Friday, December 29, 2006

Reality strikes back, but let’s not have too much realism

Reality strikes back, but let’s not have too much realism

Timothy Garton Ash

The Guardian

28 Dec 2006



In world politics, 2007 may be the year of realism. If that means getting rid of dangerous illusions, it’s a good thing. If it means abandoning idealism, it’s a bad thing. In the way of things, it will probably mean some of both. Back in 2002, a senior... read more...

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

The problem is that he just doesn’t understand race

The problem is that he just doesn’t understand race

Joseph Harker

The Guardian

20 Dec 2006



The following is a draft of Tony Blair’s follow-up speech on multiculturalism — or what he might have said if he’d considered the matter more carefully. My speech this month about multiculturalism was well received in the press: I seem to have pressed... read more...

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

A modern-day slavery is flourishing in Britain, and we just avert our eyes

A modern-day slavery is flourishing in Britain, and we just avert our eyes

Madeleine Bunting

The Guardian

18 Dec 2006



Europe in 2003, hoping to start a new life beyond the reach of the torture and prisons of Saddam Hussein’s regime in northern Iraq. But after four years of failed asylum applications in the UK, he is still living in fear.



He’s too nervous to tell his story inside the cafe where we meet for fear of eavesdroppers, so we sit outside. He flinches as a policewoman passes. He says he never answers a knock on his front door at home in Birmingham; friends know to call first to tell him they are coming.



He knows — as the Home Office officials remind him on his monthly required visits to sign in — that he could be deported at any time and sent back to Iraq. He could be snatched from the streets or from his bed in the middle of the night. But, as he is well aware, there is nothing unusual about his plight — he is just one individual out of an army of irregular migrants, which the Home Office estimates at more than half a million strong. They precariously exist in a kind of bureaucracy-made limbo in this country.



Deportation is not the only fear he lives with. He needs urgent kidney treatment, but an operation would require several months’ convalescence. If he can’t work, who will pay his rent or food? He knows his kidney malfunction is slowly getting worse. “I came here to survive, not to die slowly.” He rubs tears from his cheeks.



He works in a kitchen — and he apologises for it. He knows that he’s not allowed to work but explains that after his asylum appeal was refused two years ago and he was ejected from the hostel and his vouchers were stopped, he had no alternative. He got himself false papers and his employer doesn’t press him for his national insurance number. The arrangement suits them both. Nehad gets 182 net for a 40-hour week, and the employer gets cheap hard labour with no sick or holiday pay. Nehad will be working through Christmas.



Nehad counts himself as one of the lucky ones. He knows someone who bought an old car for 50 just to sleep in it. Nehad rents for 100 a week, which leaves enough to pay the bills, and feed and clothe himself. He sometimes helps out other irregulars who are worse off.



“There is another, terrible life underground in this country. The government calls us illegals, but how can a human being be illegal? We are here, and we are human beings. People ask me what my hope for the future is; I don’t have a right to hope, but what I would like is to hold my head up high and tell people, this is who I am.”

... read more...

Thursday, December 14, 2006

The dream of a neoliberal nirvana is coming to an end

The dream of a neoliberal nirvana is coming to an end

John Harris

The Guardian

14 Dec 2006



The other day I caught sight of one of those leaflets that fall out of magazines. This one featured pictures of a swimming pool and a radiant, pastel-clad couple, with the offer of “learning the secrets that could help you become a property... read more...

Blair is blinded by a belief that big is always beautiful

Blair is blinded by a belief that big is always beautiful

Simon Jenkins

The Guardian

13 Dec 2006



We don’t do small any more. We just do big. Small is fiddly and hard to control. Big is beautiful and computable. That is why Tony Blair’s legacy crisis is seeing yet another wave of “closures”, this time of 29 accident and emergency departments, 81... read more...

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Pinochet

Pinochet

By Alvaro Vargas Llosa

The Wall Street Journal Europe

12 Dec 2006



In 1971, Fidel Castro visited Chile, where the left-wing government of Salvador Allende was under pressure from the second most powerful Marxist movement in the Western Hemisphere to speed up the revolutionary process. The president provided the Cuban... read more...

Saturday, December 09, 2006

They live like aristocrats. Now they think like them

They live like aristocrats. Now they think like them

Marina Hyde

The Guardian

09 Dec 2006



Marina Hyde There is a moment in the spoof rock documentary This is Spinal Tap when a reporter poses a crushingly direct question to the eponymous band’s lead singer at the wrap party for their disastrous US tour. “Is this, like, your last waltz?” he... read more...

A revolt against broken forms of government

A revolt against broken forms of government

Martin Kettle

The Guardian

09 Dec 2006



Martin Kettle Most of what has been written about this week’s Iraq Study Group report has concentrated on Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton’s big policy critique of America’s historic humiliation. And quite right too. It was a shatteringly critical verdict... read more...

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Sisters, mothers, martyrs

Sisters, mothers, martyrs



The Guardian

05 Dec 2006



On the television screen a woman is reading slowly from a sheet of paper held close to her face. The moment is awkward. Her hands shake, she avoids the camera and a large, black M-16 assault rifle hangs from her shoulders. Her head and neck are wrapped... read more...