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The guy, Wim Wenders, to me is the second greatest (contemporary) filmmaker from Germany after Werner Herzog.
And I'm with him in that quote from Tilo Jung (last post).
There can be peace somewhere when war is elsewhere. War isn't all the universe has to offer, although many people don't easily understand that there can be peace when all they know is an opposite.
For me it begins with every one of us. At home. In the family.
Keep the peace inside yourself and the rest will follow.
Lessons to be learned for us as individuals.
Journalists were given no advance notice of 1.6 million criminal hearings, the number of court cases listed was accurate on just 4.2 per cent of sitting days and half a million weekend cases were heard with no notification to the press.
So much for democracy in Europe!
It's a bit more nuanced than that.
Minister of State Sarah Sackman:
I am committed, as are this Government, to greater transparency in our justice system. I am also committed to putting the dignity of victims first. As Courts Minister, I have a concern that people should know what goes on in our courts. It is a way of enhancing transparency and of informing and educating the public, and that is why His Majestyâs Courts and Tribunals Service has made and continues to make information available to accredited journalists so that they can keep the public informed about what is taking place in our courts.
In 2020, a company called Courtsdesk entered into an arrangement with His Majestyâs Courts and Tribunals Service to conduct a pilot providing a new service. That agreement, made under the previous Government, was essentially to take some of the data that we routinely provideâand continue to provideâto journalists, and to re-provide it in a more accessible and easier to search form.
HMCTS was working to expand and improve the service by creating a new data licence agreement with Courtsdesk and others to expand access to justice. It was in the course of making that arrangement with Courtsdesk that data protection issues came to light. What has arisen is that this private company has been sharing private, personal and legally sensitive information with a third-party AI company, including potentially the addresses and dates of birth of defendants and victims. That is a direct breach of our agreement with Courtsdesk, which the Conservatives negotiated.
I believe that everybody in this House would agree that that agreement should be upheld. The Government take our data protection responsibilities seriously. It is for that reason that we decided to stop sharing data with Courtsdesk, a company that was prepared to put victimsâ personal data at risk. We instructed it to remove that data from its digital platform. This is about preserving dignity for those who are in our justice system, be they those accused of crime or victims going through the court process. I know that the whole House would agree that that is incredibly important.
Let me be clear: the cessation of our agreement with Courtsdesk does not change the information available to the public about what carries on in our courts, nor does it change the information available to journalists. I recognise that the sort of service that Courtsdesk provided was useful for journalists, because it collated the information and presented it neatly. It is for that reason that officials in my Department are continuing to work, as we had always planned to do, on an alternative platform that allows us to make the information available, but to maintain the guardrails on data protection. I hope to update the House on that in coming weeks
Journalists were given no advance notice of 1.6 million criminal hearings, the number of court cases listed was accurate on just 4.2 per cent of sitting days and half a million weekend cases were heard with no notification to the press.
Europeâs Leaders Have No Strategy for Peace Caught off guard by new proposals to halt the war in Ukraine, European leaders have rejected the idea of Kyiv giving up territory. Whatâs less clear is how they imagine making their red lines into a reality.
On November 19, news broke of a US-brokered peace proposal imposing stringent conditions on Ukraine. It was news to European leaders, too, with a US official adding insult to injury: âWe donât really care about the Europeans.â For the first forty-eight hours, the Europeans responded with stunned, sullen silence.Since Marco Rubio declared the arrival of a multipolar order, weâve been watching a repeat reel of Europeâs foreign policy establishment having the rug pulled from under their feet.
What explains this frenzy among European elites? What explains their sudden readiness to throw strict fiscal rules to the wind, alienate citizens with yet more austerity and then scold them for their discontent, meekly forfeit their positions on trade, or suspend democracy itself? Why revive militarist propaganda tropes reeking of early-twentieth-century rot?
