Who is the real leader of the opposition?

Keith Taylor, Green MEP does good in Gaza

Keith Taylor, the new Green Party MEP who took over from Caroline Lucas when she became an MP, is currently touring the Middle East to see how the Green Party can input into the peace process. Excellent stuff, he seems to be playing a very positive role.It was a groggy crew that were checking out of the hotel just six hours later, and our tribulations were only just beginning. When we got to

Turns

Turns  

by Andreas Aronsson  

http://im-possible.info/english/art/computer/andreas-aronsson.html#30-07-2011

The Well of Mirages

The Well of Mirages  

by Valery Martyanov  

http://im-possible.info/english/art/various/valery-martyanov.html

Image 026 by Tamas Farkas

http://im-possible.info/english/art/various/farkas.html#026

Crossroads of Consciousness

Crossroads of Consciousness  

by Sergey Pyatigora  

http://im-possible.info/english/art/pencil/sergey-pyatigora.html

Jenny Jones: Boris Johnson misled Londoners during active police investigation

Jenny Jones: Boris Johnson misled Londoners during active police investigation28 JULY 2011After this morning's meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority, Jenny Jones, Green member of the MPA said:"Kit Malthouse says he did not tell London's Mayor about a police briefing last September over new claims on phone hacking."However, the Mayor said that he and Malthouse were in continuous discussion.

Improbable star

Improbable star  

by Brian Eason 

http://im-possible.info/english/art/computer/brian-eason.html

Image 25 by Tamas Farkas

http://im-possible.info/english/art/various/farkas.html#025

Delta Sinks To New Levels Of Passenger Rip-Off

As usual, Delta won the dubious honor this year of being this blog's Worst Overall Airline... again. They really just suck on every level. Turns out the service is so bad because upper management is such a bunch of greed-obsessed reactionaries. Today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution went on and one about how that city's biggest carrier pulled a fast one on its customers after the right-wing ideologues in Congress shut down the FAA. The shutdown keeps the FAA from collecting about $200 million a week in ticket taxes. But instead of letting that accrue to fliers, Delta gobbled it up itself by increasing the base fares it charges.

Airlines have complained for years that taxes added to ticket prices drive up the cost of travel. But when those tax collections stopped last weekend and airlines had a rare chance to give fliers a break, most opted to keep prices the same and pocket the difference.

“It just seems like it was the perfect chance for the airlines to throw a bone in consumer satisfaction,” said FareCompare.com CEO Rick Seaney.

“Consumers feel like they’ve been nickel-and-dimed in the past, (and) this is a windfall that wasn’t expected... “Why wouldn’t [airlines] give consumers at least half the benefit?” Seaney said.

The suspended taxes include a 7.5 percent excise tax, a $3.70 tax per flight segment and other taxes for international flights.

As the partial shutdown continued this week, some public officials have criticized the airlines’ decision, and two U.S. senators wrote a letter of complaint to Delta’s chief executive, who also is chairman of a major airline lobbying group.

Delta, as always, started whining about the high price of jet fuel. They little windfall at customers expense amounts to between $4 and $5 million a day. In the U.S. Senate, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) lashed out at their greed:

I wish I understood why the policy objections of one company-Delta Air Lines-mattered more than the livelihoods of thousands of people. Last year, the CEO of Delta made $9 million. Delta paid its top executives almost $20 million. Yet, it is fighting to make sure its employees cannot organize for fear that they may secure a few extra dollars in their paychecks. At the same time it is pushing for special interest provisions in the FAA bill, Delta announced it was abandoning air service to 26 small rural communities-leaving many of them without air service.

Delta then had the gall to announce publicly it would seek EAS subsidies to continue this service.  Maybe Mr. Anderson and his colleagues could forgo some of their salary to help subsidize this air service. Maybe they could use some of the millions of dollars they are collecting in a tax holiday windfall to pay for this service. Their actions are shameful.

Let me be clear, House Republicans and their Senate allies have thrown nearly four thousand FAA employees out of work, stopped critical airport safety projects, hurt hundreds of small businesses, and gutted the Aviation Trust Fund, all so that Delta Air Lines doesn't have to allow its employees to organize in a fair and timely manner.

The needs of one company should not dictate the safety and soundness of our aviation system. We need to pass a clean extension that will get people back to work, and businesses and their employees back to work building out critical airport infrastructure.

Tim DeChristopher get the man out of jail and make him President instead

">http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/26-13Published on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 by CommonDreams.org I Do Not Want Mercy, I Want You To Join Meby Tim DeChristopher Tim DeChristopher, who was sentenced Tuesday to two years in federal prison and a $10,000 fine for disrupting a Bureau of Land Management auction in 2008, had an opportunity to address the court and the judge immediately before

Odd Man Out (1947)

Just watching Odd Man Out (1947) Carol Reed about an IRA chief on the run in Belfast after a bank robbery gone wrong.Classic film, the Irish accents are a little sporadic however.James Mason is spot on, highly recommended film, not politics but art.Having said that the bit with the artist is a bit shite but otherwise watch and enjoy.Black and White so much better than colour (other than Godard)

Breivik's stole his manifesto from this man!

Wisewords from the Sandwich man, it all looks sub Francis Parker Yockey to me.Generally Counter Punch is a very good source but this is a little disturbing.Lind, who is mentioned below, butchers Western Marxism, I mean its a rubbish confused argument, I mean I know Marx and Engels spent most of their time discussing LGBT (alas not).....Cultural Marxism?My overall impression is that the bulk of

Daily Mail inspired mass killing?

">http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news26-07-11.phpThe Rise of the Nutters: This is Norway to Go..?"The lunatic is all idee fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars." - Umberto ECO, Foucault's PendulumThe Norway attacks have

Indigenous rise against death squad democracy and FARC

yeah fuck you Rory Carroll! Sitting round the pool with the rich people I bet.For more on Rory read here, if you want some Latin American news that matters read on.The oldest and strongest grassroots indigenous organization in Colombia, TheRegional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), has issued a call for a "Minga ofresistance" to restore autonomy and peace throughout Indigenous territories

Artworks by Michael Cheval

http://im-possible.info/english/art/various/michael-cheval.html

Elinor Ostrom in London for ecology conference

Fran: Do you have a message for the general public?Elinor: We need to get people away from the notion that you have to have a fancy car and a huge house. Some of the homes that have been built in the last 10 years just appall me. Why do humans need huge homes? I was born poor and I didn’t know you bought clothes at anything but the Goodwill until I went to college. Some of our mentality about

Caroline Lucas 'What the Frack!'

Fracking is horrendous, Caroline Lucas is doing such a good job as our Green MP, great to see her put some of her scarce time into anti-frack.

Special Briefing on Human Rights and the Law in Colombia

6.30pm Wednesday 3rd AugustAt Hodge Jones and Allen LLP (solicitors)180 North Gower Street, London, NW1 2NB(near Euston Square, Euston and Warrant Street tube stations) Eduardo Carreño will give an in-depth briefing on: · The Justice and Peace Process · The ‘para-politica’ scandal · DAS case (interception of phone messages by the state intelligence agency, lists of targets

Green administration announces living wage for Brighton & Hove

Green Council Leader Bill Randall yesterday (21 July) announced radical plans to introduce a Living Wage to the city of Brighton & Hove.At a Full Council meeting, he confirmed that the council will be taking a number of steps to reduce inequality in the city through narrowing the gap between the highest and lowest paid workers.Cllr Randall commented: "Reducing inequality is a key plank of our

Caroline Lucas 'Don't blame the badgers'

Great to see this from Caroline.Brighton Pavilion MP, Caroline Lucas, who is an honorary vice president of the RSPCA and a longtime campaigner on animal protection issues, said:"The decision by Defra to give the go-ahead for a barbaric slaughter of badgers in our countryside shows a shocking disregard for animal welfare - and flies in the face of scientific evidence on the spread of bovine TB."

Do you know... what the trees say when the axe comes into the forest?

some stuff I am thinking about, comment welcome! Not finished yet, pure process!How do we fight the crab? “Formerly, when animals were people, a giant crab, called Ugkaju, commanded an army composed of ants and fish that killed the strongest warriors, than were the tigers, vixens and birds as the paujil and the pava of the mount. Ugkaju struck the water with its clamp forming floods that drowned

LIVE EXPORTS DEMONSTRATION

(Photo is of a Green Party speaker at a previous demo)Saturday 13th August major regional demonstration against live exports, organised by Thanet Against Live exports and Compassion in World Farming.Saturday 13th August, bring your friends and family and help to show the level of opposition to this inhumane trade. We will meet at Ellington Park, Ellington Road, RAMSGATE, CT11 9SX from 11.00am,

From crisis to commons

What apparently began as a financial crisis that turned into an economic one is soon to be called a “political crisis.” The abject destruction that capitalists have created with their “management” of the two great commons of labor and the planet’s eco-system will stop being considered a “tragedy of the common” (where no one in particular is responsible) and come to de-legitimate the capitalist

WHY LATIN AMERICA WORKS.

PUBLIC MEETING WHY LATIN AMERICA WORKSA roundtable discussion with:PROF ERNESTO LACLAU, Political theorist, Essex University and Universities around the world.JEREMY CORBYN MP, Longstanding parliamentary friend of progress in Latin America and the world.DR FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ, Latin American Studies, Middlesex University. Secretary, Venezuela

here's Jonnieeeeeeeeee!

His tweets before pieing Murdoch JonnieMarbles Jonnie Marbles It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before #splat4 hours ago Favorite Undo Retweet ReplyJonnieMarbles Jonnie Marbles It might be quicker if Baby Murdoch simply listed all of the things that he does know #hackgate5 hours ago JonnieMarbles Jonnie Marbles One gets the sense that they haven't really done the

Rupert Murdoch attack video: Media mogul hit in face with 'foam pie'

just thought Jonnie Marbles was a rubbish local comedian.Take it all back this was quite amusing.Murdoch if found guilty is unlikely to go to prison so nice to see him getting his just dessert!

Fortnum Mason arrests showed face of political police

109 activists, arrested following a non-violent UK Uncut demonstration on the 26th of March 2011, have had their charges dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service.Over 150 activists were arrested on 26 March 2011. They were handcuffed and transported to police stations across London, where they were held in cells for up to 24 hours.Jenny Jones, Green member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and

'Rupert Murdoch, the controversial media mogul, has reportedly been found dead in his garden'

Rupert Murdoch, the controversial media mogul, has reportedly been found dead in his garden, police announce.Murdoch, aged 80, has said to have ingested a large quantity of palladium before stumbling into his famous topiary garden late last night, passing out in the early hours of the morning."We found the chemicals sitting beside a kitchen table, recently cooked," one officer states. "From what

Dead NOTW journalist Sean Hoare video on why he hacked phones.

Sean Hoare is dead.How convenient.£100,000 bribes to cops, thousands of phones hacked.

An arrow in the indigenous struggle!

First Green council undertakes energy revolution

Work is underway to radically boost energy from renewable sources produced in Brighton & Hove, the local authority led by a minority Green Party administration.In April, an independent scrutiny commission set up by the council called on the authority to help radically increase use of low-carbon power city-wide.Now a report, discussed at last week's Brighton and Hove cabinet meeting, has outlined

How Important Is Food In Determining Where You Travel? Hygiene?

I was 15 the first time I hit the road and hitchhiked from Brooklyn to Miami Beach. I had the wanderlust. It never left me. When I was 15 Florida seemed exotic-- and my grandparents were down there for Passover/Easter so I knew I'd have a (free) place to stay. Motivations and destination targeting has changed for me over the years. Delicious food is always an incentive when I think of going to Italy, Morocco, Turkey, France or Thailand. A poor cuisine or an unavailability of healthy food is always a detriment when I think about Egypt, Mongolia, Cuba and, oddly enough, China. (We decided to go to Mali anyway and managed to survive well enough... and then found an absolutely fantastic restaurant-- serving traditional food-- in Bamako.)

China? With it's world famous cuisine? Well, I have to say, I was just in Hong Kong for a few days and every meal was really excellent. I was also in Nepal and... well, no one goes there for the food. And the amebic dysentery I picked up only lasted for 8 or 9 days. But China... David Sedaris put it so very elegantly in the Guardian this past weekend:

I have to go to China." I told people this in the way I might say, "I need to insulate my crawl space" or, "I've got to get these moles looked at." That's the way it felt, though. Like a chore. What initially put me off was the food. I'll eat it if the alternative means starving, but I've never looked forward to it, not even when it seemed exotic to me.

...I think it hurt that, before landing in China, Hugh and I spent a week in Tokyo, where the food was, as always, sublime, everything so delicate and carefully presented. With meals I drank tea, which leads me to another great thing about Japan-- its bathrooms. When I was younger they wouldn't have mattered so much. Then I hit 50 and found that I had to pee all the time. In Tokyo, every subway station has a free public men's room. The floors and counters are aggressively clean and beside each urinal is a hook for hanging your umbrella.

This was what I had grown accustomed to when we flew from Narita to Beijing International, where the first thing one notices is what sounds like a milk steamer, the sort a cafe uses when making lattes and cappuccinos. "That's odd," you think. "There's a coffee bar on the elevator to the parking deck?" What you're hearing, that incessant guttural hiss, is the sound of one person, and then another, dredging up phlegm, seemingly from the depths of his or her soul. At first you look over, wondering, "Where are you going to put that?" A better question, you soon realise, is, "Where aren't you going to put it?"

I saw wads of phlegm glistening like freshly shucked oysters on staircases and escalators. I saw them frozen into slicks on the sidewalk and oozing down the sides of walls. It often seemed that if people weren't spitting, they were coughing without covering their mouths, or shooting wads of snot out of their noses. This was done by plugging one nostril and using the other as a blowhole. "We Chinese think it's best just to get it out," a woman told me over dinner one night. She said that, in her opinion, it's disgusting that a westerner would use a handkerchief and then put it back into his pocket.

"Well, it's not for sentimental reasons," I told her. "We don't hold on to our snot for ever. The handkerchief's mainly a sanitary consideration."

Another thing one notices in China is the turds. "Oh please," you're probably thinking. "Must you?"

To this I answer, "Yes, I must", for if they didn't affect the food itself, they affected the way I thought about it. In Tokyo, I once saw a dog pee on the sidewalk. Then its owner reached into a bag, pulled out a bottle of water and rinsed the urine off the pavement. As for dog faeces, I never saw any trace of them. In Beijing, you see an overwhelming amount of shit. Some of it can be blamed on pets, but a lot of it comes from people. Chinese babies do without diapers, wearing instead these strange little pants with a slit in the rear. When a child has to go, its parents direct it towards the kerb or, if they're indoors, to a spot they think of as "kerby." "Last month I saw a kid shit in the produce aisle of our Chengdu Walmart," a young woman named Bridget told me.

This was the seventh day of my visit and so desensitised was I that my first response was, "You have a Walmart?"

There are the wild outdoor turds of China, and then there are the ones you see in the public bathrooms, most of which feature those squat-style toilets, holes, basically, level with the floor. And these bathrooms, my God. The sorriest American gas station cannot begin to match one of these things.

In the men's room of a Beijing subway station, I watched a man walk past the urinal, lift his three-year-old son into the air and instruct him to pee into the sink-- the one we were supposed to wash our hands in.

My trip reminded me that we are all just animals, that stuff comes out of every hole we have, no matter where we live or how much money we've got. On some level we all know this and manage, quite pleasantly, to shove it towards the back of our minds. In China, it's brought to the front, and nailed there. The supermarket cashier holds out your change and you take it thinking, "This woman squats and spits on the floor while shitting and blowing snot out of her nose." You think it of the cab driver, of the ticket taker and, finally, of the people who are cooking and serving your dinner. Which brings me back to food.

If someone added a pinch of human faeces to my scrambled eggs, I may not be able to detect it but I would most likely realise that these particular eggs taste different from the ones I had yesterday. That's with something familiar, though. And there wasn't a lot of familiar in China. No pork lo mein or kung pao chicken, and definitely no egg rolls. On our first night in Chengdu, we joined a group of four for dinner – one Chinese woman and three westerners. The restaurant was not fancy, but it was obviously popular. Built into our table was a simmering cauldron of broth, into which we were to add side dishes and cook them until they were done. "I've taken the liberty of ordering us some tofu, some mushrooms and some duck tongues," said the western woman sitting across from me. "Do you trust me to keep ordering, or is there anything in particular you might like?"

I looked at her thinking, "You whore!" Catherine was English and had lived in China for close to 20 years. I figured the duck tongues were a sort of test, so I made it a point to look unfazed. Excited even.

When I was eventually forced to eat one, I found that it actually wasn't so bad. The only disconcerting part was the shape, particularly the base, from which dangled tentacle-like roots. This reminded one that the tongues had not been cut off but, rather, yanked out, possibly with pliers. Of course the duck was probably dead by then, wasn't it? It's not as if they'd jerk out the tongue and then let it go, traumatised and quackless but otherwise whole.
It was while eating my second duck tongue that the man at the next table hacked up a loud wad of phlegm and spat it on to the floor. "I think I'm done," I said.

The following morning, and with a different group, Hugh and I took a drive to the mountain where tea originally came from. It was late January, and the two-hour trip took us past countless factories. Mustard-coloured smoke drifted into the sky and the rivers we passed ran thick with waste and rubbish. Eventually we hit snow, which improved things visually but made it harder to move about. By the time we headed back down the mountain, it was almost three. Most restaurants had quit serving lunch, so we stopped at what's called a Farming Family Happiness. This is a farmhouse where, if they're in the mood, the people who live there will cook and serve you a meal.

One of the members of our party was a native of Chengdu, and of the five Americans, everyone but Hugh and I spoke Mandarin. Thus we hung back as they negotiated with the farm wife, who was square-faced and pretty and wore her hair cut into bangs. We ate in what was normally the mah jong parlour, a large room overlooking the family's tea field. Against one wall were two televisions, each tuned to a different channel and loudly playing to no one. On the other wall was a sanitation grade-- C-- and the service grade, which was a smiley face with the smile turned upside down.

As far as I know there wasn't a menu. Rather, the family worked at their convenience, with whatever was handy or in season. There was a rooster parading around the backyard and then there just wasn't. After the cook had slit its throat, he used it as the base for five separate dishes, one of which was a dreary soup with two feet, like inverted salad tongs, sticking out of it. Nothing else was nearly as recognisable.

I'm used to standard butchering: here's the leg, the breast, etc. At the Farming Family Happiness, rather than being carved, the rooster was senselessly hacked, as if by a blind person, a really angry one with a thing against birds. Portions were reduced to shards, mostly bone, with maybe a scrap of meat attached. These were then combined with cabbage and some kind of hot sauce.

Another dish was made entirely of organs, which again had been hacked beyond recognition. The heart was there, the lungs, probably the comb and intestines as well. I don't know why this so disgusted me. If I was a vegetarian, OK, but if you're a meat eater, why draw these arbitrary lines? "I'll eat the thing that filters out toxins but not the thing that sits on top of the head, doing nothing?" And why agree to eat this animal and not that one?

I remember reading a few years ago about a restaurant in the Guangdong province that was picketed and shut down because it served cat. The place was called The Fangji Cat Meatball Restaurant, which isn't exactly hiding anything. Go to Fangji and you pretty much know what you're getting. My objection to cat meatballs is not that I have owned several cats, and loved them, but that I try not to eat things that eat meat. Like most westerners I tend towards herbivores, and things that like grain: cows, chickens, sheep, etc. Pigs eat meat-- a pig would happily eat a human-- but most of the pork we're privy to was raised on corn or horrible chemicals rather than other pigs and dead people.

There are distinctions among the grazing animal eaters as well. People who like lamb and beef, at least in north America, tend to draw the line at horse, which in my opinion is delicious. The best I've had was served at a restaurant in Antwerp, a former stable called, cleverly enough, The Stable. Hugh was right there with me, and though he ate the same thing I did, he practically wept when someone in China mentioned eating sea horses. "Oh, those poor things," he said. "How could you?"

I went, "Huh?"

It's like eating poultry but taking a moral stand against those chocolate chicks they sell at Easter. "A sea horse is not related to an actual horse," I said. "They're fish, and you eat fish all the time. Are you objecting to this one because of its shape?"

He said he couldn't eat sea horses because they were friendly and never did anyone any harm, this as opposed to those devious, bloodthirsty lambs whose legs we so regularly roast with rosemary and new potatoes.

The dishes we had at the Farming Family Happiness were meant to be shared, and as the pretty woman with the broad face brought them to the table, the man across from me beamed and reached for his chopsticks. "You know," he said, "this country might have its ups and downs but it is virtually impossible to get a bad meal here."

I didn't say anything.

Another of the dishes that day consisted of rooster blood. I'd thought it would be liquid, like V8 juice, but when cooked it coagulated into little pads that had the consistency of tofu. "Not bad," said the girl seated beside me, and I watched as she slid one into her mouth. Jill was American, a Peace Corps volunteer who'd come to Chengdu to teach English. "In Thailand last year? I ate dog face," she told me.

"Just the face?"

"Well, head and face." She was in a small village, part of a team returning abducted girls to their parents. To show their gratitude, the locals prepared a feast. Dog was considered good eating. The head was supposedly the best part, and rather than offend her hosts, Jill ate it.

This, for many, is flat-out evil but the rest of the world isn't like America, where it's become virtually impossible to throw a dinner party. One person doesn't eat meat, while another is lactose intolerant, or can't digest wheat. You have vegetarians who eat fish and others who won't touch it. Then there are vegans, macrobiotics and a new group, flexitarians, who eat meat if not too many people are watching. Take that into consideration and it's actually rather refreshing that a 22-year-old from the suburbs of Detroit will pick up her chopsticks and at least try the shar pei.

I'd like to be more like Jill, but in China something kept holding me back. In clean, sophisticated Japan the rooster blood, arranged upon a handmade plate between the perfect, tempura snow pea and a radish carved to look like a first trimester foetus, would have seemed a fine idea. "We ought to try making this at home," I'd have said to Hugh. Here, though, I thought of the sanitation grade, and of the rooster, pecking maggots out of human faeces before being killed. Most of the restaurants in China to me smelled dirty, though what I was smelling was likely some unfamiliar ingredient, and I was allowing the things I'd seen earlier in the day-- the spitting and snot blowing, etc-- to fill in the blanks.

Then again, maybe not.

While on our trip we ate at normal, everyday places, and sometimes bought food on the street. Our only expensive meal was in Beijing, where we went alone to a fancy restaurant recommended by an acquaintance. The place was located in an old warehouse and had been lavishly decorated. There was a wine expert and someone whose job it was to drop by every three minutes and refill your water glass. We had the Peking duck, which was expertly carved rather than hacked and was served with little pancakes. Towards the end of the meal, I stepped into the men's room to pee and there, disintegrating in the western-style toilet, was an unflushed turd, a little reminder saying, "See, you're still in China!"

Back at the table I asked for the bill. Then I remembered where I was and amended it to "the check". In France, you can die waiting to pay for your meal, which is something I've never understood. "How can they not want me out of here?" I'll think. Ten minutes might pass. Then 20, me watching as the waiter does everything but accept my goddamn money.

I'll say that for China, though-- offer to pay and before you can stab a rooster with a rusty screwdriver someone has taken you up on it. I think they want to catch you before you get sick, but whatever the reason, within minutes you're back on the street, searching the blighted horizon and wondering where your next meal might be coming from.

Asian culture doesn't subscribe to the germ theory. I'll never forget the first time, decades ago, I visited Thailand and watched our beautiful, smiling waitress coming towards us with a huge platter of delicious looking food. She sneezed all over it, and kept smiling beautifully as she served us. My friend Digby, who lived in Thailand for many years, suggests you kill whatever bacteria you can by using plenty of hot sauce... on everything.

Thailand-- The Monks vs The Katoeys

Thailand has the most wide-open sex trade scene I've ever observed in any country I've visited. I suspect it's why Thailand gets so many millions of tourists every year, tourists from every corner of the world. And now, not just tourists from every corner of the world, but-- a new thing as far as I can tell-- prostitutes from every corner of the world. Russian, Eastern European and African prostitutes are now competing with the native ones in Bangkok's Pat Pong district-- which is, at least superficially, more like a Disneyland than a traditional red-light district. Even without the sex trade, Thailand is one of the most beautiful, varied and rewarding destinations anyone could hope to find anywhere. But, like I said, I suspect all those elderly European single men and determined Arabs aren't in Bangkok to visit Wat Po or sample royal court cuisine. I was a little dubious when Roland told me he saw Russian girls working as "hostesses" in the Pat Pong "bars." A few days later I saw a "masseuse" from Romania offering his services at a gentleman's club in a more staid part of town, the "boy's town" gay bars in Pat Pong long ago having lost any allure for all but those looking for laughs.

In the video above, you see something about how Thais are more accepting of a "gender-bending" approach than red state Americans. But that doesn't mean that it's all clear sailing for Thai katoeys, or ladyboys. Yesterday I found this story about Thai monks trying to teach maleness to ladyboys.

The 15-year-old aspiring "ladyboy" delicately applied a puff of talcum powder to his nose-- an act of rebellion at the Thai Buddhist temple where he is learning to "be a man."

"They have rules here that novice monks cannot use powder, make-up, or perfume, cannot run around and be girlish," said Pipop Thanajindawong, who was sent to Wat Kreung Tai Wittaya, in Chiang Khong on the Thai-Laos border, to tame his more feminine traits.

But the monks running the temple's programme to teach masculinity to boys who are "katoeys," the Thai term for transsexuals or ladyboys, have their controversial work cut out.

"Sometimes we give them money to buy snacks but he saved it up to buy mascara," headteacher Phra Pitsanu Witcharato said of Pipop.

Novice monks' days pass as in any other temple-- waking before dawn, collecting alms and studying Buddhism-- but every Friday attention turns to the katoeys at the attached school.

"Were you born as a man or a woman or can you not specify your gender-- not man or woman?" asked Phra Pitsanu at a recent assembly. "You cannot be anything else but your true gender, which is a man. As a novice you can only be a man."

The temple has a stricter interpretation than others of rules governing behaviour during Buddhist training that is a key childhood experience for many Thai boys.

Pupils are banned from using perfume and make-up and prohibited from singing, playing music and running.

"We cannot change all of them but what we can do is to control their behavior to make them understand that they were born as a man... and cannot act like a woman," said Phra Pitsanu.

The Kreung Tai temple has run the course for boys aged between 11 and 18 since 2008, after former principle Phra Maha Vuthichai Vachiramethi devised the programme because he thought reports of katoeys in the monkhood had "affected the stability of Thai Buddhism."

He told AFP that he hopes the teaching methods will be rolled out to other temple schools to "solve the deviant behavior in novices."

It is an attitude that enrages gay rights and diversity campaigner Natee Teerarojanapong, who said trying to alter the boys' sense of gender and sexuality was "extremely dangerous."

"These kids will become self-hating because they have been taught by respected monks that being gay is bad. That is terrible for them. They will never live happily," he told AFP.

Gay and katoey culture is visible and widely tolerated in Thailand, which has one of the largest transsexual populations in the world, and Natee said the temple's programme is "very out of date."

But Phra Atcha Apiwanno, 28, disputed the idea that society accepted ladyboys and said he joined the monkhood because of social stigma about his sexual identity.

"The reason I became a monk is to train my habits, to control my expression... I didn't want to be like this," he told AFP.

Monks have had limited success in their project-- three of the six ladyboys to have graduated from the school are said to have embraced their masculinity, but the remaining three went on to have sex changes.

Pipop said he has struggled with his sexuality at the temple.

At home in Bangkok he dressed like a girl, putting on make-up and taking hormones until he developed breasts, but he has since stopped the treatment and wears only a surreptitious dab of powder at the temple.

He does not believe he will live up to his family's hopes that he will become more manly.

"I can make them proud even I'm not a man," the teenager said, adding he had given up his ambition to be an airhostess and now aspires to work in a bank.

He thinks he will have a sex change after graduation.

"Once I leave the monkhood the first thing I want to do is to shout, to scream out loud saying: 'I can go back to being the same again!'"

Young Greens host 'Just Do It'

As part of its nationwide release, 'Just Do It' is coming to Stratford, and following the film's screening, the London Young Greens will be hosting a question and answer session and discussion about the film and the relationship between politics and activism alongside members of UK Uncut and the film's production team. The film is showing at Stratford Picturehouse (Gerry Raffles Square, Salway

Tell Vedanta to stop attack on Dongria Kondh

Why: In August 2010 India's Dongria Kondh tribe won a historic victory when Vedanta's plans to mine in the Niyamgiri Hills were stopped by the government. But that success is currently under threat from a challenge in India's Supreme Court. We will be at the AGM to tell Vedanta - and its shareholders and investors - that resistance to the mine is still strong, and that it's time to stop trying to

Saving the Earth = Mother Rights!

Saving the Earth will take more than merely adjusting our actions—polluting less here, conserving more there, moving toward sustainability within the confines of today’s prevailing worldview.To really declare our commitment to protecting the rights of nature, we must change how we think about the world itself and our place within it. This means taking a fresh look at nature, learning from its

Gordon Brown rinses Murdoch.

Gordon Brown has gone up in my estimation quite astonishingly.The Murdoch Empire may fall but we slaves all need to give it a little push if we are to be free.Did you know that people are shoplifting the Sun such is the disgust at stealing Gordon Brown's sons medical records, the hacking of murder victim Milly Dowler's phone and that the protests are spreading to the USA and Australia.The end of

Anonymous targets RBS and Exxon

Anoymous have shifted from fighting Scientology to attacking the tar sands companies who threaten our collective future.Please spread the word! The war against the crab continuesAnonymous statement hereTarmeggedonFree-thinking citizens of the world:Anonymous' Operation Green Rights calls your attention to an urgent situation in North America perpetuated by the boundless greed of the usual

Our war against Ugkaju

“Formerly, when animals were people, a giant crab, called Ugkaju, commanded an army composed of ants and fish that killed the strongest warriors, than were the tigers, vixens and birds as the paujil and the pava of the mount.Ugkaju struck the water with its clamp forming floods that drowned the people. The warriors could not defeat it. Finally, the weakest animal met to plan an attack. They were

Debbie Fink news on returning Green Party activists from Israel

Just had this about the activists held in Israel from Debbie Fink, incidentally big shout out to all the Jewish Socialist Group comrades, etc from me!Dear all,I've been informed that all but three British activists will be deported tonight on the EasyJet flight EZY 2086, scheduled to land at Luton Airport at 23.55 tonight. The other three had refused to go. Pippa Bartolotti is among them, as I

Political statement of the Broad Front of People’s Resistance Frente Amplio de Resistencia Popular (FARP)

News from Honduras, workers, indigenous, farmers getting organised for socialism, democracy, ecology, human rights....Political statement of the Broad Front of People’s ResistanceFrente Amplio de Resistencia Popular (FARP) We want reconciliation but do not find any will; we demand freedom for political prisoners and an end to persecution. We want JUSTICE; we are going to sue the material and

FIFA must condemn Nigerian anti-lesbian witch-hunt

really pisses me off homophobia and general LGBT persecution, not good, just had this from Peter. Flashmob protest planned for Wednesday 13 July in Frankfurt London – 12 July 2011 The international gay rights pressure group – www.AllOut.org - has called on FIFA to publicly condemn homophobia in football, starting with a full investigation of the Nigerian Women’s Football Coach, Eucharia Uche, for

Some good news from Australia, 24 hour solar.

24-hour solar power: here and nowSaturday, July 9, 2011Spain's Gemasolar concentrated solar thermal power plant.It’s the best news on climate change for years, and you’ve probably not heard about it.Spain’s new Gemasolar power plant produced uninterrupted clean energy all day and all night for the first time on July 3. That’s 24 hours of zero emissions power, here and now.Gemasolar is a

Mark Northfield 'The Death of Copyright'

Mark is a member of my local Green Party!

Caroline Lucas speaks out on Green Party prisoners in Israel

Several British citizens, including Pippa Bartolotti, Deputy Leader of the Wales Green Party, have been detained in Israel this weekend while en route to Bethlehem for a human rights demonstration.The group was held at Ben Gurion airport and were then transferred to Givon Prison. It remains unclear under what legislation they are being held, and whether any charges have been brought.There are

Marxman 'Ship Ahoy'

Pure class!Enjoy!

When To Go-- Worth Paying Attention To

You know how standard travel guides always have a little chapter or subchapter towards the front about when the right time to visit is? There's a reason it's always there and there's a reason it's in the beginning and, most of all, there's a reason we need to pay attention. The first time I was in Bangkok it was in the summer. I mean summer's a good time for a vacation, right? Yeah, but not there. And not Kathmandu either. I sore I'd never visit either in the summer again-- but I just got home from a trip to both.

The trip didn't start out that way. It started out as a trip to Tibet with a stopover in Kathmandu on the way and a stopover in Bangkok on the way home. Two weeks out the government of China, the occupying power in Tibet, suddenly canceled all foreign visas. The smart thing at that point would have been to just cancel the whole trip... or change it to a trip to Ethiopia, a country of eternal spring. But... well who doesn't love Kathmandu?

In 1971, the first time I visited, it really was like some kind of a Shangri-La with a hippie tinge. That was then. Even in the early '90s, the last time I was there, it was still fascinating and worthwhile. A lot has changed. For example it used to not be all that polluted, let alone the most polluted city on earth. And last time I was there it was during an invigorating December. Summers in Kathmandu are steamy, rainy and muddy. It's monsoon season, not a good time to visit. More to the point, Kathmandu's many charms-- balanced with the inconveniences-- is probably best savored just once. It's not a place for a casual tourist to go over and over, not like, say, Bali or Paris.

The best times we had on the trip were all outside the city-- visiting nearby Bhaktipur and Patan and, better yet, trekking in the mountains. I know sloshing around in the mud up in the mountains during a monsoon might not sound wonderful, but it actually was. Being lost, wandering around on unmarked paths at the top of the world, coming across little villages and spectacular temples where no one spoke a word of English except small children has its own special charm. And we had high rubber boots. It doesn't make any sense to visit Nepal without trekking. The Darbar Squares are all nice (photo of me up top at the Patan Darbar Square) but the mountains are what Nepal's really all about. Just avoid the leeches... and better to go when it's not monsoon season.

The civil war drove a million rural people into Kathmandu. There's been no increase in infrastructure. So it's too crowded and verging on uninhabitable. Another big difference is that the tourists aren't western hippies any more. The tourists are now basically all from India and China. And the tourist trade caters to them and to their tastes. It's a big change. Asia's changing that way. It's not as overwhelming in Bangkok because there are so many tourists there and it's such a major cosmopolitan city. But that's also a place best visited during our winter. In the summer, the weather is unbearable. It's sweltering hot and the humidity is beyond anything in Houston at its worst. You step outside and you're soaked in sweat within minutes. And then if you go inside anything-- a building, a taxi, a train... it's bone-chillingly freezing and deadly dry. No one understands the settings on the AC between zero and 10. It's always 10. So you're never dressed properly. Outdoors you want as little clothing as possible. Inside you need to be bundled up. December is the best time to visit, when it's still warm but not sweltering and the skies aren't prone to open up and release sheets of rain every now and then the way they do during the summer.

A very short opera entitled 'Never Buy the Sun'

Urban Gadabout: Newark Bay or bust! (Is there anyone else whose pulse is sent racing by the prospect?)

A nice overview of the waters in and around New York City (which is in light gray), pretty much all really inlets of the Atlantic Ocean: 1. Hudson River; 2. East River, though the number indicates the wilder upper portion, which has more in common with -- 3. Long Island Sound, to the east (between Long Island and Connecticut); 4. Newark Bay; 5. Upper New York Bay, and on the other side of the Verrazano Narrows -- 6. Lower New York Bay; 7. Jamaica Bay (that big purple splotch along its shore being JFK Airport); 8. Atlantic Ocean. Newark Bay (4) connects via the Kill Van Kull (to the northwest of Staten Island) to the Upper Bay and via the Arthur Kill (to the southwest of Staten Island) to Raritan Bay, at the bottom-left corner of the map.

by Ken

Here's the news in a nutshell: a New York Harbor tour that targets . . . Newark Bay!

I realize it's a pretty small subset of readers who will share even a fraction of my excitement about this news. Newark Bay? The more or less inland harbor -- hidden from view from the outer coast by the big land blob that is Staten Island -- that is the, the industrial hub of North Jersey? Would it help to think of it as the maritime heart of Sopranos country?

It's still not exactly glamorous, but Newark Bay is now where the hottest action of New York Harbor, since despite its remove from the open ocean, thanks to diligent dredging of the Kill Van Kull and Arthur Kill, its outlets to that ocean, it can handle all many of the larger ocean-going freight vessels, and its western shore gives them access to the North American mainland, a major saving in shipping costs.

Maybe it's just this thing I've developed, this late-life fascination with the real geography of the harbor,now going beyond the obvious part that's on display from the Battery (the southern edge of Manhattan Island) and from the New York City Department of Transportation's gift to harbor hounds, the Staten Island Ferry. That's the Upper Harbor, 5 on the map --

* lying between Manhattan to the north, Brooklyn to the east, Staten Island to the south, and New Jersey (north to south: Hoboken, Jersey City, and Bayonne) on the west;

* with Governors Island sitting just south of Manhattan and east of Brooklyn, and with Liberty and Ellis Islands just east of the New Jersey coast;

* and with the Hudson River projecting north on the west side of Manhattan, separating it from New Jersey;

* and the East River to the east of Manhattan, separating it from Brooklyn (spanned in these lower reaches by the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges) and as it continues northward separating Manhattan and the Bronx from Queens;

* and just visible from standard Upper Bay outposts, the Kill Van Kull separating Staten Island on the northwest from New Jersey (with views from some angles of the Bayonne Bridge over the kill);

Nowadays there seem to be all sorts of boats cruising the upper harbor, and I've done those tours. Mostly, though, they seem to be about what you do besides harbor-viewing, like dinner, or brunch, or fireworks (or sailing on a yacht, or a sailboat, or . . .). In the summer there's now free ferry service to Governors Island. (In fact I'm headed to Governors Island tomorrow.)

I've been trying to fill in my picture of the harbor and the coastline. To the east I did my pilgrimage to Plum Beach, Brooklyn (on Rockaway Inlet, more or less midway between 6 and 7), to observe horseshoe crabs with Urban Park Ranger Andrew. Farther east I took advantage of an Urban Park Rangers walk along Rockaway Beach, and still farther east there was a Shorewalkers walk along Jones Beach.

Farther up the East River, I seized the opportunity of a Municipal Art Society walk to get a close-up view, and actually walk over, Newtown Creek, which forms four-plus miles of the border between Brooklyn (to the south) and Queens (to the North), the NYC boroughs that occupy the western end of Long Island.

For the harbor itself, for Jane's Walk weekend in May, the tour I chose took me to the north shore of Staten Island, with a good view of the working harbor, even on a Sunday -- you're reminded that ships don't get "days off" while they're at sea and under intense pressure to make their schedules), including my best view as of then of the Kill Van Kull separating Staten Island and New Jersey, including a pretty good view of the Bayonne Bridge spanning the kill.

By now it should be clear that a major role in the geography of the southern part of the harbor is played by Staten Island, and for that reason, and also for my shocking ignorance of this borough of the city of New York, I've been undertaking a sort of crash course in Staten Island, taking advantage of Municipal Arts Society tours to Snug Harbor, on the Kill Van Kull shore (though we didn't get much of a view of the water): Tottenville, on Raritan Bay, at the southern tip of the island (to which I recently returned for the Second Annual Raritan Bay Festival), and Stapleton Heights. (In fact, I'm about to head out to an MAS tour of the budding cultural scene in Staten Island's St. George.)

In my mind, at least, all of this was pointing me toward -- what else? -- Newark Bay, but I honestly had no idea how I might tackle it as a destination. That is, until I was, as usual, perusing the week's listings in Time Out New York and found myself staring at this listing:

Hidden Harbor Tour: Newark Bay Tour

South Street Seaport, Pier 16, Tue 6:15pm. Fulton St (at South St)
(866) 977-6998circlelinedowntown.com
Subway: A, C to Broadway-Nassau St; J, M, Z, 2, 3, 4, 5 to Fulton StGet directions
$29, seniors $22, children $15

As one of three of its New York Harbor tours, this trip around Newark Bay on Circle Line's Zephyr includes views of the Red Hook Container Terminal and Bayonne Bridge, a passage through Kill Van Kull, which divdes Staten Island and New Jersey, and an exploration of the busy container ports across the water.

Sure enough, the Circle Line Downtown website lists the three Hidden Harbor Tours:

Tour 1 - The Newark Bay Tour
Feauturing the Kill Van Kull, Bayonne Bridge and The Giant Container Ports of Newark Bay

Tour 2 - The Brooklyn Tour
Featuring Brooklyn's Maritime Heritage & Future - Brooklyn Navy Yard to Sunset Park

Tour 3- North River Tour
The Changing Waterfront of North River - Passengers Ships to Kayaks

There are much more detailed descriptions of each onsite. Still-to-come dates for the Newark Bay Tour, in addition to July 12, are August 9 and September 13; for the Brooklyn Tour, July 26 and September 27; and for the North River Tour, August 23. If there was any financial advantage to booking all three tours, which I was certainly prepared to do, I couldn't find any trace of any, but you better believe I went ahead and booked Tuesday's epic trip to Newark Bay.

Luckily for me, I work within walking distance of Pier 16, so with just a little fudging I'll be able to make that 6:15 departure. I've already printed my ticket, but I'm still supposed to be there 30 minutes before departure time. Can you tell that I'm excited?

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A bill of rights for irradiated citizens

Nuclear Power Irradiated CitizensBill of Rights1. All planned releases of radioactive gases or liquids, no matter what level of radioactivity, will be announced to surrounding communities prior to the release.2. All radioactive releases will be monitored in detail and the data from those releases including quantity of all radionuclides, wind direction and duration of releases will be published

Aidesep say 'don't kill our brothers and sisters!'

Autonomous indigenous brothers and sisters, mislabeled in isolation or notcontacted, and Initial Contact depend on their territory for subsistence andare highly vulnerable to rapprochement with outsiders because they do not have thebody defenses to fight disease easily transmitted outside thesame may be common and easily treated for the rest of thesociety.Aidesep the inter ethnic association of

Ed Miliband should take the train

A lot of my friends are off to the Durham Miners Gala, my heart goes with them, its one of the premier labour movement events.One person who wouldn't be there is Labour Party leader Ed Miliband.Scared of the Murdoch press and the Daily Mail he refused to go.Too scared to move an even an inch, he will be buried like the News of the World.Sad but true, in Britain the right are powerful and the

Impossible triangle

Impossible triangle  

by Gosia Wudarska (Goggie)  

http://im-possible.info/english/art/computer/gosia-wudarska.html

790 impossible figures in the Figures Library

http://im-possible.info/english/library/grey/grey79.html

Artwork 24 by Tamas Farkas

http://im-possible.info/english/art/various/farkas.html#024

Salma Yaqoob resigns as councillor

Really sad to see this, I have known for some time that Salma has been ill. If I was a praying person I would pray for her.One of very few really impressive UK political figures.Caroline Lucas and Salma have been mutually supportive which is something that I have also been inspired by.Get well soon Salma we need you!This week I told party members, friends and supporters of my decision to resign

Labour Party and Green Party issue joint statement against EDL

oh and here's some classic Marxman, my music does not mean its endorsed by Lab or GreensCambridge Labour Party and the Green Party have issued a statement rejecting the views of the English Defence League.The two parties, whose members, who will be joining the counter march, protesting against the far-right group this Saturday (July 9), said: “As Cambridge councillors we do not welcome the

Bob Crow fight for Bombardier jobs

Who you going to call, Ed Miliband.........don't think he would have much muscle in a fight for jobs.UNIONS REPRESENTING the Bombardier workforce in Derby confirmed today that they will be mobilising a mass demonstration on Saturday 23rd July in the city in protest at plans to axe over 1400 jobs as a result of the Governments’ refusal to award the company the Thameslink carriage contract.Details

H. Maagd met Kind, door de familie Hollstein welbemind

H. Maagd met Kind, door de familie Hollstein welbemind  by Jos de Mey  http://im-possible.info/english/art/mey/mey12.html#108

Advertising posters of Şok Discount Market

http://im-possible.info/english/art/advertising/sok.html

Ed Miliband admits he is Rupert Murdoch's bitch

Bring on the clones!Ed is on the way out but I no question that the New Labour leader will be loyal to Rupert Murdoch.The fact that Ed is boycotting the Durham Miners Gala says it all.This is worth a read,Ed Miliband’s reneging on a commitment to speak at the Durham Miners Gala looks like a timid attempt by the leadership to distance itself from the trade unions and the working class. Such an

Keith Taylor's Bees

Rather liked this from Green World, the Green Party Magazine about Keith Taylor, who took over from Caroline Lucas as our South East MEP after Caroline Lucas was elected to parliament.There’s a crisis in the world of bees...Between 1985 and 2005 the number of honeybees in the UK halved. Colonies disappearing is a real and significant threat, not only to honey production but also to the production

‘Where will the lower orders buy their Christmas presents?’

Your new book is called Chavs:The Demonization of the Working Class. Can you briefly explain where the term ‘chavs’ comes from, what it is supposed to represent, and who is using it?The word ‘chav’ comes from the Romani word ‘chavi’, which means ‘child’. When it first entered the Collins English Dictionary in 2005, it was defined as a ‘young working-class person who dresses in casual sports

Agent Orange being used to clear Amazon

Wonder if Rory Carroll is having a nice time sitting next to the pool, a well, lets get on to some news:Agent Orange is one of the most devastating weapons of modern warfare, a chemical which killed or injured an estimated 400,000 people during the Vietnam War -- and now it's being used against the Amazon rainforest. According to officials, ranchers in Brazil have begun spraying the highly toxic

Ray-gun killer statue shames London

A Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Briefing 4 July 2011According to Baroness Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, whose statue was unveiled outside the US Embassy in London today, was responsible for ‘winning the Cold War without firing a shot.’However, behind the cosy facade of the great statesman and communicator who ended the Cold War was a man whose ideologically-driven foreign policy, uncluttered

Commemorative coins with M.C. Escher portrait

http://im-possible.info/english/art/escher/coins.html

Guardian correspondent writes 'advertisement features' for human rights abuser

Alvaro Uribe's methods and allegiances have been criticised, but Colombians are simply happy that, under his regime, there is relative peace and security - at least for now. Rory Carroll joined him on a typical working day.Surely, for the sake of the Guardian's credibility, now is the time to relieve Carroll of his duties and let him to what he does best; composing 'advertisement features' for

Artwork 23 by Tamas Farkas

http://im-possible.info/english/art/various/farkas.html#023

Chomsky denounces 'extreme dishonesty of the Guardian'

Indigenous people get killed in Colombia day after day.This is hardly news worthy to Rory Carroll, the Chavez dictator meme has instead to be reinforced day after day.Chavez is worthy of criticism but don't forget the agenda behind this, Chavez is a target because he challenges US hegemony and attacks elites when they attack indigenous people, farmers, etc.From: "Noam Chomsky" Date: 3 July 2011

Urban Gadabout: Inside the Revolutionary Apple with a co-author of "Inside the Apple"

James explained that the fence around Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan is not only one of the city's oldest surviving artifacts but a participant in some key historical events.

by Ken

Is there any traveler who hasn't become wholly dependent on the Internet? Whether it's for scouting destinations, gathering information, finding timetables, making reservations -- even for a humble urban gadabout, it's hard to imagine doing it these days without the staggering range of resources online.

Online is how I do essentially all of my planning with my "regular" tour providers, New York's Municipal Art Society, New York Transit Museum, and Urban Park Rangers. I'm so booked up for the summer that I have hardly a weekend "day off," and on a lot of those days I'm doubling up. Still, I'm aware that this only scratches the surface of what's available out there, so Friday, with a thinned-out schedule thinning for the 4h of July Weekend, I did some online searching, and stumbled onto, insidetheapple.net, the blog of Michelle and James Nevius, wife-and-husband authors of a combination history of New York and guidebook called Inside the Apple, and learned that on July 3rd James would be doing a "Revolutionary War Walking Tour" in Lower Manhattan, for which, as of a post from a couple of days previous, they still had places.

So I followed the instructions for e-mailing a reservation request and soon got back a confirmation, which left only the consideration of weather, which today started out dreadful, with intermittent heavy rain and overcast, and a not especially sunny forecast. Nevertheless, James sent out an e-mail to the reservation list expressing the hope that the storms would pass through by our scheduled assembly time, 4pm said, "Thus, I am going to be at the meeting place at 4PM to lead the tour and I do hope you will be too! Bring an umbrella, of course, and good humor, and I'm sure will have a great time."

So as soon as I finished puttering around with Bruno Walter and the Siegfried Idyll, I set out for Peter Minuit Plaza, in front of the Staten Island Ferry, and incredbily, just about the whole group of 25 walkers turned up. (As James pointed out, you're apt to get a bunch of no-shows even in perfect weather.)

And through intermittent, sometimes heavy rain, our hardy band trooped through a host of locales where way back in Revolutionary New York events of significance happened, though as is true of almost all of our two centuries of colonial history, first Dutch and then English, hardly anything except streets (and many street names) survives from that time. (A particular bête noire of James, we discovered, is the relative lack of attention that's been given to our four-century-old city's English century. Everybody loves the Dutch century, he points out, and of course the two centuries-plus since the Revolution are wildly popular. But the English century may be too closely connected with English rule, the city itself having been not just the site of the English military command but a center of Loyalist sympathy and activity.

James himself is wildly charming and personable, and an easygoing fount of information, so the tour was a resounding success. We wound up walking up Broad Street to the corner of Broad and Wall, and the Federal Hall that's not the Federal Hall where George Washington was inaugurated as our first president but occupies the same site (in much the way that what now passes for Fraunces Tavern, a famously favorite hangout of George Washington, is a re-creation of the building from Washington's time. Walkng up Broad Street we passed my office building, 20 Broad, and by then I had learned that there wasn't any great canal-like purpose to the canal that originally ran up the middle of Broad Street, as is described in the history of the street that's engraved in the new curbside that was created when the street was repaved with stones -- and security outposts -- from Beaver to Wall Streets a couple of years ago.

I was happy to buy a copy of Inside the Apple from James (I like the idea of a larger chunk of the purchase price going into the authors' pockets), and am just starting to get to know it. In an introductory note, Michelle and James explain:

The goal of Inside the Apple is to give you a different pathway into the city's long and rich history. While there are many books that focus on New York's notable events and famous people, ours is instead organized around the places where those events took place. By grounding the narrative in sites that you can see and visit, we provide concrete, tangible, connections between the city of today and its intriguing past.

People have long tried to answer the question: What makes New York unique? We feel the answer is deceptively simple: more than any other American city, it is primarily experienced on foot. . . .

As this suggests, the history-based narrative is grounded in places, with lots of cross-referencing to related chapters, and there are 14 full-fledged walking tours at the end. I'm looking forward to getting to know the book better.

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EARTH FIRST SUMMER GATHERING, EAST ANGLIA - 10-15 Aug

Got to love the bunnies, u pay you rent?At a rapid speed the earth is being torn up by human greed. Where therewere once wild untamed woodlands there are now mining machines. Wherethere was once clean water with fish running free, there are now damns andthe waste products of civilization. Where once non-human animals roamed invast numbers, there are now sprawling suburbs, motorways and

Elinor Ostrom 'an accidental life'

Here are my rough notes towards a biography of Professor Elinor Ostrom, only women to win a Nobel Prize for economics and if you ask me about the only economist to ask serious questions about the big stuff like propsperity, ecology, human freedom and collective choices.Rough, may have missed some references but enjoy, her really interesting life has helped shape her economics.ha and lovely

Danger In Thailand?

Saturday night Pat Pong was was relatively quiet. Like all bars in Thailand, Bangkok's tourist-oriented, even Disneyland-like, red light district wasn't serving alcohol... and many of the hostesses and hosts were back in their hometowns to vote Sunday. Sunday is election day.

Sunday voting is a great idea-- working people have the day off-- something American conservatives have always adamantly opposed as a way of holding down participation from the poorer classes. Here in Thailand voting goes 'til 3pm. Public transportation in Bangkok is free of charge Sunday between 6AM and 4pm to encourage voters. Online political messages were banned after 6pm Saturday. Vote buying is widespread. [A 100 baht note is about $3.00.]

Police stepped up efforts to crack down on vote-buying Saturday and arrested three people in Samut Prakan and Maha Sarakham provinces suspected of involvement in the practice.

Somjai Uan-takhop, 55, a grocer in Samut Prakan's Muang district, was arrested for allegedly handing two 100 baht bank notes to Anusorn Thongkon, 51, and asking him to vote for a major political party, according to Samut Prakan police inspector Sonchai Empradit.

In Maha Sarakham, special branch police arrested Thongphoon Sriyowong, who they said was found carrying 64 100 baht bank notes.

Acting on information provided by the suspect, officers then seized a pickup truck containing about 4,000 100 baht bank notes, a pistol and a book with lists of canvassers' and voters' names, and leaflets profiling an MP candidate.

Mrs Thongphoon, a resident of Muang district, allegedly confessed that she received the 6,400 baht cash from three men in a pickup truck.

...The Australian and British embassies have issued travel advisories for Thailand due to concerns over the possibility of unrest and violence during and after the election and the formation of the next government.

The Australian embassy in Bangkok advised its nationals in Thailand to exercise a high degree of caution.

"There is a possibility of civil unrest and violence in the period surrounding the election and formation of a new government," said a message posted on the embassy's website.

"The political situation remains unpredictable after the last April-May incident and further political unrest and violence cannot be ruled out in Bangkok and other provinces," it added.

The British Embassy posted a travel advisory on its website on Friday regarding the "possibility of unrest in parts of Thailand during national elections."

"The Election Commission has until Aug 2 to confirm the election result. There remains a risk that political developments may lead to violence," it said.

Bangkok is an incredibly cosmopolitan city. Look around a Skytrain car and you always see people from every continent. If election season is a dangerous time, tourists and ex-pats don't seem to be paying any attention. Thais have a different perspective:



UPDATE: People Are Voting Now-- But Not Tweeting


Thai election law prohibits sales of alcohol and all political campaigning-- so not just Facebook and Twitter but the law covers the too-- from 6:00 pm the day before a vote until midnight of the election day, even though voting ends at 3pm.

Police on Saturday warned election candidates and citizens not to use web media such as Facebook or Twitter to campaign for the election-- or risk going to jail.

Thai policemen and officials give a final check to ballots and ballot boxes.

"Police will work with hundreds of ICT (information and communication technology) officials to monitor all types of social media activities after 6:00pm," said national police spokesman Major General Prawut Thavornsiri.

"Any candidates or even ordinary people who convince others to vote for someone face a six-month jail term or a 10,000-baht fine ($324) or both," he said.

Protest causes facebook to reverse ban on indigenous rapper

Indigenous rapper Caper says a backlash from his fans caused Facebook to reverse their banning of the video to his song "How Would You Like To Be Me?" (lyrics below).The song, which addresses racism in Australia, has enjoyed extensive radio airplay, becoming one of the most requested songs on Magic FM.The 30-year-old musician, otherwise known as Colin Darcy from Whyalla in South Australia, said

Colombian indigenous organization protests five killings in Antioch

Must blog up my encounter with Emma Reynolds MP, the Labour Shadow Foreign Office Minister for Latin America, who I challenged at last weeks Westminster post election Peru meeting. I told her how disgusted I was with her remark about 'the increasingly authoritarian Chavez' when the previous Labour government had cuddled up to Peru and Colombia where there was state complicity with death squads

The camera never lies?

The camera never lies?by Bern67  http://im-possible.info/english/art/montage/bern67.html

Intellectual club

http://im-possible.info/english/art/logotypes/page5.html#iclub

Coalition of Resistance conference, July 9th

RCoR national conference: 9 JulyUniversity of London Union 10am-5pmOur second National Conference will be the first opportunity since the pensions strike to take stock discuss the way forward. Plenary speakers will include PCS General secretary Mark Serwotka together with Zita Holbourne from the PCS executive [and BARAC] and NUT executive member Alex Kenny. All played important roles in ensuring

'dedicated to the common use of the pobladores'

I am enjoying reading Vincent Ostrom's Phd thesis, may not be your idea of fun, but Vince who was later to marry Elinor Ostrom, was already fascinated by commons in 1950.Here he looks at how the Spanish monarchy created common property, while I am a stern critic of the European invasion of North America and the destruction of indigenous and indigenous property rights, its still a fascinating