Archive for December, 2009
12 30th, 2009
An interesting perspective from Adam Williams, author of three historical novels on China, about the execution of Akmal Shaikh:-
Thoughts on Today’s Headlines: Akmal Shaikh
It’s sad when cultures cannot meet halfway. It happened after the Americans bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Every Chinese believed that it was deliberate while most Westerners thought it was an accident. The dislocation was surreal. No argument could bridge the gulf of understanding or mindset. Old friends and colleagues shook their heads and looked stony. It happened again yesterday when a Briton was executed for drug smuggling. 99% of Chinese approved the verdict, ridiculing our pleas that they test the poor man’s sanity. It was partly pride. They are strutting the world like a cockerel these days and will not be told what to do. The result of their obduracy is they’ve earned the anger of possibly their most friendly ally, for, as it appears, Akmal Shaikh died because mercy was considered to be a loss of face.
12 30th, 2009
I like this from Maureen Dowd in the New York Times:-
If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch?
12 29th, 2009
After my Morning Star interview on Democracy Kills, I’m looking at The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 by Freidrich Engels. Also reading Charles Dickens’ America Notes from his journey there in 1842.
12 28th, 2009
I’ve had some interesting interviews on my book Democracy Kills: What’s So Good About Having The Vote – but none more engaging or challenging than today’s with a a journalist from The Morning Star — that promotes itself as the only English-language socialist daily in the world.
So I Googled its latest op-ed. Here’s an exceprt:-
We don’t have to sit there worrying that our jobs are going to be flushed down the toilet, our homes are going to be repossessed and our future mortgaged for a generation to bail out a pack of overpaid and underachieving bankers.
It’s a choice that is in our own hands. Sure, we can accept that there’s no real difference between the free-marketeers of the Tory Party and the grovelling class traitors of new Labour, but we don’t have to accept the inevitability of one of those two unappetising items being on the menu of our 2010-2011 Christmas dinner.
I wonder……
12 26th, 2009
The guy accused of trying to blow up an American airliner is apparently a 23-year-old Nigerian who had studied in London, got his explosives from Yemen, left from Lagos to transit Amsterdam to get the plane to Detroit. So where’s Afghanistan in any of that and what happens even if the Taliban are defeated there?
12 23rd, 2009
I wonder if China’s blocking of the climate summit could be getting close to a tipping point. If not that, what and when? Good piece in today’s Guardian.
12 22nd, 2009
From The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, published 1911.
Dictator, n, The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of despotism to the plague of anarchy
12 21st, 2009
in his weekly column, Harlan Ullman writes:-
Pakistan faces potentially nation-wrecking economic, political and
security crises in which policies to resolve one exacerbate the others.
A pertinent example is support for American actions in Afghanistan and
against all persuasions of Taliban. One guaranteed consequence is huge
increases in anti-Americanism and even greater opposition to the
government. In essence, unchecked, Pakistan could be headed for a
political meltdown in which an already dysfunctional government becomes
even more dysfunctional and therefore unable to put the nation back on
a sage course.
Read the chillingly fictional scenarion in Click here: The Third World War — A Future History
12 20th, 2009
I like this from Stephen L Carter’s excellent novel Palace Council from a character Lieutenant Cox speaking about Vietnam:-
“I’m an officer in the armed forces of a democracy. It’s my job to go where they tell me. The day I decide I have a different job, that it’s up to me to figure out whether I like the theory of the war, is the day we stop being a democracy. Know why? Because that’s the day the military takes over.”
12 20th, 2009
Portugal port’s image changed to attract younger fans |
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| While a bottle of port may still be brought out at Christmas, the days of it being a regular tipple for most seem to be long gone. Humphrey Hawksley travelled to northern Portugal to see how an image overhaul is affecting the region’s historic port trade.
Paul Symington walks through his hillside vineyard, at ease with the land. With his steps, confident on the damp, sloping ground, he cuts a figure not unlike a Roman centurion.
He stops to talk to his men pruning the vines. He confers with his caseiro – or farm manager. He consults his young viticulturist about the quality of the soil. Then he casts his eyes over the estate, where mist obscures the view of the Douro River below. “The Romans dressed differently, of course. And you wouldn’t have driven there,” he said. “But apart from that, what you see in these vineyards hasn’t changed since Roman times.” Paul’s family have been working the hills in northern Portugal for more than 300 years. He has an instinctive sense of history and tradition, but he knows things have to change if his business is to survive. Table rituals The business is port wine, and if one product is getting an image makeover it is this deep red tipple.
It conjures up images of huge wooden barrels in cobwebbed cellars; of raising glasses at regimental dinners; of strange table rituals with crystal decanters and grumpy conversations among red faced colonels – when the women have been asked to leave the room. Paul has had to think very hard about his future. “There’s marvellous ceremony attached to port,” he said. “At state banquets the Queen always makes the toast with port, and we don’t want to lose that. “But we all live differently now. We don’t have wine cellars. We eat around the kitchen table. We don’t dress for dinner every night.”
“We have to adapt our markets. We absolutely have to get more young people drinking port.” He paused to sweep his hand around the view of the vineyards, and said: “Otherwise this whole valley will revert back to scrub.” It has not been scrub for a long time. Every year, the Romans ripped off their sandals to tread the Douro Valley grapes pretty much as some of Paul’s harvest is trod by villagers today. The rest is done by computerised machines that simulate human feet. Immediate hit The area itself is one of the oldest wine-growing regions in the world – officially demarcated back in 1756, a century before Bordeaux. And port itself was created almost by mistake. To stop wine going bad on its sea journey to England, British traders fortified it with brandy. The new sweet taste and extra kick was an immediate hit with those who could afford it.
The Douro River runs down to the town of Oporto where hoardings with names such as Sandeman, Taylors and Dow, dominate the skyline – showing how the British establishment took to port wine and made it its own. Over lunch in a small restaurant, it became clear that Paul need look no further than his own farm manager, Antonio, if he wants to expand his clientele far outside Britain’s palaces and clubs. “Do you decant port and insist on it being passed around the table to the right – or should it be to the left?” I questioned Antonio. As Paul translated, Antonio’s weather-beaten face broke into a huge grin. What on earth was I talking about? he asked. Paul clarified and Antonio threw back his head, roaring with laughter. “He doesn’t know about these quirky English habits,” translated Paul. “He makes port, puts it in the glass and drinks it.” “And here the women drink it just the same as the men,” said Paul. “They certainly wouldn’t leave the table or the men wouldn’t be allowed to sleep within the four walls of their own home.” Perfectly filtered Back in Britain, in the heart of the recession gripped City of London, one of Britain’s leading port experts, Tim Stanley-Clarke, was keen to add his bit to the drink’s changing image. He arrived at a top wine bar with a smart decanter, a vintage bottle from 1983 and a pair of tights. With jazz piano playing in the background, he flipped open a pocket corkscrew.
“Forty-eight percent of port is drunk by females and 44% by people under the age of 45,” he argued, easing out the cork. “I love it,” chipped in 23-year-old Judith Hurrell, there with friends, sharing a bottle in an ice bucket. Behind us two young women executives each had a glass while working on their laptops. Tim stretched the tights over the mouth of a plastic funnel, dropped it into the decanter and began pouring. “There you go,” he said. “No ceremony here and perfectly filtered through nylons. House port sold by the glass. “The days of boring old men with expensive complexions, falling asleep over their port in leather chairs – they’re long gone.” How to listen to: From Our Own Correspondent |
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The days of boring old men with expensive complexions, falling asleep over their port in leather chairs – they’re long gone 
