Photojournalist Jonas Lara locked up for documenting grafitti | Chase Jarvis Blog

[UPDATE: The criminal charges against him have just been dropped and the judge issued a court order for the release of his camera equipment. Good news for sure, but the points remain: 1) we need documentary shooters shooting the entire gamut, legal and not. 2) we need public defenders who understand this need and are prepared to help us defend it.]

This is nuts. LA photographer Jonas Lara has been arrested and faces up to a year in prison for ‘aiding and abetting’ two graffiti artists while documenting their work in February. Lara pleaded not guilty, wisely citing it’s within his rights as a photographer to be at the scene documenting the work of the artists. But here’s the rub: his public defender, David Gottesmann, has so far refused to consider his rights as a photographer as part of the defense.

PDN reports, “When he was arrested,

via blog.chasejarvis.com

Click on link to read article. We are starting to have the same problems here in the UK

Posted via web from Hexham Matters

Fair votes campaign returns to streets of London on Monday | Ekklesia

Campaigners are set to return to the streets on Monday to urge radical reform of the voting system.

Yesterday, a flashmob protest of over 2000 people demonstrated, demanding a firm line on PR, outside a meeting where Liberal Democrats were in coalition talks.

Saturday’s crowd, adorned in purple, the colour of suffrage were joined by similar protests across the country in places such as Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham.

People watching on TV saw the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, temporarily adjourn talks so that he could address the crowd.

The new Take Back Parliament coalition, which includes Ekklesia, Power2010, 38 Degrees, the Electoral Reform Society and Vote for a Change, is hitting the streets of central London tomorrow at 5:00pm.

Pam Giddy, from Take Back Parliament, said: “Voters have seen through the scare-mongering and returned a hung parliament. We now have an historic opportunity to make 2010 our last stolen election, but that decision rests with the politicians.

“We would remind politicians that this is our democracy and our business. Since Thursday we’ve seen something rare in British politics. Politicians have been forced to sit down and work together, and we intend to make that permanent. With PR, we can call time on the Punch and Judy show, and deliver the politics we actually voted for on May 6th.

“Together the Take Back Parliament campaign is reaching out to millions of people online, and taking the call for justice onto the streets. The people want fair votes, and yesterday’s protest was just the beginning.”

via ekklesia.co.uk

Posted via web from Hexham Matters

The Independent ask us not to miss this historic opportunity - go for it!

 ENLARGE

The Independent newspaper begins its front-page article thus;

For five years this paper has fought for electoral reform. Britain now has a historic chance to end our unfair and discredited voting system for ever

This election campaign has felt almost like a liberation. The prison walls – the stultifying, spirit-crushing assumptions of the long era of two-party politics – have crumbled. The surge in support for the Liberal Democrats has unlocked something precious: a feeling among the public that, for the first time in a generation, a radical overhaul of our political settlement could be possible.

That feeling – combined with the enduring uncertainty over the result of the election – is a tonic for our democracy. The public sense that their vote matters. When one considers that this campaign began against a backdrop of rampant cynicism and apathy, stirred up by MPs' abuse of their expenses, this transformation looks all the more remarkable. And welcome.

It really is a once in a life-time chance to get a modern system based on real democracy.  

Dr Steven Ford for Hexham - vote tactically for the rest of the UK!

Let's do it!

Click HERE to read the Indy article.

Posted via email from Hexham Matters

'Dave' Cameron is descended from King William IV (Daily Mail) - will he continue the tradition of screwing the middle classes as well as the poor?

David Cameron (left) is descended from King William IV

Indeed, his wife Samantha is aristocratic on both sides of her family.

Creative director of the upmarket stationery company Smythson of Bond Street, she is a direct descendant of Nell Gwyn, mistress to Charles II, and her stepfather is Viscount Astor.

Meanwhile, 'Call me Dave' himself comes from a family which makes the bulk of the British landed gentry seem positively nouveau riche.

Cameron is William IV's great-great-great-great-great grandson, which Debrett's says makes him fifth cousin, twice removed, of the Queen.

As Patrick Cracroft-Brennan, of the guide Cracroft's Peerage, says: "Mr Cameron is the most aristocratic leader of the Conservative Party since Alec Douglas-Home."

But as well as being impeccably connected, David Cameron is also extremely wealthy. Sunday Times Rich List compiler and wealth watchdog Philip Beresford has valued the Tory leader for the first time.

He says: "I put the combined family wealth of David and Samantha Cameron at £30m plus. Both sides of the family are extremely wealthy. They certainly have no need to worry about poverty or paying school fees."

via dailymail.co.uk

It shouldn't matter that Cameron has this dubious lineage but the fact of that matter is that the Tories as well as Labour have transferred most of the wealth of the middle classes and poor to the mega-rich does indicate that he is the last person to clean up UK politics.

"In 1976, excluding property, the bottom half of the UK population owned 12% of the marketable wealth; by 2003 that had fallen to just 1%.

In the same period, the share enjoyed by the top 10% rose from 57% to 71%.

Even when property is included, the bottom half of the population still only owns just 7% of the country’s wealth."

Heartening isn't it!

Source -

http://www.respublica.org.uk/articles/spend-investment

Which is why we ask Hexham to vote Dr Steven Ford and the UK to vote Lib Dem.

Posted via email from Hexham Matters

What will you do to stop the sinking of the SS UK-Titanic?

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In Hexham and the UK we don't want the deck-chairs re-arranged as the ship goes down - we want a whole new system. 

Where did Blair & Brown get the rotten values that have almost sunk us - from the Tories of course.

Vote for Dr Steve Ford in Hexham - and the Lib Dems nationally.

Posted via email from Hexham Matters

Meet Dr Steven Ford - will Hexham choose a candidate with proven service to the Constituency?

Steven Ford was a much-respected GP in Haydon Bridge - serving Hexham people for more than 20years.  He is an Independent - free from all of the Labour-Tory-Tory-Labour tribal garbage.

Vote Ford for a new, clean, ethical representation for Hexham.

Posted via email from Hexham Matters

Rising Tory star Philippa Stroud ran prayer sessions to 'cure' gay people | Politics | The Observer

Philippa Stroud, the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Sutton and Cheam, has founded US-style evangelical churches in Bedford and in Birmingham. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

A high-flying prospective Conservative MP, credited with shaping many of the party's social policies, founded a church that tried to "cure" homosexuals by driving out their "demons" through prayer.

Philippa Stroud, who is likely to win the Sutton and Cheam seat on Thursday and is head of the Centre for Social Justice, the thinktank set up by the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, has heavily influenced David Cameron's beliefs on subjects such as the family. A popular and energetic Tory, she is seen as one of the party's rising stars.

The CSJ reportedly claims to have formulated as many as 70 of the party's policies. Stroud has spoken of how her Christian faith has motivated her to help the poor and of her time spent working with the destitute in Hong Kong. On her return to Britain, in 1989, she founded a church and night shelter in Bedford, the King's Arms Project, that helped drug addicts and alcoholics. It also counselled gay, lesbian and transsexual people.

Abi, a teenage girl with transsexual issues, was sent to the church by her parents, who were evangelical Christians. "Convinced I was demonically possessed, my parents made the decision to move to Bedford, because of this woman [Stroud] who had come back from Hong Kong and had the power to set me free," Abi told the Observer.

via guardian.co.uk

Click on link to read the article

Posted via web from Hexham Matters