Can he hold the centre?
Ros Taylor
March 17, 2007 9:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ros_taylor/2007/03/bayrou_can_he_hold_t=
he_centre.html
"Nous attendons notre prince charmant," a friend told me a couple of
years ago as we talked about the state of France. That prince may well
turn out to be the less-than-charming Nicolas Sarkozy. For a while, it
looked likely to be a "princesse", in the shape of S=E9gol=E8ne Royal.
Both are still favourites to win the presidential elections.
But it increasingly looks as though France may not want either a
rupture with the past (however "tranquille") or a return to socialist
values. It may want nothing more than a gentle kiss to wake it from
the uncomfortable dream of the past decade. And the man hovering over
the sleeping body of Marianne is Fran=E7ois Bayrou.
Iran awakening?
Hossein Derakhshan
March 16, 2007 11:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/hossein_derakhshan/2007/03/iran_awakeni=
ng.html
Two well-known and moderate women's rights activists have been
detained in Iran since last week for participating in a peaceful
street protest. The incident has outraged activists in Iran and
elsewhere, but there is much more to it.
On June 23, 2003, after months of heated debate, the then-reformist
parliament in Iran passed a bill, in favor of signing a UN document
that would abolish legal discrimination against women.
The case against St Patrick's Day
Ian Williams
March 16, 2007 8:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_williams/2007/03/how_green_is_my_gu=
iness.html
As we approach St Patrick's Day, it's possible to buy Kerrygold Irish
butter in all its yellow-salty-artery-clogging glory in New York. But
it's small reward for the outrageous tribalistic shamrockery that will
accompany it - including the ubiquitous Bailey's Cream that is made
with what's left of the milk when the butter is churned away.
I remember a friend from Dublin hooting when a waiter in a second
avenue Irish bar offered the corned beef and cabbage that is passed
off as traditional St Patrick's Day fare. "For God's sake man, I came
thousands of miles to get away from that crap."
The pink tide flows
Roger Burbach
March 16, 2007 8:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/roger_burbach/2007/03/the_pink_tide_flo=
ws.html
The pink tide flows
The United States is suffering yet another setback in Latin America as
the Ecuadorian "pink tide" grows. While President Rafael Correa is
locked in battle with the Ecuadorian Congress over a plebiscite
calling for a new constitution to "refound" the country, the new
leftist government has moved assertively in its relations with the
United States. The minister of moreign relations, Maria Fernanda
Espinosa, has announced that Ecuador intends to shut down an important
US military base located at Manta on the coast. "Ecuador is a
sovereign nation, we do not need any foreign troops in our country,"
she said. The treaty for the base expires in 2009 and will not be
renewed.
The beginning of Mugabe's end?
Richard Dowden
March 16, 2007 7:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_dowden/2007/03/the_beginning_of=
_mugabes_end.html
Zimbabwe has had two rulers leaders in 43 years. Both gave the finger
to international opinion and led their country into isolation,
conflict and despair. Ian Smith and Robert Mugabe have much in common,
but, in the end, Ian Smith blinked and came to the negotiating table.
Mugabe shows no sign of blinking. Not even when inflation hit 1,594%
in February.
He was probably happy to see that picture of a bloodied, beaten Morgan
Tsvangirai broadcast around Zimbabwe: that is what happens to those
who oppose me. He probably wasn't too worried when the picture
appeared on the front pages of the rest of the world. He knows they
can't touch him.
Representing Islam
Naima Bouteldja
March 16, 2007 7:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/naima_bouteldja/2007/03/the_burdens_of_=
representation.html
Timothy Garton-Ash is obviously right in his assertion that "what has
characterised the Muslim world throughout history is the great
diversity of what Muslims say and do under the banner of Islam." One
could even afford a smile, if it was not so worrying, that this idea,
considered self-evident for any other ethnic or religious group, is
proclaimed as if a groundbreaking discovery. What it shows, yet again,
is that when it comes to issues related to Islam and Muslims, the
world has gone slightly mad.
Take the word "Islamism", which represents a political momentum that
emerged in the Muslim world within the context of western colonial
expansion during the 19th and 20th centuries. Islamism, when used by
politicians or media pundits, is rarely defined and is often rashly
substituted for terrorism. Yet, most in-depth research on political
Islam illustrates that Islamism is not a monolithic, static, insular
movement but one with multiple threads and tendencies that varies from
country to country, depending on internal political and economic
characteristics, as well as the wider, regional and international
geopolitical environment. Fran=E7ois Burgat, writer and researcher of
Face to face with Political Islam, identifies the importance of the
educational background of Islamists, and elucidates how Islamists have
revealed themselves throughout history in different guises, whether as
literalists or liberals, democrats or authoritarians, legalists or
sectarian revolutionaries, etc.
Not-so-bright Young thing
Paul MacInnes
March 16, 2007 6:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/paul_macinnes/2007/03/i_have_always_det=
ested_toby.html
I have always detested Toby Young: a man who seems to have made an
entire career from solipsism, and whose journalism has become
increasingly a means for plugging projects in other media. And that's
just the stuff he writes for the Guardian.
So, perhaps I should have been pleased today when I opened the pages
of "London's Quality Newspaper", the Evening Standard, to find his
physiog staring out from a piece of commentary related to the murder
of teenager Kodjo Yenga in Hammersmith yesterday. And then I read the
headline.
Platforms for dissent
Inayat Bunglawala
March 16, 2007 6:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/inayat_bunglawala/2007/03/betrayed_by_o=
ur_guardian.html
A free media. That's what I was taught to believe we had in the UK
when I was growing up in Bolton. So, when I was at university in the
late 1980s and the Satanic Verses affair became worldwide news, there
was a stock explanation given to all those, including me, who took
part in marches to protest about the passages they found offensive in
Salman Rushdie's book: we have a free media and that must include the
right to offend.
It was an argument that I later personally came to appreciate and
understand the value of, when I found out that the Saudi authorities
did not allow one of my favourite books, Muhammad Asad's The Message
of the Qur'an, to be sold in their country.
Is society past its sell-by?
Neal Lawson
March 16, 2007 5:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/neal_lawson/2007/03/so_almost_one_in_th=
ree.html
So, almost one in three items you take off the shelves in the
supermarket and put in your trolley, you may as well put straight in
the bin. Only, we don't. We select the items carefully, put in them in
the trolley, then out of the trolley and through the till, back in the
trolley, in and out of the car, then on the shelf or in the fridge,
before finally admitting defeat and slinging them in the bin. That's
not a few items - but every other, other one.
This is economic and environmental madness. But we keep doing it. In
fact, one definition of madness is the repetition of the same process,
believing it will result in a different outcome: ie, that we will
actually consume all we buy. But it's getting worse, not better.
One-line genius
Duncan Campbell
March 16, 2007 5:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/duncan_campbell/2007/03/there_has_been_=
much_coverage.html
There has been much coverage of the competing claims of biologist
Richard Dawkins and comedian Peter Kay for this month's Galaxy British
Book Awards. Dawkins has been nominated for The God Delusion, and Kay
for The Sound of Laughter.
But there has been much less about Kay's line in Phoenix Nights:
"Garlic bread - it's the future, I've tasted it," which was named best
one-liner in television comedy in a poll last year.
What's our story?
Timothy Garton Ash
March 16, 2007 4:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/timothy_garton_ash/2007/03/vote_for_eur=
opes_best_story.html
Europe is 50 next Sunday (March 25). Well, not exactly. More like
2,500 (for the word) or 10,000 going on 100,000 (for the place). But
the European economic community that eventually became today's
European Union can be dated back to the Treaty of Rome, signed 50
years ago next Sunday.
Compare Europe today to Europe in 1957, let alone 1947 or 1937, and
you see what a huge success story it is. But there won't be all that
much genuine, spontaneous celebration. People take the achievements of
the EU for granted, and see only its (very large) shortcomings -
unemployment, inequality, bureaucracy, ethnic tensions, failure to
speak with one voice, hypocrisy on trade etc.
Where are the women?
Riazat Butt
March 16, 2007 3:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/riazat_butt/2007/03/the_equal_opportuni=
ties_commis.html
The Equal Opportunities Commission says black and Asian women are
missing from three out of 10 workplaces. The Muslim Council of
Britain, ever ready with a response, says, "a fundamental cultural
shift is needed among minority communities, but mainly in workplaces
and in public policy-making".
So says MCB secretary-general Dr Abdul Bari, who, last time I looked,
is a man. It's too easy to declare open season on the MCB, so let me
ask all these bodies with the word "Muslim" in them to do their bit
for equal opportunities by encouraging and promoting women to come
forward and step into the spotlight.
Viva Rio
Conor Foley
March 16, 2007 3:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2007/03/viva_rio.html
I was not asked to contribute a blog for Comment is free's first
birthday (sob), but I did get a present in the form of an extremely
interesting and informative threads beneath one of my articles.
The original piece was based on a rather facile joke that President
Lula made about George Bush's G-spot on his visit to Brazil. What
followed was a passionately argued discussion about the nature and
extent of racism in Brazilian society, and its links to poverty,
violence and injustice. It fell off the front page fairly quickly, but
it really is worth reading in full.
Dissent into the unknown
Frank Fisher
March 16, 2007 2:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/frank_fisher/2007/03/the_normalisation_=
of_censorshi.html
An interesting aspect of Comment is free's anniversary threads was the
constant reference to censorship of one variety or another across so
many threads. The "what would you change about the world" thread,
which most posters had decided was another "what would you change
about Cif" thread, teemed with complaints regarding banned posters,
and vanished posts.
Two themes stood out: a request for some kind of explanation for the
censorship, and a request that it stop. Without getting in to the
details, what I would once have found fascinating, but now merely find
routine, is that Cif's editor, Georgina Henry, reckoned that to avoid
censorship, all the posters had to do was abide by the Guardian's talk
policy. Ah but Georgina ... don't you see that that is censorship?
Prior restraint on conversation?
A new spin on the boardroom
Jonathan Freedland
March 16, 2007 2:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_freedland/2007/03/whatever_the=
_bbc_nature_and.html
Whatever the BBC nature and politics departments have produced for
2007, it won't come close to Comic Relief Does The Apprentice, the
first delicious chunk of which aired on BBC1 last night, with another
serving to come tonight.
The patient folks of the nature unit may scour the world, filming dung
beetles, minke whales and heavyweight gorillas, but they will struggle
to find a display of alpha-male behaviour to match what we saw
yesterday. As Alastair Campbell and Piers Morgan sought to take charge
of the boys' team - whether out-negotiating the girls in the quest for
the best choice of fairground rides or drumming out weaklings like
Rupert Everett - the testosterone rose like a vapour from the screen.
The fact that they had spent so many years locked in combat against
each other - when Campbell served as lead henchman to Tony Blair,
while Morgan edited the Daily Mirror - made the rivalry fierce enough
to have the television smelling like a locker room. The pair are so
macho that Danny Baker and Ross Kemp - ordinarily both lads' lads -
had no choice but to retreat, effete wimps by comparison. And that's
even before we get to the boardroom scenes tonight, when Campbell and
Morgan will surely turn on each other like lions who haven't eaten for
a month.
A question of degree
Open Thread
March 16, 2007 1:27 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/open_thread/2007/03/graduation_day_phot=
ographer_ap.html
From next year, university candidates will be asked to state on their
application form whether or not their parents hold a degree. The move
comes as part of an effort to drive up the number of students from
disadvantaged backgrounds getting into university. Ucas, the central
university admissions body, has said that the controversial move will
give admissions officers a more rounded picture of applicants.
A half-baked notion
Matthew Fort
March 16, 2007 1:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/matthew_fort/2007/03/half_baked.html
Of all the disgusting things I can think of to put in my mouth - and I
speak as someone who has choked his way through more than his fair
share of unspeakable food - a pizza topped "with creme fraiche,
chives, eight ounces of four different kinds of Petrossian caviar,
four ounces of thinly sliced Maine lobster tail, salmon roe and a bit
of wasabi" comes pretty near the top of the list. That isn't a pizza.
It's one of those Danish open sandwiches so beloved of cocktail
parties in the 1970s. It is an exercise in vulgarity, to go alongside
other overpriced gourmet gross-outs, over-publicised by an over-
credulous media. Gordon Ramsay's beefburger with foie gras and
Selfridge's Waygu beef sandwich spring to mind.
When you think about it, I suppose the caviar pizza is merely another
version of the American dream. Originally, it was a dish of the poor
of Naples, an ingenious way of stretching a few ingredients - a thin
base of bread, a smearing of intense tomato sauce, a few bits of
cheese, an olive or two and an anchovy fillet, or whatever tasty bits
and bobs you had hanging around - to produce a tummy-filling mouthful.
And then, along with a lot of other impoverished Italians from the
south, the pizza emigrated to the land flowing with milk and honey,
where there are only two sizes - large and king size - and where
anyone can become a billionaire if they dare to dream. And that's what
happened to the pizza. It became a calorie billionaire, the size of a
double bed, deep pan, sodden in salt, sugar and fat, with extra cheese
stuffed into the crust.
An exclusive club
Mark Seddon
March 16, 2007 12:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mark_seddon/2007/03/do_as_i_say_not_as_=
i_do.html
Dr ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency is in
no doubt. His job, he recently told reporters, in telling the Iranians
to abide by the non-proliferation treaty, or helping to cajole the
North Koreans back in, is not made easier when countries such as
Britain upgrade their nuclear weapons programmes.
Ironically, Tony Blair got his way in parliament over modernising
Trident just as his ambassador to the United Nations was finessing,
with his permanent five security council colleagues, a new round of
sanctions against Iran. There is no doubt that Iran is in breach of UN
security council resolutions that call upon the country to halt the
move to uranium enrichment. And many UN member states do believe that
Iran wants to embark on a nuclear weapons programme, not least because
the political leadership has seen that in the case of North Korea,
having nuclear weapons brings direct negotiations with the United
States, and of course a degree of respect.
Law and disorder
Jakob Illeborg
March 16, 2007 11:30 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jakob_illeborg/2007/03/lock_them_up.html
During the recent riots in Copenhagen the police made and
unprecedented amount of arrests in an attempt to quell the riots. The
total number of arrests made in the three days the riots lasted passed
the 800 mark, making it the biggest mass-arrest in Danish history.
The object of the conflict was Ungdomshuset (The Youth House) and
accordingly many were minors. The arrested were brought before an
examining magistrate and more or less indiscriminately detained. Now,
almost 14 days after the riots started, around half of the detained
have been released. The rest are still being held. The tactics applied
by the police (the so called pincers manoeuvre) basically blocks off
all escape routes within a certain area and all people present are
arrested. The tactics are pretty efficient, but the problem in
Copenhagen arose when the magistrates had to decide who could be
detained and who should be set free. Defence lawyers are arguing that
dozens of innocent people were held without shred of evidence to prove
that they participated in the riots.
Watching David Coleman
Teresa Hayter
March 16, 2007 11:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/teresa_hayter/2007/03/watching_david_co=
leman_1.html
Oxford university students have challenged demography Professor David
Coleman. Coleman is co-founder of the anti-immigration pressure group
Migration Watch, and a long-term member and sometime office-holder in
the Eugenics Society and its successor the Galton Institute (thus
renamed because the word eugenics, unsurprisingly, shocks).
Coleman's figures on the many millions of immigrants who might come to
Britain are catchy, clever PR stuff. They are, of course, gleefully
picked up by the British National Party and by the tabloids. The BNP's
website, to "end on a cheery note", refers to "our friends at the
immigration-reform think tank Migration Watch" and describes Coleman
as "a very distinguished demographer whom we trust". Migration Watch
also penetrates into more respectable parts of the media. Both Coleman
and his co-founder Sir Andrew Green make frequent appearances in the
media, including the BBC. Green was even one of three "expert
witnesses" to a parliamentary investigation into the removal of asylum
seekers.
Identity on parade
Josh Freedman Berthoud
March 16, 2007 10:30 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/josh_freedman_berthoud/2007/03/eurovisi=
on_wrong_contest.html
Wednesday's decision by the Eurovision organisers to allow Israeli
band the Teapacks into the song contest, in spite of their lyrics
portending of nuclear war, should have been greeted by Israelis
everywhere with concern.
Not because the band is unlikely to win. As far as I know they may be
as good/bad if not better/worse than Dana International, the Israeli
transsexual who won in 1998. And not because they sing of "crazy
rulers" who are "gonna push the button" - widely assumed to be a
reference to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (though this is denied by the band).
As far as I'm concerned, if a neighbouring ruler had spoken of a need
to wipe my home country off the planet and seemed to be moving towards
gathering the nuclear capacity to do so, I'd be scared too.
'Fascism is in fashion'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2036087,00.html
Murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya was fearless in her pursuit of
truth. In this shocking extract from her final book, she chronicles
the death of Russian democracy
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
December 7 2003
The day of the elections to the Duma, the [same] day Putin began his
campaign for re-election as president. In the morning he manifested
himself at a polling station. He was cheerful, elated even, and a
little nervous. This was unusual: as a rule he is sullen. With a broad
smile, he informed those assembled that his beloved labrador, Connie,
had had puppies during the night. "Vladimir Vladimirovich was so very
worried,' Mme Putina intoned behind her husband. "We are in a hurry to
get home," she added, anxious to return to the ***** whose impeccable
timing had presented this gift to the United Russia party.
Stern consequences
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2036033,00.html
This week's ambitious climate change bill demands big cuts in carbon
emissions. David Adam meets the globetrotting economist who seems
reluctant to take the credit
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
For a man who likes to warn of impending financial meltdown because of
global warming, Sir Nicholas Stern has a gigantic carbon footprint.
The soon-to-be former head of the UK Government Economic Service has
criss-crossed the globe in recent months, to share the bad news -
climate change could bring a worldwide economic downturn comparable to
the great depression or the two world wars. After trips to Brussels,
Washington DC, Japan, China, India and South Africa, next week he is
scheduled to leave on the final leg of his end-of-world tour, taking
in Indonesia, Australia and California.
The perfect monument to Blair's defining manias
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2036154,00.html
Retail jails are the latest in a long line of failed and forgotten
initiatives. We need to tidy up with a Loose Ends Tour
Marina Hyde
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
Of all the myriad amusements contained in last year's leaked Downing
Street plan for Tony Blair's farewell tour, one stood out. "He needs
to go with the crowds wanting more," blathered some anonymous Blair
ultra. "He should be the star who won't even play that last encore."
The immediate deduction - that these people are living in a parallel
Britain, where Mr Blair's eventual departure will be impeded by a
bawling electorate clinging to his ankles in the manner of a child
unwilling to be left at nursery school - was nothing new. The
desperate desire for attention runs like a golden thread through the
tapestry of Mr Blair's time in office, and the document was perhaps
remarkable only in how closely it harked back to the concerns of
another memo, penned by the prime minister himself, which emerged in
2000. On that occasion, the PM called for more "eye-catching
initiatives" with which he "should be personally associated".
In a British fairyland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2036156,00.html
The portrayal of Sinn F=E9in as a reluctant partner in peace is a
fiction that did not fool the Irish voters
Ronan Bennett
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
Does Sinn F=E9in deserve no credit for the extraordinary transformation
that has taken place in the north of Ireland over the past 15 years?
From Peter Mandelson's account of the prime minister's handling of the
peace process, one would think that the British government had to drag
a stubborn republican leadership kicking and screaming to the
negotiating table, and that once there they could only be kept on
board by repeated capitulation to republican demands.
A special relationship with Angela is just what we need
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2036085,00.html
The dialogue that Britain has with Germany is as crucial to this
country's role in the world as the one with America
Martin Kettle
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
The German chancellor Angela Merkel heads a weak coalition government
held together by the awareness that any alternative would be more
fragile still. Yet she commands the European stage without challenge.
If Tony Blair was Europe's figurehead politician before Iraq, and
Jacques Chirac afterwards, since 2005 that role has been captured by
Merkel. To the rest of the world, she is us.
Fifty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, this is
historically appropriate. It was Germany's destructive potential that
defined the 20th-century Europe the treaty aimed to replace. But it is
Germany's constructive potential that also defines, to a degree still
misunderstood, the 21st-century Europe in which we now live.
The nuisance is mobile
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2036155,00.html
With no other decent reason to ban the use of mobile phones, hospitals
are reverting to snobbery
James Harkin
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
There is no more anyone needs to know about the strange hybrid of
medieval and futuristic that is the British government's technology
policy than to stand in the entrance of a major NHS hospital, wearing
only a flimsy knee-length gown and whispering a snatched conversation
with a friend on a mobile phone. This was my plight when, wheeled into
St Thomas's with acute appendicitis, I was informed that I wasn't
allowed to use my mobile phone because of "health and safety"
considerations. The health and safety considerations of me freezing my
arse off were not discussed.
Ultimate absurdity
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2036086,00.html
Charging victims of miscarriages of justice for their board and
lodging in prison is a gross insult
Duncan Campbell
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
In his play One Way Pendulum, first performed in 1959, the absurdist
dramatist NF Simpson created a judge with a magnificent sense of
logic. Sentencing a man convicted of 43 murders, he noted that, while
two character witnesses had spoken on his behalf, "from your 43
victims - not a word. Not one of those 43 had felt under any
obligation to come forward and speak for you." Nonetheless, the judge
discharged the man, saying that to jail him would put him beyond the
reach of the law "in respect of those crimes which he has not yet had
an opportunity to commit ... The law is not to be cheated in this
way."
Face to faith
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2036115,00.html
The England v Israel game raises some interesting questions about
loyalty, says Jonathan Romain
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
For some the forthcoming football match between England and Israel
will just be an entertaining game between two teams; but for others it
will provoke uneasy memories of a challenge to their identity. In the
1960s there was a question that many Jewish children were asked at
some point during their school days: if there was to be a war between
England and Israel, which side would you be on?
Being children, we were not aware of the historical background: the
tensions between the British authorities and the Zionist leadership
during the last years of the mandate; the blame game between Britain,
France and Israel after the Suez debacle in 1956. However, we were
sufficiently alert to sense that this apparently simple question
carried subterranean resonances of dual loyalty and needed to be
handled with care.
The wasteland - inside Mugabe's crumbling state
http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,,2036161,00.html
At the end of a week that saw protests violently crushed, Chris
McGreal reports from Bulawayo on a nation sliding into chaos
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
Among the many signs of a country sliding into chaos, one has gone
largely unnoticed: Zimbabwe's morgues are filling up. It's not only
that more people are dying, but also that the families of those who
are cannot afford to pay their medical bills any longer. To escape
them, relatives are registering the sick under false names. When they
die, the bodies cannot be claimed.
The practice is just one of the increasingly desperate measures
Zimbabweans are taking to survive in a collapsing economy where
inflation runs at 1,700% a year and the value of local currency can
plummet in a few hours.
Olmert defiant as calls grow for resignation ahead of war report
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2036203,00.html
=B7 Israeli prime minister admits he is unpopular
=B7 Media criticism a 'cauldron of poison', he tells party
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has made a fresh attempt to
improve his political standing ahead of a crucial report that is
expected to criticise his handling of last summer's war in Lebanon.
In an unusually defiant speech to his Kadima party's governing
council, Mr Olmert admitted he was "an unpopular prime minister" but
showed he intends to ride out calls for his resignation.
CIA spy says cover blown by own side
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2036157,00.html
=B7 Plame claims government destroyed her career
=B7 Lives put in danger by 'reckless' leak
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
Valerie Plame, the former CIA spy at the heart of an Iraq weapons
scandal, yesterday blamed the Bush administration for "carelessly and
recklessly" blowing her cover, saying it was ironic that her own
government had destroyed her career rather than an enemy state.
Ms Plame's identity was disclosed in the press in July 2003, four
months after the invasion of Iraq.
She was giving evidence to a Congressional committee, some of whose
members claimed the Bush administration deliberately leaked her name
in an act of personal vindictiveness after the agent's husband, the
former US ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote an anti-war article in the New
York Times.
'I try to forget - but i can't'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,2033934,00.html
She was the 12-year-old girl filmed crying alongside her father and
siblings as they lay dying - victims of an explosion at a family
picnic. But what happened to Huda Ghalia next? Rory McCarthy meets the
shy, teased girl who became a symbol of Palestinian despair
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
It was a Friday afternoon in June. The sky over Gaza was a broad wash
of purple blue, and along the seafront the surf was breaking into
small whitecaps. Ali Ghalia was on a day off from his work as a farmer
and decided to take his family for lunch on the beach at Beit Lahiya,
a few minutes' drive from their home. The beach on the Mediterranean,
with its rolling dunes and dry grasses, is a rare delight in a stretch
of land ground down by poverty, overcrowding, militancy and decades of
military occupation. It is free to the public and barely touched by
development - just a few half-built hotels are dotted along the 25-
mile coastline, the shadow of a tourist industry that never was.
Ghalia had two wives, as is still sometimes the custom in the
Palestinian territories, and both were with him on the beach that day,
along with their dozen children and their beach kit: several plastic
armchairs, plates of food and cooking pots, flasks of tea, plastic
toys, blankets to sit on and a small cot for the baby. They ate lunch
and lazed in the sunshine, and were still on the beach shortly after
4=2E30pm.
Take the Coca out of Cola, Bolivian farmers say
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2036007,00.html
Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
It may be called Coca-Cola, but though the drink uses the name of the
coca leaf, its maker shies away from confirming whether the leaf is
one of its ingredients. Now Bolivian coca farmers want to reclaim the
leaf as part of their country's cultural heritage by forcing the US
drinks giant to change its brand name.
A resolution by a farmers' lobby group has been adopted by an assembly
that is rewriting Bolivia's constitution, potentially tipping the
government into a legal battle against Coca-Cola and other companies
that use the name of the leaf.
Iran crushes teachers' pay protest
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2036297,00.html
Robert Tait in Tehran
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
The authorities in Iran have arrested up to 1,000 teachers in a brutal
crackdown that signals their determination to break a pay revolt.
Riot police beat demonstrators with batons as they tried to gather
outside Iran's parliament and education ministry and herded them into
police vans and buses before transporting them to detention centres
across Tehran.
Around 150 of those arrested in Wednesday's protest are still in
custody, with the ringleaders believed to be in the capital's
notorious Evin prison. Others were released after signing a commitment
not to participate in "illegal" demonstrations.
=A325 fridge gadget that could slash greenhouse emissions
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2036183,00.html
David Adam, environment correspondent
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
It is made of wax, is barely three inches across and comes in any
colour you like, as long as it's black. And it could save more
greenhouse gas emissions than taxes on gas guzzling cars, low energy
light bulbs and wind turbines on houses combined. It is the e-cube,
and it is coming soon to a fridge near you.
Invented by British engineers, the =A325 gadget significantly reduces
the amount of energy used by fridges and freezers, which are estimated
to consume about a fifth of all domestic electricity in the UK. If one
was fitted to each of the 87 million refrigeration units in Britain,
carbon dioxide emissions would fall by more than 2 million tonnes a
year.
Windows on a mother's war
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2035016,00.html
Kamila Shamsie finds few certainties in A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam,
a story rooted in the birth pangs of Bangladesh
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
A Golden Age
by Tahmima Anam
288pp, John Murray, =A314.99
"Dear Husband, I lost our children today." The startlingly blunt
opening words of Tahmima Anam's much-anticipated debut novel are
addressed to a dead man by his widow, Rehana Haque, whose children
have been taken from her by her brother-in-law and his wife; they
convince a judge that she is an unfit mother, based on a combination
of her financial situation and her bad parenting skills, as displayed
by her decision to take her young children to watch Cleopatra. Her son
and daughter are taken from her, for a year, to another part of
Pakistan - a more dramatic physical separation than a present-day map
might suggest, since this is 1959, when Pakistan was divided into two
wings. Rehana is left in Dhaka, East Pakistan, with all the great mass
of India separating her from her children in West Pakistan's port city
of Karachi.
Damned if you don't
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2034996,00.html
Blake Morrison hails Clair Wills's balanced and subtle account of
Ireland's wartime neutrality, That Neutral Island
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
That Neutral Island: A Cultural History of Ireland During the Second
World War
by Clair Wills
352pp, Faber, =A325
Like Auden and Isherwood's departure for America in 1939, Ireland's
wartime neutrality was once a source of bitter controversy. Winston
Churchill was the fiercest critic, denouncing the Irish premier Eamon
de Valera as unprincipled and cowardly, and leaning on him (without
success) to lease back the Treaty ports that Britain had finally given
up in 1938. The Americans were no less vituperative, once they
belatedly joined the Allies, accusing the Irish of acting as "a ready-
made Trojan horse" for Hitler. And there were also criticisms from
Irish writers based abroad, including Louis MacNeice, who wrote of the
"neutral island in the heart of man", and Samuel Beckett, whose
efforts in the French resistance made him scornful of those back home
("My friends eat sawdust and turnips while all of Ireland safely
gorges"). A recurrent image, ironic given that wartime Britain was
enduring blackouts while Dublin blazed with light, was of a people
living in darkness, their faces turned away from Europe's suffering as
they skulked in the peasant mindset of Ballygobackwards. Whether
through passive indifference or active collaboration, either way they
were "shaking hands with murder".
'Hamburg must have had it'
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2034998,00.html
Keith Lowe's Inferno describes the bombing of Hamburg from the
perspective of the pilots and the civilians, says Claire Tomalin
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg 1943
by Keith Lowe
512pp, Viking, =A325
This is a sad, straightforward, well-researched book that gives an
account of the bombing of Hamburg in the summer of 1943 from the point
of view both of the bombers, English and American, and the Germans who
endured it, experiencing the worst fire storm ever produced. More
people were killed than at Nagasaki. There were 45,000 dead and 38,000
injured, while a million fled, their homes destroyed. Remarkably, the
survivors of Hamburg have never complained. They saw the attack as
something brought down on them by the Nazi regime's manner of making
war.
The voyage of their life
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2035011,00.html
James Fenton discovers human history in the logbooks of empire
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
An extraordinary document is coming up for sale at Bonhams in
Knightsbridge on March 21: the logbook of the slave schooner Juverna.
You can view it (and other items in the "Scientific and Marine" sale,
including an incredibly early and rare astrolabe found in Canterbury)
from tomorrow on. Don't be shy. There's no reason why they shouldn't
be happy to show it to anyone with any sort of interest in seeing what
this kind of document looks like. It's about 90 pages long, written in
a standard pre-printed journal book, published by Smith's navigation
shop, Pool Lane, Liverpool.
Go bright green
Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century exhorts Josh Lacey
to embrace his inner geek, grow mushrooms and turn off the vampire
power.
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century
edited by Alex Steffen
608pp, Abrams, =A324.95
How shall we save the world? Here's one way. We must stop flying. We
must switch off our cities and get back to the land. We must renounce
all the dirty pleasures of modern life. Never again will we eat a
fresh mango in March. Alex Steffen and the other contributors to
worldchanging.com - and this big book which the website has spawned -
describe that puritanical branch of ecological thought as "dark green"
and, in opposition, describe themselves as "bright green". Dark greens
demand that you dismantle your car and get a bike instead; bright
greens recommend you upgrade to a Toyota Prius. Dark greens say the
world is already overpopulated; bright greens suggest that with more
efficient farming, we could feed another few billion.
Ahead of the curve
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2035007,00.html
Alvar Aalto was the kinder, gentler face of modernism - the man who
put Finland on the architectural map, and made saunas his speciality.
Fiona MacCarthy recalls a shared lunch of smoked reindeer and schnapps
in his elegant Helsinki restaurant
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
Why use a straight line when you can make a curving one? Alvar Aalto's
buildings have an undulating force. The walkways curl around them. The
rooflines curve and soar. Even Aalto's famous vases are designed to be
things of rippling contours. The Finnish 20th-century modernist
architect was a master of sinuosity. If Mies van der Rohe was the high
priest of angularity, Aalto was his opposite. It is Aalto's
predilection for these lyrical, organic forms and natural materials
that suits our current mood.
Clever pigs and showers of toads
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2034999,00.html
Let's have more tall tales, says Daniel Hahn, examining Jan Bondeson's
cabinet of animal curiosities, The Cat Orchestra and the Elephant
Butler
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
The Cat Orchestra and the Elephant Butler
by Jan Bondeson
320pp, Tempus, =A320
The memoirs of 14th-century traveller John Mandeville, a great soup of
wild tales now (alas) discredited, recount his marvellous encounters
with centaurs, cyclopses and pygmies, and the unusual experience of
eating a vegetable lamb and drinking from the fountain of youth. All
quite remarkable, really.
The challenge inherent in any attempt to tell stories such as those in
Jan Bondeson's entertaining new collection of animal curiosities is to
find a voice that combines genuinely felt wonder with clear-sighted
scepticism and robust scientific questioning, without veering too far
either way - in other words, avoiding the trap of seeming either an
easy dupe or a literal-minded killjoy. Bondeson, a veteran of this
kind of book, steers the course between wonder and doubt with some
expertise.
In praise of polyps
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2035001,00.html
Coral: A Pessimist in Paradise by Steve Jones charms and perplexes
Richard Fortey
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian
Coral: A Pessimist in Paradise
by Steve Jones
256pp, Little, Brown, =A315.99
Thomas Carlyle described the first volume of Ruskin's The Stones of
Venice as "sermons in stone". In the same spirit Steve Jones's book on
coral could be described as "parables in polyps". The coral of the
title provides a rather loose link for a series of ruminations on
natural history and global change. The pessimistic conclusion is that
we humans are doomed, sooner or later - and probably sooner. The death
of the coral that is happening now is a herald of what will ultimately
happen to us all. The message is neither new nor cheering, but it is
very well told.
Zimbabwe is Africa's shame, Tutu declares
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2366501.ece
By Basildon Peta in Johannesburg and Daniel Howden
Published: 17 March 2007
Opponents of Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe have vowed to
drive him from office saying the state was already at "war" with its
own people.
Arthur Mutambara, the leader of one of the two factions of the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), yesterday delivered the
strongest call for action yet against the increasingly violent
regime."If there is going to be any war, this is the time to declare
war," he said. The Oxford and MIT-educated professor was among those
detained and beaten by police at a peaceful prayer meeting on Sunday.
'Black Jesus' who terrorised jungle villages is captured
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2366505.ece
By Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent
Published: 17 March 2007
He called himself Black Jesus but Steven Tari was a false prophet,
according to police in Papua New Guinea, where the Bible school drop-
out will face charges of murder and cannibalism after being captured
in a jungle village.
Tari, the leader of an obscure cult with 6,000 followers, had been on
the run since last June, when he escaped from custody with the help of
a Lutheran pastor. Suspected of raping scores of girls and carrying
out sacrificial killings, Tari eluded police by staying on the move
and hiding in far-flung mountain villages.
Protesters claim Egypt has become police state
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2366502.ece
By Peter Popham in Cairo
Published: 17 March 2007
Riot police and others in plain clothes fought protesters in Cairo's
central Tahrir [Liberation] Square this week as government opponents
denounced constitutional amendments which they claim will turn Egypt
into a police state for ever.
It could be the dissidents' last opportunity to protest. On Monday,
parliament delivers its final vote on the amendments - in effect a
rubber stamp - then the nation will be invited to endorse them through
a popular referendum. The exercise is seen by many as a farce: the
government claims that about 30 per cent of the electorate turns out
to vote, but one of Egypt's most prominent activist bloggers said the
figure was closer to 2 per cent. In either case, the passing of the
referendum is a foregone conclusion. The most sweeping change to
Egypt's constitution in 35 years will then be law.
Robert Fisk: The truth should be proclaimed loudly
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2366519.ece
When has any publisher ever tried to avoid publicity for his book?
Published: 17 March 2007
Stand by for a quotation to take your breath away. It's from a letter
from my Istanbul publishers, who are chickening out of publishing the
Turkish-language edition of my book The Great War for Civilisation.
The reason, of course, is a chapter entitled "The First Holocaust",
which records the genocide of one and a half million Armenians by the
Ottoman Turks in 1915, a crime against humanity that even Lord Blair
of Kut al-Amara tried to hide by initially refusing to invite Armenian
survivors to his Holocaust Day in London.
It is, I hasten to add, only one chapter in my book about the Middle
East, but the fears of my Turkish friends were being expressed even
before the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was so cruelly
murdered outside his Istanbul office in January. And when you read the
following, from their message to my London publishers HarperCollins,
remember it is written by the citizen of a country that seriously
wishes to enter the European Community. Since I do not speak Turkish,
I am in no position to criticise the occasional lapses in Mr Osman's
otherwise excellent English.
Riot police smash up TV studio as protests grow against Musharraf
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2366504.ece
By Justin Huggler, Asia Correspondent
Published: 17 March 2007
President Pervez Musharraf's regime in Pakistan is resorting to
increasingly heavy-handed methods to quell protests against him that
are growing by the day.
In Islamabad yesterday hundreds of police fought protesters outside
the Supreme Court. And as the protests continued, riot police stormed
the Geo private television station, which was broadcasting pictures of
the protests, tear-gassed the staff and smashed up the studio.
Outed CIA agent Plame attacks 'reckless' White House
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2366503.ece
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 17 March 2007
Valerie Plame, so long in the shadows, stepped front and centre stage
yesterday when she appeared on Capitol Hill to condemn the
politicisation of American intelligence gathering, and the White House
officials who disclosed her covert CIA identity .
The sound of countless high-speed camera shutters sounded like the
chirping of crickets as Ms Plame, or Mrs Plame-Wilson, entered room
2154 of the Rayburn House building. She smiled at the photographers as
she took her seat and swore an oath to tell the truth.
Merkel's Polish visit is marred by defence row
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2366518.ece
By Stephen Castle, Europe Correspondent
Published: 17 March 2007
Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has called on the United States
to anchor its missile-defence project within Nato as she walked a
diplomatic tightrope on a visit to Poland which wants to host
America's "son of star wars".
A move by the Poles and the Czechs to help set up the European arm of
the American system has provoked a sharp reaction from Moscow and
threatened to divide the EU and Nato.
Irena's list: Holocaust heroine's untold story
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2366517.ece
This week, a 97-year-old Polish woman was finally honoured for saving
thousands of Jewish children from extermination in Nazi death camps.
Claire Soares tells her extraordinary tale
Published: 17 March 2007
Behind the doors of a Polish nursing home sits a woman who might be
described as the female Oskar Schindler. She didn't have his
industrial machinery or his financial might, but the one-time health
worker rescued twice as many Jews from the horrors of the Holocaust.
Nearly 2,500 children were saved from Warsaw's Ghetto and an almost
certain death in the concentration camps - all thanks to Irena
Sendlerowa.
Ms Sendlerowa, now 97, smuggled Jewish babies and children out in
sacks, through sewer pipes and even hidden under stretchers in
ambulances. They were then farmed out to non-Jewish foster families
where they were given false identities and taught to speak Polish and
rattle off Christian prayers so they could fool prying Gestapo
officers.
Leading article: Education and information can unblock Britain's
social mobility
http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2366500.ece
The new places in higher education have been taken disproportionately
by the better-off
Published: 17 March 2007
The British universities admissions service, Ucas, has unleashed a
storm of protest by announcing that application forms for 2008 will
ask for details of the prospective students' parents. Specifically,
the forms will ask about their educational attainment and whether they
have a degree.
The reasons for concern are not hard to divine. Graduate parents fear
that their sins - in having been to university - will be visited on
their children in the form of reverse discrimination. They worry that
their offspring could be penalised by their own achievement - and all
in aid of the Government's efforts to broaden access and get 50 per
cent of school-leavers into higher education. Yesterday, after the
Ucas moves became public, the air was thick with charges of "social
engineering", and worse.
Mary Dejevsky: So what exactly is the British nuclear deterrent
supposed to protect us against?
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/mary_dejevsky/article236272=
0=2Eece
This week has shown how out of kilter our defence capabilities and
aspirations are
Published: 16 March 2007
What should Britain's defence priorities be? What contingencies should
we anticipate in the years ahead? By coincidence, the past two days
have offered a whirlwind tour of some of the options. The mismatch
between threats, structures and funds has rarely been more glaring.
There was a delightfully retro feel around Westminster this past
Tuesday evening. Old-style protesters of the hirsute variety sauntered
away from their demonstration, brandishing placards in black and
white, saying "No" to Trident. They had lost the vote, of course - or
rather Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the Conservatives had won it - but
the moral victory, as it always used to be on such occasions, was
theirs. This was a good old-fashioned back-bench revolt.
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