No Pandering Here
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15990689/site/newsweek/
Virginia Senator-elect Jim Webb is the rare Washington figure who
doesn't suck up to power.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 2:42 p.m. ET Dec. 1, 2006
Dec. 1, 2006 - Every so often a politician comes along who doesn't
pander to the president. Fresh off a nasty campaign that centered on
the war in Iraq, Virginia Senator-elect Jim Webb had no interest in a
picture of himself with President Bush, and he didn't want to
exchange small talk with the man whose war policies he opposes. So he
skipped the receiving line at a White House reception for newly elected
members of Congress, creating the first of what we should all hope will
be many ripples in Washington.
Cooking your goose
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
December 1, 2006 12:10 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/hugh_fearnleywhittingstall/2006/12/cook=
ing_your_goose.html
I have been championing the cause for years, so I'm delighted if people
are turning to goose as their Christmas bird. It is a far superior way
of celebrating the festive day than a turkey.
The great thing about goose is that it's a grazer - it eats grass - and
that's what gives that fantastic, dense, almost beefy flavour. You can
actually serve it pink, but at the same time you have all that
wonderful fat as well. It has everything you might want; frankly, it
knocks turkey into a cocked hat - a cocked Christmas party hat.
Life on Mars
Open Thread
December 1, 2006 01:40 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/open_thread/2006/12/life_on_mars.html
According to scientist Stephen Hawking, the human race will need to
venture far beyond Earth to ensure its survival. He told the BBC: "The
survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a
single planet."
Hawking said: "There isn't anywhere like Earth in the solar system so
we would have to go to another star." However, he did predict that we
could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on
Mars within the next 40.
The world through a prism
Dominique Moisi
December 1, 2006 02:15 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dominique_moisi/2006/12/the_fall_of_the=
_hyper_power.html
Listen carefully these days to Israelis and South Koreans. What they
are hinting at is no less than a tectonic shift in the international
system: the shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world.
Israelis are rediscovering Europe. They intuitively sense that they can
no longer rely only on the absolute security guarantee represented by
the United States' combination of active and passive support. The war
in Lebanon, so frustrating for Israel, accelerated that subtle change.
Now Europe and its various contingents are playing a leading role in
picking up the pieces there.
Cameron is right on Iraq
Oliver Miles
December 1, 2006 02:46 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/oliver_miles/2006/12/iraq_an_internatio=
nal_contact.html
David Cameron's article in the Times today about Iraq, following the
visit he has just made there with William Hague, is well timed. In
Washington the Iraq Study Group, led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton,
is expected to report very soon, and to make recommendations which will
be unwelcome to president Bush, if only about withdrawal of soldiers.
The White House is already taking defensive action.
Cameron's tone is modest, neither complacent nor polemical. His
analysis, insofar as it does not come from his personal observations
during this visit, gives the impression that it owes more to people who
know something about the region than to speechwriters. In this it is a
welcome change from the prime minister's speeches on the same subject
in Los Angeles and at Mansion House, with their rhetoric about arcs of
evil and so on.
The price of making peace
John Hooper
December 1, 2006 03:55 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_hooper/2006/12/the_pope_in_turkey.=
html
Was it a success or a failure? As the Pope flew back to Rome, the
verdict on his four-day visit to Turkey depended very much on who you
were and where you stood. But what the Turks in particular, and Muslims
in general, got from the trip is a lot easier to make out than the
benefits to the pontiff and the Vatican.
A neatly laid ambush at Ankara airport on the first day wrung from pope
Benedict a wholly unexpected expression of support for Turkey's EU
application. This from the man who, just a couple of years ago, was
saying Turkey's history and culture were in "permanent contrast" to
those of Europe.
Aids: a feminist issue
Bianca Jagger
December 1, 2006 04:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/bianca_jagger/2006/12/why_aids_is_a_goo=
d=2Ehtml
Today, World Aids Day, around 7,000 women across the world will become
HIV-positive. Over the past few years, the number of women and girls
infected with HIV has increased in every region of the world, and HIV
is rising particularly rapidly among women in Eastern Europe, Asia and
Latin America.
Part of the reason for this is that women are biologically more
vulnerable to HIV. They are twice as likely to contract HIV from
unprotected sex than men, and young women are most vulnerable to
infection. But it is not just biology; culture and poverty are putting
women's health and lives at risk.
Empty endorsements
Robert Fox
December 1, 2006 04:57 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/robert_fox/2006/12/post_733.html
For all the mutual backslapping and upbeat talk between George Bush and
Nuri al-Malaki, Iraq's prime minister, at their Amman summit, the grim
prospect looming for both in Iraq can be summed up in a word: defeat.
Mr Malaki's boast that Iraq can be running its own security with its
own army and police by June seems bizarre - he couldn't provide four
out of six army battalions for the current American-Iraqi security
sweep in Baghdad, Operation Together Forward.
The hearty endorsement by Bush of Mr Malaki sounds pretty hollow in
view of the bad character given him by national security adviser
Stephen Hadley in his confidential report of November 8. In it Hadley
accuses Malaki of gross deception or self-deception about the true and
parlous state of Iraq's security apparatus, now riven and undermined by
militias and death squads.
Spud u don't like
Matthew Fort
December 1, 2006 05:27 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/matthew_fort/2006/12/post_737.html
Romano, Maris Piper, Jersey Royals, Golden Wonder, Pink Fir Apple,
Belle de Fonenay, Charlotte, Pentland Javelin, Sharp's Express - there
is a special poetry to the names of potatoes. They cascade off the
pages of seed catalogues and supermarket display counters, promising
starchy delights, some good for baking, some for roasting, some for
chipping and some just to be eaten on their own with a lump of butter
melting all over them.
And soon, it seems, if the government has its way, that roll call of
tuber magic may be joined by GM potatoes, genetically modified
super-potatoes, perfect, spherical, identical and blight-resistant.
What shall we call them? Gene-Genie Romano ? Blushing Pink Fir Apple?
Golden Wonder Delicious? Pentland Blightfree Tip Top Tattie?
No way home
Laila El-Haddad
December 1, 2006 06:04 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/laila_elhaddad/2006/12/post_734.html
My son Yousuf and I, along with my parents, left the US, where we were
visiting family, to return to Gaza nearly three weeks ago.
But we are not in Gaza.
How America dumped Bush, part 2
Sidney Blumenthal
December 1, 2006 07:11 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sidney_blumenthal/2006/12/how_america_d=
umped_bush_part_2.html
=B7 Read part 1 of this piece here.
The modern Republican rise was first apparent in the midterm elections
of 1966, in the wake of early frustrations over Vietnam and racial
turmoil after passage of civil rights legislation. The closely fought
presidential contest of 1968, whose outcome was hardly inevitable, in
which Richard Nixon was elected, was ratified four years later in his
49-state landslide. Nixon's strategy was to revitalize the Republicans
as a party by assimilating Southern Democrats and ethnic suburban
white-flight Catholics in reaction to a post-New Deal Democratic party
tainted by antiwar dissent, minority protest and countercultural
experimentation - "amnesty, acid and abortion," as Vice President Spiro
Agnew captiously put it.
Nixon's Republican majority was the template for Reagan's
consolidation. Reagan's grin replaced Nixon's scowl, but the strategy
was basically unaltered. Watergate had only temporarily derailed the
project. Reagan's chief innovation was to acknowledge and encourage the
nascent religious right as an evolved form of Southern Democrats
metamorphosing into Southern Republicans.
Smokes, mirrors, slogans and insults
Denis MacShane
December 1, 2006 07:33 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/denis_macshane/2006/12/cameron.html
Is there such a thing as a Conservative foreign policy? In as much as
one can be discerned it is to insult Europeans, patronise Americans and
suggest some link between black citizens and crime. In the Times today,
David Cameron offers some thoughts after his first visit to Iraq. His
first? He has been an MP for five years and a party leader for 12
months and only now has he found the time to visit the epicentre of
Britain's 21st century foreign policy and military engagement. He found
his way to Greenland quick enough and I suppose it is good that someone
has shown him where Baghdad is on the map.
He seeks to put some distance between himself and British government
policy. But just as the Tories, including Messrs Cameron and Hague,
were the strongest supporters of the intervention in 2003, so today
they are trying to create a little smoke in the hope that their
reflection in the mirror will show they are being independent and
creative in foreign policy.
A scandalous waste
Peter Tatchell
December 1, 2006 08:20 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/peter_tatchell/2006/12/world_aids_disas=
ter.html
The battle against HIV has been seriously undermined by reliance on
unscientific animal-based medical research. Hundreds of millions of
pounds have been wasted on animal experimentation that has no relevance
to finding a vaccine and cure for HIV because HIV is a uniquely human
disease. It doesn't have the same devastating effect on other species.
This is the conclusion of a damning new report, Still Dying of
Ignorance? 25 years of failed primate AIDS research, published today -
World Aids Day - by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
(BUAV). Written by Dr Katy Taylor, it gives a comprehensive review of
HIV research (HIV is the virus that causes Aids). Her report documents
the failure of a quarter of a century of research with monkeys, cats
and other non-human species.
Putting Turkey to the test
David Boaz
December 1, 2006 09:01 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_boaz/2006/12/turkey_struggles_wit=
h_modernit.html
Turkey's relationship with the European Union, with the Catholic
church, and with western values generally, has been much in the news
lately. One indication that Turkey hasn't quite found its way to
liberal values is the recent treatment of Attila Yayla.
Yayla, a professor and the founder of a liberal think tank, appeared on
a panel discussion November 18 sponsored by a local branch of the
governing Justice and Development Party. He allegedly asserted that
Kemalism, the governing philosophy instituted by Kemal Ataturk, "leads
more to backwardness than progress". This was too much for Gazi
University, which promptly fired him; party officials also condemned
him.
Forever friends
Lawrence Freedman
December 1, 2006 10:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/lawrence_freedman/2006/12/forever_frien=
ds.html
Once again the value of Britain's special relationship has been called
into question, this time by an American diplomat of no evident
importance who claims to be embarrassed by President George Bush's
failure to reward Prime Minister Tony Blair adequately for his staunch
support during the past five difficult years. This fits in with the
standard characterisation of the relationship these days of a Faustian
bargain in which Blair has sold Britain's soul except in this case
nothing actually has been received in return.
It is of course obvious when the relationship is not producing the
goods. The calls of Britain for a different US policy - on climate
change or the Middle East - are blatantly ignored. Demonstrating that
the relationship is working is much more difficult for that requires
showing that there has been (a) a significant shift and (b) this can
only be explained by external pressure. No president, or for that
matter prime minister, is inclined to admit that a policy has been
adopted in order to please another government, especially on matters of
vital interest. Because observers assume that the junior partner must
always seek to oblige the senior, there is little disposition to accept
either that Blair went in with Bush on Iraq out of belief (though he
did) rather than American demands, nor that Bush has modified his
policy one jot because of Blair (though he has).
History and truth
Tenzin Tsundue
December 2, 2006 10:21 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/tenzin_tsundue/2006/12/tenzin_tsundue.h=
tml
Before it happened our local Superintendent of Police called me to his
office twice and tried to advise me to keep silent. But when everything
failed he slapped an official detention order on me saying I couldn't
leave Dharamsala for 14 days. Hu Jintao, President of the People's
Republic of China, was visiting India and the host government had to
keep me away from their diplomatic display of friendship and desire for
business contracts - fearing I might repeat my protest stunts by
inviting myself to their banquet table shouting "FREE TIBET".
The order states that I was detained due to my protests in 2002 and
2005 - when Chinese Prime Ministers Zhu Rongji and Wen Jiabao visited
India - and also on "substantial evidence" of plans to protest this
time and add Hu Jintao to the list. For the 10 April 2005 caper, I hid
myself on the balcony of the bell tower atop India's premier science
institution for 24 hours. I had climbed the building the night before
China's Prime Minister was to address a conference in the Indian
Institute of Science. So, as Wen Jiabao started his speech on the
ground floor, I emerged onto the tower's balcony brandishing the
Tibetan national flag shouting "FREE TIBET". By then unfurling a huge
red banner reading "FREE TIBET" and flinging leaflets in the air, the
massive media coverage meant to focus on the Chinese premier was
instantly redirected to Tibet.
Face to faith
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1962195,00.html
We need to fast a little to truly enjoy our feasts, says Stephen
Tomkins
Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian
Advent is here, and has been for three months according to my local
supermarket, which put its mince pies and choc-filled stockings out in
early September. I suppose sooner or later the whole year will be
Christmas, except the 12 days themselves, which will be our recovery
period. The original Christmas holiday will be a holiday from
Christmas.
Easter is the same idea writ small. My supermarket starts it on Ash
Wednesday, when the lemon juice and pancake mix are transfigured
overnight into chocolate eggs and hot cross buns. This year, I wanted
to buy a late Easter egg on the bank holiday Monday and found they were
all gone. For supermarkets, it seems, Lent equals chocolate.
Cue Christian rant about the commercialisation of our religious
calendar and Christian festivals being consumed by paganism. Well, up
to a point. Actually, I have little sympathy for Christians who
complain about Christmas becoming pagan. The truth is that we stole it
off pagans in the first place and can hardly object if they want it
back.
The genius in our nostrils
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1962369,00.html
Though derided by philosophers down the ages, in the matter of the
senses, the nose has it
Lara Feigel
Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian
Once upon a time, primitive man got up from the ground. While his less
enlightened companions scrabbled and sniffed in the dust, he preferred
to rely on the world of sight. As time passed, the limbic lobe in his
brain shrank and his olfactory faculties became a mere whiff of what
they had once been. No longer aware of the heady range of smells that
assails the average dog, man put his nose to new use, and turned it up.
Smell, said Aristotle, is the most undistinguished of all our senses.
In 1757 Edward Burke declared: "No smells or tastes can produce a grand
sensation, except excessive bitters and intolerable stenches." And in
1798 Kant dubbed smell the "least rewarding" and "most easily
dispensable" sense, at best "a negative condition of wellbeing".
We are only two weeks from an existential explosion
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1962344,00.html
If the European Union now spurns Turkey, it will deservedly stand
accused of historic dishonesty and perfidy
Martin Kettle
Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian
Today, as in the past, Turkey embodies transcendent political
questions. Can west and east live in harmony? How can secular and
religious values best coexist? Are minorities and human rights properly
respected? This week Pope Benedict trod a more exemplary path through
these difficult issues than some had expected. Now the European Union
must do the same if it is to avoid becoming a protectionist irrelevance
and, perhaps, if it is to survive at all.
In spite of all its problems, the mutual embrace between the west and
Turkey is a great project of civilisation and law. Yet events are
pushing both sides towards an epochal confrontation at this month's EU
summit. We are a mere two weeks away from an existential explosion
which could end with Europe defining itself as a place in which Muslims
are not welcome, and with modern Turkey turning away from the
westernising path that has been fundamental to its whole existence. We
would be crazy to allow either thing to happen.
Centres of barbarism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1962191,00.html
We treat asylum seekers as the lowest of the low - while private firms
turn their plight into profit
Melanie McFadyean
Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian
The riots at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre will surprise no
one who knows what goes on behind the doors of privately run detention
centres, where some 2,000 asylum-seeking men, women and children are
locked up and a level of despair prevails that rarely gets media
attention - what an irony that this week's riot was sparked by a
custody officer turning off the TV as an item about a damning inquiry
into the centre, near Heathrow, was coming on.
Anne Owers, the chief inspector of prisons, has uncovered human-rights
abuses time and again in more than 40 reports into immigration
detention. But she described her new report on Harmondsworth as
"undoubtedly the poorest ... we have issued on an immigration removal
centre".
How to build intelligent suburbs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1962170,00.html
The urgency of climate change makes the rebirth of our cities crucial
to the planet, and its people
Richard Rogers
Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian
After a century in which cities were treated as problems - dirty,
crowded, dangerous - the 1997 general election marked a turning point
with a new government that saw cities as the only sustainable solution
to the growing demand for housing.
There has been a measurable cultural shift - to an understanding that
we need to use land better, and plan better, to sustain our cities. If
you visit Manchester today, you can see tangible evidence of that
change in the centre. Over 15 years the population has soared from 90
to 25,000, bringing life and pride back to one of our great urban
centres.
Huge protest brings Beirut to a standstill
http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,1962136,00.html
=B7 Muslims and Christians demand new government
=B7 Corruption and lack of inclusion prompt rally
Clancey Chassay in Beirut
Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Christians waving Lebanese flags
poured into central Beirut yesterday as opposition leaders gave
impassioned speeches calling for the resignation of the cabinet and the
formation of a new, more inclusive government.
A tent city was set up for the thousands who vowed to stay outside the
government offices where the prime minister, Fouad Siniora, and most of
his ministers were holed up behind barbed wire and barriers until the
cabinet stepped down.
Chaos erupts as Mexican president is sworn in
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1962291,00.html
Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian
Mexico's new rightwing president, Felipe Calder=F3n, slipped in through
a back door of the national congress yesterday to take his oath of
office amid chaotic scenes that followed fist fights between rival
deputies seeking control of the chamber.
In the 90 minutes before the ceremony deputies from Mr Calder=F3n's
National Action party (PAN) clashed with representatives from the
leftwing Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD), who claim July's
presidential election was stolen from their candidate Andr=E9s Manuel
L=F3pez Obrador. Mr L=F3pez describes himself as the "legitimate
president", and was "sworn in" before more than 100,000 supporters in a
theatrical open-air ceremony last month.
Charisma and petro-dollars mean the show will go on for Ch=E1vez
http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,,1962163,00.html
Opponents loathe him, but leftwing leader is 20 points ahead of his
main rival
Rory Carroll in Caracas
Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian
Hundreds of young men and women in red T-shirts surge towards the
doors, clamouring to be allowed in, but the theatre in central Caracas
is already full and the show is about to begin.
Those crammed inside fizz with expectation, their eyes locked on the
stage, willing him to appear. Suddenly he bounds into view, arms aloft,
and thousands of voices shout in welcome.
They have come to be reminded why they love Hugo Ch=E1vez and the
Venezuelan president does not disappoint. Raw political talent and an
ocean of oil have given him the means to persuade them, and millions of
others, to vote for him in tomorrow's election.
Praise and fears as Pope ends Turkish visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/turkey/story/0,,1962109,00.html
John Hooper in Istanbul
Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian
Pope Benedict flew out of Turkey yesterday having convinced many - but
by no means all - of his hosts of his desire for warm relations with
the Muslim world.
Ending his first trip as Pope to a predominantly Muslim nation,
Benedict made a last attempt to assuage fears of a pan-Christian
conspiracy against Islam, saying the Vatican sought to "impose nothing
on anyone".
His unprecedented gesture on Thursday, when he prayed in the Blue
Mosque, elicited widespread praise. His guide, the grand mufti of
Istanbul, Mustafa Cagrici, noted that the Pope had stood and faced
Mecca as he did so, as a good Muslim would. "These were very nice
gestures," he told a television interviewer.
Da Vinci's print may paint new picture of artist
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1962373,00.html
Marta Falconi in Rome
Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian
Anthropologists say they have pieced together Leonardo da Vinci's left
index finger print, and it could shed more light on the artist and his
mother's supposed Arabic origins, and even help attribute disputed
paintings or manuscripts. The reconstruction took three years.
"We knew how Leonardo saw the world and the future ... but who was he?"
Luigi Capasso, Anthropology Research Institute director at Chieti
University, central Italy, said. "This biological information is about
his being human, not being a genius."
Heirs to the slavers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1960629,00.html
Nearly 200 years after Britain abolished slavery its legacy is all
around. As the PM sidesteps a state apology, Andy Beckett talks to
descendants of slave traders. And prominent black Britons speak out
Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian
Sir George Earle lives in a long thatched house in Devon with a small
apple orchard, a few rich green fields and an old barn. In the barn,
under a workbench, are several large black metal boxes. Their lids are
scratched, their insides rusty, but the boxes have protected the Earle
family archive for generations. "There are handwritten notebooks, in
flowery language," he says. "You need a lot of patience to read them."
He has retired from a career in the City, but is busy working for the
UK Independence Party and writing to the Times.
Hands up who really understands what Stephen Hawking is telling us?
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article2032699.ece
The great scientist's attempts to popularise his ideas about the
Universe have been bestsellers, but few have read until the end. Steve
Connor admits to feeling slightly baffled, but gamely unravels the
rival contenders for a Final Theory of Everything
Published: 02 December 2006
We came a little closer to knowing the mind of Stephen Hawking this
week when he was interviewed by John Humphrys for a special edition of
the Today programme on Radio 4. It is a mind filled with dark matter,
black holes and multidimensional space-time. Perhaps the easiest
concept to emerge from the brain of Britain's most celebrated living
scientist was the notion that our future survival depends on whether we
can colonise distant planets orbiting far-away stars.
Hawking, a mathematical cosmologist at Cambridge University, wrote A
Brief History of Time, a book that famously attempted to shed light on
the deeper recesses of cosmology. It has been a consistent best-seller
since it was first published in 1988, but few people - including myself
- have been able to finish it.
Robert Fisk: My reservations about the French
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2032671.ece
P=E9tain sent his country's Jews to Auschwitz with an enthusiasm that
surprised the Nazis
Published: 02 December 2006
I still possess a 1930s photograph of a cosy old Beirut street, its
Ottoman houses draped with flowers, an ageing Citro=EBn just visible at
the end of the cobbled roadway, trees shading the narrow pavements on
each side. "Rue P=E9tain," it says on the caption. My old poilu - Dad -
he of the third battle of the Somme - would teach me P=E9tain's pledge
at Verdun. "Ils ne passeront pas." They shall not pass.
But of course, P=E9tain's patriotism in 1916 - his refusal to permit the
Kaiser's army to advance beyond the Meuse - became France's shame in
1940. When it reached Beirut in 1941, the Anglo-Australian invasion
force which drove Vichy France from Lebanon stripped P=E9tain's name
from the wall of that Ottoman street and Bill Fisk thereafter spoke of
him with ambiguity. Bill, like most Englishmen and women - and many,
though by no means all, Frenchmen and women - could not forgive the man
who collaborated with Hitler's Germany.
Blair tells Vatican to 'face up to reality' on condoms
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2032696.ece
By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent
Published: 02 December 2006
Tony Blair has told religious leaders to "face up to reality" and drop
their opposition to condoms to help the fight against Aids.
In a pointed criticism of the Vatican's stance on contraception, Mr
Blair used a television interview on World Aids Day to insist that
preaching abstinence was not enough. Speaking to MTV, Mr Blair said:
"The danger is if we have a sort of blanket ban from religious
hierarchy saying it's wrong to do it, then you discourage people from
doing it in circumstances where they need to protect their lives."
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