Blog by half-American ‘ultimate outsider’ describes dangers of political and sexual dissent She is perhaps an unlikely hero of revolt in a conservative country. Female, gay and half-American, Amina Abdullah is capturing the imagination of the Syrian opposition with a blog that has shot to prominence as the protest movement struggles in the face of a brutal government crackdown. Abdullah’s blog, A Gay Girl in Damascus, is brutally honest, poking at subjects long considered taboo in Arab culture. “Blogging is, for me, a way of being fearless,” she says. “I believe that if I can be ‘out’ in so many ways, others can take my example and join the movement.” Her blog really took off two weeks ago with a post entitled My Father the Hero, a moving account of how her father faced down two security agents who came to arrest her, accusing her of being a Salafist and a foreign agent. Abdullah’s family is well-connected – she has relatives in the government and the Muslim Brotherhood whom she prefers not to name – and she says being politically active was a “natural thing”. “Unfortunately, for most of my life being aware of Syrian politics means simply observing and only commenting privately.” That changed when protests broke out and Abdullah joined them, blogging about her experiences. “Teargas was lobbed at us. I saw people vomiting from the gas as I covered my own mouth and nose and my eyes burned,” she wrote after one demonstration. “I am sure I wasn’t the only one to note that, if this becomes standard practice, a niqab is a very practical thing to wear in future.” The blend of humour and frankness, frivolity and political nous comes from an upbringing that straddles Syria and the US. “I’m the ultimate outsider,” she says. “My views are heavily informed by being both a member of a small marginal minority as an Arab Muslim in America and as a part of a majority as a Sunni in Syria, and of course as a woman and as a sexual minority.” Homosexuality is illegal in Syria and a strict taboo, although the state largely turns a blind eye. “It’s tough being a lesbian in Syria, but it’s certainly easier to be a sexual than a political dissident,” she says. “There are a lot more LGBT people here than one might think, even if we are less flamboyant than elsewhere.” Writing in her blog, she said was terrified when she realised at 15 that she was gay, becoming a devout Muslim and getting married. She came out aged 26 and returned to Syria, where she taught English until the uprising closed classes. Her posts vividly describe falling for other women, finding a Damascene hair salon full of gay women and having a frank conversation with her father about her sexuality. “For my family it is a preferable outcome than a promiscuous heterosexual daughter,” she jokes. Born in Virginia to an American southerner mother and a father from an old Damascene family, Abdullah moved to Syria at six months and grew up between the two countries. She spent a long period in the US after 1982, when an Islamist uprising in Syria was being brutally quashed. Despite facing prejudice– in both the US and Syria – Abdullah sees no conflict in being both gay and Muslim. “I consider myself a believer and a Muslim: I pray five times a day, fast at Ramadan and even covered for a decade,” she says. “I believe God made me as I am and I refuse to believe God makes mistakes.” Having family members in high places and dual nationality has, as some blog comments have pointed out, made her more able to speak. But on Wednesday Abdullah and her elderly father went into hiding in separate places after the security forces came round again. She has refused to go to Beirut with her mother, and is blogging when she can, moving from house to house with a bag of belongings. Abdullah is also writing a book, in the hope that a revolution will bring more freedoms, both sexual and political. “The Syria I always hoped was there, but was sleeping, has woken up,” she says. “I have to believe that, sooner or later, we will prevail.” Katherine Marsh is a pseudonym for a journalist who lives in Damascus Syria Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Protest Katherine Marsh guardian.co.uk
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Greece denies claims by Der Speiegel but markets react quickly after report of emergency meeting in Luxembourg The euro has fallen sharply on the foreign exchange markets in late trading after reports Greece is preparing to leave the eurozone. Athens has denied the reports. The Greek deputy finance minister, Filippos Sachinidis, told Reuters: “The report about Greece leaving the eurozone is untrue. Such reports undermine Greece and the euro and serve market speculation games.” The euro has had its worst week since January, and has fallen 1% to below $1.4400 after a report on the Der Spiegel website that a secret crisis meeting is being held in Luxembourg on Friday evening to discuss the situation of the heavily indebted Greek nation. The report said that the Greek prime minister George Papandreou felt he had no option but to leave the eurozone and that Germany intended to prevent the country tearing up the decade-old single currency. Quoting a document which it said was prepared by the German finance minstry, Der Speigel said that the euro could lose as much 50% of its value if Greece pulls out of the Eurozone, leading to an explosion in Greek national debt and crippling its banking system. A German government source told Reuters after the report that: “An exit is not planned and was not planned.” A spokesman for French finance minister Christine LaGarde refused to comment. Greece has been surrounded by rumours for weeks that its considering ways to restructure its debts – which its government has repeatedly denied – and last month its finance ministry launched an investigation into a trader at Citigroup after rumours swirled of an imminent debt restructuring . Greece has already agreed a €110bn (£96bn) bailout by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union . The country’s debt is expected to hit 160% of GDP in 2012, although the report in Der Spiegel said it would reach 200% if the country exited the single currency. Euro Euro Greece European Union Jill Treanor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Greece denies claims by Der Speiegel but markets react quickly after report of emergency meeting in Luxembourg The euro has fallen sharply on the foreign exchange markets in late trading after reports Greece is preparing to leave the eurozone. Athens has denied the reports. The Greek deputy finance minister, Filippos Sachinidis, told Reuters: “The report about Greece leaving the eurozone is untrue. Such reports undermine Greece and the euro and serve market speculation games.” The euro has had its worst week since January, and has fallen 1% to below $1.4400 after a report on the Der Spiegel website that a secret crisis meeting is being held in Luxembourg on Friday evening to discuss the situation of the heavily indebted Greek nation. The report said that the Greek prime minister George Papandreou felt he had no option but to leave the eurozone and that Germany intended to prevent the country tearing up the decade-old single currency. Quoting a document which it said was prepared by the German finance minstry, Der Speigel said that the euro could lose as much 50% of its value if Greece pulls out of the Eurozone, leading to an explosion in Greek national debt and crippling its banking system. A German government source told Reuters after the report that: “An exit is not planned and was not planned.” A spokesman for French finance minister Christine LaGarde refused to comment. Greece has been surrounded by rumours for weeks that its considering ways to restructure its debts – which its government has repeatedly denied – and last month its finance ministry launched an investigation into a trader at Citigroup after rumours swirled of an imminent debt restructuring . Greece has already agreed a €110bn (£96bn) bailout by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union . The country’s debt is expected to hit 160% of GDP in 2012, although the report in Der Spiegel said it would reach 200% if the country exited the single currency. Euro Euro Greece European Union Jill Treanor guardian.co.uk
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Join us for live coverage as the votes are counted in the referendum on the alternative vote 5.00pm: This is what the pollsters were predicting on AV. YouGov (pdf). This is their figure based on those certain to vote. Yes: 40% No: 60% ComRes Yes: 34% No: 66% ICM Yes: 32% No: 68% Angus Reid Yes: 39% No: 61% 4.54pm: The AV results are being counted by “voting area”. In England and Northern Ireland these are local authority areas, and in Wales and Scotland they are parliamentary constituencies. There are 440 of them. Two have counted so far, and the votes are dividing: yes – 39%; no – 61%. 4.51pm: The first AV referendum results are in. And it looks as if the pollsters are not going to have too much to worry about. Here they are, from the Isles of Scilly Yes 288 (34.70%) No 542 (65.30%) No maj 254 (30.60%) Electorate 1,737; Turnout 830 (47.78%) You can see the results as they come in on the Electoral Commission’s website. 4.44pm: Ray Mallon, the former police officer nicknamed Robocop for his tough stance on crime, has won a third term as mayor of Middlesbrough. In other mayoral elections, Gordon Oliver, a Conservative, has been as the new mayor of Torbay. He beat the incumbent Nick Bye, an independent. And in Mansfield Tony Egginton, an independent, was re-elected as mayor. 4.40pm: They’ve been crunching the AV numbers at the BBC and think that the winning side will need 9.8m votes to win. Or to get “first past the post”, as you could put it. 4.30pm: In Northern Ireland the election turnout appears to be lower than usual. My colleague Henry McDonald has sent me a note on this. One Queen’s University Belfast academic Dr Peter Shirlow has interpreted the lower than usual turn out in the Northern Ireland election as a sign that Ulster society is becoming more normal. In the past elections have been tribal contests where voters turned out in large numbers to keep the “other side” out. Thirty years ago more than 80% of the electorate in Fermanagh/South Tyrone turned out to vote in a Westminster by-election when IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected as an MP even though he was dying in the Maze prison. Dr Shirlow may have a point here about these new turn out figures. Arguably the figure of around 55% indicates that Northern Ireland is becoming more like the rest of the UK and the Republic. 4.28pm: Here’s some more on those AV turnout figures. No one was making any firm predictions about turnout in the AV referendum, but these figures are certainly higher than I was expecting. I thought the London turnout could well fall below 30%. The turnout in London was higher than it was when Londoners voted in 1998 in a referendum on whether to have a mayor. The turnout then was 34.1%. But the turnout in the North East was lower than the 47.7% turnout in 2004 in the referendum on whether to have North East Assembly. 4.26pm: Iain Gray has announced that he will resign as Labour’s leader in Scotland in the autumn. Ed Miliband said that he respected Gray’s decision and that he wanted to thank him for everything he had done. 4.02pm: For the last 18 hours officials have been counting the votes cast for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly and almost 300 English councils. But it’s only now that they are starting to count the results in the referendum on the alternative vote. This was the only election open to everyone in the UK and potentially it could change the British constitution in an important way – but only if the pollsters have collectively made the most enormous mistake in British polling history. Assuming they haven’t, the no team will win easily. But this is an important story too, possibly quashing hopes of electoral reform for a generation and producing long-term challenges for the Lib Dems. Here is what the Electoral Commission has been saying about the turnout figures. 4 of the 12 regions have yet to provide figures, and the Commission will announce these shortly. Counting Officers will begin counting the Yes and No votes from 4pm today. The provisional turnout for each referendum region received to date is: Region Turnout As percentage of registered voters London 1.86 million 35.4 % South West 1.80 million 44.6% Eastern 1.84 million 43.1% West Midlands 1.63 million 39.8% Yorkshire and the Humber 1.53 million 39.9% North West 2.05 million 39.1% North East 0.76 million 38.7% Scotland 1.98 million 50.7% I’ll be focusing on the AV results for the rest of the day, although I’ll also be covering elections results as they continue to come in. 4.00pm: For all the election results and reaction to them up until 4pm on Friday, do read our earlier live blog. Alternative vote AV referendum David Cameron Conservatives Nick Clegg Liberal Democrats Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk
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Barack Obama ruled out a drone bombing of Osama bin Laden to save civilian life. But such scruples are all too rare Whatever the legality of Osama bin Laden’s apparent execution, he was certainly a murderer, probably a war criminal, and his demise flowed, albeit bloodily, from a carefully planned and targeted attack – the greatest care being taken to avoid the horror of innocent casualties. President Obama himself, it is said, vetoed a bombing raid: the risk that innocents would die in full view of the watching world was too much to contemplate. Predator drones, launched by technicians in California, were too crude a weapon because hearts and minds, the president well understood, matter almost as much as bombs. So it’s a shame that these presidential scruples don’t always translate to other areas of attack in that struggling part of the world. Western television viewers may not always be watching, but in Karachi and Lahore they are glued to their screens. In the four years between 2004 and 2007, there were just nine US drone strikes in north-west Pakistan, with around 25 deaths a year; in 2010, there were 118 , with estimates of up to 1,000 people killed. But how many of these dead were innocent? When President George W Bush announced his experimental policy of neoconservative kidnap in Guantánamo Bay , he reassured an anxious world that the 779 prisoners being held there – many seized from Pakistan’s Afghan border areas – were the “worst of the worst” and deserved no legal rights. Nine years later, just over 600 of those men have been released, each one of them found to pose “no threat to the United States or to its coalition partners”. It seems that tossing a dime would be a better way of identifying a “high value terrorist” than relying on US military intelligence. Guantánamo proves the tragic inability of the US military to differentiate between an enemy and an incidental bystander, and if you live in north west Pakistan, that matters very much. History reflects an unfortunate precedent: when he was asked, during the Albigensian crusade in the 13th century, how to distinguish Cathar heretics from ordinary, decent believers, the pope’s emissary is said to have replied: “Kill them all. God will know his own.” Leaving omniscience tactfully to one side, we can all understand the US point of view, that drone attacks reduce the human cost of military action to the nation that sends them humming out over the horizon and into other people’s houses. Americans may care little for the expense of their technology; but they do, reasonably enough, care a great deal about the deaths of their servicemen. Naturally, this means that Washington is more likely to take violent action where no American lives are at stake. So while no sane person would wish any harm on American soldiers, an obvious danger of drone warfare is that it encourages reckless military activity, risking a high likelihood of innocent civilian death – with the hapless victims, including the very young, remaining faceless with no meaning at all to the military planners pressing their buttons several thousand miles away. Yet, these victims, young and old, have great significance in Pakistan, and their collateral destruction will surely have unintended consequences, coming back to haunt us soon enough. It may be quite true, as the research suggests, that as many as 33 important militant leaders have been killed by American drones over the past seven years, and the value of this is not to be lightly dismissed. But it is equally true that the same research shows what we might have already guessed: several hundred innocent people of all ages have also died most violently in their wake. Yet hypocrisy is a dangerous quality, particularly in a superpower. So in the shadow of Bin Laden’s death, the question for the west may be whether it is time at last for a different kind of campaign: one based less upon the skilful delivery of random and sudden death, and a little more focused on the democratic values on which we lecture our enemies. Otherwise, it seems safe to assume that these horribly unjust killings, limb blasted from damaged limb, and delivered so pitilessly, will set off a rancid hatred, lasting for long, bitter generations. Once again, a strategy designed to make us all safer seems likely to risk, in the long run, a tragically contrary effect. Osama bin Laden US foreign policy al-Qaida Pakistan Obama administration US military Ken Macdonald guardian.co.uk
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Audio slideshow: May’s best photo shows and books, with works by Bruce Davidson, Lartigue and Herb Ritts Jim Powell Antonio Olmos The Observer
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Conviction hailed as rare victory for justice by activists who say long sentences have brought down number of racist attacks Human rights activists in Russia have hailed a rare victory for justice after a court in Moscow sentenced an extreme nationalist to life in prison for killing a prominent lawyer and a young journalist . Nikita Tikhonov was jailed for shooting dead lawyer Stanislav Markelov, 34, and Anastasiya Baburova, 25, a trainee reporter at the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, in January 2009 on a side street in the Kropotkinskaya district of central Moscow. Tikhonov’s girlfriend, Yevgeniya Khasis, was also tried and sentenced to 18 years in a penal colony for helping co-ordinate the attack by mobile phone. A jury at Moscow’s city court found the pair guilty late last month after hearing they had targeted Markelov because of his work on prosecutions of neo-Nazis. At the time of his death the lawyer and Baburova were walking to a metro station after a press conference. Tikhonov shot Markelov in the back of the head with a pistol from close range and then shot Baburova when she tried to grab his arm. In contrast to the disputed trials surrounding other high profile murders such as those of journalists Paul Klebnikov in 2004 and Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, family and colleagues of the victims said they were satisfied with the outcome. “The court process was honest, fair and carried out with dignity,” said Baburova’s mother, Larisa. “We are certain they were the killers; we have no doubt. They executed a terrible crime and must answer for their actions.” Sergei Sokolov, the editor in chief of Novaya Gazeta, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station the investigation had been “impeccable”. He praised the judge in the case for putting the Tikhonov and Khasis – who “posed a real danger to society” – behind bars for a lengthy sentence. Alexander Cherkasov, an activist with the Memorial rights group, said he and others had “studied the whole process very thoroughly, evaluated the evidence very critically, and come to the conclusion that the defendants on the bench were exactly the people who should be punished for the murders”. According to witnesses in the courtroom the killers laughed and smiled as the sentence was read. Tikhonov had initially confessed but both later claimed they were not responsible for the deaths. During a trial lasting three and a half months, the jurors heard that Tikhonov, 31, and Khasis, 26, were involved with an ultra-right group called Russky Obraz. Tikhonov had a motive to seek revenge on Markelov because the lawyer represented the family of a 19-year-old antifascist activist who was murdered in 2006. A search warrant was issued for Tikhonov in connection with that killing and although he was not captured, three accomplices to the crime received heavy prison sentences as a result of Markelov’s efforts. Tikhonov and Khasis fell under police suspicion in autumn 2009 and officers bugged their apartment, recording the pair discussing the murder. They were arrested in November that year. Three pistols and a Kalashnikov were found in the apartment. One of the pistols, a 1910 Browning, matched bullets found at the murder scene. Neo-Nazis have already written posts on online forums threatening the judge in the trial. However Natalya Yudina of Sova Centre, a group that tracks nationalist aggression, expressed hope the outcome would act as a deterrent. “In the last year there has been an increase in guilty verdicts for neo-Nazi hate crimes and we’ve seen a corresponding drop in the number of violent racist attacks,” she said. “Long sentences undoubtedly have an effect, and today’s court decision is one more step in the right direction.” Tikhonov and Khasis’s lawyers have said they will appeal. Russia Europe Human rights Tom Parfitt guardian.co.uk
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• Player is latest celebrity to obtain privacy injunction • MP rumoured to have taken out superinjunction Another Premier League footballer has become the latest high profile individual to take out a privacy injunction to prevent details of an alleged extra-marital affair being made public. The footballer, who cannot be named, is married and allegedly had an affair with Kimberley West, an 18-year-old who claims she had a three-month relationship with the highly paid sports star after meeting in a nightclub. The footballer becomes the latest high profile figure to obtain a gagging order to prevent potentially embarrassing details about their private life being published. The high court granted the order on Thursday. Separately, it emerged yesterday that an MP was rumoured to have taken out a superinjunction, allegedly to prevent embarrassing details about his life being exposed. The MP, whose identity nor party membership can be named, joins others including a TV star, a leading actor, and other Premier League football players to have obtained a gagging order against the media. The respected BBC journalist Andrew Marr last month revealed that he too had obtained a wide-ranging superinjunction to protect details of his private life being made public. The Conservative MP Matthew Offord on Thursday raised the apparent increased use of injunctions in the House of Commons. He said: “There has been much public discussion on the increasing use of superinjunctions and the ability of judges to decide policy instead of elected parliamentarians. Is the leader of the house aware of the anomaly this creates, if, as has been rumoured, a member of this place seeks a superinjunction to prevent discussion of their activities?” Sir George Young, the leader of the house, acknowledged that it is a “very important issue about how we balance, on the one hand, an individual’s right to privacy and, on the other hand, the freedom of expression and transparency”. •
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Click here to view this media The Republicans are holding their first presidential primary debate tonight in South Carolina and apparently a few of the participants didn’t mind doubling down on the torture card. Chris Wallace asks for a show of hands and who would be willing to continue the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding. Herman Cain, Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum all raised their hands. And guess who’s sponsoring the event tonight? The John Birch Society and the Oath Keepers. Seriously. Digby has more here . Jed Lewinson is live blogging the debate over at Daily KOS if you’d like to follow along — First Republican presidential debate .
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As the happy glow of that wedding fades, literature provides some brilliant examples of what’s in store when the honeymoon ends Any sap can have a bad marriage, but some unions rise above the masses to become classics of dysfunction. Similarly, many novels claim to show us the dark heart of modern marriage, but only a few pull it off with real panache. Being a newlywed is fun for those involved, but you only really become interesting to neighbours, and readers, when it all starts to unravel. Who cares about a beautiful Home Counties bride happily signing over her best reproductive years in a tasteful frock, when you could be reading the history of a disappointed couple throwing insults and gin tumblers at each other after a dinner party? Of course, there’s always the hope one will lead inexorably to the other. There is perverse beauty in marital breakdown, and writers who show us this, from Henry James to John Updike, are worth celebrating. What really distinguishes an ordinarily bad marriage from a truly terribly one is the lengths to which those involved are willing to go in their unhappiness. Madame Bovary is an early archetype of the genre for this reason. Emma Bovary’s response to a loveless union is the opposite of settling down with some needlework and making the best of things; there is a laudable extravagance to the way in which she sets about causing her own destruction, fitting in two failed affairs, bankruptcy and a lingering suicide before the marriage is over. Of course, being married to Charles Bovary might tempt anyone to knock back the arsenic – he is one of literature’s great boring husbands, and Flaubert excels in anatomising his dullness. This is a man who never aspires to anything beyond eating a lovely piece of cheese and falling asleep. The contempt bred by familiarity is perfectly articulated in a passage in which Emma has grown so sick of Charles that she’s angered just by seeing his back as he snoozes: “even his back, his tranquil back, was irritating to behold, and in the very look … she found all the banality of the man.” The kind of fury and disgust, often inspired by little more than boredom, that someone can feel against a spouse is explored at length in the novels and short stories of Richard Yates . For Yates, every husband is a moral coward, every woman on the verge of a breakdown, every tray of cocktail-hour hors d’oeuvres just moments from being hurled at the wall. He revels in exposing the hypocrisy and pettiness in both himself (he took all of his plots from personal experience) and his middle-class readership. Yates’s ultimate frustration is with the idea of uniqueness: the way that most people go through life with the conviction they are exceptional, and so go into marriage thinking their love and legacy will be correspondingly great. Reading Yates’s novels, however, you start to feel he lacks a sense of humour about marital disaster. Yes, a bad marriage is a hideous thing that sucks in all the life around it, but some of the best writing on the subject acknowledges the darkly funny aspect of warring lovers and their witty cruelty to each other. Edward Albee demonstrated mastery of this black humour in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The play’s central couple, George and Martha, are bleakly hilarious in their unrelenting torture of one another. Utterly worn down by conflict, beyond caring about social reproof, to them, no subject is off limits. They joke to their guests and each other about everything from career disappointments and sexual inadequacy to depression and death. George and Martha have salvaged grim wisdom and gallows humour from their wreck of a marriage; they have made for themselves a kind of marital purgatory in which they are utterly despairing, but it is inconceivable for them to leave each other, for in doing so they would be leaving the one person who understands their suffering and can match them blow for blow. While some modern marriages are difficult to leave, it is at least technically possible to escape them. The most tragic, claustrophobic depictions of unhappy marriage in English literature undoubtedly have to come from a time before divorce was legally or socially an option. In James’s Portrait of a Lady, Isabel Archer’s suffering once she realises she’s married a miserly sociopath is horribly compounded by the knowledge that, as a woman in the late 19th century, she has messed up the most important decision of her life, and cannot go back on it. Bad marriages are just as depressing, if not more so, in Jane Austen’s novels, precisely because so little time is given to discussing them. If the reader paused to consider what Lydia’s marriages to Wickham or Charlotte Lucas’s marriage to Mr Collins are actually like they might be less inclined to celebrate the inescapable march towards matrimony of the other characters. The realities are hastily swept aside while Lizzie makes another winning quip, and Darcy huskily mentions his annual income. I think we’re overdue for a more realistic sequel in the style of Updike’s Couples, where Darcy has a nasty opium habit and Lizzie talks constantly about how pregnancy has ruined her thighs. Fiction Edward Albee Gustave Flaubert Henry James guardian.co.uk
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