It’s still very hot. Apparently much hotter than it has ever been in the UK in April, so news stations have been sending out armies of photographers to capture the acres of lily white flesh that amassed all over the country. I was going to post an image as accompaniment for that, but I’m not sure it's really needed.
David Cameron has been overheard calling some journalist a “Fucker” – on a plane journey back from Pakistan. Cameron made a statement during his trip there, in which he admitted that Britain was responsible for the problematic relationship between India and Pakistan. His outburst was directed at the journalist who had turned these words into a front-page story, and put Cameron in rather a bad light. Ironically, I said (only two days ago) that you probably wouldn’t find nice Mr. Cameron cursing at journalist the way President Sarkozy has been known to. I stand corrected.
Former President Mubarak of Egypt, one of the first Arab leaders to be thrown out of power by protesters in recent times, is now facing big questions from the state. He is being accused of the deaths of many protesters, as well as for squirrelling away public money and generally being corrupt and nasty. Mubarak resigned in February, following 18 days of protests and has been under house arrest in his not-very-prison-ish coastal villa ever since.
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has rather boldly said that his service is more accountable than any democratically elected government. WikiLeaks, for those of you who don’t know, was set up (in 2006) as a nifty online ‘dump’ for people (mostly of the political ilk) to anonymously offload secrets, which could then be published and served before the public eye. It is funded entirely by its users. Last year, WikiLeaks started publishing a whole load of top-secret information that had been dumped or ‘leaked’ by various insiders, about the war in Iraq. Obviously, it revealed a number of unsavoury home truths and went down very badly with various governments who wanted to keep these truths behind closed doors, Britain and America included.
Assange was arrested in December of last year on suspicion of various sexual assault charges. Some say these allegations were all just attempts to sully the name of a man who held so many valuable secrets. Others say not. That’s not the news story, but you should know it has been an issue. Assange’s point is that because WikiLeaks is funded on a week-to-week basis by the public, based on whether they approve of its work or not, the service is far more responsive and fair than a democratic government. Even democratic governments, he argues, are largely funded by big dog companies and wealthy benefactors every four years in order to get elected. It’s an interesting business.
Tomorrow I’ll be giving you a once-over on Al’Jazeera – which is one of the boldest, most controversial and perhaps most influential news stations to emerge in a long time.
Until then…
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