Click here to view this media (h/t Heather at VideoCafe) God, I am enjoying the circular firing squad that is the Bush administration struggling to lift their individual heads above the slime that surrounds them. Implicit in this clamoring is the acknowledgment that they know they are part of this slime. Donald Rumsfeld is one of the first out of the gate to try to rehab his image and did so by going after the two members of the Bush administration who went out with the highest approval ratings, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice : In his first television interview since leaving public service in 2006, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gives candid criticism of his fellow Bush administration officials, former Secretary of States Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. [..] Powell, President George W. Bush’s first secretary of state, “did not, in my view, do a good job of managing the people under him,” Rumsfeld said [..].”There was a lot of leaking out of the State Department, and the president knew it,” he reportedly said. “And it was unhelpful. And most of it ended up making the State Department look good. We didn’t do that in the Pentagon. I insisted we not do it.” Rumsfeld was criticized during his tenure as defense secretary for his tight rein on information relating to the war on terrorism. This week, in conjunction with the release of his new memoir “Known and Unknown,” Rumsfeld is releasing online nearly 2,000 documents from his career in public service. They span his time in Congress, in the Ford and Nixon administrations, the 9/11 attacks and the build up to the Iraq war. Rumsfeld acknowledged that “the intelligence was certainly wrong” with respect to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. However, he said that the military and the Bush administration — including Powell — had faith in the intelligence at the time. “There’s a lot of stuff [in] the press that say Colin Powell was against [the war],” he said. “But I never saw even the slightest hint of that.” “The idea that he was lying or duped is nonsense,” Rumsfeld added. Rumsfeld said “it’s possible” that decisions on troop levels in Iraq may have been the biggest mistake of the war. He maintained that the war overall was not a mistake. “I think the world’s a better place with Saddam Hussein gone and with the Taliban gone and the al Qaeda out of Afghanistan,” he said. Rumsfeld was also critical of Powell’s successor, Condoleezza Rice, for her lack of experience in government. “She’d never served in a senior administration position,” he said. “She’d been an academic. And, you know, a lot of academics like to have meetings. And they like to bridge differences and get people all to be happy.” Rumsfeld feels no similar compunction to make people happy. He reportedly caused Rice to burst into tears at the prospect of meeting with him : Miss Rice tried repeatedly to organise a meeting with the most senior figures in the government to discuss the tribunals, but Mr Rumsfeld twice refused to attend, sending his deputy Paul Wolfowitz instead. Pulitzer prize winning author Barton Gellman writes: “He did not regard her as an equal and barely hid it. The opinions of her staff did not interest him.” On finding Mr Rumsfeld absent from a second meeting, CIA director George Tenet was so angry that he defied a direct order from Miss Rice to sit down and marched out of the meeting, declaring: “This is bullshit.” The book goes on: “Something happened to Rice’s face, control melting away. Her eyes welled up and her next words caught in her throat. The men in the room did not know where to look. ‘She started to cry,’ said one of them. ‘And she said – I can’t remember the exact words because I was so shaken – something like: “We will talk about this again,” and she turned and walked quickly out of the door.’” So when Fareed Zakaria asks Rice about Rumsfeld’s less-than-glowing reports of the job she did, Rice simply gets a tight smile and says that Donnie–who has carefully crafted an “aw shucks” persona in the media–is just a grumpy guy and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But the best part? She tells Fareed to wait for her book to find out what she really thinks about Rumsfeld. The circular firing squad is about to load up again.
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Click here to view this media (h/t Heather at VideoCafe) God, I am enjoying the circular firing squad that is the Bush administration struggling to lift their individual heads above the slime that surrounds them. Implicit in this clamoring is the acknowledgment that they know they are part of this slime. Donald Rumsfeld is one of the first out of the gate to try to rehab his image and did so by going after the two members of the Bush administration who went out with the highest approval ratings, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice : In his first television interview since leaving public service in 2006, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gives candid criticism of his fellow Bush administration officials, former Secretary of States Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. [..] Powell, President George W. Bush’s first secretary of state, “did not, in my view, do a good job of managing the people under him,” Rumsfeld said [..].”There was a lot of leaking out of the State Department, and the president knew it,” he reportedly said. “And it was unhelpful. And most of it ended up making the State Department look good. We didn’t do that in the Pentagon. I insisted we not do it.” Rumsfeld was criticized during his tenure as defense secretary for his tight rein on information relating to the war on terrorism. This week, in conjunction with the release of his new memoir “Known and Unknown,” Rumsfeld is releasing online nearly 2,000 documents from his career in public service. They span his time in Congress, in the Ford and Nixon administrations, the 9/11 attacks and the build up to the Iraq war. Rumsfeld acknowledged that “the intelligence was certainly wrong” with respect to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. However, he said that the military and the Bush administration — including Powell — had faith in the intelligence at the time. “There’s a lot of stuff [in] the press that say Colin Powell was against [the war],” he said. “But I never saw even the slightest hint of that.” “The idea that he was lying or duped is nonsense,” Rumsfeld added. Rumsfeld said “it’s possible” that decisions on troop levels in Iraq may have been the biggest mistake of the war. He maintained that the war overall was not a mistake. “I think the world’s a better place with Saddam Hussein gone and with the Taliban gone and the al Qaeda out of Afghanistan,” he said. Rumsfeld was also critical of Powell’s successor, Condoleezza Rice, for her lack of experience in government. “She’d never served in a senior administration position,” he said. “She’d been an academic. And, you know, a lot of academics like to have meetings. And they like to bridge differences and get people all to be happy.” Rumsfeld feels no similar compunction to make people happy. He reportedly caused Rice to burst into tears at the prospect of meeting with him : Miss Rice tried repeatedly to organise a meeting with the most senior figures in the government to discuss the tribunals, but Mr Rumsfeld twice refused to attend, sending his deputy Paul Wolfowitz instead. Pulitzer prize winning author Barton Gellman writes: “He did not regard her as an equal and barely hid it. The opinions of her staff did not interest him.” On finding Mr Rumsfeld absent from a second meeting, CIA director George Tenet was so angry that he defied a direct order from Miss Rice to sit down and marched out of the meeting, declaring: “This is bullshit.” The book goes on: “Something happened to Rice’s face, control melting away. Her eyes welled up and her next words caught in her throat. The men in the room did not know where to look. ‘She started to cry,’ said one of them. ‘And she said – I can’t remember the exact words because I was so shaken – something like: “We will talk about this again,” and she turned and walked quickly out of the door.’” So when Fareed Zakaria asks Rice about Rumsfeld’s less-than-glowing reports of the job she did, Rice simply gets a tight smile and says that Donnie–who has carefully crafted an “aw shucks” persona in the media–is just a grumpy guy and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But the best part? She tells Fareed to wait for her book to find out what she really thinks about Rumsfeld. The circular firing squad is about to load up again.
Continue reading …Much pearl-clutching after the statement on This Week by Paul Krugman that the U.S. should allow the government to default on the debt limit rather than allow Republicans to hold New Deal social programs hostage. Former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman is quick to say he “respects” Krugman but disagrees. I’ll just bet you do, Roger! And a “terrified” FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair responds by urgently listing the potential effect on the bond market and institutional investors, of course completely missing the point: Would it be the Democrats’ fault — or that of the Republicans who are trying to impose their extremist and anti-democratic beliefs on the majority? “I’m terrified by a blackmail political system,” Krugman responds. He’s exactly right. It’s like paying protection to your local thugs to keep your windows from being broken. It’s not your fault for not paying, it’s their fault for threatening you. Oh, and here’s Digby’s take on the whole mishegas .
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In an exclusive interview with the Guardian the cosmologist shares his thoughts on death, M-theory, human purpose and our chance existence A belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us is a “fairy story” for people afraid of death, Stephen Hawking has said. In a dismissal that underlines his firm rejection of religious comforts, Britain’s most eminent scientist said there was nothing beyond the moment when the brain flickers for the final time. Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21, shares his thoughts on death, human purpose and our chance existence in an exclusive interview with the Guardian today. The incurable illness was expected to kill Hawking within a few years of its symptoms arising, an outlook that turned the young scientist to Wagner, but ultimately led him to enjoy life more, he has said, despite the cloud hanging over his future. “I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first,” he said. “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,” he added. Hawking’s latest comments go beyond those laid out in his 2010 book, The Grand Design, in which he asserts there is no need for a creator to explain the existence of the universe. The book provoked a backlash from some religious leaders, including the chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, who accused Hawking of committing an “elementary fallacy” of logic. The 69-year-old physicist fell seriously ill after a lecture tour in the US in 2009 and was taken to Addenbrookes Hospital in an episode that sparked grave concerns for his health. He has since returned to his Cambridge department as director of research. The physicist’s remarks draw a stark line between the use of God as a metaphor and the belief in an omniscient creator whose hands guide the workings of the cosmos. In his bestselling 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking drew on the device so beloved of Einstein, when he described what it would mean for scientists to develop a “theory of everything” – a set of equations that described every particle and force in the entire universe. “It would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God,” he wrote. The book sold a reported 9 million copies and propelled the physicist to instant stardom. His fame has led to guest roles in The Simpsons, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Red Dwarf. One of his greatest achievements in physics is a theory that describes how black holes emit radiation. In the interview, Hawking rejected the notion of life beyond death and emphasised the need to fulfil our potential on Earth by making good use of our lives. In answer to a question on how we should live, he said, simply: “We should seek the greatest value of our action.” In answering another, he wrote of the beauty of science, such as the exquisite double helix of DNA in biology, or the fundamental equations of physics. Hawking responded to questions posed by the Guardian and a reader ahead of a lecture tomorrow at the Google Zeitgeist meeting in London, in which he will address the question: “Why are we here?” In the talk, he will argue that tiny quantum fluctuations in the very early universe became the seeds from which galaxies, stars, and ultimately human life, emerged. “Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in,” he said. Hawking suggests that with modern space-based instruments, such as the European Space Agency’s Planck mission, it may be possible to spot ancient fingerprints in the light left over from the earliest moments of the universe and work out how our own place in space came to be. His talk will focus on M-theory, a broad mathematical framework that encompasses string theory, which is regarded by many physicists as the best hope yet of developing a theory of everything. M-theory demands a universe with 11 dimensions, including a dimension of time and the three familiar spatial dimensions. The rest are curled up too small for us to see. Evidence in support of M-theory might also come from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva. One possibility predicted by M-theory is supersymmetry, an idea that says fundamental particles have heavy – and as yet undiscovered – twins, with curious names such as selectrons and squarks. Confirmation of supersymmetry would be a shot in the arm for M-theory and help physicists explain how each forces at work in the universe arose from one super-force at the dawn of time. Another potential discovery at the LHC, that of the elusive Higgs boson, which is thought to give mass to elementary particles, might be less welcome to Hawking, who has a long-standing bet that the long-sought entity will never be found at the laboratory. Hawking will join other speakers at the London event, including the chancellor, George Osborne, and the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Science, truth and beauty: Hawking’s answers What is the value in knowing “Why are we here?” The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can’t solve the equations, directly in the abstract. We need to use the effective theory of Darwinian natural selection of those societies most likely to survive. We assign them higher value. You’ve said there is no reason to invoke God to light the blue touchpaper. Is our existence all down to luck? Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in. So here we are. What should we do? We should seek the greatest value of our action. You had a health scare and spent time in hospital in 2009. What, if anything, do you fear about death? I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. What are the things you find most beautiful in science? Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology, and the fundamental equations of physics.” Stephen Hawking Religion Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
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Officers are under attack from ministers who used the media to plant ‘twisted’ stories about them, says police body The Conservative-led coalition is undermining the police with an unprecedented “campaign of denigration”, the leader of rank and file officers has told the Guardian. Paul McKeever, chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales, launched a blistering attack on ministers ahead of its annual conference this week. Relations between the government and federation, which represents 140,000 officers in England and Wales, are at an all-time low following government cuts to police budgets and proposed cuts to police pay, he said. McKeever claimed the government reforms and cuts to policing were driven by “ideology” and would endanger public safety. He said ministers were claiming to support the police while actually attacking them, and using their allies in the media to plant “twisted” stories portraying officers terms and conditions as gilt-edged. McKeever said: “I’m sure there is a campaign of denigration going on, both directly and indirectly from the government and their chosen thinktanks and through the press. “Nobody [in the police service] has experienced this before. The government seems to have a real antipathy to police officers.” As evidence he cited “adverse stories about police overtime and payments which they know are twisting the truth and painting an untrue picture of what happens in the police service”. With the home secretary, Theresa May, due to address the conference on Wednesday, McKeever said he and his members were furious at the coalition: “The government seems to think it’s OK to denigrate and kick cops on every occasion and it has gone too far. “There is a thin veneer of pretence that the government is supportive of the police, but their actions speak much more loudly than their words.” McKeever added: “Past Conservative governments have treated the police service pragmatically. This government treats the police service as an ideological adventure playground for intellectuals.” The police leader warned of cuts leading to rising crime: “The cutbacks will affect the most vulnerable in society and those least able to defend themselves.” The federation says the pain that its members are feeling is revealed in its own survey, released to chime with its conference week in Bournemouth. The survey claims that the 20% budget cuts have led 98% of officers to claim that morale has fallen in the ranks; 86% believe the fight against crime will be damaged; and 78% of federation members say their workload has increased. Nine out of 10 officers who responded to the survey said that they fear colleagues will quit because of being unable to make ends meet. The federation says officers could be left £4,000 worse off, without taking account of the effects of high inflation while the public sector is subjected to a two-year pay freeze. The government has cut its funding of policing by 20%, and a review of terms and conditions recommended reforms that while seeing some officers gaining, will see more losing out. Ministers deny that falls in police numbers will lead to a rise in crime and say officers can be moved from back office roles to those fighting crime. The Home Office said: “The government’s priority is to deal with the budget deficit and as a service spending £14bn a year of public money, the police can and must make their fair share of savings. Changes to police pay and conditions have been made by an independent review and are being discussed in the Police Negotiating Board.” Part of the Conservative-led coalition’s array of plans for the police have hit a stumbling block. The Police Federation and government are negotiating pay and conditions, but it is expected the talks will stall and ministers will impose the cuts by autumn, in order to be able to see some savings in time for the next financial year. Police officers cannot strike but protests including rallies and marches are expected. However, some figures in the federation want to put the issue of the right to strike back on the table. McKeever said the home secretary would receive a cordial welcome from delegates when she addresses the conference on Wednesday. Last week government plans for elected police commissioners were defeated in the House of Lords, although ministers are still vowing to drive it through parliament. May told the BBC on Sunday that Labour opportunism was to blame for the defeat: “The Labour party has supported an element of direct election in terms of the oversight of the police. It was sheer opportunism from Labour peers in the House of Lords that went against Labour party policy.” Police Liberal-Conservative coalition Public sector cuts Public finance Public sector pay Vikram Dodd guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Conservative columnist George Will is not a fan of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA). “Newt Gingrich’s problems are so far beyond just his multiple marriages and all that,” Will told ABC’s Christiane Amanpour Sunday. “His ethanol love affair right now. On the 7th of March he said, ‘Let’s go get Gaddafi.’ On the 23rd of he says, ‘I never favored intervention.’ He did it on television.” “He’s one of these people who says that to understand Barack Obama you need to understand his ‘Kenyan anti-colonial mentality.’ This is just not a serious candidate,” he added.
Continue reading …After Feigned Outrage Over ‘Cop Killer’ Rapper, Huckabee Brings in Ted Nugent Preceding His ‘Big Announcement’
May 15, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Well, no big surprise that Mike Huckabee decided he was enjoying his well-paying gig over at Fox News so much that he’s not going to run for president in 2012. If we weren’t sure before he made it official tonight, this appearance by Ted Nugent on his show just prior to his “big announcement” should have tipped everyone off. Nugent was asked what he thought about the killing of Osama bin Laden and although Nugent praised the decision to go in and get him, he downplayed the importance of them finally killing him by saying it didn’t really matter that much in the overall “war on terror.” Anyone think he wouldn’t have been dancing around praising Bush as the best president ever if this had happened under Bush’s watch? And for all the talk from Huckabee about being a Christian and a man of god, why is he allowing someone who spouts off the kind of inflammatory, violent rhetoric we heard out of Nugent here on his show? I think we all know the answer to that, but I find it pretty ironic after all of the yelping over the rapper Common coming to the White House , on the night that one of the Republican Party’s supposed “front runners” was potentially going to announce whether he was running for president or not, he chooses to bring someone like Nugent on to spout this nonsense: NUGENT: And everybody rejoiced. There was an uproarious celebration because we know that when good wins over evil it’s perfect. And that was a perfect maneuver. God bless President Obama for making that right decision. HUCKABEE: He did make the right decision. NUGENT: And god bless the warriors. I get to train and hang with these heroes of the military and especially those comando warriors, those U.S. Navy Seals. Um, you’ve all heard about equality. I’m sorry, we’re not equal to them. They’re superior beings. They are the greatest warriors in the history of the world and they’re ours. HUCKABEE: Ted, let’s talk about it. Are we safer because of the death of Osama bin Laden? Does that make this world a more secure place? NUGENT: No. It was a great moment and it was long overdue, but in the real world with the war on terror and our security, it was a hiccup. It was a brief good, but it isn’t even the beginning of what we have to do. we have to kill them all. We have to find all his idiots and we have to kill them all. If we unleash the heroes of our military who are trained and ready to do so if we just did what Obama did that day and said go kill him. You know where he is. Go get him. If we just let the warriors do that like they’re supposed to all of those rats, all of those mongrels, then we would be on our way to being safe. But we’re not safer now. The only way towards peace and love is to kill people who mess with your peace and love. HUCKABEE: Hmm. I want to talk about the… NUGENT: That’s how you build nations. Nugent went on to endorse militarizing our borders in the United States and claimed we could stop all of the illegal immigrants coming in “before 6pm” if they just let the military come down there. He then went on to compare securing the entire border of the United States to him being able to secure his private property. So I’ve got a question for Mike Huckabee. How many “rats” would Jesus kill Huck? Of course Huckabee knows exactly what he’s getting when he allows Ted Nugent on his show after this appearance. Click here to view this media You remember the time he told a concert audience back in 2007 that Barack Obama was a “piece of s–t” and suggested both he and Hillary Clinton get a taste of his semi-automatic weapon: Nugent: I was in Chicago last week I said—Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these you punk? Obama, he’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on one of my machine guns…Let’s hear it for them. I was in NY and I said hey Hillary—you might want to ride one of these into the sunset you worthless bitch…Since I’m in California, I’m gonna find– she might wanna suck on my machine gun! Hey, Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore. Any questions? Freeeeedom! And it’s not just at concerts. He’s done this on Fox News too. This is a guy who told Neil Cavuto we should ‘kill the pigs’ — like the ‘Marxist’ pigs in the White House — and told Sean Hannity that Obama was “spitting on the Constitution” . I also found it pretty ironic that Huckabee and Nugent decided to treat the audience at his show to the two of them playing Cat Scratch Fever following this segment. If the fact that he had Nugent on in the first place wasn’t enough of a hint that there was no way he was running, not wanting the lyrics to Cat Scratch Fever to be his official campaign song might have been a hint as well. Media Matters has an extensive report on all of the feigned outrage over the rapper Common that I linked above. I highly recommend reading the whole article here — Fox News’ Contrived Outrage Over “‘Cop Killer’ Rapper” .
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Sony begins restoring service in the United States and Europe after shutting it down last month after a security breach Sony began restoring its PlayStation Network service in the United States and Europe after shutting it down last month after a security breach affecting more than 100m online accounts. Restored operations are mainly limited to online gaming, chat and music streaming. Sony said it aimed to fully restore the network by the end of May. The company also began a phased restoration of its Qriocity movie and music services which share the PlayStation Network’s server, said a Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. spokesman Satoshi Fukuoka. Limited services will also resume in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the Middle East, and Sony said it will start restoring the service for users in Asia soon. Sony’s PlayStation Network is a system that links gamers worldwide in live play. Sony shut it down on April 20 after discovering a hacker attack and said personal data, including credit card numbers, may have been stolen. But the company said it had not received any reports of the stolen information being used illegally. Kazuo Hirai, chief of Sony Corp’s PlayStation video game unit, said in a statement that the company has beefed up security measures to protect customers’ personal data. He offered “sincere regret” for any inconvenience caused by the network intrusion. While the partial service allows users to enjoy video games and online chat, Sony said consumers still cannot buy video games or other content by using credit cards. “While we understand the importance of getting our services back online, we did not rush to do so at the expense of extensively and aggressively testing our enhanced security measures,” Hirai said. Among the 100 million user accounts, Sony said about 92 million can access the limited PlayStation Network service. The network serves both the PlayStation video game machines and Sony’s Qriocity movie and music services. It is a system that also allows users to upgrade and download games and other content. Sony spokesman Sosuke Kamei said the company’s probe into the hacker attack was ongoing. He declined to give details on the investigation. Sony came under heavy criticism over its handling of the network intrusion. The company did not notify consumers of the breach until April 26 even though it began investigating unusual activity on the network from April 19. Last month, US lawyers filed a lawsuit against Sony on behalf of lead plaintiff Kristopher Johns for negligent protection of personal data and failure to inform players in a timely fashion that their credit card information may have been stolen. The lawsuit seeks class-action status. Since the shutdown of the PlayStation Network on 20 April, Sony’s share price has dropped nearly 9% to close at 2,241 yen ($28) on Friday. PlayStation Hacking Games Sony guardian.co.uk
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Head of Afghan army wants officers to be trained at replica of college he hopes to build with support from Britain The school is a cornerstone of the British military establishment – revered by those who survive it, feared by those who don’t. But Sandhurst may soon have a rival in a rather unlikely place. The head of the Afghan national army, General Sher Mohammad Karimi, wants to build a replica of the Royal Military Academy, which has been churning out officers for the British army since 1741. General Karimi attended Sandhurst in Camberley, Surrey, in the 1960s and has never forgotten the experiences he had there. They would have included basic training on military tactics and leadership, as well as being bawled at by sergeant majors, boot polishing and square bashing. So-called “beasting” which involves pushing cadets to their physical limits with a tough regime of cross-country runs, boxing and route marches, would also have been in operation. And this is exactly the sort of thing Karimi wants his own high-flyers to go through in an effort to bring Afghanistan’s army up to scratch. In Kabul the idea – dubbed “Sandhurst in the sand” – has already won the approval of American and British commanders with Isaf, the international security and assistance force. President Hamid Karzai now has to sign off the idea. General William Caldwell, head of Isaf’s army and police training, told the Guardian: “General Karimi would very much love to build Sandhurst in Afghanistan. I’m supporting him. He thinks so highly of Sandhurst, he would love to model it and build it here. I know the UK government is looking at it in terms of providing trainers to help if we were to do this.” Caldwell added that Karimi had returned to Sandhurst last month as a guest of honour and found the trip very moving. Three Afghans have been training at Sandhurst over the past year, while another three are due to arrive soon. “When he was there in 1967 you did a two-year course, not a one-year course,” said Caldwell. “He thinks today’s cadets have got it easy. When he was there he knew very little English, and had to study and study. He was the only trainee not from the UK.” During his recent visit to the UK Karimi praised the level of training at Sandhurst. He said: “[It] provides the ideal preparation for candidates to return to the Afghan national army as really good quality officers.” The school at Sandhurst was established in 1947, but the army has had a military academy since 1741. Afghanistan Military Nick Hopkins guardian.co.uk
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American director promises ‘a good romp and a cracking yarn’ in film version of The Crooked House Neil LaBute has carved a career from seriously disturbing plays and films – In the Company of Men, The Shape of Things – that plunge deep into the American male psyche and find it to be damaged, selfish and brutal. But now the writer and director is turning to a gentler, politer and certainly more English material: Agatha Christie. And, he says, he promises “a good romp and a cracking yarn”. LaBute is to direct a film of Christie’s novel The Crooked House, with a screenplay adapted by Julian Fellowes, of Gosford Park and Downton Abbey fame. Though LaBute has ventured into period drama once before – Possession, the AS Byatt novel whose adaptation he directed, flips between the 19th and 20th centuries – he is certainly more associated with dystopian urban fables than the tinkling tea-cups and well-appointed drawing rooms of Christie’s classic murder mysteries. “I have always liked whodunnits,” LaBute said. “And I mean real whodunnits, not mystery-slash-thriller-slash-horror whodunits. I thought, ‘When did I last see one of those? And in fact it was probably Gosford Park: at least a nominal portion of Gosford Park had a whodunnit running through it.” As LaBute points out, The Crooked House is “atypical for Christie: often there is a small Belgian or an elderly lady solving the crimes”. This novel, by contrast, features neither Hercule Poirot nor Miss Marple, but is a standalone story with a young man called Charles Hayward attempting to solve the mystery of the murder of the wealthy Aristide Leonides, with whose daughter, Sophie, he is in love. The entire extended family – the inhabitants of the “crooked house” – falls under suspicion. Matthew Goode, who played Charles Ryder in the 2008 film of Brideshead Revisited, is to play Charles Hayward, with Gemma Arterton – who last year charmed Cannes with her performance in the title role of Tamara Drewe – as Sophia. Julie Andrews will play Aristide’s bitter, repressed sister-in-law Edith de Haviland, and Gabriel Byrne, Sophia’s elder brother Roger. The film is set to start shooting in September. LaBute said of the character of Hayward: “To have someone so hellbent on finding out the truth and is asked huge moral questions – I don’t often ask these questions of my boy-men characters, who are generally cowardly, duplicitous and selfish.” LaBute, whose work usually feels more akin to noir thriller writer Patricia Highsmith than Agatha Christie, said the novel was “twisted enough for me”. He added: “Christie may be even more twisted than I am. I think I may have met my match.” In this book, he said, she was “in the vanguard of bad seeds”. But the writer and director – whom the New York Times has described as a specialist in “two-legged wolves and pigs who wear the camouflage of business suits and golf sweaters” – also declared himself an unlikely fan of the classic film adaptations of Christie novels of the 1970s. “I love what Sidney Lumet did with Murder on the Orient Express,” he said. “And I love the almost kabuki-like performance of Albert Finney as Poirot.” He also expressed his admiration for David Suchet’s bustling interpretation of the role for television, and Peter Ustinov’s “bumbling” Poirot in Death on the Nile (1978). LaBute declared himself enthusiastic about the period setting, and said that he wanted to introduce a feel of his favourite 1940s and 50s films. He namechecked Douglas Sirk, Powell and Pressburger, and said he was fan of “domestic noirs such as Mildred Pierce and especially Leave Her To Heaven”. He wanted to create a feel, he said, of “deep Technicolor and dark shadows”. LaBute’s cinematic and theatrical career has had its ups and downs. After a startling film debut with In the Company of Men, he hit a low point with a critically disastrous remake of The Wicker Man (2006). Known for his depiction of human, particularly male, cruelty, his latest play, In a Forest Dark and Deep is playing at the Vaudeville Theatre in London, with Matthew Fox, who starred in the television series Lost, and Olivia Williams. The Mercy Seat (2002), told the story of a man who uses his proximity to the September 11 attacks to disappear from his suburban life. Cannes 2011 Agatha Christie Neil LaBute Gemma Arterton Gabriel Byrne Olivia Williams Sidney Lumet Charlotte Higgins guardian.co.uk
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