| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
28 May 2007 06:53:58 AM |
| Object: |
Truths and prejudice part 2 |
Truths and prejudice part 2
Martin Bright
May 28, 2007 9:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/martin_bright/2007/05/i_imagined_that_a=
ny_serious.html
John Kampfner has blogged already about the panel discussion on Islam
and Democracy that I chaired last night at the Hay Festival. I warned
the audience that this was a subject I had written about extensively,
and was not therefore a neutral chair. But I had assumed that any
serious fireworks would be provoked by Michael Gove, the Tory shadow
minister who has made a point of challenging liberal sensibilities on
radical Islam. His book Celsius 7/7 is a counterblast to the received
wisdom that assumes that engagement with the extreme tendencies of
political Islam would be necessarily productive.
Gove was provocative enough - insisting that Iran should not be
considered a democracy and brushing aside criticism of US foreign
policy. You could almost feel the ultra-liberal Hay audience preparing
to be hostile towards him. But Gove's interpretation of the question
"Is Islam Incompatible with Democracy?", the title of the debate, was
reasoned and calm. It amounted to a sceptical "I do hope not". It was
difficult to argue with that. He didn't even rise when Ziauddin Sardar
said Gove's ideological allies on the American neo-con right had a
totalitarian ideology every bit as dangerous as al-Qaeda.
Hamas at Hay
Katharine Viner
May 27, 2007 2:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/katharine_viner/2007/05/its_only_when_y=
ou_hear.html
It's only when you hear a person from Hamas talking that you realise
how rare it is to hear a person from Hamas talking.
Ghazi Hamad, the spokesperson for the Palestinian government, a
survivor of an assassination attempt (last week) who spent five years
in Israeli jails, was interviewed on stage at the Hay festival on
Saturday by William Sieghart, chairman of Forward Thinking, a conflict
resolution agency that works with all sides. It couldn't have come at
a more relevant time, given the escalation of conflict between Hamas
and Israel in the last couple of months.
Israel won. But so have the Islamists
Samir El-youssef
May 27, 2007 10:35 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/samir_elyoussef/2007/05/samir_elyoussef=
_hay.html
Gamal Abed An-Nasser was the last Arab nationalist leader. He was also
the most credible leader of secular Arab politics. No Arab president
or king managed to capture the imagination of the Arab peoples the way
he did. Hafez Al-Asad, Saddam Hussein and, occasionally, Arafat and
Qaddafi tried to fill the gap that was left after his demise but they
failed. Indeed they didn't even succeed to gain the trust of their own
people let alone the whole of the Arab World.
Nasser was not an unmatched leader. But his defeat in the war of June
1967 was a defeat to the whole project of Arab nationalism. Arab
leaders, particularly in Syria and Iraq where the Ba'ath party ruled,
carried on with the rhetoric of Arab nationalism, promising to do what
Nasser had fail to achieve: Uniting the Arab World, liberating
Palestine and spreading freedom and justice. In reality the only thing
they were able to do was to hang on to power with whatever means and
for as long as they could. Nor could left-wing parties and
organizations maintain popular support for secular politics. They were
either habitually too close to the Soviet Union or too intellectual
and elitist to represent the aspiration and sentiments of Arab
peoples. Even the PLO who at one time seemed the only hope left for
secular politics lost eventually to Hamas.
I'm not climate change's Billy Graham
George Monbiot
May 28, 2007 8:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/george_monbiot/2007/05/a_few_hours_befo=
re_i.html
I think I might have cracked it. Ever since I started giving lectures
on man-made climate change, I've been troubled by the question of how
to answer people who don't and won't believe it is happening.
You can tell them that almost all climate scientists believe it is
taking place. But climate scientists are part of the conspiracy. You
can explain that almost all peer-reviewed scientific papers on the
subject accept it. But how does that help if they believe the Daily
Mail is the font of all wisdom? You can point out that the effort to
dissuade people that climate change is real has been sponsored by
fossil fuel companies. In response - and in marvellous contradiction
of their professed suspicion of scientists - they then point to the
handful of climatologists who have not been sponsored by the oil
industry who say that it isn't happening. You can argue that they are
cherry-picking their experts and their data, but unless they have an
understanding of the scientific process, they don't see what's wrong
with that.
The limits of the new creativity
Libby Brooks
May 27, 2007 8:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/libby_brooks/2007/05/the_limits_of_the_=
new_creativi.html
Charlie Leadbeater is nothing if not a utopian. His thrill about the
impact of technology on human potential is palpable. Creativity is
being redefined as a social activity, he tells the audience. People
who have previously only had the chance to be workers and consumers
can now be participants and creatives. It's good for democracy, for
equality and for freedom.
Second to utopian, Leadbeater is also collaborative, and this is
important to acknowledge. He is here at Hay to discuss the draft of
his book about the potential of the internet which he has posted
online and invited comments on.
An unequal dance
Zoe Williams
May 27, 2007 7:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/zoe_williams/2007/05/ill_start_with_my_=
boyfriends.html
I'll start with my boyfriend's verdict: Nick Cohen is an arse and
Stephen Marshall looks like Rob Lowe. Then he had to rush off, because
he had to go and blog for Just Seventeen.
Ha, I mock him, but really, that's all you needed to know. It took me
a bit longer to brush off the sense that Nick Cohen is totally right,
about everything. He's an incredibly good speaker; he's engaging but
would never compromise a point to be likeable. Like any decent
character from an upmarket comic strip - and I really think The Crisis
of Modern Liberalism is a graphic novel crying out to be written - he
can be beaten, but not by Rob Lowe-alike. He needs to be outwitted.
The joys of going green
Samuel Blake
May 27, 2007 6:14 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/samuel_blake/2007/05/if_you_are_coming_=
to.html
If you are coming to Hay this year then leave the Hummer in the garage
and plug in the Prius. The festival has gone greener than the
surrounding hillsides. Jostling for position with the lecture theatres
are the usual organic and locally-sourced burgers, strawberries and
ice creams and a number of exhibitions urging us to squeeze our carbon
feet into a smaller pair of wellies. It's no surprise that Hay is at
the vanguard of the environmental movement, but this year the number
of solar panels, wormeries, sustainable-this and ethical-that has sky-
rocketed. Even AA Gill put joking aside for a time to bang the drum
for the planet. Much of this is, of course, ironic when you look up at
the huge new gas pipeline which is being built a stone's throw from
the festival site.
George Monbiot clearly casts a pretty long shadow around here. But his
is not the only green voice in town and green voices don't come much
more jovial and positive than that of ***** Strawbridge, bushy-
moustached Gerard Depardieu lookalike and star of BBC2's It's Not Easy
Being Green. I watched the show religiously, following ***** and his
family's progress towards a carbon-neutral lifestyle. Strawbridge
admitted that he was wearing hemp underwear but he is not, however,
insufferably greener-than-thou (even though he is, much). In fact, one
of the premises of the show was that his family would not be going
without in order to cut their energy use - hot showers (powered by
solar panel or HEP) and cars (bio-diesel) were in, but mains
electricity and petrol were out.
Truths and prejudice
John Kampfner
May 27, 2007 5:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_kampfner/2007/05/saturday_10pm_mor=
e_than_500.html
Saturday 10pm: more than 500 people hung around in the cold of the Hay
Festival for a round table discussion about radical Islam.
The question under discussion: Is Islam incompatible with democracy?
The chairman, Martin Bright, New Statesman political editor, starting
by decreeing the question daft. He declared his hand by reminding the
audience of his many writings attacking the Muslim Council of Britain
and drawing attention not just to the dangers of Islamism in the UK,
but the government's previous acquiescence - in his view - in the face
of it. The issue, Bright and others noted, was not Islam per se but
political Islam, in other words the right or demand of that religion,
or any religion, to dictate the political agenda in any country.
Intelligent design - fruit or polyps?
Gwyn Topham
May 27, 2007 4:30 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/gwyn_topham/2007/05/steve_jones.html
Steve Jones, the great Welsh geneticist, was here to talk about coral,
the subject of his new book, but took a detour into bananas.
Specifically, the banana on the video here which has apparently done
the rounds on YouTube, but was - judging from the laughs - the first
time most of us had seen it.
What do you want?
Ed Miliband
May 27, 2007 2:50 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ed_miliband/2007/05/sennett.html
In my experience, the best of all conversations are unpredictable -
and that's especially true at Hay. My on-stage discussion with Richard
Sennett was designed to be about his writing on work, welfare and
culture; but the conversation really took off when it turned to the
whole nature of the public sector.
The audience's centre of gravity was clear: a feeling that targets and
new forms of public management had undermined morale in the public
services. The paradox is this: across the public services, we see
significant improvements over the last 10 years, and yet the audience
felt that the public service ethos had been undermined by the role of
the private sector and central government failing to listen
sufficiently.
Liberty and progress
Geoffrey Robertson
May 27, 2007 2:41 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/geoffrey_robertson/2007/05/it_is_a_rema=
rkable_fact.html
It is a remarkable fact that a nation with so much history of liberty
to boast of ignores its most crucial contribution to political
progress, namely the gains of the civil war. it was this period
between 1640 and 1649 that first secured parliamentary sovereignty,
judicial independence and comparative religious toleration (except for
Catholics, who were then regarded as terrorists). This amazing period
in which torture was abolished and the Star Chamber with its executive
abuses of power was shut down, were all a crucial part in the progress
to modern democracy that was consolidated by the trial of Charles 1 on
charges of tryanny.
This should be the proudest moment in our history, yet it is never
recognised as such by a nation that is still befuddled by Royalist
propaganda. It just seems so terrible to have cut off the head of the
only monarch who ever cared about culture, yet it was that verdict on
Charles 1 which confirmed the first steps towards democracy. The
period of the civil war and the republic in Britain is arguably the
crucible period for modern political history.
The big slur
David Wilson
May 27, 2007 1:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_wilson/2007/05/the_big_slur.html
It was the colonial historian Edmund S Morgan who first drew my
attention, as an undergraduate, to the paradox that began and then ran
throughout American history. In other words how could a people develop
such a steadfast dedication to human liberty and dignity - as
evidenced in the Declaration of American Independence (which was
written by slave owners), whilst at the same time developing and then
maintaining a system of labour - slavery - that quite simply denied
human liberty and dignity on the basis of skin colour.
There have been various attempts to explain this paradox - some more
successful than others - but returning from a trip to California last
week I was reminded how often "paradox" and "America" seem to go hand
in glove.
Intellect-lite
Zoe Williams
May 27, 2007 11:44 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/zoe_williams/2007/05/theres_something_u=
p_in_the.html
There's something up in the state of the UK- in the Any Questions
debate, Jonathan Dimbleby asked the audience who thought the country
would be improved under Gordon Brown, and the answer was almost
nobody. Well, I put my hand up. But mainly because I've wanted to be
in one of those audible-polls since I was first born.
At Brown's own talk, Courage, apropos his book on the subject, the
love was overwhelmingly with him. The hall swam with love, I thought.
Every time he turned towards Mariella Frostrup (who did a good job, on
balance, though I will of course be complaining about her in a
minute), the collective consciousness burst with one thought. "Hasn't
he got a lovely nose? I like it much better than Tony Blair's nose. I
like his whole profile!"
A decade of Blair has left society more segregated, fearful and
divided
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2089419,00.html
He could have played midwife to a confident, inclusive, hybrid sense
of Britishness, but sought to strangle it at birth
Gary Younge
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
Just a few days before Labour swept to power in 1997, Tony Blair was
visiting a health centre in Brentford when a Sikh man approached him
and asked: "What about us Asians?" Had Blair stopped to listen, as my
colleague Jonathan Freedland did, he would have learned that the man
was concerned about a possible EU directive that would have stopped
him from wearing his turban under his motorbike helmet. If ever there
was an ideal opportunity to triangulate, this was it. So long as the
turban did not violate British safety laws, why should the EU
interfere? With racial sensitivity he nods to the left, with a well-
placed jab at Europe he nods to the right. But Blair had an entirely
different audience in mind. "You're part of Britain," he snapped.
"We'll treat you the same as everyone else."
The entire Labour party shares blame for Iraq's horrors
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2089461,00.html
The members may want to pin responsibility on just one man, but they
have a moral duty to question their own role
Haifa Zangana
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
Iraqis often debate whether it is the Labour party as an institution
or Tony Blair as an individual that is the real British culprit in
their tragedy. This issue needs to be addressed, not least for the
future of relations between Iraq and Britain; but the debate echoes
the deeply felt anger among Arabs and Muslims worldwide.
Blair's callousness about Iraqi lives and the country's ongoing
destruction should now be notorious. In December 2004, the BBC's
Andrew Marr asked Blair during a visit to Baghdad's Green Zone: "Many
thousands of people have died for this moment, including scores of
British people: are you sure that this prize was worth that price?"
Blair's answers ranged from, "I know that we are doing the right
thing" to, "Yes, I believe we did the right thing" and, finally, "I've
got no doubt at all that that is the right thing for us to do".
This will do for our security what sus did for inner cities
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2089459,00.html
The outgoing prime minister's angry words about civil liberties ignore
the sorry history of stop-and-search tactics
Jackie Ashley
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
The nearer the exit door, the louder he shouts. With just four weeks
left in office, Tony Blair still knows how to grab the attention. In
yesterday's Sunday Times, his analysis of the terrorist threat was
uncharacteristically angry. After three suspects on control orders
disappeared, criticism of the security services was "absurd". Judges
such as Lord Hoffman, who had opposed tougher rules on civil liberties
grounds, were "misguided and wrong". In fact, according to the
outgoing prime minister, the whole damn country is wrong too.
Mutiny of the aristocrats
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2089460,00.html
The civil war was about defending noble power rather than democratic
ideas, a new book argues
Hywel Williams
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
How and why did England collapse into civil war? The early Stuart
crisis of government, with its regicidal consequences, remains a
dominant question in English history. We still live with the
consequences both of the breakdown and of the restoration of 1660. It
is parliament, rather than "people", that enjoys "sovereignty" in
Britain - a country whose monarchy in cultural terms retains much of
the ancient charisma of kingly rule. What else might explain the
debate about whether a young prince of the blood royal should bear
arms in a foreign country? And if Harry's dilemma appeared only a
question for him and his CO, this summer's crises in devolved Scotland
and Wales show a bigger hangover from 1660 and all that.
Open door
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2089371,00.html
The readers' editor on ... the open and organic business of
journalism
Siobhain Butterworth
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
Journalism can mean different things depending on where and how you
access it. News may be spun, biased, censored, truthful, incomplete
and life-threatening. These issues were discussed at Harvard last week
at a gathering of ombudsmen (assume throughout that I mean women too).
There are not many of us - the Organisation of News Ombudsmen has
under 100 members - and the annual conference was an opportunity to
compare notes.
Accounts from Turkey and Russia were gloomy. Yavuz Baydar, readers'
representative for the Sabah newspaper in Istanbul, talked about the
murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink who, before his death
in January, was charged three times under article 301 of the Turkish
Code with the offence of insulting Turkishness. Today in Turkey 15
journalists need bodyguards.
In praise of ... Monopoly
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,2089379,00.html
Leader
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
Monopoly, says the US economist Benjamin Powell, "does a poor job of
demonstrating the benefits of mutually advantageous trade in a market
economy". Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union disagreed: both tried to
ban it. Foolishly, of course - not least because Monopoly, in which
the landlord is king and renting is costly and pointless, illustrates
the downside of Britain's property boom rather well. Monopoly's
origins lie in the century-old Landlord's Game, which was intended to
show how much fairer things would be if all the players agreed to pay
a redistributive tax and the railways were brought into public
ownership. In either case, the game lasted as long as the players
could stand it. True Monopoly, which has only one winner, went on sale
soon after the Wall Street crash. Monopoly's injustices - parking is
free, one is forced to pay school fees, and buying one's way out of
jail is perfectly possible - dismay all of an egalitarian bent. Taxes
hit rich and poor alike. Street improvements are just another unwanted
tax. But anyone who has lost the game knows the agonising slide from
optimistic speculator to indebted property-owner and the final descent
into penury and bankruptcy - all of it down to nothing more than luck,
risk-taking and a knack for buying and selling at the right time. A
forthcoming Here & Now edition will feature the towns that receive the
most votes on its website. An engaging wheeze, but redundant. Monopoly
will always be unfair, unconscionable and utterly compelling.
Hay festival: How the British Museum is reinterpreting history
Martin Kettle
May 28, 2007 10:08 AM
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/2007/05/hay_festival_how_the_british_m.html
There's an easy - and lazy - tradition of thinking about the British
Museum. It casts the museum, in spite or because of all its glories,
as the quintessential imperial institution, looting the world and
acquiring the trophies of global power for the glorification of
Britain. It feeds into a generally guilt-driven view of the Bloomsbury
museum and the belief that almost everything within it, from the Elgin
marbles downwards, is illegitimately possessed and ought to be
"returned".
Neil MacGregor has used his years as director of the museum to
confront and combat this tradition. But not in a reactionary way that
would cede the terms of the argument to the museum's opponents.
MacGregor does not deny the museum's place in history. He just refuses
to oversimplify it. His view, expounded with great brilliance at Hay
on Sunday, is that the museum was, from the start, an enlightenment
institution. It was a practical affirmation of Addison's vision of
Londoners as citizens of the world. It set out to show that other
peoples were like us. It was an embodiment of Lockeian toleration. And
that's how it ought to be today.
The voice of conscience
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2089493,00.html
For decades he was the scourge of successive Nigerian despots. Now
aged 72, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka tells Maya Jaggi how 'repetitions
of history' - most recently the atrocities in Darfur - continue to
haunt his life and work
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
When the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka visited the Hay Cartagena
festival in Colombia earlier this year, in a walled Spanish colonial
town on the Caribbean coast, children in the streets instantly thought
they recognised the black man with leonine grey hair. But they
couldn't decide whether he was Kofi Annan or Don King. They might not
have identified the great Nigerian writer, but they were certainly on
to something: Soyinka is surely both pugilist and peacemaker.
Lost and found
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2089500,00.html
Roya Hamid grew up with a deep respect for her family's Iranian
heritage but saw herself as firmly British. Then, last year, came the
phone call that changed everything
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
I was a Persian princess on a housing estate in Surrey and, until I
came to live in London 20 years ago, every social interaction I had
was prefaced by an exchange about my "funny name". In a classroom of
Marys, Sarahs and Jennys, I felt special, proud, different. My mum is
English, my dad Iranian. My parents were divorced when I was 10 and
eight years later, my father returned to his family home in Tehran, to
look after Mama Bezorg, my grandmother.
Gazing into the property crystal ball means looking as far away as
China
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2089382,00.html
Forecasting house prices, let alone averting a crash, is getting ever
more tricky
Larry Elliott, economics editor
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
All economic commentators know when it's about to happen. A colleague
sidles up, asks how you're doing and then gets down to business.
The honest - indeed, the only - response to this question is to say
that nobody really knows. At present, the consensus view is that the
Bank will push up bank rate a couple more times before the end of the
year and that house-price inflation will moderate but remain positive.
Israeli PM risks losing office as coalition partner begins leader poll
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2089488,00.html
=B7 Labour contenders vow to end Olmert's tenure
=B7 Hamas rockets continue despite air strikes on Gaza
Conal Urquhart in Tel Aviv
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
Israel's government faces fresh upheaval today when the Labour party
begins primaries for a new leader who could deal a final blow to Ehud
Olmert's tenure as prime minister.
The two leading contenders to take the party's helm from Peretz have
said that they will work to get rid of Mr Olmert, who has been under
intense pressure following a damning report into his prosecution of
last year's war in Lebanon. Labour is part of the ruling coalition
along with Mr Olmert's Kadima party.
Gay activists beaten and arrested in Russia
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2089413,00.html
=B7 Police watch as neo-Nazis attack protesters
=B7 MEPs among 30 detained as aggressors go free
Luke Harding in Moscow
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
Riot police used violence to break up a gay rights demonstration in
Moscow yesterday and arrested several European parliamentarians in
what critics say is the latest violation of human rights in Russia.
A group of gay rights activists came under attack from neo-Nazi thugs
when they tried to present a petition asking Moscow's mayor, Yuri
Luzhkov, to lift a ban on a Gay Pride parade. He has previously dubbed
gay rallies "satanic". Witnesses said riot police watched as far-right
skinheads chanting "death to homosexuals" beat up several activists.
Democracy Damascus style: Assad the only choice in referendum
http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,2089429,00.html
President's victory celebrated before a ballot is cast, but dissent is
met with imprisonment and intimidation
Ian Black in Damascus
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
High above the teeming streets of Damascus, from giant hoardings,
posters and balloons, Bashar al-Assad gazed benignly down on his
people - determined, proud, statesmanlike and reassuring - the
carefully crafted image of a man fit to carry on leading Syria for
another seven years.
Banners praised "our Bashar", defender of sovereignty and stability.
"We love you," declared another slogan, printed over a thumbprint in
the national colours. Nightly street parties, concerts, dabke dancing
and rallies created a festive, jubilee-like atmosphere in the run-up
to yesterday's presidential referendum.
Gritty Romanian tale of abortion and sacrifice wins Cannes Palme d'Or
http://film.guardian.co.uk/cannes2007/story/0,,2089689,00.html
Alexandra Topping
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
A disturbing tale of illegal abortion in communist-era Romania won the
Cannes film festival's top prize yesterday as director Cristian Mungiu
beat 21 contenders to take the much-coveted Palme d'Or for his film 4
Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
The low-budget film tells the story of Gabita, a student who has a
risky back-alley abortion, and the horrific consequences she and her
friend Otilia suffer as a result in Ceausescu's Romania. The critics
praised the film's realism and the humility shown in Otilia's
sacrifice for her friend.
Talks between US and Iran on Iraq war marred by claims of spy ring
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2089565,00.html
=B7 Tehran official complains of American infiltration
=B7 Troops free 42 from al-Qaida hideout in Diyala
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
Hopes for a breakthrough in US-Iran talks on Iraq diminished last
night after Tehran formally complained about alleged US and British
spy rings operating in Iran.
The two adversaries are due to hold a rare face-to-face meeting in
Baghdad today to discuss the future of Iraq. But the utility of talks
was in question last night after a top Iranian foreign ministry
official summoned the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, who represents US
interests, to launch a formal protest about what he called "espionage
networks".
New breast cancer genes identified
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,2089635,00.html
Most significant advance in decade
Polly Curtis, health correspondent
Monday May 28, 2007
The Guardian
The most significant advance in the understanding of breast cancer for
a decade was announced last night with the identification of a new
group of common genetic markers for the disease.
Scientists have discovered four genes which, if faulty, can increase a
woman's chance of developing breast cancer - by up to 60% in the case
of two of the genes. This helps explain why women with a close
relative with breast cancer are twice as likely to develop the
disease, and offers the hope of a test in the near future. The
scientists also believe the techniques used will help them unravel
other cancers.
Millions who risk death for a better life
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2588909.ece
By Steve Bloomfield. Africa Correspondent
Published: 28 May 2007
Across Africa, millions are dreaming of fleeing to Europe. Families
scrimp and save to find the money needed to secure a seat on a boat.
Young men, often fathers, squeeze on to overcrowded, rickety fishing
boats that leave Senegal, Libya or Somalia in the dead of night. They
take with them nothing more than the hope that a better life lies
across the sea.
Some leave because of conflict, most because of poverty. All hope to
find enough money in Europe to be able to send some back home to their
families. The money earned by a migrant on a construction site in
Spain or hawking sunglasses on the streets of Italy can be several
times more than he would have made back in Mali, Nigeria or Eritrea.
African migrants' remittances are growing at a faster rate than
official aid from foreign governments.
Rwandan combatants attack Congo village
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2588910.ece
By Eddy Isango, Associated Press Writer
Published: 28 May 2007
Rwandan combatants attacked a village in eastern Congo yesterday,
killing 17 people, wounding 28 others and taking as many as a dozen
people hostage, a local rights worker said, citing survivors'
accounts.
The attackers - carrying machetes, spears and hammers - descended on
the village of Kanyola in the middle of the night, rights worker
Constantin Charondagwa said by telephone from Bukavu, about 50
kilometers (30 miles) from Kanyola.
Gene structure: It's life, Jim
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article2586651.ece
50 years after his discovery, the Nobel laureate is first to receive
his fully decoded DNA blueprint
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 27 May 2007
It is a dramatic step into a brave new world. Longer than 50 years
after Watson and Crick's breathtakingly important study on gene
structure, a man is to become the first to receive a fully-decoded
copy of his own DNA blueprint.
Appropriately perhaps, the man will be Nobel prize winner Jim Watson,
now 79, who will go down in history, with Francis Crick, as one of the
most famous double acts in science.
Poles apart: opening the files on a Communist past
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2588927.ece
The journey from communist state to 21st-century democracy has
culminated in a dilemma for Poland: to purge the poison of the past or
to forgive and forget. Anne Penketh reports from Krakow
Published: 28 May 2007
He was among Poland's most acclaimed and respected writers. His works
based on his travels across Africa and Latin America, including his
best-known book The Emperor chronicling the downfall of Emperor Haile
Selassie of Ethiopia, put him on course to be tipped for the Nobel
Prize.
Leading article: An attack on civil liberties that won't make us
safer
http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2588908.ece
Published: 28 May 2007
Britain has witnessed sustained assaults on its liberties at various
times, notably under Charles I. Then, Parliament rose memorably to the
challenge. Not much chance of that nowadays, alas, as the Government
prepares a fresh assault on civil rights in the form of the new "stop
and question" powers it intends to grant the police.
As ever, Tony Blair is artfully presenting the proposals using tried
and tested anti-elitist language: those arguing against the new powers
are lambasted as the selfish and squeamish few who prize "their"
freedoms above the right of 60 million law-abiding "ordinary" people
to walk the streets in safety. They are the dreaded liberal snobs who
care only about the rights of bombers. It's the old refrain, and one
that distorts and paralyses so much public debate in this country.
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
