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Tuesday, April 27, 2004

No Belly Laughs in Orange Prize Shortlist-Judge

The shortlist for the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction, one of the most prestigious awards for female novelists in English, reflects a pessimistic society, the award's top judge says.

- Orange prize longlist revels in diversity
- Literature Awards

Posted by Nick @ 18:52 GMT

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Monday, April 26, 2004

Today the Internet - Tomorrow Waterstones!

BlogBinders.com (Turn your blog into reality.)

Posted by Nick @ 10:48 GMT

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Sunday, April 25, 2004

Blue Belle Watch

Took a leaf out of Belle's blog and had a day off from The Book Club Blog yesterday. Went in search of Bluebells before they all disappear as a result of global warming. Found these in the Wilderness Garden at Hatfield House, drifting through dappled shade beneath a multifarious canopy of freshly unfurled leaves.

Visit Plantlife to see what you can do to help conserve wild plants.

Posted by Nick @ 08:05 GMT

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Friday, April 23, 2004

It's St George's Day

- St George (d.303)
"There is very little information about the life St George, but it is known that he was not English. He is thought to have been an early Christian martyr from the area of modern day Turkey, who was executed in Palestine in the third century."

- Saint George (Wikipedia)
- St. George, Patron Saint of Scouting

- The great St George revival, BBC News, Thursday, 23 April, 1998.
"St George, a third century martyr, dragon-slayer, rescuer of maidens, figurehead for the Crusaders and patron saint of England has been gradually forgotten over the centuries."

- Labour MP gets set to fight St George's corner: "Racist tag fades as 'decent people' reclaim patron saint."
"Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East, is aiming to slay the dragon of official indifference to England's patron saint. He has put down an early-day motion calling on the government to make St George's Day a "national day of celebration" and commending his local council, Sandwell, for organising a festival today. "It's time to reclaim symbols of Englishness, like the flag of St George, for moderate, tolerant people," he said. "At Westminster there is an anomaly: we have devolved power to Scotland and Wales, and local symbols like the thistle in Scotland are now routinely used by political parties. But in England we remain suspicious of such symbols. I'm arguing that we shouldn't be ashamed of the flag of St George."

"The far right has sought to promote the flag of St George and the idea of Englishness as their property, rather than the property of ordinary, decent people," said the mayor of Sandwell, Councillor Martin Prestidge. "We are seeking to celebrate St George's Day in a non-racist, non-confrontational inclusive way."

- Down with St. George: Fans of the War on Terror, Which Sounds Ever More Like Nineteen Eighty-Four, Still Venerate George Orwell. They Can Have Him. by John R. MacArthur, is the publisher of Harper's Magazine, Published on Saturday, March 30, 2002 in the Toronto Globe & Mail.
- The English observer: Orwell, Englishness and Empire, Stephen Woodhams, University of Luton, Imperium, VOL III, Spring 2002.

- That Blessed Plot, That Enigmatic Isle: "Is there such a thing as "Englishness"—and if not, then why can't one imagine Samuel Johnson as an Italian?" by Christopher Hitchens The Atlantic Monthly; October 2003; That Blessed Plot, That Enigmatic Isle; Volume 292, No. 3; 126-133.

Christopher Hitchens contributes an essay on books each month to The Atlantic Monthly.

Posted by Nick @ 08:15 GMT

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Postcard from Belle

"Belle de Jour" a new Hibiscus cultivar for 2004; One of my favourite Roses "Tess Of The d'Urbervilles"; and "Belle Story"

Belle writes, from an undisclosed foreign land, to let us all know that she is having a wonderful break from Blighty - spending her time taking "many, many pictures of flowers bright and exotic." She really does sound like a girl after my own heart. She wishes we were there. Not as much as we do I suspect.

Lets hope she makes it back in time to appreciate England in all of its floral glory.

Posted by Nick @ 08:13 GMT

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Perle at the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

Juan Cole * Informed Comment * Thoughts on the Middle East, History, Islam, and Religion
Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan.

"Now [Pentagon favorite Ahmad] Chalabi's nephew Salem has been put in charge of the trial of Saddam Hussein. Salem is a partner in [the now apparently renamed] Zell and Feith, a Jerusalem-based law firm headed by a West Bank settler, in which Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of Defense for Planning, is also a senior partner when not in the US government."

Posted by Nick @ 08:11 GMT

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The Memory Hole - Photos of Military Coffins

War President

Casualties From Iraq at Dover Air Force Base
- Pentagon Cracks Down on War Dead Photos
"The Pentagon has ordered an information crackdown after a website published dozens of photographs of American war dead arriving at the nation’s largest military mortuary.
The photographs were released last week to First Amendment activist Russ Kick, who had filed a Freedom of Information Act request to receive the images. Air Force officials initially denied the request but decided to release the photos after Kick appealed against their decision.
After Kick posted more than 350 photographs on his website, the Defence Department barred the further release of the photographs to media outlets."
“Quite frankly, we don’t want the remains of our servicemembers who have made the ultimate sacrifice to be the subject of any kind of attention that is unwarranted or undignified,” said John Molino, a deputy under-secretary of defence."
- Woman loses her job over coffins photo"A military contractor has fired Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times."

Posted by Nick @ 07:56 GMT

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N Korean trains explode in crash

"The station was said to have been destroyed. Overseas officials have confirmed a massive blast in North Korea feared to have left thousands dead and wounded."

The BBC's Rebecca Pearce: "No details at all have been released by this most secretive of states."

- Former CNN correspondent Rebecca MacKinnon's weblog North Korea Zone

Posted by Nick @ 06:41 GMT

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Former generals of Saddams regime reinstated to new US-trained army

Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad, The Independent, 23 April 2004

"Iraqi generals who fought for Saddam Hussein are being reinstated to strengthen the new US-trained Iraqi army half of whose soldiers mutinied or went home during fighting earlier this month.
More than half a dozen generals from the old Iraqi army, dissolved by the US-led Coalition last May, have already been given jobs say American officials according to the US press. Former members of the Baath party will also be employed in the government.
The abrupt reversal of previous policy comes as a senior US general admitted that 10 per cent of the Iraqi security services actually changed sides during recent fighting and another 40 per cent went home."



"The only thing Saddam is afraid of is a land invasion".

"As Tony Blair publishes his much vaunted dossier on Iraq and President Bush cranks up the rhetoric against Saddam Hussein, Washington and Baghdad insiders, Andrew and Patrick Cockburn present their own dossier on what has really been happening in Iraq since the end of the Gulf War: Saddam Hussein, An American Obsession.
At the outset of the Gulf War, US leaders resolved that 'Iraqi's will pay the price', so long as Saddam Hussein remained in power. This book shows in chilling detail just how terrible that price has been. Eleven years ago Saddam was caught off-guard by the allied attack; his preparations since September 11 show that lessons have been learnt. In a substantial new prologue the authors analyse Saddam's preparations and the terrifying consequences of a military invasion of Iraq."

Posted by Nick @ 06:33 GMT

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Thursday, April 22, 2004

Are all the "serious people" (whoever they might be) blogging now, rather than watching TV?

Serious shows turn off viewers: Watchdog calls for action on decline in quality TV, Matt Wells, media correspondent, Thursday April 22, 2004, The Guardian

In a survey of 6,000 households, fewer than 10% of viewers thought arts and religious programming were "of importance to society".

The findings of this survey appear to say a great deal about the relationship between television and the general public. The question is, have television executives defaulted in their responsiblity to fully reflect the world we inhabit, or have television audiences dictated what they would like to watch by voting with their remotes for the lowest common denominator in an ever more competitive marketplace.

I attempted to explain just what is "WRONG" with BBC 1's output on a Saturday night, only last week (not on the blog!). I soon realised that as a potential audience member, who to be fair is very unlikely to tune in on a Saturday night, I couldn't think of anything that was "RIGHT" with it. Its coming to something when 'THE' communicative medium of the 20th century, settles for output that is so poor, at the time of the week when people are supposedly most available to tune in. Who is to blame? And what is to be done? Or is television a dying medium? Soon to be surpassed by the evolution of the internet, personal publishing ventures (such as this one), and direct to consumer provision of media in all its forms?

Posted by Nick @ 10:56 GMT

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I'm no racist - insists Ron Atkinson

- Update: The Guardian profile: Ron Atkinson 23 April, 2004 . "With endless anecdotes, a tan as lasting as his love of jewellery, and a tough talking character as big as his coats, the former manager and TV pundit won a cult following in football. But does the final whistle beckon now for Big Ron?"
"Carlton Palmer, another black player to have played under Atkinson, suggested that the questionable culture of football could be to blame, but rejected any notion that Atkinson's comments made him a racist. "I've known Ron since I was 16, I've been on holiday with his family, my children have been sick on him, I know him. I can't defend what he said but there is no way he is a racist," he said. "In football things are said on the field and in the dressing room that should stay there. You say what you have to to get an edge. If someone wants to wind me up so I get sent off, and calls me a black bastard, I have no problem with that. Ron is not a racist. He's a big brash man, but he is very sensitive and he'll be heartbroken by this."

- Update: I was totally out of order over racist remark - Atkinson, Thu 22 April, 2004 11:09.



ITV Football - Why then, when referring to the performance of French defender Marcel Desailly for Chelsea against Monaco in the Champions League semi-final first leg match on Tuesday night, did he say: "He's what is known in some schools as a fucking lazy thick nigger."

This raises the question, often faced by Michel Houellebecq ofcourse, of exactly what does constitute being a racist. The Book Club Blog would like to know. Ron appears to have ticked all the familiar boxes of racial stereotyping, but is he trying to claim that he is merely acknowledging the existence of a particular school of thought or analysis to which he does not subscribe?

- TV pundit Ron Atkinson sacked for racist remark
- It's All Ronglish to Me
"I never comment on referees and I'm not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat"
- And is this acceptable humour under the circumstance? Desailly Quits In Big Ron Row. Or does it simply deflect attention from the true nature of the problem? Ignorance, and oblivious, prejudicial insensitivity.
- Three Degrees West: the story of Three Pioneer Footballers' - a tribute to Cunningham, Regis & Batson
- Lets Kick Racism Out of Football
- “Racism seemed to have been cut out of the game but recently I’ve heard things and seen things I don’t like. We need to kick this stuff out, it’s not good for the people involved, it’s not good for the game.” David Beckham, Captain of England

Posted by Nick @ 09:15 GMT

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Ralph Nader and Christopher Hitchens

Triggered by Christopher Hitchens' article "Ralph Nader's Folly," in this month's (May, 2004) Vanity Fair, (which appears to be unavailable online) I think it is high time that the Book Club Blog takes a closer look beyond the Bush/Kerry dichotomy. I'll sort out the key points for the blog when I get a second.

If anyone can explain what on earth is going on in this sideshow to the US Elections 2004, please don't hesitate to do so. In fact any insights into Christopher Hitchens current frame of mind would be greatly appreciated.

- Ralph Nader for President 2004
- Ralph Nader, Wikipedia
- Ralph Nader: The Unchallenged Hero of Muslims, By Paul Sperry, FrontPageMagazine.com, March 26, 2004
- Journalist Christopher Hitchens: from "left" charlatan to mouthpiece for the Republican right, By David Walsh, World Socialist Web Site, 27 November 2000
- Murder was their only motive, Christopher Hitchens, Guardian, Wednesday September 26, 2001
- Brothers at war over Britain, BBC, October 15, 1999
More to follow, obviously.

- Second Thinking: What I got wrong about Iraq, Christopher Hitchens, Slate, Monday, April 19, 2004
"The thing that I most underestimated is the thing that least undermines the case. And it's not something that I overlooked, either. But the extent of lumpen Islamization in Iraq, on both the Khomeinist and Wahhabi ends (call them Shiite and Sunni if you want a euphemism that insults the majority), was worse than I had guessed.

And this is also why I partly think that Colin Powell, as reported by Woodward, was right. He apparently asked the president if he was willing to assume, or to accept, responsibility for the Iraqi state and society. The only possible answer, morally and politically, would have been "yes." The United States had already made itself co-responsible for Iraqi life, first by imposing the sanctions, second by imposing the no-fly zones, and third by co-existing with the regime. (Three more factors, by the way, that make the Vietnam comparison utterly meaningless.) This half-slave/half-free compromise could not long have endured.

The antiwar Left used to demand the lifting of sanctions without conditions, which would only have gratified Saddam Hussein and his sons and allowed them to rearm. The supposed neutrals, such as Russia and France and the United Nations, were acting as knowing profiteers in a disgusting oil-for-bribes program that has now been widely exposed. The regime-change forces said, in effect: Lift the sanctions and remove the regime. But in the wasted decade of sanctions-plus-Saddam, a whole paranoid and wretched fundamentalist underclass was created and exploited by the increasingly Islamist propaganda of the Baath Party. This also helps explain the many overlooked convergences between the supposedly "secular" Baathists and the forces of jihad.

When fools say that the occupation has "united" Sunni and Shiite, they flatter the alliance between the proxies of the Iranian mullahs and the Saudi princes. And they ignore the many pleas from disputed and distraught towns, from Iraqis who beg not to be abandoned to these sadistic and corrupt riffraff. One might have seen this coming with greater prescience. But it would have made it even more important not to leave Iraq to the post-Saddam plans of such factions. There was no way around our adoption of Iraq, as there still is not. It's only a pity that the decision to intervene was left until so many years had been consumed by the locust."

- Vietnam? Why the analogy doesn't hold water. Christopher Hitchens, Slate, Monday, April 12, 2004
"Here is the reason that it is idle to make half-baked comparisons to Vietnam. The Vietnamese were not our enemy, let alone the enemy of the whole civilized world, whereas the forces of jihad are our enemy and the enemy of civilization. There were some Vietnamese, even after the whole ghastly business, who were sorry to see the Americans leave. There were no Lebanese who were sad to see the Israelis leave. There would be many, many Iraqis who would be devastated in more than one way if there was another Somalian scuttle in their country. In any case, there never was any question of allowing a nation of this importance to become the property of Clockwork Orange holy warriors."

- Saddahmer Hussein: Forget Hitler and Stalin; Saddam's role model was the cannibal from Milwaukee. Christopher Hitchens, Slate, Monday, July 7, 2003.
"In the past few years, I have written often about whether the figure of Saddam Hussein is—or was—a model taken from Hitler, from Stalin, or from some combination of the two. It has occurred to me recently that it can all be put more simply. He is—or was—a reincarnation of Jeffrey Dahmer. Look in his kitchen drawer, and you will find instruments of torture. Look in his bathroom cabinet, and you will find poisons. Look under his floorboards, and you will find bones and skulls. Look in his flowerbed, and you will stumble over body parts. Look in the rest of the garden, and you will find a substantial piece of a nuclear centrifuge, employed to make weapons of mass destruction."

Posted by Nick @ 08:42 GMT

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Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Mordecai

There is a (slightly tenuous) book-ish link here, in that Mordecai is the name of the consumptive Jewish ascetic in George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, who the eponymous hero meets on the way to discovering his true Jewish identity and converting to Judaism. Infact, that's the only other time I've come across the name.

Both Mordec(h)ais share an extraordinary and self-negating commitment to a higher purpose (although the "real" Mordechai actually converted from Judaism to Christianity). Eliot's Mordecai despises worldly things so much he wastes away entirely, and as for the "real" Mordechai, well, 18 years in prison - 9 of them in solitary confinement - is a pretty high price to pay for your anti-nuclear beliefs.

There you are, that's broken my blog duck at least - thanks Nick for honorary membership of the BCB !

Posted by Laurence @ 14:54 GMT

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Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Israeli Who Revealed Nuke Secrets Hailed

Anti-nuclear activists from around the world rallied outside Mordechai Vanunu's prison Tuesday, a day before his release, praising the former reactor technician as a hero for revealing Israel's weapons secrets 18 years ago. Several counterdemonstrators burned Vanunu posters nearby, but they were quickly dispersed by police. Motorists slowed down and shouted epithets at the Vanunu supporters, among them British actress Susannah York and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland. ``You feel, 'Here is a hero for our times, a man who cannot be silenced,''' York said. ``I just say, 'Welcome back to life Mordechai.''' Vanunu is considered a traitor by many Israelis, however, and his attorney expressed concern for his safety after his release. After Vanunu walks out of the Shikma Prison in Ashkelon on Wednesday, he will have to comply with travel restrictions and other constraints, or risk arrested. Israel argues he is a security threat, though Vanunu has said he has no more secrets to reveal.

In 1986, Vanunu leaked details and pictures of Israel's alleged nuclear weapons program to The Sunday Times of London. Based on his account, experts said at the time that Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. The revelations undercut Israel's long-standing policy of neither confirming nor denying its nuclear capability. Vanunu was abducted to Israel by the Mossad secret service and convict in solitary confinement. Vanunu had hoped to leave the country, but he will not be able to travel abroad for at least a year, speak with foreigners or approach Israeli ports or borders. He also will be barred from discussing his work at Israel's Dimona reactor. Vanunu was given a map of Israel marking the areas that are off-limits to him, the Defense Ministry said.

Vanunu will live in a luxury apartment complex in Jaffa, an old seaport and today part of Tel Aviv. Jaffa has both Arab and Jewish residents, and Vanunu's apartment will be near several churches. Vanunu, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, converted to Christianity in the mid-1980s. The Andromeda Hill complex has 170 apartments, and tenants include both wealthy foreigners and local residents. It was unclear who is paying for Vanunu's apartment. Vanunu has been embraced as a hero by the anti-nuclear movement. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and was legally adopted by an American couple who mistakenly thought this would give him U.S. citizenship.

Among the 50 demonstrators Tuesday was Shinji Noma, from Hiroshima, Japan, which was hit by a U.S. nuclear bomb at the end of World War II. Noma, 41, said he has exchanged letters with Vanunu for the past five years. ``He wrote to me that his act was to stop a Hiroshima in the Middle East,'' Noma said. Other anti-nuclear activists, including British playwright Harold Pinter (politics) (War Against Iraq?) and actress Julie Christie, sent messages to coincide with Vanunu's impending release.

But there is little sympathy for him in Israel, a country obsessed with security. Defending the restrictions imposed on Vanunu, Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres, who spearheaded Israel's nuclear program in the 1950s and 1960s, said Vanunu "violated norms and betrayed his country." "This is justice,'' Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told Army Radio. Yoav Loeff, of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which is representing Vanunu, said he is worried about Vanunu's safety. Loeff said he did not know of any special safety measures planned. Police did not return a message seeking comment. Also Tuesday, authorities briefly detained a CNN crew in Dimona, site of the nuclear reactor. A CNN spokesman called the incident a "misunderstanding."

- Mordechai Vanunu: The Sunday Times articles



- Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb: "This was a difficult book for Avner Cohen to write. As an Israeli, he had to break the code of silence that surrounds the discussion of nuclear weapons in his homeland. But he has done a superb job of laying out the political history of Israel's nuclear program from its foundation in 1950 through the acceptance by the United States of Israel as a nuclear-weapon state in 1970. Cohen has achieved the impossible. With ''Israel and the Bomb,'' he has written a scholarly treatise that includes over 1,200 footnotes, yet reads like a novel." Lawrence Korb, New York Times Book Review, Nov. 1, 1998.

Posted by Nick @ 21:13 GMT

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Secretary Guilty of Stealing £4.3M from Wealthy Bosses

"A top City personal assistant who betrayed the trust of her investment banker bosses to fleece them of nearly £4.5 million was found guilty today. De-Laurey, a mother-of one, turned to crime because she envied the five-star lifestyle of her seniors at blue chip investment bank Goldman Sachs. She allegedly plundered £1.1m from a New York investment account belonging to Jennifer Moses and her husband Ron Beller, before pocketing more than three times that from their much wealthier successor, Edward Scott Mead. De-Laurey insisted she was given the money by grateful bosses impressed by her efficiency and discretion. In particular, she claimed that she repeatedly lied to Mr Mead’s wife and colleagues to conceal the affair he was having. But after retiring last Wednesday to consider its verdicts, the jury convicted De-Laurey by a majority of 11-1 on each count."

"Her downfall only came when Mr Mead was examining his bank accounts himself with a view to making a donation to his former college in May 2002. He found the balance of income on the accounts to be much lower than it should have been. Shocked by the discovery, he asked senior client analyst Theresa Voigt to provide a detailed breakdown of recent transfers. One such transaction was for 379,000 US dollars from his account to the Bank of Cyprus. There was no reason why money should be going to Cyprus."


Harvey Court's New Neighbour

All of which only goes to show that it might not be such a bad idea to make that donation to your former college after all. And for a mere £5 million, the college will even name the new building after you.

Posted by Nick @ 12:38 GMT

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White House reels from Woodward book

The Independent: "A new book on the run up to last year's invasion of Iraq has rattled the White House with the most detailed account yet of the deep divisions within the Bush administrations over the war. Implicitly, it raises the question of why Colin Powell, Secretary of State and the chief in-house sceptic about the war, did not resign once it was clear he had lost the argument."

Posted by Nick @ 08:46 GMT

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Al-Qaeda plot to target this weekend's Liverpool game foiled

"Reports today claim that a plot to kill thousands of innocent football supporters at this weekend's Premiership fixture between Manchester United and Liverpool has been foiled. Armed police officers seized ten suspects in dawn raids yesterday. All are said to have had tickets for this weekend's crunch fixture and it is claimed that they would have been in different positions around the stadium where they would then detonate hidden explosives attached to their bodies.
A police source is quoted as saying: "The plot involved several individual bombers in separate parts of the stadium. If successful, any such attack would have caused absolute carnage. Thousands of people could have been killed."
An official police statement said: "A number of search warrants were executed under the Terrorism Act 2000. Ten people have been arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism.
"We appreciate the public interest in this but are unable to provide more specific details at this stage."
More than 400 officers were involved in the raids which were planned following a joint operation between British and American security services."

Posted by Nick @ 08:40 GMT

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Monday, April 19, 2004

BBC London Radio - Robert Elms

Today's listed Londoner on Robert Elms' magnificent radio show (I only wish Robert's website was as exhaustive as the show) was Gilda O'Neil, who's books I have decided I simply must read before too long. She picked out the lobby bar at 1 Aldwych as one of her favourite places to grab a drink in London. For his part, Robert recommended the suite at the top of the hotel for its view over Waterloo Bridge as a perfect accompaniment to a London breakfast. Had better start putting pennies in a jam jar!

Posted by Nick @ 23:38 GMT

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Capturing The Friedmans: A Phoenix night to remember - No. 2

Fascinating.

Posted by Nick @ 23:01 GMT

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Ugandan Discussions: The Covers of Private Eye

I hate to think how much time I could potentially spend sifting through these Covers of Private Eye. Via normblog, via Michael Brooke.

Posted by Nick @ 22:59 GMT

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Blog all about it

Weblogs have revolutionised the media. But are they more than just vanity publishing? And if so, what kind of content is best? Leading bloggers Salam Pax, Rhodri Marsden and Gregor Wright debate the issues. Via email, naturally.

Posted by Nick @ 22:45 GMT

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The special relationship between the United States and Israel

Book Club discussions of late, seem to have become preoccupied with the extent to which United States foreign policy appears to be influenced by the relationship with Israel. With this in mind, the Book Club Blog will be examining this relationship in more detail.


The U.S. announces recognition of the State of Israel in a statement released, May 14, 1948. The statement recognizing the State of Israel is at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri.

"The choice for our people, Mr. President, is between statehood and extermination."
Chaim Weizmann, president of Jewish Agency for Palestine,to President Harry S. Truman, April 9, 1948

The creation of a Jewish state in Palestine was one of the most divisive issues of the Truman administration. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations agreed that Palestine, which had been a British mandate since 1922, would be divided into two new states: one Jewish, one Arab. The British would withdraw on May 14, 1948, when this partition plan would take effect.

As the deadline approached, U.S. policy on this question appeared to be in disarray. President Truman secretly assured the Jewish Agency for Palestine of U.S. support for the plan, while the State Department announced support of an alternative plan. As the violence between Jews and Arabs in Palestine escalated and as the British prepared to withdraw, President Truman, subjected to intense pressures, made his choice. On May 14, 1948, just 11 minutes after the State of Israel was proclaimed in Tel Aviv, President Truman released a statement recognizing the new Jewish state.

Articles
- Afif Safieh (Palestinian General Delegate to the UK and the Holy See), Monday April 19, 2004, The Guardian, Sharon's banana republics: "Bush and Blair have allowed Israel to dictate their Middle East policy and carry out a Palestinian politicide."
"The study of American-Israeli relations has preoccupied two generations of scholars. Two competing schools of thought addressed the "who wags whom" debate. The first school spoke of "an American Israel", with the United States dictating to the local ally its regional policy in accordance with the American global vision. Noam Chomsky wrote two decades ago that Washington was the contemporary Rome and Israel its regional belligerent, Sparta.
The second school projects the image of "an Israeli America", a complex relationship where the global superpower adopts the regional policy of its client state and integrates it in its global strategy. This is seen as a result of a powerful pro-Israel lobby that succeeded in turning "Capitol Hill into another Israeli-occupied territory."
- Boaz Ganor, "Defining Terrorism: Is One Man’s Terrorist Another Man’s Freedom Fighter?"
Boaz Ganor is the Director of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. He received his B.A. in Political Sciences from the Hebrew University, and his M.A. in Political Studies from Tel-Aviv University. The topic of his thesis was “Terrorism and Public Opinion in Israel.” He is currently finalizing his Ph.D. on “Israel’s Counter-Terrorist Strategy.”
Mr. Ganor has served as a consultant to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his recent book, Fighting Terrorism. He has also served as a security analyst for Israeli Government Ministries on counter-terrorism. Currently, he lectures on subjects related to terrorism and counter-terrorism.

Posted by Nick @ 07:34 GMT

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Spanish press split on Iraq pullout

El Mundo"We think the prime minister's decision is not only correct, but also necessary, bearing in mind the worsening of security in the Shia zone, where the revolt instigated by Moqtada Sadr and the radical clerics constitutes a threat to Spanish forces."

Posted by Nick @ 07:29 GMT

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Sunday, April 18, 2004

TIME.com: See Me, Blog Me

Turned on by online opinion sites? Then get ready for Web video journals

Posted by Nick @ 22:13 GMT

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More pain, more gain

When Jane Fairfax lost her job as a successful journalist, she found she had another skill... as a dominatrix. Here, she reveals what it feels like to whip, torture and humiliate total strangers for money.

Posted by Nick @ 21:15 GMT

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The world's most expensive lunch

If you fancy a bite at the Eagle - Gstaad's restaurant of choice for international jetsetters - be prepared for a three-year wait and a £25,000 bill. Alternatively, you could just make friends with Roger Moore.

Posted by Nick @ 21:08 GMT

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Mid-East press focuses on killing

Palestinian and Israeli newspapers debate the assassination by Israel of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi. Some Israeli papers rejoice while others are more cautious. The Palestinian dailies are unequivocal in condemning Israel."

Posted by Nick @ 17:29 GMT

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Belle de Jour changes her title

Just popped over to the discussion board that I've been participating in regarding Belle de Jour over at plasticbag.org. And Seb has drawn to my attention the fact that:
"the Belle de Jour book has now been RETITLED on Amazon, from "Belle de Jour - the Diary of a London Call Girl" to "Belle de Jour - The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl". I think I'll rest my case. The initial "diary" plus weblog gave the impression of a first person, honest account. "Intimate Adventures" is cover for fiction. The author and publishers are now covering their butts in relation to the recent or imminent outing of the author."

I had previously said that:
"Belle de Jour has now denied being Lisa Hilton. I personally hope that Belle is Belle, whoever that may be, and that she is a previously unpublished author set to take the publishing world by storm. In a sense I regret ever doubting her, but you can't be too careful these days. With regards to Lisa Hilton - I love the journalism and must get hold of the books - they sound marvellous."

To which Seb had responded by saying that:
"There's no denial there at all. I think every author has the licence to allow their fictional character to talk to them, even to compliment their physical attributes. To me that blog passage confirms the Hilton connection. Given your compelling evidence the author(s) have given ground, conceding that Belle at least knows Lisa Hilton. Whether there are two or more authors (the Erotic Review Conspiracy theory) or it is Hilton ghost writing for the real item we will probably never know. But I for one am now convinced this blog is a hoax."

Interesting! I have yet to receive an offer from the publishers to use my cover design for the Belle book.

I also noticed that Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for:
- Belle De Jour; Unknown Binding ~ KESSEL
- The Storyteller's Daughter: Return to a Lost Homeland; Hardcover ~ Saira Shah
- Atomised; Paperback ~ Michel Houellebecq, Frank Wynne (Translator)
- The Design of Sites: Principles, Processes and Patterns for Crafting a Customer-centered Web Experience; Paperback ~ Douglas K.Van Duyne, et al
- Life of Pi; Paperback ~ Yann Martel

Those shopping for Belle De Jour; Unknown Binding ~ KESSEL also shopped for
- Belle De Jour: Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl; Hardcover ~ Anonymous
- Belle De Jour (1967); VHS Tape ~ Catherine Deneuve;
- Belle De Jour (BFI Film Classics); Paperback ~ Michael Wood
- Belle De Jour; Paperback ~ Luis Bunuel

Posted by Nick @ 14:27 GMT

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PRAVDA.Ru: Dynamic Duo miss the point - Bush and Blair, the perfect pair

PRAVDA.Ru Could well become my first web destination of a morning if this is indicative of its regular news analysis. Many thanks to Jon Ken Fan for drawing my attention to this fantastic publication.

"They have the same stance, the same height, the same arrogant demeanor, the same self-righteousness and approach crisis management in the same way: first create the crisis, then manage the consequences."

"Iraq is chaos, and this chaos was caused by two men, the dynamic duo, Bush and Blair, a modern-day Batman and Robin, supported by Rumsfeld the Riddler, Powell the Joker, Dick Mr. Freeze Cheney and Condy Catwoman. Unfortunately this is the real world and not Gotham City."

Posted by Nick @ 11:34 GMT

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Beck de Jour

Beckham tackles honesty: "I'm so sorry"

Mythic happier times.

David Beckham, or rather Tom Watt, remains the author that got away for The Book Club Blog after our members decided against the suggestion that Lofty's "My Side" become a Book Club Book. The reasons for this decision included the Book Club's wish to concentrate primarily on the novel, the fact that most of the details of Mr Beckham's life contained in "My Side" had already been widely reported in a similar vein elsewhere at the time they occurred, and the suspicion that it was merely an 'official' i.e. partial rendering of the truth. In hindsight, it now appears that this decision was correct. The Book Club is passionately committed to surveying writing which renders reality as truthfully as the written form permits - a passion shared by Uncle Joe and eloquently expressed by Michel Houellebecq in "Rester vivant" ("To Stay Alive"): "The truth is scandalous. But without it, nothing has any worth. An honest and naive vision of the world is already a masterpiece... As you approach the truth, your solitude will increase."

As Mr Beckham flirts with the prospect of the world knowing far more about the reality of his life, as oppose to the marketing myth that its had to swallow for the past seven years, The Book Club Blog surveys the chain of events which have brought him closer to truth and the potential nirvana of a higher plane of solitude.

David Beckham has apparently/allegedly gone on record and admitted that far from being a ludicrous fabrication, Rebecca Loos was actually telling the truth. "Yes. I did have the affair and I did send Rebecca the txts." "My life is ****ed. I don't know what to do. I love Victoria, but she's really upset. I've let everyone down." "It just happened. I don't know what I was doing."
- Becks sister has also been getting in on the sex text act with her love rival commenting: "Like brother, like sister. I can't believe she has done it."
- Posh and Becks plans to tell all on Parkinson were shelved on Friday night.
- Nancy Dell'Olio has offered her support to Vicky with a call to her mobile, telling her: "Fight for your man like I did for Sven."
- Rebecca's account of Beck's encounter with Esther Canadas.
- Beckham and his Pretty Woman 'hookers.' Becks 'acts' out Richard Gere style scenarios. Is he merely preparing for his leap onto the big screen? Sarah Marbeck: "I lived it. And it wasn't pretty." Sarah Marbeck's experience of working as a call girl differs markedly from the adventure we have all become so familiar with through the eyes of Belle de Jour. Unfortunately, Belle has gone away on holiday "in search of beaches" having packed "all varieties" of knickers - and not just the ones someone in particular might prefer. It remains to be seen whether Mr Beckham decides that he deserves a sabbatical too. Not wishing to preempt future happenings - but The Book Club Blog knows how your minds work - and agrees, the thought conjures a hyper-reality the like of which would quite frankly be too much for the Book Club Blog to cope with. Although I'm sure it'll be blogged if and when it happens.
- Gangsta Rap and Hooker texts - DB: You on your date yet!...Trust me baby, I'm not excited for u, just him!...I'll txt u through the date... and if he asks who it is just say its your pimp x; DB: Please my baby, how much you earn tonight? Get your a**e home to the daddy x. Sarah Marbeck: "He has a thing for gangsta rap so he'd often say things like ‘Who's the Daddy'. "The pimp thing was a joke. But now, when I read the messages again, I can see how it looks. "I hadn't then earned money as an escort, but maybe he thought of me as entertainment fodder for his fantasy and I didn't see it."
- The unseen text messages.

Furthermore, it has not escaped The Book Club Blog's notice that David Beckham's life has come to resemble an episode straight out of a Belle de Jour blog post. The way things are going, one wonders whether it is not completely implausible for Mr Beckham to expect an offer of a cameo playing himself in the new Belle de Jour film. It has been widely reported (March 26, 2004) that he is to have a cameo in the upcoming "Pink Panther" remake, playing an internationally renowned football superstar (the film is set to follow a detective solving the murder of a famous soccer coach and the theft of the Pink Panther diamond). As he follows in the acting footsteps of Hugh Grant (Hugh Grant finds "honesty" best policy, July 1995), and embarks upon his conquest of Hollywood, would it not be more appropriate for him to initially take a role closer to his more familiar persona. More Richard Gere than Pele perhaps, at least to begin with. Moreover, in the current climate is there any chance that we will now have some honest analysis of Mr Beckham's bizarre decision to 'jump' out of a crucial tackle during the 2002 World Cup Quarter Final with Brazil, which led to the first of the goals which ended England's World Cup hopes following his close friend Mr Owen's sublime opener - four years after his petulence against Argentina had contributed to the end of England's 1998 World Cup dream.

Updates:
- More Beck de Jour claims as daughter of a preacher man comes forward.
- news.com.au "Vicar's daughter 'bedded by Becks': Vicar's daughter Celina Laurie, 27, yesterday claimed that Beckham had sex with her in Denmark in August 2000. The alleged one-night stand took place after Beckham's then-team Manchester United played in the Danish city of Aarhus."
- The Telegraph: "How brave Rebecca overcame her qualms to become very rich."
- smh.com.au - "England's best paying job"
- All about texting, SMS and MMS
- Its official: text sex is as bad a betrayal as the real thing.

Posted by Nick @ 08:43 GMT

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Saturday, April 17, 2004

Maybe there's still hope for Becks

Russian surgeons implanted new penis
This fantastic surgery was conducted in Russian National Center of Medical Surgery named after Pirogov.

"Lieutenant Alexei previously was fighting in Chechnya. On the way to the base after a successful military operation, he encountered the wire attached to grenade.

'After the blast I regained consciousness in the military hospital', says Alexei. 'Then the doctor started examining me. He folded the blanket aside, and I discovered with horror that I had only one testicle left from my genitals. The doctors explained that this meant I still could be a father, but I could not believe it'."

Posted by Jon @ 17:54 GMT

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Do we need to up our critical game a little?

Stimulating as they undoubtedly are, perhaps our regular Book Club meetings could benefit from the application of more critical vigour. For a lesson in these matters, who better to turn to than good old Uncle Joe, who is widely believed to have penned this 29 January 1936 Pravda article on Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

Muddle instead of music
"With the general cultural developement of our country there grew also the necessity for good music. At no time and in no other place has the composer had a more appreciative audience. The people expect good songs, but also good instrumental works, and good operas.

Certain theatres are presenting to the new culturally mature Soviet public Shostakovich's opera Lady MacBeth as an innovation and achievement. Musical criticism, always ready to serve, has praised the opera to the skies, and given it resounding glory. The young composer, instead of hearing serious criticism, which could have helped him in his future work, hears only enthusiastic compliments.

From the first minute, the listener is shocked by deliberate dissonance, by a confused stream of sound. Snatches of melody, the beginnngs of a musical phrase, are drowned, emerge again, and disappear in a grinding and squealing roar. To follow this "music" is most difficult; to remember it, impossible.

Thus it goes, practically throughout the entire opera. The singing on the stage is replaced by shrieks. If the composer chances to come upon the path of a clear and simple melody, he throws himself back into a wilderness of musical chaos - in places becoming cacaphony. The expression which the listener expects is supplanted by wild rhythm. Passion is here supposed to be expressed by noise. All this is not due to lack of talent, or lack of ability to depict strong and simple emotions in music. Here is music turned deliberately inside out in order that nothing will be reminiscent of classical opera, or have anything in common with symphonic music or with simple and popular musical language accessible to all. This music is built on the basis of rejecting opera - the same basis on which "Leftist" Art rejects in the theatre simplicity, realism, clarity of image, and the unaffected spoken word - which carries into the theatre and into music the most negative features of "Meyerholdism" infinitely multiplied. Here we have "leftist" confusion instead of natural human music. The power of good music to infect the masses has been sacrificed to a petty-bourgeois, "formalist" attempt to create originality through cheap clowning. It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly.

The danger of this trend to Soviet music is clear. Leftist distortion in opera stems from the same source as Leftist distortion in painting, poetry, teaching, and science. Petty-bourgeois "innovations" lead to a break with real art, real science and real literature.

The composer of Lady MacBeth was forced to borrow from jazz its nervous, convulsive, and spasmodic music in order to lend "passion" to his characters. While our critics, including music critics, swear by the name of socialist realism, the stage serves us, in Shostakovich's creation, the coarsest kind of naturalism. He reveals the merchants and the people monotonously and bestially. The predatory merchant woman who scrambles into the possession of wealth through murder is pictured as some kind of "victim" of bourgeois society. Leskov's story has been given a significance which it does not possess.

And all this is coarse, primitive and vulgar. The music quacks, grunts, and growls, and suffocates itself in order to express the love scenes as naturalistically as possible. And "love" is smeared all over the opera in the most vulgar manner. The merchant's double bed occupies the the central position on the stage. On this bed all "problems" are solved. In the same coarse, naturalistic style is shown the death from poisoning and the flogging - both practically on stage.

The composer apparently never considered the problem of what the Soviet audience looks for and expects in music. As though deliberately, he scribbles down his music, confusing all the sounds in such a way that his music would reach only the effete "formalists" who had lost all their wholesome taste. He ignored the demand of Soviet culture that all coarseness and savagery be abolished from every corner of Soviet life. Some critics call the glorification of the merchants' lust a satire. But there is no question of satire here. The composer has tried, with all the musical and dramatic means at his command, to arouse the sympathy of the spectators for the coarse and vulgar inclinations and behavior of the merchant woman Katerina Ismailova.

Lady MacBeth is having great success with bourgeois audiences abroad. Is it not because the opera is non-political and confusing that they praise it? Is it not explained by the fact that it tickles the perverted taste of the bourgeois with its fidgety, neurotic music?

Our theatres have expended a great deal of energy on giving Shostakovich's opera a thorough presentation. The actors have shown exceptional talent in dominating the noise, the screaming, and the roar of the orchestra. With their dramatic action, they have tried to reinforce the weakness of the melodic content. Unfortunately, this has served only to bring out the opera's vulgar features more vividly. The talented acting deserves gratitude, the wasted efforts - regret.”

Of course, a hint from us that things “may end very badly” for the author/artist in question might not carry quite the weight that it did for Mr Stalin. For more on the background to this story, see this Telegraph article: When opera was a matter of life or death.

[By the way, the Pravda website is well worth a visit – some cracking little stories, including Khrushchev's son believes Americans have a better attitude toward his father than Russians, An Interview with Mullah Umar of Afghanistan, USA is ready to start five wars every year and Five rules to get a woman.]

Party round at Gorky's
Simon Sebag-Montefiore expands on Stalin’s attitude to art and artists in Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. Having appointed Gorky as head of the Writer’s Union, one night in October 1932 he headed round to Gorky’s plush Moscow mansion for a party with fifty of Russia’s greatest writers. Politburo members Molotov (Foreign Minister), Kaganovich (Head of Railways), and Voroshilov (Defence Commissar) were in tow.

“Playing ominously with a pearl-handled penknife and now suddenly ‘stern’, with a ‘taste of iron’ in his voice, Stalin proposed: ‘The artist ought to show life truthfully. And if he shows our life truthfully he cannot fail to show it moving to socialism. This is, and will be, Socialist Realism.’ In other words, the writers had to describe what life should be, a panegyric to the Utopian future, not what life was.

Then there was a touch of farce, as usual provided unconsciously by Voroshilov.
‘You produce the goods that we need’ said Stalin. ‘Even more than machines, tanks, aeroplanes, we need human souls.’ But Voroshilov, ever the simpleton, took this literally and interrupted Stalin that tanks were also ‘very important’.

The writers, Stalin declared, were ‘engineers of human souls’, a striking phrase of boldness and crudity – and he jabbed a finger at those sitting closest to him.

‘Me? Why me?’ retorted the nearest writer. ‘I’m not arguing.’

‘What’s the good of just not arguing?’ interrupted Voroshilov again. ‘You have to get on with it.’

By now, some of the writers were drunk on Gorky’s wine and the heady aroma of power. Stalin filled their glasses. Alexander Fadeev, the drunken novelist and most notorious of literary bureaucrats, asked Stalin’s favourite Cossack novelist, Mikhail Sholokhov, to sing. The writers clinked glasses with Stalin.

‘Let’s drink to the health of Comrade Stalin,’ called out the poet Lugovskoi. The novelist Nikoforov jumped up and said: ‘I’m fed up with this! We’ve drunk Stalin’s health one million one hundred and forty-seven thousand times. He’s probably fed up with it himself . . .’ There was silence.

But Stalin shook Nikoforov’s hand: ‘Thank you, Nikoforov, thank you. I am fed up with it.’”

A short rant about kulaks
Sorry to be banging on about Stalin so much, but yesterday, Nick, you were asking about the kulaks. Here’s an excerpt from a 1933 speech, Work in the Countryside, delivered at the Joint Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the CPSU (B) – reportedly this was rewarded by ‘stormy and prolonged applause’ – a little rambling for my tastes, but a fine example of Stalin’s oeuvre.

“The fourth reason for the defects in our work in the countryside is the inability of a number of our comrades in the localities to reorganize the front of the struggle against the kulaks; their failure to understand that the face of the class enemy has changed of late, that the tactics of the class enemy in the countryside have changed, and that we must change our tactics accordingly if we are to achieve success.

The enemy understands the changed situation, understands the strength and the might of the new system in the countryside; and because he understands this, he has reorganized his ranks, has changed his tactics -- has passed from frontal attacks against the collective farms to activities conducted on the sly. But we have failed to understand this; we have overlooked the new situation and continue to seek the class enemy where he is no longer to be found; we continue to apply the old tactics of a simplified struggle against the kulaks at a time when these tactics have long since become obsolete.

People look for the class enemy outside the collective farms; they look for persons with ferocious visages, with enormous teeth and thick necks, and with sawn-off shotguns in their hands. They look for kulaks like those depicted on our posters. But such kulaks have long ceased to exist on the surface. The present-day kulaks and kulak agents, the present-day anti-Soviet elements in the countryside are in the main "quiet," "smooth-spoken," almost "saintly" people. There is no need to look for them far from the collective farms; they are inside the collective farms, occupying posts as store- keepers, managers, accountants, secretaries, etc. They will never say, "Down with the collective farms!" They are "in favour" of collective farms. But inside the collective farms they carry on sabotage and wrecking work that certainly does the collective farms no good. They will never say, "Down with grain procurements!" They are "in favour" of grain procurements. They "only" resort to demagogy and demand that the collective farm should reserve a fund for the needs of livestock-raising three times as large as that actually required; that the collective farm should set aside an insurance fund three times as large as that actually required; that the collective farm should provide from six to ten pounds of bread per working member per day for public catering, etc. Of course, after such "funds" have been formed and such grants for public catering made, after such rascally demagogy, the economic strength of the collective farms is bound to be undermined, and there is little left for grain procurements.

In order to see through such a cunning enemy and not to succumb to demagogy, one must possess revolutionary vigilance; one must possess the ability to tear the mask from the face of the enemy and reveal to the collective farmers his real counter-revolutionary features. But have we many Communists in the countryside who possess these qualities? Not infrequently Communists not only fail to expose these class enemies, but, on the contrary, they themselves yield to their rascally demagogy and follow in their wake.

Failing to notice the class enemy in his new mask, and being unable to expose his rascally machinations, certain of our comrades not infrequently soothe themselves with the idea that the kulaks no longer exist; that the anti-Soviet elements in the countryside have already been destroyed as a result of the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class; and that in view of this we can now reconcile ourselves to the existence of "neutral" collective farms, which are neither Bolshevik nor anti-Soviet but which are bound to come over to the side of the Soviet government spontaneously, as it were. But that is a profound delusion, comrades. The kulaks have been defeated, but they are far from having been crushed yet. More than that, they will not be crushed very soon if the Communists go round gaping in smug contentment, in the belief that the kulaks will themselves walk into their graves, in the process of their spontaneous development, so to speak. As for "neutral" collective farms, there is not, and there cannot be, any such thing. "Neutral" collective farms are a fantasy conjured up by people who have eyes but do not see. Where there is such an acute class struggle as is now going on in our Soviet country there is no room for "neutral" collective farms; under such circumstances, collective farms can be either Bolshevik or anti-Soviet. And if certain collective farms are not being led by us, that means that they are being led by anti-Soviet elements. There can be no doubt about that."

Posted by Jon @ 16:02 GMT

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Gaza plan 'way back to road map'

THE disengagement plan of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was "a way into the road map" to peace in the Middle East, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said today.

Posted by Nick @ 10:01 GMT

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Samarkand - The Book Club Blog's chosen book for the coming month

Amin Maalouf: Profile, Guardian, Saturday November 16, 2002 Maya Jaggi, "A son of the road," :
"Amin Maalouf was a journalist in Lebanon until the civil war in 1975, when he left for Paris with his family. He became a novelist whose historical characters span cultures and continents. Now an opera using his first libretto is being performed in London."

Life at a glance: Amin Maalouf
Born: February 25, 1949; Beirut, Lebanon.
Educated: Notre Dame Jesuit College, Jamhour; French University of Beirut (masters degree in sociology).
Married: 1971 Andrée, three sons: Ruchdi, Tarek, Ziad.
Career:
- 1971-76 journalist, An-Nahar daily, Beirut
- 1976-79 Jeune Afrique magazine, Paris
- 1979-82 director An-Nahar weekly, Paris
- 1982-85 editor-in-chief Jeune Afrique
Some books (English translations):
- 1984 The Crusades Through Arab Eyes
- 1988 Leo the African
- 1992 Samarkand
- 1993 The First Century after Beatrice
- 1994 The Rock of Tanios
- 1996 The Gardens of Light
- 1999 Ports of Call
- 2000 On Identity
- 2002 Balthasar's Odyssey
Awards:
- 1993 Prix Goncourt

Posted by Nick @ 10:00 GMT

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Belle de Jour has diary competition, from star of "Belle de Jour"

Catherine Deneuve's reputation as French cinema's queen of cool looks in direst danger after a reviewer claimed her forthcoming diaries "make Marilyn Monroe look like an intellectual." L'Ombre de Moi-Meme (In the Shadow of Myself) is a collection of writings by the 60-year-old star from the set of six of her films. But her unprecedented venture into unscripted public speech may prove to be a step too far. According to the Telegraph newspaper, an unnamed critic in Le Figaro has derided the star of Repulsion, Belle de Jour and 8 Women for presenting a "syrupy, banal" series of thoughts that reveal the mentality of a "top model from the Elite agency". Deneuve's crime, it seems, is cataloguing a series of anodyne daily events that includes missing a flight, buying stockings and commenting on fellow commuters. While such diaries might be alright for the rest of us, it seems that we expect our movie icons to be more profound. Other critics have been swift to rally to Deneuve's defence. "The criticism I've seen smacks of a vendetta," the French cultural broadcaster Laure Adler said. "OK, so it's not Shakespeare. But she never intended it to be a polished work. It is a document of fragmentary, uncensored thoughts of a fragile actress constantly questioning herself and searching for the truth." It seems only right that Deneuve should get the last word. "If I had known that these notebooks would one day be published I would never have written them. The problem with a book is that you never know who will get their hands on it."

Update: Film legend’s diaries may cost her dear

Posted by Nick @ 09:10 GMT

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Canadian Gobe and Mail headline: "Bent like Beckham"

Just another athlete in a tawdry sex scandal? Not a chance. The English soccer icon with the pop-star wife and a business empire built on his squeaky-clean image stands to lose it all. DB, phone home.
JOHN DOYLE, Canadian Gobe and Mail, Saturday, April 17, 2004

". . . A writer for The Guardian said the sex fantasies of English soccer players "sound like the product of some diseased, fascist imagination." In the same paragraph, David Beckham was described as "that prince of sport." Throughout, he was cited as the model English player, assumed to be tucked up at home with Victoria and the kids, training with Real Madrid or living like a monk in a hotel room. . . All this has become tawdry rather than tragic. Mr. Beckham now seems no better than any English soccer star. The prince's image has been pulverized. He has been revealed to be just another guy in the gutter. Now, it's his hypocrisy that takes your breath away."

- Dominic Mohan, The Sun, Beckham spins out of control
- Mum in tears at Loos 'lie'; Posh drowns her sorrows in a Swiss bar; Becks chose NOT to tune in
- Flashback: GQ reports on "Beck's Teen Action" back in 1991
- Flashback: November 2002 - What was the story back then? Why did the injunctions stop it being published?
- Literary observation - Is Lofty updating the autobiography with all this?

Posted by Nick @ 08:54 GMT

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Friday, April 16, 2004

Kingston university buys Murdoch library

The Guardian reports that the library of Book Club Blog favourite, Iris Murdoch, consistng of more than 1,000 books, notes and original manuscripts has been acquired by Kingston university. The collection, which includes books on subjects ranging from philosophy to poetry, as well as makeshift bookmarks and handwritten notes, was put up for sale by her husband, John Bayley, last year. He said that, since his remarriage, he no longer had room for the books in his Oxford home, and hoped to use the money raised from the sale to set up a bursary at St Anne's, Murdoch's former Oxford college. Mr Bayley faced criticism over his decision to sell the collection amid fears that it would leave the country. There was strong interest from US booksellers, who were prepared to meet the £150,000 asking price. Since her death in 1999 following a descent into Alzheimer's, Murdoch's life has been documented in her husband's tender portrait of her decline, Elegy for Iris, a huge "official life" by Peter Conradi, a controversial revisionist biography by AN Wilson and a film, which starred Kate Winslet and Judi Dench.

Posted by Nick @ 15:23 GMT

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Palestinian anger as hopes are dashed

Palestinians yesterday lashed out in anger and confusion at the Bush administration's move to legitimise Jewish settlements on occupied land, calling the seismic shift in US foreign policy a "catastrophe".
Arab and Palestinian leaders had barely 24 hours notice of the extent of President George Bush's concessions to Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon, deepening the fury of their reaction yesterday. Palestinian figures, such as the finance minister Salam Fayed, who held three meetings in the last year with the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice and her aides, told staff he felt betrayed. The foreign minister Nabil Shaath was on the point of cancelling his planned visit to Washington next week.
"Until two weeks ago, the Americans were telling us that it is not final. It may or may not happen," said Hassan Abdel Rahman, the PLO representative in Washington.

Posted by Nick @ 08:37 GMT

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Thursday, April 15, 2004

Bin Laden 'Trying to Move into Politics'

The Scotsman reports that "Osama bin Laden is trying to shed his image as a “mad Islamic fundamentalist” and move into politics, an expert on al Qaida said today. Abdel Bari-Atwan, the editor of London-based Arabic daily newspaper al Quds, said he was “100% certain” a new tape purporting to be from the al Qaida leader was genuine. Mr Atwan, who said he has interviewed bin Laden in the past, believed the statement aired on Arabic television marked a watershed for the terror group. He also said it would dispel strong rumours in the Arab world that he had been captured by the Americans and was being held in secret until the US elections. The tape also made clear for the first time that al Qaida was behind the recent bombings in Madrid. In addition, Mr Atwan added, the tape marked a “turning point” for al Qaida in differentiating between Europeans and Americans. He told PA News: “It is the first time he has offered a truce. In 1998 Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa to kill ‘crusaders’, meaning Christians, and Jews. He is now reversing that. He is saying to Europeans: you can have safe railways, safe airports, if you distance yourself from the American aggression. He is trying to create a rift. It means he is actually changing his strategy. He is talking politics. He is not that mad Islamic fundamentalist as he used to be described. He is understanding the realities of the world and that European leaders are not happy with the American administration.”

Posted by Nick @ 18:28 GMT

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Bin Laden offers 'truce'

A new recording said to be of Osama bin Laden shows him offering European countries a "truce" if they stop attacking Muslims.

"I announce a truce with the European countries that do not attack Muslim countries" adding that "most of the European peoples want reconciliation".

The message said the truce would last three months and could be extended. However, he said that there would not be any troop with the U.S. The tape also claims that the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people were payment for Spain's actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and "Palestine". "What happened on September 11 and March 11 are your goods returned to you so that you know security is a necessity for all," the voice on the tape said. The message also promised revenge for Israel's killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The video consisted of a sound recording and an old picture of bin Laden.

- It would appear that bin Laden is seeking to divide the West at this particularly difficult time and isolate the US and Israel as his main combatants.
- If anyone can add a particularly elucidating insight regarding the current neoconservative/left liberal divide (i.e. for example bewteen the poles of Christopher Hitchens and Noam Chomsky) in the west it would be appreciated.
- Chomsky Replies to Hitchens, By Noam Chomsky
- Turning the Tide - Noam Chomsky's blog
- The Antiwar Crowd: Wrong As Usual - Christopher Hitchens
- Left Behind - By Jacob Weisberg, Slate, Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2001
"Put bluntly, there is no anti-war movement, intellectual or popular, in the United States. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying no one opposes the war. According to polls, 5 percent of the country is against it. There are pacifists and Buddhists. There remain others whose ears hear only evil about the United States. But even among such folk, it's impossible to find anyone who explicitly sides with our enemies, as so many radicals and intellectuals did during the Vietnam. Opposition to the war against terrorism is more like opposition to World War II. You can draw up a list of names, just as you could catalog those who didn't think we should fight the Nazis, such as the critic Dwight Macdonald, the pacifist poet Robert Lowell, and the once pro-fascist architect Philip Johnson. But however wrongheaded it was, such opposition was marginal and idiosyncratic. It meant nothing in terms of the country or the war effort"

Posted by Nick @ 08:33 GMT

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Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Belle de Jour at her amusing best today - reminding me what I was missing while she was away

Does this mean she read my mail and just couldn't be bothered to reply?

Posted by Nick @ 22:31 GMT

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Expert PR Advice

Find out what happened when Lisa Hilton decided to contact Max Clifford!

Posted by Nick @ 22:19 GMT

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Go on, you know you want it, The Observer, Sunday September 14, 2003

Lisa Hilton on oysters in Paris. Your first oyster is a rite of passage comparable to your first sexual experience, says Lisa Hilton. She should know - she did both one year on holiday in France. Now a confirmed addict, she trawls Paris in search of salty, sensuous pleasures.

"I tipped up my head, exposing the soft skin of my teenage neck, my mouth opening, my eyes involuntarily closing as it slipped down my throat as easy as original sin. I swallowed hard, I was initiated, and I have been an addict ever since."

I know what you're thinking, but ofcourse Belle has now denied being Lisa Hilton.

Thanks to Sarsparilla Vanessa for drawing my attention to this.

Posted by Nick @ 22:16 GMT

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Iraq kidnappers kill Italian hostage

DUBAI (Reuters)
Arabic television Al Jazeera say Iraqi kidnappers have killed an Italian hostage and are threatening to kill three others in response to Italy's refusal to withdraw its troops from Iraq. An Al Jazeera official told Reuters the channel received footage of the killing of the Italian but would not broadcast it. "We have the footage but we won't air it as it is too bloody. They slaughtered the hostage because of (Italian Prime Minister Silvio) Berlusconi's last remarks refusing to withdraw troops from Iraq," the official told Reuters on Wednesday. There was no immediate comment from the Italian government. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said on Wednesday the country would not give in to "blackmail" to save the four Italians held by an Islamist group but was working with Iran and others for their release. Al Jazeera television aired a tape on Tuesday of the four Italian security guards snatched by a hitherto unheard-of Iraqi group which demanded Italy withdraw its troops from Iraq. Italy has confirmed that Italians working for a U.S. private security firm had gone missing. The kidnappings have added to pressure from some of Italy's opposition groups for the immediate withdrawal of Italy's almost 3,000 troops, but Berlusconi and his government have refused to back down.

Posted by Nick @ 21:44 GMT

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Bush on Gaza withdrawal

US President George W Bush has endorsed controversial Israeli plans to pull out of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. The text of his statement in Washington follows: "

Posted by Nick @ 21:40 GMT

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What does it mean to be a liberal hawk regarding the war on terror?

Much the same as it meant to be a liberal hawk regarding the war on Vietnam I would imagine.

Find out for sure at Harry's Place.

Posted by Nick @ 19:15 GMT

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OK, time for a new game . . .

Came across this via normblog, and he got it from Anne Cunningham, who saw it at Crescat Sententia, and so it goes on . . .

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Given that Norm went on to question the recent editorial decision making of The Guardian yet again, I thought it quite appropriate that the nearest book to hand was "Cameron in the Guardian: 1974-1984," which I have recently borrowed from a friend and only moments ago had opened for the first time prior to reading normblog. Uncanny. So here goes, the fifth sentence on p. 23 is from an article entitled "Life begins at 42" from The Guardian, 7 July, 1979:

"That is a proper moment at which to petrify."

Posted by Nick @ 16:52 GMT

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The literary scene in Britain today

It has recently been suggested to me, by one of our members no less, that The Book Club Blog's content s