In praise of ... literary bequests
First Doris Lessing, now Alan Bennett: for some leading writers, the season of goodwill is already here. Bennett is donating his entire archive to the Bodleian Library in Oxford; Lessing has given 113 of her letters to the University of East Anglia. Theirs may not be the most noteworthy of literary bequests: Shakespeare's famous second-best bed will always be hard to better. However, their gifts will delight scholars, along with the recent acquisition by the British Library of the papers of Ted Hughes. This £500,000 purchase, however, underscores Lessing and Bennett's generosity. In his essay A Neglected Responsibility, the poet and librarian Philip Larkin called for the archives of living writers to be secured. Even in the late 1970s he saw how British institutions would lose out on estates of the illustrious dead (thanks to the chequebook archivism of American libraries). For Larkin, the worth of such collections was twofold: meaningful and also "magical". Manuscripts reveal the evolution of a text, letters the evolution of writers. Such knowledge is not necessary to enjoy a work, but essential if we are truly to understand one. But the collector in Larkin also appreciated the other, more arcane, value of such papers: intimate, unique, thrillingly human. And now that word-processed manuscripts are the norm, and sterile emails have replaced dog-eared missives, Bennett's longhand drafts and scribbled-on typescripts are perhaps particularly worth celebrating.
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/24/leadersandreply-leaders?INTCMP=SRCH
In praise of ... kimchi
Korean cuisine which marries raw vegetables with spices is enjoying growing popularity far west of Seoul or Pyongyang
If the thought of eating fermented cabbage makes you squirm, then perhaps you're not ready for it – but plenty of others are. Kimchi, a staple of Korean cuisine which marries raw vegetables with spices, is enjoying growing popularity far west of Seoul or Pyongyang. A spicier, more colourful, cousin of Germany's sauerkraut, it can lighten up a number of meals: simply eaten with rice, added to stews for depth of flavour, slathered on a fried egg sitting on top of a bed of wilted spring greens, or replacing onions in a hot dog. Variations are almost infinite, but a good start would be to bring together shredded Napa cabbage, daikon radish, garlic, ginger, fish paste and sugar, along with a generous helping of chilli powder. A few days fermenting in a glass jar does the trick – it is ready when the concoction starts bubbling. The result is pungent, but don't let the strange smell put you off: it's part of the experience. Best of all, it keeps for weeks.
Fugitive justice
Illinois is one of about a dozen states that protect close relatives when they help a family member flee the country to avoid prosecution, no matter how brutal the alleged crime.
On Wednesday, the Illinois House voted 114-0 to end that astonishing loophole.
The bill, inspired by the findings in the Tribune series "Fugitives From Justice," now goes to Gov. Pat Quinn. We trust he'll sign it.
This came to light in the outrageous case of Muaz Haffar, accused of beating to death Tombol Malik, a 23-year-old political science major at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in 2005.
Haffar's father bought him a plane ticket so Haffar could flee to Syria to escape the murder charge, law enforcement officials told the Tribune. Haffar's father denies that he bought the ticket. What's undeniable: Haffar has never been extradited to face charges. His father couldn't be charged with assisting Haffar because Illinois law wouldn't allow it.
The bill, which also sailed through the Illinois Senate on a 52-0 vote, would apply only to relatives who are at least 18 and who intentionally helped prevent a fugitive's arrest or helped him flee the jurisdiction of the offense. The penalty: a one- to three-year prison sentence.
We hope that will make family members think twice before assisting a relative avoid criminal charges. We hope that will provide some measure of solace to families like Malik's, who still wait for justice.
There's a lot more work to do, in Illinois and across the country, to stop the flight of fugitives.
Credit U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. for taking the lead. Last month, he introduced a bill that would direct $1 million to $3 million a year to a fund dedicated to enhancing efforts to apprehend international fugitives. The new fund would come from bail bonds and other fees forfeited by federal defendants who flee justice.
In January, Durbin convened a meeting of top federal, state and local law enforcement officers to find ways to improve the government's faltering efforts to apprehend violent fugitives who cross U.S. borders to evade justice in Illinois.
The officials from the Justice Department and various northern Illinois agencies pledged to more closely coordinate their international fugitive apprehension programs. They said they would better manage mounting caseloads. They pledged to train local prosecutors and police in the long, complex and frustrating extradition process.
From Chicago to Cumming, Ga., police detectives have reopened cases. Three of the fugitives highlighted in the series have been captured in recent weeks.
So there is progress. But there are so many families out there who still wait, intensely frustrated that their families cannot find peace, cannot see justice. The Illinois Legislature took an important step Wednesday to stop that heartbreaking list from growing.
France evades reality
To sustain its economic future, a country needs reasonable taxes, an affordable public sector and an economic climate conducive to job creation. This is not exactly a blinding revelation in the United States or much of Europe, which has seen painful encounters with economic reality in Italy, Greece and Spain. But in France, it seems to be a well-kept secret.
The French are holding the first round of balloting on Sunday in their presidential election. Instead of coming to grips with the new constraints on leaders in a turbulent world economy, the candidates are running the other way. Incumbent Nicolas Sarkozyadvocates a tax boost on upper-income citizens, a higher value-added tax and an "exit tax" on French who have the nerve to leave the country.
That's the bad news. The worse news is that Sarkozy is the more conservative of the two main candidates. His opponent, who leads in the polls, is Francois Hollande. The Socialist candidate, who has said, "I don't like the rich," wants to raise the top income tax rate to a staggering 75 percent, hire 60,000 new teachers, and lower — yes, lower — the retirement age.
From all this, you might not guess that government spending is higher in France (56 percent of gross domestic product) than in any of the other countries in the eurozone, or that its public debt, already 90 percent of GDP, is swelling. Unemployment is stubbornly high, the result of chronically stalled growth.
Germany, by contrast, is prospering partly because of its relative fiscal discipline. It also pays lower yields on government bonds than the French government does, a tribute to investor confidence.
But the French seem oblivious to the obvious lessons that can be drawn. "It is not unusual for politicians to avoid some ugly truths during elections," says The Economist magazine, "but it is unusual, in recent times in Europe, to ignore them as completely as French politicians are doing."
Sarkozy won the last presidential race promising to downsize the overgrown government sector, but he's moved on. Though both candidates have promised to reduce the budget deficit to 3 percent of GDP next year, a report from the national auditing agency said neither has proposed cuts that would meet the goal.
The auditor also saw major peril in this refusal. "It is essential to prevent markets from sensing any risk of France's debt being unsustainable," said the report. "The snowball effect would ensure that the debt would quickly become uncontrollable." What would happen next requires no great imagination, thanks to the experience of countries like Greece: economic and political turmoil, with a crash program of fiscal austerity.
But the presidential candidates hold out the hope that the European Central Bank will somehow come to their aid by doing more to "support growth" even if it means feeding inflation. Given Germany's long-standing and unshakable belief in the importance of price stability, and its dominant influence over monetary affairs, Sarkozy and Hollande are deluding themselves.
At some point, France's leaders are going to have to come to grips with what needs to be done. They apparently plan to postpone that day as long as possible, which will only make it harder when it comes.
No comments:
Post a Comment