Now That We Have Tasted Hope - a poem by Khaled Mattawa

Listen to Libyan poet and recent winner of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship Khaled Mattawa read his latest for the revolution in Libya on BBC’s “The World Today”

Now That We Have Tasted Hope

Now that we have tasted hope
Now that we have come out of hiding,
Why would we live again in the tombs we’d made out of our souls?

And the sundered bodies that we’ve reassembled with prayers and consolations,
What would their torn parts be other than flesh?


Now that we have tasted hope
And dressed each other’s wounds with the legends of our oneness
Would we not prefer to close our mouths forever shut on the wine
That swilled inside them?

Having dreamed the same dream,
Having found the water that gushed behind a thousand mirages,
Why would we hide from the sun again
Or fear the night sky after we’ve reached the ends of darkness,
Live in death again after all the life our dead have given us?

Listen to me Zow’ya, Beida, Ajdabya, Tobruk, Nalut, Derna, Musrata, Benghazi, Zintan,
Listen to me houses, alleys, courtyards, and streets that throng my veins,
Some day soon
In your freed light and in the shade of your proud trees,
Your excavated heroes will return to their thrones in your martyrs’ squares,
Lovers will hold each other’s hands.

I need not look far to imagine the nerves dying rejecting the life that blood sends them.
I need not look deep into my past to seek a thousand hopeless vistas.
But now that I have tasted hope
I have fallen into the embrace of my own rugged innocence.

How long were my ancient days?
I no longer care to count.
How high were the mountains in my ocean’s fathoms?
I no longer care to measure.
How bitter was the bread of bitterness?
I no longer care to recall.

Now that we have tasted hope,
Now that we have lived on this hard-earned crust,
We would sooner die than seek any other taste to life,
Any other way of being human.

URC Assembly moderators blog

Earlier on this summer the United Reformed Church elected two women to be its moderators for the next two year period. I feel a bit bad for not blogging about this at the time but I was on a bit of a depressed blogging holiday in June and July. Anyway I have just discovered that Val Morrison and Kirsty Thorpe are writing a blog about their experiences in the job and it's good mix of their thoughts, encounters and experiences.

I was interested to see that Kirsty has been at Labour Party Conference this week (Val will attend the Conservative Party conference next week).
The paragraph below from Kirsty's post set me thinking about how we describe people - do we describe people from a Christian background as "atheist Christian" but Ed Milliband is described as "atheist Jewish" ... It was interesting for me listening to Ed Milliband's speech that he also made reference to "not walking by on the other side" and I found myself thinking ... that's a very new testament reference. Then I wondered whether I would have had such a thought had a non-believing member of the shadow cabinet from a nominally Christian background made the same remark. Knowing me probably I would but it made me think about language and culture - in the labour party the language of the Bible is also part of the culture of the party.

Anyway enough passing thoughts from me, here's part of what Kirsty wrote and good luck to her and Val as they go around the country on behalf of the church over the next two years. Hope they continue to blog:

A few generations ago, a church leader might have been preoccupied with questions such as whether we could have confidence in an atheist Jewish party leader, who’s not yet married to the mother of their children. Today, those issues seem far less relevant to me than how this autumn’s cuts will impact communities across Britain. The churches are well placed to alert MP’s to places where the pain becomes too much for people to bear. From what we heard this week and last, there are plenty of politicians of all hues who expect us to be in touch with events around our churches, and who are waiting to hear from us how things look on the ground when the budget cuts bite.

Et Dieu créa la femme - an amazing evening at feminist theology ...

It will take me about ten posts to begin to try to communicate the sheer joy and energy that I felt after last night's first feminist theology session of the new season.

Ria van Beek had the brilliant idea that we should invite Jacqueline Berenstein Wavre to speak to our group. A few years ago Jacqueline, a famous local Swiss politician and women's rights activist turned up to our group and we felt very honoured. She was genuinely interested in learning more about the faith into which she had been baptised and the idea of feminist theology was quite new to her when we began our francophone group about 5 years ago.
Anyway I shall begin with the ending, here is Jacqueline putting on her her coat at the end of the evening and showing us that even her coat has a feminist message - "And God created woman... " Et Dieu créa la femme - the infamous Brigitte Bardot movie!
"So, Jacqueline" I said - after teasing her for being a socialist and wearingis this designer model coat - "is this coat a few years old?" "oh a bit more than that - I inherited it from one of my sisters in law!" and then she proudly displayed the taped repairs she had made "about 10 years ago"! Twirling like a young woman at least 70 years younger as she did so.

I came home last night feeling truly privileged to have been able to listen in quite intimate circumstances to an extraordinary woman talk about her life and times, her convictions, questions and also of course her current campaigns.
Jacqueline is 89 years young, full of life and the most wonderful example of tenacity and vivacity. She also spoke extremely powerfully about faith and law and the Holy Spirit, more on that in another post very soon I promise.
Ah yes and Jacqueline in on Facebook and also has a blog!

elections, depression and the changing nature of life

I have been studiously avoiding commenting on British politics and the election campaign. It's too depressing and only serves to underline a certain sort of disconnectedness I feel. For the whole of my youth and young adulthood I was very involved in local politics. Thatcher's election in 1979 was a key event in my life - it was the first election I stayed up to watch. My father, local leader of the labour party on the council, waited for the first result to come in and then went to bed, resigned to the polls and consigned to opposition. My involvement in politics in 1987 led to quite an existenital crisis of faith for me. Thatcher was reelected with a big majority and I felt totally disenfranchised, I was at the end of my first year of training for the ministry and ended up questioning everything I was committed to. I went off to stay in France for a month with my father's right-wing cousin. The 1992 election was if anything even worse. Stephen was working in Labour Party headquarters for the whole campaign and we were on the steps of Walworth Road in the early hours of the morning as Neil Kinnock resigned from the party leadership, then we also set off for France where we were already living.
That commitment, involvement and those experiences of defeat taught me a great deal about resistance and spirituality. One night from the public gallery, I watched my father in opposition on the town council fight every single ammendment with enormous integrity and verve. By doing that rather than falling into resigned depression he actually managed to convince the majority on some key small issues and won several votes. It's a lesson of tenacity that I forget too often.
So next Thursday I suspect I may do the same as my dad in 1979, though we are due to have friends of a similar political persuasion with us. No doubt drowning our sorrows together. I suppose going to bed is a bit like hiding behind the sofa at the scary bits of Dr Who.
Somewhere I still have a semi-vague hope that results may be more unpredictable even than I expect. In the end though I shall stay up because what I hope happens will be a real culture shift in the way elections and politics happens in my home country. Democracy needs to be vibrant and meaningful, politics needs to connect with people and effect real change for the good. Perhaps a hung parliament will help British society become more fair.Britian is still a country which has the highest gaps between rich and poor in Europe, can it re-imagine politics and the practice of democracy or will it still hold to privilege. Really though I'm just expecting a Tory win and I cannot bear David Cameron - and yes our 18 year old nephew is planning to vote for him.

What I am learning through all of this is that things change and that old tribal allegiances may not serve democracy best all of the time. People have to feel engaged by both a meta narrative and to feel that they can be involved and make a difference. If I were living in the UK now I would very likely consider voting for the Green Party, yet I am still a member of the Labour Party. Because I have been living outside the country for more than 15 years I no longer have a vote. I can quite see how Tony Blair's war in Iraq and lies about what led him to take us to war (supported by Tory MPs rather than Labour ones by the way!) and the hubris of parliamentary life over recent years have disgusted and disenchanted huge parts of the elecctorate.
Hard to know what I hope for in my home country but I would hope for a more vibrant civil society that doesn't treat politics as something dirty and laughable but as decent, fun and necessary.
Meanwhile to stop me from ranting on, I've just come across this on Kester Brewin's blog (hat tip tp Maggi Dawn). Kester's been commenting with more wisdom than I on the current British campaign.

Now the Electorate was out in Middle England, and Sky News and other members of the Media brought Gordon Brown to them. They made him stand before the group and said to the Electorate, ‘Voters, this man was caught in the act of speaking rashly in private. He left his microphone on, and it caught him accusing a woman of being bigoted.’ They were using this question as a trap, in order for having a basis for people not voting for him.

But the Electorate bent down and started to write something on their Twitter accounts. When the Media kept questioning them they straightened up, and said to the them. ‘If any of you - journalists and or other party leaders – if any of you has never spoken rashly in private, let us cast our votes for you.’

At this, those who had heard began to go back to their campaign buses and leave, one at a time, the older ones first, until only the Electorate was left, with Brown still standing there. The Electorate straightened up and asked him, ‘Prime Minister, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’

‘No one Sirs.’ he said.

‘Then neither do we condemn you.’ the Electorate declared. ‘Go now and DON’T BE SUCH A BLOODY IDIOT AGAIN OR WE’LL CERTAINLY NOT CAST OUR VOTE FOR YOU.’ (With thanks to John 8: 1 – 11)

And just in case you're interested, I am not a French national but, as a European, I do have a vote in French local elections for the centre of the universe in Ferney Voltaire, and in the European Elections, so I am not completely disenfranchised. Of course in order to get rid of Nicolas Sarkozy I may well consider becoming a French citizen, meanwhile Dr B and I are still trying to run a stealth campaign to get Daniel Cohn Bendit as the French left's next presidential candidate. He's speaking in Geneva on May 20 and we might just go along.
So I suppose what is changing is that I am still tribally of the left but as I see society and politics changing I am more interested in promoting democracy and debate than in being blindly a member of the party I support.

Ferney dans la rue - local democracy and protest

Yesterday morning Alex Décotte was wandering around the Ferney market with a sign around his neck protessting at the plans by our town council for the redevelopment of the centre of Ferney. He told us to visit the Ferney dans la rue site. I'm actually in favour of some of the plans but it's important to go and check the PLU (plan local d'urbanisme) at this stage and to offer complaints, alternatives and comments before it's too late. One of the challenges for Ferney is that all around the communes have alot more land than Ferney does and across the whole of the Pays de Gex housing developments have been taking place without even a hint of a structure plan or green belt. The past 10 years have seen a mushrooming of building projects. So there are good reasons - not least public transport and reducing the number of car journeys - for trying to develop the centre of Ferney rather differently. However one big challenge in our area is the lack of social housing and the current plans would lead to some of the existing social housing being taken down (particularly hideous stuff built cheaply in the 1950s and 60s) but those living there at very low rents at the moment may not find anything similar in the new project.
Anyway there is a series of public meetings underway on the PLU and of course the opposition is getting organised as well through Ferney dans la rue.
Décotte comes from an old Ferney family and is a journalist. He has been involved in writing the local satirical magazine and now website "Ferney Candide". He was on the town council here in Ferney for a while just after we moved here, but he's really happier involved in satire, campaigns and opposition politics.
I suppose what I like about the project that our council has put together is that it is ambitious. I'm not convinced by the collective's claims that it involves the destruction of greenery (a tarmac car park with a few trees on it?) and I think the town deserves a bit of a rethink to encourage people to walk and use public transport.
Anyway all this to say that things in Ferney are set for quite a political battle over the coming months. Should be fun, it makes the British general election campaign seem quite tame.

What is "strong" leadership, "strong" government - reflecting on the day the election is announced in my home country

It's not really surprising that I think about a quote from Heinrich Grüber's memoirs as I wander around Berlin this week. Grüber describes in his memoirs how he voted for Hitler - as did many others of his class and background - because he wanted "strong" government and the experience of Weimar democracy had been of weak ever-changing government.
Today the election will be called in Britain to take place in just one month's time. It's quite interesting chatting with our family about their voting intentions - our oldest nephew is (shock horror) probably going to vote Tory - but we've also been having discussions about voting systems, whether it's better for democracies to have change after a decade and the place for conviction in politics. It's fascinating to see how approaches to democracy and voting systems are very culturally determined. Do I want strong government or good government?
At a personal level I've also been thinking about "strong" leadership and our need to embue these words which tend to be seen as male virtues with value. Is the only way of describing leadership positively to be seen in macho language? Of course women are also strong and it is very much a female virtue as well. But surely goodness, integrity, mid-wifery, artistry, brick-laying, sculpting and many other things may offer us more useful images for the sort of government and society we want rather than this steroid obsession with strength.
Grüber learnt the strength of saying he was wrong to vote for Hitler and took up resistance to teh regime he had voted in very quickly. There is strength in recognising when we have been wrong, it's called humility and it's not a bad virtue for politicians and leaders to learn.

Romantic democrat ...

I've been moved today to read the tributes to the wonderful Michael Foot who died aged 96. He was one of my father's political inspirations - Foot was a decade older and my dear dad has been canvassing a higher authority for nearly five years. I particularly liked Neil Kinnock's piece called romantic democrat and this by Mark Seddon who used to be in the same ward Labour party as me several decades ago. That was where I went canvassing, became politically active, where I was when we lost the terrible 1983 election and where I met Dr B ...
As I ponder Michael Foot's and my father's political legacy I feel convinced that across democratic countries we need to reawaken a falling in love with political ideas, political debate and the building up of democracy itself. Do we actually believe that we deserve, do we even want, politicians of integrity and conviction any more? What will it take to make our cultures fall in love with vibrant democracy and civil society? But perhaps we don't really want intelligent debate and informed discussion, we would rather develop a culture of ridicule and blame.
Democracy is a poetic and practical ideal, it deserves feisty, intelligent proponents. Let's hope that the romance of politics and political ideas will not die with foot's generation.

A quote from Michael Foot

"Men of power have not time to read; yet the men who do not read are unfit for power" Michael Foot

I could change that to "people of power..." but it is a piece of its own time ...

Water, politics and justice in Palestine and Israel

In the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Change talks two of the Ecumenical Accompaniers in Palestine-Israel have written a powerful story about how the human right to water is being rationed for Palestinians in the Holy Land.
You can learn more about the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) and you can also find EAPPI on facebook and follow EAPPI on twitter. You can also find out more about the human right to water through the Ecumenical Water Network and its campaigns.

Rows of neat suburban houses stand on the parched, barren hillside. A water tower looms over them, irrigating lush greenery in the gardens. But outside this West Bank settlement's perimeter fence sits the tiny Bedouin community of Umm Al Kher, whose residents are desperate for water.
Here in the South Hebron Hills, there has been scarce rainfall for many months. Grey rock and dry, rugged earth spread off in every direction. But locals who met observers from the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel said the effects of the recent drought are exacerbating a man-made water crisis.The community is not connected to any water supply network and the Israeli army will not issue permits to dig wells. The community is forced to buy tanked water from Mekorot, the Israeli national water company, which charges 5 shekels (around $1.30) per cubic meter. That cost prohibits the shepherds of Umm Al Kher from irrigating crops. Umm Al Kher's only other water supply is a pipe no bigger than a garden hose that trails across from the pump in the settlement.

On Advent Sunday Switzerland votes on whether minarets can be built

Today Switzerland is voting on whether or not building minarets can be allowed according to the federal constitution. The referendum initiative had been put forward by the extreme right-wing people's party. A great way to pile on the pressure to polarise public opinion. Very clever and very worrying, these days the repurcussions will be felt not only in Switzerland.
The early results seem to indicate that the majority will be in favour of banning the building of minarets. Geneva and the Canton of Vaud seem to be voting in favour of building minarets but the German-speaking cantons are coming out very clearly against.
Perhaps there's still time to hope for a late surge of voters choosing the other options.
Not a good day as Switzerland last week took over the presidency of the Council of Europe. One of the priorities of the sixth month presidency is to be human rights.
There are already four minarets in various parts of Switzerland.

Today is Advent Sunday ...

How to get rid of Nicolas Sarkozy? A passing thought ...

Reports are coming in this week of Ségolène Royal sacking her closest aid on her wing of the French socialist party - after a huge row. That wing of the party was apparently called espoir à gauche, hmm perhaps nul espoir à gauche is more fitting - the hopelessness of the left. There really does seem no hope for the left to gain power in France ... or maybe there is...
This evening Dr B has come up with a cunning plan and a unity candidate. The only person he reckons could really bring people on the French left together is Danny the Red - also known as Daniel Cohn Bendit, a fascinating and rather fun idea because he has the potential to get support from the far left to the centrists. He's a clever campaigner too.
It probably wouldn't work though, because people will prefer Sarkozy's venality, celebrity and nepotism.
Anyway if Danny does stand as the Left's unity candidate remember you heard it here first!

A week for pure Schadenfreude - mainly à la française

Sometimes I do worry that my spirituality is not quite up to scratch where compassion is concerned. This morning I kept shouting "good, good, good"in a somewhat over-excited fashion as the radio news led with headlines that Tony Blair is almost certainly not going to be the new European president. I do not want the man who rode sidecar to George W. Bush when invading Iraq to have any further role in politics. Now it seems he may have been thwarted I dare say he'll try to get a role as a "goodwill ambassador" somewhere. Tony, those of us who voted for you as PM wish you had listened to the voice of conscience rather more carefully than you seemed able to. People are getting killed today because of your lack of moral fibre. I am rather pleased that he has been outmanoeuvred by Angela Merkel.
Earlier this week there was a moment of joy when I heard that deeply unpleasant French politician Charles Pasqua had been sentenced to a year in prison for his role in illegal arms trading deals in Angola. You have no idea how rare it is for anyone in French politics to actually see the inside of a prison when found guilty.
Now today more Schadenfreude inhabits my doubtless deeply flawed soul as I learn that former French president Jacques Chirac is to stand trial for corruption. Yippee! He was lucky to get elected in 1995 and so escaped a trial at that point - presidents are exempt from legal proceedings while in office in France.
So is what I'm feeling Schadenfreude or is it just a reflection of that exaltation we see in the Magnificat?
He hath put down the mighty from their seat : and hath exalted the humble and meek.
Now I suppose my Freude would be complete if we could see the humble lifted high as well as the mighty cast down.

Of tankies, trots and another life ...

Years ago I used to be involved in politics. This weekend Dr B made a brief sortie back into part of that world and found himself back in the thick of Trotskyite, Maoist and Stalinist interpretations of Eastern Europe and the changes 20 years on. It's funny how easy it is to fall back into the old language and to delight in the terminology. It also brings a different kind of literature into the house and I'm looking forward to reading James Buchan's article on Impasse in Iran in the latest New Left Review.
Of all the things I miss living in France rather than in the country of my birth politics would be quite high up there along with pubs. I'm just not as viscerally involved in French political life.
However, one of my lecturers at college said when he heard I was going into the church "oh so you are going in to politics after all". Of course the politics in the church are often quite a bit nastier than party politics.
Anyway this household is neither maoist nor trotty and certainly not tanky. I suppose we're a strange brand of ecumenical calvinist-benjamites. However for now bed calls. The central heating has still not been repaired and the only way to keep warm is under the duvet.

Of heroes and democracy

This morning over breakfast I decided that I needed to read the historical part of my guidebook to Greece and I'm glad I did. I had commented to a travelling companion last night that I was woefully ignorant about modern Greek history and politics.
Almost 28 years ago to the day, on the eve of PASOK's historic win in the Greek elections, I went to a special screening at Berlin's alliance française of Costa Gravas' film "Z" it made an enormous impression on me. I was in tears and deeply shocked at the end of the film. Only now do I realise that writing the book that inspired it was a real act of creative imagination, about resurrection in a very powerful way. "Z" means "he lives" - the Greek colonels banned much in the way of civil society after they came to power, according to the final credits of the film they also banned the letter Z because it symbolised resistance.
Thinking about all of this made me realise once more how much we take democracy for granted, it is not at all so long ago that this country was having to come out of the pain of military rule. Building up civil society is not easy, so much easier to destroy than to construct, to stifle rather than encourage dialogue and discussion.
As I'm also reading a bit about the Greek gods and heroes while on my short holiday here I've also been thnking about our human need to see virtue embodied in a single individual rather than in groups and collective values - of course we do all need exceptional individuals to look up to but any individual will have faults, will be human. It strikes me that in looking for heroic qualities in leaders we hope that they will do the hard work for us. I can see this in politics, the churches and many organisaitons.
Perhaps in the end a truly heroic leader will share power by motivating others, encouraging responsibility of each for the whole and building up civil society - which even means opposition to such values ...

Memes, diaries, politics and thinking about the past

As you may have gathered from the rather perfunctory posting here life has rather taken over from blogging. My mother and her partner Martin are visiting us (we are all still at the getting to know you and being very polite stage), Dr B is trying to finish revising the German translation of his doctorate before the end of the month and life at work is no less busy than usual.
Today I finally got around to digging out my GDR diary from the cupboard and spent some time reading what I wrote 20 years ago. It was rather a surprising read, much more personal than I remembered. My comment to Dr B was that the diary seems to mainly be about alcohol, sex and politics, "Oh don't worry" he said "you can always edit it ... and get rid of all the politics". It is quite a shock to discover that I obviously was once young. Meanwhile I do sometimes think that my life has had all the politics edited out of it, I miss being active in a meaningful political way.
Then finally getting back to reading my favourite blogs I discovered that I was tagged on a meme by David Ker a week ago already. Bizarrely the passage he wants his blogosphere friends to share their thoughts about also figures in the background to one of the more lurid passages of my diary. I think that the only time I have heard the passage of the children being mauled by bears in 2 Kings 2:23-24 preached on was in East Berlin a month after the wall came down. David, in my bad girl way I will try and get to your bad boy Bible study sometime this week.
In my rather bad girl diary from 20 years ago, as well as encountering my wild younger self in a form I would rather not remember it was interesting to read musings and rants on prayer, ecology, life, the church and liturgy very similar to what I write here. With a bit of judicious editing to protect individuals I'll try and start posting it in real time from October 4th when I began to write it.

Bernie Ecclestone wrong about Hitler

I got very cross the other morning listening to reports of Bernie Ecclestone having said that "at least Hitler could get things done". You can read the interview with Ecclestone here.
I suppose Ecclestone won't have had time in his busy life making millions to have actually do something as challenging to his ignorance and boorishness as read, for instance Ian Kershaw's brilliant two volume biography of Hilter.
The Third Reich was not a dictatorship that was particularly efficient, decision-making and power were exercised in a social-Darwinist way, with everyone trying to curry favour with and please the mercurial leader who had a rich, highly industrialised and well-educated country at his disposal. Thirteen years of that way of "getting things done" left the country in ruins, millions systematically annihilated, further millions across Europe killed in war.
We must counter the myth that in difficult times we need "a strong man" to bully us through. Difficult times are crucially times for more democracy not for more dictatorship. Leadership is not always about telling others what to do, it's much more about building alliances, convincing others and saying "together we can make a difference", not "I have all the answers just do as I say".

Photos from Budapest

Dr B returned late yesterday from Budapest. He was attending a meeting organised by the Lutheran World Federation on Church and State in Societies in Transformation - 20 years after the huge changes in eastern Europe. You can see some photos here.

Moritz Leuenberger on John Calvin and Calvin Klein

Moritz Leuenberger was the main speaker at this afternoon's Calvin event in the Temple de la Fusterie in Geneva. Leuenberger currently heads the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications and has been president of the Swiss confederation. He's a member of the Swiss Social Democratic Party.
The son of a Reformed pastor, from Zwingli's home town of Zurich where a play has been put on to mark the 500th anniversary called "Calvinism Klein" - yes it's all about religion and underwear! Germanophone rather than Francophone Leuenberger claimed to feel rather daunted at being asked to make such an address in Geneva on Calvin, epsecially after discovering in one reference book he consulted that Calvin is considered to be the father of classical French, he nevertheless gave his speech in extremely elegant French. He managed to be self-deprecating, funny and show real understanding of Calvin.
He also made four key points based on his understanding of Calvin and of reformation:
We need to reform our lifestyle with regard to nature
We need to reform the chain of solidarity
We need to reform the market economy
We need to reform our values

He also played with the image of two US presidents standing in Berlin - Kennedy denouncing the moral bankruptcy of communism and then decades later Clinton standing on the same spot and saying "everything is possible". In our current financial crisis we know that the anything goes model of unregulated markets has not been helpful. "Immoderation and greed have come to figure as driving forces of our financial activities ... bankers have been found to be bandits ... it is in our interests to marry ethics and market."

Leuenberger's full speech will be available tomorrow in Le Temps and in the NZZ, in French and German respectively,

Throughout the afternoon I was struck by how often different speakers underlined the fact that Calvin was not a killjoy but passionately believed that justice was the expression of love. As a second generation Reformer he structured the church, set limits but also transformed society insisting on the importance of education, work and the economy. The other key idea that was underlined was how Calvin insisted on the sharing of power between several people and on transparency and good governance:
"Given the imperfection of human beings, the kind of government which is most acceptable is a model where several persons share power, supporting and admonishing one another." (Calvin, Institutes Vol. IV ch XX)

Support calls for Aung San Suu Kyi's speedy release by writing 64 words

64 words for Aung San Suu Kyi is a web initiative encouraging people around the world to write, speak of record 64 words to support the campaign to release her from custody before the upcoming Burmese elections. She is the world's only imprisoned Nobel Prize winner

Aung San Suu Kyi is Burma's imprisoned Democracy leader. The brutal dictatorship that rules Burma has detained her for over 13 years for campaigning for human rights and democracy.

Visit the site to leave your 64 words to support democracy in Burma.

Political depression ...

While I was lying comfortably in my Wagon-lit coming back from Rome I received regular sms updates on the European election results. Not a good day for British politics and time surely to turn to reinvigorating political culture ... Perhaps one day Britain will wake up to being part of Europe rather than living in some sort of disdainful superior separation. It doesn't seem to be about to happen any time soon. When Jean-Marie le Pen came second in the French presidential elections in 2002 it was a wake up call for France, will these election results wake up Britain?
I did however finally smile when I got the Euro results for Ferney Voltaire and discovered that Madame Françosie Grossetête had topped the poll (Ms Big Head for the UMP - boo hiss!) and I was really rather delighted that Daniel Cohn-Bendit and José Bové's brand of left-wing Green party came in second place with a very low score here for the far right.
Overall though I shall go to bed sad wondering how I too can re-engage in the building up of healthy political culture.