normblog

Hard decision

"This is one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. Haven't the people of Darfur suffered enough? Aren't we adding insult to injury?" WFP Executive Director James Morris said.

He's talking about the decision to cut food aid for Darfur:

The United Nations said on Friday it would cut food rations for more than 6 million people in Sudan, half of them in Darfur, because of a severe lack of funds.

Many donor countries appear to have tired of the long-term conflict in Darfur, despite signs that malnutrition is again on the rise among people living in squalid camps, the United Nations' World Food Program (WFP) said.

WFP said it was halving food aid from the minimum daily requirement of 2,100 calories to 1,050 calories as of May.

The report goes on to say that the US is the largest donor at $188 million, and that Italy is the only major European country to contribute so far ($1.2 million). See also here:

America and Britain are the two most generous bilateral donors. Aside from Libya, no Arab state has contributed anything, despite windfall gains from high oil prices and Sudan's membership of the Arab League.

And here:

The EU says it has allocated 48m euros ($60m) for the whole of Sudan this year, while the UK will donate £49m ($88m) through various aid agencies.

(Thanks: EC)

Darfur: 'we cannot look away'

If you're starting your day anywhere near one of the rallies referred to in this report and can get to it, please go:

Washington (Reuters) - Joined by senators from the left and right, Oscar-winning actor George Clooney used his star power on Thursday to focus attention on Sudan's Darfur region, where he said the first genocide of this century was taking place.

Clooney told heart-breaking stories of visiting the border area between Chad and Sudan's Darfur region last week, where he watched refugees spilling into sordid camps and women foraging for food who faced the threat of rape or death.

Clooney urged the public to attend rallies across the United States this Sunday to pressure Khartoum to stop what Washington says amounts to genocide in Darfur.

Hollywood actors, political, religious leaders and sporting personalities will be among those at the rallies, which are expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people.

"What we cannot do is turn our heads and look away and hope that this will somehow disappear," Clooney said to an unusually packed news conference at the National Press Club. "It's the first genocide of the 21st century."
.....
Clooney is usually seen more frequently among Democratic politicians and has often criticized the Bush administration for its policies, but on Thursday he said issues such as Darfur could not be partisan.

In December I took issue with some remarks of George Clooney's on suicide terrorism. Credit to him now on this. (Via - and thanks, Will.)

From Saturday to Euston

The Dude on the anti-war movement and its most famous day:

So that was what was actually happening on that celebrated "Saturday". A vast crowd of people reiterating the identical mantras of Ba'athism - one of the most depraved and reactionary ideologies of the past century. How on earth, or how the hell, did we arrive at this sordid terminus?

And on the Euston Manifesto:

It prefers those who vote in Iraq and Afghanistan to those who put bombs in mosques and schools and hospitals. It does not conceive of arguments that make excuses for suicide murderers. It affirms the right of democratic nations and open societies to defend themselves, both from theocratic states abroad and from theocratic gangsters at home.

I have been flattered by an invitation to sign it, and I probably will, but if I agree it will be the most conservative document that I have ever initialled. Even the obvious has now become revolutionary. So call me a neo-conservative if you must: anything is preferable to the rotten unprincipled alliance between the former fans of the one-party state and the hysterical zealots of the one-god one.

Read the whole thing.

Tierra de libres

This I don't get:

Washington - President Bush has never been shy about speaking Spanish in public, and he is known to love all kinds of music: country, folk and even Tex-Mex-style rock. But one thing you will not find on his iPod: "Nuestro Himno," the new Spanish version of the U.S. national anthem that was released on Friday as part of the growing immigrants' rights movement.

Asked at a news briefing in the Rose Garden on Friday whether he believed the anthem would have the same value in Spanish as it did in English, Bush said flatly, "No, I don't."

"And I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English," Bush said. "And they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."

The last remarks there have no bearing on the issue. Whether or not US citizens should all learn English and know how to sing the national anthem in English, it's perfectly OK to have a Spanish version. It's the land of the free, isn't it? So people can sing the thing every which way they want. And having a Spanish version is a way for Spanish-speaking US citizens to embrace the anthem to their bosoms. It may not be the only way, but it's a way. In any case, as the report here goes on to say:

This is not the first time the national anthem has been translated. The Library of Congress offers another Spanish version, "La Bandera de las Estrellas," translated in 1919 for the U.S. Bureau of Education, as well as several German songsheets of uncertain age celebrating "das Banner mit Sternen."

Stuart Elliott has more along the same lines, including a version in Yiddish. As he says:

Translating the Star Spangled Banner into other languages - whether Spanish, Navajo, or Yiddish - is not un-patriotic. It is part of the process of self-Americanization.

Talking about O'Neill's

> In a piece by James Harkin, the Guardian today 'outs' the pub where the Euston Manifesto took final shape, so ending the feverish speculation. The dead tree version even has a picture:

[T]here is much that is useful and spirited about their manifesto - the signatories score some eloquent points against the left's opportunistic flirtation with radical Islam, its lazy anti-Americanism, and its retreat into flaccid relativism. Nor does it make any sense to label them as neoconservatives and apologists for American imperialism. The American neoconservative right and the Eustonian left might have arrived at similar positions, but they did so from vastly different premises and backgrounds.

> See also this article by Niall Stanage in The American Spectator:

The Euston Manifesto... shows that an internationalist Left still exists, still holds freedom's promises dear, and has not been deformed by virulent anti-Americanism.

> There is a discussion of the manifesto by Clifford Longley in The Tablet for 29 April (hat tip: JK), but it isn't online:

[T]he Euston Manifesto ... declared that democracy is a universal value that the Left ought to support wherever it can.

> Steve Richards talked to Martin Kettle and John Lloyd about the Euston Manifesto on Radio 4's Week in Westminster this morning. You can hear their discussion here (see the panel 'Listen to the latest programme' - start 13 minutes in).

The long, long run of David Aaronovitch

Read about it, in full detail, here. David's postscript:

One minute after the race ended I could hardly move, and told myself that I could never do this again, for all that I felt elated and proud. Half-marathons, no problem, but could I really be that mentally tough a second time? Five days on and, like a happy mum, I've forgotten the agony. Could I possibly, if I trained really hard, manage to...?

My experience exactly. And I did do it a second time. But over the last six miles I knew there wasn't going to be a third time. I thought to myself (in so far as you can call it thought), 'What the hell am I doing this for? I did it once already.'

Minding the Manolo

From a normblog reader this tale of woe and learning:

Once upon a time there was a young girl who every day read the blog of the marvellous person, the Manolo. She read it for its exquisite taste, its witty literary style and its humane and enhancing attitude to matters of everyday existence. But she was a bit of a foot-dragger when it came to actually following the advice contained therein: i.e. you must only ever buy the super fantastic shoes, and if you are the poor girl (which this girl isn't, actually) then you must save up.

So one day she buys, in a shoe shop near her house - i.e. a local suburban shoe shop in inner London - a pair of brown leather-studded wedges, very much de nos jours, but not what you would call super fantastic and certainly not expensive or good quality. But so what? They are only to last a short season, as the English summer is. Exceedingly short. So she has disobeyed the rules of the Manolo, not once, but twice, because he has already pointed out to her what she knew. If you are a big-legged woman, no ankle straps.

The weather continues seasonally cool, and still the shoes remain in their box until, one day, she sets off for France, more specifically the Cote d'Azur, in fact, Nice. She brings with her three pairs of shoes.

1. The Prada trainers she wears on the plane, with jeans.
2. The high-heeled black patent car-to-bar shoes for drinks at the Hotel Negresco.
3. The new wedges, ideal for wearing with the collection of Zara dresses she has brought with her, after assiduous attention to the self-tan application, a week beforehand, on the legs.

She arrives at the hotel, checks in, admires the terrace - where she will no doubt be sitting out sipping a glass of rosé - showers, changes into her Zara dress, puts on the brown wedges and sallies forth.

As she gets to the lift, she notices that the ankle strap on the right shoe has come undone, and she bends to fasten it.

Stepping out on to the Promenade des Anglais, she notices that once again the ankle strap of the right shoe has come undone. She bends to fasten it. At this point, the tiny pointed bit of metal that is part of the buckle, the bit that fits through the hole in the strap, falls off and vanishes under les pieds français of the passers-by.

Merde!

She now has a number of choices: she wears the same pair of travelling jeans for the whole four days, with the Prada trainers. She wears the Prada trainers with dresses, which is not a look that she admires, it reminding her of the bag lady, or the New York working girl saving on shoe leather. She wears the high-heeled bar-to-car shoes, and doesn't leave the hotel at all.

Or...

She returns to the hotel and asks the receptionist to call her a taxi to take her to the rue des Shoe Shops. Mais la jeune fille at reception offers une autre suggestion. If Madame can manage to hobble a few metres, maybe une minute et demi, she will reach the boutique d'Agnès b, the celebrated Parisienne designer, who stocks a small number of shoes, all très moderne, très chic, très super fantastique.

We know what the Manolo wishes our heroine to do. We submit to our fate.

At the boutique d'Agnès b, she buys the heart-stoppingly super fantastic shoes of a glazed black leather with glazed silver leather soles (the bit your foot rests on, not the bit that hits the pavement). And amazingly, these are only 115 of the European Euros, which isn't even at all expensive. She looks longingly at the other shoes, particularly the gold silk Mary Janes. Un autre temps, certes. Je reviens.

Now she has worn her new shoes every day since Monday and she loves them above everything else in her wardrobe, for unlike the Christian Louboutins she bought in the Vogue sample sale, she can wear them every single day if she wishes, and they're comfortable! (Apart from the bit across the toes that drew blood after a long walk, but so what? The blood can be washed off the leather, easily.)

So that is the story of the person who paid no attention to the Manolo, and of her fate. And you can be assured that she has now learned her lesson good and proper, and will never disobey the advice of the Manolo ever again. And because of this, she will live happily ever after.

Pointedlee

Eric Lee provides you with a guessing game.

Football and Iran

On women being permitted to watch the game, and some related matters.

Platform seven

There is a passage in the Euston Manifesto the intention of which has been misunderstood, and those who drafted it and who agreed the draft are responsible for the misunderstanding. The passage isn't well formulated. It's this one:

We are also united in the view that, since the day on which this [the overthrow of the Baathist regime - NG] occurred, the proper concern of genuine liberals and members of the Left should have been the battle to put in place in Iraq a democratic political order and to rebuild the country's infrastructure, to create after decades of the most brutal oppression a life for Iraqis which those living in democratic countries take for granted - rather than picking through the rubble of the arguments over intervention.

The problem here is the 'rather than'; and 'picking through the rubble' doesn't help. These make up an ill-chosen phrase. The intent was to say that, once the invasion had occurred and the regime was overthrown, the primary focus of those on the left and others of democratic outlook should have been on solidarity with the Iraqi people and with the democratic forces trying to reconstruct the country on a new, free basis. The authors of the manifesto thought, and we think, that the future of Iraq and the fate of the Iraqi people should have been a more important preoccupation of leftists and liberals than returning constantly, as many have, to why the war should never have been fought. The way the above passage reads, however, it looks as if we're saying that criticism relating to earlier arguments about the war, concern over the way it was presented by the US and British governments or about the planning for its aftermath, was inappropriate. And that isn't right. The point was picked up in one of the earliest responses to the manifesto, by Martin Bright on the New Statesman website. He wrote:

The manifesto suggests that we should stop arguing about the whys and wherefores of the war and concentrate on building a left consensus on reconstruction.

And he went on to demur. He's right: right about what the Eustonians think a left consensus should have 'concentrated' on once the Saddam regime was gone; and also right - unfortunately - that we've given the impression in the manifesto as written that arguments about 'the whys and wherefores of the war' ought to have stopped. We have done, but by a mis-statement of a point meant to be about priorities as if it were about mutually exclusive alternatives. It has not in fact been the position of those blogs which took the initiative leading to the Euston Manifesto that discussion of the origins of the war, or the planning for its aftermath, was somehow out of bounds. As just one piece of evidence for this I refer to a post of my own (old normblog site, 'But where is the green parrot?', August 21 2003) on the question of whether the Bush administration or the Blair government deliberately misled their publics. This is obviously a legitimate matter for discussion; more than that, it is a very important one.

The manifesto needs to be amended on this point.

[For other Euston platforms, go here.]