Gordon Brown: Wiring a web for global good

There's been some follow-up from Rafael Behr's piece in the Observer saying 'The Tories think the internet favours them. They're wrong' which repeats the meme that Gordon Brown is a web luddite whilst 'webcameron' gets it.

This is just wrong and the following talk by Brown at TedGlobal last month shows why.

Yes, Labour has a crap web operation. Yes, Gordon should stop jigging around in Downing Street videos.

But this presentation off the Westminster bubble circuit is seemingly effortless and masterful and demonstrates that he 'gets it' web-wise.

Listen to Gay Life After Saddam

Here is the BBC radio report on the situation for Iraqi LGBT. It is nothing but horror (and heroism) and here's the thing: life was better under Saddam.

Iraqi gays report a (discrete) gay life before 2003 which reminds me of the life which currently exists in Beirut. There were clubs, people could meet by the river. An exile says "no one was killed for being gay under Saddam regime".

This brilliant report goes to Baghdad and visits the Iraqi LGBT safe house. It is very hard listening.

"They had thrown [my boyfriend's] corpse in the garbage. His genitals were cut off and a piece of his throat had been cut out."

Some LGBT find their way to the UK. Very, very few. The UK Border Agency in every instance says they can go back and just 'be discrete'. I kid you not.

Not surprisingly (sic) both David Miliband and Phil Woolas refused to give an interview for this programme.

It includes a lot of background from my friend Ali Hilli. I can't begin to express my admiration for him. He is a true hero.

Listen to the show (60').

Gay Life After Saddam

Tatchell barred from Pride parties by Brown + Boris

If you were to stop people in the street and ask them to name a gay rights campaigner I would bet money they would name Peter Tatchell. For twenty years he has been in front of the media.

Yes, Sir Ian McKellan is more famous but I doubt most people would see him as a more prominent campaigner than Tatchell.

But Peter is a thorn in the side, not least to those who are quick to praise Labour and slow to critique it. Last year he had a very public word with Harriet Harman at Pride about LGBT asylum - 'why are we sending gays back to Iran?' This followed her being heckled as she spoke. Of course Harman made promises which were immediately forgotten about.

Most notable of those who don't like Tatchell are the gay establishment, those whom Labour have awarded gongs to. So it's unsurprising to learn that when Ten Downing Street hosts an event for Pride Month on Saturday morning Tatchell won't be there. Neither will he be at Mayor of London, Boris Johnson's soirée, according to Tatchell's tweet, despite being a patron!



Tatchell also says about another Downing Street event in March, held to dismiss the widely believed idea that Gordon doesn't like the gays, he was actively dismissed from the guest list.

An insider tipped me off that my name had been removed from the invite list, at Gordon Brown's personal request. He was apparently still angry that I had heckled him over his government's erosion of civil liberties, when he opened the Taking Liberties exhibition at the British Library late last year.

You could imagine that those invited into the golden circle are not exactly likely to say 'I'm not coming if Tatchell's not there' given that Peter says they're "tame apologists for Labour". And that is precisely what is happening.

Not that Tatchell gives a shit:

I don't do my human rights work to win awards, honours or invites. It doesn't matter to me that I haven't been invited.

What angers me is the principle - the way the Prime Minister invites and fetes mostly tame pro-Labour loyalists in the LGBT community. It is a manipulative tactic by an insecure government that knows its record on LGBT human rights is not as glorious as it claims.

And if the evidence of the Mayor's non-invitation is anything to go by "mostly tame pro-Labour loyalists in the LGBT community" deliberately exclude him precisely because he just so damned awkward.

Gongs, Sir TBL and speeding up freeing up the data

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The gongs have been handed out for the Queen's Birthday and, scanning through, I couldn't see one for a webbie or a tekkie. This seemed particularly odd looking at the ones locally for Cambridge - home of the 'Silicon Fen' - and the business related ones didn't include any webbies or tekkies, neither did the academic ones.

So I was wondering about all that in the context of the announcement that one webbie who actually has a gong, Sir Tim Berners Lee (TBL), was appointed to drive the freeing up of government data in the wake of Gordon Brown's near-demise, a week which also saw a large number of the unelected enter his cabinet and him appoint Sir Alan Sugar, of TV fame, to a government post.

So the first thing which struck me was 'this is another celebrity appointment'. Then it struck me that at least TBL is a webbie who is part of the establishment. Then it also struck me that with the exit of Minister Tom Watson, who is also a webbie, perhaps we do need someone with establishment clout to knock heads together at the top table.

What we don't know if whether TBL will have the skills to be effective. To actually be able to move Whitehall and the rest of government.

But the consensus from those close in is that - chaneling Princess Leia - he's our best hope.

Simon Dickson:

But what he will be able to do is intimidate persuade those people who always seem to block the initiatives which have already gone before. He may have more success saying the exact same things many of us have already been saying for some time, because of who he is.

Emma Mulqueeny:

It just makes sense – and the fact that data sets are in such a muddle in most organisations where I work, is almost testament in itself that nothing organised will come out of such chaos without serious intervention and dedication.

However Rory Cellan-Jones asked TBL himself and came away unconvinced:

But will the cry "raw data now" resound through the civil service, with Sir Tim leading a chanting crowd of bureaucrats through Whitehall? "We'll see - listen carefully!" was the web creator's advice. But I fear he may be in for a bruising few months, as he tries to convince Sir Humphrey et al to let it all hang out.

I can think of a few other people with no media profile whatsoever who would know how to do that - Tom Steinberg seems to know his political shit-stirring stuff - and with the loss of Tom Watson it's going to be seriously needed.

I won't judge Sir TBL until he's done something - but it did come off as another of GBrown's headline-lead, showbizisation bad ideas like Sir Alan.

Yanks go for our beloved leader

Daily Show 'does' both Nick Griffin and, gulp Our Beloved Leader.

Screen grabs:




How very dare they?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2009 - Everywhere but Here Edition
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

• isthebnpracist.co.uk

Fairplay to Brown, a brilliant speech

Gordon Brown gave a knockout and quite moving speech this afternoon in Normandy.

Given the current situation this may be very hard to believe! But I defy anyone to listen to it and, putting issues with the man aside, not find the content stirring



By contrast Obama's history lesson was full of sweeping historical generalisations and - yes - errors. Plus, I thought, his tone was plain wrong.

Gordon hearts Luca

More

Downing Street's website circle of hell

Sad to report but the blogging platform I'm using appears to be letting down disabled readers.

I was emailed by one that they'd attempted to comment on a post but were unable to because the alternative to the spam-preventing 'captcha' word verification wasn't working.

Well, I just logged out and tried it and it wasn't working for me either. It just 'hiccuped'

So I've complained to Blogger but in the process noticed that they don't seem to respond at all to accessibility issues. Have a look around the Google Group.

Other things about Blogger in this regard have irritated me for a while, such as not adding a simple field to add Alt tags to images (you have to rawcode). Hardly rocket science.

Wordpress does have this simple field, and link titling - are they the better option if you are serious, but lazy, with accessibility? Or something else?

Captcha seems to be a particular pain in the rear for those using text-to-speech.

Robin Christopherson, head of accessibility at technology access charity AbilityNet, recently examined the Number 10 Downing Street website. While he found it comparatively accessible (in a 'low-bar' field) it still had:

• 'click here' links, and - the horror!
• auto-start videos, with unlabelled control buttons

What the latter means is that blind users are confronted with Gordon Brown drowning out their own audio controls and cannot work out how to turn it off. Sounds like one circle of hell.

What my correspondent complained about in Blogger with captcha is also happening elsewhere, says Christopherson. He says that the sounds created in order to confuse audio recognition software are so distorted that they cannot be recognised by humans either.

Even more patronisingly, when testing Google he saw that it has a third option - contact the site's owners directly for assistance. When Christopherson was eventually contacted two days after applying for this option he was informed that everyone had to register online!

My correspondent also finds the whole accessibility attempt somewhat patronisingly unuseful:

I can't pass the eyetest and I think the wheelchair (what does wheelchair use have to do with poor eyesight anyway?) is meant to link to a hearing test, which is also a problem for me because I damaged my hearing doing factory work when I was young.

Anyway, that's irrelevant because the wheelchair actually links to a page that says "Not Found Error 404" for me. I can't even try a hearing test.

Joining Gordon

Gordon Brown's statement today.

"The theme of this Holocaust Memorial Day is Standing up to Hatred."

"We all like to think that we know what we would do in the face of hatred – that in a moment of decision we would honour our obligations to resist brutality and to stand with its victims.

"In studying the Holocaust, however, one thing becomes painfully clear: that the full barbarity of Hitler’s death camps was the end point of many acts of cruelty and discrimination, each injustice feeding on the last.

"The murder of six million Jews and countless Roma, Poles and other Eastern Europeans, gay men and lesbians, trade unionists, disabled people and political and religious opponents of the Nazis was not a sudden and frenzied explosion of hate, but a horror that had been methodically and carefully planned.

"Hatred may begin with small acts of prejudice or bigotry – but it rarely ends with them. That is why we all have an obligation to stand up to hatred.

"This Holocaust Memorial Day I hope that people all across Britain will join me in renewing a personal commitment to resisting hatred wherever it is found today."

Past post: Remembering Sachsenhausen.

'E-democracy' and, er, democracy

Jakob Nielsen has produced for Pew a very interesting usability study of voter information websites from all 50 united states and the District of Columbia.

Some points of interest. He identifies these neglected usability aspects:

• Homepage usability
• Search
• Accessibility
• Web presence (that is, how users get to content from outside the site, or "usability-in-the-large")
  

And makes this spot-on comment on his results:

there's a negative correlation of r=-.1 between homepage usability and accessibility ... the negative correlation indicates that designers aren't treating accessibility as a component of user experience quality. Most likely, government agencies are focused on complying with legalistic accessibility regulations instead of trying to make the sites easy for people with disabilities to use.

As an observer of 'e-democracy', where's usability in the mix? Well it's nowhere - because it's simultaneously nowhere in egov. That's true of the UK and - Nielsen suggests - the US also.

Not very democratic, I'd venture to suggest.

According to E-Access blog, Robin Christensen now of AbilityNet and formally of the RNIB reviewed the FAB! NEW! WEB 2.0! Number 10 Downing Street website and found it wanting:

While relatively accessible in many ways, still has various untagged links which read simply ‘click here’ [sic], offering the audio browser no clue as to what lies behind. The website also features auto-start videos, with unlabelled control buttons, so that blind users are confronted with video noise drowning out their own audio controls and cannot work out how to turn it off.

A very polite way to put it. Picture the scene ....

Again with the not-very-democratic.

Sez Jakob:

There's a reason that we have a "total user experience" concept to encompass everything that users encounter. It's not enough to have a great design for part of the user interface. Good navigation, say, is certainly a necessity for a great user experience, but it's not sufficient. Offer a bad homepage, and users might turn away before they even start navigating.

We can liken a website's user experience to the metaphorical chain that's no stronger than its weakest link. If any one usability attribute fails, the overall user experience is compromised and many users will fail.

It's all very obvious, really - auto-start videos FCS!! Unless one is sitting inside a walled garden ....

Gordon Brown on Leaks

Quite, quite odd to see a UK viral getting picked up. I'm used to Romanians and Italians and Malaysians etc. against the Britneys and Obamas.

Of course this is because this viral stuff explodes the hypocrisy on the Tory's arrest - just as Jon Stewart has been doing all year - hence the virality. But, jeez, where is the UK with online politics if a scandal of this scale barely raises a blip compared with two Romanian MPs shouting at each other?

“We still don’t know where the bottom is”

HT: Crooks & Liars

Mort Zuckerman talking about the Fannie and Freddie Mac bailout.



The bank deregulation fallout (which G.Brown may have had a hand in). Been there, done that?

Here's the legacy for the grandkiddies: disastrous climate change and massive debt. Could we be more selfish?

‘The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.’
John Kenneth Galbraith

Our shame: official, imposed destitution

Protest by Zimbabwean refugees - the banner reads 'you take our nurses but not our wounded'

In a story buried in almost all the media, Gordon Brown has misled people on his government's attitude to Zimbabwean refugees.

According to the Press Association:

The deportation of failed asylum seekers to Zimbabwe has now been halted, Gordon Brown said.

The Prime Minister told MPs that while officials continued to deal with the issue on a case-by-case basis, no returns were currently taking place.

“No-one is being forced to return to Zimbabwe from the United Kingdom at this time,” he said.

Mr Brown, who has been under pressure to stop the deportations in the wake of the violence surrounding the disputed presidential election, said that ministers were also looking to help failed Zimbabwean asylum seekers who were unable to work.

It is noticeable that the story fails to quote press statements such as by the Refugee Council's Donna Covey.

They were not deporting anyway because of a legal challenge - it’s not news, it's not some great act of charity, source G.Brown, which might please his Minister father.

What’s desperately needed is that the Zimbabweans in the UK are granted ‘leave to remain’ so they can work.

At the moment 11,000 are officially destitute. Many are homeless and begging. All are reliant on charity. This is intolerable.

What Brown said was, frankly, a lie.

This is what the Refugee Council said:

The Refugee Council will tomorrow accuse the government of “utter hypocrisy” as its Chief Executive, Donna Covey, addresses a rally outside Parliament calling on the government to give Zimbabwean asylum seekers leave to stay in the UK and allow them to work.

Thousands of Zimbabweans have been refused asylum in the UK, yet the government admits it is not safe to send them back. They are left homeless and destitute, with no entitlement to any support or the ability to work and support themselves.

It comes close to a charade for the Foreign Secretary to applaud the courage of refugees from Zimbabwe in South Africa, while in this country Zimbabwean refugees are being left to rot.

“The current situation amounts to a policy of saying to Zimbabweans, we won’t return you but our protection will amount to you being allowed to stay and beg on our streets.

“If the government had a shred of decency it would act now, to give Zimbabweans some temporary status in this country, allowing them to work and indeed to reskill so that they are better placed to help rebuild their country when the Mugabe regime falls.”

Unfortunately we have a strong anti-refugee movement led by the media outlets which aren't covering this or quoting the Refugee Council, and this is why it's so difficult to get pressure on G. Brown to do something about the situation of the Zimbabweans.

The government hides behind blatant falsehoods about their system's supposed 'fairness' but the reality is as I explained: official destitution.

They have merely suspended deportations to Harare but only after being forced to by being taken to court.

I and many Brits find this shameful. We live in the fifth biggest economy and most other European countries - or for that matter African countries - do not behave this way. At least they let people work.

And it's not just Zimbabweans. We are now sending refugees back to Darfur. And because the system which creates this is getting no media coverage, British people haven't a clue about what's being done in our name.

Web power: From the Zimbabwe underground to the G8

Two days ago the Zimbabwean civic organisation Sokwanele published this photo on their blog.

It is of the mutilated and burnt corpse of Joshua Bakacheza, MDC driver for Mashonaland West and discovered late on Saturday. Many people apart from the 103 confirmed dead are also missing. It had taken his family two weeks to find it.

Joshua and another MDC supporter, Tendai Chidziwo, had been assisting murdered MDC activist Tonderai Ndira’s wife to move her furniture and personal belongings as she no longer felt safe at her home in Mabvuku, a sprawling township on the outskirts of Harare.

Their truck was ambushed by 16 Zanu-PF thugs, leaving Tonderai’s widow and her two children standing by the roadside, trembling from fright and crying.

Joshua and Tendai was taken to a torture centre and tortured and then shot. Tendai miraculously survived, he directed the family to where the corpse might be found.

Sokwanele have a Flickr page which hosts this photo and many others, and a Google Map, as well as the blog, where they are documenting the terror campaign.

Yesterday Gordon Brown used this photo at the G8 summit to convince his fellow leaders of the need for action against Mugabe's murderous regime.

The meme is that he was producing it from his back pocket. (It was also mentioned on his Twitter feed).

From determined family to Sokwanele to the G8 - this is an amazing moment in web history.

I have read many comments on Sokwanele's blog about whether their documentation is worthwhile, whether people elsewhere can make any real impact. Today showed that they could and the web is enabling this; this is worth noting and I am amazed that none of the news reporting about Brown's actions have sourced the photo back to the web and the heroic people behind Sokwanele.

Postscript: What is more, well, amazing is that in my correspondence with Sokwanele they do not care if credit is given.

These people are my heroes.

Zimbabwean exiles abandoned, left destitute

One image from the terror campaign: More

Cross-posted from LGBT asylum news also on Wardman Wire

The UK Prime Minister is currently in Japan lecturing people about doing more to oust Robert Mugabe.

At the same time his government is doing everything it can to oust the opposition to Mugabe from the UK.

This week 11,000 Zimbabwean refugees received letters asking them to return to a country described by the same government as undergoing a campaign of terror orchestrated by a military cabal. No opposition is brokered and activists are being hunted down and killed.

These refugees are being denied a right to work or any official support (because they are 'refused' to return because they are terrified and do not have 'leave to remain') so they are - officially - destitute and many are homeless and some beg to survive. This is the practice adopted by the UK government to force people to return.

It is hypocrisy of the highest order. Many poor African countries have accepted thousands more Zimbabwean refugees, in South Africa millions. Yet the fifth richest country in the world refuses basic support to the very same people it is praising in Zimbabwe - Mugabe's opposition.

The sole reason is because the UK government is beholden to a few media proprietors who propagate lies about asylum seekers to make money from populist fears.

The government has been trying for some time to forcibly send people back to Zimbabwe - there was a court case which highlighted the unreported issue this week.

Donna Covey, Chief executive of the Refugee Council said:

“The legal ping pong over the removal of Zimbabweans is now becoming farcical. The Judges in explaining their decision today said as much, making the point that the test case going through the courts is more than a year old, and based on even older evidence, while the situation in Zimbabwe is clearly deteriorating day by day.

“It’s now time for the government to drop the legal action and do the decent and sensible thing. It should give all Zimbabweans a temporary right to stay in the UK until the situation in their country improves markedly. This would allow the Zimbabweans, many of whom are well qualified, to work to support themselves and to carry on making plans for rebuilding their shattered country once the Mugabe regime falls.

“The current situation, where brave Zimbabweans who have stood up for democracy and human rights are left homeless and destitute in the UK, having been refused any protection, is a disgrace.”

Sir John Waite, co-chairman of the Independent Asylum Commission, which has just published a report on the asylum system in the UK, described the situation as a source of shame.

He said: "We heard testimony from many Zimbabwean asylum seekers and we were shocked by what we found - Zimbabweans sleeping on sofas, in parks and launderettes, reliant on charity and prevented from working."

He added: "Our nation's leaders have loudly condemned the Mugabe regime, but perhaps we should also look a little closer to home, to the thousands of Zimbabwean asylum seekers who have been left in a harsh legal limbo - unable to work, deprived of welfare and unable to return home. If the British people had heard what we have heard from destitute Zimbabweans, they would be troubled and perhaps even ashamed."

A march and rally is due to be held in Westminster on Friday, to ask for asylum seekers from Zimbabwe to be given status and the right to work. It will begin in Parliament Square, outside Westminster Abbey, at 1.30pm.

It will be preceded by a special service at St Margaret’s Church Westminster Abbey, led by the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu.

• Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's website
• Foreign Secretary David Milliband's blog

• The Still Human Still Here Campaign
  Dedicated to highlighting the plight of tens of thousands of refused asylum seekers who are being forced into abject poverty in an attempt to drive them out of the country.

gayasylumuk condemns "inhumane, anti-gay" Labour government

MEDIA RELEASE

23rd June, 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE USE

gayasylumuk condemns "inhumane, anti-gay" Labour government

The campaigning group gayaylumuk today called the comments of British Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith about retuning gays and lesbians to Iran "outrageous, shameful, inhumane and anti-gay".

In a letter to the LibDem MP Lord Roberts, Smith echoed government policy by claiming that it was safe to return people if they were "discreet".

Spokesperson, Paul Canning, said "we are calling for protest to be directed at Gordon Brown over the issue. Sign the petition."

"We hope that gay and lesbian Labour voters in particular will consider changing their vote if the policy isn't changed before the next election. This is one way to get the message through on their hypocrisy regarding lesbian and gay rights issues — when embassies in other countries are flying the rainbow flag they aren't doing this in Tehran, Kingston or Kampala."

Human Rights Watch (HRW), the respected international authority often quoted by the government, has documented the persecution and torture of gays and lesbians in Iran, where sex can attract the death penalty.

In March they issued an alert over the raiding of a private party in Ishfahan. In May the Home Office was added to their 'Hall of Shame'.

Scott Long of HRW said: "Torturing and killing gays is legal in Iran: you don't need to view the bodies to prove it. International law bars Britain from returning people to the risk of torture. Britain must give gay Iranians asylum."

"Human Rights Watch has shown how Britain tries to redefine its obligations on torture, so it can send people back to states where they face grave risk. Usually it happens in the context of counterterrorism. But with gay Iranians, too, the government aims to change the rules, denying that legal torture is "persecution"."

gayasylumuk believes that the number of such asylum seekers in the UK is small, maybe 30. Such small numbers is also the case in other countries.

"The Dutch experience shows that a proven, tested model exists of how to operate a humane asylum policy for gays and lesbians - and they haven't had a 'flood'", said Canning.

"Similar policy and practice exists in the United States, Canada and Sweden - why is the UK alone in being inhumane and disregarding international law?"

gayasylumuk countered the government's position, as restated in the Medhi Kazemi case in the House of Lords by the Home Office Minister, Lord West.

"We are extremely cautious about the way in which we treat these cases"
They have shown no evidence of caution. For a number of years they have consistently refused asylum to gays and lesbians and transgender people who would suffer persecution if returned, because that is their policy. Some of these people have committed suicide rather than be returned. There is a mass of evidence that Iran and other countries like Jamaica and Uganda are a 'deathzone'.

"We give detailed consideration to these cases"
This is not the experience of asylum seekers, and this is well documented. They do not consider the stated opinion of their own colleagues in the Foreign Office and never have. They misrepresent evidence of torture and systematic harassment by Human Rights Watch and other NGOs.

"They go through a rigorous appeals and court process"
As Smith has just reiterated, there is a Home Office policy that gays and lesbians can be returned if they are 'discreet'. Further, there is a history of the Home Office accepting bland assurances from the Iranian and other governments. Further, there is a lot of evidence of homophobic attitudes within the Appeals Court process.

"Obviously we have to follow and respect the integrity of that process"
Not if it is biased. Not if the outcome is guaranteed because of their (unstated) policy. There is no integrity to this process for gays and lesbians.

The group is calling on all British people outraged by government policy to sign the petition, established by Durham Methodist minister Walter Attwood, which says: 'we the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop deporting gays and lesbians to countries where they may be imprisoned, tortured or executed because of their sexuality'. to Gordon Brown (at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Stopdeportinggay/).

This petition says: 'we the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop deporting gays and lesbians to countries where they may be imprisoned, tortured or executed because of their sexuality'.

The petition has almost 3000 signatures but needs many more to achieve significance in the Number Ten petitions system, established by Downing Street to affect and inform policy.

gayasylumuk is a campaign group established by Omar Kuddas. It has supporters in the UK, USA, Europe and around the world.

• Further information on asylum seekers the Iranian lesbian threatened with deportation to torture and possible death by stoning, Pegah Emambakhsh, can be found on 'LGBT asylum news (formally Save Mehdi Kazemi)', the campaign's website
  http://www.medhikazemi.com
  
  
• Human Rights Watch: Iran: Private Homes Raided for 'Immorality'
  Authorities Escalate Arbitrary Arrests, Harassment
  http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/03/28/iran18385.htm
  
  
• Human Rights Watch adds Home Office to 'Hall of Shame'
  http://madikazemi.blogspot.com/2008/05/human-rights-watch-adds-home-office-to.html
  
  
• Further information on Rev. Walter Attwood
  http://www.durhamdeernessmethodist.org.uk/ministers.shtml
  

A button promoting the petition to Gordon Brown, for use on websites and blogs, can also be found on our website.

~~~~~~

Independent: Iran is safe for 'discreet' gays, says Jacqui Smith

gayasylumuk wants more to sign petition to Gordon Brown

MEDIA RELEASE
15TH June

FOR IMMEDIATE USE

gayasylumuk wants more to sign petition to Gordon Brown

The campaigning group gayaylumuk today called on all those moved by the plight of the 19-yo Iranian Mehdi Kazemi to support other lesbian and gay asylum seekers at risk of return to torture and possible death.

The group is calling on all British people outraged by government policy to sign the petition to Gordon Brown (at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Stopdeportinggay/).

This petition, established by Durham Methodist minister Walter Attwood, says: 'we the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop deporting gays and lesbians to countries where they may be imprisoned, tortured or executed because of their sexuality'.

The petition has almost 3000 signatures but needs many more to achieve significance in the Number Ten petitions system, established by Downing Street to affect and inform policy.

The group has also established an international petition to support Prossy Kakooza, a 26-year-old lesbian woman seeking asylum in the UK. She fled Uganda after suffering vicious sexual, physical and verbal attacks due to her sexual orientation. Her application has been refused with Prossy being told she can return and 'be discrete' when this is not an option in Uganda.

International petition for Prossy http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ProssyKakooza/

We are also highlighting the cases of:

* Pegah Emambakhsh, an Iranian lesbian threatened by the British government with deportation to torture and possible death by stoning.
* Gay Syrian refugee JoJo Jako Yakob, who fled his homeland two years ago after being arrested, shot and beaten.
* Babakhan 'Babi' Badalov, a target of repression and persecution as an openly gay radical artist and poet in Azerbaijan.

Their claims for asylum has all been dismissed.

Spokesperson Paul Canning said, "LGBT refugees fleeing torture and possible murder are routinely being refused asylum because of UK government policy. This is at the same time as British embassy's abroad are flying the rainbow flag — it's hypocritical."

"Many other countries, such as Holland, the United States and Sweden do not treat LGBT asylum seekers this way and the evidence shows that there is no 'flood' if you adopt humane policies. The government needs to change its shameful attitude and we are calling on British people to tell them it is, indeed, shaming."

gayasylumuk is a campaign group established by Omar Kuddas. It has supporters in the UK, USA, Europe and around the world.

Further information about Prossy, Pegah, JoJo and Babi can be found on 'LGBT asylum news (formally Save Mehdi Kazemi)', the campaign's website http://www.medhikazemi.com

Further information on Rev. Walter Attwood http://www.durhamdeernessmethodist.org.uk/ministers.shtml

Telling one source from another

In PM Questions today Gordon Brown referred to ConservativeHome as the Conservatives website.

The Conservative party’s members’ website, ConservativeHome, also said this morning:

“A clear majority of the British people favour a longer detention period. We believe that the British people are right. They won’t readily forgive any politicians who allow a major atrocity to occur because our detention procedures prove to be inadequate.”

The right hon. Gentleman must answer also to members of his own party.

It's not the "members’ website", it's Tim Montgomerie's.

I hope this is a one-off, from a bad No. 10 researcher, confusing an individual's website with those of the party they're in sympathy with. There's been enough of this in the US election, including bizarre, deliberate attacks on out-there comments or images on Democrat-orientated sites like dailyKos or HuffPost somehow being the site's or 'the liberal left's' (aka Democrats) responsibility. Something similar is happening at the moment confusing my.obama.com with Obama's stated positions.

What made it even stranger was Brown pointing at how ConservativeHome was supporting 42-days detention. Actually, all it was doing was pointing at a Telegraph poll ... and that quote is wrong.

Also, ConservativeHome, never mind the Conservative party, appears to have missed this Prime Ministerial faux-paus.

All very odd and hopefully not a trend in the making.

ICELE and how out-of-touch Gordon is with egov

There's been a long thread going this week on the UKIE-Edem network (European edemocracy) about what appears to be the last death thrashes of the International Centre of Excellence for Local eDemocracy (ICELE). This was a 'National Project' funded by the government, then defunded, then thrown to the wolves.

Although there has been deserved criticism of the project, for duplicating blog products for example, much of the work has been very useful, not least their basic resources on blogging etc.

All will, apparently, be lost.

I can't think of a better example of how out of touch Downing Street is with the state of egov in the UK; that this is happening and they aren't interested, actually they're probably completely unaware.

So whilst we have them pioneering good edem initiatives like Twitter and epetitions, at the grass roots it's chaos.

Here's a summary from Dave Briggs of the thread discussion. And here's what I posted to the thread:

Two points:

1. How much money has been wasted on this and other national projects? Is anyone other than Public Sector Forums paying attention?

2. This just highlights for me the absence of any national central point of reference for egov. It's splintered all over the place, so no one actually working in the area has 'heard of' most of the worthy stuff.

We need an intro point as well as one for researchers - ICELE at least tried to be the former with its introductions.

It just pains me that the Australian state of Victoria and other governments like Hong Kong and New Zealand have managed 'one stop shop' portals to egov for practitioners but all Downing St has led with is endless, endless different initiatives with different websites whilst at the same time preaching to the rest of us about 'just' directgov and businesslink.

We've got truly bad leadership on egov in the country and I'd hope us practitioners could say that with a collective voice rather than 'well, on the other hand ... '

Scrapbook clips catch up

Scrapbook is the Firefox extension I use to quickly capture either a whole page or a text selection. It's not, yet, online - meaning that I can't access clips anywhere - but much more useful for my needs than del.icio.us.

Accessibility, two new useful resources.

• Shape Shed on How to make websites more accessible for users with Intellectual Disabilities.
  
• Jack Pickard on WCAG 2.0 and Accessibility for older users.

Why we posted epilepsy film to YouTube

Epilepsy charities condemned Russell Barth andChristine Lowe's YouTube seizure video as a "freak show". Not so, say the couple: the movie has saved lives.

Since posting this footage, we have had over 254,000 views (23 times more hits than the next-most-viewed clip), and have received dozens of emails from people asking for advice in reducing seizures, and hundreds of positive comments about our bravery and compassion.

This footage has been used in medical schools and presentations around the world, and a prison in New Mexico has even used it to help new guards recognize real seizures. Another man in Fort Worth, Texas emailed us to say that our video helped him save another person who had a seizure while at his place of work. Our video has saved lives.

What is it with charities and the web?

Wired's Wiki on how to set up an online pirate radio station.

From the US, UK egov read this and weep:

More than 400 government Web managers from across the country are meeting this week at the fifth annual Government Web Managers Conference, co-sponsored by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and the Federal Web Managers Council. This year's conference focuses on new collaborative technologies that allow agencies to work together to create and deliver better Web content for citizens. The Web Managers Best Practice Awards were presented as part of the conference on May 5, recognizing six exemplary federal Web sites.

From Public Sector Forums (.gov.uk only):

The Cabinet Office is currently embroiled in a huge behind-the-scenes row with the Treasury who they are accusing of failing to sort out tax rules on VAT on shared services for the last two years. Although some public bodies are VAT-exempt, buying shared services incurs 17.5% VAT which they cannot recover. The Cabinet Office, along with many other departments, believes this is one of the two single biggest barriers to shared services, is wrecking business cases for shared services and costing the public sector more than £200 million per year in lost potential efficiency savings.

Others have reported how Gordon Brown talked up the Internet at a Scottish faith gathering. Here's how the Express reported it:

To many it is a talking shop or a playground for perverts. But for Gordon Brown the internet is a new force for global good.

Gordon Brown's speech to Google Zeitgeist:

Churchill once said that those who try to build the present in the image of the past will miss out entirely on the future. And he also warned about people who were facing change, resolved to be irresolute, he said, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, and all powerful for impotence - and that is a warning to all of us.

Chairman: So am I right in paraphrasing that that you expect the web to drive more responsibility and accountability to our elected leaders?

Prime Minister: Yes.

Chairman: And will we see a lot more 'coups de blogs' and 'coups de social networks'?
Prime Minister: 'Coups de blogs' and 'coups de texts', yes!

What was clear from his speech and answers to questions, though, was that although Downing Street will be webbie he doesn't understand how this isn't flowing down through Whitehall and local government. Now why is that?

Those new online maps from DEFRA showing noise in the UK managed to crash on their first day.

On FutureMajority a neat explanation of the ancient rules which stop the US Congress from doing anything on YouTube or social networks.

Franking Rules state that unless you're in the leadership you can't use anything outside the House/Senate firewall. So, YouTube is technically not ok (even though most members are pushing the envelope), no Facebook, or Myspace... nothing…

The article points out how far behind Downing Street the US is.

The Atlantic magazine on how Obama's use of the web has produced The Amazing Money Machine.

Whenever I think about the quarter billion dollars he has raised so far, the image that leaps to mind is Scrooge McDuck diving joyously into his piles of gold.

Picking up my Google Reader clip on being aware of sadists at the US border - Taking your laptop into the US? Be sure to hide all your data first, The Guardian reported.

They can take your computer and download its entire contents, or keep it for several days. Customs and Border Patrol has not published any rules regarding this practice, and I and others have written a letter to Congress urging it to investigate and regulate this practice.

But the US is not alone. British customs agents search laptops for pornography. And there are reports on the internet of this sort of thing happening at other borders, too. You might not like it, but it's a fact.

When the New York Times reported on the Pentagon's use of retired generals as 'experts' to push propaganda onto US TV networks, they did so from FOI releases of thousands of documents and audio. This huge archive was then put on dailykos for others to hunt through and it's turned up gem after gem, such as this one from audio of Donald Rumsfeld:

RUMSFELD: [Iraqi militias] know the center of gravity of the thing is here in the United States. It isn't out there. And they're designing their attacks to have maximum effect politically, to weaken the will of the American people. Doing a pretty good job. Hell of a lot more skillful at it than we are. Have a lot greater flexibility. They can lie. Don't have bureaucracy. They have media committees that they operate to manipulate the media. And they do it very skillfully. (mp3)

In the wake of the earthquake, Shanghailist carried the Chinese government's order for websites to 'go dark' for three days national morning:

To all propaganda departments, online propaganda units and foreign affairs offices, and to the various bureaus and websites in all cities and counties:

The State Council has gazetted May 19-21 as national days for mourning. In line with the spirit of the Central Foreign Affairs Office's emergency notice, the requirements are as follows ...

Ethical Corporation Magazine on how the exposure of Yahoo's complicity with Chinese censors has had a positive effect

Former Chinese dissident Harry Wu is administering the new Yahoo human rights fund. As John O’Reilly, a leading human rights commentator, said of the letter to Condeleeza Rice: “This is the first time a company has been so explicit in its condemnation of human rights violations and this, together with the establishment of the new fund, is pretty ground-breaking stuff.”

Same magazine has a feature on Olympics 2008: Beijing games – Sponsors enter rings of fire

Sponsoring companies have difficult choices. They have paid huge sums for rights to global marketing. Limiting that marketing to China seems like a safe last resort, but will undermine their investment. Meanwhile, the moment can be seized by their competitors back home.

Speaking up for human rights, as campaigners want, could now be very risky if the Chinese authorities took it as a “loss of face” and retaliated by making life in China difficult for the companies.

Africa is definitely going digital.

For veteran wildlife ranger Joseph Kimojino, the traditional tools of his trade -- binoculars, off-road jeep and a rifle -- have been supplemented by Twitter, Flickr and a blog.

A ranger in Kenya's acclaimed Mara Triangle wildlife park, Kimojino is a member of the Masai tribe. He first learned how to click a computer mouse in November. Now he blogs about the Mara Triangle and posts wild animal photos on Flickr nearly every day.

WhiteAfrican had more on startups in Nigeria and Techpreneurs in Kenya.

Marco Cantu reports on how Microsoft Blames Users for Vista Problems

An article covering "Five Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista" claims that all Vista problems are only perceived by users and blames their judgment of the OS. You can get upset, or have a good laugh.

Joe Lieberman tried to hustle Google into censoring YouTube, here's Google telling him to get lost.

Larry Page criticising a potential Microsoft takeover of Yahoo:

Now, if you put 90 percent of communications all in one company ... that's really a big risk, especially one (Microsoft) that has a history of doing bad stuff.

Scott Schmidt used Google AdWords to discover many Americans Searching for Hilary (it's 'Hillary'). He also discovred a method for Republicans to waste Obama's millions.

Search for either candidate and their own website is the sponsored link that returns - at a cost of somewhere near $3 each time someone clicks on the link, a fortune in click-through ad rates.

Slate details why although Microsoft's new 'cashback' scheme for boosting LiveSearch looks radical on the surface, underneath the hood it's actually all about the same old - limited and hence hardly useful for users - dealmaking.

Google search results can now be tweaked to provide top categories and in-site search. Yahoo has announced the general public availability of their SearchMonkey program. This is a program that has been in beta testing with limited partners. It allows the partner to provide Yahoo with structured data that provides advanced information about a web page. This information is then used by Yahoo to influence the presentation of organic search listing results for that page. This includes building apps into the search results.

From Bootstrapper (no, not a gay porn site) : 50+ Google Reader Productivity Hacks. Keyboard shortcuts, firefox add-ons and time-savers. Very useful.

The generation gap defined:

Ralph Nader showed up at the Google offices to talk about his presidential campaign. About 5 minutes in, he says the Internet has been a "disappointment," and then, "don't get me going on the Internet." He goes on to say that "it hasn't shown much by way of mobilizing, except on Internet issues..."

Here's a gem from Master Miliband's recent trip with Condi to Mountain View:

Finally, Rice and Miliband came out of the auditorium and walked over to the microphones at the edge of our grassy pen.

Miliband remarked that he was thankful that Secretary Rice rescued him from the chilliness of the United Kingdom for the warmth and sunshine of "Southern California."

"Northern California!" Rice corrected him. "Oh, sorry!" Miliband said. Scattered laughs.

In a damned radical move, Comedy Central said it will soon start streaming full episodes of The Daily Show, Colbert Report and South Park. As you might imagine, this raises some eyebrows with cable companies, in this case, Time Warner. “They can’t have it both ways. If they put content they ask cable companies to pay for online for free, they are making it less valuable and we should be expected to pay less for it.”

Great cover story in Prospect Magazine about the moral panic surrounding Gaming.

A generational rift has opened that is in many ways more profound than the equivalent shifts associated with radio or television: more alienating for those unfamiliar with new technologies, more immersive for those who are. How do lawmakers regulate something that is too fluid to be fully comprehended or controlled; how do teachers persuade students of the value of an education when what they learn at play often seems more relevant to their future than anything they hear in a classroom?

So far, the dire predictions many have made about the "death" of traditional narratives and imaginative thought at the hands of video games have at best equivocal evidence to support them. Television and cinema may be suffering, economically, at the hands of interactive media. But literacy standards and book sales have failed to nosedive, and both books and radio are happily expanding into an age that increasingly looks like it will be anything but lived on-screen. Young people still enjoy sport, going out and listening to music. They like playing games with their friends, and using the internet to keep in touch and arrange meetings rather than to isolate themselves. And most research—including a recent $1.5m study funded by the US government—suggests that even pre-teens are not in the habit of blurring game and real worlds. This finding chimes with an obvious truth: that a large proportion of "problem behaviours" in relation to any medium or substance exist for resolutely old-fashioned reasons—lack of education, parental attention, security, support and experience.

Unintentional laugh of the week, from an article about 'lifting the ban' on US soldiers in Afghanistan having sex:

According to Helixon's staff, 28 soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade have been punished for having sex in Afghanistan or for violating the no-entry rule in the past year. Those punishments ranged from letters of reprimand to field-grade Article 15s.