n to the nearest Bathroom Equipment supplier (look it up in Yellow Pages) and purchase the latest equivalent, rather than go to all that ridiculous expense of repairing it, as though they were fixing a tear in the canvas of the Mona Lisa? Come to think of it, why not just buy up the whole stock, haul it over to the gallery, and call the exhibition, “Homage to Duchamp”?
Perhaps Homebase should apply for an Arts Council grant.
Amir Taheri on the significance of Ariel Sharon:
As a professional soldier, Sharon saw that Israel had won all its wars with the Arabs in military terms, but failed to translate those victories into lasting political gains. At some point, he must have wondered why.
For a war to be won, it is not enough for one side to claim victory. It is also necessary for one side to admit defeat. Yet in the Arab-Israeli wars, the side that had won every time was not allowed to claim victory, while the side that had lost was prevented from admitting defeat. Why? Because each time the United Nations had intervened to put the victor and the vanquished on an equal basis and lock them into a problematic situation in the name of a mythical quest for an impossible peace.
This novel situation saw bizarre new concepts invented to prevent the normal mechanisms of war and peace from functioning. These include such concepts as “land for peace” and “peace with justice.” Yet there is no instance in history in which the winner of a war has given the loser any land in exchange for peace. Nor is there a single instance in which justice and peace went together as Siamese twins. In every case, the winner wins the land and gives the loser peace. In every case, the peace that is imposed is unjust to the loser and just to the winner.
Thus for more than 50 years Israel and the Arabs were asked to achieve what no others had ever achieved in history.
And so Israel-Palestine became the only conflict to defy a resolution. Successive Israeli governments preferred to wait for a Palestinian partner that would accept the kind of peace Israel could offer. This was mirrored by the Palestinians, who were asked by their Arab brothers and others in the United Nations to wait until Israel offered a peace that they would like.
Sharon understood that if such a formula remained in force, there would never be peace. It was necessary for the victor to claim victory, regardless of what anyone else said. It was also necessary for the victor to take unilateral action, imposing the peace it could live with.
Paradoxically, many Palestinians say, even in public, that they would rather see Sharonist unilateralism at work than a prolongation of the stalemate that has lasted since 1948. It was clear that Sharon, his denials notwithstanding, was planning to claim victory for Israel and impose an Israeli peace.
That Israeli peace would see Gaza and, perhaps, up to 90 percent of the West Bank allocated to a putative Palestinian state while Israel would demarcate its permanent borders on the ground, partly along the “security fence.”
That would not be the kind of “land for peace” that countless U.N. resolutions have vainly called for since 1968, nor would it satisfy the radical Arabs, who would not see any peace as “just” without the total elimination of Israel.
Sharon may never return to the helm. But Sharonism need not fade away. It is still possible for Israel to create on the ground the kind of peace it can live with and then let the Palestinians decide whether or not they, too, can live with it.
My guess is that they will.
ure to reform.
He also said that former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri was threatened by Syria months before he was assassinated. That claim made him the first former top member of the Syrian government to confirm allegations in a U.N. commission report that Assad threatened Hariri in an August 2004 meeting. The two leaders were at odds about Syria’s desire to extend the mandate of Lebanon’s pro-Syrian president. Hariri was known to oppose the extension.
The U.N. probe into Hariri’s killing has already implicated Syria, but Damascus has denied the allegations. Hariri, a Lebanese nationalist who sought to assist his country wiggle free from Syrian control, was assassinated in a truck bombing Feb. 14 in Beirut. The blast killed 20 other people.
Khaddam’s damaging remarks on Al-Arabiya caused an uproar in Syria, where he was declared a traitor who should stand trial, stripped of his membership in the ruling Baath Party and his assets impounded.
See here for the BBC report.
chance did a poor woman have against such people?
Overall I think the evidence against her was overwhelming, despite the fact that Link was in many ways a deeply unpleasant man, and that his lawyer was indeed something of a fat cat compared to Conchita’s pleasantly downhome-style lawyer. But what intrigues me is, what did the director, Paul Yule, think? Is he to be congratulated for presenting such an even-handed account of a complex case, or was he in fact persuaded by Conchita? That’s what I couldn”t work out. In a way I wouldn’t blame him if he was: she was quite extraordinary in the belief she had in herself as a wronged woman. Guilty or not, she was the one who made the film so compelling. Could anyone who was guilty possibly have put on such a convincing performance? (Um, yes, they could. People can fool themselves as well as others.)
It’s not only the way Conchita was allowed to dominate the film: there’s also that blurb, with its mention of an “unexpected and sordid twist”, and the line that this is “a story of an America that never was and a society that has fed off the myth ever since.” What’s that all about? Was this intended as another swipe at the corruption at the heart of the American Dream, where you get the justice you pay for? If so, well, I don’t think that’s the film we ended up with, but either way it was gripping stuff
A few days after its leader Sir Iqbal Sacranie made his comments about homosexuality being “not acceptable”, the Muslim Council of Britain has now decided to continue its boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day:
The MCB’s policy is not to take part in the UK’s commemorations of the mass murder of Jews because it does not mention non-Jewish victims of genocide.
It had been reconsidering this, but the BBC has learned the MCB has decided to boycott this year’s event too.
From the NYT, found at EastSouthWestNorth:
I had barely sat down when I heard a voice from the other bathroom stall saying, “How are you?” I don’t know what got into me, but I answered, somewhat embarrassed, “Doin’ just fine.” And the other person said, “So what are you up to?” (What kind of a question is that?)
At that point, I was thinking, “This is too bizarre,” so I said, “Uh, I’m like you – just traveling.” At this point I was just trying to get out as fast as I could when I heard another question. “Can I come over?” O.K., this question was just too weird for me, but I figured I could just be polite and end the conversation. I answered: “No. I’m a little busy right now.”
Then I heard the person say, nervously: “Listen, I’ll have to call you back. There’s an idiot in the next stall who keeps answering all my questions.”
Chad’s president Idriss Deby, following his declaration of a “state of war” with neighbouring Sudan, has accused the Sudanese regime of exporting the Darfur crisis to his country:
“The Khartoum regime is secretively going ahead with the recruitment of mercenaries and other elements to put into action its Machiavellian plan — the destabilization of Chad,” Deby said in opening remarks to the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) mini-summit.
“These efforts at destabilization, cunningly orchestrated by Sudan, are deliberately designed to export the Darfur conflict to the subregion,” he said.
“Chad has taken measures to face any aggression coming from Sudan.”
Deby has accused the Khartoum regime of supporting Chadian rebels in the east, on the border with the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur, which has been in the throes of a devastating civil war since early 2003.
Several new rebel groups have sprung up recently in eastern Chad, to where about 200,000 refugees from the conflict in Darfur have fled.
(Via Sudan Watch)
nursing to construction work. North Korea has sent workers to Russia, Libya, Bulgaria, Saudi Arabia and Angola, in addition to the Czech Republic, defectors say.
Almost the entire monthly salaries of the women here, about $260, the Czech minimum wage, are deposited directly in an account controlled by the North Korean government, which gives them only a fraction of the money.
To the extent that they are allowed outside in this village 20 miles west of Prague, they go only in groups. Often they are accompanied by a guard from the North Korean Embassy who is referred to as their “interpreter.” They live under strict surveillance in dormitories with photographs of North Korea’s late founder Kim Il Sung and current leader Kim Jong Il gracing the walls. Their only entertainment is propaganda films and newspapers sent from North Korea, and occasional exercise in the yard outside.
“This is 21st-century slave labor,” said Kim Tae San, a former official of the North Korean Embassy in Prague. He helped set up the factories in 1998 and served as president of one of the shoe factories until he and his wife defected in 2002 and sought asylum from South Korea.
It was Kim’s job to collect the salaries and distribute the money to workers. He said 55 percent was taken off the top as a “voluntary” contribution to the cause of the socialist revolution. The women had to buy and cook their own food. Additional sums were deducted for accommodations, transportation and extras such as flowers for the birthdays of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.
The women even had to pay for the propaganda films they were forced to watch. By the time all the deductions were made, they received between $20 and $30 a month. They spent less than $10 of it on food, buying only the cheapest local macaroni.
Kim says Czechs often mistook the North Korean women for convict laborers because of the harsh conditions. “They would ask the girls, ‘What terrible thing did you do to be sent here to work like this?’ “
In fact, the women usually come from families deemed sufficiently loyal to the regime that their daughters will not defect. With salaries at state-owned companies in North Korea as low as $1 per month, the chance to work abroad for a three-year stint is considered a privilege.
ling these people.” […]
Interviewer: “You have ten sons.”
Umm Nidal: “Yes, Allah be praised.”
Interviewer: “If another is killed…”
Umm Nidal: “There are many young men…”
Interviewer: “Will your heart be filled with unbearable sorrow?”
Umm Nidal: “No, no. Allah be praised, I am preparing myself. I will sacrifice them all. If my duty requires me to sacrifice them all, I will not refuse – even if it costs me a hundred sons.”
htm#017″>EastSouthWestNorth, Rebecca MacKinnon reports on Microsoft’s MSN Spaces censorship of “one of China’s edgiest journalistic bloggers”.