NOT DEAD
They’ve been asked to wait in Paediatrics. It is five o’clock, already; and the sun is streaming in through the high, unopenable windows. Thrum, thrum, thrum, resounds the concert in the day room, and his name is Aiken Drum ( Read more... )

The Future of European Democracy

By Thomas Darnstädt
Card-carrying Europeans reacted in dismay to a recent far-reaching ruling on the EU's Lisbon Treaty by Germany's Constitutional Court. But the judges have in fact done Europeans a huge service by tackling the issue of how democracy can work in the era of supranational institutions.
( Read more... )

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2009/apr/07/g20-police-assault-video

The police story changed as the evidence against them mounted.  The occasions where protesters smashed windows appear contrived too, with banks of press photographers ready and waiting, and police video cameramen inside the bank poised to capture the breaking of a window at the ( Read more... )

Weekend Edition ( Read more... )

Posted Jul 22, 2006, this documentary provides a useful point of comparison with today's coverage of the Israeli attack on Gaza, which has been widely blamed on the Palestinians in the mainstream media:

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=50287

Strange happenings in Baghdad, as the outgoing Dubya suffers “the worst insult in the Arab world”-assault by footwear. The foot being the lowest part of the body, this is as bad as it gets, apparently; it takes me back to a cheerful montage of images from Iraq in 2003, when Iraqis seemed to be queuing up to rub the soles of their shoes against ( Read more... )

Next Saturday world leaders meet in Washington to discuss new rules for the global financial system (though little will be achieved with President-elect Obama absent). So far, thinking about this matter has scarcely got beyond calls for better banking regulation: a microeconomic issue that is doubtless important but misses the main economic plot. ( Read more... )

Archeologists from the British Museum visited the historic site of Ur, Iraq, this weekend; the visit was part of an assessment of various archeological sites for damage and looting ( Read more... )

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Orwell, you may recall, has an essay called "Literary Censorship in England" which was supposed to be the introduction to Animal Farm, except that it never appeared, in which he points out "look, I’m writing about a totalitarian society, but in free, democratic England, it’s not all that different", and then he says unpopular ideas can be silenced ( Read more... )