no doubt another vicious slur against Chomsky, Zinn and Ali from that mendacious neo-con rag, the Guardian

Norm Geras on Mary Beard

I've returned from the meadow with a fellow named X
two turntables and a spark upon his set
wet behind the ears from the tears of my peers
rap is outta control that's what we fear
so we collapse any actual threats
with the new batch of catchy little quirks
and it works like a charm as I bomb and alarm
any listeners
coming through crisper
on your transistors

i think an apology is owed to Jonathan Steele, actually, certainly for the amount of occasionally nasty commentary his article on Kosovo/a provoked. (it's trying to be fairly cautious, i think, and not exactly doing a great many of the things some of its respondents appear to think.
maybe it's me.)

i was too harsh on the USA the other day, which has been trying to help in Burma more than most, in doses, through the last decade or so and more, and although i know i am only stating the obvious (or Myanma or Bama or whatever you want me to say), i felt like stating it.
and i think Tisdall, since an editor of his, or perhaps he himself, chose to drop in a discussion of the 'blame game' to his piece, and sort of flag that up, could have looked more at this, perhaps.
there's certainly some powerful opinions from various Indians there, about her neighbour.

i also think this short Rubin article, say, or this 2000 reminder from Zimbabwe seems fair when considering a lazy Guardian leader line about making it easier for despots to target their opponents because of American crimes and misdeeds and mistakes, a line of argument that, frankly, shouldn't have got past the person with a red marker.

+

anyway, who do i think i am with these preening little asides (Hirsi Ali, Buruma, Tisdall, Steele, various talking heads).

the commentary thought police?!
it's absurd.

CRITIQUING MYSELF

(i) contrary to an extraordinarily mean-spirited and really rather loutish aside in a provincial English newspaper recently, Kate Nash does do that Regina Spektor thing quite well, and seems to want to follow other ivorians, maybe, you know, and i saw her on the tv.
she was quite frou-frou, dressy, doing that song that you know, that relationship break-up one.

and she was wonderful.

(ii) this

"while the Trial Chamber's factual findings show that KLA soldiers systematically committed cruel treatment and torture in the camp, the Trial Chamber was not satisfied that these KLA soldiers were participants in a systemic joint criminal enterprise to commit these crimes"

Tim Judah come in please.

(iii) this

'Beinart's argument gives a pass to the tyrants in Tehran.'

though there is this
- "Certainly, the timing of the Hersh article could not have been worse.."

CRITIQUING MYSELF

the below little bit contains some awful rubbish and parlour game trash from myself, but i'm not deleting it in an act of solipsistic accountability, to remind myself if i read it again of how one should refrain from discussing sick jokes and petty shite in the real world.
well that's what i think for the below anyway, let's let the journalists get on with it.
Buruma's pop psychology on Podhoretz's body image etc is a tad offensive.

(or just plain loopy.)

(iv) good that the Guardian leader rightly attacked
this:

Britain's own investment relationship with Burma is far from clear. There was a revealing exchange between the Foreign Office and Burma Campaign UK on the junta's claim that the UK is its second largest investor. While the Foreign Office dismissed the figure as bogus, Burma Campaign UK said that Britain had allowed foreign companies to use subsidiaries in the dependent territories to invest in Burma. They are right to argue that David Miliband should now close this loophole.

they also had time for One of the consequences of the Bush era, in which regime change is an explicit aim of foreign policy, is that the US and Britain have become tainted messengers of democratic values. Efforts to undermine hostile regimes - either militarily or covertly through funding - can create real difficulties for opposition movements in those countries. It it is now all too easy for despots to brand their domestic opponents as foreign lackeys. It is an argument that echoes from Iran to Zimbabwe.

efforts can create real difficulties, true.

but

despots will tend to do that anyway.
they are despots anyway.
their domestic opponents are their domestic opponents anyway.

it's a little shame in a fairly focused editorial (on the same subject, the Guardian's London rivals the Telegraph and the Times had leaders of a slightly different stroke today, and preferable for that), discussing matters at hand, that if we are going to get into broad strokes about the US, it couldn't be acknowledged that that country has had a better record than most toward Burma in recent times, which - yes - is not saying much, you can argue. (given they, the Yanks, were trying to do things in a vacuum for much of the 1990s, without many other states assisting, they didn't get too far.)

Simon Tisdall - here - surprisingly mentions Burmese neighbours first off, in a piece about 'the blame game'. (i mean: where's Israel?)
fair cop at the end, too. 'war on terror'. etc. undermining the rule of law.

but you know what?
this from Geras, is shorter, and better.
(oh. but he doesn't mention the USA. neocon hubris.)


(v) five rushed, angry points.

(vi) rugby; i prefer Tests to one-dayers, i must say.
actually, i don't know.
i think i prefer watching them.
maybe.

jove, this rugby world cup has been SOME fun.

(vii) two NYRB articles on trafficking and Buruma doesn't like Podhoretz (no link, but it was in the most recent-less-one issue). at all!
look at that cartoon.
you wouldn't mess with that guy!
the Irishman in 'Withnail & I'.

i liked "Dogmatism also leads to errors of judgment, for example when she recommends backing the Turkish military against the democratically elected Turkish government, just because it is led by an Islamic party".
i didn't know that about Hirsi Ali.

oh dear.

Buruma and TGA got in a spot of bother over Hirsi Ali and i can't remember what it was about exactly but - be fair to them - they were in the right*.

CRITIQUING MYSELF

(viii) i've been seeing a shrink for about a year. (this ain't a joke; i mean, i'm being serious.)
it's good, i'm finally getting there, and getting well.
not that i know what i'm doing.
(save this navel-gazing need to spew pompous and careless opinions about as if to nail out who i am, where i stand.)

i am going to go a wandering soon.

but.
anyway.
let what i said above about Kate Nash stand.

that is there.

entirely.
that stays.

go.
now.

* iirc

redux

if i could just find a dateline Kigali, late May '94 post from Mr Steele, that started "The genocide, the major blight on the CDR record, is almost over."

[(awful) joke, sic, to make a 'point'.]

but, yunno?
brushed aside in a second, when he appropriately excoriates other situations that are the making of other countries and organisations and people, it's, well.
beats me.

economic fairness in Thailand as long as you're not a Laotian or Burmese national, or a drugs injector, or.. (the unique motor of democratic progress line is addressed to a strawman, no?)

---

i'm sorry. er, really. i thought of this pie-eyed need to rant this morning whilst listening to John Humphrys drone on, on Radio 4's Today programme.
much like Steele, Humphrys chats lazy, simplistic garbage about Afghanistan is too a venerable Brit journo.

a deadly serious UK govt elision

what is, most likely, a lie, and a disgusting one at that, given the despicable topic of conversation- "The government says its position was backed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)."

what is, most likely, the truth- However the ICRC says this has never been discussed with them by Britain.

'Simon Conway, director of Landmine Action, says if this was a cluster bomb last November, then it still is.

Neither of the government's points are internationally accepted definitions that would exclude this rocket from a ban.'

elsewhere, Jonathan Steele has this piece in today's Guardian that i want to (very briefly) comment on.

i'm glad he got in

The "smash the bourgeoisie" ideology Putin grew up with was extreme, but today's political opposite, the picture of the middle class as unique motor of democratic progress, is equally simplistic.

he does continue

Take Chile, or more recently Venezuela and Thailand, as three cases of bourgeois backing for military coups against democracy and economic fairness.

i like that he likes Thaksin Shinawatra's laudable health-care provision (democracies are sometimes able to provide pretty decent health-care) and all that, but the likes of Shinawatra and Chavez have a few skeletons in the cupboard and it's a little troubling to say the least that Steele felt good enough about his thesis (one assumes.. ...ass out of you and me, and all that..) to drop these examples in, given that the skeletons in the cupboard should really be about enough to dissuade one from lauding these two men (whilst, naturally, condemning without condition the military coups against them, whether successfully attempted or not).

the short aside

The second Chechen war, the major blight on Putin's record, is almost over.

is a bit relaxed, innit?!
hmm.

that wily Yeltsin.

the bottom line with Steele (noted here before, but clear-eyed reportage from Pristina is a reason to laud him, among other things) is that his analysis here is fairly detached and cool, perhaps a little more detached than the subject deserves.
but hey.

+
* what is bandwidth? it's something to do with your internets, eh. it's not a pr0no ref. i know that.

They don't support Saddam. They don't support his foes. They have no policy to offer.

-Nick Cohen.

mummy what's a new statesman?

it is far beyond me to describe how deeply i am in love with Channel 4 (UK)'s advertisement for its film arm season of 'new Hollywood'.

(the fact that Michael Mann's Heat, The Shield and the updated edition of 'City of Quartz' have been three of my key touchstones all year - and they are not competing claims - possibly helps.
the nearest i've even been to LA is the Bay Area.)

+

don't ask me quite how the text of this email came to me (i'm still unsure myself), but, read on, dear heart, read on

from A <_____@__.by> hide details 09:20 (1 minute ago)
to
____ <____@__.ve>
date 01-Aug-2007 9:20
subject Fraternal greetings; Against the idlers, a Plea
mailed-by ____@__.by

H,

I know you gave me a lot last month but we need some more.
PLEASE.
V's up to his uncomradely tricks again. (Only issue 'those fuckers' and I agree on!)

Thing is, I admit I made LOTS selling MY utility to HIS utility, but that pot's all dry.
(Don't ask, brother.)

Fraternally, A.

---

here's a link to normblog, mentioning something utterly despicable the truly shameful fool Richard Dawkins once said.

letter to the editor, TIME, April 10, 1972

Sir:

Concerning the National Enquirer story: Sorry- the leopard has only half changed its spots if their story on Howard Hughes (which included me) is any example.
I was never interviewed by these gentlemen, and much of their little story is a complete lie. There were never any nude scenes shot during or after a day's shooting.
I have never posed in the nude above or below the waist. Like Lucifer, publications of this ilk tell a little truth and slip the lies in like chopped liver in a sandwich. The gullible don't know they've been had till they get sick.

- Jane Russell, Los Angeles

i saw some magpies fighting yesterday.

they made a heck of a racket.

At 28 days detention, we are already the most draconian of the common law democracies.

David Davis

Sir Andrew Green, British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, 1996-2000, wrote an article in yesterday's Telegraph.

in it he took a classically realist view of the Serious Fraud Office investigation being blocked.
(and got a lot of tough Tories applauding him in the comments box.)

the formulation "The Saudis are often blamed for being behind the growth of Islamic extremism. Certainly, they have never been short of fundamentalist -preachers. But the regime is itself now the first target of al-Qaeda" shows Sir Andrew's gift for gross understatement, the BUT at the end demonstrating you can have a firm grasp on the facts and still come up smelling of humbug.

a series of chilling (and valid, natch, if necessarily crudely reductionist*) questions to the strawmen he is arguing against highlight Sir Andrew's imaginative gifts whilst not engaging one tiny iota with any of the serious arguments concerning the SFO investigation being stopped short for reasons of public interest.

---

* what other sort of argument would you expect from the man who runs the absurd pressure group Migration Watch UK?

NOTE
Trevor Kavanagh once wrote a piece some years ago in The Sun defending Sir Andrew and his group, claiming that a man who had done such good work as chair of the Medical Aid for Palestinians group (and, to give Sir Andrew immense credit where it is due, he has also been involved with the group Christian Solidarity Worldwide) was hardly a bigot.
a fair point in itself to rebut the charges he wanted to, but as an extended argument more than a little disingenuous, as Trevor must have known, given the sorts of groups and outlets claiming Migration Watch UK as their own, surely - in some cases - with the approval of the watchdog.
are you seriously telling me Migration Watch UK do not have the ear of the Daily Express?

whenever it runs a story on the issues they campaign upon Sir Andrew is - without fail, to my knowledge, at least at any time in the last few years and if the story has been more than a small paragraph or so - reverently quoted as the leader of an independent campaign group, Migration Watch UK.

as the Sri Lankan supreme court has stopped any further evictions of ethnic Tamil residents from Colombo, AFP are quoted as The court will hear the case on 22 June and in the meantime, the police inspector general has been restrained.

"The Free Media Movement in Sri Lanka has condemned the expulsions saying they are tantamount to ethnic cleansing"

in a slightly less imperfect world where the necessities of linguistic nicety did not matter quite so much, the above good souls would need not be so polite

-

yesterday

Victims of Colombian paramilitaries and rebels..filed for damages against Chiquita Brands after the U.S. fruit company pleaded guilty to paying protection money to an illegal armed group and agreed to a $25 million fine, one of their attorneys said.

"We filed a complaint in U.S. federal court for damages on behalf of the 144 people who had family members who were murdered by the AUC or the FARC during the period of time Chiquita was providing them support," Terry Collingsworth, an attorney with International Rights Advocates, told Reuters.

Monday

'Police Capt. Guillermo Javier Solorzano, a local businessman and his son were forced into a vehicle late Monday by uniformed men in Valle del Cauca province..police said.
"They were kidnapped by group of men who arrived by surprise and acted as if they were a military operation," the Valle del Cauca police said in a statement.'

Brendan O'Neill has a fair point here (from last July) about the IAF flying low over Latakia in order to send a message, but his conclusion

This old Cold War conflict is kept alive by the needs and prejudices of many in the West, not by what the people of Israel or Palestine want.

So, Hands off the Middle East – and today that doesn’t only go for America, but also the UN, the EU, Russia and every other institution, NGO, writer, academic and activist who has helped to turn the Middle East into a stageshow for their own political gratification.


while clearly true of some unbending idiots, says rather more about O'Neill than anything he's trying to analyse, ("the West", civil society, cutting through cant)
[i humbly submit]

i'm delighted that Ollie has blogged about Anne Applebaum and Russia's new dissidents [a motley crew of very uneven quality], which you can see here, as it prompts me to go with a little something i'd been meaning to for some time.

{not quite in a chatting shit kinda way, i hope, although that's not for me to judge, as when Green Day's Mike Dirnt once said to Kerrang! Magazine, that he had a little shit to chat about the Presidents of the USA
1}

Mary Dejevsky, evergreen, (she was reporting on the Baltic Way in 1989, as Wikipedia suggests) wrote an article on the chess man's dance, headed The secret of Putin's crackdown, halfway through last month in the Independent (17 April).

[Dejevsky is often out and about in her columnist duty, recently discussing, say, gay marriage, or Sarkozy, or the euro. or, indeed, "The Chechnya parallel helps explain why Moscow is so sensitive about Kosovo. If Kosovo can become independent, why not Chechnya?"

she's someone with plenty of opinions, and wide-ranging interests.

fair play.]

Dejevsky appears to make some fair sense the first time, read through.

she lamented the police action, then argued that perhaps "Russia, to be sure, would benefit from making a greater effort to see itself as others see it. But we should try to understand, too, how Russia looks from the Kremlin", arguing how some of the regions have little to fear from the centre in terms of being reined in, which has to inform what she identifies as the Kremlin's over-reaction.

(i'm not sure if this really stands up to analysis, given the presidential appointment of regional governors nowadays, and how the Kremlin is drawing all power to itself, but no matter eh.)

she pointed out Putin's massive approval ratings and had sharp words for some of the dodgy end of the protestors (though Ollie above summarised things better and more concisely on that score).

but reading back through her article a second time (and, admittedly, in light of what Applebaum wrote – a writer that, whatever one can say and applaud about Dejevsky's long-standing interest in this region, surely has a better understanding of the big picture) some things stand out that strike me as extremely dis-satisfactory and just wrong, in tone and analysis.

Dejevsky finds the "consequences depressingly predictable" of riot police wading into the crowds, which is clearly to her credit ("gashed heads and bruised limbs"), but in the same breath she finds another consequence as depressing and (it appears, or - rather - one is not being unreasonable to infer this, if you read through) on the same moral plane, that is, "headlines across the Western world denouncing Big Bad Putin".

this sort of application of equivalency needs to be called out for what it is: true plain nonsense.

(and i don't know why i didn't notice it properly straight away.)

a free press finding fault with those scenes?

(i'm not going to digress about much of the printing presses in the UK being concentrated in a few hands here, as, to stick with the UK, a country whose papers find room for Macer Hall in the Express and Seumas Milne in the Guardian and Con Coughlin in the Telegraph and Suzanne Moore in the Mail clearly has a healthy enough situation in that department..

2)

now why-ever is that – in a million years – "depressingly predictable"?

'Depressingly', mind you.

that word in itself, in these circumstances, is a big disappointment.

who is the editor here?

reading things with this in mind stuff gets a little weird in the article.

shortly after her egregious oversight about independent journalists getting upset with the horrible behaviour of the police of this awful govt, she discusses how "crowd control has come a long way in two generations", citing the double outrages of Kent State and Bloody Sunday, with a side order of Tiananmen Square.

(you can perhaps appreciate why she cites Ohio and Northern Ireland ahead of, say, incidents during the Moroccan Years of Lead or episodes of the 8888 Uprising, as a lesson of what monstrous things can happen in the darkest of times for protestors and dissenters..)

there's casuistry with how Russian leaders can now "throw back retorts about Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition and double standards" if asked about "considerations of image".

yes: hers is a correct analysis in the most essential sense, as Russian leaders should and can do that (any govt is entitled to lecture the Americans on this, but sadly many of the least deserving regimes, mind you, revel in this freedom, as – granted – we all know), but Putin of course is able to go even further and use the American war on terror branding as an excuse for all sorts of naughtiness, and the exercising of lots of conveniences that offend, to grossly understate.

(as GW Bush, again, can and has done, obviously.)

this is a very basic point but one that Dejevsky omits. this sin of omission is really troubling.

look, this is all very sixth form and preening of me (or sub-sixth form) but i can't apologise for that, can i, because the article itself is even worse.

yes, worse.

coming to the end now, again, and that final line now sticks in the throat when at first it had breezed past me: But we should try to understand, too, how Russia looks from the Kremlin.

we have been doing that for a long time, it seems.

we have been so understanding toward Russia from the Kremlin's perspective that a city the size of Edinburgh was entirely razed to the ground (just for, yunno, kicks and starters..), thanks, partly, in some small (or perhaps quite significant) way to our 'understanding'.

they have a law that authorises their agents to liquidate people overseas!

cyber-tricks against Estonian websites, it's recently implied.

yes, that as of yet is not reputably sourced AFAIK, more just rumour but i mention it, of course.

perhaps i'm going off on an entirely wrong track here and ascribing all sorts of motives and issues to Dejevsky that she would disassociate herself from (clearly, she would have nothing but condemnation for all the abuses the Russian govt has committed, and continues to commit).

after all, it's not like any of the above would be news (Baltic Way for her as the rest of her colleagues were laughing at Ross Perot, after all), and you could say i am engaging in my own sleights here, not fully grappling with the subtle thrust on display.

but it's one sentence at the start of her final paragraph that again stops you short, and not in a good way.

"A more confident regime might have surprised us by leaving the protestors to their rallies – and it should have done."

well, we can all agree with her fine conclusion there (which indicates the fundamental agreement that places her by the side of all opponents of Putin, granted), but, Putin & Co didn't, did they.

and that is the issue in this situation.

(other issues in nearby situations are the friendships between the Iranian and Russian govts, the Russian and Sudanese govts, the Russian and Belarusian govts, and ex-German Chancellors of recent times and the current Russian leader, and so on & such & so forth.)

that, is, the issue.

and no amount of phrasing footwork changes that.

indeed, read through that prism, the article veers close to apologetics.

---

1
eating the peaches: good times..

2
false consciousness on my part you may wish to argue, so i will say that Nick Cohen's June 1998 New Statesman piece, 'The Death of News', reprinted in his Cruel Britannia anthology, is instructive

+

P.S.

Ollie was good enough to send some news-links my way recently (you can dig them up on that blog, if you fancy, and haven't already), and i hafta doff my cap to that.

Michel Gurfinkiel had a in-depth look at Commentary magazine on the topic of 'Can France be saved?' which had a lot of interesting things to say about the ENA, statism [quoting sociologist Louis Chauvel, we have the delicious "What used to be said of Prussia..applies to France today, with a slight difference. Other countries may have a state bureaucracy, but France is a state bureaucracy that owns a country"], and the uselessness of Chirac.

(to be fair to France, no-where does Gurfinkiel mention her productivity.)

and other bits & bobs too, the most of which is worth quoting (Sego loves the Kurds), though especially the GFIW – in closing – on the murder of Moaaid Hamid, VP in the federation, and his wife, recently.

Glory and eternity to our fallen comrade trade union leader Hamed and his wife.

Glory to the martyrs of the Iraqi working class.

Shame on the murderous terrorists.

P.P.S.

with the recent hardening of attitudes between London and Moscow it will be interesting to see how intelligence handling between the two countries carries on.

just this weekend past it has been reported how Russian help to the UK security and intelligence services – providing useful information about groups in the Balkans and the Horn and the Caucasus – has previously been of assistance.

such arrangements have become damaged.

press freedom - some recent developments in-

Thailand

Honduras

Indonesia [via normblog]

Venezuela