quivering with rage as one links to this, but over at the Swots Terry Glavin has found a bunch of extravagantly idiotic Fox News talking heads insulting the Canadian military, which just goes to show any amount of political abuse in the direction of Rupert Murdoch is entirely justified.

"Master Corporal Scott Francis Vernelli, 28, Corporal Tyler Crooks, 24, and an Afghan interpreter were killed and five others were injured as they walked through the dusty terrain. All of the Canadians were members of the same November Company.

The second blast occurred in the Shah Wali Kot district north of the city. Trooper Jack Bouthillier, 20, and Trooper Corey Joseph Hayes, 22, were killed when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device. They were members of the Royal Canadian Dragoons."

odious garbage here.

truly superb Johann Hari article on Jade Goody

'Words of straightforward snobbish abuse – “chav” and “pikey” – were becoming acceptable again.'

A failed asylum-seeker who returned to Darfur under a government repatriation scheme has been murdered by Sudanese security officers after they followed him home from the airport in Khartoum, The Independent has learnt.

Adam Osman Mohammed, 32, was gunned down in his home in front of his wife and four-year-old son just days after arriving in his village in south Darfur.

The case is to be used by asylum campaigners to counter Home Office attempts to lift the ban on the removal and deportation to Sudan of failed asylum-seekers. Next month, government lawyers are expected to go to court to argue that it is safe to return as many as 3,000 people to Khartoum.

But lawyers for the campaigners will tell the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal that people who are returned to Sudan face imprisonment, torture and death. Mr Mohammed, a non-Arab Darfuri, came to Britain in 2005 seeking sanctuary from persecution in Sudan, where he said his life was in danger. The village where he was a farmer had been raided twice by the Janjaweed, the ethnic Arab militia, forcing him and his wife and child to flee their home.

His family in Britain told The Independent that Mr Mohammed witnessed many villagers being killed and became separated from his wife during a second attack on the village a few weeks later. He escaped to Chad before making his way to the UK in 2005.

But last year his appeal for asylum was finally turned down and he was told that he faced deportation. In August last year he was flown to Khartoum under the Home Office's assisted voluntary return programme, in which refugees are paid to go back to their country of origin. He stayed in Khartoum for a few months and then, when he believed it was safe, he travelled to Darfur to be reunited with his family.

Mohamed Elzaki Obubeker, Mr Mohammed's cousin and chairman of the Darfur Union in the UK, said: "The government security forces had followed him to another village, Calgoo, where his wife and child had sought help. They came to the village to find him and then targeted him. They shot him in front of his wife and son."

here in full.

a rare Australian bird

the actresses Alicia Witt (l) and Kelly Reilly (r)

"Moyles, for example, whose endless bloke-down-the-pub patter (and reluctance to play any actual music) normally irritates me no end, came across as genuinely funny and warmhearted, while Cheryl Cole continued her transition in the public's imagination from not-very-talented and quick-tempered reality show winner to beautiful-but-kindly big sister who can remain radiant at 15,000 feet. And who would have thought that 'our very own, the gorgeous Alesha Dixon' (copyright Brucie, 2008) had such a filthy cackle of a laugh?
...
At times, I wondered what had happened to the determination of those alternative comedians who set up Comic Relief, to do things differently: to raise money in a way that didn't objectify the recipients and instead saw them as active participants in achieving social justice."

Martin In The Margins on Comic Relief.

'Elders of Zion to Retire'

After a humiliating year left most of its financial holdings, as well as the entire civilized world, on the verge of collapse, the organization has re-defined its mission in terms of bridge games and making it to restaurants for the Early Bird Special.

here.

Hoare on Tudjman.

Magas on Tudjman.

If you look to the language in the above paragraph, you can see this same confusion continued and even extended, in that "insurgents" are described as more "sophisticated" because they get more vicious as the American presence becomes less noticeable. Wait: Wasn't the "insurgency" supposed to be a protest against occupation?

Hitchens with a point.

Mick Hartley: You Can't Just Hide a Million People

caught some of Party Animals again - been getting re-shown on the BBC, two years after they originally broadcast it - it's an 8 part drama serial focusing on a group of Labour and Tory researchers and prospective politicians, and two senior parliamentarians in Westminster.

(the cast includes Patrick Baladi as a senior Tory, Matt Smith as a Labour office assistant, and Shelley Conn as an ambitious young Tory.)

the end of the last episode had Stopfordian actor Andrew Buchan (he plays Smith's elder brother, he is a lobbyist) and the Geordie actress Andrea Riseborough (she is Smith's character's colleague, a Labour minister's intern; incidentally Riseborough is good in The Devil's Whore, Channel 4's atmospheric English Civil War drama) falling into bed together after doing coke in a pub bog, and there's a wonderful rather sexy moment as he's pumping away when she greedily sucks his thumb, telling him what they're doing is far better than their original idea for a nightcap (which was to go clubbing).

anyway Buchan meets his deceased father's mate, a seemingly principled (presumably Old, or Old-ish) Labour MP - we can reasonably infer this as the bloke is given a northern accent - in a pub and they are drinking pints (in fact Buchan drinks quite a lot of beer, both bottled and pint glasses) and have plates of what look like chips in front of them as they chew the fat.
later the MP tells Buchan his father would be ashamed that his son works as a lobbyist ("he would hang his head").
it's very realistic, i think, about evoking that particular element of that rather closed world of particular Westminster-area pubs where - among other denizens - bright young things drink beer that will surely one day enhance their waistline, and garble out fractured ideas at one another.

there's a section where Buchan's new client - a genuinely chilling Russian oligarch on the lam from Moscow - makes an implied threat to Buchan about something, and the lengths to which Buchan's character goes to watch his back are inventive, desperate, and all the while sound tracked by ale.

Buchan was in the ITV drama The Fixer (where he plays, er, a fixer) and from what i saw of that - less than a full episode, granted - he was convincing in it, and the show was decent.

"shot for going to work"

read this.

glad to see it provides a take-down of some disgracefully piss-poor Guardian journalism.

Osler on Scargill

Oliver Kamm re-iterates a very good, basic point in his final paragraph here

Karadzic not entering a plea is entirely expected.

One can not play games with entire regions and even with the world as a whole. I am abiding.

only when it involves the deliberate policy of massacring several thousand men and boys because you don't like them, eh Radovan.

open letter from Shalom Lappin to the Vice Chancellor of York University

"The BBC's Umaru Fofana at the court in Freetown said that as the verdicts were delivered, Sesay looked very serious and Kallon, clad in a smart light green suit, could have been mistaken for one of the lawyers, while Gbao buried his face in his hands and looked very dejected."

here.

the superb CAFÉ TURCO recently celebrated its first birthday, and yesterday there were these lovely pictures of cuties

Jim D has embedded an extraordinary 6 minute plus Youtube recorded on a phone at 5:30 am yesterday, Shift C, "yellow", from the BMW Mini Plant at Cowley.

his post has the apposite title of Agency workers treated like shit by BMW Oxford.

Workfare: Freud Flies Fast.

ModernityBlog has rounded up a couple of invaluable Guardian/Observer reports from northeastern Sri Lanka here.

the details are horrific.

i have been linking to normblog a lot of late but here's another one. whenever he mentions his mate Ian Holliday writing something, i always pay attention as Holliday talks sense.

it's going on about the Rohingya boat people, and the entire post is worth reading in full, not least because the final line from Geras himself is masterly in terms of controlled anger making a point far more impressively than any amount of swearing rants from pie-eyed pub tub-thumpers such as myself.

the latest from Hitchens (click here to visit) at Slate is about Zimbabwe - he is nothing if not a reactive writer in the best sense - and there's some reaching going on, but what i wanted to do is quote the final paragraph in full, as he makes a connection that i think one rarely sees from big name writers and journalists in the every day press.

I once spent some time with Sebastiao Salgado, the UNICEF special envoy for the eradication of polio. By 2001, when we visited Calcutta and other parts of Bengal, this horrible and preventable illness was well on its way to joining smallpox as a thing of the past. But if only a few pockets resist inoculation, the malady, which is almost insanely infectious, comes roaring back across wide swaths of neighboring territory. And in certain militant Muslim areas, where it is believed that the inoculation is a plot to make people sterile, the doctors and nurses of the campaign have been shot as imperialist intruders. As a result, polio is spreading again. Once more, it seems to me that this could qualify the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan as having, to that extent, become an international responsibility rather than just the concern of Pakistan alone. The fact that the Taliban and al-Qaida spread from the same source may not be entirely coincidental, which is why I offer the thought that human rights and epidemiology may be natural partners [my emphasis] —and that Zimbabwe could make an excellent laboratory in which to test the proposition that the two kinds of health are related.

Hitchens is obviously correct and should be thanked for pointing out the fundamental link between epidemiology and the study of rights.

The analysis of famine as a social experience rather than a technical malfunction is the foundation of the case for politicizing famine.
- Alex de Waal, in the 2004 preface to that revised Famine that kills of his.

also in the preface, he references Nutrition matters: People, food and famine (Helen Young and Susanne Jaspars, 1995).

again, this is another paragraph worth quoting in full.

Famine that kills became perhaps best known for its strong claims about the epidemiology of excess mortality in famine. The finding that infectious diseases were the principal cause of famine mortality was nothing new, and in retrospect it is astonishing that such an elementary fact of disaster epidemiology should have caused such a stir. There is no doubt that the position that I argued is too strong. The striking and unexpected finding that socio-economic indicators had almost no correlation with mortality levels led me to search for an alternative explanation, which I duly found in the health crisis model. This residual hypothesis was then forwarded, perhaps not cautiously enough. There are so many intermediate variables between income and food access and the nutritional status of children that the inference that nutritional factors played almost no role cannot be sustained by the data. As Helen Young and Susanne Jaspars subsequently pointed out, nutrition matters (1995). For good measure, they derived their data from Darfur. I stand corrected. But my chief point, that food consumption failures cannot account for famine mortality in the absence of analysis of disease, is correct. And the practical recommendation that measles immunization, malaria control and clean water supplies are at least as important as emergency food relief, still stands.

the Tigers have now denied responsibility for the attack attributed to them on Monday, through TamilNet.

so after the alleged suicide bomb blast on Monday near Vishwamadu that was initially reported to have killed 28 people (though DefenceWire quoted an updated toll of 32 people by Monday night), Reuters is today reporting that Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers on Wednesday denied gunning down civilians streaming out of the country's war zone, and the Red Cross said 16 patients had been killed in shelling.
(also, that Reuters article says 29 people were killed in the Monday attack.)

note, then, that the LTTE - through TamilNet - deny the death by shooting of 19 civilians.
the TamilNet response to Monday's alleged bomb blast was however, perhaps, not entirely believable.

as - it looks likely - the LTTE is staring a conventional military defeat in the face (the BBC is including that map in all its reports: there's a Red Cross spokesperson clip embedded there - nice to hear a union mentioned!), the grim assessment being made all over is that insurgency tactics (in the contemporary sense of that ugly word) are sure to increase.

from the view of the Tigers, who must have suffered many casualties in recent months, their storied martyrdom culture must be looking most attractive for a brush-off from the perspective of the leadership.

added to this a rigid, abusive govt. currently rejecting ceasefire calls ('must get the job done'), the immediate outlook seems as bad as it's been for a long time, in terms of the impact of this fighting on the people, the cruelty of the miserable, massive displacements, the shutting down of freedoms and active persecution from the govt. and the prospects for an upturn in those wicked martyr operations.

i was watching Masterchef earlier (one of my favourite telly) and there was a Metropolitan Police London Transport cop in one of the heats and he was a nervous guy when cooking, and he admitted he was getting a bit stressed.
the look on his face when he didn't make the cut, it really was heart-breaking, i felt so sorry for him.

(i mean, you always feel sorry for the people that don't make the cut i am sure, but this chap just looked so pained, i felt so sorry for him.)

some great food in tonight's show, as ever.

Q: Why is there so much ignorance and hatred in the world?

A: Because of the Jews.

nicked from swears from the Dissensus jokes thread

this all reminds me of an excellent post from Norm Geras a few years ago which he entitled Shoah business, taking aim at the stupid, monumentally wrong and pernicious idea that some fools like to peddle about the oppressive weight of that tedious 'Holocaust industry'.

you should really read it all by clicking here, but the concluding paragraph is entirely correct.

Yes, a people who lost a third of their number, and two-thirds of their number within Europe, have a certain understandable (remember that word?) preoccupation with the experience, and many minds, not all of them Jewish, have found in the experience matter meriting close study as well as other types of reflection. Much has been produced, much learned, a certain amount obfuscated; good work has stood alongside bad and indifferent work. That's all. 'Holocaust industry' is base mockery of a vast human tragedy and the response to it. It's worthy of Norman Finkelstein, and unworthy of Michael Burleigh.

the following really grabbed me from the start of that piece.

Among these is a Lefebvrist "bishop" named Richard Williamson, who doubts his own version of the facts of the Nazi Holocaust and who furthermore suspects the Bush administration of having orchestrated the events of September 11, 2001, in order to afford itself a pretext for war.

Richard Williamson, twice over.

politically speaking, i wish you extreme ill.

As with Cardinal Bernard Law, the enabler of child-molestation, who is now sheltered by Rome and who was able to vote in the election of Ratzinger as pope, so with those who slander the Jews with innuendo and worse, and who spread the vile libels that blame the democratic United States for the theocratic terrorist attacks upon it. One might think a responsible church would be indignantly arraigning and expelling such people rather than piously seeking reconciliation with them. Apparently, one would be wrong.

Hitchens.

in short, the Pope doesn't seem to have too much of an issue with homophobes and anti-semites.

Erwin James on a John Martyn prison gig.

(via the fabulous Shuggy.)

Dissent re. John Updike, here.

good words about the changing role of the public writer, criticism, and a nice finish about Rabbit, Everyman.

Of the Farm: like the sound of this "peerless novella"

the stuff about comfortable married sex reminded me of Ian McEwan who does a very fine job of evoking this, briefly, in Saturday.

Honesty is the best policy.

The Sri Lankan government has told civilians to leave an area where it is fighting Tamil Tiger rebels, saying it cannot guarantee their safety.

The shells, which fell into the pediatrics and women's wards other than a kitchen and a chapel, killed nine patients and wounded 20, Red Cross spokeswoman Sarasi Wijeratne said.

so, read up again in Waterland when Graham Swift is going on about eels and then find out something about the three species of sand eel to be found in Swedish territory and eels yeah.

eels yes eels.

that is one idea, anyway.

granted not a particularly good one.

also: this is deeply, deeply wrong.

(via.)

Amstell.

a gem.

i really liked Graeme quoting Willa Cather here.

i'm going to put the excerpt in full up.

This was an important market day, and Auclair went down to the hill early. The black frosts might set in at any time now, and today he intended to lay in his winter supply of carrots, pumpkins, potatoes, turnips, beet-root, leeks, garlic, even salads. On many of the wagons there were boxes full of earth, with rooted lettuce plants growing in them. These the townspeople put away in their cellars, and by tending them carefully and covering them at night they kept green salad growing until Christmas or after. Auclair's neighbor, Pigeon the baker, had a very warm cellar, and he grew little carrots and spinach down there long after winter had set in. The great vaulted cellars of the Jesuits and the Récollet friars looked like kitchen gardens when the world above was frozen stark. Careless people got through the winter on smoked eels and frozen fish, but if one were willing to take enough trouble, one could live very well, even in Quebec.

incidentally, the temperature in Sept-Îles at time of posting (11:15 pm British) is about minus 20.8 degrees celsius

+

loving Karnage on 1Xtra right about now, and the rest of them, there's a hell of a lot going on there

"We plan to open one restaurant in London before the end of 2009, find a group of farmers and ranchers who can supply us with the highest quality food and begin to find a group of top-performing managers who can help us establish a very special Chipotle brand in Europe," said Steve Ells, Chipotle founder and CEO, in a statement.

here.

two of the commentators from that Shiraz Socialist piece linked to here on Sunday past with good looking blogs are Natalia Antonova and The SmackDog Chronicles (Ver. 2.6)

as the SLA drive on (and on) the BBC's Alastair Lawson discusses a few options for Prabhakaran the man*

"I have been in the business of journalism a good long time. Indeed, 2009 will be The Sunday Leader's 15th year. Many things have changed in Sri Lanka during that time, and it does not need me to tell you that the greater part of that change has been for the worse."

Sunday Leader leader, by Lasantha Wickramatunga.

+

On 12 January, four Ethiopian soldiers died in a roadside explosion just outside the Somali capital along Mogadishu and Afgoi road, as they were heading back to Ethiopia.

“The explosion was so big that it lifted a big Ethiopian military truck off the ground and jolted the ground around the area where the explosion occurred and I can prove the death of 4 of the Ethiopian soldiers, and the injury of scores of others of which I cannot actually guess the exact figure” said an eyewitness.

writes the AFCEA's Nighwatch

---

* incidentally

here is a recap.

"At trial, witnesses accused him and his soldiers of horrific torture in the West African country. Among the techniques: electric shock, molten plastic, lit cigarettes, hot irons, bayonets and biting ants shoveled onto people's bodies. Prisoners were kept in water-filled pits covered by heavy iron gates and barbed wire."
writes the Herald's Jay Weaver

"Taylor is a U.S. citizen, (he was born while his father lived in the United States) and tortured hundreds of Liberians during as commander of the so-called "Demon Forces," a special security unit meant to protect his father, the President, from 1999 to 2003. The precedent is now set for more cases to follow.

Chuckie Taylor's trial is also important for Liberia. This is the first and only conviction in a war crimes trial for the war in Liberia; no tribunal has been setup in that country."
writes FP blog's Elizabeth Dickinson

Quentin Skinner in context

bloke from the Telegraph doesn't appear to be overly keen on pierogi, for some reason: his loss

the Telegraph is reporting that Chipotle is opening in the UK this year.

A confession: if there is one cuisine likely to bring me out on hunger strike, it is Mexican. The only rival on my yuck list? Tex-Mex. I'd rather eat Polish, or even 1970s British. But some like it hot, clearly: in the capital, a new Mexican, Chilango, has food lovers queuing around the block in Fleet Street, while the market feel of Wahaca near The Strand is fun and affordable. Chipotle, an American chain, is also due in Britain this year.

this is good news in terms of choice for Mexican street food/Tex-Mex lovers based in the UK.
(people who live in Mexico and the USA, and i know up in to parts of Canada, are clearly very lucky in this regard, and must bear in mind that context is all.)

aside from the new Fleet Street opening mentioned above, and Thomasina Miers opening her second branch of Wahaca (Thomasina is fairly committed, it must be said), there are a few Mexican places in London apparently of note.
(Time Out lists nine places here, of which the happily named Taqueria, Mestizo and the Thomasina gaffs have long intrigued me the most; i have never ate in any of them. it must be said that at least one of the places mentioned, Los Guaduales, is explicitly acknowledged as a Colombian eatery..)

as said the other day, in the UK* the best Mexican grub (and bear in mind, context is all) for my money is Cambridge's Mannamexico, followed by Belfast's Boojum.
the now-expanding Mancunian mini-chain Barburrito (for those who know the Manchester dining scene, i must admit what this person has to say here about El Macho made me laugh) has recently opened a third venue (their first outside Manchester), in central Liverpool, and they can be considered an honourable third.
i mention Barburrito as the owners were inspired by lunching at Mexican fast-food gaffs in the USA whilst travelling, and will have encountered many a Chipotle in Chicago when they researched (there used to be a Jonathan Schofield - Manchester-area local travel guide-type, historian and food writer - review of the first opening that IIRC made this specific claim about Chicago on the Manchester Evening News website, but as he is no longer with the MEN - AFAIK - i cannot find it).
i only mention Chicago because i love the place.
(for more on Schofield, see here.)

anyway, as someone once said to me, there are perhaps similarities between, say, the Chipotle experience, and the Barburrito experience.

as it's been a few years now since McDonald's ceased their relationship with Chipotle (see here), i think we can look forward to Chipotle coming across the pond without too many snide remarks accompanying them. (i don't mean to sound straw-mannish here, but as with Pret a Manger and McDonald's, i have myself encountered fairly frequent mention of this in person, and in my experience the fact of their relationship at the time was sometimes used as a stick with which to denigrate Chipotle in general, although this was far from the case all the time.)

(with respect to the great Bandini.)

---

*
bearing in mind my sole experience of Mexican food in London was a meal around Old Street once, and the only other experiences of Mexican stuff i've seen much of in Britain are a gaff in Edinburgh, that cheerful little burrito van that used to be on Birmingham's Broad Street, and, er, that's about it..

Happy Birthday Motown!

news from the four largest English cities

"Prayers have been said at a service to remember a sub-postmaster's son who was shot dead by armed robbers on Friday."

'Detectives have identified a man they are hunting over a double stabbing on Merseyside that left a man dead and his son seriously injured.'

A teenager is fighting for his life after being stabbed in south-west London.

A 29-year-old man is recovering in hospital after being shot in the stomach in south Manchester.

Now, maybe Cath and I read different newspapers but I certainly haven’t noticed supporters of Jacqui Smith’s recent proposals, or conservative feminists in general (by which I mean moralists who see puritan legislation as the solution to this issue) being howled down by IUSW or ECP supporters. It just is not true.

here.

"This paper analyses the backgrounds and consequences of the Hama massacre, an uprising of mainly Muslim rebels in Syria in 1982, which was brutally crashed down by Syrian government forces."

i've recently been introduced to the blog I kid you not (although author Edmund Standing has stopped posting, having moved on to pastures new).

he is excellent on the BNP.

BNP tries to reach kids, but reaches Nazis instead.

The History National Curriculum: Myth and Reality.

The 'Nazi' Question.

BNP: Police run by 'left-wing mafia'.

their greatest film alongside Barton Fink imo, FWIW

number 3 film

here is a scene from the single greatest film of 2008

It is obligatory to disregard laws conflicting with the immediate claims of life

what Abu Mazen said

one picture i just remembered i missed off my list is Traitor: this would definitely be floating around the upper reaches of the second bunch.

if, as at least one review i have seen does, you conflate the entire film itself with some of the callous politics displayed in the film, you may be disappointed.

on the other hand, if you're looking for a smart, pretty sharp counterterrorism movie and are down for some lean performances, you should stroll up.

Kate and Gerry McCann have condemned a Conservative activist who boasted about dressing up as Madeleine McCann at a party, calling his actions "offensive".
Matthew Lewis has now apologised "unreservedly" to the McCanns. He was expelled from the party after telling friends of his New Year party exploits.

what do they teach them at these schools?

i mentioned earlier ten favourite first-run flicks in the '08: a list with a fair few movies tickling its depths.
so, here's a sprinkling of some of the rest (as earlier, some of the following films are older than 2008, but generally by a year or two at most, and i saw them last year at the pictures in one of about four countries in a first-run capacity, so i think it's fair enough to be a bit loose with criteria).
this post promises* to descend, invariably, into a list of absolutely all first-runs i saw last year.

Juno.
how did they get this so right? Michael Cera, you're a star.
and you, too, young lady.
Juno's dad was once a white supremacist gang leader in homoerotic prison show 'Oz'. marvelous. one of the finest (and just so) film soundtracks since Into the Wild (which was similarly fab in both songs, and as moving picture).

Caramel.
there were a few strands running through this film, with perhaps the most affecting being a middle-aged woman whose courting attempts were continually undermined by her frail, older sister. one of the women at the salon hadn't yet come out and that was handled quite nicely. (the epilation of the title was shown, wonderfully, including the removal of a male cop's upper lip hair.)

Still Life.
such a profoundly different film to much of the multiplex in terms of the dignified pace at which things revealed themselves (that is to say, with no great rush at all). the overall effect was not snail, more glacier. in terms of immersing cinema possibly the experience of the year. it left you deeply shook up, and not only due to the background subject matter (a giant dam in China = flooded villages, and that is overlooking much of it).

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
anticipating criticisms along the line of this was an overlong, somewhat empty exercise to some, i would note Affleck's stumbling, mumbling performance built up a sort of head of steam, a satisfying exercise in accretion. and the film looked superb, with cinematography to rival the opening pans of No Country (and, overall, beat it).
the wind rustling through prairie grass.
dies.

XXY.
intimate and deeply moving. and very sympathetic.

The Silence of Lorna.
a (slight?) drop in quality for the brothers, apparently, is the consensus (this their only one i've seen), and maybe the ending is a bit too open-ended for some, but i thought it magnificent.
they really live their locations, don't they?

The Orphanage.
like being scared. and impressed. and, then, happy.
(also, Belén Rueda is gorgeous.)

The Visitor.
meeting of cultures-different sides of the track arc, drums, the injustice of how poor people move around the world with far less ease than capital does, drums, the lovely Richard Jenkins (who was perfect in Burn After Reading), drums.
it could have been a different - and perhaps more powerful, certainly more worthy, definitely less subtle - movie if the end focus of the film hadn't rested on the successful New England professor, but his anger and concern for his immigrant friend Tarek's plight is epitomised with that subway drumming coda (plus audiences don't need spoon-feeding), and it's hard to think of a (relatively) big American movie in recent years with as finely appropriate an ending as this one. About Schmidt maybe?
(also, Hiam Abbass is gorgeous.)

The Mist.
this is already a good movie anyway, and all good movies must end.

Changeling.
Owen, thoroughly on the money. (excellent on accents.)

The Dark Knight.
even leaving aside the politics, and the fact this is a fine film with not just the incredible Ledger, but Eckhart on song too, (and Gyllenhaal and Freeman and Oldman convincing), you get car chases taking place under the Chicago El, William Fichtner as a handy banker, Batman swooping among 2IFC and the other modern redwoods of Hong Kong, and Michael Caine gets to utter the most bad ass line in the film (although aficionados would have been more pleased with the final conversation between Batman and the Joker, granted).

Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
ravishing.
i was ravished.
(also, Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz and Rebecca Hall are all oh fuck this all younger people that Woody ever pervs at are gorgeous.)

The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Shia LaBeouf + Harrison Ford + well-executed job x Karen Allen - Ray Winstone ÷ John Hurt = Cate Blanchett (Cate has no need of brackets).

My Brother is an Only Child.
unfortunately i missed The Baader-Meinhof Complex (and Garage, while we're at it), but this also had reds holding guns. a bit of a looker concerning the two brothers with differing political outlooks coming of age in 70's Italy, yet by turns funny, laugh aloud funny, and then seriously beautiful (an in-film concert, for one), with some breath-catching scenes, and quite a finish, too.

The Yacoubian Building.
huge (practically epic) Cairene soap - i have not read the novel from which it was taken - with a bit of everything thrown in, including a lot of humanity (and humanity), plus a useful reminder that Hosni Mubarak tortures, persecutes, extinguishes, harasses, cracks down and detains on a whim.

Burn After Reading.
more typical Coens (including casting) after the singular No Country, and classic Coen extravagance.
i am still shaking from what happened to Brad Pitt.
Clooney is lovely, isn't he?

Quantum of Solace.
i adore Daniel Craig in general, and this darker direction compared to some of the classic years of the franchise appeals (there's only so much Roger Moore you can take, although i do love Moonraker and Live and Let Die as much as the next person), whilst acknowledging the entire series has always had a wry smile up its sleeve: at least up until now.
Craig is only behind Connery already for me after two films, and he has feelings!
(that said, if we're talking sparse spy brutality, Matt Damon is the man, and i must admit my appreciation of the Damon Bourne may be tipping me further toward this Bond than he strictly deserves.)

Cloverfield.
how awesome are the parts in the subway?
call it 'smart gore'.
smart gore sounds like it could be the title of a giallo guide for Anglophones, but, hey.

The Golden Compass.
i read the trilogy and went with a friend - at his insistence - who hasn't read any of the trilogy.
he pretty much hated it, which was certainly stronger than my reaction (it didn't really warrant a strong reaction TBH).

the vaguely Fens-like settings at some point and a nice ensemble cast (not a surprise when you consider the esteem in which Philip Pullman's work is rightly held) were my highlights, and i'm glad i went, because the more time in East Anglia the better AFAIC.
(also, Dakota Blue Richards was brilliant.)

The Day the Earth Stood Still.
i was surprised by how heartfelt a tribute this was to the original (of course it has been getting a critical kicking), the message still sweet and the pic, overall, quite touching.

on an IMAX screen it packed a real punch and i am left defending Keanu's grasp of stillness in the same way that Scarlett Johansson above was either;
(a) a harder-fought pleasure/acquired taste compared to the ease with which we all enjoyed the effortless sight of Bardem and Cruz arguing in the street
(b) the weak link
(c) both of the above

posdata
the reason why i have not put any bracketed comments about my, er, views on Nadine Labaki after my Caramel paragraph are known to people who know me..

* that was the wrong word, wasn't it?

trying to undo something murky in Louisiana - and it's not the gumbo.

Jim Gabour on three regular guys.

"Two men have been arrested on suspicion of murder after [a] man was stabbed to death at a property in Hulme."

(Copyright ©2006 Northern and Shell Media Publications)

it would take the vigour of, say, a Robin Carmody or a septicisle to keep up with the many distortions that characterise the Daily Express' long-running coverage of immigrants, asylum seekers* and economic migrants taking advantage of soft touch Britain, but even lazy old me has to pause at the bobby dazzler that is their cover today.

Nick Fagge writes

THOUSANDS of Eastern European migrants who lose their jobs plan to ride out the recession on British 
benefits – costing taxpayers around £200million a year.

Up to 200,000 migrant workers are set to lose their jobs this year as firms lay off staff in the construction, manufacturing and retail industries. But while some young single workers are expected to return home, many others are likely to stay in the UK and ask their relatives to join them.
They are keen to take advantage of Government handouts which are four times higher than in other EU states.

The average family with children can claim around £715 a week in benefits in Britain, compared with just £178 in countries such as Poland.

(though even Fagge has to note in closing that 'Last night the Home Office claimed that the number of Eastern European migrants coming to work in Britain had fallen to “its lowest level” since 2004. And the Department of Work and Pension claimed that only a small number of East Europeans had applied for jobseekers allowance and income support'.)

i fail to see what is so devastating about this.
the specific migrant residents the Express is discussing are those human beings from our fellow European countries (EU member states) who have come to the UK in the last several years, many seeking jobs.
the Polish plumber is a British taxpayer whilst working here.

immigration enriches the UK in many ways, and immigrants certainly contribute in the fiscal sense.

you may as well say UK-born-and-bred people who have the misfortune to fall out of work are costing their fellow Brits and northern Irish money when they seek unemployment assistance.
(yes, you can point out that unemployed British nationals who have lived all their life in Britain will be taking up a job in Britain the next time they enter the workforce, whereas some unemployed residents of other nationality are likely to return home at some point, but these migrants have earned - by the standards of the Express if it is honest with itself, lauding ordinary hard-working Britons as it does - the right to assistance.)

as a side-note, one factor for the disparities in welfare between the UK and Poland is that, whilst Poland in 2007 was estimated to have a PPP of US $16,200, the estimate figure for the UK that year was US $35,000
(and although i know absolutely nothing about the Polish welfare system perhaps it is fairly safe to assume there are, er, reasons in Poland's history in recent decades for that low-sounding figure)

* inevitably bogus

Munir (not his real name), an administrator in the Swat region of north-west Pakistan, describes the challenges of daily life in his valley as the Taleban and the army vie for influence. In recent weeks, he says, the Taleban have gained the upper hand and are making their presence felt in brutal fashion.

(via.)

Ethan Zuckerman on Mapping: Infrastructure and flow


A roadside bomb killed a Ugandan soldier in Somalia's capital on Tuesday and masked gunmen murdered a man working for the United Nation's World Food Programme in the southwest of the Horn of Africa nation.


writes Abdi Sheikh

'A prisoner found hanged in a cell was a "fit young man" months away from being eligible for parole when he apparently killed himself, an inquest heard.
Michael Bailey, 24, from Ladywood, Birmingham, was found hanged at HMP Rye Hill, Warwickshire, in March 2005.'

UN reaches villages in north-eastern DR Congo attacked by Ugandan rebels.

(copyright Getty Images, photograph is hyperlinked, via.)

'Taking sides' by Eve Garrard

some background:

Mano Ganesan, an opposition lawmaker, called on both sides "to conduct their war in a way that the civilians are not affected or punished" and asked that a group of observers from all political parties be allowed in the war zone...While the military has avoided large-scale civilian casualties in its latest offensive, reports of civilian deaths have grown in recent days.

(here.)

“They are in the process of advancing further North to take full control of the Elephant Pass area soon,” a senior military official told the Daily News.

“With the capture of Elephant Pass South the troops are now in control of the entire Jaffna lagoon.

They are in full control of the lagoon front from Pooneryn to Paranthan and Paranthan to Elephant Pass on the A-9 road,” the Brigadier added.

(here.)

an Economist leader from around November 27th was right on the button.
it's worth reading in full but the pertinent bit for this post was

The awfulness of the Tigers has enabled the government to present the war as a fight against the scourge of terrorism that must first be eliminated before a political solution can be contemplated. In this, it has in effect ditched all three parts of a long-held consensus about the conflict: that there can be no purely military solution; that a political solution must cover both the north and the east; and that it must go beyond the limits of Sri Lanka’s existing “unitary” constitution.


Yet all three elements remain true.

the rest here.

'A 60-year-old woman has been found stabbed to death in her home in south-east London.
Police have launched a murder inquiry after discovering her body in Kenbury Gardens, Camberwell, at about 1830 GMT on Sunday.'

'Six teenagers, including a girl, have denied murdering a 16-year-old boy who was beaten with a baseball bat and repeatedly stabbed in south London.
Shakilus Townsend was attacked in Thornton Heath, in July and died in hospital the next day.'

SLA approach Elephant Pass

p.s.
B92 writes "This week's stabbing of a Serb boy, and the arrest of the Gnjilane Group have added turbulence to Kosovo's poor security situation, an expert warns."
(here.)

and what of that Gnjilane group?

(monsters in the Balkans.)

"We're looking here at the arrest of a significant number of individuals, members of the so-called Gnjilane Group of the Kosovo Liberation Army suspected of kidnapping 159 Serb civilians and killing at least 51 between June-October 1999."
...
Many of the victims were killed in a boarding school in the town. They were first taken there, stripped naked, tied up, severely beaten and stabbed with knives. Parts of their bodies were cut off before they were viciously murdered.

Nick Cohen reprises a theme of his, under 'A man condemned by psychobabble', concerning the killer and predator Robert Napper, and Colin Stagg, the guy wrongly hounded for the murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common in 1992.

i started to get into William Easterly at the end of the summer (someone very close to me was boning up on him), and then saw Alex de Waal quote him in the updated (2005) edition of Famine that Kills.

incidentally, if you've not read de Waal's preface to his update (even if you've read the book itself previously), it's worth getting hold of.
sources include Leo Kuper on genocide, David Maybury-Lewis on the anthropology of genocide, stuff on Sudanese land law and epidemiology, and the landmark 1995 study from African Rights on the Nuba people of central Sudan (which he actually co-authored with Yoanes Ajawin).

the second part of the preface is about the origins of the Darfur crisis, 2003-4 (basically a shortened version of his history with Flint) but it's the first section concerning "Famine theory and Humanitarian Practice" that's of interest here.

de Waal discusses how, between 1991 and 2000, Ethiopia saw an average growth in GDP annually of 2.9%, a stat that obscures significant ups and downs. (during the same period, one year saw a contraction of 3.64%, whilst in other years the economy grew by up to 9.4%.)
citing Easterly, he continues, observing Macro-economic figures show that more people are plunged into poverty by an economic contraction than are lifted out of it by a comparable expansion.

he then considers an IMF paper published as Ethiopia was being ear-marked for debt relief under the HIPC programme.

(going to quote a considerable chunk now, and the initial emphases left in are his, as the text will make clear, whilst the final part of de Waal's final sentence contains my emphasis.)

suggests that the country should be able to double its growth rate to an average of 6% per annum, thereby enabling it to halve its number of poor people by 2015 (IMF 2004). But the IMF smuggles a caveat into this rosy outlook: 'While this is an ambitious objective, in the view of the staffs it is achievable if the government pursues an ambitious reform agenda and sound macroeconomic policies that would promote higher private savings and investment, and provided there is adequate rainfall and a favorable external environment' (p.4, emphasis added). What a dumbfounding assumption is contained in that final clause! An average of 6% growth in a volatile economy may lead to little or no decrease in the poverty headcount whatsoever.

Famine that Kills: Darfur, Sudan (revised edn.) Alex de Waal
The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics William Easterly
'The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia: Joint Staff Assessment of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Annual Progress Report' IMF Country Report No. 04/59 (here.)

my mate on his ten fave TV shows

i saw about 26 first-runs (or new enough, in the sense that maybe they dated from 2006 or 2007 when not actually of this year - often the case for Anglophones seeing non-English language films) at cinemas this year, and the following is a list of my ten best.

(i will probably say something in the new year about near misses to this list, and about repertory in 2008.)

10. Lars and the real girl
9. Persepolis
8. Gone, baby, gone
7. Trouble the water
6. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
5. In Bruges
4. Wall-E
3. No country for old men
2. There will be blood
1. 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days

happy new year!

[ETA: lists, lists, lists. dear me. 9. and 7. probably under-counted anyway lbr]

list link

i was at the pad of my oldest friend recently and saw a copy of the Uncut end of year booklet: a handsome little insert in the magazine.
i've not touched Uncut for years, although - for Kulkarni on Stevie Wonder some time ago, which i mentioned here once, and SR on the 'oceans of sound' in reggae, to name two - i remain fond of it.
the cinema and genre categories were particularly enjoyable.

so, without further ado, there follows.

The Ex, Mississippi Records, snd and beautiful on Bangles: it's Jon, here, with 25 exquisite capsules.
(writes, on Lionel Marchetti: "Because he was the only person I would reach for when I needed to scratch that musique concrete itch. There’s an itch associated with that, right?")

Jane's typically epic singles run-down has gone from 40 to 2 now, and i'll plug in specifically here, with 30 to 21.

it could have been anywhere, but, really
Couldn’t "Urban Paisley" be a whole new musical style (not in evidence here)? Couldn’t "Paisley Urban" be a good name for a character on Gossip Girl?

Fact are rolling out across everywhere: 100 best tracks, 20 best mixes, etc.
i'm going to roll on to the re-issues list, because it's such archaeology.

the best gig i saw this year was the Sparrow Quartet in Vancouver: a formidable group.

at the theatre, a bracing reading of After the Fall by Our American Theater Co. in Seattle (an Arthur Miller i had not even heard of prior, must admit).

BRISTOL PIRATE RADIO RECORDINGS

football performance attended had to be Barcelona's demolition of Valencia earlier this month. (though being among La Barra Brava toward the end of a DC United game was fun.)

pizza a toss up between a buffalo mozzarella in Milan or a slice of cheese from some Manhattan hole in the wall.

street food (i would blog about all sorts of meals but i deleted my grub blog) a toss up between a Montreal poppyseed (preferred to New York), or one of two cheesesteaks from one of two titchy Philadelphia walk-ups (one with onions).

my own sandwich: salami and leaves on rolls (meat from the Cheshire Smokehouse near Wilmslow).

food, probably carrot.

bowl food a goulash and white beer in Brooklyn.

best chowder in Galway, actually.

best Mexican outlets visited in Britain and Ireland: Mannamexico, Cambridge and Boojum, Belfast.
(though i did always like Thomasina when she was on 'Masterchef'.)

beer would be Daleside Porter from the Harrogate micro, a very good version, recently sampled on two pints at the Guy Fawkes Tavern (an old contender for urban pub of the year: gas lamps, rickety wood, tallow splats on uneven tables, dark solid stone) in York.
i was inducted into the charms of the Cardinal - hail Sam Smith's bargains in London - in Victoria, and have to note.
loveliest English cities Norwich and Cambridge.

the best pint of Guinness i had was probably in Sligo or Derry (i drank a lot of Guinness this spring in Ireland), and the most impressive American craft brewing situation was certainly in Portland.
Antwerp remains the best overall beer city visited this year.

going back to the incredible Dissensus, getting turned on to new writers (American election night was the date, and i now have theory in my head; Roberto Bolaño - thanks to Philip Mind; and history - thanks to Ollie, to mention some) and acquiring a taste for grappa (i'd had it before, but rarely) are other personal faves.

film experience probably popping my Ikiru cherry on the big screen. amazing.
(more movies later.)

an ambition next year will be to have Luka make me a coffee. the best coffee i was given this year was from a Stuttgart-bred man in Seattle who discussed dour Austrian tactics.

OH AND SPAIN WON THE EUROPEAN FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP AND NADAL AND CHOF CHOF CHOF

I speak Thai. I know what they're saying

I remember a story. Two fools are waiting for their kidney transplants but only one kidney is available.
The two guys thus play a game.
They each put a playing card into the other's pocket.
Whoever guesses the card in his own pocket wins.

You know I can see your card.

I think so too.

(Infernal Affairs, Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, 2002.)

Gaza health official Moawiya Hassanain confirmed the report, saying 120 Palestinians have been killed in the airstrikes...Plumes of black smoke rose over Gaza City, sirens wailed through the streets and women frantically looked for their children.

(+ A rocket apparently fired by Palestinians on Friday killed the two Palestinians aged five and 13, Palestinian medics said.)

MSF 'list'

"Craig Brown was shot in Loftus Road, Shepherd's Bush, on Wednesday afternoon after returning from a shopping trip."

a perfect ten
(as some Hullite band once sang)

for those that missed it, some highlights from Channel 4's edgy, courageous and vital "spiritual...seasonal goodwill"-filled Alternative Christmas Message:

(1). All the nations, including those of Europe, are being harmed.

(2). It should be of no pride to the American society to say that they defend homosexuals and support it.

(3). State repression of Iran’s ethnic minorities, which have been demanding greater recognition of their cultural and political rights, has intensified in recent years.

(4). Particularly troubling are President Ahmadinejad’s choices for the powerful positions of
Minister of Interior, Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi, and Minister of Information,
Gholamhussein Mohseni Ezhei.

(5). Discrimination against women remained entrenched in law and practice.

(6). Kurdpour's brother, who lives in Sweden, said the family has been in touch with him in prison, and that when they last saw him a few days ago he had lost weight and said he had been mistreated.

(7). I've been called an orientalist and a neo-con.

(8). Here are some of the current serious human rights abuses in Iran to bear in mind
during President Ahmadinejad's visit to the UN.

(9). There have been some reactions on the fact that the Iranian authorities have chosen to execute so many people on the Christmas eve.

(10). Nineteen-year-old Mehdi Kazemi was more fortunate.

RIP Harold Pinter

this seems fair (including the responses of the author to commenter commonsguy).
(via.)

News from Guinea and Friends of Guinea

If I saw Mr Haughey buried at midnight at a crossroads, with a stake driven through his heart - politically speaking - I should continue to wear a clove of garlic round my neck, just in case.

It is thought the victim, who has not been named, may also have been stabbed before his body was found in Coldharbour Lane, Camberwell.

we knew this was coming

it was always going to be obsessive, unhealthy love-at-first-encounter for me and the DAF debut (and so it proved with its re-issue nearly nine years ago now), and look at this!
the fine folk at Discogs have this pretty image cap, including the Biba Kopf words on the back.

happy as a gambolling lamb.

all here

i have had a massive crush on Sandra Jordan for a very long time

Behind the men firing with revolvers was another PAD supporter holding up a picture of the country’s monarch.

dog, snaps

Germaine Greer embarrasses herself

i like what the wonderful hakmao has to say here about Toby Young, 'lecturing the rest of us on non-existent pseudo-scientific categories'.

and you know what?

Toby Young is not someone i come across often, but i have this nagging doubt at the back of my mind he was mentioned somewhere else online once, in a very clear-eyed, magisterial, politically literate and morally wealthy article by some Guardian journalist.

trouble is, i can't remember the piece in question.

oh yes.

"Hungry for controversy, a sizeable portion of London's intelligentsia lined up to support Living Marxism. They rallied round those who had named me and others as liars in the name of free speech - so why not name them too, the great, the good and the up-and-coming? Fay Weldon, Doris Lessing, Harold Evans, Toby Young, and even a handful of contributors to this newspaper. A diverse coterie, eager to sip Living Marxism's apparently excellent claret at the ICA, to eat their canapés and run alongside the rotten bandwagon of revisionism."

here.

somedisco blog election results round-up special

USA: good, especially as libertarians - appallingly - wanting no income tax in Mass got told to do one, although less good in California on gay marriage of course

Canadian: bad, although the NDP got their first in Quebec

New Zealand: bad

Glenrothes: good

Palua: Toribiong innit

'and, in a curve-ball of a move, the Guardian decided to publish another shit article about Israel'

more garbage from Simon Jenkins

i'm not quite sure what it is with Jenkins and this tough-minded pose of his, throwing out his little hard jewels of insight.

he reads a bit like the National Review's David Freddoso in Grant Park last night (though that is unfair on Freddoso)

if Obsolete isn't on your blog roll i feel i must link to their take on something disgraceful Ed Balls has come out with: who, after all, needs a living wage in London?

Labour isn't working, indeed

ticket dot ntdtv dot com / fsc / index_eng dot html

Sixty corpses of would-be refugees from Somalia and Ethiopia were found on a beach in Yemen over the weekend after smugglers forced many of them overboard, an international aid agency said on Monday.

David T: 'This Government Cannot Be Trusted On Islamism'

i'm particularly glad he calls out Peter Bergen. i remember reading the article in question in the print version with mounting unease as Bergen heaped undeserved cream and candy on Lambert

+

Shannyn Sossamon

BLAM! BLAM BLAM!

BLAM BLAM BLAM!

Inhofe, R, OK

Inhofe believes that 9/11 was divine retribution. He believes that our Middle East policy should be based on the text of the Bible. He denies the science behind global warming. Doesn't like students. Doesn't care for poor people. Hates government. Like Jesse Helms, without the charm. We made a mistake on our "10 Worst" list: Inhofe stands alone as the worst member of Congress.

Esquire tells the time