tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55476952009-02-21T08:37:20.029Zthe weblog of norman gerasnormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comBlogger737125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1083065939630103532004-04-27T12:38:00.000+01:002004-04-27T12:44:09.686+01:00

A suggestion I'm here. Please fix your bookmark: http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1071095505521586172003-12-10T22:31:00.000Z2003-12-11T19:00:40.060Z

New site Apologies that this comes so late in the day, but I was unable to get in here till now to post anything. I have a new site. Please visit.

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070978345734805742003-12-09T13:59:00.000Z2003-12-09T14:01:05.340Z

A few statistics John Carvel in today's Guardian:Support for raising taxes to spend more on health, education and social benefits has nearly doubled over the last 20 years. .......... Its [the National Centre for Social Research's] first report 20 years ago found that 32% thought taxes and spending on the welfare state should be higher. By 1991 - after Margaret Thatcher's second and third terms

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070976930416411852003-12-09T13:35:00.000Z2003-12-09T13:41:08.186Z

Two blog posts and an article > Check out Marc Mulholland, responding to Ken MacLeod's post which I discussed here yesterday. Marc has some reflections on America which should be read. > Check out Alan Brain on why war isn't always wrong. > Check out Anne Bayefsky on the UN and anti-Semitism.

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070976570946240182003-12-09T13:29:00.000Z2003-12-09T13:30:15.106Z

Mbeki For some reason it's not in the online version of this Guardian report but it is in my actual dnoc:His credentials [Thabo Mbeki's] as a leader of African opinion have been badly dented, not to mention his reputation as a defender of democracy.Credentials? AIDS. Zimbabwe. Hmm.

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070974420496730122003-12-09T12:53:00.000Z2003-12-09T12:57:06.326Z

Cricketers From Carr's Dictionary of Extra-ordinary English Cricketers, compiled by J.L. Carr:Ranjitsinhji, Maharajah Jam Sahib of Nawanagar, Sussex, b. 1872, whose elegant yet aggressive cutting, leg glides, race and title, captured the nation's imagination. Why, even my father had heard of him.From Thirty Obituaries from Wisden, compiled by Matthew Engel, alumnus of the University of

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070974120653705872003-12-09T12:48:00.000Z2003-12-09T12:50:01.796Z

Estimates hovered around 750,000 No, not that again, but this:Horns were beeped in celebration and taxi drivers got out of their black cabs and waved and smiled like men who knew that the only things still running were their meters.Thousands out on the streets of London for the England rugby team.

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070973720609648212003-12-09T12:42:00.000Z2003-12-09T12:46:05.966Z

Double Standards (Eve Garrard) We care about double standards. We think people shouldn't have them. It's a strike against a view if it displays them. So criticisms are levelled at George Bush for attacking Iraq while leaving other, maybe worse, tyrannical regimes untouched; at Noam Chomsky for attacking America's sins while saying little or nothing about those of other states; at the EU for

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070925209626495352003-12-08T23:13:00.000Z2003-12-08T23:14:13.483Z

Inversion Here's John Patterson discussing the movie The Last Samurai:The contemporary resonances of The Last Samurai are unmissable, though most American critics seem to have missed them easily enough. With Tom Cruise facing down a US regiment on a foreign field, it's possible to see him as a John Walker Lindh figure - except he's the hero. No doubt they would string him up in pretty short

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070921429626907572003-12-08T22:10:00.000Z2003-12-08T22:18:01.826Z

Iraqi workers David Bacon, a labour journalist, writes in The Progressive about the problems facing workers in Iraq today. It's not a rosy picture, and the failure of the occupation authorities to get rid of anti-union laws is indefensible, as well as being short-sighted from their own point of view. At the same time the information Bacon himself provides shows that a certain thesis of his here

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070907451396300342003-12-08T18:17:00.000Z2003-12-08T18:22:11.593Z

From Zimbabwe - for Iraq I've posted today on both Zimbabwe and Iraq. Now, thanks to Douglas Rogers who drew my attention to it, I direct you to this intersect between the two countries: an article at New Zimbabwe by Charles Frizell which states the case for military intervention in Iraq in terms of a simple analogy. At the same time, Frizell in effect links back to a long tradition in the

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070903780150082542003-12-08T17:16:00.000Z2003-12-08T17:25:39.326Z

No skin off Ewen's nose This article at the Guardian website details the process of finding mass graves in Iraq and the preparation for a tribunal to try crimes against humanity there:The mass grave at Mahaweel, with more than 3,100 sets of remains, is the largest of some 270 such sites across Iraq. They hold upward of 300,000 bodies; some Iraqi political parties estimate there are more than 1

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070885611229662602003-12-08T12:13:00.000Z2003-12-08T18:23:20.326Z

Before the flood? There's a long, very interesting and eloquent post by Ken MacLeod at The Early Days of a Better Nation. It sets out the pro-war left position as fair-mindedly as I've seen this done by any opponent of the position, before going on to say why he is an opponent of it. His core reason, I think, is contained in this passage:The strengthening of imperialism, of the New World Order,

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070884722895883822003-12-08T11:58:00.000Z2003-12-08T12:00:39.810Z

Zimbabwe: call for 'a coalition of the willing' Here's a piece by Mduduzi Mathuthu about the latest development:THE decision by President Robert Mugabe to drag Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth is a perilous, self-serving adventure for which he should be held to account. .......... What emerges from this sordid saga is the frightening reality that Robert Mugabe now thinks he can make any decision

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070884463978303892003-12-08T11:54:00.000Z2003-12-08T11:55:07.546Z

Mass rape as a legitimate instrument of war? See John Bayley on Anthony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin: After what the Germans had done in Russia the Russians were more than entitled to get a bit of their own back and they did.(Thanks to David Bennett for the tip-off.)

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070836711043568782003-12-07T22:38:00.000Z2003-12-07T22:54:48.280Z

Non-paradoxes of democracy 2 In publishing the results of the Alternative Big Read here (on November 26), I pointed out that, had I asked everyone to send me only their top book, rather than their top three books, the results would have been different (with James Joyce's Ulysses, for example, coming fifth rather than tenth); and I said I might return to the issue. The issue I had in mind was the

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070801350303643422003-12-07T12:49:00.000Z2003-12-07T22:21:03.250Z

Alinda, the lovely lady singer In the Guardian 'Weekend' magazine there's a lovely article about Maurice Sendak by Tony Kushner - a eulogy really, but none the worse for that. Sendak's children's books were among my favourites back when I was reading to my daughters. Looking at them again today I find whole chunks still familiar to me. From Where the Wild Things Are:And when he came to the place

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070800996623674482003-12-07T12:43:00.000Z2003-12-07T12:43:58.623Z

Christmas books Wife of the Norm, spelt out in full here because she's the story - or half the story - and not an incidental detail in it (now, come on, you know what I'm saying), gets a heigh-ho in the Sunday Times today:Christmas is a good time for traditional retellings. Among the most striking of the recent crop for 5-8s is Adèle Geras's emotive and literate reworking of Sleeping Beauty (

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070800804040589822003-12-07T12:40:00.000Z2003-12-07T12:40:46.076Z

How to... Do you know about eHow? It has the answers to many different 'how to' questions. I tried 'to fish', 'to bake bread', 'to make movies' and 'to knit socks'. Not that I want to know, actually, but just by way of messing about; no, correction, by way of researching for you, my readers. Anyway, there's material on the first three but not on the fourth. More seriously, there's nothing on 'to

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070800618695393022003-12-07T12:36:00.000Z2003-12-07T12:37:40.780Z

The undiscovered Melanie Phillips Tipping his hat to the Friday normblog profile, Bobbie, along the way at politx, started a regular Unopened Files feature in which previously undisclosed work gets to be disclosed. This week it's a piece by Melanie Phillips. She's on top form:The moral fibre of our once-great country depends on the nuclear family. If one thing has proven more utterly responsible

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070800437230158502003-12-07T12:33:00.000Z2003-12-07T12:35:41.920Z

Don't WotN and I couldn't be bothered trekking out last night, so we watched The Bourne Identity on DVD. It features two central characters utterly devoid of spark, humour, interest, character, and indeed identity. This is partly determined by the fact that the two principals can't act, but it's also helped along, rather, by a lifeless script and a few other things. You don't know who he (Jason

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070800226862178352003-12-07T12:30:00.000Z2003-12-07T12:31:09.030Z

One good heh deserves others Heh about this. And heh heh and heh about these: Leeds United 1 - 1 Chelsea Leicester City 1 - 1 Arsenal Newcastle 1 - 1 Liverpool Well?! It's Sunday. I'm resting.

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070747292558936082003-12-06T21:48:00.000Z2003-12-06T21:48:53.873Z

Malignancy From a review by Hazhir Teimourian of John Simpson's The Wars Against Saddam, in the Literary Review (December 2003-January 2004, pp. 34-5 - no online version):I cannot understand why I... can take pride in Britain's heroic readiness to help to remove the Ba'thist malignancy from the world, on whatever legalistically flimsy pretext, while Simpson and the BBC as a whole are so negative

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070747180773887052003-12-06T21:46:00.000Z2003-12-06T21:47:02.123Z

Mugabe Here is a report by Peter Oborne on how state control of grain in Zimbabwe is being used against the regime's political opponents:There is indeed a drought. But Mugabe, in an act of pure evil, has taken advantage of this for his own loathsome purposes. Elderly and unpopular, he has one weapon left in his battle to hang on to power: the ability to use the power of the state to starve and

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070722220654200602003-12-06T14:50:00.000Z2003-12-06T14:58:42.170Z

Kissinger Duncan Campbell reports from LA:Henry Kissinger gave his approval to the "dirty war" in Argentina in the 1970s in which up to 30,000 people were killed, according to newly declassified US state department documents. Mr Kissinger, who was America's secretary of state, is shown to have urged the Argentinian military regime to act before the US Congress resumed session, and told it that

normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.com