| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
10 Mar 2007 03:03:33 PM |
| Object: |
OT: Noxious emissions |
Noxious emissions
David Adam
March 9, 2007 12:58 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_adam/2007/03/envirocon.html
Cycling into work this morning, I had little idea that I was part of a
global conspiracy, a cabal even. Especially one involving Mrs
Thatcher. Colleagues did not mutter behind their hands when I walked
into the office. There were no brown paper envelopes stuffed with cash
on my desk. Yet, according to a Channel Four documentary last night
called the Great Global Warming Swindle (reviewed here), I am heavily
involved in such a plot. In fact I'm in it up to my neck.
The conspiracy, of course, is climate change. And my role? I
perpetuate the myth that man-made emissions like carbon dioxide are
warming the planet, thereby, er, giving me something to write about,
by ignoring evidence that does not support it.
The familiar old refrain
David Rowan
March 9, 2007 2:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_rowan/2007/03/augustus_melmotte_w=
ould_have_r.html
Augustus Melmotte would have recognised the cold, searing blade of
sudden ostracism. Until his inevitable downfall, Melmotte, the anti-
hero of Trollope's The Way We Live Now, had bought himself an
outsider's ticket to the heart of the British establishment: holding
court at his ostentatious Pickering Park mansion, hosting balls to
entertain the Emperor of China, bamboozling his way into parliament
where, after "spend[ing] a little money", he knew that "a baronetcy
would be almost a matter of course".
Melmotte had been born a Jew, it was whispered, and his wife certainly
"had the Jewish nose and the Jewish contraction of the eyes". Yet
whilst his wealth and connections remained useful, the inner circle -
and the prime minister himself - expediently "worshipped" a man who in
private was considered "vulgar" and "not an Englishman". Only when it
became clear that the law had caught up with Melmotte did they
brutally cast him adrift, his dinner for the Chinese Emperor betrayed
by the empty seats of former establishment friends - no Sir Gregory
Gribe, no Sir David Boss, no Postlethwaite nor Bunter. Not even when
Melmotte was found dead, a bottle of prussic acid by his side, could
former friends bring themselves to express anything but disdain for
him.
Thinking globally
Henning Meyer
March 9, 2007 3:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/henning_meyer/2007/03/henning_meyer.html
In the European year of equal opportunities the reform of the European
social model is at the top of the political agenda. Tax dumping,
international competitiveness and the right balance between labour
market flexibility and social security are the central points of
debate. On a general level however, the discussion about the reform of
the European Social Model suffers from a structural shortcoming: it is
too much focused on Europe itself and thus omits to adequately
consider the importance of the global framework.
The diverse appearances of the European social model, with its varied
financial concepts and steering mechanisms, make the discussion about
its reform very complex. This complexity also causes the introverted
character of the discussion. Questions such as whether the UK should
emulate more Scandinavian welfare policies or whether "flexicurity" is
the silver bullet to combine economic development and social justice
are necessary but not sufficient points of discussion. A too
introverted debate implicitly accepts external pressures on the
European social model whereas the reflection of these pressures needs
to be an integral part of the reform itself.
Revitalising Zionism
Alex Stein
March 9, 2007 4:28 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/alex_stein/2007/03/the_greatest_mistake=
_israels_c.html
The greatest mistake Israel's critics make is to believe that its
problems stem from an excess of ideology. Nothing could be further
from the truth. The country, which was forged in the irons of Zionism,
is now shrouded under the dark cloud of apathy. This phenomenon was
already noticeable during the later Oslo years, before giving way to
the cohesion that was necessitated by the Second Intifada. Ariel
Sharon tried to blow the apathy it away, but was laid low by a coma
before he was able to complete the job. And now, under Ehud Olmert,
the situation is worse than ever.
How would Israelis vote if elections were called tomorrow? For the
last year, the polls have been suggesting triumph for Netanyahu. Faced
with this awful prospect, my own answer to this question has always
been a tactical vote for Kadima. I had always assumed that a period of
inertia is better than rule by the far right. But I'm no longer so
sure. Anything but Olmert is now preferable. Anything, whether left or
right, that will shake Israel out of its lethargy.
Iran: it's not about energy
Matthew Yglesias
March 9, 2007 5:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/matthew_yglesias/2007/03/chomsky_its_no=
t_about_energy.html
As George W Bush's administration contemplates blundering forward into
a war with Iran - complete with a nonsensical plan to construct an
unlikely alliance of Sunni Arab states, Israel, the United States, and
(most hilariously) the Iranian-backed political parties in charge of
Iraq - important elements of the American left seem determined to once
again play their usual role of useful idiots for the war party.
Thus, Noam Chomsky assures us, the issue with Iran is (of course!)
oil. Or, as he phrased it for Guardian readers, as if to underline the
lack of originality: "for the US, the primary issue in the Middle East
has been, and remains, effective control of its unparalleled energy
resources." In short, contrary to the superficial appearance that a
new administration took power in January 2001 and, when granted a
political opportunity by the events of September 11, 2001 began
implementing a series of disastrous new policies - of which the
heightened conflict with Iran is just one - everything is simply
continuing on as it has been for decades. "Washington's worst
nightmare," Chomsky informs us, "would be a loose Shia alliance
controlling most of the world's oil and independent of the US."
An asmymetry of information
Andrew Brown
March 9, 2007 5:20 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/andrew_brown/2007/03/soldiers_must_talk=
_like_this_i.html
Was it only yesterday that George Osborne was claiming that the
internet abolishes "information asymmetry"? The same yesterday, in
fact, as his colleague Patrick Mercer was being sacked for claiming,
in effect, that racism was not a huge problem in the army? Note that
he didn't claim it didn't exist, or was not a problem at all: merely
that it was under control.
Let us assume for the moment that Mercer was telling the truth: in his
battalion the abuse was directed at everyone, irrespective of race,
and that skin colour meant no more than hair colour. In battle his
soldiers could trust one another with their lives, whatever their
race. That may very well be true. It's certainly a lot more likely
than that soldiers never swear at one another in improper and
insulting ways.
Disproportionate force
Faisal al Yafai
March 9, 2007 6:58 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/faisal_al_yafai/2007/03/a_lot_of_force_=
for_one_young_g_1.html
Another day of paperwork and domestic calls, another night of
separating drunks anxious for a fight; the daily work of the police is
hardly glamorous, yet its unpredictability can make it desperately
dangerous. Every day the police have to deal with serious criminals in
difficult situations - people who have both the will and the capacity
to inflict acute harm. Drug dealers, armed robbers, not to mention
terrorist suspects; there's a whole gamut of risks the police run that
are at the opposite end of the danger spectrum from Toni Comer, whose
brief CCTV appearance is now being played across TV and the internet.
Yet it's precisely that fact that makes the CCTV footage of a
policeman apparently laying into Comer with punches so shocking. Comer
is not a burly man and she was not armed on the night she was
arrested: she is a young, slight woman, though one who was apparently
so under the influence of alcohol she could not control herself. And
thus the question arises: if the police use such force to subdue a
teenager (she was 19 at the time), what force might they use on people
who pose a greater physical risk? It is not hard to see how that
thought leads, eventually, to disproportionate use of force, and,
ultimately, to the most serious cases.
A sea change
Jonathan Jones
March 9, 2007 8:02 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_jones/2007/03/jjgormley.html
Antony Gormley is a humanist hero in a world that affects to despise
the human species and all its creations. You hear it in the voices of
protesters against the decision to permanently install his gathering
of metal men on Crosby beach. What about the wildlife, they cry? What
of the migratory birds?
It's not just that the beach will now be permanently marked by human
intervention. No, I think what worries Gormley's opponents is the
actual content of his sculptures - the fact that by casting his body
he promotes what William Blake called "the human form divine".
War and peace
M=E1irt=EDn =D3 Muilleoir
March 9, 2007 8:26 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mirtn_muilleoir/2007/03/war_and_peace_2=
..html
Brendan Behan once remarked of an IRA court martial, "they tried me in
my absence and sentenced me in my absence, so they can just as well
execute me in my absence." No such luxury was afforded UUP leader Reg
Empey who was present at the poll counts and in the television studios
to see the electorate crash and burn his party try, sentence and
condemn his election team.
How did it come to this? From pre-eminent unionist party with David
Trimble as lord and master of all he surveyed to political has-beens
in the blink of an eye. That's the question genial but hapless UUP
leader Reg Empey will be asking himself today.
Diplomacy, redux?
Brian Katulis
March 9, 2007 9:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brian_katulis/2007/03/sat_conference.ht=
ml
Iraq's government is hosting an international conference this weekend
in Baghdad that brings together Iraq, its six neighbors, the United
States, other global powers and regional actors like Egypt to discuss
security measures. Is this a major step towards implementing the Iraq
Study Group's (ISG) recommendations for a "new diplomatic offensive"
on the part of the United States? By itself, probably not.
Iraq's initial reactions to the ISG report were cool, and this
weekend's forum has much more modest goals than the broader diplomatic
offensive outlined in the ISG's report. This is not the full-blown
diplomatic surge advocated by some to stabilise the Middle East.
Patrick Mercer is not a racist
Edward Pearce
March 9, 2007 9:45 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/edward_pearce/2007/03/_edsard_pearce_to=
_thersa.html
Poor Colonel Mercer, he is denounced as a racist, summarily dismissed
from his front bench post and roundly abused on the BBC's Question
Time by five of the dimmest panellists ever let into a TV studio. Be
clear about this, Patrick Mercer is not a racist, nothing like a
racist: rather he is the victim of a collective reflex in the
political class, a reflex which has all the complexity of a tape
recording and which speaks received standard opinion.
What the colonel was actually trying to do with his remarks about "fat
bastards," "ginger-haired bastards" and "black bastards", was to ask
for a sense of proportion, the very last thing routine political minds
could hope to find. He was saying that the army is a rough-mouthed
place, happily adjusted to top-of-the register adjectives without
going to law. That is surely right. Indeed Mr Mercer is being slightly
euphemistic. It would be less likely that the noun, around which the
adjectives "fat," "ginger" or "black" usually gathered, would be
anything so eirenic as "*****." In the army, as at the football
stadium, it would be "*****" or "wanker." A pity really that Mr Mercer
didn't get himself hanged for the sheep of "*****" rather than the
genteel lamb of "*****."
The Hobbesian charms of Lost
Seth Michaels
March 9, 2007 10:15 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/seth_michaels/2007/03/the_hobbesian_cha=
rms_of_lost.html
Picture a small, unforgiving piece of territory, and throw into it
disparate groups of people, each deeply proud, touchy about its turf,
afraid of appearing weak in the eyes of the other. Right away
suspicions and pride lead to friction. Kidnappings and skirmishes lead
to ruthless reprisals. Guns are omnipresent, life is cheap, and each
side is divided internally by differences over how to deal with the
threat. No one can be trusted, no one is safe.
You could apply this description all sorts of places around the world,
but the one Americans seem most interested in is somewhere in the
south Pacific, and it appears every Wednesday. I speak of the
immensely entertaining "Lost", a show popular enough to have created
its own mythology.
When the FBI says 'trust us'
Geoffrey Stone
March 9, 2007 11:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/geoffrey_stone/2007/03/fbi_subpoenas.ht=
ml
One reason the Bush administration has fared so poorly over the past
several years is its obsessive fear of public accountability,
separation of powers and checks and balances. From its secret prisons
to its classified torture memos, from its clandestine authorization of
NSA spying to its efforts to deny the detainees at Guantanamo Bay any
access to the writ of habeas corpus, the Bush administration has
entered one long plea of "trust us". President Bush is, after all,
"the decider".
As the Framers of the US Constitution well understood, such an
approach to governance is a recipe for disaster. A recently-released
Justice Department audit of the FBI's use of PATRIOT Act authority is
the latest example of the consequences that accompany the "trust us"
theory of governance.
Don't get so angry!
Michael White
March 10, 2007 10:59 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michael_white/2007/03/i_missed_the_fast=
_train.html
I missed the fast train I wanted to catch last night becauser someone
had sold me the wrong ticket. When the man at the barrier started
explaining the finer points of ticket pricing in a patronising way we
had a sharp exchange.
Having bought the right ticket and seen my train pulling out of the
station I had time on my hands to go back and apologise. The mistake
wasn't his fault and on my outward journey the previous night I had
travelled from central London to Marlow, Bucks in little more than an
hour - despite having to use five different trains. Brilliant!
Cameron must take sides
Simon Woolley
March 10, 2007 12:11 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/simon_woolley/2007/03/the_problem_for_c=
ameroon.html
OK, Patrick Mercer MP has been booted out the shadow cabinet and
consigned to the political scrapheap along with other outdated Tory
bigots such as John Townsend and Norman Tebbitt. Whatever Edward
Pearce might say, that's where he belongs. And you can almost hear a
collective sigh of relief from the Tory frontbench.
But before we find closure and carry on with "business as usual"
surely we need to ask the Conservative party, and in particular David
Cameron: how did an individual harbouring such archaic views found
himself in one of the highest political offices in the land? Surely no
one believes that Mercer woke up on the ill-fated morning and espoused
these views from nowhere. And he could neither claim that he made a
throwaway remark that was taken out of context, or that he was
suffering from a medical condition that educed such remarks. His views
were measured, well articulated and consistent with anyone aspiring to
be Alf Garnett.
No news is bad news
Sasha Abramsky
March 10, 2007 1:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sasha_abramsky/2007/03/killing_the_news=
..html
The Los Angeles Times, the newspaper of record for America's second
largest city, has been busily destroying itself over the past couple
years.
Faced with shrinking revenues, and competition from a host of online
information sources, the paper's large investors have been demanding
one cutback upon another. The publisher, Jeffrey Johnson, was fired by
Tribune, the newspaper's parent company, after he refused to implement
huge staffing cuts. The newspaper's editor, Dean Baquet, was forced
out this past November after resisting an order to slash the number of
reporters he employed. The newspaper changed its format to have fewer
stories on its front page. More recently, spokesmen for some of the
large investment funds that hold Tribune stock have even suggested
eliminating the newspaper's foreign bureaus. Apparently, despite Iraq,
Afghanistan, and all the other places in which America is so directly
enmeshed at the moment, it's a money-losing proposition for newspapers
to invest the time and energy in setting up bureaus in these
locations.
It's a man's world
Dave Hill
March 10, 2007 2:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dave_hill/2007/03/ive_spent_a_lot_of.ht=
ml
I've spent a lot of time with my poorly old parents lately, in the
house in the small town where I grew up. In keeping with my family
background - respectable skilled manual - and with the general
cultural atmosphere I breathed as child, I got my values from Bible
stories read to me at cubs and primary school, from Biggles and
Blyton, from the sports field and from music radio and light
entertainment TV. It was the latter, even more than pop, that taught
me my first lessons about male homosexuality and its grave relevance,
to not only me but to all boys enduring adolescence in the first half
of the 1970s, whatever our burgeoning sexual tastes might be.
The death of comedy actor John Inman sharpens those memories - as if
they weren't sharp enough already. In his role as Mr Humphries in the
department store sitcom Are You Being Served? Inman's was but one
among a veritable pageant of a small screen homo-personae who
entertained in mainstream living rooms. Fey of phrase and limp of
wrist, no prime time comedy show seemed complete without "one of
those", be it ***** Emery's Clarence ("Hello Honky Tonks, how are
you?"), a lonesome Lukewarm in Porridge, played by Christopher
Biggins, who knitted to pass his time, or Gunner "Gloria" Beaumont,
Melvyn Hayes's drag specialist in It Aint Half Hot Mum. The comic
identification of gayness with camp delivered a telly version of
homosexual maleness that Middle England accepted and adored. It had
already been primed by radio: I can still smell my mother's gravy
thickening while Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick nudged, winked and
threw hissyfits on Round The Horne.
The Captain paid the price of this retreat into unreality
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2030678,00.html
When a superpower starts having its own Deirdre Barlow moments, you
know it's no longer a land fit for superheroes
Marina Hyde
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
'Unhappy the land that has no heroes!" declares a character in
Brecht's The Life of Galileo. "No," counters Galileo. "Unhappy the
land that has need of heroes." What with the play being written in
1938, we are denied the great dramatist's opinion on the land that
makes a big show of rushing to the heroic defence of the liberties of
fake Kazakh journalists, but you sense he might have deemed it a
dolorous place indeed. As for the land that sees its eponymous
superhero gunned down on home soil after 66 years of fighting the
forces of darkness ... one might respectfully venture that it hardly
suggests a country in the grip of mass euphoria.
A shameful injustice
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2030677,00.html
Cuba's 50-year defiance of US attempts to isolate it is an inspiration
to Latin America's people
Philip Agee
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
There is a wave of progressive change sweeping Latin America and the
Caribbean after the many lonely years in which Cuba held high the
torch, with free universal healthcare and education, and world-class
cultural, sports and scientific achievements. Although you won't find
a Cuban today who says things are perfect - far from it - probably all
would agree that compared with pre-revolutionary Cuba, there is a
world of improvement.
George Bush, the antithesis of this process, is now in Brazil at the
start of a mission to lure five countries away from regional economic
integration. However, the many thousands in the streets demonstrate
the region's vast repudiation of Bush and what he stands for,
something polls reflect unanimously.
Why aren't we waiting?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2030676,00.html
Let's reclaim the lost art of killing time and celebrate the boredom
of just hanging around
Joe Moran
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
The current BBC4 series The Waiting Room is a refreshing phenomenon: a
TV programme without a narrative hook. Filmed in various places where
people wait, from nail salons to launderettes, it simply records the
boredom, silence and aimless conversations that ensue. It is a useful
corrective to the constant refrain that our lives are more hectic,
mobile and "time-poor" than ever.
The waiting room was once a significant place in public life.
Newspaper editorials would lament the smouldering fires, obsolete
reading matter and bumpy seats in railway-station waiting rooms and
doctors' surgeries. "The furniture and decoration are usually in the
very abyss of dullness," complained the Times in 1925. But the reason
people complained about waiting rooms is that they had to use them:
they were places where all social classes, from vagrants to
professionals, shared a temporary berth.
We don't need Trident, we need a whole new plan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2030594,00.html
In the nuclear debate, the government has dismally failed to come up
with any fresh ideas on non-proliferation
Martin Kettle
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
The historic vote for radical House of Lords reform triggers a cluster
of good thoughts. First, that it was an object lesson in realistic
progressive audacity; what looked risky before suddenly looks
inevitable and sensible, constitutional reform's equivalent of the
congestion charge. Second, that it ought to put an end - though it
won't - to the ignorant claim that today's House of Commons is a
supine shadow of its supposedly glorious former self. And, third, that
MPs ought to show their muscle again on Wednesday by refusing to renew
the Trident nuclear missile system prematurely.
Angry crowds hunt Bush as protests mark start of Latin American tour
http://www.guardian.co.uk/brazil/story/0,,2030717,00.html
=B7 Brazilians take to streets with effigies and abuse
=B7 Presidents cement alliance that many do not want
Tom Phillips in Sao Paulo
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
Some arrived clutching banners telling "Mr Butcher" to go home. Others
brought effigies of "The Warlord" dangling miserably from a hangman's
noose. A handful dressed up as the grim reaper, while some women
paraded through the streets with stickers of George Bush and Adolf
Hitler placed tastefully over their nipples.
Fabio Silva had other ideas. He stuffed a sock into his mouth and left
it there for three hours. "It means that the Brazilian authorities
have tried to censor us - to pretend to Bushy that we don't exist,"
said the 21-year-old student, using the president's nickname in these
parts after briefly removing his gag. "It means that we are
remembering the silent victims of Iraq. And it means that the
censorship will not shut me up."
Dead or alive, on his 50th birthday ghost of the Hindu Kush haunts US
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,,2030777,00.html
CIA think they know where Osama bin Laden is. So do local tribesmen -
hiding in the White House
Declan Walsh in Islamabad
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
Osama bin Laden marks his 50th birthday today, most likely at a
hideout in the tribal lands straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's
tempting to imagine the grey-bearded jihadi hunched over a cake with
burning candles inside a cave, smiling henchmen gathered behind him.
In reality it's not likely to be much of a bash. Birthday parties are
frowned upon by Wahhabi puritans such as the al-Qaida leader, who
consider such celebrations a vulgar western import. But as he passes
another milestone he at least has reason to enjoy a quiet smile.
Did he jump or was he pushed? Russian journalists fear worst after
another death
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2030776,00.html
Safety fears heightened by mystery plunge of man known for damaging
scoops
Tom Parfitt and Luke Harding in Moscow
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
It's a setting repeated a thousand times over in the great sprawl of
sagging apartment blocks that make up Moscow's suburbs. Entrance
number two at 9 Nizhegorodskaya Street looks out on to a courtyard
where children play on swings and a climbing frame, still encrusted
with snow.
Only up close do you see the pile of carnations lying on a bench by
the door. And only then do you look up to the gaping window between
the fourth and fifth floors from which Ivan Safronov, 51, either
jumped or was pushed on March 2.
Palestinian, 11, says army used her as shield
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2030669,00.html
Conal Urquhart in Tel Aviv
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
The Israeli army is investigating whether its troops used two
Palestinian children as human shields during a house search operation
in the West Bank, after claims by the Israeli human rights
organisation B'Tselem.
Gingrich admits having affair at time of Clinton scandal
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2030773,00.html
Ed Pilkington in New York
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
Newt Gingrich, the darling of the conservative right and architect of
the Republicans' 1990s "contract with America", has spoken in depth
about the extra-marital affair he conducted with a congressional
assistant and confirmed that the relationship was ongoing at the time
he forced the impeachment of President Bill Clinton over the Monica
Lewinsky affair.
"There were times I was praying and I felt I was doing things that
were wrong but I was still doing them. I look back on periods of
weakness that I was not proud of," Mr Gingrich told the conservative
Christian group Focus on the Family.
Campaigners clip wings of the vultures
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2030705,00.html
The light of publicity may scare away scavengers of developing world
debt
Ashley Seager
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
Vulture funds, like the scavengers they are named after, prefer to
circle a corpse and be sure no one is watching before pouncing to
devour their prey.
But this strategy may be starting to unravel as these funds - which
pursue some of the world's poorest countries for millions of dollars
they can ill afford to pay - are attracting attention from
international campaigners and lawyers.
Oxfam has been leading a campaign against a company called Donegal
International, which has just won a high court suit against Zambia
that could net it up to $20m (=A310.1m).
Dark horse opens up race for French presidency
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,2030670,00.html
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
Fran=E7ois Bayrou, the centrist gentleman-farmer who has leapt from rank
outsider to become the "third man" in the French presidential race,
this week saw his support surge to 24% - a whisker behind the leading
candidates.
Mr Bayrou, a former education minister, horse-breeder and fervent
Catholic from the Pyrenees, has seen his popularity rise over six
weeks. He has gathered votes from both rightwing interior minister
Nicolas Sarkozy and socialist S=E9gol=E8ne Royal as the French electorate
voices its disillusionment with the political elite.
US defends secrecy surrounding Guant=E1namo Bay hearings
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,2030767,00.html
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
The US opened military hearings at Guant=E1namo Bay yesterday into the
14 suspects described as "high value", allegedly the most dangerous of
all the inmates with direct links to al-Qaida.
Journalists were barred from the hearings for the first time since
detainees began arriving at the US base in Cuba in 2001.
The 14 include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the
9/11 attacks, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003. Some of the 14
were transferred from secret CIA prisons worldwide.
Eternal wonder of humanity's first great achievements
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2030611,00.html
Only one still stands, but tales of the seven 'must see' monuments
still grip the world's imagination
Jonathan Glancey
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
When the ancient Greek historian Herodotus was about four years old, a
tiny army of 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians and a small cluster of Greek
allies fought one of the most famous battles in history: Thermopylae.
Here, at the "hot gates", a mountain pass in central Greece, the
unprecedented Persian army of Xerxes I (estimated by Herodotus to
number 2.6 million, excluding elephants and horses) was held back long
enough for the Greeks to prepare a counterattack by land and sea that
would trounce Xerxes and spare western civilisation from being overrun
from the feared east.
Move over, Pedro
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,2029118,00.html
For Almod=F3var it's an aspiring Argentinian director. For David
Miliband it's a 17-year-old campaigning single mother. We brought
together some famous names and the people they think are the next big
thing - how do mentor and prot=E9g=E9 inspire each other?
Read part two here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,2029458,00.html
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
FILM
Pedro Almod=F3var
Oscar-winning Spanish film-maker. He has written and directed a string
of successful movies, including All About My Mother, Talk To Her and,
most recently, Volver. Aged 55
I discovered Lucrecia when I went to see her first film, The Swamp.
There is nothing quite like going to the cinema in a state of complete
innocence and coming across something as mature and surprising as that
film. It is a rare sensation, the kind of thing that happened to me
with directors like Tarantino, Scorsese and Kim Ki-duk.
The long way round
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2030192,00.html
VS Naipaul always considered himself a writer of the imagination, but
increasingly found he wanted to engage with history and the wider
world. What better place to start than his ancestral land of India?
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
I thought when I began to write that I would do fiction alone. To be a
writer of the imagination seemed to me the noblest thing. But after a
few books I saw that my material - the matter in my head, the matter
in the end given me by my background - would not support that
ambition.
The ambition itself had been given me by what I knew of the great 19th-
century novels of Europe, or what I thought I knew of them. I put it
in that cautious way because, before I began to write, I actually
hadn't read a great deal. I saw now - something I suppose I had always
sensed but never worked out as an idea - that those novels had come
out of societies more compartmented, more intellectually ordered and
full of conviction than the one I found myself in. To pretend that I
came out of a society as complete and ordered would in some ways have
made writing easier. The order I am talking about is, simply, the
order, the fenced-in setting, that underpins the television situation
comedy. The rules of the fenced-in world are few and easily
understood; the messy outside world doesn't intrude to undo the magic.
I could have tried to write like that. But I would not have got very
far. I would have had to simplify too much, leave out a lot. It would
have been to deny what I saw as my task as a writer.
Happiness and all that jazz
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2030252,00.html
Simon Jenkins is converted by Terry Eagleton's The Meaning of Life
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
The Meaning of Life
by Terry Eagleton
200pp, Oxford, =A310.99
The fad for pocket wisdom continues. You want Shakespeare in half an
hour? Or a brief history of the planet? Or humanity in a hundred
words? We have it right here. Now along comes Terry Eagleton's answer
to the Bertrand Russell taxi driver question - "Always wanted to ask
you, Bert, what's it all about?" And in just 200 (very small) pages.
Virgin territories
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2030463,00.html
Fintan O'Toole on Hakluyt's Promise by Peter C Mancall, and Savage
Kingdom by Benjamin Woolley
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
Hakluyt's Promise: An Elizabethan Obsession for an English America
by Peter C Mancall
378pp, Yale, =A325
Savage Kingdom: Virginia and the Founding of English America
by Benjamin Woolley
467pp, Harper Press, =A325
Anniversaries usually provide a context for the rediscovery of half-
forgotten historical events. In the case of the foundation of the
English colony in Virginia 400 years ago next month, however, this is
neither possible nor entirely necessary. For one thing, half the story
- the perspective of the indigenous peoples of the place they
themselves called Tsenacomoco - can never be recovered. As the most
famous scion of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, noted of them in 1782:
"Very little can now be discovered of the subsequent history of these
tribes severally." One nation, the Mattaponies, he reckoned, consisted
of "three or four men only, and they have more negro than Indian blood
in them. They have lost their language, [and] have reduced themselves,
by voluntary sales, to about fifty acres of land." Of another nation,
the Nottoways, he noted "not a male is left". As for the memory of the
dead, all he could say was "I know of no such thing existing as an
Indian monument".
Kit Carson rides again
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2030470,00.html
Michael Moorcock finds in Hampton Sides' Blood and Thunder that the
man in the fancy buckskins was a real hero
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West
by Hampton Sides
460pp, Little, Brown, =A320
As a young hack I wrote dozens of stories featuring the heroic
adventures of Robin Hood, ***** Turpin, Billy the Kid, Kit Carson and
Buffalo Bill. To my disappointment, I swiftly discovered that Robin
Hood was a legend, ***** Turpin had been a brutal butcher who never
rode to York and Billy the Kid was a teenage psychopath. It was
therefore natural to assume that the redman's friend Kit Carson, in
his fringed finery, was a self-invented opportunist like Buffalo Bill.
A sympathetic sisterhood
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2030165,00.html
Veronica Horwell is moved by Jenna Bailey's collection of confidences
from ordinary women, Can Any Mother Help Me?
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
Can Any Mother Help Me?
by Jenna Bailey
330pp, Faber, =A316.99
The Cooperative Correspondence Club was established in 1935 as a cheap
way to establish regular contact between educated women, trapped at
home with their children (often many and not always all wanted)
because of the period's rules which demanded that they leave
professional jobs on marriage. They were further isolated by social
requirements for stiff upper lips and perpetual simulation of gallant
cheeriness. From a present that includes instant messaging, the CCC
seems archaic; each member regularly posted a handwritten or typed
article to the editor, who stitched them together into a private
magazine, which was then forwarded by post among the members. The
despair and loneliness of these unwilling housewives must have been
fierce to motivate so much effort, so many hard-to-fund tuppenny
stamps.
We're all English now
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2030164,00.html
Sarfraz Manzoor enjoys Julian Baggini's cultural tour of Rotherham,
Welcome to Everytown
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
Welcome to Everytown
by Julian Baggini
256pp, Granta, =A314.99
Identity is questioned when it is threatened; for immigrants the
threat arises from displacement from their mother country to a new
home where they are compelled to ask who they truly are. In England
they are no longer alone in confronting these questions. With the
challenge to multiculturalism from the growth of British-born Islamic
extremism - together with anniversaries of the act of union and the
election of the Labour government - national identity has leapt from
abstract concern to an all-out obsession.
The fibre coarse, the vision low
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2030167,00.html
Tristram Hunt sees lessons for the post-Blair era in Edward Pearce's
biography of Sir Robert Walpole, The Great Man
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
The Great Man: Sir Robert Walpole - Scoundrel, Genius and Britain's
First Prime Minister
by Edward Pearce
496pp, Jonathan Cape, =A325
Is it just coincidence that, as schools and universities abandon
teaching the 18th century, the period only grows in popular interest?
Lurching from the Tudors to the Victorians before concluding with the
Nazis, students rarely come across the lost world of Marlborough and
Wolfe, Whigs and Hunters, Jenkins' Ear or the Jacobites. Yet outside
the lecture room, William Hague's biography of Pitt the Younger proves
a bestseller, Vic Gatrell has a hit with his account of Georgian print
culture, City of Laughter, and hundreds queue for Tate Britain's
Hogarth exhibition.
Iranian general 'hands over vital documents after defecting to US'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2344833.ece
By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
Published: 10 March 2007
An Iranian general appears to have defected to the West with vital
documents, despite Iranian claims that he was snatched last month from
a Turkish hotel by US or Israeli agents.
A former Iranian deputy defence minister, Ali Rez Asgari has documents
and maps detailing the relationship between the elite Revolutionary
Guards and Islamist groups such as Hizbollah and Islamic Jihad, the
London-based Asharq Alawsat newspaper said.
Chavez hijacks Bush's South American tour with attack on 'wolf in
sheep's clothing'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2344753.ece
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Daniel Howden
Published: 10 March 2007
The Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez, has dismissed President George
Bush's anti-poverty proposals as the US leader's visit to Latin
America was met with furious demonstrations across the region
yesterday.
As the two leaders embarked on separate visits, Mr Chavez - who has
made poverty reduction a central plank of his own domestic agenda -
said the proposals of his ideological rival were nothing more than a
"wolf in sheep's clothing". He also mocked a $75m (=A339m)initiative to
help teach Latin American children to speak English. "He's a symbol of
domination and we are a cry of rebellion against the domination ...
he's trying to trick our people to divide us," said Mr Chavez, before
heading for a meeting with Argentina's president, N=E9stor Kirchner. "We
don't need tips from the empire."
Dispute over salt tax may be behind kidnapping of Britons
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2344750.ece
By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic editor
Published: 10 March 2007
A dispute over a salt tax could provide the key to the disappearance
of a group of Britons in one of the most remote and inhospitable
regions on the planet.
The hostages were reported yesterday to be "okay" by the Foreign
Secretary Margaret Beckett. But the Foreign Office cautioned that
investigators in the arid border region between Ethiopia and Eritrea
had still not located the group of five British embassy staff and
their relatives and that the report of a sighting remained
uncorroborated last night.
Don't mention the polar bears, Bush tells US scientists
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2344771.ece
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 10 March 2007
The Bush Administration has been accused once again of gagging US
government scientists by getting them to agree not to talk about polar
bears, sea ice and climate change during official overseas trips.
A leaked memorandum issued by a regional director of the US Department
of the Interior states that officials within the US Fish and Wildlife
Service will limit their discussions when travelling in countries
bordering the Arctic region because of sensitivities about climate
change.
Afghan anti-corruption chief is drug dealer
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2344759.ece
By Justin Huggler, Asia Correspondent
Published: 10 March 2007
Afghanistan's new anti-corruption chief has a shady past. Izzatullah
Wasifi served nearly four years in a US prison for trying to sell
heroin to an undercover agent in Las Vegas for $65,000.
It is not the ideal CV for a man appointed to root out corruption in
the country that is overwhelmingly the world's biggest supplier of
opium, from which heroin in refined.
Coup chief returns Mauritania to its people
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2344751.ece
By Rukmini Callimachi in Nouakchott
Published: 10 March 2007
Blue-robed nomads, civil servants, lawyers and village elders have
visited the presidential palace, begging the bespectacled man who
seized control of this desert nation in a coup to stay.
But the military commander who rules Mauritania, the junta leader
Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, is packing his bags after two years in
power, even while many fear that whoever replaces him could plunge the
country back into totalitarian rule.
Robert Fisk: Torture in Lebanon via a Toronto stage
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2344778.ece
The duty of an artist is to place imagination on a higher level than
history
Published: 10 March 2007
Scorched is the right title for Wajdi Mouawad's play about Lebanon.
The word "Lebanon" doesn't occur in the script and "the army invading
from the south" - the Israeli army, of course - remains preposterously
anonymous. But any playwright who calls a town "Nabatiyeh: or refers
to a prominent Shia figure called "Shamseddin" - the late Mehdi
Shamseddin was the leader of the Shia clergy in Lebanon - hasn't tried
very hard to hide the country in which his powerful, murderous
scenario takes place. Suitably bloody, Scorched is a story of love,
family honour, civil war and barbarity.
Wajdi Mouawad, who is of Lebanese Christian Maronite origin but is now
a French Canadian - his play was written in French and translated into
English for its latest performance at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto
- has written a programme note in which he acknowledges his own
background, even the devastating Israeli-Hizbollah war last summer.
But his play, he says, is "anchored above all else by poetry, detached
from its political context and instead anchored in the politic of
human suffering, the poetry which unites us all".
US refuses to name men at Guantanamo Bay court
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2344754.ece
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 10 March 2007
The Pentagon has refused to reveal which of its 14 "high-value"
detainees were being examined by military lawyers in closed
proceedings in Guantanamo Bay.
The military said the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT), which
began yesterday, were being held to assess 14 men transferred to the
prison last September from secret "black hole" prisons operated around
the world.
Mister President? Barack Obama on the road to the White House
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2342894.ece
No US presidential candidate since Bobby Kennedy has sparked as much
campaign-trail hooplah as Barack Obama. But is the 45-year-old senator
for Illinois ready to become the most powerful person on the planet?
Interview by Ben Wallace-Wells
Published: 10 March 2007
Shortly after Barack Obama was elected to the United States Senate in
2004, he began residing, Monday to Thursday, in a one-bedroom
apartment a few streets from the Capitol. For a 43-year-old man who
had been married for 13 years and who had two young daughters, it was
an isolating experience. The building has a yoga studio and a running
track and a decidedly down-and-urban view of some ratty rooftops in
the city's tiny Chinatown district. In his return to bachelor life,
Obama found himself "soft and helpless. My first morning in
Washington, I realised I'd forgotten to buy a shower curtain and had
to scrunch up against the shower wall in order to avoid flooding the
bathroom floor."
When Obama first got to Washington, he wanted to keep his head down
and concentrate on small issues. "The plan was: Put Illinois first,"
one of his aides tells me. Obama himself admits that his initial
agenda had a "self-conscious" modesty. His early legislative
accomplishments have been useful and bipartisan - he has even
sponsored bills with ultraconservative Senator Tom Coburn, who
believes that high-school bathrooms breed lesbianism - but they have
been small-scale and off the headlines: a plan to make it easier for
citizens to find out about government spending, increased research
into ethanol, more job training and tax credits for "responsible
fathers". This is the kind of head-down diligence that plays well in
the Senate
Swiss cheesed off with 'arrogant and objectionable' German invaders
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2344776.ece
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
Published: 10 March 2007
They have not yet resorted to clich=E9s about jackbooted Teutons or
started to ridicule their habit of bagging poolside sun loungers but
the Swiss have let it be known that they are more than a little upset
about a perceived " German invasion" of their once pristine Alpine
state.
"How many Germans can Switzerland stand?" demanded the mass
circulation Swiss newspaper Blick. It went on to ask its 250,000
readers whether "they too" had had "enough of cheap workers, arrogant
expressions" and Germans' "objectionable self-confidence".
Big Brother racism row: police rule out charges
http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2344799.ece
By Sherna Noah
Published: 10 March 2007
No arrests will be made in connection with the Celebrity Big Brother
racism row, police said yesterday. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)
decided that what occurred was "clearly offensive" but "not
criminal".
The row sparked a diplomatic incident following the treatment of the
Channel 4 show's eventual winner Shilpa Shetty.
Five Best: Andalucian hideaways
http://travel.independent.co.uk/europe/article2342739.ece
Get away from it all - deep in the Spanish countryside
By Danielle Demetriou
Published: 10 March 2007
Hoopoe Yurt Hotel, Cortes de la Frontera
Getting back to nature couldn't be easier at this solar-powered
retreat. Scattered among olive groves in the shadow of the rugged
Grazalema mountains are three romantic yurts, each set in its own acre
of meadow. Filled with traditional Mongolian artefacts and exotic
textiles, the chic and bohemian yurts even have en suite bathrooms. A
wooden pergola with low Turkish seating and antique kilims is ideal
for smoking a hookah. Chinese lanterns illuminate alfresco dinners.
Hoopoe Yurt Hotel, Cortes de la Frontera, Malaga Province (00 34 952
117 055; www.yurthotel.com). Yurts start at =A380, including breakfast.
Open April-October.
Deborah Orr: Racism won't go away if we merely make examples of a few
individuals
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/deborah_orr/article2344804.=
ece
Published: 10 March 2007
It's a very fine thing to live in a nation that does not tolerate
racism, especially one that gets the precious opportunity to advertise
its lack of toleration of racism so very, very frequently. Yet it's an
altogether more curious thing that the only people left in Britain who
seem relaxed about failing to toe the blanket-condemnation line (not
that I notice skin colour myself) are black.
Leroy Hutchinson, who served as a corporal under Patrick Mercer, the
former Conservative homeland security spokesman, went on Newsnight to
defend his former boss, even though his former boss seemed certain
himself that his remarks about racism in the Army had been
indefensible.
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