Christina Lamb on Afghanistan

Christina Lamb is Washington correspondent of the Sunday Times and won this year’s Prix Bayeux Calvados for war reporting for her coverage of Afghanistan. She has twice been named Foreign Correspondent of the Year in the British Press Awards. She is, in short, really good. (As is her most recent book, Small Wars Permitting, a collection of her journalism.)

She writes in the Spectator:

In the late 1980s I lived in Peshawar and travelled with many of those we now consider bad guys, but who were then on the same side against the Soviets. I even spent three weeks going round Kandahar on the backs of motorbikes of the incipient Taleban. These long links enable me to travel to areas few other foreign journalists can go to. But for the last two years, each time I visit Afghanistan, I find I can travel to fewer and fewer places, my Afghan friends insisting it is too dangerous to travel on the roads built with billions of dollars of our taxpayers’ money. Last time I went, in August, I barely ventured outside Kabul. Even in the capital foreign residences are surrounded by ever more concrete blocks.

She says that she used to think the answer was to send more troops, but no longer. She sets out her case at length – it really is worth reading the whole piece – but here is one example of why she has changed her mind:

A recent report from the Institute of War details how British forces took the district of Nad Ali last year, losing a number of soldiers. They then handed control over to the Afghan police, who set about raping young boys. Eventually the people got so fed up that they asked the Taleban to come back to protect them.

She lists some of what she sees as the West’s biggestmistakes since ousting the Taleban eight years ago:

getting distracted by Iraq; giving Karzai too much leeway; supporting warlords; being unable to differentiate tribal infighting and Taleban; bombing wedding parties; believing Pakistan shared our interests; putting the Italians in charge of building a justice system.

That last one is quite amazing, really.

Joe Hildebrand on racist food

Home Paddock alerted us to the fuss in Australia about creole creams, a trans-Tasman sequel to our own fuss about marshmallow Eskimos. But wait, there’s more.

In this three-minute video, Joe Hildebrand presents a shocking exposé of the real situation confronting sensitive shoppers in Australian supermarkets:
VIDEO: Politically incorrect groceries

Was Pope John Paul II anti-Semitic?

The question is posed in this week’s Spectator Diary by Neil Tennant, the articulate Pet Shop Boy, following their tour of the Americas – Montreal to Lima. He rates the food in Peru, and is annoyed by fans snapping pix of the band on their cameras rather than watching the show, but more to the point he says:

One of the books I read on tour was Fritz Stern’s Five Germanys I Have Known, a memoir by the distinguished Jewish-American historian who grew up in pre-war Germany and emigrated with his family to the US. The five Germanys are Weimar, Nazi, capitalist West Germany, communist East Germany and today’s unified Germany, and he provides an insider’s account of his experiences of all of them and America’s interaction with them. In 1987, he met Pope John Paul II and enthused about the large number of bright Asian students there are at American universities these days, remarking, ‘They have taken the place of the Jews.’

The Pope’s response was a little chilling: ‘Yes, but they [Jews] still control the media and finance.’

I think that there we have our answer to Tennant’s question. On an anti-Semitism scale of 10, I’d give that an 8.5. You can take the Pole out of Poland but. . .

They invented algebra, and now. . .

Arab News reports:

A new TV show that discusses issues concerning teenage girls and female university students was recently broadcast with Saudi presenters dressed in black from head to toe.

As Mick Hartley says, such a show:

would make for a devastatingly incisive critique of contemporary celebrity culture; alienation and conformity; the fetishisation of women; the impossibility of meaningful personal communication within the dehumanising environment of commercial television.

Well, yes. The Arab News report continues:

The show — named Asrar Al-Banat (The Secrets of Girls) — is broadcast on Awtan TV, a Saudi religious channel that was first aired in August 2008 and has women broadcasters who are covered in the all-enveloping abaya and niqab. [. . . ]

Answering a question about some opposing religious views that regard the voice of women as Awrah (something that cannot be revealed in the presence of men), Sawsan said that scholars deem women’s voices as Awrah only if they are speaking softly or on immoral topics.

She added that the Prophet’s wife Sayyidatuna Ayesha (may Allah be pleased with her) would verbally issue religious rulings (fatwas) to men and that none of the Prophet’s companions criticized her at that time.

Commenting on whether her appearance on TV would now lead to women appearing on cooking and children programs, she said, “When it comes to cooking, men can present them. However, there are some issues relating to women which men cannot handle in the way we can.”

Happy birthday, Ike Turner

Well, it would be if Ike was still with us but he left for the Great Gig in the Sky nearly two years ago, on 12 December 2007.

Even if we allow that Tina Turner’s autobiography might have been a tad biased, he does seem to be been a monster. A great musician, though: his “Rocket 88”, credited to Jackie Brenston, is generally held to be one of the first, if not the actual first, rock and roll songs. He was a hot pianist, a fine guitarist and a brilliant band leader. Here he is with Tina in February 1971 performing “Proud Mary”, a version which features his baritone voice and great guitar work – he was from Mississippi, after all. It’s funny, sexy and great showmanship throughout. The Ikettes are pretty good too – I can’t find their names (many Ikettes went on to stardom of their own, most notably PP Arnold) – but the entire show is on an Eagle Vision DVD called Ike and Tina Turner Live in ’71. It’s all as fantastic as this:



My favourite Ike Turner story concerns another great guitar player who might not have been a very nice man either. Frank Zappa recorded some of his 1973 album Overnite Sensation at the Turners’ studio, Boltic Sound. As Zappa told interviewer Simon Prentis (quoted in Ben Watson’s The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play):

I wanted to put some back-up singers on the thing, and the road manager who was with us at the time checked into it and said, “Well, why don’t you just use the Ikettes?” I said, “I can get the Ikettes?” and he said, “Sure.” But you know what the gimmick was? We had to agree, Ike Turner insisted, that we pay these girls no more than $25 per song, because that’s what he paid them. And no matter how many hours it took, I could not pay them any more than $25 per song per girl, including Tina.

It was so difficult, that one part in the middle of the song “Montana”, that the three girls rehearsed it for a couple of days. Just that one section. You know the part that goes, “I’m pluckin’ the ol’ dennil floss...”? Right in the middle there. And – I can’t remember her name, but one of the harmony singers – she got it first. She came out and sang her part and the other girls had to follow her track. Tina was so pleased that she was able to sing this thing that she went into the next studio where Ike was working and dragged him into the studio to hear the result of her labor. He listened to the tape and he goes, “What is this shit?” and walked out.

Wonderful. Zappa continued:

I don’t know how she managed to stick with that guy for so long. He treated her terribly and she’s a really nice lady. We were recording down there on a Sunday. She wasn’t involved with the session, but she came in on Sunday with a whole pot of stew that she brought for everyone working in the studio. Like out of nowhere, here’s Tina Turner coming in with a rag on her head bringing a pot of stew. It was really nice.

Monitor: Home Paddock

The best dictionary ever

Robert McCrum writes in the Observer that the Chambers Dictionary may be no more. Its owner, Hachette UK, a subsidiary of the French company Lagardère, can see no future for it.

This dictionary has been in print since 1867 and for me is the best available. Oxford is the conventional authority, Collins is useful and we need the Americans when editing for their amusing language, but Chambers is the business.

It is as good on phrases as it is on individual words, and it has by far the best attitude. My favourite entry is this, under Charity:

― charity begins at home, usually an excuse for not letting it get abroad.

The inland seal of Matamata

The Waikato Times reports on its front page today:

Matamata farmer Nigel Buckley had to rub the sleep from his eyes to make sure he wasn’t seeing things when he stumbled across a young New Zealand fur seal in his paddock. In the dawn light yesterday as he headed to the milking shed, Mr Buckley first thought the seal, which his 2-year-old labrador/retriever cross Sassy gave chase to, was either another dog or a possum.

“But when I got a bit closer I wondered what the heck Sassy was chasing – this thing just turned around and snapped at her and it turned out to be a New Zealand fur seal.”

The seal, 100km from the sea, frightened a paddock full of calves before making its way across the farm, where it took shelter under a tree. About the size of an adult dog and thought to be up to 3 years old, the seal crawled under a disused milk tank, where it took a nap which lasted most of the morning.

Conservation Department staff captured the seal, which was around 90cm long and which weighed an estimated 20kg or more, in a net and released him yesterday at Pauanui, on the Coromandel Peninsula.

It’s thought the seal made its way from the sea, an estimated 100km away, via the Waihou and other rivers and farm drains. The seal was first seen about 1km from a drain. [. . .]

Marine ecologist Kristina Hillock said seals that travelled this far were usually just curious. “It might have been just chasing a fish.”

As you do. Matamata is a much pleasanter town than it was 20 or 30 years ago, and there is the attraction of the excellent Kaimai Cheese Company for lunch in nearby Waharoa, but really if I was a seal it wouldn’t be enough to entice me to swim 100 km up-river from the Firth of Thames.

To give you an idea of how far the seal swam, here's the Waikato Times's map:

My local news is so better than your local news.

In praise of Prince Philip

Yes, I know. It is not a phrase I thought I would ever use. The Duke of Edinburgh does seem to be, frankly, a total shit. And yet, and yet.

Few of us in New Zealand have ever heard of Gyles Brandreth, who is a household name in England, writing loo books, appearing on TV, doing all the things a publicity-hungry person does, and by all accounts he does them well. Last month he published his diaries, Something Sensational to Read on the Train. The Spectator reviewer Sam Leith writes:

There’s a sort of running joke of Prince Philip — with whom Brandreth first comes in contact through his work at the National Playing Fields Association — thinking he’s a nincompoop. Introduced at a reception to “the President of Pakistan”, Brandreth is hopelessly tongue-tied. Prince Philip returns, and intuits what’s going on: “He’s the president of the Pakistan Playing Fields Association, you idiot. He is not General Zia. Does he look like General Zia? Good God, man, do you know anything?”

Later, Brandreth tells the Duke that he’d had breakfast with “Blake Carrington from Dynasty”. Prince Philip replies:

I haven’t the first idea what you’re talking about. I had breakfast with the Queen.

There’s not much you could say to that.

Later still, Prince Philip comes upon Brandreth among the dignitaries lined up to receive him and the Queen:

‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m the Member of Parliament.’
‘Good God, are you really?’

What an astoundingly rude man, but imagine how satisfying it must be to be able to talk like that to people.

Sheer brilliance from Dim-Post

How the Herald’s next interview with John Key will read.

I want a Kindle

Clearly the e-book is the future of publishing and the Kindle has always sounded better than the competition. I could see it as a working tool for publishers, as Geoff Walker of Penguin Books outlines here, but I’ve never quite seen the point of it for me.

It’s not just that I make my living from books – editing them, writing them and, as a manuscript assessor, helping others get their work into a publishable form. It’s more that that I like books as a medium – they’re portable, readable under all but the dimmest light, the big expensive ones have nice pictures and the little cheap ones you can throw away after reading or pass on without caring if you never see them again.

Also, I spend half my day at a computer screen, so I prefer to read anything else in printed form. So why would I want a Kindle?

Now I know. Rory Sutherland, the Spectator’s IT columnist explains:

The Kindle is different from other e-book readers in being permanently connected to a mobile phone data network. This seems to me a great advantage over the competition. It means you can stand in the middle of a field in perhaps 50 countries in the world and order a copy of any of 350,000 digital books to arrive through the ether in 60 seconds. More important, this connectivity makes it a potent news-reading device — it automatically receives digital copies of chosen newspapers and magazines the instant they hit the newsstands.

But wait, there’s more:

Already, browsing Amazon’s Kindle store in anticipation of what to buy has led to some happy discoveries. The Spectator is already available in Kindle form. So are a few hundred other periodicals, including the TLS, the Telegraph and the New York Times. Ninety P.G. Wodehouse novels and stories can be bought as a bundle for less than $8.

It’s the instant access wherever one is that appeals. That, and the bundling. (There is an outstanding bundle coming of New Zealand books, thanks to Martin Taylor’s work with the Digital Publishing Forum, which was set up by Copyright Licensing Ltd.)

There are problems for authors with all digital rights. As Sutherland says:

What can you charge for an electronic book ($4-10 seems the current norm)? How much of this money will go to Amazon, which created the Kindle and owns the rights to the Kindle file format? How much will go to the publisher? How much will be lost to piracy?

Even the NZ Society of Authors, which is currently revising its contracts manual for authors, The Business of Writing (I did the previous revision a few years ago, before any of this was an issue), doesn’t yet have a definitive view on what we want for our digital rights, and I suspect local publishers don’t yet either. We are very much in uncharted waters.

But the Kindle is coming to New Zealand, and I want one.