A Certain Point of View

Zinedine Zidane: From man to god and back

2006-07-13T07:21:00.000+01:00

The indisputable facts of Zinedine Zidane’s participation in the 2006 World Cup in Germany are as follows: matches played: 6, goals scored: 3, yellow cards received: 3, red cards received: 1. Everything else has become the subject of such debate and speculation that for many Italy’s triumph has become almost an afterthought.

Of the galaxy of stars assembled at the World Cup, it was “Zizou” who shone brightest and most brilliantly before exploding like a supernova in Berlin. In truth his form did not match that of the Italian skipper Cannavaro, the tournament’s outstanding defender, yet his brand of determined rearguard brilliance cannot capture the imagination as Zidane’s.

Not since Maradona in Mexico '86 has one player been so much the focal point of attention at football’s quadrennial carnival. And not since Maradona's “hand of god” goal against England has a player produced a moment of such scandal and controversy as Zidane: a headbutt to the chest of Italian defender Materazzi which earned him a dismissal in the final. It was the last act in the career of the greatest talent the game has seen for the past 15 years

The second coming

Zidane was not even supposed to be at the World Cup having retired from international football two years earlier after the European Championships in Portugal. A lacklustre France crashed out at the quarter-final stage to eventual winners Greece and it seemed Zidane’s days with les blues had come to an underwhelming conclusion.

His club career at Real Madrid seemed to be following suit. There was a glorious climax to his first season with Real when he struck a stunning volleyed winner in the European Cup final to add the most prestigious prize in club football to his international honours. But that proved to be the high point as Real crumbled under the hubris the “galacticos” policy. In his final seasons Zidane seemed tired and jaded, even his great talents unable to lift Madrid’s bloated squad above mediocrity.

With France struggling in their World Cup qualifying campaign, the call went up for the old guard to return. Zidane, along with fellow retirees Thuram and Makelele, was coaxed out of retirement by coach Domenech. Viera gladly yielded the captaincy back to Zidane.

No doubt the frustrations of his last years in Madrid tempted him to return to les blues for the chance of one more trophy and a glorious send-off. He negotiated an annulment of the final year of his contract with Real and announced that he would retire from all football at the end of the World Cup. Win or lose, France’s last match in Germany would be the last match of his career.

Yet Zidane's return proved to be no panacea to France’s woes. They limped through to the finals and arrived in Germany as firm outsiders. Abject displays in their opening two games did little to inspire confidence. There were rumours of a rift between Domenech and his captain, Zidane having stormed off angrily after being substituted against South Korea. With France in danger of elimination and Zidane suspended for the final group match it seemed the grand ending to his career he sought would instead be another disappointment.

Against Togo, France needed to win to be sure of a place in the knockout rounds. Win they did, sans Zizou, with an improved display which had some questioning if the captain should return. Zidane, they said, was too old, too slow and too ponderous to play alongside the young guns in the French team. Would Domenech do the unthinkable and drop his captian for the clash with Spain?

France lined up with Zidane, but for perhaps the first time in a decade they found themselves as underdogs against an impressive young Spanish side. Spanish supporters, having seen the end of Zidane’s club career only weeks before, brought banners reading “Au revoir, Zidane”, so confident were they of ending what remained of his career. But it instead turned out to be “Adios Espana”, Zidane himself capping a resurgent French victory by skipping past Puyol, Spain’s finest defender, and slotting home in the final moments.

Most thought Zidane had merely earned himself a stay of execution, as France faced tournament favourites Brazil next. Up against Ronaldinho, his successor as FIFA’s official best player in the world, he responded by producing one of the all-time great World Cup performances. Rolling back the years, his full repertoire of touches, dribbles, flicks and passes was on show. From the very first minute he mesmerised and confounded the Brazilians and set up the winner for Henry with a wonderfully flighted free kick, all while never threatening to score a goal himself. Zidane’s performance demonstrated again that he was the playmaker supreme; a virtuoso whose artistry functions for the betterment of the team.

Portugal were dispatched in the semi-final, a largely forgettable match settled with a Zidane penalty. He now had his date with destiny; the final match of his career would be a World Cup final against Italy. To lead his country to a second world championship would surely provide confirmation of what many already professed and still do: that Zidane belongs alongside names such as Pele, Beckenbauer and Maradona as one of very greatest players the game has known.

Despite the presence of other world class talents in their squad, Zidane’s teammates spoke of him in almost reverential terms. When quizzed on the reason for their confidence before the final more than one French player answered to the effect of “we have Zizou and they don’t”.

Early in the match, Malouda tumbled in the area and France were awarded a penalty. As in the semi up stepped the captain. His previous attempt from the spot has been a powerful effort whipped low into left corner. Facing Buffon, rated by most as the world’s best keeper, he produced an audacious chip of such backspin that it hit the crossbar before bouncing down over the line, hitting the crossbar again and then out. Zidane tuned away to celebrate sheepishly, knowing how close his daring had come to costing his team.

Italy equalised shortly with a header from Materazzi, but after half-time France began to dominate. The talk before the final was of how the aging legs of Zidane and others would be exploited by the Italians, but instead it was the French who looked full of energy. Following their captain's lead, the other veterans of the French side seemed to summon untapped reserves of will for a final push to victory.

Just before the half-time in extra-time, Zidane slid the ball out to Sagnol on the right. The full-back delivered a perfect cross into the area towards Zidane, who had continued his run. For once the tiring Italian defence failed to pick him up and he rose to power a header towards goal. Buffon denied him with a majestic leaping save. Zidane had almost sealed his own fairy tale ending.

“Oh, Zinedine. Pas ça, Zinedine.”

The dream had been so close, but now came the nightmare. With 10 minutes to go, after exchanging words with Materazzi, the same famed, balding scalp responsible for those two headed goals in the ’98 final in Paris delivered a firm coup de tête to the Italian’s chest. Materazzi could not have collapsed more dramatically if he had been shot, but Zidane’s punishment was inevitable: a red card.

The reaction of French TV commentators was shock, disbelief, confusion, despair. French supporters in the stadium, not privy to replays of the incident, howled their disapproval until the final whistle. With both teams drained and the atmosphere poisoned, the remainder of the game spluttered towards a penalty shoot-out, won by Italy after a solitary miss by Trezeguet.

In the immediate aftermath Zidane remained silent. Materazzi has never been anyone’s idea of a sporting gentleman and doubtless it was some obscene comment which provoked Zidane. News organisations around the world scrambled to find lip-readers to decipher the Italian’s insults. Common suggestions were slurs on Zidane’s family or his Algerian-Muslim heritage. For his part Materazzi only issued a few clumsy statements of defence.

The day after it emerged that Zidane had won the “Golden Ball” award for player of the tournament on votes cast by journalists before the conclusion of the final. FIFA president Blatter, clueless to a fault, made the hollow suggestion that Zidane’s could be stripped of the award.

In an eventual TV interview, Zidane was reticent about details, saying only the insults concerned his mother and sister. "I do apologise but I don't regret my behaviour because regretting it would mean he was right to say what he said." Non, je ne regrette rien.

The Player. The Icon. The Man.

It was estimated that over one billion people watched the final in Berlin. Over the past 15 years through his exploits for France, Cannes, Boudreaux, Juventus and Real Madrid, Zidane has been possibly the most watched player at a time when football’s appeal has never been greater.

His footballing story has now come to a bitter end, but manner in which it has captivated the world is a testament sport’s unique cultural appeal and capacity for human drama. Twice Zidane has appeared on football’s greatest stage and in those two performances he has shown us ecstasy and agony, genius and madness, glory and shame, joy and anger, triumph and defeat.

The world first knew Zidane the player; one of peerless touch, vision and control. Since that night in Paris it has known Zidane the icon; of France, of racial integration, of Gallic flair and genius; of football’s global appeal. After Berlin, not for the first time but more starkly than ever, it knows the Zidane the man; capable of sporting feats most can only dream of, yet also capable of the same follies and weaknesses as the rest of us. If you prick him, will he not bleed? And if you wrong him, shall he not revenge?

The world watched to see Zidane ascend to the footballing pantheon, but was instead reminded that a man with god-like talent remains just that: a man.

Japan wins key vote on commercial whaling

2006-06-19T12:52:00.000+01:00

No words needed.

Quote of the day

2006-04-18T05:09:00.000+01:00

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. - Napoleon Bonaparte

Chirac and de Villepin meet their Waterloo

2006-04-12T00:44:00.000+01:00

Massive protests have forced French PM Dominique de Villepin and President Jacques Chirac into a humiliating climbdown over the proposed "contrat première embauche" employment law reforms.

For de Villepin, this defeat surely ends any chance of succeeding Chirac. The centre-right UMP will now turn to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy as its candidate for the presidential election in 2007. Chirac's appointment of de Villepin over Sarkozy to the post of Prime Minister was intended to pave the way for his protege to be the centre-right's frontrunner; instead he seems to have handed him a poisoned chalice.

For Chirac this was just the latest humiliation of a nightmare term in office. He was bolstered in the first half by assuming a leading position in opposing the US invasion of Iraq, but domestically he has lurched from one setback to another. This latest episode completes a trifecta of major revolts against his leadership; first with the "Non" vote in the EU constitution referendum, then last November's suburban riots and now the CPE protests.

As with the EU referendum, the French leadership's failure to convince its people to embrace change has dealt a blow to the wider European reformist agenda, which recognises the need for Europe's economies to become more flexible and competitive in responce to the challenges of globalization.

Few can doubt that France's levels of unemployment are unacceptably high and structural reform of the labour market is needed. But de Villepin's CPE, which would have made it easier for companies to "hire and fire" employees aged under 26, foolishly targeted students and youths. Les jeunes predictably took to the streets to reprise the events of May '68. A keen student of history, de Villepin (who has authored a biography of Napoleon) should have known better than to disregard France's revolutionary past and tradition of protest.

All of Europe will now wait until next year's election for the leadership vacuum at the top of French politics to be filled. Chirac will decline to run again and let his sorry second term peter out, while de Villepin's own presidential prospects are in tatters. In Napoleonic terms, he has met his Waterloo even before his Austerlitz.

Anwar Ibrahim: the James Dean of Malaysian politics

2006-03-31T06:29:00.000+01:00

Anwar Ibrahim has a piece today in the Sydney Morning Herald, commenting on US efforts to bring democracy to the Muslim world, a privilege he could not hope to be afforded in the newspapers of his home country of Malaysia. Of course once Anwar’s every public utterance would be given coverage in Malaysia’s press when he was both Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, the second most powerful man in the country and heir apparent to Mahathir Mohammad. Before the Asian financial Crisis of 1997, before his fallout with Mahathir, before his sacking and subsequent jailing on dubious corruption and sodomy charges.

A BBC reporter, responding to a question on his prospects for a political comeback after his release, noted that Anwar was “a man of some charisma and intellect, something that’s very much lacking in Malaysian politics”. A classic piece of British understatement if ever there was one.

That charisma and intellect have won him many supporters outside Malaysia. Marginalized at home, he has reinvented himself as voice of moderate Islam for the post-9/11 era. He tours the international speaking circuit, preaching both Islamic reformism and criticism of American foreign policy, appealing to both right and left wing sections of Western audiences. He also serves as a visiting fellow at St. Anthony's College, Oxford and Georgetown University in Washington. Such associations probably only serve to damn him further with his opponents; as a turncoat more interested in pleasing foreigners than serving his own people, a quisling who would conspire to sell out his country’s interests.

His prospects of a substantive comeback in Malaysian politics remain bleak. He has mooted running at the next general election, possibly taking over the seat currently held by his wife for the Keadilan (Justice) Party, but a return to anything approaching his former influence is unlikely given the hegemony of the ruling UMNO party and government control over the media.

Exiled from power, Anwar remains the leader unfulfilled, a symbol of the promise of reform and renewal as yet unrealized. Perhaps had he been afforded the opportunity he would have proved a disappointment, lapsing into the established vices once assuming the vestiges of power. He’s the James Dean of Malaysian politics: a talented man who fell before his time; admired not so much for what was, but what could have been.

Israel votes to move "forward" with Sharon's vision

2006-03-31T02:09:00.000+01:00

So it seems Ariel Sharon’s legacy is secured by Kadima’s victory in the Israeli elections. His former party, the once mighty Likud, is now a rump on the outer right fringes of Israel’s new political orbit; the one he founded in the months before his stroke is now the largest party in the Knesset and will head the new government under his successor, Ehud Olmert. Kadima, meaning “forward” in Hebrew, will now forge ahead with Sharon’s agenda of unilateral separation, which began with the withdrawal from Gaza. Though he lies unaware in a coma, the party and the vision of a final settlement he conceived has now secured the electoral mandate to proceed.

For Sharon the problem was never Arafat, Hamas or indeed even terrorism. No martial force the Palestinians could muster constitute an existential threat to Israel, with GDP per capita many times that of the Palestinians, armed with nuclear weapons, backed by US military and political aid. The Palestinians' own “nuclear weapon”, the suicide bomber, is ultimately as ineffective as it is obscene.

The problem was the peace process, which demanded Sharon to concede more than he was willing. Where Israel could not be compelled on the battlefield through guerilla and terror tactics, it could be forced to yield through a diplomatic process given the approval and support of world opinion. The growing acknowledgement of the Palestinian national cause throughout the 70s and 80s eventually forced the US and Israel to commit to a Palestinian state. The Palestinians' ultimate weapons were pen-wielding diplomats giving statements before the world’s TV cameras, not fanatical youths with explosives strapped to their bodies recording their final testimonies on camcorders.

This in turn led to the Israeli policy of escalation in order to avoid negotiation, dating all the way back to the invasion of Lebanon, through the first Intifadah and the rise of Hamas, the collapse of the peace process, Sharon’s election and the second Intifadah. The net effect was a gradual undermining of moderate, secular Palestinian parties and the strengthening of more extremist Islamist factions. This reached its culmination with the death of Arafat, in his last years rendered “irrelevant” in Sharon’s own assessment. In his absence the Fatah party collapsed at the first opportunity, leading to the current Hamas government.

The doctrine of unilateral separation has, as its justification, the notion that Israel had “no partner for peace”, not in Arafat and certainly not now in Hamas. A bilateral settlement is not possible; therefore Israel will act unilaterally to dictate its borders on its terms, to exclusion of Palestinian rights, UN resolutions and international opinion. This will be hailed by their US sponsors as brave moves towards peace, and any dissenting Palestinian voices dismissed as the objections of a terrorist regime, indeed a terrorist people.

The Israeli agenda remains the same: to give up most of the West Bank, “compensating” the Palestinians for the arable land and water supplies Israel wishes to retain with parts it does not, but crucially retaining all of Jerusalem and its surrounding suburbs and settlements, along with absolute rejection of right of return for Palestinian refugees. Through all the various conferences, accords, changes of government and new leaderships since Oslo, the basic outline of Israel’s end-goals have not changed much, Sharon’s one major modification to sensibly concede Gaza.

The latest version involves retaining the settlements deep in the West Bank and linking them to Jerusalem via a highway corridor. Greater Jerusalem and other settlements are to be secured by the completion of the “security fence”, erected with little regard to the 1967 borders, and in addition a “security border” will be maintained along the Jordan Valley. These moves effectively split in two and encircle the territory of any future Palestinian state and cut it off from the main economic and cultural centre of Jerusalem, as well as to whatever additional restrictions Israel seeks to impose. What is left to the Palestinians can only amount to a Bantustan: diminished, dispossessed, isolated, divided, surrounded, deprived; in a word: unviable.

Kadima’s victory will be hailed by “liberal” Western observers, telling us that the rubicon has been crossed, that Israelis have tired of bloodshed and voted for an end to conflict. And when he does finally expire, praised will be heaped upon Sharon, eulogies written to effect of “Only Nixon could go to China”. Only Sharon, the butcher of Sabra and Shatila, could have achieved peace by dragging Israel towards unilateral separation, to eschew diplomacy and set the terms of settlement itself, could make the “painful concessions” of dismantling some of its illegal settlements and giving up part of its occupied territory. Bush will no doubt be moved to repeat his observation that Sharon was a “man of peace”.

Thus the basis of Israeli policy, backed by the US, remains as it ever was: rejection of UN Resolution 242, rejection of the 1967 borders and rejection of Palestinian rights. Rejectionism sold to the world first as occupation, then as peace process and now as unilateral separation. “Kadima” indeed.

Bloody funny

2006-03-28T02:15:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago the Aussie press whipped up a minor diplomatic frenzy over the issue of a Tourism Australia ad being banned from British TV. The ad consisted of scenes featuring Australia's manifold natural and *ahem* cultural attractions, ending with the tagline "So where the bloody hell are you?". British TV censors initially objected to use of the word "bloody", before later letting it pass.

The Aussie press played on the popular stereotypes of each nation, saying that it was yet another case of the dour, humourless, uptight Pommies not being able to deal with a slightly rude bit of carefree, cheeky, larrkin-spirited Aussie humour. The suggestion was also that Brits were somehow made uncomfortable at their beautiful, idyllic, sun-baked paradise being promoted so aggressively, and were eager to keep the ad off TV screens.

But now Tourism Australia has threatened legal action against internet comedian Dan Ilic, who produced a parody of the ad, changing the jingle to "So where the f***ing hell are you?" and inserting negative images of Australian life. Ilic has agreed to take his versions of the ads offline, but vows to return with remixed versions which don't infringe the copyright of the Tourism Australia jingle. And the carefree, cheeky, larrkin-spirited Aussie humour seems to have receded faster than Shane Warne's hairline. This proves one certainty: like sqabbling sibblings, the Brits and Aussies will always have more in common than either would like to admit.

Australia. Get bitten by a shark at Bondi. Be racially abused at a cricket match. Get murdered, your body never to be found, by a drifter in the Outback. Stay at one of our lovely detention centres. Have your freedom of expression curtailed. So where the f**king hell are you?

French Revolution against Apple's iMonopoly

2006-03-22T09:48:00.000Z

France is not a country usually noted for vigorous advocacy of free markets, but it has struck a blow for open competition, albeit at an American cultural imperialist. French MPs have voted last week to force Apple’s iTunes online music store to cease its practice of prohibiting its downloads from playing on anything other than the company’s own iPods portable music players. Apple may now seek to withdraw iTunes from the France, but if this decision gains momentum through the European Commission it will face a much bigger problem, which might well force them to open iTunes up to competing devices.

Apple and its enthusiasts have always looked to cast the company in the role of the underdog we should root for: the plucky, stylish, innovator David against the grey, monolithic, bullying Goliaths (IBM in the 80s, Microsoft today). Yet in one area where Apple is dominant, it stands condemned of the same brand of abuses as Microsoft. Perhaps this merely reflects a similar trend to Apple's decision to switch to Intel microprocessors traditionally used in Windows PCs for its machines: different on the outside, same on the inside.

A market controlled by one or a small number of companies can lead to benefits such as productivity gains which can be passed on to consumers and global standards of goods and services, but can also stifle innovation, reduce choice and lead to monopolistic pricing and anti-competitive policies such as Apple’s iTunes-on-iPod-only policy. The invisible hand of the market still needs the guiding hand of government regulation to ensure consumers get the best deal.

And justice for all

2006-03-12T05:02:00.000Z

Slobodan Milosevic found dead in his cell at the Hague. The death of man who was the main instigator of a war which left more than 250,000 people dead should not be the cause of any disappointment; instead it seems like a last cruel joke on his victims and enemies.

It's hard to see this development as anything other than blow to the system of international criminal justice. Whatever the truth about his death, his supporters will assign responsibility firmly on the Hague Tribunal and its sponsors. Milosevic is doubly the winner from the circumstances of his departure: his crimes will now escape the judgement and sentence of international justice, while his legacy as a martyr for the Serbian nationalist cause, the only consolation that was left open to him, is now secured.

There were those, myself included, who believed that Serbia should have been afforded the dignity and closure of trying Milosevic in its own courts prior to being brought before any international body. It's ironic that his premature demise has now handed final judgement over his deeds back into the hands of the Serbian people.

Gay cowboys rustled out of Oscar

2006-03-06T07:47:00.000Z

Crash over Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture? This is a result destined to go down in the same vein of infamy as Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction, Annie Hall over Star Wars, Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan and Titanic over anything.

I've yet to see Crash, and have no intention to go out of my way to do so despite the collective wisdom of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But I have seen Brokeback, and it is the greatest love story of any sexual orientation I've ever seen. The love and pain portrayed by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal and orchestrated Ang Lee (Best Director of not-the-Best-Picture; how does that work?) is stark and moving, at times almost visceral in its raw emotion. It's an epic tale of tragedy, fueled not by a backdrop of crime, poverty, war or political upheaval, but the banality and everyday intolerance of society. Beautifully shot and wonderfully scored; one of the greatest westerns ever made and an earnest examination of the subjects of friendship and masculinity.

The good news for Brokeback, like those other undeserving Oscar losers, is that history and posterity, not the Academy voters, are the ultimate arbiters of which films become true classics.

Whit Stillman's Metropolitan: Doomed Bourgeois on DVD

2006-02-20T16:07:00.000Z

I just found out one of my all-time favourite movies, Whit Stillman's Metropolitan, has finally received a long overdue DVD release.

Metropolitan tracks the story of Tom Townsend; a young, middle-class New York intellectual with socialist inclinations and a preference for literary criticism instead of actual novels. Quite by accident, he falls in with a group of Park Avenue party goers. Initially distant and haughty, through numerous debutante balls, bridge games and discussions on Jane Austen, he gradually overcomes his ideological snobbery to find friendship and love amongst the self-dubbed Urban Haute Bougeoisie, or UHB.

It's impossible to watch Metropolitan without drawing comparisons with that other auteur of the Manhattan UHB, Woddy Allen. Like Allen's earlier work, Stillman's script sparkles with an educated wit and irony while dissecting the social rituals and conventions of New York's upper classes, but without the self-obsession and Jewish neurosis. As he did again in pseudo-sequel The Last Days of Disco, Stillman evokes the quiet desperation of the privileged youth of a social class in decline, whose determined response is to party the nights away.

Made in 1990 for $300,000, financed partly by Stillman morgaging his house, featuring an a first-time director and a cast of unknowns, Metropolitan went on to garner critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. It stands as both a biting satire and an affectionate defence of Manhattan's old WASP-ish elite.

"Multi-cultism" in Malaysia

2006-02-16T01:31:00.000Z

In the space of a few dusty hours and clamorous city blocks I have contributed my quart to the gallons of milk being ceremonially poured over a statue of the Hindu Lord Ganesh (thus removing all obstacles to prosperity, peace and success), been enlightened under a bodhi tree by a Buddhist businessman of Sri Lankan origin, inhaled the incense offered to selected gods by the Chinese marking the end of their new year in the See Yeoh temple, listened to a Malay choir practising English hymns in the Anglican church of St Mary and discussed the finer points of Islamic banking with a Malaysian sheltering from torrential rain at the beautiful Jamek mosque. This is not just multiculturalism but multi-cultism in one city. All human faith is here. Yet Malaysia is a majority Muslim country, where Islam is the official religion.

Timothy Garton Ash's latest Guardian column weighs in on religious multiculturalism in Malaysia, which is so often raised as the model of moderate, tolerant Islam for others to emulate. Having recently attended a conference on Islamic-Western relations in Kuala Lumpur, he finds reasons for optimism, but also brings words of caution.

Garton Ash is a must read for anyone even vaguely interested in world affairs, a voice of calm and lucidity amongst the rhetoric and hyperbole of newspaper opinion pages and internet blogs. He made his name chronicling the changes in Eastern Europe as it emerged from the yoke of Communism and moved towards reconciliation with the West. It would serve us all well if he now performed a similar project for the Islamic world over the coming years.

Burn baby, burn!

2006-02-12T14:16:00.000Z

Burn baby burn! Burn baby burn! Burn baby burn! Burn baby burn! Burnin'!

To mass fires, yes! One hundred stories high
People gettin' loose y'all gettin' down on the roof - Do you hear?
(the folks are flaming)Folks were screamin' - out of control
It was so entertainin' - when the boogie started to explode
I heard somebody say

Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno!
Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down
Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno!
Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down
Burnin'!

Satisfaction (uhu hu hu) came in the chain reaction
(burnin') I couldn't get enough, (till I had to self-destroy)so I had to
self destruct, (uhu hu hu)
The heat was on (burnin'), rising to the top, huh!
Everybody's goin' strong (uhu hu hu)
And that is when my spark got hot
I heard somebody say

Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno!
Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down, yoh!
Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno!
Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down
Burnin'!

Up above my head I hear music in the air - I hear music!
That makes me know there's (somebody)a promise somewhere

Satisfaction came in a chain reaction - Do you hear?
I couldn't get enough, so I had to self destruct,
The heat was on, rising to the top
Everybody's goin' strong
That is when my spark got hot
I heard somebody say

Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno! (Aah yeah!)
Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down
Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno, yeah!
Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down
Burnin'!

I just can't stop
When(till) my spark gets hot
Just can't stop
When my spark gets hot

Burning, burning, burning, burning.........

Cartoon violence

2006-02-03T18:57:00.000Z

Well I suppose I'll better write something about the Danish cartoons and the worldwide riot they seem to have precipitated, though its possibly the most depressing post I've written yet.

The cartoons may be ill advised, insensitive and maybe even blasphemous. But freedom of speech is not freedom if we do not defend those who choose to walk on its boundaries. We cannot say we value our rights if we do not defend the same rights exercised by someone else, no matter how unwisely. By the same token one cannot begrudge the right of Muslims to express their indignity though protest or boycott, freedom cuts both ways.

Some European newspapers have chosen to publish the cartoons, which can either be seen as a brave show of solidarity with the Danes in the name of free speech or deliberately thumbing their noses at incensed Muslims. Most reasonable people would take the "Yes, but...." position of professing their belief in free speech, followed by qualifying it with a responsibility to respect the beliefs and sensitivities of others.

This of course is the entirely correct and commonsense position; rights should be exercised responsibly, but unfortunately the widespread and violent response to the cartoons have taken the debate beyond a simple question of good taste and manners and into one of protecting democratic freedoms against theocratic censorship. The editor of the newspaper has already acknowledged the offence his decisions have caused and apologised, yet extremists from Jakarta to London still call for his head. Regimes such as those in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Iran now presume to dictate what can and cannot be published in a democratic European country. Against such a backdrop, a clear and unambiguous stance must be taken.

It is deeply unfortunate that such anger, hatred and readiness for violence exists in the Muslim world; yet should we be surprised when we survey the slums of Gaza or Baghdad and the corrupt autocrats and extremists who rule over them? If it was not clear before, a total rethink of the world's approach to the Middle East and the wider Muslim world is needed. But that will not happen overnight, even if the will to do so existed from today; what is needed now is a clear stance that despite whatever perceived grievances the Muslim world holds against the West, its principles of freedom cannot and will not bend in the face of thuggish violence and intimidation.

Democracy + Terrorism = Hamas

2006-01-27T05:21:00.000Z

Throughout most of the world the reply to Hamas' landslide victory in the recent Palestinian legislative election has been frosty. Again and again we are told that terrorism can have no place in civilised, democratic politics.

They are correct of course; one can never condone the deliberate attacks on civilians; but what stance is to be taken then on Israel's "targeted killings", which indiscriminately claim the lives of bystanders as well as militants? The suicide bombing is grotesque act of inhumanity, but what other riposte do the Palestinians have to Israeli F-16s and Apaches? Debates on the "moral equivalence" of Israeli policies have little currency on the Arab street, where such subtleties are recognised as yet another hypocrisy of Western imperialism.

The perception exists, whether correct or not, that Israel's withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza were military defeats, brought about by the guerrilla and terror tactics of groups such as Hamas. Is it any wonder that these were seized upon as victories in contrast to the failures at the negotiating table? Yasser Araft foreswore terrorism and abandoned the hope of reclaiming all of historic Palestine to walk the path of diplomacy; he died having endured a string of humiliations and failures, his people's ambitions unfulfilled.

Democracy is nothing if not the will of the people, and the will of the decisive majority of Palestinians has been made clear: a rejection of the corrupt and failed leadership of Fatah and a mandate for Hamas to continue its armed struggle as a means to achieve their national aspirations. Who would expect anything less from an oppressed and brutalised people, most of whom have known nothing but exile and occupation? One can only hope that the Israeli electorate exercises greater moderation when it goes to the polls in March.

In the neo-conservative Bush worldview, America leads the free and democratic world in the struggle against the forces of oppression, fundamentalism and terror. The Hamas victory delivers another blow to this fanciful delusion. Events in Iraq, Lebanon, Iran and now Palestine make one thing clear: though America may wield military power greater than any, the ultimate force in the region is that of the masses, and they alone will decide its future.

It's democracy George, but not as you know it.

Disney buys Pixar........or does it?

2006-01-27T04:17:00.000Z

So after the threatened divorce, Disney and Pixar end up even closer together than before. Yet the critical point of deal isn't the $7.4 billion Disney is paying for Pixar, but the fact that Steve Jobs is now on the Disney board as its largest shareholder. It's less a case of Disney buying Pixar than Jobs buying into Disney.

Despite Jobs having revitalised Apple since his second coming, its long-term growth prospects are limited by the fact it will likely never occupy more than a niche position against the Windows monopoly in the computer sector, while its iPod/iTunes dominance of the digital music market will be challenged eventually. Just as Microsoft is attempting to branch out with projects like X-Box, Jobs must realise that Apple also must shift from just being a media platform provider and into producing and controlling media content itself.

We can expect more deals for Apple products to carry Disney TV, movies and music, like the one which allows you to download episodes of ABC shows like Desperate Housewives onto your iPod video. And who would bet against Jobs ending up in control of both companies? Unlike the AOL-Time Warner fiasco, an Apple-Disney tie-up, with America's most energetic and visionary entrepreneur at its head, just might be the new media paradigm that people were waffling on about during the internet boom.

Google.cn: Your search - freedom - did not match any documents.

2006-01-26T05:20:00.000Z

Well that didn't take long. In a sure sign of Google's turning to the dark side, they have announced that they will begin collaborating with the Chinese government to ensure the Chinese version of their search engine, www.google.cn, filters out links to sites and webpages which don't conform with Beijing's required restrictions on free speech and political expression.

To quote one much wiser than myself:

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

Infinite Crisis

2006-01-16T04:01:00.000Z

Reason the Iraq War was a mistake #54,269: If you expend military and political capital waging a phoney war against an impotent enemy based on dodgy intelligence on nonexistent weapons, you might find yourself overstretched when a real threat comes along.

The real threat is of course Iran, its (declared) ambition to wipe Israel off the map and its (undeclared) ambition to become a military nuclear power. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's "democratically" elected President, is merely a public jester for the mullahs who wield the real power, yet his comments on destroying Israel and denying the Holocaust are a direct window on their intentions. Along with Iran's announcement it intends to resume its nuclear research activities, they send a clear signal. Iran's rulers sense, correctly and astutely, with America bogged down in Iraq, Israel paralysed by Sharon's illness and their energy reserves such a potent political card, the time is now to step up their nuclear and rhetorical provocation.

The EU three of Britain, France and Germany seem to have exhausted their softly-softly diplomatic approach, and together with the US seem set to refer the matter to the UN Security Council. China and Russia have already indicated they do not approve of sanctions as an option should the matter go to the Council, raising the prospect of another ugly schism as seen in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

In Israel, with Sharon out of the picture and elections scheduled for March, Iran's provocations could push the electorate into the arms of Bibi Netanyahu and the reformed Likud Party on a hardline national security ticket. Netanyahu has already declared if elected he is ready to follow the example of Menachem Begin, who ordered air strikes to destroy Saddam Hussein’s incipient nuclear program in 1982. And needless to say his election would leave the peace process in limbo once again.

The Bush administration sold the Iraq War as a panacea to the region's problems; we were told that the removal of Saddam and establishment of a democratic Iraq by US military might would produce a "domino effect", bringing peace, freedom and stability to the Middle East.
Instead of a shining beacon, Iraq has become a toxic swamp: a breeding ground for fundamentalist reptiles, entrapping everyone who steps in it and spreading its poison throughout the region and beyond.

Economies of mass consumption

2006-01-12T15:17:00.000Z

Worldwatch Institute, a US environmental think tank, has released a study suggesting the rapid pace of economic growth in China and India poses a grave threat to the future wellbeing of the planet. It said that if China and India were to consume as much resources per capita as Japan, in 2030 “together they would require a full planet Earth to meet their needs”. That the world's current economic trajectory is environmentally unsustainable is hardly news, yet it's a fact which cannot be stated frequently enough due to the degree of denial around the world about it.

Many Chinese, Indians and other people living in developing economies may find wealthy, privilaged Westerners telling them their efforts to raise their living standards are a threat to the planet a might hypocritical, but the report also cites "record-setting" levels of consumption in the West, and by the US in particular. In anycase this is besides the point; the inability of the planet to sustain such levels of economic activity is ecological fact, not ideological rhetocric which can just be ignored.

The bottom line is this; currently about 6,500,000,000 and rising, projected to reach 10,000,000,000 in 2036. If we expect that all or even most of us are going to adopt the same consumer lifestyle as people currently do in the developed world, then we are headed for economic and ecological meltdown.

The past 250 odd years since the industial revolution have seen spectacular material and cultural progress for mankind; unless we take radical long-term steps to control our population and consumption, the next 100 years might see a even more spectacular decline.

Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Google

2006-01-07T10:14:00.000Z

If you get information that's not available on Google, then we haven't done our job. - Chief Executive of Google, Eric Schmidt

And even if they acheive that it still won't be enough. Geeky idealism or techno-totalitarianism? As so often it's a bit of both. Either way credit should be given to Google for being the company that Microsoft is only in its rhetoric. Not content with being the no.1 internet portal and worth billions, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and co. are lauching on a Trotskyite-style "permanent revolution " from the home base of their search engine. They're doing what for the last decade Bill Gates has only been promising: to totally transform the way we access information and media.

It may all end in tears; they may sell out and become MS ver 2.0, collapse under the weight of their ambitions or worse, but whatever happens it'll be fascinating to watch.

Rationalising inhumanity

2006-01-05T15:17:00.001Z

Google the name 'Tirhas Habtegiris' and you will find out about a 27 year-old East African immigrant who died in a hospital in Texas because she couldn't pay for her life support costs. A terminal cancer patient, on Dec 1st Habtegiris received a notice that unless she could come up with the up the cash in 10 days her doctors would be pulling the plug on her, as they are allowed to by legislation passed by, you guessed it, former Governor George W Bush. This was pay-as-you-go taken to the grossest extreme. Tirhas knew that she was dying with no hope of recovery, her last wish was apparently for her mother to be at her side when he passed on; it went unfulfilled. She died in front of her brother on Dec 11th, suffocating for around 15 minutes after they turned off her ventilator.

Most people would be appalled upon hearing that story. Others, like economist Steven Landsburg at slate.com, try to rationalise it. In Landsburg's worldview, if someone like Tirhas chose to spend $75 on "groceries, a pair of shoes or some CDs" (or possibly sending it back to her family in Africa) which instead could have gone on ventilator insurance (and likely into the coffers of insurance companies and HMOs), well that's her own fault. Leaving her to suffocate isn't just justified; it's a consequence of choices she made for herself. The rest of society can sleep with a clear conscience, because if the poor end up dead for lack of health insurance, it's their own damn fault for being foolish.

I'm all for "economic considerations" as part of health care planning and provision. Clearly health care, in this case forestalling the death of a very sick woman for a while longer, consumes resources which society might use in other elsewhere, perhaps more productively (or not). But in this case the decision made by the hospital was not economic, but financial; the choice wasn't between keeping the terminally ill Tirhas in a hospital bed at the expense of someone else with a chance to recover, it was between her paying up and staying alive or not paying up and being sent to the morgue. Yes, the "right to life" cannot be absolute and overriding over all other considerations, but what is objectionable is Landsburg's rationale that financially challenged people can be left to end up as victims of their spending choices.

Health care is a social good like education or national defence, which the free market does not value or produce at the appropriate levels; it is therefore necessary for the state to intervene and arrange their provision. Exalting consumer choice as the ultimate expression of people's interests isn't just vulgar; it's thoroughly corrosive to a viable functioning society. For example, everybody knows that getting an education is important, but the decision whether to attend school and spend money doing so isn't left to children or even their parents, and rightfully so. People are compelled through taxes to investing in a universal system of basic education, health care should be organised along similar lines.

To be fair to Landsburg he acknowledges that health care in the US needs significant reform, but he understates the case. In a country as rich as America, the inequities and failures of its health care "system", by far the most expensive and costly in the world, should be a source of shame. Only a universal, government mandated, tax funded system of health insurance as exists in every other developed Western society will correct that.

America's a great place to visit, just make sure you go with insurance. You sure won't be able to rely on the generosity of your hosts.

Stung

2006-01-05T14:41:00.000Z

I guess it was inevitable but I've just been stung by eBay and Paypal. I received a notice informing me that a transaction I thought was happily concluded a couple of months ago is now being disputed by the Paypal account holder, who says he did not authorise the payment. As result my account has been debited by £80. The guy making the complaint might be a scamster, but I suspect we're both the victims of the buyer, who has feeble feedback rating of 4 and no transactions since mine.

Damn.

Ave, Paolo

2005-12-24T04:33:00.000Z

More madness from the world of football, this time courtesy of Lazio striker Paolo Di Canio. He's addressed the controversy over his "Roman salutes" during Lazio games by saying he considers himself a "fascist, but not racist" and that his salutes are simply a gesture to his fans, with no political connotations whatsoever. He did however reaffirm his desire to see all Roma fans sent to the gas chambers.

Insert ape pun here

2005-12-23T05:15:00.000Z

Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong scaled to the top of the US box office with a haul of $50.1 million for the weekend. While that can buy you lot of bananas it compares poorly with other the big blockbuster releases of the year such as Star Wars: Episode III ($104 million), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ($102 million) or even the less hyped Chronicles of Narnia ($66 million) released the week before.

After receiving plenty of hype and favourable critical reviews, Kong had been tipped to open considerably stronger and possibly end up as the year’s top-grossing film. Instead its weak opening was a disappointment and a further blow to a US box office that has been mired in a slump for most of the year. Kong's debut will be causing particular concern at Universal Studios, who are on hook for up to $207m in production costs for Kong, including Jackson's $20m paycheque.

Kong is under little threat of ending in the red; international revenues and DVD sales will see to that, and it may yet demonstrate "good legs" and avoid the steep declines blockbusters typically experience after their initial opening weekend. But one casualty will surely be Universal's thesis that Jackson's name could sell the movie in the manner of an A-list actor or actress.

By agreeing to the highest ever salary for a director, Universal were paying for not only Jackson's talents as an Oscar-winning director but a star name in the same price range as Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts. The Rings trilogy made Jackson a huge favourite amongst the "fanboy" audience of action, fantasy and sci-fi enthusiasts, but Universal clearly overestimated the pull of his name amongst the general public. The film's leads Adrian Brody, Jack Black and Naomi Watts are all well known, but not amongst the top tier of Hollywood stars who command the kind of fee paid to the director. The real star of the film, apart from the titular giant ape, is Jackson; Kong is a circus where the spotlight is on the ringmaster instead of the performers.

But money matters aside I'm happy to report that as a movie, Kong is already a success.

Naomi Watts may play the beauty who steals the heart of the beast, but the real inter-species love affair is between Jackson and his simian star. Remaking Kong has long been Jackson's ambition, and his affection and reverence for the big ape is palpable from the moment we first glimpse him through the jungle mists up until his last stand atop the Empire State Building.

Played via motion capture by Andy Serkis, (who also gave life to Gollum in Lord of the Rings) Kong is a fascinating mix of animal brutality, alpha-male egotism and childlike-naivety all wrapped within a 25ft frame. The marvels devised by Jackson’s WETA animation team have allowed him to up the ante not only in terms of destruction and carnage, but emotion; the CGI Kong’s facial movements and expressions elicit greater empathy than the stop motion model or men in rubber suits of past iterations ever could.

There are moments of genuine pathos; even more than his inevitable demise, the scenes of Kong’s capture and subsequent display as Broadway freak attraction are the most harrowing. It’s during these scenes that the racial and historical subtexts are clearest, though Jackson doesn’t dwells on them. Kong is the noble savage, torn from his jungle homeland by supposedly more civilised men to be exploited and humiliated for profit in musical stage parody of his native culture, complete with blackface dancers.

Weighing in at an epic 3 hours, double the running time of the 1933 original, Kong can’t help but feel somewhat bloated. The middle hour of the film in particular sinks into excess as Jackson indulges his passion for creature features which first made his name. Why settle for one T-Rex when you can have three? And then why not throw in giant leeches, insects, bats and a Jurassic Park quantity of dinos.

Nevertheless Kong is still probably the best remake since, well, Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. It demanded to be made due to opportunities allowed by the advances in CGI. It’s just fortunate that in it fell to a director with the passion and vision to make it worthwhile.

Winners and losers

2005-12-17T03:35:00.000Z

In the interconnected world we inhabit today progress on one front can often mean trouble on another, winners in one instance resulting in losers in elsewhere. So it has proven today.

In Brussles Tony Blair gets himself in the good graces of everyone in the EU (save perhaps in Britain) by sealing a deal over EU budget for 2007-2013. Britain has agreed to give up £7 billion of its rebate over the period, and in return there will be review of agricultural spending in 2008 (unlikely to amount to anything) and a smaller increase in the total budget. In doing so Blair has opened himself to criticism from eurosceptics at home, who will portray this as a capitulation to France and Germany. In reality it's more of a concession to the newer Eastern European members, who will now be getting access to the EU aid they need to fund infrastructure and economic reforms.

In Hong Kong the WTO talks are in deadlock, with any substantive deal seemingly out of reach. Outside the conference centre representatives of farmers from across the developing world are rioting, demonstrating their anger and contempt at the proceedings going on behind the barricades. The agreement of the EU budget probably means that European agricultural subsidies will see no significant reform over the next 7 years. This simply confirms of what most already knew coming into these talks; that developed nations have reached the upper limits of what they are willing to concede on agricultural tariffs and subsidies.

Given the absence of any progress, developed countries (principally the US and EU) will eschew the WTO and instead seek bilateral deals with major developing nations (such as China and India) and regional organisations (such as ASEAN) on terms more flexible and favourable than could be reached under the WTO. Developing countries which have the markets, labour, exports and investment opportunities which Western multinationals crave should have no fear of being shut out as a result of failure in Hong Kong. The real losers will be smaller, mainly agricultural-producing countries on the fringes of the world trading system.

The history of the development and enlargement of the WTO simply provides another example of the problems of making large scale, multilateral organisations work. From its origins as GATT, the WTO has steadily expanded from being a small club of mostly wealthy, industrial nations to a one which includes a majority of the world's countries, rich and poor. As it has grown the WTO has become more and more unwieldy and less able to accommodate the greater diversity of interest amongst its members. Much as the UN proved ineffective in dealing with the crisis leading to the Iraq War, the WTO seems like it cannot extract the concessions on agriculture from developed nations which are the key to any deal. And as with Iraq, when the big boys are unable to get their way multilaterally, they will go it alone unilaterally with any willing allies in tow.

What else is new?

Picture for the Day

2005-12-16T04:02:00.000Z

I just felt compelled to share this wonderfully surreal image with the rest of you. Enjoy.

Passion of the Witch

2005-12-11T03:34:00.000Z

I've been to see Narnia, and it's good. The 4 children are all excellent, Liam Neeson reprises his Qui-Gonn Jinn persona to voice the Christ-lion Aslan and the supporting cast of fauns, centaurs and talking beasts are all well realised. Thankfully dirctor Andrew Adamson doesn't import the one liners and SNL-style humour of Shrek, instead sticking with old fashioned English understatement and irony. It's also rarely guilty of the modern film-making sin of dwelling on its special effects (call it Lucas syndrome), leaving the focus firmly on the characters and story. The christian allegory is there only for those looking for it, the rest of us can instead enjoy the universal themes of redemption, courage and sacrifice played out in a charming fantasy tale.

As is so often the case, it's the villian which steals the show. Tilda Swinton is fantastic as the White Witch, a vast improvement on the pantomine camp of her BBC television predecessor. Her character remains compelling throughout, thanks mainly to the numerous guises she assumes over the course of the film. The sweet, seductive lady with whom Edmund is instantly smitten (along with much of the audience, I'd bet) is gone all too quickly, replaced by a cruel, shrieking tyrant. She morphs into a pagan priestess when presiding over the ritual slaughter of Aslan in a Stonehenge-like arena, surrounded by her braying, heathen hordes. Donning the lion's shaven mane around her neck, she leads her army to battle on chariot as a sword-flailing Boudicca-like amazon. Her stern beauty, icy complexion, frozen blonde braids and piercing dark eyes make her utterly sinister and completely irresistable.

Ultimately, despite offering superior entertainment, this adaptation fails to acheive the heights of any of the 3 Lord of the Rings movies, often feeling competant rather than inspired. It lacks the depth and richness of Peter Jackson's films, which, like Star Wars before it, has set the bar for fantasy adventures so high we are unlikely to see it matched for some time yet.

Bring it on!

2005-12-10T02:03:00.000Z

Well there will be no Ashes rematch at the World Cup, not in the group stages at least. Instead England get a near ideal draw of Sweden, Paraguay and Trinadad & Tobago. Ideal for some that is; Simon Barnes in the Times instead argues that if England are good enough to win it, they should have no fear of who they draw at any stage of the competition. Better in his mind to go out all guns blazing in a "group of death" than to surrender meekly in the quater-finals after an easy progress before that. I'm inclined to agree.

As it turns out the group of death is comprised of Argentina, Holland, Serbia & Montenegro and Ivory Coast. Argentina will be haunted by memories of 4 years ago when they crashed out at the group stage, while Holland are still largely in rebuilding mode after coach Marco Van Basten jetissoned most of the Ajax '95 generation of Davids, Kluivert, Seedorf et al. It would be no great shock to see one of those two fail to get out of the group. All the other favourites all have seemingly easy draws except for Italy, who have the Czech Republic, Ghana and the USA for company.

Seeing the draw in full reinforces my feeling that after the lesser teams had their moments in the sun in 2002, this World Cup will see the established major nations returing to the fore. Playing in Germany should give European teams a "home advantage" boost, the relative inexperience of the African teams counts against them, and surely Japan and Korea will not enjoy the success they did 4 years ago as hosts. Brazil with their unmatched firepower remain clear favourites, but should they fail the path to glory would open up for a number of teams, England being one of them.

Under Eriksson England have progressed slowly since 2001, but can now be considered the foremost amongst the European contenders. The left side of midfield remains a question, but in Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and captain David Beckham they have possibly the best all-round midfield in the world. The defence is solid, Rio Ferdinand's sorry decline compensated for by the presence of John Terry and Sol Campbell. Gary Neville and Ashley Cole are proven performers and Paul Robinson is a talented goalkeeper, if still prone to occasional errors of judgement.

The key for England will be the dynamic duo of Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen upfront. Rooney is a genius, the best young player in the world, and he will go to Germany trying to remove any qualifier on his status. Owen, though his own wonderboy aura has faded since 1998, remains one of most lethal strikers in the world, as Argentina will testify. Together they compliment each other ideally, with Rooney as a deep-lying creator frequently dropping into midfield and Owen streching the defence and waiting to pounce further upfront. The paucity of striking options beyond them (including the much maligned Peter Crouch) makes it crucial to England's chances they stay fit.

All that amounts to a team which should be considered joint second favourites with Argentina behind Brazil. This is the best England side since the one that defended the World Cup in 1970. Brazil could be their undoing once again, but England should fancy their chances against anyone else.

Ashes rematch?

2005-12-09T03:23:00.000Z

England coach Eriksson is keen to avoid an "Ashes rematch" of England vs Australia at next year's World Cup. I'm praying for it. Australia are mostly comprised of current or ex-English League players who won't hold any suprises for England; better to face Oz than be ambushed by some Eastern European or African team who could spring a suprise. With the possible expections of Viduka, Schwarzer and fit Kewell, none of the Australian team would figure in the English squad, let alone first team. If there's any team England should be totally confident of beating, it's Australia.

Furthermore facing England in a competitive match at the World Cup would be the biggest football match in Australian history. It would do much to help the growth of football down under and give huge boost to the fledgling A-League.

Secularism is not anti-clericalism

2005-12-05T06:04:00.000Z

The-most-anticipated-movie-event-of-the-year^tm, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (phew!) is almost upon us. With the end of the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings series, Hollywood has decided that CS Lewis' works are going to fill the gap in the market for an epic fantasy movie franchise. Taking a que from Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, producers Disney and Walden Media are playing up the story's Christian elements, pitching the movie to church groups and religious organisations. This in turn drawn the ire of some on the left.

Polly Toynbee in the Guardian says Narnia "represents everything that is most hateful about religion", embodying the "perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America" and advising that the secular amongst us "may need a sickbag handy". Phillip Pullman, who has written an entire trilogy of best-selling books with precisely the opposite aim of Lewis, slams them as "religious propaganda", riddled with misogyny and racism.

To me such hyperbolic and hysterical attacks are, in this day and age, beating a dead horse. Christianity in the West is an aging, declining, ineffectual sect and a soft target. Like that other pet hate of the left, the monarchy, the Church is an institution largely stripped of its former power and prestige, no longer wielding any great influence on our way of life. Particular issues such Catholic Church's runious stances on contraception and homosexuality may be objectionable, but these are not the basis of the wholesale and fundemental condemnations made by the anti-Narnians.

They seem especially hollow from those who would shirk from equivalent criticisms of Islam for fear of appearing "racist", despite the fact that issues of freedom, tolerance, women's rights, homosexuality and religious belligerence are far more pressing in relation to Islam than Christianity. Furthermore Christianity is increasingly no longer a "white" or "Western" religion which licences scorn and criticism. As church-going numbers dwindle across the developed world, most of the flock of the faithful is located in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Even in Bush's evangelical America, the appetite for religion is greatest amongst blacks, Asians and Latinos.

Secularism is not anti-clericalism; it should not seek the advance of atheism or to drive religion completely from the public life. Secularism should be an attitude of neutrality towards religion, not Jacobin-like hostility. Its goal is to immunise our political and state processes and institutions from religious interference, but not to try undermine it beyond that.

Secularist (amongst whose number I include myself) need not indulge in pointless sniping at Lewis’ gospel-dressed-as-fantasy. Liberals should have no objection to the religious point of view being propagated in the free market of ideas.

Mutatis Mutandis

2005-12-04T14:47:00.000Z

Hello loyal readers (you are out there aren't you? aren't you? Hello........?). You may have noticed the numorous subtle changes to the layout of the blog every once in a while. It's evolution, folks.The originl layout was a stock template from blogger.com and I've been making small changes to it every once in a while. The intention is that as I gradually develop my html and web design skills, ACPOV can get it's own newly designed layout, migrate to its own site and maybe evolve into something else. Im still getting a handle on what ACPOV will focus on and trying to adapt my writing to style appropriate to the blog format, so please bear with me. In the meantime please continue to log on and read the blog. Thank you all for your support.

Also please leave comments, as I have no other gauge of the interest (or lack thereof) this blog is attracting. Maybe I'll get round to installing a hit counter sometime.

Econo-masochism

2005-12-02T05:35:00.000Z

The latest act of monetary self-harm by the European Central Bank has seen them raise interest rates by a quarter of a %. ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet justifies this by saying:

"We are expected by 311 million people to provide price stability," Mr Trichet said, and went on to underline that the best way to ensure low interest rates is to control price growth.

He also pointed out that economic growth and job creation would be best served by steady price growth.

No, Monsieur Trichet, the people of Europe (from whom you are splendidly unaccountable) expect the ECB to create conditions for economic prosperity, of which price stability is only one concern, and certainly not at the expense of flatlining growth rates and high unemployment. The outdated monetarist dogma of price stability uber alles has made the Eurozone by far the weakest of the world's major economic blocks since 1999, ritual repetition of it will not make the policies based upon it any less ineffective. Current upward price pressures are a result of higher energy costs more than anything else, penalising the entire Eurozone economy on that basis is short-sighted and counter-productive to say the least. And price stability the best way to ensure low interest rates? The less said about that philosophy the better.

Discontented European voters should soon realise that ranting against their elected national officials is useless so long as the monetary mandarins in Frankfurt are unwilling to utilise interest rates as an active tool to promote growth, especially with regards to Germany. The experience of the Bank of England post-ERM crisis should be instructive; since casting off the restrictions of the ERM the British economy has seen by far the fastest growth rates and lowest unemployment amongst the major European economies whilst successfully keeping inflation within the Banks mandated 2% limit.

Ultimately, for all the willful incompetance of the ECB, the mistitled Growth and Stability Pact was authored and approved by politicians, and it will require political action to reform it. But the woeful lack of political courage, unity and leadership in Europe scarcely inspires any confidence that will come about soon.

"Trust me, this system's gonna be dope, yo"

2005-11-30T13:41:00.000Z

Thousands of gamers have finally gotten their hands on Microsoft’s X-Box 360, the most technically advanced and ludicrously named gaming console yet.

The narcolepsy-inducing selection of launch titles comprise mostly of sequels and updates of existing franchises, offering bigger, louder and shinier versions of what we already have. All this simply reinforces the perception that Microsoft have brought nothing to gaming, except their “now-with-33%-more-pixels-it’s-not-a-games-machine-it’s-a-whole-new-entertainment-
experience-iPod-white-with-online-play” sensibilities and a determination that nothing should run on a software platform which isn’t theirs. Sony were also guilty of these tendencies to a lesser extent, and unfortunately the competition from Microsoft will only serve to exacerbate them.

It’s a real shame a year that has seen some of the most innovative, playable and artistically accomplished games ever is capped off by the mega-launch of a product which epitomises the cynical, soulless, bloated corporate tendencies which caused the first video gaming crash and may well cause another one. It’s the like of Katamari Damacy, Nintendogs, Killer 7 and Shadow of the Colossus which are the future of gaming and can extend the medium beyond its core audience of teens and young males, not the tired new rubbish being served up by Gates and Co.

Hangman Wanted

2005-11-28T07:07:00.000Z

It appears now the hangman at Changi Prison is not preparing to hang Nguyen Thoun Van, instead he's now retiring. After his picture was published in The Australian newspaper, Singaporean authorities have dismissed him. He was Singapore's only exceutioner and no replacement is readily available.

Nguyen's execution might now have to be delayed unless a replacement can be found by Friday. It may be too much to hope his sentence will be commuted, but at least if it is delayed due to this farcical twist it may make a small contribution to Singapore eventually repealing its senseless policy of death for drug trafficking.

Malaysia's Abu Gharib

2005-11-28T05:52:00.000Z

Malaysian police are embroiled in probably the biggest abuse scandal since former Deputy PM Anwar Ibrahim's roughing up while in custody in 1998. A video clip, seemingly shot with a camera phone, appears to show a Chinese woman being stripped and forced to perform "ear squats" by a police officer. The government has launched an investigation and promised action.

This "Abu Gharib"-style expose serves as yet another example of the increasing power whistle blowers and amateur journalists enjoy thanks to the internet and modern digital recording devices. Where in the past a scandal would be confined to rumour and hear say, now the ability of private citizens to publish and publicise their stories mean neither governments nor the mainstream media can ignore incidents of abuse and corruption coming to light.

It's also interesting to note that the story broke as a result of the video clip in question being sent to female Chinese MP Teresa Kok of the opposition Democratic Action Party, rather than a government minister or police complaints body. Important, especially in Malaysia where the opposition's role of keeping the government in check is not always given the regard it deserves.

The fall and fall of Conrad Black

2005-11-27T09:25:00.000Z

The Conrad Black saga takes a turn for the ironic. It seems the former Daily Telegraph publisher, after renouncing his citizenship to become "Lord Black of Crossharbour", now wants to be Canadian again as part of his legal manouverings to avoid ending up in a US jail on charges of fraud.

Sweet, sweet schadenfreude.

Aussie facing death in Singapore

2005-11-20T09:27:00.000Z

The hangman at Singapore's Changi Prison is preparing to execute Nguyen Tuong Van, a Vietnamese-Aussie from Melbourne. The Australian government has put a request to Singapore for clemency which has so far been rejected, leading to a bit of a diplomatic row.

I suppose before anything else I should state that I am against the death penalty for any crime, including murder (yes, even if the guilty party happens to be a tyrannical, mass-murdering former head of state). I would sum up my objection by saying simply:

Execution as a means to provide "revenge", whether to the victim's friends and relatives or to society at large, is barbaric
In the vast majority of cases the death penalty is no greater deterrent than life imprisonment
No court is infallible; therefore no court should be able to administer a punishment which is absolute and irreversible.

The legality of drugs is of course a whole other debate, but even if it is conceded that certain drugs, such as heroin (396 grams of which Nguyen was alleged to have been carrying), must be prohibited, the death penalty is still a wholly disproportionate and cruel punishment for their traffic. That is if you can call Nguyen Tuong Van a trafficker in any meaningful sense.

This unfortunate young man was not some drug lord living the high life with a woman on each arm, gold hanging off his neck and the blood of his rivals on his hands. He is a 25 year old with no prior criminal record, who took this assignment to pay off debts owed by his brother. In the grand scheme of the drugs trade Nguyen was just a mule, a term which accurately describes both his function and his expendability and insignificance. The irony is that if Nguyen Tuong Van was an actual mule and not a human being he would not now be facing death.

The reality is that illegal narcotics are a product for which there is a vast and lucrative global demand (London is estimated to snort 150,000 lines of cocaine a day) and there are a great many poor and desperate people in the world willing to function as cogs in the industry which supplies it. No amount of moral posturing will alter that, any policy which does not acknowledge it is blind and hypocritical.

Osama Bin Voldemort

2005-11-17T16:16:00.000Z

Just seen Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and it's pretty good. It sticks to the same formula as the previous 3 instalments: another year at Hogwarts, more strange going-ons and threats to Harry's life, yet again the school is infiltrated by the forces of Lord Voldemort, yet again Harry prevails. This is the best one yet though, as the usual magical antics are interspersed with overactive hormones, teen angst and romantic awkwardness. But as compelling as the coming of age of Harry and his chums is, it's Voldemort and his fellow evil-doers that are most interesting. Whether by design or accident JK Rowling and the people behind the film adaptation successfully tap into our contemporary fears of terrorism.

Early on in the movie Harry and his friends attend the final of the Quiddich World Cup, only for the occasion to be thrown into chaos by an attack by Voldemort's followers, the Death Eaters. Like the scene at a Bali nightclub or a Moscow rock concert, the fun and frivolry is replaced by panic and destruction. The morning after officials arrive to survey the carnage, lamenting the lapse of security and fearing the next attack. Just as we are used to the release of website announcements or videotapes following the latest terrorist attacks, the Death Eaters leave the dreaded sign of Voldemort so there can be in no doubt who is responsible and what it means.

The Death Eaters operate much like sleeper terrorists cells, hiding within decent wizarding society for the purposes of subverting it. They don skull masks when emerging to do their wickedness, only to melt away again once they are done. They are depicted as single-minded fanatics, seemingly driven by little but their lust for power, pathological desire to destroy and cultish devotion to their master. At the end of Goblet of Fire when the infiltrator is finally exposed and captured he is crazed and unrepentant, boasting he will be welcomed as a hero (martyr?) by his fellow inmates at Azkaban prison, the Guantanamo of the wizarding world.

The process of dealing with evil-doers in Rowling's world is free of the complexities and controversies of ours. In one scene in a captured Death Eater is brought before a tribunal of the Ministry of Magic. He is caged and bound, with seemingly no access to an advocate, right of appeal, right to judgement by his peers nor any of the other niceties of due legal process. Asked to reveal identities of other Death Eaters, he offers a couple only for his interrogators to rebuff him, asking for "new names". Threatened with being returned to Azkaban, he breaks. Torture or any kind is never mentioned yet the prospect of returning to whatever terrors exist at Azkaban is enough to get him to talk. Apparently Azkaban inmates are subject to Abu Gharib-style psychological torture, where "the presence of dementors renders the inmates incapable of happiness and forces them to relieve their worst memories, as they become gradually helpless and very often severely insane."

The dreaded Lord Voldemort is much like Bin Laden, an evil mastermind who is more myth than man. Like Bin Laden he has been missing for years, possibly alive, hopefully dead. Even in exile he commands the loyalty of his followers and the fear and hatred of everyone else. He exercises a pernicious dominance over the imagination of wizarding world, assumed to be the puppet master behind every dark conspiracy, though no one can say for sure.

By the end everybody’s worst fears are realised as Voldemort returns and claims the life of one of Hogwarts’ prize students. It falls to the headmaster of Hogwarts to lead the memorial. Like a head of state after a bombing, he pays tribute to the fallen, warns of the “dark and difficult times ahead” and urges everyone to steel their resolve in the face of this evil.

The villains in JK Rowling's world plays on the universal and recurring fears of shadowy cabals (Papists, communists, heretics, Freemasons, Islamists, illegal immigrants, terrorists, Jews) living amongst us, fermenting evil and foreign ideologies, waiting to strike out and disrupt our way of life. Rowling plays upon the fears of our terror-obsessed age whilst offering the comforting certainties of fantasy. Evil-doers may lurk amongst us and good people may become their unwitting pawns, but everyone is ultimately on one side or the other. And of course we know in the end good will prevail. If only our "muggle" world were so simple.

Economic counter-revolution in Germany

2005-11-15T05:01:00.000Z

What's the solution for an economy that has seen minimal or no growth, high unemployment, weak domestic demand and is genrally agreed to be an expensive and overregulated business environment? Why to raise income and consumption taxes of course.

Anatole Kaletsky's latest economic opinion column in the Times examines incoming Chancellor Angela Merkel's new economic plan for Germany. A prominent German economist, when replying to his suggestion that this is a recipe for disaster:

“Maybe,” he replied, “but the Germans are different. When taxes are raised in Germany, I can guarantee that consumers will become more confident and will spend more. You see, we Germans are today more worried about the deficits of our Government than about the incomes we receive.”

Now I haven’t met that many Germans, and had discussions on the intricacies of macro-economic policy with even fewer (one, to be precise). Yet when I put it that what Germany and the rest of the Eurozone needed was reform of the Growth and Stability Pact (which governs the workings of the European Central Bank) to allow a more flexible, stimulatory approach to budgets and public finances I met with similar response: deficits are dangerous and must be controlled, taking painful measures if necessary.

The idea that taxpayers and consumers review the German Federal treasury's finances with more concern than their own pay packets and bank balances completely flies in the face of all conventional economic logic, or at least any that I was exposed to at university. Yet that such a view is evidently prevalent in Germany, to the extent that the government is banking its plans for economic recovery on it, certainly says something about conventional economic logic.

To read much of the English-speaking media one hears all about China, India and the inescapable necessity of free trade and more liberal economic regimes. The conventional logic amongst most of the world's political, business and media establishment is that Germany must embark on a vigorous bout of reforms to compete with the low-cost economies of Asia and Eastern Europe, of which lower taxes and all their implications are central.

Yet recent election and referendum results, as well as many other gauges of popular opinion, suggest that German and European publics are radically opposed to these measures, which they fear will inexorably erode their welfare systems and workers rights to the levels of Britain, America or worse. This wave of economic counter-revolution in Europe is in essence a mirror of the one in Latin America led by the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez. In the case of Latin America liberal economics have been blamed for the same in reverse: failing to lift the region's poor out of poverty.

Kaletsky suggests the Merkel experiment might well end in failure and a "lost decade" of continued economic slump. Yet perhaps there is something much larger to consider. The European social model (the German version of which is often dubbed the "Rhein model") is an undoubtedly magnificent achievement, achieved after centuries of war and revolution. It represents the successful compromise between the demands of capitalism and socialism which caused such upheaval in the 20th century. Now after more than 50 years of peace and prosperity, Germany and the rest of Europe at a crossroads under the pressures of new post-communist age of globalisation.

While most of the world seems to have prescribed a solution that will inevitably erode that achievement, Germany is gambling it can save its social model by doing exactly the opposite. It is much easier to privatise and reform it away in a generation then it will be to rebuild afterwards. Seen within this context, perhaps gambling the next ten years of economic prospects may not be so costly for the chance of preserving something much more precious.

Five mascots of the Apocalypse

2005-11-12T04:51:00.000Z

Meet Bei Bei, Jing Jing, Huan Huan, Ying Ying and Ni Ni. These 5 monstrosities will be serving as the official mascots for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Of course the Chinese government is determined that the upcoming games will be the biggest and bestest games ever, so of course it needs more mascots than any other previous games.

It's also in line with China's new capitalist-to-get-rich-is-glorious philosophy, as they can no doubt expect to sell five times as much merchandise than if there were just the one mascot. It'll be (unpaid) overtime at toy factories across the country from now until 2008.

Apparently one of them (don't ask me which) is supposed to be a "Tibetan antelope", just in case anyone was in any doubt that Tibet is a legitimate part of the People's Republic and that the Tibetan people will be sharing in the coming Olympic joy just as much as the rest of the country.

Seven years on

2005-11-11T01:42:00.000Z

French international defender Lilian Thuram has had a bit to say about the recent riots gripping the country, criticising the government for failing young racial minorities. Thuram was part of France's 1998 World Cup-winning team, which featured a number of players who were foreign-born or second generation immigrants of African origin, that was hailed as symbol of successful racial integration.

The triumph of 1998 was so resonant because it brilliantly captured the Republican ethic which is now being called into question in light of the disenchanted youths currently setting fire to Renaults in town and cities across France. Before each international match Thuram and his teammates would sing perhaps the most stirring and famous of all national anthems, La Marseillaise. Not just a collection of vague patriotic slogans like many others, La Marseillaise is bloody call to arms in defence of liberty and the fatherland, a testament to France's revolutionary heritage and the ideals of the Republic. The French team was a unified and indivisible unit, drawing together regardless of race or religion, donning the national colours and working together for the greater good of France. They were as latter day sans-culottes, a people's army ready to do battle for the honour of la patrie. The victory of 1998 was presented as a shining example for the rest of French society, one which President Jacques Chiriac spared no effort in associating himself with.

And therein lies the problem. Whilst the fraternité team ethic succeeded in producing a world beating football team, it has manifestly failed within French society at large. In failing to recognise racial difference the French model of integration has left itself unable to tackle the specific problems faced by the large pools of people of Arab and North African extraction living within it. All the lofty ideals of 1789 matter little to jobless youths living in sink estates, seething at exclusion from mainstream French society. It is a problem made all the more pressing by the current of radicalism and extremism in the Islamic world.

Now seven years on France are no longer world champions. Zinedine Zidane, the inspiration of 98, has been coaxed out of retirement for next summer's World Cup, but it seems more an admission of the team's decline than anything else. Chirac is now a lame duck president who seems to lurch from one disaster to another. In place of the jubilant faces which lined the Champs-Elysées in celebration are angry youths and fearful bystanders on streets lined with carnage.

Chelsea defeated!

2005-11-07T13:27:00.000Z

Hallelujah! Chelsea are defeated, all is good in the world. In all honesty I wanted a Chelsea win; as much hatred as I have for Chelsea it cannot match that which I reserve for United. A United win "good for football", "good for the Premiership"? Please! Manchester United have been more responsible than any club in cultivating the culture of greed and commercialism in modern football. Now that some one else is besting them on and off the pitch United can't help but come off as sad and hypocitical.

In anycase this result and the performance by United doesn't seem like one of a team about to challenge for the title, it smacks of desperation. In the second half it was backs against the wall stuff, not the type of football played by a championship team. More and more United seem to resemble Liverpool in the 90s; a team in decline, trying doggedly to hang on to the coattails of the new top dogs.

The one bright spot for United is Rooney. Forget about the latest "new Pele" or "next Maradona" that the Brazillians or Argentines always hype up leading up to every World Cup, Wayne Rooney is the best young player in the world. He's got the touch and vision of Cantona, the strength and power of Shearer, the speed and aggression of Owen. United won't win the title this season, but in Rooney they have a player they can build their next championship team around.

Bolivar, Guevara, Chavez......Maradona?

2005-11-07T03:15:00.000Z

Diego Maradona's latest comeback isn't on the football pitch. A slimmer and more sober Maradona, fresh from interviewing Fidel Castro on his new TV chat show, has now taken part in anti-Bush rallies at the Summit of the Americas.

Of course Diego was always been a political figure, even if he's only explicitly become so recently. Against England in the 1986 World Cup he inspired Argentina to victory by scoring both the most famous and infamous goals in football history, inflicting revenge for Falklands War. In recent years his struggles against health and legal difficulties have mirrored that of the Argentine nation, still recovering for the economic collapse of 2001. And now he's riding the neo-Bolivarist wave of left wing opposition to Bush's imperialist foreign policy and neo-liberal economic agenda.

As a political activist Maradona evokes his past not only as a footballing genius, but also as a son of the slums of Buenos Aires. Whether on the pitch or on the streets, he has presented himself as a man of the people, a representative of the poor and downtrodden. It is an image which resonates not just in Argentina but across Latin America. Then as now Maradona is a symbol of defiance; of Latin American pride against Anglo-Saxon hegemony, of the developing world against the rich, of the simple working folk against the sinister forces of capitalism and imperialism. The political Maradona claims the legacy of not Di Stefano and Kempes but Bolivar and Guevara, his comrades Castro and Chavez rather than Crespo and Tevez.

What next for El Diego? Who can say for a man who's as likely to end up being President as he is national team manager.

"There's a kind of an assumption that if somebody wrote it on the internet, it's true."

2005-11-01T08:26:00.000Z

The world's number one public intellectual, Noam Chomsky, demonstrates he's not so different from any other 76 year old. He doesn't come across very well in the rest of the Guardian interview either, taken to task over lending his name to the defence of some dodgy bits of journalism on Serb atrocities in Bosnia during the 90s.

When I hear Chomsky mentioned I always think of a sticker I saw stuck on a wall at eye level above a urinal in a toilet at the Glastonbury Festival in 2003 which simply said "Read Chomsky". I wonder if any people were inspired to pick up Manufacturing Consent while taking a leak.

I can't think of a single figure who inspires such differing opinions as Chomsky. To some on the left he's, well, the world's number one public intellectual; a shining beacon of truth and resistance in media wasteland of doctrine and propaganda. To others he's blackest of bête noirs; an anti-semetic, anti-western fraud and liar, defender of tyranny and outrage, opponent of everything good and precious. Though my opinions on Chomsky are closer to the former than the latter, they are not without reservations. His writings on US foreign policy are excellent and for the most part recommended, though the anarchist, anti-capitalist convictions which underline them are more questionable. As the interviewer implies, his logic is at times inconsistant and veers off on tangents which serve little to advance the debate.

Ultimately Chomsky embodies the strengths and failings of the anti-imperialist left, of which he is it's most potent voice. He commands such an enthusiastic, almost cultish, following from people world wide simply because he states uncomfortable truths and challenges authority in forthright manner. The purpose of his message should not be distracted by the odd injudicious signing of a letter or petition, which right wing vultures seize upon as conclusive proof he's in favour of throwing Jews into the Mediteranean or something similar. And such a voice is very much needed in a world as it is. After all without him we wouldn't get stuff like this, when asked about being a benificiary of a capitalist system he opposes:

Does he have a share portfolio? He looks cross."You'd have to ask my wife about that. I'm sure she does. I don't see any reason why she shouldn't. Would it help people if I went to Montana and lived on a mountain? It's only rich, privileged westerners - who are well educated and therefore deeply irrational - in whose minds this idea could ever arise. When I visit peasants in southern Colombia, they don't ask me these questions."

Priceless.

Shock result for Chelsea at Everton

2005-10-24T08:03:00.000+01:00

In result which sent shockwaves throughout the football world, Chelsea failed to win at Everton.

Well at least now we know Chelsea won't finish the season with a line of P 38 W 38 D 0 L 0 Pts. 114. Though unless I am very happily mistaken they'll still have the title sewn up by Christmas. At the moment neither United nor Arsenal look able to muster the kind form to make a run at Chelsea while at Liverpool a familiar Houllier-esque haze seems to be descending after the euphoria of last season's unlikely CL win. The words Crouch, Benitez and albatross come to mind.

"Back a bit...no, a bit more......"

2005-10-20T04:27:00.000+01:00

Recent pic of me on a mountaintop in the Grampians National Park in Victoria, Australia. Not quite as dangerous as it looks but still one slip away from pain or death or both. The south coast of Australia is lovely if you go at the right time of year and every bit as worth visiting as the warmer, sunnier climes which people more often associate with Oz.

Trial of Saddam begins

2005-10-19T13:10:00.000+01:00

Saddam: " Im still the president of Iraq." Predictable, yet it never fails to entertain. Looks as if Saddam will be employing the Milosevic strategy of refusing to acknowledge the validity of the court, codemning the illegal acts of aggression by Western powers which deposed him and mixing protestations of innocence with occasional "and they deserved it anyway"-type admissions. Meanwhile Human Rights Watch raises concerns about the fairness of the tria l.

Whatever the concerns there's at least one thing this trial has over Slobba's in the credibility stakes: he's facing an Iraqi court of some sort as opposed to one in the Hague proporting to administer justice in the name of all mankind. Any repercussions from the trial can eventually be resolved within Iraqi society at some point in the future, as opposed to the situation in Serbia where the manner in which their genocidal tyrant was sold-out for foreign aid and bundled off to the Hague for his interminable on-going trial lingers like a sore which inflames Serb nationalism and sense of victimhood.

Hello

2005-10-17T06:48:00.000+01:00

Welcome to my blog.

This is the inaugral post of A Certain Point of View (henceforth to be known as ACPOV). It's aim to provide it's own brand of insight, commentry and humour on the affairs and culture of the of the day, "from a certain point of view".

The title of this blog is of course a quote from Return of the Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi, used to justify telling porkies to Luke about his father. Also echoed (or preceded?) by Anakin in Revenge of the Sith, justifying his betrayals with "From my point of view the Jedi are evil!". Its relative, innit? And thats all this or anyother blog really is, things as seen from a someone's point of view.

Please feel free to leave comments, as feedback will be the lifeblood of my enthusiasm for this blog. So if you've read something at all interesting, amusing or funny (or not) please leave a note to say so.

Cheers