| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
16 Apr 2005 07:33:29 AM |
| Object: |
Misc. |
Presumption of guilt
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1461274,00.html
Politicians and journalists are corroding the foundations of justice
Shami Chakrabarti
Saturday April 16, 2005
The Guardian
I doubt that any of us will forget where we were and how we felt on
September 11 2001. I was spending my second working day at the human
rights organisation Liberty. Before lunch I wondered nervously about my
new job and the challenges it would bring. In the afternoon the
devastating news of the twin-towers atrocity ended such navel gazing.
Like millions all over the world, my heart was filled with raw and
agonising fear - fear for friends in the US, fear for a husband working
in Canary Wharf, fear for former colleagues working in the Home Office.
My fears for the future came later. Three and a half years on I feel
betrayed by the way that my legitimate and human fears are exploited,
and my intelligence insulted, by politicians and commentators whose
style and vision is more suited to Hollywood than the real life and
death business of our security. The inevitable consequence is neither
greater public reassurance nor safety, but the demise of the
presumption of innocence as a core value of our once robust democracy.
Shami Chakrabarti
http://news.google.com/news?tab=3Dgn&q=3D%22Shami%20Chakrabarti%22&num=3D10=
0&hl=3Den&lr=3D&safe=3Doff&
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&hl=3Den&lr=3D&ie=3DUTF-8&sa=3DN
http://www.google.com/search?q=3D%22Shami+Chakrabarti%22&btnG=3DGoogle+Sear=
ch&hl=3Den&cat=3Dgwd%2FTop
http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=3D%22Shami+Chakrabarti%22&start=3D0&=
scoring=3Dd&num=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&safe=3Doff&
Reviled as outsiders
East End Muslims and Jews have more in common than some realise
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1461183,00.html
Jonathan Freedland
Saturday April 16, 2005
The Guardian
Adolf Hitler never got his hands on the Jews of Britain. The Nazis drew
up a kind of macabre shopping list, spanning Europe and beyond, and
British Jewry was on it. But their plans were thwarted; this community
stayed out of their clutches.
Except on one day. On March 27 1945 the last V2 rocket of the war
landed on Hughes Mansions, a block of low-cost housing in London's East
End. Among the 134 people killed, 120 were Jews.
Jonathan Freedland
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/dae1106a5d34b02a
Anonymity is the road to nothingness
David Bryant
Saturday April 16, 2005
The Guardian
Forty-seven years after demobilisation I can still recite my
eight-digit national service number. It's an indication of how
intrusive and indelible are the depersonalising mechanisms used by
institutions to control their members.
The kickback from this can be savage, as Kafka knew. In The Castle he
sketches the plight of a Land Surveyor referred to as K. At every step
he is harried by malevolent, unseen forces. Disorientated and
distressed he becomes a nameless pawn tossed around in a cruel,
autocratic world.
David Bryant
http://news.google.com/news?q=3D%22David%20Bryant%22%20%22David%20Bryant%22=
&num=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&safe=3Doff&sa=3DN&tab=3Dgn
http://www.google.com/search?q=3D%22David+Bryant%22+%22David+Bryant%22&num=
=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&tab=3Dnw&ie=3DUTF-8&sa=3DN
http://www.google.com/search?q=3D%22David+Bryant%22+%22David+Bryant%22&btnG=
=3DSearch+Directory&hl=3Den&cat=3Dgwd%2FTop
http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=3D%22David%20Bryant%22%20%22David%20=
Bryant%22&num=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&safe=3Doff&sa=3DN&scoring=3Dd&tab=3Dwg
A Healthy Fear of China
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501050418-1047545,00=
..html
India needs its powerful neighbor to be a challenger, not a partner
BY ARAVIND ADIGA
Monday, Apr. 11, 2005
Consider it a sign of the times that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao chose
to begin his trip to India last Saturday with a visit to the high-tech
haven of Bangalore before traveling to New Delhi to talk politics.
High-tech and business, naturally enough, are at the top of the agenda
for this encounter between leaders of the world's emerging economic
superpowers. Indians hope their Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can agree
with Wen on ways to boost trade between the two countries and can
reduce competition with China over access to the energy resources both
nations need to fuel their economic growth. But the best gift Wen can
give India is not a new trade deal or cheery expressions of
international brotherhood: it's a jolt of anxiety.
It's All Relative
http://www.time.com/time/asia/tga/article/0,13673,501050418-1047543,00.html
Europe celebrates the life and genius of physicist Albert Einstein
BY NICK EASEN
Monday, Apr. 11, 2005
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's special
theory of relativity and the 50th anniversary of his death. Both events
are being commemorated by a bid to spark fresh interest in the
Nobel-prizewinning physicist, who was named TIME's Person of the
Century in December 1999. "Einstein was not only a brilliant physicist,
but also a lateral thinker, pacifist, cosmopolite and visionary," says
Gerd Weiberg, head of Germany's Einstein Year celebrations. Here are
some highlights of Einstein-related happenings around Europe:
Dreams Meet Reality
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501050418-1047546,00=
..html
Director Gu Changwei's Peacock explores the anguish-and beauty-of
life in small-town China
BY SUSAN JAKES
Monday, Apr. 11, 2005
In Chinese film, as in Hollywood, ambition and nuance seldom keep
company. The mainland's best-known directors are masters of the kind of
movies that critics call "epic" when they succeed and "overwrought"
when they fail, films that swamp our eyes and yank at our hearts.
Cinematographer Gu Changwei has shot many of Chinese cinema's most
imperial tours de force-Zhang Yimou's Red Sorghum and Ju Dou, Chen
Kaige's Farewell My Concubine, Jiang Wen's Devils at the Doorstep. But
his directorial debut Peacock, surprise winner of the Silver Bear at
this year's Berlin International Film Festival, is a bird of a far less
flashy feather. A portrait of a family's struggles in a small Chinese
city in the 1970s, Peacock draws its considerable power from its
complex script (by the novelist Li Qiang), its imperfect characters and
its emotional restraint in depicting the harshness of daily life in
China.
A Widening Threat
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501050418-1047556,00=
..html
As the conflict in the embattled south threatens to surge north,
Thailand tries a new approach
BY ANDREW PERRIN | BANGKOK
Monday, Apr. 11, 2005
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's promise last month to back
away from heavy-handed measures in dealing with the insurgents in his
country's southern provinces may have come too late. On April 3 a trio
of bombs, detonated remotely and simultaneously by mobile phones,
ripped through a hotel, a shopping center and an airport in the city of
Hat Yai, killing two people and injuring more than 70, including four
foreigners. The attacks came as a shock in part because Hat Yai, a
regional commercial center 150 km north of Pattani, one of the
provinces hardest-hit by the insurgency, had seen none of the violence
that has claimed as many as 800 lives in the South since the beginning
of last year.
The Bully Blight
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1047497,00.html
Scientists find that getting picked on is more harmful than anyone knew
By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK
Monday, Apr. 11, 2005
Like most of her classmates at Washington High School in Milwaukee,
Wis., La Shanda Trimble, 18, is attentive to fashion trends; it's the
particular trend she chooses that sets her apart. She's a Goth, wearing
black lipstick and nail polish, listening to bands like Linkin Park and
Rob Zombie rather than rapper Nelly or R&B star Ciara. She likes to
wear her hair in pigtails instead of the more popularly accepted
braids. The other kids don't approve. "They think I should act like
them,'' says the 11th-grader. "They like me to listen to rap and pop
and wear, like, brand-new shoes."
Chasing Kubrick
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7506399/site/newsweek/
A new book takes a painstaking look at one of cinema's most important
directors
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Malcolm Jones
Newsweek
Updated: 11:48 a.m. ET April 15, 2005
April 15 - One of my personal markers of the importance a movie has for
me is whether I can remember where I saw it. According to this system,
about half of Stanley Kubrick's movies rank right up at the top. I
saw "Paths of Glory" as a teenager hooked on staying up late and
watching old movies on television. I saw "A Clockwork Orange" as a
college student visiting London. I saw "Barry Lyndon" on a long
afternoon in a theater in North Carolina with about three other people,
"Spartacus" in a tiny revival house that doubled as a Catholic
church on Sundays in an upstate New York resort area. What's
noteworthy here is that I don't like or even admire all these movies.
In the case of "A Clockwork Orange," I dislike it intensely. But
that's the thing with Kubrick: you can't just not care. He never
gave you that option. Good or bad, what he put up on the screen is
indelible.
Stanley Kubrick
http://news.google.com/news?q=3D%22Stanley%20Kubrick%22%20%22Stanley%20Kubr=
ick%22&num=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&safe=3Doff&sa=3DN&tab=3Dgn
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2&num=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&tab=3Dnw&ie=3DUTF-8&sa=3DN
http://www.google.com/search?q=3D%22Stanley+Kubrick%22+%22Stanley+Kubrick%2=
2&btnG=3DSearch+Directory&hl=3Den&cat=3Dgwd%2FTop
http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=3D%22Stanley%20Kubrick%22%20%22Stanl=
ey%20Kubrick%22&num=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&safe=3Doff&sa=3DN&scoring=3Dd&tab=
=3Dwg
Lost in Sacramento
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7516144/site/newsweek/
In his first year, Schwarzenegger did well thinking as an outsider but
playing the inside game. What went wrong?
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Eleanor Clift
Contributing Editor
Newsweek
Updated: 1:40 p.m. ET April 15, 2005
April 15 - Observing from afar, I had the feeling that California's
Mr. Wonderful had lost his way politically. From a differently-abled
politician who could bridge the partisan divide, Arnold Schwarzenegger
had become Bush Lite, sinking in the polls and squandering the
bipartisan goodwill he once had.
Eleanor Clift
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/2c2a2d13f36ef163
A creature of lightning
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1460520,00.html
King of Iceland, prisoner, writer and fearless campaigner, Jorgen
Jorgenson was a 19th-century man for all seasons. Thomas Keneally is
fascinated by Sarah Bakewell's account of his eventful life, The
English Dane
Saturday April 16, 2005
The Guardian
The English Dane
by Sarah Bakewell
324pp, Chatto & Windus, =A318.99
Sarah Bakewell has a fine story to tell, and she is its skilled
servant. It is the story of Jorgen Jorgenson, an extraordinary Georgian
figure who would have been invented by some novelist had he not in fact
existed. "There is something about Jorgen Jorgenson that drives people
to enumerate, multiply, accumulate and replicate," writes Bakewell. As
soon as you have said he is a revolutionary you must also say he was an
anti-Napoleonic Anglophile. As soon as you say he was an enthusiast you
must entertain the possibility that he was, to quote Bakewell, "Toad of
Toad Hall", and as soon as you say he was one of the founders of Van
Diemen's Land and grand protector of Iceland, you have also to mention
that he was a British convict. Jorgenson is remembered both as king of
Iceland for one heady summer at one end of the globe, and the Viking of
Van Diemen's Land at the other, and to an extent he seems a being
created by the Earth's zapping north-south electric field. When the
Prince of Denmark recently wedded his Tasmanian (Van Diemen's Land)
wife, he declared he followed in the earlier Dane, Jorgenson's,
footsteps with just as much hope and just as much confidence. The
prince did not mention Jorgenson's endlessly zealous, inventive and
disordered brilliance.
Raising the tone
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1460547,00.html
Lewis Lockwood is a subtle guide to Beethoven's heavenly music, says
Nicholas Lezard
Saturday April 16, 2005
The Guardian
Beethoven: The Music and the Life, by Lewis Lockwood, (Norton, =A311.99)
In June, Radio 3 is going to play nothing but Beethoven's music for a
whole week. This is terrific news. Like Harold Bauer, the pianist who
left the room when Debussy called the composer le vieux sourd (the old
deaf one), you should not stand for any nonsense about the man, a hero
in more ways than one. But you are going to have to prepare yourselves.
Do you have any book about Beethoven on your shelves? If you follow the
advice of this column, you will already have Charles Rosen's The
Classical Style, which also discusses the music of Haydn and Mozart.
But while that is superb (and if anyone has my copy, could they please
give it back?), its brief does not include much biography or social
context, which is where this book comes in.
Beethoven
http://news.google.com/news?q=3DBeethoven&num=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&safe=3Dof=
f&sa=3DN&tab=3Dgn
http://www.google.com/search?q=3DBeethoven&num=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&tab=3Dnw=
&ie=3DUTF-8&sa=3DN
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cat=3Dgwd%2FTop
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safe=3Doff&sa=3DN&scoring=3Dd&tab=3Dwg
Crossing the line
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1459472,00.html
Samir El-youssef on attempts to explain what turns people into suicide
bombers
Saturday April 16, 2005
The Guardian
Making Sense of Suicide Missions
edited by Diego Gambetta
378pp, Oxford, =A325
Suicide in Palestine: Narrative of Despair
by Nadia Taysir Dabbagh
265pp, Hurst, =A316.95
The Road to Martyrs' Square: A Journey into the World of the Suicide
Bomber
by Anne Marie Oliver and Paul Steinberg
214pp, Oxford, =A314.99
Suicide missions are not a recent phenomenon. Some researchers trace
the trend back to the Russian anarchists at the start of the 20th
century; others go back to ancient history. Yet there is no
over-arching explanation as to why groups and individuals resort to
this form of political violence. As Diego Gambetta, the editor of
Making Sense of Suicide Missions points out, the characteristics,
motives and aims of organisers and attackers - not to mention social
and political contexts - are so diverse that it makes it hard to
identify one single cause.
Suicide Bomber
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/af156acbac3e9e86
Way out East, innit?
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1459474,00.html
Kevin Rushby is transported by Tarquin Hall's life among the
immigrants, Salaam Brick Lane
Saturday April 16, 2005
The Guardian
Salaam Brick Lane: A Year in the New East End
by Tarquin Hall
256pp, John Murray, =A316.99
When Jack London came to London in 1902, he stayed in Highgate and
contacted Thomas Cook, the travel agent, for information on how best to
approach his next stop - the East End. They were unable to help,
admitting they knew nothing of that unexplored corner of the globe.
Undeterred, London disguised himself as a sailor and dived in - roaming
what was a poverty-stricken ghetto and writing his book People of the
Abyss .
Tarquin Hall
http://news.google.com/news?q=3D%22Tarquin%20Hall%22%20%22Tarquin%20Hall%22=
&num=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&safe=3Doff&sa=3DN&tab=3Dgn
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=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&tab=3Dnw&ie=3DUTF-8&sa=3DN
http://www.google.com/search?q=3D%22Tarquin+Hall%22+%22Tarquin+Hall%22&btnG=
=3DSearch+Directory&hl=3Den&cat=3Dgwd%2FTop
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20Hall%22&num=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&safe=3Doff&sa=3DN&scoring=3Dd&tab=3Dwg
Tangerine dream
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1460521,00.html
Tim Mackintosh-Smith takes a tour through India with a 14th-century
adventurer in The Hall of a Thousand Columns. Sara Wheeler is
enthralled
Saturday April 16, 2005
The Guardian
The Hall of a Thousand Columns: Hindustan to Malabar with Ibn Battutah
by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
334pp, John Murray, =A320
The Hall of a Thousand Columns is the second volume of a trilogy in
which Tim Mackintosh-Smith trails Ibn Battutah, the Tangier-born
adventurer who voyaged over most of the known world between 1325 and
1355 - a period when Islamic culture was travelling fast. Taking up
where his first book left off, and with his hallmark combination of
irreverence and empathy, Mackintosh-Smith again peers at the Battutian
landscape across a gulf of seven centuries. He has confected a
curiously addictive blend of history, travel and jokes. But above all
he engages with ideas, and his aim is that of the novelist - to send
a bucket down into the subconscious.
Ibn (Battuta OR Batuta OR Battouta OR Battutah) Battuta OR Batuta OR
Battouta OR Battutah
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a%20OR%20Battutah)%20Battuta%20OR%20Batuta%20OR%20Battouta%20OR%20Battutah&=
num=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&safe=3Doff&sa=3DN&tab=3Dgn
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utah)+Battuta+OR+Batuta+OR+Battouta+OR+Battutah&num=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&tab=
=3Dnw&ie=3DUTF-8&sa=3DN
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ttutah%29+Battuta+OR+Batuta+OR+Battouta+OR+Battutah&btnG=3DSearch+Directory=
&hl=3Den&cat=3Dgwd%2FTop
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20Battouta%20OR%20Battutah)%20Battuta%20OR%20Batuta%20OR%20Battouta%20OR%20=
Battutah&num=3D100&hl=3Den&lr=3D&safe=3Doff&sa=3DN&scoring=3Dd&tab=3Dwg
Landscapes of the mind
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1459478,00.html
Abbas Kiarostami began making documentaries about children and
education and progressed through shorts to art films that won awards
around the world. Despite constant trouble with Iran's censors, he says
he couldn't work anywhere else. A retrospective of his stills
photography and movies opens in London this month. Interview by Stuart
Jeffries
Saturday April 16, 2005
The Guardian
On May 18 1997, Abbas Kiarostami made what some still regard as a faux
pas. He kissed Catherine Deneuve on the cheek. At the time, he was on
the stage of the Grand Th=E9tre Lumi=E8re at Cannes, receiving the Palme
d'Or from the French star for Taste of Cherry (an award shared, highly
unusually, with Shohei Imamura for the Japanese director's film The
Eel). "Many critics said that the film marked the highest point in
Kiarostami's film career," says cinema historian and his biographer,
Alberto Elena, "and with that glorious reputation the film began to be
shown all over the world."
The Eden project
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1459477,00.html
Alice Turnbull takes inspiration from architectural plans and botanic
gardens to create paintings in which science, art and nature meet. By
Philip Hoare
Saturday April 16, 2005
The Guardian
In her eyrie studio, set above the warren of narrow streets that twist
and turn in the shadow of London Bridge, Alison Turnbull carries her
latest work to the wall. Across the blushing pink canvas, suffused with
the glow of a Mediterranean sunrise, wheels a gigantic structure, a
ghostly graphite form. Only on closer inspection can you see the
painting's true nature, its surface highly worked and exquisitely
rendered, raised in minute degrees, with the oil paint emboldened by
beeswax to give substance to its disappearing reality. It is an
enigmatic image, substantial and ethereal at the same time.
Panicked China reins in rioters as anti-Japanese protests spread
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=3D629864
By David McNeill in Tokyo
16 April 2005
After a week of megaphone diplomacy that stretched ties between China
and Japan to breaking point by disputes about history and territory,
Beijing has cracked down on anti-Japanese protesters in an apparent
attempt to defuse a movement it fears could spiral out of control.
Beijing authorities said any attempt to repeat last weekend's attacks
on the Japanese embassy and Japanese-owned property which have brought
relations between the two Asian giants to their lowest point since
normalisation in 1972, would be "considered illegal behaviour".
The Frontrunner?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7517177/site/newsweek/
Rome is filled with speculation that Ratzinger will be pope. And
that's just the first of the attacks on him.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Melinda Henneberger
Contributing Editor
Newsweek
Updated: 4:01 p.m. ET April 15, 2005
April 15 - Though the first ballot of the papal conclave is still days
away, the Italian press has already characterized Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger as the clear front-runner to succeed Pope John Paul II.
Melinda Henneberger
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/6c8de527325fe2df
The ethical revolution sweeping through the world's sweatshops
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=3D629863
By Maxine Frith, Social Affairs Correspondent
16 April 2005
They are the global brands that have raked in multimillion-pound
profits on the back of sweatshop labour in developing countries.
But after a decade of denying any wrongdoing, companies such as Nike
and Gap are now admitting that their workers have been exploited and
abused, and have pledged to improve the conditions of the millions of
people who are paid a few pence a day to make their top-selling goods.
Religious right plan Democrat-bashing 'Justice Sunday'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=3D629860
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
16 April 2005
Bill Frist, the Republican leader of the US Senate and strongly tipped
to run for the presidency in 2008, is to join a broadcast with
right-wing Christian evangelicals in which Democrats will be accused of
"standing against people of faith" by seeking to block George Bush's
judicial nominations.
Mr Frist has agreed to join a number of prominent Christian
conservatives for a service next weekend to be beamed live from a
"mega-church" in Kentucky to churches around the US and on the
internet. The event, organised by the Family Research Council (FRC),
has been dubbed "Justice Sunday".
Italians Feel They Need the Next Papacy for Themselves
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/international/worldspecial2/16italians.ht=
ml
By JASON HOROWITZ
Some Vatican historians believe that the election of another foreigner
as pope will conclude a historic shift of power away from Italy.
Chinese Authorities Temper Violent Anti-Japan Protests
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57832-2005Apr15.html
Students Cancel Mass March in Beijing
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 16, 2005; Page A13
BEIJING, April 16 -- More than 3,000 anti-Japanese protesters marched
through Shanghai Saturday and pelted the Japanese Consulate with eggs
and stones. But Chinese authorities, seeking to temper popular outrage,
prevailed on organizers to call off large-scale demonstrations planned
for Beijing.
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