The religious right in Israel are promoting a bill in the Knesset that would   amend the country's basic law to include "the Jerusalem municipality is authorized to bar parades and processions on the grounds that they disturb public order, offend the public's sentiments or on religious grounds."

This is intended to enable the banning of the annual Gay Pride March which is the subject of a concerted hate campaign. The wording of course would enable any protest over matter of controversy to be banned, including the mass protests over the Prime Minister's performance in the Lebanon War.

On Sunday, the bill passed its first hurdle when a committee of ministers approved it. It will now go to the Knesset for consideration. Haaretz speculates that:

The bill's approval by the committee could indicate that the (ruling) coalition will vote for it. Kadima Ministers Jacob Edery and Gideon Ezra both supported the bill, as did Tourism Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch (Yisrael Beiteinu).

Today there is a meeting at Ben Gurion University in Israel to discuss the use of computers in terrorism and counter-terrorism, sponsored by NATO. One Jewish professor from California, the Director of one of the largest artificial intelligence research labs in the U.S. will not be there. He had been invited but was then "dis-invited" in light of his political views.

Last week the British University and College Union (UCU) held its first conference and passed a motion which is falsely represented as "boycotting Israeli academe". One comment made in reports compared the impact of such a boycott on Israel to the impact that the Anti-Apartheid sporting boycott had on South Africa. Judging by the hysteria that has flowed from both Israel and Jewish supporters of Israel in the USA, this characterization hit the spot.

Tul Bahadur Pun VC is one of only 12 living holders of Britain's highest medal, theVictoria Cross. He earned it fighting during the Burma campaign in World War II, for the British, as a member of the Ghurka Regiment. Such is the courage of these Nepalese fighters that they comprise one third of the 12 surviving holders of the medal. Below the fold, I reproduce the main part of the citation Mr Pun received.

Mr Pun was an honored guest at the coronation of the current Queen. Now he is elderly and infirm. Like many of his colleagues, is forced to live in Nepal because of the meanness of the pension scheme for the regiment, that gives them less than their equivalent in a purely British regiment. He has multiple medical problems and has only intermittent access to treatment and medication. He has to be carried down the mountains to get to a doctor.

He wants to come to Britain to get the treatment this country owes him for his service to it. The British embassy in Nepal has refused his application to settle in Britain to receive it on the grounds that he  "failed to demonstrate strong ties with the UK"
Update [2007-6-1 12:54:49 by londonbear]: The campaign has worked! See below

Like some aging pop star, Blair is on his "Farewell Tour". This week he is in Africa. On Thursday he goes to South Africa and on Tuesday dropped in to Libya to sell some arms to his old mate Gaddafi, in the name of the War on Terra you understand.

It is his Wednesday stopover that should be noted tho as it goes towards understanding why he got involved in Iraq. It is in Sierra Leone where he has his greatest popularity, wildly so. He was installed with the honorary title of Paramount Chief and was greeted with the sort of welcome that Rumsfeld must have imagined Bush would have in a "liberated" Iraq

The Neocons constantly complain that the media fail to report all the news from Iraq. That's true but Tuesday is a prime case in point where news from Iraq is not reported and that news is an indicator that things are going badly wrong.

Because it involves five Brits of course you might not expect it to make the headlines, despite it being the top story on news stations here. Yet it failed to get any coverage at all in the CBS evening news while a couple of whales and a cicada showing in Chicago did. To their credit, ABC Evening News did report it and indicate some of its significance.

A minor sidenote in the weekend news has been a rise in the price of pork in China. It is such a staple in the modern Chinese diet that its rise has pushed the inflation rate above 4%.

This would not be significant if the reports did not throw up some detail which relate even to the price of gasoline in the USA.

On Wednesday the Blair government lost a case in the Court of Appeal. If it is not successfully appealed in the House of Lords or Supreme Court, it will enable the Chagos Islanders to return to their homeland. The best know of the islands is Diego Garcia and it was to build that US air base, sometimes called the Indian Ocean Guantanamo, that the islanders were illegally evicted.

The islanders will not be able to go to Diego Garcia itself, in the same way the Cubans cannot enter Gitmo, but they should be able to return to the other islands.

Much of my Monday was spent anticipating the loss of an old friend. I live in sight of the Cutty Sark at Greenwich. Like many London schoolkids, I was taken there to get an appreciation of the country's maritime history. One of the joys of moving to my present apartment was the view downriver to see her and the surrounding buildings. I knew the Christmas season had arrived when I saw the tree and its lights lashed to the top of her highest mast.

It was not only to be a loss for me, she was part of a World Heritage site. She was the only surviving tea clipper from the 19th century and was the never quite the fastest but was one of the most beautiful, elegant and functional. A true queen of the seas even if she had become a bit sorry in her dry dock in recent years.  The disaster was even more profound when the police announced that the fire was suspicious. Had vandalism destroyed what wars and  nigh on 150 years of changing economics and wars could not? Would the course for the 2012 Olympic Marathon lose one of its landmarks?

Slowly though, later in the day, better news started to emerge. Hope is starting to rise that she may emerge not quite the same but better than could be anticipated even on Sunday. 

Channel 4 in the UK has broadcast couple of documentaries on Israel/Palestine to mark the 40th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank. The pair were personal investigations of the history and current situations by the two presenters, Rod Liddle, a former senior BBC journalist and Paddy Ashdown.

Liddle concentrated on investigating whether the occupation of the West Bank has eroded Israel's claim to be a democracy. Ashdown focused on Jerusalem. Most importantly, he proposed a series of five elements essential to bring about peace. These would involve changes in the present orthodoxy of the need to follow the Olso and Camp David processes.

One of the results of the recent discussions of the Israel/Palestine diaries has been to embolden those who want to rid the site of those they see as pro-Palestinian. I am such a target and I await an email from Hunter informing me I have been banned. I think it is useful to examine what got their ire and I will do so over the flip.

In case those who avoid I/P discussions are unclear, let me make this clear. The purpose of this is to close down dissemination of facts inconvenient to those whose uncritical support of any and all Israeli government action goes far beyond most Israelis. The irony is that they are attempting to close down the sorts of debates that freely circulate within Israel. For Americans, Israel must only be seen the Nelson's eye of AIPAC. There have been various attempts at this, culminating it seems with such disruption on the site that the FPs will refuse to allow the topic at all. This was apparently after the failure of a threat that the exposition of a neutral or pro-Palestinian view would endanger Democratic candidates being elected.

I would argue the contrary. This tactic is getting Daily Kos a reputation for censorship which will ultimately damage its influence.

I'd just like to flag up two British sporting heroes who were in the news this weekend. Both in their own ways are inspirations. One is comparatively little known outside Britain or their own specialist field, the other is becoming successful and should be known worldwide, perhaps even gaining a championship this year.

The more reports come out, the more it is becoming apparent that the use of biofuels in the form of ethnanol (or indeed most forms of bio-diesel) is a false road to prevent global warming. Bush's push for it must therefore be seen as the policy of Mr Micawber, the belief that "something will turn up" to avoid the need for radical changes. Indications are that again he is gearing up to emasculate the outcome of the upcoming G8 discussions on global warming and lay landmines for a future administration.

What I want to bring together are three news items that appear at first to be separate but when taken together must inform future energy policy. That, I would suggest, is not a case of substitution, as in ethanol for gasoline but avoiding usage as in investing in public transport and radically changing infrastructure and work patterns to avoid the current levels of travel for work.

Violent clashes in the large Pakistani city of Karachi, the commercial centre, have left "at least 27" dead after targeted assassinations of opposition party activists and open gunfire by pro-Musharraf gangs. Local television stations broadcast pictures of one group firing from an intersection.

The purpose of all this was to stop the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, reaching the city for a rally after flying into the airport. In advance of his arrival pro-junta activists had blocked streets. The rally has now been called off as the violence has stopped Chaudhry leaving the airport.

The miliary dictator and Bush client, General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president is attempting to get his rule extended. He is due to hold a rally himself in the capital Islamabad soon (due to start before 17.00 UT) While there is no obvious successor, the opposition parties to some extent being too divided, it is not in the USA's medium term interest to continue to prop up Musharraf.

You can virtually guarantee that when a non-story comes out of Palestine via Israeli propaganda organisations, there is another story that the Israelis want covered up. So today we have the non-news that a Hamas TV station has been using a Mickey Mouse look-alike. The only actual news in the story was in Haaretz, that the Palestinian minister in charge of broadcasting had ordered it pulled. Indeed the Haaretz headline told the news story:

So what had to be covered up by the rushed released of a report from Palestinian Media Watch? Nothing short of the imminent publication of a highly critical report from the World Bank on the stangulation of the Palestinian economy by the "cantonisation" of the West Bank. Of the movement restrictions the summary is scathing:

While Israeli security concerns are undeniable and must be addressed, it is often difficult to reconcile the use of movement and access restrictions for security purposes from their use to expand and protect settlement activity and the relatively unhindered movement of settlers and other Israelis in and out of the West Bank.

I am writing this early Wednesday morning, London time. Today may well be the day Blair resigns as Labour Party leader. The announcement is due this week and while Thursday is possible, today seems more likely. Very possible this will be before 12 noon, in time for the US morning shows.

Now I may be wrong but there seems to be a natural timetable for this and a very good reason for Blair to have his day today.

Seonachan  has started a thread giving the results for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections. I have added some posts on the English local council elections. While the results are pointing towards the Scottish Nationalists becoming the largest party in the Parliament, there are increasing worries that the electoral system has seriously affected the result, with the number of spoilt ballot papers exceeding the majority in at least one constituency seat election.

There seems to have been considerable confusion caused by holding elections for Scottish local elections on the same day. This has resulted in each elector getting three different ballot papers, to be marked in different ways.

Ten years ago today as dawn broke over London a helicopter delivered Tony Blair and his wife to a victory rally on the South Bank. Later he would go to Buckingham Palace to be invited to become Prime Minister. This was a moment for his party to savor.

As the various characters we came to know and love know embarrassed themselves to various degrees with their attempts to dance, the loudspeakers blared the campaign song "Things can only get better". There was undoubtedly an air of excitement. The Thatcher years ended with her sobbing in the back of her car as she left Downing Street, a sight at which only those with a heart of stone could fail to shed a smile. Her successor, John Major, although basically a fairly decent man was surrounded by his "bastards". At the end, the country was just tired of the Tories.

Ten years on and we are on the eve of a new set of elections and change is again in the air. Now the country is just tired of Blair.

If you listen to Anthony Charles Lynton (known as "Tony") Blair, you would think he was English. His accent, especially when he is interviewed on TV is one known as "esturine" or Estuary English.

Blair has been on the stump this week attempting to rescue his party's fortunes in Thursday's elections for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and many English local government seats outside London. For many this seems like Dracula advertising a cure for anemia but today "our Tony" produced an amazing display of amnesia.