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Journalism of Courage
This week the story of the Kanishka bombings climbed out of the musty box with the label 8216;8216;Largest Pre-9/11 Act of Air Terror8217;8217;. It will now return to haunt as the mass murder trial still in search of closure, 20 years after.
The Canadian papers reflected the troubling leftover questions as Justice Ian Josephson acquitted Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri of all charges they faced in the bombing. 8216;8216;Tale of negligence, missed opportunities8217;8217; said the Toronto Star, arguing that the problem lay not in the lack of tools with the police and intelligence agencies to fight terrorism. 8216;8216;It is not that they needed preventive detention 8212; or more drastic measures like the torture cells of Syria. It is that they did not use the tools they had8217;8217;.
Neo con pomp
Wolfowitz at the door8217;8217;. The Guardian8217;s headline cleverly framed the gathering furore in the liberal media in America and Britain. The announcement of Paul Wolfowitz8217;s name as Bush8217;s nominee for World Bank president was reason for 8216;8216;shock and consternation8217;8217; read the editorial, because of his reputation as the 8216;8216;neoconservative godfather of the Iraq invasion8217;8217;.
8216;8216;Why Paul Wolfowitz?8217;8217; asked the New York Times8217;s editorial on the subject. Alongside the nomination of John Bolton as UN ambassador 8212; he who famously announced in 2000 that the Security Council should have only one permanent member 8216;8216;because that8217;s the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world8217;8217;8212; the choice of Wolfowitz is a 8216;8216;slap at the international community8217;8217; said the NYT.
The NYT appealed to Wolfowitz8217;s past nature. He was, after all, the American ambassador to Indonesia during the Reagan administration who wrote persuasively about how solutions to global conflicts lie more in poverty reduction and economic development than in arms control.
The choice of head of the World Bank is especially important now, wrote Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate, in the Guardian, because poverty in developing countries is finally being acknowledged as 8216;8216;our greatest problem and challenge8217;8217;. In this moment, the head of 8216;8216;the world8217;s most important multilateral organisation promoting development8217;8217; must crucially enjoy the confidence of others, apart from the training or experience for the job. What is at stake, urged Stiglitz, is choosing the right general for a 8216;8216;global war on poverty8217;8217;.
Stiglitz also revived festering questions about the process of choosing leaders of international institutions among the G7. How can they expect to be taken seriously when they advise democratic reforms to countries when they are themselves opaque in their functioning?
So are the Wolfowitz and Bolton appointments a sure sign that the neo-cons are 8216;8216;back in their pomp after a dismal year8217;8217; as the Economist put it? Could it really be a tsunami aftershock? More than one paper recalled how Wolfowitz was moved by the devastation in Asia to reinvent himself as the 8216;8216;harbinger of help, not conflict8217;8217;.
Fried by the fish
On the eve of the British Parliament passing a new law against incitement to religious hatred, Salman Rushdie wrote in the Guardian about why it is such a 8216;8216;bad law8217;8217;. The government of the 8216;8216;devoutly Christian and increasingly authoritarian Tony Blair8217;8217;, he wrote, is trying to 8216;8216;steamroller8217;8217; it through in order to appease British Muslim spokesmen 8216;8216;in whose eyes just about any critique of Islam is offensive8217;8217;.
Rushdie wrote in defense of free speech and against what he called the 8216;8216;Mel Gibson view of the world8217;8217;. He warned against the 8216;8216;increasingly sanctimonious8217;8217; timbre of American public discourse which even the defeated Democrats are now colluding in, in the hope of future electoral gain. In Europe, Rushdie pointed out, the warnings that the 8216;8216;secular principles that underlie any humanist democracy need to be defended and reinforced8217;8217; have been heeded. But Britain, he said, is the exception to European secularism.
Sixteen years after the writer was forced underground by the bearers of religion, Rushdie8217;s concern is 8216;8216;religion is coming after us all, and even though most of us probably feel, as I once did, that we have other, more important concerns, we are all going to have to confront the challenge. If we fail, this particular fish may end up frying us8217;8217;.
