On Bin Laden's Lingering Face

Morgan Meis being characteristically wise, over at The Smart Set:

The most surprising thing about the death of Osama bin Laden was his funeral. Islamic law declares that a person must be buried within 24 hours of death. "We are ensuring that it is handled in accordance with Islamic practice and tradition," Time reported a U.S. official as saying, "This is something that we take very seriously. And so therefore, this is being handled in an appropriate manner."

Bin Laden was buried at sea, presumably so that there will be no burial site, no country that owns him, no place on Earth could be associated with him ever after. The sea gets him, being the only place capacious enough to take on the burden. There is dignity in having done it this way. Not dignity for him, but dignity for us. It is understandable that people want to celebrate the death of a man who scared us, who was the author of a traumatizing act of violence, who plotted the deaths of thousands and dreamed of the deaths of thousands upon thousands more. But I am not sure that celebrating death ever does anything very good for the one who celebrates.

I shuddered for the souls of the men at Saddam Hussein's execution. The footage is, now, widely available on the Internet. It was captured surreptitiously on a cell phone video camera. Saddam is brought into a dingy room in what looks like a basement. He is bustled toward a noose and begins praying. Some of the people standing below begin to shout. They are calling out, "Muqtada," in reference to Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia religious and political leader. Saddam says the name Muqtada back to them and then asks, "Do you call this courage?" Another person yells at Saddam to go to hell. He replies, "the hell that is Iraq?" Then he goes back to praying. All of a sudden, the trap door beneath Saddam opens and he plummets. He is gone. It is impossible to watch that footage without feeling that Saddam stole his dignity back in those final moments. The people in the room gave Saddam the opportunity to do it. They gave him a moment to be the honorable one in death. It lessened those men, those witnesses. They became small in the face of the ultimate thing, the death of a human being.

The last few days have seen a lot of talk about whether or not it is appropriate to celebrate the killing of Osama bin Laden. I would phrase the question in a different way. What does it do to one human being to celebrate the killing of another human being, whatever the circumstances? What happens inside you, how does it make you feel? Is that something you want to feel? Is it a way you want to be?

By http://www.3quarksdaily.com/

When those who claim to know get it wrong

Last June, we published a pamphlet titled "They Said It: how the EU elite got it wrong on the euro", in which we compared what politicians, central bankers, journalists and opinion makers said about the Single Currency before the eurozone crisis erupted - to what they say now. It's a pretty shocking read, and should make people think twice before making the argument against EU-related referenda on the grounds that 'average people are too stupid to understand such complex issues'. On the euro, by far the most important issue relating to the European project, it was the elite (in politics, in media and elsewhere) who got it spectacularly wrong - for whatever reason: political vanity, ideology, short-term thinking, ignorance or plain incompetence.

Take the FT's Wolfgang Munchau, for example. For years, the guy churned out columns praising the euro, sometimes with caveats, but nothing like the stuff we're seeing now.

Back in 2006, Munchau argued:

"There is not the slightest danger of a break-up of the Eurozone. On the contrary, I expect the Eurozone to be exceptionally stable in the long run. Make no mistake, the Eurozone is here to stay".

And in 2008,

"The world's two large reserve currencies, the dollar and the euro, offer more protection from speculative attack than a free-floating offshore currency unit. The UK will at some point have to make a choice whether it wants to be in the Eurozone or whether it wants to seek an alternative use for those rather tall buildings in the heart of London".

We're not saying that he's not making many valid and interesting points in his columns. But seriously, these are painfully inaccurate predictions. And compare to what he's been saying over the last few months:

“The probability of scenario four [eurozone break-up] cannot be zero or even close to zero. When the eurozone crisis broke out, the probability of failure was considered as small, but non-trivially positive. It is higher now despite the ‘whatever it takes’ pledge…My point is that if Germany is serious about limited liability – and I believe it is – the probability of a break-up is anything but tiny.”

Trust us, we can make the list of contradictory quotes from Munchau very very long. In fact, we could write a new "They said it" every single month, and wouldn't have any difficulty filling it with material, as established figures continue to contradict themselves on the euro.

Take this from the BBC's economics editor Robert Peston - who clearly is a clever and nice chap - but on potential UK liabilities in a Portugal bail-out he was just plain wrong, as we noted at the time. Two weeks ago - when it was becoming obvious that Portugal would had to seek a bail-out -he noted on his blog and on the Today Programme (and contrary to what we said):

“Only in the event that the Portuguese financial crisis exhausted the available money in the eurozone's bail out fund - which it won't - would the UK become liable.”

Last week, when the Treasury had confirmed that the UK will be partly liable, Peston did a U-turn:

“First of all, it does now look as though the implied UK contribution to the Portuguese bailout will be around 4.8bn euros or £4.2bn (in line with what I've been saying).”

Excuse us?

Okay, so the eurozone crisis is a moving target and we all get stuff wrong from time to time, but this is pretty bad. It's also interesting that those complaining about the poor coverage of EU issues in UK media never quite seem to look at the flip side of the coin.

26th March Protests Across London: Why are windows and the olympic clock more important than people?

 

 

The Trojan Horse of the Apocalypse and the Big Society on Westminster Bridge.

 

Well, yesterday was the big march for the alternative which I almost made myself late for by blogging about before leaving the flat. As I mentioned in that, I was worried about being kettled by the police and having all manner of weird health problems, not to mention the risk of being hit, so I packed a bag full of food and drink, a scarf that could be used as a picnic blanket a nice warm hat as well as a medic alert bracelet and spare medication, just in case I needed to talk to medical staff about why I'd need to leave - although I'd decided that if I was trapped in, I was staying in, not playing a get-out-of-kettle-free card.

I got to Kennington at eleven to meet a group of people and while they assembled, chatted to strangers and gave directions to the park to a range of families, sweet old ladies, people who'd travelled in from very far out of London and a fairly noticeable contingent of young people who'd come in hoods and face scarves that matched my picnic-scarf, but with the idea of keeping their identity away from the police who were already filming people even as we were just gathering outside of Oval station. The presumption of innocence seems to be a thing of the past.

In the park, there was a really friendly mix of people (I have the sense I'm going to be repeating that again and again, but it bears emphasis). I got a few texts from friends asking where we might meet and when I'd said I was at Kennington, a couple replied that they'd heard it was where the big Anarchist lot were starting from, so I should be cautious. That might explain why the police were filming things, if their intelligence had picked up the same thing that friends of mine had heard, so there's a bit of common sense to it.

As we started moving off, the chatter was chirpy, mostly people surprised at the enormity of the march we were on and how this was just a small feeder march that the Police had tried to discourage, saying that it had seemed unnecessary to them (according to one person with a megaphone, anyway, I suspect this might have just been hubris) and people just really enjoying the wit of the banners, and those without them taking the ones handed out by Socialist Worker people, berating them for using bleached card, then tearing out the part that said "Socialist Worker" so they could just keep the slogan.

The horse was amazing. It was one of four horses of the apocalypse, but was the most impressive, and I think it was built at Camberwell, but I might be mistaken. If so, I'm proud. Either way, it was one of the things that gave the march a sense of procession and carnival that really focused the point around bringing people together rather than the horrible politics of division that we're relentlessly exposed to at the moment.

As the march got to Lambeth North, we were told to turn and cross at Blackfriars Bridge, not Westminster, with the argument being that we'd be detained if we kept to the original route, but the bulk of the march refused this and although the vanguard of the march (which I was in) had been moved around by the police and the TUC stewards, so we dashed back to join the main body as they stuck to the plan and pressed on towards Parliament.

There, the anarchists in hoods and scarves started shouting "Oh, 'cause standing around's going to cause a revolution? 'being polite's going to change a fucking thing? The police want you to turn left, oh, I mean right, um so you go right?" and everyone giggled. The megaphone went quiet after that.

By the time we were coming up to Trafalgar Square, the reported numbers were ranging from 250,000 to half a million people. I think that the counting point was along Embankment, so by crossing Westminster Bridge, the tens of thousands who came up from Kennington were not counted, and I wonder how many other feeder marches missed whichever counting point was used. There might be another counting method used, based on helicopter images and an assumption of three people per square metre, which is where I guess the half-million would come from, but by half twelve, when I was approaching Trafalgar Square, people were already solid from Hyde Park Corner all the way along the route along to Trafalgar Square (which was full), down Whitehall to Parliament Square, along the Embankment as far as opposite the National Theatre on the North Side and as far back as Lambeth North to the South. However many square metres that is in people, I don't think it really matters, but it's a lot of people, and that's not including the UK Uncut groups gathering in Soho as they prepared for the occupations in Oxford Street and Piccadilly.

What was really stirring about the march was the diversity of it; you had pensioners' groups marching next to families who were broken-hearted about the cuts to Sure Start services, you had Disabled People Against The Cuts next to youth sports groups. You had people whose focus was on elimination of the tax loopholes which cause the divisions between rich and poor to widen, next to anarchists who believe we should throw out the whole damn system and just start again.

I can't say I agreed with everything that everyone was marching for - the masked kids wanting to smash the state I kind of wished they could travel a bit more and get to have a bit more of an appreciation of what's actually brilliant about this country and the system we've got compared to how it works in other places, but I can empathise with the anger and frustration, but a fresh start needs a transition plan and a sense of what happens afterwards, which there just never seems to be.

These fliers irked me, though - I think to draw comparisons between England and Egypt, Trafalgar and Tahrir, while appealingly alliterative, is lazy and demeans the feat pulled off in the face of live ammunition by the Egyptians and it disrespects the history of political engagement we've got in this country, even though we've got a broken democracy that's at best an elective oligarchy which affords only the illusion of representation, where we get to pretend that our system somehow is something others should aspire to and risk their lives to attain. Oh, and while they're fighting to get there, maybe they might like to buy some British weapons to fight for their democracy against the awful dictator we armed a couple of years back when we thought he might get us some cheap petrol.

I forgot to take a picture as we passed the Ritz, but I remember thinking it odd that two men were shouting "Fuck the rich, smash the Ritz!" which just got a reply of "What's that got to do with anything?" from a woman near us. There was a Sky News camera crew just next to them, and the pair disappeared from the march just afterwards.

Now, I don't want to be suspicious or anything, but I also heard of people being offered money from reporters to throw bricks at windows (£25 was the going rate, allegedly), so the fact that the reporters just happened to be exactly at the perfect spots to get the perfect shots might not be entirely coincidence when those photos get them the front pages to net the outraged front pages.

The march was overwhelmingly, and I mean that in the sense that it was stirringly and heart-warmingly, peaceful and friendly. The chances of the reporters knowing to be at the exact spots where the 16 people who, during the day, engaged in criminal activity resulting in arrest out of a crowd of 500,000 beggars belief, frankly.

I mean, look - is this a bunch of mindless yobs intent on destroying London and Londoners?

No, it's a fucking enormous number of people in Hyde Park, milling around, chatting and being a bit twee, trying to put the world to rights over a picnic. This was the contents of my backpack:

Sure, that scarf could be used to cover my identity and I could douse it in water to protect me from pepper spray, and the oil content of that cheese dip could help to lift pepper from my skin if I were exposed to a chemical attack like that, but really, sometimes a picnic is just a picnic.

Here's what Oxford Street looked like - closed off to traffic because of the horrific threat of riots. And here's the tremendous damage done to BHS by the UK Uncut people:

Oh, some paint. The Police were reporting "Ammonia devices have been employed against officers." I think there's a world of difference between the kind of chemical weapon that implies and the likely truth of it, that they really mean a joke shop stink bomb. Sure, it's disruptive and nasty, but to say chemical weapons and a sustained assault of missiles from a hard-core of violent people intent on ruining everything for everyone is a bit of a diversion. I mean, this was the main target of UK Uncut:

There's a lovely irony about the slogan in the window, and the main flashing wasn't violence but the flash of people posting pictures up onto twitter. In the centre of Oxford Circus, there were the ashes from where the giant horse had been broken down and burned - now, I'm not sure if this was a genuine Trojan Horse to use as a weapon, or just because it was cold and people needed to warm up when they were being held without charge for hours and had no access to food, water or somewhere to go to the toilet.

Generally, though, the policing that I experienced, was very low-key, friendly and polite - the Met police were a little cowed, even, as though ashamed about how things had gone down in the past. One guy caught himself cruising me, we laughed at each other, then his role forced itself around him again like armour and he couldn't meet my eye as he became a policeman again, but the reminder that it's people who are generally motivated by a desire to do a job that involves a social conscience and a connection with people (maybe not just cruising protesters, admittedly) was important.

I have to admit, I'm confused by the attack on Fortnum and Masons, who give a large amount of their income to charitable ventures in the arts, education and other areas and have quite a clear corporate social responsibility policy which would, in my eye, imply they're taking from the rich and giving to the poor, but I'll freely admit to not knowing the full picture, and the UK Uncut people generally do their homework before picking their targets, so I'm not going to let my love of fancy cheese colour my opinion too much before I worry about it being a class war action rather than something more clearly about closing tax inequality.

Trafalgar Square was a party. We went there and there were people drumming and playing music and dancing around. It was a laugh. People were chatting to the police and drawing in chalk on the pavement outside the National Gallery. It was a party, and the people there were having fun and relaxing after a nice day. There was still stuff happening in Piccadilly, but the people in Trafalgar Square weren't the people who'd set out to smash things, they were there to dance around and have a laugh.

We left with a smile on our faces and even commented that the police had been really relaxed.

On the train back, I heard from other friends that I'd just missed madness. Someone had tried to put a sticker on the Olympic Clock, the police had tried to stop him, his friends pulled him away, the police arrested him and hit some of his friends, then released him, while others rallied around and shouted at them for being unreasonable - a couple of people threw their water bottles, by which point the riot police had been radioed in. The police by the Olympic Clock released the man and things eased off, but the riot team came in hard and attacked people, including an unarmed teenage girl who was already crying when she was hit, so the people who had been drinking and dancing fought to protect the people being attacked and it turned into a major situation, all because one man tried to put a sticker on the Olympic Clock.

The news reported it as a hard core of violent protesters intent on causing property damage throwing missiles at police officers. The policeman interviewed described them as "Mindless yobs" which seems more than a little off, as does the police twitter feed which said:

policeuk Police UK

Its nearly 0000 London is feed up of you it is time to go home without causing further violence to londoners #march26 #Trafalgar #Demo2011

I think that you can read all you need into the level of literacy displayed there. We need a much better education system in this country so we can have a much better civil society.

All the property damage stuff and the nonsense about how the BBC News woman interviewed Laurie Penny and refused to let her say anything other than "The people in the square are criminals" is a wild distraction.

We had an enormous number of people on the streets of London yesterday, uniting to express a shared sense of a need to address inequity in society across a wide range of issues. The march was dealing with complex issues, the mandate this gives to the unions and the wide range of groups marching to progress with arguing the case for a fairer society is a powerful one.

We need to move the discourse away from relentlessly attacking the undeserving poor and the mindless yobs, and instead perhaps question the solipsistic yahoos in power and the rich who lack the sense of humility, responsibility and grace we used to associate with wealth and then let's see where this movement can take us.

London: Half A Million In The Streets To Protest Massive Government Cuts

Our guest blogger is Erica Sagrans, a writer who has spent the last six weeks in the UK. You can follow her for more London protest updates on Twitter at @EricaS.
Fueled by anger at drastic government cuts, 500,000 protesters took to the streets of London yesterday in the largest protest since the city’s 2003 march against the Iraq war.
Few parts of British life will remain untouched by the massive $130 billion in cuts to public services now being rolled out by the coalition government. Local budgets are being slashed by up to 30 percent, leading to cuts in child care, public safety, programs for retirees, and library closures — and an increasing privatization of the popular, publicly-funded National Health Service.

“Women, parents, carers, disabled people, teenagers and elderly people” are likely to be hardest hit, reported the Guardian in a study of the cuts’ devastating impact. On top of services, the job losses are expected to be enormous. Amidst the UK’s current record 17-year unemployment high, the cuts will mean a loss of 490,000 public sector jobs.

The crowd at yesterday’s protest — the major march organized by the Trades Union Congress — was as diverse as the cuts people came out to rally against. On the streets, I stood next to firefighters wearing ‘Cuts cost lives’ shirts, a ‘book block’ of 20-somethings wielding large pink cardboard books as shields, kids on parents’ shoulders, and loads of homemade signs: ‘Give me back my future,’ ‘Stop teabagging the public sector,’ and ‘Hands off — the NHS is ours’ were just a few.

UK Uncut, the distributed effort that calls attention to corporate tax avoidance by taking over stores, used the march as a jumping off point for occupations throughout London’s major shopping areas. The spin-off group US Uncut also spent the day targeting more than 40 Bank of America branches across the United States.

UK Uncut peacefully took over London’s upscale Fortnum and Mason department store, whose owners they say have dodged more than 40 million pounds in taxes. Others climbed onto the store’s second-story roof, where they strung up tape saying ‘Closed by UK Uncut’ and sprinkled glitter on the crowd. Later in the evening protesters danced in Trafalgar Square when they were surrounded by riot police, who prevented them from leaving by using the harsh ‘kettling’ technique that was introduced during this winter’s UK student protests.

While the line that played out in the media focused on a small minority of protesters throwing paint and smashing windows, the vast majority were parents, students, health care workers, and union members there to voice their anger about the cuts. The real power of the day came from its dual nature: both the smaller groups ready to take more direct action combined with the strength in the numbers and stories of ordinary people standing up to say ‘no more.’ Their half-a-million strong presence in London’s streets yesterday gave rise to the feeling amongst many that this is just the beginning of something much larger.

Waking up to 'Europe'

Parliament’s stance against the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights to give prisoners a vote has again inspired UK commentators to take a closer look at ‘Europe’.

The right of prisoners to vote is an ECHR issue – not an EU one (the ECHR is not an EU institution as we're always keen to point out). However, it’s right to consider the influence and mission creep of the ECHR in the same discussion as the influence of the EU itself - for a whole range of reasons. As we’ve argued before, on rights legislation the two are now linked and both suffer from an inherent tendency to expand their own powers into new areas. And in terms of the politics and perception of it all, for most people in Westminster and beyond, there’s little difference between the EU and the ECHR, making it extremely difficult to unbundle the issues in media and political discussions (and given that even senior judges have a difficult time unpicking the patchwork of human rights legislation that exists in Europe today, the blurring of the ECHR and the EU in public perception is more rational than what EU communication-types and others realise).

And there has been no shortage of hard-hitting commentary.

Here’s James Forsyth in the Mail on Sunday:

The Tories try to keep their newly hardened Euroscepticism under wraps when dealing with their Lib Dem colleagues, who remain committed to the European project. But even the Lib Dems have been shocked at how much influence Brussels has on decisions that should be taken at a national level. Nick Clegg was appalled when officials told him that the EU wouldn’t allow VAT to be set at a local level.

And here’s Fraser Nelson in a strong post on the Spectator’s coffee house blog:

Europe was easier to characterise as a fringe issue, not so now….Cameron thought he’d have to play along, even though it made him “physically sick”. But in perhaps the most useful thing the House of Commons has done for two decades, it decided otherwise last week in a free vote. And what are the judges of Strasbourg going to do? Invade?

A healthy precedent was established last week. Britain has rejected that old argument that we have no choice. We do. Parliament is sovereign. We can reject as many Euro laws as we like: from Brussels, Strasbourg or both.

Meanwhile, Tim Montgomerie takes a swipe at Ken Clarke on Conservative Home:

The fact is the Conservative Party is largely united on Europe. The vast majority of Tory MPs and activists, from the Prime Minister down, believe that unelected European judges and bureaucrats have too much power. Given the nature of the Coalition and the economic priorities, significant repatriation of powers may not be possible in this Parliament but we must prepare a manifesto for the next General Election that attempts to address that. So long as Ken Clarke is a significant player in the Conservative Party there is little chance of that happening. I sometimes wonder if he stays in government to prevent the party fulfilling its Eurosceptic instincts

Inevitably, there will be more court rulings from the ECHR and the ECJ (one coming up on pensions for example) - in addition to new Directives and Regulations from the Commission - which will be percieved as interfering in national areas where they don't belong. This isn't the last clash we'll see, but it's a signifcant one.

And hats off to Parliament. This time, MPs did their job.

The two-lane Europe fallacy

Assumptions in the British media are funny sometimes (though other countries' suffer from this too) - not least amongst those who claim to take the intellectual high-ground on the European Union.

Consider this quote from the Guardian, for example, in a piece about the EU summit last week:

The Chancellor Angela Merkel is to ditch years of opposition to common economic policymaking among Europe's single currency countries today, in a major shift that will widen the gulf between Britain and the EU mainstream (emphasis added)

Or this one, from David Rennie, the brainy Political Editor of the Economist:

If 2011 does see a leap towards a two-speed Europe, securing a place in the slow lane will only mark the start of Britain's worries (emphasis added)

Or Philip Stephens in today's FT,

The German chancellor and French president want to couple only 17 of the Union’s 27 carriages to their refurbished train. David Cameron’s British government is perfectly content to wave goodbye from the platform. (emphasis added)

Note the expressions "mainstream", "slow lane" and waving "goodbye from the platform" - without any definition or further explanation - to present an underlying assumption as if it was a matter of fact. The assumption is that, looking ahead, not being in the eurozone is synonomous with being left on the periphery, in the ‘slow lane’ or even standing still - an assumption which arbitrarily puts further integration in and of itself above, for example, economic growth as the main determinant of what constitutes the EU's "fast lane".

This borders on thought-terminating cliché - trying to end a debate with a commonly used phrase which is actually meaningless without some sort of definition, but that tends to discourage further reflection from the reader or listener. Or perhaps we can call this appeal to process. Circular reasoning which sees the process of EU integration, in and of itself, as determining the speed at which a country travels - by virtue of being, well, EU integration. The actual outcome is secondary. (To avoid bashing British media too much, here's an example of a non-British paper, which consistently commits this fallacy without realising it)

To illustrate: Under the definitions in the articles that are cited above, countries such as Poland, Denmark and Sweden are confined to a life in the EU's "slow lane", while Greece, Spain and Italy, for example, can freely enjoy the "fast lane".

Really?

So nothing on growth, employment rates, demographics - factors that seem pretty important to consider in any discussion about "fast" and "slow" in Europe...?

Let's consider the division into a fast lane and slow lane, as defined by the cited articles (particularly the second one) in light of economic growth - just to illustrate how intellectually lazy the two-lane assumption is:



Not quite the same picture, is it?

Now, the articles are of course correct in that there are challenges for the UK, and other non-euro states, arising from the eurozone crisis and the drive for more economic integration in its wake - including the risk that the centre of gravity in EU-17 now moves in the protectionist direction. This is a valid discussion.

But these challenges (and opportunities) are far more interesting than what can captured by a simplified - and arbitrary - reduction of the issue into 'fast' and 'slow' lanes.

And to continue the illustration, look at how Sweden - a non-euro member who, for instance, has also vetoed moves towards common EU family law (=the slow lane presumably) - has strenghtened its position in Europe over recent years. Why? Hint: the economy.

Without rehersing the pros and cons of the Single Currency, the question is also how being part of what increasingly looks like a debt union automatically puts you in the fast lane.

Throwing around assumptions and reducing multi-facetted discussions into oversimplified cliches is lazy journalism.

Hysterical and one-sided

It's always amusing to witness journalists and politicians with euro-enthusiastic tendencies having a go at parts of the British press for being biased on Europe, while at the same time being guilty themselves of some seriously one-sided and dubious reporting.

One of the most conspicous examples is when we caught the Independent - at the height of the debate about a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty - reprinting a Foreign Office briefing note on the Treaty almost word-for-word, but without any attribution that the FCO was the source. (Compare the Foreign Office briefing here to the Independent article here). A newspaper simply printing what the government tells it word for word is not considered quality journalism in most places.

On Friday, the Independent’s John Lichfield got a bit over excited about the prospect of a Conservative government 'spooking' Europe. Quoting a couple of French politicians, a Spanish MEP and a second-hand “source in Ms Merkel's Christian Democratic Party” he predictably got stuck on the idea that Europeans these days live in perpetual fear of the Conservatives coming to power. A potential Conservative government is now up there with global warming and terrorism as the greatest threats to humanity (we made up that last part).

The discussion about the Tories in Europe has always verged on the hysterical – and few people outside the bubbles in Brussels, Paris and Westminster pay much attention to it. But what’s arguably worse, at times it comes across as outright ignorant – despite all the lofty talk amongst commentators for the need to increase the quality of the discussion on the EU.

For example, Lichfield makes a song and a dance over the Tories’ manifesto, which spells out that the EU should be an “association of states”. In mainstream European politics, Lichfield claims, to talk about the EU in this way is “unhelpful” and is “reopening an argument that Britain lost more than 50 years ago.”

Er, say what?

That argument is alive and well around Europe – in fact, it is increasingly moving back to the fore. The German Constitutional Court used this exact phrase in its explosive ruling on the Lisbon Treaty to make clear its view on what the EU is and what it should remain (Verbindung souverän bleibender Staaten). Also the Swedish governing Moderate Party – which is at the mainstream of the mainstream of European centre-right politics – is using very similar wording to describe its vision of the EU (mellanstatligt samarbete).

It does take knowing a couple of languages, but the information is quite clearly there for anyone interested in a quality report. But then again, the need for such reporting only applies to one side of the argument, doesn't it?

Bloggers Get Press Credentials From NY Police - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com

More at NYTimes.com: “Three bloggers who had sued New York City after the Police Department denied them press credentials because they work for online or nontraditional news outlets were issued credentials on Friday after the police relented, the bloggers’ lawyer, Norman Siegel, said.

The three men — Rafael Martínez Alequin, Ralph E. Smith and David Wallis — filed a federal lawsuit in November asserting that they were denied press credentials in 2007 “with little explanation or opportunity for appeal.” They argued that the system for issuing press credentials was “inconsistent and constitutionally flawed.”

Mr. Siegel walked out of 1 Police Plaza on Friday morning with the three men, who were issued press identification cards, one of the types of press credentials issued by the Police Department. Mr. Siegel sad he was delighted with the outcome, but he vowed to continue the lawsuit, saying further reforms were needed.”

Mysterious sweet syrup smell wafts over Manhattan again

More at NY Daily News: “It's back!
That sweet smell that wafted over the city a few years ago - described as maple syrup, French toast, pancakes and even coffee cake - is in the air again, officials said Tuesday.
The city's 311 system received about 35 calls Monday night from New Yorkers reporting the mysterious scent drifting through parts of upper Manhattan and Queens.
[DO YOU SMELL IT?  Tell us where you are in the city and where you're smelling it in the comments section below.]
"The maple scent was light," a reader with the screen name LuckyLady wrote on nydailynews.com. "While moving around my apartment ... the scent hit me again, only this time it was stronger."
The city Department of Environmental Protection sent inspectors to the areas to conduct air tests.
They confirmed the scent, but the source of the smell is still unknown, officials said.
Another Daily News reader initially thought the smell came from a pine tree.
"I noticed it, and it was strong enough to make me want to know what it was before I got to my corner when I left my apartment," the reader, Page One, wrote on the Web site.”

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MEDIA PROTEST FOR ACCESS TO GAZA

My last post talked about the horrors of life in Gaza Strip right now and the expulsion of journalists attempting to report on this gross violation of human rights there. I have received one comment in this blog and a couple of e-mails criticising me for being anti-Israel. I am not anti-Israel. I am anti-atrocity, whoever may be doing it. I am very gratified that I have not received a single complaint that "this is not a Sikh issue." Perhaps we as a people really have made some advancement and have come to realise that all humanitarian issues are Sikh issues. Thank you, readers!

I repeat:

Most of Gaza borders land controlled by Israel. The southern border, however is at Egypt. Egypt is a Muslim, Arab state. Why does Egypt not open its border for humanitarian help to its sisters and brothers dying in Gaza? Let me repeat: WHY DOES EGYPT NOT OPEN ITS BORDER FOR HUMANITARIAN HELP TO ITS SISTERS AND BROTHERS DYING IN GAZA!

SHAME ON ISRAEL! SHAME ON EGYPT! SHAME ON US IF WE ARE SILENT!

Now several large media organisations have filed a protest against Israel, asking for reporters to again be admitted to Gaza.

From the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz:

Top media executives protest Israel's ban on journalists' entry to Gaza

for whatever reason, my link button isn't working. Here is the URL:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1039255.html
By The Associated Press

Leaders of the world's biggest media organizations filed a protest with Israel's prime minister Wednesday criticizing the government's decision to ban journalists from entering the Gaza Strip for the last two weeks.

The protest was the latest in a chorus of international criticism of Israel's Gaza closure, tightened after a five-month truce began unraveling about two weeks ago in a flurry of Israeli airstrikes against militants and Palestinian rocket barrages targeting Israeli towns.

Those signing the letter included Associated Press Chief Executive and President Tom Curley, Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, ABC News President David Westin, BBC News Director Helen Boaden and other top executives from CNN, the Canadian TV network CTV, the German broadcaster ZDF, and the French news service Agence France Presse.

"We are gravely concerned about the prolonged and unprecedented denial of access to the Gaza Strip for the international media," they wrote in the letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

"We would welcome an assurance that access to Gaza for international journalists will be restored immediately in the spirit of Israel's long-standing commitment to a free press," reads the letter.

After a recent upsurge in Palestinian rocket fire, Israel closed off Gaza to all but the most vital supplies. The only people allowed in or out are urgent medical cases and a handful of humanitarian workers.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Olmert, confirmed that the letter had been received. Journalists were not being singled out, he said, but were affected by a broader decision to close the crossings:

"There is no policy to prevent the media from entering Gaza, and the minute the security situation allows for the normal functioning of the crossings, journalists, like all of the others who have been inconvenienced, will be able to return to using the crossings."

The Israeli government has long banned Israeli journalists from entering Gaza because of fears for their safety, but foreign reporters have been permitted to go in, even during times of heavy fighting. In the past two weeks, coverage in Gaza has been largely left to local Palestinian staffers and a handful of foreign journalists who entered before the closure went into effect, including two AP reporters.

Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for Israel's Defense Ministry, said journalists would be allowed in only once Gaza militants stopped shooting and said Gaza was being adequately covered by reporters already there.

While he said journalists were not being targeted, Dror also said Israel was displeased with international media coverage, which he said inflated Palestinian suffering and did not make clear that Israel's measures were in response to Palestinian violence.

Israel pulled all of its troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005, a withdrawal that was followed by an increase in rocket fire and a takeover by the Islamic militants of Hamas, a group dedicated to Israel's destruction.

"Where Gaza is concerned, our image will always be bad," Dror said. "When journalists go in it works against us, and when they don't go in it works against us."

Dissatisfaction with coverage would not hold up in court as a reason to bar journalists, said Dalia Dorner, a retired Supreme Court justice who represents Israeli journalists as head of the Israeli Press Council. Only concerns that "grievous harm" could befall state security could provide the legal justification for the Defense Ministry's ban, she said.

Israel's Foreign Press Association, which represents international journalists operating in Israel and the Palestinian territories, also has condemned the ban.

Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas spokesman, said the ban is part of an Israeli policy of isolating Gaza internationally. "This stops outside parties from seeing the crisis taking place in Gaza," Hamad said.

Since violently seizing control of Gaza last year, Hamas sometimes has harassed journalists, in some cases beating reporters, seizing videotapes and raiding news offices.

The Gaza ban is the latest in a line of difficulties foreign journalists have encountered while covering the Israel-Palestinian conflict. International reporters inside Israel generally enjoy broad freedom, but must pass security checks to receive government certification and are subject to a military censor in all matters related to defense.

A number of journalists have been killed or injured by Israeli security forces during clashes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and reporters have also been subject to abuse by Palestinian security forces and kidnapped by militants.

The news executives' letter came as international criticism of the closure grew. U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon called Olmert on Tuesday to express concern about a possible humanitarian crisis in Gaza, home to a largely impoverished population of 1.4 million. A group of 21 aid organizations also charged the closure was harming their Gaza operations. The current European Union president, France, issued an unusually strong protest saying the closure was a "disproportionate response" that would "collectively punish" Gaza's civilians.

Gazans are facing a shortage of basic goods and fuel. Restaurants and bakeries across the strip are closing as cooking gas runs out.