Burgess’s Manchester archive houses many short stories, film and theatre scripts and musical compositions as well as the original screenplay for A Clockwork Orange At least 20 unpublished stories by Anthony Burgess, the author of A Clockwork Orange, have been discovered by researchers sorting through his papers at a research centre in Manchester, the city in which he was born. The short stories, unproduced film and theatre scripts and hundreds of musical compositions have emerged from the contents of three houses in London, Monaco and Italy, bequeathed to the International Anthony Burgess Foundation after the death of his widow, Liana, four years ago. Burgess died in 1993. Among the archive are 50,000 books and 20,000 photographs, symphonies, poems and unfinished or rejected scripts for television and film projects, including lives of Atilla the Hun, Sigmund Freud and Michelangelo and a play about Harry Houdini that he collaborated on with Orson Welles, another frustrated creator of unproduced projects. Will Carr, the deputy director of the research centre, said: “We are discovering things all the time. There is a lot of stuff, and we are still unpacking cardboard boxes. “He was a good short fiction writer and, particularly early in his career, he would write these things and then put them away and forget about them. They have never been read or published. The stories are very good, very funny and pungent. You can see how his writing developed.” Burgess published 33 novels in a prolific career and was also a critic, broadcaster, scriptwriter and composer. Among the papers is the first completed music he wrote, his original screenplay for A Clockwork Orange – rejected by the film’s director, Stanley Kubrick, who eventually wrote the script himself – an unpublished history of London, a ballet score about the life of Shakespeare and a musical about Leon Trotsky. There is even a script for another, unmade, Kubrick movie, which would have been about Napoleon. One of the discovered compositions, A Manchester Overture, is being played by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and the foundation intends to publish a collection of the unknown short stories next year. Andrew Biswell, the foundation’s director and a Burgess biographer, told the BBC: “A lot of the stories are very nasty and tending towards the supernatural – a lot of ghost stories or stories about gods who come down to earth. The amount of material which people don’t know about I think heavily outweighs the known. Even though Burgess was productive and he published a lot, a good deal of what we’ve got here has always been below the waterline. It has never been made available in a public way until now. “I’m staggered by the extent of the collection sometimes. I come down into the basement and I look at it and I think, my God, did this man never sleep?” Carr said: “Burgess has been forgotten about in Manchester, but people are
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Burgess’s Manchester archive houses many short stories, film and theatre scripts and musical compositions as well as the original screenplay for A Clockwork Orange At least 20 unpublished stories by Anthony Burgess, the author of A Clockwork Orange, have been discovered by researchers sorting through his papers at a research centre in Manchester, the city in which he was born. The short stories, unproduced film and theatre scripts and hundreds of musical compositions have emerged from the contents of three houses in London, Monaco and Italy, bequeathed to the International Anthony Burgess Foundation after the death of his widow, Liana, four years ago. Burgess died in 1993. Among the archive are 50,000 books and 20,000 photographs, symphonies, poems and unfinished or rejected scripts for television and film projects, including lives of Atilla the Hun, Sigmund Freud and Michelangelo and a play about Harry Houdini that he collaborated on with Orson Welles, another frustrated creator of unproduced projects. Will Carr, the deputy director of the research centre, said: “We are discovering things all the time. There is a lot of stuff, and we are still unpacking cardboard boxes. “He was a good short fiction writer and, particularly early in his career, he would write these things and then put them away and forget about them. They have never been read or published. The stories are very good, very funny and pungent. You can see how his writing developed.” Burgess published 33 novels in a prolific career and was also a critic, broadcaster, scriptwriter and composer. Among the papers is the first completed music he wrote, his original screenplay for A Clockwork Orange – rejected by the film’s director, Stanley Kubrick, who eventually wrote the script himself – an unpublished history of London, a ballet score about the life of Shakespeare and a musical about Leon Trotsky. There is even a script for another, unmade, Kubrick movie, which would have been about Napoleon. One of the discovered compositions, A Manchester Overture, is being played by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and the foundation intends to publish a collection of the unknown short stories next year. Andrew Biswell, the foundation’s director and a Burgess biographer, told the BBC: “A lot of the stories are very nasty and tending towards the supernatural – a lot of ghost stories or stories about gods who come down to earth. The amount of material which people don’t know about I think heavily outweighs the known. Even though Burgess was productive and he published a lot, a good deal of what we’ve got here has always been below the waterline. It has never been made available in a public way until now. “I’m staggered by the extent of the collection sometimes. I come down into the basement and I look at it and I think, my God, did this man never sleep?” Carr said: “Burgess has been forgotten about in Manchester, but people are
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Burgess’s Manchester archive houses many short stories, film and theatre scripts and musical compositions as well as the original screenplay for A Clockwork Orange At least 20 unpublished stories by Anthony Burgess, the author of A Clockwork Orange, have been discovered by researchers sorting through his papers at a research centre in Manchester, the city in which he was born. The short stories, unproduced film and theatre scripts and hundreds of musical compositions have emerged from the contents of three houses in London, Monaco and Italy, bequeathed to the International Anthony Burgess Foundation after the death of his widow, Liana, four years ago. Burgess died in 1993. Among the archive are 50,000 books and 20,000 photographs, symphonies, poems and unfinished or rejected scripts for television and film projects, including lives of Atilla the Hun, Sigmund Freud and Michelangelo and a play about Harry Houdini that he collaborated on with Orson Welles, another frustrated creator of unproduced projects. Will Carr, the deputy director of the research centre, said: “We are discovering things all the time. There is a lot of stuff, and we are still unpacking cardboard boxes. “He was a good short fiction writer and, particularly early in his career, he would write these things and then put them away and forget about them. They have never been read or published. The stories are very good, very funny and pungent. You can see how his writing developed.” Burgess published 33 novels in a prolific career and was also a critic, broadcaster, scriptwriter and composer. Among the papers is the first completed music he wrote, his original screenplay for A Clockwork Orange – rejected by the film’s director, Stanley Kubrick, who eventually wrote the script himself – an unpublished history of London, a ballet score about the life of Shakespeare and a musical about Leon Trotsky. There is even a script for another, unmade, Kubrick movie, which would have been about Napoleon. One of the discovered compositions, A Manchester Overture, is being played by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and the foundation intends to publish a collection of the unknown short stories next year. Andrew Biswell, the foundation’s director and a Burgess biographer, told the BBC: “A lot of the stories are very nasty and tending towards the supernatural – a lot of ghost stories or stories about gods who come down to earth. The amount of material which people don’t know about I think heavily outweighs the known. Even though Burgess was productive and he published a lot, a good deal of what we’ve got here has always been below the waterline. It has never been made available in a public way until now. “I’m staggered by the extent of the collection sometimes. I come down into the basement and I look at it and I think, my God, did this man never sleep?” Carr said: “Burgess has been forgotten about in Manchester, but people are
Continue reading …Hilarious video: Aussie climate scientists go all Beastie Boys on the deniers
May 11, 2011 No Comment
“The Australian TV show Hungry Beast teamed up with climate scientists to point out what the media won’t — while scientists may debate the degree & speed of change, the people who completely deny the reality of global warming aren’t climate scientists,” as Miles Grant put it. Warning — This music video is Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Climate Progress Discovery Date : 11/05/2011 03:29 Number of articles : 4
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Extraordinary session set to debate the bill, which in its original form would impose the death penalty Ugandan MPs will debate a bill calling for gay people to be imprisoned for life on Friday after a walkout by women MPs over an unrelated matter forced parliament’s adjournment. The controversial legislation, first put forward in 2009 , was discussed in a parliamentary committee last Friday. It was due to be debated on Wednesday but was removed from the MPs’ timetable after there was a lack of a quorum. MPs now appear set to hold an extraordinary session to debate the bill, which in its original form would impose the death penalty. If they run out of time, it could yet be reintroduced in the next parliamentary session. The bill’s author, David Bahati, has claimed a new version would not contain capital punishment, but no amended version has been released publicly. Bahati said he expected the bill to be debated and passed on Friday. John Alimadi, an MP, told the Associated Press the bill may have been dropped from the agenda because of the worldwide outcry against it. Campaigners welcomed the temporary reprieve and called for the bill to be scrapped. Frank Mugisha, the director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a gay rights group, said. “The way I saw, if the bill was debated today, it would have been passed because most MPs were in its favour,” he told the Associated Press. “We were saved by the lack of quorum.” Christopher Senyonjo , a retired Anglican bishop from Uganda, said: “We wouldn’t like this bill even to be debated. That will be dangerous because there is a lot of misinformation and excitement. Just with the bill being debated, anything can happen to LGBT people.” Gay activists say homophobia in Uganda has increased since the bill’s introduction. Last year a tabloid newspaper published the names and photos of men it alleged were gay. One cover carried the words: “Hang Them.” The bill carries harsh provisions, extending colonial-era laws that condemn anyone convicted of a homosexual act to life imprisonment. Anyone who “aids, abets, counsels or procures another to engage of acts of homosexuality” would face seven years in prison. Landlords renting rooms or homes to homosexual people could get seven years. Online petitions from the groups Avaaz and Allout said they had gathered more than 1.4 million signatures decrying the proposals. Politicians and civil rights groups around the world have criticised the bill, with Barack Obama describing it as “odious”. • This article has been amended. The previous version stated that Uganda had dropped the bill in question. This has been corrected to indicate that it may still be debated Gay rights Uganda Africa David Smith guardian.co.uk
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America funding technology to break web censorship in repressive regimes, such as China and Iran The United States is playing a game of “cat and mouse” on the web, funding new technology aimed at breaking internet censorship in repressive regimes including China and Iran, officials have said. Michael Posner, the assistant secretary of state for human rights, said that among projects being funded by the US government is a technology that acts as a “slingshot” – identifying censored material and throwing it back on to the web so that users can find it. The project is part of a $30m (£18m) state department project aimed at encouraging civil liberty online. “We’re responding with new tools. This is a cat-and-mouse game. We’re trying to stay one step ahead of the cat,” Posner said. Censored information would be redirected to email, blogs and other online sources, he said. Posner said he would not identify the recipients of funding for “reasons of security”. Posner’s comments come as the US ended two days of talks with Chinese officials amid worsening relations over censorship and crackdowns on dissidents. Chinese authorities block sites including Twitter and Facebook and censor information online. In March, Google accused China of interfering with its email service. Authorities have been censoring references to pro-democracy uprisings in the Arab world and recently blocked search results for “Hillary Clinton” after she gave a speech championing internet freedom. Posner said the US was using $19m to fund technology that would “be redirecting information back in that governments have initially blocked”. In Washington, critics have accused the state department of being slow to spend the money and kowtowing to China. Earlier this year senator Dick Lugar, a Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee, called for another government body to be put in charge of the funds. Rebecca MacKinnon, co-founder of GlobalVoicesOnline.org , a global organisation for bloggers, said that access to information was not the only issue people faced online. In Egypt, for example, censorship had not been a problem but surveillance had been a far bigger issue, she said. When the Egyptian revolution began, the authorities successfully closed the internet. “Circumnavigation tools don’t do much good if the government shuts down the internet,” she said. MacKinnon said other technologies that would help people avoid government scrutiny online and allow them to set up local networks should a regime pull the plug on internet access were just as valuable. In a recent interview with the Atlantic magazine, Clinton said China had a deplorable human rights record and was involved in a “fool’s errand” trying to hold off democratic changes like those sweeping the Middle East. In her speech in February, the US secretary of state called the internet “the public space of the 21st century” and hailed the way the internet had been used to support uprisings in Egypt and protests in Iran. She pledged US support for freedom of expression and association online. “For the United States, the choice is clear. On the spectrum of internet freedom, we place ourselves on the side of openness,” she said. But Clinton criticised WikiLeaks for publishing secret US cables, calling it “an act of theft”. Censorship Internet Web filtering United States US foreign policy China Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
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Thousands in Italian capital take non-existent earthquake prediction seriously and escape city It may be down to the beatific presence of Pope Benedict XVI, or perhaps Italy’s tectonic plates balked at the idea of destroying the Pantheon, the Colosseum and St Peter’s basilica in one fell swoop – but, as yet, the Eternal City remains untouched by a huge earthquake predicted by a self-taught seismologist . Raffaele Bendandi, the “earthquake prophet” who died more than 30 years ago, forecast a devastating tremor that would tear through Italy’s capital on 11 May. Italy had already felt 22 small earthquakes by midday, a figure that is perfectly normal for the quake-prone country. But Rome’s espresso-drinking, Vespa-driving, hand-waving activities continued as normal. The threat had been taken seriously by thousands of Romans. In Rome’s Chinatown, many storefronts were shuttered, and La Repubblica reported that requests from the capital’s public employees for a day off in order to escape the city were 18% higher than for the same day in 2011. Education officials expected school attendance to be down by a fifth. Bendandi, who was knighted by fascist leader Benito Mussolini, is said to have predicted several disasters, including the Friuli quake of 1976, which claimed almost 1,000 lives. Despite assurance from the head of a foundation set up in Bendandi’s honour in his hometown near Bologna, that the seismologist had never pin-pointed a date for the earthquake, Romans still headed for the country. A survey of farm hotels outside the capital indicated that business was up as the city’s inhabitants made their preemptive escape. “I can state with absolute certainty that in Raffaele Bendandi’s papers, there is no prediction of an earthquake in Rome on 11 May 2011,” Paola Lagorio, the president of the Osservatorio Geoficico Comunale of Faenza, said last month. “The date is not there. The place is not there.” Italy’s Civil Protection department looked to reassure people with an information pack online that stressed that quakes cannot be accurately predicted and that Rome isn’t at particular risk. Italy Natural disasters and extreme weather Geology Europe guardian.co.uk
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Prosecution says Levi Bellfield made early hours visit to flat near where Milly disappeared and later stripped the bedding A former nightclub bouncer accused of the kidnap and murder of schoolgirl Milly Dowler paid a visit in the middle of the night to his rented flat near where she was last seen, stripped the bedding and removed the mattress, a court heard. Just hours after the 13-year-old vanished, Levi Bellfield, 43, who was house-sitting with his girlfriend in west London, returned to their empty rented flat in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, which overlooked the road where Milly was last seen alive, a jury was told. His girlfriend awoke between 3am and 4am to find him getting dressed, and he said he was going to the flat in Collingwood Place because he “wanted a lie-in”, said prosecutor Britain Altman QC. “So why return to Collingwood Place in the dead of night? To walk the dog? To lie in? “If the prosecution is right – that he abducted and killed Milly Dowler – then he had to dispose of her body and clean up,” Altman told the Old Bailey trial. Milly vanished shortly after 4pm on 21 March 2002, while walking home from Walton station. Her naked and badly decomposed body was found six months later in undergrowth in Yateley Heath Wood, Hampshire, 25 miles away. Phone records showed that during his late night visit Bellfield had switched off his mobile, the court heard. “His phone records show that his phone fell silent or was unreachable for almost nine-and-a-half hours between 23.02 that Thursday night and 08.26 on the Friday morning, ample time to make the journey from Walton to the deposition site in Yateley Heath Wood and to begin the clean-up,” said Altman. Bellfield, who was convicted in 2008 of the murders of two women and the attempted murder of a third, denies the kidnap and murder of Milly, whose real name was Amanda. He also denies the attempted abduction of Rachel Cowles, then 11, the previous day, on 20 March, 2002. The jury has heard that Bellfield, his girlfriend Emma Mills, and their two children, were renting the ground-floor flat in Collingwood Place, which had views of Station Avenue, where Milly was last seen, but at the time of her disappearance the couple were house-sitting for a friend, and the flat was empty. On the day Milly vanished, Mills had been unable to contact Bellfield because his phone was switched off and he returned to the house they were staying in West Drayton, between 10.30pm and 11pm. She noticed he had changed his clothes, and thought he must have returned to the flat in Walton, where his clothes were kept, said Altman. She could tell he had been drinking, but he was not drunk, and she was suspicious he had been with another woman, the jury heard. At about 3am-4am, Mills awoke to find Bellfield getting dressed. “She asked him what he was doing. He answered ‘I’m going back to the flat , ’cause I’m going to have a lay-in’,” said Altman. He left, taking the couple’s staffordshire bull terrier with him. Altman said the jury might ask themselves “What it was that was so important that in the middle of the night he decided to get up and drive over to Walton” – a distance of 13.7 miles, taking around 27 minutes. “You can be sure that it was no lie-in.” Milly’s uncle, Brian Gilbertson, was out in the early hours and was searching for his niece in the area of the Collingwood Place flats when saw a man with a dog not on a lead. He described the man as “thick set, stocky build”, white, aged between 30 and 40, who “walked with an air of confidence”. The jury could conclude that was Bellfield, said Altman. The next day Malcolm Ward, who knew Bellfield, agreed to help him move a king-size mattress from the flat, for which he was paid £15. “According to Ward, that day Bellfield was not his usual self and was quieter than normal,” the jury heard. When Mills returned to the flat after Milly’s disappearance, she found the bed stripped, with “no duvet cover, sheet or pillowcases”, with Bellfield claiming their pet staffordshire bull terrier had had an “accident” and he had “chucked it all”, said Altman. The court heard CCTV images showed no trace of Milly walking down Station Avenue, although a fellow pupil had seen her shortly after 4pm. The fact she was not on CCTV meant that she vanished within a very short time, and just yards from Collingwood Place. “If that evidence is accurate and reliable, then it means that Milly had to have been taken from that part of Station Avenue, right outside Collingwood Place, and right on the defendant’s doorstep,” said Brian Altman, QC, prosecuting. Milly, a pupil at Heathside School, Weybridge, where her mother, Sally, taught maths, had boarded her train at Weybridge, but got off at Walton to buy chips at a cafe with friends, instead of continuing on to Hersham station, her usual route, the jury was told. The jury has been told that within two years of Milly’s murder, Bellfield murdered Marsha McDonnell, 19, and Amelie Delagrange, 22, by striking them over the head with a blunt instrument, and attempted to murder Kate Sheedy, then 18, by deliberately running her over in a car. The trial continues. Milly Dowler Crime Caroline Davies guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Prosecution says Levi Bellfield made early hours visit to flat near where Milly disappeared and later stripped the bedding A former nightclub bouncer accused of the kidnap and murder of schoolgirl Milly Dowler paid a visit in the middle of the night to his rented flat near where she was last seen, stripped the bedding and removed the mattress, a court heard. Just hours after the 13-year-old vanished, Levi Bellfield, 43, who was house-sitting with his girlfriend in west London, returned to their empty rented flat in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, which overlooked the road where Milly was last seen alive, a jury was told. His girlfriend awoke between 3am and 4am to find him getting dressed, and he said he was going to the flat in Collingwood Place because he “wanted a lie-in”, said prosecutor Britain Altman QC. “So why return to Collingwood Place in the dead of night? To walk the dog? To lie in? “If the prosecution is right – that he abducted and killed Milly Dowler – then he had to dispose of her body and clean up,” Altman told the Old Bailey trial. Milly vanished shortly after 4pm on 21 March 2002, while walking home from Walton station. Her naked and badly decomposed body was found six months later in undergrowth in Yateley Heath Wood, Hampshire, 25 miles away. Phone records showed that during his late night visit Bellfield had switched off his mobile, the court heard. “His phone records show that his phone fell silent or was unreachable for almost nine-and-a-half hours between 23.02 that Thursday night and 08.26 on the Friday morning, ample time to make the journey from Walton to the deposition site in Yateley Heath Wood and to begin the clean-up,” said Altman. Bellfield, who was convicted in 2008 of the murders of two women and the attempted murder of a third, denies the kidnap and murder of Milly, whose real name was Amanda. He also denies the attempted abduction of Rachel Cowles, then 11, the previous day, on 20 March, 2002. The jury has heard that Bellfield, his girlfriend Emma Mills, and their two children, were renting the ground-floor flat in Collingwood Place, which had views of Station Avenue, where Milly was last seen, but at the time of her disappearance the couple were house-sitting for a friend, and the flat was empty. On the day Milly vanished, Mills had been unable to contact Bellfield because his phone was switched off and he returned to the house they were staying in West Drayton, between 10.30pm and 11pm. She noticed he had changed his clothes, and thought he must have returned to the flat in Walton, where his clothes were kept, said Altman. She could tell he had been drinking, but he was not drunk, and she was suspicious he had been with another woman, the jury heard. At about 3am-4am, Mills awoke to find Bellfield getting dressed. “She asked him what he was doing. He answered ‘I’m going back to the flat , ’cause I’m going to have a lay-in’,” said Altman. He left, taking the couple’s staffordshire bull terrier with him. Altman said the jury might ask themselves “What it was that was so important that in the middle of the night he decided to get up and drive over to Walton” – a distance of 13.7 miles, taking around 27 minutes. “You can be sure that it was no lie-in.” Milly’s uncle, Brian Gilbertson, was out in the early hours and was searching for his niece in the area of the Collingwood Place flats when saw a man with a dog not on a lead. He described the man as “thick set, stocky build”, white, aged between 30 and 40, who “walked with an air of confidence”. The jury could conclude that was Bellfield, said Altman. The next day Malcolm Ward, who knew Bellfield, agreed to help him move a king-size mattress from the flat, for which he was paid £15. “According to Ward, that day Bellfield was not his usual self and was quieter than normal,” the jury heard. When Mills returned to the flat after Milly’s disappearance, she found the bed stripped, with “no duvet cover, sheet or pillowcases”, with Bellfield claiming their pet staffordshire bull terrier had had an “accident” and he had “chucked it all”, said Altman. The court heard CCTV images showed no trace of Milly walking down Station Avenue, although a fellow pupil had seen her shortly after 4pm. The fact she was not on CCTV meant that she vanished within a very short time, and just yards from Collingwood Place. “If that evidence is accurate and reliable, then it means that Milly had to have been taken from that part of Station Avenue, right outside Collingwood Place, and right on the defendant’s doorstep,” said Brian Altman, QC, prosecuting. Milly, a pupil at Heathside School, Weybridge, where her mother, Sally, taught maths, had boarded her train at Weybridge, but got off at Walton to buy chips at a cafe with friends, instead of continuing on to Hersham station, her usual route, the jury was told. The jury has been told that within two years of Milly’s murder, Bellfield murdered Marsha McDonnell, 19, and Amelie Delagrange, 22, by striking them over the head with a blunt instrument, and attempted to murder Kate Sheedy, then 18, by deliberately running her over in a car. The trial continues. Milly Dowler Crime Caroline Davies guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Neil Cavuto: America’s Financial Future Died Tuesday Because Senate Republicans Refused to Dismantle Medicare
May 11, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Neil Cavuto is terribly upset that the Republicans in the Senate have decided not to support Paul Ryan and the House’s budget plan and dismantle Medicare by turning it into a voucher system. Cavuto opened his segment with American Pie playing in the background and followed with this: CAVUTO: Alright, I don’t want to be melodramatic (too late for that Neil), but let it be known that this is the day America’s financial future died. I want you to write it down, May 10, 2011. The day tea partiers elected to the United States Senate not only caved, they quit. They folded their spending tent and left. And all because some Medicare recipients stomped their feet and roared. And those Republicans ran into their buzz-saw and just bugged out. I am telling you, they didn’t just blink, they bolted. Which is odd because Republican Senators like Pat Toomey and Marco Rubio got to where promising big cuts. Then they ran into this big old wall. They discovered some folks were fine, cutting spending, but in the case of some Medicare recipients, just not their spending. It is a familiar story. Cut, just don’t cut my stuff. So now my friends, we are all stuck. Republicans in the Senate said, because the reality is Democrats control the Senate today, so they’re keeping their powder dry for when they control the Senate some day. Which is why they are putting off things like Medicare until after 2012, as if the stark reality of things we’re facing will be any less after 2012. They won’t. I can understand their political math, but I fear out far more unfriendly math, by then likely one and a half trillion dollars more in debt, not even a game plan as how to hack that debt. They say they’ll focus then, but I fear it will be too late. No wonder all this talk of a third party now. The Grand Old Party has botched it. Time was of the essence and now the time has gone. And now, they’re of the essence and now they’re the ones risking being gone. History will show it started this day, the tenth of May, 2011, when they gave up the fight and they lost the war. This spring day in 2011, they lost something else, their souls. How dare all of those selfish seniors expect that their children and grand children be taken care of in their old age? Sorry Neil, but you just lost yours running this fearmongering segment. We’ve got the biggest income disparity since the Gilded Age in the United States and you want to throw seniors under the bus. Shame on you.
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