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Continue reading …Stately homes, cream teas … and an indie band: countryside opens up to crossover culture
June 10, 2011 No Comment
Guillemots members are among the exhibitors at National Trust’s Nunnington Hall, one of the UK’s most unlikely cutting-edge galleries Two miles from the nearest B road, one of the UK’s leading indie rock band members pauses, hammer in hand, below a 17th-century roof beam, and admits: “I’m scared.” “I mean, can I really put nails into the walls of a National Trust house dating back hundreds of years?” asks Aristazabal Hawkes of Guillemots, the band that has taken over the ancient manor’s top floor. Busy with his own staple gun and a tough stretch of Yorkshire oak, the manager of Nunnington Hall, Simon Lee, replies: “Sure. Bryan Adams did, and Mary McCartney. Why not Guillemots as well?” It’s an exchange that highlights the extraordinary growth of one of the country’s most unlikely cutting-edge galleries, spread across miles of stately home and cream tea country on the edge of the North York Moors. Not just Nunnington, but an entire, delectable slice of North Yorkshire countryside has joined the contemporary circuit for critics, collectors and anyone interested in “crossover culture” – musicians who paint, artists who sing, sculptors who write and many more. “It’s an exploration of the nature of creativity,” says Lee, one of a string of arts commissioners who are bringing well-known names from across the world to nooks such as Nunnington and the former home of Lawrence Sterne, nearby Shandy Hall. The curator there, Patrick Wildgust, hosts New York poets, South American intellectuals and European artists at the world’s first Centre for Non-Linear Narrative, inspired by Sterne’s erratic masterpiece Tristram Shandy. “There seems to be something restless about creativity,” says Fyfe Dangerfield, founder of Guillemots, which has been nominated for Mercury and Brit awards. He is equally busy with tape and glue as the band’s exhibition goes up in a corridor and two rooms at Nunnington. “Some people argue that it can be narrow – a well-developed ear, for instance, may mean less visual awareness. But we find that music, doodling, taking photographs and making films all play a part in what Guillemots wants to do.” A noted classical music composer as well as Guillemots’ lead singer, Dangerfield was talent-spotted for his drawings by Lee. After increasing Nunnington’s annual visitor numbers to 65,000 with photograph shows by Adams and McCartney, as well as Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood and Andy Summers of the Police, Lee was surfing Guillemots’ website and clicked on their gallery of artwork. “I thought: this is good stuff and very much in our line of discovering other creative sides to people known for one talent,” says Lee. “To put it crudely, if you cut off a guitarist’s hand, what are the odds that they would find another medium to express themselves?” Guillemots members were initially fazed by the invitation. “I thought it might be a wind-up,” said Dangerfield, “but then I suggested extending it to the whole of the band, and it’s fascinating what’s come out.” Hawkes is exhibiting family photographs and collages of concert wristbands, backstage passes and the like; MC Lord Magrão screens a 10-minute film noir; and the fourth band member, Greig Stewart, who says his closest public brush with art was being hugged by Damien Hirst at a drunken Groucho Club bash, has clay sculpture and wall-hangings. Visitors to the hall keep dropping in on the hanging sessions; with one demanding the “disgusting music” to Magrão’s film be switched off, but others intrigued by the crossover theme. Retired teachers Judy and Eric Murphy from Sheffield chimed with Dangerfield’s ‘restless notion’, saying: “We’ve always liked Guillemots and got their first album, but this looks as though it’s going to tell us a whole lot more about them.” The exhibition runs from 14 June to the end of July, after which Lee will Polyfilla and revarnish his attics while planning Nunnington’s next contribution to the wider countryside gallery programme. “There’s no problem getting busy or famous people to come here,” he said, “because it’s one of the loveliest parts of England. And they appreciate being asked. If anyone says, ‘Who do they think they are?’ or ‘It’s all rubbish’, the answer is that we invited them; they didn’t push to come.” The National Trust Indie Guillemots Art Cultural trips Martin Wainwright guardian.co.uk
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Up to 5,000 troops and dozens of tanks reportedly massed near Turkish border as revolt against regime enters decisive phase Syrian forces equipped with dozens of tanks were reportedly massed outside a near-deserted town near the Turkish border as the revolt against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad entered a potentially decisive phase. Human rights campaigners and people who have been in the vicinity of Jisr al-Shughour said there had been shooting near the town on Friday, where there has been shelling in recent days. Witnesses have claimed up to 5,000 troops are involved, which appeared to confirm reports on Syrian state TV that the regime has started a new military operation on the town where a mass defection of troops to rebels has also been credibly reported. Damascus has admitted 120 officers and security personnel based in the town were killed by “armed groups”. Information about events on the ground remained patchy, since most foreign journalists are banned and there are heavy restrictions on local media, but previous Fridays have seen increased violence across Syria as protesters and forces loyal to Assad have clashed. Jisr al-Shughour usually has a population of 41,000 but thousands of people have fled to nearby villages and across the border into southern Turkey, where the authorities are offering humanitarian assistance. They have been reluctant to let most people speak to waiting media, although some refugees making their way independently have managed to give their accounts of the latest crackdown on the national uprising which began three months ago and is said by human rights groups to have cost at least 13,000 lives. The government says 500 members of the security forces have been killed. Nadim Houry from Human Rights Watch, which is monitoring the situation from Beirut, told the Guardian: “We managed to get through to someone in a town not far from Jisr al-Shughour and they reported hearing gunshots in a town called Sermaniyyeh. That seems to confirm what Syrian state TV indicated earlier today that the army has started its ‘military operation’ on Jisr al-Shughour. “Based on what’s happened over the last three months we are very worried that we are going to see yet again a large number of killings of protesters.” Houry said: “Based on various testimonies there have been some defections, what we don’t know is the scale of these defections. In Egypt and Tunisia, the decision of the army to stop shooting at protesters or to refuse orders was key to convincing the regime that it was time to go [but] we have to wait and see what’s going to happen in Syria. Things are playing out differently there, the loyalty of the officers in Syria remains clearly with the regime.” Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had close ties to Assad, on Thursday criticised the crackdown. Interviewed on Turkey’s ATV television, he said some images coming out of Syria were “unpalatable” and suggested Turkey could support a UN security council decision against Syria. “They are not acting in a humane manner. This is savagery,” he said. Syria Arab and Middle East unrest Bashar Al-Assad Middle East Refugees Martin Chulov Matthew Weaver James Meikle guardian.co.uk
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Prime minister takes responsibility for public anger over NHS bill but brushes off claims he is making a ‘mess’ of reforms David Cameron has claimed that the listening exercise the government was forced to undertake to salvage the NHS bill was a “strong” thing for the government to do. Earlier this week, the prime minister announced that key elements of health secretary Andrew Lansley’s original blueprint were being abandoned following the two-month listening exercise on the health and social care bill launched in April. The announcement came amid mounting criticism of the coalition’s controversial NHS reforms. The U-turn on elements of the bill prompted Labour leader Ed Miliband on Wednesday to accuse Cameron of making a “complete mess” of health and justice reforms. Miliband launched the attack after reports the government had also ditched plans to introduce a 50% prison sentence discount for early guilty pleas after holding talks with Ken Clarke, the justice secretary, on Tuesday. In an appearance on ITV’s This Morning on Friday, Cameron sought to cast the NHS rethink as a sign of political strength rather than weakness. He said “a number of doctors and nurses are coming back on board”, adding that openness to change is “not weak, it’s sensible”. “In fact, I think it’s strong,” he said. Appearing relaxed on the show, the prime minister said he took responsibility for the two policy areas that have provoked a public outcry – health and sentencing policy. “I knew exactly what was in our health plans when they were announced and exactly what was in our criminal justice consultation paper when we launched it,” Cameron said. “It’s as much my responsibility as it was Andrew Lansley’s or Kenneth Clarke’s. We are a team, we play as a team, and that’s absolutely the way I run my government.” Cameron stressed Clarke’s plans were out to consultation. But he appeared to confirm reports that the 50% sentence reduction idea had been dropped by saying he wanted rapists and murderers and those who commit violence to go to prison “for a very, very long time”. He said: “We are going to make sure the right people are being sent to prison for the right amount of time and make sure we reform.” Asked if Clarke got a yellow card for his comments about giving rapists a 50% sentence reduction if they admitted to the crime, Cameron said many things in the consultation paper that were “extremely good” would be taken forward, including “tougher community punishments”. He rejected the idea that prisons were holiday camps – “They are tough, and they should be tough” – but he indicated that criminals working in the community to make amends for their crimes would form part of his plans for the “big society”. Cameron said it was appalling that people were going to prison, at a cost of £45,000 a year for each place, only for half of them to re-offend again within the first year of release. “Magistrates will be happier punishing people in the community if they really felt they were scrubbing graffiti off walls and cleaning up the streets and making amends for the dreadful things they have done,” he said. Asked why those who commit crimes were not part of the “big society” plans, Cameron told co-host Eammon Holmes, “They will be”, before adding that it would take time to deliver. Cameron fielded questions on NHS pay, welfare reforms, overseas aid and the economy. He said the government’s plans to “rebalance” the economy was making progress but that “it is going to be choppy”. “There will be good months and bad months,” he said. “People will judge this government at the end of our parliamentary term in 2015. People will be able to make a judgement – did they do the right thing in terms of dealing with the deficit? We are taking difficult decisions, unpopular decisions, but I would rather take the right decisions now and actually see the economy grow in the long term than try and be popular now and do the wrong thing.” He added: “It’s very easy in politics just to think of tomorrow and what the papers will say and not think of the long term. In my job you have got to think, ‘Is what I am doing going to help the country in the long term?’” David Cameron NHS Health Prisons and probation UK criminal justice Liberal-Conservative coalition Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk
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Immigration rights activists plan court challenge to state law requiring public schools to check students’ status The Republican governor Robert Bentley has signed a crackdown on illegal immigration into Alabama law, with both supporters and critics considering the measures to be the toughest in the country. The crackdown will require public schools to determine the immigration status of students – an aspect not covered in an Arizona law that has been at the forefront of attempts by several US states to crack down on illegal immigrants. Under the Alabama law, police must detain someone they suspect of being in the country illegally if the person cannot produce proper documentation when stopped for any reason. It also will be a crime to knowingly transport or harbour someone who is in the country illegally. The law imposes penalties on businesses that knowingly employ someone without legal resident status, and business licences could be suspended or revoked. The law – due to come into effect on 1 September – requires businesses to use a database called E-Verify to confirm the immigration status of new employees. “We have a real problem with illegal immigration in this country,” Bentley said after signing the law on Thursday. “I campaigned for the toughest immigration laws, and I’m proud of the legislature for working tirelessly to create the strongest immigration bill in the country.” Immigration rights advocates are vowing to challenge the law in court, after having sued to block similar measures in Arizona, Utah, Indiana and Georgia. The US justice department also sued over Arizona’s law. The courts blocked the implementation of a provision allowing Arizona police to check the immigration status of people there . But the US supreme court recently endorsed a separate Arizona law requiring employers to use E-Verify . The court also ruled that Arizona could suspend or revoke business licences of companies that knowingly employ illegal immigrants. Alabama’s law is unique in requiring public schools to determine, by review of birth certificates or sworn affidavits, the legal residency status of students. “We fear that it will, in effect, ban the student through fear and harassment,” Shay Farley, the legal director of Alabama Appleseed, a non-profit policy and legal advocacy organisation, said. Farley said there was concern about the increased financial burden on schools for collecting the information. “We definitely believe this is the nation’s toughest immigration law,” Jared Shepherd, a law fellow with the Alabama American Civil Liberties Union, said. The Alabama bill passed the state House of Representatives and Senate by large margins before landing on Bentley’s desk. Republicans took majority control of both chambers last year for the first time in 136 years. Civil and immigrant rights groups mounted a campaign against the measure, urging voters to contact the governor and ask him to veto the bill. Some pointed to concerns in Georgia, where farmers have complained that tough new curbs on immigration are creating a shortage of seasonal workers before they even come into effect. But Gene Armstrong, the mayor of Allgood, Alabama, a small community in which the Hispanic population has grown to almost 50%, said: “We managed in the past without illegal immigrants to pick the tomatoes here, and I haven’t heard anyone say that if we sent them all home nobody would be left to do that work. “When you have 9% unemployment, I think that some people who might not have wanted those jobs previously might reconsider.” Several states have enacted immigration restrictions, even though the US government considers it to be a federal issue. Alabama US immigration United States guardian.co.uk
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Corporation’s talks with DCMS suggests it could axe a channel The BBC is in talks with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport about cutting the red tape involved in axing a service, the clearest indication the corporation could close a channel to save money. The DCMS and the BBC have held talks about changing the so-called public value test – a lengthy consultation the corporation must undertake if it wants to launch or close a service. According to sources the BBC wants to remove a stipulation that it must launch a PVT if it wants to close a service. “DCMS has had discussions with the BBC about the PVT provisions in the BBC agreement but no decisions have been reached,” said a spokesman for the department. Following last autumn’s stringent licence fee settlement, the BBC is looking at how it can make 20% cuts. The BBC Trust wrote to director general Mark Thompson earlier this year saying that so-called “salami slicing” – spreading cuts around equally – “would not be in the interests of licence payers”, even if it could achieve the scale of savings required. However those working on Thompson’s Delivering Quality First consultation, which aims to trim budgets by about 16%, were told that there would not be cuts in “services”. Thompson is trying to use DQF to work out how the BBC can manage with a six-year licence fee freeze and take on additional funding obligations such as BBC World Service. There has been keen debate between executives and the BBC Trust about “salami-slicing” versus axing a service. One insider said: “One of the things that makes it more difficult to close down a channel is the process that it is subject to.” Under article 25 of the BBC agreement that was laid out in 2007, the BBC Trust “will be required to apply the PVT before a decision is taken to make any significant change to the BBC’s UK public services (which can include introducing a new service or discontinuing a service).” “We are in discussions with the DCMS about some of the detail in the PVT provisions but no decision has been reached,” said a spokesman for the BBC Trust. According to sources, culture secretary Jeremy Hunt is not keen on the idea of changing the agreement. Closing a channel or drastically changing it as a result of the new “shotgun” licence fee settlement would undoubtedly reflect badly on the government. The lengthy consultation the BBC had to go through when it wanted to close 6 Music, a decision that was eventually reversed, proved how much bureaucracy the corporation has to go through to axe a service. PVT’s have been considered an important safeguard to making sure the rationale for launching – or closing – a service is thoroughly sound. To date the BBC Trust has conducted four PVTs – it approved the iPlayer, HD television and controversial Gaelic TV channel BBC Alba, but blocked a plan to launch a network of 60 local video sites that had incensed commercial rivals . • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook . BBC BBC Trust Television industry Radio industry Tara Conlan guardian.co.uk
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Tahawwur Rana is found guilty of plotting attack on Danish newspaper but cleared of Mumbai charge in closely-watched trial A federal jury has convicted a Chicago businessman of helping to plot an attack against a Danish newspaper that printed cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, but cleared him of the most serious terrorism charge he faced of co-operating in the deadly 2008 rampage in Mumbai. The jury reached its split verdict after two days of deliberations, finding Tahawwur Rana guilty of providing material support to terrorism in Denmark and to the Pakistani militant group that claimed responsibility for the three-day siege in India’s largest city that left more than 160 people dead, including six Americans. The jurors, who were not identified in court, declined to talk to the media to explain their decision, which defence lawyers described as conflicting. Rana, a Canadian national who has lived in Chicago for years, faces up to 30 years in prison on the two charges. “We’re extremely disappointed. We think they got it wrong,” defence attorney Patrick Blegen told reporters. At the centre of the trial was testimony by the government’s star witness, David Coleman Headley , Rana’s longtime friend. Headley had previously pleaded guilty to laying the groundwork for the Mumbai attacks and planning to attack the Danish paper in retaliation for printing the cartoons, which had angered many Muslims because pictures of the prophet are prohibited in Islam. That plot was never carried out. Headley’s testimony was closely watched worldwide because it provided a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which took credit for the Mumbai attacks, and the group’s alleged co-operation with Pakistan’s top intelligence agency known as the ISI . The trial started weeks after US navy Seals found Osama bin Laden hiding outside Islamabad, raising concerns that Pakistan may have been protecting the world’s most wanted terrorist. The Pakistani government has denied the allegations and maintained it did not know about Bin Laden or help plan the Mumbai attacks. Ujjwal Nikam, the special public prosecutor in the Mumbai attack trial in India, said he was disappointed with the verdict. “When Rana has been held guilty of assisting the Lashkar-e-Taiba and guilty of supporting terrorist acts in Denmark, how have they separated him from the Mumbai attacks?” he said. “It appears that there are some apparent contradictions in this verdict.” India’s internal security chief, UK Bansal, told reporters that the verdict should not be a setback for the case in India. “The judicial systems in both countries are different. We will be presenting our evidence before our own courts,” Bansal said. Defence lawyers spent much of their time trying to discredit Headley, who they claim duped his friend from a Pakistani boarding school. They attacked Headley’s character, saying he initially lied to the FBI, lied to a judge and even lied to his own family. They claimed he implicated Rana in the plot because he wanted to make a deal with prosecutors, something he had learned about when he became an informant for the US drug enforcement administration after two heroin convictions. But prosecutors claimed Rana, 50, knew exactly what he was doing when he helped Headley. Rana, who did not testify, was on trial for allegedly allowing Headley to open a branch of his Chicago-based immigration law services business in Mumbai as a cover story while Headley conducted surveillance before the November 2008 attacks. He was also accused of letting Headley, who will avoid the death penalty and extradition because of his co-operation, travel as a representative of the company in Copenhagen. Prosecutors used a phone call between Rana and Headley, recorded on 7 September 2009, as the centrepiece of their evidence against Rana. In the call, the men discussed the Mumbai attacks and Headley talked about future targets, including the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Prosecutors also questioned the validity of Rana wanting to open a branch of his office in Denmark and sending Headley to the Copenhagen newspaper’s office simply to inquire about advertising, which could have been done via email or telephone. The US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said he was gratified by the jury’s decision and disagreed with defence lawyers who said the verdict was conflicting because Rana was convicted of supporting Lashkar-e-Taiba but acquitted of helping in the Mumbai attacks. “There are lots of ways you could explain it, but I have not spoken to the jury,” Fitzgerald said. “There was clearly evidence that he knew he was working with Lashkar.” In court, prosecutors played clips of Rana’s post-arrest statement to the FBI, in which he said he knew Headley had trained with Lashkar, which the US has declared a terrorist organisation. It was also clear from the recording that Rana was at least aware of the others allegedly involved in the Danish plot. Six others were charged in absentia in the case, including an ISI member known only as Major Iqbal and Headley’s Lashkar handler, Sajid Mir. According to Headley’s testimony, Lashkar was initially involved in planning the Danish plot. But after the Mumbai attacks, the group decided to lay low, according to Headley, who said he proceeded to work with another militant group. While much of Headley’s testimony had been heard before – both through the indictment and a report released by the Indian government last year – he did reveal a few new details. Among them was that another militant leader, Ilyas Kashmiri, who US officials believed to be al-Qaida’s military operations chief in Pakistan, had plotted to attack the US defence contractor Lockheed Martin. Kashmiri was reported killed on 3 June by US drone attacks inside Pakistan. While US officials have not confirmed the death, Pakistani officials say they are certain he is dead. Headley said he worked with Kashmiri in the plot against the Danish paper, describing how the militant wanted a “stronghold approach”. One plan included taking hostages in the building and killing them quickly by beheading them. “He said we should throw out the heads of the hostages from the windows,” Headley said of Kashmiri, speaking in a monotone and seemingly detached voice. “He said shoot them first and then behead them later, so there wouldn’t be a struggle.” Global terrorism Mumbai terror attacks Muhammad cartoons row 2006 United States Pakistan guardian.co.uk
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Robert Gates blasts ‘two-tiered’ alliance of those willing to wage war and those who don’t share the risks and costs The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, has delivered a blistering attack on European defence complacency, declaring that Nato has become a “two-tiered” alliance of those willing to wage war and those only interested in “talking” and peacekeeping. In his bluntest warning in nearly five years as Pentagon head under two US presidents, Gates announced that Washington’s fading commitment to European security could spell the death of the 60-year-old alliance. In a valedictory speech in Brussels three weeks before retiring as Pentagon chief, Gates bristled with exasperation and contempt for European defence spending cuts, inefficiencies and botched planning, and read the riot act to an elite European audience. Nato faced a “dim, if not dismal” future, consigned to “collective military irrelevance”, Gates argued, warning for the first time that Nato was living on borrowed time and that a new young generation of US leaders could abandon the key pillar of transatlantic security established in 1949. “If current trends in the decline of European defence capabilities are not halted and reversed, future US political leaders – those for whom the cold war was not the formative experience that it was for me – may not consider the return on America’s investment in Nato worth the cost.” He attacked Europe’s conduct of the bombing campaign against Gaddafi in Libya, told the Europeans to forget any notions of pulling their troops out of Afghanistan in a piecemeal manner, and said that the big new factor raising questions about Nato’s survival was the “political and economic environment in the United States”. “The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country,” Gates said of the Anglo-French led campaign in Libya. “Yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the US, once more, to make up the difference.” The US share of Nato military spending had soared to 75%, much more than during the cold war heyday when Washington maintained hundreds of thousands of US troops across Europe. The US taxpayer would not stand for it much longer – the US Congress and “the American body politic writ large” would rebel against spending “increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations apparently willing and eager for American taxpayers to assume the growing security burden left by reductions in European defence budgets”. Nato had degenerated into an alliance “between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of Nato membership but don’t want to share the risks and the costs”, Gates fumed. Noting that he was 20 years older than President Barack Obama, Gates said that Washington’s security guarantees to Europe, embodied in the Nato alliance, were fading because of generational change. “I am the last senior leader in the US government who is a product of the cold war,” said the former head of the CIA. His peers’ “emotional and historical attachment” to Nato was “ageing out”. “You have a lot of new members of Congress who are roughly old enough to be my children or grandchildren.” Generational change, economic hardship and European refusal to take responsibility for their own security were all feeding Nato’s decline and possible end. “The drift of the past 20 years can’t continue,” Gates said. “In the past, I’ve worried openly about Nato turning into a two-tiered alliance: between members who specialise in ‘soft’ humanitarian, development, peacekeeping, and talking tasks, and those conducting the “hard” combat missions … This is no longer a hypothetical worry. We are there today. And it is unacceptable.” In March all 28 Nato members had voted for the Libya mission, he noted. “Less than half have participated, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission ,” he said. “Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they can’t. The military capabilities simply aren’t there.” In a withering attack on the European defence establishment, he blasted allies for slashing defence budgets, but conceded there was little chance of reversing the trend. “The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the US Congress to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defence.” Nato US military US foreign policy United States European Union Libya Middle East Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Sure to Be Omitted from Our Media: U.K. Hospital Horror Story of Dragging a Dead Guy Like an Animal
June 10, 2011 No Comment
The next time someone in the media wants to blame budget cutters for premature deaths , remember James Taranto at The Wall Street Journal, who unveiled another story filed under “Great Moments in Socialized Medicine,” once again from jolly old England and the London Daily Mail : Peter Thompson, 41, was left in a corridor for ten hours before someone noticed he had passed away. In a final act of indignity, hospital auxiliaries pulled his lifeless body across the floor in a manner his family described as like “dragging a dead animal.” The scenes which shame the NHS [National Health Service] were all captured on CCTV. Staff thought Mr. Thompson was merely drunk and left him to “sleep it off.” Yesterday a coroner condemned the death as “wholly preventable.” An inquest heard that the father-of-one, who had consumed a cocktail of drink and drugs, could have been saved had he received emergency treatment. The hospital’s accident and emergency department was just 200 yards away. Taranto couldn’t help himself: Would someone please ask former Enron adviser Paul Krugman to call the Thompson family and relieve their suffering by letting them know “these stories are false”?
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Race circuit chairman says it ‘has been made clear that this fixture cannot progress and we fully respect that decision’ The Bahrain Grand Prix has finally been cancelled after Formula One teams complained about competing in the country, which has been racked by months of popular uprisings against the regime. Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone had already announced the race was now “not on” after a complaint from teams at the rescheduling of the event, which was initially put back to 30 October amid condemnation from human rights groups. The Bahrain International Circuit chairman, Zayed Alzayani, said: “While Bahrain would have been delighted to see the grand prix progress on 30 October in line with the World Motor Sport Council’s decision, it has been made clear that this fixture cannot progress and we fully respect that decision. “We want our role in Formula One to continue to be as positive and constructive as it has always been; therefore, in the best interest of the sport, we will not pursue the rescheduling of a race this season.” The Formula One Teams Association (Fota) wrote to the FIA on Tuesday with objections to the race being held, understood to be based on personnel and logistics. The event had been originally scheduled for March but was postponed as clashes intensified between Bahrain’s majority Shia population and the Gulf kingdom’s security forces, heavily backed by the forces of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Pressure on organisers to not reschedule the motor race had been intense, with a Facebook campaign calling for its cancellation receiving 320,000 signatures. At least a quarter of staff from the Grand Prix’s organising committee, Bahrain International Circuit, all of them Shia, were sacked in April after being accused of taking part in anti-government demonstrations. Clashes have continued since martial law was lifted, though not on the same scale as the running battles seen in mid-February and March. Authorities have been pursuing Shia opposition supporters who staged street marches to demand greater freedoms, equal rights and an elected government in the island kingdom. As the violence intensified, the calls for reform became calls for an overthrow of the 200-year-old Sunni dynasty, which demonstrators say actively discriminates against the country’s majority Shia population. Formula One Bahrain Arab and Middle East unrest Protest Middle East Motor sport David Batty guardian.co.uk
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