rodcorp

Prostitution is not illegal, slavery is: Crimestoppers sex-slave traffic video

Our friends at Crimestoppers UK are launching a new campaign to encourage people to call in if they witness any victims of sex slave traffic. It's a tricky area because the (perceived) risk of self-incrimination or embarrassment tends to dis-incentivise witnesses from coming forward. Crimestoppers capo Mick Laurie's comment:

“These women who are victims of trafficking, travel to this country, usually under false pretences and suffer horrific abuse. They are held against their will and often forced to see up to 40 clients per day. The only other people who may know what is happening to them are the men who use their services, who would obviously not want to contact the police. We are appealing to them to give us information if they are suspicious about women they have seen in these circumstances on 0800 555 111. They will not have to give us their name, or any details about themselves, calls are not traced – we guarantee they will remain anonymous.”

The video is on YouTube: Prostitution is not illegal, slavery is. And Alex's site has a statement from the film-maker.

UK politics news

Blair calls the UK national election for 5th May 2005. Follow coverage here: BBC's election site, Guardian's election blog.

Your Party ("putting people back into politics") will be standing candidates in these constituencies:

• Banbury (incumbent Tony Baldry (C)'s voting record, speaking record)
• Holborn and St Pancras (incumbent Frank Dobson (L)'s voting record, speaking record)
• Southport (incumbent John Pugh (LDem)'s voting record, speaking record)

(We're not involved in YP any more, but good luck Chris, Dave and Bill!)

Elsewhere, Talk Euro has been launched by Gavin Bell.

Talk Euro is opening up your EU constitution

The European Constitution establishes the over-riding legal framework for the Union. It gets ratified during 2005, but many EU citizens don't know what's in their constitution, and what's in (and out) of its scope. This isn't particularly good for goverment or democracy.

To address this, Gavin Bell has launched Talk Euro, which will allow Europeans to explore, discuss and understand their constitution. It's a multi-lingual website that presents the European Constitution in a more readable, accessible and searchable form, and allows you to annotate it. English and French language versions so far. Also!: there's a collaborative effort to rewrite the Constitution in a shorter, more readable "people's version". And: Talk Euro's news and discussion forum. Well done Gavin! Gavin talks about TalkEuro on O'Reilly.

Referenda on the Constitution:
The constitution was signed in October 2004, but doesn't come into force until the 25 member states ratfiy it, by either referendum or parliamentary vote. France goes to the polls on 29 May 2005, and the French govt is having to push hard against recent polls suggesting the Nos have unexpectedly high support. The UK referendum is planned for 2006. Good roundup on member states' current referenda and ratification plans.

Patronise our friends in order to find

... things to see:
Artscrape gathers together London art listings and lets you sort them by show or by gallery, and by "open today", "opening soon" or "closing soon". You can add it to your Mozilla sidebar. By clever friend Dorian. Perhaps Chris's Art aggregator is its godfather.

... things to buy:
Sparratease and Goalhanger, music and football t-shirts. This 45 adaptor is good, and we swear by our lucky Cerebro del Mal T. By creative friends D and R.

... places to go on holiday:
Senderos is an honest broker for travel and tourism in Latin America. By trustworthy friend Simon.

Good things and people, all.

Your Party survey: what do YOU want from Europe and the EU?

The new Your Party survey on Europe asks the question no-one else wants to ask: what do YOU want from Europe and the EU?

It's almost thirty years since the British public were last consulted on Europe and it's time we all - Europhiles and Eurosceptics alike - had another chance to tell the politicians what we want. How can we decide on the best way forward, on what a constitution (if any) should look like, if we don't know what kind of Europe we want? Take the survey if you have some time and interest - it's enjoyable, genuinely thought-provoking (and there's a short version if you haven't got the 5 minutes it will take for the longer version).

Once we have the results we're going to lobby the EU and the politicians to address the views expressed in the survey - and the more people who take the survey the stronger our voice will be.

PS: "What the hell is Your Party anyway?", you ask. It's a political party/campaigning organisation whose main goal is to give a voice back to real people, and let them make the key decisions about political policy. There are European elections on 10 June 2004. Your Party isn't standing in these elections, but we're aiming to keep parties, MEPs and candidates honest when they go off to Brussels to represent you.

European Council votes for software patents

ZDNet: EU votes through software patent changes: "After a stalled effort on Monday, the European Council has approved controversial changes to a draft directive, meaning that Europe is now likely to see widespread patenting of software programs."

The wider story: 2004-05-18 EU Council of Ministers Approves Software Patents. Background to the arguments against: Software patents: Key Arguments, which concludes that patents threaten competition, SMEs, open source, and personal creative freedom. Also: Software Patents: who pays and who plays?

There's a metric EU-load of information to read there and elsewhere, but the potential outcome seems to be that largecos may manage to be awarded patents for software "methods", "approaches", "technology" etc, which mean that other companies and organisations would need to license the same or risk litigation. Is this now set in stone? Will it encourage softwarecos to relocate outside of the EU? (Would relocation make any difference?)

June elections: European, Mayoral and GLA candidates announced

Two days ahead of schedule, the lists of candidates for the London Mayoral, London Assembly have been announced. All three elections are on 10 June 2004 (well, for Londoners), so London Elects explains how the voting works.

• Europe: List of candidates for the European election.
• London Mayor: The 10 candidates for London Mayor (and BBC London has a summary of each of their policies).
• London Assembly: The London Assembly has 25 seats, 14 of which will be filled by constituency members, with the remaining 11 filled by London-wide members. (As before, the BBC also has these lists on a single page). On June 10 Londoners will be asked to vote for both a constituency member and a London-wide member.

Keep an eye on BBC London, London Elects and Race 4 City Hall for coverage of Assembly and Mayoral hopefuls.

(Your Party's members decided that we shouldn't stand candidates in the European and GLA elections.)

On D-Day and World War Two

You're thinking about the D-Day Landings (60 years ago this June), and wondering about the wider context, whether you've retained the true story from those half-remember episodes of Band of Brothers. You ask someone who knows - the good Mr Kelly - for his recommendations, and his immediate choices are:

For the war itself, start with a good general overview: Martin Gilbert's The Second World War (also wrote The First World War). Then, for the forensic detail, Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint and John Pritchard's The Penguin History of the Second World War.

For a balanced history of the landings, you'd read Max Hastings's Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy, 1944 - Hastings considered "our best modern historian". And for bonus points, his Das Reich: The March of the 2nd Panzer Division Through France, 1944 - about the 2nd SS Panzer division's race north to support the D-Day defences, hampered all the way by the Resistance and Allied Special Forces.

And he notes (paraphrasing): let's not forget that as soon as Hitler moved East, the Allied forces in the West rarely faced more than a quarter to a third of the German army's strength, many of whom were reservists. So credit where it's due: the war is largely won on the Eastern front (Stalingrad, Kursk), Though by 1944 the US's logistical efficiency played its part by getting Sherman tanks off the assembly line and into theatre a lot quicker than Germany could the Tigers.

Perfect politics

Loads of interesting political stuff via Perfect.co.uk recently. Just a sample:
Conservatives to modernise with online election focus (via this). Meanwhile Labour to do the same (via that - the comments worth following too).

Can non-US nationals contribute to US campaigns? Loads of links here.

And Perfect's Robin Grant is going to put himself forward for ITV's new Vote For Me! show. Good luck, and he should come work with Your Party too. (And this from RichardHod: "Yet is shining under in the simulated world of modern media the best qualifying criterion we need for our next generation of politicians?")

Politics links

Saving Democracy from the Information Age: Non-skeptical but negative on edemocracy.

A US national budget simulation game.

Moveon.org founder will be directing John Kerry's net campaigning efforts.

Electronic voting source code released: VoteHere, US company that makes software for electronic voting machines, has taken the unprecedented decision to make public all its proprietary computer code.

Deliberative democracy vs Online dialogue (surprising that people see these in opposition; clearly both are required).