London

High property prices are forcing people, even City professionals, to live on camp sites:

"Last week a council worker called Philip Hanman hit the papers when he claimed he had been forced out of his job after his bosses discovered he was commuting to work in Barking and Dagenham in east London from a campsite in Epping Forest, where he slept in a £30 tent. Hanman has taken voluntary redundancy from the council and now lives with his family in Cornwall..." [READ MORE]

So readers, what's the best solution?

Literary Slap (and 2000 entries on LJ, yay!)

An Aussie author describes European fiction as "dry" and "academic in a cheap, shitey way". I don't do fiction, but those who do, is it true?

Afghanistan

James Fergusson, author of A Million Bullets and Taliban, argues that British soldiers should not be dying for the rights of Afghan women:

"The west views gender equality as an absolute human right and so we should. But no country, certainly not Britain, has yet managed unequivocally to establish that right at home; and we tend to forget both how recent our progress towards it is, as well as how hard the struggle has been. Full women's suffrage was not granted in Britain until 1928. With such a track record, is it not presumptuous to insist that a proud, patriarchal society that has survived for 3,000 years should now instantly mirror us? That, in effect, is what well-meaning western experts did when they helped to draw up Afghanistan's 2003 constitution. The stipulation that at least 25% of MPs should be women is plain hypocritical. Even after the 2010 election in Britain – a parliamentary democracy that has had rather longer to mature than Afghanistan's – women MPs account for just 22% of the total." [READ MORE]

I agree with a lot of what he says and think attention should be paid to recognising the Taliban as part of the solution, whether we like it or not. Unfortunately our blinkered black-and-white view has largely prevented this from happening until now. And although some baby steps have been taken in this direction a lot remains to be done. Improving the rights of women is important but not essential to our intervention.

Mosques on Lower Manhattan

In the midst of the hysteria about turning a site into a community center, Anne Barnard offers us a timely reminder via the NY Times:

"...what the two mosques have in common [...] is that both have existed for decades, largely unnoticed, blocks from the World Trade Center site. Masjid Manhattan, on Warren Street, four blocks from ground zero, was founded in 1970. Masjid al-Farah, formerly on Mercer Street, moved to its present location on West Broadway, about 12 blocks from ground zero, in 1985."

9/11 was the world's worst terrorist atrocity and a lot of Americans are still angry about it, but the opposition to the community center goes against everything the American constitution stands for. Which ironically is what many of the protesters use to defend antiquated gun laws and environmentally unsustainable lifestyles. Frankly, it's a response comparing favourably only with what is de rigueur in the third-world.

Forvo

It's been a while since I shared a useful site and this time I've been naughty, in that I've been using it for quite a while before posting about it. Forvo is a database of user-generated pronunciations. As it states on the tin: 800,789 words / 645,626 pronunciations / 258 languages.

ETA: There is also the obligatory Forvo iPhone app which released last month. I've found it quite useful while on the move.

Robert Wintemute walks out of Indian news channel discussion programme

Yesterday I posted about India's alleged racist visa rules. Not surprisingly, the article sparked a flame war in its comments section. But to spice things up, the author appeared a few hours ago on what is possibly India's most popular English news channel programme, The Newshour with Arnab Goswami on Times Now. I've yet to watch the full exchange between the presenter and the human rights lecturer, but the regular news broadcast showed a brief clip in which the author refuses to continue the discussion and walks off in disgust. He was connected by video link. It transpires that the author got some facts wrong in the article, and this resulted in an unfavourable response to it by Times Now. The channel highlighted the comparison made between India's anti-British Pakistani visa rules and Nazi treatment of Jews:

"In 1933, Nazi Germany excluded German citizens of Jewish origin from the civil service. In 1942, the United States arrested all US citizens of Japanese origin living on the west coast, and transferred them to prison camps. It makes no difference that India is practising racial discrimination against British citizens rather than its own. India would object very strongly if Australia, Canada, China or the US made it much harder for British citizens of Indian origin (but not Pakistani origin) to obtain a tourist visa."

Two or three wrongs don't make a right. And even if Prof Wintemute did get some facts wrong and even if he won't apologise for these errors whatever they maybe, it is irrelevant. Because the fundamental principle remains true in that every government, British or Indian, must resist the temptation "to abandon human rights principles and impose sweeping restrictions on the innocent" whenever terror strikes.

Robert Wintemute is Canadian

And what's more, after doing his undergrad at Alberta he studied law at McGill. Now he teaches human rights law in London. Sound.