Coffee & WMD

Fuel for thought

For the last two weeks, not to mention the last few years, the Diary has shamelessly obsessed about nuclear proliferation, global security, and the end of the world.

Time to get serious. This week, the Diary ditches all talk of Armageddon, and concentrates on what really matters: coffee.

That’s right. Coffee. The fuel that drives the human engine. There is nothing – nothing! – more important. Rest assured, without coffee, there wouldn’t even be a World Diary. These very words are being written in between sips of the evil bean.

Coffee is the world’s second most-valuable commodity. The first is oil. The coffee industry pockets about $60 billion a year – about 25% of which is the Diary’s fault. From global economics to global justice, cultural imperialism to personal health, coffee is international enemy number one these days (along with carbohydrates and fast food – the axis of evil, if you like).

However, this week, the pendulum may have shifted. All hail Chiara Trombetti, a dietician from Bergamo, Italy. Trombetti works for the Humanitus Gavanezzi Institute. In the words of the BBC: “There is sound scientific reason to enjoy your morning espresso without worrying about the health effects. Coffee can be good for you – she says – and the stronger, the better.”

Long live the Diary!

Apparently, Dr Trombetti can’t stand coffee, which is cause for suspicion if ever there was one. However, she also can’t bring herself to promote the big lie that coffee is bad for us, bless her. Our hearts and our arteries benefit from coffee’s tannin and antioxidants.

Like we couldn’t tell!

Drink enough coffee and headaches will be a thing of the past. Asthma attacks can be prevented by hanging out in smoke-filled cafés and downing some char. As for the liver: go ahead, drink like a fish, coffee can prevent cirrhosis and gallstones.

Even better, coffee might just save us from the morose apathy of the next generation! Says the BBC: “Dr Trombetti is adamant that a cup of milky coffee could make the ideal start for the next generation of coffee lovers – Italy’s drowsy school kids – stimulating their brains ahead of a day that often lasts from 08.30 until 16.00.”

You never thought you’d hear the Diary say it, but there is hope!

Kerry’s Korea

OK, that’s enough of that. Back to the usual concerns.

North Korea – after coffee, the Diary’s favourite obsession, and now accused of being John Kerry’s biggest supporter. Those still interested in what Pyongyang has to say, stay awake, this may interest you.

Following last week’s second round of six-party talks on North Korea’s nuke programme, the People’s Republic demanded this week that the US pull its troops out of South Korea.

Do this small thing for us, said Pyongyang, and we’ll consider scrapping our nuclear arms programme (so long as you don’t threaten us, and so long as you lavish us with economic aid, oh, and so long as you don’t try and stop us having a nuclear power industry, which, of course, we won’t use for processing nuclear weaponry, just like we promised before).

What this does is add yet another obstacle to the peaceful resolution of this crisis. The US is not about to pull its 37,000 troops out of South Korea.

Expect more of this. Maybe expect war, too, if that’s your style.

Atomic matters

And so to Iran (this is getting to be like automatic pilot).

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) produced a draft resolution this week censuring Iran over its nuclear programme.

Tehran was not happy. Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Pirooz Hosseini, called the draft “an act of bullying and putting pressure on others.”

In an entirely unpredictable move, America was blamed.

Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, sent a stark warning to Europe: “We advise the Europeans to respect their obligations and to resist American pressure, otherwise there is no reason for co-operation to continue.”

Unfortunately for the Iranians, Britain, Germany and France (the triumvirate who originally brokered the deal, and who are these days pretending to be best friends, much to Washington’s annoyance) came out in favour of the resolution, although the draft was toned down after European demands (“Washington dropped threatening language,” said the New York Times).

Kharrazi described any favourable comparison of Libyan openness against Iranian secrecy as “incorrect”, which could mean anything really. Iran, says Iran, is not developing the bomb. Libya was. Even Libya admits that.

To rub salt into Iranian wounds, Libya signed an agreement this week allowing the IAEA to conduct surprise inspections of nuclear facilities. But the IAEA is focusing on Iran’s failure to declare its work on P-2 centrifuge designs (for bomb-making). Past declarations by Iran “did not amount to the correct, complete and final picture of Iran’s past and present nuclear programme”, which is the polite way of putting it.

Or, to put it in American: “The Iranians change their stories to fit the facts,” as Kenneth Brill, US Ambassador to the IAEA said. “It’s striking that the more the agency learns the more the Iranians have to change their stories.”

Tehran is talking of a “war of propaganda” against Iran. It also says it will continue enriching uranium once relations with the IAEA return to “normal”. “It’s our legitimate right to enrich uranium,” piped Kharrazi.

Comply with our demands, says the IAEA, or the board will “consider all options at its disposal.”

Banners banned

Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.

Twenty demonstrators from the Committees for the Defence of Democratic Liberties and Human Rights in Syria protested outside the Syrian parliament this week on the forty-first anniversary of the Ba’athist accession to power.

Demonstrations of this kind are unheard of in Syria. According to Associated Press reports, this one was quickly broken up. Several of the protestors were arrested and taken away in riot police buses. News photographers were detained for questioning. A banner reading “Freedom for Prisoners of Opinion and Conscience” was torn up by agents, as were journalists’ notebooks.

The authorities tried to pre-empt the demonstrations by telling their leader Aktham Naisse that the protests “served American interests at this time.”

Oh yes, that old chestnut.

Extreme progressive caution

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, more acorns.

This week saw the country’s first human rights watchdog get royal approval from King Fahd. The National Human Rights Association is forty-one members strong, three of whom are women.

Women!

However, before you get too excited, the body is not about to overthrow the House of Saud. In the words of the Financial Times, “the association is unlikely to provoke any confrontation with the regime.”

“I think there is genuine desire to achieve progress,” Abdul Aziz al-Qassim, a lawyer, told the FT. “I also think there is a kind of extreme caution.”

Mmm…

Some aren’t happy. The body is at core governmental. It is not independent. It is not, therefore, a product of a blossoming civil society. It is also “committed to preserving the secrecy” of its findings.

Still, it’s better than nothing.

Don’t miss!

“It was green, but you could tell it was not a real bill.”

Quotes of the week

“We don’t do the same job, we are not colleagues. You do a job that is useful to the economy, but I’m no street hawker, my job is to govern the country.”
Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, responding to a caller in a live radio phone-in who called him a “colleague”.

“I believe this is the way forward for Muslims all over the Western world. There is too much ignorance and prejudice on all sides. The threats and the hatred will only fade away if we all educate ourselves more about different faiths and customs.”
Abdalhasib Castineira, director of the Grenada mosque. Read more.

“When I believed that someone was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it.”
George Tenet, director of the CIA, on how he corrected President Bush and Vice-President Cheney on their public misstatements on intelligence.

“There is freedom of expression, but there is not freedom after expression.”
Ambeyi Ligabo, UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, on what Iranians were telling him about the situation in Iran.

“I would not be surprised if Israeli unilateralism is discussed bilaterally.”
Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator.

“For the first time since World War II, anti-Semitism is now more widespread than racism that is not directed against Jews. We cannot act as if this didn’t exist, we cannot not respond to it.”
Luc Ferry, French education minister. Ferry urged schools this week to show films like Schindler’s List and The Pianist to counter anti-Semitism. “If we have such a rise in anti-Semitism in France,” Ferry further said, “it’s because some children identify with the Palestinian cause and others with Israel.”

“Why would you respond to fabrications and misrepresentations and vitriolic attacks that virtually have no basis in fact? The president made a determination very early on, we’re not going to get engaged in that sort of thing … We will push back on attacks, we will make comparison of records, but we will not corrode the political process as they have done.”
Marc Raciot, head of the committee to re-elect George W. Bush, responding to Democrat anger at the use of 9/11 in Republican campaign commercials.

“If George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election.”
Republican US congressman Tom Cole

Contact the Diary: Dominic.Hilton@openDemocracy.net