Living in the eye of the storm
Josh Freedman Berthoud
February 28, 2007 9:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/josh_freedman_berthoud/2007/02/israel_p=
alestine_who_do_you_su.html
Watching a conflict from afar often allows the viewer to see the
bigger picture - the tit-for-tat of a never-ending cycle of violence.
At the eye of the storm, however, things are rather different. When
the winds ravage your own house, you shout in the direction from which
they came. So it is in Israel and Palestine, where I spent last week
sharing the view from the damaged homes of those on both sides of the
conflict.
If it wasn't for the sunny blue skies, the border town of Sderot would
be a grim place. Tiny shops sit neglected and empty in concrete-block
arcades where only a few stores open for business. A group of women
mend clothes in one small, barren tailor's; handwritten signs in
Russian advertise the trade of the hairdresser next door. In the five
years since the rockets began to fall on Sderot, unemployment has
risen rapidly, the wealthy and the young have fled, while the poor and
the elderly remain, isolated from the rest of Israeli society and
desperate for change.
The new flip-floppers in town
Matthew Yglesias
February 28, 2007 6:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/matthew_yglesias/2007/02/the_new_flipfl=
oppers_in_town.html
For an administration that got itself re-elected largely by bashing
the alleged "flip-flops" of its opponent, the Bush team has started
reversing course an awful lot. Things kicked off when, on February 13
of this year, the United States reached a nuclear deal negotiated by
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, a career diplomat whose
judgment was for once permitted to override that of the ideologues
clustered around the vice president's office. The deal was a reversal
of more than a decade's worth of the Republican Party's North Korea
policy, dating back to congressional GOP denunciations of the
structurally-similar 1994 Agreed Framework reached by the Clinton
administration. What's more, it was in stark contrast to the
administration's policies toward Iran and Syria where, despite many
calls at home and around the world for talks, the administration was
steadfastly committed to a policy of isolation and, in the case of
Iran, increased pressure.
Until now, that is.
Shanghaied!
Meghnad Desai
February 28, 2007 5:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/meghnad_desai/2007/02/shanghaied.html
It used to be that when the US sneezed, Europe caught cold. But
Tuesday's blood bath on the world's stock markets turned that truism
on its head.
The rout started in Shanghai. The Chinese are just getting a taste of
stock market buying and selling and, like other stock markets such as
Bangkok and Mumbai, there has been a long, strong upward trend. China
has accumulated huge foreign exchange reserves and a lot of those
dollars, if not spent abroad, seep into the domestic money supply,
which, in turn, makes credit cheap. The Chinese authorities are
nervous about a likely bubble and tried to make noises that they may
tax capital gains of the traders. This caused panic in Shanghai.
Condi's rock'n'roll approach has been and gone. Let's try Benita's
slow waltz
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2023612,00.html
In Egypt the US has retreated from its push for democracy in the Arab
world. Europe should step into the breach
Timothy Garton Ash in Cairo
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
In a poor quarter of Cairo, down narrow dirt roads in which goats feed
on scraps, I am taken to the bare, crowded but carefully kept
apartment of a friendly greengrocer, whose extended family sleeps four
or five to a room. He introduces me to his numerous nieces and
nephews, and finally to a grinning tousle-haired boy called Usama.
Usama is three years old, so our conversation is not extensive, but he
has stuck in my mind ever since.
We are catching up with this man's creative talent at last
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2023570,00.html
The current rash of Pinter revivals is about far more than guilt or
respect. Both artistically and politically, he was ahead of the pack
Michael Billington
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
Harold Pinter is currently everywhere. His final play, Celebration,
went out this week on More4 along with a lively 75-minute documentary.
Harry Burton's production of The Dumb Waiter is packing out the
Trafalgar Studios. And revivals of The Caretaker, Old Times, Betrayal
and The Hothouse are on the way: that last, written in 1958 and
dealing with state detention of social dissidents, seems especially
timely. As if this weren't enough, Kenneth Branagh is filming Pinter's
scabrously funny adaptation of Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth with Michael
Caine and Jude Law, and Pinter himself is about to play the irascible
Max in a Radio 3 version of The Homecoming. Not since the mid-1960s
has Pinter been so much in vogue.
A nightmare without end
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2023569,00.html
Shahajan Janjua's story is a glimpse of what the war on terror means
for young British Asian men
Victoria Brittain
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
How does a young man from west London find himself landed in a Kenyan
police station, hanging from his wrists, his feet tied to buckets of
freezing water? How does he find himself, soon after, being dined by
MI5 officers at a Nairobi hotel one moment, then imprisoned
underground in the desert the next?
The story of Shahajan Janjua, a British Asian, is a little window into
the "war on terror". As with the cases of the three young men from
Tipton who ended up in Guant=E1namo Bay, MI5 officials in this case
showed themselves apparently incapable of making a judgment of young
British Asian men's likely links to terrorism. So, another has come
back from an innocent overseas trip traumatised. Would it have
happened if he had been white and middle-class?
A blind eye to bigotry
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2023603,00.html
Five years on, those behind the Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom are still
running the state
Mike Marqusee
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
Five years ago this week, across the Indian state of Gujarat, the
stormtroopers of the Hindu right, decked in saffron sashes and armed
with swords, tridents, sledgehammers and liquid gas cylinders,
launched a pogrom against the local Muslim population. They looted and
torched Muslim-owned businesses, assaulted and murdered Muslims, and
gang-raped and mutilated Muslim women. By the time the violence
spluttered to a halt, about 2,500 Muslims had been killed and about
200,000 driven from their homes.
These film-makers are peddling twaddle about Jesus
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2023550,00.html
New claims about Christ's resurrection fail on both scientific and
theological grounds, says Justin Thacker
Dr Justin Thacker
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
The recent announcement of the supposed discovery of the ossuaries
(bone boxes) of Jesus' family is void of scientific and archaeological
merit (Is this really the last resting place of Jesus, Mary Magdalene
- and their son?, February 27).
I am both a medical doctor and a doctor of theology, and it is unusual
for both of my disciplines to be irked at once. Yet the documentary
film-makers behind these claims - to be broadcast on the Discovery
Channel - have managed to fail on both scientific and theological
grounds simultaneously. As the Guardian report rightly notes: "Even as
the felt was being pulled back yesterday, holes in the theory were
becoming glaringly evident."
Heading for the exit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,2023561,00.html
Leader
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
The announcement that the US will participate in talks with Iran and
Syria on the future of Iraq came as something of a surprise. U-turn
was the phrase that came to mind, even to those versed in the history
of the Pentagon's policy lurches. But today's Guardian report may
explain why US diplomats are preparing to sit down with the
representatives of two regimes that they have hitherto accused of
destabilising Iraq. A group of officers advising General David
Petraeus, the warrior-scholar sent in to quell the insurgency in
Baghdad and Anbar province, has concluded that US forces have six
months to win the war; otherwise it faces the prospect of defeat and
withdrawal.
Is Obama black enough?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2023671,00.html
The Democratic hopeful Barack Obama could become the US's first black
president. Yet, with his mixed-race background, Ivy League education
and midwestern accent, one of his greatest challenges has been
convincing African-Americans that he is 'one of us'. Gary Younge
reports
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
In 1998, as a blue-stained dress presented the biggest political
threat to the leader of the free world, the Nobel laureate Toni
Morrison inaugurated Bill Clinton "our first black president". Most
people got the message. The manner in which Clinton had been chased,
slipped and then caught were reminiscent of how black leaders in the
past had been singled out for a particular kind of probity until they
had failed. His poor, rural Southern roots, turbulent marriage and
voracious appetites for junk food and sex helped propel him over the
cultural colour line. His life read like a country ballad; but it just
as easily could have been the blues.
Girls who don't
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2023670,00.html
From Paris Hilton to Helen Mirren, it's an epidemic: female
celebrities going out without their knickers. Is it a bid for
affection? A cry for help? Or just the latest rule-breaking craze? By
Zoe Williams
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
Heat magazine probably has it snappiest when it calls them, in its
cover story, the "no knicker girls". They are describing famous girls
who go to parties without knickers on, see. They go out, get
photographed by the paparazzi, usually as they are getting into a car,
and reveal everything. I always smell a rat when someone remarks on a
trend, and it turns out that this trend amounts to Paris Hilton,
Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. I hope I won't hurt their feelings
if I say this, but Hilton and Lohan are attention-seekers. Nothing
they do will amount to a trend because the only reason they are doing
it is in the hope that nobody else will do it, and then they will get
more attention. Britney, meanwhile, is going through a vulnerable
time. She will do anything Hilton tells her is cool.
US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2023865,00.html
Elite officers in Iraq fear low morale, lack of troops and loss of
political will
Simon Tisdall
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David
Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win
the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and
public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.
The officers - combat veterans who are experts in counter-insurgency -
are charged with implementing the "new way forward" strategy announced
by George Bush on January 10. The plan includes a controversial
"surge" of 21,500 additional American troops to establish security in
the Iraqi capital and Anbar province.
Zimbabwe is broke and hungry, admits bank chief
=B7 Normally upbeat governor warns of drastic slump
=B7 No cash for electricity or police as protests grow
Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
Zimbabwe is hungry and broke, the country's central bank governor has
warned in a frank admission that president Robert Mugabe's government
is unable to provide adequate food supplies or maintain many basic
services.
The Reserve Bank governor, Gideon Gono, told a parliamentary committee
that he was struggling to keep the country's electricity on and the
air force aloft. He admitted he had no funds to buy police vehicles or
print passports and that unless drastic action was taken on rampant
inflation, Zimbabwe could slump "to levels never dreamt before".
US praised for diplomacy ahead of summit
=B7 Syria and Iran likely to attend stability meeting
=B7 Conference marks abrupt reversal by Washington
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
The Bush administration won rare praise for its diplomacy on Iraq
yesterday as plans for an international conference on stabilising the
country gathered pace, with Syria and Iran indicating they would
participate.
"Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, even the US and Britain have informed us
they will participate," the Iraqi deputy foreign minister, Labi Abawi,
told reporters in Baghdad.
Sarkozy pledges not to submit to America
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,2023807,00.html
=B7 Sarkozy sets out tough foreign policy agenda
=B7 Presidential hopeful calls Iraq invasion a mistake
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Thursday March 1, 2007
The Guardian
Nicolas Sarkozy, a self-declared "friend of America", yesterday
promised France he would not be the US president's poodle and would
oppose any repeat of the Iraq war.
The right-wing interior minister and presidential hopeful has been
blasted by his critics as a kowtowing Atlantist and US-style
neoconservative since his visit to George Bush last year when he
declared his passion for the American way of life and criticised
French "arrogance" in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003.
US softens on 'axis of evil' as it plans talks with Iran and Syria
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2314198.ece
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 01 March 2007
Iran has agreed to attend this month's planned regional security
conference on Iraq that will see its representatives sit down with US
officials - a potentially groundbreaking departure, given the glacial
state of relations between Tehran and Washington.
US participation in the talks was confirmed by Condoleezza Rice, the
Secretary of State, to Congress earlier this week. Yesterday officials
from the Iraqi government, which is organising the meeting, said that
Iran too would be attending, although the immediate response from
Tehran was more cautious, that it would attend "if it was expedient".
'Racist' forced to withdraw bid for Israeli cabinet post
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2314210.ece
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Published: 01 March 2007
Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the most right-wing party in Israel's
governing coalition, was forced last night to cancel his nomination of
a colleague condemned as a "true racist" to the Tourism Ministry.
Mr Lieberman had faced mounting embarrassment over his choice of
Esterina Tartman for the post of Tourism Minister after a series of
damaging revelations about her eligibility for the job - or lack of
it.
Hamish McRae: We are seeing a slowdown - but it is one that is needed
to rebalance the world economy
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/comment/article2314224.ece
Published: 01 March 2007
The day starts in the east - and the trading day too. It is a bit
early to try to calibrate the long-term significance of the past
couple of trading days, but not too early to try to set the bump in
the markets in a longer-term context.
The first point surely is that markets are not completely rational
entities, weighing up the importance of new information as it comes in
and allocating capital flows in response to its implications. There is
a wild and wacky element, as we have just seen. By rights, a proposed
shift in investment regulation in China, plus some tax changes in
South Africa, ought not to give such a kick in the teeth to global
markets. The Chinese economy may be growing swiftly, but the market
capitalisation of the Shanghai exchange remains tiny by comparison to
Wall Street. The tail is wagging the dog. That is odd.
Adrian Hamilton: Is President Bush changing tack at last over Iran?
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/adrian_hamilton/article2314=
175.ece
The chink of diplomatic sense is there, if not for this President then
for his successor
Published: 01 March 2007
From the beginning the Bush administration has been characterised by
deep fissures between departments, particularly the Pentagon and the
State Department, and vicious internecine warfare. It is still at it.
How else does one explain the fact that the Vice-President, *****
Cheney, could be touring Asia this week, ratcheting up the rhetoric
against Iran, while Condoleezza Rice was telling Congress that, at
last, the US was prepared to talk to Iran and Syria as part of a
regional conference in Iraq.
The Sketch: Blair, belief and truth in the End Times
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/simon_carr/article2314187.e=
ce
Simon Carr
Published: 01 March 2007
What's the state of the Prime Minister's soul? Can we dabble in it a
little? It's a matter of some topicality as we are in the End Times,
as maniacs call them, in the final days before his Rapture.
We know he'll be taken up, though we hope we won't be taken with him.
He still says Armageddon (or, in secular language, an attack on Iran)
is not going to happen. But then he also says he has given "no
thought" to what he'll do after he stands down.
Miles Kington: The gods debate mankind's deception
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/miles_kington/article231418=
0=2Eece
Lemminkainen said he had long wavy blonde hair and was very handsome.
Also, Sibelius had written a suite about him
Published: 01 March 2007
Amazingly, we have got this far in the year 2007 without paying a
visit to the United Deities, the all-party gathering of gods and
goddesses which sits on high and watches us all with a jaundiced eye.
Let us then without further ado consult the minutes of their most
recent discussions and see what has been on their mind.
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