Anti-politics machine - article by Noorani in Frontline

“[T]he politician lives in a world of publicity, calumny, distortion, and insult. He is often looked down upon by police society as being a mere ‘fixer’ and an ‘opportunist’ (though it is puzzling why this last word always has a bad meaning) and he is mocked by intellectuals for rarely having ideas of his own: a politician is an arse upon/which everyone has sat except a man, which is the whole of an easy poem by E.E. Cummings. And, indeed, the politician, beneath his necessary flexibility, will rarely be a man of less than normal pliability and ambitions. He will provoke such cheap mockery from spectators. But he will not take these things to heart. The successful politician will learn how to swallow insults.”

A politician deserves scorn only when he is disloyal to his calling and fails to perform his duties as a politician. A free society has diverse interests with conflicting claims on power and the state’s attention and finances. The politician is an advocate as well as a mediator. He espouses an interest and meets with advocates of other interests to reconcile them peaceably and in an orderly way, whether in the legislature or outside. That is the only way a free society can function: by compromise, conciliation and reconciliation. It is messy, but it is unavoidable. That is life.

To be sure, the politician does not act purely from altruistic motives. He does seek power for himself. But it is a pursuit that is informed by a commitment to the public interest as well. That is what is known as “honourable ambition”, as distinct from that of the man who enters politics in order to line his pockets. The corruption of politics and the disavowal of politics form a vicious circle. Implicit in both is contempt for the political process. Read it all here

US priests 'in $800,000 theft'

By Robert Pigott
BBC Religious Affairs Correspondent


Father John Skehan admits stealing the money for property and gambling
Two Roman Catholic priests have been accused of stealing $800,000 from the collection plate of their church in the US state of Florida.
They allegedly planned to spend the money on property, holidays, gambling and to meet the expenses of mistresses.
One of the priests, Fr John Skelan has admitted the charges, but his colleague Fr Francis Guinan denies them.
US law - the statute of limitations - prevents the priests being charged with thefts that occurred before 2001.
But the auditors say that up to $8m might have disappeared over a period of 20 years.
It could be the biggest embezzlement case to affect the Catholic Church in the United States.
One of the priests - Fr John Skehan - abandoned his not-guilty plea just before his trial began, and admitted stealing $800,000 given by parishioners at St Vincent Ferrer Church in West Palm Beach.
The priests allegedly hid the money in the church ceiling and opened offshore accounts.
Fr Skehan - who is 81 and has been given the honorific title "Monsignor" - served at the church for 40 years.
He admitted spending stolen money on expensive houses and gambling in Las Vegas.
Police reports claimed that he used more than $100,000 to pay the expenses of an alleged lover, and almost $300,000 on rare coins. More

Twitter Surpasses Digg: Almost 1000% Growth in One Year

Tweet smell of success over Digg


The rise and rise of Twitter traffic in the UK
Twitter, the mobile phone-based micro-blogging service, rocketed nearly 1000% in use in the UK over the past year according to industry analysts HitWise.
For the first time, the site has seen more visits than "social bookmarking" site Digg, which allows users to share links to sites.
Twitter made headlines earlier in January, providing the first pictures of downed US Airways flight 1549.
The site may continue its meteoric rise as the new US President is a devotee.
The Twitter site has jumped from 2,953rd most popular in the UK in 2008 to 291st as of mid-January.
"A big driver of traffic to Twitter last week was around the US Airways plane crash in to the Hudson River last Thursday, driving many posts and updates about the situation," said Hitwise research director Heather Dougherty.
The first picture of the crash was posted to TwitPic, and was picked up by more traditional media outlets - sparking the widely-quoted notion that Twitter is the poster child for a new era ofcitizen journalism.
Among the "Social Networking and Forums" category, however, Twitter came in at 23rd for the week ending 17 January, garnering just 0.24% of the site visits in the category.

Facebook maintains a significant dominance among them, with nearly 38% of site visits, twice as many as YouTube and more than four times as many as its predecessor Bebo. Read it all

Christian bus driver walks out over atheist advertisement

Jan 17 2009
A CHRISTIAN bus driver refused to take out his vehicle because it sported an atheist advert.
Ron Heather, 62, walked out of the depot in protest at the words "There's probably no God" written on his bus.
The First Bus vehicle was one of 800 across the UK to feature the first-ever atheist ad campaign, run by the British Humanist Association
Now bosses have agreed to accommodate Ron's beliefs by trying to put him on buses which don't carry the advert.
Dad-of-three Ron, from Southampton, said: "I was just about to board and there it was staring me in the face. My first reaction was horror.
"I'd heard about this silly campaign but I had no idea it was coming to Southampton.
"I felt strongly I couldn't drive that bus, so I went up to my inspectors and told them.
"To be fair, the company have been very good and have agreed to do everything they can to keep me off those buses.
"However, if it goes on any longer, then I will consider giving up my job." more

Businessman who faked his own death in a plane crash has been found alive

Times Online

The American businessman who faked his own death in a plane crash has been found alive in Florida.

Marcus Schrenker, 38, who parachuted from his aircraft shortly before it went down, then fled on a motorbike, is in custody in Gadsden County, northern Florida.

The investment adviser from Indiana, whose personal and business life was in meltdown, disappeared on Sunday after radioing from his Piper Malibu that he was in trouble. His windshield had caved in, he said, and his face was plastered in blood.

Military jets scrambled to intercept the aircraft found the door open and the cockpit dark. It eventually crashed in the Florida panhandle, but there was no sign of Mr Schrenker.

RELATED LINKS

• Businessman accused of trying to fake own death

• Back-from-the-dead canoeist admits fraud

More than 200 miles away in Alabama, police officers picked up a man, wet from the knees down and carrying pilot's goggles . His Indiana driver's licence was in the name of Marcus Schrenker, but the officers believed his claim that he had been in a canoeing accident, and drove him to a motel.

From there, he made his way to a storage unit where he had hidden a red motorcycle and he sped off into the countryside in what investigators say was a desperate attempt to escape a messy divorce and an investigation into his firm, which had been accused of a multimillion-dollar fraud.  more