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film and theatre scripts and musical compositions as well as the original screenplay for A Clockwork Orange At least 20 unpublished stories by Anthony Burgess, the author of A Clockwork Orange, have been discovered by researchers sorting through his papers at a research centre in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for A Clockwork Orange – rejected by the film’s director, Stanley Kubrick, who eventually wrote the script himself – an unpublished history of London, a ballet score about the life of Shakespeare and a musical about Leon Trotsky.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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Concerns about cuts to benefits and services led thousands of protesters to London. For some it involved an enormous effort Just after 10 morning, a group of around 40 blind people gathered by Paddington’s platform 5, guide dogs helping them make their way through the crowds. Many had got up well before 5am, packed food and water for their dogs, then caught the first train from Plymouth to attend a march through central London in protest against cuts to disability benefits and services. It is not easy travelling to London to take part in a protest if you’re blind, but the demonstrators, many marching for the first time, said they were determined to rise to the challenge to express their anger about a series of cuts and rule changes affecting disabled people, who are disproportionately dependent on state support. “It is stressful going on a march like this, the noise and the crowds. It’s an enormous effort for many people who find getting through life one day at a time quite difficult,” said Doreen Taylor, 59, one of the blind protesters who travelled from Cornwall. “But people feel very worried about the changes to disability benefits.” If the size of the Hardest Hit march was relatively small compared with last autumn’s student demonstrations (with police estimates ranging between 3,000 and 8,000), consider the hurdles facing many of the participants – the everyday problems of inaccessible public transport, and the high cost of rail travel for those dependent on disability benefits. The protesters from the West Country said they were already so acutely conscious of the consequences of local authority funding shortages, and anxious about the impact of changes to the benefits system, that making the choice to come and protest was not difficult. Kathryn Harrington, 57, also registered blind, said staffing levels at the supported housing where she lived in Plympton had been cut by about 40% over the past year, making it difficult for residents to find someone to help them in an emergency. Despite being an experienced computer programmer, she had found it difficult to find work, and was worried about benefit changes that would increase the pressure on claimants to find work. “When I apply for jobs, I’m seen as a health and safety risk,” she said. As she made her way along Victoria Embankment, led through the crowds by her guide dog Liza, Siobhan Mead, 27, from Great Yarmouth, said she voted Conservative last year, but had subsequently been dismayed at the impact local authority cuts have had on the availability of funding to help her live independently. Last year her needs were classified as “critical”, meaning she was eligible for around £8,000 to pay for help getting to college, shopping, travelling to job interviews. This year, as the council made substantial cuts, she was told she was no longer being classified as in critical need, and would therefore not be eligible for any money. “I’ve come here to get my voice heard, to make politicians realise that they are targeting the most vulnerable people in society. It’s totally unreasonable,” Mead said. Several blind protesters carried posters with expletives in braille, declaring: “We’re being [something in braille] by the government.” Dino Goldie, 33, travelled by train from Bath to register his anger at changes to the incapacity benefit system, which will see hundreds of thousands of claimants reassessed and declared fit for work, and therefore eligible only for considerably reduced levels of weekly benefit payments. “Research by the RNIB shows that nine out of 10 employers say they would not employ someone with visual impairment. We are being punished for not being able to find work,” he said. Marching through the crowds, Lisa Jones, 37, who has been looking for a paid job for 15 years, said: “I’d give my right arm for a job, but I can’t get one. I think the government is encouraging the idea that disabled people are all scroungers. I want the government to realise that cutting benefits will not help us get into work.” She was marching with her husband, also registered blind, to try to make the public aware of the new difficulties facing disabled people. “Disabled people are invisible in society. That’s why this march is so important,” she said. Further along the street, Vicci Chittenden, who was diagnosed with MS when she was 17, was in a wheelchair with a cardboard box on her head, marked “Don’t Box Me In” in felt-tipped letters. She felt there had been a radical shift in how society viewed disabled people. “Before we were portrayed as poor dears, pathetic creatures. Now there’s been a complete turnaround and we’re seen as benefit cheats,” she said. “But the opportunities just aren’t out there to enable us to work.” Protesters are angry about a myriad of issues that have arisen over the past year, as the government has simultaneously cut budgets to local authorities, begun changes that will hit the disability living allowance, and started a radical reform of incapacity benefit payments designed to reduce the number of claimants. Along with the blind protesters were parents marching with disabled children, aghast at how quickly local authority funding shortages had reduced the support available for their families. Fiona McHale travelled from Newry in Northern Ireland with her six-year-old son Jamie O’Connor, who has Down’s syndrome, angry that family support grants that used to be available for families with disabled children were no longer easily available. Jo Stubbins from Cambridge was dismayed at cuts to the care package received by her 23-year-old daughter Victoria, who has severe learning disabilities. “I’ve never marched before. We need to all join together and show that people with disabilities are not easy targets. It makes me so angry that vulnerable people are the first ones to be affected by the cuts.” Alex Ozansoy had travelled from Norwich to express concern that her six-year-old daughter, who has a learning disability and global developmental delay, was not getting the specialist support she needed at school. Ozansoy is battling with her local council to formally recognise her daughter’s difficulties, and channel more resources to her education. “She needs support now; it’s a critical time in her development but she’s overlooked in a class of 30 and we can’t afford extra tuition,” Ozansoy said. The chances of her daughter getting that support had dwindled in the past year, she said, because of cuts to the local authority budget. “I can’t sleep at night because I’m so worried about it. It seems so short-sighted because if she doesn’t get help now, she’s going to be dependent on the state all her life, which will be a huge cost to the government.” Some demonstrators were anxious that the combined effect of changes would end up seeing disabled people more isolated and less able to participate in society. Pepe Martinez, 58, arrived in a wheelchair by train from Huntingdon, where he is a resident at a Leonard Cheshire home, hoping that the protest would help persuade the government to rethink its plan to cut disability allowance payments. A former nurse who spent 35 years caring for others in the NHS, Martinez had not expected disability benefits to be affected when he voted Tory last year. Without the mobility component of DLA which the government plans to cut, he worries he will no longer be able to participate in “life generally”, and instead will be stuck inside the care home, unable to visit friends and family outside. “We’ll be like zombies,” he said. Disability London Welfare Amelia Gentleman guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Concerns about cuts to benefits and services led thousands of protesters to London. For some it involved an enormous effort Just after 10 morning, a group of around 40 blind people gathered by Paddington’s platform 5, guide dogs helping them make their way through the crowds. Many had got up well before 5am, packed food and water for their dogs, then caught the first train from Plymouth to attend a march through central London in protest against cuts to disability benefits and services. It is not easy travelling to London to take part in a protest if you’re blind, but the demonstrators, many marching for the first time, said they were determined to rise to the challenge to express their anger about a series of cuts and rule changes affecting disabled people, who are disproportionately dependent on state support. “It is stressful going on a march like this, the noise and the crowds. It’s an enormous effort for many people who find getting through life one day at a time quite difficult,” said Doreen Taylor, 59, one of the blind protesters who travelled from Cornwall. “But people feel very worried about the changes to disability benefits.” If the size of the Hardest Hit march was relatively small compared with last autumn’s student demonstrations (with police estimates ranging between 3,000 and 8,000), consider the hurdles facing many of the participants – the everyday problems of inaccessible public transport, and the high cost of rail travel for those dependent on disability benefits. The protesters from the West Country said they were already so acutely conscious of the consequences of local authority funding shortages, and anxious about the impact of changes to the benefits system, that making the choice to come and protest was not difficult. Kathryn Harrington, 57, also registered blind, said staffing levels at the supported housing where she lived in Plympton had been cut by about 40% over the past year, making it difficult for residents to find someone to help them in an emergency. Despite being an experienced computer programmer, she had found it difficult to find work, and was worried about benefit changes that would increase the pressure on claimants to find work. “When I apply for jobs, I’m seen as a health and safety risk,” she said. As she made her way along Victoria Embankment, led through the crowds by her guide dog Liza, Siobhan Mead, 27, from Great Yarmouth, said she voted Conservative last year, but had subsequently been dismayed at the impact local authority cuts have had on the availability of funding to help her live independently. Last year her needs were classified as “critical”, meaning she was eligible for around £8,000 to pay for help getting to college, shopping, travelling to job interviews. This year, as the council made substantial cuts, she was told she was no longer being classified as in critical need, and would therefore not be eligible for any money. “I’ve come here to get my voice heard, to make politicians realise that they are targeting the most vulnerable people in society. It’s totally unreasonable,” Mead said. Several blind protesters carried posters with expletives in braille, declaring: “We’re being [something in braille] by the government.” Dino Goldie, 33, travelled by train from Bath to register his anger at changes to the incapacity benefit system, which will see hundreds of thousands of claimants reassessed and declared fit for work, and therefore eligible only for considerably reduced levels of weekly benefit payments. “Research by the RNIB shows that nine out of 10 employers say they would not employ someone with visual impairment. We are being punished for not being able to find work,” he said. Marching through the crowds, Lisa Jones, 37, who has been looking for a paid job for 15 years, said: “I’d give my right arm for a job, but I can’t get one. I think the government is encouraging the idea that disabled people are all scroungers. I want the government to realise that cutting benefits will not help us get into work.” She was marching with her husband, also registered blind, to try to make the public aware of the new difficulties facing disabled people. “Disabled people are invisible in society. That’s why this march is so important,” she said. Further along the street, Vicci Chittenden, who was diagnosed with MS when she was 17, was in a wheelchair with a cardboard box on her head, marked “Don’t Box Me In” in felt-tipped letters. She felt there had been a radical shift in how society viewed disabled people. “Before we were portrayed as poor dears, pathetic creatures. Now there’s been a complete turnaround and we’re seen as benefit cheats,” she said. “But the opportunities just aren’t out there to enable us to work.” Protesters are angry about a myriad of issues that have arisen over the past year, as the government has simultaneously cut budgets to local authorities, begun changes that will hit the disability living allowance, and started a radical reform of incapacity benefit payments designed to reduce the number of claimants. Along with the blind protesters were parents marching with disabled children, aghast at how quickly local authority funding shortages had reduced the support available for their families. Fiona McHale travelled from Newry in Northern Ireland with her six-year-old son Jamie O’Connor, who has Down’s syndrome, angry that family support grants that used to be available for families with disabled children were no longer easily available. Jo Stubbins from Cambridge was dismayed at cuts to the care package received by her 23-year-old daughter Victoria, who has severe learning disabilities. “I’ve never marched before. We need to all join together and show that people with disabilities are not easy targets. It makes me so angry that vulnerable people are the first ones to be affected by the cuts.” Alex Ozansoy had travelled from Norwich to express concern that her six-year-old daughter, who has a learning disability and global developmental delay, was not getting the specialist support she needed at school. Ozansoy is battling with her local council to formally recognise her daughter’s difficulties, and channel more resources to her education. “She needs support now; it’s a critical time in her development but she’s overlooked in a class of 30 and we can’t afford extra tuition,” Ozansoy said. The chances of her daughter getting that support had dwindled in the past year, she said, because of cuts to the local authority budget. “I can’t sleep at night because I’m so worried about it. It seems so short-sighted because if she doesn’t get help now, she’s going to be dependent on the state all her life, which will be a huge cost to the government.” Some demonstrators were anxious that the combined effect of changes would end up seeing disabled people more isolated and less able to participate in society. Pepe Martinez, 58, arrived in a wheelchair by train from Huntingdon, where he is a resident at a Leonard Cheshire home, hoping that the protest would help persuade the government to rethink its plan to cut disability allowance payments. A former nurse who spent 35 years caring for others in the NHS, Martinez had not expected disability benefits to be affected when he voted Tory last year. Without the mobility component of DLA which the government plans to cut, he worries he will no longer be able to participate in “life generally”, and instead will be stuck inside the care home, unable to visit friends and family outside. “We’ll be like zombies,” he said. Disability London Welfare Amelia Gentleman 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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Two earthquakes in Spain, near Lorca in the south-east, have cost three lives At least three people have died in earthquakes in the south-east of Spain. Two earthquakes in quick succession caused damage in the Murcia region, south-east Spain. An official with the Murcia regional government said the quakes had magnitudes of 4.4 and 5.2. The centre of quakes Wednesday afternoon was close to the town of Lorca, and the second earthquake followed about two hours after the first. Spain Natural disasters and extreme weather Europe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Rachel Maddow Asks Why the Sunday Shows are Loaded With Bushies the Week of Bin Laden’s Death
May 11, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Rachel Maddow asks why during the week that Osama bin Laden was killed, the Sunday morning show producers decided to bring on one Bushie after another to sit at the grown-up table and give their opinion on the matter. If that question sounds familiar for our readers here it’s because just like this past Sunday , our own Nicole Belle asks that same question pretty much every week when we cover the Sunday morning bobblehead shows here at C&L. I wonder if David Gregory’s producer was watching? It would be nice to get him or her to answer Rachel’s question. I’d love to see Rachel get Meet the Press, but she probably couldn’t get any Republicans to come on with her, or not very many of them anyway. Unlike David Gregory, she actually asks follow up questions to people who come on the air and try to lie to her. Transcript below the fold: MADDOW: Clay Jones is an editorial cartoonist for “The Freelance Star” newspaper in Fredericksburg, Virginia. This is his latest political cartoon I saw posted at Slate.com today. In the class “foreign policy,” school kid George W. Bush with giant ears gets a D-minus. And school kid Barack Obama, with different giant ears gets an A, with lots of plus signs after it. This cartoon is post-death of bin Laden, right? The teacher looks at the papers and says to school kid Obama, “A plus, plus, plus? You must have cheated off George.” Whether or not you feel like George W. Bush deserved a D-minus in foreign policy or that Barack Obama deserves an A-plus, whatever, I think Mr. Clay Jones in this political cartoon nailed the Beltway media reaction to the killing of Osama bin Laden. This is exactly how the Beltway media is approaching the politics of bin Laden`s death. And I can prove it. That`s next. MADDOW: I will admit right off the bat this is petty. I`ll admit it. But it is also true and it has got to drive Democrats in the White House absolutely nuts. Here it is: Republican Senator Dick Lugar, Republican former presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, Republican former Congressman Tom Davis, the Bush administration`s CIA director, General Michael Hayden, the Bush administration`s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration`s homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, the Bush administration`s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the Bush administration`s vice president, Dick Cheney, the Bush administration`s vice president`s daughter, Liz Cheney — the week the Obama administration announces it has killed Osama bin Laden, that`s the guest list on the Sunday morning political talk shows to talk about it. The Sunday shows are supposedly the apex of political debate — the pulsing, throbbing heart of what`s going on in American politics. Is the biggest story in American politics right now retirees from the Bush administration and how they feel about stuff? Plus, Dick Lugar? Honestly, this is the roster? This is Sunday morning in all of its thundering seriousness? Now, among those nine Bush administration officials and other Republican politicians, there were three outliers: Senator John Kerry, also a former White House communications director named Anita Dunn, and one current White House official Tom Donilon, the national security adviser. So, there were those three. But the week the Obama administration announces that bin Laden is dead, the invitees to the adult`s table, the measure of serious and importance in Washington is three-to-one, Bush administration and Republican officials. Why is that? That’s just how they roll every week Rachel.
Continue reading …Rachel Maddow Asks Why the Sunday Shows are Loaded With Bushies the Week of Bin Laden’s Death
May 11, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Rachel Maddow asks why during the week that Osama bin Laden was killed, the Sunday morning show producers decided to bring on one Bushie after another to sit at the grown-up table and give their opinion on the matter. If that question sounds familiar for our readers here it’s because just like this past Sunday , our own Nicole Belle asks that same question pretty much every week when we cover the Sunday morning bobblehead shows here at C&L. I wonder if David Gregory’s producer was watching? It would be nice to get him or her to answer Rachel’s question. I’d love to see Rachel get Meet the Press, but she probably couldn’t get any Republicans to come on with her, or not very many of them anyway. Unlike David Gregory, she actually asks follow up questions to people who come on the air and try to lie to her. Transcript below the fold: MADDOW: Clay Jones is an editorial cartoonist for “The Freelance Star” newspaper in Fredericksburg, Virginia. This is his latest political cartoon I saw posted at Slate.com today. In the class “foreign policy,” school kid George W. Bush with giant ears gets a D-minus. And school kid Barack Obama, with different giant ears gets an A, with lots of plus signs after it. This cartoon is post-death of bin Laden, right? The teacher looks at the papers and says to school kid Obama, “A plus, plus, plus? You must have cheated off George.” Whether or not you feel like George W. Bush deserved a D-minus in foreign policy or that Barack Obama deserves an A-plus, whatever, I think Mr. Clay Jones in this political cartoon nailed the Beltway media reaction to the killing of Osama bin Laden. This is exactly how the Beltway media is approaching the politics of bin Laden`s death. And I can prove it. That`s next. MADDOW: I will admit right off the bat this is petty. I`ll admit it. But it is also true and it has got to drive Democrats in the White House absolutely nuts. Here it is: Republican Senator Dick Lugar, Republican former presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, Republican former Congressman Tom Davis, the Bush administration`s CIA director, General Michael Hayden, the Bush administration`s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration`s homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, the Bush administration`s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the Bush administration`s vice president, Dick Cheney, the Bush administration`s vice president`s daughter, Liz Cheney — the week the Obama administration announces it has killed Osama bin Laden, that`s the guest list on the Sunday morning political talk shows to talk about it. The Sunday shows are supposedly the apex of political debate — the pulsing, throbbing heart of what`s going on in American politics. Is the biggest story in American politics right now retirees from the Bush administration and how they feel about stuff? Plus, Dick Lugar? Honestly, this is the roster? This is Sunday morning in all of its thundering seriousness? Now, among those nine Bush administration officials and other Republican politicians, there were three outliers: Senator John Kerry, also a former White House communications director named Anita Dunn, and one current White House official Tom Donilon, the national security adviser. So, there were those three. But the week the Obama administration announces that bin Laden is dead, the invitees to the adult`s table, the measure of serious and importance in Washington is three-to-one, Bush administration and Republican officials. Why is that? That’s just how they roll every week Rachel.
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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
Continue reading …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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