Europe’s largest street festival kicks off with the Jour Ouvert event in which festivalgoers cover each other paint and flour Crowds have started to flood the streets of west London as Notting Hill carnival, the largest street festival in Europe, gets underway. Up to 70 floats are expected to take part in the children’s day parade amid a heavy police presence. Officers are manning knife arches on London underground links around the capital. The Metropolitan police confirmed that there were plainclothes officers amongst the carnival crowd but refused to discuss numbers, and a police helicopter flew overhead, the sound of the chopper blades competing with the music blaring out from batteries of sound systems on sidestreets. With tensions high in the wake of the riots, about 16,000 officers will be deployed in the capital for the duration of the carnival. Organisers were allowed to proceed on the condition that the parade would end by 6.30pm and the sound systems be turned off by 7pm, hours earlier than usual, with the aim of minimising the risk of violence breaking out. Police also have a section 60 order in place across London, giving officers extra powers to stop and search members of the public. The power was also used during the royal wedding in April, when a number of protesters were arrested during the event even though they were up to a mile from the celebrations themselves. The police said a total of four arrests had been made as the carnival got under way, three for possession of drugs and one for a public order offence. Earlier in the day fifty dancers and brass band members from the Yaa arts group trouped through the streets in red, black and yellow camouflage. Organisers said the camouflage costumes represented the uniform of “hooded youth” who believe themselves disguised when they are in the streets.The live brass band symbolised that young people also had constructive talents, the group said. The festival kicked off with the messy and colourful Jour Ouvert in which festivalgoers covered themselves in paint and flour, an event that has become a tradition at the Notting Hill carnival over the past three years. Organiser Franka Philip said the idea for the Jour Ouvert was taken from the Phagwa festival in the Caribbean, which itself originates from the Indian spring festival of Holi, when people throw paint and powdered dye over revellers. On an otherwise sunny day, a brief downpour sent festivalgoers scurrying for shelter just after lunch. Notting Hill carnival Festivals Police London Shiv Malik guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Turned out my entire neighborhood was in the storm surge zone, so I decamped across the bridge to a New Jersey hotel. (I figured it was cheaper than a new car.) All night, I was glued to the teevee as they announced one tornado warning after another, even in the city of Philadelphia. In Lewes, Delaware, at least 15 homes were damaged by a tornado. Now, New York and New England, it’s your turn: Hurricane Irene, a ferocious and slow-moving storm, smashed into North Carolina on Saturday morning, then slowly swirled its way up the Eastern Seaboard, flooding low-lying areas, knocking out power to as many as 1 million customers and forcing the densely populated regions of Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and New York City to take unprecedented steps as they braced for impact. At least eight people are known to have died as a result of the storm in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida. Irene is expected to continue its northward path through New England before weakening early Sunday morning. The youngest victim, an 11-year-old boy, was killed when a tree crashed through his apartment building in Newport News, Va. “I’ve never even heard of a hurricane around here,” said Peter Watts, working at the Vitamin Shoppe in downtown Philadelphia. “Or an earthquake,” he said, referring to Tuesday’s 5.8-magnitude temblor that shook the East Coast. Storm-related disruptions of daily life were immense. About 10,000 commercial airline flights were canceled, and more than 2 million people were ordered evacuated from areas inundated by the surging floodwaters that accompanied the 450-mile-wide hurricane’s northward path at 16 mph. Evacuation orders affected people in Staten Island and Battery Park in New York City, the Jersey Shore, all coastal areas of Delaware, plus parts of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. “Staying behind is dangerous, staying behind is foolish and it’s against the law,” said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took to television to plead with about 600 seniors who refused to leave their Atlantic City high-rises. He said he feared they would be injured or worse if the hurricane’s expected 80 mph winds shattered their windows. “You’re correct that I cannot make you leave your home and I certainly do not intend to place you under arrest to get you to leave,” Christie said. “But if you stay where you are, you’re putting yourself in danger as well as your loved ones.” In New York City, the country’s largest subway system ground to a halt as officials took precautions against flooding. In an effort to minimize flying debris in the face of brutal, sustained winds, city sanitation workers turned over 25,000 trash cans.
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Anti-corruption campaigner quits 12-day fast, vowing to resume if law tackling corruption and misgovernance is not introduced Anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare has ended his 12-day, nationally televised hunger strike in India with a glass of honeyed coconut water and a stern warning that he will resume his fast if an effective law is not instituted to deal with corruption and misgovernance. After forcing India’s parliament to pass an unprecedented resolution in support of his demands, Hazare told a huge crowd of supporters: “I haven’t given up the fast, I have only suspended it. My fast will really end when all our demands are met, when parliament passes the bill [to establish a nationwide ombudsman system] and there is genuine reform in the country.” Tens of thousands of Indians poured on to the streets to celebrate what is being hailed as a “people’s victory”. Prime minister Manmohan Singh’s beleaguered government, which seriously misjudged the support for Hazare’s anti-graft movement after it was launched in January, fielded law minister Salman Khurshid to try to make the best of a bad job. In a combative interview with the minister, TV host Karan Thapar accused Singh’s government of “looking like British imperialists and colonialists” in its treatment of Hazare. Thapar recalled how the 74-year-old crusader, known as much for his unimpeachable integrity as for his dogged pursuit of public causes, was accused himself of being corrupt by a Congress party spokesperson, and then thrown into Delhi’s notorious Tihar jail as he was about to begin his fast on 16 August. But a defiant Khurshid refused to accept any responsibility on behalf of the government. “We might have made errors of judgment, but errors are not mistakes,” he said. “Whatever we did, the consequences may not have been what we desired.” The government finally relented on Saturday, and in an historic gesture, parliament “agreed in principle” to three of Hazare’s key demands: that anti-corruption ombudsmen should be appointed in all regional states, and not just at the centre; that the entire bureaucracy should be covered by the new anti-corruption law, and not just senior officials; and that there should be a citizens’ charter for redressing public grievances against the administration. The government’s draft bill, already tabled in parliament, had ignored both the first and the third demands of anti-corruption campaigners, and had only partially agreed to the second demand. Though much discussion lies ahead in parliament before the bill is passed, Hazare has already forced Singh’s government to work toward devising an effective anti-corruption law. “Until today, Indians believed that corruption cannot be eradicated, that it’s a fact of nature, that it has entered our DNA,” said sociologist Dipankar Gupta. “But a beginning has been made. This will lessen corruption to a huge extent.” Anna Hazare Protest India corruption index Maseeh Rahman guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Based on the dramatic bias of past election cycles, nobody should count on The Washington Post to be helpful (or even fair) to Sen. George Allen. But in Sunday's paper, political writer Ben Pershing reported on how Jamie Radtke, a Tea Party activist running against Allen in the primary, leaked e-mails to Politico from RedState blogger Erick Erickson and turned him from an endorser to someone joking about how one of her speeches made people wonder if she'd been drinking. Pershing wrote: On Wednesday, Politico’s Ben Smith reported on an e-mail from Erickson to the Radtke campaign in response to a request from Radtke that she be allowed to speak at RedState’s convention, which happened in mid-August. “My bosses are huge Allen friends, not just fans. They are socially connected,” Erickson wrote in the message, which was sent to Politico by Radtke’s campaign manager. “So I’m having to tread carefully in this. Happy to help, but it’s got me in a difficult position. So please come and let me introduce you to people, but just understand that I have to be delicate for now.” Erickson’s “bosses” are the executives who run conservative Eagle Publishing , which owns RedState. In his own response to Smith’s queries, Erickson said Eagle officials “asked [that Erickson] go slower in evaluating that race instead of diving in head first.” “It was not a commandment or order, but out of respect to the long-term relationship George Allen has with Eagle, I thought it was a reasonable request; I was happy to accommodate.” Erickson went much further in his own post , which was published later Wednesday on RedState. [It includes a great "Billy Madison" clip!] First, Erickson posted several blisteringly bad reviews of Radtke’s speech at the RedState convention — where she had, in fact, appeared to introduce the director of the Sarah Palin documentary, “The Undefeated.” “I assume this act of self destruction in front of 400 attendees of the RedState Gathering is why Jamie Radtke’s campaign decided to orchestrate a hit job on me in the Politico after I both endorsed her campaign and allowed her to speak at the RedState Gathering,” Erickson wrote. He acknowledged that his bosses have a “very good” relationship with Allen and that they had asked him, when it came to evaluating the race, to “please go slow for once instead of shooting first and asking questions later.” Erickson added that while he remains no fan of Allen, Radtke's weird actions considerably lessened his opinion of her: “Jamie Radtke is not a victim,” he wrote. “She’s a candidate. And clearly a bad one at that. Game over as far as I’m concerned.” …On Thursday, the Radtke campaign fired back in a news release, accusing Erickson of publishing “libelous pejoratives.” “Erick’s blog goes beyond the pale,” Radtke said in the release. “He crossed the line by publishing complete falsehoods. Now, it is his responsibility to admit he did wrong, set the record straight and apologize – and that is what I am asking Erick to do.” Pershing added an update that the war of words between Radtke and Erickson escalated further Thursday. Radtke was furious: An attorney for Radtke sent a letter to Erickson demanding the “immediate and prominent retraction” of his Wednesday blog item on Radtke, primarily because two anonymous reviewers were quoted in the post claiming that Radtke appeared “drunk” when she spoke to the RedState convention this month. “Those statements are false,” wrote attorney Patrick M. McSweeney. “You plainly repeated the statements quoted above without regard to their accuracy.” In response, Erickson posted Thursday what could be described as a backhanded apology. “Okay. I’m sorry I put up reviews of Jamie Radtke’s speech from people who saw it and thought she had been drinking,” Erickson wrote. “She says she had not been drinking. I’ll take her at her word for it. That does then suggest she needs some serious work on giving speeches if people who saw her speaking not under the influence presumed that she was under the influence.”
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Former dissident and now publisher of Poland’s biggest newspaper honoured for work for international cultural relations One of Poland’s leading journalists and intellectuals has been awarded the Goethe medal in recognition of his “outstanding” contribution to the dialogue between eastern and western Europe. Adam Michnik, a onetime Solidarity activist and now publisher of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s biggest newspaper, was given the award for his commitment to the German language and international cultural relations. The two other winners this year were the British novelist David Cornwell, better known as John le Carré, and the French film and theatre director Ariane Mnouchkine. Michnik, a former dissident who spent six years in prison for agitating against the communist regime, has since become one of the most influential figures in modern democratic Poland. He was once described by Václav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic, as “the intellectual conscience of the Polish nation”. Speaking at the Amnesty strand of the Edinburgh book festival last week – sponsored by the Guardian – Michnik recalled his time in jail as one of Amnesty’s causes and said he still couldn’t believe he was a free man. “I often wake up in the morning and I’m afraid to open my eyes because I worry that it will turn out the last 20 years were just a dream. “It will turn out that Brezhnev is still alive and that they are going to come and knock on my door and I will be wondering if they are going to arrest me in the Polish language or the Russian,” he said. At the awards ceremony in Weimar on Sunday, Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, president of the Goethe Institut, said Michnik had “played a key role in ensuring that Poles and Germans now once again have a positive common story to tell”. Michnik, Lehman said, was “a brave, incorruptible and tolerant Polish rebel who has never tired of speaking out in the European public sphere”. After the prizegiving, Le Carré gave an address devoted to his “love affair” with Germany which also touched on the problems facing his native Britain – which was, he said, suffering from “a moral vacuum” in the wake of the riots and phone-hacking scandal. Poland Germany Europe guardian.co.uk
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The 24 state-funded schools set up by teachers, charities, education experts and parents will not follow national curriculum Twenty-four “free schools” are to open next month, the government has announced. The schools – state-funded and set up by teachers, charities, education experts and parents – are spread throughout the country but mainly concentrated in deprived areas with poor records of academic achievement. They have the same legal status as academies and do not have to follow the national curriculum, giving them more freedom than local authority schools. The Department for Education has confirmed that funding for all 24 schools has been signed and agreed. Under the coalition’s plans, the schools will also be able to prioritise the most disadvantaged children in their school admissions arrangements. Education secretary Michael Gove said: “The most important thing for any parent is to be able to send their child to a good local school, with high standards and strong discipline. “That is why we are opening free schools across the country. I am delighted to announce that the first 24 will open this year. “Too many children are being failed by fundamental flaws in our education system. The weakest schools are concentrated in our poorest towns and cities, and we are plummeting down the international education league tables. “In spite of years of investment, the situation is worsening. Children from disadvantaged homes are still falling behind. A change of approach is vital. “By freeing up teachers and trusting local communities to decide what is best, our reforms will help to raise standards for children in all schools.” The 24 schools will open at different times during September – 17 are primary schools, five secondary and two are all-age schools. They will open between 10 to 15 months after submitting their initial plans to the Department for Education. In the first application window, 323 groups applied to open free schools. When selling the idea, the government referred to the similar American charter schools, saying that in New York they closed the gap separating inner-city students from those in the wealthiest suburbs by 86% in maths and 66% in English. Free schools Schools School funding Primary schools Secondary schools Education policy Michael Gove guardian.co.uk
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Report into death of Iraqi hotel receptionist expected to criticise conduct of individual soldiers and failures in chain of command An independent report into how a hotel worker died while in British custody in Iraq will clear the army of systematic torture and mistreatment, according to the Sunday Telegraph. However, the document will criticise the conduct of individual soldiers and highlight “numerous failures” in the army’s chain of command, the newspaper says. The official findings of the three-year inquiry into the death of Iraqi civilian Baha Mousa and the abuse of nine other Iraqi men detained with him are expected to be released on 8 September. Father-of-two Mousa, 26, sustained 93 injuries while being held by 1st Battalion the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment in Basra, southern Iraq, in 2003. The judge-led inquiry, chaired by Sir William Gage, was ordered in 2008 and became the biggest examination of military conduct in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion. It heard oral evidence from 247 witnesses over 115 days of hearings between July 2009 and October 2010. According to the Telegraph, the inquiry has found no evidence that British soldiers conducted wholesale abuse, torture and murder of suspected insurgents during the occupation of southern Iraq. However, it will accuse former members of the battalion of “closing ranks”, and both senior officers and serving soldiers of a dereliction of duty. The report will also criticise the nature of the original investigation into how Mousa died, according to the newspaper. Mousa was working as a receptionist at the Ibn al-Haitham hotel in Basra when it was raided by British forces in the early hours of 14 September 2003. After finding AK-47s, submachine guns, pistols, fake ID cards and military clothing, Mousa and several colleagues were arrested and taken to the Preston-based battalion’s headquarters. Here the soldiers subjected the Iraqis to humiliating abuse, including “conditioning” methods banned by the UK government in 1972, such as hooding, sleep deprivation and making them stand in painful stress positions, the inquiry heard. Mousa was hooded for nearly 24 of the 36 hours he spent in British detention. He died at about 10pm on 15 September. His 22-year-old wife had died of cancer shortly before his detention, leaving his two young sons, Hussein and Hassan, orphaned. Seven soldiers, including former commanding officer Colonel Jorge Mendonca, faced allegations relating to the mistreatment of the prisoners at a high-profile court martial in 2006-07. But the trial ended with all of them cleared, apart from Corporal Donald Payne, who became the first member of the British armed forces convicted of a war crime when he pleaded guilty to inhumanely treating civilians. The Ministry of Defence agreed in July 2008 to pay £2.83m in compensation to the families of Mousa and nine other Iraqi men abused by British soldiers. The surviving detainees and Mousa’s father are expected to call for a full public inquiry following the release of the report. Baha Mousa Military Iraq Middle East guardian.co.uk
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• Eight people die in US as Irene lashes east coast • New York in direct path of the eye of the storm • 2m homes without power in wake of Irene • NY metro area braced for storm-surge flooding • Tornado warnings in effect for parts of Long Island • Read the latest summary here • Read our latest news story on Irene • Follow me on Twitter @mattseaton • Email me at matt.seaton@guardian.co.uk 5.20am ET: Welcome back to our live coverage of Hurricane Irene’s progress, as the eye of the storm is expected to pass through New York City in the next few hours, and move north towards New England. Hurricane Irene United States New York Michael Bloomberg Natural disasters and extreme weather Matt Seaton guardian.co.uk
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Another entry in my semi-regular series of Saturday night humor postings for NewsBusters drawn from the clips Bret Baier runs at the end of FNC’s Special Report which he and his staff usually select from video montages picked up off the late night comedy shows. Tonight, a fresh one from Tuesday night’s program which comes from an online video clip shown by NBC’s Tonight Show . Baier described it as “something that could give us a little chuckle or a smile or, okay, a smirk.” Jay Leno’s staff appropriately titled it: “It’s time for deodorant.”
Continue reading …Open Thread with The Professional Left Weekly Podcast: What does the Right have that we don’t? A Rookie Bench.
August 27, 2011 No Comment
enlarge Credit: The Professional Left Time for your Professional Left podcast, otherwise known as our newly married C&L contributors Driftglass and Bluegal . You can listen to the archives at The Professional Left Podcast and make a donation there if you’d like to help these keep these podcasts going or just send them a belated wedding gift. You can also follow them on Facebook here — The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal . Have a great weekend everyone and for those in the eye of the storm heading towards our coast, stay safe. Open thread below….
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