Did Tookie Williams deserve to die

On December 13, 2005 a few minutes past mid night a well built, healthy man walked the last few hundred feet between his cell on Death Row at San Quentin and the excecution chamber. That Tookie Williams was a ruthless killer no one denies. That he had a violent youth in which a dissipated life careened out of control uder the influence of poverty and drugs too no one denies. He along with Raymond set up a violent street gang, Cripps, this too is a fact. And he killed four people in typical gang land style. Having said all this can we say that he deserved a chance to straighten out his lfe.I do not buy the theory of procecutorial misconduct during the course of the trial. That he was responsible for killing four young men is certain.After his trial, Tookie Williams had embarked upon the worthy course of warning Black youth of the dangers of gang warfare and drugs by writing a series of books. He also wrote his autobiography which explains the social context in which he grew up. A fatherless childhood and two children from two different women by the time he was 18, and an irresponsible attitude towards his children, made him seek the refuge in a gang. The gang is probably the one social group that provided a degree of self worth and then the drift into crime.It is not quite right to disscount the race factor in the debade on the Death Penalty. Tookie Williams was probed fro nearly 1 hour with hypodermic syringes before the vein to let the lethal mixture was found. This is ceratainly a cruel and unusual way of killing an individual, Further it took Mr Tookie Williams nearly 10 minutes to die. Some agony.The federal jusdes had reccomended clemency for Tookie Williams on the ground that he had behaved in an exemplary manner in the last half of his life. He died at the age of 52 for a crime committed at the age of 24. Obviously he was a completely different man to the callow youth who had done the horrible deeds.Can this factor not be the ground for mercy?

Did Tookie Williams deserve to die

On December 13, 2005 a few minutes past mid night a well built, healthy man walked the last few hundred feet between his cell on Death Row at San Quentin and the excecution chamber. That Tookie Williams was a ruthless killer no one denies. That he had a violent youth in which a dissipated life careened out of control uder the influence of poverty and drugs too no one denies. He along with Raymond set up a violent street gang, Cripps, this too is a fact. And he killed four people in typical gang land style. Having said all this can we say that he deserved a chance to straighten out his lfe.I do not buy the theory of procecutorial misconduct during the course of the trial. That he was responsible for killing four young men is certain.After his trial, Tookie Williams had embarked upon the worthy course of warning Black youth of the dangers of gang warfare and drugs by writing a series of books. He also wrote his autobiography which explains the social context in which he grew up. A fatherless childhood and two children from two different women by the time he was 18, and an irresponsible attitude towards his children, made him seek the refuge in a gang. The gang is probably the one social group that provided a degree of self worth and then the drift into crime.It is not quite right to disscount the race factor in the debade on the Death Penalty. Tookie Williams was probed fro nearly 1 hour with hypodermic syringes before the vein to let the lethal mixture was found. This is ceratainly a cruel and unusual way of killing an individual, Further it took Mr Tookie Williams nearly 10 minutes to die. Some agony.The federal jusdes had reccomended clemency for Tookie Williams on the ground that he had behaved in an exemplary manner in the last half of his life. He died at the age of 52 for a crime committed at the age of 24. Obviously he was a completely different man to the callow youth who had done the horrible deeds.Can this factor not be the ground for mercy?

USA IS LAWLESS ONCE AGAIN IS IT TIME FOR WAR CRIMES TRIAL

Under George II, the regime now in place in Washington DC has become a law unto itself. Even rougue states like Libya and North Korea did not ever attempt the blatant violations of International Law that has become the norm under the Bushmen. USA is not a party to the Internation Criminal Court of Justice. This perhahs explains the studied impunity with which the Bush regime has trampled upon the very core values of the international order. The illegal war in Iraq and themwanton use of banned chemical by US troops together with the Abu Gharais Prison scandal have exposed the utter lackmof idealism in the conduct of US fopreign policy. Not that the world was taken in by the faniful rhetoric of human rights, and freedom bandied about by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. However a new depth has been plumbed in the present regime.The CIA has been caught running illegal,flights between Europe and the USA. THese flights were used to ferry suspected "terrorists" from Europe to the legal limbo of prisons located in US dependencies. It is well known that prisoners or for that matter any human being casnnot be transported across international borders without the explicit sanction of the host countries through which the men are being transported. In the exalted Blairdom of Tony and the goons of the Labour Party more than 200 such flights have landed and taken off. Now the little poodle has suddenly become wise and has started barking against his master: Tony Blair's "foreigh minister" has written to the Secretary of State Dr Condaleeza Rice asking for details about the "torture flights". My Lord we are shocked that our airports were being used for such nefarious purposes says Tony Blair feigning ignorance. It is quite another matter that by ignoring the American violation of British airspace, Blairdom has also violated the EU constitution. The USA uses euphemisms to gloss such terrible acts:"extraordinary renditions" describes the illegal transfer of prisoners to third countries wherein US torture experts can question illegally detained and captured prisoners. Even in the dark days of Nazi Germany such vicious acts were unknown. Germany's new Chancellor Angela Markel is likely to take up this matter with Rice when the Secretary of State visits Germany next month.Tony Blair claims that his regime was totally in the dark about what the US was up to. Even this poodle has begun to distance himself from the misdeeds of Bush and his Bushmen.Back to Iraq. Everyday the toll is rising and the much vaunted Iraqi security force is being dessimated in the barracks itself. Now it has been confirmed beyond a shadow od doubt that the US used White Phosphorous in Fallujah against unarmed non combatants. Pictures of burnt children have been published by a former US marine Jeff Englehart. The "embedded free press" does not cover war crimes in Iraq. In March 2005, the American army in house magazine Field Arillery gave specific details of the use of WP in Falujah. It goes without saying that the USA has violated the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons which bans the use of incendiary weapons like White Phosphorous. In the Rules of Engagemnet, an account of the Iraq war, the British general Tim Collins admits that he trained troops in the use of WP. Now Saddam may have used chemical weapons against the Kurds, however in the Falklands War, the Anglo Saxon troops used WP against the Argentinians.It has also come to light that in the shock and awe attack on Bagdad in Narch 2003, the US used 'napalm'. With the tide of revulsion rising against the atrocities of trhe Bushmen it is time to CALL THE TROOPS HOME.

CLINTON SPEECH ON IRAQ HE TOO IS RESPONSIBILE

a speech in Dubai, Bill Clinton declared that the Iraq War was a "big mistake". The speech was made in the context of rising civillian and US casualities in Iraq. Clinton by referring to the Iraq War as a mistake is obviously playing to the domestic Democratic lobby in order to gather support for the next Pesidential candidate from the Democratic party, who could even be Hiliary Clinton. Of course, a consumate politician like Clinton can paly politics and thetre is nothing wrong in that per se. However,he implies that he had no real responsibility for the happenings in Iraq. Hence I would like to set the record straight.First of all, Clinton gave unqualified support to the invasion of Iraq ibn 2003. As former president he cannot claim that he was misled by the false propaganda emanatinf from the White House. If the truth be told George Bush was only follwing in the path alid out by Bill Clinton during his twi terms in the White House.Second, Bill Clinton was primarily responsible for imposing the UN sanction regime on Iraq qhich resulted in creating a huge humanitarian crisis in Iraq. In fact half a million Iraqi children perished as a direct consequence of the ruthlessly inhuman sanction's regime of the UN. Clinton cannot escape the responsibility for that.Third, Bill Clinton along with the British Government subjected Bagdad to weeks of ariel bombardment in 1993. Further in 1998, he signed the Iraq Liberation Act which made regime change the ofricial policy of the US Governemt. On the pretext of allowing the UN Weapons insectors the protection for carrying out their task, Clinton ordered the bombing of Bagdad for 4 days. Need we forget the bombing of Kossovo which resulted in thousands of fatalities.Given the record of his Administration, Bill Clinton cannot really distance himself from the killing fields of Iraq. In fact it was his administration that laid the ground for US involvement and George Bush II blundered into the mess aided and abetted by the faulty intelligence.

USA USES BANNED CHEMICALS IN IRAQ

It is a delicious bit of irony that the ostensible reason for American invasion of Iraq remains the ABC weapons allegedly developed by Saddam Hussein. It has now become abundantly clear that not only was the intelligence with respect of the WMD program of the erstwhile President of Iraq flawed but there appears to have been what one senator delicately called "cherry picking ." So a savage brutal war was waged against a nation which was down on its heels due to the UN sanctions. The people of Iraq have been crushed under two oppressive regimes:One the warlord regime of Saddam Hussein and the "shoot and scoot"wild west regime of the Anglo-Saxon coalition troops. We have during the course of the last one year catalogued the awful story of the travails the ordinary Iraqi living outside of the Grren Zone is expriencing.USA is a signatory of the Geneva Convention which bans the use of chemical weapons. In fact one of the charges that the regime in Bagdad has levelled against Saddam Hussein pertains to the use of a chemical against the Shiaa population in the South of the country at the end of the I st Gulf War. According to the Reprt prepared by William R Brankowitz of the US Army Chemical Materials Agency, a classified document printed for private circulation with security clearance,the USA dumped 7,346 canisters of a banned chemical White Phosphorous in the Atlantic Ocean in order to comply with the Geneva Convention against the use of Chemical Weapons.. Along with WP 421,157 pounds of radiological waste and 20 drums of cyanide were sunk in the Atlantic Ocean btween 1962 to 1989.What is disturbing is the growing evidence that in thwe assault on Fallujah last year( extensively covered on our blog) the US troops used White Phosphorous against civillian population. Clincs in and around Fallujah treated hundreds of people including children with severe burns and lesions of the skin caused by exposure to the chemical. The patriotic "embedded journalists" who reproduce uncritically the lies dished out by the Bush and the Bushmen did not once report the use of the banned chemical in the American media. The world got wind of the use of the blatant violation of the Geneva Convention from the Italian Press.The Italian TV aired a documentary feature produced by Sigfrido Ramicci and Maurizio Torrealta where shocking visuals of the horrendous damage done by the indiscriminate use of WP are given.A web site called globalsecurity.org WP results in "painful chemkical burn injuries".This chemical burns the skin right up to the demal level and leaves the clothes intact. This is because the chemical is used as a highly lipis solution.The response of the US state department to this war crime has been as expected flat denial followed by the most fraudlent of excuses. The use of the WP for illumination of the battle field is permitted and so the State Department spokeperson claimed the WP was used only as a battle field illuminator. Even the US battle manual ST100-3 permits the use of WP only as a smokescreen. Yet in complete violation of its own Internation obligations, and with total inhumanity to the Arab population, the Coalition used banned chemicals in an illegal outlaw manner in an illegal war of occupation.Thinking Americans must write to their Senators and Congressmen asking for a bipartisan Inquiry into the conduct of the Fallujah assault.Link: globalsecurity.org

Terrorism In Jordan: The American Occupation of Iraq and its consequences

The exposion in the Hyatt Grand Hotel at Amman killed nearly 60 people and injured 300 more. The responsibility for the blast has been taken by Al_Qaeda in Iraq led by the illusive Abu Musab Zarqawi.The attack in Jordon itself is proof, if proof is needed, that the Al Qaeda is capable of pulling of spectacular terror attacks in the region. Jordon has been a key ally of the US in its war of occupation in Iraq. Infact the utility of Jordon is more direct as far as US war efforts are concerned:"security personel" from US and other parts of the world brought into Iraq on conttract transit through Jordon. Further, Jordon is the only country in the region, apart from Egypt, to sign a peace treaty with Israel. There is also a demographic reason for the growing unrest in Jordon:more then half the population otf the country is Palestenian and was born in refugee camps where the living conditions are appaling.American occupation of Iraq has converted Iraq into a strong base for the Al -Qaeda. The violence has now begun to spill into Saudi Arabia, Jordon andmbelieve it or not even Iran. The American bombing of Fallujah (reported extensively on this blog) provided just the opportunity for Al Qaeda to reorganise itself and there is a steady influx of militants from the porous borders with Syria. A few years ago educated Islamic people may have scoffed at then very idea of the revival of the Caliphate. Now this concept has moved out of the sermons of mullahs in the mosques and is freely discussed in the cafes of Bagdad and Cairo which only goes to show athat the common man no longer regards the nation state as the center of his political loyalties.Another factor that is contributing to the groqing instability in the region is the American induced and encouraged Sunni-Shia divide. Iraqi society was essentially an interweave of Sunni, Christian, Kurdish and Shiaa communtities. This bond was reinforced during the decade Iran Iraq war, in which the USA provided every kind of weapon to Saddam Husseain. This age old tradition of amity between the different ethnic and racial groups has been undermined by American occupation. Identity politics encouraged by the occupying forces has made Iraqis extremely sensitive to primordial loyalties of sect and clan to the exclsion of other attributed of modern citizenship. The newly"ratified" Iraqi constitution virtually legeslates the exclusion of Sunnis from the political arena abd the Al Qaeda has found yet another grievance to espouse.The western media, the aptly named"embedded journalists" has not highlighted the fact that several Shiaa groups are being armed by the occupying forces as a prelude to eventual American withdrawal. The Freedom Guard is the most notorious of such groups. This group has been deployed against the Sunnis in Anbar province. American occupation has given the fuel to Islamic Terrorism

Civillian Casualities in Iraq

The highly respected medicak journal The Lancet that has been at the fore front of medical research for more that 150 yearshas in a recent issue highlighted the consequences of the American areal bimbing on Iraq using a sophisticated statistical technique called cluster analysis. The margin of error is less that 3% in most cases.The team looked carefully at the mortality figure reported in select households in the week immediately preceeding the Ameican bombing campaign in March 2003. This figure was compared to the mortality reported after the campaign to "liberate" Bagdad from the forces loyal to Saddam. The team from John Hopkins University found that by correlating the figure thus obtained over 33 neighbourhoods estimated that more than 100,000 civillians, of whom the large propotion happen to be non combatant women and children,had died as a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE OF ANGLO-AMERICAN ACTION.The unacceptable civillian casualities has made the World wonder whether the US Under George Bush has no qualms about inflicting death on unarmed civillians in the name of Freedom and Democracy.. George Bush spoke of winning political capital which he intends on the benefit of Americans. I would like to state the he has got this capital by wanton and callous bloodshed on a minumental scale.The report made public needs to be placed on the table of the Security Council and the opinion of the World raised againstsuch actions. It is of coursr not my case that the American political establishment be hauled before a war crimes tribunal.This will not happen and in 1945 the War Crimes Tribunal was set up only because Germany lost the war. More recentlyMilodovan Milosovisch was arraigned in the Hague only because he was militarily and politically defeated.However this does not negate the fact that atrocities and gross violations of the rules of combat are taking place in that insane and unneccessay war in Iraq and the world must protest.

GIRL BLOG FROM BAGDAD

I am an ardent blogger and have quite a few blogs posted in different web sites. I do not know why, but I do find the world of blogging extremely challenging. One goes to parts of the world one has only heard of, Bagdad for one. I read a particular blog form bagdad posted by a woman who calls herself riverbend, possibly she lives near the bend in the river Tigrios that flows through Bagdad. I have also been a keen advocate of peace in iraq and have done a lot of writing in my blogs on the atrocities of the US troops. However, I do not live in Iraq and my knowledge about what is happening in entirely from embedded journalists, whose reports are unvasrlnished American propaganda.

This brings me to riverbend. Her blogs are full of humour, not the dark black humour, but the humour that makes enduring the horrible nighmare of life in Bagdad bearable. She wries well, and I would even say that she is a stylish writer. There is no frenzied Yankee Get Out kind of reaction. She is much too educated for that. She records the sufferings of ordinary Iraqis who are outside the Green Zone who are trying to get by without losing their dignity and the compassion. I name RIVER BEND as the personality of the year who has brought the life in Bagdad within reach of people around the world.

I have read almost all her posts and have been touched by the simple and deliberrately understated manner in which she repotrs from the city of Bagdad.

is LORDS OF ALL THE WORLD A REVIEW

Historians have always had problems while dealing with large territorial empires and their raison d' etre for their very existence. The Roman Empire for instance claimed to have brought peace to a warring Europe, and formulated the concept of pax romana to justify is conquests. Edward Gibbon rightly said that the pretence of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence, an acknowledgement that the ideological formulations of Vergil, Livy and Tacitus wre exactly self serving. More recently, Napoleon justified his ruhless war of expansion by claiming to be the inheritor of the French Revolution. And of course, we have the "white mans' burden" theory of the English Empire. Now the Americans have their own take on the imperial ideologies of the past by claiming that they advocate democracy and human rights the world over. As ideological formulation such statements are not subject to refutations and it does not matter that the USA ends up supporting the worst kinds of criminal regimes in the world.

Antony Pagden is a Professor ofn History at Johns Hopkins University and is one of the leading American historians of the Spanish Empire in the New World. His book Lords of All the World
is a classic study of imperial ideologies as fashuioned by the Christian Empires of the Eary modern period. How did the educated churchmen of the sixteenth century justify the expropriation of land and human rights of the Amer Indian population? How did Christian theology justify the acts of Cortes and his conquistidores?How was slavery justified using the theology of Saint Augustine? An answer to all these questions is found in the book.

Paul Volcker and His Report

After the end of the first Gulf War the United Nations at the instigation of the USA and other Western Powers imposed a most horrendous regime of sanctions on Iraq. Iraq was forbidden even to sell oil and as a consequence the quality of life and the civil infrastructure of Iraq virtually collapsed. It is well known that nearly 800,000 children dies prematurely because of the nobn availability of paracteamol, a drug that all take for granted. In these circumstances the UN decided to allow Iraq to export its Oil and import food, the program that came to be called Food for OUIl Program. The moneies gained by the export of Iraq oil was to be deposited in an escrow account maintained by the UN. So far so good. Then the likes of KOjo Annan, the son of the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, got on to the act and subverted a viable humanitarian program into a get rich fast scam in which the minnions of Saddam Hussain were accomplises. Shell companies were created and the Iraqi Oil Ministry at Bagdad assigned the right to lift and sell oil in the international market at a lower cost and the differnece in price to the tune of 50cents a barrel was deposited against the accounts of individuals in the Jordon National Bank.This was a scam waiting to happen and Paul Volcker has done a comendabel job in following the money trail and has perused 20 million documents in order to arrive at the truth. The fact is that some of the leading Third world politicians like Natear Singh, India's Foereign Ministeer seem to have made millions at the cost of starving and dying Iraqis. Ofcourse, no thief ever says even if he is caught with his finger in the till. even acknowledges that he is a thief. And the same with the like of Natwr Singh and his son Jagat Singh. There is now an outrage agaIst these clowns and they have been thoroughly exposed by Paul Volcker and his team.There is howeve a small problem. Paul Volcker in his interveiw with LA tIMES STATED THAT HE CHANGED THE LANGUAGE OF THE REPORT vis a vis Kofi Annan. I think that a splendid job was compromised by allowing this needless concession to Kofi Annan. The father claims that Cotecna, for which his son Kojo works obtained contracts without his knowledge. Given the way the UN system works this is impossible and Paul Volcker muist have nailed the lie of Kofi Annan,as the credibility of a truthful and accurate Report stands compromises as a consequence.

A New Threat to Blogging

Cyberspace is perhaps the last frontier of freedom. A new threat now confronts the blogging community. People are being procecuted for views and opinions expressed in their blogs. With the advance in technology, employers are in a position to monitor even the most private activities of their employees ans charge them with violation of company policy for opinions expressed in their personal blogs. Justice Wendell Holmes has defined the limits of the freedom of expression and as long as ablogger conforms to the Holmesian principle, it is illegsl to take action for opinion. Expression of a thought or opinion can never be a punishable offence in any democracy. Afterall, we are not living in an Orwellian world of "Thought Police".

The air hostess who was dismissed from her job because of what she posted on her blog deservesd public sympathy as she is a symbol of the right of free expression.

Zheng -He and His Voyages

Recently a retired English naval officer published a book entitled 1421: The Year China Discovered the World innwhich this former sailor argues that Zheng _He the eunach of the Ming Emperor, Yong-Le was responsible for the discovery of North and South America, Australia and hold your breath, even Antartica. The run away success of this book means that many people who have had little, if any expoture to History, will learn about these remarkable events only from Menzies. That would be a real pity. I am not complaining that the book is wrong and muddle headed and thererfore needs to be corrected.If this interesting book makes people curious about the past in the same way that Dan Brown's book made people curious about the early history of Christianity, I would have no trouble with this work. However, given the hype and publicity surrounding this book it is likely that most readers will not make any attempt to go beyond this volume and hence my blog today.

Conspiracy theories make bad history. In fact historians are loathe to use conspiracy theories because it is so easy to writ history bacjkwards and make every bit of information fit on the procrustan bed of appriori notions and fancies. This is the same case with Menzies. He obviously has enjoyed writing this book, Who would not given the fantastic royalty he commends. In fact thie figure itself is encouraging that people are willing to spend tonnes of money on History. Now coming back to my blog: Whenever there is need for hard evidence the author falls back on the familiar ruse that the evidence once exixted but has now been destroyed a la Dan Brown.

The fact is that Zheng-he was accompanied by a Historian Ma Huan who wrote the history of at least 3 of the seven voyages of Zhenh-He. The book by Ma Huan is not only free from fanciful theorisis of the sort that afflicts Menzies, but also been corroborated bynfurther archaeological evidence.

The most striking case of such corroboration is the Tri lingual inscription left by Zhebh-He in Sri Lanka. This inscription was found in 1914 and is now preserved in the Museum at Colombo.At Mogadishu too Zheng He is known to have erected a steale but that has not been found. Nearly 100 years back a Dutch scholar , Dyvendak studied the inscritions and solved many tricky questions about the voyages. Menzies has made Zheng_he a Christopher Columbus, Captain Cook and Robert Falcon Scott all rolled into one.

Biography and History

Ever since human beings developed an interest in their own past, they have tried different way through which to explain and understand the events of their lives. Seemingly unrelated events seemed to form patterns and those patterns were related conceptually to the movement of the earth around the sun in its own orbit and from that point onwards there emerged the view that our lives were governed by the stars. This was a very comforting notion because those with power and privilege could always rationalise it and those without felt comforted that their travails in life were due to influences beyond human control. One may say that an astrological ordering of life is essentially the ideology of a conservative staus conscious society.

It is to yhe credit of the Greeks that they refused to accept this idea. Events in their human exixtence had to be explained in terms of everyday occurences. In the Homeric myths we have the idea that heroes are especially blessed by the Gods on Mount Olympus. By the time we get to Hesiod and Herodotus a new insight is strirring in the Greek mind. While the play of Fortuna is not entirely rejected, we now have the notion that events that happen in the lives of people is due to certain underlying factors that are visible at least in terms of the consequences. Thus when Herodotus spoke of the invasion of Darius I and the Greek response to it he had necessarily to place this cataclysmic event in the context of the interaction between the Greeks and Others. This is the point that Francois Hartog makes in his fabulous book, The Mirror of Herodotus. The awareness that their are cultural differences and therefore the kind of lives worth recording is the first step in the establishmment of a principle of historiography.

Casablanca An Eternal Classic

Humphery Bogard and Ingrid Bergman in their classic roles in the war time movie Casablanca played roles that have seldom,if ever been surpassed. What makes this movie just a great film. The editing is spotty. For instance, the famous scene in the Railway station at Paris and when it is raining hard and Richard is dripping wet and by the time he enters the train in the very next scene his dress is dry. It is obvious that the director has overlooked this point. The dialogues are cliche ridden. Is that the sound of cannon fire or is it my heart poundinng. This line spoken by Ingrid Bergman is as cliche ridden as most of the other dialogues; Of all the gin joints in all the towns of the world she walks into mine;this line uttered by Eric Blaine aks Richard aks Ricky is just mushy sentimentalism. In spite of the obvious flaws thetre is something immensely grand about the movie.

I regard the corrupt police officer, Claude Rains who plays Captaibn Renault as the real hero of the movie. He admits that he is a poor corrupt official but manitains a warm and exceptionally largehearted relationship with everyone. The poor girl from Bulgaria who does not have the money to bribe herself to an exit visa is helped by Renault. In the end when he could have had Rick arrested for the murder of the German officer Major Strasser, Renault allows Rick to escape saying: Major Strasser has been shot:Round uo the ususal suspects. Rightly, it is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I wonder why no novelist has ever thought of a sequel to Casablanca. The most wooden and by far the fraceless character of in the movie is Victor Lazlo. He is self righteous, loves a woman who obviously does not love him,and tries to use his heavy hand to get Rick to part with the letters of transit. I think it would have been great if Bergman and Bogard had stayed behind in Casablanca.

Guns, Germs and Steel

I have always liked reading histories with a wide global sweep. The kind of history that one is trained at graduate school is what I call the miniscule school of history: a medieval count. a decaying castle, a bunch of worn out parchment and the like. While I do recognise that much of history is based on such painstaking research, I personally do not find such history terribly exiting. This is not to say that minute analysis of documents cannot be interesting. One has only to read the book by M T Clanchy, From Memery to Written Records to realise that medieval historiography can be as much of a paGE TURNER AS ANY CONTEMPORARY NOVEL.

I recently picked by Jared Diamond's Guns Grms and Steel in a bookstore that rightly calls itself landmark. I had read a review of his recent book Collapse in the Economist. Jared Diamond is an anthropologist probably teaching in one of the West coast Universities . This book is refreshing in that there is hardy any of the soul destroying jagon so dear the American anthropologists. In this Diamond is in good company: Marshal Sahlins learnt to write like a historian towards the fag end of his teaching career. If one reads his Stone Age Economics and compare the style with his Islands of History you can hardly believe that the same person wrote both books. However, Sahlins son Peter Sahins writes with elegance and polish and yes, Sahlins junior is a trained historian.

The basic theme of Jared Diamond in his Guns, Germs and Steel is simple. Mankind over a period of nearly a millennium learnt to remove the toxicity from a number of plasntsd by selective breeding and by carefully collecting the mutated grains. I was surprised to learn that the humble potato had once been highly toxic.In a similar manner human being too developed resistance to viruses. When the Spanish conquerors reached the so called New World they brought with them a whole range of new diseases for which them native peoples had no immunity. In the pan demics that followed the entire population was killed off. Is the AIDS virus something similar.

The Da Vinci Code and Historians

Dan Browns novel the Da Vinci Code is a run away success. The book has been widely read and it is unfortunate that most people will form their opinion of early Christianity by reading this interesting but outrageous book. Jesus Christ is venerated as a saviour by billions of people and the basis of the Christian faith lies in the belief that He died on the Cross as a supreme aacrifice for the sins of mankind. One may or may not agree with this notion but no one, least of all a novelist has the right ot insult this belief. Further the fact that Mary Magdalen was only a companion of Jesus and probably the most compassionate of all his followers. To transform this lonely, tragic figure into the wife or partner of Christ is not only unhistorical but also insulting to peoples belief. Of course, I do not believe that she was what the Roman Catholic chruch made her out to be, but that is another story. I thimk the whole plot senationalises certain conspiracy theories and therefore while it makes interesting reading it is certainly not literature.

Katrina and the American Race Question

The hurricane that lashed the coast of Louisianna and other Gulf states in Souther US has exposed a dark seamy side of American society that had lay hidden under swathes of sanctimonious hyperbole: the world's larges superpower is resting on a social base that is not only unequal but is also marinated in the mal odourous slime of racism. The people who were deeply affected by the Tragedy were not the rich, educated suburban elite but the poor blacks and other minotities. It was for this reason that the response from the American state was extremely tardy. George Bush took full 5 days even to travel to the affected statye and there he engaged in a public spat with the Governor. Later there was the Blame Game as to who should take the rap fro this tragedy. The fact is that the federal budget for the upkeep of the Levees have beeb cut and the misguided policies of Bush meant that Iraq was topmost on his agenda rather than the domestic situation. Had this event happened in the first term it is unlikely that Bush would have been re elected.