Media Watch World: Obama, Bush, Iraq, Alitalia, Sharia, Naipaul, CIA, Obama... March 16, 2008

This is Sunday March 16 wrap-up of news and comments from the media selected by me. I started off doing one Media Watch column but soon broke it into two: one for Desi and the other for World news and comments. As you have probably already discovered, I keep on adding more to them as and when I read something of interest or when I am sent a link that I find worth sharing.

Dear reader, your feedback and ideas would be appreciated. You can reach me a temporal3@gmail.com.

Obama Prepares For Full Assault On Clinton's Ethics

The Chicago Tribune reports that Barack Obama's is pushing this week for greater transparency in his campaign as part of a plan to launch a head-on attack against his opponent Sen. Clinton.

The plan seems to be yielding dividends, if the Tribune is to be believed. After sitting with the papers editorial board to answer every question asked about his relationship with Tony Rezko, the Chicago Tribune had this to say:

Bush Screws America, Again: Economy Slips to #2 - Paul Abrams

He did it to Arbusto Energy in the '70s, to Spectrum 7 and Harken Energy in the '80s. Enormous debt. Selling his shares to foreigners just days before a negative report on losses, leaving the other shareholders to shoulder the burden.

Now, he's done it to the United States of America. Enormous debt (a $9 trillion turnaround from a $5 trillion projected surplus to a $4 trillion debt), sold to foreigners. Until, that is, the value of the dollar falls to levels that foreigners may prefer other currencies instead -- such as, say, the Euro?

The atheist delusion

The abrupt shift in the perception of religion is only partly explained by terrorism. The 9/11 hijackers saw themselves as martyrs in a religious tradition, and western opinion has accepted their self-image. And there are some who view the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as a danger comparable with the worst that were faced by liberal societies in the 20th century.

For Dawkins and Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Martin Amis, Michel Onfray, Philip Pullman and others, religion in general is a poison that has fuelled violence and oppression throughout history, right up to the present day. The urgency with which they produce their anti-religious polemics suggests that a change has occurred as significant as the rise of terrorism: the tide of secularisation has turned. These writers come from a generation schooled to think of religion as a throwback to an earlier stage of human development, which is bound to dwindle away as knowledge continues to increase. In the 19th century, when the scientific and industrial revolutions were changing society very quickly, this may not have been an unreasonable assumption. Dawkins, Hitchens and the rest may still believe that, over the long run, the advance of science will drive religion to the margins of human life, but this is now an article of faith rather than a theory based on evidence.

Zia Mohyuddin on Paul Scofield

Paul Scofield remained the most unrecognised of actors even after he had been declared the natural heir to Sir Lawrence Olivier. This was because of his own shyness and his avowed resolve to remain intensely private. He did not drink at the Garrick (posh actor's club) and he wasn't a regular diner at the Ivy or the Caprice, the two exclusive restaurants where the likes of Noel Coward, John Gielgud, Douglas Fairbanks Junior dined regularly -- and he did not open fetes.

Thinking of Paul Scofield last night, my mind wandered to the time (1954) when he gave a magnificent performance as the Catholic priest in "The Power And the Glory", an adaptation of the Graham Greene novel. Oddly enough, the picture my mind conjured up was not of the priest, but that of the sleazy spiv that Scofield created in the not so successful West-End musical, "Expresso Bongo."

Why Shariah? - Noah Feldman

In some sense, the outrage about according a degree of official status to Shariah in a Western country should come as no surprise. No legal system has ever had worse press. To many, the word “Shariah” conjures horrors of hands cut off, adulterers stoned and women oppressed. By contrast, who today remembers that the much-loved English common law called for execution as punishment for hundreds of crimes, including theft of any object worth five shillings or more? How many know that until the 18th century, the laws of most European countries authorized torture as an official component of the criminal-justice system? As for sexism, the common law long denied married women any property rights or indeed legal personality apart from their husbands. When the British applied their law to Muslims in place of Shariah, as they did in some colonies, the result was to strip married women of the property that Islamic law had always granted them — hardly progress toward equality of the sexes.

Reformers Gain in Iran Vote Despite Being Barred -Nazzila Fathi

TEHRAN — With about half of the races for Parliament decided Saturday, more than 30 reformers appear to have won seats although most of their most prominent members had been barred from running by the country’s conservative establishment.

Religious conservatives, as expected, took a vast majority of the 141 seats that had already been decided. The conservative winners included some critics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, notably Ali Larijani, the former nuclear negotiator, who resigned over his differences with the president.

The results were announced by Press TV, the official government television network. Voter turnout was 60 percent, compared with 51 percent four years earlier, according to the Interior Ministry.

Spain’s Many Muslims Face Dearth of Mosques

LLEIDA, Spain — As prayer time approached on a chilly Friday afternoon and men drifted toward the mosque on North Street, Hocine Kouitene hauled open its huge steel doors.

Stefano Buonamici for The International Herald Tribune

Shoes outside the Lleida prayer hall. Garages and other buildings are pressed into service to make up for a lack of mosques.

As places of worship go, the crudely converted garage leaves much to be desired, said Mr. Kouitene, vice president of the Islamic Association for Union and Cooperation in Lleida, a prosperous medieval town in northeastern Spain surrounded by fruit farms that are a magnet for immigrant workers. Freezing in winter and stifling in summer, the prayer hall is so cramped that the congregation, swollen to 1,000 from 50 over the past five years, sometimes spills onto the street.

V. S. Naipaul - Part I and II - Observer

'I asked Patrick to do it, but I haven't read a word,' he emphasises, brushing past rumours of discord over the manuscript. 'I don't intend to read the book.'

This volatile mixture of pride and insecurity illuminates everything about him. 'I am the kind of writer,' he once said, 'that people think other people are reading.' That's a characteristic Naipaul formulation, ironically self-deprecating (my audience is small, but select) while at the same time breathtakingly self-confident (I am a great writer whose work deserves to be generally admired).

The light cast by this strange combustion of arrogance and modesty has often exposed the world in new and unexpected ways. At its best, Naipaul's prose is as sharp and lucid as splinters of glass. But there's a paradox here. The man himself is anything but straightforward - an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, inside a mystery: possibly, he is a bit of a puzzle even to himself.



A Phone Call to the Future by Mary Jo Salter: Reviewer James Longenbach

Back in the 20th century, when such things seemed to matter, poets argued about the virtue of meter and rhyme. Occasionally the debate produced insights of lasting consequence, like Robert Frost’s snarky metaphor for free verse (“playing tennis with the net down”) and Charles Wright’s brilliant response: “the high wire act without the net.” But the debate was perpetuated more often by tribal loyalties than by artistic necessity. An argument that forecloses possibilities for art — that says X is good because Y is bad — can rarely be trusted.

But what makes Salter worth reading — what makes her stand apart from the merely polemical elegance of the New Formalism — is that she herself is appalled by this distaste. While many of her poems are burdened by a need to dispense wisdom (“love dooms us to earn / love once we can speak of it”), her best are driven by a compulsion to confront the inexplicable. Her second collection, “Unfinished Painting,” includes “Elegies for Etsuko,” a long poem about a friend who committed suicide.

And now love’s pain, your curse,
is all I have. Forgive me ... What worse
punishment for suicide
than having died?

Here, the blunt rhyme between “suicide” and “died” makes the poem’s confrontation with mortality feel witheringly unavoidable. Rather than dispensing wisdom, Salter asks eviscerating questions.

Yemeni describes CIA secret jails

Khaled al-Maqtari told Amnesty International he was held in isolation for more than 28 months without charge or access to any legal representation.

He said he first became a US "ghost detainee" at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq after being arrested there in 2004.

The US has not acknowledged detaining Mr Maqtari.

CIA spokesman George Little told the BBC: "Apart from transfers to Guantanamo, the CIA does not, as a rule, comment publicly on allegations of who may - or who may not - have been in its custody.

"The agency has run its terrorist detention and interrogation programme in accord with US law."

US President George W Bush did acknowledge the existence of black sites in 2006.

The Media Repeats Stream of Lies About Obama _Ari Berman

He is a Muslim. He was sworn into office on the Koran. He doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance. His pastor is an anti-Semite. He's a tool of Louis Farrakhan. He's anti-Israel. His advisers are anti-Israel. He's friends with terrorists. The terrorists want him to win. He's the Antichrist.By now you've probably seen at least some of these e-mails and articles about Barack Obama bouncing around the Internet. They distort Obama's religious faith, question his support for Israel, warp the identity and positions of his campaign advisers and defame his friends and allies from Chicago. The purpose of the smear is to paint him as an Arab-loving, Israel-hating, terrorist-coddling, radical black nationalist. That picture couldn't be further from the truth, but you'd be surprised how many people have fallen for it. The American Jewish community, one of the most important pillars of the Democratic Party and US politics, has been specifically targeted [see Eric Alterman's column in the March 24 issue, "(Some) Jews Against Obama"]. What started as a largely overlooked fringe attack has been thrust into the mainstream -- used as GOP talking points, pushed by the Clinton campaign, echoed by the likes of Meet the Press host Tim Russert. Falsehoods are repeated as fact, and bits of evidence become "elaborate constructions of malicious fantasy," as the Jewish Week, America's largest Jewish newspaper, editorialized.


Alitalia accepts Air France offer

Troubled Italian carrier Alitalia has agreed to be bought by rival Air France for a cut-price 138m euros(£106m:$215m) in a move to save the state airline.

The Italian government, which holds 49.9% of Alitalia, failed to sell the company by auction in 2007.

Alitalia has lost money for five years, and has struggled to clinch a buyout.

Air France-KLM offered one share per 160 Alitalia shares, valuing Alitalia at a low-value 0.10 euros a share.

That is a 81% reduction on Alitalia's current share price.

The offer includes plans for a 1bn euro capital injection by the Franco-Dutch airline, which says it will also pay 608m euros to buy back Alitalia bonds.

The proposed purchase could become a hot topic in Italy's general election, being held on 13 and 14 April.

Alec Baldwin on Choosing McCain's V-P Hinting He is Far From Healthy

For altogether different reasons, watch McCain's choice. Few men (or maybe, craftily, a woman?) will enter the West Wing with a greater chance of becoming president than this VP. McCain is not what one would consider a healthy man. Inheriting the Bush mess certainly holds no cure.

Glaciers suffer record shrinkage

Some glaciers in Europe have suffered significant losses

The rate at which some of the world's glaciers are melting has more than doubled, data from the United Nations Environment Programme has shown.

Average glacial shrinkage has risen from 30 centimetres per year between 1980 and 1999, to 1.5 metres in 2006.

Some of the biggest losses have occurred in the Alps and Pyrenees mountain ranges in Europe.

Experts have called for "immediate action" to reverse the trend, which is seen as a key climate change indicator.

Estimates for 2006 indicate shrinkage of 1.4 metres of 'water equivalent' compared to half a metre in 2005.