The reality of Brexit - worrying and unstable times ahead.

Why did people not think and consider the facts before they acted? Voting is serious. 

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/i-really-regret-my-vote-now-the-brexit-voters-who-wish-theyd-voted-to-remain-a3280361.html

Gabriel Dread ‏@gabrieldread  Jun 24

Well that escalated quickly

5,277 retweets3,330 likes

 

 

 

MP Jo Cox RIP and it's implication

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/16/the-guardian-view-on-jo-cox-an-attack-on-humanity-idealism-and-democracy?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet

The Guardian view on Jo Cox: an attack on humanity, idealism and democracy

Editorial
The MP murdered on the street embodied decency and a commitment to all that humanity has in common. What a contrast with so much that is rotten in politics

Thursday 16 June 2016 18.25 BST

The slide from civilisation to barbarism is shorter than we might like to imagine. Every violent crime taints the ideal of an orderly society, but when that crime is committed against the people who are peacefully selected to write the rules, then the affront is that much more profound.

The killing, by stabbing and repeated shooting in the street, of Jo Cox is, in the first instance, an exceptionally heinous villainy. She was the mother of two very young children, who will now have to grow up without her. It is also, however, in a very real sense, an attack on democracy. Violence against MPs in Britain is mercifully rare. Only three have been killed in recent history: Airey Neave, Tony Berry and Ian Gow, all of them at the hands of the Irish republicans. Two others, Nigel Jones and Stephen Timms, have been grievously wounded, the latter by a woman citing jihadi inspiration and rage about the Iraq war. Whatever the cause, an attack on a parliamentarian is always an attack on parliament as well, which was as clear in Thursday’s case as any before.

Here was the MP whom the citizens of Batley and Spen had entrusted to represent them, fresh from conducting her duty to solve the practical problems of those same citizens in a constituency surgery. To single her out, at this time and in this place, is to turn a gun on every value of which decent Britons are justifiably proud.

Jo Cox, however, was not just any MP doing her duty. She was also an MP who was driven by an ideal. The former charity worker explained what that ideal was as eloquently as anyone could in her maiden speech last year. “Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration,” she insisted, “be it of Irish Catholics across the constituency or of Muslims from Gujarat in India or from Pakistan, principally from Kashmir. While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”

What nobler vision can there be than that of a society where people can be comfortable in their difference? And what more fundamental tenet of decency is there than to put first and to cherish all that makes us human, as opposed to what divides one group from another? These are ideals that are often maligned when they are described as multiculturalism, but they are precious nonetheless. They are the ideals which led Ms Cox to campaign tirelessly for the brutalised and displaced people of Syria, and – the most painful thought – ideals for which she may now have died.

The police are investigating reports that the assailant yelled “Britain First” during the attack. If those words were used, this would appear to be not merely a chauvinist taunt, but the name of a far-right political party, whose candidate for City Hall turned his back in disgust on Sadiq Khan at the count, in sectarian rage at a great cosmopolitan city’s decision to make a Muslim mayor. The thuggish outfit denounced Ms Cox’s death, as it was bound to do. But their brand of angry blame-mongering could very well serve to convince particular individuals – especially those who are already close to the edge – that some people are less than human, and thus fair game for attack. The rhetoric of western racism and Islamophobia is the mirror of the ideology with which Isis and al-Qaida secure their recruits and that persuades them to strap explosives to themselves, and die in order to kill. It might be especially powerful in Britain, at a time when divisive hate-mongering is seeping into the mainstream.

We are in the midst of what risks becoming a plebiscite on immigration and immigrants. The tone is divisive and nasty. Nigel Farage on Thursday unveiled a poster of unprecedented repugnance. The backdrop was a long and thronging line of displaced people in flight. The message: “The EU has failed us all.” The headline: “Breaking point.” The time for imagining that the Europhobes can be engaged on the basis of facts – such as the reality that a refugee crisis that started in Syria and north Africa can hardly be blamed on the EU, or the inconvenient detail that obligations under the refugee convention do not depend on EU membership – has passed. One might have still hoped, however, that even merchants of post-truth politics might hold back from the sort of entirely post-moral politics that is involved in taking the great humanitarian crisis of our time, and then whipping up hostility to the victims as a means of chivvying voters into turning their backs on the world.

The idealism of Ms Cox was the very antithesis of such brutal cynicism. Honour her memory. Because the values and the commitment that she embodied are all that we have to keep barbarism at bay.

Really sad about the UK vote out.

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Alex Deane ‏@ajcdeane  Jun 16

Here is the text of the Chancellor's speech tonight at #MansionHouse about Jo Cox (h/t @JoelTaylorhack)

288 retweets178 likes

Man pays for full page advert in London morning paper to give some perspective on immigration.

Edward Anderson ‏@edanderson101  10h10 hours ago

British man "fed up" with “rubbish” being talked about #immigration takes out full-page advert in @MetroUK. #EUref

1,162 retweets868 likes

MP Jo Cox, RIP

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/jo-coxs-family-lay-flowers-memorial-131415618.html

moving video in link above from sister of Jo Cox

'The family of Jo Cox has paid tribute to the murdered MP, saying she "only saw the good" and lived a "too short life".

The mother-of-two was stabbed and shot in the street outside her constituency surgery in the West Yorkshire village of Birstall on Thursday. 

Her loved ones have visited a market square where flowers and cards of condolence have been laid by locals.

Mrs Cox's sister, Kim Leadbeater, said: "There are some things in life you should never have to do. Last night, I had to go and identify my sister's body.

"Yes, this was Jo Cox MP, and she was so many things to many people in her too short life. She was my only sibling, my parent's first-born child, a wife and a mother.

"We want to say the most sincere and heartfelt thank you to everyone who has expressed their love and affection for her and sent their thoughts and sympathies to us.

"It has genuinely made a difference and helped us through dark times in the last 48 hours.

"Our parents instilled in us a real glass half full mentality, and while I sometimes tend to add a large measure of Yorkshire cynicism into this, Jo generally did not. She always saw the good.

"We know there are some evil people in this world, but there are an awful lot of good people too.

"When Jo would get abuse on Facebook or Twitter, we would talk and sometimes cry together.

"But she was still focus on the positive, and talk about the silent majority who did not always shout the loudest but who she knew were in her corner.

"Over the past 48 hours, people have not been silent. They have been vocal and passionate and have spoken from the heart with genuine emotion and no hidden agendas. Jo would have loved it.

Ms Leadbeater said this strength and solidarity had to continue in the months to come as part of her sister's legacy - focusing on the things which unite people, rather than divide people.

She went on: "For now, our family is broken. But we will mend over time, and we will never let Jo leave our lives.

"Jo will live on through all the good people in the world, through Brendan, through us, and through her truly wonderful children who will always know what an utterly amazing woman their mother was." 

Thomas Mair, who is charged with her murder, was remanded in custody during an appearance at Westminster Magistrates' Court earlier on Saturday. 

In court, he gave his name as "death to traitors, freedom for Britain".'

Rap news - immigrants. Satire.

Shakespeare's support for refugees - known as 'strangers' in the 1600's

 “You’ll put down strangers,/ Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,/ And lead the majesty of law in lyam/ To slip him like a hound. Alas, alas! Say now the King/ As he is clement if th’offender mourn,/ Should so much come too short of your great trespass/ As but to banish you: whither would you go?/What country, by the nature of your error,/ Should give you harbour? Go you to France or Flanders,/ To any German province, Spain or Portugal,/ Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England:/ Why, you must needs be strangers.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/15/william-shakespeare-handwritten-plea-for-refugees-online-sir-thomas-more-script-play-british-library-exhibition

William Shakespeare's handwritten plea for refugees to go online

Mark Brown Arts correspondent

Tuesday 15 March 2016 06.00 GMT

The last surviving play script handwritten by William Shakespeare, in which he imagines Sir Thomas More making an impassioned plea for the humane treatment of refugees, is to be made available online by the British Library.

The manuscript is one of 300 newly digitised treasures shining a light on the wider society and culture that helped shape Shakespeare’s imagination. All will be available to view on a new website before an extensive exhibition on the playwright at the library next month.

The Book of Sir Thomas More script is particularly poignant given the current European migration crisis.

The powerful scene, featuring More challenging anti-immigration rioters inLondon, was written at a time when there were heightened tensions over the number of French Protestants (Huguenots) seeking asylum in the capital.

“It is a really stirring piece of rhetoric,” said the library’s curator, Zoe Wilcox. “At its heart it is really about empathy. More is calling on the crowds to empathise with the immigrants or strangers as they are called in the text. He is asking them to imagine what it would be like if they went to Europe, if they went to Spain or Portugal, they would then be strangers. He is pleading with them against what he calls their ‘mountainous inhumanity’.

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 Drawing of Shakespeare’s house by George Vertue. Photograph: British Library

“It is striking and sad just how relevant it seems to us now considering what is happening in Europe.”

The original play, written in approximately 1600 about the life of Henry VIII’s councillor and lord chancellor, was not by Shakespeare and was not staged because of fears it might incite unrest.

Shakespeare was one of several writers brought in to rework the piece, and it is his contribution which remains the most remarkable.

He writes: “You’ll put down strangers,/ Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,/ And lead the majesty of law in lyam/ To slip him like a hound. Alas, alas! Say now the King/ As he is clement if th’offender mourn,/ Should so much come too short of your great trespass/ As but to banish you: whither would you go?/What country, by the nature of your error,/ Should give you harbour? Go you to France or Flanders,/ To any German province, Spain or Portugal,/ Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England:/ Why, you must needs be strangers.”

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 John Dee’s self-portrait. Photograph: British Library

Wilcox said all the evidence suggested the writing was by the hand of Shakespeare, making it a unique manuscript. “All we have other than that are the six authentic Shakespeare signatures, so this is really amazing. It is not even a fair copy, it is something he was drafting as he was mid-composition.”

The manuscript has been conserved and digitised and will also be on display at the library’s Shakespeare in 10 Acts exhibition, which opens on 15 April.

Other highlights on the Discovering Literature: Shakespeare website include:

• Some of the earliest images of Native Americans brought back by the first European settlers.

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s personal copy of The Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, which includes extensive annotations and his famous comments on Iago’s “motiveless malignity”.

• The only surviving portrait of John Dee, the Elizabethan polymath thought to have inspired Shakespeare’s Prospero.

There will also be essays and films as part of an effort by the library to bring to life the world in which Shakespeare was writing. “We are trying to help students understand the context of Shakespeare’s time because many English teachers tell us that students struggle to understand him and the world he came from,” Wilcox said.

Mecca's expansion

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/magazine/mecca-goes-mega.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-4&action=click&contentCollection=Magazine&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=Blogs

New York Times article

Mecca Goes Mega

A building boom in the city’s sacred center has
created a dazzling, high-tech 21st-century pilgrimage.

Photographs by LUCA LOCATELLIJUNE 8, 2016

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In the days before rapid sea or air travel, it could take months to travel to Mecca. The spiritual heart of Islam lay far from its great capitals in Istanbul, Delhi and Isfahan. The devout came from distant lands on foot, by camel and in horse-drawn carriages. Bedouin tribes routinely robbed these pilgrims, who were the primary source of revenue for this ancient desert town. Now, the ease of air travel and the rise of a global Muslim middle class have made the journey to Mecca far less arduous and far more common. Last year, three million came for the hajj, a pilgrimage in the last month of the Islamic lunar calendar that is considered obligatory for every Muslim who can afford it; five million more came for the umrah, a minor pilgrimage that can be made for much of the year. And millions of Saudi citizens routinely pass through Mecca’s sacred sites as tourists.

The Italian photographer Luca Locatelli, visiting Mecca this year during theumrah period, captured how radically the city has changed to accommodate this growing influx of pilgrims. Until the first half of the 20th century, this was a small city of spacious stone houses famed for their mashrabiyah, or latticed windows and balconies. Five hills known as the rim of Mecca encircled the Grand Mosque and the Kaaba, or House of God, located in the city center. Today, all a visitor would recognize from older images of Mecca are the Ottoman domes of the Grand Mosque, its minarets and the Kaaba. The ancient hills, the old stone homes and many of the sites linked to the life of the Prophet Muhammad have been obliterated by towering shopping malls, hotels and apartment blocks.

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SLIDE SHOW|23 Photos

The Modern Journey to Mecca

The Modern Journey to Mecca

CreditLuca Locatelli/Institute, for The New York Times

It is a transformation that has been underway since the late 1970s, when the wealth generated by the oil boom led Saudi monarchs to devise an ambitious plan to replace earlier Ottoman structures and to expand the Grand Mosque and its surroundings with Arab-style architecture. At a projected cost of $26.6 billion, the Saudi Binladen Group has led the efforts to increase the capacity of the Grand Mosque, adding new wings, prayer areas, escalators and hundreds of bathrooms. Before his death in 2015, King Abdullah ordered the installation of the world’s largest folding umbrellas in the piazzas outside the Grand Mosque, to shelter worshipers from the blistering sun as they offered prayers, read the Quran or simply basked in their proximity to this holy site. His successor, King Salman, announced plans to build a ring road, subways and intercity trains to accommodate millions of worshipers.

One of Locatelli’s photographs looks as if it were taken from the air, but it was actually shot from one of the highest points of the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, which houses a hulking hotel and shopping complex a few hundred meters from the gates of the Grand Mosque — 46 times taller than the Kaaba and crowned by a clock five times the size of Big Ben. Throughout the history of Islam, no other ruler built in such proximity to the Kaaba; certainly none built anything to dwarf it. In luxury hotels like the Fairmont Makkah Clock Royal Tower and the Raffles Makkah Palace, views of the holiest site of Islam are marketed as the “Haram view” and “Kaaba view,” and a standard room can run anywhere from $1,500 to $2,700 a night during the hajj.

Locatelli, who is Italian and was raised Catholic, gained entry to Mecca through his marriage to an Indonesian Muslim, which included a ceremonial conversion and gave him a feeling of sympathy for his wife’s religion. In his striking images, you can see experiences shared by pilgrims everywhere as well as the mix of crass commercialism and genuine faith common among holy sites across religions (Lourdes, Fátima, Varanasi). A group of men inihram — two pieces of white towel-like cloth that the pilgrims wear to convey a state of purity and human equality — get a bite to eat in a food court; a young man takes a selfie with the Kaaba in the background; hundreds pray inside a shopping mall. “I wanted to show my Western viewers that being a holy tourist in Mecca is not very different,” Locatelli says, “that we do similar things whether we go to a great temple, to St. Peter’s or to Mecca.”

When Locatelli first arrived in Mecca, he was anxious about his outsider status. But, he says, “Mecca was truly peaceful. My fear melted away within days.” BASHARAT PEER

Luca Locatelli is a documentary photographer and filmmaker based in Milan and a frequent contributor to the magazine.

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