tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55476952011-04-21T22:10:45.629+01:00normblogthe weblog of norman gerasnormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comBlogger7371100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1083065939630103532004-04-27T12:38:00.000+01:002004-04-27T12:44:09.686+01:00A 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-1071095505521586172003-12-10T22:31:00.000Z2003-12-11T19:00:40.060ZNew 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-1070978345734805742003-12-09T13:59:00.000Z2003-12-09T14:01:05.340ZA 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-1070976930416411852003-12-09T13:35:00.000Z2003-12-09T13:41:08.186ZTwo 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-1070976570946240182003-12-09T13:29:00.000Z2003-12-09T13:30:15.106ZMbeki
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-1070974420496730122003-12-09T12:53:00.000Z2003-12-09T12:57:06.326ZCricketers
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-1070974120653705872003-12-09T12:48:00.000Z2003-12-09T12:50:01.796ZEstimates 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-1070973720609648212003-12-09T12:42:00.000Z2003-12-09T12:46:05.966ZDouble 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-1070925209626495352003-12-08T23:13:00.000Z2003-12-08T23:14:13.483ZInversion
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-1070921429626907572003-12-08T22:10:00.000Z2003-12-08T22:18:01.826ZIraqi 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-1070907451396300342003-12-08T18:17:00.000Z2003-12-08T18:22:11.593ZFrom 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-1070903780150082542003-12-08T17:16:00.000Z2003-12-08T17:25:39.326ZNo 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-1070885611229662602003-12-08T12:13:00.000Z2003-12-08T18:23:20.326ZBefore 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-1070884722895883822003-12-08T11:58:00.000Z2003-12-08T12:00:39.810ZZimbabwe: 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 decisionnormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070884463978303892003-12-08T11:54:00.000Z2003-12-08T11:55:07.546ZMass 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-1070836711043568782003-12-07T22:38:00.000Z2003-12-07T22:54:48.280ZNon-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 thenormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070801350303643422003-12-07T12:49:00.000Z2003-12-07T22:21:03.250ZAlinda, 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 placenormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070800996623674482003-12-07T12:43:00.000Z2003-12-07T12:43:58.623ZChristmas 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-1070800804040589822003-12-07T12:40:00.000Z2003-12-07T12:40:46.076ZHow 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 'tonormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070800618695393022003-12-07T12:36:00.000Z2003-12-07T12:37:40.780ZThe 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 responsiblenormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070800437230158502003-12-07T12:33:00.000Z2003-12-07T12:35:41.920ZDon'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-1070800226862178352003-12-07T12:30:00.000Z2003-12-07T12:31:09.030ZOne 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-1070747292558936082003-12-06T21:48:00.000Z2003-12-06T21:48:53.873ZMalignancy
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 negativenormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070747180773887052003-12-06T21:46:00.000Z2003-12-06T21:47:02.123ZMugabe
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-1070722220654200602003-12-06T14:50:00.000Z2003-12-06T14:58:42.170ZKissinger
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 thatnormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070720280499213242003-12-06T14:18:00.000Z2003-12-06T14:18:41.983ZGalloway
From yesterday's Telegraph (registration required):George Galloway was advised by a Commons committee yesterday to pursue his libel action against The Daily Telegraph "with all due urgency".
The standards and privileges committee said it would suspend its own investigation into the MP's conduct until his case went to court. But it suggested that if Mr Galloway delayed his action, it normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070713900932255952003-12-06T12:31:00.000Z2003-12-06T14:19:38.700ZWhy terrorists get confused
Following the link from Harry's Place to some letters on the Socialist Worker website, I found myself pondering this passage from one of them:[K]nee-jerk cries of anti-Semitism from Israeli politicians are wide of the mark. Since the creation of Israel in 1948 it has committed war crimes against the Palestinian people.
Successive Israeli leaders have claimed to normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070713227025079262003-12-06T12:20:00.000Z2003-12-06T12:21:08.403ZJulie follow-up
This morning Julie Burchill follows up her Graun piece of last Saturday on anti-Semitism. Today's article contains a characteristic Burchill excess which will be seized on by those with an interest in dismissing the concerns she's discussing. But this pair of articles is only one of the reasons I'm sorry she's leaving the Guardian.normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070665490381221212003-12-05T23:04:00.000Z2003-12-05T23:10:34.640ZEmperor Josh, that's me
I am Joshua Abraham Norton, first and only Emperor of the United States of America!Born in England sometime in the second decade of the nineteenth century, [I] carved a notable business career, in South Africa and later San Francisco, until an entry into the rice market wiped out [my] fortune in 1854. After this, [I] became quite different. The first sign of this came on normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070637765551342302003-12-05T15:22:00.000Z2003-12-05T15:24:27.246ZMore world-Jewish-Zionist-cabal, dominate-the-entire-planet, plot
According to this Bleeb report, relayed to me by the ever-mysterious SdeW:The Israeli army has inducted into its ranks one of the most unusual recruits in its history - an Eskimo girl from Alaska.The original language of this girl is Yupik:After nearly a decade in Israel, Eva has forgotten the smattering of Yupik she spoke as a normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070637632979106062003-12-05T15:20:00.000Z2003-12-05T15:25:07.966ZNine minutes
Nine fact-packed minutes. Here's a description of Steve Waugh's innings at the Gabba today:This brought Waugh to the crease for the first of his farewell innings in his last series. The crowd responded with the first of many standing ovations Waugh will no doubt receive this summer, but this valedictory innings was all over in just nine minutes. Indeed, it could be argued Waugh's normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070628658366325222003-12-05T12:50:00.000Z2003-12-05T13:05:08.263ZEnraged
Up the road at Gauche, Stephen Marks has a review of two books, one of them Christopher Hitchens's Regime Change. The review is predictably unsympathetic and, equally predictably, I don't much care for it, having a better opinion of Hitchens's volume. But it isn't my intention to rehearse all of the issues over which Stephen Marks and I would differ here and that lead to these opposing normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070627877989134262003-12-05T12:37:00.000Z2003-12-05T12:38:38.076ZA strange reluctance
This woman was evidently not desperate to end her days in this world yet:A Palestinian woman arrived at the Tarkomiya checkpoint and complained to soldiers that she had been beaten by 4 Hamas terrorists for refusing to serve as a suicide bomber.(Thanks to SdeW.)normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070627764734230652003-12-05T12:36:00.000Z2003-12-05T12:37:37.653ZEuropean anti-Semitism
Dominic Hilton has a discussion of the issue on Open Democracy, in which he gives some background about the shelved EUMC report. But the piece also contains this inaccuracy:[T]he journalist Julie Burchill resigned from Britain's Guardian newspaper this week, saying she refuses to accept the paper's distinction between anti-Zionism (which it supports) and anti-Semitism (normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070621276104406372003-12-05T10:47:00.000Z2003-12-05T10:48:35.983ZThe normblog profile 11: Francois Brutsch
Francois Brutsch was born in Cameroon in 1955 where his parents worked for the Protestant Church Mission. The family soon returned to Geneva and there Francois later graduated in law and political science, going on to train as a lawyer. He has been involved in politics since the age of 15: both in the Socialist Party (carrying various responsibilities atnormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070582440013189412003-12-05T00:00:00.000Z2003-12-05T00:06:44.250ZSome late night links
Welcome to the new blog Socialism in an Age of Waiting, which after introducing itself kicks off with a post on Victor Serge. Serge wrote:Defence of man. Respect for man. Man must be given his rights, his security, his value. Without these, there is no Socialism. Without these all is false, bankrupt and spoiled... It must never be forgotten that a human being is a human normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070551616104150982003-12-04T15:26:00.000Z2003-12-04T15:33:38.810ZWhat's left?
The discussion on moving rightwards begun by Marc Mulholland and Harry Hatchet and which I took up here a couple of days ago (see 'Left divided', which has the links to Marc and Harry), has elicited further comment at Butterflies and Wheels and the new blog Building the Socialist Republic of Heaven. The view I expressed on the subject gets an endorsement from Ophelia Benson at the normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070548630085699312003-12-04T14:37:00.000Z2003-12-04T14:44:56.856ZSimply breathtaking
Noam Chomsky in today's Independent, in answer to the question 'Is anti-Semitism on the increase?'In the West, fortunately, it scarcely exists now, though it did in the past. There is, of course, what the Anti-Defamation League calls "the real anti-Semitism", more dangerous than the old-fashioned kind: criticism of policies of the state of Israel and US support for them, normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070536952134728042003-12-04T11:22:00.000Z2003-12-04T11:35:10.983ZMarx, dead or alive?
Via Chris at Crooked Timber I was directed to the interesting discussion by Brian Leiter on 'What is Living and What is Dead in Marx?' I'd like to engage with one part of Brian's argument, embodied in the following passage:In recent years, there has been what I call a "moralizing" tendency in Marx scholarship - a tendency to abandon the manifest causal-explanatory ambitions normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070474256251101492003-12-03T17:57:00.000Z2003-12-03T17:58:14.326ZDemocratic militaries
Read about these soldiers and these air force pilots.normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070474131603906772003-12-03T17:55:00.000Z2003-12-03T18:01:23.653ZA post about post
My relationship to most of the (paper) mail I receive, both at home and in my Department, is a tearing up and throwing away one. Unsolicited, unwanted, form mail, junk. I wonder how many people this is true of. What a waste of everyone's effort, both the senders and the receivers.normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070456395108097982003-12-03T12:59:00.000Z2003-12-03T14:13:40.590ZOops!
Jimmy Carter on the Middle East:"Had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region, we could have moved to a final solution," he said.He's not George Bush, so (unless I missed something) this has not been splashed in - you know - some of the usual places. (Via Randal Robinson.)normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070454184486752792003-12-03T12:23:00.000Z2003-12-03T14:15:56.936ZAnti-Semitism in France / A call to the left (updated)
According to this article French Jews now 'live in constant fear'.
See also the excellent statement at Workers' Liberty attempting to 'rally the left to combat anti-semitism'.
(Thanks to SdeW and Clive Bradley, respectively.)
Updated at 2.15 PM: Also well worth a look is the post 'Left-Wing Anti-Semitism' on Laban Tall's Blog (scroll downnormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070454048034992492003-12-03T12:20:00.000Z2003-12-03T12:21:26.390Z'I have no words to describe the agony'
Yosi Mendelevich talks to Linda Grant about the loss of his son through a suicide murder.normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070453937262829922003-12-03T12:18:00.000Z2003-12-03T12:19:35.640ZA brave and remarkable man
That man is Pius Ncube, the Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo. Last night there was a programme about him on Radio 4, Michael Buerk speaking to him in Rome:Pius Ncube... watched [the] descent into dictatorship with concern that turned into horror. His church told him to keep quiet but he reached the point where he had to choose whether to take a public stand - maybe a normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070453809622887482003-12-03T12:16:00.000Z2003-12-03T12:18:10.796Z2003 warblogger awards
'And the best blog overall is...' Well, you may be able to guess, but see how 49 right-of-centre bloggers responded to John Hawkins on this - and in the various other categories as well.normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070453620851098132003-12-03T12:13:00.000Z2003-12-03T12:15:31.436ZA better class of audience
Polly Toynbee writes regarding the 'political' scene in Love Actually:In front of the press and the president, prime minister Grant makes a fine speech about standing up to the over-mighty, a small country still holding on to pride and principle. A roar went up from the audience and apparently every audience cheers as loudly at our PM telling the Americans to bog normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070453498821938772003-12-03T12:11:00.000Z2003-12-03T12:12:17.296ZGobbledegook?
I'm with Jackie and Natalie (oh, and Donald Rumsfeld) on this one.normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070396897221764872003-12-02T20:28:00.000Z2003-12-02T20:47:04.123ZLeft divided
Marc Mulholland of Daily Moiders and Harry of Harry's Place have been discussing the possible rightward movement - or not - of the pro-war left. Call me sentimental, but even though I'm not quite a 'thirty-something', the generational constituency Marc fastens on, I feel implicated here willy-nilly. Much of what I would have said has already been said by other contributors to the normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070385014083925492003-12-02T17:10:00.000Z2003-12-02T17:12:02.373ZLeaked report on anti-Semitism
The previously unpublished EUMC report on anti-Semitism in Europe has been leaked to the Jerusalem Post. It's long and I've not yet had time to read it. (Hat tip to SdeW.)normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070373399821621242003-12-02T13:56:00.000Z2003-12-02T15:34:59.513ZSomething peculiar
The writer Michael Rosen has a letter in yesterday's Guardian from which I pick out this for discussion:There is... something peculiar about the idea that millions of Jewish Zionists would rather not live in the nation that they keep telling us was founded for them.
The serious side of this is that the Zionist project demands of non-Israeli Jews to support the existence and normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070372919615800542003-12-02T13:48:00.000Z2003-12-02T13:49:16.856ZIraqi opinion
Last night's Newsnight covered an Oxford survey on Iraqi opinion, based on interviews with 3,244 Iraqis nationwide. It can still be seen and heard here (click on the 'latest programme' video and go to 5 minutes in). As you might expect, the report bears mixed news for the Coalition authorities, but one of the more encouraging elements of it is that 'those killing Coalition troops normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070372440987797872003-12-02T13:40:00.000Z2003-12-02T15:36:23.403ZSilenced
Mike Aaronson, director-general of Save the Children UK, has a Guardian piece today under the headline 'We will never be "silenced"'. That's as may be. But he maintains a coy silence about the fact that Save the Children opposed the Iraq war.
He complains that the 'highly charged political context has made it difficult to assert humanitarian principles and still be perceived as normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070311984664448212003-12-01T20:53:00.000Z2003-12-01T20:53:40.966ZTax demand
This has been around for a couple of months already, but I hadn't come across it, so others may not have either. It's a letter from an official at the Inland Revenue and is very, very funny:Dear Mr Addison, I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more-than-prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise.
I will address them, as normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070301085364872562003-12-01T17:51:00.000Z2003-12-01T17:52:18.750ZThose to whom evil is done...
A grim report about attacks on farmers in South Africa and the epidemic of violence there more generally - though it contains one statistic that I can scarcely credit:Nasty things are happening in the South African farmlands... South African farmers and their families are being slaughtered. The murders are accompanied by torture and rape. The sadism of the attacks normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070290003382958642003-12-01T14:46:00.000Z2003-12-01T14:51:46.140ZNon-paradoxes of democracy 1
I owe readers, particularly those who emailed me about this, a follow-up on Wollheim's paradox (November 15). To remind you of the terms of it, the paradox supposedly arises for the committed democrat who, voting for a policy - A - that she favours for moral reasons, finds the democratic result to be a policy - B - that is incompatible with A. As I wrote in the normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070279400375099272003-12-01T11:50:00.000Z2003-12-01T11:51:35.326Z'Carol has been doing this since she was 11'
On AIDS in Zambia:Across sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS has cut a swathe through an entire generation. It happened slowly, without anyone noticing for a while. By the time anyone realised the scale of the problem, it was already out of control. Whole families have gone, young parents contracting the disease and passing it on to their children. There are normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070279216522017252003-12-01T11:46:00.000Z2003-12-01T11:48:16.653ZSoldier blogger in Baghdad
About Private First Class Trueman Muhrer-Irwin, who's been blogging from Baghdad:He usually posts new material in his online journal, or blog, every day: pictures of kittens on tanks for his best friend, Emmy Ohlin, reflections on raids, conversations with translators about life in Iraq before Saddam. But he hasn't posted for a few days. People are starting to worry - normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070279072333715022003-12-01T11:44:00.000Z2003-12-01T11:45:26.326ZGift idea
According to the Jerusalem Post:Israeli customs agents seized 400 Osama bin Laden dolls and 50 more Saddam Hussein dolls Wednesday, saying they were inciteful material, the customs authority said in a release. An Arab Israeli had ordered the singing and dancing dolls that carry toy guns as a "gimmick" for sale to Arabs and Jews in Israel, he told the agents when he was questioned.Just normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070278915533192182003-12-01T11:41:00.000Z2003-12-01T11:43:58.966ZYour chocolate years 2
From Dr Katherine Stott, via Anne Stott, I have the following explanation of my previous post of this title (November 28):If n = chocolate days, then...
(((n x 2) + 5) x 50) + 1753 (say) - year born
= ((2n + 5) x 50) + 1753 - year born
= 100n + 250 + 1753 - year born
= 100n + 2003 - year born
= 100n + your age...
which will give a number where the first digit is n and the normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070232859069151782003-11-30T22:54:00.000Z2003-11-30T23:18:53.560ZAmerican culture
Richard Eyre this weekend lets out a sour belch of anti-Americanism which I wouldn't consider worth linking to but for one feature of it which obliquely reminded me of something I read some years ago and found extremely odd. Eyre explains that - and why - he feels 'uneasy at [his] current resistance to American culture', and his reason is that he was once an enthusiast for it.
normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070232165109399792003-11-30T22:42:00.000Z2003-11-30T22:43:20.623ZDeath of a monster
Read here (registration required) about Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, the hanging judge of the Iranian revolution who died last week. Known as 'the butcher', Khalkhali 'developed a new judicial concept called "obvious guilt" - whereby the accused is presumed guilty if his or her "crimes" were "very clear" prior to the trial. Stories of his cruelty were legion.'normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070109780148030972003-11-29T12:43:00.000Z2003-12-02T13:44:09.890ZDead wrong
Let's not get carried away, however (see previous post, and the conclusion to the Julie Burchill one a bit further down). With my hard-won reputation for even-handedness to protect, I feel bound also to point this out, from yesterday's leader on Iraq:Ayatollah Sistani is hardly alone, in Iraq or beyond, in believing that truly representative self-governance is a desirable objective normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070108436696648362003-11-29T12:20:00.000Z2003-11-29T12:21:59.030ZMy good old dnoc
Another thing I love about my dnoc, people, is that sometimes it endorses my views. Despite the bad press for Love Actually - a movie WotN and I both thoroughly enjoyed - whaddya know but the Dragunia, with the fearless courage you'd expect of a fine liberal newspaper, speaks out for us. It speaks out for us twice. (Scroll down a bit both times.)
normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070108183769804982003-11-29T12:16:00.000Z2003-11-29T12:18:57.793ZBlog round
> Philip Stott takes a break from the environment to issue a 'cri de coeur for women composers'. I have a problem about linking to this and you'll see why if you go there, but I figure the 'rabbiting on' thing suitably modifies the other thing, and anyway it's a good read.
> Oliver has been partying - as only Oliver Kamm.
> Elizabeth is conducting a different kind of book poll. normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070096990553277762003-11-29T09:09:00.000Z2003-11-29T09:10:25.013ZOnly one Julie Burchill
Even if she'd never written anything else and never writes another thing, everlasting honour to Julie Burchill:Not only do I admire the Guardian, I also find it fun to read, which in a way is more of a compliment. But if there is one issue that has made me feel less loyal to my newspaper over the past year, it has been what I, as a non-Jew, perceive to be a quite strikingnormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070064745259935632003-11-29T00:12:00.000Z2003-11-29T00:12:59.280ZThat shelved report
The Austrian-based E.U. Monitoring Committee (EUMC) on racism and xenophobia is claiming that its report on anti-Semitism wasn't released only because it wasn't good enough. The Chair of the EUMC Management Board, Bob Purkiss:"I deeply regret that a collective decision of the Board, based purely on the insufficient quality of the work carried out by the Berlin Center for normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070063216824984892003-11-28T23:46:00.000Z2003-11-28T23:47:30.340ZTestimony to ballot rigging
From the same site (as linked to in the post immediately below) and on a rather more serious matter, comes this:"I filled in hundreds of ballot papers. There were too many to count, maybe thousands." He said that he had worked with five others, who were also filling in ballot papers. He said the ballots were later put in boxes and transported to the capital, normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070062118943626152003-11-28T23:28:00.000Z2003-11-29T00:23:34.903ZYour chocolate years
This is quick. Work it out as you read and don't cheat by looking ahead.
> Pick the number of times a week (greater than 1 and smaller than 10) that you'd like to have chocolate.
> Multiply by 2.
> Add 5.
> Multiply by 50. You may use a calculator.
> If you've already had your birthday this year, add 1753, and if you haven't, add 1752.
> Now subtract the four-digit year in normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070038497443292262003-11-28T16:54:00.000Z2003-11-28T17:05:58.000ZWhat if it doesn't end it?
Along at Harry's Place a few days ago, responding to my post Enough, Gene asked what I meant by saying 'Israel now has the primary responsibility and the power to bring this horror to an end', as well as posing the question, 'What if withdrawal doesn't end it?' Two readers of this blog have also written to me disagreeing with my statement and citing the responsibility normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070029268350174232003-11-28T14:21:00.000Z2003-11-28T14:31:25.903ZRoot causes (Eve Garrard)
[Soon after normblog got started, I posted a short item by my friend Eve Garrard on the reporting of the power outages in the US and Canada. She contributes another post today, and will continue to do so on an occasional basis.]
We're often told that rather than condemn terrorists we should look for the causes of their existence and activities - one implication being normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1070014287495818132003-11-28T10:11:00.000Z2003-11-28T10:12:01.013ZThe normblog profile 10: Natalie Solent
Natalie Solent was born in 1964. She has worked as a commercial artist, author of textbooks (under a different name), waitress, teacher, civil servant, recruitment consultant and stay-at-home-mother. She blogs at Natalie Solent and Biased BBC
Why do you blog? > Heredity. When I was a kid my grandma always used to shout at the TV when politicians she normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069969254603196312003-11-27T21:40:00.000Z2003-11-28T10:23:06.653ZA new anti-Semitism?
Under the above heading three of six letters in the Guardian today - those from Matthew Collins, M.M. Austin and Ian Simpson - rely on what has become a standard trope in responding to the question it poses. As stated by one of them:I find it absurd that criticism of the Israeli government should be seen as anti-semitism.Well, it may be hasty, but it's not absurd. It just normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069960577296953572003-11-27T19:16:00.000Z2003-11-27T19:16:50.140ZSurprise visit to Iraq
In a stunning mission conducted under enormous secrecy, President Bush flew into Baghdad today aboard Air Force One to have dinner with United States officials and a group of astonished American troops.Read the rest here. (Thanks to David Levine.)normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069947017304315872003-11-27T15:30:00.000Z2003-11-27T15:32:40.623ZA baker's dozen survival tips for academic speakers
As proffered by William Germano, vice president and publishing director at Routledge. I like this one:Prepare yourself in advance for questions... Always keep in readiness something you might want to add as a supplement to your talk... If you're faced with a question you can't answer, answer one you can ("Speaking of that, I'd like to share normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069944478431012712003-11-27T14:47:00.000Z2003-11-27T15:07:34.496ZIsraeli children get the thumbs down
Israel has withdrawn its first draft resolution to the UN in many years, in face of wrecking amendments. The resolution called 'for the protection of Israeli children from terrorism' - evidently not a top priority of the world body. (Thanks to SdeW.)normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069944390645841912003-11-27T14:46:00.000Z2003-11-27T14:47:02.826ZUnfortunate slip?
Flashback to Tuesday when I featured a letter to the Groan from Rosemarie McMichael in San Francisco, thanking people in the UK who demonstrated against Bush's visit. I missed this at the time, but Nelson Ascher wrote to draw my attention to McMichael's sentence, 'Unfortunately, the only "security" at issue is this president's political future and not his physical wellbeing.' normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069944243168050682003-11-27T14:44:00.000Z2003-11-27T14:44:35.373ZImaginary reads
Check out the literary imaginings of Kieran Healy and Jeffrey Kramer upstairs at Crooked Timber.normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069943774420508462003-11-27T14:36:00.000Z2003-11-27T15:08:20.593ZMy Hornby and my Barlow
This seems like the moment - which had to come - for what is surely the greatest verse about cricket, from Francis Thompson's At Lord's, to appear here on normblog:It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though my own red roses there may blow;
It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though the red roses crest the caps, I know.
For thenormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069937587911955482003-11-27T12:53:00.000Z2003-11-27T12:57:52.483ZThe end of Waugh
Following Steve Waugh's decision to retire after the Australian home series against India, there's a warm tribute to him from Mike Selvey. Selvey writes today about the great man:This is a proud man... He determined to go on his terms. If there has ever been a more predictable century than the bloody-minded, quarter-fit, I'll-bloody-show-'em effort at The Oval two seasons ago (normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069935701435074892003-11-27T12:21:00.000Z2003-11-27T12:22:13.856ZThe end of war?
Natalie Angier looks at research into the possibility: Was Plato right that "Only the dead have seen the end of war"?
In the provisional opinion of a number of researchers who study warfare, aggression and the evolutionary roots of conflict, the great philosopher was, for once, whistling in a cave. As they see it, blood lust and the desire to wage war are by no means innate. To normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069855087153243282003-11-26T13:58:00.000Z2003-11-26T13:59:34.013ZFor Zimbabwe
For those who don't regularly read the paper I am in the habit of referring to as my dnoc and may therefore have missed this item, I commend it to you. It's about a radio station broadcasting to Zimbabwe:In a country where Mugabe's regime ruthlessly controls all radio and television output, and where the only independent newspaper has recently been shut down, SW Radio Africa is the normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069854941538488602003-11-26T13:55:00.000Z2003-11-26T14:09:48.670ZForward strategies for Iraq
The Graun 'asked eight experts' the question 'How do we get out of Iraq?' Their answers are here. And this is also interesting (hat tip to Steve de Wijze).normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069854791748773962003-11-26T13:53:00.000Z2003-11-26T13:54:40.530ZEngland's future success at cricket
A hypothesis from Nick Barlow:George Cohen plays for England in the football world cup final in 1966 - we win.
His nephew Ben Cohen plays for England in the rugby world cup final in 2003 - we win.
Are there any members of the Cohen family who play cricket?A different hypothesis from Justin Rigden:Congratulations to Charles Newey on being present at Wembley normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069845890899465902003-11-26T11:24:00.000Z2003-11-27T14:58:48.543ZThe normblog Alternative Big Read Top Twenty
It's the moment you've been on the very edge of your seats waiting for: the list, the list, of your favourite books from the BBC's top 100.
Preliminaries. I received 105 entries in the end, and there were votes for 62 of the books which, as you can work out for yourself, means that 38 of them - including Jeffrey Archer's Kane and Abel - picked up no normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069773106324446562003-11-25T15:11:00.000Z2003-11-25T15:12:16.983ZOn sale in Gaza
Toys (via Andrew Sullivan).normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069772894240240492003-11-25T15:08:00.000Z2003-11-25T15:08:44.950ZTwo news items from Iraq
The Iraqi Governing Council has banned the Arab satellite news network al-Arabiya from broadcasting from Iraq 'after it aired a taped message, purportedly from... Saddam Hussein, that called for attacks on Iraqis cooperating with the American occupation.'The decision to shut the al-Arabiya office - sharply criticized by media watchdog groups - marked a dramatic normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069772687776920262003-11-25T15:04:00.000Z2003-11-25T15:05:18.530ZReactions to the London demonstration
On the Guardian letters page Rosemarie McMichael writes of last Thursday's demonstration: I want to thank all the good people of the UK who turned out to demonstrate at the visit of President Bush... We in this country who wish to protest at a site where the president is speaking will find ourselves shunted to a holding pen approximately half a mile away, normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069760222191805052003-11-25T11:37:00.000Z2003-11-25T15:21:41.436ZTo Monbiot or...? No, not to
George Monbiot is today arguing pretty much what he argued four weeks ago in the same place: that the moral case for the war in Iraq founders on the fact that those who took the US and Britain into war couldn't have been doing it for moral reasons. Monbiot writes:I do believe that there was a moral case for deposing Saddam - who was one of the world's most revolting normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069691847250338602003-11-24T16:37:00.000Z2003-11-24T16:46:27.390ZEnough
Here is one description, one more description, of the continuing tragedy for the Palestinian people, the tragedy of a different kind for Israel and for Jews everywhere who care about Israel, the running sore on the face of the international community - and which may yet develop into a human catastrophe, whether regional or global - that is the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069691507148055162003-11-24T16:31:00.000Z2003-11-24T16:34:17.640ZAt it for over 40 years
It's a shame about Rosemary's swollen ankles, Michele Hanson's aching legs and her wanting to cry in a corner, but this short piece perhaps throws a different, or an extra, light on the discussion some of us have been having about last Thursday's march (see my post of yesterday, The sounds of silence, and the links I give there to Chris, Chris and Harry). For Hanson normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069691175177010272003-11-24T16:26:00.000Z2003-11-24T16:26:44.700ZWild about Harry's Place
It's happy birthday to Harry, Marcus and Gene who are, collectively, one today, as in one-year old, rather than three-in-one - which Harry explains they, in a sense, are not, although in another sense thay also clearly are. Harry's Place was the second blog I became acquainted with, and Harry kindly offered me help when I was starting up normblog. There's always normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069690891217875612003-11-24T16:21:00.000Z2003-11-24T16:23:50.810ZReports from here and there
Two items of interest, both thanks to Anthony of Black Triangle, where you can also read this post about a paediatrician executed in 1988 for laughing at a joke about Saddam Hussein.
The first item concerns an aspect of the continuing violence in Iraq that I've not previously seen given much emphasis: revenge killings targeted on former officials of the Baathist normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069677173765955922003-11-24T12:32:00.000Z2003-11-24T12:54:31.013ZEthics and international affairs
The Osama feature in the previous post is from ak13. According to their 'about' page ak13 is...an online publication that transmits vivid, lucid and penetrating reportage, commentary and satire from the hidden corners of contemporary culture... a space where culture, politics and current affairs collidePaul Mason, political editor on the ak13 team, recently normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069676674629395462003-11-24T12:24:00.000Z2003-11-24T12:25:04.013ZOsama's human side
An unusual feature from (yes 'from', not 'about') Osama bin Laden. He begins by confessing to his guilt for 'inciting many violent acts of destruction', then goes on:But this does not mean that myself, like Presidents Bush and Kabila, Mr Mugabe in his Zimbabwe and the Burmese Junta, despite our crimes, do not have a human and, dare I say it, a gentle side.
For example, many normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069676496329063652003-11-24T12:21:00.000Z2003-11-24T12:54:54.153ZTurkish voices
Student:"Turkey never deserved this," said Murat Ozkan, a student. "Turkey never got involved in the war in Iraq, it never sent troops there," he added to nods of agreement from a group of youths peering at gory pictures splashed across a newspaper.Security expert:One leading Turkish commentator last night said he believed al-Qaida had targeted Istanbul because it was the ultimatenormhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069676408713130892003-11-24T12:20:00.000Z2003-11-24T12:20:38.153ZThe Daily Bread
Check out this new blog where Jackie and a few others - The Pieman, Keckler and Dcake - are going to be talking food. I shall be sending them my tips on how to boil an egg to just the right point, and alternative techniques for piercing the film lid before popping something pre-prepared into the oven. And that loaf of bread they've got up there on the site - you could just eat it.normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069676344360127542003-11-24T12:19:00.000Z2003-11-24T12:19:33.810ZMal Waldron
If you're a jazz person and not already the owner of this, consider treating yourself. Or if jazz isn't your thing but is your Dad's, sister's, husband's, friend's, well, then I'm giving you an idea for Christmas or any other festival you might celebrate. Cook and Morton say:A glorious set, celebrating a master musician. The band is exactly the kind of line-up he thrives on... A normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069632993128511412003-11-24T00:16:00.000Z2003-11-24T00:18:02.403ZGodard
From a review by Stuart Jeffries of Colin MacCabe's Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at 70:It's difficult to think of Godard here as anything other than an egotistical hypocrite. That description, though, would be better than what Francois Truffaut called his old friend a few years earlier. Godard had written to him asking for money to make a new film. "You ought to help me," he wrote, "normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5547695.post-1069629918328594482003-11-23T23:25:00.000Z2003-11-23T23:31:18.216ZFun actually
To recover from a hard day of following sport yesterday, in the evening I ambled out with WotN and we got a bus to our local multiplex, there to take in Richard Curtis's new film Love Actually. According to Ben Walters in the December issue of Sight and Sound (no online version of the actual review) the movie is 'a shallow, saccharine distillation of the romantic sentimentalism of [normhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15510525544880860635noreply@blogger.com