The Times (Continuación)

MundoOriente Próximo,

The conflict in Gaza has been triggered by Israel's belief that the status quo has become intolerable and should be overturned.

There are several reasons why Israel felt it could not live with the situation in Gaza. The most immediate is the rocket attacks by Hamas that have made life for nearly a tenth of Israelis an exercise in anxiety. Also a factor is that Hamas, since it staged its putsch two years ago, has closed Gaza to all Palestinian groups that have accepted a two-state solution. This makes it impossible for Israel and the administration of President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) in the West Bank to restart negotiations that could lead to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

The spectacle of Merkava tanks rumbling into the Gaza Strip last weekend served as complete proof that the massive Israeli onslaught from the air, killing hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children, utterly failed in its objective of crippling Hamas. I simply do not believe Ehud Barak's claim that Israel always planned a ground invasion as a necessary second stage of the offensive against Hamas. Those tanks so conspicuously parked along the borders of the Gaza Strip were simply intended to put extra psychological pressure on Hamas. Now they have been deployed in earnest - and the invaders have taken casualties.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

It was strictly forbidden to have a notebook in Belsen, but my Aunt Ruth had one anyway. Just a little pocket diary - an appointment book with one of those tiny pencils. And in it, in the autumn of 1944, she noted that Anne Frank and Anne's sister, Ruth's schoolfriend Margot, had arrived in the concentration camp.

My mother and my aunt had been watching through the camp wire when the Franks arrived. Mum remembers it well, because they had been excited to spot girls they knew from the old days in Amsterdam. They had played in the same streets, been to the same schools and Ruth and Margot attended Hebrew classes together.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

Why do you want to join the Secret Service?” demands John Cleese, the British spymaster interviewing a new recruit in the old Monty Python sketch.

“Can you keep a secret?” “Yes.” “Good, well you're in then.”

Some British spies have proved notoriously bad at keeping secrets, but for most of the last century the British intelligence agencies insisted on complete secrecy as the central defining tenet of their work. MI5, the Security Service, and MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, worked in deep shadow, anonymous, deniable and invisible.

As the historian Sir Michael Howard remarked in 1991: “So far as official government policy is concerned, the British security and intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, do not exist, enemy agents are found under gooseberry bushes and intelligence is brought in by the storks.”…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

For months - years even - the historical twinning that some campaigners have chosen for the situation in Gaza has been with the Warsaw ghetto. There'll probably be a sign up soon, because in the past week Ken Livingstone, the activist-musician Brian Eno and George Galloway have all made the comparison.

“Gaza is a ghetto,” said Mr Livingstone, "in exactly the same way that the Warsaw Ghetto was, and people are trapped in it”; while Eno predicted: “They [the Israelis] will continue to create a Warsaw Ghetto in the Middle East.” The less-restrained Mr Galloway pronounced: “Those murdering them [the occupants of Gaza] are the equivalent of those who murdered the Jews in Warsaw in 1942.”…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica

Cuba - what a word to conjure with. And what nonsense people have used it to conjure up for half a century now. Those who are determined to see Cuba through the rosy tints of revolutionary spectacles have for decades claimed the country as proof that socialism can work; a Cuban David was able to stand up to the western Goliaths of colonialism and corruption, and Castro’s revolution 50 years ago last week brought peace and plenty - or, if not exactly plenty (given the wicked US blockade), then something better in the shape of brotherly and sisterly content and hospitals far better than those of the National Health Service.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, ,

For some years now, the British Government has professed the wrongness of Guantánamo Bay. Tony Blair called it an “anomaly”; others were more forthright. Indeed, the Cuban camp that houses about 250 prisoners, without trial or charges after seven years, is a profound exercise in hypocrisy. The West is here to promote the rule of law, proclaimed George Bush with Mr Blair at his side - but don't ask us to respect it ourselves. Because hypocrisy is the yeast that ferments hatred, the Guantánamo experiment has been a recruiting sergeant for extremism. And so long as the suicide bombers flock to the standard, everyone is a loser.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica

Long after you leave Zimbabwe images linger in the mind, harrowing and ineradicable. An emaciated old woman making “soup” from weeds for her orphaned grandchildren; desperate parents foraging in the bush for a handful of desiccated berries; young men defying crocodiles to catch a handful of tiny fish in the Zambezi; the corpses of cholera victims trussed up in black plastic sheeting; the ubiquitous and debilitated Aids victims; perfunctory funerals in Harare's cemetery while, all around, fresh graves are dug.

The pathetic attempts to grow vegetables on scraps of common land; the queues desperate to withdraw a few pennies from banks before their money loses all its value; the listlessness and despair of a crushed and broken people, the anguish of priests, doctors and aid workers overwhelmed by this tsunami of suffering...…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

Last week I was in Gaza. While I was there I met a group of 20 or so police officers who were undergoing a course in conflict management. They were eager to know whether foreigners felt safer since Hamas had taken over the Government? Indeed we did, we told them. Without doubt the past 18 months had seen a comparative calm on the streets of Gaza; no gunmen on the streets, no more kidnappings. They smiled with great pride and waved us goodbye.

Less than a week later all of these men were dead, killed by an Israeli rocket at a graduation ceremony.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

Let's have a pointless discussion about Gaza and begin it by talking about whether Israel's bombing is “disproportionate”.

To illustrate the meaninglessness of such a debate let us attempt to agree what “proportionate” would look like.

Would it be best if Israel were to manufacture a thousand or so wildly inaccurate missiles and then fire them off in the general direction of Gaza City? There is a chance, though, that since Gaza is more densely packed than Israel, casualties might be much the same as they are now, so although the ordnance would be proportionate, the deaths would not. Of course, if one of Gaza's rockets did manage to hit an Israeli nursery school at the wrong time (or the right time, depending upon how you look at it), then the proportionality issue would be solved in one explosion.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica,

A billion people around the world face a stark choice - to drink potentially lethal water or nothing. Sometimes when faced with these huge facts, we can feel that there is nothing we can do to change them.

When I first heard the remarkable story of Pump Aid, I was reminded of something Margaret Mead, the American anthropologist, once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

Pump Aid is the story of three thoughtful, committed Zimbabwean teachers who saw several students die after drinking contaminated water, and believed that they could make a difference.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

Barack Obama was said to have the in-tray from hell even before the conflict between Hamas and Israel resulted in substantial loss of life in Gaza, as the Israelis took revenge on the terrorist organisation for its recent rocket attacks. If Obama harboured any idea of allowing the Arab-Israeli conflict to fall down towards the bottom of his agenda as he dealt with the economic slump or Iran or Afghanistan, he will by now have been disabused.

Able politicians do not fear inheriting what appears to be an impossibly complex agenda: they relish it. A significant moment during the US presidential campaign came when John McCain broke off electioneering to deal with the credit crunch.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesTestimonios

Harold Pinter was the greatest English playwright of the 20th century. That is as near to a fact as one gets in such matters. It is quite likely that, in the future, he will be seen as one of the greatest English playwrights in history. Pinter’s early plays are what is meant by creative genius.

Pinter needs no attempts at cheerleading from me or from anyone else. I idolised him from the moment I saw, as a teenager, a production of The Birthday Party, or possibly from the moment, at about the same time, when I saw a photo of him on the back of a copy of the play.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalIglesia Católica

It's not often that a science writer gets to say this, but the Pope is right. It's not as if he's always right: where scientific matters are concerned, Benedict XVI has displayed precious little infallibility. He has shown a disquieting sympathy for the rebranded creationism of intelligent design, and his views on embryonic stem cells, IVF and contraception are inimical to medical progress. But in attacking the notion that sex roles are invariably ordained by culture and not biology, the Holy Father has said something that needed saying.

As the Pope is finding out, anyone who criticises this “gender theory” invites vitriol from its liberal champions.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

When Muntazar al-Zaidi's first shoe arced through the Baghdad press conference, and as George W. Bush - rather nimbly for a man in late middle age - commenced his duck, there began the creation of a metaphor for where we have all got to in the great Iraqi debate. “I am in love with al-Zaidi,” wrote a British comedian, who was disappointed that the shoes missed the hated President. The fact that this was a gesture of contempt among Arabs (as the BBC's Caroline Wyatt told viewers twice in one report) was taken and immediately projected on the entire Arab world by Western commentators.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión Europea,

Last week Gordon Brown announced a date for Britain’s withdrawal from Iraq. Most troops will be back in time for a spring general election. The prime minister posed with soldiers and expressed his sorrow over yet more fatal casualties in Afghanistan. He did not dwell on Britain’s humiliation in Basra, nor mention that this is the most inglorious withdrawal since Sir Anthony Eden ordered the boys back from Suez.

The fundamental cause of the British failure was political. Tony Blair wanted to join the United States in its toppling of Saddam Hussein because if Britain does not back America it is hard to know what our role in the world is: certainly not a seat at the top table.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaReflexionesTestimonios, ,

Although “Deep Throat” became for 33 years the most famous mystery source in investigative reporting, it is worth recalling that his momentous Watergate disclosures had little immediate public impact. Richard Nixon gained re-election in 1972 by a landslide despite the torrent of coverage of his campaign's misdeeds in The Washington Post stemming from the fabulous insider source of Bob Woodward, then a cub reporter.

But if America ignored it at first, what Deep Throat - Mark Felt, who died on Thursday - had done, as Woodward later wrote, was to set out a “road map”. It was followed by judges, prosecutors, and congressmen.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

Not far from the road that the Romans called Ermine Street and we more prosaically call the A10 is a field strewn with rounded flint pebbles. These formed on a tropical beach 55 million years ago: Hertfordshire-by-the-Sea.

Above the field stands a copse. The farmer has not sought to bring it under the plough, and there is a good reason. The wood is pitted with Roman and Stone Age excavations. Our ancestors quarried hard patches of the beachrock, cemented by silica, at a time of exceptional global warming 55 million years ago. The Hertfordshire puddingstone was used to grind corn.

Grinding corn with puddingstone querns was more important to the survival in that area of our Stone Age and Roman ancestors than oil is to us today.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea

The European Parliament voted yesterday to end Britain's exemption from the maximum 48-hour working week. A bit of Euro-fudge with the member states should water this down, but across the Channel they are wondering why Britain bothers.

Since the early 1980s, les Anglais have been lecturing Europe on the virtues of long hours as the path to prosperity. While the grasshopper French were awarding themselves a 35-hour week in the 1990s, the British fought for the right to sweat away 24/7 in the name of competing with the emerging ants of Asia.

Now the boot is on the other foot. Just as there is no French word for opt-out, there is none for schadenfreude - but there is a lot of it around.…  Seguir leyendo »