'Britain's ancient laws of blasphemy have been abolished by MPs'

Evangelists had tried to prosecute the director-general of the BBC over the controversial musical Jerry Springer – The Opera.

MPs voted to support the abolition of blasphemy in an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill.

This has now received Royal Assent, condemning the laws to history.

Maria Eagle, the junior justice minister, said in the debate: "These offences have now largely fallen into disuse and therefore run the risk of bringing the law into disrepute.

"Given that these laws protect only the tenets of the Christian Churches, they would appear to be plainly discriminatory."

But Edward Leigh, a Conservative MP, claimed their abolition would encourage more people to make fun of Christianity.

"Getting rid of the blasphemy law sends a message that that is OK, but it is insulting to many Christians," he said.

The last successful prosecution for blasphemy was in 1977, when the publisher of Gay News, Denis Lemon, was given a suspended sentence for printing a poem about a Roman centurion's love for Jesus.

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'Human identity, the idea that defines each and every one of us, could be facing an unprecedented crisis'

"What was truly astonishing was that the group who had merely imagined doing the piano exercises saw changes in brain structure that were almost as pronounced as those that had actually had lessons."

 

From: The REAL brain drain: Modern technology - including violent video games - is changing the way our brains work, says neuroscientist

 

" ...One vital fact I have learnt is that the brain is not the unchanging organ that we might imagine.

It not only goes on developing, changing and, in some tragic cases, eventually deteriorating with age, it is also substantially shaped by what we do to it and by the experience of daily life.

When I say "shaped", I'm not talking figuratively or metaphorically; I'm talking literally.

At a microcellular level, the infinitely complex network of nerve cells that make up the constituent parts of the brain actually change in response to certain experiences and stimuli.

The brain, in other words, is malleable - not just in early childhood but right up to early adulthood, and, in certain instances, beyond.

The surrounding environment has a huge impact both on the way our brains develop and how that brain is transformed into a unique human mind.

Of course, there's nothing new about that: human brains have been changing, adapting and developing in response to outside stimuli for centuries.

What prompted me to write my book is that the pace of change in the outside environment and in the development of new technologies has increased dramatically.

This will affect our brains over the next 100 years in ways we might never have imagined.

Our brains are under the influence of an ever- expanding world of new technology: multichannel television, video games, MP3 players, the internet, wireless networks, Bluetooth links - the list goes on and on.

But our modern brains are also having to adapt to other 21st century intrusions, some of which, such as prescribed drugs like Ritalin and Prozac, are supposed to be of benefit, and some of which, such as widelyavailable illegal drugs like cannabis and heroin, are not.

Electronic devices and pharmaceutical drugs all have an impact on the micro- cellular structure and complex biochemistry of our brains. And that, in turn, affects our personality, our behaviour and our characteristics. In short, the modern world could well be altering our human identity.

Three hundred years ago, our notions of human identity were vastly simpler: we were defined by the family we were born into and our position within that family. Social advancement was nigh on impossible and the concept of "individuality" took a back seat.

That only arrived with the Industrial Revolution, which for the first time offered rewards for initiative, ingenuity and ambition.

Suddenly, people had their own life stories - ones which could be shaped by their own thoughts and actions. For the first time, individuals had a real sense of self.

But with our brains now under such widespread attack from the modern world, there's a danger that that cherished sense of self could be diminished or even lost. ... "

 

Soldiers need loans to eat, report reveals

Exclusive report from The Independent :

 

A highly sensitive internal report into the state of the British Army has revealed that many soldiers are living in poverty. Some are so poor that they are unable to eat and are forced to rely on emergency food voucher schemes set up by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Some of Britain's most senior military figures reacted angrily yesterday to the revelations in the report, criticising the Government's treatment of its fighting forces.

The disturbing findings outlined in the briefing team report written for Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff, include an admission that many junior officers are being forced to leave the Army because they simply cannot afford to stay on.

Pressure from an undermanned army is "having a serious impact on retention in infantry battalions", with nearly half of all soldiers unable to take all their annual leave as they try to cover the gaps.

The analysis, described by General Dannatt as "a comprehensive and accurate portrayal of the views and concerns of the Army at large", states: "More and more single-income soldiers in the UK are now close to the UK government definition of poverty." It reveals that "a number of soldiers were not eating properly because they had run out of money by the end of the month". Commanders are attempting to tackle the problem through "Hungry Soldier" schemes, under which destitute soldiers are given loans to enable them to eat.

The scheme symbolises a change from the tradition of soldiers getting three square meals a day for free. Now hard-up soldiers have to fill out a form which entitles them to a voucher. The cost is deducted from their future wages, adding to the problems of soldiers on low pay.

The controversial Pay as You Dine (PAYD) regime, which requires soldiers not on active duty to pay for their meals, has seen commanding officers inundated with complaints from soldiers unhappy at the quality of food that they get and the amount of paperwork involved.

Senior officers warn in the report that "there is a duty of care issue" and add that the "core meal" provided to soldiers on duty "is often not the healthy option". The confusion of which soldiers even qualify for free meals while on duty is revealed in the admission that "in some areas the soldier has to pay and then claim back and in others the duty meal is included in the contract".

 

'Borax's first book, "2012: Crossing the Bridge to the Future," was published April 15 by Frog Books'

The book, a spiritual memoir, centers on Borax's apprenticeship with master astrologer Ellias Lonsdale (called William Lonsdale in the book).

The book also focuses on the importance of the year 2012, which the Mayan calendar cites as the end of recorded history. Borax and Lonsdale ended up launching a mystery school to study the 25-year period between 1987 (where the book begins) and 2012. The result was that Borax and his fellow students discovered much about other mysteries as well, including life after death, human evolution and the meaning of life on earth.

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Let ‘em eat biodiesel, Brazil says sugarcane is fuel

While the world has a war of words over whether food should be used for fuel or feeding people, Brazil – the country which relies on biofuel – said the case is closed as far as it's concerned. Food is for fuel. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva insisted that the biofuel-versus-food debate was a function of increasing demand and poverty alleviation in developing countries - and not the result of competition for farmland by biofuel crops, as argued by some critics. "Don't come tell me that (food) is expensive because of biodiesel," he said. "It is expensive because the world was not ready to see millions of Chinese eat, millions of Indians, Brazilians and Latin Americans eat three times a day," Lula said in a speech before the opening session of the 30th Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO.) "Instead of crying," Lula said, the world should "produce more food."

The use of biofuels has been seen by some advocates as a way to reduce reliance on oil and to cut greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change and global warming. Lula was defending the production of biofuels against charges that a rapid increase in production has competed with production of foodstuffs, resulting in soaring food prices. Instead, he blamed the price increases on the alleviation of poverty and the growing ability of the world's poor to buy food. Lula said he was willing to travel the world in defence of biofuels. Without explicitly mentioning the UN official, Lula referred to recent remarks by UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Jean Ziegler, and complained that "it is very easy for someone who is sitting in Switzerland to express his opinion on Brazil or on Africa." In an interview with the French daily Liberation, Ziegler expressed great worry about the crisis triggered by the spiraling increase in the price of basic foodstuffs like rice and wheat.

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On India’s Farms, a Plague of Suicide

Here in the center of India, on a gray Wednesday morning, a cotton farmer swallowed a bottle of pesticide and fell dead at the threshold of his small mud house.

The farmer, Anil Kondba Shende, 31, left behind a wife and two small sons, debts that his family knew about only vaguely and a soggy, ruined 3.5-acre patch of cotton plants that had been his only source of income.

Whether it was debt, shame or some other privation that drove Mr. Shende to kill himself rests with him alone. But his death was by no means an isolated one, and in it lay an alarming reminder of the crisis facing the Indian farmer.

Across the country in desperate pockets like this one, 17,107 farmers committed suicide in 2003, the most recent year for which government figures are available. Anecdotal reports suggest that the high rates are continuing.

[ ... ]

Monsanto, for instance, invented the genetically modified seeds that Mr. Shende planted, known as Bt cotton, which are resistant to bollworm infestation, the cotton farmer's prime enemy. It says the seeds can reduce the use of pesticides by 25 percent.

The company has more than doubled its sales of Bt cotton here in the last year, but the expansion has been contentious. This year, a legal challenge from the government of the state of Andhra Pradesh forced Monsanto to slash the royalty it collected from the sale of its patented seeds in India. The company has appealed to the Indian Supreme Court.

The modified seeds can cost nearly twice as much as ordinary ones, and they have nudged many farmers toward taking on ever larger loans, often from moneylenders charging exorbitant interest rates.

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'The 21st century could use more Thoreau'

From: The Great Book Adventure: Walden - Part Three

As much as I try to fight it, I'm neck deep in our American consumer culture. And it is a fight, it truly is, to keep my head above the waters of rampant materialism. I'm a meticulous recycler, I have a passionate dislike of plastic bags, and I buy my coffee fair trade as often as possible. Nevertheless, when I walk into that Apple store or wander onto Amazon.com, I feel the monstrous magpie inside crying and wanting to be fed. It wants the shiny, the new, the cool, and sometimes it wins. In the future, though, I'll have another voice to keep it quiet: the patient words of Thoreau:

"However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names .... It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is."

Where are the voices like that these days? Where in our culture does anyone call for contentment? If those voices are out there, I don't think they are being heard. There is everywhere pressure for faster, bigger, thinner, younger. Enough is never enough any more. If you try to keep up with even just one societal demand, it's a sure path to frustration. When you buy that tiny new phone, it's inevitable that a smaller, cooler one will be out in six months. The big companies are big because they know how to tempt the magpie. They not only make sure we feel like we need that SUV, they make sure we want a better one than the Joneses next door. We try to meet the demands by going after more money, but that's like using a gas-tanker to put out a forest fire. "It looks poorest when you are richest," Thoreau says, and I think he's right. More money means more stuff to buy, and if you have more stuff, you need a bigger car to move it and a bigger house to store it all. Faster than you can say Visa, your house becomes, as George Carlin said, "a pile of stuff with a cover on it."

 

The campaign against rainforest deforestation to produce agrifuels

Hunger and malnutrition are the forgotten Millennium Development Goal?

Food Riots are Coming to the U.S. by Binoy Kampmark

"I don’t want to alarm anybody, but maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food.  No this is not a drill."

--Brett Arends

There is a time for food, and a time for ethical appraisals. This was the case even before Bertolt Brecht gave life to that expression in Die Driegroschen Oper. The time for a reasoned, coherent understanding for the growing food crisis is not just overdue, but seemingly past. Robert Zoellick of the World Bank, an organization often dedicated to flouting, rather than achieving its claimed goal of poverty reduction, stated the problem in Davos in January this year. ‘Hunger and malnutrition are the forgotten Millennium Development Goal.’

Global food prices have gone through the roof, terrifying the 3 billion or so people who live off less than $2 a day. This should terrify everybody else. In November, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization reported that food prices had suffered a 18 percent inflation in China, 13 percent in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10 percent or more in Latin America, Russia and India. The devil in the detail is even more distressing: a doubling in the price of wheat, a twenty percent increase in the price of rice, an increase by half in maize prices.

Finger pointing is not always instructive.   In this case, it may be. The US and various European countries are moving food crops into the bio-fuel business, itself an environmentally unsound business. This, in addition to encouraging developing countries to not merely ‘liberalize’ their agricultural sectors, but specialize in exporting specific cash crops (cotton, cocoa), has done wonders to precipitate the shortages. Consumption in developing economies, added to the vicissitudes of climate change, water availability, and rising fertilizer costs, are others.

Political stability is being undermined. Food shortages are proving endemic. Food riots are becoming common. Riots have been sparked in Cameroon, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Uzbekistan and Yemen. There have been riots over spiraling grain prices in Mauritania and Senegal. In Mexico City, mass protests were sparked by a price hike in tortillas. In Haiti, biscuits are being made from a mud compound. The Somali capital Mogadishu bore witness to the deaths of five people.

Governments, indifferent and incautious to the demands of a hungry public, have already fallen victim to the food crisis. Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was dismissed by a senate vote in Haiti after skirmishes between UN forces and protesters. The UN commander Major General Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz urged calm amidst the carnage. ‘It is important for the people to have a peaceful life in Haiti,’ he claimed in April 2008. The message then: be peaceful on an empty stomach.

The Bush administration, so often in arrears on the relief front, has earmarked some 770 million dollars or so in funds dealing with the problem. There is one glaring hitch: the money would only start flowing in 2009. ‘There is definitely a lag time when it comes to assistance,’ states the senior manager of the Foreign Aid Reform Project at the Brookings Institute, Noam Unger. 

More troubling is the critique offered of the crisis by officials within the administration. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, at the Peace Corps conference held at the end of April, targeted various culprits.   The audience barely stirred at some of the explanations: distribution, oil prices, and the ‘alternate fuels effort’. They duly woke up when Rice moved on to targeting the export strategies of various countries – India and China foremost amongst them. ‘We obviously have to look at places where production seems to be declining and declining to the point that people are actually putting export caps on the amount of food.’

The problem, for Rice, is rising food consumption. Improved diets within China and India are bothering free market fundamentalists who insist that export caps stifle trade.  According to this rationale, Indians are far better off buying the rice from the global market than eating their own in times of crisis. How silly of them to ensure a domestic supply first before shipping off the rest for the global market. Rice is crying foul at such protectionist deviancy, will ‘have a look at it’ and take the matter to the World Trade Organization.

Members of the American public are not so sure.  A narrative of catastrophe is gradually building – stockpile or perish. The Wall Street Journal (April 25) was one of the first to issue the clarion call: ‘Start Hoarding Food Americans!’ The paper had various suggestions. Stock up on some products – dried pasta, rice, cereals, canned products. Buy them all in bulk to save.  Sit the children down give them a good talking to – no, not about the birds and the bees, but about ‘how our generation and the two behind it, screwed their world into a death spiral through greed and predatory capitalism.’

Solutions suggested by such economists as Jeffrey Sachs, somewhat patchy yet desperately needed, are forthcoming: allow easier access for sub-Saharan African farmers to fertilizers; reduce the amount of crops going into bio-fuel development; shore-up climate change policies. 

Sachs, in his work Common Wealth, also advocates the abolition of states in the face of a crowded planet. But it was state regimes besotted by neoliberal economics that brought us here. They can take us back and remedy the damage. Abolishing them would simply absolve their regimes.

In the meantime, the US and some countries in the West may have to brace themselves for a starving army guided by the morality of the stomach. The food riots are coming.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge.