You can't polish a turd.

Do not be fooled. The BNP and EDL are rapidly growing support. Do what you can to help stop the rise of the far right.

Unite Against Fascism.

Wanker.

"We can't go on like this. I'll cut the deficit, the NHS, the BBC, Ordnance Survey. Anything in fact. We should not be allowed to govern again"

The Times describes this as pedantic graffiti. I wonder who they are supporting at the next election?

The power of advertising.

It's the festive period and there's one thing that guarantees - being bombarded with advertising. It's everywhere, on television, in magazines, on the bus. We are constantly being told what to wear, how to behave and how to live. It quite simply preys on people's insecurities and anxieties.

This is something I feel links strongly to the wider issue addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his Christmas speech. British children are being 'forced to grow up too soon' and actually touched on advertising as one of the main factors in causing 'misery and exploitation' for many British children.

To quote the speech:

"We do our level very best to turn you into active little performers and consumers as soon as we can, we shall test you relentlessly in schools, we shall bombard you with advertising, often highly sexualised advertising, we shall worry you about your prospects and skills from the word go, we shall do all we can to make childhood a brief and rather regretable experience, on the way to the real thing, that being independence"

Everyone is vulnerable to advertising, but unfortunately it is the young who suffer most. From the moment a child gains the smallest freedoms within society, they are restricted, pressured and moulded. Marketing forces children to feel inadequate without the very latest product (something which is also compeltely unsustainable). This is however precisly what business needs, it demands it - to keep firms ticking over, people need to buy goods and spending money - it keep business good. That is why firms are spending millions on advertising campaigns.

Children need protection from advertising. Kids have lost their freedom to business and marketing campaigns. We are unlikely to see a change, its too fundamental to our economy and those of most developed nations.

It's very clear where our priorities lie. They certainly aren't in the best interests of the next generation.

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Bit of a random rant on advertising, but I feel its a particularly prominent issue at Christmas. Love is the best present any child will recieve.

In the mean time, here's some brilliant subvertisement work from Dr. D:

Copenhagen has been and gone. Nothing has really changed.

"Between 1750 and 2005, developed countries accounted for 80% of the world's CO2 emissions. Even today, with only 20% of the world's population, developed countries pump more than 55% of the total emissions into the atmosphere. So when it comes to emissions, developed and developing countries can't be compared like for... like, not to be painted in the same brush ... This is ultimately about fairness and equal right to development"

Madam Fu Ying speaking at the London School of Economics.

Climate Camp Does Trafalgar Square!

Taken from http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

When the tripods first shot up and the rocket stoves got burning, it wasn't long before the actions started rolling. Prior to the talks beginning, 20 Santas took over the departure lounge at London City Airport as the last flights of hypocrisy left for Copenhagen. Then on Monday, with the summit beginning, activists blockaded the European Carbon Exchange offices sending a clear message that the false solutions on the table will be stopped every step of the way. Meanwhile campers continued cooking, discussing, and plotting as requests to leave were ignored.

Surrounded by opportunity, the camp is preparing for our two week stay. We are the Christmas present under the square's enormous tree this year, already working well with community groups to collectively push for climate justice during this season of festivity. Those of us remaining in the UK need to demonstrate we are not simply sitting back and letting our "leaders" tear apart the planet, but are enacting the change we need ourselves. But this will only succeed if everyone gets involved for as little or as long as they can.

Anti-BNP Demo.

Went down to White City to see what the Anti-BNP demonstration was like. Here are a few photos:

BBC Television Centre, White City:



The tube by Wood Lane station:



Lowkey:



The scene at the main gates. Griffin entered through the back, hours before:



Security was a little tight..



Although I went to the march - a campaign specifically against Nick Griffin's appearance on the BBC - I do believe that BNP has every right to appear on the show. Poltical view points, whatever the may be, cannot simply be dismissed if we don't like them - even if they're fascist. As an elected MEP, Nick Griffin should be given the chance to engage in serious political discussion. The BNP have large support in some areas of the country (e.g. Burnley, Dagenham, Bradford) and unfortunately do represent some proportions of our population, albeit a minority.

The real problem with Question Time last night was not Griffin's appearance, but the over-bearing anti-BNP bias on the programme from the supposedly 'independent' BBC. The show was unbalanced and the constant attack launched towards the BNP by both the audience and panelists meant that serious issues, such as the Royal Mail, public sector debt and climate change (things normally discussed on Question time..) were merely bypassed. Given any chance to speak on such issues, Griffin would have shown himself up to be the complete fool that he truely is.

The panel spent the show attempting to out-do each other in an attempt to be most critical of the BNP. Instead, they should have been asking themselves why it is that in 21st century Britain, we are seeing fascists being legally elected into our governing institutions. Both the BBC and politicians of recent years have a lot to answer for.

Did Obama really deserve the Nobel Peace prize?

Stolen and edited from the Independent; worth a read:


Greg Mortenson: Mountaineer fighting Islamic extremism with education

Following a failed attempt to climb K2 in Pakistan in 1993, Greg Mortenson met a group of children sitting in the dirt and writing with sticks in the sand. He promised to build them a school. It seemed, he says, a "rash" promise.

The story of what happened next is told in Mr Mortenson's book, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time, a bestseller now required reading for military leaders as well as for humanitarians. His Central Asia Institute has built 84 schools in the region, educating mainly girls, and Mr Mortenson, 51, has become a tireless advocate of the need to build human relationships with the Muslim world. His mantra: politics won't bring peace, people will bring peace.

"These are secular schools that will bring a new generation of kids that will have a broader view of the world," he says. "We focus on areas where there is no education. Religious extremism flourishes in areas of isolation and conflict."

In 2009 alone, he has been awarded Pakistan's highest civilian award, the Star of Pakistan, and a half dozen other humanitarian gongs but, for this year at least, he failed to land the biggest one of all.


Denis Mukwege: Doctor dedicated to helping rape victims in the Congo

Sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo is at appalling levels - ask the 27,000 victims of rape reported in a single year in a single province, or the 70 per cent of the women of one town who had been brutally assaulted.

Dr Denis Mukwege is affected in a different way. He has dedicated his life to dealing with those abused, seeing an average of 10 women a day, in his surgery in Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu, the province where the first statistic was recorded. Many have travelled hundreds of miles.

"Generally the victims are raped by several men at a time, one after another; in public, in front of parents, husbands, children or neighbours. Rape is followed by mutilations or other corporal torture."

So far in his career, he has treated 21,000 women. His pioneering work has helped thousands of these women reclaim something of their physical selves and begin to heal some of the psychological wounds. His tireless dedication has not been easy, his ward burned to the ground in 1996 during the first civil war.

"Here it is not rape because you have desire for a woman, it's rape because you want to destroy that person through her private parts," he said recently. "There is no appropriate expression, because if these were men, were shot by a gun, we would call it genocide. But it is another type of genocide."


Wei Jingsheng: The father of Chinese democracy

For a Chicago community organiser to rise far enough to receive the Nobel Prize is fairly remarkable; had a former electrician at Beijing Zoo been so honoured, the recognition would have been truly extraordinary.

Wei Jingsheng, has come far from his humble beginnings as an electrician at Beijing zoo. 2009 was his 7th nomination for the Peace prize for his work fighting for democratic rights in China. Mr Wei once served as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. Much has changed since then, following Jingsheng's realisation of the true China under the rule of Mao Zedong. He was jailed for 18 years before international pressure forced his release in 1997.

His prison sentence was for taking part in the "Democracy Wall" movement in 1978, when students and activists displayed uncensored news and dissenting opinions on a brick wall near Tiananmen Square, just as the Red Guards had done themselves during the Cultural Revolution. During imprisonment, he wrote open letters to the regime on toilet paper that were smuggled out and published, making him a figurehead for democratic campaigners. He was released in 1993 but refused to be silenced. That determination led to another jail sentence, this time for 14 years.

But by then, Mr Wei had powerful backers. Bill Clinton intervened, and he was released in November 1997 and allowed to fly to the US on medical grounds, shorthand for exile. His 1997 book, The Courage to Stand Alone: Letters from Prison and Other Writings, is seen as one of the classics of Chinese dissident literature.


I already believed Obama has not done nearly enough to warrant the prize. Reading this only confirmed by view. The judges claimed that it was Obama's 'intentions' that won him the prize. All the other nominees have good intentions and have done for many years, the key difference being that they've already put them into practice. I would love to see Obama win the prize in 10 years, but currently he does not deserve this accolade.