Deconstructing Damascus
Faisal al Yafai
July 27, 2006 03:14 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/faisal_al_yafai/2006/07/the_kremlinolog=
y_of_damascus.html
During the Cold War, the lack of agents and reliable information on the
ground in the Soviet Union forced the US to seek out the workings of
government from small signs. It was called Kremlinology, the study of
how appointments or demotions, or even seating arrangements, might
prefigure larger changes in mood of the Soviet leaders.
And still thus in Damascus. With the failure of yesterday's Rome summit
to come up with anything substantial, and Israel suffering its worst
day of casualties against Hizbullah, Israel and the US will need to
start looking for non-military solutions. And that road leads back to
Damascus and to President Bashar al-Assad.
We want to be sensible, not censors
Ajmal Masroor
July 27, 2006 04:58 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ajmal_masroor/2006/07/post_260.html
Jonathan Heawood should come and live in Brick Lane for couple of
months with a Bangladeshi family. If he spent some time with real
Bangladeshis I am sure his opinion would be different. This has nothing
to do with censorship; it's all about being sensible.
I am a British Bangladeshi; I have lived and worked in and around Brick
Lane for most of my life. Brick Lane for Bangladeshis is like Chinatown
for the Chinese. It is our cultural home, a place where we gather and
share our culture and life with each other and with visitors. The area
is bustling with Bangladeshis from all over the country; we come here
to shop for authentic groceries, meet friends and family and celebrate
Bangladeshiness here in the heart of London - a truly nostalgic
experience for many. This is our common connection. The area is also
full of people from all over the world enjoying the rich variety of
food, markets and restaurants. Most people - Bangladeshis and non -
come to Brick Lane for the cultural experience.
A long war of attrition
Yossi Alpher
July 27, 2006 05:41 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/yossi_alpher/2006/07/israeli_strategy_y=
ielding_to_r.html
The mood in Israel regarding the war with Hizbullah has darkened in
recent days. In part this is operational fatigue, particularly on the
part of more than a million Israelis who have either fled the north or
are living in crowded and sweltering shelters. But in part it reflects
a series of new insights and revelations regarding the course of the
war thus far.
After more than two weeks of Israel Air Force attacks, Hizbullah's
rocket attacks on Israel's north continue at more or less the same
pace. The IAF appears to be destroying much of Lebanon, but not of
Hizbullah. It is clear that IDF Intelligence underestimated the degree
to which Iran has, in the course of the past decade, helped the
Lebanese Shi'ite organization build deep and sophisticated bunkers,
improve communications, and stockpile weapons. It is also clear that
once again the effectiveness of air power has been exaggerated.
Why America still loves Blair
Harold Evans
July 27, 2006 05:48 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/harold_evans/2006/07/post_261.html
Tony Blair's halo, on the eve of his arrival in Washington, is intact
among pretty well all shades of political opinion in the US. The street
adjectives are still "honest, eloquent, trustworthy, articulate," etc.
not ones you find these days among the snarky British commentariat
which is running out of epithets to the contrary. Visitors to the UK
come back asking, "Why are those guys always whining?"
The daily assault on Blair hasn't made a dent. In fact, among the
bipartisan foreign policy elites many very frankly wish it was Blair,
not Condi Rice, who was out on the road to everywhere except Damascus
and Tehran. Les Gelb, the former head of the well-informed and
influential Council on Foreign Relations, put it this way: "Look, the
Bush administration has never been big on diplomacy; they have an
adversarial approach to foreign relations. Blair is subtler. In fact,
he's a terrific negotiator." Rick Hertzberg of the New Yorker, who is
highly critical of Bush-Blair on Iraq, endorsed that tactic: "It would
be smart of Bush to hand over the diplomacy to Blair. He did so well on
the Irish problem because he is really gifted on bringing people
together. It must be a huge frustration that Condi, not him, is the
Middle East mediator"
Only Hizbullah can defend against an Israeli invasion
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1831960,00.html
Attempts to impose an international force would risk destroying
Lebanon's government and revive the danger of civil war
Jonathan Steele in Beirut
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
A rally of well-dressed middle-class ladies, perhaps 40 in all,
protested outside the UN's offices here on Wednesday, calling for a
ceasefire. Representing the Lebanese Council of Women, they handed out
leaflets appealing to Kofi Annan to get something done.
They were fewer in number than the recent anti-war demonstrators in Tel
Aviv, but more representative. While today's peaceniks in Israel are a
lonely, though perhaps slowly growing, minority, the cry for a
ceasefire is overwhelming in Lebanon. Why bother to demonstrate when
the issue is so obvious?
In hock to George Bush
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1832058,00.html
Blair must speak out on Lebanon. We can't leave the United States to
set our moral compass
Stephen Wall
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
No 10, which is both hothouse and bunker, is well stocked with TV sets.
Prime ministers do not find much time to watch. They should. John Major
led the rescue of the Iraqi Kurds in 1991 because, sitting at home over
Easter, he had time to look at the news. What he saw shocked him into
action. He mobilised the EU and then challenged George Bush Sr to back
his plan for safe havens for the Kurds. A reluctant Bush was, in the
end, also moved by what he saw on his screen.
I defy any person watching TV not to cry out loud for an immediate
ceasefire in Lebanon. Yet our government and that of the US have
weasel-worded their way through this tragedy. Why?
Tying the hands of the United Nations
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1832199,00.html
Simon Tisdall
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
In the week preceding Hizbullah's July 12 cross-border raid into Israel
that sparked the Lebanon war, the UN security council was wrestling
with a draft resolution on Gaza. Sponsored by Arab countries, it called
for the unconditional release of an Israeli soldier captured by
Palestinian militants on June 25, an end to the firing of rockets from
Gaza into Israel, and a halt to Israel's "disproportionate" military
response that was killing and injuring dozens of Palestinian civilians.
In the event, the US vetoed the Gaza resolution on the grounds that it
was "unbalanced" and, ironically in the light of subsequent events,
would have exacerbated regional tensions. John Bolton, the US
ambassador, said the draft "places demands on one side of the Middle
East conflict but not the other". In a taste of things to come, Britain
abstained from voting.
The taming of a superhero, or why an airport won't be named after Condi
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1831999,00.html
The image of American secretaries of state as elite shuttle diplomats
cooling the world's hot spots no longer holds
Mark Lawson
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
Washington has one airport, Reagan, named after a president and
another, Dulles, dedicated to a secretary of state. This arrangement
may seem increasingly strange to future generations, as we tend to hold
the occupant of the White House far above the resident of Foggy Bottom.
It's far easier to imagine frequent flyers landing at a Clinton or even
a couple of Bushes than standing by the carousel at, say, an Albright,
Kissinger, Christopher, Schultz or Rice.
So the fact that, on November 17 1962, President Kennedy - just a year
before he was assassinated and became an airport himself - and former
president Eisenhower attended a ceremony to memorialise, in the
capital's new aviation hub, John Foster Dulles (Ike's secretary of
state from 1953 to 1959) speaks of the enormous national status the
American equivalent of foreign secretary once had. It was a
consequence, probably, of an era during which the second world war had
morphed into the cold war, forcing American thoughts abroad.
No deal is better than a bad deal for poor countries
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1831931,00.html
The collapse of trade talks is no surprise given the self-interest of
rich nations
Aftab Alam Khan
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
Your leader column is spot on when it says that the best hope for
developing countries is for "the multilateral trading system to
continue (World trade talks: Into the freezer, July 26). This does not
mean, however, that the collapse of negotiations is a bad thing for
developing countries.
You say that "the outline of a successful trade round was there", but
this depends very much on the definition of success. Regardless of
whether the US shaved a little more off its multi-billion-dollar farm
subsidy regime, the deal on the table at the World Trade Organisation
would actually have left many poor people around the world worse off.
Kooky capitalism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1832075,00.html
Jacques Peretti
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
Have you seen the ads for Ben & Jerry's new ice cream, Peace Of Cake?
The O is replaced by a hand-drawn CND logo. These aren't two way-out
bearded Dead-heads selling homemade ice cream out of the back of a
campervan. B&J's may have started small but it's now a massive
multi-national corporation - the beardie duo merely branding, like
Ronald McDonald waving a hamburger in your face - so what is it with
their unprompted affiliation to nuclear disarmament? It's kooky
capitalism, an example of multinational companies marketing themselves
as itsy-bitsy cottage industries rather than monoliths with Exxon-like
bad vibes.
Disarm - or else!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1832034,00.html
The veteran CND was fading away. But with the government looking like
it's going for the nuclear double whammy of reactors and missiles, new
members are flocking to the banner. By Maev Kennedy
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
This month, Farzana Zaman, a 21-year-old English literature student at
Goldsmith's College in London, finally did something she had been
vaguely thinking about for months: she walked into the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament office on Holloway Road in north London, paid her
=A36 student fee, and became a member.
Richard Folley had to pay =A326 for his badge, as a 59-year-old early
retiree from the rail industry. When he recently found himself marching
down a road carrying a CND banner, protesting against war, only the
name of the war had changed - from Vietnam to Iraq. Otherwise, he was
back where he started, 40-odd years ago, as a student.
To abolish only non-Christian faith schools would be taken as an
affront. The answer is that they all have to go
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1832031,00.html
Stuart Jeffries
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
When I wrote a piece recently calling for the abolition of all
fee-paying and faith schools on egalitarian grounds, I received some
caustic responses. Some were rude, some smart, but there were several
that still make me shout "Ha!" in inappropriate public situations. One
correspondent, for instance, noted I had forgotten what "Beverage" said
about the "war on ignorance". You know, sir (madam? chimp? master
ironist?), I hadn't forgotten what Beverage said. I never knew that
there was such a person, let alone one whose views on education were
worth considering. You see, Stuart, they added angrily, you didn't
consider "grammer schools" and the issue of dumbing down in British
education. Again, I can only apologise for being quite the dunce.
Chastity is chic
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1832035,00.html
..=2E. well it is in the US, where a group of 'sexual revolutionaries' are
urging women to preserve their modesty until marriage. Jessica Valenti
asks is this radical or just retrograde?
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
In a culture where one-night stands, reality porn and Playboy logos on
kids' stationery have all become shrug-worthily normal, it takes quite
a leap of imagination to be sexually subversive. Take up pole dancing?
Nah, that's so commonplace that women organise group lessons for hen
parties. Threesomes? No longer noteworthy. Faux-lesbianism? Yawn ...
Moscow snubs US to sell arms to Venezuela
http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,,1832194,00.html
=B7 Military planes and attack helicopters in =A31.6bn deal
=B7 Outspoken Ch=E1vez hints at nuclear ambitions
Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
Russia signed a =A31.6bn arms deal with President Hugo Ch=E1vez of
Venezuela yesterday, risking a confrontation with the US, which has
imposed an arms embargo on the South American country.
The outspoken Venezuelan president, who has claimed that America wants
to assassinate him and pledged cheap heating fuel for London's poor,
also told reporters in Moscow that his country could develop its own
nuclear programme.
"Maybe some day we will start using nuclear energy," he said, according
to Interfax. He did not specify when or how he might obtain nuclear
power, but his ambitions will rile a Bush administration already deeply
concerned by Iran's nuclear programme.
A growing number of American women believe that they have the answer.
Through books, websites and clothing ranges, a new breed of
modesty-loving gals is spreading the word: chastity is chic! While most
young Americans are keen to forget their abstinence education by their
20s, these women choose to take it a whole lot further, saying that not
only is premarital and casual sex a bad idea, but that modesty - in
sexual behaviour, dress and comportment - is, in fact, essential for
building strong relationships. Although returning to a long-discarded
form of femininity might seem truly retrogressive, many of these women
assert the opposite. They are, they say, sexual revolutionaries.
Bolton fights to keep UN job at new hearings
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1832171,00.html
=B7 Bush's man attempts to overturn Senate rejection
=B7 Ambassador accused of harming US interests
Julian Borger in Washington
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
America's ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, went to the
Senate yesterday to defend his record and attempt to keep his job in
the face of criticism that his combative style is harming US interests.
Mr Bolton holds his post temporarily because opposition from the
Democratic Party and a senior Republican blocked his confirmation at
bitter hearings last year. President Bush subsequently exercised his
power to give the outspoken hawk and unilateralist a provisional
appointment that expires in January.
Pushing for a ceasefire from behind a barrage of Katyushas
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1832162,00.html
Jonathan Steele in Beirut and Ian Black in Jerusalem
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
Hizbullah wants an immediate ceasefire and is ready to swap the two
abducted Israeli soldiers "in six hours" after it comes into force,
according to officials from Amal, a Shia party allied to Hizbullah.
Top Indian civil servant 'was CIA spy'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,1832190,00.html
Randeep Ramesh in Delhi
Friday July 28, 2006
The Guardian
Moles, nuclear secrets, espionage in high places are all essential
ingredients for a racy spy thriller - but they have also ensured the
memoirs of India's former foreign minister will be a runaway publishing
success. In A Call to Honour, published this week, soldier-statesmen
Jaswant Singh claims one of India's top civil servants was in the pay
of the CIA and leaked secrets to the United States about India's
nuclear programme in the early 1990s.
Hizbullah has entrusted Amal with negotiations for a prisoner deal,
realising that it cannot be a direct partner to talks. Nabih Berri,
Amal's leader, who is also speaker of the Lebanese parliament, met
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, on Tuesday in a clear sign
that Washington sees him as a conduit to Hizbullah.
The T-shirt seller of Beirut
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,1831361,00.html
The inhabitants of the Lebanese capital are making the most of a
terrible situation, despite official incompetence and Israel's
continuing air campaign
Brian Whitaker
Thursday July 27, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The Phoenicians were the greatest traders of the ancient world and the
Lebanese are their descendants. In Lebanon, every situation - no matter
how dire - is an opportunity for someone to do business.
Ammar runs a shop selling decorative inlaid boxes, hubble-bubble pipes,
necklaces, keffiyehs (cotton headdresses), historical-looking artefacts
and just about anything else that a tourist in Beirut might be induced
to buy.
Changes of course
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,1827697,00.html
The PM helped fly Lebanon evacuees home, but his policy is not carrying
all Canadians with him, writes Anne McIlroy
Monday July 24, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
After days of fear and waiting, 87 Canadians who fled the violence in
Lebanon stretched out on the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper's
plane for a comfortable ride home.
There are as many as 50,000 Canadians in Lebanon. Mr Harper, whose
minority government had been criticised for bungling the evacuation,
decided to personally assist some of those seeking to escape the
violence. He changed his travel plans en route home from the G8 in
Russia. Journalists and other non-essential staff were left behind in
Paris, as Mr Harper, his wife and a photographer flew to Cyprus. They
waited on board for 18 hours before personally greeting their war-weary
passengers and bringing them back to Canada late last week.
Chavez recruits Chaplin for a lesson in revolution
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1201298.ece
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 28 July 2006
Charlie Chaplin's classic black-and-white movie Modern Times
highlighted the exploitation and horrendous conditions faced by US
factory workers during the Depression. Venezuela's leader Hugo Chavez
believes it is as relevant today as it ever was.
At factories and meeting halls across Caracas, Mr Chavez's government
has been showing the film to workers to expose what he believes are the
evils of capitalism, and cement support for his socialist
administration.
PM urged: Stand up to Bush and call for ceasefire
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1201307.ece
By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
Published: 28 July 2006
Tony Blair will face fresh pressure over the Middle East crisis today
when he arrives in Washington to meet President George Bush. Senior
Downing Street aides said the two leaders intended to show the world
they were seeking an urgent end to the hostilities in Lebanon, despite
the failure of the much vaunted Rome summit on Wednesday to deliver a
unified call for a truce.
Israel's Justice Minister, Haim Ramon, added to the pressure yesterday,
when he interpreted that indecision as a green light to continue the
bloody assault on Lebanon.
Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28arabs.html?ref=3Dworld=
&pagewanted=3Dall
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Initially, Arab governments criticized Hezbollah for recklessly
provoking a war. Now, opinion across the Arab world has changed.
2 Steps Back: Rice's Careful Diplomacy Falters Under Renewed
Assertiveness by the U.S.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28rice.html?ref=3Dworld
By HELENE COOPER
Certainly, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice won the diplomatic
battle in Rome, but she lost the public relations war.
Americans Showing Isolationist Streak, Poll Finds
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/washington/27poll.html?ref=3Dmiddleeast&p=
agewanted=3Dall
By JIM RUTENBERG and MEGAN C. THEE
While almost half of those polled approved of President Bush's
handling of the Mideast crisis, a majority said they preferred the U.S.
leave it to others to resolve
'The Prince of the Marshes,' by Rory Stewart: An Outsider Confronts the
Tide in the Marshes of Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/books/28book.html?ref=3Darts
By RORY STEWART
Reviewed by WILLIAM GRIMES
Rory Stewart offers a rueful, richly detailed, often harrowing account
of his yearlong efforts to build a new civil society from the ruins of
the old Iraq.
A War of Her Own
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR200607270=
1220.html
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, July 28, 2006; Page A25
Lebanon has now become Condi's war.
You can argue whether legal title to the tragic mess in Iraq properly
belongs to Rummy or Cheney or to the Decider himself, but as far as
Lebanon is concerned, it's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who has
stepped front and center to handle the crisis and show the world who's
boss.
Pander and Run
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR200607270=
1222.html
By Peter Beinart
Friday, July 28, 2006; Page A25
After years of struggling to define their own approach to post-Sept. 11
foreign policy, Democrats seem finally to have hit on one. It's called
pandering. In those rare cases when George W. Bush shows genuine
sensitivity to America's allies and propounds a broader, more
enlightened view of the national interest, Democrats will make him pay.
It's jingoism with a liberal face.
The latest example came this week when Democratic senators and House
members demanded that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki either
retract his criticisms of Israel or forfeit his chance to address
Congress. Great idea. Maliki -- who runs a government propped up by
U=2ES. troops -- is desperate to show Iraqis that he is not Washington's
puppet. And the United States desperately needs him to succeed because,
unless he gains political credibility at home, his government will have
no hope of surviving on its own.
Making Enemies
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14046789/site/newsweek/
Hamas and Hizbullah should not be confused with Al Qaeda. Bush's
insistence on doing so shows his failure to understand his foes.
Web-Exclusive Commentary
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
Updated: 4:52 p.m. ET July 26, 2006
July 26, 2006 - Reading "Fiasco," Thomas Ricks's devastating new book
about the Iraq war, brought back memories for me. Memories of going on
night raids in Samarra in January 2004, in the heart of the Sunni
Triangle, with the Fourth Infantry Division units that Ricks describes.
During these raids, confused young Americans would burst into Iraqi
homes, overturn beds, dump out drawers, and summarily arrest all
military-age men-actions that made them unwitting recruits for the
insurgency. For American soldiers battling the resistance throughout
Iraq, the unspoken rule was that all Iraqis were guilty until proven
innocent. Arrests, beatings and sometimes killings were arbitrary,
often based on the flimsiest intelligence, and Iraqis had no recourse
whatever to justice. Imagine the sense of helpless rage that emerges
from this sort of treatment. Apply three years of it and you have one
furious, traumatized population. And a country out of control.
Buckeye Blues
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14044965/site/newsweek/
Republican candidates in Ohio are facing a very tough fall. Plus, the
international semantics over a Lebanon ceasefire.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey
Newsweek
Updated: 3:00 p.m. ET July 26, 2006
July 26, 2006 - With just over three months until Election Day, White
House political adviser Karl Rove hit the campaign trail Tuesday in
Ohio, hoping to rev up voters in a state where polls show President
George W. Bush and the GOP is in real trouble. Bush's top political
aide was the guest of honor at a $100-a-plate luncheon in Columbus to
benefit county parties in central Ohio, a state that is viewed as
ground zero in the GOP's attempts to maintain control of Congress.
Let It Bleed
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14045328/site/newsweek/
Leaders at the Rome summit on the Mideast are ignoring the real bottom
line: Hizbullah is winning.
Web-Exclusive Commentary
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Updated: 3:57 p.m. ET July 26, 2006
July 26, 2006 - Worthy-sounding meetings of ministers, like the
International Conference for Lebanon held in Rome today, rarely get
very much done. The participants here were high-powered, to be sure:
U=2ES. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan, the prime minister of the country in question, Fouad Siniora,
plus a slew of Europeans and Arabs (but no Israelis or Hizbullahis).
Instigated by Washington, it was all for show.
Israel's Mistake
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14066288/site/newsweek/
Nationalism has blinded the Jewish state to the long-term consequences
of a Lebanon campaign that is practically guaranteed to fail.
Web-Exclusive Commentary
By John Barry
Newsweek
Updated: 6:50 p.m. ET July 27, 2006
July 27, 2006 - As Israel hammers Lebanon and Condoleezza Rice hurries
back and forth, I find myself recalling Henry Kissinger after the 1973
Yom Kippur war. What keeps coming back isn't the secretary of
State's shuttle-diplomacy successes. It's how much more he hoped to
achieve-and why he failed.
Reflective Criticism
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14048523/site/newsweek/
In '100 Ways America Is Screwing Up the World,' foreign-policy
expert John Tirman tackles everything from terrorism to pop culture.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Jessica Bennett
Newsweek
Updated: 9:06 a.m. ET July 27, 2006
July 27, 2006 - It's hard to picture genocide, gangsta rap and Las
Vegas sharing the pages of the same foreign-policy book. What could
they possibly have in common? But add a chapter on SUVs, Halliburton
and George W. Bush and you've got six of 100 ways that one
foreign-policy expert says the globe's most powerful country is
"screwing up" the world around it.
Anatomy of an Attack
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14066688/site/newsweek/
Controversy still rages over the deaths of four U.N. observers killed
in southern Lebanon. A timeline of the strike.
Web Exclusive
By Michael Meyer
Newsweek
Updated: 7:34 p.m. ET July 27, 2006
July 27, 2006 - Were the four United Nations observers killed by an
Israeli strike in southern Lebanon on Tuesday deliberately
targeted-or were their deaths accidental?
Five Myths That Sanction Israel's War Crimes
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14196.htm
By Jonathan Cook
07/26/06 "Information Clearing House' -- -- This week I had the
pleasure to appear on American radio, on the Laura Ingraham show,
pitted against David Horowitz, a "Semite supremacist" who most
recently made his name under the banner of Campus Watch, leading
McCarthyite witch-hunts against American professors who have the
impertinence to suggest that maybe, just maybe, Arabs have minds and
feelings like the rest of us.
It was a revealing experience, at least for a British journalist rarely
exposed to the depths of ignorance and prejudice in the United States
on Middle East matters -- well, apart from the regular wackos who fill
my email inbox. But five minutes of listening to Horowitz speak, and
the sympathy with which his arguments were greeted by Laura ("The
Professors -- your book's a great read, David"), left me a lot more
frightened about the world's future.
An affair to remember
http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D7218678
Jul 27th 2006
From The Economist print edition
The Suez crisis of 50 years ago marked the end of an era, and the start
of another, for Europe, America and the Middle East
ON JULY 26th 1956 Gamal Abdul Nasser, president of Egypt, addressed a
huge crowd in the city of Alexandria. Broad-shouldered, handsome and
passionate, Nasser stunned even this gathering of enthusiastic
supporters with the vehemence of his diatribe against British
imperialism. Britain had ruled Egypt, one way or another, from 1882 to
1922, when the protectorate gained nominal independence, and continued
to influence Egyptian affairs thereafter, maintaining troops there and
propping up the decadent monarchy overthrown by Nasser in 1952.
In that speech in Alexandria, though, Nasser chose to delve back even
further into history, in a long digression on the building of the Suez
canal a century earlier. That gave him the chance to mention the name
of the Frenchman who had built the canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps. This he
did at least 13 times. "De Lesseps", it turned out, was the
codeword for the Egyptian army to start the seizure, and
nationalisation, of the canal. It also launched the start of a new era
in the politics of Europe, the Middle East and America.
Mind those proportions
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D7231163
Jul 27th 2006
From The Economist print edition
As the war in Lebanon shows, there are several ways to make a moral
judgment
"YES, Israel has a right to exist and defend itself, but bombing
houses, roads and utilities and killing hundreds of civilians is surely
far out of proportion to the offence it suffered." "But doesn't it
make a difference that our enemy in Lebanon, with its arsenal of
rockets standing at 12,000, wants to destroy our state? Consider all
that, and surely our response (which falls well short of our potential
and tries to minimise civilian deaths) is restrained: proportionate, in
fact, to the threat we face."
An argument on just those lines is going on between Israel and its
detractors in the world. Both sides in the argument presume that
proportionality in war has some broadly accepted meaning which rational
people can discuss, refine and apply to real situations. Are they
right?
Not yet, say the Arabs
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D7188862
Jul 20th 2006
From The Economist print edition
Why democracy will not sink roots in the Arab world, at least in a
hurry
FOR those who think that an onrush of democracy is the answer to the
Arab world's malaise, these books are disheartening. This is so, even
though one of their authors, Fouad Ajami, hails from a rare breed: an
Arab (now an American citizen) of Lebanese Shia background who
enthusiastically backed George Bush's plan to spread democracy
throughout the Middle East, starting most hazardously in Iraq.
None of these books asserts categorically that the Arabs are unfit for,
or incapable of, democracy, but all make plain how extraordinarily hard
it will be for a system of one-person-one-vote to sink roots in such
unfamiliar soil. Not a single country in the 22-member Arab League is a
stable, full-fledged democracy: the three that currently come
closest-Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Iraq-are all
peculiar and flawed cases, and are now all in particular trouble.
Hero or bully?
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D7188925
Jul 20th 2006
From The Economist print edition
WHEN lawyers speak, laymen are often baffled. So it is refreshing to
hear an exchange such as the following, between the attorneys-general
of New York and California, as reported in the American Lawyer. "You
want to step outside, that's fine! I grew up in the Bronx!" said
Eliot Spitzer, New York's attorney-general. "No problem," shouted
Bill Lockyer, California's attorney-general, "I grew up in east LA.
Let's go!" In the end, the two men settled their dispute without
violence.
What does this incident tell us about Mr Spitzer, who is likely to be
elected governor of New York state this year? As the title of Brooke
Masters's new biography suggests, Mr Spitzer is a combative fellow. He
can be admirably plain-spoken, too. But his aggression is not always
channelled to useful ends, and he sometimes talks up a tempest but
fails to follow through.
Heads you win
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D7188932
Jul 20th 2006
From The Economist print edition
FROM his vantage point on the scaffold, Charles I would have had a good
view of the spot where policemen now guard the entrance to Downing
Street, Tony Blair's residence and office. The falling axe brought
about a decisive shift of power from the world of the court to that of
Parliament. But it was not as straightforward as that. Rather than
severing the idea of a hereditary head of state permanently, Charles's
shabby trial and violent death helped the monarchy to survive for far
longer than it otherwise would have.
Diane Purkiss's book about the English civil war runs through the story
of the conflict between king and Parliament. But what really interests
her is what the civil war might have felt like to those caught up in
it. To get at this she uses news-sheets, cookery books, diaries and
autobiographies, particularly those of women. The result is a book that
is as enjoyable as histories of this episode often promise to be, but
somehow seldom are.
Story's story
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D7188975
Jul 20th 2006 | LOS ANGELES
From The Economist print edition
Fantasy with a moral
AFTER his four successful, rather spooky films for the Walt Disney
Company, any new film by the young Hollywood writer and director M.
Night Shyamalan (pronounced SHA-ma-lon) is sure to be an event. Adding
controversy to the event, "Lady in the Water" comes accompanied by
an unusually revealing book about its making: "The Man Who Heard
Voices", by Michael Bamberger (Gotham Books).
No student of film, Mr Bamberger, a senior writer at Sports
Illustrated, approaches his subject as he might Tiger Woods or Michael
Jordan (who happen to be two of Mr Shyamalan's heroes) at some turning
point in their careers. His book tells in detail why Mr Shyamalan
dumped the Walt Disney Company, his home for six years, to make this
film for Warner Bros. There is irony here: "Lady in the Water"
would seem, at least at first glance, to be the most Disneyesque film
he has ever made.
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