Fire in Central London

INCENDIO EN EL CENTRO DE LONDRES Bomberos trabajan en el incendio del edificio Chancery Lane; la policía ha evacuado la zona y por el momento no se ha informado de la existencia de heridos

From El Universal, report of a London fire.

Atheists Send a Message, on 800 British Buses

The advertisement on the bus was fairly mild, just a passage from the Bible and the address of a Christian Web site. But when Ariane Sherine, a comedy writer, looked on the Web site in June, she was startled to learn that she and her nonbelieving friends were headed straight to hell, to “spend all eternity in torment.”

That site is Jesussaid.org: at the bottom of its web page, this nugget appears: Proclaiming Truth in London, P O Box 408, Twickenham, TW1 9FJ

That’s a bit extreme, she thought, as well as hard to prove. “If I wanted to run a bus ad saying ‘Beware — there is a giant lion from London Zoo on the loose!’ or ‘The “bits” in orange juice aren’t orange but plastic — don’t drink them or you’ll die!’ I think I might be asked to show my working and back up my claims,” Ms. Sherine wrote in a commentary on the Web site of The Guardian.

I agree. Her website has a link to the Atheist Bus Campaign site.

Inspired by the London campaign, the American Humanist Association started running bus advertisements in Washington in November, with a more muted message. “Why believe in a god?” the ads read, over a picture of a man in a Santa suit. “Just be good for goodness’ sake.”

Here, hear.

In 2003, when an interviewer asked Tony Blair, then the prime minister, about religion, his spokesman, Alastair Campbell, interjected, snapping, “We don’t do God.” After leaving office, Mr. Blair became a Roman Catholic.

We don't DO God? Geez.

More recently, Nick Clegg, a member of Parliament and the leader of the Liberal Democrats, announced that he was an atheist. (He later downgraded himself to agnostic.)

Better downgraded than downsized.

An interesting element of the bus slogan is the word “probably,” which would seem to be more suited to an Agnostic Bus Campaign than to an atheist one. Mr. Dawkins, for one, argued that the word should not be there at all.

Spin is important.

But the element of doubt was necessary to meet British advertising guidelines, said Tim Bleakley, managing director for sales and marketing at CBS Outdoor in London, which handles advertising for the bus system.
For religious people, advertisements saying there is no God “would have been misleading,” Mr. Bleakley said. “So as not to fall foul of the code, you have to acknowledge that there is a gray area,” he said.

Believe this? Misleading? Oy vay. But this is neat:

But Mr. Bleakley said he had no problem with the atheist bus ads. “We do have religious organizations that promote themselves,” he said. “If somebody doesn’t believe in religion, why wouldn’t we carry an ad that promotes the opposite view? To coin a phrase, it’s not for us to play God.”

WSJ's Dan Henninger's Wonder Land

Obfuscation is a favourite tactic of politicians of all stripes, as it is of analysts and pundits, of all who wish to divert attention from the key, important facts. An effective way of doing so is to raise emotionally-gripping points, and inflate their importance, deflecting attention away from the crux of the matter.

This column is a perfect example of obfuscation. Two different points are raised, twisted, fogged over, an emotional hook put in place, then yanked, and what emerges is the wrong point. In this case a columnist from the Wall Street Journal, that bastion of right-wing nuts, not only befuddles and beclouds the issue, but uses the specter of 9/11 to further confuse the issue.

Yup, never hurts to pinch yourself hard on entering presidential campaign space right now.

Absolutely, yes. Whomever doesn't know that a political campaign is no place to find the unvarnished truth is a dolt. However, let it not be said this columnist is unimaginative.

Setup: Here's another hypothetical: Would this conversation be different today if in August 2006 seven airliners had taken off from Terminal 3 at Heathrow Airport, bound for the U.S. and Canada and each carrying about 250 passengers, and then blew up over the Atlantic Ocean?

Ouch. Now, that is an emotional hook par excellence. Well done.

The details emerging from that case are quite remarkable and will be summarized shortly. Pause to reflect on the ebb and flow of public debate that has occurred over how free societies should order themselves after two airliners full of passengers knocked down the World Trade Center Towers on Sept. 11 in 2001.

Touché, emotionally-wrenching connection made. This man is good.

One sometimes gets the feeling that our policy debates over national security and the journalism that travels with them float, as it were, at 30,000 feet above the reality of the threat on the ground. A novelist or filmmaker, alert to the personal demons that drive modern terror, would with fiction better clarify what is at stake. Start with the details of the eight defendants now on trial in England.

Apt metaphorical choice: 30,000 feet, as it were. An aeroplane's cruising height. Nicely done. This guy is really good. But his punctuation is a mite sloppy; were I his proofreader I might have had it this way: A novelist or filmmaker, alert to the personal demons that drive modern terror, would, with fiction, better clarify what is at stake. Seems repetitive otherwise; the added commas help.

The private intelligence-analysis agency, Stratfor, concludes from the trial that "al Qaeda remains fixated on aircraft as targets and, in spite of changes in security procedures since 9/11, aircraft remain vulnerable to attack."

Stratfor is a fascinating organization. Mr. Henninger is an expert at connecting the dots.

Here in the U.S., our politics has spent much of the year unable to vote into law the wiretap bill, which is bogged down, incredibly, over giving retrospective legal immunity to telecom companies that helped the government monitor calls originating overseas. Even granting there are Fourth Amendment issues in play here, how is it that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama cannot at least say that class-action lawsuits against these companies are simply wrong right now?

Unable? Incredibly? Simply wrong? Well, I beg to differ. Perhaps unwilling, rather than unable. Not necessarily bogged down, rather, debating important details. Not simply wrong, but in defense of personal privacy and civil liberties. Of course, out in the fringe where Mr. Henninger resides, catching the bad guys is more important than keeping our society based on the principles that Madison and Jay (and even Jefferson) thought fundamental.

Philip Bobbitt, author of the just released and thought-provoking book, "Terror and Consent," has written that court warrants are "a useful standard for surveillance designed to prove guilt, not to learn the identity of people who may be planning atrocities." Planning atrocities is precisely the point.

Aye, warrants used to surveil are useful tools. And when warrants are issued with the blessing, as it were, of courts, they indeed can be useful tools. Of course, Mr. Henninger glosses over the fact that the Bush-Cheney team disregards courts when seeking court approval do not suit their purposes. Having courts in the loop insures, as James, John, and Thomas explained, that the Executive does not run roughshod over the rights of the citizens of the nation.

Furthermore, blanket spying is an invasion of privacy that undermines democracy. Mr. Henninger went from Senator Obama questioning General Petraeus to 9/11 to atrocities in a smooth line. Whether that line does in fact exist is debatable, and I disagree.

Free Love

Red Ken has been around:Ken Livingstone has five children by three women

Mayor of London says he has two daughters by one woman and a son by another, as well as two children with his partner

• April Fool? Livingstone video risks Labour rift

• Red Box blog: watch the video here

Public libraries told to innovate or die out

This one is on UK libraries. Another person who isn't satisfied with what she sees in libraries from her vantage point.

London’s public libraries must take innovative steps such as rewarding regular borrowers with vouchers for travel or the cinema if they are to stay relevant to an increasingly discerning and web-savvy population, Margaret Hodge, the Culture Secretary, said today.

Imagine that, handing out coupons, or vouchers, to people who come into the library. That one will go over well with librarians.

Although spending on libraries has risen 17 per cent in the past decade, the number of books borrowed has slumped by 34 per cent, she told delegates.

Books, of course, are not the one resource provided by libraries, so that statistic is misleading. The larger point, however, is valid.

Situating libraries in railway stations and shopping centres would attract a wider market, as would a single London library card allowing users to borrow books in one location and return them in another, she suggested.

I agree. A single card is essential. It is common in New York, and seems an anachronism.

A loyalty scheme, like those run by supermarkets, could be implemented, rewarding borrowers with a one-day travelcard or a pair of cinema tickets after ten visits, for example.

This I don't like. Reducing library use to being equal with retail shopping would cheapen it. It seems to me that using a library is somewhat different than going to the market to get toilet paper or toothpaste.

More, London has 33 boroughs that seem to hardly co-operate, if at all.

"... it ought to be possible to share services and support functions such as inter-library lending, IT systems and delivery systems and thereby spend more effectively.”

No Inter Library Loans? Ouch.