I first read about Invisible Children’s links with The Fellowship in Adam Gabbatt’s article in The Guardian. This references articles by Truth Wins Out’s director Wayne Besen on Invisible Children Promoted By Jason Russell As God’s “Trojan Horse” and by Bruce Wilson on Invisible Children Nonprofit Extensively Tied To “The Family”.  A summary of the latter rather lengthy article, with references to Wayne Besen’s find, can be found in Bruce Wilson’s article in The Huffington Post.

Whilst I still have no doubt that Joseph Kony should stand trial at the ICC for the heinous crimes they have indicted him for, I cannot in any way support any organisation that is – or even may be – supporting anti-gay legislation, especially such barbaric laws as those implemented and proposed in African countries like Uganda.

I am disappointed to learn that such a vibrant and effective campaign as Kony 2012 is backed by a charity involved with such insidious organisations.  However, I much prefer to admit that I made an error of judgement than continue to aid an organisation that is likely spreading intolerance towards gays.

The charity Invisible Children uploaded their “Kony 2012″ 30-minute film to YouTube on 5 March 2012.  Their aim is to make Joseph Kony famous: not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.  The film has been viewed more than 70 million times and the buzz about it on social networks and in the media has given enormous exposure to the campaign to #StopKony.

Sadly, many chose to focus on negatives.  ”Reputable” news sources whinged that the film and campaign over-simplified a complex issue, while others criticised Invisible Children’s spending.  The charity set the record straight with interviews and an official response on their website.

I prefer to focus on the positive. Jason Russell met a boy in Uganda who wanted to die rather than live in fear of Joseph Kony and the LRA.  Jason promised him that he would do everything he could to stop them and for the last 9 years has followed through on that. His efforts with Invisible Children have brought the problem to the attention of millions worldwide, made them care about the atrocities committed by Joseph Kony and inspired them to help bring him to justice.

I wholeheartedly (and financially) support Invisible Children and the international effort to arrest Joseph Kony, disarm the LRA and bring the child soldiers home. It is time to show Joseph Kony and other international war criminals that the world knows about them, cares and will unite to stop them.

Help Stop Kony in 2012.

“Jobs’ Stanford University speech” is almost synonymous with “inspiration”, and is perhaps best encapsulated in the following quote:

If you enjoy listening to motivational speeches by amazing people, I am sure that has whetted your appetite.  I can think of no better way to do justice to the genius that was Steve Jobs than for you to hear him in his own words:

Thank you, Steve, for enriching my life in so many ways!

I had been feeling a little guilty at times – if not a tad stupid – that my last post here entitled “I’m posting every week in 2011″ was a month old!!! My maverick side triumphed over the feeling I should conform, though, and I concluded that as it is my website I can do exactly what I want with it and post as and when I choose. Nonetheless, I was very pleased this morning to receive an emailed link to a WordPress post that said “posting on Twitter is still posting something” and I have been tweeting quite regularly. Also, as I explained to one of my followers on Twitter, I did make a post on an alter-ego blog I started in connection with a project; and I’ve been posting on Facebook. So whilst it may have looked as though I was not posting, I was: just not here!

Now, typically, as I felt freed by the email from a commitment to post here, of my own volition I decided I want to. OK, so this isn’t exactly an article that’s likely to win a Pulitzer: but it is a post. Stay tuned for more: though I’m not promising there’ll be one a week now!

A Snowstorm of Distant Galaxies in the cluster MACS J0717.5+3745

When this image appeared on 4 December on my Boston Globe Advent Calendar – which reveals images from the Hubble Space Telescope each day until Xmas – I thought it looked quite interesting, but was not particularly enamoured. But when I then read what the image is showing – and did a little research – I found it utterly amazing and wanted to share that.

Most of the dots of light above are galaxies. A galaxy, I found, is a system of stars and other objects gravitationally bound together. I had heard of our Milky Way galaxy obviously and our neighbouring spiral galaxy Andromeda, but had not given galaxies much further thought. I found that a galaxy has between 10,000,000 to 100,000,000,000,000 stars in it, so when I remembered that our Sun is a star, I realised that many of the stars in each galaxy could have astronomical objects such as planets orbiting them too. So most of the dots in this image are galaxies containing billions of star systems like our solar system. When I realised that, I was was awestruck by this image.

I had never before fully comprehended quite how vast our universe is. It turns out that there are 170,000,000,000 galaxies in our observable universe - though 85 years ago Edwin Hubble had a hard time persuading other astronomers that our Milky Way was not the only one – and the latest estimate is that there are 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. What an incredible amount of space we have left to explore, especially considering that NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft reached the edge of our solar system just last week after travelling for 33 years.

I knew she was an ardent advocate for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, having seen video messages and support on her website, and feel the voice of such a media icon contributed to the fantastic result in the U.S. Senate yesterday. I was further impressed to learn of the non-gay fans she also seeks to empower, which she communicated through amusing anecdotes and acts – as well as more obviously in rallying cries – between songs in her show.

Lady Gaga during her Mons†er Ball tour

She explained that she was viewed as “weird” at high school, feigning venting anger towards her conformist tormenters on a Barbie doll thrown on stage by a fan. “You made my school days hell” she scolded as she decapitated the epitome of the American dream, quietly adding “I wonder what you think of me now?”. Whilst she conveyed her experience of bullying amusingly it was poignant, and gave an insight into her motivation to include fans who might otherwise feel excluded and alone.

Her efforts to embrace those regarded by many as misfits seem set to continue on her forthcoming album, especially in the title track Born This Way. Indeed, in an unambiguous dig at homophobic, and similarly prejudiced, Christians she shouted repeatedly at one point during her performance “Jesus loves EVERYONE”.

It was inspiring to see Lady Gaga so genuinely care about her fans’ welfare and self-confidence. I have only touched on the ways she did that here and have probably not done justice to the sincere and admirable attitude I saw expressed. My lack of experience writing may be partly to blame for that, though perhaps it was one of those things that you just had to be there for?

Some may feel that the attitude of a pop-star to her fans is not particularly important: but the more enlightened will realise that celebrities such as these have more influence than politicians, especially over children or the disenfranchised. So is it not reassuring to find one like Gaga, who stresses to her audience “I do not want you to go home tonight loving me more: I want you to go home tonight loving YOURSELF more”?!

Ian Hislop – editor of Private Eye magazine and team captain on Have I Got News For You – brings these fixers of 19th century “broken Britain” to our screens in his fascinating new BBC2 history series Ian Hislop’s Age of the Do-Gooders. Anyone who is interested in modern society, and leading figures who have shaped it, should enjoy this series: watch it soon whilst it’s freely available in the U.K. The third and final episode airs on 13 December on BBC2 at 9pm, with all episodes available on BBC iPlayer until 9:59pm on 20 December.

Britain’s Moral Makeover

In this first episode, Ian Hislop sets the scene of the society that the heroic Do-Gooders had to work within.  The social divide between wealthy and poor is discussed often today, but it is narrow compared to the chasm between classes in the 18th century. We widely accept now that too large a disparity in wealth is unfair and undesirable, but the Do-Gooders were exceptions in their time believing that. The rich of their day felt entitled to their privileged lives, exploiting those with less than them with rarely a thought that maybe they should help them. The powerful and influential were keen to preserve the status quo so it took considerable efforts by the Do-Gooders to persuade them to reconsider.

The extraordinary men and women who precipitated the most remarkable period of social change in British history are heroes to Ian, and from watching this series I am compelled to agree regarding many of them. They have helped leave us with a nation worth living in and yet – unlike notable Victorian royals, inventors, politicians and generals – many of them have been all but forgotten.

William Wilberforce

Ian begins by introducing us to William Wilberforce (24 August 1759 – 29 July 1833) who he describes as the ‘godfather of the Do-Gooders’. Hedonistic man-about-town turned crusader, Wilberforce kick-started a multi-faceted moral revolution which reverberated throughout the 19th century. His campaign to abolish slavery in the British Empire was just one element of this, which resulted in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. Three days after hearing that the passage of the Act through Parliament was assured, he died and was honoured with a burial in Westminster Abbey. He was also a co-founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, later granted royal status by Queen Victoria to become the RSPCA.

In this first programme, Ian also tells the story of:

• Robert Owen (14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) – one of the founders of socialism and the cooperative movement.
• Thomas Wakley (11 July 1795 – 16 May 1862) - founder of The Lancet, who exposed the fatal consequences of cronyism in the surgical profession and helped establish the rights of patients that we take for granted today.
• George Dawson (24 February 1821 – 30 November 1876) - inventor of the civic gospel which inspired a generation of Brummies to take responsibility for their city.
• Charles Trevelyan (2 April 1807 – 19 June 1886) – who battled to make the civil service a meritocracy and is widely regarded as the founder of the modern British civil service.
  

  Octavia Hill

• Octavia Hill (3 December 1838 – 13 August 1912) - a pioneer of social housing, despite her opposition to cash hand-outs or anything that might create a dependency culture, and one of the founders of the British National Trust.

Ian brings these figures to life in an interesting and humourous manner, covering their significant achievements without dwelling so long as to become tedious for those less interested in historical figures. I feel grateful to him for teaching me about so many significant reformers in an hour that passed all too quickly.

Suffer the Little Children

In this episode Ian Hislop looks at the Do-Gooders’ dramatic struggle to give youngsters a proper childhood, sending them to school instead of up chimneys, helping rather than hanging juvenile delinquents and raising the age of consent. Whilst Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and its like had given me an inkling of 19th century childhood, I had somehow not fully appreciated the full horror of it. This episode really brought home to me how lucky most children are today that these Do-Gooders changed society’s attitude towards them:

The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain

• Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (28 April 1801 – 1 October 1885) - stopped children as young as five being sent down mines. His lifetime’s work for children is celebrated in the famous monument at Piccadilly Circus – not actually Eros (sexual love) but Anteros (selfless love).
• Dr Barnardo (4 July 1845 – 19 September 1905) - founded one of the most famous charities of his era. But his methods were decidedly dodgy: he was guilty of misleading advertising, photo-fakery and even child abduction. Yet, we owe our own concept of child protection – that children have rights independently from their parents – to Thomas Barnardo.
• Mary Carpenter (3 April 1807 – 14 June 1877) - an indefatigable Bristol spinster whose radical approach to helping young offenders was years ahead of its time. But even her patience ran out with some of the errant teenage girls at her pioneering reformatory school.
• W. T. Stead (5 July 1849 – 15 April 1912) – newspaper editor and early pioneer of investigative journalism shocked the nation with his lurid exposé of child prostitution – an exclusive which involved him buying a 13-year-old virgin for five pounds. His style and methods make today’s tabloid newspapers seem tame. Stead managed to get the age of consent raised to 16, where it remains to this day, before he died on the RMS Titanic.
• Charles Kingsley (12 June 1819 – 23 January 1875) wrote best-seller The Water Babies which was crucial in banning the practice of sending small boys up chimneys. To him children were innocent, not tainted with original sin. Yet after him, Victorians sentimentalized children to a degree which we today find hard to stomach.

It was difficult for me to initially comprehend that children have not always been regarded as worthy of protection by – and indeed from some – adults. This programme left me with no doubts that less than 200 years ago children needed Do-Gooders like these, and that they have educated us and established their childhood as something to cherish and safeguard.

Sinful Sex and Demon Drink

The pleasures and perils of booze and sex are the focus for the final episode of Ian Hislop’s series about Victorian reformers, campaigners and philanthropists. In attempting to wean Britons off alcohol and away from vice, Ian wonders whether the Do-Gooders, despite their extraordinary energy and success in transforming every other aspect of 19th century society, had finally bitten off more than they could chew.

I did not find the reformers – or rather the people who attempted to change Britain’s attitudes to alcohol and sex – in this episode as inspiring as those in the previous ones. This is partly because they were not so successful in their endeavours, but mostly because I felt their aims were not as noble and vital to society as the others. Whilst many in our society, even today, could benefit from a more responsible attitude to consuming alcohol, it is not a cause that I feel was as important as ending slavery or protecting/educating children was. I felt the need to reform British sexual behaviour was even less imperative, so I found most of these Do-Gooders unnecessarily puritanical and this last episode of the series disappointing.

Jury pronounce verdict on apple-cutter

I was puzzled last month on jury service when required to determine if a defendant found in possession of a bladed article when entering a court building had genuinely intended to use it to cut an apple. It was found next to an apple in his bag, was a typical apple-cutting knife and no evidence was given to even suggest a more sinister intent. The trembling defendant’s testimony even included an explanation of why he always cut his apples, as he had been traumatised as a child when he bit into a worm inside one.

He was so obviously innocent – and was unanimously proclaimed so – that it was difficult to surmise why the Crown Prosecution Service had decided to pursue the case.  Did they have no choice and was this the unintended result of a government sensibly declaring it would get tougher on knife crime? I could not understand why the knife had not simply been confiscated by the court security guard, in the manner that many sharp objects are from passengers passing through security in airports.

He came before a jury to decide his fate, as the accused had elected not to leave that to a panel of magistrates.  At the time I felt it was a risky decision, as his prison sentence from the Crown Court could have been 8 times longer than a Magistrates’ Court could punish him with. Now, in light of Judge Jacqueline Davies’ peculiar view of what “anyone in this country” would think of Paul Chambers’ joke tweet, I think it was a sensible choice.

If this defendant had no right to be judged by 12 ordinary members of the public, he might have been found guilty by magistrates and sentenced to time in prison. There is no guarantee that all jury members will carefully listen to evidence and fairly judge a defendant based on that; indeed, I once overheard an elderly juror declare that she knew an alleged criminal “was guilty because his eyes were too close together”. It would be extremely unfortunate for  12 people like that to end up on the same jury though, so I believe this larger, randomly-selected panel typically ensures a fair hearing and verdict.

Commissioner wants jury trials scrapped

There are a broad range of offences in the U.K. that can be tried either in a Magistrates’ Court or Crown Court, and a defendant not pleading guilty can currently choose the venue. These are known as “triable-either-way” offences and are more serious than summary offences (which can only tried by magistrates) but not very serious indictable-only offences (which must go before a Crown Court). Either way offences include possession of a bladed article or offensive weapon, public nuisances, types of theft and dangerous driving. Louise Casey, the Victims’ Commissioner appointed earlier this year, believes the U.K. should scrap the right to jury trial for some of these.

I agree with many points that Louise Casey makes and feel that victims’ rights are definitely as important as those of an alleged criminal. Further savings do need to be found in the public sector to reduce the U.K.’s deficit and criminals who abuse the right to trial in a “publicly funded waiting game” should certainly be stopped.

Removing the rights of defendants in broad categories of alleged crimes seems an extreme way to tackle flaws in our legal system, though. I’m concerned it could lead to more innocents like Paul Chambers having their lives destroyed by out-of-touch magistrates and judges – who perhaps are so focused on legalities or bring unusual personal views to bear – who do not reach decisions the majority of us feel are fair.