Kristin Chenoweth is honored at the 2011 GLAAD Media Awards held at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel on Sunday (April 10) in Los Angeles. In 2010, the 42-year-old singer publically challenged a controversial Newsweek article which incorrectly asserted that gay actors cannot play straight roles. The Vanguard Award is presented to individuals who, through their work, Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Just Jared Discovery Date : 11/04/2011 14:39 Number of articles : 3
Continue reading …Video: Country Legend Dolly Parton presents the Stephen F. Kolzak Award to Robert Greenblatt at the GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles
April 11, 2011 No Comment
On Sunday night at the 22nd Annual GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles, country music legend Dolly Parton presented Robert Greenblatt with the Stephen F. Kolzak Award. Watch inside! Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : glaadBLOG.org Discovery Date : 11/04/2011 13:45 Number of articles : 4
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Click here to view this media While the media go on and on about how Paul Ryan’s budget is so serious and courageous that the President “must respond” to it (see the clip above where Fox’s Stuart Varney employs the ‘crisis’ budget strategy), a truly progressive proposal has been released. Unlike Ryan’s proposal, which takes us all the way through 2040 before the deficit is eliminated, this budget puts us on solid footing by 2021, with a fully balanced budget by 2014. Here are some specifics: The CPC proposal (PDF) • Eliminates the deficits and creates a surplus by 2021 • Puts America back to work with a “Make it in America” jobs program • Protects the social safety net • Ends the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq • Is FAIR (Fixing America’s Inequality Responsibly) What the proposal accomplishes: • Primary budget balance by 2014. • Budget surplus by 2021. • Reduces public debt as a share of GDP to 64.4% by 2021, down 16.9 percentage points from a baseline fully adjusted for both the doc fix and the AMT patch. • Reduces deficits by $5.7 trillion over 2012-21 • Both outlays and revenue equal 22.3% of GDP by 2021 Real courage involves raising taxes and explaining that we can’t pay for wars without a cost attached. Real courage involves protecting our most vulnerable and asking those with much to give a fair share. This budget is a courageous budget. Not Ryan’s. Yet, there hasn’t been so much as a peep from the mainstream media about this alternatives. Gosh, I wonder why not.
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Ali Abdullah Saleh hails a handover deal brokered by Gulf states, but protesters reject the initiative Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has hailed an initiative brokered by a regional bloc of Gulf states that would see him step down and transfer power to his deputy. But he insisted he would only do so when his term ended in 2013 – a condition already rejected by youthful protesters who are demanding that he be ousted immediately. Gulf foreign ministers who have been pushing for a negotiated end to three months’ worth of political turmoil and bloody violence in Yemen said publicly for the first time that their mediation efforts involved Saleh standing down, though they did not specify when that would take place. After rejecting a similar mediation offer from the Gulf states last week , Saleh appeared to backtrack on Monday saying he had “no reservations about transferring power peacefully as long as it was within the framework of the constitution,” a phrase he has used frequently in the past weeks. Yemen’s opposition coalition swiftly rejected the Gulf initiative saying its offers of immunity for the president and his family from prosecution were unjust. “Who would be a fool to offer guarantees to a regime that kills peaceful protesters? Our principal demand is that Saleh leaves first,” the opposition spokesman Mohammed al-Sabry said, referring to the Gulf assurances that Saleh and his sons would not have to face a similar fate to rulers in Tunisia and Egypt. Meanwhile Yemen’s youthful protesters, who have been bearing the brunt of an increasingly violent governmental crackdown, came out in force on Monday in the cities of Sana’a, Aden and Taiz demanding that Saleh step down and that he and members of his family be put on trial. “This is the 12th time this month Ali [Saleh] has told us he is ready to quit, yet he is still here. His promises are worthless to us now. This is political jockeying, nothing else,” said Ali Fowruzi, reading a statement on behalf of Yemen’s Youth Revolutionary Council before tens of thousands stationed outside the gates of Sana’a University. More than 120 people have been killed, 46 them children, since protests began in earnest in mid-February. On Sunday the al-Jazeera offices in Sana’a were fastened closed with sealing wax. An official from the interior ministry said that this final action came after the persistence of al-Jazeera in the “implementation of a sabotage scheme aimed at inciting strife, hatred and fighting in a number Yemen’s provinces”. Yemen Arab and Middle East unrest Tom Finn guardian.co.uk
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Rebels say deal is unacceptable because it does not require Gaddafi to step down Libya’s revolutionary leadership has flatly rejected an African Union peace initiative because it does not require Muammar Gaddafi to immediately relinquish power. The rebels’ interim ruling council met an AU delegation from five countries – led by three presidents and two foreign ministers – the day after Gaddafi endorsed the African “roadmap to peace”, which included an immediate ceasefire, the suspension of Nato air strikes and talks towards a political settlement. But Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the revolutionary council chairman, said the rebels had told the AU its proposal had been outdated by events, including the UN security council resolution authorising air strikes, and was in any case unacceptable because it left Gaddafi in power while both sides negotiated. “From the very beginning we have been asking that the exit of Gaddafi and his sons take place immediately. We cannot consider this or any future proposal that does not include this peoples’ requirement,” said Jalil. “He leaves on his own or the march of the people will be at his doorstep.” That view was strongly backed by thousands of demonstrators outside the Benghazi hotel where the talks were held. They waved revolutionary flags and carried signs saying: “No solution with Gaddafi staying”. Jalil said that the AU peace proposal was drafted a month ago and had been overtaken by the UN security council resolution requiring Gaddafi to halt his attacks on civilians. “Colonel Gaddafi did not recognise this resolution and continued bombing civilians from the air and shooting them, and surrounding cities with his forces and put his forces inside cities. There is not any way the Libyan people can accept such a situation,” he said. Although the AU proposal included a ceasefire, the rebels said it did not go far enough. They want one that requires Gaddafi to withdraw his forces from towns where they have been used to suppress the revolution, particularly Misrata and Zawiya, and the allowing of unfettered public protest in the hope that Libyans in cities still under Gaddafi’s control will seize the opportunity to rise up. The British foreign secretary, William Hague, backed the revolutionaries’ position saying that Gaddafi must go and that a new ceasefire would have to meet the UN requirement for a withdrawal of his forces from cities they are attacking. “Anything short of this would be a betrayal of the people of Libya and would play into the hands of the regime, which has announced two utterly meaningless ceasefires since the fighting began without its vicious military campaign missing a single beat,” the foreign secretary said. Jalil also rejected the AU’s proposal for a cessation of Nato air strikes. “If it were not for the air strikes carried out by the coalition forces and Nato we would not now be at this meeting,” he said. The AU’s proposal for an end to the air strikes was also met with scepticism by Nato. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato secretary general, said that for a ceasefire to work it would need to be “credible and verifiable”, suggesting that international monitors would need to be deployed on the ground in Libya, but that it was “too early” for this. “We need to establish an effective monitoring mechanism if a ceasefire is to be credible,” he said. Jalil said that the revolutionary council had confronted the AU delegation with evidence that mercenaries from several African countries were fighting for Gaddafi, particularly from Algeria. The AU delegation – made up of South Africa, Uganda, Mauritania, Congo-Brazzaville and Mali – left the talks looking glum, without making a public comment and to the derisive shouts of the protesters outside the hotel. The revolutionary leadership was distrustful of the AU initiative from the beginning. Gaddafi used Libya’s oil wealth to buy greater influence in Africa after his aspirations to forge an Arab union were spurned. The AU delegation included the leaders of countries that have taken money from Gaddafi as well as South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, whose party, the African National Congress, has accepted considerable donations from the Libyan leader. The rebels were disturbed to see Zuma refer to the Libyan dictator as “brother leader”. The South African leader did not travel on to the Benghazi meeting. While Gaddafi told the AU he was ready for a ceasefire, his forces continued their onslaught against Misrata. Unicef warned that thousands of children in the city were in grave danger. At least 20 children, mostly under the age of 10, have been killed in the besieged city in the past month, according to Unicef. Many more have been injured by gunfire or shrapnel from mortars and tank shells. “More and more children in this city are being killed, injured and denied their essential needs due to the fighting,” said Shahida Azfar of Unicef. “Until the fighting stops we face the intolerable inevitability of children continuing to die and suffer in this war zone.” At least 250 people in the town, mostly civilians, have died in the past month according to two doctors interviewed by phone by Human Rights Watch (HRW). “The Libyan government’s near-siege of Misrata has not prevented reports of serious abuses getting out,” said Sarah Leah Whitson of HRW. “We’ve heard disturbing accounts of shelling and shooting at a clinic and in populated areas, killing civilians where no battle was raging.” Libya African Union Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Chris McGreal Harriet Sherwood Ian Traynor Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Sarah Palin showed back up on Fox News’ bottom-of-the-barrel show — Justice With Judge Jeanine — this weekend and put in a nice word for Donald Trump and his raving Birtherism . Of course, we think Trump is just trying to make the rest of the GOP field look sane and intelligent by comparison. In which case, Palin just tossed away his little gift: PALIN: Well, I appreciate that the Donald wants to spend his resources getting to the bottom of something that so interests him and many Americans. You know, more power to him. He’s not just throwin’ stones and, um, from the sidelines — he’s diggin’ in there, he’s paying for researchers to find out why President Obama would have spent two million dollars to not show his birth certificate. Of course, Obama has NOT spent “two million dollars” or anything close to that on this matter. What money he has spent has been on defending the legitimacy of his claim to be president against the lawsuits brought by nuts like Orly Taitz and Phil Berg — not to “hide” his official birth certificate from the state of Hawaii, which he has in fact displayed publicly since 2008 — and that money has been closer to a couple thousand dollars, if that much. The claim that he spent this money originated with yet another phony story from WorldNutDaily, the home of All Things Birther. It was carefully examined by Mother Jones, which (surprise, surprise) found that it was another bit of dishonest absurdity: Given the sheer number of cases, it seems plausible that the president and the government may have been forced to devote real resources to their defense. But in fact the opposite may be true: The birthers’ own copious legal bungling could wind up costing them more than Obama will have to spend defending himself. The birthers have peppered dozens of state and federal courts around the country with legal challenges—against the president and other government officials and organizations who had some role in allowing Obama’s name to be placed on the ballot, including the Federal Election Commission, various state election officials, and the US Supreme Court. Some of the suits, particularly those filed by the movement’s leading lady, California lawyer/dentist Orly Taitz, have been headlined by members of the military claiming they’ve been wrongfully made to serve in foreign wars by an illegitimate commander in chief. Most recently, birther attorneys have represented car dealers who charge that Obama is a phony president who lacked the authority to order a restructuring of Chrysler that they say cost them their businesses. WorldNetDaily has noted that FEC filings show that Obama’s presidential campaign has paid out more than $1.7 million since the election to the law firm of Perkins Coie. Until recently, that firm was home to Obama’s campaign lawyer, and now White House counsel, Robert Bauer—the very same DC lawyer, says WND, who has defended Obama in many of the birther lawsuits. Ergo, WND concluded, Obama must be devoting that entire $1.7 million to crushing birthers in court. This is a ridiculous claim: Even after an election is over a presidential campaign has plenty of need for lawyers as it winds down operations and meets campaign finance law requirements. And it’s been pretty cheap to defend these suits, because the people bringing them are — in addition to being irrational scam artists — simply incompetent: But the birthers’ lawsuits don’t exactly seem to be requiring Obama’s lawyers—government or private—to burn the midnight oil. Roger West, an assistant US attorney in the central district of California, represented the government in a lawsuit brought by Taitz on behalf of perennial presidential candidate Alan Keyes, asking the court to require that Obama prove he is a natural-born citizen. The case has dragged on for more than a year, mostly because Taitz, a graduate of an online, unaccredited law school, failed to serve the defendants. Judge David O. Carter dismissed the suit in October for a host of reasons, but Taitz has appealed. Yet West says that far from bleeding his office, Taitz and her co-counsel Gary Kreep have assembled such a weak case that he hasn’t had to spend much time on it. “I filed one motion that didn’t take too long, we’ve had two hearings and that’s it,” he says. “It’s not like we’ve devoted some sort of task force to this.” Army Major Rebecca Ausprung handled two of the birther cases against the Department of the Army that disputed Obama’s authority as commander in chief to order soldiers to war. Ausprung says she spent a few hours drafting motions and doing research, and she did have to make three short trips to Georgia from Arlington, Virginia. She prevailed in both cases. “The monetary cost to the government in defending these two cases was extremely minimal,” she says. But Trump and Palin can get on Fox News and tell the world that he’s spending millions to “hide” his birth certificate. Of course, that begs the question: Even if he were “hiding” these medical records, doesn’t he have the right to medical privacy we give every other American? No one else born in Hawaii would have to provide their “long form” to prove their citizenship by birth — why should Obama? We know the answer: Because Republicans believe they can only win when they gin up fake scandals with no basis in reality. They had so much success with it in 2004 — and now they’re addicted to it.
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There’s plenty that links the two – not least their umbilical link with communities. Is it time to think more creatively about what libraries can do? The words on the page fade to white. A voice in my ear instructs me to keep reading. There’s something impish about this voice, a private soundtrack in this place of supposed silence and study. I am sitting in Bishopsgate Institute Library, listening to The Quiet Volume , a piece of audio-theatre designed by Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton for libraries. Participants are first paired up; then they don headphones and sit side by side with a small stack of books at each person’s elbow. The voice invites them to look around at their fellow readers and to become more conscious of their own “reading voice”; in this way both the act of reading and the space in which they sit becomes defamiliarised, alien, exciting. The piece asks its participants to consider why they read and how they read; it also tries to make them aware of what it is to no longer have that ability. The voice is at times soothing and reassuring, but also at times unsettling as it shifts out of sync with the printed words. The resulting experience is at once meditative and playful, making it impossible not to view both libraries and the process of reading with a greater degree of wakefulness. Libraries – their necessity, their undiminished importance – unite many of the events at this year’s London Word festival , an annual celebration of words, books and language, which runs at various venues in east London until 5 May. The Quiet Volume is being hosted by several very different London libraries, including Hackney Central Library and Senate House Library, while a panel discussion, No Future, So Charming, on 21 April at Bethnal Green Library will look at the evolution of book borrowing. The social role of libraries, their function and power, is an issue that remains as relevant as ever, even though the number of libraries under threat has been reduced somewhat. Currently just under 500 libraries across the UK (including mobile libraries) face closure . The loss might not be cataclysmic, but it will be socially erosive. As Philip Pullman said in response to proposals to close 20 of Oxfordshire County Council’s 43 libraries , “it’s a kind of inward loss, a darkening of things, a narrowing of horizons that will gradually make us a less informed, less intelligent, less aware, less useful, less imaginative, less kindly people than we might have been”. A piece like The Quiet Volume enables its participants to look at these spaces afresh. Even a project like Laughter in Odd Places , a series of comedy gigs in unexpected venues, run by Terry Saunders and Tom Searle – now sadly dormant – did this to an extent. It began life in a library in Camberwell. Surely the relationship between libraries and theatres is one that could be mined further. The Quiet Volume’s co-creator Ant Hampton describes how a book could “be seen as the ultimate portable theatre or event space; a compressed, codified version of the ‘black box’ theatre or the ‘white cube’ gallery, flattened into white squares and black lines”. There is an affinity between libraries and theatres, both are places of gathering and connection. (There’s a nice circularity to the fact that the Bush theatre’s new west London home will be in a former library building). Perhaps the idea of library theatres, or theatre libraries, is one that should be pursued further. We already have plenty of pub theatres. Maybe library theatres could be next? Theatre Libraries Arts funding Natasha Tripney guardian.co.uk
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As the Commission now acknowledges, the warrant is only for major crimes and is being misused How is the EU going to stop the European arrest warrant, its fast-track extradition system, from being misused to prosecute bike thefts? At Fair Trials International we have been campaigning for years for a fairer European arrest warrant system, with a proportionality test to weed out trivial cases, as well as basic fair trial safeguards for people facing extradition. In a report out on Monday, the European commission acknowledges that the arrest warrant is being misused for low-level crimes. It urges European member states to sort out the problem themselves, by only using the warrant for what it was intended to do – prosecute or punish “major crimes”. However, the problem is that the law applying the arrest warrant does not say it can only be used for major crime and it contains no “proportionality test”. That is why countries such as Poland, Lithuania and the Czech Republic, with no prosecutorial discretion, must under their own law pursue every wanted person, no matter how minor the alleged crime. Take, for example, the case of a retired schoolteacher and grandfather facing extradition to Poland for going over his overdraft limit more than 10 years ago. The entire debt was repaid to the bank but he is still being sought to face trial for “theft”, although he has suffered three strokes and is in fragile health. Extradition has an enormous impact on individuals and their families, yet this “no questions asked” system leaves judges no real discretion to refuse warrants – even when there are serious human rights concerns about sending someone off to the other side of Europe to be prosecuted or imprisoned. Building a proportionality test into the system would mean amending the framework legislation by creating an amendment that every one of the 27 EU countries would then have to implement domestically. Though it has not ruled out legislative reform and has the power to recommend it, the commission would like to avoid this. The European arrest warrant is seen as an important symbol of mutual trust between EU countries, a flagship instrument forged in the wake of 9/11 in a spirit of stronger judicial co-operation across EU borders. In a union of 27 countries, all with distinct legal and penal cultures, it is not easy to build the trust necessary for this degree of mutual co-operation. The commission hopes that the slow but steady introduction of EU-wide basic defence safeguards will help to stem the growth in cases of injustice. The report recommends better statistical monitoring and more training for judges, who are asked to look at whether alternative measures are appropriate before reaching for the arrest warrant. Time will tell whether this is enough to stop the excessive use of this tick-box system by some countries (most notably Poland, which in 2009 issued 4,844 warrants compared to the UK’s 220). Although they are welcome and necessary, new EU laws guaranteeing basic defence rights such as access to a lawyer and an interpreter will not cure the flaws in the arrest warrant system nor eradicate injustice from its operation. Time is running out for EU countries to put their own houses in order. Urgent steps are needed to reform the European arrest warrant, to make sure it fights serious cross-border crime effectively without compromising fundamental rights in the process. Legislative change may be the only answer. European arrest warrant European commission European Union Europe Catherine Heard guardian.co.uk
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SS architect of final solution hated life in hiding and wrote letter to West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, a new book reveals For more than a decade after the second world war, his whereabouts were officially unknown. Adolf Eichmann, chief architect of the Holocaust, had escaped from an American POW camp, slipped into Italy and on to a ship bound for Argentina. The West German government, busy rebuilding the country and rehabilitating its reputation, knew from at least 1952 where he was living, yet never made any real attempt to bring him to justice. But a new book claims Eichmann had wanted to return to his motherland and claim his place in history several years before he was captured by Israeli intelligence in 1960 and put on trial in Jerusalem. In 1956, Eichmann wrote an open letter to the West German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. “It is time to relinquish my anonymity and introduce myself,” wrote Eichmann, who was then living under the name Ricardo Klement in a suburb of Buenos Aires. “Name: Adolf Otto Eichmann. Occupation: SS Obersturmbannführer a. D [lieutenant colonel].” The letter was supposed to be published by an Argentinian company with Nazi sympathies, although it never saw the light of day. It was unearthed from German state archives by historian Dr Bettina Stangneth in Hamburg, whose book, Eichmann Before Jerusalem, is published in Germany this week. In the letter to Adenauer, Eichmann, then aged 50, suggests he should be allowed home to tell the young people of Germany what really happened under Hitler. “How long fate will allow me to live, I don’t know, but I know that someone has to be the one to tell future generations about these events,” he said, neglecting to mention that “these events” involved the mass murder of millions of people. “I had a big role in leading and directing these programmes,” he added. Eichmann ran the “Jewish section” at the Reich security head office, the SS organisation responsible for fighting “enemies of the Reich”. In practice, this meant it was his job to work out how best to deport Jewish people to concentration camps. He took great joy in figuring out the most profitable and effective way of carrying out mass murder: it was he and his unit who dreamt up the idea of the authorities and the police robbing the victims before deportation. Stangneth said Eichmann was unhappy with his lowly life in Argentina, where he was a rabbit farmer. He craved the power and recognition he enjoyed in the Third Reich. “That’s why he wrote the letter to Adenauer – because he wanted to be famous,” said Strangneth. “He wanted to claim his part in history alongside Adolf Hitler. “He wanted to be put on trial in Germany and give his version of events. Of course, if that had happened, he would have been given a very different trial from the one he got in Jerusalem. There was no death penalty in Germany by then, so he would certainly not have been executed.” Nearly 50 years since Eichmann was hung in Israel, awkward questions are now being asked in Germany about the country’s role in bringing him to justice or otherwise. A series of articles in Der Spiegel magazine recently have suggested West German secret agents knew full well where Eichmann was following his escape, but were never ordered to recapture him. Following Eichmann’s kidnapping by the Mossad in May 1960, Adenauer’s government held a crisis meeting, where they agreed they should do everything to make clear that “Eichmann was a stooge of Himmler’s SS” and that he was not an authorised agent of Germany. A foreign ministry official is noted as saying it was crucial that “leading figures in West Germany” were not harmed by the trial. The latest edition of the magazine claims Adenauer personally sent an agent from the German secret service, the BND, to monitor the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Adenauer told a spy called Rolf Vogel to observe the trial in the guise of a reporter and influence it where possible. “You must go to the Eichmann trial for me,” wrote Adenauer, according to secret papers unearthed by Der Spiegel, which describes Vogel’s deployment as was “one of the most delicate diplomatic/secret service operations in the history of West Germany”. Der Spiegel claims Adenauer was terrified that the Nazi past of one of his most trusted aides, Hans Globke, his chief of staff at the chancellery, would be exposed by the trial. Adenauer reportedly went as far as discreetly trying to pay Eichmann’s legal fees because he was terrified that if he didn’t, the Eastern bloc would, and his Soviet enemies would attempt to influence the trial for their own ends. But when the media got wind of the plot, back in 1961, the plan was shelved, and the 100,000 deutschmarks already sent by Germany ended up with the Israelis, said Der Spiegel. In the event, Eichmann did not expose any high-ranking West German parliamentarians or civil servants. A week after Eichmann was executed on 13 May 1962, Adenauer met Israel’s deputy defence minister, Shimon Peres, and asked him to thank the prime minister, Ben Gurion, for the way the trial was conducted. “It was excellent,” said Adenauer, “and I will never forget it.” In August 1962, the Adenauer government donated 240m marks to Israel’s military programme. Holocaust Second world war Germany Europe Judaism Israel Helen Pidd guardian.co.uk
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Anti-monarchy group claims north London council’s refusal to let it hold a street party is politically motivated A street party for republicans wishing not to celebrate the royal wedding has been banned by a north London council. The anti-monarchy pressure group Republic has complained that its application to close a street in Covent Garden for its party has been turned down by Camden council . The council claims that it told the group to provide a management plan and consult local residents and it failed to do so. The decision left Republic vowing to take court action. Its executive officer Graham Smith complained: “This is a disgraceful attack on the rights of republicans to make their voice heard and to hold a fun and peaceful event. Camden council is allowing a few vocal residents and businesses to veto any event they do not support … (It) is seeking to silence and marginalise us without any legitimate reason. “We can only assume this is a politically motivated ban and we will challenge it all the way.” The organisation may be able to claim the support of two unlikely recruits. David Cameron told readers of the Sun that the wedding on 29 April would be a chance for everyone to come together and celebrate the great things about the country: “People who want to come together to celebrate with their neighbours should go ahead. We’ve done our bit by ripping up red tape.” Joining in, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) insisted that royal wedding party organisers should not be fobbed off by “jobsworths” trying to prevent them. The organisation said it was concerned that health and safety would be used as an unfounded excuse to stop celebrations. Judith Hackitt, the chair of the HSE, said: “Volunteers should feel confident to organise celebrations, taking simple measures based on common sense without having to worry about obligations under health and safety law at all. I want to encourage people to challenge those who tell you something can’t be done for health and safety reasons – it’s too easy an excuse to trot out. “There’s nothing in health and safety law to prevent anyone from celebrating the royal wedding – in fact, HSE encourages everyone who wants to throw a party to go right ahead. If someone tells you that you can’t have a get-together to mark the nuptials of Prince William and Kate, then challenge them. Health and safety is about looking out for any legitimate things that might spoil people’s fun on the day, not to stop people doing anything at all.” The organisation’s website says that while organisers should consult councils to secure road closures and permission to sell alcohol, those organised on a non-commercial basis would not fall foul of restrictive rules and regulations preventing them from going ahead. The prime minister claimed on Monday that about 4,000 street parties were known to be going ahead – though that is many fewer than at the time of the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in the summer of 1981. A spokeswoman for Camden council said that permission for Republic’s celebration in Earlham Street, just off Shaftesbury Avenue, had been refused: “We asked them to come to us with a management plan and after consulting local residents and they did not do so. There were objections from local residents and businesses and significant concerns from the police about the potential for disorder. We have allowed other street parties.” Royal wedding Republicanism London Monarchy Stephen Bates guardian.co.uk
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