Outspoken and outcast
Eric Alterman
October 12, 2006 03:41 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/eric_alterman/2006/10/alterman_on_judt.=
html
The British historian Tony Judt, transplanted to New York told a
reporter this week:
I'm struck when I observe the Jewish community in the United States,
especially in New York ...that it's a community which is the most
successful, the wealthiest, the most well-integrated, the most
influential, the most safe Jewish community in the history of Judaism,
period - anywhere, anytime - since the Roman empire. And yet it's
driven by an enormous self-induced insecurity.
The pain behind the occupation
Laila El-Haddad
October 13, 2006 11:45 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/laila_elhaddad/2006/10/post_505.html
It's a conundrum for most people, and a difficult issue to talk about,
even between Palestinians. During a time when they are being bombarded
by some 300 artillery shells a day, exposed to deafening sonic-boom
attacks and living under an increasingly brutal occupation without
electricity and very little water, they are killing each other.
Palestinian versus Palestinian.
"Why are the Palestinians doing this? If they don't fight Israel, they
have to fight someone, so they fight each other!" I've heard time and
again.
Religious practises are a part of people's identities
Yael Simon
October 13, 2006 10:24 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/yael_simon/2006/10/post_504.html
So Jack Straw can't possibly discuss constituency business with a woman
wearing a veil. It hinders communication.
Why have we never understood the utter intimacy needed to discuss
council tax? You see, at the hospital that we run, we manage to
effectively counsel veiled women through cancer and worse.
So much for the sisterhood
Salma Yaqoob
October 13, 2006 09:01 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/salma_yaqoob/2006/10/what_happened_to_s=
isterhood_1.html
Harriet Harman MP, Labour's "in-house feminist", has entered the debate
on Muslim women and integration with the observation that "the veil is
an obstacle to women's participation, on equal terms, in society". Her
comments echo those of other white female commentators, most of whom
disappointingly recycle the same dish served up by a host of senior
male politicians.
Veiled Muslim women are caricatured as oppressed victims who need
rescuing from their controlling men, while at the same time accused of
being threatening creatures who really should stop intimidating the
(overly tolerant) majority. What is distinctly lacking is any sense of
genuine empathy for British Muslim women and how this "debate" may be
impacting on them.
A star is just a star
Daniel A Bell
October 12, 2006 06:35 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daniel_a_bell/2006/10/post_502.html
Shortly before China's national day on October 1, I was asked to
participate in a discussion on Chinese television about the meaning of
the national symbols and national identity. The show was to be aired on
October 1st, but it was cancelled. I was surprised because I had
appeared on the show before without any problems, and the show has a
reputation for being relatively free and open-minded (perhaps because
the interviews are carried out in English and I was told half-jokingly
that the leaders would not be able to understand the discussion).
What could I have said that led to the cancellation? I tried to steer
clear of overly provocative topics, but I may have said something that
crossed the line. Was it the point that flags and national anthems
could be put to ironic use? I mentioned the case of central Europeans
before the fall of communism there, and perhaps it was felt that
listeners would be reminded of the May 1989 pro-democracy
demonstrators' use of the Chinese national anthem. Or perhaps it was
the point that patriotism is best developed through participation in
intermediary associations rather than flag-waving, because
participation in such groups lifts people out of their private concerns
and leads them to act from public or semi-public motives? Some members
of the government seem to be worried about the role of foreign NGOs in
promoting political change, and perhaps it was felt that my claim could
be seen as an endorsement of such NGOs. Or maybe it was that example
from the Quebec referendum on independence, when pro-independence and
pro-unity forces competed with Quebec and Canadian flags to show their
respective allegiances. I was trying to say that flags matter more in
times of war or political crisis, but perhaps it was felt that any talk
of pro-independence forces would remind listeners about splittists in
Taiwan.
Where's Voltaire when you need him?
Denis MacShane
October 12, 2006 05:46 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/denis_macshane/2006/10/post_503.html
Where is Voltaire when you need him? The decision of the French
politicians in the national assembly in Paris to legislate on the
writing of the history of the Armenian massacres of 1915-1916 deserves
the wit, the scorn, the satire and the derision of France's greatest
exponent of free speech. I cannot believe that the nation of Voltaire,
Hugo, Zola and Sartre has decided to try and control what is written
about history.
But alas, Voltaire is dead and his spirit is slowly being extinguished
as freedom of speech is being replaced by freedom from being insulted
or hurt. The Turkish politicians who also want to dictate how the
Armenian massacres are reported must be opening champagne that they now
have fellow politicians who think they can control history.
The view from Egypt
Brian Whitaker
October 12, 2006 05:24 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brian_whitaker/2006/10/egypt_fights_the=
_veil.html
With so many people already sounding off in the Great Niqab Debate, I
have no particular desire to join in. However, a press release from an
Egyptian human rights organisation which reached me yesterday provides
an interesting twist.
Homeward Christian soldiers
Jonathan Freedland
October 13, 2006 11:55 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_freedland/2006/10/post_509.html
The head of the army, Sir Richard Dannatt, told Jim Naughtie this
morning on Radio 4's Today programme that he thought his damning view
of the war in Iraq was hardly "newsworthy". Well, that puts him in a
minority of one.
Tony Blair and Downing Street certainly understood the news value of
the chief of the general staff's interview with the Daily Mail,
reportedly debating its consequences into the early hours in a series
of conference calls. You can hardly blame them. For the political
impact of an intervention like this from Britain's top soldier is huge.
Prodi feels the pain
John Hooper
October 12, 2006 02:40 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_hooper/2006/10/italys.html
Italy this week has reverberated to a sharp, discordant sound - that of
trophies crashing to earth. On Wednesday, parliament scrapped the
Berlusconi government's flagship infrastructure scheme: a bridge to
link Sicily to the rest of Italy that would have been the biggest of
its kind in the world. The day before, Silvio Berlusconi's successor as
prime minister, Romano Prodi, signalled that Italy's flag carrier
airline was on the verge of bankruptcy. The situation at Alitalia, he
said, was "completely out of control - and I don't see any parachutes".
Rarely can a country have taken two such hefty blows to its national
pride in barely 24 hours. But then Italy is in serious economic
difficulties.
The numbers do add up
Daniel Davies
October 12, 2006 02:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daniel_davies/2006/10/how_to_not_lie_wi=
th_statistics.html
As Richard Horton's post says, the latest Johns Hopkins University
study of mortality in Iraq, published in the Lancet is horrible news.
When the previous study was published, a horrendous chorus of hacks
sprung up and suddenly discovered a new-found expertise in
epidemiological statistics.
Tim Lambert, the Australian science-blogger, and I ended up spending a
lot of time and energy fighting on the online front of this Campaign
For Real Statistics, and so it is with heavy heart that I see that
President Bush - who is probably a better statistician that many of his
online supporters as he has at least been to business school - has
already expressed an uninformed opinion on the matter.
Acid and alcohol don't mix
Nick Johnstone
October 12, 2006 01:05 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/nick_johnstone/2006/10/acid_and_alcohol=
_dont_mix.html
It should be obvious: giving LSD to an alcoholic in the hope of curing
them is a very, very bad idea. But various newspapers this week appear
not to agree. For instance, we've got the Independent claiming "LSD
helps alcoholics put down the bottle" and Metro stating, "LSD can help
alcoholics quit drink".
They're alluding to the just-released findings of Erika Dyck, a
professor of the history of medicine at the University of Alberta, who
recently revisited the subject (and subjects) of a four decades old
research study by British psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond, who
experimented with giving alcoholics a single dose of LSD in a bid to
cure their illness.
The rise of the 'libertarian Democrats'
David Boaz
October 12, 2006 12:40 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_boaz/2006/10/libertarian_democrat=
s=2Ehtml
The American blogosphere is abuzz with the oxymoronic concept
"libertarian Democrats", kicked off by lefty uberblogger Markos
Moulitsas of Daily Kos at Cato Unbound. Kos says libertarians should
consider voting Democrat because Republicans have spectacularly failed
to deliver on their promise of "smaller government and less intrusion
in people's lives". Indeed they have: Americans gave Republicans
control of both Congress and the White House, and they've delivered a
war with no end in sight, increasing civil liberties restrictions, the
biggest expansion of entitlements in 40 years, a 49% spending increase
in six years, centralisation of education, an anti-marriage amendment,
entanglement of church and state, the imperial presidency ... the list
goes on.
But Kos's argument founders after he makes that point. Libertarians
have good reason not to vote Republican, but why should they vote
Democrat? He says libertarians should wake up to the fact that
corporations also take away our freedom, and then vote Democrat. OK. Or
maybe Democrats should wake up to all the miracles that corporations
have produced - from planes, trains, and automobiles to worldwide
computer networks and 500 television channels and a standard of living
unimaginable a generation or two ago - and start voting Libertarian.
Kos can't really make the case that libertarians who believe what
libertarians believe should vote Democrat, so he has to argue that
libertarians should believe what Democrats believe. A tough sell.
Blunkett's war
David Clark
October 12, 2006 12:21 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_clark/2006/10/blunketts_war.html
David Blunkett can at least be congratulated for his candour. Not many
politicians would have agreed to the publication of personal diaries
that reveal them in such a bad light. Alan Clark is one that springs to
mind, but at least his diaries had the merit of being funny and
strangely endearing. No one is likely to make that claim about the
Blunkett Tapes. Any humour they contain is wholly unintended.
Nor, with one exception, does Blunkett tell us much of importance about
New Labour's decade in power. There is lots of embarrassing
tittle-tattle to put Whitehall press officers into a spin, but nothing
that is likely to change the way we view politics. Even today's
revelation that Tony Blair has been economical with the truth about his
heart condition is unlikely to create the kind of scandal that engulfed
the fictional President Bartlett in the West Wing. The British are
inclined to regard health as a personal matter, and besides, we have
become accustomed to the idea that our prime minister bends the truth
when it suits him. Let's face it; he's done it on far more serious
matters.
Whose mess is it anyway?
Inayat Bunglawala
October 12, 2006 12:07 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/inayat_bunglawala/2006/10/cant_buy_our_=
love.html
Ruth Kelly's speech yesterday to an invited Muslim audience contained
much that was sensible. On the contentious issue of the niqab
(face-veil), for example, she said: "This is ultimately an issue of
informed personal choice. No-one is suggesting that in a free and
democratic country the state should decide what its citizens can and
cannot wear..."
She was also half-right, in my view, in reminding her listeners that:
"Britain is a good place to be a Muslim. British Muslims are central to
our political, business and social life. There are an increasing number
of Muslims in the armed forces, in the police and in parliament."
Are we still all New Yorkers?
Tim Footman
October 12, 2006 12:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/tim_footman/2006/10/are_we_still_all_ne=
w_yorkers.html
In the days when BBC announcers wore dinner jackets, news of grim
goings on in foreign parts often ended with the reassuring phrase: "No
Britons are reported to have been killed." We've left behind such an
insular mentality, but have we replaced it with something else.
A small aircraft has crashed into a building in Manhattan. Obviously,
we are gripped by the news: the attacks five years ago are still seared
in our minds, and the memory is made more grim by the knowledge that
the whole thing was a beginning, not an end. The outside chance that
such an event might be repeated grabs the attention of media providers
around the globe.
Genocide is not just a word
Brian Brivati
October 12, 2006 10:40 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brian_brivati/2006/10/post_500.html
The French parliament votes today on a bill which will make it an
offence to deny that genocide took place in Armenia.
In response the Turkish parliament is drafting a bill to make it
illegal to deny that the French committed genocide in Algeria.
Sleepwalking towards nuclear proliferation
Ian Davis
October 12, 2006 08:56 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_davis/2006/10/north_koreas_nuclear_=
weapons_t.html
North Korea's nuclear weapons test at Hwaderi near the Chinese border
is a serious threat to international security and the credibility of
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime. It becomes the ninth
country, and arguably the most unstable and most dangerous, to join the
club of nuclear weapons states. Pyongyang has also broken the informal
eight-year global moratorium on nuclear testing (the last tests were
made by India and Pakistan in 1998) and it is the first Non-Nuclear
Weapon State (NNWS) signatory to the NPT to cross over to the dark
side.
Although North Korea announced its withdrawal from the treaty in
January 2003, by actually testing a weapon, if that is proven, it has
chosen to end years of ambiguity.
Supposing ... We invent some decoy doomsday scenarios
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1921439,00.html
Charlie Brooker
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian
I always wondered what the end of the world would look like. Now I
know. Let's face it - we're doomed. Each time I pick up a paper or
catch a bulletin, the news is 15% worse than before. Seriously, if I
switched on the TV and they were showing live footage of an army of
fire-breathing pterodactyls machine-gunning people to death on the
streets of London right outside my door, I'd be horrified, but not
entirely surprised, nor any more scared than I already am. I'd probably
just shrug and wait for them to smash the door down.
We're so screwed, I don't even know what to worry about first.
Terrorist extremists? Yeah, they're frightening - but what about those
North Korean nukes? Or global warming, come to think of it? I need a
personal bloody organiser to sort it out - a gizmo that'll set me a
"timetable of concern" just so I can break down my overall sense of
creeping dread into manageable, bite-sized flurries of panic.
Otherwise, I'm in danger of forgetting to worry about some things -
like bird flu, for instance. I haven't seriously crapped myself about
that since, ooh, February? Whenever it was, a top-up's long overdue.
Bad news for Kosovo raises Balkan tension
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1921237,00.html
Simon Tisdall
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian
Plain-speaking Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president who has
been widely tipped to win the Nobel peace prize today, let the Kosovo
cat out of the bag this week with potentially unpredictable
consequences for Balkan stability.
As UN envoy charged with brokering a settlement by the end of the year
between Serbia and the ethnic Albanian leadership in Pristina, Mr
Ahtisaari conceded the negotiations were not going well. In fact, he
went further. Agreement on Kosovo's final status was not on the cards,
"at least not in my lifetime", he said. "The parties remain
diametrically opposed." The breakaway province might have to wait a
little longer for its long-sought independence, he said.
That was definitely not what the US, Britain or most Kosovans wanted to
hear. They say 2007 must be the year when Kosovo becomes a sovereign
country. And almost regardless of whether this ill-starred entity of
about 2 million people with no visible means of support and a
dispiriting history of crime, violence and division can be transformed
into a viable state, they seem determined, at least in public, to have
their way.
For their eyes only
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1921328,00.html
New evidence clears up whether Bush sought to bomb al-Jazeera. But we
are not allowed to hear it
Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian
Two men are to be tried behind closed doors in an Old Bailey courtroom
in a move that will stop the public finding out whether George Bush
proposed what would have been a war crime and how Tony Blair reacted.
The evidence the government does not want us to hear is in an official
record of a meeting in Washington in April 2004, when the situation in
Iraq was deteriorating fast. The memo, it has been reported, refers to
Bush's alleged proposal to bomb the Arabic TV channel al-Jazeera, and
is said to reveal how far Blair went in criticising US military tactics
in Iraq at a time when troops were bombarding Falluja.
David Keogh, a former civil servant, is charged with unlawfully
disclosing the memo. Leo O'Connor, a former Labour researcher, is
charged with disclosing a classified document. The way the government
went about demanding a private trial, and the arguments used by the
judge to allow it, are deeply disturbing.
This ignorant act will only fan the flames of division
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1921264,00.html
The French vote to outlaw denial of the Armenian genocide plays into
the hands of Islamist nationalists in Turkey
Fiachra Gibbons
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian
For those who enjoyed a country childhood beyond the reach of a
reliable TV signal, entertainment often consisted of watching two
farmyard animals headbutting each other to the point of
unconsciousness. Typically, two young bullocks would square up to one
another in the way the Turkish donkey and the French ***** are doing
today over the Armenian genocide, the collected crimes of French
colonialism, the headscarf, the French insistence that it is their
liberal duty to publish every Muhammad cartoon ever drawn, and any
other raw nerve within reach. Stupider breeds of sheep can keep this up
for hours.
It is pretty poor sport, and one that must take a toll on the limited
reasoning capacities of the creatures involved. Which is why it makes
it all the harder that the supposed excuse for this release of
political testosterone is one of the great forgotten tragedies of the
last century: the massacre - or what some call the genocide - of around
one million Armenians in what is now eastern Turkey. "Who remembers the
Armenians?" Hitler remarked before he set his own Holocaust in motion.
Sadly, few did, even in France.
Online poker bosses were only ever after a quick, illegal buck
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1921142,00.html
Internet gambling in the US was always dodgy - the analysts just turned
a blind eye, says Simon Burridge
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian
Richard Wray's article made much of the fact that internet gaming
companies and British investors were caught out by the clampdown on
gambling in the United States (US gambling: Ambush wipes =A34bn off web
shares, October 3). Yet it is hard to argue that there weren't very
clear warning signals that it was about to happen.
One of the first (and easiest) decisions Virgin Games made, when we set
up two years ago, was that we wouldn't accept bets from any
jurisdiction, such as the US, where internet gambling was not allowed.
It seemed a simple decision - not to break the law in any country we
operated in. However, it came at a cost: 80% of the poker and casino
business comes from the US. We turned our backs on the bulk of a highly
lucrative marketplace: but, as someone once said, a principle isn't a
principle until it costs you money.
Shameful legacy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1921276,00.html
In the early 1950s, Mau Mau rebels murdered 32 people in an uprising
against colonial rule in Kenya. Britain's response was brutal: 150,000
Kenyans were detained in camps where, survivors claim, prisoners were
beaten, tortured, sexually abused and even murdered. Fifty years on, a
handful of them are suing the British government. By Chris McGreal
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian
It has been 50 years and there is much to remember. But what still
stands out from his time in the camps is a tall white man in shorts
with a swagger stick. "When we first arrived we didn't know who he was,
but we quickly knew he was in charge," says Espon Makanga. "All the
other whites and the black guards waited for him to speak, and when he
gave the order that is when it began. After that it never really
stopped. I came to hate that man. I can never forgive him."
Army chief denies rift with government
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1921633,00.html
James Sturcke
Friday October 13, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The head of the British army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, today
repeated his call for UK troops to withdraw from Iraq soon but denied
reports of a rift between him and the prime minister on Britain's Iraq
strategy.
He said again that British soldiers' presence in the country was
provoking violence but insisted that he was not the first person to
suggest that they should be pulled out of Iraq. He added that "a
tremendous amount had been made" from comments extracted from a long
conversation on a wide range of issues with a Daily Mail journalist.
Murdered Russian reporter's critical last work published
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,1921368,00.html
=B7 Report accuses Chechen security forces of torture
=B7 Paper says new evidence emerges on writer's killing
Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian
A Russian newspaper yesterday published the report that journalist Anna
Politkovskaya was working on the day before she was assassinated - a
report that accuses the pro-Moscow Chechen security forces of torture.
Novaya Gazeta devoted a page to the graphic account of a suspected
rebel fighter who claimed he was subjected to electric shocks and
beaten with rubber batons. The events in the article, headlined We're
Appointing You a Terrorist, were described in a letter to Politkovskaya
by Beslan Gadayev, a suspected militant who is now in custody in
Chechnya.
Bad news for Kosovo raises Balkan tension
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldbriefing/0,,1324846,00.html
Simon Tisdall
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian
Plain-speaking Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president who has
been widely tipped to win the Nobel peace prize today, let the Kosovo
cat out of the bag this week with potentially unpredictable
consequences for Balkan stability.
As UN envoy charged with brokering a settlement by the end of the year
between Serbia and the ethnic Albanian leadership in Pristina, Mr
Ahtisaari conceded the negotiations were not going well. In fact, he
went further. Agreement on Kosovo's final status was not on the cards,
"at least not in my lifetime", he said. "The parties remain
diametrically opposed." The breakaway province might have to wait a
little longer for its long-sought independence, he said.
How South Koreans are learning to stop worrying and get used to the
bomb
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1868082.ece
By Clifford Coonan in Busan
Published: 13 October 2006
Fireworks lit the night sky in Busan, South Korea's secondlargest city,
and an orchestra belted out a rousing anthem to launch this year's
international film festival. Schoolgirls screamed and cameras flashed
as the country's leading actors walked the red carpet, and traffic
built up on the waterfront as usual. People still filled the
restaurants, eating the national delicacy kanji and the shops were busy
as they normally are on a Thursday night.
Not exactly a picture of a country quaking with fear at the prospect of
nuclear annihilation after the news that North Korea had tested a
nuclear weapon. But South Koreans are resilient.
US charges al-Qa'ida video man with treason
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1868064.ece
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 13 October 2006
A 28-year-old Californian accused of collaborating with al-Qa'ida has
become the first American citizen since the aftermath of the Second
World War to be indicted for treason, a crime which theoretically
carries the death penalty.
The charges against Adam Gadahn =AD who is believed to be living in
Pakistan =AD were announced by the Deputy Attorney General, Paul
McNulty, at a Justice Department press conference. Mr Gadahn "chose to
join our enemy and provide it with aid and comfort by acting as a
propagandist for al-Qa'ida," Mr McNulty said.
Immigrants are victims as 'apartheid' returns to South Africa
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article1868062.ece
By Sharmeen Obaid Chinnoy in Diepsloot, South Africa
Published: 13 October 2006
As dawn breaks over Zimbabwe, Douglas Foster and five other men crouch
behind a fence, waiting for a South African border police patrol to
pass. Shivering in the cold September rain they wriggle their way
through three sets of fences to enter South Africa illegally. Desperate
to escape the spiralling poverty in Zimbabwe, they risk everything to
join millions of other African immigrants in one of the continent's
most economically prosperous nations.
No one knows how many illegal immigrants there are in South Africa. A
recent census suggested 1.1 million, but the real figure is almost
certainly far higher. They come from all over the continent - Zimbabwe,
Mozambique, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo - but their
growing numbers are causing a major backlash, leading to what some
describe as a second apart-heid. Xenophobia is on the rise and in the
past three months more than 32 Somalis have been killed.
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