One of the Bruschetta Boys (the one who normally does the FFT and the Cohen /Standard reviews, ie me) is currently “a client of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce” ie on the rock and roll at present. Hence no Wednesday Cohen review as they don’t have the Standard in the library where I go to keep warm. Sorry folks; I will be getting on my bike and looking for work presently, so normal service will be resumed.
Meanwhile, place your bets … here’s the form.
Cohen has a piece in the New Statesman about religious schools; presumably his kid has been turned down for the Brompton Oratory as well as the few remaining grammar schools in town. Move out to Barnet Nick, you know you’re going to in the end. The Statesman piece is bound to end up in either the Observer or the Standard some day soon, but he usually leaves a decent interval of about a month so I guess not this week.
The Harry’s Place indicator is obviously full of Galloway versus Hitchens in New York but I would counsel against going quids-in on this heavily backed favourite. Remember that Hitchens himself occasionally contributes pieces to the Observer. I think it rates no more than a throwaway joke from NC and nothing at all from DA in the main columns; NC will be able to exploit it more for Associated Newspapers. The thinking man’s “Unite Against Terror” online decentist and ferocious hack-about-town, Alan Johnson, has a new web project out called “Democratiya”, god help us, and I betcha that gets a plug.
Katrina seems to me to be pretty well played out as a theme; doesn’t mean DA won’t go for it (the vulnerability, the fallibility) but I would guess otherwise. Also, I still think we must have “reach out to the left week” and surely to shit the recent legislation against “justifying or glorifying” acts of terrorism must stir Nick Cohen’s ire, not least because he is bound to get caught by them himself in a future incarnation.
So my guesses are:
Aaronovitch, Tuesday: German elections.
Cohen, Sunday: Charles Clarke’s laws
Cohen, Wednesday: Hitchens/Galloway in New York (plus luvly Spurs, why can’t you get a cab to go south of the river, etc etc).
We haven’t had a big winner for a while, so do your best.
D-Squared Digest 
September 16, 2005 at 2:51 pm |
NC will go for Clarke’s anti-terror legislation; DA will go for Bush’s New Orleans speech or possibly the UN summit
September 16, 2005 at 3:55 pm |
I think it’s time for another foody one from Aero, something about taking vitamin/fish oil pills. Nickers might do City Academies soon and just to confuse us, it’s probably something he’d be ok on.
September 16, 2005 at 4:05 pm |
I’g go for the German elections with Dave – specifically a homily on how there’s nothing left of the left, and how failure to acknowl;edge this leads to the victory of the right. He may also work in something to the effect that Schroeder and the German left is being punished for its opposition to the Iraq war.
September 16, 2005 at 10:03 pm |
Ah yes, the German elections and Gunther Grass’s article in the paper the other day. He could do one of his filing cabinet jobs on him, digging up anything slightly off the wall or inconsistent that Grass may have said over the last fifty years and using that to suggest that we’d all be better off with Merkel in.
September 17, 2005 at 12:31 am |
Ah, yes, another propaganda initiative from “Labour Friends of Headchoppers in Iraq”. They are the ones who support a government whose Defence Minister, Sadoun al-Dulaimi, said –
“We are warning those who have given shelter to terrorists that they must stop, kick them out or else we will cut off their hands, heads and tongues as we did in Tal Afar..”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5270715,00.html
Presumably in the World According to Blairites there are good headchoppers and bad ones.
September 17, 2005 at 12:38 pm |
The thinking man’s “Unite Against Terror” online decentist and ferocious hack-about-town, Alan Johnson, has a new web project out called “Democratiya”, god help us, and I betcha that gets a plug.
Er, you have seen the editors, haven’t you? Unless modesty forbids declaring an interest.
September 17, 2005 at 1:37 pm |
I’m now sure that NC will puff Democratiya. Harry of the Place wrote a review which included “Nick Cohen, for years a stinging critic of Tony Blair and his government from the left, has used his columns in The Observer and The New Statesman to scrutinise and criticise the anti-war movement.” He doesn’t mention that Cohen and Johann Hari (whom he also praises) are fellow editors, perhaps he didn’t know; the list is so long, it reads like “everyone who knows me.”
(Nor does he mention that of the contributors to A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq Johann Hari, Christopher Hitchens, Norman Geras, and John Lloyd are fellow Advisory Editors.)
How can Nick Cohen resist?
September 17, 2005 at 2:41 pm |
lordy lordy.
September 17, 2005 at 6:10 pm |
I’m going to ‘roll over’ my previous ‘Why the UN is rubbish (And Why Is The Left Silent?)’ prediction for Cohen.
September 17, 2005 at 6:10 pm |
I’m going to ‘roll over’ my previous ‘Why the UN is rubbish (And Why Is The Left Silent?)’ prediction for Cohen.
September 17, 2005 at 6:11 pm |
I’m going to ‘roll over’ my previous ‘Why the UN is rubbish (And Why Is The Left Silent?)’ prediction for Cohen.
September 17, 2005 at 6:11 pm |
Yes, apparently I’m so keen on that prediction I made it three times. Feel free to get rid of two of those.
September 17, 2005 at 6:26 pm |
On this ‘Democratiya’ thing, I note that the ‘Harry’s Place’ weblog is not once but twice referred to as ‘Harrysplace’. ‘theguardian’ was bad enough, FFS.
September 18, 2005 at 8:32 am |
He doesn’t mention..Nor does he mention…
What’s happened to the Harry’s Place demand that journalists give full disclosure?
There’s an unintentionally funny bit in the comments on their (unintentionally) funny post on Norman Johnson where David T (another lack of disclosure) says that he’s a surprised a national newspaper is covering this stuff as its just of interest to blog obsessives. I think they actually think discussion of Galloway’s tour of the US is top of every US and UK families’ dinner-table discussion.
September 19, 2005 at 2:18 am |
I Love this bit
A Matter of Principle is the first volume gathering critical voices from around the world to offer an alternative perspective on the prevailing pro-war and anti-war positions.
Snip
these essays claim that, in spite of the inconsistent justifications provided by the United States and its allies and the conflict-ridden process of social reconstruction, the war in Iraq has been morally justifiable on the grounds that Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant, a flagrant violator of human rights, a force of global instability and terror, and a threat to world peace.”
That is an alternative to the prevailing pro-war position how exactly?