Yousaf Raza Gilani denies Pakistan helped al-Qaida, orders army to answer MPs’ questions and warns US over future raids Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, has ordered the army to investigate how Osama bin Laden managed to hide in the country for up to eight years, and has called on the military leadership to answer questions before parliament. Addressing criticism from US officials, including President Barack Obama, Gilani told parliament it was “disingenuous” to blame Pakistan or accuse its intelligence services of being “in cahoots” with al-Qaida. “Allegations of complicity or incompetence are absurd,” he said. “We didn’t invite Osama bin Laden to Pakistan.” He also warned Washington that future unilateral strikes could be met with “full force”. The speech came a day after Obama said Islamabad had questions to answer about Bin Laden’s “support network” in the country, including possible help from government officials. Gilani retorted that Bin Laden’s sanctuary was a “failure of the world” and defended the role of the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, which has come under sharp attack at home and abroad. “The ISI is a national asset and has the full support of the government. We are proud of its considerable contribution to the anti-terror campaign,” he said. The forthright speech was an attempt to rally Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership in the face of mounting international criticism following the dramatic raid on the compound at Abbottabad, 35 miles north of the capital, Islamabad, that killed the al-Qaida chief. The ISI had passed “key leads to the CIA” that ultimately led to Bin Laden and helped capture many senior al-Qaida lieutenants since 2001, including 248 in one operation alone, Gilani said. He paid lip service to the alliance with America and welcomed a forthcoming visit from the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. But he pointedly paid tribute to help from China, “a source of inspiration for the people of Pakistan”, he said. Left unsaid was Pakistan longstanding military and nuclear co-operation with China, which is believed to have boosted Pakistan’s nuclear programme in the 1990s. The investigation into the Bin Laden raid is to be carried out by the army’s adjutant general, Lieutenant-General Javed Iqbal, Gilani said. The army leadership will address a closed session of parliament on Friday and answer questions on the issue, he said. Echoing Obama’s words one week ago, Gilani said the death of Bin Laden was “justice done” but added: “We are not naive enough to declare victory.” Afterwards jeering broke out among the opposition benches before Chaudhry Nisar Ali, leader of the opposition in parliament, stood up to speak, saying: “I have not heard a single word that addresses the deep discontent of the Pakistani people.” Osama bin Laden Pakistan al-Qaida Global terrorism United States US national security Declan Walsh guardian.co.uk
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To curb ‘gallery rage’, the National Gallery has limited admissions to its forthcoming Leonardo show. Is this the end for timed tickets, high prices and jostling crowds? Tate Modern’s recent Gauguin exhibition seems to have been a watershed. It did record business for the museum – but also caused record heartache because the galleries were so thronged with people that it was almost impossible to see the pictures . I went on a weekday morning, and it was packed. If there were less than a dozen people clustered round a single picture, you were doing well. The National Gallery has taken note of the bad publicity Tate Modern got over Gauguin, and announced that its forthcoming Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan exhibition will reduce the number of admissions from the 230 per half-hour slot it is allowed under health and safety rules to 180. Hurrah!, you might be tempted to say. Until you remember that Leonardo produced very few completed pictures – no more than 15 have been fully authenticated. The National Gallery is bringing together seven of them as the centrepiece of its exhibition. My experience is that people budget a couple of hours in a gallery – that seems a human attention span when it comes to art. Think films, plays and operas (before an interval), and indeed sport – the length of a football match or cricket session is no accident. So if my calculations are correct and the National Gallery sell all their tickets, you will still have 720 punters in the gallery at any given time fighting to see seven masterpieces. Of course there will be lots of supporting exhibits. The press material for the show mentions “drawings by Leonardo and his followers” and “a near-contemporary, full-scale copy of Leonardo’s famous Last Supper seen alongside all the surviving preparatory drawings made by Leonardo for the Last Supper”. So it won’t just be 700 people fighting over seven paintings, but inevitably those seven superstars are going to be mobbed. The National Gallery say it wants to combat “gallery rage”. Personally, I don’t recognise that term. Art lovers on the whole are terribly polite. I didn’t witness any rage at Gauguin, just a weary shuffling around, and a good deal of apologising to people you’d just trodden on or accidentally barged out of the way. The real rage is prompted by people whose mobiles go off and who insist on talking on the damn things despite all appeals not to. The crowds are just put down to gallery greed and accepted with a kind of weary “we’re all in this together” shrug. The problem lies with the whole notion of the “blockbuster”, which is just a desperately hoped-for money-spinner for cash-strapped galleries. Colin Tweedy, chief executive of Arts & Business, argued recently that the era of blockbuster shows was coming to an end . And he welcomed their phasing out. “The blockbuster model is killing art,” he said. “It is not the right way to see great artists. In the next five years, museums will stop doing these exhibitions because they are too much trouble. The blockbuster is an old model. The creators of culture have to think in a different way.” Art shows are like any other aspect of the cultural business. Galleries put together a show, try to create a buzz, hope the exhibition will come to be seen as an “event”. The hucksterism is pretty disgusting when you think about it. They’ve introduced timed tickets to try to even out the peaks and troughs in attendance, but timed tickets are pretty disgusting too. They assume that a two-hour stint is the norm and won’t let you back in if you fancy having lunch and then taking another look. This is, as Tweedy says, no way to see art. It is a branch of commerce devised for the benefit of the gallery, and playing on the exhibition-goer’s fantasy that by spending two hours in the company of Gauguin or Leonardo he or she can get a meaningful take on the artist. Far better to go and look at a couple of Gauguins in a gallery and live with them for a while, or go regularly to see the couple of Leonardos in the National Gallery’s permanent exhibition. Galleries which stage blockbuster shows are peddling a myth, and they know it. Like Tweedy, we should welcome the fact that the age of the blockbuster is ending. We need to study more carefully paintings that are readily to hand. I spent an enjoyable afternoon recently at Apsley House in London’s Knightsbridge where I had the excellent collection (including four major paintings by Velázquez) more or less to myself. Similarly, at the Wallace Collection near Marble Arch you can enjoy a magnificent collection in a lovely setting without crowds. Seek the art out; concentrate on single paintings or groups of paintings; look at aspects of an artist’s career and let a sense of the whole career accrete; and don’t play the galleries’ game by falling for the idea that these big shows are “must-sees”. For a start, you can barely see them. Exhibitions Art National Gallery Leonardo da Vinci Tate Modern Stephen Moss guardian.co.uk
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Take the road to Rome, featuring Jack White, Norah Jones and musicians who worked on Ennio Morricone’s 60s scores Five years. That’s all it took for Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton) and Daniele Luppi to turn their love of old Italian film scores into a new musical project called Rome. Then again, considering the album features Jack White and Norah Jones, plus musicians who performed on the original Ennio Morricone scores, it’s pretty clear why Rome wasn’t built in a day. Speaking to the Guardian last November , Burton described his passion for Piero Umiliani, Bruno Nicolai and Piero Piccioni – something few people would have expected when the producer first came to prominence in 2004 following his Beatles/Jay-Z mash-up, the Grey Album. Has Danger Mouse confounded expectations once again? Has Norah Jones revived her reputation? And is this the only record you’re likely to hear that links the White Stripes with Alessandro Alessandroni? The answer to that last question is “yes”, but let us know your thoughts in the comments section below. Danger Mouse Jack White Norah Jones World music guardian.co.uk/music guardian.co.uk
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Witness in US trial expected to say ISI officers were complicit in the 2008 terrorist attacks that killed more than 160 people The apparent involvement of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Pakistan’s premier spy agency, in international attacks carried out by Islamic militants is to be revealed in a trial starting next week in the US. A former member of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a violent Pakistan-based extremist group with close links to the Pakistani military, is expected to tell a court in Chicago that ISI officers were complicit in the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai , India’s commercial capital, in which more than 160 people died. The trial comes at a critical time, with relations between Islamabad and Washington at a new low following the death of Osama bin Laden. The hearings could acutely embarrass the ISI, which is suspected by many in the US and elsewhere of protecting the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The trial is also likely to fuel pressure in the US for the high levels of financial aid to Pakistan to be cut. Official court documents in the case have so far played down the role of the ISI, still officially considered by the CIA and other American agencies as a key ally in the hunt for al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan. They avoid mentioning the Pakistani spy service by name, for example. Spokesmen for the ISI have repeatedly denied any involvement in the Mumbai attacks to the Guardian. The key witness in the hearings will be David Headley, an American-Pakistani LeT militant who has already told Indian intelligence services that he carried out the surveillance for the Mumbai operation while working for the ISI. A report on Headley’s interrogation last June by Indian investigators obtained and published by the Guardian in October revealed that the 51-year-old double agent gave his questioners a detailed picture of close co-ordination between at least lower-ranking officers in the ISI and the LeT militants. Headley claimed he was trained by an ISI non-commissioned officer in clandestine techniques and that he kept his handler – named as “Major Iqbal” – up to date with planning for the raid. The ISI also provided training and facilities to the attack team as well as funding his own surveillance operations, said Headley, who changed his name from Dawood Gilani. American prosecutors have now indicted “Major Iqbal” along with three senior members of LeT and an American alleged to be involved with the group. Headley, a former bar manager who was arrested in October 2009 in Chicago while returning from Europe, has since co-operated with US authorities in return for a reduced sentence. LeT – whose name means “war party of the pure” – has had a close relationship with the Pakistani security establishment since it was founded around 20 years ago. Militants from the group brought a new edge of extremism and brutality to violence in Kashmir and since 2001 have been found fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, though in small numbers. Following the Mumbai attacks and under great international pressure, Islamabad ordered the arrest of a series of senior LeT figures. But successive Pakistani leaders have refused overseas demands to shut down the group. In the secret report, Headley is said to have told the Indian investigators he was recruited by the ISI in 2005 and that his handler had expressed enthusiasm when told which targets had been chosen for the Mumbai operation. Headley said too that he had informed his ISI handler about his involvement in operations that breakaway LeT factions planned to launch in Europe. The only man named in the recent American indictment who will be on trial in Chicago is Tahawwur Rana, a Chicago-based immigration consultant who is charged with material support of terrorism. He denies the charges against him. Two weeks ago the Guardian revealed that the ISI had been categorised with al-Qaida, Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah and other militant Islamic groups in a 2007 “threat matrix” compiled to help interrogators at Guantánamo Bay. Links with all these entities were indicative of involvement with terrorism, the document said. Intelligence reports used for assessments of detainees in Guantánamo Bay reveal scores of references by captured militants to ISI support for the Taliban in Afghanistan. Documents dating from 2002 to 2005 qualify many of these references with the warning that any such assistance to insurgents fighting western troops was thought to be the work of “rogue” ISI operatives. From 2006, there are no such caveats as US analysts appear to have decided that assistance for some militant factions was official policy. Pakistan Mumbai terror attacks United States Global terrorism India Jason Burke guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Witness in US trial expected to say ISI officers were complicit in the 2008 terrorist attacks that killed more than 160 people The apparent involvement of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Pakistan’s premier spy agency, in international attacks carried out by Islamic militants is to be revealed in a trial starting next week in the US. A former member of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a violent Pakistan-based extremist group with close links to the Pakistani military, is expected to tell a court in Chicago that ISI officers were complicit in the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai , India’s commercial capital, in which more than 160 people died. The trial comes at a critical time, with relations between Islamabad and Washington at a new low following the death of Osama bin Laden. The hearings could acutely embarrass the ISI, which is suspected by many in the US and elsewhere of protecting the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The trial is also likely to fuel pressure in the US for the high levels of financial aid to Pakistan to be cut. Official court documents in the case have so far played down the role of the ISI, still officially considered by the CIA and other American agencies as a key ally in the hunt for al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan. They avoid mentioning the Pakistani spy service by name, for example. Spokesmen for the ISI have repeatedly denied any involvement in the Mumbai attacks to the Guardian. The key witness in the hearings will be David Headley, an American-Pakistani LeT militant who has already told Indian intelligence services that he carried out the surveillance for the Mumbai operation while working for the ISI. A report on Headley’s interrogation last June by Indian investigators obtained and published by the Guardian in October revealed that the 51-year-old double agent gave his questioners a detailed picture of close co-ordination between at least lower-ranking officers in the ISI and the LeT militants. Headley claimed he was trained by an ISI non-commissioned officer in clandestine techniques and that he kept his handler – named as “Major Iqbal” – up to date with planning for the raid. The ISI also provided training and facilities to the attack team as well as funding his own surveillance operations, said Headley, who changed his name from Dawood Gilani. American prosecutors have now indicted “Major Iqbal” along with three senior members of LeT and an American alleged to be involved with the group. Headley, a former bar manager who was arrested in October 2009 in Chicago while returning from Europe, has since co-operated with US authorities in return for a reduced sentence. LeT – whose name means “war party of the pure” – has had a close relationship with the Pakistani security establishment since it was founded around 20 years ago. Militants from the group brought a new edge of extremism and brutality to violence in Kashmir and since 2001 have been found fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, though in small numbers. Following the Mumbai attacks and under great international pressure, Islamabad ordered the arrest of a series of senior LeT figures. But successive Pakistani leaders have refused overseas demands to shut down the group. In the secret report, Headley is said to have told the Indian investigators he was recruited by the ISI in 2005 and that his handler had expressed enthusiasm when told which targets had been chosen for the Mumbai operation. Headley said too that he had informed his ISI handler about his involvement in operations that breakaway LeT factions planned to launch in Europe. The only man named in the recent American indictment who will be on trial in Chicago is Tahawwur Rana, a Chicago-based immigration consultant who is charged with material support of terrorism. He denies the charges against him. Two weeks ago the Guardian revealed that the ISI had been categorised with al-Qaida, Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah and other militant Islamic groups in a 2007 “threat matrix” compiled to help interrogators at Guantánamo Bay. Links with all these entities were indicative of involvement with terrorism, the document said. Intelligence reports used for assessments of detainees in Guantánamo Bay reveal scores of references by captured militants to ISI support for the Taliban in Afghanistan. Documents dating from 2002 to 2005 qualify many of these references with the warning that any such assistance to insurgents fighting western troops was thought to be the work of “rogue” ISI operatives. From 2006, there are no such caveats as US analysts appear to have decided that assistance for some militant factions was official policy. Pakistan Mumbai terror attacks United States Global terrorism India Jason Burke guardian.co.uk
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Detective Inspector Eddie Hall falsely claimed Tomlinson fell down twice before encountering PC Simon Harwood A senior Metropolitan police officer has been found guilty of “reckless” conduct after misleading two pathologists over the possible cause of Ian Tomlinson’s death. Detective Inspector Eddie Hall, the most senior Met officer involved in the Tomlinson inquiry, was investigated after it emerged he told two forensic experts Tomlinson had fallen to the ground in front of a police van before the newspaper seller came into contact with PC Simon Harwood. In his defence, Hall said an Independent Police Complaints Commission investigator had told him Tomlinson had fallen in front of a van. The IPCC investigator, Chris Mahaffey, denied this. Hall’s claim was formally relayed to two pathologists charged with finding a cause of 47-year-old Tomlinson’s death at the G20 protests in London. Video footage showed Tomlinson being struck with a baton and violently pushed from behind on 1 April 2009 on Royal Exchange Buildings. An inquest jury found last week that Tomlinson was “unlawfully killed” by the police officer, and died from internal bleeding as a result of injuries sustained by the push. Jurors heard evidence from four pathologists, including Dr Ken Shorrock, one of the pathologists formally instructed by Hall on behalf of the Met at St Pancras mortuary on 22 April 2009. The police officer told Shorrock that Tomlinson had been seen to fall to the ground on Lombard Street, minutes before the newspaper seller came across Harwood. The same information was supplied to Dr Ben Swift, the pathologist instructed by Harwood, who was also present during the examination. Tomlinson did walk on to Lombard Street as he tried to find a route home through the G20 protests and was forcefully escorted out of the road by police officers. But there was no evidence that even suggested he fell to the ground. Releasing the findings of its inquiry, the IPCC confirmed that “misinformation was supplied by the police to the pathologists”. It said there was never any evidence to suggest Tomlinson fell to the ground in front of a van on Lombard Street. Investigators found that while Hall did not “intentionally mislead” the pathologist, his erroneous briefing jeopardised the investigation, inquest and possible prosecution. “He did so based on what he believed to be the case at the time but he should have ensured he relayed factual information rather than his interpretation of the facts,” the report said. The inquest jury was told to ignore part of Shorrock’s report in which he said he could not rule out that the fall in Lombard Street had resulted in the fatal internal bleeding. The Met said in a statement: “The report concerning information supplied to the pathologists by an MPS [Metropolitan police service] officer found that although incorrect information was given, this was an honestly held belief and there was no evidence of intent to mislead and no lasting damage to the investigation.” Tomlinson’s family responded by the report by releasing extracts from a letter the IPCC sent to a top-ranking Met officer in March this year. In the letter, the IPCC said there was a “total lack of evidence” for the fall reported by Hall. “There is no evidence of any kind to suggest that Ian Tomlinson fell in front of a van,” the letter said. “No media footage portrays a fall; it was not said in any Gold Group [a forum designed to 'add value to the response to an internal or external critical incident'] meeting; no investigator workbook documents that there was a fall, there is no email traffic revealing such a view and there is no witness evidence that he fell in front of a van.” In a separate development, the Guardian revealed on Monday that senior police were told within 48 hours of Tomlinson’s death that police witnesses had seen him being pushed to the ground by Harwood. The three constables who witnessed the assault did not recognise Harwood, but the significance of their information was instantly realised and passed on to City of London police investigators. The IPCC is now investigating why City of London failed to pass the information on to its own officials, the coroner, the pathologist, the family or the media. Ian Tomlinson Metropolitan police Police Protest G20 Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Judith Miller thinks that whole debate over torture is so yesterday. I wonder what other crimes Judith Miller thinks should be excused because someone promised not to do them again? Given her history of playing stenographer for the Bush administration with their push to invade Iraq, I would imagine that list is quite long. MILLER: Yes, this is a replay of the old arguments we were having earlier on, before the election of Obama about what we did, why we did it. I think a couple of commentators pointed out that the techniques that were used under Bush, President Bush were not the techniques that were in place by the time he left office. And so you do have, we’ve had an evolution of thought about how you handle terrorism, what’s appropriate, what’s not. It was kind of a shame to see this whole thing come up again because pretty much the issue’s been solved. Sorry Judy, but it’s not been solved when no one’s been held accountable for it. And the people making an issue of it today are the endless supplies of Bushies running to the airways to try to justify their tactics that failed to catch bin Laden. Miller also goes on to say that talking about whether torture worked or not is “not the only standard by which we judge something like this.” Well that’s right Judy, but the standard should be whether we’re following the law or not. Alan Colmes spoke up and asked a good question which is why are we bragging about torturing anybody in the first place? What’s pitiful is after the last ten years of continually being propagandized by our media, the politicians and the movie and television industry, so much of the public does think it’s perfectly acceptable to torture someone and that it actually yields reliable information. Jim Pinkerton throws out the treatment of Bradley Manning as proof that the Obama administration is continuing Bush’s practices and I’m with Alan Colmes, torture is not acceptable no matter who’s running the country and I’m not about to defend the way Manning has been treated in custody just as Colmes wasn’t. I’m also not going to play this all sides are equal game either when you look at the long list of atrocities that were committed under the Bush administration and hold up Manning’s case as somehow equal to that as Pinkerton did here. It’s just not. And there’s nothing Pinkerton could say that would make me believe he’s actually got one iota of concern for Bradley Manning. He deserves a speedy trial and we need to find out the truth about how he’s been treated in custody. If Pinkerton is concerned for his well being, he sure as hell has not been advocating for it on Fox. What’s disgusting is that the fact that no one was held accountable for what happened during the Bush years, so now we’ve got these guys back on television instead of on trial and our media still defending their actions and calling waterboarding “enhanced interrogation” instead of what it is, torture.
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Dominique Strauss-Kahn pictured in €100,000 car, undermining socialist credentials ahead of expected bid for presidency In a country that has never forgiven Nicolas Sarkozy’s love of bling, it wasn’t the brightest idea for the French Socialists’ great presidential hope to be photographed climbing into a €100,000 Porsche car. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and long-hailed as the only man who can beat Sarkozy, now looks certain to return to France and run for president in 2012. Secret meetings in Paris in recent days have mobilised his future campaign team. But “Porschegate” has created a headache for the man whose greatest challenge is convincing voters that he is not a haughty champagne socialist. From Washington, Strauss-Kahn has spent months trying to convey to the French electorate that he is not the voice of globalised fat cats and highly-paid technocrats but a true leftwing intellectual who can save the French social model. Sliding into a sports car outside his €4m (£3.5m) Paris penthouse with his millionaire wife was a faux pas, even if the vehicle was not his, but belonged to an adviser who works for one of France’s richest men. Sarkozy’s entourage could not hide their glee. So many Porsche jokes flew around the Socialist party that Ségolène Royal, a rival of Strauss-Kahn, ordered her supporters not to crack sports-car gags online. Things were made worse for Strauss-Kahn, as France on Monday marked 30 years since François Mitterrand’s 1981 election victory. Mitterrand is modern France’s only Socialist president; his sphinx-like public self-restraint went under the slogan La force tranquile (calm strength). Strauss-Kahn was quickly dubbed La Porsche tranquile . Strauss-Kahn – or DSK has he is known in France – has remained silent over his presidential ambitions owing to the impartiality of his IMF job. But his lieutenants in Paris said over weekend that he will declare his intentions on 28 June, the start of the Socialists’ race to chose a candidate. Polls continue to show him far ahead of Sarkozy. The latest survey for LH2 found Strauss-Kahn would take 23% of the vote followed by the extreme right politician Marine Le Pen (17%) and Sarkozy (16%). Not only would DSK beat Sarkozy, the incumbent would be eliminated in the first round. “To walk away now looks weak,” said a diplomat who knows Strauss-Kahn but wanted to remain anonymous. Jean-Jacques Urvoas, one of DSK’s close supporters, said he was “convinced” his man would run. But even advisers acknowledge that a return to Paris would not be easy. A former finance minister and economics professor, Strauss-Kahn will land in the middle of a party fighting over a primary race to nominate its candidate. His attributes – a presidential demeanour, experience of global politics, understanding of finance – are also weaknesses. He has been criticised for being haughty and arrogant, and worst of all “free-market” and not truly leftwing. Despite being regarded as the architect of the 35-hour week, a cause celebre of the French left, Strauss-Kahn is seen as to the right of his party. “He’s not a socialist,” said Roland Dumas, a former foreign minister in the Mitterrand government. The Socialists chose Royal over Strauss-Kahn to run in the last presidential election in 2007. He now faces another rival, her former partner François Hollande. The former Socialist party leader has emerged as a surprise challenger by positioning himself as a man of the people against DSK’s man of the establishment. In a poll this week, Hollande was seen as the Socialist who most resembled Mitterrand. The primary race will begin in June and end in the autumn. Strauss-Kahn’s greatest weapon may proved to be his third wife, Anne Sinclair, France’s answer to the Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman. She has helped neutralise his moneyed image by preparing a book about her art-dealer grandfather, suggesting the couple’s wealth comes from her inheritance rather than her husband. Sinclair has also set out to neutralise Strauss-Kahn’s troubled image as, what the French press politely call, “the great seducer”. In 2006, when he was last preparing to run for president, she told L’Express she was “rather proud” of his reputation, saying: “It’s important for a politician to be able to seduce.” Sinclair has remained silent over his brief affair with a senior IMF colleague. In 2008, an IMF investigation cleared him of harassment and favouritism over the affair while deeming it a “serious error of judgment”. When Porschegate erupted and the right took advantage, the MP Pierre Moscovici, a DSK lieutenant, warned against a campaign of “stink bombs”. It was interpreted not only as a warning against jibes about Strauss-Kahn’s wealth but also to silence rumours that the Sarkozy camp could go rummaging through his private life to catch him out during an election campaign. Olivier Ferrand, who is head of the thinktank Terra Nova and is close to Strauss-Kahn, said the Socialist party primary would work in DSK’s favour, giving him a “legitimacy” as the left’s true candidate if he won. The Socialist party, which could be dented by anti-globalisation candidates on the hard left, wants to avoid a repeat of the “political aberration” of April 2002 when an array of leftwing candidates split the vote and the Socialists were knocked out of in the first round by Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National. France Nicolas Sarkozy Europe Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk
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Twitter claims of intimate photos of socialite and Top Gear host are untrue and upsetting, says Khan Jemima Khan described weekend rumours that she has taken out a gagging order preventing “intimate photos” of herself and Jeremy Clarkson being published as a “bloody nightmare”. The socialite was among a number of celebrities alleged to have taken out privacy injunctions to stop potentially embarrassing details being made public. A Twitter account claiming to expose the celebrities has attracted about 30,000 followers since its first message on Sunday afternoon. Khan said the rumours were ” untrue and upsetting “, and added on Monday: “I hope the people who made this story up realise that my sons will be bullied at school because of it. Plus I’m getting vile hate tweets.” Khan has consistently denied having obtained a gagging order. On Monday, Mark Stephens, a senior media lawyer at Finers Stephens Innocent, told the Guardian: “This is discriminatory justice: not one single woman has sought or obtained a superinjunction.” Stephens added that the Twitter user behind the allegations “should expect a knock on the door within the next 48 hours” from solicitors representing the stars. “If it is false, it is libellous; if it is true, it is contemptuous,” he said. The lawyer added that anybody acting for the celebrities could attempt to force Twitter to hand over information about the person behind the account. “Twitter can reveal the user who dialled up to the connection at that time,” he told the Guardian. “The technical trail is indelible – it has the fingerprints of the miscreant all over it. They should expect a knock at the door in the next 48 hours and they should take their toothbrush to court, because they can expect to spend a very long time in Pentonville [prison].” Privacy injunctions – and the high-profile figures alleged to have obtained them – have been thrown into the spotlight in recent weeks as MPs warn of a new privacy law created by judges, rather than parliament. The use of Twitter and other internet sites to publicise the alleged injunctions has made the high court gagging orders “increasingly untenable,” Stephens said on Monday. “We’re in Spycatcher territory here. Eventually, the House of Lords will be forced to accept that the purpose of an injunction has been removed so remove it – as I’m sure they will on this occasion.” Twitter had not returned a request to comment at the time of publication. On Sunday, a Twitter spokesman said the company “strive[s] not to remove tweets on the basis of their content,” but that it would remove “illegal tweets and spam”. Keith Arrowsmith, the head of intellectual property and media at Ralli solicitors, told the Guardian that superinjunctions – where even the existence of a gagging order cannot be reported – are rendered ineffective without an international “supercourt” to implement them. “Anything the government says about privacy law is now nonsense, because they can only tweak UK law.” More details soon … • 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 . Privacy & the media Media law Press freedom Newspapers & magazines Newspapers Superinjunctions Twitter Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk
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A little-known Elizabethan lyric, this week’s poem is an elegant, complex meditation on evanescence I discovered this week’s poem in a glorious anthology, Elizabethan Lyrics, edited by Norman Ault in 1925 . I’d like to say a bit about the anthology first, because it’s such an achievement. Ault’s aim was to challenge the conventional claim about Elizabethan poetry that “After Wyatt and Surrey, nothing; then Sidney and the giants.” The major figures receive duly generous space, of course, but around them swirls a garland of minor but exquisite works, some by Anon, many by long-forgotten names. And, having mined the printed poetry collections, dramatic works, songbooks and manuscripts of the period, Ault arranges all the poems, as far as possible, in chronological order. This means that the poems of the productive major figures are not clumped in the usual way, but scattered across the volume, allowing individual developments, influences and shifts of fashion to be traced. Ault’s cornucopia of an anthology demonstrates that “the giants” were of their time as well as above it; feeding, and fed by, its remarkably fertile soil. The author of this week’s poem, “A Palinode,” is represented only by this single composition (dated 1600) – but what a complex and lovely piece it is. Edmund Bolton was born c.1575 and died c.1633. It seems he was an eccentric sort of character: a Catholic, he held a court post under James I, only to fall out of favour on the accession of Charles I and end his days imprisoned for debt. The palinode is not a strict poetic form: the term simply means a retraction. Bolton, however, raises retraction to an art. His poem is shaped as two sonnets, each rather different in rhyme-scheme, and certainly not straightforward mirror-images of statement and retraction. The sonnets are ingeniously linked by argument and images, the latter arranged in different patterns and symmetries. Bolton might be shaking a kaleidoscope or choreographing a very elaborate minuet. He begins with some pleasant but fairly conventional imagery. Notice how the key verbs of the first four lines (“wither”, “fade”, “vanish”, “melt”) are taken up by the fifth, but set in reverse order, more palindrome than palinode. The sixth line repeats the images of the first four in their original order (“primrose”, “sunlit fountains”, “bubble”, “snow”) but the “primrose” now becomes the “rose”, the “sunlit fountains” are simply, and rather magically, “the shine.” And in line seven we see why. Bolton has evolved a further metaphor: the rose, shine, bubble and snow are now attributes “Of praise, pomp, glory, joy –”. If you’re feeling faintly dazzled, put on your sunglasses; Bolton hasn’t finished. A final melancholy scene reprises the natural emblems, with further beautifully evocative adjectives, and asserts the Biblical lesson. The human treasures we “up-lay” also “wither, vanish, fade, and melt away”. Those verbs do not, of course, denote a logical progress, or “vanish” would need to come last. They simply denote various kinds of evanescence. The second sonnet begins with the four key images, again in reverse order. First, there’s the snow, now attached to an expansive conceit that indicts the over-ambitious hills whose nakedness its melting has exposed. The bubble sails away and wreaks havoc – a shipwreck, no less. Perhaps the repetition of the word “dalliance” should alert us to an erotic subtext? At this point, the plot thickens, the wordplay intensifies. The sun has melted the snow, and perhaps we half expect a chain of reactions now, along the lines of “The House that Jack Built.” But that’s not what happens. The sun restores negative to positive, colours the bubble, makes the primrose grow. Bolton can only be building to another retraction. He is, but he expresses it subtly, concluding his bravura display with a rhetorical question rather than a statement. The final couplet unites the two quartets of concrete and abstract nouns. Evanescence wins, but evanescence itself is temporary. Flowers fade, but grow again, and so on. Bolton’s “A Palinode” reminds me of Louis MacNeice’s “Snow” (it’s possible, of course, that MacNeice knew the Palinode, and sourced his snow and roses there). Bolton, too, sets disparate images together and somehow suggests that, even if life is mere shine and bubble, there is constant wonder in “the drunkenness of things being various”. The poem creates an impression not of pendulum-like assertion and retraction, but of circularity. What goes around comes around, and vice versa. Bolton puts it far more memorably. A Palinode As withereth the primrose by the river, As fadeth summer’s sun from gliding fountains, As vanisheth the light-blown bubble ever, As melteth snow upon the mossy mountains: So melts, so vanishes, so fades, so withers The rose, the shine, the bubble and the snow Of praise, pomp, glory, joy – which short life gathers – Fair praise, vain pomp, sweet glory, brittle joy. The withered primrose by the mourning river, The faded summer’s sun from weeping fountains, The light-blown bubble, vanishéd for ever, The molten snow upon the naked mountains, Are emblems that the treasures we up-lay Soon wither, vanish, fade and melt away. For as the snow, whose lawn did overspread The ambitious hills, which giant-like did threat To pierce the heaven with their aspiring head, Naked and bare doth leave their craggy seat; Whenas the bubble, which did empty fly The dalliance of the undiscernéd wind, On whose calm rolling waves it did rely, Hath shipwreck made, where it did dalliance find; And when the sunshine, which dissolved the snow, Coloured the bubble with a pleasant vary, And made the rathe and timely primrose grow, Swarth clouds withdrawn (which longer time do tarry) – Oh, what is praise, pomp, glory, joy, but so As shine by fountains, bubbles, flowers or snow? Poetry Carol Rumens guardian.co.uk
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