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- Hilary Mantel is right - freedom is compromised by media bullying
- Wole Soyinka: why I don't want to be one of the 100 great Nigerians
- Oscar Pistorius trial day four – live updates
- The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe – review
- Ukraine crisis: EU and UN hold emergency talks over Russia in Crimea – live
- Game of Thrones: HBO raps up season four | Media Monkey
- Nick Clegg hosts his Call Clegg phone-in: Politics live blog
- Could Chennai become India's model green city?
- Malaysian prosecutors appeal against Anwar Ibrahim acquittal
- Art of war: melding arms into weapons of mass attraction – in pictures
- Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion – review
- Ukraine crisis: European leaders to hold emergency summit
- Medicare fraud reaches nearly half a million dollars in past year
- Indonesia and Iran to discuss Australia's treatment of asylum seekers
- Asylum policy secrecy brings call for overhaul of interest immunity claims
- Shell boss warns against Scottish independence
- Qantas carbon tax bill has been covered by ticket surcharge
- If God is love, then can God also be love, heat and passion? | Miranda Threlfall-Holmes
- Soldiers injured in war zones lose bid to accrue war service leave if evacuated
- Geert Wilders backs new anti-Islam party, the Australian Liberty Alliance
- China imposes censorship on reporting of knife attack
- Gina Rinehart says Australia is blessed but needs a good dose of Thatcherism
- Ukraine crisis is about Great Power oil, gas pipeline rivalry | Nafeez Ahmed
- NSW moves to ban trucking company involved in fatal tanker crash
- Nato attack kills five Afghan troops
| Hilary Mantel is right - freedom is compromised by media bullying Posted: 06 Mar 2014 02:03 AM PST  Throughout the Leveson process newspaper publishers and editors have been extolling the virtues of freedom of the press while casting themselves as tribunes of that freedom. Critics, by contrast, have sought to show that the freedom exercised by press proprietors weighs heavily in their favour. In effect, the freedom they enjoy is denied to others. Now Hilary Mantel, the novelist, has accused newspapers of compromising freedom through a bullying mentality that stifles intelligent debate. In other words, despite their attachment to freedom in theory, the practice is very different. Mantel was referring to the coverage that followed a lecture she gave in February last year in which she mentioned the media's portrayal of the Duchess of Cambridge. She spoke of the former Kate Middleton's media image as "a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung". But her statement was reported as if it was her own opinion of the duchess rather than a description of the way in which she was treated in the media. The result was a swathe of personal criticism in newspapers and on TV and radio. Even the prime minister and leader of the opposition thought it necessary to comment. An article in today's Times reports that Mantel took up these misrepresentations of her lecture during a Royal Shakespeare Company press conference on Wednesday about the transfer of its adaptations of her novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, to London. She said (and I'm assuming she has been reported properly this time around):
She went on to talk about it being indicative of the way the media presented stories in bite-sized chunks so that readers could form instant opinions. Asked whether this was encouraged by social media, such as Twitter, she replied:
Mantel points to a problem with a long history. The deliberate misreading of her lecture comments about the duchess are part of an agenda-setting process in which the story, rather than the truth, is regarded as the central journalistic mission. Here was a headline story with guaranteed readership appeal: an award-winning novelist criticises a glamorous member of the royal family. Result 1: a media storm in which the public can be guaranteed to take sides with the overwhelming majority undoubtedly siding with the duchess. Result 2: the demonisation of the novelist. Result 3: self-censorship, the narrowing of public debate because people will seek to avoid becoming victims of a media frenzy. Mantel, clearly, is refusing to censor herself. The attempt to bully me, she said on Wednesday, "won't work". She also said:
Good for her. But her substantive point, that others who fear a similar fate might well button up, should be taken seriously. People are intimidated by "the power of the press." It reminds us, yet again, that press freedom has to be balanced by responsibility. But how is a story-getting, rather than a truth-telling, press to be made to act responsibly? Doubtless, the incoming Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) will sort that out... theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds       |
| Wole Soyinka: why I don't want to be one of the 100 great Nigerians Posted: 06 Mar 2014 02:01 AM PST Nobel-winning author writes open letter rejecting government honour in protest against inclusion of former dictator       |
| Oscar Pistorius trial day four – live updates Posted: 06 Mar 2014 02:01 AM PST Full coverage of day four of South African athlete Oscar Pistorius's trial for the murder of his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, at his home in Pretoria on Valentine's Day last year       |
| The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe – review Posted: 06 Mar 2014 02:00 AM PST  David Kertzer's nuanced book investigates an unholy alliance between fascism and the Catholic church In 1938, Pope Pius XI addressed a group of visitors to the Vatican. There were some people, he said, who argued that the state should be all-powerful – "totalitarian". Such an idea, he went on, was absurd, not because individual liberty was too precious to be surrendered, but because "if there is a totalitarian regime – in fact and by right – it is the regime of the church, because man belongs totally to the church". As David Kertzer demonstrates repeatedly in this nuanced book, to be critical of fascism in Italy in the 30s was not necessarily to be liberal or a lover of democracy. And to be antisemitic was not to be unchristian. The Pope told Mussolini that the church had long seen the need to "rein in the children of Israel" and to take "protective measures against their evil-doing". The Vatican and the fascist regime had many differences, but this they had in common. Kertzer announces that the Catholic church is generally portrayed as the courageous opponent of fascism, but this is an exaggeration. There is a counter-tradition, John Cornwell's fine book, Hitler's Pope, on Pius XII (who succeeded Pius XI in 1939) exposed the Vatican's culpable passivity in the face of the wartime persecution of Italian Jews. But Kertzer describes something more fundamental than a church leader's strategic decision to protect his own flock rather than to speak up in defence of others. His argument, presented not as polemic but as gripping storytelling, is that much of fascist ideology was inspired by Catholic tradition – the authoritarianism, the intolerance of opposition and the profound suspicion of the Jews. Pius XI – formerly Achille Ratti, librarian, mountain-climber and admirer of Mark Twain – was elected Pope in February 1922, eight months before Mussolini bullied his way to the Italian premiership. For 17 years the two men held sway over their separate spheres in Rome. In all that time they met only once, but they communicated ceaselessly by means of ambassadors and nuncios, through the press (each had his tame organ) and via less publicly accountable go-betweens. From the copious records of their exchanges Kertzer has uncovered a fascinating tale of two irascible – and often irrational – potentates, and gives us an account of some murky intellectual finagling, and an often startling investigation of the exercise of power. The accession of Mussolini, known in his youth as mangiaprete – priest-eater – didn't bode well for the papacy. The fascist squads had been beating up clerics and terrorising Catholic youth clubs. But Mussolini saw that he could use the church to legitimise his power, so he set about wooing the clergy. He had his wife and children baptised. He gave money for the restoration of churches. After two generations of secularism, there were once again to be crucifixes in Italy's courts and classrooms. Warily, slowly, the Pope became persuaded that with Mussolini's help Italy might become, once more, a "confessional state". Only gradually did it become clear how much the church might lose in the process. Pius fretted over inadequately dressed women – backless ballgowns and the skimpy outfits of female gymnasts were particularly worrisome. Mussolini played along, solemnly declaring that, in future, girls' gym lessons would be designed only to make them fit mothers of fascist sons. He was accommodating in aiding the Pope's war on heresy – banning Protestant books and journals on demand. But Mussolini was creating a heresy of his own. Schoolchildren were required to pray to him: "I humbly offer my life to you, o Duce." In January 1938, he summoned more than 2,000 priests, including 60 bishops, to participate in a celebration of his agricultural policy. Neither the Pope nor his secretary of state were happy, but they feared offending the dictator. And so the priests marched in procession through Rome. They laid wreaths, not at a Christian shrine, but on a monument to fascist heroes. They saluted Mussolini as he stood on his balcony and attended a ceremony where they were required to cheer his entrance, to pray for blessings upon him and roar out "O Duce! Duce! Duce!" That the fascists (beginning with their precursor, Gabriele d'Annunzio) had appropriated ecclesiastical rituals and liturgies could perhaps be taken as a compliment to the church, but to recruit its priests for the worship of a secular ruler was to humiliate God's vicar on earth. Mussolini was cock-a-hoop. It was easy to manipulate the church, he told his new allies in Nazi Germany. With a few tax concessions, and free railway tickets for the clergy, he boasted, he had got the Vatican so snugly in his pocket it had even declared his genocidal invasion of Abyssinia "a holy war". When it comes to the "Jewish question", Kertzer demonstrates that the Pope's failure to protest effectively against the fascist racial laws arose not simply from weakness, but because antisemitism pervaded his church. Mussolini scored a painful hit when he assured Pius that he would do nothing to Italy's Jews that had not already been done under papal rule. Roberto Farinacci, most brutal of the fascist leaders, came close to the truth when he announced: "It is impossible for the Catholic fascist to renounce that antisemitic conscience which the church had formed through the millennia." And Catholic antisemitism was thriving. Among Pius's most valued advisers were several who – as Kertzer amply demonstrates – saw themselves as battling against a diabolical alliance of communists, Protestants, freemasons and Jews. Avoiding overt partisanship, Kertzer coolly lays out the evidence; he describes his large and various cast of characters, and follows their machinations. We meet the genial Cardinal Gasparri who, narrowly missing the papacy himself, became Pius's secretary of state, handling the negotiations that led in 1929 to the Lateran Accords between the Vatican and the regime. Gasparri, a peasant's son who had risen far, considered Mussolini absurdly ignorant and uncouth; Mussolini thought him "very shrewd". We meet the Jesuit father, Tacchi Venturi, Pius's unofficial emissary, a firm believer in conspiracy theories, who claimed to have been nearly killed by an antifascist hitman (the story doesn't stand up). We meet Monsignor Caccia, Pius's master of ceremonies, who was known to the police and to Mussolini's spies for luring boys to his rooms in the Vatican for sex, rewarding them with contraband cigarettes. And we meet the motley crew familiar from histories of fascism: the doltish Starace, Mussolini's "bulldog"; Ciano, plump and boyish and, in the opinion of the American ambassador, devoid of "standards morally or politically"; and Clara Petacci, the girl with whom Mussolini spent hours of every day on the beach. Some of this is familiar territory, but what is new, and riveting, is how fascists and churchmen alike were forced into intellectual contortions as they struggled to justify the new laws. "Racism" was good. "Exaggerated racism" was bad. "Antisemitism" was good, as long as it was Italian. "German antisemitism" was another thing entirely. Eventually Pius XI drew back from this casuistry. Kertzer describes the old pope on his deathbed, praying for just a few more days so that he could deliver a speech with the message that "all the nations, all the races" (Jews included) could be united by faith. He dies. Cardinal Pacelli – suave, emollient and devious, where Pius XI was a table-thumper who had no qualms about blurting out uncomfortable truths – clears his desk, suppresses his notes and persuades the Vatican's printer, who has the speech's text ready for distribution, to destroy it so that "not a comma" remains. Eighteen days later Pacelli becomes Pope Pius XII. It is a striking ending for a book whose narrative strength is as impressive as its moral subtlety. • Lucy Hughes-Hallett's The Pike: Gabriele d'Annunzio has won the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, the Costa biography award and the Duff Cooper prize. theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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| Ukraine crisis: EU and UN hold emergency talks over Russia in Crimea – live Posted: 06 Mar 2014 01:54 AM PST • EU leaders in Brussels to meet Ukraine's new PM       |
| Game of Thrones: HBO raps up season four | Media Monkey Posted: 06 Mar 2014 01:53 AM PST  Common, Outkast's Big Boi and Wale among artists featuring on a hip-hop mixtape to promote the return of the fantasy drama "Watch the throne, don't step on our robe," Jay-Z rapped on the track HAM from Kanye West's album Watch the Throne. Now it appears HBO is to promote the fourth series of Game of Thrones using an unlikely medium: a rap mixtape. The Wall Street Journal reports that the cable channel has recruited 10 rappers and Latin artists to create tracks, including Common, Outkast's Big Boi and Wale. According to the WSJ, Common's lyrics include "I sit and think when I'm in my zone / This life is like a Game of Thrones", while Big Boi raps about Khaleesi, "the mother of dragons" on a track chorus of, "Dungeons, dragons, kings and queens!" Lucinda Martinez, HBO's senior vice-president for multicultural marketing, said: "Our multicultural audiences are a very important part of our subscribers, and we don't want to take them for granted." The mixtape will be released free online on Friday, while the new series of Game of Thrones begins on 6 April. Monkey can't wait – perhaps HBO could arrange a guest role for Kanye Westeros? . theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds  |
| Nick Clegg hosts his Call Clegg phone-in: Politics live blog Posted: 06 Mar 2014 01:38 AM PST Andrew Sparrow's rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happen, including Theresa May's statement on the report into allegations that police corruption undermined the Stephen Lawrence investigation and David Cameron's press conference in Brussels       |
| Could Chennai become India's model green city? Posted: 06 Mar 2014 01:38 AM PST  Thanks to a revamped public transport system, Tamil Nadu's seaside capital has cleaner air, better health and less traffic Rapid urbanisation across India poses a new set of challenge for the country's cities. With few blueprints in place to handle the explosive growth, ad hoc urban planning has dominated. Nowhere is this more apparent than in urban public transport. Inadequate public systems force millions of daily commuters in cities like Chennai – commercial capital of south India – to inch for room in overcrowded busses and trains. Chennai's busses carry 30% more passengers every day than the international average. More and more affluent commuters abandon the system and take to their own vehicles. Tamil Nadu, Chennai's home state, has seen a 95% increase in car ownership in the past decade. Short-sighted solutions tend to focus on bridges, flyovers and roads to ease congestion. The trend disproportionately impacts the health and safety of the poor who primarily walk or use public transport. A study in Mumbai found that overall, 44% of the city walks to work, though among the poor, that number jumps to 63%. Still, the ever-expanding number of cars has brought major complications beyond traffic jams: extremely poor air quality and a spike in road accidents has put vulnerable communities – those who often live and work on the roadsides – at greatest risk. The southern coastal city of Chennai is a testament to these unsustainable car-centric choices, but it has set out to right its wrongs. In an unprecedented move, 15 key urban departments came together in 2010 to form a central decision-making body, the Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (Cumta), to reroute the city on a path to sustainable, integrated transport. Their goal is ambitious: to focus on cycling, walking and rapid bus transit in an increasingly car-loving country. "If you speak to people, there is a sea change in attitude. Everyone is talking about how to create better facilities for pedestrians and improving public transport," says Shreya Gadepalli, director of the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) , an international organisation that has stepped in to catalyse and expand Cumta's efforts. She says it has been inspiring to watch Chennai's municipal engineers, many of them who came sceptically to the initiative, act as evangelists for making India's urban areas more pedestrian friendly. Chennai's new approach hopes to provide new, safer transport linkages for poor communities. A study last year found that on average, Chennai residents commute 72 minutes each way. The poor, many of whom have been resettled to outskirt areas of the city, often have the longest commutes and the fewest transport options. Important steps have been made by Chennai's top officials to reclaim road space for pedestrians where there was little or none in the past. Footpaths have been expanded and carriageways narrowed in 40 locations around the city. That number will jump to 70 soon and 400 by next year. "Every street where a bus plies will have a new sidewalk," says Gadepalli, recognising that the most marginalised communities will significantly benefit from these additions. Rishi Aggarwal, founder of the Walking Project in Mumbai, is encouraged by what is happening in Chennai, but he's also cautious until he hears from those on the ground – the ultimate jury, Chennai's pedestrians. "We definitely need some cities to emerge as models of excellence creating inspiration and embarrassment for other cities," he says. A large-scale cycle network is also part of the plan. The main cycle path will take advantage of Chennai's seaside location, stretching for miles up the coast with connecting points to many neighbourhoods, slum areas and the metro stations along the way. The focus on cycling will not only be good for the environment, but usher in a more inclusive focus to city planning since the poor are already the majority of those cycling in urban India. The Hindu, a leading English language Indian daily, says that the car-centric transport initiatives have been pushing bicycles off the road, "forcing the poor who use them most to spend more and more on transport." Tenders have also been sent out for a cycle sharing programme. Cycle Chalao, one of India's first cycle sharing initiatives which piloted in Mumbai in 2010 and moved to Pune thereafter, set out initially to charge a minimal monthly amount $3-4 but in the end, the Pune Municipal Corporation decided to underwrite the programme to offer it as a free service. Chennai will need to make similar concessions to ensure the programme is available to all. The message Chennai is sending out is an important one in India. With urbanisation overwhelming cities, a state of paralysis has ensued. More common than fixing the current situation in cities is building smaller satellite cities. But, as Gadepalli emphasises, there is a way to untangle the mess, and Chennai officials hope to showcase the possibilities forward. In five years, she sees Chennai as a significantly different city. The changes have the potential to bring economic growth and improve air quality. Most importantly, however, widespread integrated public transport shifts the city's focus to the poor, and in bringing about changes for the most marginalised, has the potential to bring about a more equitable city for everyone. Join the community of global development professionals and experts. Become a GDPN member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Malaysian prosecutors appeal against Anwar Ibrahim acquittal Posted: 06 Mar 2014 01:19 AM PST  Former deputy PM, who remains potent threat to ruling coalition, spent six years in prison charged with sodomy and corruption Malaysian prosecutors began their appeal on Thursday against the acquittal of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on a charge of sodomy, a case that international human rights groups have condemned as politically motivated. A verdict by the court of appeal could come in days or weeks, legal experts say, just as Anwar bids to win a local election this month that many expect to pave the way for him to run Selangor, Malaysia's richest and most populous state. The charismatic Anwar, 66, remains a potent threat to the Barisan Nasional coalition led by the prime minister, Najib Razak, leading a three-party opposition that has made deep inroads into its parliamentary majority in the past two national elections. If convicted of sodomy, the former finance minister and deputy prime minister would be disqualified from holding political office in the Muslim-majority country and face a jail sentence of up to 20 years and whipping. His legal team would appeal against a conviction and are likely win a stay of the sentence, lawyers say. But the case will keep Anwar's legal problems in the spotlight during his latest political gambit, which promises to give him a formidable power base ahead of the next election, which must be held by 2018. Anwar was arrested in 2008 on charges of having intercourse "against the order of nature" with an aide. He had already spent six years in prison on sodomy and corruption charges after he was sacked as deputy prime minister in 1998 and lost his status as heir apparent to then prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad. He was acquitted of the latest charge in January 2012 due to doubts over whether DNA samples tendered by police as evidence were contaminated. "By continuing this political motivated persecution, it's clear that PM Najib and his government are determined to remove Anwar from the political scene by hook or by crook, even if that involves dragging the Malaysian judicial system into the mud," Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, said in a statement. The prime minister's office did not immediately respond to request for comment. Anwar's defence has been dealt a series of setbacks in recent weeks, which lawyers and rights groups have said raises doubts over whether he will receive a fair trial. It failed in three attempts to disqualify the lead prosecutor, Shafee Abdullah, arguing that the lawyer's strong links to the ruling party – the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) – would hurt the chances of a fair trial. Shafee has denied opposition allegations that he has conspired with the government to end Anwar's political career. But he has not denied being present during a 2008 meeting between Najib and Saiful Bukhari Azlan – the aide Anwar is accused of "forcibly sodomising" – which lawyers said raised questions of a conflict of interest. "To me, that is enough to show that you are in some way partisan," said Andrew Khoo, co-chairperson of the Malaysian Bar Council's Human Rights Committee. "For the judges to say that doesn't matter, or that doesn't prejudice anything, to me is really odd." Najib's ruling coalition slumped to its worst election showing last May, though Anwar's alliance failed to repeat the massive gains it made in 2008 polls that deprived the BN of its two-thirds parliamentary majority for the first time. Last year's election result has heightened ethnic tensions in the multiracial south-east Asian nation, emboldening conservatives in the ethnic Malay UMNO party after minority ethnic Chinese largely deserted the ruling coalition. After failing in his bid to dispute the election result, Anwar announced in January that he would run for a seat in the state assembly of Selangor, an industrial hub and crucial electoral battlefield neighbouring the capital Kuala Lumpur. Many analysts see the move as a bid by Anwar to take over the chief minister job in the opposition-controlled state, although he has refused to confirm the speculation. theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds  |
| Art of war: melding arms into weapons of mass attraction – in pictures Posted: 06 Mar 2014 01:03 AM PST The loaded task of transforming guns into weapons of mass attraction is being undertaken by pacifist sculptors around the world       |
| Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion – review Posted: 06 Mar 2014 01:00 AM PST  Tansy E Hoskins's book suggests the entire fashion industry is a dangerous trick, and needs to be overthrown Setting up the terms of her polemic against the fashion industry, Tansy Hoskins defines fashion in utilitarian terms as "changing styles of dress and appearance adopted by groups of people", and the industry as one in which there is "a shrinking distinction between high fashion and high street fashion". She does acknowledge that the whole business is both "glorious and enthralling, as well as exasperating and terrible", though she doesn't come close to conveying its appeal as well as Diana Vreeland once did: "Fashion must be the most intoxicating release from the banality of the world." As fashion editor of Harper's Bazaar and then as editor of Vogue, Vreeland was once the ultimate fashion insider. Hoskins is an interested outsider, determined to change minds. So even though her intention is to show us what Karl Lagerfeld has to do with Karl Marx, she never represents fashion as the sigh of the soul in a soulless world. Stitched Up instead disapproves of the idea of fashion itself. And for good reasons: it focuses on the social consequences of the industry, from the conditions of workers to its disastrous environmental costs, collecting a number of useful, at times horrifying, facts in one place. It is nearly a year since 1,133 garment workers died and 2,500 were injured in Bangladesh, when a poorly constructed factory collapsed just north-west of the capital, Dhaka. The discovery of the labels of western manufacturers in the rubble highlighted long supply chains and the practice of subcontracting at every stage. Amid the shocked reactions, some of the retailers could plausibly claim that they had no idea their clothes were made at Rana Plaza, or about the state of a building they didn't know existed. What happened in Bangladesh is a perfect starting point for Hoskins's attack, but she hasn't set out only to condemn the consumers of cheap fashion; she wants to show how the entire system is a trick to divert attention from how clothes are made, who actually wears them, and who makes all the money. She goes for the high end. So while her book reminds us that Stefan Persson, the owner of H&M, bought a whole village in Hampshire in 2009, it dwells on the luxury conglomerates, the richest and most ruthless of which is LVMH (Louis Vuitton/Moët Hennessy), an intricate nest of companies that includes among its brands Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton and Céline. In the course of her convincing denial of the possibility of "ethical fashion", Hoskins tells the story of Edun, the clothing line started by Ali Hewson and her husband Bono. It began with the intention of manufacturing in sub-Saharan Africa, but after a poor initial reception, LVMH bought a 49% stake in the company in 2010 and immediately moved 85% of its manufacturing out of Africa – mainly to China. At the other end of the scale, LVMH lost patience with Christian Lacroix, selling the house in 2005. The couturier filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and (like a select club of designers, such as Martin Margiela and Jil Sander) no longer has the rights to his own name. As Hoskins says a little gleefully he "now designs interiors and uniforms for train companies and collaborates with high‑street chains". In 2012, Johann Rupert, the CEO of the much smaller Richemont (owner of Chloé and Dunhill) said: "I feel like I'm having a black-tie dinner on top of a volcano." Western luxury brands are very worried about China, in particular what will happen when a Chinese label becomes as prestigious as, say, Givenchy. Ever‑resourceful LVMH has been buying Indian brands, and in 2012 bought a stake in the Trendy International Group, a Chinese company specialising in casual wear. So for the time being at least, there is no immediate threat to the dominance of the brands who show in New York, Milan, London and Paris – especially given the way they are structured: 55% of Chanel's profits, for example, come from perfume and cosmetics. But change will inevitably come. Hoskins is quite clear that high-end fashion is guilty of covering up a system of imitation and exploitation under the guise of novelty – so that a catwalk collection is immediately ripped off and copied by a mass-market retailer, and made up in a factory in Dhaka in appalling conditions. She is good on the question of "size zero", on advertising and on racism, too. Is Fashion Racist? asks one chapter heading. Of course it is. Hoskins reminds us of the Navajo nation suing Urban Outfitters, in a case that is still to be settled, for using its name on a range of products in 2012. Urban Outfitters' response was to argue that the tribe's federal trademark registration should be cancelled. She could also have reminded us of Dolce and Gabbana's "blackamoor" earrings for its spring 2013 collection, a surprising revival of an art deco jewellery fad. And Vogue India's "Slum Dwellers" shoot in 2008. Stitched Up explores and analyses the existing industry, but also has another aim. The final three chapters – Resisting Fashion, Reforming Fashion and Revolutionising Fashion – take on a strangely programmatic tone, which can best be conveyed by the final chapter, in which Hoskins "imagines a post-capitalist society where capitalism has been overthrown and the world is in a state of permanent revolution". This reads rather like a pamphlet written by Central Committee. Perhaps it is enough to say that the garment industry shows vividly how the capitalist system works, and that labour is anything but immaterial in parts of the world where "our" clothes are made. The great value of Stitched Up as polemic lies in its reminder that while very few of us can take the blame for the deaths of the three crocodiles needed to make an exclusive handbag (if you're tempted, there's a grim description), it is harder to absolve ourselves from other crimes of the global industry – from, for instance, the squandering of water to irrigate cotton crops that has led to the disappearance of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. The fashion industry is sizeist, it's racist, it's exploitative. Yet will it ever be overthrown? Do people want it to be? Even when its veils are stripped away, as they are in this book, we still so easily succumb to fashion's glamour and its fantasies of self-transformation. As Vreeland said: "I think fantasists are the only realists in the world. The world is a fantasy. Nothing's remarkably real." theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds  |
| Ukraine crisis: European leaders to hold emergency summit Posted: 06 Mar 2014 12:59 AM PST  EU leaders to meet in Brussels on Thursday morning to decide how to respond to Russia's occupation of the Crimean peninsula European leaders will assemble in Brussels on Thursday for an emergency summit to address the crisis in Ukraine sparked by Russia's military occupation of Crimea. Western requests for Moscow to withdraw its troops from the Crimean peninsula – occupied in a so far bloodless takeover – have been ignored. According to the Associated Press, the new leader of the Crimea region, Sergei Aksyonov, said pro-Russian forces have control of all of the peninsula and have blockaded all Ukraninan military bases that have not yet surrendered. The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said on Wednesday that EU leaders could impose sanctions on Russia if the situation in Crimea had not defused by the time they met in Brussels on Thursday. And while it may not have escalated, the crisis is far from defused. Ahead of the summit, the European Union has frozen the assets of Ukraine's ousted Russia-backed leader Viktor Yanukovych and 17 other officials suspected of violations of human rights and misuse of state funds. David Cameron, François Hollande and Angela Merkel will meet on Thursday morning before the summit – due to begin at 10.30am GMT – to discuss a range of possible punitive economic sanctions against Moscow. The US secretary of state, John Kerry, has threatened Russia with isolation "diplomatically, politically and economically" to withdraw from the Crimea – and yet while he is still engaged in negotiations with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the hands of EU leaders are effectively tied. As the EU meets, 40 unarmed military personnel are expected in Crimea on a mission by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe to try to defuse tensions in the region. Later, the 15-member UN security council will hold closed-door talks in New York – the fourth such consultations since Friday. But Putin has so far shown no indiciation that he is ready to bend. The first western attempts to get Moscow to back down over its seizure of Crimea failed on Wednesday evening. Negotiations in Paris between Kerry and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, broke up without agreement on Wednesday. The Americans and the Europeans hoped to persuade Moscow to open a dialogue with the new government in Kiev and to withdraw its forces in Crimea to their bases and allow in international monitors. But while Lavrov accused the Americans of tabling unacceptable ultimatums, Kerry said there were "a number of ideas" up for discussion. Both men are expected to resume negotiations in Rome on Thursday after consulting their respective presidents, Barack Obama and Putin. "Things have moved in a good direction," said Fabius. Lavrov said western countries were proposing "steps that do not help create an atmosphere of dialogue. John Kerry agreed that such an atmosphere needed to be created. It's very hard to make honest agreements that will help the Ukrainian people stabilise the situation in an atmosphere of threats and ultimatums." Kerry insisted he had not come to the French capital expecting to find an instant answer to the crisis in the Crimea, but was encouraged by signals from the Russians after meeting his Moscow counterpart Lavrov. Kerry also met the Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrij Deshchytsia. "I believe I have something to take back to President Obama, and I believe Foreign Secretary Lavrov has something to take back to President Putin. All parties agree it's important to resolve this issue through dialogue," Kerry said. It had been a day of frantic diplomacy in Paris, where Kerry met his Russian counterpart in an attempt to find a peaceful solution to the Ukrainian crisis. "We will not allow the integrity, the sovereignty, of Ukraine to be violated – or for that violation to go unchallenged," Kerry told journalists after the meeting. "Russia made a choice. We have clearly stated it is the wrong choice to move troops into the Crimea. Ukrainian territorial integrity must be restored and maintained." Kerry added that efforts would continue to allow a "de-escalation" of the situation. The meeting between Kerry and Lavrov was the first direct US-Russian contact since the Ukrainian crisis acquired alarming dimensions at the weekend with the fall of President Viktor Yanukovych and Russia's military occupation of Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea. Analysts and diplomats in Brussels had been expecting the Kremlin to make symbolic concessions in order to weaken the case for sanctions against Russia by Europe and America, but those failed to materialise. That put further pressure on Thursday's emergency EU summit, with the Europeans almost obliged to impose punitive measures on Russia. Early on Thursday the EU said it had targeted Yanukovych and 17 other members of his former Ukrainian hierarchy with an assets freeze. In Washington, Congress was fine-tuning legislation that would provide Obama with a "sanctions toolbox", including visa bans and asset freezes, similar to those used against Iran. The US is expected to push ahead with sanctions, which at their most extreme would include measures to restrict trade, irrespective of the decisions taken in Europe. Lavrov said Moscow could not order the forces controlling Crimea back to bases or barracks since they were not under Russian control, but were local "self-defence" units opposed to the new government in Kiev and safeguarding their region. Diplomats in Brussels said this amounted to opposition to the western proposals. In Crimea, a UN special envoy had to abandon his mission after being stopped by armed men and besieged inside a cafe by a hostile crowd shouting "Russia! Russia!" The envoy, the Dutch diplomat Robert Serry, agreed to leave Crimea to end the standoff. Germany has led the push to get Russia to engage diplomatically, resisting calls from Washington to isolate the Kremlin. The German push was reinforced by William Hague, the British foreign secretary, and the European commission, which unveiled an €11bn (£9bn) financial package for Ukraine, the equivalent of the $15bn pledged by Russia to shore up Yanukovych before he was toppled. The transatlantic gulf opening up over how to respond to Putin appeared to be widening. One senior official from a G7 country spoke of growing unease over the US push for economic sanctions against Russia. "This isn't time for economic sanctions," the official said. "There is no clock ticking and we should be careful not to antagonise the other side." The senior official said Berlin, rather than Washington, should assume the lead in talks with Russia. "I don't think the US should necessarily be taking the lead on behalf of G7 countries." Merkel has spoken to Putin six times in the past week and the Germans are keen to engage rather than isolate the Russians. In Washington, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, said a bipartisan push was under way to pass legislation that would "strengthen the president's hand". He said it would be similar to how the US Congress and White House had dealt with Iran. "We gave the administration what I'll call a toolbox of sanctions [against Tehran] that they had the ability to impose as they saw fit," Boehner said. Comparisons to the situation with Iran are likely to unnerve the White House, which has been embroiled in a series of bruising battles with hawks in Congress, who have spent months trying to push through sanctions legislation that further squeeze Tehran, a move the Obama administration believes would scupper nuclear negotiations. But Obama, who last week insisted "there will be costs" for Putin if he intervened in Ukraine, a threat he has repeated several times since, is under pressure to follow through with action. Officials in Brussels said there was little sign of willingness from the Russians to pursue a political settlement of the crisis, but they did not rule out a last-minute proposal from the Kremlin that would deflect the pressure for sanctions and divide Europeans going into the summit. "The situation in Crimea needs to be handled through political dialogue in the framework of the Ukrainian constitution and respecting the rights of all Ukrainian citizens and communities," said José Manuel Barroso, the head of the European commission. "I expect no one will oppose a deployment of international observers to Crimea." Earlier in Paris, Lavrov boycotted a meeting with Kerry, Hague and Deshchytsia. Kerry said that "regrettably" one member – Russia – had failed to appear for a meeting of the so-called Budapest agreement group, which guaranteed Ukraine's borders after it renounced nuclear weapons in the 1990s. Lavrov repeated the Kremlin's assertion that the 16,000 troops that have seized Crimea were not Russian forces. "If you mean the self-defence units created by the inhabitants of Crimea, we give them no orders, they take no orders from us," he said. "As for the military personnel of the [Russian] Black Sea fleet, they are in their deployment sites." European officials and diplomats admit that the sanctions being discussed on Thursday were symbolic rather than substantive. The measures include freezing talks on making it easier for Russians to travel to Europe and on a new overall agreement regulating relations between Russia and the EU. Russian and European officials admit that both sets of talks are unofficially frozen anyway. Nonetheless, Moscow is threatening to retaliate. Hague said the summit would need to show that there were "costs and consequences for Russia's actions against Ukraine". But the impact was more likely to be long-term rather than immediate. theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds  |
| Medicare fraud reaches nearly half a million dollars in past year Posted: 06 Mar 2014 12:55 AM PST A fraud hotline set up by the government has reportedly received 1,116 Medicare-related tip-offs to date this financial year  |
| Indonesia and Iran to discuss Australia's treatment of asylum seekers Posted: 06 Mar 2014 12:53 AM PST Iranian foreign minister, visiting Jakarta in wake of death of Reza Barati, says Canberra's policy will be subject of future talks  |
| Asylum policy secrecy brings call for overhaul of interest immunity claims Posted: 06 Mar 2014 12:44 AM PST Senate committee recommends censure following the assistant minister for immigration's refusal to hand over documents  |
| Shell boss warns against Scottish independence Posted: 06 Mar 2014 12:44 AM PST  CEO Ben van Beurden said vote for independence in September referendum would introduce greater uncertainty into oil industry The chief executive of Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell on Wednesday dealt a blow to the campaign for Scottish independence by saying he would like it to remain part of the UK. Speaking at the company's annual reception in London, Ben van Beurden explained that a vote for independence in the September referendum would introduce greater uncertainty into the North Sea oil industry, a crucial source of income for Scotland and Shell. For similar reasons, he also said that he wanted Britons to vote to stay in the EU during a possible referendum in 2017. "We're used to operating in uncertain political and economic environments. But given a choice, we want to know as accurately as possible what investment conditions will look like 10 or 20 years from now," he said. "That's the chief reason we're in favour of the UK maintaining its long-established place at the heart of the EU: it provides greater investment stability and certainty. "It's for similar reasons that we'd like to see Scotland remain part of the United Kingdom," he added. "Shell has a long history of involvement in the North Sea – and therefore in Scotland – and we continue to invest more than £1bn (€1.21bn) there every year." Scots go to the polls on 18 September to decide whether to end their 300-year union with the rest of Britain. Scotland's first minister and Scottish National party leader, Alex Salmond, said on Tuesday that an independent Scotland could become an economic powerhouse, despite all three of Britain's main political parties saying they will not let the country retain the pound, post-independence. theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds  |
| Qantas carbon tax bill has been covered by ticket surcharge Posted: 06 Mar 2014 12:19 AM PST CEO Alan Joyce and prime minister Tony Abbott have spoken of the tax's $106m impact, yet its net effect was zero  |
| If God is love, then can God also be love, heat and passion? | Miranda Threlfall-Holmes Posted: 06 Mar 2014 12:00 AM PST  George Herbert personifies God as love – a fundamental tenet of the Bible – but then goes further, as the more sexual heat "God is love". It's probably the least controversial statement in the Bible. But it is also one of those assertions that can easily be heard as an almost meaningless platitude. Does it simply mean that God is loving, nice, kind? And that Christians should therefore be loving, nice, kind, and inoffensive? Those are good things to be, of course. But the idea that God is love is much more than simply applying a pleasant adjective to God. In Herbert's best-loved poem, Love (III), he deftly explores the question of whether "God is love" is a transitive statement. If God is love, does it follow that love is God? "Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin." As John Drury observes in his recent biography of George Herbert, Music at Midnight, this poem would lose almost all its emotional force if the first word were "God" instead of "love". Herbert personifies God as Love, and enters into a dialogue with him – or her? No pronoun is used, but to me the voice of Love in this poem sounds tantalisingly female. Love welcomes the poet in at the door and invites him to sit down to eat. (S)he is described as "quick-ey'd", noticing the poet's hesitation, and draws nearer, "sweetly questioning / If I lack'd anything". (S)he refuses to accept the poet's humble statement "I cannot look on thee" – a reference to the Old Testament idea that to see God's glory directly is death. In direct contradiction to this notion, and in what feels like a deeply maternal moment, "Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, Who made the eyes but I?" The poet first addresses Love as "my dear", and only at the beginning of the final stanza uses the familiar male title, "lord". This title shifts the focus of the poem to the crucifixion, economically both dismissing the poet's shame at his own unworthiness, and referring to Jesus's death as the ultimate act of love: "And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?" The very satisfying conclusion of the poem has the poet first acknowledging and accepting Love's arguments, and responding with what might seem appropriate humility: "My dear, then I will serve". But Love will not allow humble bowing and scraping to be the last word, and insists that the poet take his place at the banquet – "So I did sit, and eat". The very simplicity of the vocabulary and rhyme scheme echo the beautiful simplicity of the idea of God's grace. As the numbered title suggests, Herbert wrote two other poems entitled Love. Both explore the contrast between the way the word love is commonly used, particularly in love poetry, and what it means to say that God is love. In Love I, Herbert deplores the way in which human beings have "parcel'd out thy glorious name... / While mortal love doth all the title gain!" The word and concept "love" has been emptied of its primary meaning – God – and is commonly applied only to human attractions such as "beauty" and "wit". Even though love has given us the greatest gifts of all, both creating us and saving us, poets devote their energies almost exclusively to hymning such minor tokens of a lover's affection as "a scarf or glove". Love II goes even further. Here, Herbert explores the connection between love and lust. If we can say that God is love, can we trace lust, passion and sexual desire back to God's innermost being too? With astonishing audacity, Herbert opens this poem not by addressing God as "Love", but as the unmistakably sexual "Heat": "Immortal Heat, O let thy greater flame Attract the lesser to it". Herbert's treatment of lust itself is relatively conventional in this poem. It is seen as "usurping'" our true desire for God, and God is asked to "Kindle in our hearts such true desires, as may consume our lusts". But the idea of conceptualising God not just as the ultimate object of human desire, but as desire itself – and not in an anaemic, abstract sense but as heat, which will make "our hearts pant [for] thee", shows Herbert flexing and testing the metaphor of God as love, pushing it to its limits. I can't help feeling that all the church's current agonising over sex and sexuality would be rather different if we took the idea of God as love – not just loving, but love, heat, passion – so seriously. theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds  |
| Soldiers injured in war zones lose bid to accrue war service leave if evacuated Posted: 05 Mar 2014 11:55 PM PST Government rules war service leave accrues for operational service, including hospitalisation, but not during recovery periods  |
| Geert Wilders backs new anti-Islam party, the Australian Liberty Alliance Posted: 05 Mar 2014 11:45 PM PST The far-right politician sends pre-recorded message to a conference being held in Melbourne on Friday that will feature two speakers barred entry into Britain  |
| China imposes censorship on reporting of knife attack Posted: 05 Mar 2014 11:40 PM PST  After the knife attack on Chinese people in Kunming last Saturday, in which 29 people were hacked to death, the state council information office issued the following directive:
The press freedom watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, responded by deploring the censorship. Its research chief, Lucie Morillon, described the order to journalists to confine themselves to using only the official version provided by Xinhua as "intolerable." She said: "It is vital that journalists should be able to work without any hindrance and that the public should have access to full, unrestricted news coverage." The censorship was also criticised within China on microblogs such as Weibo and WeChat. One wrote: "It is as if nothing happened in Kunming. If we didn't have Weibo and WeChat, we would still be living in a happy world like the one presented on the evening news on China Central Television." Source: CPJ theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds  |
| Gina Rinehart says Australia is blessed but needs a good dose of Thatcherism Posted: 05 Mar 2014 11:29 PM PST Mining magnate believes Margaret Thatcher made 'courageous decisions in the interests of Britain, despite noisy detractors'       |
| Ukraine crisis is about Great Power oil, gas pipeline rivalry | Nafeez Ahmed Posted: 05 Mar 2014 11:26 PM PST  Resource scarcity, competition to dominate Eurasian energy corridors, are behind Russian militarism and US interference Russia's armed intervention in the Crimea undoubtedly illustrates President Putin's ruthless determination to get his way in Ukraine. But less attention has been paid to the role of the United States in interfering in Ukrainian politics and civil society. Both powers are motivated by the desire to ensure that a geostrategically pivotal country with respect to control of critical energy pipeline routes remains in their own sphere of influence. Much has been made of the reported leak of the recording of an alleged private telephone conversation between US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland and US ambassador to Kiev Geoffrey Pyatt. While the focus has been on Nuland's rude language, which has already elicited US apologies, the more important context of this language concerns the US role in liaising with Ukrainian opposition parties with a view, it seems, to manipulate the orientation of the Ukrainian government in accordance with US interests. Rather than leaving the future of Ukrainian politics "up to the Ukrainian people" as claimed in official announcements, the conversation suggests active US government interference to favour certain opposition leaders:
As BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus rightly observes, the alleged conversation:
But US efforts to turn the political tide in Ukraine away from Russian influence began much earlier. In 2004, the Bush administration had given $65 million to provide 'democracy training' to opposition leaders and political activists aligned with them, including paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet US leaders and help underwrite exit polls indicating he won disputed elections. This programme has accelerated under Obama. In a speech at the National Press Club in Washington DC last December as Ukraine's Maidan Square clashes escalated, Nuland confirmed that the US had invested in total "over $5 billion" to "ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine" - she specifically congratulated the "Euromaidan" movement. So it would be naive to assume that this magnitude of US support to organisations politically aligned with the Ukrainian opposition played no role in fostering the pro-Euro-Atlantic movement that has ultimately culminated in Russian-backed President Yanukovych's departure. Indeed, at her 2013 speech, Nuland added:
What direction might that be? A glimpse of an answer was provided over a decade ago by Professor R. Craig Nation, Director of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, in a NATO publication:
A more recent US State Department-sponsored report notes that "Ukraine's strategic location between the main energy producers (Russia and the Caspian Sea area) and consumers in the Eurasian region, its large transit network, and its available underground gas storage capacities", make the country "a potentially crucial player in European energy transit" - a position that will "grow as Western European demands for Russian and Caspian gas and oil continue to increase." Ukraine's overwhelming dependence on Russian energy imports, however, has had "negative implications for US strategy in the region," in particular the strategy of:
But Russia's Gazprom, controlling almost a fifth of the world's gas reserves, supplies more than half of Ukraine's, and about 30% of Europe's gas annually. Just one month before Nuland's speech at the National Press Club, Ukraine signed a $10 billion shale gas deal with US energy giant Chevron "that the ex-Soviet nation hopes could end its energy dependence on Russia by 2020." The agreement would allow "Chevron to explore the Olesky deposit in western Ukraine that Kiev estimates can hold 2.98 trillion cubic meters of gas." Similar deals had been struck already with Shell and ExxonMobil. The move coincided with Ukraine's efforts to "cement closer relations with the European Union at Russia's expense", through a prospective trade deal that would be a step closer to Ukraine's ambitions to achieve EU integration. But Yanukovych's decision to abandon the EU agreement in favour of Putin's sudden offer of a 30% cheaper gas bill and a $15 billion aid package provoked the protests. To be sure, the violent rioting was triggered by frustration with Yanukovych's rejection of the EU deal, along with rocketing energy, food and other consumer bills, linked to Ukraine's domestic gas woes and abject dependence on Russia. Police brutality to suppress what began as peaceful demonstrations was the last straw. But while Russia's imperial aggression is clearly a central factor, the US effort to rollback Russia's sphere of influence in Ukraine by other means in pursuit of its own geopolitical and strategic interests raises awkward questions. As the pipeline map demonstrates, US oil and gas majors like Chevron and Exxon are increasingly encroaching on Gazprom's regional monopoly, undermining Russia's energy hegemony over Europe. Ukraine is caught hapless in the midst of this accelerating struggle to dominate Eurasia's energy corridors in the last decades of the age of fossil fuels. For those who are pondering whether we face the prospect of a New Cold War, a better question might be - did the Cold War ever really end? Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds       This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| NSW moves to ban trucking company involved in fatal tanker crash Posted: 05 Mar 2014 11:12 PM PST Roads minister says Cootes Transport showed 'blatant disregard for safety' and has 14 days to explain why it should not be suspended or banned       |
| Nato attack kills five Afghan troops Posted: 05 Mar 2014 11:02 PM PST Eight more injured in air strike that will inflame tensions between foreign military alliance and Hamid Karzai       |
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