December 26th — if you have the day off —is the one day in the calendar when there is nothing you are obliged to do. It's a delightful switch-off from the outside world—Ireland's unofficial mental health day. In the dark week between Christmas and New Year, all of Ireland catches its breath. You don't have to be Christian to enjoy the mood.

In the past, we used to feel so sorry for the gardaí, fireman and nurses who worked that day. There was always a newspaper article interviewing them about what it was like.

They're not alone any more. Now the 26th is just another day.

While I've worked my share of St Stephen's Days, since we publish on the 27th if it isn't a Sunday, I still think that the only paid work on Christmas Day and St Stephen's Day should be absolutely necessary work. While I've heard it said that the shops opening on the 26th is yet further encroachment of godless UK and US values, that's not what makes me disapprove. My reason is that we need a rest this year more than ever, and on top of that we're learning to live within our means.

[Some] may still be getting a kick out of shopping, but the rest of us have reassessed our priorities and found better things to do.

The traffic jams of yore are gone, and you can nearly see the tumbleweed blowing down the thoroughfares and through the huge open-plan retail spaces of the nougthies' temples, while bored shop assistants practically beg to be of assistance and even the mannequins look disgruntled.

On St Stephen's Day, the shops will be trying to lure us in with what they promise will be extravagant discounts, but if the item that is on sale on St Stephen's Day for half the price it was fewer than 48 hours before, then why wasn't the shop selling it for 50 per cent less in the first place if it could still make a profit? . . .

"Save 50 per cent!" You're not saving anything. The only way to save money is to keep it in your wallet.

So on St Stephen's Day, let's stay home by the fire. There can hardly be anything so life-enhancing on sale on St Stephen's Day that it can't be bought on the 27th or the 28th, if it is to be bought at all.

My solution to winter travel chaos? Don't travel. Stay indoors. Build a fire. Live and shop within walking distance of civilisation. Associate with neighbours. See distant relatives some other time of the year.

Above all, do not complain if you insist on laying siege to motorways, stations and airports and the weather or the labour force let you down, as they do every year. It is not their fault, it is yours for being there.

Of all human activities that bring out the selfish in mankind, nothing compares with travel. [. . .] I am a free and independent spirit innocently enjoying the right to roam; you are a travel-mad lemming who thinks he has a God-given right to tarmac, train or plane just when I am there. Get out of my way.

[The Copenhagen Conference] illustrates the problem rather than the solution. The craving to move and to congregate [. . .] has been the greatest contributor to CO2 emissions over the past half century, above all from the internal combustion of carbon. [. . .] Traveling does as much damage to the earth's atmosphere as all other domestic activities put together. Yet powered movement is a craving no government is willing to curb. Hypermobility is the totem of personal liberty. [. . .]

Meanwhile the government pursues a policy of closing such local institutions as primary schools, cottage hospitals and post offices and encouraging out of town shopping and rural housing estates. All lead to an increase in the need for motor travel. If a hospital visit requires a drive of 50 rather than five miles, the NHS does not pay but someone does; indeed everyone does.

As the geographer, John Adams, points out, mobility may seem "liberating and empowering for individuals", but it also destroys the propinquity essential to more efficient living and to community and civic cohesion. Like the internet, which paradoxically appears to boost travel by making it more efficient, hypermobility has replaced real neighbourhoods with pseudo ones.

People rush anywhere that delivers a new experience, from a weekend break to a global warming conference. Hypermobility is the opium of the people. It panders to instant gratification while dulling a sense of community.

Since hypermobility both dilutes a sense of place and (mostly) increases carbon emissions, governments should be charged with curbing or at least not promoting it. This means planning the town and country so as to minimise the need for ever longer journeys. It means rationing travel capacity by congestion or by price. Since governments are scared of price, most choose to ration by congestion. Summer and winter "road and rail chaos" is the result, with blame conveniently attaching to operators. Everybody thinks it is cars, trains and planes that cause gridlock—when in reality it is people.

There is no absolute right to roam. There is no free trip. We must initiate the rebirth of domestic space.

A friend of mine taught me that rather than "giving up" things for Lent, it is better to add something—more quiet time, more prayer. Similarly, I suggest that Christmas be a time not for getting more and doing more, but a time to get rid of some unwanted stuff. For instance . . .

In its series The Question The Guardian asks "What would you get rid of for Christmas?" Anglican clergyman Peter Bolton responds 23 Dec 2009 that he would get rid of churchmen who denounce sexual sins with a fervour they never apply to any other sin.

This is like writing a letter to Santa! Resisting with all my might the temptation to ask for the extermination of certain people who get on my nerves my mind wonders around to the big and worthy issues. Should I ask for the end of war or global warming or poverty or homelessness or child abuse? Well, yes, I should [. . .]

I am going to ask for the end of something that is making me really angry right now. Like most Guardian readers (I hope), I am very angry and upset about Uganda's proposed anti-homosexuality legislation. But my wrath is not directed at Uganda or even its government especially. A little knowledge of the history of Uganda helps one realise that this is too complicated just to be angry with the people who will pass this law.

No, my anger is directed at those Western Christians who feed the bigotry. I can just about understand that Christians might regard homosexual acts as sinful but what I completely fail to understand is why they get so worked up about it. I just wish that churchmen (yes, I do mean that) who get so upset about what they regard as sexual sins would get just as worked up about illegal wars, the greed that leads to global warming, or the violence done to women in the name of Christian marriage. I wish were as vociferous in their campaigning against world poverty, against nuclear weapons or the appalling treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Why do they seem to get more upset about people trying to love than they do about poverty, the penal system, or the exploitation of women?

So, dear Santa, please get rid of all talk from churchmen about sex unless it is a celebration of God's wonderful gift. [. . .] Come to think about it, though, it might be more realistic to hope for the end of poverty.

This year we have again been reminded of the fragility of life. Natural disasters and conflicts around the world, including the Victorian bushfires which caused such destruction and loss of life, show all too clearly that life cannot be taken for granted. The global economy continues to stagger, and although there are signs of recovery interest rates are now rising and many families remain uncertain about the future. Hope seems hard to come by.

The Palestine of Jesus' day was also a place of war, of occupation, of hardship and uncertainty. Hope was hard to come by then, too. It was in this setting that the Christmas events occurred.

God came among us as a vulnerable child. Christmas speaks of a God who does not abandon us, even in the dark times. We celebrate Christmas, not just to remember an event which occurred 2000 years ago. The annual celebration reminds us that the God who came among us then remains among us now. So we continue to hope even when hope seems foolish.

Each Christmas we celebrate not just the birth of a child but the birth of hope.

Of more immediate concern, those under siege in Gaza face another winter of intense personal suffering. I visited Gaza after the devastating January war and observed homeless people huddling in makeshift tents, under plastic sheets, or in caves dug into the debris of their former homes. Despite offers by Palestinian leaders and international agencies to guarantee no use of imported materials for even defensive military purposes, cement, lumber, and panes of glass are not being permitted to pass entry points into Gaza. The US and other nations have accepted this abhorrent situation without forceful corrective action.

I have discussed ways to assist the citizens of Gaza with a number of Arab and European leaders and their common response is that the Israeli blockade makes any assistance impossible. Donors point out that they have provided enormous aid funds to build schools, hospitals and factories, only to see them destroyed in a few hours by precision bombs and missiles. Without international guarantees, why risk similar losses in the future?

It is time to face the fact that, for the past 30 years, no one nation has been able or willing to break the impasse and induce the disputing parties to comply with international law. We cannot wait any longer. Israel has long argued that it cannot negotiate with terrorists, yet has had an entire year without terrorism and still could not negotiate. President Obama has promised active involvement of the US government, but no formal peace talks have begun and no comprehensive framework for peace has been proposed. Individually and collectively, the world powers must act.

For almost 20 years, from Rio to Kyoto to Copenhagen, we've been wasting time, pursuing the failed strategy of cutting carbon-dioxide emissions. Promises of short-term carbon cuts haven't worked because implementing them is extremely expensive and ineffective: alternative energy technologies are far from ready to take over. To ensure that they are ready, we should instead invest 0.2% of GDP in green research and development . . . which is far smarter option.

The solution is not to make fossil fuels more expensive; the solution is to make alternative energy cheaper.

[L]et's say we index 1990 global emissions at 100. If there were no Kyoto at all, the 2010 level would have been 142.7. With full Kyoto implementation, it would have been 133. In fact, the actual outcome of Kyoto is likely to be a 2010 level of 142.2—virtually the same as if we had done nothing at all. Given 12 years of continuous talks and praise for Kyoto, this is not much of an accomplishment. The Kyoto Protocol did not fail because any one nation let the rest of the world down. It failed because making quick, drastic cuts in carbon emissions is extremely expensive. Whether or not Copenhagen is declared a political victory, that inescapable fact of economic life will once again prevail and grand promises will once again go unfulfilled. This is why I advocate abandoning the pointless strategy of trying to make governments promise to cut carbon emissions. Instead, the world should be focusing its efforts on making non-polluting energy sources cheaper than fossil fuels.

Instead of papering over the flaws in the Kyoto approach and pretending that grand promises translate into real action, we need to acknowledge that saving the world requires a smarter strategy than the one being pursued so dogmatically in Copenhagen.

We affirm that sexuality is a divine gift, and hence God intends us to celebrate this divine gift in committed, consensual, and monogamous relationships. It is in such celebrations of our sexuality that we grow into the fullness of our humanity, and experience God in a special way.

We believe that our negative attitudes towards sexuality and our body-denying spirituality stem from our distorted understanding of God's purpose for us. The embodied God who embraced flesh in Jesus Christ is the ground for us to love our bodies and to celebrate life and sexuality without abuse and misuse. So God invites us to experience sexual fulfillment in our committed relationships of justice-love with the commitment to be vulnerable, compassionate, and responsible.

We recognize that there are people with different sexual orientations. The very faith affirmation that the whole human community is created in the image of God irrespective of our sexual orientations makes it imperative on us to reject systemic and personal attitudes of homophobia and discrimination against sexual minorities. We consider the Delhi High Court verdict to "decriminalize consensual sexual acts of adults in private" upholding the fundamental constitutional and human rights to privacy and the life of dignity and non-discrimination of all citizens as a positive step.

We believe that the Church as 'Just and Inclusive Community' is called to become a community without walls to reach out to people who are stigmatized and demonized, and be a listening community to understand their pains, desires, and hopes.

We envision Church as a sanctuary to the ostracized who thirst for understanding, friendship, love, compassion and solidarity, and to join in their struggles to live out their God given lives. So we appeal to the Christian communities to sojourn with sexual minorities and their families without prejudice and discrimination, to provide them ministries of love, compassionate care, and justice.

We request the National Council of Churches in India and its members to initiate an in-depth theological study on Human Sexuality for better discernment of God's purpose for us. This involves a deeper engagement with Bible, traditions, and other disciplines such as social theories, psychology, and medical science. This process should be an inclusive one where people with different sexual orientations can learn from each other and contribute to this process without prejudice and fear. We also request the Theological Fraternities in India to help this process through integrating issues related to Human Sexuality into the process of theological and ministerial formation.

We hope and pray that the embodied God will bless our endeavors to grow into the fullness of life, and to transform our faith communities into rainbow communities of the beloved and equals.

The problem that the Archbishop of Canterbury faces is that the Anglican Communion will continue to fragment. The Covenant which he believes is a centre of unity around which the vast majority of provinces can coalesce is not even yet in its final form. Such is the polarisation of the Church of England, as a result of the Anglican Communion crisis, that there is now no guarantee that it can pass in the General Synod let alone in other more liberal western provinces.

It seems likely that any Anglican future worth having will be radically different from the current shape of things. The so-called instruments and international meetings will become largely a thing of the past, replaced by networks, regional conferences and some tangential relationships to the Canterbury primate. It is a fragmented and difficult future, but one preferable to a constant state of hysteria and schism.

is an official artist studio (changjaksa) in Pyongyang, North Korea (DPRK), which employs over 1000 artists across the disciplines of painting, drawing, embroidery and mosaics. There is a rich cultural heritage associated with artistic production in North Korea (DPRK), and ink painting in particular is a revered practice. Artistic themes vary and may be revolutionary, social, political and historical in content, or purely aesthetic, and are expressed in different media such as sculpture, poster art, ceramics and painting. Installed in streets, schools, cinemas and official buildings, they function as a form of public art. These works are created with virtuosic technical skill by groups of artists, reflecting the state’s collective ethos. This new body of work, created specifically for APT6, addresses the nature of work and collectivism, the process of collaboration and the fundamental role played by the studio in artistic practice in North Korea. This important project, developed in collaboration with Nicholas Bonner, will be the first presentation in Australia of contemporary art from North Korea (DPRK).

The most significant recent climate change findings are:

• Surging greenhouse gas emissions: Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were nearly 40% higher than those in 1990. Even if global emission rates are stabilized at present-day levels, just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability that warming exceeds 2°C, even with zero emissions after 2030. Every year of delayed action increases the chances of exceeding 2°C warming.
• Recent global temperatures demonstrate human-induced warming: Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.19°C per decade, in very good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases. Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues to be one of warming. Natural, short-term fluctuations are occurring as usual, but there have been no significant changes in the underlying warming trend.
• Acceleration of melting of ice-sheets, glaciers and ice-caps: A wide array of satellite and ice measurements now demonstrate beyond doubt that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990.
• Rapid Arctic sea-ice decline: Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. The area of sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40% greater than the average prediction from IPCC AR4 climate models.
• Current sea-level rise underestimated: Satellites show recent global average sea-level rise (3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) to be ˜80% above past IPCC predictions. This acceleration in sea-level rise is consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps, and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice-sheets.
• Sea-level predictions revised: By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected by Working Group 1 of the IPCC AR4; for unmitigated emissions it may well exceed 1 meter. The upper limit has been estimated as ˜ 2 meters sea level rise by 2100. Sea level will continue to rise for centuries after global temperatures have been stabilized, and several meters of sea level rise must be expected over the next few centuries.
• Delay in action risks irreversible damage: Several vulnerable elements in the climate system (e.g. continental ice-sheets, Amazon rainforest, West African monsoon and others) could be pushed towards abrupt or irreversible change if warming continues in a business-as-usual way throughout this century. The risk of transgressing critical thresholds ("tipping points") increases strongly with ongoing climate change. Thus waiting for higher levels of scientific certainty could mean that some tipping points will be crossed before they are recognized.
• The turning point must come soon: If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2 °C above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society—with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases—needs to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80-95% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.

Just a few days later, he failed to condemn openly the new law to be enacted in Uganda that will condemn a large number of homosexuals to death. Yet when it came to the election as a bishop of a monogamous woman who has been in the same relationship for 21 years he was quick to judge. The problem was that this woman's relationship is with another woman.

It is well known in church circles that Dr Williams, once barred from becoming Bishop of Southwark because of his liberal views, was the favoured choice of Tony Blair's Government and the mostly liberal Church of England bishops to lead them because of what they believed to be his fearless advocacy for gay rights.

The dreams of these liberals, and the oppressed minorities they speak out in support of, are almost dead. One blog commenter yesterday suggested that the Archbishop, instead of asking "serious questions" about the election of Mary Glasspool, might like instead to appoint her as his representative to go and lobby the Ugandan Government. What a thrilling spectacle that would be to behold.

Otherwise, frankly, there seems little point in the Anglican Communion bothering to exist any more. Maybe that is what the Pope has realised.

To many Anglicans, embarrassed and ashamed by a Church that knows not which minority it stands up for or which tradition it is prepared or not to breach, the Catholic option must seem increasingly attractive.

Rowan Williams has found himself in some difficult and undignified places as Archbishop of Canterbury, but it looks as if the Ugandan church is going to land him in the hardest and most uncomfortable early next year. But his difficulties have been greatly aggravated by his own diplomatic ineptitude. He has got himself into a position where he thinks that he can tell liberal Americans what to do, but dare not tell conservative Africans. He's certainly wrong about the Americans; the Ugandans may leave him with no choice but to speak out.

If he speaks out against the homophobic Ugandan law now, he may make it more likely that the bill will pass. One Ugandan prelate, Bishop Joseph Abura of Karamoja Diocese, has already written a blood-curdling denunciation of the protesting West. Gays, he says, are in the power of Satan.

[. . .]

There is perhaps something that could be said about a Bishop who wants to put men to death for loving other men, and accuses his opponents of "being inhumane, looking at own self, own feelings, and not the feelings of others" But this is no time for irony. Let's cut to the message.

Africa, run away from gays, let us save our continent by refuting the vice; practice, and preserve our heritage, that is our traditions and culture believing and trusting in the Almighty God ... Christ is the answer, feelings or sympathies, especially on evil, are not! Ugandan Parliament, the watch dog of our laws, please go ahead and put the anti-gay laws in place. It is then that we become truly accountable to our young and to this country, not to Canada or England. We are in charge!

Perhaps it is the Church of Uganda that's in charge here; perhaps it's the devil that the church so firmly believes in. But it certainly isn't the Archbishop of Canterbury. Williams's office has let it be known that he is appalled by the proposed bill, and doing everything he can behind the scenes to scupper it. You can see the problem. Having his press secretary tell people he is exerting covert pressure isn't the most covert way possible to pressurise the Ugandans. But the bill is now widely known and condemned among his natural sympathisers. He can no longer be seen to be doing nothing, any more than he can be seen to be acting against it.

What makes his difficulty darkly comic rather than tragic is the speed with which he has reacted to the election of a lesbian assistant bishop in Los Angeles. A statement came out of his office less than 12 hours later urging the Americans not to proceed.

Consider the case of two Anglicans of the same gender who love one another. If they are in the USA, the Anglican church will marry them and may elect one of them to office. If they are in Uganda, the Anglican church will have try to have them jailed for life, and ensure that any priest who did not report them to the authorities within 24 hours would be jailed for three years; anyone who spoke out in their defence might be jailed for seven.

Under Williams, the church that marries two women who love each other is to be thrown out of the Anglican Communion. The church that would jail them both for life, and would revile and persecute their defenders, stays snugly in his bosom. Not even the Archbishop's remarkable gift for obfuscation can conceal these facts forever.

The indigenous holy days that rise from the solstice – Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hannakah and all the rest – offer us an unseen opportunity. . . . It needn't be a consumer event.

This year we should radically redefine what our gifts will be, to simultaneously love our family and our earth. A gift from a big box store—from the demon monoculture—that puts us in a car for hours and is wrapped in plastic packaging, and was shipped a thousand miles with internal combustion engines– this year we won't consider that a gift at all. Such a gift hurts life on earth, and so it hurts us.

The language that sells us consumerism for Christmas is going in one direction and what we are quietly telling ourselves is the opposite. This year, after the banking failure and the debt mountains, the advertising has less power than ever. So find the things you have that may be under-used, over-looked. Shop locally and stay out of Tesco, Starbucks, Marks & Spencer and Primark.

There's no doubt Christmas is an annual environmental disaster. Last year Americans generated 25 million tons of trash between Buy Nothing day and Christmas. But we can still change it— and Buy Nothing day isn't a bad place to start.

A study from the University of London, which was published this week, says that Down-syndrome pregnancies have risen by 70 per cent. This is put down to women having babies later in life, when the chances of a Down-syndrome conception are higher. But the study also says that fewer children are being born with the condition, as its abortion rate is now 92 per cent. Some apparent expert on the Today programme justified all of this under that lazy catch-all alibi: choice.

It is the choice of modern women to try for babies later in life because this fits in better with their desire for a career earlier in life. So the number of abortions rises steadily. Abortion is a by-product of a lifestyle choice. But because it is a largely hidden one — the sadness of abortion taking place privately and discreetly —the full cost of this demographic shift in women's behaviour and expectations is rarely weighed. It is out of sight and out of mind —and thus so much easier to wave away with a casual flick of the word "choice".

But the Today-programme expert is not alone in using the word as she did. It is the single most over-used, and misused, get-out-of-jail-free card in contemporary moral jargon. So let’s take it slowly. Choice is good, in so far as a free society is better than an unfree one. That moral principle is in the bank, for me.

Nonetheless, just because something is a choice does not make it morally right. I might choose to stab the Dean of St Paul’s, but my choosing to do so makes no difference to the morality of the act. This is so obvious that it ought not to need saying. Yet the way that many public figures segue from the importance of having choice to a blanket affirmation of the moral rightness of any and every choice made, by anybody in any conceivable circumstances, is absurd, and deeply corrosive of the moral fibre of society. I feel a bit of an idiot having to point this out. But if Grandma can't suck eggs, she needs to be shown how.

More than 1100 Down-syndrome babies were aborted [in Britain] in 2007-08, compared with 300 in 1989-90. Those of us who think this a significant moral issue are often treated like religious fundamentalists who want to put women in shackles and push them into the hands of grubby back-street abortionists. Rubbish: what most of us want to see is an end to our culture's damaging obsession with physical perfection, something driven by our own fear of inadequacy. The false logic of choice which blocks any challenge to this cult of perfection is profoundly harmful to us all.

developing children's appreciation, enjoyment and participation in the arts in all its forms as part of their education. It acknowledges that only professional performers and practitioners practising their craft at a high level of educational and artistic competence can provide students with opportunities to experience live performances and presentations. To ensure the artistic and educational integrity of these performances and to meet its charter to protect the young people in its care, the Department of Education and Training strongly recommends that all schools accept only those performances that have been authorised to perform in schools and colleges through the Performances For Schools program.

It's one thing to explore such remote recesses of time in theory. It’s something else again to witness their afterglow. And GRB 090423 is an invitation for all of us to unfetter our imaginations. We imagine looking outward from that distant point knowing that our own exploration still lies some 13 billion years in the future.

Even though we should know better, it is natural to regard what we grew up with as the normal state of affairs. Indeed, every generation has a different view of "the good old days." This is particularly troublesome with respect to the environment and nature. Without some perspective of what might be "normal," it is hard to understand the impact we have had on our planet and what to do about it.

At the time I turned my hand to environment and conservation, the number of endangered species worldwide was modest. To be sure there were the first signs of more pervasive problems heralded in Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," but they seemed amenable to straightforward and simple fixes.

Hole in the ozone layer? Find a substitute for chlorofluorocarbons. Acid rain and acid lakes? Reduce sulfur emissions and do it economically by creating a market for sulfur trading. An endangered rainforest? Create a protected area.

To be truly effective in most endeavors, including environmental work, it is important to lift one's gaze from the particular to assess periodically the overall state of the exercise. That can determine whether and how to alter strategy as new environmental problems emerge and understanding deepens. Current indicators can only tell us about the moment, whereas we need to be cognizant of shifting environmental horizons — what could well become future baselines unless action is taken. Doing so, one can only conclude that the environmental profession has changed from one in which simple and often local interventions would work, to one in which we have become planet doctors.

In the oceans and on land it is impossible to find a place unaffected by human activities. We live in a chemical soup of our own making. Even in the Arctic and Antarctica, animals accumulate toxic compounds in their tissues. Rainforests and virtually all other natural habitats are in retreat. The number of endangered birds, mammals and plants is soaring from multiple causes. Perhaps as many as one quarter of all amphibian species are endangered through a strange combination of factors, including a fatal fungal disease. With no tadpoles, some streams have turned bright green from unconstrained algal growth. The great global cycles of carbon and nitrogen are badly distorted, producing, among other things, climate change and acidifying oceans from greenhouse gases plus multiple dead zones in estuaries and coastal waters. The rising temperatures are already stressing coral reefs. In some parts of Siberia, the thawed permafrost bubbles with methane like a Yellowstone hot spring.

While there is enough on the planet's environmental horizon to make us all want to throw up our hands, as planet doctors we know diagnosis is just prelude to treatment. There is a tremendous amount that can be done to right the imbalance without wrecking the global economy. Indeed the recent Stern report on climate change, whatever its flaws, clearly demonstrates that the implications of a deteriorating environment are more serious for the economy than the cost of addressing it. Action is required in all segments of society: Government needs to put the right incentives in place to encourage, for example, the right kinds of biofuels and other alternate energy sources. Individual human aspiration needs to be provided choices that are environment-friendly.

Clearly, there is an enormous role for the private sector. Happily, there are many signs that some companies view this as an opportunity. The aluminum company Alcoa, in one of the most energy-intensive industries, is seeking to make its Brazilian operations carbon-neutral and sustainable in other ways as well. Generators made by Caterpillar run on methane from landfills. Time magazine has analyzed the carbon in its product life cycle from tree harvest to disposal.

This is not the first time in our history that humanity has faced a huge and unprecedented challenge. Environmental degradation is largely avoidable. It only requires us to take the planetary diagnosis as seriously as our own individual annual checkups, and rise to the challenge with all of our innate creativity.

• Rawhide 1959 to 1966.
• Gunsmoke 1955 to 1975.
• The Rifleman 1958 to 1963.
• Bonanza 1959 to 1973.
• Maverick 1957 to 1962.
• Lawman 1958 to 1962.
• Cheyenne 1955 to 1962.
• Wagon Train 1957 to 1962.

• WA Mozart. Symphony no. 41, 'Jupiter'. 4th mov - Finale
• Waverley Mission. Zeph 3.17. 'The Lord thy God' & Ps 92.13. 'Those that be planted'
• Richard Strauss. 'Waldesligkeit' & 'Morgen'.
• Jimmy Sommerville. Singles Collection 1984-1990. 'To love somebody.'
• Paul Simon. 'Graceland' from the album of the same name.
• WA Mozart.Così fan Tutte. Overture.
• Jan Garbeck / Hilliard Ensemble. 'Sanctus' from the album Officium

Our society does not often tell us this. Progress, since the dawn of the Industrial Age, is supposed to be a linear upward progression; graphs with upward slopes are a good sign. Processing speeds are always getting faster; broadband now makes dial-up seem like traveling by horse and buggy. Growth is eternal.

. . . The ultimate form of progress, however, is learning to decide what is working and what is not; and working at this pace, emailing at this frantic rate, is pleasing very few of us. It is encroaching on parts of our lives that should be separate or sacred, altering our minds and our ability to know our world, encouraging a further distancing from our bodies and our natures and our communities. We can change this; we have to change it. Of course email is good for many things; that has never been in dispute. But we need to learn to use it far more sparingly, with far less dependency, if we are to gain control of our lives.

In the past two decades, we have witnessed one of the greatest breakdowns of the barrier between our work and personal lives since the notion of leisure time emerged in Victorian Britain as a result of the Industrial Age. It has put us under great physical and mental strain, altering our brain chemistry and daily needs. It has isolated us from the people with whom we live, siphoning us away from real-world places where we gather. It has encouraged flotillas of unnecessary jabbering, making it difficult to tell signal from noise. It has made it more difficult to read slowly and enjoy it, hastening the already declining rates of literacy. It has made it harder to listen and mean it, to be idle and not fidget.

This is not a sustainable way to live. This lifestyle of being constantly on causes emotional and physical burnout, workplace meltdowns, and unhappiness. How many of our most joyful memories have been created in front of a screen?

If we are to step off this hurtling machine, we must reassert principles that have been lost in the blur. It is time to launch a manifesto for a slow communication movement, a push back against the machines and the forces that encourage us to remain connected to them. Many of the values of the Internet are social improvements—it can be a great platform for solidarity, it rewards curiosity, it enables convenience. This is not the manifesto of a Luddite, this is a human manifesto. If the technology is to be used for the betterment of human life, we must reassert that the Internet and its virtual information space is not a world unto itself but a supplement to our existing world . . .

The speed at which we do something—anything—changes our experience of it. Words and communication are not immune to this fundamental truth. The faster we talk and chat and type over tools such as email and text messages, the more our communication will resemble traveling at great speed. . . .

This is a disastrous development on many levels. Brain science may suggest that some decisions can be made in the blink of an eye, but not all judgments benefit from a short frame of reference. We need to protect the finite well of our attention if we care about our relationships. We need time in order to properly consider the effect of what we say upon others. We need time in order to grasp the political and professional ramifications of our typed correspondence. We need time to shape and design and filter our words so that we say exactly what we mean. Communicating at great haste hones our utterances down to instincts and impulses that until now have been held back or channeled more carefully.

Continuing in this strobe-lit techno-rave communication environment as it stands will be destructive for businesses. Employees communicating at breakneck speed make mistakes. They forget, cross boundaries that exist for a reason, make sloppy errors, offend clients, spread rumors and gossip that would never travel through offline channels, work well past the point where their contributions are helpful, burn out and break down and then have trouble shutting down and recuperating. The churn produced by this communication lifestyle cannot be sustained. "To perfect things, speed is a unifying force," the race-car driver Michael Schumacher has said. "To imperfect things, speed is a destructive force." No company is perfect, nor is any individual.

It is hard not to blame us for believing otherwise, because the Internet and the global markets it facilitates have bought into a fundamental warping of the actual meaning of speed. Speed used to convey urgency; now we somehow think it means efficiency. One can even see this in the etymology of the word. The earliest recorded use of it as a verb—"to go fast"— dates back to 1300, when horses were the primary mode of moving in haste. By 1569, as the printing press was beginning to remake society, speed was being used to mean "to send forth with quickness." By 1856, in the thick of the Industrial Revolution, when machines and mechanized production and train travel were remaking society yet again, "speed" took on another meaning. It was being used to "increase the work rate of," as in speed up.

There is a paradox here, though. The Internet has provided us with an almost unlimited amount of information, but the speed at which it works—and we work through it—has deprived us of its benefits. We might work at a higher rate, but this is not working. We can store a limited amount of information in our brains and have it at our disposal at any one time. Making decisions in this communication brownout, though without complete information, we go to war hastily, go to meetings unprepared, and build relationships on the slippery gravel of false impressions. Attention is one of the most valuable modern resources. If we waste it on frivolous communication, we will have nothing left when we really need it.

Everything we say needn't travel at the fastest rate possible. The difference between typing an email and writing a letter or memo out by hand is akin to walking on concrete versus strolling on grass. You forget how natural it feels until you do it again. Our time on this earth is limited, the world is vast, and the people we care about or need for our business life to operate will not always live and work nearby; we will always have to communicate over distance. We might as well enjoy it and preserve the space and time to do it in a way that matches the rhythms of our bodies. Continuing to work and type and write at speed, however, will make our communication environment resemble our cities. There will be concrete as far as the eye can see.

. . . We need context in order to live, and if the environment of electronic communication has stopped providing it, we shouldn't search online for a solution but turn back to the real world and slow down. To do this, we need to uncouple our idea of progress from speed, separate the idea of speed from efficiency, pause and step back enough to realize that efficiency may be good for business and governments but does not always lead to mindfulness and sustainable, rewarding relationships. We are here for a short time on this planet, and reacting to demands on our time by simply speeding up has canceled out many of the benefits of the Internet, which is one of the most fabulous technological inventions ever conceived. We are connected, yes, but we were before, only by gossamer threads that worked more slowly. Slow communication will preserve these threads and our ability to sensibly choose to use faster modes when necessary. It will also preserve our sanity, our families, our relationships and our ability to find happiness in a world where, in spite of the Internet, saying what we mean is as hard as it ever was. It starts with a simple instruction: Don't send.

• thorough records of farming and production practices throughout all stages;
• verification of organic claims through a process of independent, third party certification;
• practices stipulated in the Standard to be applied to the land for no less than three years before any products can be labelled organic or biodynamic;
• the almost absolute restriction of pesticides and fertilisers produced from the synthetic chemicals;
• a complete ban on the use of genetically modified products;
• operators to have a farm biodiversity and landscape management plan as part of their organic management plan; and
• the use of organic and biodynamic livestock feed for livestock products labelled 'organic' or 'biodynamic'.

A great satisfaction in growing old—one of many—is assuming the role of a witness to the wobbling of the world and seeing irreversible changes. The downside, besides the tedium of listening to the delusions of the young, is hearing the same hackneyed opinions over and over, not just those of callow youth but, much worse and seemingly criminal, the opinions of even callower people who ought to know better, all the lies about war and fear and progress and the enemy—the world as a wheel of repetition. They—I should say "we"—are bored by things we've heard a million times before, books we've dismissed, the discoveries that are not new, the proposed solutions that will solve nothing. "I can tell that I am growing old," says the narrator in Borges's story "The Congress." "One unmistakable sign is the fact that I find novelty neither interesting nor surprising, perhaps because I see nothing essentially new in it—it's little more than timid variations on what's already been. "

The average North Korean doesn't know the country's national constitution well, but at least he has a solid excuse: Kim Jong Il keeps the working masses ignorant of the rights that are formally granted them, which include freedom of speech and demonstration. But just because Pyongyang's constitution is hardly worth the paper it is written on does not mean that alterations to it are beneath notice. For the ruling elite, its preamble and first few articles serve as a broad indication of the regime's ideological direction.

Which is why the latest version of the North Korean constitution, made public on Monday by the South Korean government, is worth paying attention to. Unlike earlier versions, it omits all mention of communism, while referring here and there to the "military-first" brand of socialism that has guided the regime since the mid-1990s. It also designates the National Defense Council Chairman—Kim Jong Il, of course—as "supreme leader" of the country. Last weekend a North Korean press representative explained to South Korean officials that Kim did not consider communism to be viable "as long as U.S. imperialism exists."

These changes do not reflect a sudden shift in policy. Despite the world media's tradition of referring to North Korea as a "hardline communist" or "Stalinist" state, it has never been anything of the sort. From its beginnings in 1945 the regime has espoused—to its subjects if not to its Soviet and Chinese aid-providers—a race-based, paranoid nationalism that has nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism. (This latter term was tellingly dropped from the constitution after the collapse of the East Bloc.) North Korea has always had less in common with the former Soviet Union than with the Japan of the 1930s, another "national defense state" in which a command economy was pursued not as an end in itself, but as a prerequisite for rapid armament.

North Korea is, in other words, a national-socialist country—one lacking imperialist ambitions, to be sure, but one that must still be seen on the far right and not the far left of the political spectrum. The only thing that has changed over the past 15 years is the country's readiness to show its true colors to the world. Despite this, some foreigners continue to misinterpret the regime's sporadic efforts to regain total control over the economy in terms of an attempted "re-Stalinization." In fact it has made no serious effort to resocialize the enormous amount of property, including real estate, that has been amassed by traders and officials in the past 15 years. Nor has it stamped out open-air markets. Instead it tries to control and monitor these markets better, with a view to preventing the diversion of able-bodied workers from farms and factories, and stopping the trade in items stolen from state industry. In short, Kim wants to call the economic shots to maintain internal security and to pump as much money as possible into the army; Stalin doesn't enter into the equation, let alone Marx.

So far, the United States government has never been interested enough in North Korean ideology to look beyond Pyongyang's lip service to communism. An element of wishful thinking is involved, given that Washington wants the current nuclear stand-off to end as peacefully as the Cold War did. Perhaps this new constitution will finally make America realize who it is dealing with: a leader who derives his entire legitimacy from a pledge to maximize his country's military might. Kim is aware that he cannot disarm without committing political suicide. This unfortunately means that negotiations with Pyongyang, whether bilateral or multilateral, can never bear the sort of fruit that détente with the Soviet Union did.

Some in Washington have suggested that negotiations can nonetheless be an effective adjunct to sanctions, the hope being that the U.S. can chatter away with the Kim regime until it finally collapses from a lack of funds. But if North Korea is not a communist country, there is no reason to expect it to fold like one. Party propaganda derides the old Soviet Union for nothing so much as the way it went down "without a shot." With the Dear Leader's uranium centrifuges spinning every hour, running out the clock seems a very dangerous strategy indeed.

The Constitution of 1972 established the "Revolutionary Leader Theory" and the 1998 revision established the system of the National Defense Chairman by providing for "Seongun," or a "military-first" policy. [. . . ] The newly revised Constitution dramatically reinforces the authority and duties of the chairman and stipulates the powers that have been executed by the chairman. The chairman [. . .] not only leads national projects in general but also has the authority to ratify and abandon treaties and declare states of emergency. The Constitution seems to give the chairman [Kim Jong-il] authority similar to those of a president in a Western country.

North Korea has advocated military-first politics as the basic ruling system of the Kim Jong-il era since the death of Kim Il Sung. When the Constitution was revised in 1998, it created a government system centered on the National Defense Commission but did not reflect a specific leadership philosophy for the military-first policies.

The latest Constitution states that North Korea takes military-first policy and the juche ideology of self-reliance as "the leadership guideline of activities," and adds military servicemen as one of the sovereign classes. While the 1972 Constitution included "soldiers" as sovereign power holders, they were dropped in the 1998 Constitution. The most recent revision replaced soldiers with "military servicemen." By adding military-first policy as a leadership ideology and including military servicemen as sovereign power holders, North Korea wishes to constitutionally complete a military state. The military-first doctrine is not at the same level as the juche ideology, but more of an embodiment of it.

It is notable that "communism" has been removed in the revised Constitution. When socialist countries are collapsing and struggling to keep people well fed, communism is a far-fetched idea. The socialist objective of realizing distribution based on labor is hard to attain under present conditions, and the communist idea of realizing distribution based on demand is not in sight.

China assumes that becoming a socialist state is a long process that takes over 100 years. It is pursuing rapid economic growth as a primary socialist stage. North Korea also proposes its own socialist theories and is more interested in resolving immediate challenges. It seems to have omitted the communist objective since defending socialism is the highest priority in the confrontation with imperialism.

In response to the international community's demand for improved human rights, a human rights clause has been added to the Constitution, but it also contains new clauses on reinforcing the ideological revolution, labor classes and collectivism, reflecting an intention to tighten control over society. Clauses on much-anticipated economic reforms are nowhere to be found. After all, the Kim Jong-il regime seems to want to remain a military nation centered on armed forces. Meaningful policy change and legislation will only be possible when the North-U.S. hostility is resolved and Pyongyang has confidence in the system's stability. A more serious change in policy direction will be made after 2012, a period when Pyongyang says it will become a powerful and prosperous nation.

The correct response to abuse

Weeks before he was elected Pope in 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spoke in a Good Friday meditation of "filth in the Church", a remark interpreted as a denunciation of those involved in clerical child sex abuse. Cardinal Ratzinger had more insight than most into the grave sins committed by priests against innocents: as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he had read plenty of reports of sexual misconduct.

The shame of those crimes was not limited to the individual priests involved, however. All too often, in countries such as the United States, Ireland and the United Kingdom, church authorities, from parish to diocese and up the hierarchical chain, put the avoidance of scandal above the protection of the young and above justice. No wonder then that the Church remains tainted by that history. This week, at a meeting of the United Nations human rights council in Geneva, it was accused of covering up child abuse and being in breach of several articles under the Convention of the Rights of the Child.

In response, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's permanent observer to the UN, issued a statement saying that only 1.5 to 5 per cent of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse. He also said that such abuse was far worse in other denominations and in Jewish communities. This is an argument akin to a teenager caught taking drugs pointing out to his parents that the kids over the road are drunk. As Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, head of the New York Board of Rabbis, remarked: "Comparative tragedy is a dangerous path on which to travel."

That there is child sex abuse occurring in other Churches should be noted by the Catholic Church — not as a defence of itself but as a starting point for dialogue. Best practice for dealing with the problem should be shared as well as theories about the causes of abuse. Critics of the Catholic Church have often claimed that abuse is linked to celibacy. But if it is also occurring in denominations where no such tradition exists, then the cause must presumably lie elsewhere.

Media coverage sparked by the archbishop's comments served to deflect attention away from the work that the Church has done in recent years in trying to ensure that abusers are weeded out before they come into contact with children through their ministry. Those charged with priestly training try to ensure men with paedophiliac tendencies are not accepted at seminaries; child protection policies have been developed and people charged with those policies work at parish and diocesan level.

Then there are the historic cases of abuse going back many years. Where once there were cover-ups, the Church in places such as Britain has cooperated with the police to bring past child abusers to justice. Excuses of the kind made for film director Roman Polanski this week — that he should not be extradited from Switzerland in connection with having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl because it happened 30 years ago and he has suffered enough in his own life — might wash among the film world's intelligentsia but not among the Catholic laity.

Rather, sorrow, humility and justice are the only responses acceptable to the abuses that moved Cardinal Ratzinger to such righteous fury.

Even a cursory reading of church history shows how Christians have had to adjust over time and in different contexts on matters which they previously thought to be fundamental and non negotiable. This is not an argument for anything goes. It is simply to draw attention to the complexity and difficulty of living in the world without being of the world, of testifying to Jesus' Kingdom which is not of this world, while living in this world. In a rapidly changing world this is one of the most important and difficult issues facing Christians. It is clearly at issue in the present Anglican conflict, but it has been neglected in the way in which the present conflict has been approached.

The Anglican covenant is coming to a synod near you and it is not a good idea. It has come like an express train in part because it is really a piece of crisis management, even though it is designed to be a permanent part of global Anglican relations. . . . It fails to grapple with actual issue in the present conflict. It fails to take account of the complexity and diversity of decision-making in the provinces. . . . It assumes an idea of the Anglican Communion which is novel, conflicts with the history of Anglican ecclesiology and will almost certainly have the effect over time of institutionalising divisions on a wide range of issues.

Not long ago, I found myself driving east across Kansas at dawn, cutting across the north/south band of the Flint Hills. Venus was riding bright above the horizon. And as I drove, I began to think about the morning star's orbit around the sun.

Everything felt oddly stationary—the stars fixed overhead—except for my car humming along the blacktop and the grasses on the stone outcrops bending under a southern wind. Yet Venus was roaring along in its path, rotating clockwise on its axis while orbiting counterclockwise around the sun. Earth was roaring around the sun, too, except that our planet happens to rotate clockwise on its axis. In the grand scheme of astronomical motions—imagine, too, the rotation of the Milky Way and the overall expansion of the universe—my car had come to a virtual standstill, though I was doing 80.

I cannot do the calculations to sum up all those motions, to figure out how fast and in what direction I was really moving as I drove across the prairie. It's no easier sitting at my desk, watching October roll across the landscape, a bright day following a warm, wet night when the falling leaves adhere to every surface. Somehow, I can't help imagining my life as a vector with a velocity and direction I cannot calculate.

A day isn't just a standard measure, all the same size so each fits on a calendar page. A day is a period of light, an astronomical event. I felt that on the road that Kansas dawn. The broad swath of the sun's light rolls upward from the darkness, morning after morning, and then we roll outward into the ocean of stars at night. It seems extravagant, a glorious squandering of motion to give light, and life, to the grasses bending under the breeze, slowly retracting their shadows as the sun begins to climb.

Experts warn that parts of the cathedral are "falling down" and that the building as a whole is "in serious jeopardy". A fifth of the structure's internal marble pillars are currently held together by duct tape.

In July, masonry around the Great South Window fell out, forcing the authorities to fence off the area around the window and south entrance to protect the public. There are fears that the fourteenth century window, which is 80ft tall, could collapse unless work is carried out immediately. It is estimated that the repairs for this alone will cost at least £500,000 and could take up to 12 months, delaying other projects.

"Bits of the cathedral are falling down," said Chris McWilliams, a cathedral spokesman. "There are very urgent structural issues. It is in serious jeopardy. We have to act quickly if we don't want to have a ruin there."

Trustees of the cathedral warned in 2006 that there would be "disastrous consequences" unless urgent action was taken to renovate the building, which is suffering from serious damage caused by corrosion and pollution. However, a global campaign to raise £50 million by 2011 has so far managed to raise only £9.4 million in the three years since it was launched. [. . .] Despite being one of the most popular tourist sites in England, the cathedral receives no money from the Government and relies on income from visitors to cover routine running costs.

The cathedral, which was founded in 602 by St Augustine, survived extensive bombing of the city during the Second World War, but now its trustees believe it faces its greatest threat. Matthew Butler, chief executive of the Save Canterbury Cathedral appeal, said that the challenge is enormous. "People said that there was a risk that it would start falling down and we're seeing signs of that happening," he said.

The problem of rain leaking through the roof has been dealt with, but there remains a list of pressing issues that are causing concern for cathedral staff. £6 million is needed for the Bell Harry Tower, the cathedral's most imposing structure where 500-year-old carvings are wearing away. Around £2 million is needed to preserve the cathedral's collections of books and artefacts, including a "signature", or two crosses, of the illiterate William the Conqueror and another document signed by King Henry II relating his penance for the murder in 1170 of Thomas a Becket. Part of the library is currently closed to the public.

The campaign to raise the outstanding £40 million will be stepped up next week and it is understood that a bid will soon be made for a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, which gives around £15 million to the Church of England every year. The cathedral has been designated as a World Heritage Site and received more than one million visitors in 2008, but receives no state funding or money from the Church of England.

If you hold the conclusions of these vastly different surveys simultaneously in your mind, you get the idea that Tweeting is like electronic tent preaching to a congregation of like-minded preachers. If that sounds tiresome, it's because it probably is. My own experience, though, is that it's worth putting up with the predictable river of babble for the sake of an occasional gem.

Sometimes statistics and analysis run counter to everything we know in our bones about something, and sometimes they confirm what we suspected all along. In this case, at least for me, I was amused to see confirmed something I suspected about Twitter, which is that it's the most valuable waste of time I've ever come across.

The problem, when it comes to motivating politicians, is that the dangers from global warming—drought, famine, rising seas—appear to be decades off. But the only way to prevent them is with sacrifices in the here and now: with smaller cars, bigger investments in new energy sources, higher electricity bills that will inevitably result once we put a price on carbon.

Mainstream scientists warn that the longer the world waits, the sooner it will reach a tipping point beyond which even draconian measures may not be enough. [. . .] That is why Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—no alarmist—has warned that "what we do in the next two or three years will determine our future." And he said that two years ago.

Proponents of climate change legislation have now settled on a new strategy: warning that global warming poses a serious threat to national security. Climate-induced crises like drought, starvation, disease and mass migration, they argue, could unleash regional conflicts and draw in America' armed forces, either to help keep the peace or to defend allies or supply routes. This is increasingly the accepted wisdom among the national security establishment. A 2007 report published by the CNA Corporation, a Pentagon-funded think tank, spoke ominously of climate change as a "threat multiplier" that could lead to wide conflict over resources.

This line of argument could also be pretty good politics—especially on Capitol Hill, where many politicians will do anything for the Pentagon. [. . .] National security is hardly the only reason to address global warming, but at this point anything that advances the cause is welcome.

If there is a theology of the church which is distinctively Anglican, it is without doubt the tradition which traces its roots to Richard Hooker's writings and expects to hold a balance between scripture, reason and tradition. The interaction between the three, all playing a part because none is infallible, means that in ever-changing situations new judgements need to be made. While holding fast to tradition is sometimes the right thing to do, at other times we are called to welcome new developments and insights. . . . It is a tragedy that this more open, tolerant, creative Anglican ecclesiology has gone too far in tolerating the intolerant and including the excluders. They have now taken many of the senior posts in the church, and seek to turn Anglicanism into an intolerant and exclusive sect.

Historians reviewing the church's past history often distinguish between times of decline and times of revival. Each has its own unique qualities, but there are common themes. Periods of decline usually contain two. One is the failure to communicate the faith in a way which helps people to make sense of their lives and develop a constructive sense of their spiritual nature. Teachings which once had provided this help become, in a later age, meaningless or oppressive dogmas. The other is an inward-looking mood in the church's leadership. Instead of paying attention to the society around them, and considering what kinds of spiritual help they need, church leaders busy themselves justifying and defending the institutions, teachings and practices they have inherited, thereby making it even harder for ordinary people to find any help in their teachings.

On both these counts we are now in a period of decline. These papers [by Williams and Wright], like the whole anti-homosexual campaign, are a sign of it. They are not about helping homosexuals to live better lives: they are parts of an elitist power game for control of the Anglican Communion.

If there is to be a revival, the church must move in exactly the opposite direction. It must return once again to that balance of scripture, reason and tradition in which there are no infallibilities but there are countless opportunities for new life and insight. The church must be less obsessed with itself, more concerned with the society in which it is set; less determined to defend everything it has inherited, more open to discoveries from elsewhere; less threatened by new challenges, more excited by new possibilities.

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First, simple gratitude: Thank you, Vice President Gore, for founding Current and employing such inspiring journalists as Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Thank you, President Clinton, for securing their safe return.

Ever since Ling and Lee were first detained in North Korea, I kept thinking there was a largely untold religion angle to their story. I did not presume this was for any sinister reasons, but because journalists were more focused on other details, such as whether the two young women would ever be free again.

Well, there is a religion angle. In the weeks ahead, remember the name of the Rev. Chun Ki Won. He appeared in the occasional news story as the man who helped arrange the journalists' investigation into human trafficking, and advised them on the risks they were taking. For a good introduction to the work of this South Korean missionary, watch the embedded video from the PBS series Wide Angle. In July that series devoted an episode, Crossing Heaven's Border to the plight of North Koreans trying to escape their country.

Until Laura Ling and Euna Lee are ready to tell their stories, this PBS report is a good primer in the horrors that attracted their journalistic interest.

was probably inevitable given the secularisation of society. But from a Jewish perspective I doubt whether Judaism would have survived, let alone thrived, without the Sabbath. It is our counterweight to the pressures and values of the market. It is our oasis of rest in a world that seems as if it is moving too fast for anyone to know where it is going. It is our sanctuary in time, when we celebrate the things that have value but no price.

The Sabbath is dedicated family time. We sit around the table, sing a song of praise to the "woman of worth", bless our children and extend hospitality to others. We go to the synagogue and renew the bonds of community and friendship. We study our sacred texts and reorient ourselves in the light of their timeless values. We pray, thanking God for what we have instead of envying others for what they have. It is when we rediscover the real roots of happiness.

That is what the Sabbath was at its best, whether on Saturday or Sunday. It was a collective statement of values that said there are limits to our striving. There are things you can buy, but there are others, no less valuable, that we can only make for ourselves: relationships of love and generosity, a feeling for the rhythms and adagios of time, a sense of the spectacular beauty of the created world that we fully experience only when we stop and inhale the fragrance of things.

Because of that, British culture once had an inner poise and balance. [Did this Australia ever have such a balance? Perhaps this is too long ago for that.] Families had time to eat a meal together, to converse and share, not sit watching a screen at one remove from reality. The Sabbath was a day on which money did not matter, when we each had equal dignity whatever we earned or could afford. It was to time what a public park is to space: something we can all enjoy on equal terms. On the good days, it made us glad to be alive, singing, with Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Glory be to God for dappled things".

. . . Twenty years of a seven-day-a-week consumer culture has not made Britons [or Australians] measurably happier. Not surprisingly, because the world of salvation-by-shopping depends on advertising making us all too conscious of what we lack. If only we had this watch, that suit, this car, that mobile phone, our pleasure would be complete, at least until tomorrow, when we discover the next thing we do not yet have. The financial meltdown was caused, at least in part, by people spending money they did not have to buy things they did not need to find a happiness that does not last. The consumer culture is, in fact, a remarkably efficient system for the production and distribution of discontent.

We cannot bring back the Sabbath to the public domain, but we can bring it back to our private lives. We need to because neither the environment nor the economy can be predicated on limitless growth, fed by artificial desire. One day in seven we should give thanks for what we have and open our eyes to the radiance of the world.

It seems inconceivable, but while for many users, virtual worlds — or 'metaverses' — are merely something to dip their toes into, others fall in head first, to the extent that it pervades their waking thoughts even when they are not logged in." SL addiction has resulted in "a frightening catalogue of neglect and self-neglect, of disintegrating families, foreclosures, relationships ruined, and businesses going belly up as a result of individuals diving too deeply into this online realm. . . .

[T]he fact that so many adults find themselves lost in here is perhaps more testimony to the power of the human mind, than the medium itself — after all, although in some ways is is an extraordinary creative platform, Second Life is only a kind of advanced 3D chat.

SL merely reflects forces at work in the wider developed world — the corporeal one, of flesh and bone, where time ravages our envelope of flesh, and society worships the unravaged. The tweaking of the avatar is cosmetic surgery. The lack of standard game elements such as level progression or any guiding principle becomes a void in which endless consumption becomes the goal — virtual items paid for with real money — mirroring the endless dissatisfaction coded into us by a culture predicated on instant gratification.

In the course of my own investigations — and like a cop infiltrating a bikie gang, at times I wasn't sure if I was investigating or participating — I encountered a circle of avatars dancing in synch beside a blazing pixel fire at a simulated beach on an actual weekend, expressing their dismay that their teenage children were addicted to World of Warcraft (another, and even more popular MMO game). . . . The irony was perhaps lost on them.

As we continue to become 'tools of our tools', as Henry David Thoreau warned long ago, we risk mistaking online social networking for social capital (real 'meatspace' connections between people and groups of people). If this phenomenon is widespread it's because humans are essentially social animals, and technology has changed the way we live, interact and seek to interact. It manipulates us, as much as we manipulate it.

Richard Dawkins has pointed out that Moore's Law, which dictates that computer processing power effectively doubles every 18 months, means it is almost inevitable that coming virtual worlds will contain avatars that look like real people. This does not bode well for the future.

And in the present, sharp increases in user hours and economic activity [in SL] in the first quarter of 2009 (up 42 per cent and 65 per cent respectively over the corresponding quarter last year) perhaps indicate an influx of cyber refugees, sheltering in imaginary worlds from economic storms.

The concept of a digital life is indeed troubling, but there may be a positive side to all of this in that people seem prepared to bare their souls, safely hidden behind a pixel doll. Even if they do wear a mask, to some extent this creates an atmosphere ripe for reasoning about how to live. 'You level-up when you quit the game', a European legal professional and resident told me in-game, 'by realising what you have to fix in your real life.'

Intriguingly, virtual worlds may be a means of reasoning about what is worth doing, by doing something that is perhaps not. Even so, in other cases Alice may need some help in finding her way back from Cyberland.

[T]the day before yesterday Rowan William published his latest missive on his church. It underlined the tragedy of the man once more for me.

Whenever he affirms the church's non-sanctioning of gay relationships, it's worth recalling what he previously wrote in The Body's Grace. Then he made the argument that the pivotal issue in any decent moral theology of sex is that of birth control, since once you allow that, as the Anglican communion long has, you acknowledge that sex has a good purpose independent of procreation. It's called love. From this it follows that:

'the absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous texts, or on a problematic and non-scriptural theory about natural complementarity, applied narrowly and crudely to physical differentiation without regard to psychological structures.'

This fundamentalism, problematic, non-scriptural, narrow and crude path is the one he appears committed to supporting in his church. Or putting it another way, he's sacrificing what he must privately feel to be the path to greater truth on the altar of mere institutional expediency.

Williams is an astonishing intellect and spirit. And all of it must bow down in loyalty to all too human concerns. I lament the loss of the prophet.

Miss T
It's a very odd thing —
As odd as can be —
That whatever Miss T. eats
Turns into Miss T.;
Porridge and apples,
Mince, muffins and mutton,
Jam, junket, jumbles —
Not a rap, not a button
It matters; the moment
They're out of her plate,
Though shared by Miss Butcher
And sour Mr. Bate;
Tiny and cheerful,
And neat as can be,
Whatever Miss T. eats
Turns into Miss T.
— Walter de la Mare. Peacock Pie: A Book of Rhymes (1913)

Sneezles

Christopher Robin
Had wheezles
And sneezles,
They bundled him
Into
His bed.
They gave him what goes
With a cold in the nose,
And some more for a cold
In the head.
They wondered
If wheezles
Could turn
Into measles,
If sneezles
Would turn
Into mumps;
They examined his chest
For a rash,
And the rest
Of his body for swellings and lumps.
They sent for some doctors
In sneezles
And wheezles
To tell them what ought
To be done.

All sorts and conditions
Of famous physicians
Came hurrying round
At a run.
They all made a note
Of the state of his throat,
They asked if he suffered from thirst;
They asked if the sneezles
Came after the wheezles,
Or if the first sneezle
Came first.
They said,
"lf you teazle
A sneezle
Or wheezle,
A measle
May easily grow.
But humour or pleazle
The wheezle
Or sneezle,
The measle
Will certainly go."

They expounded the reazles
For sneezles
And wheezIes,
The manner of measles
When new.
They said "If he freezles
In draughts and in breezles,
Then PHTHEEZLES
May even ensue."

Christopher Robin
Got up in the morning,
The sneezles had vanished away.
And the look in his eye
Seemed to say to the sky,
"Now, how to amuse them today?"
—A.A. Milne. Now we are six (1927)

The human family needs to find a spiritual unity or it may well destroy itself. It is in crisis as many retreat from the challenge of renewal and the evolution necessary o be to a rapidly evolving world. They seek security in centralization and adherence to static formulas that are largely incomprehensible to today's youth or any thinking person. The authority of the local church, the local monastery, has to stand on its own courageously and respond to the reality at hand. If it lets itself be co-opted by central authority, it will cease to be creative of life—the local community will fossilize, which is worse than dying and leaving space for something new.
—M Basil Pennington OCSO. Engaging the World with Merton: on retreat in Tom’s hermitage (Brewster, Mass.:Paraclete, 2005), p. 52.

The most lasting impact of the 76th General Convention is likely to be an increase of initiative and energy in local congregations and dioceses. [. . . ] The emphasis on local ministry is a proper expression of the principle of subsidiarity, whereby mission should occur at the level closest to the people who are called to engage in that mission.

Local mission is also enhanced by resolutions which the secular press has incorrectly interpreted as necessarily damaging our worldwide relationship and as following the agenda of a gay and lesbian lobby. Instead, what the convention did is to reaffirm that the ordination process is under the control of local bishops and dioceses, while stressing that access to that process is open to all baptized persons.

The Convention also invited local churches and dioceses (as well as churches elsewhere in the communion) to collect liturgical and theological resources regarding same-gender blessings. Recognizing the unique pastoral needs of those dioceses in jurisdictions where same-gender marriage or civil partnerships are legal, the Convention affirmed that a generous pastoral response is needed.

Of course, we can't all have a carefree life. But we can at least move in that direction. We fill our lives with so many unnecessary cares—even we monks. When the monks here were changing over to private cells, Tom [Merton] urged them to build them as places of prayer and to think of them that way and not as places to establish a private kingdom of which they would have all the care. How much we all tend to clutter our lives with things and projects we don't really need, and then we have to take care of them. [. . .]

I look at the clutter of my own life. That is really what is at issue. I have to learn to say "no" to the little things that clutter: the book reviews and prefaces, the talks to students and ladies' guilds. The gardening is OK; I need the fresh air and exercise. But I have to avoid other projects. If I can get a handle on the clutter and the correspondence, my life could be a bit more free. Still, something more radical than that is perhaps needed, at least for a while. As Tom [Merton] says in his Thoughts in Solitude, to be a person implies freedom and responsibility. Both of these call for a certain interior solitude. But a cluttered or too-full life—full of activities and concerns leaves little interior-solitude. Most people are, in fact, afraid of facing their own interior solitude. They flee from it, deliberately filling their lives with people, if they can, and with things. And in so doing they lose their freedom and become irresponsible not responsible to many of the basic human needs around them and even in their own lives. They become addictively dependent on their chosen clutter. I am told that the average American allows television to fill a quarter of his time. What an investment of life! One of the reasons Tom was able to accomplish so much was that he was free from television and spectator sports. [I’m not guilty of this problem!] He preferred to play life's game rather than watch others play it. He didn't watch the Vietnam War or the race riots on TV. He heard about them, prayed, and acted, doing all he could to bring healing and peace. An uncluttered life gives a lot more freedom to be a responsive person.
— M Basil Pennington OCSO. Engaging the World with Merton, (Brewster, Mass.: Paraclete, 2005) pp. 103-4.

Influenza A viruses cause recurrent outbreaks at local or global scale with potentially severe consequences for human health and the global economy. Recently, a new strain of influenza A virus was detected that causes disease in and transmits among humans, probably owing to little or no pre-existing immunity to the new strain. On 11 June 2009 the World Health Organization declared that the infections caused by the new strain had reached pandemic proportion. Characterized as an influenza A virus of the H1N1 subtype, the genomic segments of the new strain were most closely related to swine viruses. Most human infections with swine-origin H1N1 influenza viruses (S-OIVs) seem to be mild; however, a substantial number of hospitalized individuals do not have underlying health issues, attesting to the pathogenic potential of S-OIVs. To achieve a better assessment of the risk posed by the new virus, we characterized one of the first US S-OIV isolates, A/California/04/09 (H1N1; hereafter referred to as CA04), as well as several other S-OIV isolates, in vitro and in vivo. In mice and ferrets, CA04 and other S-OIV isolates tested replicate more efficiently than a currently circulating human H1N1 virus. In addition, CA04 replicates efficiently in non-human primates, causes more severe pathological lesions in the lungs of infected mice, ferrets and non-human primates than a currently circulating human H1N1 virus, and transmits among ferrets. In specific-pathogen-free miniature pigs, CA04 replicates without clinical symptoms. The assessment of human sera from different age groups suggests that infection with human H1N1 viruses antigenically closely related to viruses circulating in 1918 confers neutralizing antibody activity to CA04. Finally, we show that CA04 is sensitive to approved and experimental antiviral drugs, suggesting that these compounds could function as a first line of defence against the recently declared S-OIV pandemic.

Resolution D025, Commitment and Witness to Anglican Communion

Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, That the 76th General Convention reaffirm the continued participation of The Episcopal Church as a constituent member of the Anglican Communion; give thanks for the work of the bishops at the Lambeth Conference of 2008; reaffirm the abiding commitment of The Episcopal Church to the fellowship of churches that constitute the Anglican Communion and seek to live into the highest degree of communion possible; and be it further

Resolved, That the 76th General Convention encourage dioceses, congregations, and members of The Episcopal Church to participate to the fullest extent possible in the many instruments, networks and relationships of the Anglican Communion; and be it further

Resolved, That the 76th General Convention reaffirm its financial commitment to the Anglican Communion and pledge to participate fully in the Inter-Anglican Budget; and be it further

Resolved, That the 76th General Convention affirm the value of "listening to the experience of homosexual persons," as called for by the Lambeth Conferences of 1978, 1988, and 1998, and acknowledge that through our own listening the General Convention has come to recognize that the baptized membership of The Episcopal Church includes same-sex couples living in lifelong committed relationships "characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, and the holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God" (2000-D039); and be it further

Resolved, That the 76th General Convention recognize that gay and lesbian persons who are part of such relationships have responded to God's call and have exercised various ministries in and on behalf of God's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church and are currently doing so in our midst; and be it further

Resolved, That the 76th General Convention affirm that God has called and may call such individuals, to any ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church, and that God's call to the ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church is a mystery which the Church attempts to discern for all people through our discernment processes acting in accordance with the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church; and be it further

Resolved, That the 76th General Convention acknowledge that members of The Episcopal Church as of the Anglican Communion, based on careful study of the Holy Scriptures, and in light of tradition and reason, are not of one mind, and Christians of good conscience disagree about some of these matters.

C056 Liturgies for Blessings

Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, That the 76th General Convention acknowledge the changing circumstances in the United States and in other nations, as legislation authorizing or forbidding marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships for gay and lesbian persons is passed in various civil jurisdictions that call forth a renewed pastoral response from this Church, and for an open process for the consideration of theological resources and liturgies for the blessing of same gender relationships; and be it further

Resolved, That the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, in consultation with the House of Bishops, collect and develop theological and liturgical resources and report to the 77th General Convention for further action; and be it further

Resolved, That the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, in consultation with the House of Bishops, devise an open process for the conduct of its work inviting participation from provinces, dioceses, congregations, and individuals who are engaged in such theological work, and inviting theological reflection from throughout the Anglican Communion; and be it further

Resolved, That bishops, particularly those in dioceses within civil jurisdictions where same-gender marriage, civil unions, or domestic partnerships are legal, may provide generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this Church; and be it further

Resolved, That this Convention continue to honor the theological diversity of this Church in regard to matters of human sexuality; and be it further

Resolved, that the members of this church be encouraged to engage in this effort.

The National Portrait Gallery has an exhibition of photographic portraits from Vanity Fair, from its early days to the present. There are some intriguing pictures of (mostly European and American) "celebrities" from science, soprt, the arts, politics and other things.

I liked this one. The contrast between the two faces is wonderful: Connery, alert yet relaxed, and Caine, seemingly world weary and unfocused.

It is no longer possible for anyone to go on claiming that everything Kim Jong-il does is an effort to get America's attention, or that he just wants to go into the next round of disarmament talks with a stronger hand. Nor can anyone seriously argue that all these hugely expensive exercises are aimed at securing more economic aid.

In short, it has become obvious that North Korea's nuclear and military provocations and the escalating belligerence of its rhetoric are motivated by domestic political considerations instead. This does not mean that we must now waste time speculating about which of Kim's sons will someday take over, or whether the army and the party are struggling for power. It hardly matters who succeeds Kim. All players in the elite are wedded to the same paranoid, race-based nationalism, without which the country has no reason to exist at all.

Over the past 15 years the regime in Pyongyang has painted itself into an ideological corner — or, to put it better, it has pushed itself up to the edge of an abyss. Kim Jong-il shook off responsibility for economic matters in the mid-1990s in order to avoid public blame for the famine. The propaganda machine claimed that his new "military first" regime would henceforth be too busy defending the country from the Yankees (who in fact were sending aid at that time) to bother with economic issues. This line not only maintained support for Kim, but also enabled officials at the provincial level to begin dismantling the command economy.

The West, of course, was overjoyed to note that the North Koreans no longer took all that Communist nonsense seriously. But the spread of capitalist values is what made the current string of nuclear provocations inevitable. Simply put, the more North Korea resembles a third-rate South Korea on the economic front, the more the Kim Jong-il regime must justify its existence through a combination of radical nationalist rhetoric and victories on the military and nuclear front. This is why North Korea will never disarm, for to do so would be to declare itself irrelevant.

Some in the West are now suggesting that North Korea's nuclear capability must be accepted as a fait accompli, but that is no solution either. Needing constant tension with the outside world for his own political survival, Kim Jong-il is no more interested in winning international acceptance of his nuclear ambitions than in normalizing relations with Washington. The West must assume that he will always find a way to make his nukes unacceptable, while at the same time engaging sporadically in arms talks to keep the tension from tipping into all-out war.

It is time for America to shift its focus from negotiating with North Korea to negotiating with the Chinese about North Korea. Beijing understands how vital these nuclear provocations are to Pyongyang's survival, which is why it continues to bankroll them. Washington must therefore do more to assuage Beijing's fears of a collapse of the Kim Jong-il regime. Let us remember how opposed the Soviet Union was to a unified Germany, until NATO came up with a promise not to station troops in the former East Germany. It would be a step in the right direction for the United States to assure the Chinese that they will never have to face American troops along the Yalu River.

One thing is certain: We cannot simply wait for Kim's death and hope for the best, because whoever succeeds him is going to need an especially dramatic military crisis to legitimize his rule. What we have seen in the past few weeks may well end up looking tame in comparison.

After more than three hours of debate, the Church of Scotland's General Assembly, meeting in Edinburgh, has this evening avoided a confrontation on sexuality and ministry, after a motion from anti-gay hardliners was withdrawn before it could be voted on. The development is being seen as a significant achievement by those who want reason and conciliation rather than anger and confrontation in the argument over homosexuality. Some church members claim this is incompatible with tradition and scripture but others see it as part of the variety which God blesses and uses for good in the face of fear and prejudice.

The 'overture' (the Lochcarron and Skye motion), if passed, would have had the effect of barring those whose sexual relationships fall outside heterosexual marriage from ministry and the life of the Kirk - an approach deliberately targeted against gay people. Ekklesia has been told that part of the motivation in withdrawing the resolution was for the anti-gay lobby to avoid another damaging defeat. This follows their attempts to rescind the decision by a parish and presbytery in Aberdeen to recognise the call of the Rev Scott Rennie, an openly gay minster who lives with his partner David, which were decisively rejected on Saturday night (23 May 2009).

. . .Leaders of the Church of Scotland are pleased with the outcome. They will respond to those who accuse them of a fudge or of delaying tactics by pointing out that the great majority of those involved with the Church - other than some who actively seek confrontation - want a reasoned process and discussion.

It takes a certain mix of optimism and frustration to contemplate the possibility of space travel. To dream of navigating the cosmos is to assume that man has the resources and the know-how to propel himself into the heavens, but also some compelling reasons to exchange his home planet for the cold vast unknown.
[. . . ]
Forty years later, as Star Trek is returning to its past so is America: the country is again gripped by anxieties about entanglements abroad, compounded by the fear that the economy could collapse at warp speed. A cautious optimism has emerged in the afterglow of the election of President Obama (whose Vulcan-like composure has invited frequent comparisons to Mr. Spock), but a surge of foreign violence, a swine flu outbreak or any number of other events could easily dampen that mood.
[. . . ]
But at least one person closely identified with Star Trek argues that for all the ways in which the franchise has been affected by current events, its optimistic vision has persisted. "A lot of science-fiction is nihilistic and dark and dreadful about the future, and Star Trek is the opposite," Mr. Nimoy said. "We need that kind of hope, we need that kind of confidence in the future. I think that's what Star Trek offers. I have to believe that — I'm the glass-half-full kind of guy."

Despite all the high-tech wizz-bangery, the story is "fundamentally about two men engaged in a continuing conversation about civilizations and their discontents. Hot and cold, impulsive and tightly controlled, Kirk and Spock need each other to work, a dynamic Mr. Abrams captures with his two well-balanced leads. Mr. [Zachary] Quinto lets you see and hear the struggle between the human and the Vulcan in Spock through the emotions that ripple across his face and periodically throw off his unmodulated phrasing. Mr. [Chris] Pine [Pictured] has the harder job — he has to invoke Mr. Shatner's sui generis performance while transcending its excesses — which makes his nuanced interpretation all the more potent. Steering clear of outright imitation, the two instead distill the characters to capture their essence, their Kirk-ness and Spock-ness.

Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the story has plenty of chatter, but Mr. Abrams keeps the talk moving, slowing down only intermittently, as when Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) or the wryly smiling Leonard Nimoy (!) unload some paternalistic advice on Kirk. . . . By far his finest moments take place on the brightly lighted deck of the Enterprise, where against the backdrop of limitless space, Kirk, Spock and the rest of the young crew fumble with roles that — much like the young actors playing them, including Anton Yelchin as Chekov and John Cho as Sulu — they ultimately and rather wonderfully make their own.

(c) affirms the request of the Windsor Report (2004), adopted at the Primates' Meetings (2005, 2007 and 2009), and supported at the Lambeth Conference (2008) for the implementation of the agreed moratoria on the Consecration of Bishops living in a same gender union, authorisation of public Rites of Blessing for Same Sex unions and continued interventions in other Provinces.

Middle East (from APJN)
Resolved: 09.05.09
The Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Kingston, Jamaica between May 2-12, 2009, in response to the challenge in a sermon on May 3, 2009, of the Archbishop of Canterbury to be a people of hope to those in need of justice, forgiveness and reconciliation,

1. deplores violence wherever it is used in conflict in the land of Israel/Palestine and affirms its desire that a robust peace process in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict leading to a two state solution should be pursued by all parties without delay;
2. expresses its deep concern about recent and continuing events in Gaza, and supports and draws attention to the Statement on the situation in Gaza issued by the February 2009 Primates meeting;
3. laments the fact that current Israeli policies in relation to the West Bank, in contravention of UN Security Council resolutions, have created severe hardship for many Palestinians and have been experienced as a physical form of apartheid;
4. noting that a just peace must guarantee the security and territorial integrity of both Israel and the future state of Palestine so that all the people of the area can live in peace and prosperity, applauds President Barack Obama for his commitment to work for a just peace for both Palestinians and Israelis, and calls on him and all governments of the Middle East to work in co-operation with the United Nations for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel as defined by UN Security Council Resolutions;
5. welcomes the Arab League statements which indicate a readiness to make peace with the state of Israel, the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the normalization of relations, and calls on the Israeli government to respond favourably to the Arab proposal in an effort to end all forms of belligerence on the basis of international law;
6. calls on Israel to:
   1. end its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,
   2. freeze immediately all settlement building with the intention to abandon its settlement policy in preparation for a Palestinian state,
   3. remove the separation barrier (wall) where it violates Palestinian land beyond the Green Line,
   4. end home demolitions, and
   5. close checkpoints in the Palestinian territories;
7. recognising that the city of Jerusalem is holy to Christianity, Islam and Judaism and is not therefore the monopoly of any one religion, upholds the view that members of all three faith groups should have free access to their holy sites; and
8. calls on all people of faith and good will to pray and work for peace so that justice and reconciliation may be achieved for all the people of Palestine and Israel.

blogs where authors and commenters sip vim-and-vitriol under the cover of Christian sanctimony and care not about crucifying friends because, let's face it, in our world crucifixion doesn't mean real death so why should it matter. It’s 'blog eat blog' out here. Everyone has their 'Brutus', a 'friend' stabbing them in the back, whether on Holy Smoke, Articles of Faith, Twitter, even Facebook. And some of us have people doing it to our face.

Blogging is a compulsive medium that appeals to the addict in me. I wonder how long it will be before there is a wing of The Priory in Roehampton set aside for recovering bloggers? Or a Bloggers Anonymous meeting in London: ‘My name's Ruth, and I’m a blogger.’ We'd all be sitting there, posting on Twitter: 'Guess who's just walked through the door . . .'

I’m not sure The Tablet's suggestion of stripping the anonymity from blogs can ever be workable. Anonymity is an essential protection in the name of freedom of speech. But perhaps the blogosphere needs a set of 12 guidelines rather like those used by AA: 'Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.'

Of course, there are some fantastic blogs and threads, and there are many places where decent argument is respected and encouraged. Yet some sites are moral pigsties, where the most disgraceful comments are justified, and even encouraged, as a show of democracy and internet freedom. It is easy to imagine that all this unpleasantness originates with a small number of obsessive blog "commenters", operating from sweaty bedrooms that have never seen the light of day, living off pizza and pornography, and getting their kicks out of being unpleasant as compensation for their own social inadequacy.

Oh, that it were so simple! The people who are being so cruel to each other are just as likely to be wearing pinstripes or flowery dresses — or even clerical collars. Part of the problem is that too many contributors do not recognise that they are being unpleasant because they believe themselves to be justified by some higher cause. [. . . ] The other problem is that, on the internet, the other does not come with a face. The French philosopher and Talmudic scholar Emmanuel Levinas has based his ethical philosophy on the sense of responsibility for others that originates in the face-to-face encounter. Only by looking at someone's face does one properly appreciate his or her vulnerability — a vulnerability that cries out not to be harmed.

The quick-fire argument on the internet has cut itself adrift from this sensitivity, and has become cruel. This is why too much time going through blogs and comments can be bad for your spiritual health.

Prayer flags

I left the store with a Kleenex and Snickers bar.
The girl behind the counter said,
"Enjoy your afternoon"; I said, "you too"
and walking home I asked myself
what I could do, if anything,
too reel that pleasure in.
Perhaps in stores across the city
people were telling one another
as we had done just now
to fill the afternoons with happiness
and as those wishes caught the wind
like prayer-flags in the Himalayas
were there enough of them
to change the days for some of us? Who knows?

The cinema, as he remembered it, was off Trafalgar Square. It was small, stuffy and dark. And there, over 40 hours in early 1962, Maurice Jarre watched the first rough cut of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. The showings started at 9am on a Monday and did not finish till the Friday. And he was mesmerised. Peter O'Toole, the blue-eyed, white-robed Lawrence, rode his camel along a beach at dawn. He crested the dunes and gazed out over a landscape of shimmering oranges and greys. Cavalcades of Arabs, keffiyehs flying, raced across the sand. It was astoundingly beautiful. And it was completely silent.

Mr Jarre's commission was to write the music for it. It was extraordinary that he had been asked. Sam Spiegel, the producer, had heard only his ten-minute score for a French film called Sundays and Cybele, written for bass, counter-bass, flute and table-harp. Now he was supposed to produce, in six weeks, two hours of music for a 100-piece orchestra. Back in his room in Half Moon Street he tried to read all he could about T.E. Lawrence, including the huge Seven Pillars of Wisdom, as well as searching for that little swatch of notes that might turn into a theme. Search, search, search, search, as Stravinsky said. "Sam Spiegel told me, you have the job of Superman!" Mr Jarre joyously recalled.

Paola had been as good as her word, for the aromas that met him as he entered the apartment were a rich blend of seafood, garlic, and something he wasn't sure about, perhaps spinach. . . She was already seated at the table, a glass of white wine in front of her, reading.

'All right,' he said, 'I'll ask you what you're reading.'

She glanced at him over her reading glasses and said, 'A book that should be of great interest to us both, Guido: Chiara's [their daughter's] textbook on religious doctrine.' Little good could come of this, Brunetti realized instantly, but still he asked, 'Why to us?'

'Because of what it tells us about the world we live in,' she said, setting the book down and taking a sip of wine.

'For example? 'he asked, going to the refrigerator and taking out the open bottle. It was the good Ribolla Gialla they'd bought from a friend in Corno di Rosazzo.

'There's a chapter here,' she said, pointing at the page she had been reading, 'on the Seven Deadly Sins.'

Brunetti had often thought that it was convenient that there should be one for each day of the week, but he kept this thought to himself for the moment. 'And?' he asked.

'And I started thinking about the way our society has ceased to think of them as sins or, if not all of them, has managed at least to remove most of the scent of sin that was once attached to them.'

He pulled out a chair and sat opposite her, not really interested in this latest observation but willing to listen. He raised his glass in her direction and took a sip. It was as good as he remembered its being. Thank God, then, for good wine and good friends, and thank God even for a wife who could find reason for polemic in a middle school textbook of religious doctrine.

'Think of lust,' she continued.

'I often do,' he said and leered.

Ignoring him, she went on. 'When we grew up, it was, if not a sin, at least a semi-sin, or at least something that one did not discuss or present in public. Now you can't look at a film or television or a magazine without seeing it.'

'Do you think that's bad?' he asked.

'Not necessarily. Just different. Maybe a better case is gluttony.'

Ah, that was to strike a blow close to home, Brunetti thought, and pulled in his stomach a little.

'We're encouraged to it all the time. Every time we open a magazine or a newspaper.'

'Gluttony?' he asked, puzzled.

'Not gluttony for food, necessarily,' she said, 'but the taking in or consumption of more than we need. After all, what is owning more than one television or one car or one house but a form of gluttony?'

'I'd never thought of it that way,' he temporized and went back to the refrigerator for more wine.

'No, neither did I, not until I started to read this book. They define gluttony as eating too much and leave it at that, but I started thinking about what it would or could mean in larger terms.'

That, it seemed to Brunetti, was the essence of Paola, this woman he still loved to the point of distraction, that she was always thinking about things--everything, it sometimes seemed to him--in larger terms.

'Do you think you could start thinking about dinner in larger terms?' he asked.

[later]

. . . 'I'd probably starve to death without you to protect me.' Brunetti said.

[still later]

He thought of the kids, how tired they had been at dinner, while his eyes travelled down her body. He set his glass down on the table and leaned towards her. 'Could we return to our examination of the seven deadly sins?' he asked.

Big John: the extraordinary adventures of John McKinlay 1819-1872, by Kim Lockwood. (Melbourne: State Library of Victoria, 1995)

Burke and Wills, with King and Gray, were the first whites to cross the Australian continent from the southern coast to the northern coast. They didn't make it back. Who was second? Most people will say John McDougall Stuart, on the third of his epic journeys in 1862. They are wrong. A 6ft 4in Scot named John McKinlay beat him by two months. McKinlay led the South Australian Burke Relief Expedition, one of four sent out from the south, east and north to look for the missing explorers. In doing so he crossed the continent, got back safely, did not lose a man, was reduced to camel's feet soup to stay alive, and had a row with his second-in-command, who resigned in disgust, but was forced to stay with the 10-man party to the end. McKinlay also managed the first—possibly the last—transcontinental droving feat, taking with him 100 sheep as 'stores on the hoof'. Four years later he had a much closer escape. Sent to the Northern Territory to seek a better site for settlement than the existing Escape Cliffs, he set out into Arnhem Land at a disastrous time of year--the middle of the wet season. With 14 others he was marooned on a hillock for six weeks by impenetrable sheets of water, finally made it to the East Alligator River and, under attack from Aborigines built a remarkable punt from saplings and horsehide. With only a small amount of dried meat and with their fresh water turning putrid from its rubber containers, they rowed downriver to the sea. Tides and currents took them as far as eight miles out from the coast, but by non-stop rowing they made it back. After six days and nights of this hell they landed, starved and exhausted, on the beach at Escape Cliffs--six months after they had left. Big John tells McKinlay's story. It is told without frills, but with plenty of action. Apart from being a ripping yarn, it is a genuine and important contribution to the body of Australian historical literature.

You men there, keep those women back
and God Almighty he laid down
on the crossed timber and old Silenus
my offsider looked at me as if to say
nice work for soldiers, your mind's not your own
once you sign that dotted line Ave Caesar
and all that malarkey Imperator Rex

well this Nazarene
didn't make it any easier
really—not like the ones who kick up a fuss so you can
do your block and take it out on them
                            Silenus
held the spikes steady and I let fly
with the sledge-hammer, not looking on the downswing trying hard not to hear
over the women's wailing the bones give way
the iron shocking the dumb wood.

Orders is orders, I said after it was over
nothing personal you understand—we had a
drill-sergeant once thought he was God but he wasn't a patch on you

then we hauled on the ropes
and he rose in the hot air
like a diver just leaving the springboard, arms spread
so it seemed
over the whole damned creation
over the big men who must have had it in for him
and the curious ones who'll anything if it's free
with only the usual women caring anywhere
and a blind man in tears.

In fact, of the five nominees for best picture—"Milk," "Frost/Nixon," "The Reader," "Slumdog Millionaire," and "Benjamin Button"—only "Milk," a bio-pic with a thrilling sense of history and lots of jokes and sex, has the aesthetic life and human vitality that warrant its nomination.
— David Denby, New Yorker 9 Feb 09.

The very act of awarding prizes seems to throw Tinseltown into a state of cognitive dissonance. As Tom Shone observes in his insightful book, "Blockbuster", Hollywood spends nearly all its money and energy working out what teenagers want and cravenly giving it to them. Then, once a year, it pauses to ask: "But is it art?". It is hardly surprising that its conclusions are often so dismal.
-- The Economist, 21 Feb 09

According to the latest market research, reported here some 10.4 million people aged 35 years and older have accounts on Facebook and that's up 97% on the previous year. [There are 175 million users in all.] Indeed, the 30 plus age category is now the fastest growing group on the social networking site. That raises questions about whether it will change the nature of Facebook and similar sites, whether we are going to see different types of relationships springing up. And about some of the mistakes we're going to see happen.

Yes, I am on Facebook and a few other social networking sites (being an old fart), and I've met some really interesting people through it. But nothing beats face to face contact. It's also a point taken up by Jerry Wilson at BusinessWeek.

"In today's fast-paced digital world, face-to-face interactions are more important than ever. While wireless culture is quite efficient, it is not always very effective. People are quick to click and send with little thought, and this leads to many problems . . . While it is easy to click and send, face-to-face interactions can have great impact. They lead to more consensual decisions and the building of trust and high-performance teams. It all begins and ends with the people. People who do not have regular and credible interactions with others are missing the potential of personal growth."

I deeply regret the decision by those at the EREZ Crossing Point to deny me, a recognized Anglican Bishop of the Church in Jerusalem with pastoral responsibilities in Gaza, this important pastoral opportunity during the present quiet in the Cease Fire, to visit my diocesan Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. The Hospital has been carrying a great responsibility for the diocese in providing high quality healthcare to the Gaza communities for over a Century of exemplary medical and humanitarian services.

During this Gaza Conflict, our hospital and the dedicated heroic staff provided urgent emergency, in patient, and outpatient care to many hundreds of civilians, children women and men, tragically caught in the fray of the military operations. The staff ministered to the wounded, injured and the dying under great conditions of stress. Their devotion and work was admirable in the highest tradition of medical ethics and Christian compassion. The purpose of my visit to Gaza, along with my colleagues, the Heads of Churches, was to pastorally affirm such outstanding services rendered, and be the pastor that I am to our people.

... I deeply regret such a denial of entry, on whatever grounds so stated, by the authorities. Gaza remains a portion of my diocese in the administration of my pastoral duties and responsibilities as a Bishop of the Church for the care of my staff and people. The denial of entry to myself and Bishop Mounib Younan, a close colleague who has been a collegial and active partner in the ministry which began between our two Churches Lutherans and Anglicans since 1841, is reprehensible. I say this, because it reflects badly on those in authority at these crossing points, and which the international community had demanded be open to humanitarian endeavors—and most certainly pastoral care is an important factor in such services.

In spite of this denial of entry today, I will try, and try again to reach our Hospital and people in Gaza to provide the pastoral care as well as the necessary review and supervision of our Hospital, as both its Chairman and President. My intention here is to care for our people and staff and to insure a continued impeccable healthcare and other related services rendered to the community.

As Anglicans the Bishop continued, a faith community across 130 countries, and as caring Christians, the third largest Christian family, and within our collegial interfaith family partnership here in this Diocese of Jerusalem that serves five countries, we have had a rich tradition of devoted and selfless non-sectarian service to all those in need, and certainly in critical areas of healthcare and education.

Regardless of what happened today at EREZ, I will continue the work of Peace and Reconciliation during this difficult time that we face. And as I have always said, we must keep Faith and Hope alive against all odds as we work in earnest for a just peace and security for all Palestinians and Israelis alike. I remain committed to a two State Solution that will bring reconciliation and harmony. A solution that brings betterment for all of our communities in Israel and Palestine, to enjoy the blessings of a far better quality of life that they justly deserve with the attendant economic and social opportunities to build the foundation, the fabric of an enduring equitable society.

In the court of King Kim

If his spooks in Seoul dare tell him the truth, then North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong Il, knows that all his threats against South Korea and its president, Lee Myung-bak, have made little impression. Since his inauguration a year ago, Mr Lee has made it clear that he will engage properly with the North only when it really begins to dismantle its nuclear capability.

The stand has infuriated Mr Kim. For months he has abused the South Korean government. He has threatened it with "all-out confrontation". [. . . ] In a televised discussion, Mr Lee dismissed the threats as "not new". Ordinary South Koreans seem equally impassive, although South Korea's navy takes seriously the possibility of another clash in the Yellow Sea-the last, deadly, one was in 2002. [. . . ]

Mr Kim's bluster is probably intended more for an American audience than a South Korean one-as well as for his own people. After an illness last year, the 66-year-old may want to show his grip on the country. Rallying North Korea's army to his side by (verbally) attacking South Korea is an old trick of Mr Kim's. [. . .] Like any thrower of hissy fits, the North can switch on the charm, too. At a banquet in Pyongyang last month for a big Chinese Communist Party cheese, Mr Kim assured his guest that he was making efforts to denuclearise the Korean peninsula. [. . .]

The [South Korean] president promises massive aid and investment, with the aim of raising North Korean income per head to $3,000 a year within a decade, if only the North gives up its atom bombs. As Mr Lee sees it, the ball is firmly in Mr Kim's court.

. . . may look infantile, but from the North's point of view it is quite logical. Time and again in the past decade, dictator Kim Jong Il has manufactured a crisis by testing missiles or a nuclear weapon, taking steps to produce bomb-grade plutonium, or expelling international inspectors. In most instances he has been rewarded with diplomatic attention and bribes of food and energy from South Korea, the United States, China and other nations, in exchange for reversing or freezing the actions. The Bush administration took office eight years ago declaring it would not condone such payoffs. It meekly ended, in October, by bribing Mr. Kim to reverse steps toward resuming plutonium reprocessing.

The mess inherited by the Obama administration is considerably worse than that encountered by President Bush. North Korea recently declared that it has weaponized its entire declared stock of plutonium, which if true means it has five or six nuclear weapons. In theory, the Bush administration won Mr. Kim's commitment to give up this stockpile in a step-by-step process in exchange for economic and diplomatic favors. In practice, Pyongyang's behavior never changed: while reneging or heating on its own commitments, it used brinkmanship to extract concession after concession from Washington. . . . If there's one lesson to be learned [by President Obama] from the past decade, it's that rewarding the North's provocations will only ensure more of them — and that while that strategy works, the regime will not take genuine steps toward disarmament.

First of all, one point: Hamas exists and has survived. It's unrealistic to think that you can defeat it with an economic blockade, that you can defeat it with more 'moderate' forces (from the Palestinian Authority of president Mahmud Abbas) or that you can defeat it militarily. These paths have failed in a crushing way.
That doesn't necessarily mean you have to start a direct dialogue with Hamas, but you have to think about how to deal with this question in a more intelligent way, by using all political and diplomatic instruments. And I'm not one of those who thinks that you have to be nicer to them and everything will be alright.

However reasonable they might appear from Washington or Paris, the Quartet's conditions are completely unrealistic in Palestine. No, Hamas will not recognise Israel, neither will it renounce violence. For political reasons, and for ideological reasons. These demands must be translated into concrete and digestible terms. So asking for a ceasefire for an indefinite period to be observed by both parties is much more pragmatic and realistic a solution than demanding they [Hamas] renounce violence.

And Hamas must say clearly that it would sign up to a peace deal, including recognition of Israel, if was ratified by a referendum of the Palestinian people. So the violence must stop and the semblance of a Palestinian national movement must be recreated that can talk in a legitimate and credible way when it negotiates with Israel.

[. . .] There are some matters on which you know that the American administration is going to completely change policy: it's going to start talking to Syria, talking to Iran, and it will be engaged from day one in the (Middle East) peace process. It's certain that if the relationship between these countries and the United States improves, then the Israeli-Palestinian peace process will get a new lease of life, which will create a new regional context that will also change Hamas's political calculations. Indirect methods will perhaps achieve similar results, but that will not avoid a deeper reflection on how to deal with Hamas. The paradox is that it's much to easier to speak about Hamas in Israel, including with the hawks, than in the United States.

O Lord, our heavenly Father, the high and mighty ruler of the universe, who from your throne beholds all the dwellers upon earth; most heartily we ask you, with your favour to behold and bless your servant the President of the United States, and all others in authority; and so replenish them with the grace of your Holy Spirit, that they may always incline to your will, and walk in your way. Endue them plenteously with heavenly gifts; grant them in health and prosperity long to live; and finally, after this life, to attain everlasting joy and felicity; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

O Lord our Governor, whose glory is in all the world: We commend the United States of America to your merciful care, that, being guided by your providence, they may dwell secure in your peace. Grant to the President of the United States, and to all in authority, wisdom and strength to know and to do your will. Fill them with the love of truth and righteousness, and make them ever mindful of their calling to serve their people in your fear; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will . . .

Bless us with tears — for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger — at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort — at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience — and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our [America's] new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility — open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance — replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity — remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King's dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State [with much of the world] needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our [America's] presidents, and we're asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand — that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us [the American people] as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

Amen.

Bishop sees prayer guiding Govt to do the right thing, by Graham Downie, Religion reporter Canberra Times (13 Jan 09)

Israel's high level of indiscriminate violence was inappropriate and must stop, Canberra and Goulburn's Anglican Bishop-elect, Stuart Robinson, said yesterday.

Settling into his new residence and preparing for his consecration on January 31, Mr Robinson spoke about his personal life, his beliefs and his expectations for his new diocese. This included qualified support for the ordination of homosexual people.

He was very concerned about Palestinians experiencing the horror of what could only be described as a war, he said. And although Palestinians had fired rockets into Israel, the response had been inappropriate. He was also concerned about large numbers of children and people not involved in any kind of skirmishes being caught up in the violence. "We need to be concerned for those people whose lives are being destroyed by such violence," he said.

Though not wanting to suggest there was a simple solution, he said that in Anglican liturgy, people prayed for peace in the world. "We are praying for our leaders and praying that God will raise up people who are just women and men of peace," he said. "I believe very much in the power of prayer and God's intervention.

"I am wanting to say to people in this diocese that we need to be praying for wisdom for our Prime Minister and for his Cabinet that they will act in a just and right way. I am committing myself to praying for the Prime Minister to make wise and godly decisions and in no way to be caught up in indiscriminate and careless warfare."

On whether he would ordain homosexual people, he said that outside marriage, sexual congress was inappropriate. But celibate people who had a same-sex attraction may well be ordained "as long as they take the notion of being celibate seriously".

"If somebody, in a discreet way, tells me they have same-sex attractions and are not in any way seeking to be in a same-sex relationship and are seeking to honour Christ in their life, that is a person I can confidently ordain and confidently encourage to be involved in Christian ministry."

In principle, he believed a register of same-sex unions would be fair and just. But people on that register would effectively be denied ordination.

His influence over Canberra the political city was yet to be seen but, "I am hoping to meet and build a relationship with the Prime Minister and other leaders in Government and Opposition. "I am hoping to actively be involved in praying for them and with them and, with the senior leaders of the diocese, seeking to influence them."

In which direction? "In a way which we believe will better our society and honour Christ."

During his joint press conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy last Tuesday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said:

Unfortunately, the Israelis didn't learn from Lebanon war…they wanted to eradicate the resistance but the answer was that the thought of resistance has been augmented. The resistance is not an organization to dismantle, or an individual to be assassinated or a weapons cache to be destroyed….It's a thought that expands…they committed the same fatal mistake again, and now this thought is spreading more and more…

Regardless of the merits or otherwise of their aims, that is why the Israelis will fail to suppress Hamas resistance. The resistance is an ideal, to be sustained at any cost in blood or treasure. It will be overcome not by war, but by peace.

• The Marianas Trench Marine National Monument consists of three components: the waters and submerged lands encompassing the coral reef ecosystem of the three northernmost islands, the Marianas Trench, and a series of active undersea volcanoes and thermal vents.
• Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monuments, particuarly coral reef ecosystems around Kingman Reef, Palmyra Atoll, Howland, Baker, and Jarvis Islands, Johnston Atoll, and Wake Island
• The Rose Atoll Marine National Monument protects the pristine coral reef ecosystem around a remote part of American Samoa.

This is the vast stage on which President Bush is trying to salvage his environmental legacy. It's strange but true. Mr. Bush, who has been monumentally indifferent to the health of continents and the atmosphere, is going down in history as a protector of the oceans.

On Tuesday, he designated three huge areas of the western Pacific as national monuments, declaring that their fish, birds, reefs and other marine life were more important than commercial fishing, drilling and mineral extraction. The protected waters encircle the Northern Mariana Islands (including the Mariana Trench, the deepest canyon on Earth) and parts of a sprawling collection of reefs and atolls known as the Line Islands.

They are a dazzling world of undersea volcanoes, pristine reefs, endangered seals, turtles and whales and intact food chains ruled by sharks. In protecting nearly 200,000 square miles of ocean, an area far bigger than California, Mr. Bush has outdone his decision in 2006 to set aside 140,000 square miles in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. . . .

Big as they are, the monuments are not nearly enough to offset eight years of Mr. Bush's bad environmental policies, marked by inaction on climate change, the sacrifice of millions of acres of public lands to oil and gas exploration, and indifference bordering on hostility to endangered species and fragile ecosystems.

Given that record, why did he create these new ocean monuments . . .? We can take him at his word that it was the right thing to do, but we have to note as well that the areas protected are staggeringly far away and not notably prized by the corporate interests whose priorities the Bush administration has for so long made its own. . . . An environmental trophy was lying on the ground, and Mr. Bush, with just days left in his presidency, simply picked it up.

The spiralling violence in Gaza tragically illustrates the fact that the cycle of mutual threat and retaliation have no lasting effect except to reinforce the misery and insecurity of everyone in the region. I want to express my grief and sympathy for the innocent lives lost in this latest phase of violence. People of all faiths in this country will want to join their voices to the statements of the Christian Muslim Forum and the Council of Christians and Jews in urging a return to the ceasefire and efforts to secure a lasting peace. We must unite in urging all those who have the power to halt this spiral of violence to do so.

Those raising the stakes through the continuation of indiscriminate violence seem to have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. It must surely be clear that, whilst peace will not wipe out the memory of all past wrongs, it is the only basis for the future flourishing of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. The recent statement by the Patriarchs and Heads of Church in Jerusalem reflects a clear awareness that there can be no winners if the current situation is allowed to persist. Its continuation can only condemn ordinary Palestinian and Israeli citizens to the prospect of another year of fear and suffering.

Urgent humanitarian needs have arisen through the attacks on Gaza and Israel and they demand a generous response to local appeals for support, such as that issued by the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem for its hospital in Gaza. But this humanitarian response, both local and international, needs to be matched by redoubled efforts in the political sphere.

The prophet Zechariah declared, "Not by might and not by power, but by my spirit says the Lord of Hosts". The New Year is an opportunity for a new initiative that will set the tone for what lies ahead. Religious leaders, most particularly those of the region, have an urgent responsibility in supporting the search for peace and reconciliation. But it is the political leaders and opinion-formers who hold the key to implementing the necessary changes that can bring hope. Can they not agree a period of truce as the New Year begins, so that the communities of the Holy Land may once again explore how common security might at last begin to replace the mechanical rhythms of mutual threat? Might the outgoing and incoming Presidents of the USA combine to make such an appeal and pursue its implementation?

The Anglican Communion worldwide stands alongside other religious communities and humanitarian organisations in its commitment to supporting any such initiative. Without such a sign of hope, the future for the Holy Land and the whole region is one of more fear, innocent suffering and destruction.

There's a man talking on the radio
What he's saying I don't really know
Seems he's lost some stocks and shares
Stops and stares
He's afraid I know
That's the way it goes

There's a man talking of the promised land
He'll acquire it with some Krugerrand
Subdivide and deal it out
Feel his clout
He can stoop so low
And that's the way it goes

There's an actor who hopes to fit the bill
Sees a shining city on a hill
Step up close and see he's blind
Wined and dined
All he has is pose
And that's the way it goes

There's a fire that burns away the lies
Manifesting in the spiritual eye
Though you won't understand the way I feel
You conceal, all there is to know
That's the way it goes