A tragedy of his own making
David Corn
September 12, 2006 06:44 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_corn/2006/09/a_tragedy_of_his_own_making.html
The fifth anniversary of 9/11 changed little - particularly how the
president of the United States talks about the war in Iraq. George W.
Bush used the occasion to deliver a primetime speech to the nation
(and, I suppose, to the world) in which he once again tried to connect
9/11 to the war he initiated in Iraq. Bush, though, has been left
without much of a case. The new book that I co-wrote with Newsweek's
Michael Isikoff, offers many behind-the-scenes stories of how the White
House misrepresented the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Still, the
president pushes on.
In the lion's den
Brian Whitaker
September 12, 2006 06:14 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brian_whitaker/2006/09/in_the_lions_den.html
I don't know if Gordon Brown's supporters have seized control of the No
10 Downing Street website, but it looks as if someone has been doing a
bit of sabotage. In a statement about Tony Blair's visit to Lebanon
yesterday, the prime ministerial website says:
"The PM also re-iterated his desire ... to see what he called a
're-engerising' [presumably re-energising] of the Israel-Palestine
conflict."
Losing my religion
Sunny Hundal
September 12, 2006 05:15 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sunny_hundal/2006/09/my_religion_and_my_turf_war.html
It is sometimes said that Panjabis did not deserve Sikhism being
unleashed upon them because they squandered its teachings and values.
When the first Guru (teacher) of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev, started
preaching in around 1499, Panjab was a very volatile area rocked by
tension between Hindus and Muslims. It was also susceptible to constant
incursions by marauding armies from the area now broadly Afghanistan
and Pakistan.
Aimless and confused
Inayat Bunglawala
September 12, 2006 02:56 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/inayat_bunglawala/2006/09/martin_amis_aiming_and_missing.html
The fifth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy saw the publishing of a range
of articles in the British press reflecting on the progress (or the
lack of it) to date of the war on terror.
Perhaps the most discussed in the blogosphere has been Martin Amis's
12,000 word essay the "age of horrorism" published last Sunday in The
Observer.
Talking to terrorists
Conor Foley
September 12, 2006 02:28 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2006/09/why_not_talk_to_the_terrorists.html
There are three main reasons usually given for why governments should
refuse to talk to those engaged in political violence.
Firstly, it is said, the demands of such groups are so unreasonable
that they could never be conceded. Secondly, it is wrong, on principle,
to confer legitimacy on such groups by talking to them and thirdly, the
people engaged in such acts are so evil and irrational that talking to
them is a waste of time.
Champions of the people
David Hencke
September 12, 2006 01:46 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_hencke/2006/09/post_371.html
Ask any young person under 35 to name the TUC chief or the general
secretary of a trade union and you'll be met with blank
incomprehension. They probably won't have a clue. Thirty years ago they
would have probably reeled off a whole list, Arthur Scargill, Len
Murray, Jack Jones and Clive Jenkins, to name just a few. Like them or
loathe them, they were part of national life.
Today the unions are not. The fashionable view is that they are these
old dinosaurs, not longer relevant to the high tech, turbo charged,
celeb culture of 21st century Britain. Yet I have this sneaking feeling
that their time might come again and they could appeal to a new
generation.
The quest for a peacemaker
Karma Nabulsi
September 12, 2006 01:05 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/karma_nabulsi/2006/09/post_373.html
Bill Clinton, the most pro-Israel US president that had ever served in
the White House, suddenly decided in the summer of 2000 that he would
leave office as an international statesman, clouds of glory accruing to
his name. He would make good the failed Oslo Accords, earn his place in
the history books and, most importantly, retrieve his status as a
heroic peacemaker. He would do this by recreating the dramatic signing
between the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and the PLO leader,
Yasser Arafat, on the White House lawn - but this time solve the entire
conflict in one go.
The only problem with this scenario was that somebody had to make the
concessions in order to provide a platform for his ambition. Would
Clinton play an even-handed role in this process? The Palestinians told
him that the ground had not been prepared for such a high-stakes
negotiation, that the Israelis were not in the mood to make the
necessary concessions, and noted that Clinton had no recent form in
putting the necessary pressure on the Israelis to achieve any
constructive results.
Multinationals should listen to the street - not the City
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1868641,00.html
Shoshana Zuboff
Sunday September 10, 2006
The Observer
It has always seemed to me unlikely that Nero fiddled while Rome
burned. But we have seen Messrs Bush and Blair on vacation during a
terror crisis, and Bill Ford slashing production at his motor company
(while he was still chief executive). Ancient arrogance echoes through
today's corridors of power. It shapes the combat zone of public life,
through the loudly declared 'war on terror', but no less through
business's undeclared private war on us: consumers and employees.
The war on terror isn't like any other. Our enemies are in thrall to an
archaic patriarchy, yet their methods are anything but ancient.
Al-Qaeda is a 21st century peer-to-peer network that provides support -
training, finance, shared purpose - while self-managing local cadres
get things done. Linked by commitment, not chains of command, they
coordinate on the web. No uniforms or barbed wire separate them from
the street. Yet British and American leaders fight this war with a
20th-century arsenal that the American war correspondent Ernie Pyle
called 'the mass production of death'. Yes, the latest terror plot in
London was foiled - but not by the armies.
An inconvenient truth: beware the politician in fleece clothing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1870980,00.html
Al Gore's film delivers a stunning lesson on global warming. It should
also alert Britons to the danger of voting on personality
Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday September 13, 2006
The Guardian
I am ashamed to say it took a movie to make me realise what, above all
others, is surely the greatest political question of our time. An hour
and 40 minutes in the cinema watching Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth,
which opens in Britain this weekend, is what finally did it.
Sure, I had heard the warnings and read the reports: for two decades
environmental activists have been sounding the alarm. But, I confess,
none of it had really sunk in the way it did after seeing An
Inconvenient Truth. I can think of few films of greater political
power.
Attacks on multicultural Britain pave the way for enforced assimilation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1870907,00.html
The backward cultural discourse of mainland Europe, in which difference
is decried, is infecting our thinking
A Sivanandan
Wednesday September 13, 2006
The Guardian
The mounting campaign against multiculturalism by politicians, pundits
and the press, in Britain and across Europe, is neither innocent nor
innocuous. It is a prelude to a policy that deems there is one dominant
culture, one unique set of values, one nativist loyalty - a policy of
assimilation. And yet it is passed off as a virtuous attempt at
integration, thereby deliberately and dishonestly conflating the two
terms. To use "integration" and "assimilation" as synonyms is not just
to misuse language and confuse concepts, but to dissimulate practice.
Integration provides for the coexistence of minority cultures with the
majority culture; assimilation requires the absorption of minority
cultures into the majority culture. The aim of assimilation is a
monocultural, even a monofaith, society; the aim of integration is a
multicultural, pluralist society.
With the necons discredited, here comes libcon Cameron
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1870909,00.html
Bush and Blair believe al-Qaida threatens our way of life. They are
wrong, and the Tory leader seems to get it
Simon Jenkins
Wednesday September 13, 2006
The Guardian
He is right or he is wrong. Which? "The war on terror is the decisive
ideological struggle of the 21st century," said George Bush on Monday.
"It is a struggle for civilisation ... The safety of America depends on
the outcome of the battle on the streets of Baghdad." It is as
Manichean as that.
Bush is wrong. My parents endured one life-or-death struggle, against
Hitler's fascism, and I grew up during another, against Soviet
communism. Both were real threats. When Bush was dodging war service in
Vietnam and Tony Blair was a supporter of CND, I had no qualms about
backing nuclear deterrence. Foreigners did not just want to conquer my
country and change the way I lived, but they had amassed sufficient
state power to make that ambition plausible. I call that a threat to
the security of the nation. It required massive defence.
And now for something completely difficult ...
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1871169,00.html
Three decades after the Monty Python team made the silliest film ever,
it's been reborn as a hit musical. And it's even got the killer rabbit!
As Spamalot prepares to open in London, Eric Idle tells Dave Eggers why
this was something he had to get right
Wednesday September 13, 2006
The Guardian
Its colour reminds one of lightly tanned Caucasian flesh, or putty. Its
foundation is teak, stained luxuriously. Its body is segmented, much in
the way of certain insects, or most couches. In fact, it resembles in
many ways a small modular love seat, or a praying mantis. On its upper
extremities rests a modest matching pillow, rectangular and
leather-enclosed, awaiting a human head. It is a comfortable-seeming
thing, flexible without being adjustable, giving without being pliant.
"This is the chair," Eric Idle said. Almost two years ago, on a bright
October day in Los Angeles, Idle stood above the chair, looking down on
it. The chair was empty because Idle was standing.
"Yes, this is the one," Idle reiterated. This was the chair in which
the first pages, and the pages in the middle, and, later on, the last
pages of Spamalot, the musical-comedy adaptation of the film Monty
Python and the Holy Grail, were written.
Taliban exposes cracks in Nato
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1871090,00.html
Simon Tisdall
Wednesday September 13, 2006
The Guardian
Nato chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's public plea yesterday for up to
2,500 additional soldiers to fight alongside British, Canadian and
Dutch forces in southern Afghanistan has highlighted deep internal
strains in the alliance caused by unexpectedly fierce Taliban
resistance in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.
The Nato secretary-general's appeal followed an unsuccessful attempt to
drum up more support from leading members such as France, Germany,
Italy and Spain in Warsaw at the weekend. A formal force generation
conference will be held today. "We are working on getting nations to do
what they promised," Mr De Hoop Scheffer said. "I am calling for
alliance solidarity because some nations are carrying more of the
burden than others."
BBC did not know of 9/11 film's link to religious right
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1871146,00.html
David Leigh
Wednesday September 13, 2006
The Guardian
The BBC broadcast a controversial docu-drama, The Path to 9/11, this
week without realising that it had been made by a member of the US
religious right.
The three-hour programme, shown over two nights on BBC2 to commemorate
the fifth anniversary of the attack on the twin towers, was purchased
from ABC, a subsidiary of Disney. At the last minute the US television
company was forced to re-edit sequences after claims of distortion from
former president Bill Clinton and members of his administration.
Young Anger Foments Jihad
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/12/AR2006091201298.html
By David Ignatius
Wednesday, September 13, 2006; Page A17
During Monday's commemorations of the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11,
2001, I found myself wondering what the world will look like on the
10th anniversary, or the 20th. Will the catastrophe that began five
years ago become a permanent feature of life -- a "long war" that won't
end for many decades? Or will it gradually wane with time?
President Bush made an emphatic case for the long war in his speech to
the nation Monday night. In his account, America is locked not simply
in a war but in a meta-conflict, "the decisive ideological struggle of
the 21st century and the calling of our generation." He described a
global enemy of Muslim fanatics that imprisons women in their homes,
beats impious men and attacks Americans at will. I admire Bush's
toughness, but I disagree with his analysis.
With No Ideas, The GOP Seeks to Scare
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/12/AR2006091201306.html
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, September 13, 2006; Page A17
Wasn't it just a couple of years ago that Republicans were boasting
that they were the party of ideas? They would privatize the
commonwealth and globalize democracy, while Democrats clung to the
tattered banner of common security in both economics and national
defense. The intellectual energy in America, it seemed, was all on the
right.
That, as they say, was then. In 2006 the campaigns that the Republicans
are waging in their desperate attempt to retain power are so utterly
devoid of ideas that it's hard to believe they ever had an idea at all.
Bush Tells Group He Sees a 'Third Awakening'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/12/AR2006091201594.html
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 13, 2006; Page A05
President Bush said yesterday that he senses a "Third Awakening" of
religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the
nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted
as "a confrontation between good and evil."
Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open
expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he
suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other
religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham
Lincoln's strongest supporters were religious people "who saw life in
terms of good and evil" and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of
his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.
Pope Assails Secularism, Adding Footnote on Jihad
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/13/world/europe/13pope.html?ref=world&pagewanted=all
By IAN FISHER
In a speech on Western science and philosophy, the pope said jihadi
violence is contrary to reason and God's plan.
Wish you were here
Oliver Miles
September 13, 2006 09:28 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/oliver_miles/2006/09/what_was_the_pm_doing_in_the_m.html
How should we assess the Prime Minister's latest visit to the Middle
East?
Tony Blair has consistently argued that the Palestine question is
"central" in the Middle East. This position is shared by almost all
foreign leaders. But many let it go by default, whereas Tony Blair
comes back to it over and over again.
Uganda is the new Zimbabwe
Peter Tatchell
September 13, 2006 08:44 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/peter_tatchell/2006/09/uganda_gays_are_the_problem_no.html
Fifty-eight alleged lesbians and gays have been outed by the Ugandan
newspaper, Red Pepper - the latest outrage in an on-going homophobic
witch-hunt orchestrated by the government, police, media and churches
of Uganda.
Uganda is the new Zimbabwe. President Yoweri Museveni is the Robert
Mugabe of Uganda - a homophobic tyrant who tramples on the human rights
of gays and straights alike.
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