There is more than one triangle of resistance
Haifa Zangana
September 14, 2006 08:01 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/haifa_zangana/2006/09/the_defiant_triangle_of_the_ir.html
Reuters reports that the commander of US Marines in Iraq denied on
Tuesday that his troops had lost the Anbar province they patrol, after
newspapers said his intelligence chief had written the grimest report
from the field since the war began.
The area he refers to as the Sunni insurgency's heartland is obviously
part of the disappearing "Sunni Triangle", which make us wonder:
whatever happened to the Sunni Triangle, the brand name which was used
by the US-UK military spokesmen and all the media outlets in reporting
on the US-led occupation's struggle to maintain effective control of
Iraq since the invasion in 2003?
The Path from 9/11
Rory O'Connor
September 13, 2006 07:34 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/rory_oconnor/2006/09/the_path_from_911.html
Now that all the books have been published and promoted; the Hollywood
films have all opened (and closed); all the radio and television
commentaries and commemorative specials have been broadcast; all the
dramas (and the so-called "docudramas") and even a handful of
reality-based, actual "documentaries" have aired and been argued over,
ad infinitum and ad nauseum, on the web and in the blogosphere...at
long last, and after all has been said (but so little really has been
done) where do we find ourselves? And where do we go from here, on the
long, confusing, circuitous and still ever-painful path from 9/11?
To answer that question, we first must come to understand truly what
happened in and to America five years ago, how it happened, and - most
important - why. Yet the plethora of attack-related media that has
exploded onto our public consciousness in the run-up to the fifth
"anniversary" of the terror attacks has done nothing to help us
understand any of it. Yes, books have been sold, theatres filled,
ratings raised, circulations increased, reputations enhanced - but I
repeat: nothing has been done to help us understand.
Primary colours
Gary Younge
September 13, 2006 06:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/gary_younge/2006/09/post_381.html
Yesterday's slew of primary results from several states should give
little comfort to either of the party hierarchies. For while the
anti-incumbent mood claimed few scalps it made most sweat and rendered
contests that should have been safe highly contestable.
The Republican establishment were relieved at incumbent Lincoln
Chafee's victory in Rhode Island where he staved off an insurgent
challenge from conservative Steve Laffey. To achieve just this
eight-point margin of victory against their own supporters the
Republican National Committee had to pour more than $1m and a huge
investment in personnel and political capital. In truth this really
gives them the ability to fight another day. Laffey's primary victory
would have doomed their prospects in November; Chafee's win just means
they are in with a shot at keeping the seat.
Acting out the facts
David Aukin
September 13, 2006 05:20 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_aukin/2006/09/post_382.html
The poison created by the ABC docudrama The Path to 9/11 is that it
undermines the audiences' trust in what they were watching. Were they
really telling it as it probably happened, to their best of their
knowledge and belief, or were they following their own agenda,
irrespective of what may or may not have actually happened?
As with a story written by a journalist in a newspaper, the television
audience assumes, or wants to be able to assume, that the film-maker is
telling the story as accurately as he or she can, and where scenes are
made up, they are made up in the likelihood that such a scene, or
something comparable to it, more than likely occurred. In a film you
can't have footnotes or asterisks stating "this is made up" or "the
source for this is to be found ... ". So the film-maker of a docudrama
has, I believe, a responsibility to be honest, to be fair and be able
to justify every scene within the drama, even those that are obviously
made up.
Truth in the prediction
David Rieff
September 13, 2006 03:45 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_rieff/2006/09/david_rieff.html
In the wake of the demands by the Sudanese government for African
peacekeepers to leave Darfur and Khartoum's refusal to accept any
deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in their stead, let alone an
American or a Nato deployment, the fear that a new round of slaughter
instigated by Khartoum is about to begin has led many decent people to
call for western intervention.
For activists, Darfur is Rwanda all over again and, they argue with
great passion and seriousness, just as it was a moral imperative to
intervene to stop the genocide in Rwanda (and a blot on the world that
such an intervention did not take place), so the slaughter in Darfur
must be stopped by any means necessary.
The fog of war
Dan Glaister
September 13, 2006 01:34 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dan_glaister/2006/09/post_378.html
Forget the non-existent sightings of OBL in a compound in a
colour-saturated land. Forget the invented - or conflated -
conversations between the non-existent SWAT team on the ground and the
grey suits back in DC. Forget the shots of Lewinsky and Clinton, which
British viewers got to see thanks to the BBC's decision to go ahead
with the uncut version of The Path to 9/11.
Perhaps the most revealing moment about the "movie", as the corrective
caption repeatedly displayed during the broadcast called it, came
towards the end of the fateful day. As the rubble fell around the
firefighters and civilians at the World Trade Center, just two figures
faced the falling buildings. One was John O'Neill, portrayed by Harvey
Keitel, the star of the piece and the man, were he alive today, who
might be able to dispel some of the fog of this war.
The chains of childhood
Rosalind Coward
September 13, 2006 01:08 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/rosalind_coward/2006/09/ros_coward.html
It is tempting to dismiss yesterday's letter to a national newspaper
from 110 leading experts on childhood as a wail of nostalgia, or as
Dave Hill put it, a reflection clouded by "banks of wistful cumuli".
After all, their chosen paper was the Daily Telegraph. And the list of
causes included most aspects of modern life: junk food, sedentary based
entertainment, lack of interaction with real significant adults and
lack of time. But it is interesting how few people, including Dave
Hill, are dismissing the letter in its entirety. The massive media
response shows that the frustrations behind it are widespread.
The letter has struck a chord because anyone involved with children in
any way recognises that, for all the resources now poured into it,
childhood is not a fun place to be. Children are being exposed to
extreme pressures and anxiety, whether in the form of excessive
academic targets, the absurdities of parental over-ambitiousness, the
restrictions on their movements or information overload from the mass
media. And they are showing their anxieties as never before.
Cliches and capital letters
Laila Lalami
September 13, 2006 12:45 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/laila_lalami/2006/09/post_376.html
It is not every day that writers find themselves needing to coin a new
word. They do so only when a phenomenon or an original idea stumps them
completely, and makes them realize that no other word in the dictionary
will do. The novelist Martin Amis, in an essay for The Observer this
past weekend, has done just this, and the word he came up with is
"horrorism," by which he means "more than terrorism," "a maximum
malevolence," the kind of thing that can happen even when "the
suicide-mass murderer" isn't even present. In the fight against
"horrorism," Amis wants to draw a line: "We respect Muhammad. But we do
not respect Muhammad Atta." For those who missed his admonition the
first time, he repeats it a few paragraphs later: "Naturally we respect
Islam. But we do not respect Islamism."
Radical Islam is wholly deserving of the contempt that Amis shows it,
and yet I remain unconvinced by his assurances of respect for Islam.
Indeed, most of his essay is couched in classic "clash of
civilizations" rhetoric, using terms that have become so hackneyed in
our global culture as to lose meaning. Amis argues that the world has
entered "an age of terror," where the West, a place "where there are no
good excuses for religious belief," is under threat from the east, a
region where "almost every living citizen...is intimately defined by
religious belief." Furthermore, the specific culprit within the east is
"Islam," but within the west it is "30 years of multicultural
relativism."
Reopening the roadmap to peace
John Williams
September 13, 2006 12:27 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_williams/2006/09/reopening_the_roadmap_to_peace.html
After a tragic and wasteful summer in the Middle East, the
international community now has a chance that must not be missed. In
fact, the formation of a national unity government that includes both
Hamas and Fatah could be turned into a decisive moment.
But for that to happen two steps are necessary. The first is to release
the aid money that has been blocked since the Palestinians elected
Hamas in January. The second is to open direct contact with elected
Hamas representatives.
Bring the arms trade under control
Anna MacDonald
September 13, 2006 12:04 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/anna_macdonald/2006/09/we_need_control_of_the_arms_tr.html
News headlines continue to be dominated by depressing, yet worryingly
familiar, stories and pictures of war, conflict and displacement.
Closer to home, shootings are reported by the media, analysed briefly
and then just as quickly consigned to the archive file - and many more
are never reported at all.
In countries including Brazil, the Congo, Kenya and India I have met
men, women and children whose lives have been torn apart by armed
violence
A really inconvenient truth: don't abandon the centre
Robert Philpot
September 13, 2006 11:47 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/robert_philpot/2006/09/a_really_inconvenient_truth.html
Today's excellent article by Jonathan Freedland rightly ruminates on
the tragedy that Al Gore failed to make it to the White House in 2000.
After watching An Inconvenient Truth, the former US vice-president's
cinematic wake-up call on global warming, Freedland writes:
You curse the single vote on the US supreme court that denied this man
- passionate, well-informed and right - the presidency of the United
States in favour of George W Bush.
Olmert should have more of an insight than most into terrorism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1871882,00.html
Sixty years ago the sort of atrocity that Israel's leaders habitually
condemn helped bring the country into being
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Thursday September 14, 2006
The Guardian
After Tony Blair's latest - and perhaps final - trip to the Levant, the
TUC must have seemed almost a relief. There were no banners in Brighton
reading "Blair, you killer, go to hell", like those that greeted him in
Lebanon last weekend - on a visit that seemed a very long time since
the prime minister told the Labour conference, in the wake of September
11: "The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those
living in want and squalour from the deserts of northern Africa to the
slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our
cause."
Russia deserves more than stability from Putin's last year
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1871871,00.html
The chaotic capitalism of the Yeltsin era has been banished, but other
disturbing trends are now gaining momentum
Jonathan Steele in Moscow
Thursday September 14, 2006
The Guardian
On the seventh floor of a skyscraper that towers over southern Moscow
an entire wall is covered by screens of electronic data. At computer
terminals, operators monitor the flow of Russia's most lucrative export
product. This is mission control for Gazprom, Russia's state-owned
energy conglomerate - the place from which, if you are ***** Cheney or a
Russophobe of his ilk, the Kremlin intends to run Europe, if not the
world. Pressing a button here can bring a country to its knees, so the
nightmare has it, or at least cause its citizens to shiver by cutting
off their gas.
Curb this deadly trade
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1871877,00.html
Those who oppose the proposed UN arms treaty could derail a chance to
save millions of lives
Bianca Jagger
Thursday September 14, 2006
The Guardian
As the UN general assembly opens this week, it has its best opportunity
in years to make a life-saving difference to people all over the world.
An opportunity to stop human rights abuses, limit the threat of
terrorism, and reduce suffering for millions. The opportunity is a
draft resolution for an international arms trade treaty that would
place tough controls on sales.
The treaty would make it illegal to sell weapons to human rights
abusers; make it harder for weapons to end up in the hands of criminals
and terrorists; and help regulate a trade that is spiralling out of
control - $900bn spent on defence versus only $60bn on aid. Every day
over 1,000 people lose their lives through armed violence.
Don't ignore us: we are a race apart
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1871815,00.html
Mixed-race people should not be forced to pick a race, they should be
accepted as they are
Sharron Hall
Thursday September 14, 2006
The Guardian
Laura Smith highlighted some of the important challenges which
mixed-race individuals and families have to contend with (Absent
voices, September 6). For example, as she pointed out: "Last year,
mixed children accounted for 8% of looked-after children [in care],
although only 3% of under-16s are mixed." These are worrying figures. A
mixed-race child is a sign that families have crossed racial lines, and
parents will constantly come across people who will seek to punish them
for that. Some who disapprove may do so violently and can come from any
racial group. This can be too much for some parents, especially if
disapproval comes from within their own network of family and friends.
One month on, uneasy truce holds in battle-scarred border villages
http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,1871962,00.html
Hizbullah fighters patrol hills while Israeli forces commit daily
violations
Clancy Chassay in Aita al-Shaab
Thursday September 14, 2006
The Guardian
In the dusty, broken village of Aita al-Shaab, where almost every house
bears scars from the battle between Israel and Hizbullah, the war still
lingers a month after it officially ended.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers roam back and forth across the border at
night, locals say, while Hizbullah fighters patrol the thick green
hills above the village. The sound of Israeli drones is familiar to the
people of southern Lebanon, who report daily over-flights.
Black lawyer poised to be first Muslim member of US Congress
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1578717.ece
By Rupert Cornwell in Minneapolis
Published: 14 September 2006
Memories of September 11 are still bitter, and President George Bush's
war against "Islamofascism" is in full swing. But a historic new bridge
between America and its Muslims is about to be built. Barring a
stunning upset, Keith Ellison will next year become the first ever
Muslim member of the US Congress.
First, of course, Mr Ellison, 43, has to win the election on 7 November
to claim his seat. But after his hard-fought, yet convincing, win in
Tuesday's Democratic primary here, this is almost a foregone
conclusion. Minnesota's 5th District, covering the thoroughly liberal
metropolis of Minneapolis, is one of the party's safest seats in the
House of Representatives. Its loss would be the equivalent of Labour
being defeated in the mining valleys of Wales.
Hizbollah rocket attacks on Israelis 'war crimes'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1578722.ece
By Patrick Cockburn in Beirut
Published: 14 September 2006
Amnesty International has accused Lebanon's Hizbollah movement of
committing war crimes by deliberately targeting Israeli civilians with
its rockets.
The 4,000 rockets it fired into northern Israel during the war in
Lebanon killed 43 civilians, seriously wounded 33 and forced hundreds
of thousands of others to live in shelters.
'Ashamed' Short confirms she'll step down
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1579033.ece
By Caroline Gammell, PA
Published: 14 September 2006
Clare Short launched a withering attack on Tony Blair and New Labour
today as she confirmed she would step down as an MP at the next
election.
The former International Development Secretary, who quit her post over
the Iraq war, said she was "profoundly ashamed" of the Government.
Prudence at the Polls
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/13/AR2006091301574.html
By David S. Broder
Thursday, September 14, 2006; Page A21
The lesson from Tuesday's round of primaries in nine states and the
District of Columbia was simple and reassuring. Credentials count.
Experience counts. And so does the willingness to engage some serious
issues.
For the most part, the candidates nominated for Congress and governor
come from the mainstream establishments of their parties. Despite the
widespread voter discontent with the political status quo, few
mavericks, rebels or true outsiders won places on the November ballot.
2 Foundations Join in Africa Agriculture Push
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/13/us/13gates.html?ref=africa
By STEPHANIE STROM
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will team with the Rockefeller
Foundation to increase agricultural productivity in Africa.
Philanthropy Google's Way: Not the Usual
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/technology/14google.html?ref=business&pagewanted=all
By KATIE HAFNER
Unlike most charities, Google's new philanthropy will be for-profit,
a move that could greatly increase its range and flexibility.
White House Seeks a Way to Keep Bolton at the U.N.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/13/AR2006091302025.html
By Peter Baker and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 14, 2006; Page A12
President Bush's nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the
United Nations appears increasingly endangered in the Senate, prompting
the administration to explore other ways to keep him in the job after
his temporary appointment expires in January, officials said yesterday.
The situation represents a sharp turnaround from two weeks ago, when
the White House was confident it could finally push through Bolton's
long-stalled nomination. But last week's surprise move by Sen. Lincoln
D. Chafee (R-R.I.) to delay a vote convinced Republicans on Capitol
Hill that the nomination may be doomed, prompting a search for
alternatives.
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