divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/31630?ns=guardianpageName=Politics%3A+Britain+is+not+a+police+state%2C+says+Jack+Straw+in+Damian+Green+rowch=Politicsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Damian+Green%2CPolitics%2CUK+news%2CConservatives%2CPolice+%28politics%29%2CJack+Strawc5=Unclassified%2CPolicy+Society%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Andrew+Sparrowc7=2008_12_01c8=1126809c9=articlec10=GUc11=Politicsc12=Damian+Greenc13=c14=h2=GU%2FPolitics%2FDamian+Green" width="1" height="1" //divpJack Straw today denied claims that the arrest of Tory MP Damian Green and the police raid on his office in the Commons meant Britain was "a police state". /ppThe justice secretary told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We are not in a police state. A police state would be where ministers were directing a police operation." /ppWhen Green, the shadow immigration minister, was arrested last week over allegations that he had procured leaked documents from a civil servant, the police were not following orders from ministers, Straw said. /pp"We have an independent police service. What's important here is that politicians do not interfere with the natural course of an investigation."/ppStraw also said that he expected parliament to review the procedures that led to the police raiding Green's office in the Commons. Green strongly denies any wrongdoing. /ppWith MPs from all parties still furious about the way the police were allowed to search Green's office last week and take away his computer and details of constituency correspondence, Straw said that he was "pretty certain" that there would be a parliamentary inquiry into the affair when the case was closed./ppThe justice secretary also defended Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, over her decision not to apologise for what happened to Green./pp"If any home secretary had offered an apology, there would have then been a huge furore about the fact that the home secretary was prejudging the actions and activities of the police without an investigation," Straw said. /ppStraw said that if the Tories were unhappy about what had happened, they could complain to the independent police complaints authority. /ppMPs have complained that the raid on Green's office in the House of Commons was a breach of parliamentary privilege – the principle the MPs are entitled to special protection to enable them to carry out their work as members of the Commons./ppStraw said that he accepted that in this case competing constitutional principles were in play – the right of MPs being free to carry out "legitimate business" on behalf of their constituents, the independence of the police to investigate, and the importance of protecting secrecy and confidentiality "where it is necessary" in government. /ppMichael Martin, the Commons Speaker, will make a statement about the affair to MPs when the new session of parliament begins with the Queen's speech on Wednesday. /ppToday Denis MacShane, the Labour former minister, said that Martin had to assure MPs that what happened to Green would not happen again. /pp"The police have made a mistake, I think the Home Office bureaucracy have made a mistake, and I think the Speaker on Wednesday has to say this will not happen again," he told Today. /pp"The inner sanctum of our parliamentary democracy is the Palace of Westminster and, in the Palace of Westminster, MPs, yes they are protected under privilege when they speak in the House of Commons, but there is a broader constitutional privilege that says they can meet anyone, talk about anything, discuss their political passions, they can hold files, and the police, the agents of the state, do not storm in there and start breaking in or going into offices and taking away confidential files that all our constituents think will be treated confidentially." /ppHe suggested that the situation could not happen if the UK had its own written constitution: "In other countries ... the police would never be allowed into a parliament." /ppBut one of Britain's leading constitutional experts, Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at the University of Oxford, told the programme: "This does seem to me something of a storm in a teacup. /pp"The important principle is that MPs, apart from when they are speaking in the chamber and dealing with constituents' correspondence, are as subject to the law as the rest of us. /pp"If the police decide not to take action against an MP which they would against an ordinary citizen then that would be discriminatory./pp"Then people might say: 'Well, we are not living in a police state but a state where people, because they have been elected to parliament, have certain exemptions from the law.' That can't be the case. They are subject to the same laws as the rest of us."/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/damian-green"Damian Green/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/conservatives"Conservatives/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/police"Police/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/jackstraw"Jack Straw/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/DD4qsQNEjaQeV3Q479TuMZBXj-M/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/DD4qsQNEjaQeV3Q479TuMZBXj-M/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/81951?ns=guardianpageName=Politics%3A+Acting+Met+chief+could+step+aside+in+Damian+Green+leak+rowch=Politicsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Damian+Green%2CPolitics%2CUK+news%2CConservatives%2CPolice+%28politics%29%2CLondon+politics%2CLondon+%28News%29c5=Unclassified%2CPolicy+Society%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CLocal+Government+Societyc6=Sandra+Laville%2CNicholas+Watt%2CAndrew+Sparrowc7=2008_12_01c8=1126763c9=articlec10=GUc11=Politicsc12=Damian+Greenc13=c14=h2=GU%2FPolitics%2FDamian+Green" width="1" height="1" //divpThe man tipped to become the new Metropolitan police commissioner was last night understood to be considering whether he should apply for the job, after a barrage of criticism from politicians on all sides over the arrest of the shadow Home Office minister Damian Green. /ppSir Paul Stephenson, as acting head of the Met, ultimately sanctioned the arrest of Green over his role in publishing documents allegedly leaked to him by a mole in the Home Office. /ppHis decision, described by one senior officer as "totally catastrophic", has led to a furious reaction from the Conservative party leader, David Cameron, the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and members of the cabinet, who are understood to be divided over the issue. /ppThe deadline for applications for the top job at the Met is noon today and Stephenson is understood to be wondering whether the post is worth the flak. /pp"He is a man who does angst over things quite a lot and he will be thinking very hard about this," said one source. /ppSenior members of the cabinet have expressed deep disquiet over the treatment of Green, who was detained by police for nine hours last Thursday and forced to give a fingerprint and DNA sample. /ppSome ministers voiced unease on the margins of a cabinet meeting in Leeds on Friday. They believe the police's behaviour was heavy-handed and gave the impression that the state was attempting to block the opposition from holding the government to account. Other ministers said that the police had good grounds to question Green. /ppHarriet Harman, the leader of the Commons, admitted yesterday that she was "very concerned indeed" about what had happened, although the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, refused to apologise and insisted the police were independent. /ppToday Jack Straw, the justice secretary, said that Smith was right not to apologise for what had happened to Green. /pp"If any home secretary had offered an apology, there would have then been a huge furore about the fact that the home secretary was prejudging the actions and activities of the police without an investigation," Straw said in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. /ppStraw said that if the Tories were unhappy about what had happened, they could complain to the independent police complaints authority. /ppHe also said that he was "pretty certain" that, once the affair was over, parliament would review the procedures that led to Green's office at the House of Commons being searched by police. /ppThe Tories intensified pressure last night by revealing further details of the police questioning of Green, who was arrested on suspicion that he had procured leaked documents from Chris Galley, a 26-year-old junior civil servant. Police allegedly accused the MP of "grooming" the young civil servant, in what was seen as an attempt to prove that Green had broken the law by offering inducements to procure leaked documents. /ppA Tory source said that Green was furious at the use of a word with such horrendous connotations. "This was clearly designed to provoke Damian. This is typical of the cack-handed way the police have handled this." /ppSuch revelations will add to the pressure on the Met, and specifically Stephenson, who was seen as the favourite to succeed Sir Ian Blair as the new commissioner. He is understood to have had a furious row with Johnson on Thursday after telling him of the impending arrest. /ppA Scotland Yard source yesterday denied that anyone had been bugged as part of the inquiry, after speculation that the police had listened in to calls between Green and the civil servant accused of leaking documents to him. Police sources stressed that they were investigating whether Green had aided, abetted and encouraged the civil servant to procure the information. /ppSenior officers were split over whether the MP should have been investigated or arrested at all, it emerged yesterday. Some within Scotland Yard viewed the issue as a disciplinary one for the civil service, and not a criminal matter at all. /ppPublicly the Met is defending its actions, saying there was nothing unusual about the use of 20 officers to carry out searches and the arrest of Green. "There were four addresses, five officers for each address," the source said. /pp"The investigation is ongoing. That is all we are saying." /ppThere was also a row brewing between the Crown Prosecution Service and the police. The Guardian has been told that the CPS was involved in the decision by Bob Quick, the Met's assistant commissioner of specialist operations, to arrest Green. But the CPS angrily denied it was party to the decision to arrest, saying: "We were involved only in the preliminary stages of the investigation." /ppIt emerged that the arrest had not been sanctioned by the new director of prosecutions, Keir Starmer. A spokesman for the CPS said that Starmer had only been informed shortly before detectives swooped. /ppThis is crucial to another growing row – the decision by the Commons serjeant at arms, Jill Pay, and the Speaker, Michael Martin, to allow police to search Green's office. Pay reportedly gave the go-ahead after police told her that the DPP had given his approval to the arrest. Martin is due to make a statement on Wednesday. /ppDominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said the police might have misled Pay. "One way of reading the contradictory explanations between the sergeant at arms and what the DPP has said is that the police misled her. That's a very serious issue which needs to be looked into," he told Sky News. /ppA spokesman for Martin said: "The Speaker will be speaking to the house when the house returns."/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/damian-green"Damian Green/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/conservatives"Conservatives/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/police"Police/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/london"London politics/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/london"London/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/P846BVswauKzn6Pw_Rq3OM_e-4M/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/P846BVswauKzn6Pw_Rq3OM_e-4M/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Sarah sez, "BBC radio is doing a piece about the influence of Yiddish on American culture - they have a great clip describing the ways in which Yiddish songs made their way into jazz (see blurb below). My grandma - the last surviving member of my family who remembers hearing Yiddish spoken in the home - got a real kick out of it." Hell, I get a kick out of it! My father's first language was Yiddish, and I grew up taking Sunday Yiddish classes at the secular Workman's Circle school in Toronto. It's still the language I use to communicate with my family in Russia (they don't speak English and I don't speak Russian). It's a fantastically expressive, ironic language made for joking and tummeling and kibbitzing. It's a kind of weak Sapir-Worf: it's nearly impossible to speak it without turning ironic and funny. And of course, Yiddish jazz like Mickey Katz (brilliantly covered by Don Byron) and the Yiddishisms in Slim Gaillard's music (Matzoh Balls, anyone?) just plain kicks ass. Yiddish - a language once spoken by more than 10 million Jews - had a profound effect on American culture in the first half of the 20th Century. It originated in central and eastern Europe - and spread to the United States when thousand of immigrants arrived in New York. Zalmen Mlotek is the Artistic Director of the city's last surviving professional Yiddish theatre - the Folksbiene. With the help of his piano, he has been telling Radio 3's Dennis Marks how the language influenced jazz music - and the likes of George and Ira Gershwin. Audio slideshow: Inspired by Yiddish (Thanks, Sarah!)...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=daeb71f2420ab02394ed46648f677943p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=daeb71f2420ab02394ed46648f677943p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=daeb71f2420ab02394ed46648f677943" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Cher journal, j'ai envie d'être hors-sujet aujourd'hui,br / br / Tu sais peut-être déjà que je suis un grand admirateur du travail de Gilles Peterson, dont tu pourras avoir un aperçu par là :br / br / a href=http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/gillespeterson/http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/gillespeterson//abr / a href=http://www.gillespetersonworldwide.com/http://www.gillespetersonworldwide.com//abr / a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Petersonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Peterson/abr / br / (j'en avait déjà parlé vite fait ici : a href=https://linuxfr.org/~benoar/20542.htmlhttps://linuxfr.org/~benoar/20542.html/a )br / br / Pour résumer, c'est un DJ, mais qui sait dénicher de la bonne musique comme nul autre en ce bas monde. Il compile de vraies perles phoniques, des joyaux récupéré d'un passé qu'on a parfois trop vite oublié, des morceaux de pure folie, des passages incongrus, ou encore de la musique d'une beauté émotionnelle rare ... (oui, je m'emballe) On ne pourrait pas lui accoller de style constant, variant entre Jazz/Électro/Soul/Hip Hop/Afro/Rock/Jungle/etc.br / br / Il concocte chaque semaine un show qui passe sur la BBC radio, et même si c'est mieux de l'écouter en live sur les ondes, on ne peut pas toujours se le permettre, surtout quand son émission a été reléguée à un créneau horaire difficile (le jeudi matin de 2h à 4h, GMT ; avant il passait le dimanche soir de minuit à 2h).br / br / Bref, son émission est accessible sur le net, mais avec une applet Real Media à deux francs, qui bien sûr ne marche pas sous linux. Enfin, la proprio, peut-être, mais je n'en veux pas. Donc, pour plus de practicité et afin de pouvoir réécouter ses show à l'envie, j'enregistrais ces lives avec mon fidèle mplayer. Mais l'URL a changé récemment (quelques semaines), et j'ai vraiment été en manque pendant quelques temps. Heureusement, voici la nouvelle commande que j'utilise pour dumper ce flux :br / br / citemplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile gilles_peterson_worldwide_$1.rm $(wget -q -O /dev/stdout a href=http://bbc.co.uk/iplayer/aod/playlists/ql/w8/f0/0b/RadioBridge_0200_bbc_radio_one.ram)http://bbc.co.uk/iplayer/aod/playlists/ql/w8/f0/0b/RadioBrid(...)/a/citebr / br / Sachant que je l'utilise dans un script qui prend la date en paramètre, afin de repérer facilement les différents shows.br / br / J'espère que tu trouveras ton bonheur dans ces émissions, qui me sont un soutien inestimable chaque semaine afin de garder le moral ! Et pensez à rétribuer le travail de tous ces gens en achetant de temps en temps de la musique (Gilles Peterson a fondé entre autres le label Brownswood Recordings : a href=http://www.brownswoodrecordings.com/http://www.brownswoodrecordings.com//a ce qui permet d'être plus indépendant).