Wednesday, 12 May 2010

4.00pm: Laura Kuenssberg has just said on BBC News that she has seen bags being loaded into cars at the back of Downing Street. "Large hold-alls", she said. She is implying that the Browns are getting ready to leave.

3.55pm: Labour has given up talking to the Lib Dems, according to the BBC. This is what Laura Kuenssberg has put out on Twitter.

No 10 sources recognise talks with the libs and labour are over and working out how to declare their side of the negotiation is at an end

@'The Guardian'

Tuesday, 11 May 2010

Pete Wylie - The Day That Margaret Thatcher Dies!

HIT!!!

Steel Justice (1992) & other 'lost' TV shows...

A little boy idolizes his policeman father and likes to secretly tail him when he goes out on drug busts and stakeouts at night. One night, the kid gets killed. Dad is distraught… until he meets his new crime-fighting partner-a fire-breathing, 100-foot-tall robot dinosaur that’s possessed by the spirit of his dead son.

More 'lost' TV pilots

HERE
Including:
Heil, Honey I’m Home! (1990)

A parody of 1950s sitcoms like Leave It To Beaver, this British show was about Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun living peacefully in a suburban neighborhood until their lives are turned upside down by their new Jewish neighbors.
(!!!)

(Thanx Anne!)

Swans To Play Brooklyn Masonic Temple (& elsewhere in N America)

In January I posted about Swans’ plans to reform, record, and tour. At the time, I had no idea I’d be helping to organize their biggest ever show in New York City. It’s an honor — Swans’ music/thought exerted a huge influence on me at a crucial time and the band’s remained one of my all-time favorites. I put together an acoustic M. Gira show at Housing Works a couple of years ago, but this is a different monster: Haunting The Chapel’s teamed up with the Blackened Music Series (we did Alcest at the Studio) and Issue Project Room to present Swans’ first show in NYC in more than a decade. It takes place 10/8 at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple (317 Clermont Ave). It will be very loud. Michael Gira handpicked Baby Dee to open. Her performance will be keyboards accompanied by a cello. Tickets go on sale Friday (5/14) at 10AM EST. We have info on that and the rest of the tour dates.

09/28 – Philadelphia, PA @ Trocadero Theater
09/29 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat
09/30 – Boston, MA @ Middle East downstairs
10/01 – Montreal, QC @ Le National (Pop Montreal Fest)
10/02 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
10/04 – Detroit, MI @ Crofoot Ballroom
10/05 – Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge
10/08 – Brooklyn, NY @ Masonic Temple
10/09 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
10/22-24 – Birmingham, UK @ Supersonic Festival

Tickets go on sale Friday. You’ll be able to grab tickets for the Masonic Temple show at TicketWeb (I’ll post the link on Fri). Also, keep in mind:

THIS IS NOT A REUNION. It’s not some dumb-ass nostalgia act. It is not repeating the past. After 5 Angels Of Light albums, I needed a way to move FORWARD, in a new direction, and it just so happens that revivifying the idea of Swans is allowing me to do that. I’ll be using what I learned in the last several years to inform the way this new material develops, while carrying forward from where Swans left off with its final album Soundtracks For The Blind, and in particular, Swans Are Dead. If you have expectations about how Swans should be, that’s your business, but it would be a disservice to both of us if I were to make music with your needs in mind, and the music would certainly suffer as a result. In any event, I certainly never thought this day would arrive, but it’s inevitable, it’s here, it’s fate, so I’m succumbing to it.   Helping me in this quest are the fantastic musicians and friends listed below. I’ll enter the studio with the songs, we’ll hash them out together, someone will come up with something unexpected, then that will lead to new ideas, the song will take a different trajectory and the material will grow on its’ own. This is what I’m hoping, anyway.

As far as that album, Gira told me in January that the approach will be “basically where Soundtracks For The Blind/Swans Are Dead left off, with influence of Angels of Light in there too. Probably pretty severe tho, according to my present mood…”

Excellent.

Brandon @'Stereogum'

I once recorded Swans playing live at The Paradiso in Am*dam and it was SO loud that the result was nothing more than thick aural sludge!

Now all we need is some enterprising young hipster to bring them down to Australia...

Anyone?

Hitting Home (BBC One Scotland at 2235 BST Tonight)

Domestic abuse victims 'turned away' over lack of space

There are fears about the impact of cuts on refuges like this Glasgow one

About 3,000 women fleeing domestic abuse are turned away from Scottish refuges every year because of a lack of space, a BBC investigation has found.

A Scottish Women's Aid census last year revealed 49 women and 25 children had asked for help in a one-day period, but more than half had to be turned away.
Experts have said there has been a "huge improvement" in domestic abuse services since devolution.
But it is claimed cuts are now putting refuges in a difficult position.
The women and children were turned away for a number of reasons - because the refuge was not suitable, because of their immigration status and because there was no space.

You worry about what happens to them and you wonder where the kids have ended up

Lily Greenan
Scottish Women's Aid

Abuse court 'makes a difference'

'I could have killed my partner'

'He hit her with a fire extinguisher'

Police 'proactively hunt abusers'

Across Britain, it is thought that 235 women every day are refused access to refuges because there is no space, equating to up to 58,000 a year.
Although many of these women may get help elsewhere, or from another refuge, experts have raised concerns about the situation.
Lily Greenan, director of Scottish Women's Aid, said: "We're not at what we need in terms of refuge provision. We turn away women and children every day.
"The prospect of further cuts, it just feels like we're going back. We've achieved so much and we don't want to lose that ground."
She added: "You worry about what happens to them and you wonder where the kids have ended up.
"You wonder if they found a friend's floor to sleep on. You wonder if they went back."
'Turned away'
Dr Mairead Tagg, a psychologist who works with Glasgow East Women's Aid, said: "To be fair we have seen a huge improvement in the services for domestic abuse since the Scottish government came into being."
But she said she was concerned about the impact of economic hardship and cuts.
"Women will then come forward depending and relying on a service that may be truncated or cut or fractured or, God forbid, not there at all," she said.

Dr Tagg said services highlighted by advertising drives may not be available

It is thought one-in-four women and one-in-six men will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime.
Among those not entitled to help in a refuge are those women who have come to Britain to marry from abroad.
Many of these women find that, although living in Britain legally, they are not entitled to help from public funds. This means that refuges have no money to help them.
A survey of Women's Aid refuges in Scotland found that 139 such women had to be refused help by refuges over the course of a year.
However, John Watson, Amnesty International's programme director in Scotland, said there was no accurate way of measuring how many women were being affected by this and that the real total could amount to many hundreds.
He said: "In the great majority of those cases they have to be turned away, either to go back to the abuser, or to be forced onto the charity of friends or forced onto the streets.
"We've heard of cases where people have ended up in prostitution."
Since the BBC investigation was carried out, a pilot scheme which offers some limited help to domestic abuse victims who have no recourse to public funds, has been extended until the end of August.

@'BBC'

GOP seeks to block Obama nominee to El Salvador post over Cuban romance

Senate Republicans are determined to block a Democratic Party activist's nomination as ambassador to El Salvador because of questions about a long-ago boyfriend who had contacts with Cuban diplomats, congressional staffers say.
The FBI cleared Mari Carmen Aponte when the issue of the boyfriend, Cuban-born businessman Roberto Tamayo, first became public after President Bill Clinton nominated her as ambassador to the Dominican Republic in 1998.
Aponte withdrew from that nomination after Senate Republicans vowed to ask tough questions about Tamayo. They had dated from 1982 to 1994 and attended social functions with Cuban diplomats in Washington, D.C.
Her Obama administration nomination to the El Salvador job was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations committee April 27, with 10 Democrats endorsing her -- including Cuban-American Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey -- and eight Republicans voting no.
But the Republicans will put a hold on her nomination when it comes up in the full Senate, meaning it will need 60 votes for confirmation unless they lift the hold, said congressional staffers who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the topic.
``This is clearly a controversial nomination. It was controversial the last time she was nominated, in a different administration,'' the committee's top Republican, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, said during last month's vote.
The panel's Republicans, led by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC., had asked to look at Aponte's full FBI file and a reputed confidential memo on Tamayo's Cuban connections written during her 1998 nomination. Democrats countered that no such memo exists, and that by tradition only one member from each party is allowed to read the full files of nominees.
Menendez strongly defended Aponte during the April 27 vote, according to The Cable, a Washington-based foreign policy website.
``If I thought that, after having reviewed the file, that Miss Aponte would be a security risk to the United States in any context, but particularly in the context of the Castro regime . . . I would oppose her. But that is simply not the case,'' he was quoted as saying.
Cuban intelligence defector Florentino Aspillaga alleged in a 1993 newspaper article that Havana's spies were trying to recruit Aponte through Tamayo, but gave no details. FBI agents later revealed that Tamayo was in fact passing them information on his contacts with the Cuban diplomats in Washington.
The Puerto Rico-born Aponte, 63, has acknowledged that she and Tamayo attended some social functions with Cuban diplomats but insisted that she never became aware of any attempt to recruit her.
Aponte has been a longtime Hispanic community activist in Washington, working in the Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Jimmy Carter, volunteering in the Clinton White House in 1993 and later raising campaign funds for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she ran for Senate.
She has served on the board of directors of the National Council of La Raza and as president of the Hispanic National Bar Association, and was executive director 2001-2004 of the Puerto Rican Federal Affairs Administration in Washington, a liaison between the island's government and U.S. federal and state agencies.

Execution and Intimidation are condemned: Statement of Tehran Bus Transportation Syndicate in condemning Farzad Kamangar’s execution

فارسی

We are mourning the death of a teacher whose teaching tool was chalk and pen, who taught children that many of them would go to bed with an empty stomach every night. Execution and intimidation is condemned. His crime was defending human rights. Crime that in the past 100 year has taken lives of many and made lots of families to mourn. In the past 4 years many national and international organizations had condemned the imprisonment of Farzad Kamanger and more importantly demanded for an impartial and legal review of his case. International organizations had asked for direct meeting with Farzad several times, which never got approved.

Unfortunately his family did not have the right or opportunity to see their beloved son for the last time. These executions take place in our society while our people have always negated any type of violence. Iranian and international worker movement have lost a teacher who did not stop learning and teaching even in prison. Our condolences goes to Farzad Kamangar family and everyone around the world.

As we have repeatedly announced through out these years, we want an end to death penalty, we reject verdicts of illegal courts and ask for the freedom of all social right prisoners; including Mr. Madadi and Osanloo.

With hope for peace and justice all around the world

Union Workers

Bus Transportation of Tehran and Suburbs

In Memorium

The fire at Valley Parade took 56 lives and left more than 200 people injured
Bradford marks Valley Parade stadium fire 25 years on

Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?

Forget "Downfall", here's Bayern München 's Dutch coach Louis Van Gaal!

In case you have just tuned in...

Gordon Brown plays last card – proffering his resignation

Brown's announcement outside No 10 Downing Street

School ban on gay anthology challenged by US free speech organisations

Oh look! it's that a**hat again Mommy!

A campaign by the local chapter of Glenn Beck's 9.12 project led to Rancocas Valley Regional High School's decision to ban Revolutionary Voices. Photograph: Soul Brother/FilmMagic

American free speech organisations are fighting a decision by a New Jersey school to remove a critically acclaimed anthology of writing about teenage homosexuality from library shelves after parents described it as vulgar and obscene.

Revolutionary Voices, a collection of stories, poems and artwork by young homosexuals, was banned at Rancocas Valley Regional High School last week following a campaign by the local chapter of Glenn Beck's conservative 9.12 project. Local grandmother and 9.12 member Beverly Marinelli told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the book was "pervasively vulgar, obscene, and inappropriate", while insisting that she is "not a homophobe".

But a coalition of free speech groups has jumped to the book's defence, saying that residents "have no right to impose their views on others or to demand that the contents of the library reflect their personal, religious, or moral values".

"There are undoubtedly GLBTQ [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning] students at Rancocas Valley High School, regardless of whether they are openly recognised. Removing any of these titles would send a clear message to those students that they are the objects of social disapproval – different, vulnerable, and marginal – whose needs for information of particular relevance to their lives are not respected," wrote the directors of a collection of organisations to the school's board. The letter, the signatories to which include the National Coalition Against Censorship, the National Council of Teachers of English, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers and PEN America, added that there was "no question that these books are not obscene".

"No one has to read something just because it's on the library shelf," the letter continued. "No book is right for everyone, and the role of the library is to allow students to make choices according to their own interests, experiences, and family values ... Even if the books are too mature for some students, they will be meaningful to others."

Lambda Legal, a US civil rights group representing gays, lesbians, and people with HIV/Aids, has also written to the school board saying that removing the book "undermines the school's obligation and ability to protect students regardless of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity".

The book's editor, Amy Sonnie, pointed to a letter from a 15-year-old boy, who said that on reading the volume he was relieved to discover "that there were other people out there who shared elements of my identity".

"Queer students may not feel safe speaking up when LGBTQ books are challenged," said Sonnie. "But, they certainly deserve a chance to discover the 'diversity of voices' that make balanced library collections so crucial for the health of our communities and democracy."

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the local 9.12 group is now looking to get the same book removed from the Lenape regional high school district, the county's largest school district. But the paper said that students were "shrugging off" the controversy. "Just because these books are in the library isn't going to cause us to be gay," they said. "We have so much access to information, if we want to read something we'll read it."

Alison Flood @'The Guardian'