Author: Mick Hartley

According to the Scotsman:

He seemed to have been provoked by a lengthy stream of abuse from Materazzi…

But quite clearly, from the video, whatever was said – and obviously something was said – was delivered low-key, and briefly. It was never “a lengthy stream of abuse”.

Presumably Zidane and Materazzi will keep quiet, at least for the moment, but you’ve got to wonder what on earth could prompt such a grotesque reaction. “You bald Algerian wanker!” would seem to lack that certain inflammatory quality that we’re looking for here. “Your mother was a whore“? “My niece plays better football than you“? “You should change your deodorant“? I’m at a loss.

Update: the Times’ Penny Wark must be wishing someone had pulled her respectful profile of Zidane that appeared this morning:

There can be no more dignified and proud exit from football than to make the World Cup your point of retirement….

[T]he motif of his mature playing years has been his control and self-discipline…

Here’s the real reason that the 7/7 bombers committed mass murder, according to Dr Antony Whitehead, senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Huddersfield (via b&w). It was to show their manhood:

“It’s a very understandable dynamic. Young Muslim men in the British culture experience a lot of internalised pressure to conform to the idea of manhood – the ideal of courage and standing up for yourself.

“How does that affect you if you are a Pakistani male living in a council estate with a BNP councillor and a guy with no hair shoving shit through your letterbox? Social disadvantage equals disadvantage in being a man as well. We are coming at this from the wrong angle. We are making the assumption that it’s all about Islam.”

So back in the Seventies and Eighties, when racism against Pakistani immigrants was at its height and shit-through-the letter-box stories were rife, all those young men turned into suicide bombers (makes sense, right? – throughout history disadvantaged young men have always blown themselves up to prove how tough they were), but now, when so many of them go to college, and have all the opportunities that their parents’ generation never had, they’re, um……

Hmm, perhaps this needs a little tweaking.

ich several hundred demonstrators were killed; or support for democracy in Georgia or Ukraine – both countries faced significant economic consequences after they took a pro-Western stance. The West should stop pretending it does not have a choice. Europe and the United States can continue to admire the painted façades that hide the ruined cities, ruined lives and growing instability of the Caucasus. Or they can start treating Russia as a normal partner, and hold it to account for its brutal and illegal policies.

the top by the tropopause, a region of stability where temperature increases with height and which acts somewhat like a lid. Thus when air flows over a mountain range—say, the Rockies—it gets compressed vertically and, as a consequence, tends to spread out horizontally. When a spinning ice skater does as much, by spreading his arms, the conservation of angular momentum slows his spin. An atmospheric column going up a mountain behaves in a similar way and swerves to the south to gain some clockwise spin, which offsets part of the counterclockwise planetary component of its spin.

On the far side of the Rockies, the reverse happens: The air begins to stretch vertically and contract horizontally, becoming most contracted in the horizontal when it reaches the Atlantic. And as with an ice skater pulling in his arms, conservation of angular momentum demands that the air gain counterclockwise spin. It does so by swerving to its left. But having moved to the south after crossing the mountains, it is now at a latitude where the planetary component of its angular moment is less than it was originally. To balance this reduction in angular momentum, the air acquires more counterclockwise spin by curving back around to the north. This first southward and then northward deflection creates a waviness in the generally west-to-east flow of air across North America and far downwind to the east.

Well I’m convinced.

All of which means that we’ve been fed a load of old bull about how the melting Arctic ice cap was going to cover the salty warm water of the Gulf Stream with cold fresh water, which would stop the circulation, which would mean we’d all be living in igloos in a couple of decades time. So now I can relax and enjoy the global warming.

Well, there’s a headline I never expected to see – as much of a shock as “England out of World Cup on Penalties after Another Limp Performance”, or “Rooney Shown Red Card”.

Kenan Malik takes up Amartya Sen’s point about assigning identities to people:

The Government has long since abandoned its responsibility for engaging directly with Muslim communities. Instead it has effectively subcontracted its responsibilities to so-called community leaders. When the Prime Minister wants to find out what Muslims think about a particular issue he invites the Muslim Council of Britain to No 10. When the Home Secretary wants to get a message out to the Muslim community, he visits a mosque. Rather than appealing to Muslims as British citizens and attempting to draw them into the mainstream political process, politicians of all hues prefer to see them as people whose primarily loyalty is to their faith and who can be politically engaged only by other Muslims.

The consequences of this approach are hugely damaging. “Why should a British citizen who happens to be Muslim have to rely on clerics and other leaders of the religious community to communicate with the Prime Minister?”, asks Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize-winning economist, in his new book Identity and Violence. Far from promoting integration, government policy encourages Muslims to see themselves as semi-detached Britons. After all, if the Prime Minister believes that he can engage with them only by appealing to their faith, rather than their wider political or national affiliations, who are Muslims to disagree? If politicians abdicate their responsibility for engaging with ordinary Muslims, is it surprising that those Muslims should feel disenchanted with the political process? Or that disenchantment should take a radical religious form?

The policy of subcontracting political responsibility allows politicians to wash their hands of the alienation of sections of the Muslim community. And it allows self-appointed community leaders with no democratic mandate to gain power both within Muslim communities and the wider society. But it does the rest of us — Muslim and non-Muslim — no favours. It is time that politicians dropped the pretence that there is a single Muslim community and started taking seriously the issue of political engagement with their constituents, whatever their religious faith.

his country.
The government has turned this into a fully fledged spy scandal, accusing Amanklychev of being part of a foreign plot to destabilise Turkmenistan. And after the arrest of another human-rights activist, Ogulsapar Muradova, who was accused of “participation in illegal acts”, the authorities detained three of her children because they had the temerity to report her arrest to foreign diplomats.
These arrests are just the latest examples of the government’s intolerance of dissent. Under Turkmen law, sowing doubt about government policies or Niyazov (who has been appointed president-for-life) is tantamount to treason. In true Soviet style, dissidents are sent into internal exile, forced out of their homes or detained in psychiatric hospitals. Torture is common. […]

The Turkmen government is one of the few in the world that is deliberately pushing the social and economic development of its people backwards. Several years ago, it reduced the time spent in compulsory education. More recently, it dismissed an estimated 15,000 healthcare workers and replaced them with military conscripts. Turkmenistan is rich in natural gas, but most of the population lives in poverty.

The European Union once reacted strongly to these things, but at the moment it is busy pursuing a trade agreement with Turkmenistan. The European Parliament claims it will “increase leverage” on human rights; but if that is the strategy, it isn’t proving very effective – Amanklychev and the others were arrested just days before a European delegation arrived in Ashgabat to discuss the proposed agreement.

The European Parliament also offered the excuse that it does not wish to isolate Turkmenistan. However, it is the Niyazov government itself that has seemed bent on creating one of the world’s most closed societies.

Europe’s treatment of this country stands in stark contrast to the tough stance it has taken with another former Soviet state in thrall to an autocrat: Belarus. But then, unlike Belarus, Turkmenistan is a potential supplier of gas. The hypocrisy will not be lost on the Turkmen people, who find nothing funny about their present predicament.

the talk about the Germans being united behind their team, and everyone having a warm fuzzy good-to-be-German feeling, with street festivals and dancing and all-round flag-waving and celebration. Plus they have been playing some positive football. The Italians, on the other hand: always negative, in the middle of a scandal back home – what’s to like?

I couldn’t do it though. After five minutes I knew who I wanted to win, and it wasn’t the Germans.

A special thank you to Benito Archundia Tellez, the ref. What a game he had! It’s always the same: at the start of every tournament, of every season, the authorities lay down the law about how they’re going to tighten up on this that or the other, and the poor referees go along with it for a while, like the unfortunate Valentin Ivanov, but it just makes things worse. Eventually sense prevails, and the good referees, like Senor Tellez, use their judgement and let the game flow.

One of the great World Cup matches.

Just what the world needs:

A talking urinal is being used to plug products and deliver drunk-driving warnings to the most captive of audiences by displaying images and a playing a message when used.

The Wizmark “Interactive Urinal Communicator” uses a sensor to detect someone approaching, activating an attention-grabbing display of lights flashing in a pre-programmed pattern. This draws the eye to the graphics incorporated within the waterproof 9cm viewing screen at the base of the urinal. After a period of animation, the display automatically resets itself in anticipation of the next viewer.

The patented design of the lenticular display screen incorporates a number of pictures. The advertising images and promotional text will appear to change from one set of graphics to another as the desperate user moves toward the urinal. It can also play one of a number of pre-recorded audio announcements, or a tagline directly related to the advertisement.

But the frivolous technology is being used to carry a serious message. Traffic safety officials in Nassau County, New York, are using Wizmark to present men with a drink responsibly message. They have initiated a pilot programme, funded entirely by driving while intoxicated (DWI) fines, to distribute specially programmed Wizmarks to bars in the county.

The custom device emits a very audible pre-recorded 15 second announcement saying, “Hey you! Yeah, you. Having a few drinks? Then listen up! Think you had one to many? Then it’s time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home. It sure is safer and a hell of a lot cheaper than a DWI. Make the smart choice tonight, don’t drink and drive.”

From the Scotsman:

As the World Cup in Germany draws to a close, it is being reported in South Africa that FIFA executives have made contingency plans to move the 2010 competition to Australia because of South Africa’s high levels of violent crime, inadequate public transport, widespread AIDS infection and a general lack of readiness.

The reports, based on an interview with a member of South Africa’s organising committee just back from Germany, coincide with confirmation that the country’s prestigious World Cup transport project, a rapid-rail link from Johannesburg airport to the centre and Pretoria, will not be ready on time.

The former South African president Nelson Mandela celebrated by holding the World Cup aloft in May 2004 when his country won the right to host the 2010 World Cup finals. But the report in the Rapport newspaper said FIFA was alarmed by the organising committee’s plan for “tented towns” to relieve a lack of hotel accommodation.

Joop Demes, the managing director of the hotel investment arm of real estate group Pam Golding, said 600 new hotels would be needed, each with at least 100 rooms, to lodge the one million-plus fans expected to flood South Africa in July 2010. […]

Tony Leon, the leader of the Democratic Alliance, the official opposition, said South Africa was “two years behind in its preparations, due to government sluggishness in processing all the legislation necessary”.

Tony Twine, a leading independent econo-mist, warned that the South African organisers and government were adopting “a very casual” approach. He added: “I’m not sure we’re going to cope with it.”

Rapport quoted the anonymous member of the South African organising committee as saying FIFA officials are increasingly cynical about Danny Jordaan’s assurances that everything is fine and ahead of schedule.

The confirmation by Murray & Roberts, South Africa’s biggest construction company, that the £2 billion Gautrain project will not be ready for 2010 is only part of the evidence contradicting him.

The country’s public transport system is generally in chaos, and there is no transport system at all in three of the centres where World Cup matches would be played – Nelspruit, Rustenburg and Polokwane.