LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS THE AL-MEGRAHI FRAMING In an extensively researched article,Gareth Peirce wonders,whether the prosecution of two Libyans at Camp Zeist near Utrecht was in fact a three-card trick put together for political ends. One of the problems investigators faced was that Pan Am 103 was destroyed over the Scottish town of Lockerbie and its fall-out was scattered over an areatoo huge to cordon off. Peirce shows how the finger of suspicion moved from a fringe Palestinian outfit to Syria,then Iran,and finally,many years after the bombing to Libya. Vincent Cannistraro,a CIA official who had served under Reagan to destabilise the Libyan regime,was brought out of retirement. Pointing to various anomalies,Peirce concludes: Al-Megrahis trial constituted a unique legal construct,engineered to achieve a political rapprochement,but its content was so manipulated that in reality there was only ever an illusion of a trial. THE LIBERAL NOT A GENTLE KIND OF ZEN In a brilliant essay,cricketer Ed Smith tries to explore football great Zinedine Zidanes mind. Perhaps there is something greater still that sets apart the very best: the ability to create the illusion of complicity, writes the Middlesex captain. Great players,at their peak,sometimes exert such a mastery over opponents that they appear complicit. They reduce usually aggressive competitors to seeming like mere accomplices; the great man is the puppet-master,the feisty opponent just a puppet.While watching Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait,Smith notes,He has a completely natural type of focus there is no posturing,attention-seeking or affected team-spiritedness. His detachment is on an epic scale that is what adds fire to his few,but decisive,moments of intervention. However,what distinguishes Zidanes levels of concentration from someone like Roger Federer,according to Smith,is that he combines calmness with simmering street-wise aggression. Smith notes that there is a darkness to his concentration he would be just fine if things got nasty,in fact he might relish it. His is not a gentle kind of zen. TIME THE DEMOCRATS HEALTHCARE PAIN Writing about the complete desertion by Republicans on the healthcare agenda,Jay Newton-Small looks at the pitfalls that may await the Democrats. If Democrats end up passing such a major piece of legislation essentially on their own,theres no guarantee that it will spare them pain, he writes. On the contrary,Republicans are betting that whatever does get passed exclusively by their opponents will come back to bite the Democrats in both 2010 and 2012. While passing such a bill unilaterally has never been done,the biggest risk could be passing nothing at all. Showing results from surveys,Small warned that the Republicans were being seen as an obstructionist party The Party of No. NEW INTERNATIONALIST HOMELESS IN DELHI Jeremy Seabrook meets the people who live in the rainshadow of wealth in Delhi. Estimates suggest Delhi has at least 100,000 homeless people,most of them male, notes Seabrook. Night shelters accommodate a maximum of 7,000 a fraction of the need,as can be seen all over Delhi: sleepers lie on traffic islands,in doorways,in grassy spaces,on ledges and beneath walls,wrapped in colourless rags like cerements. Visiting shelters for the homeless,Seabrook finds the other casualties in the war against the poor victims of road,rail and industrial accidents; as well as those with disability orpeople with untreated sickness. He notes how so many survive on public pity,that reservoir of fellow-feeling which,even in a hard and self-seeking city like Delhi,is never quite exhausted.
