The myth of 1940
Michael White
March 3, 2007 2:03 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michael_white/2007/03/they_are_a_lot_sh=
arper.html
They are a lot sharper than they used to be at publicity at the
National Archives on the banks of the Thames at Kew. And officials hit
on another winner yesterday, courtesy of Radio 4, when they released
documentary evidence to suggest that the wartime Home Guard was not as
efficient as it might have been.
Hang on there. I thought that was the whole point of the joke which
sustained Dad's Army, one of BBC TV's most enduring (1968-77) sitcoms,
not to mention many comedians, commentators and writers at the time.
Captain George Mainwaring (Arthur Lowe) and his crack squad of misfits
guarding Walmington-on-Sea from Hitler in 1940 were never meant to be
presented in a flattering light as men likely to throw the all-
conquering German army back into the sea.
The greening of America
Claus Leggewie
March 3, 2007 12:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/claus_leggewie/2007/03/the_greening_of_=
bush.html
The United States is usually regarded as an environmental laggard,
with President George Bush perceived as being little better than the
head of a gang of wilful polluters who do everything they can to
obstruct global action to protect the environment. Of course, there is
some truth in this characterisation of America (and quite a lot in
that of Bush), but the picture is not uniformly bleak.
Indeed, the environmental movement- like most modern social movements
- began in the US. The roots of America's "environmental movement" lie
in the 19th century, when the damage wrought by the industrial
revolution and the fragmentation of the natural landscape by
individual property rights and tenures first became apparent.
The pitfalls of recycling
Nicholas Kusnetz
March 3, 2007 10:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/nicholas_kusnetz/2007/03/recycling.html
This is a true story. The characters' names have been changed for
their protection.
I never thought it could be so difficult to buy a used bicycle in
London. I wanted to go about the process with moral integrity,
avoiding the burgeoning black market for stolen bikes around Brick
Lane. This was my problem.
The chairman's reign
Ian Williams
March 2, 2007 8:55 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_williams/2007/03/chiang_is_on_the_w=
ay_out_in_ta.html
One of the few occasions on which Jun Chang and Jon Halliday show Mao
Tse Tung with any deep human feelings in their biography is when they
describe how he went into mourning following the death of his old
partner and rival, Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek. Their biography also
showed how much Mao owed Chiang for giving him a free pass for much of
the legendary Long March.
Chiang and Mao had other areas of agreement as well, notably their
common determination that Taiwan was part of one China, with one
legitimate government, even though they begged to differ about which
of their governments that was.
Forgotten women
Isabel Hilton
March 2, 2007 8:05 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/isabel_hilton/2007/03/just_imagine_that=
_it_was.html
Just imagine that it was possible to get 4,000 women and 200 girls
together, along with hundreds of NGOs and representatives of 45
governments to talk about real ways of protecting young women and
girls from violence and improving the status of women. Surely such an
event would be of interest?
So why, when 45 governments, 4,000 women and hundreds of NGOs do get
together to focus on these issues do none of the conventional media
pay the slightest attention? The 51st Commission on the Status of
Women is currently in session in New York. The CSW is a United Nations
body which comes together for an annual two week session to review the
world's progress on the elimination of discrimination against women.
It brings together women from countries of every faith, including
Islam, women from the global south and from the advanced industrial
countries and an impressive array of interest groups and organizations
who set up a vast ancillary programme of meetings and events. Where
else will you find Iraq's first female judge in a room with a woman
parliamentarian from the Yemen?
The winter of conservative discontent
Quin Hillyer
March 2, 2007 7:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/quin_hillyer/2007/03/conservative_polit=
ical_action.html
For American conservatives, this is the winter of discontent. As they
gather for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)
this weekend, the three major Republican presidential candidates for
2008 are all sniping at each other with great effectiveness, proving
that they fall well-short in conservative purity and character. And in
small-group meetings and dinners and conversations, conservative
stalwarts already speak of 2008 as a lost cause, at least at the
presidential level.
In short, the conservative movement seems lost. And it certainly has
lost one essential element of Reaganism - namely, a "can-do" spirit
that always sees a triumph right around the corner, and thinks it has
a way to achieve it.
Bildt blogs back
Andrew Brown
March 2, 2007 7:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/andrew_brown/2007/03/the_minister_blogs=
_back.html
One of the most interesting recent experiments in democracy has
emerged from a really unlikely place, the Swedish foreign ministry,
where the minister, Carl Bildt, has started a blog which is quite
clearly his own. It is not a collection of speeches or ornouncements -
he already has one of those, in English, and has done for years. That
is what most politicians mean by "blogs", but Bildt's is a real one -
a collection of short, sometimes angry reflections on daily life that
give a real flavour of his character. "All These Days," it's called:
"The daily life and reality of a foreign minister".
Bildt is an interesting figure, whom I knew slightly 30 years ago,
when he was a fiercely ambitious and frighteningly intelligent
backroom boy in the conservative party: a rather moralistic
globaliser, like Gordon Brown. As prime minister in the early 1990s,
he was responsible for much of the destruction of the social-
democratic welfare state, and a lot of privatisation; unlike Thatcher
and Blair, though, he did not turn on the civil service at the same
time. Not that this made him popular; his party, the Moderates, were
ejected from office in 1993, and only got back into office last year,
with a leader who set out to be as unlike Bildt as anyone could
imagine. Notwithstanding, they gave Bildt the job of foreign minister.
Shady dealing
Deborah Hargreaves
March 2, 2007 5:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/deborah_hargreaves/2007/03/shady_dealin=
g=2Ehtml
The move yesterday by the US financial regulator to charge 13 people
with insider trading was being hailed as the biggest crackdown on Wall
Street since the 1980s. The Securities and Exchange Commission said it
had acted against "one of the most pervasive insider trading rings
since the days of Ivan Boesky and Dennis Levine," who were both jailed
for manipulating the markets 20 years ago.
Well, far be it from me to spoil the SEC's moment of glory, but if
this is the best that the world's biggest and best-resourced regulator
can do, then I'm not impressed. These alleged insider traders made
about $15m over five years from their tip-offs. That's a tiny amount
compared to the millions of dollars worth of stocks that are traded
each day on Wall Street. And while insider dealing is notoriously
difficult to prove, there is a lot of it about.
Selective reading
Masoud Golsorkhi
March 2, 2007 2:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/masoud_golsorkhi/2007/03/reading_lolita=
_or_listening_to.html
Nick Cohen and Christopher Hitchens are among many neocon commentators
and orientalist warmongers who have a soft spot for the Iranian writer
Azar Nafisi. They regularly remind us - as in the special text box in
the Observer's generous preview of Cohen's What's Left? - with some
glee that the dedication in that book "to Paul" salutes none other
than the newly semi-repentant neocon stalwart Paul Wolfowitz.
Shock! Horror!? Hardly. This is no surprise to those who know a little
of the history and rise to prominence of Reading Lolita in Tehran, and
the role of Bernard "clash of civilisation" Lewis as its promoter and
supporter. This may be a reason why the book is so much less popular
among Iranians than it is among foreigners, a point raised with sharp
insight by the Columbia academic Hamid Dabashi.
Sitting pretty in the City
Larry Elliott
March 2, 2007 1:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/larry_elliott/2007/03/so_heres_how_it_w=
orks.html
So here's how it works under Labour. When it comes to the men and
women working in the City of London or down at Canary Wharf, the iron
laws of the market apply. The financial sector is booming, and if that
means bond dealers and equity traders waltz off at the end of the year
with enough money to buy a weekend retreat in the Cotswolds or to keep
an ocean-going yacht at Dartmouth, the government is cool about that.
Rather more than cool, in fact. Labour loves the City. It wants London
to be the world's global financial capital and as such what the City
wants the City gets. The message sent out is that London has none of
the annoying regulations that New York has, and a much lighter touch
regime. When was the last time, for example, that you heard about the
City watchdog banging up a dozen of the City's finest for insider
trading, as did the SEC in the US this week? When was the last time
Gordon Brown told the City that keeping control of inflation required
those on six- and seven-figure salaries that they needed to set an
example to the rest of us?
Facing phobias
Ken Livingstone
March 2, 2007 12:15 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ken_livingstone/2007/03/eastern_menace.=
html
There is a gale of reaction against lesbian and gay rights blowing
across eastern Europe that should be of concern to anyone who is
committed to a Europe of openness and inclusion.
There have been attacks on the rights of gays and lesbians, with
violence at or bans on, lesbian and gay pride events last year in
Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Moldova and Romania. These attacks
have been led by right wing and Christian forces and given credibility
at some of the highest political levels. The prime minister of Poland
has asserted that: "the affirmation of homosexuality will lead to the
downfall of civilization," the president of Poland that, "if that kind
of approach to sexual life were to be promoted on a grand scale, the
human race would disappear" and the mayor of Moscow has stated that
homosexuality is "satanic".
Degrees of separation
Alex Stein
March 2, 2007 11:35 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/alex_stein/2007/03/yisrael_beitenu_mk_e=
sterina_ta.html
Esterina Tartman, an MK for the Yisrael Beitenu party, began the year
trying to prevent the appointment of Raleb Majadele as Israel's first
Muslim-Arab minister. Six weeks later, and the tables have been
turned. Majadele has been confirmed as a cabinet minister, while
Tartman has withdrawn her candidacy for the position of tourism
minister in disgrace.
Ordinarily, this ought to be a cause for celebration. But a closer
look at the reasons for her withdrawal demonstrate a basic hypocrisy
that Israeli democracy has yet to deal with.
Pictures from the edge
Linda Grant
March 2, 2007 10:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/linda_grant/2007/03/pictures_from_warwo=
rld.html
If I turn my head to my right, on the wall of my office is a framed
photograph: an original signed print by the photojournalist Judah
Passow, with whom I have worked as a writer for the past nine years on
journalistic assignments to Israel. The picture depicts the medical
team at an Italian field hospital at the Sabra refugee camp, operating
on an injured boy. The lighting and the composition reminds me of an
Old Master, perhaps Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp.
When I read, as I sometimes do, the clamorous clashes of words in the
comment boxes on this site about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the
war waged with URLs - quotations from this or that leader's diary,
paragraphs from the Hamas charter - I always remember to turn and look
at the picture; to remind myself of the sorrow and pity of war.
Face to faith
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2025530,00.html
Perceptions of the face point to what a society thinks about its own
self-image, says Alex Wright
Saturday March 3, 2007
The Guardian
'God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him,
male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27). The idea that human
beings are created in God's image is the foundation upon which both
Judaism and Christianity are built, and is echoed throughout the
scriptures of the world's other great monotheistic religions. The
living self is the image of Supreme Being, declares the Granth. And
for the prophet Muhammad God created Adam in his own form (khlaqa
Allahu al-Adama 'ala suratihi
The biggest rubber stamp
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,2025511,00.html
Leader
Saturday March 3, 2007
The Guardian
The largest parliament in the world opens in Beijing on Monday. The
National People's Congress has 3,000 delegates, but lasts for only 10
days a year and has never rejected a government budget or bill. A true
reflection of Chinese-style "democracy", the congress is huge, showy
and toothless. The real decisions await the autumn, when the 17th
congress of the Communist party opens. Old habits die hard.
How B&Q does it all in China
http://business.guardian.co.uk/economicdispatch/story/0,,2025272,00.html
Mark Tran in Beijing
Friday March 2, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
It is hard to miss the Golden Four Season B&Q store in Beijing, with
its giant orange logo clearly visible from one of the city's multi-
lane ring roads.
At 20,000 square metres, the Golden Four Season is the world's biggest
B&Q (the biggest in Britain is 15,000 sq m). The effect can be
overwhelming when you step into its hangar-like interior.
But Chinese customers apparently like the size and the choice.
Dan Wen, the general manager of the company's northern region that
includes Beijing says: "Chinese customers are used to this style. They
are very sensitive to price, want more choices and big ranges. In a
B&Q in the UK you have 200 locks, here in Beijing we have 1,000 and 70
kinds of doors."
Rudy can't fail ... can he?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections08/story/0,,2025699,00.html
New York knight has made an astounding start in the polls but now
faces a year on more difficult ground
Ed Pilkington in New York
Saturday March 3, 2007
The Guardian
There are moments in the febrile atmosphere of US politics when you
have to pinch yourself to remind yourself what date it is. The pack of
at least 14 contestants for the 2008 presidential race are campaigning
with the kind of fury associated with the closing stages of an
election. Do they know there are still 611 days to go?
One such moment occurred this week when the latest polling
intelligence was released to gasps of astonishment. The figures showed
that Rudolph Giuliani had pulled ahead of his main rival, Senator John
McCain of Arizona, by 23%, and is in front of the leading Democrat
contender, Hillary Clinton, confounding critics who portray the former
mayor of New York as unelectable.
Found in India: the last king of France
http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,2025637,00.html
=B7 Indian lawyer acclaimed as head of royal house
=B7 Prince Philip's cousin sets out 'incredible' theory
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Saturday March 3, 2007
The Guardian
Balthazar Napoleon de Bourbon, a jovial Indian lawyer and part-time
farmer, has always been fascinated by France. Framed pictures of the
Eiffel Tower and the palace of Versailles implausibly decorate his
house in a dusty, bustling suburb of the central Indian city of
Bhopal. He gave his children French names even though he has never set
foot in France.
But he may soon make his first trip to Paris, after he was visited by
a relative of Prince Philip, who told him that he is the first in line
to the lost French throne.
Australian Guant=E1namo inmate finally charged
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,2025720,00.html
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Saturday March 3, 2007
The Guardian
The Bush administration faced renewed criticism over Guant=E1namo
yesterday when the Australian inmate David Hicks was charged with a
single count of providing material support to terrorists after more
than five years of confinement.
One man's donkey-meat ...
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2025097,00.html
Rowan Pelling surveys an exploration of our sexual fantasies in Brett
Kahr's Sex & the Psyche
Saturday March 3, 2007
The Guardian
Sex & the Psyche
by Brett Kahr
623pp, Allen Lane, =A325
It is generally agreed that the human condition can be hugely enhanced
by people just showing "a little imagination". Until you come to the
realm of sexual fantasy, where a little imagination is often thought
to be worrying, while a lot is plain terrifying. More than 30 years
since Nancy Friday began her groundbreaking study of fantasies,
there's been little advance in our understanding of the function,
gestation and deviations of the erotic imagination. Thanks to Friday,
we know it's possible that the woman over the road daydreams of sex
with an alsatian; but we're not sure why or whether we should call in
the shrinks. The psychotherapist and broadcaster Brett Kahr has made
it his task to investigate the darker reaches of Eros in Sex & the
Psyche, which he proposes as "a Kinsey of the mind". Kahr's data-
gathering has at least one thing in common with Alfred Kinsey's:
impressiveness of scale. It is drawn from 19,000 Britons of both sexes
and every conceivable orientation. Most headlining sex surveys draw on
a thousand bored readers of a glossy magazine.
Mr Hicks, 31, was the first inmate at Guant=E1namo to be formally
charged under the latest version of the administration's military
commissions. The former kangaroo skinner and shark fisherman is
expected to undergo pre-trial hearings in early April, followed by a
trial next July, a Pentagon spokesman said yesterday.
Israel hardens its peace terms ahead of Saudi Arab summit
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2323434.ece
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Published: 03 March 2007
Israel has begun staking out its minimum conditions for any attempt by
"moderate" Arab regimes to advance a peace process with the
Palestinians, in the apparent hope of influencing a Saudi-convened
Arab summit later this month.
Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, told the Palestinian
newspaper Al Ayyam that "it was impossible to accept" the Saudi-
inspired peace plan launched at the Beirut Arab League summit five
years ago "in its current formulation".
Old foes unite to create cheaper malaria pill
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article2323462.ece
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 03 March 2007
They are the unlikeliest bedfellows but their union has yielded a life-
saving medicine that could transform the fight against one of the
world's deadliest diseases.
The charity M=E9decins Sans Fronti=E8res (MSF) and the global
pharmaceuticals company, Sanofi-Aventis, have launched a new once-a-
day treatment for malaria, at almost half the cost of existing
treatments.
Obama and Clinton chase black vote in Alabama
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2323392.ece
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 03 March 2007
It is the new battle of Selma, unfolding in the Alabama town where a
historic march in 1965 was a turning point in the struggle for civil
rights in the Deep South - but this time pitting Hillary Clinton
against Barack Obama for the electoral prize of the United States'
black vote in 2008.
A 42nd anniversary is not normally one that would merit special
treatment.
Call to ease Palestinian boycott
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2323435.ece
By Donald Macintyre
Published: 03 March 2007
The international community should ease the boycott on the Palestinian
Authority and promote peace negotiations in response to the new
coalition deal signed in Mecca, according to a new report by the
International Crisis Group.
The global NGO, whose senior figures include the former Tory minister
and governor of Hong Kong, Lord Patten of Barnes, and the former
Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, accept that the agreement
does not meet the conditions imposed by the international community
and Israel.
Robert Fisk: How easy it is to put hatred on a map
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2323413.ece
Our guilt in this sectarian game is obvious. We want to divide our
potential enemies
Published: 03 March 2007
Why are we trying to divide up the peoples of the Middle East? Why are
we trying to chop them up, make them different, remind them -
constantly, insidiously, viciously, cruelly - of their divisions, of
their suspicions, of their capacity for mutual hatred? Is this just
our casual racism? Or is there something darker in our Western souls?
Take the maps. Am I the only one sickened by our journalistic
propensity to publish sectarian maps of the Middle East? You know what
I mean. We are now all familiar with the colour-coded map of Iraq.
Shias at the bottom (of course), Sunnis in their middle "triangle" -
actually, it's more like an octagon (even a pentagon) - and the Kurds
in the north.
Ancient heroism re-examined: The mother of all battles
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2323406.ece
For nearly 2,500 years, Thermopylae has been a symbol of heroic
resistance in the name of freedom. But was it really as simple as
that? As a new film celebrates the courage of the Spartans who defied
impossible odds, Paul Vallely investigates
Published: 03 March 2007
"When boyhood's fire was in my blood
I read of ancient free men,
In Greece and in Rome where bravely stood
300 men and three men..."
The 300, as every schoolboy once knew, were the elite force of
Spartans who in 480 BC confronted a Persian army hundreds of thousands
strong. The Spartans held the enemy off for days in a mountain pass so
narrow that only one chariot could pass through at a time. Its name
was Thermopylae and there the noble 300 killed tens of thousands of
the invaders before - betrayed by a traitor - they were wiped out in a
glorious last stand.
Or so the myth has it.
Leading article: The era of this particular brand of Republicanism is
coming to an end
http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2323388.ece
This presidential election, like the midterms last November, is surely
the Democrats' to lose
Published: 03 March 2007
The lacklustre "announcement" by Senator John McCain of Arizona on a
TV talk show this week that he will seek the Republican presidential
nomination speaks volumes about how difficult it will be for his party
to retain the White House in 2008. The quotation marks around
"announcement" are deliberate. Mr McCain has unabashedly acted like a
candidate for 12 months at least, and his confirmation of that fact to
host David Letterman will be followed by a formal campaign launch in
April. Such are the ways of the modern American presidential politics,
where the maximisation of media exposure is everything.
But the real message of Mr McCain's wan and subdued performance was
another. A year ago, unarguably, he was the Republican front runner,
no longer the outsider of 2000 but the candidate of the party
establishment. These are absurdly early days in the 2008 campaign
proper, but already there is a sense that Mr McCain cannot win. In
most respects, he is an admirable politician, high minded and with the
courage to take on prevailing party orthodoxy if he believes it is
wrong. But, the whispering runs, he is too old, too distrusted by
Christian conservatives, and too supportive of the ever more unpopular
war in Iraq.
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