Dangerous Ambivalence: UK Policy on Torture since 9/11

“Britain cannot have it both ways. The government claims to oppose torture. Yet at the same it is actively trying to undermine the global ban against it.”
Benjamin Ward

The situation is totally out of control and I don't see any parachutes.

Romano Prodi talks Alitalia

bacofoil on yr fod/really cheap Aussie lager

i saw Peaches yesterday.

never has the football spectator heckle 50p HEAD been more appropriate.

one thing that's really getting me right now (as in, you know, in love) is toward the end of 'Reishi' by everyone's fave Anglian technoheads, well, as Tura.


"in other news" [old news, ok], at the close, just so (just Jack), of About Schmidt, well, i wept buckets.

oh, and that, and Annie Mac told The Times that Harvey got her in to Gorecki bigtime, true fact. (as in, you know, in love.)

..


that's our man

.

RIP PETER NORMAN

He whispered to himself, 'After all, I'm not a criminal.'

The Ministry of Fear.

one sleight they don't exactly tuck away in the Vodafone store is that "data management centres" [i think that was it, they mean the call centre anyway] are based in the UK.

shoring up the anti-Indian populism is performed in tandem with the competing claim - glossy large posters adorning walls - that Vodafone customers are living happy and excited lives in diverse, sexy multinational locations, from Leeds and Lisbon to Paris and (presumably) Poole.

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in an episode of The Simpsons last night Homer read his paper at the breakfast table and chuckled away at the bridge column, commenting you never know what South's going to do next.

He told officials this would happen and it did

blighted

Niall Ferguson:
you can tell it clearly troubles him that there will soon be a minaret on the Oxford skyline. it gets a mention in his new book and i've read him note this some time ago somewhere else. it genuinely does seem to sit a little uneasily for him cos otherwise we wouldn't be having this new observation couched in much the same terms, and with the clear impression behind his writing that this is a bit of a scab for him. well, that's the inference i'm getting for at least the second time, following a decent passage of time.

in this new book, it looks like he's trying to pass it off as part of some neat aside, a pun if you will, about Edward Gibbon but - lor knows - that just sounds bollocks.

so have some fruit tea and leave it out mate.

(to be fair to Niall, he does describe himself as an optimist and Americans who don't want anything to do with the outside world get short shrift from him.)

MAKE IT IN THE STUDIO and NOT IN THE GARAGE

RIP DESMOND DEKKER
-

i didn't know until i read the obits but apparently Rugova's grandpa spent 20 years of his life building a kulla - a 'tower' - using marble blocks. some great photos here you see.
Rugova cited his grandfather as a patient influence.

well i'd have certainly taken some gemstones off the man!
and that scarf, always the scarf.
(Carl Barat in Burberry please.)

+

now then, Mark Mardell can be quite nimble.
days after i slag off Auntie, you have to hand it to him on the brandy tip.
9am, "clear grape brandy", "It's really very good: fiery and strong but very smooth and fruity as well".

_

I am Ramush Haradinaj and I am looking for Isuf Hoxha and Hajrullah Gashi

even by its own miserably low standards the lead editorial in Friday’s Daily Express was – to paraphrase General Melchett – perhaps a “crowning turd in the water pipe”.

unusually, some of their own correspondents wrote sympathetically in the face of human misery: the day’s front page was about people risking the much longer crossing from the Canary Islands to the European mainland, rather than trying the Straits because of changes in the Spanish enclaves etc.
it’s frankly quite rare for people emigrating from Mauritania or wherever, scrabbling toward Fortress Europe, to get humane coverage in the Express, so this was at least something to be grateful for.

but the editorial appeared to be unaware of any of this, and seemed quite different in tone and approach (though still with that reassuring lack of complexity and grey areas you get with the Express).

citing the usual laundry list of grievances and noting that the BBC now agreed with them (off the back of a Newsnight programme, apparently; i saw but seconds of the show in question, which had Jeremy Paxman spouting some noxious cobblers, so i switched over), you could tell the reader was in for a treat at the end.
(incidentally, have you noticed just how degraded some of the BBC’s domestic news programming has been getting of late. the Six O’Clock News has been getting increasingly parochial, more than ever it seems, over the last several months to few years or so.)

the final paragraph was magnificent, absurdly disingenuous, latching onto the ultimate ludicrous strawman as the writer reached their triumphant conclusion, that Maybe those worried by plans to allow crime-ridden Bulgaria and Romania to join the European Union next year and Turkey to follow can now voice such sentiments without being smeared as racist by Left-wingers, proven as wrong on migration in the 21st century as they were on the Cold War in the 20th.

the Express is a ‘you couldn’t make it up’-type tabloid, fond of the common sense approach, despairing at this mad politically correct world we now live in (one of their star columnists was today seeing a Third World despotism take over Britain).

well, no, you couldn’t, could you?

She was not a health tourist - she simply had the misfortune to fall ill here.

I accept that we have to have rules to stop people from taking advantage of the NHS but they should not discriminate against people with genuine need because of this obsession about immigration.

I think it is appalling that a civilised country like Britain treats someone like that.

Her death was unnecessary.

Richard Stein, who represented Ese Elizabeth Alabi.

labelled 'health tourist' by some, she died on Monday, aged 29.
she leaves behind three young children and the man who loved her.

three points, for now

some good news, being Gurbandurdy Durdykuliev was released last month (only found out today; he plans to sue the govt for compo to the tune of 5 mil American)

Alex de Waal is being clear about what he thinks may come out of the talks in Abuja; last month his mate Julie Flint was just as truthful here.

All Chadians have come out to make their choice, the choice of their hearts

Mr Deby, yesterday

-'The North Korean Government’s Control of Food and the Risk of Hunger': report

"Kuda mne devat'sia? S obshchestvennost'iu tak s obshchestvennost'iu"

Yeltsin meant to create a pure pyramid of power
-Lilia Shevtsova, 'Yeltsin's Russia: Myths and Reality'

Thus, Putin did not inherit a superpresidential order, he sought to build one.

Eugene Huskey, 2001

It's a scandalous thing when - just think about the figures - a fifth of the legal acts adopted in the regions contradict...basic law
Putin Announces Major Revamping of Senate, Rossiyskaya gazeta, 19/05/2000

victory

- how do you spell distortion?

the conservative and populist press seem to be almost relishing the chance to editorialise about the possibility of some disillusioned Labour voters switching to the BNP, noting Labour have only themselves to blame.

gripes about the scale of migration, housing, and who pays for what are wrong when they home in on scapegoating, and don’t sit too easily alongside protestations that these critics are kindly types who have the interests of immigrants at heart (obvious innit, why those chattering classes want freer borders, they trumpet).

there again, these are – you suppose – those sections of the media that are tirelessly arguing against the tagging of asylum seekers.

oh, no, wait a minute.

RIP Muriel Spark

Oliver in Minsk

There is nothing to justify this act

Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer

whatever the truth of the status quo or no heat and light, it can’t be denied that M. de Villepin enjoys a bit of shabby economic nationalism.

as it's to the immense credit of Italy in offering asylum to the outrageously persecuted Afghan Abdul Rahman, it would be good if other aspects of Italian asylum now came under similar intense international scrutiny.
but that's not going to happen is it

superb analogy in this week's Economist, Israel as middle-aged homeowner [results], that "relations with the neighbour seem beyond repair, but the house is sturdy."

Population 47,000, with 5,000 unemployed, 58 locals dead in the wars, and 15 factories shut.

Otpor member Mile Veljkovic describes Pozarevac in statistics

The water is up to my chest. The bosses got the time wrong. I can’t get back in time.
- the last words of Guo Binglong to his wife.

Guo spoke with his wife, who was in China, on a mobile phone. Guo was one of perhaps 23 people (21 bodies were recovered) who died in Morecambe Bay when they drowned in rising tides in 2004.

---

It was all over the press shortly after the tragedy, that the MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, Geraldine Smith, had written to the Immigration Service in June of 2003 alerting ministers to the dangers that illegal cockle pickers in the Bay faced.

A letter she sent to London had urged the Immigration Service to become involved; saying one of her constituents was on the Bay when police swept the area for tax evaders.
Smith wrote that Unable to speak English and under the control of a gangmaster, these people were being paid one-fifth of the standard rate for their work. They were also being transported 20 to a boat in waters renowned for their currents and quicksands, where an experienced local fisherman would not consider carrying more than six.

Fiona MacTaggart – Home Office Minister – cited a lack of resources as why Smith’s letter would not be acted on.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) confirmed that Morecambe Bay was to be regarded as a place of work, and therefore under their jurisdiction. Telling an inquisitive journalist they were familiar with a “near-miss” that occurred in December 2003, involving Chinese workers, they assured the journalist they had offered “advice”. The deaths of these cockle pickers, regarded as an “industrial accident”, might have been prevented had the HSE served a prohibition notice. That, incidentally, would have been a statutory duty with any other business (in the days following the tragedy, able local policing was extremely effective in preventing anyone from getting out on to the sands).

P.S.
During the summer of 2003, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) shut the activities of the cockle beds on the Thames (The notoriously dangerous Morecambe Bay cockle beds are being intensively harvested because tests by the Food Standards Agency, which may have produced false results, have closed the best cockle beds elsewhere, as the Guardian noted), in the Wash and at Craner’s beloved South Wales.
Immediately at stake were the position of many workers and the future of much of the UK’s (worth £20 million to the economy annually) cockle trade.
The FSA took the decision to shut down beds at these places due to what it said was the discovery of an unidentified toxin in the cockles (to protect human health, we would do the same thing again, Dr Andrew Wodge of the agency later told the BBC’s John Humphrys). FSA scientists had been experimenting on mice, injecting them with cockle-meat. The meat was being made to adhere together due, basically, to toxic glue. The lab-mice were dying as a result.
That November, FSA researchers began to get rid of what they termed “solvent carry-over.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, after the elimination of this factor, other mice who were undergoing the experiments did not die.
With science this flawed, you might have thought that the FSA would perhaps rethink their approach and maybe even be a little contrite, but their Dr Wodge continued to insist to Radio Four that the agency had done nothing wrong.
The select committee for environmental, food and rural affairs – whose chairperson (at the original time of this post) is Labour man Austin Mitchell – was less friendly to the FSA than the Today programme. Citing a very real and unnecessary damage to cockling, the committee suggested the industry must be compensated, and ways should be found to do that.

more fun and games with Rita Verdonk

The grave unearthed in Crni Vrh (which means black peak in English) contained the remains of 629 men and boys.
One of the children was 18 months old when he was killed.

We'll stand trial as often as we have to. It'll continue as it has because the refugees and their needs actually set the agenda.

Jim Corbett

earlier this year the Syrian daily Al-Thawra - a regime newspaper - appeared to suggest that Israel was responsible for the construction and spread of avian flu.

"The question being asked today is whether the virus chosen by the Zionist for their 'ethnic bomb' is bird flu?"

the mouthpiece recalled that Arafat was assassinated by the Zionists using a biologically engineered virus, warning that all the planet will suffer the effects of a flu pandemic, even though it seems likely the Israelis had designed their flu to target Arab genes specifically.
(An Israeli decision to bury infected birds in the West Bank was pointed to.)

It was lamented the flu was bound to spread beyond the Arab world (well they got that right).

if the Israelis were that good, surely they could do something about those pesky Lebanese on behalf of Damascus?

DPW/P&O deal, USA branch: or, yunno, just ramp up the selective outrage, plumping for a miserable fudge that sends out a terrible message to the rest of the world.
yeah!
good work team, good work.

putting the fox in charge of the henhouse

- Anonymous New York and New Jersey port authority board member, February 2006

The reaction in the United States has occurred in no other country in the world

- Ted Bilkey, COO of Dubai Ports World, February 2006

Hillary Clinton may have a bit of an axe to grind.

An issue that's been engulfing talking heads in the USA for some time now concerns Dubai Ports World, a Dubai state-run company.

DPW are buying august UK firm P&O, in a £3.9 billion take-over, something which means – amongst their new portfolio of locations worldwide – DPW gaining control of the majority of the operating of six ports (including Baltimore and Philadelphia) across the lower 48, from the hands of P&O. The Port of Singapore had been sniffing around P&O too, but DPW won out.

Opponents duly grumble; Iran has moved uranium through the UAE in the past, Libya has previously used its territory as a staging post, some banks in the Emirates have demonstrably not hindered the passage of dirty money before now. Oh, and two of the 9/11 hijackers were local lads.
There's also the matter of a 2002 letter - its authors claimed to represent al-Qaeda - in which the writers said they'd infiltrated various sections of the UAE govt (that has actually been flagged up in the USA maybe more than it might deserve, which could indicate a bit about the mindset of some commentators. Or perhaps it's not been flagged up enough. Jury out?).

Bipartisan lawmakers (including a vociferous Clinton and Bill Frist, Republican Senate majority leader) have been lining up to take pot-shots at POTUSA, following from Dubya not realising this bidder was Arab-owned until after his own treasury's foreign investment committee had agreed to the transfer.
They'd concluded there were no security problems here; Justice Nicholas Warren, for the High Court in this country, has also approved, waiving aside objections from American firm Eller & Co, the Miami partner of P&O (Eller & Co fear a loss of trade after the fall-out, for starters).
The New York and New Jersey Port Authority had also formally protested.

The President, firmly behind the deal, has, as usual, been his typically media-unwise self in trying to deflect heat over the take-over, not publicly acknowledging the key truth in the matter for a crucial week whilst mouthing useless platitudes at his many detractors, stubbornly refusing to climb down. He's even said he'll veto any law attempting to block the move (such a law now a distinct possibility).

Interest among the press – fear of jihadist terror striking again has understandably stoked urgent conversation – is high, to the extent that a quick google will reveal acres of bellicose newsprint [including this quite thorough Media Matters rebuttal], fiercely critical of the move.
The pig's ear the administration has made of its PR is just another galling factor to opponents.

It's certainly a fairly complex issue in which reasonable people with concerns are being unfairly lumped in with those just possessing ugly reflexes (see Media Matters for the former who are a group dedicated to correcting conservative bias in the American press; so, er, no biases in itself there then...).
Some of the most serious objections are potentially sustainable, but eventually the actual argument centring on port operating security boils down to one set of claims (Media Matters are a little disingenuous on this issue themselves when they target mainstream competitors who wave aside objections on these grounds; their own counter claims are partial) that shows up opponents – whether with the correct sort of intentions fuelling their unease or just parochial populists – as perhaps a little quick to judge.
The heart of the matter is outlined neatly by Irwin Stelzer.
An LA Times writer nimbly pointed out how Bush has brought this on himself; burden of proof and an expectation that democracies should not engage in the politics of panic for short-term gain rather going out of the window in the rush to denounce Iraq's WMD.

Extremist Islamists wandering around the New Orleans docks? Just isn't on, Jon Corzine (New Jersey governor) rightly reckons.
Charles Krauthammer: Democrats who might be upset if an Emirates citizen in an American airport, full burnoose and flowing robes, speaking only Arabic was subjected to more scrutiny than his sweet 84-year-old mother in the same situation, are not quite in the same corner here (it should be said Krauthammer was ambivalent about the deal and wanted it to go ahead only when the advanced stage was reached, but would have preferred if it hadn't got anywhere in the first place. It should also be said Krauthammer is, frequently, a buffoon).
Sure, there are enough holes to drive through in that newspaper column example, but even still, none as breathtakingly wide as Corzine's illogical double standards in flagging up that two known terrorists came from the UAE.
Provocatively, Bush observed he was struck by the lack of protest when a British outfit was running the ports.

In this climate, dismally insular voices are making themselves heard, while some on the right discuss if their President really is a conservative. Those arranged against DPW have widespread public support [a poll for USA Today found respondents against the move by 4 to 1] whilst Duncan Hunter, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, says he is prepared to legislate against such transfers.
Jerry Lewis, House Appropriations Committee chair, has also vowed to scuttle the deal (the Committee has recently voted 62 to 2 to halt the take-over’s American side).

It is DPW boss Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem who has bought some fine New York real estate for the Dubai royals (they own two of that city's most notable buildings), a regime that has given enough help to the Americans tracking terrorists. Support for a Qatari base of American forces is another service the UAE provides, whilst since the autumn of 2001 the details of transactions carried out by those suspected of terror links within its secretive banks have been discreetly passed on to Washington all the while.

DPW, if the take-over were allowed, would carry on with the same American staff as P&O uses.
Actually controlling these ports is not quite the same as fully controlling security, which is instead directed by various levels of domestic officialdom alongside the operator: Customs, the Department of Homeland Security, police, ports police, and the US Coast Guard all have roles.

A second, 45 day review of DPW's security arrangements - tougher than the initial 30 day assessment, we're promised (some carped an individual intelligence agency should have had responsibility for the first review, not a treasury-led body) - is now on.

If this review raises compelling objections, fair enough.
If not, then frankly it seems doubtful that some vocal critics would be ready to eat humble pie.

Meanwhile a second London court has dismissed Eller's arguments, this time the Court of Appeal.
Lords Justices Lloyd, Neuberger and Moore-Bick shooed away their objections on Monday, clearing a path for the deal to complete yesterday. P&O shares were due to be delisted today; their shareholders will be receiving cheques in about a week or so.
Though the deal cannot now be blocked on that side of things, with debate still raging in the USA, there are legs in this spectacle yet, with DPW agreeing to stop the American part of their take-over.

The US ports that P&O ran have been ringfenced as everything has ground to a halt - a bit like the DPW website at the moment: 'Sorry, this site is temporarily unavailable. Please check back later' - so it's all eyes on Congress.
(Also watch out for the private Dubai Investment Capital Group who are preparing to acquire British engineers Doncasters; those Brits also work in the USA, making military parts.)

As it is, Clinton – an impressive voice during the unveiling of the Abu Ghraib outrages – appears to have cheapened herself during this intrigue (not that she's alone), which may embolden isolationist perspectives; this, in the short term, is unwelcome, and could well turn out bad in the long run [some fairly recent literature the Dems were sending out to the faithful and activists asked – among a raft of other questions – were supporters concerned that what could be termed isolationist causes weren't getting enough attention from the party].

Alas, as Nicholas Wapshott noted in the Telegraph a week or two ago, it appears that Senator Clinton, possibly scenting pollsters, is taking the view that "no amount of good character references from Dubai will persuade her to abandon an issue that is doing her so much good".

David Aaronovitch on Migration Watch and Polly Toynbee

it was only reading the guardian obit of Ivor Cutler that made me realise just how many things he did, and what an incredibly full life he led. i was ignorant of so many passages of his fabulously rich time.

i've been finding it difficult to come to terms with Lynden David Hall's passing in the last couple of weeks. it's not like i ever even met the man and i realise the sadness of a fan might be a bit indulgent compared to the grief of those people who loved and knew him as an individual (i don't really know about grief though know enough that someone is allowed to react how they want), but just thinking about how awesomely sweet his voice was keeps pushing me back to some strange stage.
i wrote in my diary [a diary! hark at him] on the day something along the lines of 'i refuse to believe this'. that unacceptance a common reaction, i know, and now something i seem to have adopted.

what with people like Gordon Parks and Dana Reeve also leaving us, this week feels like a particularly packed period for celebrity deaths.

there was a death in the family yesterday morning of a very storied someone who i wished i'd spent far more time with, although the time i did was incomparably valuable, which is something to cherish i suppose.
but it was nowhere near enough, and it really was late in life; too late.
i really want to be paying my respects and to be with people right now.

i remember this beautiful smile, saintly really and so strong in its radiance. he smiled and it sort of expanded outward, cocooning everyone in a happy contentment.
plus a weakness for plain cheeseburgers.

in one of her last interviews, Linda Smith said that 'you watch Laurel and Hardy - they're long dead but there's something more than just watching an old film. You are seeing these really joyous inspired moments. And that lives on. People's work lives on. And people's qualities live on....as long as there's someone to talk about it. As long as there's someone to remember what they were like'.

After it has been prov[en] on the basis of Shari’ah, they should seize him [or her]…they should keep him standing, they should split him in two with a sword, they should either cut off his neck or they should split him from the head. He will fall down.

another nail in the coffin of Dutch liberalism

Fairtrade Fortnight starts

Tell a dream, lose a reader

Henry James

it's a shame that the compassionate concern Heather Mills McCartney shows toward Canadian baby seals does not extend to Guantanamo detainees.

-
This is a victory for international law, a victory for Indian workers and a victory for workers all across Asia.
-

Greenpeace France on the Clemenceau decision

lor knows David Holmes has had enough mud slung his way down the years (i'm certainly guilty) but i must admit to finding the piece that closes Ocean's Eleven - in that scene as Pitt, Clooney, and Roberts drive off - simply wonderful.
it just seems so full of hope and pointing to so many possibilities; joyous stuff.

ANOTHER PLUG FOR OUR DISCUS BUDS

available mainly mail order via www.discus-music.co.uk

Martin Archer - Ten studies for organ - Audiolaceration AL005
Vinyl only release
I've now acquired remaining stocks of this item originally recorded at the
end of 2001. As the title says, this is a series of ten short pieces for
solo organ plus editing and effects, with each piece dedicated to a number
of my favourite organists / soundsmiths from Oliver Messiaen to Markus Popp
to Vincent Crane. Simple and gritty, it's a good release I think.
Packaged in delightfully pre - worn plastic sleeves and custom printed
artwork. I just spent most of today assembling these, so I hope y'all want
to buy one!

earlier i noticed the way that the light fell across a usually opaque bottle of a facial scrub exposed its contents entirely.
the sun is not normally my source for looking at the scrub, rather dull electrical.

for a split-second this seemed to really transport me - quite powerfully so - to some place famed for the quality of its natural light, like the High Atlas or the Pilbara or somewhere dusty and small in Andalucia.
a luminous moment.

oh, and by the way, there's now three weeks left to read Joe T's archives before little dog's day - another absolute and original great - bites the dust.

Yesterday was possibly the best away day with the Rs. Even the wonderfully anagramed Colin Wanker had to admit that the best team won and didn't even complain about the ref. In truth we should have scored 7. Highlight was Paddy Kenny who has had a history with our fans. He had his back turned for their penalty and was celebrating like a twat before he realised that they had missed. The look on his face was priceless when he realised. Our 1200 easily outsung their 24,000 with the bizarre chant of "Arctic Monkeys are overrated".

TRIO * OF QUESTION MARK PENITENTS

that was a mean shot against the telegraph the other day wasn't it? i just feel cheap and bad now.

i tell you one thing that is truly random, do you want to know what that is?
it's that, that Taylor Parkes wrote a very entertaining piece on the Football League basement-battle match between Stockport County and Rushden & Diamonds for a recent edition of When Saturday Comes.
left of the field indeed.
-
"seconds after Spencer's gaffe, three middle aged men behind me start whistling the theme tune from Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, in perfect unison, as though they've done it before"
-
* {technically a quartet}

oh, trio.

A priest, a rabbi and an imam walk into a bar and the barman says, 'What is this? A joke?'

[thanks Sandi Toksvig]

eh you can tell that was well worked can't you.

bloody ell.

British experts said last night that the spread of the deadly virus to France could now have "major implications" for the shooting industry.
Simon Clarke, from the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, said that up to 50 per cent of pheasants reared for shooting in Britain were bought in France.
The potential spread of the H5N1 virus across the Channel could halt the import of chicks to Britain, forcing estates to rely on limited numbers of locally-reared birds.

The Sunday Telegraph gets to the heart of the matter

there's been enough time elapsed (Cher and all that) but it's still a bit, well, distressing, to hear vocoders on Radio 2

proxies of the Sudanese govt - a regime set to take on presidency of the African Union next year - are causing mayhem over the Chadian border.

-

i knew Austria had this bad, bad law, but wz so ignorant about some of the other countries that shackle similar freedoms

Kafka by Warhol

a very dear friend of mine has started up a blog again.
alas i am indeed the person referred to here re. the vodka [though i didn't get a hangover].
the crumpets thing is not me - agreed it's hardcore - although for brunch yesterday i did fry an egg and put it in a sesame bagel that was toasted and spread with cream cheese {light mind you, light!}

Fuck you Milan Baros, fuck you

please do consider going here to read Oliver, wise as ever.

Norm Geras is also right, regarding Tony Blair's disgraceful, stupid, and wrong Terrorism Bill.

LENIN with questions that deserve answers.

+

It sounded like the mountain exploded, and the whole thing crumbled.

there was an advert on the tv earlier for a forthcoming BBC4 programme and it was soundtracked by SAW 85-92's 'Heliosphan' which was, frankly, lovely

working in a school has recently provided two moments of unexpected pleasure.
in an office hangs a watercolour – by a 12 year old pupil – of a large detached house throbbing with life, less mannered than a neighbour, purple stone and framed by a big bank of dark green. there’s a bit of action in the sky, enough to prevent it looking listless, and the moorland palette seems to want to break out of the confines of the house walls. the colours pulse and shimmer just outside the edges of lines that seek to box them in, but the lines don’t quite have it.

in an echoing corridor – blasted cold tiles and a creaky disabled toilet – well used to banter and noise a young girl sang a scrap of a song, some scratchy fragment of an r’n’b effort, or so. she was probably trying to get off along to class, surrounded by mates all screeching, unenthusiastic about that first lesson bell.
for that moment she was a proper pro, a star, and transporting.

here's Oliver Kamm on Neil Clark.

incidentally, two words worth remembering whenever you see an article anywhere by the likes of Mick Hume or Brendan O'Neill are Frank Furedi

we’re staying in the ‘World Cup Hall’ (they do like a good hall, the Germans, maybe they’ll be a few speeches thrown in) by Borussia Dortmund’s ground

Stampede to vote on voodoo isle

article heading in my local paper, yesterday

GRATUITOUS RED DWARF REFERENCE

"the spark of a Clare Grogan"

ah! the connoisseur's Kochanski..

We're Shack and we're from Liverpool

-Shack at Bristol's Anson Rooms, 2000

the USA congress has finally decided to shelve the major cotton export subsidy in a move that is both scandalously overdue and worth recognising (the Step 2 scheme should now end in August).

over, in part, to Peter Mandelson, who - for all his rhetoric - is often almost as parochially protectionist as a Michigan or Lille union leader.
you shouldn't be running policy on the basis of 'yah-boo' tantrums about how you compare with the Americans (who's the most hypocritical and self-serving bunch of rich cunts, that sort of thing), but for some reason Mandy seems to think that's a reasonable way to conduct business.

just luxuriating of late in Jon furiously tearing himself a new one. it's astonishing.
oldskool Astronauts notepad-activity levels rewind in full effect!

particularly enjoyable were the lush Tropicalia visuals on display here [there were a few words jotted down too like].

my tuppence [well, alright, old penny] on Jon positioning the new Soul Jazz comp as the third wave of this in return to hipster favour centres on Jon's second wave: "then the mid 1990s obsession with Os Mutantes spearheaded by Stereolab" [he's damn right though there, isn't he].
do you remember Isle of Wight sunny-pop outfit the Bees?
(a gouty-history-man's Beta Band.)
well they covered 'A Minha Menina' on that debut LP, 2001/2-ish, and in the provinces the amount of newsprint spilled on this alone was a dam's worth.

course i don't suppose that's hipster is it, more snakebite in the Rugeley Red Rose.

+

actually last year a Sao Paulo/New York/Chicago show {Tropicália: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture} was on in the Bronx and Chicago's River North - it's coming to the Barbican later this month actually.
an exhibition of Tropicalia arts it placed the music in its wider context, design, film, etc.
that was a big hipster driver i'm sure [well for a twat like me].
i saw it here.
fwiw, the Barbican show will only spur more interest, perhaps Soul Jazz should flog their cute little record bags outside, guerrilla marketing style, with a copy of their cd. on the pavements.
yeah!
i don't know why i don't work in business innit.

does anyone know, btw, why Hibs players refused to join in the applause for Mercer at last weekend's Edinburgh derby, is there a backstory?
The Sunday Post was quick to condemn.
if you do please mail scottdisco@gmail.com

Hughes, Bermondsey, Tatchell's orientation an issue, shame on Hughes, shame on Hughes

by far the sharpest cookie yet on Munich is Zadie Smith,
thus
"If the reviewer is 'pro-Israeli', the review and the film can be dismissed by the reader who feels differently. If the reviewer is 'pro-Palestinian', the same can be done. As it happens, the film itself is neither, and as such, in the opinion of many American reviewers, is inherently aggressive towards Israel....
the nature of the argument - how it dehumanises and destroys those involved in it - and not the argument itself that Munich is interested in....
This film is about confusion and it comes at the right time. How many of us know what to do with these two competing, equally true facts we hear exchanged between Ephraim and Avner: 'Israelis will die if these men live. You know this is true!' says Ephraim. Avner replies, 'There is no peace at the end of this. You know this is true!'"

Michael Wharton, dead aged 92, had his satire praised to the highest in that morning’s Telegraph.
the columnist, it was pointed out, did not suffer anyone directly biting his style, although with Bron Waugh and arguably Chris Morris there are echoes.
Howse wrote that “he learned useless languages such as Irish”, and in a similarly distasteful vein it’s true that Wharton both supported the white Rhodesians and Franco, then applauded Slobodan Milosevic’s refusal, at trial, to recognise the Hague.
in the final analysis he was called a genius.
i may demur.

you can say one thing for Mark Oaten which is that, when he was Home Affairs brief - this in contrast to his Tory and Labour peers, plus a significant section of the UK press - he always discussed asylum seekers and economic migrants as if they were actually people

now there's a novelty

that said, it must be owned that this is the best Private Eye cover since the Hutton report

k-punk gets to the point

get well soon isaac
-down on yr luck, walking thru a dingy bus station, scrubby free papers and crap French/Polish restaurant adverts, mind on caffeine and Mexican food

fierce PA salvation in the form of a glorious blast of Steve Miller's 'The Joker'
yes that's right

this is quality

thanks to OC, we can now see -> Joan Didion = THIS

also just wanted to share this, it's rather tardy but a correspondent of the Sheffield label Discus had said
The first time I saw Derek Bailey was at Company Week at The Roundhouse in Camden maybe back in 1977; I remember an all-star big band of improvisers leaving the stage one by one until there remained only Bailey & the unsung (but equally significant) Terry Day, to whom Bailey called in his sonorous South Yorkshire brogue: 'There's only thee an' me!'
[their Martin Archer also reckons Chora are "a This Heat for the new century"]

my mother sang a basically perfect In The Midnight Hour this morning

---

later-
things with the Thames whale might be going distinctly unquality.
ah.

this is not the genocidal campaign of a government at the height of its ideological hubris, as the 1992 jihad against the Nuba was, or coldly determined to secure natural resources, as when it sought to clear the oilfields of southern Sudan of their troublesome inhabitants. This is the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power: it is genocide by force of habit.

Alex de Waal, August 2004

And so it came to pass that Russia assumed presidency of the G8

[drawing all power - soon...]