Correo de Noticias al 1/08/08 (Día de ¿Informe Presidencial? en México)

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/09/01/index.php?section=opinion&article=002a1edi
Editorial
Desapariciones: agravio histórico
El pasado 28 de agosto, la senadora Rosario Ibarra de Piedra anunció la creación de un nuevo Frente Nacional contra la Represión (FNCR) que será presentado oficialmente el próximo 2 de octubre, y cuya demanda principal será el esclarecimiento del centenar de desapariciones forzadas que, según la legisladora, han ocurrido durante los últimos siete años: 65 durante el gobierno de Vicente Fox y más de 30 en la actual administración. Entre las organizaciones que integrarán dicho frente destacan la Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO), el Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra de San Salvador Atenco, la Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE) y el Comité Eureka.

Desfiladero
Jaime Avilés
jamastu@gmail.com
Mexicanos al grito de Wal-Mart
Televisa tomará el Zócalo el 15 con sus estrellas
Propuesta: que los chuchos devuelvan sus curules
Mandoki llama a una rueda de prensa urgente
Si Vicente Fox afirmaba que su gobierno era “de empresarios, por empresarios y para empresarios”, los senadores y diputados de los tres grandes partidos de México podrían decir que su reforma electoral es “de legisladores, por legisladores y para legisladores”. Muy bien comprenden que si no limpian los escombros del instituto y del tribunal electoral devastados por el golpe del 2 de julio, los comicios de 2009 no tendrán legitimidad y por lo tanto su carrera parlamentaria se irá al demonio.

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/09/01/index.php?section=opinion&article=014o1pol
Los de Abajo
Gloria Muñoz Ramírez
losylasdeabajo@yahoo.com.mx
Ser indio es un delito
Dos heridos de bala, seis presos, más de 30 desalojados, amenazas, persecuciones, heridos y desaparecidos, es el saldo de un mes de hostigamiento gubernamental federal y estatal (militar, paramilitar, policiaco y judicial) en las comunidades indígenas de Chiapas, particularmente en las regiones autónomas zapatistas.

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/09/01/index.php?section=opinion&article=021a1eco
Silvia Ribeiro*
Maíz transgénico y descampesinización
Pese al claro rechazo al maíz transgénico por parte de la gran mayoría de la población, las trasnacionales que controlan el negocio siguen presionando para que se aprueben estos granos en México. Para ello prueban nuevas trampas y mentiras, a ver si alguna resulta. Si no, intentarán otros métodos, como hicieron para lograr que el Congreso apruebe una ley de bioseguridad (la Ley Monsanto) y luego una de certificación y comercialización de semillas, totalmente a su favor y en contra de los intereses nacionales.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2160297,00.html
Liquidity crisis
£800m hedge fund bail-out adds to City's jitters over Barclays
Richard Wray and Ashley Seager
Saturday September 1, 2007
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2160384,00.html
British army chief attacks US as 'intellectually bankrupt' over Iraq
Peter Richards
Saturday September 1, 2007
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2160170,00.html
Death and desolation after the inferno on road from Artemida
People of the Peloponnese lost relatives, homes and livelihoods in worst disaster for decades to hit their picturesque land
Helena Smith in Athens
Saturday September 1, 2007
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/01/foodanddrink.ethicalliving

Britons hungrier than ever for organic fare, but rising prices leave bitter taste
.Burgeoning UK market is third largest in Europe
.Popularity of veggie boxes takes industry by surprise
* John Vidal, environment editor
* The Guardian
* Saturday September 1 2007

http://www.guardian.co.uk/slideshow/page/0,,2155027,00.html
Audio slideshow: Poisoned chalice
Oil has been found in the Amazon region of northern Ecuador, but for local residents the discovery has brought problems as well as benefits. Rory Carroll talks to them about living alongside a rapidly developing industry.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/forward2007/story/0,,2159958,00.html
Rhyme and treason
Richard Lea listens as Malawian poet Jack Mapanje tells stories of being imprisoned without charge, the slave trade and hitchhikers on the A59
Friday August 31, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6973605.stm
New Chinese rules on Dalai Lama
By Michael Bristow
BBC News, Beijing
Communist China has introduced new rules that appear aimed at controlling the selection of the next Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's spiritual head.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6972901.stm
Chavez to meet Colombian rebels
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has agreed to invite Colombian rebels to discuss a hostage release deal.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6971651.stm
Brown and Sarkozy in Darfur vow
Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have called for intense action to secure a ceasefire in Darfur.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6970067.stm
Mafia suspects arrested in Italy
Police in southern Italy have arrested more than 30 suspected members of rival Mafia gangs which are linked to the killing of six Italian men in Germany.


http://www.proceso.com.mx/noticia.html?sec=2&nta=53558&nsec=Estados
Asesinada, consejera de Seguridad Pública de Tamaulipas
gabriela hernández
Ciudad Victoria, Tamps., 31 de agosto (apro).- La consejera de la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública de Tamaulipas, Socorro Saleh Mata, apareció asesinada la tarde de este viernes en su casa.

http://www.proceso.com.mx/noticia.html?sec=0&nta=53553
Recupera el gobierno “espacios en poder del narco”
ricardo ravelo
* A unas horas del Informe, el gabinete de Seguridad adelanta reporte
México, D.F., 31 de agosto (apro).- En un hecho sin precedente, el gabinete de seguridad --integrado por los titulares de Gobernación, Marina, Defensa, SSP y PGR-- rindió un prolijo informe de lo que cada entidad ha realizado en la guerra contra el narcotráfico durante los primeros nueve meses de la gestión de Felipe Calderón.

http://www.proceso.com.mx/noticia.html?sec=7&nta=53538&nsec=Cultura+y+Espect%E1culos
México sería otro país si la gente supiera de poesía lo que sabe de fútbol: José Emilio Pacheco
de la redacción
México, D.F., 31 de agosto (apro).- El poeta y escritor, José Emilio Pacheco, afirmó hoy que México sería otro país si las personas supieran de poesía un poquito de lo que saben de futbol.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/world/middleeast/01haditha.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
At Marines’ Hearing, Testament to ViolenceBy PAUL von ZIELBAUER
Published: September 1, 2007
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., Aug. 31 — A Marine sergeant offered gruesome testimony on Friday against a former squad leader charged with killing 17 Iraqi civilians in Haditha nearly two years ago, suggesting that the defendant, Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, was predisposed to the violence, carried it out ruthlessly and sought to cover it up.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200708300009
Politics
Guns - where are they all coming from?
Martin Bright
Published 30 August 2007
The Conservatives blame Labour for the rise of armed violence. But, as Martin Bright reports, Merseyside's problems can be traced back to a disastrous decision by a former Tory home secretary

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/31/1435243
New FBI Network Allows Instant Wiretaps on Any Communication Device
Wired Magazine is reporting the FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any private communications device. The network allows an FBI agent in New York to remotely set up a wiretap on a cell phone based in Sacramento, California. This would allow the FBI agent to immediately learn the phone's location, then begin receiving conversations, text messages and voicemail pass codes in New York. The surveillance system is called the Digital Collection System Network. It connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet providers and cellular companies. Experts say the system is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than previously suspected.

http://www.poresto.net/content/view/14933/1/
Paro nacional
sábado, 01 de septiembre de 2007
Miembros de la Alianza de Tranviarios y trabajadores de la Escuela Secundaria 54 se manifestaron ayer frente a las oficinas de la SEP en la Av. Cuahutemoc, casi con Eje 7 Sur, en el D.F. (Cuartoscuro)

http://www.repubblica.it/2007/09/sezioni/cronaca/confindustria-pizzo/confindustria-pizzo/confindustria-pizzo.html
Deciso dagli industriali siciliani dopo le intimidazioni. Di Pietro d'accordo: ma valga anche per le tangenti
Invocato l'intervento dell'esercito. Mastella: "Sul problema è aperta una discussione"
Confindustria, mossa contro il racket
Espulsione per chi paga il pizzo
L'esecutivo esprime solidarietà agli imprenditori minacciati
Montezemolo telefona al ministro dell'Interno Amato

http://www.repubblica.it/2007/07/sezioni/cronaca/immigrati/capopassero/capopassero.html
Un barcone con 18 immigrati a bordo si è rovesciato nella notte
14 le persone salvate dalla Guardia di finanza. Altri 29 sbarcati a Pozzallo
Naufragio a largo di Siracusa
un morto e tre dispersi


http://www.repubblica.it/2007/08/speciale/altri/2007letteratura/macchiavelli/macchiavelli.html
L'autore del "Principe" scrisse con i registri della scienza e dell'invenzione letteraria
e precorse Galilei per aver scrutato la politica come problemi da sezionare ed analizzare
L'arte politica di Niccolò Machiavelli
nel clima della creatività rinascimentale
Francesco Guicciardini in una lettera del l521 definì l'amico
"extravagante di opinione dalle commune et inventore di cose nuove et insolite"
di LUCIO VILLARI

http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Cinema/Venezia2007/articoli/ken_loach_precariato.shtml
Applausi per “It’s a free world” alla proiezione per la stampa
Ken Loach, il precariato visto dai padroni
Presentato a Venezia il film del regista britannico: «Lavoratori schiacciati dalla logica del business e del profitto»

http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Scienze_e_Tecnologie/2007/08_Agosto/31/asteroidi_caprara.shtml
Ma c'è anche chi pensa di far sparare un razzo da una sonda
Così salvaremo la Terra dagli asteroidi
Le principali ipotesi allo studio prevedono, fra l'altro, un trattore gravitazionale e un'esplosione nucleare per cambiarne l'orbita




http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2917360.ece

The summer that was every bit as bad for wildlife as the coldest winter
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Published: 01 September 2007

Some of Britain's most endangered creatures were dealt devastating blows by the monsoon summer which ended yesterday.

The effect on wildlife of the weeks of incessant rain and the unprecedented floods which followed was so acute that some species are likely to have suffered local extinctions – and isolated populations may never be able to be re-established.

From water voles to swallowtails, from partridges to bumblebees, species which are rare, declining or even just grimly hanging on suffered catastrophic losses, especially of their young, right across the country.

When the full picture is eventually assessed, Britain's wettest summer on record may be found to have had an effect as damaging as the 20th century's worst winter, 1963 – when millions of wild creatures died in a landscape that was snowbound for two-and-a-half months, and some species, such as the Dartford warbler, were brought to the brink of extinction in the country as a whole.

It is far too soon for a full statistical picture of summer 2007 to emerge, and the evidence of what has happened to wildlife is largely anecdotal – but the anecdotes are all pointing in the same direction.

Take birds, and one of Britain's rarest species, the bittern – the brown, long-legged relative of the grey heron which nests in the reedbeds of East Anglia.

Bitterns are counted by the number of males that are "booming" – making the low, far-carrying call that attracts the female. Within the past 20 years there were as few as 11 booming males in all of the country, but strenuous conservation efforts had this spring brought that up to more than 50.

Then disaster struck. After 2007's wonderfully warm April, cold and rain swept in during the early May Bank Holiday weekend. At Minsmere, the flagship reserve of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in Suffolk, five bittern nests were washed away, and the young birds died in the low temperatures. "It was cold and wet right across the bittern's breeding range," said Mark Avery, the RSPB's director of conservation. "One wet cold weekend dealt a devastating blow to one of Britain's rarest birds."

But it wasn't just bitterns. Two of Britain's most rapidly-declining farmland birds, the lapwing and the grey partridge, have also suffered terribly from the washout summer. Paradoxically, the lapwings were hard hit by the hot April, because the dried ground was too hard for them to dig out the invertebrates to feed their chicks. But then they were dealt a double whammy by the downpours which followed, and when rivers such as the Severn burst their banks in areas such as Gloucestershire, many nests in the riverside meadows were washed away and the chicks drowned.

The effect of the cold and wet on the grey partridge, which from being a common and familiar bird has declined by nearly 90 per cent in Britain as a whole and is now extinct in many parts of the countryside, was so lamentable that the Game Conservancy Trust issued a special warning notice about what had happened. "Urgent conservation action needs to be taken by all those with a responsibility for managing the British countryside," it said.

As with birds, so with mammals, and what may seem at first sight to be a curious victim of a wet summer – the water vole. Ratty of The Wind in the Willows was once common but now, because of the depredations of wild American mink, is our most endangered wild animal. The swollen river levels are thought to have drowned many water voles in their burrows.

But the toll taken may be locally very high, according to Brian Eversham, of the Bedfordshire Wildlife Trust. "It's because many of the water vole populations are now small and isolated," Mr Eversham said. "If they are wiped out in an area, there may well be no other nearby population to recolonise it." Perhaps the worst-affected wildlife sector of all this summer has been invertebrates, comprising insects, spiders, worms and other creepy-crawlies. The warmth of April gave butterflies in particular a fantastic start – 11 British species recorded their earliest-ever emergence dates – but the deluges and cold that followed did real damage.

Britain's most spectacular species, the rare swallowtail, appears to have had a very poor breeding year in its only home, the Norfolk Broads, where flooding has reduced the availability of the insect's food plant, milk parsley, and also appears to have drowned many caterpillars. But other uncommon species have also suffered badly, such as the Duke of Burgundy, where in some areas it was raining for its entire month-long flight period – meaning mating is much less likely to take place.


http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2901009.ece

Extreme conditions: What's happening to our weather?
This summer is set to be the wettest ever. It's the latest in a series of broken records which suggest climate change is here already.
By Michael McCarthy
Published: 28 August 2007

Britain is just a few showers away from recording a record wet summer, at the climax of the most remarkable period of broken weather records in the country's history. All of the smashed records are to do with temperature and rainfall - the two aspects of the climate most likely to be intensified by the advent of global warming.

While no specific event can be ascribed directly to climate change, the sequence of events is strongly suggestive of a climate that is now unmistakably altering before our eyes.

Furthermore, the pattern of increasing heat and wet weather has been visible in the same period all around the globe, with temperature and rainfall records broken in many other countries, from Australia (record drought) and India (record monsoon rains) to Greece (record forest fires).

Yet in the UK alone, in the past 14 months we have experienced the hottest July, the hottest April and the wettest June since records began. We have seen the hottest autumn and the hottest spring, and the second-hottest winter. We have also seen the hottest single month, and - by a considerable margin - the hottest single 12-month period.

Now we are on the brink of seeing the soggiest British summer as a whole - defined as June, July and August - since records were first kept for the United Kingdom in 1914. By Friday morning of last week, the average rainfall in Britain since the beginning of June was 356.6mm - just over 14 inches - and nudging up to the record of 358.4mm, set in 1956. It is increasingly likely a new record will be set if there is any significant rainfall between now and Saturday.

Even if there is none, summer 2007 has already passed the second-wettest summer mark (which previously was 1985, with a rainfall of 342.7mm). And the three months from May to July have easily broken the record for rainfall for that period.

The significance of these records is that they are actually occurring in the real world - rather than in the forecasts generated by computer mathematical models of the global climate.

That marks a major shift. For the initial decade of the climate change problem (from the first report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990), the effects of global warming, such as extreme heatwaves and downpours, were seen as future events which the climate models predicted. They were thus much easier for sceptics to dismiss.

But, in recent years, extreme and record-breaking real events, entirely consistent with global warming predictions, have started to mount up - beginning with the remarkable heatwave of August 2003, which caused 35,000 excess deaths in France and northern central Europe.

That episode, the first event whose severity was ascribed by scientists directly to climate change, only just caught Britain with its edge.

But even so, it broke the UK's air temperature record on 10 August 2003, pushing it for the first-time ever over 100F, to 101.3F, or 38.5C. The previous record (set in 1990) was 98.8F or 37.1C. Thus the jump to the new record was 2.5F, or 1.4C - an absolutely enormous leap.

Some of the records of the past 14 months which we detail today are of similar astonishing dimensions. In particular, April 2007 and the summer just ended produced quite unprecedented weather for Britain - with quite unprecedented effects.

April was so warm (contributing to the warmest spring on record) that the natural world was put completely out of sync: swifts arrived (from Africa) a month early, as did the hawthorn flowers - known as May - which prompted suggestions they should be renamed April blossom.

And summer was so wet that it produced the worst flooding Britain has ever seen - with the two catastrophic "extreme rainfall events" of 24 June and 24 and 20 July, which did the damage, each being of a severity likely only once in 200 years, or even longer.

The climate has a natural variability which means that extreme weather has always occurred throughout the years. But the occurrence of all these extremes together, in such a short period, suggests that we are witnessing something quite new in the climate of Britain.

The 2nd hottest winter

The winter of 2006-07 (counted as December, January and February) was the warmest on record in the northern hemisphere since records began in 1860, according to US scientists; in Britain it was the second-warmest since records for the whole country began in 1914. It had some perverse effects, especially on the UK's hedgehogs, which were fooled by the warmth into having extra litters, thinking it was still early autumn; the young then died when the cold finally did arrive because they had had insufficient time to put on weight for hibernation, said the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.

The hottest April

The creamy-white flowers of the hawthorn bush have, for centuries, been an infallible sign in England that the month of May has arrived - the average date was about 11 May - but in April 2007, such were the astonishingly high temperatures, they came out three weeks early. April this year became - in effect - the new May. Swifts arrived back from Africa in the middle of the month, when they would normally get here at about the end of May's first week. The month was also the hottest April ever recorded in Britain.

(Almost) the wettest summer

The rainfall of this summer has been unprecedented. We are a few millimetres away from a record, taking summer as June, July and August, but the record for the period May, June and July has already been smashed. The floods that this summer's rain caused were the worst in recorded British history and caused perhaps £3bn worth of damage, leaving more than a third of a million people without drinking water, nearly 50,000 people without power and thousands more homeless. At the height of the flooding, scientists announced that a link between global warming and rainfall patterns in recent decades had been established for the first time.

April's scarcely-believable warmth turned spring 2007 (defined as March, April, and May) into the hottest on record. Perhaps the most remarkable visible effect of this in the natural world was the emergence of British butterflies: no fewer than 11 species broke their records for early appearances. The chalkhill blue, for example, was seen in Sussex on 16 May; normally it would appear in the first week of July. The speckled wood, normally visible at the end of March, was seen in Cornwall on 16 January, seven weeks early.

The wettest June

It started to rain heavily in the second half of May but, in June, the downpours really got into their stride, culminating in the "extreme rainfall event" of 24 June, which was so heavy in parts of the North of England that it brought catastrophic flooding to places where they were entirely unexpected, such as Doncaster and Hull, and began the disturbing flood summer (counties bordering the river Severn had their turn in July). With rainfall in some areas more than 250 per cent above normal, it was the wettest June in UK Met Office records.

The hottest month

July 2006 gave us a heatwave that produced temperatures not seen since August 2003, when the UK's air temperature record was broken. It reached a peak on 19 July when the temperature at Wisley, Surrey, hit 36.5C, or 97.7F, beating a record that had lasted since 1911; some thought the all-time record would be broken. But even though the peak of 10 August, 2003, was not reached (101. 3F, or 38.5C) the month taken as a whole was the hottest ever recorded in Britain.

The hottest autumn

Autumn in 2006 was a golden time, with its astonishing warmth extending through September and October into late November, when cherry trees were in blossom in Devon, and raspberries were fruiting in Northumberland. It broke the seasonal record for Britain with its mean temperature for the three months of 12.6C (or 54.6F). Perhaps the most remarkable example of the exceptional season was that holly berries were fruiting in mid-October, six weeks early- prompting fears there would be none left for Christmas.

The hottest single 12 months

At the end of April this year, the Met Office announced the previous 12 months, taken together (the end of April 2006 to the end of April 2007), had been the hottest 12 months ever to have occurred in Britain, with a provisional mean temperature of 10.4C. The previous record (March 1997 to April 1998) was 9.7C. That leap of nearly three-quarters of a degree is huge and should make everybody consider whether a major shift in Britain's climate is now becoming visible. It is by no means unreasonable to answer that question with a "yes".


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2917333.ece

FBI spied on King's widow for years
By Jen Wainwright
Published: 01 September 2007

Newly released documents show that FBI agents spied on the widow of Martin Luther King for several years after he was shot dead in 1968.

The documents, which include an intercepted letter written by Coretta Scott King and various memos sent to FBI headquarters, reveal federal agents' fears that Ms Scott King would continue the work of her late husband. That she could try "to tie the anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement" was of particular concern.

After tailing her movements for four years, the government closed its file on Coretta Scott King with a statement that "no information has come to the attention of Atlanta which indicates a propensity for violence or affiliation of subversive elements."

For those closely connected with Martin Luther King, the leading light of the civil rights movement, the close surveillance of his widow comes as no great shock. The Rev Joseph Lowery, former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (which he co-founded with King in 1957), said: "The FBI kept a microphone everywhere they could where the SCLC was concerned."

J Edgar Hoover, the FBI director at the time, "hated Martin Luther King and everything that the SCLC stood for," Mr Lowery added.

A lieutenant of King's, Andrew Young, has expressed rather more surprise at the actions of the government agency, saying that Coretta Scott King had "the makings of a saint". "I don't know what they were expecting to find," he said.


http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article2917344.ece

Facebook takes protest into whole new world
By Emily Dugan
Published: 01 September 2007

Social networking has taken on a radical new edge after a Facebook campaign forced HSBC bank to reverse plans to cancel interest-free overdrafts to new graduates.

A raft of new protest zones have been rolled out on the site as grassroots social and political groups discover that they have a potent new weapon at their disposal.

No longer do eco-warriors have to rely solely on sit-ins and protests. Anti-poverty campaigners now have a platform that allows them to constantly update their message. And local activists can tackle issues such as supermarket expansion plans without leaving their living rooms. Today's revolts are mounted from the mousepad.

Recent groups established on Facebook have shown that the networking site is losing its vacuous image, with users keen to flex their political muscle.

HSBC this week announced it was "not too big to listen to the needs of customers", after thousands of Facebookers signed up daily to the site "Stop the Great HSBC Graduate Rip-Off". Students across the country had been calling for a boycott of the bank. The U-turn comes as a warning sign to other institutions, governments, organisations and individuals. For now virtually no issue goes unnoticed on social networking sites.

Appeals to save local services coexist with campaigns for human rights and appeals for the return of Madeleine McCann.

Ben Allen, 26, who runs a Facebook group which campaigned to save a section of Camden Market from being replaced with a purpose-built complex containing chain stores, said that he thought the web was empowering people who would not ordinarily protest.

"It makes it easier for those who were never going to take to the streets, and empowers people to vote with their clicks rather than their feet," he explained.

Like many Facebook activists, Mr Allen is part of the generation for whom protesting has been a relatively alien concept. "I'm no Che Guevara", said the music PR, "I've never actually been to a protest, but networking sites make it easier. At its peak my group had more than 20,000 members, and that's because its so much easier just to click to support a cause".

Steve Huff, an American networking site expert, said the phenomenon has been noticeable on the other side of the Atlantic for some time. "It's a trend that I've noticed over here especially in the last year, where people all over the country form online groups to campaign for a single issue", he said. "I'm not sure yet that they do achieve change", said Mr Huff, "but I would like to think that something can be achieved, if only in establishing a connection between people."

While the majority of Facebook groups, such as "the biggest group hug", or the popular "petition to revoke the independence of the United States of America", are still fairly pointless, serious campaigns for social issues are on the rise.

But, in a sign that Facebook is not likely to shake its navel-gazing image, its most popular campaigning group yet is the one to keep the site going. Formed during a lawsuit against the site's founders, it attracted more than a million members.

The campaigns

* "Please help! They're trying to knock down Camden Market!!!" – 18,776 members. One of several that sprang up after Camden council published plans to demolish a portion of the Victorian stables in favour of a mall-style complex. Planning permission has been granted, but members have been encouraged to write to No 10.

* "Save the British Library!" – 2,321 members. This group sprang up following the Government's consideration of funding cuts to the library. A link to an online petition shows almost all members have signed in disapproval. The group has been running since January, but there are several others dedicated to keeping membership free.

* "Object to the Tesco depot" – 416 members. Plans to build a Tesco warehouse the size of Heathrow's proposed Terminal 5 in rural Hampshire, near Andover, have angered the local community. With a link to a local council petition, the group urges users to complain directly to the council.

* "Against Dublin Dog Ban" – 83 members. After 11 breeds of dogs that were considered a public danger were banned from housing estates in Dublin, this local group was formed to petition Dublin City Council to revoke the decision. The banned species category included bull terriers and alsatians.