington Post

'Internet cut' in Burma as dictatorship troops attack monasteries, beaten monks and ransack sacred properties: Burmese troops occupied key Buddhist monasteries today to confine monks who have spearheaded anti-government protests. Concerns were raised they may be preparing to intensify a deadly crackdown on civilians. The moves came as residents said the government appeared to have cut access to the internet, which has played a crucial role in telling the world about the pro-democracy protests. At least 10 people have been killed in two days of violence in the country's largest cities, including a Japanese cameraman who was shot when soldiers with automatic rifles fired into crowds demanding an end to 45 years of military rule. Exile groups say the toll could be much higher. ...more in The Independent - The Guardian - The Times - The Telegraph - watch and listen more in the BBC and in Democracy Now

Boycott the Olympic Games in China and boycott Putin's totalitarian regime :: As Burmese troops open fire at monks and civilians and arrest hundreds, China and Putin's Russia, supporters of the mad dictatorship, block global sanctions:


Burma's military rulers were facing calls from around the world last night to show restraint in their treatment of pro-democracy demonstrators, but China and Russia blocked more punitive measures. After troops in Rangoon opened fire on monks and their supporters on the bloodiest day of the week-long protests, the UN security council held an emergency session to consider a joint call for sanctions from the US and the European Union. George Bush announced new sanctions on Tuesday and European ministers said they would consider toughening the existing package of EU sanctions, as Gordon Brown had demanded... There was widespread condemnation of the violence last night and the United Nations special envoy on Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, was leaving for the region as members of the Security Council met for emergency consultations on the growing turmoil in the country. "We condemn all violence against peaceful demonstrators and remind the country's leaders of their personal responsibilities for their actions," said a statement issued jointly by the EU and the US. European Union leaders backed a call by Gordon Brown for them to tighten their sanctions on Burma. The move is likely to result in curbs on investment – and possibly a total ban. The Prime Minister said: "The whole world is watching Burma now and the age of impunity is over for anyone in that regime who commits crimes against individuals or the people of Burma." Despite the calls for restraint, yesterday's violent turn of events was, many believed, bound to happen. If anything they appeared all the more awful because of the slow, sliding inevitability. Overnight the authorities had moved in to arrest key democracy activists, among them a Burmese comedian called Zaganar and U Win Naing, a veteran opposition member. The comedian had been part of a group providing food and supplies to the monks. But if anything there was even more defiance and determination as the demonstrators marched for the ninth successive day – once again with at least 100,000 people taking to the streets. In Mandalay, at least 10,000 people marched and reports from the city of Sitwe, on Burma's western seaboard, also suggested 10,000 people turned out to protest. ...more in The Guardian - The Independent - The Times - The Telegraph - The Washington Post - Also watch and listen reports in Democracy Now and BBC

To help Democracy and Human Rights in Burma, please visit the following webs:

Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma


Karen Human Rights Group, documenting the voices of villagers in rural Burma (this ethnic group is victim of cleansing by the 45 years ruling militar ditactorship)


Women's League of Burma, fighting for Democracy and equality in Burma

Burma dictatorship represses peaceful monks and civilians with batons and gas and arrested many in no identified vehicles: Resorting to violent repression again to break up peaceful protesters, troops dispersed a crowd trying to penetrate a barricade blocking the Shwedagon Pagoda and arrested dozens of people. A monk on a protest march in Rangoon yesterday, 'Most people are afraid. But not together' A monk joins the protest march in Rangoon which attracted more than 100,000 people Beating their shields with batons, the police chased some of the monks and about 200 of their supporters. Other protesters tried to hold their positions near the eastern gate of the vast pagoda complex. Some monks fell to the ground amid the chaos. Soldiers then cordoned off the area around the pagoda in an attempt to prevent the monks marching again today. ...more in The Guardian - The Independent - The Telegraph - The Times

Burma dictatorship planning to infiltrate demonstrations to spark violence: Burma Campaign UK sources in Rangoon have reported that soldiers have been ordered to shave their heads, in possible preparation for infiltrating peaceful demonstrations. They would start rioting or attacking police, providing the regime with a pretext for a brutal crackdown on protestors. Sources indicate that soldiers from Light Battalion 77 in Rangoon have been given the order. Sources also report that the regime has ordered 3,000 monks’ robes from a factory in Rangoon. It is a tactic the regime has used in the past, including at the Depayin massacre in 2003, during which Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested. Regime militia dressed as monks were involved in the ambush which left up to 100 democracy activists dead. State television today reported that action would be taken against protestors. ...more information The Guardian - The Times - The Telegraph - The Independent - The Washington Post - And the web For Human Rigths and Democracy in Burma and the web of Burma Forum Los Angeles where you can dawnload a free copy of a book "Please use your liberty to promote ours"

Burmese monks' protests against 45 years of cruel dictatorship grow: Militar ruling Junta, supported by China and Putin, to meet as Suu Kyi's appearance brings tears and prays. Plain clothes police watch march but do not attack. At least 5,000 monks and nuns, applauded by thousands of onlookers, marched in Burma yesterday, the largest demonstrations yet in a rare wave of protests against the country's ruling military. After a dramatic appearance on Saturday by the detained activist and leader of the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, monks prayed at the Shwedagon pagoda in Rangoon, the holiest shrine in a devoutly Buddhist country, then marched through the city. ... n a remarkable show of defiance Burmese monks and nuns yesterday led 20,000 demonstrators through Rangoon in the largest protest against the country's military regime for almost two decades. A day after hundreds of monks had walked to the house of the imprisoned democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, thousands more returned to the streets in a show of numbers not seen since the pro-democracy marches of 1988. Back then the regime responded with a brutal crackdown, killing thousands of civilians and monks. While yesterday's march ended peacefully, it was clear that the authorities had increased security in the city and the monks and the other marchers were refused access to Ms Suu Kyi's house when they tried to repeat Saturday's extraordinary meeting....more in The Guardian - The Independent - The Times - The Telegraph - The Washington Post

For full inormation visit the web FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY IN BURMA and support the campaign

Buddhist nuns protest in Burma Against the brutal military dictatorship ransacking the country while oppressing its people:

More than 20,000 citizens, led by Buddhist monks who called on the Burmese people to join their pro-democracy protest, have staged the biggest demonstration against Rangoon’s military regime in almost 20 years. ... The most serious popular challenge to Myanmar's military junta in nearly two decades gained momentum Sunday as thousands of onlookers cheered huge columns of barefoot monks and shouted support for the detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi - the Nobel Peace Price 1991- , witnesses said.... For the first time since the protests began last month, Buddhist nuns have joined the monks in a growing uprising that is gathering international support, including messages of support from Washington and a cotorie of Hollywood actors. Emboldened after Saturday’s march to the house of Burma’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house-arrest for 12 of the past 18 years, as many as 10,000 monks walked through the streets chanting: “We want the people to join us.” ... The dictatorphip is supported by China and Putin's Russia ...more in The Guardian - The Telegraph - The Washington Post - The Independent - The New York Times

August

The Korrupt Argentine of the Kirchner and his 40 thieves: Cash-Stuffed Suitcase united Venezuela and Argentina... A scandal involving a Venezuelan businessman who tried to sneak nearly $800,000 into this country has opened a sudden rift between Venezuela and Argentina just a week after the governments signed debt and energy deals. The scandal has cast a sudden chill over the warmer ties between the countries and left President Néstor Kirchner and his wife scrambling to contain any potential damage to her bid to succeed him as president. ...The suitcase episode was only the latest scandal of recent months. Since March, Mr. Kirchner has had to contend with clear indications of corruption in a large gas pipeline project. One of the companies involved, the Swedish construction company Skanska, found evidence of what it described as “improper payments” by some of its executives, who have since been fired. News reports and an investigating judge have said the money appears to have gone to Argentine government officials. In June, fire inspectors making what was said to be a routine check of the offices of the new economy minister, Felisa Miceli, found $64,000 in local currency and dollars in her bathroom. At the same time, a judicial investigation is studying whether the Kirchner government has manipulated inflation data to cover up rising consumer prices, something it denies. ...Moreover, Kirchner and his 40 thieves are trying to silence by emprisionement the only serious alternative for an ethical and democratic regeneration in Argentina, Dra Elisa Carrió, presidential candidate for a Civic Coalition created to change Argentina for good ... Elisa Carrió, presidential candidate and founder of the centre-left ARI party, said she would be requesting a public inquiry into Mr de Vido’s involvement in the “suitcasegate” incident. “After so many years in which we have talked about the levels of corruption within this government, the most important thing is that the truth comes out and its shown in the clearest fashion,” Ms Carrió said ...more information in The New York Times and in the Financial Times
Also visit for complete information the (Spanish) web of the Coalición Cívica

Popular king who quashed a coup falls from favour with his subjects: Spanish Royal Family criticised over lifestyle after their financial affairs are exposed for the first time. He has been idolised for 30 years, sailing on expensive yachts, racing motorbikes and enjoying fine living while receiving the sort of reverential treatment that Queen Elizabeth II could only imagine. Now, however, there are signs that King Juan Carlos I of Spain is in danger of falling out with his subjects. Under mounting pressure from critics, the King has appointed an auditor to scrutinise the spending of the Royal Family – which is kept hidden from the public by law. The Royal Family tried to play down the significance of the move, dismissing it as a “bureaucratic decision of an internal character”. The King’s republican critics hailed it as a breakthrough in their campaign to shine a light on the Royal Family’s spending. “The finances of the Royal Household are today a huge black hole,” said Joan Tardà, the parliamentary spokesman for the Catalan party, Esquerra Republicana. “[But] the taboo about the monarchy is starting to disappear.” Along with other left-leaning parties Esquerra Republicana has been campaigning to force the Royal Household to reveal how it spends its €8 million (£5.5 million) annual budget from taxpayers. Now they say that the King must go farther, making the auditor report to Parliament and paying taxes on his private income. It was the latest indignity to be suffered by the Spanish monarch, who was crowned on the orders of the dictator General Franco upon his death in 1975. Things have not been going the King’s way lately. Last October authorities in the Russian region of Vologda began an investigation into reports that he had shot a tame bear that had been plied with vodka to make him an easy target. The King, an avid hunter, has been accused by environmentalists of shooting protected species in the past. But the story about the killing of a drunken bear, named Mitrofan, apparently incensed the Royal Family. A spokesman dismissed the report as absurd, while refusing to discuss any details. ...more in The Times

July

A lesson in Democracy and Justice:: United Kingdom, cradle of Human Rigths, expels 4 Russian diplomats as consequence to the assasination of citizen Litvinenko by criminal agents from the Kremlin: without fear from thread of retaliation by Putin, who has announced it is preparing a "targeted" response "very soon" to Britain's move to expel four Russian diplomats over the Litvinenko poison case row. In a broadcast on state television, Alexander Grushko, Russia's deputy foreign minister, told reporters that the response would take into account the interests of ordinary people and businessmen, but he gave no further details. He added that there would be no more co-operation between Britain and Russia's Federal Security Service, indicating the row could jeopardise counter-terrorism relations. Russia is expected to retaliate by expelling some of the 58 British diplomats based in Moscow. If President Vladimir Putin's government chooses to evict a large number, this could trigger a further round of expulsions of Russian diplomats from London. ...more in The Telegraph - The Guardian - The Washington Post - The Times - The Independent

Alan Johnston freed after Hamas besieges kidnappers' compound: Alan Johnston, the kidnapped BBC journalist, was released last night after intense negotiations as Hamas fighters closed in around the compound of the Army of Islam gang that had held him for 114 days. Amidst chaotic scenes outside the house of Ismail Haniya, the deposed Palestinian Prime Minister, 50 to 60 gunmen holding rocket-propelled grenades and AK47s accompanied Johnston down the street. Johnston appeared to be in good health, and he told The Times that he was OK. Abu Subhi, a senior Hamas Executive Force commander, told The Times that Mr Johnston was released at 3:30am local time. He was taken for a shave and a shower before he met Ismael Haniya, the deposed Palestinian Prime Minister, in Gaza. ...more in The Telegraph - The Guardian - The Times - The Washington Post - BBC - The Independent

Cartoonist draws wrath of Spanish royalty with satire on sex: A Spanish cartoonist faces a possible jail term for insulting the Crown Prince in a graphic drawing that has shattered one of the country’s greatest taboos. Spain’s National Court ordered police to seize all 400,000 copies of the weekly satirical magazine El Jueves from newspaper kiosks, as well as the “printing plates”. Judge Juan del Olmo also ordered the magazine to identify the cartoonist responsible for its latest cover, which was met with disbelief in a nation where even the smallest criticism of the Royal Family is deemed off-limits. It depicted the heir to the throne, Prince Felipe of Asturias, having sex with his wife, Princess Letizia, and saying: “Do you realise that if you get pregnant . . . It will be the closest thing to work I’ve done in my life?” The drawing referred to a recent decision by the Government to award mothers €2,500 (£1,680) for each child they bear. Insulting royalty or “damaging the prestige of the Crown” is a crime in Spain, punishable by up to two years in prison. The public prosecutor’s office said in its writ that the cartoon was “clearly denigrating and objectively libellous”. The court also planned to issue an injunction to stop websites or other media from reproducing the cartoon. The cartoonist, who goes by the name Guillermo, expressed his amazement. “They’re going to take the printing plates? Why those haven’t existed for years!” he said, before joking: “The best thing would be for them to cut off my right hand.” King Juan Carlos won the respect of a generation of Spanish newspaper editors when, in 1981, he intervened to halt a military coup against the fledgeling democratic Government. Although journalists have always gossiped about his personal and business affairs, almost nothing has made it into print since he was crowned in 1975 after the death of the dictator General Franco. But many people believe that Spain’s three-decade taboo against criticising the Royal Family is on the point of collapse, with a huge public appetite for gossip being met increasingly by internet sites that are harder to control. Tongues were set wagging when Prince Felipe married Letizia Ortiz, a divorced commoner and former television journalist, in 2004. When Letizia’s sister died earlier this year, many newspapers disregarded pleas by the Royal Family to be discreet and mentioned police theories that she committed suicide. The judicial ruling last night set off a political storm in Spain, with the United Left party calling it “excessive and anachronistic” and judges defending it as “prudent” and “respectable”. Some Spanish internet users supported the ban, saying that the cartoon had been in poor taste, while others said that freedom of speech must be protected. Several recalled that some Spanish newspapers had reproduced the Danish cartoons of Prophet Muhammad in 2006 that caused worldwide protests by Muslims. The ruling “shows that we still lack political maturity,” Julio Rey, a cartoonist for El Mundo newspaper, said. “It’s terribly important for the system to be able to laugh at itself.” ...more in The Times

June

Please sign the petition to obtain the freedom of journalist Alan Johnston: Thousands of BBC News website users have written to the BBC to demand the release of Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston. They have signed an online petition and the names are published here. Mr Johnston disappeared on 12 March. A video appeared on the internet on 1 June showing the first pictures of Alan Johnston since his abduction. It is said to have been posted by the Army of Islam, the group that says it is holding the reporter. It is not clear when the video was recorded. There has been a worldwide response to the online petition, which was opened on Monday, 2 April and coincided with a full page appeal in the UK's Guardian newspaper. We have published more than 200,000 signatures so far received and will publish regular further updates to the petition on this page. ...more in the BBC - please sign the petition on the BBC web

May

Putin threatens with retaliation because his ex-KGB man faces polonium murder charge for the assasination of Alexander Litvinenko: A former Russian KGB officer should be charged with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a critic of President Vladimir Putin who died from radiation poisoning in London, the Director of Public Prosecutions announced today. Alexander Litvinenko, the poisoned Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium In a move which will spark a political row between London and Moscow, Sir Ken Macdonald QC said he had asked the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to seek the extradition from Russia of Andrei Lugovoi. The Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, said the Russian ambassador had been told the British Government expected "full co-operation" with the extradition request. However, government sources in Moscow swiftly ruled out sending Lugovoi, 40, to London, pointing out that Russian law prevented the extradition of its citizens. ...Fears were growing last night that Moscow's refusal to extradite the man wanted in connection with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko would seriously fray diplomatic ties with Moscow and damage British businesses working in Russia. Analysts said the standoff would accelerate the Kremlin's attempts to muscle in on a huge Siberian gas field run by a joint venture involving BP. But Downing Street said Russia would improve "confidence" in trade by fulfilling its international obligations to hand over former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi to stand trial for murdering Mr Litvinenko, who died in London last year after apparently being poisoned with the radioactive isotope polonium-210. ...more in The Telegraph - The Times - The Guardian - The Independent
Also visit the Litvinenko Justice Foundation website
Click over the screen to watch the Panorama´s interview to Marina Litvinenko in January 2007
And watch also an impressive 55-minute portrait of a former spy, "In Memoriam Aleksander Litvinenko", a British citizen whose death brought him worldwide fame. By directors: Jos de Putter and Masja Novikova; a VPRO Backlight 2007 production.

'Hate will no longer rule' in Northern Ireland: Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness marked their inauguration today as first and deputy first ministers of Northern Ireland by putting aside past rivalries to praise each other's role in ushering in a new peaceful era in the province. They joined the prime minister, Tony Blair, and the Irish taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, in making post-ceremony speeches hailing the start of power-sharing as an historic moment. Mr Paisley said: "I believe Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace, a time when hate will no longer rule. How good it will be to be part of a wonderful healing in this province." Mr McGuinness said: "To Ian Paisley, I want to wish you the best as we step forward into the greatest and most exciting challenge of our lives." Mr Blair and Mr Ahern thanked each other and all of those involved in the lengthy peace process. ...more in The Guardian - The Telegraph - The Times - Washington Post

Blair's decade of bloody legacy: Over 650.000 Iraquis killed, the worse Public Health Service of the developped countries, corruption and the reactionary violence of nationalism rising for the first time in the United Kingdom... Iraq On the 10th anniversary of Tony Blair's election as Prime Minister, an exclusive poll reveals 69 per cent of Britons believe that, when he leaves office, his enduring legacy will be the bloody conflict in Iraq ... Seven out of 10 people believe that Iraq will prove to be Tony Blair's most enduring legacy, according to an opinion poll for The Independent to mark the 10th anniversary today of the election victory that brought him to power. As the Prime Minister prepares to announce his resignation next week, the survey by CommunicateResearch reveals that 69 per cent of the British public believe he will be remembered most for the Iraq war. Remarkably, his next highest "legacy rating" - just 9 per cent - is for his relationship with the American President, George Bush. Four years after the US-led invasion, Iraq still dwarfs all other issues. Only 6 per cent of voters believe Mr Blair will be remembered most for the Northern Ireland peace process, which he will hail as an important part of his legacy when self-government is restored in the province a week today. Just 3 per cent think the Prime Minister will be remembered most for the cash-for-honours affair, with the same proportion citing the introduction of the national minimum wage and being associated with "spin". ...more in The Independent - The Telegraph - The Guardian

April

"Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence." a speach by Dr Martin Luther King Jr, pronounced the 4th April 1966, of great actuality today: ...." It was April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before he was murdered. He was speaking at the Riverside Church here in New York. King billed the speech as a declaration of independence from the war and called the United States: "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." ...watch and listen excerpt of his "Beyond Vietnam" speech at Riverside Church in New York on April 4, 1967 in Democracy Now! - For more of King's speeches check: Pacifica Radio Archives.
Also click on the screen to watch and hear Martin Luther King's speach "I have a dream" delivered on 28th August 1963 after marching on Washington.

March

Help to Free Gary TYLER who has been imprisoned in the USA for 32 years despite being innocent: The case of Louisiana’s Gary Tyler has been called one of the great miscarriages of justice in the modern history of the United States. Tyler, an African-American, has been jailed since he was 16 years old for a 1974 murder that many believe he did not commit. An all-white jury convicted him based entirely on the statements of four witnesses who later recanted their testimony. We speak with Tyler’s mother, Juanita, and his sister Bobbie McCray. We’re also joined by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, who has been covering Tyler’s case. And we hear Tyler in his own words in an un-aired interview from prison. ...hear and watch more in Democracy Now! and please visit the website Free Gary Tyler and join the civic campaign for Justice on behalf of this fellow citizen.

February

Palestinian political prisoner in the USA, founded not guilty on all 17 charges by a Jury, had to start a hunger strike to fight for Justice and Liberty: ...he prosecution had agreed that Dr. Al-Arian essentially should have been released shortly after the plea agreement in May of 2006, and that he would voluntarily leave the country, and he would be assisted by the Justice Department in doing that. However, when we appeared at the sentencing hearing on May 1, 2006, the judge launched into what could only be called a diatribe, in which he accused Sami publicly of all of the offenses that the jury had acquitted him of. And then he used that as a justification to reject the prosecution recommendation on the sentence and to sentence Sami to the maximum allowable under the guidelines. ... more information in Democracy Now and in Free Sami Al-Arian website.

January

London celebrates the 250th birthday of William Blake:... Blake died in 1827 and his grave is known to be somewhere in Bunhill Fields Burial Ground in the City of London, but at present the only clue to his burial plot is a stone marked with the vague inscription “Near by lie the remains of the poet-painter William Blake . . . and of his wife Catherine Sophia”. ...more in The Guardian - The Independent - The Times - The Telegraph - The British Library - The Tate Modern - The William Blake Archives - The William Blake digital project.

Year 2006

December

Putin's Echoes of Stalin mean that Russia is still a dangerous gamble: ...(like Stanlin) ...President Vladimir Putin, too, is in the business of nation-building. While Russia has abandoned the failed communist model, there are signs that President Putin appreciates the Soviet policy of self-reliance. Russia’s treatment of Royal Dutch Shell suggests that Mr Putin operates an updated version of Stalin’s Russia First policy: it could be dubbed Capitalism in one Country. Free market isolationism is a nonsensical hybrid. Shell’s decision to bow to pressure from the Kremlin and cede control of the Sakhalin-2 project is a landmark, but backward step in the development of the Russian economy. ...more in The Times

In Russia, A Secretive Force Widens: Putin Led Regrouping Of Security Services ...On Nov. 15, the Russian Interior Ministry and Gazprom, the state-controlled energy giant, announced three new senior appointments. Oleg Safonov was named a deputy head of the ministry. Yevgeny Shkolov became head of its economic security department. And Valery Golubev was appointed a deputy chief executive at Gazprom. All three men had something important in common beyond the timing of their promotions: backgrounds as KGB officers and experience working directly with President Vladimir Putin when he was a KGB operative himself in Germany or later, when he was a rising presence in the local government of St. Petersburg, his home town. ...read the article by Peter Finn in The Washington Post.

Putin shows he does not understand Democracy and cares not for it: ...Russia, too, is angry – not over Mr Litvinenko's death, but over the fact that the British did not suppress his deathbed tirade against Vladimir Putin, the man he named as his killer. It is possible to see Mr Putin's point: being accused of murder is doubtless unpleasant. But Russia's protest to the Foreign Office demonstrated a lack of understanding of democratic norms that is deeply worrying. ... As Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, told this newspaper yesterday, "it's symptomatic of a state that does not understand any longer the concept of free speech". Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, the former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, was more succinct: she called the protest "absolute bloody cheek". ... more in The Telegraph.

Putin's poisonous nature is now plain to see: Mikhail Khodorkovsky has not been killed with a dose of polonium-210 but there may be occasions on which he feels that his fate is little better. He has now served three years in a Siberian penal colony and, after a Moscow court on Friday refused to hear his appeal against sentence, he must contemplate another five years of misery there. ...But now, even those who have struggled most fervently to cling to the idea that President Putin is a modern leader with whom the west can do business, rather than an old-fashioned Kremlin commissar who cannot be trusted, must be feeling queasy. The extraordinary death of Alexander Litvinenko is the work of professional assassins with access to the most deadly of radio-active materials. Whatever efforts Moscow makes to point the finger at others who might have perpetrated such a crime, the overwhelming suspicion is that the commission to kill came straight from the Kremlin. ...read the excellent article by Patience Wheatcroft in The Telegraph .

If you are concerned for Democracy and Justice, please visit the Mikhail KHODORKOVSKY Society website and support Amnesty International campaign. Also click on the banner to get information on the unfair case made against Mr. Khodorkovsky by Vladimir Putin.

November

Britain hits out at Vladimir Putin for "attacks" on liberty and democracy: ...Mr Litvinenko's friend Alex Goldfarb welcomed Mr Hain's comments. He said Western governments' concerns were "long overdue" about "the twist of Russia towards an uncontrollable and unaccountable police state which poses a danger to the rest of the world". ...more in The Telegraph - The Spectator - News of the World - The Guardian - The Sunday Times - The Washington Post .

Final interview of a British citizen assasinated in London by the Kremlin with an invisible "nuclear bomb": ...The one subject that caused him (Mr. Litvinenko) to lose his temper was that of his former employer, and that of Mr Putin, the FSB, Russia's internal security service. Criminals and gangsters, he called them. It was not always thus. The young Litvinenko had been flattered to be recruited into the Soviet-era KGB and had been a loyal officer for years. A promising young officer working in counterintelligence, he was soon promoted and moved into the more prestigious field of counterterrorism and the fight against organised crime. The early 1990s were a turbulent period for the KGB. Communism collapsed and with it everything the KGB held most dear. But the KGB could also move with the times. And it was determined to dominate the new Russian market economy, just as it had the old Soviet Union. Its tactics were ruthless and Litvinenko was expected to show no qualms about achieving its aims. One was to protect and even recruit potential businessmen for the new Russia. And protecting them meant getting rid of their rivals too. Now in his 30s, he was responsible for recruiting murderers. He would play on their psychological weakness to win them over. "So if somebody was the victim of a crime, like his daughter was raped, you would offer to let them take revenge on the perpetrator," he told us at home in his kitchen earlier this year. "This was how we recruited killers." ... read the interview in The Telegraph.
For more information about the assasination in London of Mr Alexander Litvinenko visit our page Universal Chronicle of Infamy .

The one way to fight Putin's menace: Russia’s strength rests on sand How was Alexander Litvinenko murdered? We don’t know yet; we may never find out, but what is clear is his death marks the start of a new Cold War. The question is how to win it. Vladimir Putin’s thuggish and arrogant rhetoric; the routine use of murder in business and politics; the bullying of neighbours such as Georgia; energy blackmail; authoritarian behaviour by the Kremlin — all have crystallised a growing unease with the wishful thinking that has marked outsiders’ attitudes to Russia in the past 15 years. ... read the excelent article by Edward Lucas in The Times

Fascist Rumsfeld axed after Republicans lost Congress & Senate. Democrats promise new direction on Iraq and Middle East, civic rights and prosperity for all: Democrats gained Senate seats in Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. In the House, Democrats picked up at least 27 Republican-held seats without losing any of their own, putting Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) into position to become the nation's first female speaker . Several other House races remained too close to call. Democrats also scored heavily in gubernatorial races, picking up at least seven states to claim a majority nationally.... more information in Democracy Now - The Washington Post - The Guardian - The Independent - The Times - The New York Times .

Despite not having real democratic choice and many dirty tricks, USA citizens have a chance today to stop Bush's tyranny over the Earth: Voter Suppression in Midterm Elections: Robocalls, ID Confusion, Voter Roll Purges...n Virginia, Democratic Senatorial candidate James Webb's last name does not appear on the voting summary sheet. In Indiana, African American congresswoman Julia Carson was told her congressional ID was not sufficient to vote. In Broward County, Florida early voting, a vote for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate registered as a vote for the Republican candidate. Adam Cohen, editorial writer for The New York Times, joins us to discuss voter disenfranchisement. ...more in Democracy Now - The Washington Post - The New York Times - The Guardian - The Times - The Independent .

Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging like in the Far West and just 2 days before general elections in the USA: Bush hopes verdict will boost election campaign...But when we come to the fairness and legitimacy of the proceedings, there, there are very, very deep concerns, and I think it’s all wrapped around the timing of the announcement of the verdict, which was very carefully planned to be the last print media day, so we would have headlines above the fold in American newspapers on the day before Americans go to vote in very, very important mid-term elections. ...It was also sentenced to death Mohammad Munaf and Iraqi American who has just been sentenced to death on presure by USA military agents. ... "when I first heard a report about it ...I picked up the phone and I spoke with two -- I knew, actually, the two Iraqi attorneys who were involved, representing him in that case. The Brennan Center here in New York was also involved. So I spoke with the defense counsel. I also spoke with a bailiff at the court about it, to find out what had happened in this proceeding. And what they all described -- in fact, completely they all had exactly the same account of what happened -- was shocking. They say that he was brought into the courtroom, Mr. Munaf, by two American officers -- one they described as, quote, “the general;” the other they described as a man named Lieutenant Pirone. He was brought before the court. The court had announced, prior to session, that reviewing the evidence of the case, he had concluded that he would dismiss the charges, that there were no substantial charges, and that at this hearing, that would be a conclusion to the affair, there would be a dismissal. ...And then, the account is that this American lieutenant stood up, began arguing very loudly with the judge, saying it was unacceptable that this man be dismissed, that he had to be convicted, and moreover that he had to receive the death sentence. And the American whipped out a piece of paper saying he was there speaking on behalf of the government of Romania and the government of Romania demanded the death sentence. Afterwards, there was a private discussion, I’m told, between the Americans and the judge. The judge emerged from this ashen-faced, looking very upset, and then proceeded immediately to convict the man and sentence him to death. And subsequently, the government of Romania reacted, saying they knew nothing about this proceeding and they certainly did not authorize an American officer to stand up in the court and demand the death sentence. In fact, the government of Romania does not endorse the death sentence. So there’s something very strange going on about this case. ... Democracy Now - The Times - The Washington Post - The Guardian - The Independent - The New York Times.

Religious leader of 30 millions Americans and father of 5, supporter of Bush, was denounced by a male prostitute and had to acknowledge his lies - Bush and Blair and Aznar themselves have not yet come out so clear about their lies on Iraq: Before pastors began explaining to the congregation at New Life Church why its founder wasn't there Sunday, the youngsters were sent out of the room. Some in the standing-room-only crowd in the megachurch's 8,000-seat auditorium wiped away tears and embraced one another as they heard the Rev. Ted Haggard's remorseful confession of "sexual immorality," read by a member of the church board. Haggard agreed to resign Saturday, Nov. 4, 2006 after the New Life Church's independent investigative board recommended removal, saying he was guilty "of sexuallly immoral conduct." "I am a deceiver and a liar. There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life," wrote Haggard, who resigned Thursday as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 30 million evangelical Christians. ...more information in Democracy Now - The Guardian - The Washington Post - The New York Times - The Times - The Independent .

October

Death Squad Fears Again Haunt Argentina: BUENOS AIRES, Oct. 7 — A crucial witness, Jorge Julio Lopez (see the photo) in the trial of a notorious human rights abuser from the Argenina's genocide dictatorship has been missing for nearly three weeks, and authorities and rights groups here say they fear he may have been abducted and killed in a new campaign to intimidate prosecutors, judges and witnesses in cases that have not yet gone to court. ...more in The New York Times - visit also Anahi-Association website clicking here.

September

Very sad time for Democracy in the world as the majority of USA legislators betray Walt Whitman :
A great country that was once a champion of democratic values, such as Truth and Justice and the presumption of innocence until proven the contrary or the 800 years wise right to Habeas Corpus, has turned into an imperial despotic regime as House of Representatives and Senate granted president Bush Jr. absolute power to kidnap, to detain in secret as long as he wants and to torture any "suspect" consider by his administration a "combatant enemy". The same illegitimate legality invented by fascist dictator Pinochet with the Plan Condor and totalitarian regimes from the Dark Ages, De facto USA legislators have abolish their Constitution and Congress is no longer significant at all ...more in The Guardian - The Independent - The New York Times - The Washington Post - The BBC - watch or read report in Democracy Now

Muslim leaders demand apology for Pope's 'medieval' remarks: Pope Benedict XVI was last night facing angry demands from Muslims that he apologise for a speech in which he appeared to say the concept of jihad was "unreasonable" and quoted a medieval ruler who said Muhammad's innovations were "evil and inhuman". ...more in The Guardian

Read also "Papal fallibility" by Leader in The Guardian

And read the complete discourse of Benedictus XVI on Socrates, Faith and Reason, Christianity and Islam [clicking here]

Pope's remarks about Jews qualified as 'unwise in current climate' ... read more in The Guardian

Vatican experts say Pope 'unrepentant': As protests against the Pope continued to rumble around the Muslim world yesterday, Catholics began asking themselves if this highly intelligent man can really have been so crass as to have ignited the passions of millions of Muslims without realising that he was doing it. If the alternative version is more credible - that he knew exactly what he was doing - then the next question arises: why? The gloomy conclusion of some Vatican experts is that there was no inconsistency in the Pope's choice of the words "inhuman and evil" - quoted from the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus - to characterise Islam. Such a negative view, they say, is consistent with all his words and actions with regard to Islam. ... more in The Independent

Pope's apology fails to placate Muslims as violence goes on: Pope Benedict XVI has used his first public appearance since returning to Italy from Germany to try to defuse the crisis that has overtaken him since he quoted a Byzantine emperor who described Islam as "evil and inhuman" . ... more in The Independent

Pope has joined US crusade, says Iran: Response marks setback to 25 years of diplomacy. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday accused the Pope of committing the world's biggest Christian church to what he claimed was a "crusade" launched by President Bush against Islam. ... more in The Guardian

August

Mechanisms of mental formation and submission to the "authority"

in all human beings including Borges

Kidnap girl tells of eight-year torment : Wearing jeans and a purple shirt and sporting a long scarf tied around her head, the images reveal a poised, thoughtful young woman, looking relaxed and smiling. But the pictures mask the torment that Fraulein Kampusch reveals she endured during her eight years as a prisoner. In her first interviews since her freedom, the teenager told how she thought only of escape during her entire ordeal, once even trying to jump out of her captor’s car. She also reveals how she dreamt about decapitating Priklopil. "I always felt like a poor chicken in a hen house. You saw on TV how small my cell was - it was a place to despair." ... more in The Times - The Guardian

(photos: Natasha researched by Austria from 1998, hole where she lived 8 years hidden, his kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil)
The Austrian teenager held in an underground cell for more than eight years insisted Monday she didn't miss out on much in captivity and was even spared some temptations and torments of adolescence, such as smoking, drinking and dealing with "bad friends.": On her fifth full day of freedom, 18-year-old Natascha Kampusch broke her silence in a statement that appeared to lend credence to the theory she may have suffered from "Stockholm Syndrome," where victims cope by identifying with their captors. Natasha described the man who enslaved her as "a part of my life," adding "that's why I also mourn for him in a certain way." Kampusch also said she refused to comply with Priklopil's requests to call him "master." "He was not my master. I was just as strong," she said in the statement, read to reporters by a psychologist. ...more in The Washington Post - The New York Times - The Guardian - The Independent

Kidnapper led his victim to believe that her parents had refused to pay a ransom for her ... more in The Independent - The Guardian

Kidnapped girl kept diary during her eight-year ordeal: The neighbour who found Fräulein Kampusch in her garden said: “She was just suddenly standing in front of my kitchen window, panicking, white in the face and shaking.” After being reunited, her father said that his daughter had asked him: “Daddy, do you still have my toy car?” Herr Koch told her that he had kept it, along with all her dolls. ... more in The Times -

Kidnapper's friend says he met 'cheerful' Natascha, judging thus for the appearence of "the couple" he saw as most people does, ignoring Plato and Freud teachings: ...more in The Times - The New York Times - The Washigton Post


Full text of the public letter by Natasha: ... read it in The Times

Kidnap girl sues to seize abductor's home: A few neighbors also believed what she made "a happy couple" with her kidnapper, for instance Mr Jantschek, 66, who said: "I saw the young lady in the garden quite often over the past year. They also drove off together in his car, and every time she waved at us in a friendly way." He also said that when asked, Priklopil claimed the young woman was a "Yugoslav aide" that he had "borrowed" from a colleague to do some house work for him. Jantschek said: "We could not have known that it was the kidnapped Natascha Kampusch. When I asked him [Priklopil] whether she was his new girlfriend, he only said 'I have borrowed her from a work colleague ... more in The Times - The Washington Post

The false widow Ko dama accused, this time by the prestigious French publisher Gallimard, for abusive exploitation of Borges´ works obstructing the reprint of the acclaimed Pléiade edition in which the author cooperated personally ... more in (French) Le Nouvel Observateur - investigation report by Clarin´s Zona (in Spanish)

The neo-nazi dictator who destroyed Paraguay - under massive corruption, poverty and obscurantism - died in Brazil without facing Justice for none of his numerous crimes, including the false marriage of the last assistant of Borges whose annual income for the exploitation of his works was estimated to 25 millions dollars ... more information in the BBC - The Independent - The Guardian - The Washington Post

July

Britain and US defy demand for immediate ceasefire: Israeli warplanes continued their bombardment of Lebanon yesterday, defying a demand by Kofi Annan for an immediate end to fighting on the ninth day of a war that has led to the "collective punishment of the Lebanese people". Two countries, the US and Britain, defiantly refused to back the international clamour for an immediate ceasfire between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas. Their ambivalence about civilian deaths in Lebanon has given Israel a powerful signal that it can continue its attacks with impunity. ... more in The Independent - also watch Democracy Now

Tuesday 18th
EXCLUSIVE: Syrian President Bashar Al-Asad on U.S. Foreign Policy, the Resistance in Iraq, Syrian-Lebanese Relations and More ...watch and listen in Democracy Now!

Noam Chomsky: U.S.-Backed Israeli Policies Pursuing "End of Palestine"; Hezbollah Capture of Israeli Soldiers "Very Irresponsible Act" That Could Lead To "Extreme Disaster" ...watch and listen the interview in Democracy Now

Israel kills Lebanese civilians: An Israeli air raid has killed at least 13 Lebanese civilians who were fleeing southern border areas. Women and children were among those killed when the convoy was hit. "Bodies litter the road", an eyewitness said. ... watch and read in the BBC
Hizbullah leader: The Israeli governement wants war and we are ready for it ... more in The Guardian - The Times - The Independent

Junio

USA Supreme Court Rejects Guantanamo War Crimes Trials: The Supreme Court today delivered a stunning rebuke to the Bush administration over its plans to try Guantanamo detainees before military commissions, ruling that the commissions are unconstitutional. ... more in The Washington Post

May

Pope Benedict, calling himself "a son of Germany", prayed at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz on Sunday and asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, mostly Jews, died in this "valley of darkness. ... In a place like this, words fail. In the end, there can only be a dread silence, a silence which is a heartfelt cry to God -- Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this? ...Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?" ... more in REUTERS - Euronews

April - June 2006:

Celebrating HM The Queen's 80 Birthday
Forty years ago HM Elizabeth II knighted Jorge Luis Borges who, some years later, said in a famous lecture that to be a King means "to stand for his people" and that is the case in her kingdom, one of the few greatest democracies on Earth, illustrating the well founded conclusion of Plato that constitutional monarchy is the best possible organization of the state if wanting to achieve political justice.

HRH The Prince of Wales has paid a hearfelt beautiful tribute to HM The Queen: "...I find it hard to believe my own mother, the Queen, is today (21st April 2006) celebrating her 80th birthday.
And it gives me enormous pride to be able to congratulate her publicly in this way.
And to thank her, on behalf of us all, for the many wonderful qualities which she has brought to almost an entire lifetime of service and dedication to her country, family, to the realms, and to the countries of the Commonwealth.
... Now there is no doubt that the world in which my mother grew up, and indeed the world in which she first became Queen, has changed beyond all recognition.
But during all this, she has shown the most remarkable steadfastness and fortitude, always remaining a figure of reassuring calm and dependability, an example to so many of service, duty and devotion in a world of sometimes bewildering change and disorientation.
...wishing the Queen the happiest of happy birthdays, together with the fervent prayer that there will be countless memorable returns of the day." ... read or watch tributes and celebrations in the BBC and for updated information visit the website of HM The Queen's 80 Birthday celebrations.

Tomorrowland or China rises: A four-hour television series and interactive Web site by The Times, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the ZDF network of Germany. ...watch it at The New York Times

End of the line for the godfather: He had not been heard from since he was seen guiding his ancient mum into a polling booth and instructing her audibly to "put a cross on the symbol for Forza Italia". In the wake of this tightest, most nail-biting of Italian elections, Silvio Berlusconi, the man of torrential eloquence, had dried up. The nation's journalists spent the best part of yesterday waiting for the gusher to resume.
Finally, after 48 hours of silence and seven hours later than first announced, he took to the stage in his 16th-century Roman headquarters, all gilt rococo cupids, and told the press that as far as he was concerned the election had been won by nobody. ... read all the article in The Independent - and The Guardian

Jill Carroll recovered freedom on 30 March 2006
She was kidnapped in Iraq on the 7th January 2006, while working as a free lance journalist for The Christian Science Monitor


January editorial : It is of not service to the authentic Muslims, nor to the people of Iraq or to the Palestinians, the kidnapping of peaceful persons let alone of any journalists like Miss Jill Carroll whose good faith and valiant work is indispensable to inform all citizens of the world of the human sufferings and atrocities brought to Iraq and the middle East because of the unfairness and lack of wisdom from the Bush junior administration and those who supported the invasion of Iraq.
We pray every hour to each captor who holds another human being unto their power, in the name of Allah, of Yaveh, of the unique God that people of goodwill ought to respect as the Creator of our neighbour and as the Architect of the universe, for the sake of human compassion and kindness to each other on Earth: for your own human dignity please liberate Miss Jill Carroll and each Guantanamo’s prisoners and anyone who may actually be hold captive without a chance of Justice. Let’s treat our neighbour as kindly as we would like to be treated by others.

The terrorist group Eta captures international attention by declaring a permanent ceasefire. However, the communique, read by a female terrorist, did not state that Eta was prepared to hand over its arms, which are thought to be hidden in secret depots in the south of France. ... read more in The Guardian - The Independent - The Washington Post - The Age

The European Union asks for international condemnation of the Franco regime and demands all traces from the former tyranny to be removed in Spain, beginning by removing the bureaucrats from the dictatorship still in power, and fixing the 18th July of each year as a remembrance Day ... more in the Council of Europe website

16th March 2006:

Happy Centenary to Francisco AYALA!

3rd March: The world-renowned Granada-born writer, Francisco Ayala, has attended the official ceremony in Madrid to set up a National Commission for his centenary celebrations, just 14 days away. Born in 1906, Ayala says that his 100th birthday will mean a complete change of perspective for him, as, he said, "I only live in the present, and I only have a past. I am a man at the end of life, and that has brought me to reflect, which means a complete change of perspective, as I no longer make any plans. I live the past, and I return to the past time and time again. I want everyone to be able to enjoy that experience" he said. The Secretary for Culture was at the ceremony, as was the vice-president of the government. The centenary celebrations begin on 16th March, Francisco Ayala´s birthday, with a conference by Federico Mayor Zaragoza, in the National Library.
To read tributes (in Spanish) and hear the voice of a wise man, hundred years young, press here.

Related link:
Francisco Ayala Foundation

21 Jan 06 : Found two Stevenson tales that were too revolting to publish:
Two unknown comic stories by Robert Louis Stevenson have been discovered in the archive of an American library more than a century after his death. The author, fondly remembered for Treasure Island and "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", wrote "The Clockmaker" and "The Scientific Ape" in the 1870s and 1880s, but both satires were removed from a collection of his fables by his editor, possibly because they were too controversial. The stories appear in the current issue of the Times Literary Supplement. ... By Jack Malvern, Arts Reporter in The Times

07 Dic 05 : A dinamite Nobel lecture : Harold Pinter's devastating critic on US foreign policy ... It began with Pinter talking about his art - something he rarely does in public. In particular, he drew a clear distinction between the necessary ambivalence of art and the duty of the citizen to ask: "What is true? What is false?" ... more in The Guardian - The Independent

01 Dec 2005: Happy Birthday to Allen Stuart Konigsberg (aka Woody Allen)
His personal life may be a mess but his latest film, Match Point, marks a spectacular return to form - and critical acclaim. David Thomson salutes cinema's most prolific pensioner at 70 ... more in The Independent

London, 12 Oct 05 : On Colombus Day the Friends of Borges set on service the English section of their new Web site, celebrating thus the first literary language of Sir Jorge Luis Borges and welcome all good will readers who may wish to support this good cause.

Swedish Academy confounds expectations by naming Harold Pinter as this year's Nobel Prize in Literature laureate ... more in The Guardian

Harold Pinter, the English playwright, poet and political campaigner whose work uses spare and often menacing language to explore themes like powerlessness, domination and the faceless tyranny of the state, won the Nobel Prize for Literature today. Mr. Pinter "uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms," the Swedish Academy said in announcing the award ...more in The New York Times

In the page Orbis Tertius, you can read most of the speeches pronounced the 24th August at Can Mossenya estate in the public inauguration of a memorial to the Poet Jorge Luis Borges.