Stretchered off?
Iraqi opposition
The Washington Post reported this week on the encouraged Iraq dissidents in exile. With Washington beating the war drum, the Iraqi opposition have been limbering up to take to the pitch when Saddam is stretchered off.
The plan is to hold another opposition groups conference, probably in London. The meet may take place before the month is out. The subject for discussion: the formation of a provisional government once the US has control of Baghdad.
With Paul Wolfowitz suddenly making the moral case for attack, citing the oppression of the ordinary Iraqi Joe, the US appears set on turning attention away from its own interests and giving the mission what the Post calls an Iraqi face. Even worse, the Post reports how The State Department has begun training Iraqis on how to handle media relations.
The message is already unclear. Some dissident groups are saying that the US wants them to form a government-in-exile. But Richard Boucher, State Department Spokesman, said, Were not at that point in terms of the future of Iraq generally to say its time to create a government-in-exile.
The Post puts the new upbeat mood down to a meeting in Washington this summer between six representatives of Saddam opponents and senior members of the Bush administration. There was a conversation with Colin Powell. A video conference with Dick Cheney. And a visit from Don Rumsfeld.
This time we got the feeling that Washington means business, said Ali bin Hussein, one of the six, and pretender to the throne. Of course, some might say Washington always means business: Enron, Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, Harken
Bitter sweet legacy
To the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA. Dont sell out the American dream, the posters read. Keep the chocolate in Chocolate Town USA.
Thats right, Hershey, PA, is Chocolate Town, home to the Hershey bar. For one hundred and eight years the Hershey Foods Company has mixed its cocoa in its hometown. But now the charitable trust that controls the company wants to sell it.
As FT.com says, Any acquirer would not so much be buying a business as buying a town. In Hershey, PA, the air smells of chocolate. The streetlights on Chocolate Avenue are shaped like Hershey kisses, the companys signature chocolate drops. There is the Hersheypark theme park. The Hershey Museum. Chocolate World. The Hershey Hotel. The Milton S. Hershey school for orphans and deprived children. The Hershey funded theatre, golf course, hospital, library and recreation centre.
Chocolate in America was born two miles from here, John Dunn, a campaign organiser, told the FT. It is almost inconceivable to think the Great American Chocolate Bar could be taken over by a foreign company. Right now, after 09/11, when people are going back to their cultural roots, Americana has never been more precious.
Potential buyers include Kraft and Cadbury. But frontrunner for take-over is Swiss giant Nestlé Foods, who in 1988 consumed that other philanthropic chocolate provider, Rowntrees of York. Since then, the Kit-Kat has gone global, but Nestlé has come under intense criticism for its stance on breast-feeding in Africa.
Google down
It emerged on Monday that, using what is known as their Great Red Firewall, the Chinese authorities had blocked access to the internet search engine Google. A Chinese webmaster had this to say on an internet forum: Please tell the world that we need Google, or Yahoo or something else thats useful to do the research. We dont care about politics, but please help us to reach Google.
The politics involves the Communist Party congress in November. Google is a very, very popular tool and theres a major hassle factor, Duncan Clark, head of technology consultancy BDA China of Beijing, told the BBC. But ultimately, in the run up to something like the Party congress, its batten down the hatches.
An estimated thirty thousand people are employed in China to monitor web-use, chat rooms and email messages. As it shut down one-hundred and fifty thousand unlicensed internet cafés across the country, the Chinese government said that, by its calculations, 45.8 million of its citizens were web users. Those cafés still open have been forced to prevent access to five-hundred thousand sites.
The government defended its shutdown of Google like this: Not everyone should have access to harmful information on the internet. The whole world now is exploring a way to manage the Internet and China is also working on this.
Google is trying to lift the ban.
(Source: BBC)
You talk garbage!
Meanwhile, in Tainan, a city in Taiwan, locals have been learning to speak better English.
A common-enough activity, you might think, why in the world is this a story in the Diary?
Well, the method of tuition is somewhat unusual. The Mayor of Tainan, who obviously fancies himself as a bit of an eccentric, has opted to broadcast the lessons direct from loudspeakers that sit aboard the citys giant rubbish trucks. From Sunday, citizens of Tainan are being woken by the words Lets talk in English.
Apparently, three hundred separate sentences have been recorded. They range from How are you? to that old-favourite How much does a pound of cabbage cost?
The Mayor hopes that after a few months his citizens, including the grandmothers and grandfathers, will have grasped some of the English language.
The Diary is less convinced. At 11:16am (Pacific time) on 16 June 2001, yourdictionary.com estimated that the English language contained approximately 816,119 words.
Thats a lot of garbage.
Covering his bases in case the scheme proves a heap of junk the mayor claims it was his wife who came up with the idea.
Got the balls?
Odd goings in Central India. In January 2000, Kamla Jaan became mayor of Katni in Madhya Pradesh. But now, she has been unseated by a court.
Corruption? Poll-rigging? Well no. The courts ruling was based on their inability to determine what sex Jaan is.
Jaan is a eunuch, one of several hundred thousand in India. Like most eunuchs, she refers to herself as she. The judge ruled to the contrary. He agreed with petitioners who insisted she was a he. Kamla Jaan, he said, is a man.
So whats the big deal? Well there is a quota system for women. In order to hold his seat, the judge ruled, Kamla Jaan would have to be a woman. Jaans position as Mayor is therefore unlawful.
The BBC reports that Kamla Jaan has run the city of Katni with an iron hand. The wells, the drains and the bus station were all sorted under her rule.
Apparently, the political rise of eunuchs in India is considerable. The BBC suggests that their independence and propensity to live in humble communes is attractive to voters. The Kamla Jaan incident has fuelled suggestions that the eunuchs are set to form their own political party.
sperm: aren't they clever?
Clever sperm
And finally, the New Scientist reports this week that sperm are more intelligent than anyone had given them credit for.
According to Peter Brugger, a neurobiologist at University Hospital, Zurich, human sperm can remember which way they turned last, and turn the other way next time. In other words, they have some kind of memory.
The phenomenon is known as spontaneous alternation behaviour. Until Dr. Brugger came along, sperm were not known to exhibit this behavioural pattern. Brugger released sperm into T-shaped tunnels, and watched them go. Half the sperm went left, the other half right.
When they were forced to turn right before they reached the T-junction, the results were 58% left, 42% right. The sperm were forced to swim ten times their body length after the first turn. Brugger is convinced that over a shorter distance, the percentage that remember which way to turn next would be greater. Over the distance, some of them had already begun to forget.
Brugger intends to repeat the experiment to test whether the sperm are flocking.
Quotes of the week
Its going to be long, difficult, and sometimes very painful.
Alain Richard, former French Defense Minister, on the journey ahead for the beleaguered French Socialist Party.
Every day our Palestinian brothers are being murdered, their houses destroyed. If their relatives were to fly a plane into the Empire State Building I couldnt hold it against them.
Mohammed el-Amir Atta, father of Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attacks. Atta insists his son is still alive and that the attacks on New York and Washington were carried out by American Christians.
As far as we can tell, the Cheney speech was a freelance job which had not been cleared with other agencies.
Unnamed European diplomat describing US Vice President Dick Cheneys Hawkish speech on Iraq last week. It emerged this week that the speech had not been cleared by the White House. (Source: The Guardian)
The key characteristic of todays world is its interdependence.
Tony Blair, British PM, speaking at the Earth summit in Johannesburg.
One sees the appearance of the temptation to legitimise the unilateral and preventive use of force. This is a worrying development.
President Jacques Chirac, distancing France from Washington.
God provided justice to me.
Naseem Mai, the Pakistani woman gang-raped in June on order of a tribal council, responding to the news that the four rapists and two council members have been condemned to death.
Figure of the Week
$4 billion
The amount the WTO has authorised the EU to impose in duties against the US as compensation for its illegal system of tax breaks. The judgement is the largest handed down in the history of the WTO.
