NEWS

Issue 29 | July 6, 2007

Aishwarya Rai

VIEWS
REVIEWS
from the world's best print media
Rai: India’s Angelina Jolie
China's first international press digest www.nvrmagazine.com
People, pg 10
Britain under attack
What hope now On the front pages, pg 2
Caught: Indonesia’s most wanted
for Palestine? On the front pages, pg 2
pg
3 Yang at Yahoo
Business, pg 8
The world’s ugliest plant
Health & Science, pg 13
Sept 11. and Chinese food
Opinions, pg 16
Hillary and Celine
Opinions, pg 17
Kevin Costner: Serial killer
Film, pg 19
Forgedaboudit: Sopranos bow out
Arts & Entertainment, pg 24
The axis of decency
Travel, pg 26
Chris Patten... ten years on
Penultimately, pg 38
RMB12 HK$20 July 6, 2007
 
On the front pages
Britain under attack
The story...
Britain was placed on the highest terror threat
level on June 30, following three failed bomb
attacks in 36 hours.
On June 29, two cars filled with fuel, nails and
gas cylinders were found by chance in central
London, one of them outside a popular night-
club. Police said the bombs could have caused
“significant loss of life” if they had exploded.
The following day, a jeep packed with gas
cylinders was set alight and driven into the
main terminal building at Glasgow airport in
an apparent suicide attack. The vehicle failed
to explode, but witnesses said the driver had
doused himself with petrol and was on fire
as the vehicle smashed into the terminal. The
driver fought with police and airport security
as they tried to extinguish the flames, while his
accomplice was wrestled to the ground by a
member of the public.
At the time of going to press, eight arrests, in-
cluding that of a Jordanian neurosurgeon and an
Iraqi doctor, had been made by British officials
who said they are hunting for an al-Qaida-linked
network behind the attempted attacks.
The comment...
The London bombing attempts are “likely to
have been carried out by my former peers,”
said Hassan Butt in The Observer (London). So
Caught: Indonesia’s most wanted
The story...
Indonesian police arrested the head and military
chief of Southeast Asia’s most feared terrorist
organization, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), claiming
a breakthrough in the fight against radical-
Islamic extremism in the world’s most populous
Muslim nation.
Zarkasih, 45, the group’s leader, was captured
in Yogyakarta, just hours after anti-terror police
closed in on its military chief, Abu Dujana (pic-
tured), 37, in a village in central Java.
JI, formed in Malaysia in the late 1990s, is
blamed for a number of terrorist attacks in
Southeast Asia, including the September 2002
Bali bombings which killed 202, the August
2003 bombing of Jakarta’s Marriott Hotel
which killed 12, the September 2004 bomb-
ing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta which
killed 11, and a return attack in Bali in October
2005 which killed 25. The group’s stated aim
is to create an Islamic state across much of
Southeast Asia.
The comment...
The two arrests are the “heaviest of blows”
for JI, said Mark Forbes in The Sydney Morning
Inflamed actions: an “apparent sui-
cide attack” at Glasgow airport
what drives them? When I was a member of the
British-Muslim jihadist group Al-Muhajiroun
we used to “laugh” when people claimed
“Western foreign policy” was to blame for
Islamic acts of terror like Sept. 11, the Madrid
bombings and 7/7. The truth is that what drove
me and my associates to plot terrorist acts within
our British homeland “was a sense that we were
fighting for the creation of a revolutionary state
that would eventually bring Islamic justice to the
Herald. Zarkasih and Dujana — known among
militants as “the guru” — should know most, if
not all, of JI’s “secrets.” Indonesia’s anti-terror
police will now have access to a “walking treas-
ure trove of intelligence.” What’s more, both
men are “graduates of al-Qaida’s Afghanistan
academy of terrorism” of which JI is now in
short supply.
But don’t break out the champagne just yet,
said Philip Bowring in the International Herald
Tribune. Many Indonesians believe JI is more
of a “concept with which zealots are to varying
degrees affiliated,” rather than an “organization
with a structure.” Thus, while the arrest of key
individuals is a success, “decapitating a headless
movement” is of limited value.
Yes, to stop further attacks, we really need to
come to terms with the organization’s “ideol-
ogy” and “psychological and cultural relation-
ships” which have turned scores of “ordinary
people” into jihadists, said Noor Huda Ismail in
The Jakarta Post. JI’s “ideological roots run deep
in Indonesia,” and the organization is resilient
enough to withstand the arrest of a small num-
ber of individuals.
July 6, 2007
N E W S
world.” What’s more, radicals have been able to
increase their following in Britain because our
Islamic institutions refuse to broach the diffi-
cult topic of “violence within Islam.” Instead,
“they repeat the mantra that Islam is peace,
focus on Islam as personal, and hope that all
of this debate will go away.” It won’t, until we
tackle it head on.
Whatever the mind-set of these individuals,
it’s clearly a “twisted” one, said The Sunday
Times (London) in an editorial. “How else to
explain an attack directed at ‘ladies night’ at the
Tiger Tiger nightclub?” For Muslim extremists,
“young women drinking, dancing and enjoy-
ing themselves embodies everything they find
repulsive about western society.”
Some terrorism analysts also believe the plots
were intended as a message to the new British
government led by Gordon Brown, said BBC
News.
Brown handled his first big test as prime
minister well, said the Guardian (London) in
an editorial. Less than a week into his new job,
“he did not seek to play up the danger, or to
capitalize on it.” Brown “refused to resort to
the politics of fear,” unlike Tony Blair, who de-
clared after 7/7 that “the rules of the game have
changed” and tried to introduce “draconian”
security measures such as detention without
charge for 90 days.
Dujana: “a walking treasure trove of intelligence”
Also “looming in the background” is
Indonesia’s failure to ban JI, said The Wall
Street Journal in an editorial. Add to that a weak
court system that’s proved “woefully inad-
equate” in tackling complex terrorism cases, as
the “muddled prosecution” of Bali mastermind
Abu Bakar Bashir in 2005 shows. That said,
Indonesia “has come a long way in a short
time” in combating terrorism, and the two re-
cent arrests show “what committed anti-terror
governments can accomplish, even in countries
with majority-Muslim populations.”
www.nvrmagazine.com
July 6, 2007
N E W S
Cover story
Palestine splits in two
The story...
Palestinian Islamist party Hamas seized
control of the Gaza Strip on June 14
after days of bloody fighting with rival
party Fatah, which left 116 people dead
and put an end to the two parties’ so
called “unity government.”
After Hamas militants routed Fatah in
Gaza, Palestinian President and Fatah
leader Mahmoud Abbas declared a state
of emergency, dismissed the Hamas-led
unity government and installed a new
cabinet comprising mostly bureaucrats.
Abbas, who is based in the Fatah-
controlled West Bank, vowed to reunite the
Palestinians under their “lawful” government.
But Hamas declared the new government illegal
and refused to recognize it.
The United States and European Union
said it would support the Abbas government
through direct financial aid, while continuing
an economic boycott of Hamas. Sanctions
were imposed last year when Hamas — which
the United States regards as a terrorist organ-
ization — formed the unity government with
Fatah. In Washington, U.S. President George
W. Bush praised Abbas as “a voice for modera-
tion” and called him the true “president of all
the Palestinians.”
Meanwhile, Israel said it would release US$560
million in frozen tax revenue to the Abbas
government.
The comment...
It might seem like there’s not much choice be-
tween “the gunmen of Fatah and the gunmen of
Hamas,” said The New York Times in an editorial.
“But there is.” Fatah has renounced terrorism and
supports a two-state peace settlement with Israel.
“Doctors of death.” The Sun (London), July 2.
The Sun describes the doctors arrested in connection with the
failed car bombing attacks on London and Glasgow.
China
Town and country
A recent U.N. report said that more than half of
China’s population will be living in cities in 10
years. An estimated 150 million people moved
to China’s urban areas between 1999 and 2005.
William Ryan, information adviser for the U.N.
Population Fund in Asia and the Pacific, said:
“From 1980 to 2030, the population of China
will go from being 20 percent urban to almost
two-thirds urban.”
Zhang Bing is one of “huge wave of rural
workers streaming into China’s cities to seek
opportunity,” said the Associated Press. Zhang,
26, who until recently herded sheep and raised
chickens in Inner Mongolia, now manages a
www.nvrmagazine.com
On the front pages

Front page of
Hamas “accepts none of these things.”
Ever since Hamas won Palestinian elec-
tions in January 2006, the United States
and Israel have done everything they
could to isolate it. Now, 18 months on,
the week
“Hamas is that much stronger and Fatah
is that much weaker.”
Yes, it’s “wishful thinking” to believe
that aid money alone can create a strong
new administration in the West Bank
or squeeze Hamas in Gaza, said The
Washington Post in an editorial. “While
it’s worth trying” to support the new
government of the “moderate” Abbas,
he’s proved incapable of controlling
Fatah’s armed gangs or ridding the
party of “rampant corruption and mal-
feasance” which led to Hamas’ election victory
in 2006. Hamas still has the support of a large
number of Palestinians: it can’t be “abolished The Independent (London), Friday, June 15.
by decree,” and isolating it “will only make it The Independent uses the Palestinian
more radical and more dependent on sponsors flag for its front page to make the
in Syria and Iran.” point that Hamas’ triumph in Gaza
“In seeking to boost ‘moderates’ such as may well be Palestine’s tragedy.
Abbas, the west only hugs them to death,” said
Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian (London).
The more aid Abbas takes from the west will
only confirm him as a “western proxy” in
Arab eyes, casting him alongside Afghanistan’s
Hamid Karzai, Iraq’s Nuri al-Maliki and
Lebanon’s Fouad Siniora. If the West Bank is
showered with money but most of it stays in
“Fatah’s gilded circle,” it will foster “precisely
the resentment” that brought about Hamas’
election victory in 2006. 南开大学电子音像出版社
One thing’s clear, said Niall Ferguson in 责任编辑:宋立君
The Sunday Telegraph (London). Any “lingering
Managing Editor JFK Miller
hopes” of a two-state solution to the Israeli-
Editors Paul Collins, Toby Skinner,
Palestinian conflict have now “evaporated.” Japhet Weeks
The next peace plan for the Middle East Editorial Assistant Daisy Lu
will need to be a “three-state solution: Israel, Designer Vivien Gu
Hamastan and Fatahland.” Editorial Consultant Steven Crane
Contributors Anton Berkovic, Phil Boyle,
Vera Charlie, Emma Faulkner, Jake Hamilton,
Marissa Holden, Sophie Loras, Karlijn Meulman,
Anna Shen, Sherry Shen, Casey Whale
HK Focus Media Ltd, Hong Kong.
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Living for the city: migrants on the move
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Miscellany
Calendar
July
Saturday
7 On the back of the island’s 10th
Live Earth
The mega-concert is back. After
last year’s Live8 just about changed
the world, the team behind it
are doing it again with a series
of concerts taking place in eight
cities over 24 hours, to trigger
a global movement to solve the
climate crisis. While Live8 was
fronted by Bob Geldof, this time
it’s Presidential-candidate-turned-
campaigner Al Gore. Concerts
will be held in Shanghai, New
York, London, Sydney, Rio de
Janeiro, Johannesburg, Tokyo
and Hamburg. London will host
performers such as Madonna,
while Shanghai will see the likes of
classical-crossover soprano Sarah
Brightman.
Sunday
8 include words and music such as
Wimbledon final
The fortnight in which British
mothers and grandmothers sud-
denly become tennis experts
will come to an end with the
Wimbledon men’s final. Expect
to see Swiss world No. 1 Roger
Federer, who is going for his fifth
straight title. Some people say his
dominance is dulling the men’s
tournament, while others argue his
game on grass is a thing of beauty.
His biggest challenger is French
Open champion Rafael Nadal,
who reached the final last year but
is yet to prove he has the grass-
court skills to match Federer.
Tuesday
10
Hong Kong fashion week
anniversary celebrations to mark
its return to China, Hong Kong
Fashion Week should have more
buzz than usual this year. Featuring
the latest creations from Asia’s hot-
test young designers, the event is
expected to draw 15,000 visitors
and buyers into the city. Running
concurrently will be a flurry of
fashion shows by individual de-
signers, while essential trade tips
can be picked up at any number of
seminars organized by the region’s
leading fashion authorities.
Friday
13
First night of the Proms
The Proms is most famous for
its last night, but the best bits
normally come during the two
months of the world’s greatest
classical music festival, which
starts on July 13. Themes in 2007
Shostakovich’s take on Hamlet and
Stravinsky’s ‘Three Songs from
William Shakespeare.’ Violinist
Joshua Bell will appear again after
a triumphant 2006 performance,
and illustrious Russian pianist
Boris Berezovsky should not be
July 6, 2007
N E W S
confused with the exiled billionaire
of the same name. This week
on YouTube
Saturday Hail to the thief
Pressing the flesh in
14 Albania was a new experience
for U.S. President George W.
Bush where he was mobbed
Bastille Day like a Hollywood film star. The
France’s most important national crowd seem genuinely astonished
holiday commemorates the upris- to have such an international
ing that marked the beginning of statesman within their modest
the French Revolution. The focal midst. A memento of this-once-
in-a-lifetime event was too great
point — aside from liberté, égalité an opportunity for one patriotic
and fraternité — is a huge military Albanian to pass up: at some point
parade on Paris’s Champs-Elysées, during the impromptu walkabout
but celebrations are held around the president was deftly relieved of
the country, including dancing in his US$50 Timex watch.
Bastille Square the night before. www.youtube.com [Search for:
Curious features of Bastille Day Bush watch stolen Albania]
celebrations are the parties held Salud!
in fire stations, and the Incredible When Boris Yeltsin was
Picnic, which in the year 2000 fea- somewhat worse for
tured a 1000-kilometer feast. This wear, the journalistic euphemism
year, around 4 million picnickers was “tired and emotional.” Newbie
are expected. world leader Nicolas Sarkozy
looks as though he too enjoys the
occasional long lunch. But facing
the world’s press at the recent G8
Wednesday summit straight afterwards, and
with an uncontrollable smirk on his
18 face, can surely only be put down
to inexperience on the French
leader’s part.
Japan sea celebration [Search for: Sarkozy pissed]
Until 1996, July was the only month
in the Japanese calendar without a Barack me tonight
public holiday. An oversight that has Mmm… a wannabe
since been rectified by Umi no Hi, starlet, Amber Lee
which celebrates the country’s seas Ettinger, believes the quickest route
to pop stardom is to pen a slushy
and oceans, and Japan’s particular love song to one of the 2008 U.S.
relationship to them. The crisis over presidential candidates. Choosing
the nation’s current tuna shortage the most photogenic presidential
has made it clear just how import- candidate to boost your career
ant that relationship is. The date makes sense, but with “friends”
marks the return of the Emperor like this, Obama can now look
Meiji from a boat trip to Hokkaido forward to charges of “dumbing-
in 1876, probably the only occasion down” his election campaign.
an emperor ever came close to leav- [Search for: I got a crush on
Obama]
ing Japan, as Hokkaido, at the time,
was just being colonized.
American states vs. the world
The fact that the United States has the world’s largest Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) isn’t exactly news. What people may not be aware of is that
its individual states boast economies that are comparable to major nation
states. California tops the list and would rank as the world’s eighth largest
nation by GDP if it counted as a country. Its GDP of US$2.15 trillion gives
it a similar ranking to European superpower France. And even though the
Texan economy (at No. 2) is only half
that size, it equates roughly with Canada
on US$1.08 trillion. Other intriguing
matches include Australia (Ohio), Ireland
(Nevada) and Saudi Arabia (Tennessee).
The once mighty Russia now stands
head-to-head with... New Jersey.
www.nvrmagazine.com
July 6, 2007
N E W S
Kabul
Worst bomb attack since Sept. 11
A bomb attack on a police bus in Kabul
killed up to 35 people and injured more than
30 others. The attack, by Taliban militants,
is thought to be the worst bombing in the
Afghan capital since the Taliban were ousted
by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Most of
those deceased were police instructors,
while five foreigners were wounded. Police are unsure if the attack was
conducted by a suicide bomber, as the Taliban claim, or a pre-planted
device. Meanwhile, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai survived an as-
sassination attempt after Taliban militants fired rockets at him while he
was giving a speech in a district known as one of their strongholds.
Manaparai
Teenage surgeon on run
Indian police have arrested the parents of
a 15-year-old boy who allegedly delivered
a baby by Caesarean section under their
supervision. The boy has absconded and
police are looking for him. Physician Dr.
K. Murugesan showed a video to the Indian
Medical Association of his son, Dhileepan Raj, performing the operation
in an apparent bid to enter the Guinness Book of World Records as the
youngest surgeon. Murugesan, who filmed the operation in his mater-
nity hospital in Manaparai, was arrested alongside his wife. The baby
was born with a lump on the spinal cord, although it was not due to the
Caesarean section.
www.nvrmagazine.com
In brief: Asia

Beijing
Hu gets casual over energy
The start of the Chinese summer saw Chinese President Hu Jintao shed
his suit and tie to address a conference of similarly attired officials, in
an attempt to encourage energy conservation by turning down air-con-
ditioning. China’s leaders also attended a standing committee meeting
in casual clothes for the first time ever, and central government offices
spent a day without air-conditioning. On one day in Beijing, temperatures
hit 37 degrees, lifting electricity consumption to 11.22 million kilowatts,
the highest ever recorded. The State Council has ruled that big buildings
must not set their air-conditioning below 26 degrees Celsius.
Tokyo
Japan running out of tuna
High demand for sushi and sashimi worldwide has led to a tuna crisis in
Japan, with shortages leading to prices beyond the reach of many Japanese
consumers. Since January 2006, the average price of imported frozen
northern and Pacific bluefin — the best and most commonly-used tuna
in sushi — has risen by more than a third to about US$6 per kilo-
gram, according to Japan’s Fisheries Agency. Japan has been further
panicked by the decision of dozens of nations to reduce annual tuna
catches in the Atlantic and Mediterranean seas by 20 percent.
See The last word in fish, pg 27
Guangzhou
Local authorities get sniffy about pollution
A group of “professional noses” will sniff out foul-smelling gases as part of
a battle against unlawful emissions from factories in Guangzhou. The team,
from the Panyu environment monitoring station, will use equipment to mon-
itor the density of the gas, but will use their own noses to detect its harmful-
ness. Liu Jingcai, part of the team, said: “It’s quite unpleasant. We have to
stay in a lab smelling those awful gases repeatedly.” Liu said the group could
differentiate between hundreds of smells, many of which can make people ill.
The team will target oil refineries, rubber factories and rubbish dumps.
Bangkok
Anti-government protests continue
Up to 15,000 protesters have been marching nightly
for the past month against Thailand’s military gov-
ernment which took power in a coup last September.
The protesters, who are mostly supporters of ousted
Prime Minister Thaksin Sinawatra, want to see the
junta resign and fresh elections held. The military,
who overthrew Thaksin over allegations of electoral
fraud, have provoked the ire of Thaksin supporters
by freezing US$1.6 billion of his assets, disbanding his party and
barring him from office for five years. Thaksin has been ordered
to appear in court in Bangkok, but has chosen to stay in England,
where he is bidding to take over Manchester City Football Club.
Kuala Lumpur
Fleeing maid highlights abuse
The plight of Indonesian maids in Malaysia has come
under the microscope after a maid who was allegedly
beaten and starved by her employer knotted pieces
of fabric together to flee a 15-storey apartment.
Sumatran Ceriyati Dapin, 33, was rescued by firefight-
ers while hanging 12 floors up, after fleeing from her
35-year-old female employer who had locked her in.
Malaysian authorities have since suspended 19 maid agencies and black-
listed 85 employers for failing to pay workers. Maids enjoy little protection
under Malaysian labor laws, and earn around US$100 a month.

In brief: World
July 6, 2007
N E W S
New York Montreal

Ripley’s re-opens for business Roid rage suspected in Canadian Crippler killings
After a 35-year absence, Ripley’s Believe it or Police are investigating whether steroid use is to blame
Not, famous for depicting the weird and the in the suicide and double murder of professional
wacky, has opened a new emporium in New wrestler Chris Benoit and his family. Nicknamed the
York’s Times Square. Ripley’s new “Odditorium” is being touted as the “Canadian Crippler,” Benoit is believed to have hung
“greatest collection of unbelievable odd and unusual items ever assembled himself using a weight machine pulley after strangling
under one roof, from this world and beyond!” The collection includes a two- his wife and then suffocating his 7-year-old son. A
headed calf, a six-legged cow, an albino giraffe, a lock of Elvis Presley’s hair Bible had been placed next to their bodies. Anabolic
and 24 shrunken heads from Ecuador. It’s an experience organizers insist is steroids, which can cause paranoia, depression and
a “family affair.” Ripley’s last exhibition in Times Square closed in 1972. explosive outbursts known as “roid rage,” were found
in the house. Benoit was known as a family man and
Washington no suicide note was found.
Bush’s immigration reform collapses
The authority of U.S. President George W. Bush continues to
be undermined after much of his party abandoned him on a key
vote to overhaul the country’s immigration policy. The bill, that
would have given legal status to millions of illegal immigrants in the
United States while strengthening the nation’s borders, was rejected 53 to
46. Despite last minute pleas from Bush, only 12 of 49 Senate Republicans
sided with him in the vote. The contentious bill would have meant some of
the most radical changes to U.S. immigration law in more than 20 years, but
opponents criticized the proposal for rewarding lawbreakers.
Caracas

Chávez calls country to arms

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has warned the United States not to
consider using force against his country. “We are ready to die defending
the sacred sovereignty of our country,” Chávez said on a recent visit to
Russia. Last year, Venezuela bought helicopter gunships, fighter planes
and rifles from Russia worth US$3 billion. Chávez said he welcomed
Russian investment in the country’s booming energy sector and reiterated
his call to U.S. oil companies to the leave the country if they were not
happy with Venezuela’s move towards nationalizing its oil resources. “The
door is open,” he said. Only days earlier, U.S. companies ExxonMobil
and ConocoPhillips pulled out of Venezuela.
Bogota

Same sex marriage bill loses final vote

A new bill approved by the Colombian Congress and supported by
President Alvaro Uribe to allow same-sex couples equivalent access to
social security, health insurance and estate inheritance as heterosexuals has
hit a road-block. The bill had already been approved by the country’s sen-
ate but a final vote was derailed when a senator affiliated to an evangelical
Colombian church called for an unusual floor vote. The ballot allowed
conservative lawmakers to break ranks with their parties, defeating the
bill 34-29 in the 102-member Senate. Many of the bill’s supporters were
absent. Had the bill been passed, Colombia would have become the first
South American country to endorse same-sex relationships.
Lima
Sydney
Cameron Diaz insults Peru
Speeding not “manly” Hollywood star Cameron Diaz has apologized to the
Australian traffic authorities have taken a novel approach to reducing road people of Peru after visiting the ancient Incan city of
deaths, by suggesting drivers who speed have small penises. In a new tele- Machu Picchu carrying a bag emblazoned with a red
vision advertising campaign, women are shown shaking their little fingers star and the words “Serve the People” in Chinese. The slogan, made fam-
as male motorists speed past them. The gesture suggests a man has a small ous by Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, is said to have evoked
appendage. Australia often uses shock-value advertisements in a bid to painful memories in Peru of the Shining Path insurgency which killed
reduce its road-death toll, but the new “Speeding. No-one Thinks Big of almost 70,000 people in the 1980s and early 1990s. “I sincerely apologize
You” campaign has been designed to target a young audience desensitized to anyone I may have inadvertently offended. The bag was a purchase
by graphic computer games and horror films. In the state of New South I made as a tourist in China and I did not realize the potentially hurtful
Wales, speeding accounts for 40 percent of road deaths each year. nature of the slogan printed on it,” Diaz said.

www.nvrmagazine.com
July 6, 2007
N E W S In brief: World

London Berlin

Blair’s final farewell Germany blocks Cruise film

Hostilities in the British House of Commons
were fleetingly suspended for the occasion of
Tony Blair’s final appearance as prime minis-
ter. Watched by his family in the public gallery, MPs from all parties gave
Blair a standing ovation in recognition of his 10 years in power, despite the
confession that “he never pretended to be a great House of Commons man.”
Wife Cherie Blair couldn’t extend the same courtesy to journalists waiting
outside No. 10 Downing Street later the same day, telling them: “I don’t think
we’ll miss you.” Gordon Brown takes over as prime minister after being the
country’s longest-serving finance minister of modern times.
See Broker Blair, pg 15
London
The German government has blocked mak-
ers of an American movie from filming on
a German military site because Tom Cruise, its star and co-producer, is
a Scientologist. Valkyrie stars Cruise in the role of Colonel Claus von
Staffenberg, who led an unsuccessful plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in
1944. Director Bryan Singer planned to film at the Bendlerblock memorial
in Berlin, where von Staffenberg hatched the plot, but the government
intervened on the grounds that Scientology’s money-making goes against
the country’s constitution. Cruise’s religion also upset Germany’s Christian
Democratic Party and von Staffenberg’s 72-year-old son, who said that
the actor should “keep his hands off my father.”

Muhammad by thy name

Muhammad could become the most popular name in Britain, after it came
second in last year’s registration of boys’ births. The prophet’s name was given
to 6,010 babies in 2006, second only to the 6,928 children called Jack. Officially,
Muhammad did not appear in the top 10 boys’ names published by the U.K.’s
Office of National Statistics, because the registrations are split into 16 differ-
ent spelling variations. There were 12 percent more babies with the name
Muhammad than in 2005, and experts predict that above-average fertility rates
among British Muslims will make the name the most popular this year.
Paris

France’s power-couple split

Ségolène Royal, the Socialist presidential
candidate who lost the French election
to Nicolas Sarkozy in May, has split from
long-term partner and Socialist party leader
Françoise Hollande, admitting their relation-
ship had been in trouble throughout her campaign. The pair, who were
considered France’s foremost power-couple, had been together for 30
years and had four children together. Royal said she asked Hollande to
leave their Paris home so that he could pursue “his love interest” else-
where. Hollande said the split had “no political cause” and “no political
consequence.” Rumors of a break-up had dogged Royal’s campaign, par-
ticularly after the couple were photographed shaking hands in March.
Baghdad

Chemical Ali to hang

There was little surprise in Iraq that Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known
as “Chemical Ali,” received the harshest sentence possible for his role in
the massacre of Kurds during the so-called Anfal campaign of the late
1980s. Al-Majid, a cousin of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, was
given five death sentences for ordering the use of deadly nerve agents and
mustard gas which led to the deaths of as many as 180,000 people. As the
verdict was read, al-Majid was heard to say “Thank God.” The trial also
heard how victims were tortured and executed in concentration camps as
part of a campaign to try to eradicate Kurds from northern Iraq.
Tehran
Khartoum
Fuel rationing sparks protests
Sudan agrees to Darfur peacekeepers The start of fuel rationing in Iran has led to unprecedented scenes of vio-
Following months of pressure from the United Nations and Western lence as protesters torched several petrol stations across Tehran. Queues
governments, Sudan agreed to allow a joint U.N.-African Union force of several hundred meters formed outside stations as the government
of 20,000 peacekeepers into the country’s ravaged Darfur region. The imposed the plan, which is expected to last between four and six months.
joint force will replace a 7,000-strong African Union force that observers President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hopes prices will rise for a commodity
say did little to stop the violence. International experts say some 200,000 that currently costs less than for a comparable amount of mineral water.
people have died and about 2.5 million been displaced in four years of Such is the level of consumption in Iran that the country is forced to
fighting. Observers have warned, however, that the U.N.-African Union spend billions of dollars importing petrol from abroad, despite being
peacekeepers stand little chance of success. OPEC’s second largest oil producer.

www.nvrmagazine.com

Business
July 6, 2007
N E W S

Yang at Yahoo
Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang (pic-
tured) has replaced Terry Semel
as CEO of Yahoo, while Susan
Decker, a key Yahoo executive,
was named president. Semel pre-
sided over five years of 20 percent
annual sales growth at Yahoo, but
in recent years, the company has
lost its lead in Internet advertising
to competitor Google. Last year
alone, Yahoo shares fell 35 per-
cent. Taipei-born Yang, however,
says he can turn things around.
“I believe that Yahoo has all the
assets it takes to win, and we’re well
positioned to do just that,” he said
following the announcement.
Will Yang and Decker be able to
do what Semel couldn’t? “I doubt
it,” said Fred Vogelstein in Wired.
com. Semel’s biggest mistake was
that he let rival Google grow from
a “pipsqueak into a giant.” Now,
not only is Google the “most ef-
ficient producer of content on the
planet,” but it doesn’t even have
to pay for marketing; when it re-
leases a new product, “everyone
comes.”
Google isn’t Yang’s only chal-
lenge, said the Financial Times
(London). Yes, he’s “older and
Apple’s Steve Jobs and Microsoft’s
Bill Gates have pulled it off, but
they’re exceptions to the rule.
What’s more, Yang has “a cred-
ibility problem” because he’s been
at the company through its recent
problems, said the Los Angeles
Times. He “isn’t like Michael Dell,
Steve Jobs and other high-profile
executives who returned to rescue
the companies they founded.”
Some people at Yahoo believe
Yang’s position is only temporary
and that Decker will soon take
over, said Kevin J. Delaney in The
Wall Street Journal. However, Yang
denies such claims. And at least
one former president of Yahoo,
Jeff Mallet, agrees. He described
Yang as having always been “half
in that chair [of CEO].” But others
in the company perceive Yang as
a “gentleman founder” who’s “not
that involved in the day-to-day
operation of the business.”
One thing’s for sure, said Miguel
Helft in The New York Times: the
shake-up has “left investors with
Founder and savior? Yang is more “a technologist than a manager” more questions than answers.”
wiser” than when he founded the than a manager. Running a public Shortly after the announcement,
company in 1995 [he’s now 38], company takes “sophisticated” Yahoo shares fell 49 cents to
but he’s still more of a technologist management skills. People like US$27.63.

In the courts... Good week for...

Judge loses pants and court case
A Washington, D.C judge who filed a US$54 million lawsuit against his
dry cleaners over a pair of missing pants “will not get a penny,” says
Ariel Sabar in The New York Times. Roy Pearson could not prove that
Korean-owned Custom Cleaners was misleading customers with its
"satisfaction guranteed" sign, after one of his suits was returned without
the pants in 2005 following a US$10.50 alteration job (they were found
two days later, though Pearson argued unsuccessfully they had been
replaced by a cheaper pair). Pearson will have to pay up to US$5,000
in court costs, and possibly up to US$100,000 in legal fees if Judge
Judith Bartnoff, who delivered the verdict, deems the lawsuit “frivolous.”
Pearson rejected a US$12,000
settlement in March, and
continued to argue that U.S.
consumer protection law entitled
him to “thousands of dollars
for each day over nearly four
years in which signs at the shop
promised ‘same day service’
and ‘satisfaction guaranteed.’”
The verdict brings a “momentary
pause” to a case that has
“inspired international ridicule
and calls for legal reform.”
Taken to the cleaners: Pearson
Wendi Deng, the Chinese wife of Rupert Murdoch, who was given
an official post within News Corp. as chief of strategy of MySpace
China.
Chinese workers, who are set to enjoy improved working conditions
thanks to new laws which set standards for labour contracts, use of
temporary workers and severance pay. The move follows a crackdown
by authorities on illegal labor practices after an outcry over revelations
of slave labor at brick factories in the country’s central provinces.
Bad week for...
Chinese consumers, after inflation hit a 27-month high in May,
according to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics.
Food prices, which comprise a third of the consumer basket, rose
8.3 percent from a year earlier and a shortage of pork caused meat
prices to jump 26.5 percent.
Thomas the Tank Engine, after the U.S. Consumer Product Safety
Commission announced that toy maker, RC2 Corporation of Oak
Brook, Ill., was recalling some 1.5 million Thomas & Friends wooden
railway toys because its Chinese manufacturer appeared to have used
highly-leaded pigments in their paint.
See Tainted toys, pg 9

www.nvrmagazine.com
July 6, 2007
N E W S
Viewpoint
China’s virtual gold rush Tainted toys
The Internet has produced some
pretty weird jobs over the years,
but it’s hard to imagine anything
“more surreal than that of the
Chinese gold farmer,” says Julian
Dibbel in The New York Times. An
estimated 100,000 workers, mostly
migrants, toil in online fantasy
games like World of Warcraft
(WOW), killing monsters and
robbing them of virtual gold to
sell to Westerners. In fact, China
produces the “bulk” of the world’s
virtual booty in what has become
a US$1.8 billion-a-year business.
The individual gold farmers them-
selves see only a fraction of that,
earning about 30 cents an hour.
This “gray market,” called real-
money trading, is prohibited by
game companies, but it persists
nonetheless. Recently, American
WOW players filed a “first of its
kind” class-action lawsuit against
the virtual-gold retailer, IGE. But
in the end, it’s the farmers, not
the customers, “who catch it in
the face.” The Internet is experi-
encing an anti-Chinese backlash
with “homemade” WOW video
clips posted to YouTube bear-
ing names like “Chinese Farmer
Extermination.” And farmers are
being called “vermin” and “rats”
— rhetoric that bears “unsettling
parallels” to 19th-century U.S.
literature on immigrant Chinese
laundry workers.
Media
A Bollywood fairytale for Disney?
Disney has teamed up with Yash
Raj Films to make at least one
feature-length animated movie
a year, in what will be the com-
pany’s first deal to co-produce
films in India. The first film,
Roadside Romeo — understood to
be about a spoilt dog who is aban-
doned on the streets of Mumbai
— will feature traditional Indian
singing and dancing plus the
voices of Bollywood stars Saif Ali
Khan and Kareena Kapoor.
Disney aims to “crack the
growing Indian entertainment
market,” said The Independent
(London). Bob Iger, Disney’s
chief executive, “has put growth
in overseas markets at the top of
the company’s agenda.” Disney
www.nvrmagazine.com
Viewpoint
Thomas the Tank Engine has
served up some “important lessons
about regulating environmental
poisons in the global economy,”
says Christian Warren in The New
York Times. In the United States,
the Consumer Product Safety
Commission recalled 1.5 million
Chinese-manufactured Thomas
& Friends wooden railway toys
because their coatings contained
lead. The recall of lead-tainted
children’s products is not unusual,
but the products are almost always
cheap, un-branded novelties and
trinkets rather than a product
purchased in “upscale toy stores.”
A “spirited game of blame and
counterblame has ensued”: people
argue the American company, RC2
Corporation, “should have exer-
cised more control over its Chinese
partners”; that the commission
should have caught the problem
earlier; and that President George
W. Bush should not have cut the
commission’s budget by 10 percent
in the last two years. The solution
is not just to prevent the import of
dangerous toys, but “to help inter-
national partners curtail the use of
lead and other toxic substances in
their own markets.” Lax regulations
may lower costs, “but it perpetuates
the risk to our children,” who will
not be safe until “stiff standards are
global norms.”
See Letters, pg 17
has been working “particularly
hard” to find production partners
in India, spurred on by last year’s
appointment of Indian film pro-
ducer Shyam PS to head its Indian
studios. The company already
owns India’s Disney Channel,
and last year bought Hungama
TV, a Hindi-language children’s
channel.
“This could be huge,” said
Foreign Policy. Yash Raj Films ex-
pect the Indian animation market
to triple its returns of US$40 mil-
lion by 2011 — “probably not an
unreasonable estimation.”
No it’s not, said the Financial
Times (London). Once upon a
time, Bollywood returns were
“about as predictable as, but
Business

Seung-Youn Kim
South Korea’s richest brawler
Seung-Youn Kim, one of South Korea’s richest tycoons, has been given
18 months in jail for “abducting and beating up a group of karaoke bar
workers” who had attacked his son, says Phillippe Naughton in The Times
(London). Kim, who is head of the Hanwha group, South Korea’s 12th-largest
conglomerate, and worth around US$1 billion, “stormed into an upmarket
karaoke bar” with several bodyguards, looking for the men responsible for
beating up his son, a 22-year-old Harvard University student. The victims were
taken to “a building site outside Seoul,” where the businessman
“kicked and punched” them, as well as threatening them
with an electronic shock device and hitting one of
with a steel pipe. Kim said during his trial that he
asked his bodyguards to take
over because he “got tired” of
beating the workers himself.
The judge said Kim had taken
“advantage of his status to
carry out ‘organized’ violence for
private purposes.” The Hanwha
group has interests in explosives,
petrochemicals, finance,
insurance, telecommunications,
construction and retail, and
owns the Hanwha Eagles
baseball team.
Currency counter
Currencies RMB Weekly change (%)
United States (US$1) 7.61 - 0.21
Euro (€1) 10.28 + 0.11
United Kingdom (£1) 15.27 + 0.15
Japan (¥100) 6.17 - 0.03
Korea (₩1000) 8.24 - 0.06
Singapore (S$1) 4.98 + 0.32
Malaysia (RM 1) 2.21 - 0.23
Australia ($A 1) 6.46 - 0.23
Canada (CAN $1) 7.16 + 0.37
Hong Kong (HK$1) 0.97 - 0.27
Taiwan (NT$10) 2.32 - 0.50
rather less uplifting than, the
plotline of the average Hindi
movie.” While the world’s big-
gest movie market sells 3.7 bil-
lion tickets a year, the industry
has traditionally offered “mis-
erable returns to its backers.”
Revenues have been “swallowed
up by a blend of piracy, taxes
and inefficiencies.” But the fact
that companies like Disney are
starting to enter Bollywood “is
testament to improving industry
dynamics.” Reduced piracy, new Disney: not such a small world
ways of mitigating taxes, more analysts now say Bollywood of-
overseas shooting locations and fers returns of about 30-35 per-
increasingly specialized entertain- cent, “not too dissimilar” from
ment companies are just a few of Hollywood. “Years of tears fol-
the ways in which the industry is lowed by a happy ending? How
streamlining itself. As a result, Bollywood.”
10
People
America’s tiger tamer
Rai of light U.S. Democratic
Senator Charles
Schumer has
China by the tail
and he’s not about
to let go, “no mat-
ter how loudly the
tiger roars,” says Tom Plate in a
syndicated column. Brooklyn-born
Schumer, 57, is “on China’s case”
over its under-valued currency and
burgeoning bilateral trade deficit
with America. But Schumer, who
is as “rough as a Brooklyn bookie,”
despite a Harvard education, wants
to “red hook” Beijing with tariffs
and sanctions. That’s in sharp
contrast to U.S. Treasury Secretary
Henry Paulson who has “skill-
Rai is "ludicrously beautiful" fully” played the “supplicant role
[to China] of the vassal from a far
Indian actress Aishwarya Rai is at the Cannes Film Festival. And province requesting the emperor’s
“ludicrously beautiful,” says Martyn her most recent film, Provoked, a beneficence.” In this “tale of three
Palmer in The Times (London). And true story about Kiranjit Ahluwalia, cities” — Washington, Beijing
that’s not just a personal opinion: who, after an arranged marriage, and Brooklyn — Washington
the judges of Miss World (she suffered horrific abuse at the hands seems for now to be holding back
held the title in 1994), Harpers & of the British husband she later Schumer’s red hook and “leaning
Queen, Hello! and Julia Roberts all murdered, is a good example of her eastward toward Beijing.”
agree. After watching her in the “refusal to be pigeon-holed.”
“lavish potboiler” Devdas, Roberts Rai, 33, grew up in a traditional
described Rai as the most beautiful family in Mumbai, where as a
woman she’d ever seen. With her teenager, she “fended off offers
Open-source optimist
Jimmy Wales,
“big, almond-shaped blue-green of modeling work,” hoping in-
the founder of
eyes, lips to rival [Angelina] Jolie’s stead to focus on her studies. She
in the bee-stung stakes, honeyed wanted to be an architect but at Wikipedia, is “an
skin and a figure to die for,” it’s no 18 she sealed her fate by doing Internet rock star,”
wonder there are 17,000 Web sites a fashion spread as a favor for a says Katherine
devoted to her, with the number teacher. After that, says Rai, “the Mangu in Reason
growing each year. And not only modeling work started coming Magazine. But de-
does Rai get the pick of Bollywood in and it kind of never stopped.” spite his notoriety,
roles — she’s starred in over In April, Rai married fellow the 40-year-old public face of one
40 films since 1997 — increas- Bollywood actor, the “ludicrously of the world’s 10 most popular
Web sites “plays it low key.” Wales,
ingly, she’s getting offered roles in handsome” Abhishek Bachchan.
who lives with his family in a one-
Western movies as well. “Miss World, Bollywood star and
But Rai isn’t just a pretty face. In beyond: Aishwarya Rai has done story bungalow in Florida, is mod-
2003, she was the first Indian ac- the lot.” Now prepare yourself for est when it comes to Wikipedia’s
tress to be invited to sit on the jury Ash and Abhi. success. “We make the Internet
not suck,” he says. Wales’ latest
project is “Wikia,” a free Internet
Gaffe of the week
tool based on Wikipedia that en-
ables users to create open-source
communities. For now, the biggest
A joke in bag taste “wikis” are devoted to Star Trek
It seems the head of Britain’s equality watchdog, Trevor Phillips, forgot
that royalty are a little more equal than everyone else. While giving
and Star Wars but Wales hopes
a recent after-dinner speech on Queen Elizabeth II’s official birthday, to one day start an open-source
Phillips joked about having once danced with the late queen mother search engine he calls “The Google
and having to avoid clasping her colostomy bag. Phillips said that Killer,” armed with a commun-
as a student leader he was briefed by Buckingham Palace officials ity of volunteers who “rerank
about how to dance with the queen mother at a ball. “One said, ‘Mr Phillips, I results and tweak algorithms” so
need to share something with you. When you’re dancing with the queen mother as to streamline searches. Wales,
you will have to lay your hands on her.’” Phillips replied: “Yes, that’s what who calls himself a “pathological
happens in dancing. But I’m not going to grope the queen mother,” to which optimist,” is certain things will
the aide said: “You have to be careful where you put your hands. You have to be
careful about the colostomy bag.” The joke with the audience of some 2,000
work out — which means, soon,
went down like a, well, lead colostomy bag. Phillips later issued an apology. there will be “another reason the
Internet doesn’t suck.”
July 6, 2007
N E W S
The word
around town
Actor Christian Bale
was attacked by
angry ants during
the filming of his
new film Rescue
Dawn. The
Batman Begins
star agreed to
hang upside down with his face
buried in an ants’ nest for a torture
scene in the movie, in which he
plays a prisoner of war. “I could’ve
done without that,” said Bale.
Ex-jailbird Paris Hilton has been
dumped by her agent because
she “just wasn’t worth it,” says
Us Weekly magazine. A source at
Endeavor Agency was reported
as saying, “The goal was to make
her the Martha Stewart of her
generation. It just didn’t work out
that way.”
A DNA test has
confirmed that
Eddie Murphy is
the father of his
ex-lover Melanie
Brown’s 11-week-
old daughter, Iris.
The comedian —
who notoriously
dumped a
pregnant Brown, aka “Scary
Spice,” and intimated during
interviews that she slept around
— took the court-ordered test last
month.
Prince William has rekindled his
romance with Kate Middleton
after seeing her partying with other
men. The second in line to the
British throne was reminded of
what he was missing when he saw
pictures of a happy Kate enjoying
nights out on the town without
him, said a royal source. Since
their split in April, Kate has been
spotted enjoying herself in London
clubs with apparently no shortage
of male suitors.
The husband of former
Hong Kong actress
Moon Lee has filed
for divorce, alleging
that the 42-year-
old had an affair with
their godson. Dennis
Law told the Apple
Daily newspaper he
returned to the couple’s
apartment one day last
year to find his godson,
dancer Zong Tianyi, hiding half-
naked in his closet.
www.nvrmagazine.com
July 6, 2007
N E W S
In their
own words
“Other than the diamonds
and all of that... I’m
really low maintenance.”
Bollywood actress Shilpa
Shetty on her easy-
going dating style.
“Reviewing takes expertise,
wisdom and judgment. I am
not much fond of the notion
that anyone’s view is as good
as anyone else’s.” Author Ian
McEwan on Internet reviewers.
“A girl’s history book
is important. One
ex too many and
others will think you
have a bad record.” Hong Kong
actress Fiona Sit on how rumored
relationships destroy reputations.
“She’s accomplished many
missions impossible. It’s okay to be
pushed down by a girl. I have my
movies anyway.” Singer Jay Chou
on the possibility of losing to fellow
songster Jolin Tsai in album sales.
“The price tag is the art.” Journalist
Nick Cohen trashing artist Damien
Hirst, who unveiled a diamond-
covered skull for sale for US$100
million.
“It was pretty embarrassing. They
brought Brad and me in, and they
just made us take off our shirts and
stand there for a while, and then
they picked Brad.” Actor George
Clooney on losing the hitchhiker
role in Thelma & Louise to Brad
Pitt.
“I always felt as if I had
been born into the wrong
family. I felt that I should
have been royal.” Actress
Jessica Alba on growing
up poor.
“Seeing a hereditary monarch
reward people by calling them a
‘Member of the British Empire’
in 2007 makes me sad for my
country.” The Independent’s
columnist Johann Hari on the
Queen’s Birthday Honors List.
“Here [in the United States] they
get their snatches waxed. I get a
strip, a runway strip. I don’t think I
could get it done in England. They
stare at it. They spend ages doing
it. It’s like, ‘Get it over and f***ing
done with!’” Britpop singer Lily
Allen admires the bravery of body
conscious American women.
www.nvrmagazine.com
No more Paris
Mika Brzezinski,
an MSNBC mor-
ning presenter,
“obviously wasn’t
thrilled with her
lead story” when she was given a
script about Paris Hilton’s release
from jail, says Richard Gizbert
in The Huffington Post. “She an-
nounced on air that she didn’t want
to read it,” which she got away with
in the first news block. But when a
Hilton story appeared at the top of
the second news block, Brzezinski
tried to burn the script with a
producer’s lighter, “before settling
for just ripping it up.” At this point
her co-presenter, ex-Congressman
Joe Scarborough, picked up the
scraps of paper and sniffed them,
presumably “imagining that he
had in his possession a pair of Ms.
Hilton’s underwear.” The third
time a Hilton story appeared,
Brzezinski “ran the script through
the shredder.” Brzezinski’s father
was President Jimmy Carter’s na-
tional security advisor, and she’s “a
bit of a celebrity herself, albeit one
who is lumbered with a brain.” A la
Hilton, she could certainly “smell
the ratings.”
The other Churchill
Arabella Churchill, granddaugh-
ter of Sir Winston, is one of the
“founders, organizers and guiding
spirits” of Glastonbury, England’s
biggest outdoor rock festival, says
Cole Moreton in The Independent
(London). Churchill, 57, was
“very close” to her grandfather,
who died in 1965 when she was
15. Back then, the Churchills
were “almost as famous” as the
royal Windsor family, which meant
that the “glamorous debutante”
Arabella constantly found herself
the subject of media scrutiny. So
she ran away to a Glastonbury
in 1971 and liked it so much she
decided to stay. Since then she has
overseen the festival’s non-musical
acts. Once a year she commands
“a mutant army of jugglers, sword
swallowers, contortionists and fire
breathers as well as serious actors,
dancers and some of the biggest
names in comedy.” Churchill dis-
likes comparisons with her famous
grandfather. “I was no good at be-
ing Churchill,” she says. “People
never saw me for me.”
11
People
Obituary
U.N. head who tried to hide his Nazi past
Kurt Waldheim, 1918-2007
Kurt Waldheim, who was elected
President of Austria despite rev-
elations of his former ties to Nazi
Germany, has died aged 81.
The disclosure ensured he be-
came “the best known Austrian
politician since Adolf Hitler,” said
The Daily Telegraph (London). It
was an achievement that also owed
something to his high-profile role
as Secretary-General of the United
Nations (1972-1982). After study-
ing law in Vienna, his decision to
join the Nazi student association
in 1938 showed “opportunism” if
not necessarily “convictions” in the Waldheim: "opportunism"
movement’s ideology. But his role He hoped to serve a third term but
as an intelligence officer linking the proposal was vetoed by China.
Italian and German forces in 1942 If Waldheim had chosen to bow
fully implicated him in the massacre out of public office at this point,
of partisans at Kozara in Bosnia “his Nazi past would probably
that year. After the war, he served never have been revealed,” said
as his country’s ambassador to the Jonathan Kandell in The New York
United Nations, a springboard to Times. But running once more for
the organization’s top job. the Austrian presidency in 1986,
He viewed his appointment as rival politicians began to investigate
“fitting compensation” for failing his wartime record. A newspaper
to win the Austrian presidency uncovered his Nazi associations
the previous year, said The Times and the findings were made public
(London). But it was rumored that by the World Jewish Congress. The
Waldheim’s “mediocrity” was seen revelations, however, were regarded
as his most fitting qualification for by many Austrians as an “intolerable
a post which was soon to be “de- interference by foreigners,” and they
liberately downgraded.” A “hot elected Waldheim regardless. It was
temper” may have marked him out also true that many Austrians saw in
as a difficult boss, but his efficient his life a “parable of their own,” as
handling of what was then seen as citizens of a nation that was occu-
an “unmanageable” organization pied by Germany and which forced
ensured his re-election in 1977. As them to collaborate. But even an
an “indefatigable” worker, he acted investigation at Waldheim’s own
as a personal go-between in the behest found he must have been
“tortuous” negotiations to release aware of certain “atrocities,” even
the hostages from the American if he wasn’t guilty of “war crimes.”
Embassy in Tehran in 1981. And Right up until his death he expressed
he wasn’t without “moral courage” no “remorse or regret” for his ac-
in forcing the United Nations to tions, preferring to see himself as
directly address terrorism after the “an ordinary citizen who had been
Munich Olympic Games massacre. caught in a maelstrom.”
Farewell
Vilma Espin
"First lady" of the Cuban revolution, aged 77.
Gianfranco Ferre
Italian designer known as the “architect of fashion,” aged 62.
Ruth Bell Graham
The woman behind American evangelist Billy Graham, aged 87.
Bernard Manning
Racist, homophobic and misogynistic British comedian, aged 76.
Richard Rorty
American philosopher, aged 75.
12
Sport July 6, 2007
N E W S

Olympic watch
Basketball

Generation Yi 399 days to go

China’s Yi Jianlian, who has just
been drafted into the NBA for
the Milwaukee Bucks, is not just
another player, said Liz Robbins in
The New York Times. He’s a “sym-
bol of discovery that is rippling
through [China].” The 7-feet tall Yi
joins the NBA at a time when “its
players, agents and multiple shoe
companies” are all wanting to get
a foothold in China in the run up
to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The
success of players like Yi is “critical
to the international growth of the
game,” especially in China where,
according to NBA estimates, some
300 million people play organized
basketball. NBA Commissioner
David Stern knows this all too
well, saying, “It is time for us to
be making a greater investment in
China… to take advantage of the
opportunities, from marketing, to
new media, to retail, to merchan-
dise, to television.”
But is Yi any good? asked Stephen
Wade in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Yi helps China aim high
And will he “have the impact of the
Houston Rockets’ Yao Ming?” Or
will his stay in the NBA match the
“short, modest” careers of Wang
Zhizhi and Mengke Bateer, the
only other Chinese players in the
league? No one really knows, as
Yi remains a “mystery.” Even his
age is a matter of contention. The
Chinese Basketball Association
claims he’s 20, while others say he’s
three years older.
Whatever the case, his “pace,
natural leap and soft hands” evi-
dently impressed the Milwaukee
Bucks enough to pick him, said
Reuters. But it remains to be seen
whether the former Guangdong
Tigers power forward will be able
to “step out from the shadow of
Yao Ming and carve out a career in
the world’s top league in his own
way.” The only certainty is that
Yi’s arrival in the United States
will only “deepen China’s passion-
ate love affair with basketball and
the NBA.”
China’s golden boy Liu Xiang
isn’t content with holding the
current 110 meter hurdles world
record. “I think I have the chance
to break the world record again this
year and I’m sure I can run faster,”
said Liu. With the hopes of a nation
on his shoulders, his coach Sun
Haiping is now demanding that
Liu gets special “leg insurance” to
protect his career, which is worth
an estimated US$2.5 million a
year in endorsements.
China is building a highway to
Mount Everest in preparation for
the 2008 Olympic torch relay,
running up to base camp at 5,200
meters — the highest road on
earth in one of the world’s most
remote regions. The torch relay will
cover 85,000 miles in total, lasting
for 130 days and reaching the
peak of Everest.
Numbers game
17,000, the total tons being
shipped from Hainan Island to
Chaoyang Park in Beijing for
the Olympic Beach Volleyball
Competition, at a cost of US$1.28
million.

Cycling
Profile
Avoiding scandal
Peng Shuai “Never mind who wins,” said Julien
Back from the brink Pretot in The Washington Post, the
Just a year ago, the “rise of the East” in women’s tennis was predicted Tour de France organizers “just
when Li Na became the first Chinese woman to reach the Wimbledon want their sport to emerge scan-
quarter finals, said Katie Scott in The Times (London). But this may dal-free” when the race finishes
have been a “false dawn” since only one Chinese player made the
second round in this year’s tournament. For Chinese No. 2 Peng Shuai,
later this month. After a “traumatic
however, even qualifying for Wimbledon was an achievement. Peng experience” last year, when winner
nearly quit the sport last year due to disillusionment and depression. Floyd Landis tested positive for
Her change of heart is due to her new coach Michael Chang, the former doping, and further drug scandals
world No. 2 and the 1989 French Open winner, who has made Peng throughout this year, everyone is
believe in herself again. And Peng may just have got the break she hoping for a “smooth ride.” The
needs. One half of the reigning Wimbledon doubles champions, Zheng Tour is not only looking for a new Vinokourov: "pin-up boy"
Jie, is about to winner, said Alasdair Fotheringham as the new hero? The favorite is
undergo surgery on in The Independent (London), but “for Alexander Vinokourov (pictured),
her ankle that will
put her in doubt for
some kind of credibility as a sport- said William Fotheringham in the
next year’s Games, ing event.” And “it will be looking Guardian (London). Kazakhstan’s
paving the way for hard.” This is one of the reasons that “most popular sportsman” is the
Peng to step in the start of the race will take place kind of pin-up boy the sport needs:
alongside Yan Zi. in London, giving the event a fresh “blond, with piercing blue eyes and
Yan believes she lease of life. But who will emerge the stocky build of a boxer.”
can emulate her
Wimbledon doubles Coming up
success with her
2014 Winter Olympics venue announcement, Guatemala July 7
new partner, despite
Tour de France, July 7-29
having never played
British Formula One Grand Prix, Silverstone July 8
together.
Fed Cup tennis semi-finals and play-offs, July 14-15
German Moto GP, Sachsenring July 15
Peng's return: the Chinese No. 2 almost quit British Open Golf Championship, Carnoustie July 19-22

www.nvrmagazine.com
July 6, 2007
N E W S
Older and wiser
A 20-year study from Norway
has confirmed “what many older
siblings have thought all along
— they’re smarter,” said Kavita
Mishra in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Experts have long disputed the
role that birth order plays in in-
telligence, but now “the debate
is over,” according to researcher
Petter Kristensen, a professor of
epidemiology at Oslo University.
His team looked at the IQ scores of
250,000 men as they entered com-
pulsory military service, including
60,000 pairs of brothers. Previous
studies suggest women are similarly
affected by birth ranking.
The findings are “the latest twist
in a phenomenon that scientists
have long noticed but have been
at a loss to explain,” said Denise
Amazon vs. Nile
A team of scientists from Brazil
are claiming the Amazon River,
“not the Nile, is the longest in the
world,” said John Loach in National
Geographic. The Amazon in Brazil
was always known to be larger in
volume, but it was thought to be
slightly shorter than the African
Nile. But the findings of a 14-day
expedition has now “extended” the
Amazon by about 284 kilometers,
after the discovery of new head-
waters at the mouth of the river.
The researchers claim this makes
it 105 kilometers longer than the
Nile. The two rivers have been
at the center of a “centuries old
rivalry” as to which is the longest.
Glenn Switkes, co-ordinator for
conservation group International
Rivers Network, believes the debate
over the length is “trivial” but hopes
the publicity will focus attention on
efforts to build more than 60 large
dams on the Amazon’s tributaries.
www.nvrmagazine.com
Gellene in the Los Angeles Times.
Nobel prizes are awarded to more
firstborns than other siblings, and
they make up “disproportion-
ate numbers” in American col-
leges. Kristensen’s analysis found
firstborns had an average IQ of
103.2, roughly 2 points higher
than second-borns and 3 points
higher than third-born sons. But
the reason they’re on a “trajectory
for success” has nothing to do
with genetics and everything to do
with their parents. Boys who only
became the eldest after the death
of an older sibling, for example,
were found to have IQs very close
to firstborns. Kristensen contends
this is because they are given a
similar amount of responsibility
and are treated as “leaders” by
World’s ugliest plant
“It lives for 2,000 years, has only
two leaves, and has been called
the most hideous plant on earth,”
said Sean Thomas in the Daily
Mail (London). While the giant
panda, Siberian tigers and moun-
tain gorillas enjoy the limelight as
endangered species, the “silence
is deafening” when it comes to
the welwitschia, which also faces
imminent extinction. It grows up
to 6 meters wide and 2 meters
tall, with each leaf reaching up to
75 meters long, and lives perhaps
longer than any other organism.
“There are welwitschias around
today that were first showing their
ugly little tendrils when Jesus was
a boy.” But changing climate and
human pressure are destroying its
habitat in Southern Africa’s Namib
Desert. It’s a shame, because
the welwitschia is a “triumphant
counterblast” against a world that
ranks beauty above all else.
13
Health & Science
Some might say I'm smarter: Noel and Liam Gallagher
their families. But then, as birth
order expert Prof. Frank Sulloway
points out, Isaac Newton and
Charles Darwin are both examples
of “revolutionary thinkers” who
had older siblings.
In fact, Charles Darwin was the
fifth of six children and “didn’t
fare very well in some of his classes
at Cambridge,” said Katharine
Sanderson in Nature. Sulloway cites
the father of evolutionary science
Birds’ new habit
Birds are apparently starting to
take up smoking, said Roger
Highfield in The Daily Telegraph
(London). But instead of inhaling,
they are using cigarettes “to fumi-
gate parasites from their wings.”
Rooks in Britain have been spot-
ted swooping onto cigarette butts
as soon as they’ve been discarded
by humans. One man saw a rook
pick up butts on the station plat-
form in Exeter, pulling its wings
over the butt to “collect the
smoke” underneath. “It seemed
as if it were using the smoke to rid
itself of ants or something simi-
lar.” Another rook carried out the
same routine when another ciga-
rette was flicked away. Richard
Archer, of the Royal Society
for the Protection of Birds, said
the birds may have adapted and
learned that cigarettes can be used
to kill parasites. “Rooks are very
intelligent,” he said.
as a perfect example of a later-born
who proved to be “good at differ-
ent things.”
A famous older child like rock
singer Noel Gallagher of Oasis,
however, would no doubt agree
with the findings, said Steve Connor
in The Independent (London). While
younger sibling Liam “causes havoc,
starts fights and occasionally sings,”
there’s little argument about where
the real talent in the pair lies.
Big ideas
A ring that costs peanuts
Scientists at Edinburgh University
have developed a technique “to
create artificial diamonds from
peanut butter,” said the Edinburgh
Evening News. Peanut butter is just
one of many carbon rich materials
that can be transformed into the
gems simply by “squeezing” at
very high pressures. The technique
involves squeezing the paste
between two diamonds at a
pressure greater than that “found
in the center of the earth.” The
same technique is also being used
to turn oxygen into red crystals.
Professor Malcolm McMahon of
the university’s Centre for Science
and Extreme Conditions described
the research as “the holy grail of
high-pressure physics,” in being
able to discover the “metallic
phase” of hydrogen. “Metallic
hydrogen would be unlike any
other metal ever seen,” he said.
“It is predicted to have a number
of unusual properties, including
being a superconductor at room
temperature.”
14
Opinions: Asia
North Korea
Will Kim disarm this time?
After four months of diplomatic wrangling,
Washington and Pyongyang agreed on a
three-week timetable for shutting down North
Korea’s nuclear reactor, following a surprise
visit to the reclusive state from top U.S. envoy
Christopher Hill on June 21.
“Stay tuned,” Hill told reporters on his arrival
in Tokyo following his visit to North Korea,
the first by a high-ranking U.S. official since
October 2002.
The three-week timetable followed the re-
lease of some US$25 million of North Korean
funds, frozen by Washington two years ago
on account of alleged money laundering and
counterfeiting. Pyongyang had demanded the
funds be unfrozen as a prerequisite to shutting
down its reactor under the disarmament agree-
ment it reached in February with the United
States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
Pyongyang, which conducted its first nuclear
test explosion last October, had pledged to close
the reactor in exchange for energy aid.
A team of U.N. nuclear inspectors will now be
allowed to visit North Korean’s nuclear reactor
to verify its closure.
Washington’s “good-cop strategy” towards
Pyongyang seems to have worked, “for now,”
said Mitchell Landsberg in the Los Angeles Times.
But it’s “far too early” to say whether it will suc-
ceed in “peacefully persuading” Pyongyang to
give up its nuclear program for good.
Well, “we won’t be holding our breath,”
said The Washington Post in an editorial.
Since February’s disarmament agreement,
Washington “has made a string of concessions”
to Pyongyang, which “has done nothing, other
than skillfully extract those favors.” Hill’s visit
to North Korea is a perfect example, as up
until that point Washington had consistently
refused direct dealings in favor of the six-party
format.
Hill’s visit was certainly a “propaganda tri-
umph” for Pyongyang, said The Straits Times
(Singapore) in an editorial. It made the news
about the nuclear reactor seem “almost second-
ary.” It’s hard to imagine that so little as US$25
million — “petty cash in sovereign finance
terms” — has delayed until now Pyongyang’s
compliance with February’s agreement. But it
turned out to be a crucial component of that
compliance, “rather like a jetliner missing a
critical bolt.”
“The money was the easy part,” said the Los
Angeles Times in an editorial. “Now comes the
hard part.” February’s agreement was vague
about the “truly critical issues” which are yet
to be negotiated, not least of which is: “what
does ‘disabling’ mean?” Pyongyang wants
to disable its reactor “in such a way that its
bomb-making apparatus could be restarted
within days.” Washington, however, is looking
at something “that would require months or
years to reverse.”
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July 6, 2007
China
Can’t tell who’s Hu?
“Such is the level of confusion” regarding the
state of Chinese surnames that China’s public
security ministry wants to introduce a law allow-
ing parents to give their children hyphenated
surnames, says Jane Macartney in The Times
(London). The current law says that a child must
be given the surname of either his mother or
father. But China’s 1.3 billion people share only
about 100 surnames, which leads to more than
a little confusion. China has so many Wangs
(93 million) that if they seceded they’d become
the world’s 12th-most-populous nation. And
the U.N.’s World Food Program, “distributed
annually to people in 82 countries,” wouldn’t
be enough to feed China’s 88 million Zhangs.
Apart from the most popular names — Wang,
Zhang and Li (92 million) — at least 20 million
people share just seven other surnames. Imagine
the confusion Chinese authorities face when it
comes to differentiating between 1.3 million
people (1 percent of the entire population)
named Liu Bo. When the Communists came
to power in 1949, parents named millions of
children “Liberation” and “Nation Founding.”
Then, during the Cultural Revolution, names
like “Safeguard Red” and “Leap Forward” were
all the rage. In recent years, a “vogue” for names
of two characters, instead of the more common
three-character kind, has compounded the
problem. The proposed new laws, however, will
open up some 1.28 million new possibilities.
Hong Kong as Switzerland?
China’s growing capital surplus, soon to exceed
US$1 trillion per year, could catapult Shanghai
over Hong Kong as the country’s financial cen-
ter, says Andy Xie in the South China Morning
Post. Hong Kong was once a necessary inter-
mediary between international finance and
Chinese opportunities, but China’s new capital
surplus will soon make that role “obsolete.”
Cheap capital is now available to mainland
companies via a “buoyant” share market. China
“simply doesn’t need foreign capital anymore”;
indeed, it actually needs to export capital. And
it’s just “not practical” for an offshore financial
center like Hong Kong to mediate Beijing’s
savings into investment, even though it boasts
a “world-class” financial system. What’s more,
Hong Kong’s stagnant population of 7 million
is about a third smaller than Shanghai’s, which
is still on the rise (a country’s financial center
is usually its largest city). In the end, it’s more
likely Hong Kong will become a “center for
private wealth management, like Switzerland,”
with its low tax rate and offshore status. With
such massive wealth, the city could “sustain a
good living standard without strong economic
growth.” For now, Hong Kong can “afford” to
watch the mainland’s “mad dash for money.”
After all, “if you already have it, why bother
again?”
www.nvrmagazine.com
July 6, 2007
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United Kingdom
A knight’s crusade?
Rushdie: a “living target” for over a decade
The fuss about Salman Rushdie’s knighthood is
“depressingly predictable,” said India Knight in
The Sunday Times (London). Eighteen years after
the Iranian government called for his death fol-
lowing the publication of his novel The Satanic
Verses, Tehran has now made the “inane” sug-
gestion that his knighthood is somehow an “in-
sult to Islamic values.” Like most of us, Rushdie
could never have predicted the “calamitous
consequences of his act of creativity” and his
deserved knighthood surely takes account of his
being a “living target” for over a decade. But
rather than “pandering to extremists” with half-
hearted apologies, British politicians should be
defending the government’s decision to award
Rushdie a knighthood, as well as championing
the right to free speech. In the face of pressure
from this “grotesque distortion” of the Islamic
faith, it appears that “art, beauty, reason and
morality” must now be sacrificed.
And all because a writer said some “question-
ing, querying things about a man who died over
a thousand years ago,” said Johann Hari in The
Independent (London). By simply trying to “nudge
his fellow Muslims” away from a literal reading
of the Quran, the Indian-born writer ensured that
beheading became “a legitimate form of literary
criticism.” The mullahs he so “enraged” by men-
tioning the Prophet Muhammad in The Satanic
Verses would rather maintain their own “monop-
oly” on how the Holy Book is interpreted. And
the jihadism seen in the years since the fatwa was
pronounced in 1989 underlines the urgency to
www.nvrmagazine.com
move away from such “literalist fanaticism.”
The truth is that “the Islamic world has
acquired a penchant for self-righteous fury,”
said Jenny McCartney in The Daily Telegraph
(London). It’s now the “emotion of choice” for
many, in much the same way that Westerners
have developed a taste for “mawkish sentimen-
tality.” In the case of Rushdie’s knighthood,
there’s no shortage of “competitive outrage”
between Iran, Pakistan and homegrown crit-
ics, all keen to be seen as the “authentic voice”
of their community. But such anger “need not
define Islam.” Moderate voices like that of late
Arab scholar Zaki Badawi who pleaded with
fellow Muslims to “spurn” The Satanic Verses
but “spare” its author, remind us that anger “is
not a compulsion” but “a choice.”
As a British Muslim who enthusiastically
supported the fatwa against Rushdie at the
time, I now admit “our detractors had been
right,” said Inayat Bunglawala in the Guardian
(London). I still “strongly disagree” with
Rushdie’s caricature of revered Islamic figures,
but acknowledge that banning the novel “was
not the answer.” In the intervening years I’ve
come to realize that the “freedom to offend is
a necessary freedom.” That said, our protests at
the time gave Muslims immigrants from Arabic,
Bengali, Gujarati, Pakistani, Turkish and other
backgrounds, a sense that we were, together,
“British Muslims.” And for that I can only say
“Thanks, Sir Salman.”
See Letters, pg 17
15
Opinions: Europe
Germany/Poland
Berlin or bust
“It’s not exactly how one
expects to see German
Chancellor Angela
Merkel,” says Charles
Hawley in Der Spiegel (Hamburg). Polish week-
ly magazine Wprost recently headlined with
“Europe’s Step-Mother,” showing a picture of
Merkel with “two breasts spilling out” of her
blouse and Poland’s governing Kaczynski twins
— Prime Minister Jaroslaw and President Lech
— “suckling” one each. The article makes it
clear that while Merkel treats the rest of Europe
like her step-children, “she has been particu-
larly condescending to the Poles.” Reaction
to the image in Germany has been “predict-
ably shrill”: Cologne daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger
said the Chancellor had been “mocked” and
“ridiculed,” while Bild quoted a number of
politicians criticizing the cover’s “tasteless-
ness.” It’s “just the most recent salvo” in an
“ongoing media war between the two coun-
tries.” In 2003, Wprost printed a cover show-
ing then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder being
“ridden dominatrix style” by Erika Steinbach,
head of a group representing Poles kicked out
of Germany in World War II, wearing a Nazi
uniform. Germany’s Die Tageszeitung has printed
images of the Kaczynskis “with potatoes as
heads,” while Der Spiegel showed Merkel being
“ridden” by the Polish twins.
United Kingdom
Broker Blair
The speed with which former British Prime
Minister Tony Blair “has scripted his own
sequel” by becoming the world’s envoy to the
Middle East “gives the impression of self-ab-
sorption,” says Bronwen Maddox in The Times
(London). The rush to announce a new role
for Blair by the time he left office seemed “de-
signed to ease the sting of surrendering high
office more than to solve the problems of the
Middle East.” That said, Blair’s appointment
isn’t as absurd as it might seem, as long as “you
take a long step around” his role in Iraq and
his support for Israel’s military campaign in
Lebanon last summer. After all, Blair’s “pas-
sion for tackling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
is beyond dispute.” But it will be virtually
impossible to define his new role “while the
political route ahead remains so unclear,” with
the only certain conclusion being that it will
be political rather than economic. Blair faces
serious problems in reconciling U.S.-Israeli
plans and those of Palestine, though he may
feel the “paralysis plays to his strengths.” His
great success in bringing peace to Northern
Ireland “sprang from his skills as a broker.”
But that approach could “make too light” of
his new mission, in which he will lack “the
clout of a government head.”
See Blair’s final farewell, pg 7; Letters, pg 17
16
Opinions: Americas
Twatting about on the Net
In another age, all that campaigning politicians
were expected to do was to wear a “smart suit”
and kiss a “baby or two,” says Stuart Heritage
in HecklerSpray.com. Now, they’re expected to
“twat about on YouTube every now and again.”
The “pack-leader when it comes to wanking
about like a dickhead on the Internet” is 2008
presidential contender Hillary Clinton. Rather
than announcing the winner of her recent cam-
paign song competition like a “normal” person,
Clinton recruited her husband Bill to “spoof” the
final scene of television series The Sopranos. The
video, available on Clinton’s Web site, shows
the power couple proving why they’ve made it
big in Washington rather than Hollywood, with
a “slightly confused” re-enactment of the mob
Sept. 11 and Chinese food
“Twenty years ago, American perceptions of
Asian food could be summed up in one word:
‘Chinese,’” say Tim and Nina Zagat in The
New York Times. Since then, Americans have
been introduced to Korean, Thai, Japanese
and Vietnamese food, but while the quality of
restaurants serving those cuisines has greatly
improved in the United States, Chinese res-
taurants “have stalled.” The “unimaginative
dishes” we’ve been subjected to seem as dated
as the “pseudo-imperial décor” of the estab-
lishments that serve them. But why? There’s
a historical reason for the “abysmal” state of
Chinese restaurants in the United States. Back
in the 1860s, during the great wave of im-
migration, Chinese, faced with a lack of key
ingredients, “improvised dishes like chow mein
melodrama’s final ever scene — “complete with
obligatory blackout ending.” The stunt has been
such a success that the fact that “bloody Celine
Dion” was the winner of the song competition
has barely been noticed. Fellow Democratic
hopeful Barack Obama has also learned the
power of the Internet. A song about how “sexy”
the politician is recently appeared on YouTube,
and did more for his popularity than a “thou-
sand of his tiresome Hollywood fundraisers”
ever could. As for Clinton, she now plans to
continue doing send-ups of popular Internet
videos for the rest of her campaign. So, what’s
next? Clinton “dressed as a toddler screaming ‘I
want my money, bitch!’ a la Will Ferrell?”
See Blogs view, pg 17
and chop suey that nobody back in their native
land would have recognized.” But nowadays
getting ingredients is no drawback. Instead, the
“principal obstacle to improving Chinese fare
here is the difficulty of getting visas for skilled
workers since 9/11.” Top Chinese restaurateurs
have complained that their plans to open major
eating establishments have been derailed by the
amount of time it takes to secure work permits.
Perhaps Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
could try a little “dumpling diplomacy” so that
our two countries could develop a program
making it easier for Chinese chefs to come here?
“Eating food prepared by an influx of Chinese
chefs would be like opening up a culinary time
capsule.” And believe us: “American palates are
ready for the real stuff.”
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July 6, 2007
Jew hate, in moderation
A little bit of anti-Semitism isn’t such a bad thing,
says Eugene Volokh in The Wall Street Journal. As a
“relatively assimilated” American Jew, I feel that a
moderate level of anti-Semitism is actually a “net
positive” for the American-Jewish community
and for Israel. Why? Well, feeling “embattled”
leads to “group solidarity” — a bond that’s sorely
lacking at a time when increasing assimilation of
American Jews has led to a “declining sense of
a common fate” and a dwindling “emotional
connection” with Israel. The “fear” of anti-
Semitism also reminds American Jews of Israel’s
potential role as a “refuge” should we ever need
it, as European Jews did 60 years ago (“Home
is the place where, when you have to go there,
they have to take you in”). Then there’s the flip
side. If we suppress anti-Semitism — “whether
Muslim, white nationalist or otherwise” — it
could have the effect of making the anti-Semites
look as if they’re the persecuted ones. Obviously,
rampant anti-Semitism is a dangerous thing, but
American Jews should support free speech, even
if it means the free speech of “anti-Semites and
unfair, bigoted critics of Israel.” Anti-Semitic
advocacy which is publicly visible is an “import-
ant informational tool” in today’s America. It
reminds American Jews of the “value” of their
religious and cultural institutions and does so in
an “emotionally effective way.”
The “Law and Order” candidate
Former Senator Fred Thomson, who recently
announced he may run for president in 2008,
has been embraced by some Republicans as a
“political messiah, a latter day Ronald Reagan
who can lead their party out of the wilderness,”
says Holly Bailey in Newsweek. But what do
conservative voters really know of the star of
television’s Law and Order beyond his obvious
“magnetism” and “celebrity”? Take his flip-
flop on abortion. Thinking that he’d “forever
traded Washington for Hollywood,” Thomson
handed over years of records to be publicly
archived at the University of Tennessee. They
reveal a history of positions on issues which
have proved to be a political minefield for other
Republican candidates. For example, in a 1994
newspaper interview Thomson said, “The ul-
timate decision on abortion should be left with
the woman and not the government.” Once a
Senator however, his pro-life credentials were
impeccable. The “charismatic and down to
earth” former Senator also made “enemies” in
the Republican Party by supporting campaign-
finance reform and investigating Republican
campaign funding abuses. But on that same
issue now, he says he’s a “changed man.” So
will Thompson’s Tennessee charm be enough
to convince conservatives to turn a blind eye
to these inconsistencies? As one pundit put it,
“You can never get all of the stain out, but you
can get some of it out. The test is to see if he
really means it.”
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July 6, 2007
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Exchange of the week
A knight’s crusade?
To The Independent (London)
How can I express my personal outrage at
the queen’s lack of judgement in agreeing
to bestow a high honor on Salman Rushdie,
a person who is widely considered to be a
scoundrel by U.K. Muslims and by the vast
majority of the entire Muslim world?
Nearly 19 years ago when The Satanic Verses
was published, my wife and I skimmed
through the book. It is filled with utterly
filthy language including four-letter explet-
ives all over the place, not to mention a
grotesque portrayal of the personal life of
Muhammad.
What were the advisers thinking of when
they chose to recommend Rushdie for this
honor? They surely would have thought
about the offense this would cause. But
clearly this mattered not a jot. I am deeply
disappointed that Her Majesty did not reject
this out of hand. Does she not see the news?
I was born and bred in the United Kingdom.
I am a subject of Her Majesty, whom I have
always held in high esteem. I also adhere to
the Muslim faith.
While the Danish cartoons were produced
by someone I consider to be plain ignorant,
but caused deep offence, I’m afraid this
knighthood to Rushdie cuts even deeper.
This is a highly public endorsement by the
Establishment of Rushdie’s offensive book.
I would urge that a precedent be set with
Rushdie and that his knighthood be revoked
on the grounds that it was a mistake. A very
bad error of judgment.
Athar Siddiqui
I am sorry that Athar Siddiqui is offended
by Salman Rushdie’s writing and the deci-
sion to award him a knighthood. He says
he is outraged by the queen’s lack of judge-
ment in this matter, an opinion he is fully
entitled to express publicly however much
it might offend the head of state and others
in Britain.
I would, however, ask him to consider
whether he would enjoy the same entitle-
ment in states where religious or political
frictions lead to death for those who speak
freely. I have never read The Satanic Verses
nor any of Salman Rushdie’s work so am
unable to offer an opinion on his literary
achievement. I do think he is among those
writers who, at no small risk, have defended
the right to free expression which is so fun-
damental to democratic society. That to me
is worth acknowledgement and is what I
suspect lies behind his award.
We are all offended by opinions and beliefs
we don’t share, especially those we see as
a threat to our view of the world. For me,
belief in God and prophets is the source of
www.nvrmagazine.com
much offence but I don’t want Mr. Siddiqui
silenced because he and I clearly differ on
this, and I hope he would feel the same.
Paula Jones, London
See A knight’s crusade, pg 15
Broker Blair
To the Guardian (London)
Blair’s failure to condemn Israel’s destruction
of Lebanon last summer would appear to make
him unfit for the job; but on the other hand
he got Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness to
have tea together.
San Cassimally, Edinburgh
I cannot help but feel that this news redefines
irony in a way not seen since Henry Kissinger
was awarded the Nobel peace prize.
Julian Howes, Plymouth
To the Los Angeles Times
Tony Blair may be passionate about Middle
East issues, but I do not detect any passion
for him by the people of the Middle East. His
nomination to be a Mideast envoy makes about
as much sense as President Bush seeking the
same position in 2009.
Dodd Sheikh, Redondo Beach
See Broker Blair, pg 15
Tainted toys
To The New York Times
As the Thomas the Tank Engine recall shows,
the export of goods from China is seemingly
driven by greed and that the regulation of im-
ports from that same country is dangerously
lax. So let’s not wait for hundreds or thousands
of poisoned Americans to force a revision
of consumer safety laws governing imported
products.
Congress should pass legislation that requires
a prominent warning label when any product
sold in the United States is manufactured in or
contains ingredients obtained from China.
Pietro Allar
See Tainted toys, pg 9
Polling booth
Varying states of failure
The threats of weak nations “ripple far beyond
their borders,” says Foreign Policy in its Failed
States Index. Corruption and an absence of
the rule of law are among some of the “all too
similar” problems that beset many failed nations.
Unfortunately, the “complex” process of state
failure “remains little understood.” Using 12
social, economic, political and military indicators,
Foreign Policy listed 177 states in order of
vulnerability to “violent internal conflict and
societal deterioration.” For the second year in a
row, Sudan topped the list, followed by Iraq and
Somalia. Eight of this year’s 10 most vulnerable
states are in sub-Saharan Africa.
17
Letters
Blogs View
You and I: Hillary and Celine
Celine with backing by Hillary
Hillary Clinton hit upon the idea that she should
let the American public choose her 2008
presidential campaign song. So, which song
did the people decide upon? U2? KT Tunstall?
Smash Mouth? No, it was Celine Dion’s ‘You
and I.’
See Twatting about on the Net, pg 16
From LAist:
It’s possibly the lamest campaign song EVER.
Move over, Bill and Fleetwood Mac. Here comes
Hill and Celine Dion. Yup, to appeal to all those
kids and liberals out there, she picked the
Canadian queen’s ‘You and I.’ (Why? For the
love of God, why?) Of course, Hillary held an
interactive voting campaign on her Web site to
let the masses pick the winning song, but those
Celine fans probably stuffed the ballot box. What
was wrong with Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin’?
Hillary, this is America. Democracy can always be
overruled.
Christine N. Ziemba
From TimesOnline.co.uk:
Songs have always been associated with
presidential candidates — Jimmy Carter used the
Rocky tune, for instance, and Al Smith had ‘The
Sideways of New York’ in 1928. Clinton’s use is
very clever, since she has dumped five songs and
inserted public choices in the “second round” and
is noting who writes in so as to add them to her list
of supporters. Clinton-Obama, Clinton-Richardson,
Clinton-Inouye or Clinton-Mabus in 2008 looks
a real possibility, though one final thought is
that song saying ‘we’re gonna rock this country’
continues ‘and blow it out of this world’... uh oh...
Dr. M Meenagh, London, England
From www.mickwright.net:
This may be the worst lyric ever written: ‘Brighter
than the sun and darker than the night / I can see
your love shining like a light.’ Then there’s: ‘If I
could travel across the world / The secrets I would
tell.’
Is Hillary Clinton really going to “travel across the
world” and tell our secrets? What is this, a love
song for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
Mick Wright
From Grammar.qdnow.com:
When I heard that Hillary Clinton had chosen the
song ‘You and I’ by Celine Dion for her campaign
theme song, I knew it was finally the right time to
tackle this topic!
Celine Dion’s song ‘You and I’ is grammatically
correct, whereas the Jessica Simpson song
‘Between You and I’ is incorrect. It should be
‘Between You and Me.’
Grammar Girl
18
Film
Heist caper Comedy
Knocked up
Ocean’s Thirteen ∂∂∂∂∂
Released: June 1
132 minutes
∂∂∂∂∂
Released: June 8 Like his previous work, The 40-
122 minutes Year-Old Virgin, writer-director
Judd Apatow’s new film is “a
morality play dressed up as a filthy
piece of mummery,” said Anthony
Lane in The New Yorker. This time
the focus has shifted “from a guy
who hasn’t had sex but wants it to
a guy who has had sex but wishes
he hadn’t.” The setup is somewhat
“sitcom trite,” said Peter Travers
in Rolling Stone. Gorgeous career
girl Alison (Katherine Heigl) falls
pregnant to party animal Ben
(Seth Rogen) after a drunken one-
night stand. While the two leads
“nail every laugh,” it’s the film’s
“unexpected gravity” that carries
it through. There’s a reason why
Apatow is being hailed as “the
new king of comedy”: he “won’t
settle for skin-deep” and his gags
tend to “double back after the first
Sound off: the movie features a “faked earthquake” laugh and hit you where it hurts.”
After the European setting of the movie that still resembles a movie,” Above all, the film “feels honest,”
2004 sequel that irritated some said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall
fans, Ocean’s Thirteen returns the Street Journal.
action to Las Vegas and thereby Actually, it’s a “rambling mess,”
“recaptures the feeling” of the said William Arnold in the Seattle
2001 original, said Todd McCarthy Post Intelligencer. The film is just “a
in Variety. This time around the jumble of fragmented scenes filled
heist is about taking revenge on vil- with incomprehensible techno-
lain Willy Bank (Al Pacino), who’s babble,” designed to give each
cheated the gang’s beloved men- of the stars “their moment” on
tor Reuben out of co-ownership screen. “A chimpanzee could re- said A.O. Scott in The New York
of his soon-to-be-opened casino. arrange these scenes in any way Times, particularly its exploration of
To do this, the group — again and the movie would play basically “the built-in discrepancies between
led by George Clooney’s Danny the same.” what men and women expect.”
Ocean — plan to bankrupt Bank The problem is that “only the For all its “gynecology-inspired”
on opening night by rigging most characters know what the plan is, humor, the film “rarely feels coarse
of the casino’s games so that the and we’re expected to watch in or crude” and perfectly captures
house loses. The heist involves a gratitude and amazement,” said the moral ambivalence and sexual
faked earthquake, some loaded Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun- confusion of our age “without
dice manufactured at a Mexican Times. “I know full well I’m ex- straining or preaching.”
plastics factory and the theft of pected to Suspend My Disbelief,”
Bank’s diamonds. but during Ocean’s Thirteen, “the
Much of the movie “is taken up suspension cable snapped.” U.S. box office
with the complex planning neces- Well, “I left my PhD in ridiculous Rank Title
sary for these elaborate scams,” said heist plots at home,” said Wesley 1 Ratatouille
Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Morris in The Boston Globe. So I 2 Live Free or Die Hard
Times. While this is “entertaining was able to enjoy the “breezy way” 3 Evan Almighty
up to a point,” it sometimes seems Clooney, Brad Pitt and the rest put 4 1408
that the entire film is “an elaborate the job in motion while not under- 5 Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
sleight-of-hand maneuver, a series standing exactly they were up to. 6 Knocked Up $122m
of manufactured crises designed to It may seem like a “rinse, repeat” 7 Ocean's Thirteen
divert us from how little is actually version of the original film but it’s 8 Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
going on.” Indeed, director Steven good, “and that’s enough.” 9 Sicko
Soderbergh and cast “have man- See Real Vegas vs. Film Vegas, pg 19; 10 Evening
aged to make the least possible Curb appeal, pg 26
July 6, 2007
R E 　
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Biopic
La Vie en Rose
∂∂∂∂∂
Released: June 8
140 minutes
Director Olivier Dahan’s bio-
pic of French singer Édith Piaf
has “all the makings of showbiz
melodrama: childhood blindness,
doomed love affairs, the death of a
child, serious car accidents, onstage
collapses and drug addiction,” said
Stephanie Zacharek in Salon.com.
Marion Cotillard gives a “dazzling,
seamless and un-self-conscious”
performance as Piaf, said Philip
Kennicott in The Washington Post.
She seems to get “the frailty, the
awkwardness, the sexiness, the
sadness, the coquettishness and
finally the utter, self-annihilating
misery” of the legendary singer’s
life. Cotillard certainly turns in a
“passionate performance,” said
Anna Smith in Empire, but structur-
ally the film “has almost as many
problems as the troubled singer.”
Dahan, who also co-wrote the
script, adopts a “flashback-heavy
structure” that’s “so full of incident
it leaves little room for insight into
Piaf’s complex character.” Scenes
of Piaf’s youth, for instance, are
“broken up” by deathbed scenes
set many years later. Dahan makes
it harder for us to “fully empa-
thize with the hopes and dreams
of the young Piaf” when he’s
frequently reminding us “of the
wizened, drug-addled woman she
became.”
Total Gross Week #
$47m 1
$48m 1
$61m 2
$40m 2
$115m 3
5
$102m 4
$296m 6
$5m 2
$4m 1
www.nvrmagazine.com
July 6, 2007
R E 　
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19
Film
Horror Thriller Feature

Hostel: Part II Mr. Brooks

∂∂∂∂∂
Released: June 8
∂∂∂∂∂
Released: June 1
Real Vegas vs. Film Vegas
94 minutes 120 minutes

The sequel to 2005’s gore-fest sees “The appeal of Mr. Brooks is

respectable businessmen bid for
freshly-abducted American college
girls they’ll later torture and kill in
a network of dungeons hidden in
an abandoned factory in Slovakia.
“You come to the film expect-
ing — hoping — to be grossed
out,” said Kyle Smith in The New
York Post. And on that level the
movie delivers: “Arteries gush like
Oprah.” If there is a “creative ele-
ment” here, it’s the set pieces and
makeup. As for the script, well,
“any four randomly selected dudes
I went to high school with could
dream up something equally sick
over a six-pack of Molson.” Too
true, said Scott Bowles in USA
Today. The Hostel films make the
Saw franchise look like “Oscar
bait.” It seems that “porn-torture
is what passes for horror these
days,” and director Eli Roth has
come perilously close to making
“a snuff movie.” And “if you think
Kazakhstan got a bad rap in Borat,
the Slovakian board of tourism
must be in conniptions.” In the
end, said Vince Horiuchi in The
Salt Lake Tribune, the “real victims
of this exercise in cynically-pack-
aged horror moviemaking” are the
viewers of this “dreck” who fork
out money to see it.
as obvious as it is hard to re-
sist,” said Mick LaSalle in the San
Francisco Chronicle: Kevin Costner
as a serial murderer. Costner plays
wealthy Oregon businessman Earl
Brooks, a “reasonable man in the
grip of something that is twisted
into his very nature.” By casting
Costner against type and examin-
ing Brooks’ compulsion to kill, the
movie does “a number of insidi-
ous things”: it turns a “heartless
sociopath” into a “sympathetic
figure,” and, “most disturbing of
all,” makes his addiction to killing
seem “almost understandable.”
Writer-director Bruce A. Evans
presents Brooks’ internal struggle
through an ongoing dialogue with
Marshall (William Hurt), his “invis-
ible alter ego,” who eggs him on
from murder to murder. Imagine
the introvert/extrovert duo from
Sideways “sandwiched into one
psychological ham-on-wry,” said
Ty Burr in The Boston Globe. Indeed,
one of the “pleasures” of this
“totally absurd and equally enter-
taining” thriller is the interplay be-
tween Costner and Hurt, said Jack
Mathews in New York Daily News.
The two are so “terrific together”
that “you’re prepared to accept a
story riddled with holes.”
On a roll: Vegas presented as “sanitized promotional montages”
“What is it about Las Vegas and
movies?” asks Kevin Maher in
The Times (London). Already this
year we’ve had three films set in
America’s gambling capital: Ocean’s
Thirteen, Lucky You and Smokin’
Aces. In each movie, Vegas “isn’t
just some arbitrary shooting loca-
tion.” Rather, it’s “a title character,
a dramatic player, and indeed a
star.”
A film with “Vegas” in the title
suggests a “stylistic and emotional
terrain” we all know: “sharp suits
and hipster cool,” “seedy under-
world connections” and “life-al-
tering high-stakes” card games.
Ironically, Hollywood’s current
“love affair” with Vegas occurs
at a time when the real Vegas is
“virtually unrecognizable” from
its film version. Today’s Vegas is
mostly a “family-friendly tourist
trap” which makes the majority
of its profits from non-gambling
entertainment.
Hollywood, however, has never
been “too bothered by the discon-
nect.” During its gangster heyday
of the 1960s, the city was presented
as “a place where a backwoods girl
could become a starlet through grit
and determination alone” (The Las
Vegas Hillbillies, 1966). Even “icon-
ic” Vegas movies such Elvis’s 1964
Viva Las Vegas (pictured) were no
more than “sanitized promotional
montages.”
Then, in the ‘90s when the city
had somewhat cleaned up its act,
movies like Bugsy (1991) and Casino
(1995) portrayed a Vegas “that
had clearly vanished.” Both films
were “dripping with nostalgia for
a bygone time of glamorous gang-
sters” and contributed to “the
myth of Vegas as a fantasy place.”
In fact, director Martin Scorcese
complained that the real-life Vegas
exteriors he wanted to shoot for
Casino “weren’t ‘Vegas’ enough.”
The late French philosopher
Jean Baudrillard once argued that
Vegas is a place of “hyper-reality”:
a “plastic copy of every city and no
city, of everywhere and nowhere.”
And Hollywood has been happy to
perpetuate this myth of an “ideal-
ized city.”
See Ocean’s Thirteen, pg 18

Reel time Coming up

Shaken and stirred, German style July 11
What will the “notoriously touchy Bond fan-base” make of the recent Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
announcement that German film-maker Marc Forster will direct the next In the fifth installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry returns to Hogwarts to
007 movie? asks Wendy Ide in The Times (London). The news may not discover that much of the wizarding community is in denial about the return of
be as earth-shattering as the casting of Daniel Craig as the first “blond evil Lord Voldemort.
Bond,” but it’s “not far off.” After all, Forster is a “Bond neophyte with no
experience of directing action pictures.” He’s also a “curious choice” given July 20
that his CV has “previously veered towards intimate dramas” (Monster’s Hairspray
Ball), “sentimental family stories” (Finding Neverland) and “total misfires” John Travolta is back on the musical track in a film based on John
(Stranger Than Fiction). Forster is reportedly looking forward to the Waters’ 1988 cult classic about star-struck teenagers on a local
challenge and says the direction the Bond films took with Casino Royale Baltimore dance show. Also stars Queen Latifah, Michelle Pfeiffer and
offers “a host of new possibilities.” Christopher Walken.

www.nvrmagazine.com
July 6, 2007
R E 　
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White Stripes
Icky Thump
∂∂∂∂∂
Released: June 19 (Warner Bros/Wea)
Earning their stripes: the Detroit duo are “thriving”
When they first arrived on the
scene in July 1997, the White
Stripes “seemed destined for
a shorter shelf life” than most
other bands, said Alexis Petridis
in the Guardian (London). Their
“contrived” image and “self-con-
sciously limited” music indicated a
quick fall. And yet, a decade on, the
blues-rock duo from Detroit are
“thriving.” Icky Thump, their sixth
studio album, “positively swarms
out of the speakers” with a “breezy
diversity.”
The title track provides an “omin-
ous thud, enlivened by frantic
abuse of a primitive synthesizer,”
while ‘You Don’t Know What
Love Is (You Just Do What You’re
Told)’ has a “fabulous, effortless
melody that bears a hint of ‘70s
FM radio rock.” Meanwhile, Meg
White’s drumming smacks “not
of a percussionist but a first-time
property developer setting about
a supporting wall with a sledge-
hammer.”
The album also formalizes the
band’s departure from indie rock,
said Pete Paphides in The Times
(London). After Jack White re-
Chart toppers
Rank Week # Artist/Album
1 1 Bon Jovi / Lost Highway
2 2 The White Stripes / Icky Thump
3 3 Brad Paisley / 5th Gear
Rank Week # Artist/Album
1 1 Editors / An End Has A Start
2 1 Kelly Clarkson / My December
3 1 Traveling Wilburys / Collection
www.nvrmagazine.com
corded a song for a Coca-Cola ad
last year, Oasis’ Noel Gallagher
declared: “Jack White ceases to
be in the club.” But you have to
wonder why White didn’t leave
sooner. With Icky Thump, he “wipes
the floor with anything that has
borne the Oasis imprint for more
than a decade.” He is now an “ir-
resistible force” with a slew of
“great ideas” as a songwriter. One
can only imagine that for White,
“writer’s block is something that
usually resolves itself by the end
of the afternoon.”
White’s lyrics covers a wide
range of subjects, said Andy
Gill in The Independent (London).
From relationships to “Scottish-
and Mexican-themed tracks and
America’s treatment of its immi-
grant minorities.” Musically, the
band has abandoned the man-
dolin, marimba and glockenspiel
employed on 2005’s Get Behind Me
Satan, and returned to the “guitar/
drums formula” that has served
them so well in the past. Though
this time a mariachi trumpet and
bagpipes have been thrown in for
good measure.
Paul McCartney
Memory Almost Full
∂∂∂∂∂
Released: June 5 (Hear Music)
McCartney’s new album will “play
in every Starbucks store in the
world,” said Joan Anderman in
The Boston Globe, referring to the
former Beatle’s cross-promotion
with the coffee giant, but it still
“smacks of Wings at its goofiest.”
And yet this, his 21st solo output,
shows that Macca still holds “a
sentimental, effervescent charm
to everything he touches.” But his
“sugary romanticism often gets un-
checked,” said Randy Lewis in the
Los Angeles Times, and although it’s
far from his worst effort, the “friv-
olity” of the tunes often “sounds
like arrogance.” ‘Dance Tonight’
and ‘The End of the End’ carry
the cheery, inoffensive sound of
his “late-1970s period,” said Allan
Kozinn in The New York Times,
but as dire as the album often is,
McCartney should be respected for
“steadfastly avoiding hopping on
current pop music trends.”
Gig guide
Blondie (pictured)
U.K., until July 11
Genesis
Europe, until July 14
Alice Cooper
Australia, until July 21
The White Stripes
U.S. & Canada, until July 31
Coming out
July 10
Interpol / Our Love to Admire
Smashing Pumpkins / Zeitgeist
They Might Be Giants / The Else
July 17
Garbage / Absolute Garbage
Suzanne Vega / Beauty And Crime
Rooney / Calling The World
21
Music
Top tunes
“You know you’re
in for a treat the
minute Maximo
Park‘s new single
‘Books From
Boxes’ kicks into
gear,” said Miriam Zendle in
DigitalSpy.co.uk. “Lovely keyboard
antics provide a funky backing” to
the gentle yet powerful sound, and
there’s something “increasingly
lovely” about their accents. This
is a “pretty rare find,” a “brilliant
track.”
“It seems that
Editors have found
their life-force in
death itself,” said
NME. Single ‘Smokers Outside
the Hospital Doors’ “is a dizzying
gurn across the contradictions
of terminal illness,” and has the
intensity of a life that knows it’s
about to be blown out. “Audacious,
certainly, and very good to boot.”
“The new Unklejam
single is great!”
said Rosie Swash
in the Guardian
(London). ‘What
Am I Fighting For?’
has two essential components that
make it so fantastic: the chorus’
“resounding synthy bass line”
and the “stripped back verse.”
The band show that “restraint is
definitely better than overkill when
it comes to funk.”
Norwegian duo
Datarock “pumps
life” into the flagging
genre of electro
clash with their
“terrific, if slightly
offbeat” debut Datarock, Datarock,
said Adrienne Day in Entertainment
Weekly. They’ve taken Talking
Heads and Devo as their muses,
and though it’s not all new, singles
like ‘Fa-Fa-Fa’ with their techno
drumbeats and David Byrne-
inspired vocals “definitely bear
repeating.”
Era Vulgaris is the
fifth Queens of the
Stone Age album,
“and like the others,
it’s intricately
crafted, meticulously polished
and ruthlessly efficient,” said Rob
Sheffield in Rolling Stone. Most
of the record concerns having sex
with ladies, though Josh Homme
shows his tender side with ‘Into
the Hollow.’ He also throws some
New Wave synth into the mix.
22Nonfiction July 6, 2007
Books R E 　
V 　
I E W S
Biography Science/Philosophy History

The Black Swan Justinian’s Flea

A Woman in Charge
Carl Bernstein
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

∂∂∂∂∂
William Rosen

∂∂∂∂∂
Published: June 5
640 pages, Hutchinson
The legendary Watergate journal-
ist’s account of Hillary Clinton
“stands as a model of contem-
porary political biography,” said
Ronald Brownstein in the Los
Angeles Times. In a “balanced, judi-
cious and deeply reported” study
he paints a “three dimensional
portrait” of the Democratic Party’s
leading presidential contender that
challenges common assumptions.
The belief the Clintons’ marriage
only served Hillary’s own political
ambitions, for example, is turned
“on its head” with the revelation
she sacrificed her early “forays
into political activism” for family
life. Yet later as a governor’s wife
and then first lady, Bernstein shows
her “defining characteristic” was to
view politics uncompromisingly
as “war.” While the president was
happy to “convert” or somehow
“envelop” his opponents by ac-
commodating their concerns,
Hillary was living proof that “even
paranoids have enemies.” This
shrewdness allowed her to spot
Monica Lewinsky-investigator
Kenneth Starr early on as a “sanc-
timonious partisan” out to destroy
her husband. But such “pugna-
cious instincts” were also her un-
doing. Threats to “demonize” any
Democrat senator opposing her
ambitious universal healthcare plan,
merely had the effect of killing the
proposal altogether. Bernstein only
falters in glossing over Clinton’s
more recent senate career in a
“slapdash six pages,” depriving us
of an insight into the kind of pres-
ident she might make.
Bernstein’s book “will please nei-
ther Friends of Hillary nor Enemies
of Hillary,” said Michiko Kakutani
in The New York Times. It’s “often
critical” of her as a politician, yet is
“often sympathetic” toward her as
an individual coming to terms with
a complex marriage and trying to
put her genuine idealism into ac-
tion. Bernstein “tries hard to feel
the Clintons’ pain,” arguing that
the couple “were “treated more
harshly” than any other president
and first lady of the 20th century.
His retelling of the “sex and real
estate follies” of the Clinton era is
like a “slow acid flashback” where
we learn anew about “Monica,
Whitewater, bimbo eruptions” and
the changing state of the couple’s
marriage.
Yet it’s exactly the “central mys-
tery” of this enduring relationship
that Bernstein renders “curiously
flat-footed,” said Ana Marie Cox
in The New York Observer. He con-
cludes that “some kind of partner-
ship” means they could never have
achieved what they did without
each other: not exactly an earth-
shattering revelation.
Published: May 3
400 pages, Allen Lane
Taleb has penned an “important,
albeit at times, abstract book”
dispelling the notion that humans
are somehow able to predict “ex-
treme impact” events, said Michael
Scown in The Asian Review of Books.
The author calls these “Black
Swans”: events that couldn’t pos-
sibly have been predicted, such
as Sept. 11 and World War I.
Historians may now tell us of “ris-
ing tensions” before 1914, but the
price of bonds at the time “barely
moved” until war broke out. This
inability to come to terms with
unforeseen phenomena is “in part,
hard wired into us,” said Will Self in
The Independent (London). But this
doesn’t excuse whole disciplines
being built on the “shifting sand
of our ignorance” as practised by
economists and other professional
forecasters. Taleb accepts, like most
of us, that sometimes “shit hap-
pens.” But his dismissal of these
industry “bluffers” is a “little un-
fair,” said The Economist. Countless
business successes, for example,
can be attributed to “rigorous re-
search and canny marketing,” and
not just mere chance.
∂∂∂∂∂
Published: May 3
384 pages, Viking Adult
Rosen’s book is “a librarian’s
nightmare” in that it defies easy
categorization, said The Economist.
It “reads like several books in one,”
dealing with cultural, medical, mil-
itary, political and even zoological
history. It examines the bubonic
plague’s effect on the fall of the
Roman Empire and the rise of
modern Europe. But Rosen also
covers the evolution of the Silk
Road, the rise of Islam, and even
dabbles in microbiology with
the development of the bubonic
bacteria, Yersinia pestis. “At the
core of the book, however, is a
splendid biography of the em-
peror Justinian (482-565),” said Ian
Pindar in the Guardian (London).
Justinian survived the plague and
went on to leave lasting memorials
such as Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia.
But Rosen’s central contention,
that the plague gave rise to the
development of today’s Europe,
seems “too slick an answer,” said
Mary Beard in The Sunday Times
(London). The birth of modern
Europe “is a rather more com-
plicated process than a series of
footnotes to a pandemic.”

Hitchens silenced (in Malaysia) Nonfiction bestsellers

If religious militancy is on the increase in Malaysia, 1.
then dictating what citizens can and can’t read 2.
isn’t going to help matters, said Ioannis Gatsiounis 3.
in Asia Times Online. The country’s Internal Security 4.
Ministry has the power to “pressure bookstores not to 5.
carry certain titles” on the grounds that it may “disrupt
peace and harmony” in the largely Muslim nation.
The latest victim is the best-selling God is not Great 1.
by British-born journalist Christopher Hitchens (pictured). The well-known 2.
polemicist’s study of the “irrational legacy of religious conviction” has fallen foul 3.
of the authorities, despite the fact that anti-Semitic literature like the Protocols 4.
of the Elders of Zion is still “readily available” throughout the country. 5.
The Secret / Rhonda Byrne
Women & Money / Suze Orman
In an Instant / Lee and Bob Woodruff
You: On a Diet / Michael F. Roizen
I Feel Bad About My Neck / Nora Ephron
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid / Bill Bryson
The God Delusion / Richard Dawkins
Humble Pie / Gordon Ramsay
Don’t Tell Mummy / Toni Maguire
Please, Daddy, No / Stuart Howarth

www.nvrmagazine.com
July 6, 2007
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Fiction
Books
23
Novella Historical novel Thriller/fantasy

After Dark Heyday

Haruki Murakami
∂∂∂∂∂
Published: June 7
191 pages, Knopf
Japanese cult writer Haruki
Murakami delivers a suspense-
ful thriller, similar in style to the
films of Jean-Luc Godard or
Michelangelo Antonioni, “where
something dire seems always
about to happen,” said Michael
Dirda in The Washington Post. The
story takes place during a single
night in Tokyo, but Murakami’s
emphasis is more on setting and
characters than on what happens,
said Edward Champion in the Los
Angeles Times. A cast of “sad sacks
and loners” inhabit this dark-
ness, including Murakami’s two
heroes — struggling university
students Mari and Takahashi —
and a sociopathic engineer named
Shirakawa, who represents “the
feral yin to Mari and Takahashi’s
insouciant yang.” Styles Murakami
employed in previous novels
— “dark surrealism,” “mournful
realism,” and “supernatural yearn-
ing” — are all here, said Steven
Poole in the Guardian (London).
The story’s minimalist plotline
“spells out less” than his previous
stories have, but “evokes as much
if not more.”
Kurt Andersen
∂∂∂∂∂
Published: March 6
640 pages, Random House
Andersen deals with a time in
America “when a combination of
technological and political revolu-
tions seemed to rewrite all the rules
overnight,” said Dan Zigmond in
the San Francisco Chronicle. The time
is 1848: a year which saw the start
of the California Gold Rush and
the popular use of “new inven-
tions” like the photograph and
telegraph. Through immigrant
Englishman Benjamin Knowles,
Andersen allows the reader to
“see the sprawl of pre-Civil War
America through a foreigner’s
eyes,” said Allen Barra in the
Chicago Sun-Times. The plot, which
sees Knowles and acquaintance
Duff Lucking travel cross coun-
try in search of Lucking’s sister
Polly, gives us “a sightseeing tour
of North and Central America
at a time just before modernity
overwhelmed the primitive, buf-
falo-strewn West.” Unfortunately,
a book with such scope suffers
from “facts. And more facts,” said
Louis Bayard in The Washington
Post. Andersen “whiles away” for
about 300 pages before bothering
to set his main plot in action.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
Michael Chabon
∂∂∂∂∂
Published: May 1
432 pages, HarperCollins
Pulitzer Prize-winning Chabon has
crafted “a capacious meditation on
the contradictions of Jewishness,
disguised as a detective novel,” said
Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment
Weekly. In the writer’s “virtuoso
imagining,” the fledgling state of
Israel lasted just three months in
1948 before its cast of “criminals,
cops, dreamers, losers and schem-
ers” were relocated to Alaska.
Unfortunately, this land for the
“Frozen Chosen” was leased for
only 60 years and time is almost up.
Meanwhile, alcoholic cop Meyer
Landsman has taken on one last
case of a dead man found in the
same “fleabag hotel” he’s been
reduced to living in. These two
events collide when the “teeming,
slushy” Jewish tundra of Alaska
reverts to the United States, and
thereby halts the investigation.
The subject matter proves that
“Chabon the serious artist means
business” even if the conceit is
“jokier and cartoon broader”
than usual.
In fact, “no quirk of Jewish life”
is left unexplored for its comic
potential, said Ruth Franklin in
Slate.com. Alaskan Jews shop at
“KosherMart,” while a reclusive
religious sect is described as a
“Disney shtetl.” But it’s a select-
ive humor for a small audience.
Ironically, Chabon has fashioned
“a mass entertainment” that’s
“largely inaccessible to the mass-
es.”
The truth is “you don’t have to be
Jewish to enjoy Chabon,” said Neil
Steinberg in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“But it sure helps.” The narrative’s
“Yiddish tone” enlivens this “bleak
world” in which Orthodox Jews
are “grotesques,” and heroin ad-
dicts use the leather straps from
their prayer boxes in order to
shoot up. But a story about a “ca-
bal” of Jews conspiring to reclaim
Palestine and “boot Arabs out of
their homes” while dividing up
their criminal spoils, is in danger
of provoking both “old slanders
and contemporary accusations.”
Yes, a thriller needs villains, and
Hasidic Jews fit the bill as well
as anyone, but some might argue
the novel’s “fanciful premise” is
ultimately undone by the very real
weight of history.
Indeed, and the “sheer awfulness
of one miserable Jew after the next
sticks in the throat after a while,”
said Lisa Jennifer Selzman in the
Houston Chronicle. If Chabon weren’t
Jewish himself, one could imagine
“outraged protest” over this book.
His underlying message that Jews
have had enough of oppression is
“powerful and deeply important”
but must he resort to every “vicious
stereotype” to make his point?

Fiction bestsellers World honors Achebe

1. Lean Mean Thirteen / Janet Evanovich Often referred to as the father of African literature, Chinua
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns / Khaled Hosseini Achebe has been awarded the Man Booker International
3. Blaze / Richard Bachman Prize. The 76-year-old author topped a shortlist that
4. Double Take / Catherine Coulter included iconic literary names like Philip Roth, Doris Lessing
5. The Navigator / Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos and Carlos Fuentes. Awarded every two years, the prize for
lifetime achievement has earned “the status of an authentic
world award,” said John Ezard in the Guardian (London).
1. Crystal / Katie Price Earlier this month a fellow Nigerian and “disciple” of Achebe,
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns / Khaled Hosseini Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, scooped the Orange Fiction Prize for her novel,
3. The Overlook / Michael Connelly Half of a Yellow Sun. The more established Man Booker Prize, awarded in
4. The Children of Hurin / J.R.R. Tolkien October, aims to recognize the best novel of the year by a citizen of the British
5. The Quest / Wilbur Smith Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.

www.nvrmagazine.com
24Arts &
Entertainment
Documentary
Pilger’s War on Democracy
Veteran journalist-documentarian John Pilger’s
new film, The War on Democracy, looks at “half
a century of furtive and bloody U.S. interven-
tion” in South America, said Danny Leigh in the
Guardian (London). It shows how U.S. foreign
policy has sought to topple many of the sub-
continent’s democratically elected leaders and
put brutal pro-U.S. strongmen in their place.
Pilger’s film details a “noxious story,” which
“needs to be told.”
Perhaps the film is “rightfully indignant” of
U.S. foreign policy on South America, said
Kevin Maher in The Times (London). But it’s
ultimately spoiled by its presenter Pilger — the
veteran of over 50 documentaries — “who can’t
help but jump into frame at the slightest provo-
cation, attired in Man-From-Del-Monte whites
and loaded with oily amour-propre.” Whether
he’s ingratiating himself with Venezuelan
President Hugo Chávez, praising the spirit of
the poor, or tricking a rich Venezuelan business-
man into being an ignoramus on camera, “the
temptation to reach into the screen and slap
him is overwhelming.”
The Chávez interview in particular “has mo-
ments of almost Hello! magazine deference,” said
Peter Bradshaw also in the Guardian (London).
Pilger is unabashed in his admiration for
Chávez, but he’s “in dereliction of his journal-
Venice Biennale
What’s dug up, Doc
The 52nd Venice Biennale won’t be remem-
bered as “groundbreaking or dynamic,” said
Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times.
But this year’s festival — the largest yet — is
at least “independent” and “strong in its con-
victions.”
That’s certainly true of the Korean pavilion’s
display which features the imagined fossil re-
mains of Bugs Bunny. But overall, this year’s
displays could hardly be described as “funny.”
Typical is Emily Prince’s “deeply moving” draw-
ings of every U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan
and Iraq. Meanwhile, Tracey Emin’s etchings
are like “warmed over Egon Schieles” and sug-
gest that even Britain’s cheekiest artists are just
“reactionaries at heart.” It’s true that this year’s
event may be “a little boring” but it certainly
“grows on you.”
We critics can secretly wonder “how we got
lucky enough to call this work,” said Sarah
Milroy in The Globe and Mail (Toronto). Many
nations boast their “best curatorial picks in a
long time,” and there’s less of the cheap and
“hastily installed” exhibits we’d come to expect
from past biennales — Switzerland’s recent
“menstrual hut in upholstered maxi pads”
Whiter than white: Pilger in South America
istic duty” by glossing over the darker side of
the Venezuelan president’s regime. Chávez’s
decision to bypass the National Assembly and
rule by decree for 18 months, for instance, is
conveniently ignored.
“Yet for every interview that feels contrived
or staged,” said Rich Cline in RealMovieNews.com,
there’s another that “bristles with raw honesty.”
Pilger’s film digs under the surface “to show a
side of the story the media rarely reports.” It
also serves as an “eerie” parallel to the current
U.S. occupation of Iraq.
See the trailer at www.youtube.com [Search for John
Pilger, The War on Democracy]
Floor act: an installation at the biennale
springs to mind. But the selection suffers some
“uncharacteristic lapses in discrimination,”
notably in curator Thomas Storr’s favored cat-
egory of painting.
That may be, but if “curators could win the
Nobel Prize,” said Richard Dorment in The
Daily Telegraph (London), “I’d nominate him.”
For the first time ever, artists from the north
and south of Ireland share the same pavilion
including one whose “masterly” film depicts
the “haunting” of this troubled region by the
ghosts of murdered civilians.
July 6, 2007
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Architecture
Icons wanted
Buildings by well-known architects have their
fair share of critics, and Beijing’s National
Grand Theater “is no exception,” said Calvin
Low in The Straits Times (Singapore). Known
as the “egg,” the structure (pictured) has been
criticized as “too modern” for the city. But
“time heals all wounds,” if the once-contentious
examples of the Eiffel Tower and Louvre pyra-
mid are anything to go by. Citing the “Bilbao
effect” as justification, city planners the world
over are constructing more and more “elabor-
ate and expensive edifices” to attract tourists.
Bilbao’s iconic Guggenheim Museum, de-
signed by Frank Gehry, swelled the coffers of
the former “rust-belt” Spanish city by US$400
million within two years
of it opening in 1998. But
procuring the “gilded ser-
vices” of a “starchitect”
is no guarantee of success, as the developers
of London’s Millennium Dome found to their
cost with Richard Rogers. A bigger problem
is that the centers of power that once created
architectural icons like Beijing’s Forbidden City,
Athen’s Parthenon and Agra’s Taj Mahal, no
longer exist. Today, architects and the “consum-
ing public” alike need to discover new points
of reference to create our own “contemporary
iconography.”
Television
Sopranos bow out
The final episode of The Sopranos arrived in “a
frenzy of audience speculation” but was “per-
versely non-earth shaking,” said Frazier Moore
in The Huffington Post. There was no “mass ex-
termination” and the only violence came when
Leotardo was “whacked”; a predictable, “even
comical” demise witnessed by his grandchil-
dren. True to form, producer David Chase
refused to give viewers “comfortable closure,”
or even “catharsis.” Even in the final scene,
every moment during the family gathering at a
diner seemed to “foreshadow disaster” which
never came. But then “any ending would have
been a letdown” for the “most unusual and
realistic family drama in television history,” said
Alessandra Stanley in The
New York Times. For the
whole of the final season
“myriad hints and red
herrings” suggested any number of outcomes,
but Tony (James Gandolfini) finally turning
state’s evidence perhaps wasn’t the hardest
to predict. Gandolfini “looked like he hadn’t
slept in week,” said Phil Gallo in Variety. Yet
his performance was as “tough and focused”
as any we’ve seen in 85 episodes. Chase and
his team did “yeoman’s work” trying to tie up
loose ends, but there were still enough gaps to
have us wondering where “all those Sopranos
might be five, 10, 15 years from now.”
www.nvrmagazine.com
26
Travel
The axis of decency
“Rogue states are easy to find, but places at the
other end of the scale are few and far between,”
says Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler in The
Independent (London). Five years ago, I wrote
Bad Lands, a guide to the world’s “axis of evil”
countries — Afghanistan, Albania, Burma,
Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and
Saudi Arabia. But “finding a mirror-image set
of ‘good lands’ is, unhappily, nowhere near so
easy.” After all, a place like Switzerland, which
seems “democratic, neutral, neat and tidy,” is
in fact a favorite place for dictators to deposit
their cash. And Scandinavia, which has every-
thing Switzerland does plus socialism, is as
“unscrupulous as any other country” when it
comes to arms dealing. “Let’s face it, no country
is all good.” That’s why I’m “happy to settle for
eight ‘pretty good’ ones.”
It’s hard not to rate a country like Bhutan
“good” considering that it’s more concerned
about “Gross National Happiness” than
Gross National Product. Germany also makes
the grade, doing the “hard yards to make the
European Union work.” What’s more, it’s
“steered clear of international mistakes” like
Gourmet traveler
As cool as a cucumber
If you’re looking for a way to quench your
thirst in Japan this summer, try Pepsi’s new
cucumber-flavored soda, says Brian Tracey
in MSNBC.com. The innovative soda, “Pepsi
Ice Cucumber,” is already in stores, but
don’t pop open a can expecting a health drink
— “it doesn’t have any of the green gourd
in it.” Instead, it’s been “artificially flavored
to resemble the refreshing taste of fresh
cucumber,” said Aya Takemoto of Suntory Ltd.,
Japan’s Pepsi distributor. It turns out that in
Japan, cucumber is the first thing that comes
to mind when people think about “keeping cool
in the summer heat.” But this “mint-colored”
soda will only be around for the summer,
during which Suntory expects to unload about
200,000 cases. Pepsi rivals should “retaliate
with Spinach Sprite and Dr. Bell Pepper.” That
way, “we can skip the salad bar entirely and
get all that green goodness in liquid form.”
Pepsi's new soda: "taste of fresh cucumber"
Countries with no axis to grind
Iraq, while remaining “one of the biggest con-
tributors” to the Afghanistan peace-keeping
mission. Canada, where Greenpeace first start-
ed, is also a member of the “axis of decency.”
Despite its neighbor to the south, it’s resisted
both the “Iraq call siren” and “gun-ownership
madness.”
Nor, it seems, can New Zealand “do anything
wrong these days.” It’s “so anti-nuclear” that the
U.S. Navy is prohibited from sailing into their
Macau
Macau to get Playboy Mansion
Playboy Enterprises, “home to gentlemen clad
in silk pyjamas, girls with bunny ears and an
empire that ranges from gambling to soft-core
porn,” has announced plans to open a Playboy
Mansion in Macau, says Dan Glaister in the
Guardian (London). The Mansion will feature a
hotel, pools, grottos, restaurants, gambling tables
and, “of course, scantily clad bunnies.” The plan
follows last year’s launch of a Playboy club in Las
Vegas. Playboy once ran 22 clubs, “from Chicago
and New York to Tokyo,” but the last of those
died out in Manila in 1991 due to “an awaken-
ing cultural maturity, feminism and the growth
of pornography.” Now things have changed
again, “with an explosion of interest in gambling
and a burgeoning resort sector.” Macau used to
be “the personal fiefdom of billionaire Stanley
Ho,” but the Chinese government ended his
casino monopoly in 2002. The first foreign-run
casino opened in the former
Portuguese colony in 2004,
and “the territory’s revenue
has soared.” In 2006, Macau’s
gambling revenue grew to
over US$6.95 billion, more
than Las Vegas. Playboy maga-
zine is banned in China.
www.worldcasinodirectory.com
See Ocean's Thirteen, pg 18; Real Vegas vs. Film Vegas, pg 19
July 6, 2007
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waters, and while neighbor Australia is “apt to
send refugee boat-people off to its Pacific Gulag
(also known as Nauru), New Zealand is likely
to take them in.” Other bastions of decency
include Iceland, Finland, Ireland and Costa
Rica which deserves special mention. It’s got
an economy based on ecotourism and, here’s
the “trump card” — no army.
www.lonelyplanet.com/tonywheeler
United States
Curb appeal
Motel life was once “a glimpse of paradise”
in America, says Wayne Curtis in The Atlantic
Monthly. Recently however, motels have been
displaced by “boxy three-story chain hotels.”
So the classic motels that remain, such as the
ones along Miami’s Biscayne Boulevard, are to
be savored. Biscayne Boulevard is home to one
of Florida’s finest collections of postwar motels,
typified by their distinctive “collage of angles,
swooping curves and neon lights.” In the days
before Internet booking, it was all about “curb
appeal.” Former fashion mogul Eric Silverman
hopes to single-handedly restore the boule-
vard to its “former glory.” He’s purchased the
Vagabond (pictured), which once had a “raff-
ish, if Rat Pack charm” (Dean Martin used to
perform in the hotel bar). Silverman believes the
motel will one day become “a destination for
people to come see what life was like” — and
it’ll be even better this time
around since there won’t be
any “orange shag carpeting.”
But other motels along the
strip are waiting to see what
comes of his attempted ren-
aissance. For now, unfortu-
nately, “none seem quite
ready for retro-tourism.”
www.motelguide.com/flmi.html
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27
Travel
Beat the crowd
The world’s wackiest hotels
Looking to stay in one of the world’s “craziest”
hotels? Oddee.com lists some of its favorites.

Ice Hotel, Sweden

All soled out: the market unloads 2,000 tons of fish a day
Japan
The last word in fish
In the “wild, engulfing, blood drenched madness”
of Tsukiji, the world’s largest fish market in Tokyo,
a bluefin tuna can sell for more than US$170,000 at
auction, says Nick Tosches in Vanity Fair. Tsukiji,
whose 1,677 stalls unload 2,000 tons of fish a day,
has a history dating back 400 years. Each day, its
fishmongers offer up a “biochromatic wealth of
mysterious mollusks and other sea invertebrates,”
including barnacles, “grotesque” scorpion fish,
toxic blowfish, octopus roe and the “weirdest
looking” of all, sea pineapple, which resembles an
“otherworldly marital aid of inscrutable purpose
for the brides of Satan,” and tastes “something
like iodine.”
But bluefin tuna, a migratory fish that can grow
to more than 700 kilograms and almost 3.5 me-
ters in length, is the market’s “main event.” In
the “dark of early morning,” bidders take part in
This 550 square meters
of ice and snow is the
world’s first, and largest,
ice hotel. You’ll get to sleep
on an ice bed in a thermal
sleeping bag, and in the morning a cup of hot
lingberry juice will be brought to your bedside. But
with an average indoor temperature of -8 C, be
sure to “bring lots of layers.”
www.icehotel.com
Poseidon Undersea Resort, Fiji
This hotel’s rooms, 12
auctions that are closed to the public. Unable to meters beneath the
cut open the fish, which come from as far away surface of the “clear
as Spain, or as near as Osaka, they poke around blue” Fijian Lagoon, are
enveloped in acrylic walls,
in the body with flashlights in search of “kata” enabling guests to enjoy unparalleled ocean
— the “mysterious” qualities that constitute an views. The only catch is that you’ll have to wait
ideal specimen. until early 2009 to reserve a room because the
Tsukiji is also where you’ll find Tokyo’s best resort is still under construction.
sushi. Down a warren of nameless alleyways, bur- www.poseidonresorts.com
ied somewhere in the 55 acres the market occupies,
there’s a “poky” restaurant called Daiwa that seats Capsule Inn, Japan
fewer than a dozen. But be sure to arrive early. At 7 If you find yourself on a
a.m., there’s already a long queue of people waiting shoestring in Tokyo and
to enter. With Tsukiji at its doorstep, it’s no wonder looking for a place to
sleep, check in to the
that chef Shinichi Irino serves up fatty bluefin- Capsule Inn. Each capsule
belly-meat sushi that “melts in the mouth.” is made of reinforced plastic and comes with all
of the usual amenities such as TV, radio, and
www.tsukiji-market.or.jp alarm clock.
See Japan running out of tuna, pg 5 www.capsuleinn.com

Green Magic Tree house, India

Iran
Money in the name of Allah
The Shrine of Imam Reza in Iran is the Islamic
republic’s “biggest and richest business empire,”
says Andrew Higgins in The Wall Street Journal.
Located in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest
city, the shrine is a “sumptuous parade” of
mosques, minarets and marble that’s “vaster”
than Vatican City and draws more pilgrims than
Mecca. For centuries, the shrine has “intermin-
gled faith and money.” In addition to operating
an Islamic-studies center, the companies in its
corporate portfolio “make everything from city
buses to pizza strudels.”
The shrine is what’s known in Iran as a
“bonyad” — a “nominally charitable” foun-
dation with huge holdings acquired through
generations of donations confiscated after the
1979 Islamic Revolution. Bonyads publish no
accounts and answer only to Iran’s supreme
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In fact, the
shrine’s “independence from government
supervision” — in addition to its stuffed coffers
— is what makes it so “potent.”
How much the shrine makes each year is
unclear. Estimates vary from US$50 million
Priceless: the shrine has its own "corporate portfolio"
to US$2 billion due to a lack of transparent ac-
counting. In Mashhad, where the shrine owns
three-quarters of the land, the shrine also runs a
bakery, Reza Bread Co., that buys its yeast from
Reza Yeast Co., its sugar from Reza Sugar Co.
and its fruits from shrine-owned orchards. One
of the bakery’s biggest customers for its stru-
dels is the Reza Hospital. Best of all, since Reza
companies seamlessly blend capital gains and
religion, their employees never go on strike.
www.imamreza.net/eng/
Located in India’s southern
Kerala state, this hotel is
the perfect getaway for
someone who “longed for
a tree house” as a child.
Each suite, equipped with running water, private
baths and telephones, is built 30 meters above
ground. All of the tree houses have been built
using eco-friendly materials and are powered by
alternate energy sources.
www.hotelskerala.com/greenmagic
Travel deals
Four Points by Sheraton Shanghai, Daning
Experience Sheraton Shanghai’s brand new
guestrooms from RMB699, including daily buffet
breakfast for up to two persons. Upgrade to a
Comfort Suite for an additional RMB500 with
access to the fitness center and heated indoor
pool. Until August 31.
www.fourpoints.com/daning (2602 2222)
Grand Hyatt Shanghai Summer
Take advantage of the special summer offer at
the highest hotel in the world, starting from just
RMB1,850 for a Grand Room. Until August 31.
www.shanghai.grand.hyatt.com (5049 1234)

www.nvrmagazine.com
28
Consumer
July 6, 2007
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Headphones to shut out the world

“Air travel this summer isn’t going to be pretty,” says David Pogue in The New York Times. Fortunately, you’ll be able to avoid one of the biggest head-
aches — the roar of plane engines — with noise-canceling headphones. Market-leader Bose provides quality you can’t dispute, but at US$300 a pair,
there’s “little wonder rival companies are now trying to bring you similar peace in the stratosphere without propelling the price up there, too.”

1. JVC HA-NC100
“You could buy seven pairs of these for the price of one Bose set.” And,
since they rest on your ears instead of surrounding them, they’re very
small. The only problem is that they only cut out a “chunk of the lower
frequencies, leaving much of the engine roar unabated.”
www.jvc.com; US$40
2. Panasonic RP-HC500
The noise cancellation on this model works well, probably because the
“pleasantly smushy-edged earcups “do an excellent job of isolating your
ears.” Also, the music reproduction is “stellar.” With these headphones,
you’ll get “quality that’s nearly indistinguishable from the Boses — for
a third of the price.”
www.panasonic.com; US$100
3. Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7
These are Bose “without the marketing campaign.” They’re “comfy,
solidly built, absolutely great-sounding headphones.” What’s more, the
circuitry cuts out a “huge swath” of engine, road or train noise and the
music is “crystal clear, sweet and finely textured.”
www.audio-technica.com; US$132
4. Logitech Noise Canceling Headphones
The noise-canceling circuit on this pair is “superb.” And the music
sounds “pretty good for the price,” though it can’t compare to
Bose.
www.logitech.com; US$155
5. Bose Quietcomfort 2
These may be pricey but Bose “know their acoustics.” The noise cancel-
lation is “amazing; when you throw the switch, the world just falls away.”
And the music sounds “fantastic.”
www.bose.com; US$300

Luxury real estate

More money than sense Up for auction
Spider-Man’s house
Bling bling mouse Iran’s military history
Toby Maguire (aka Spider-Man/ Its creators, Pat Says Now, are You can’t put a price on nostalgia,
Peter Parker) has made a “tidy calling it “the most expensive although Mr. Parviz Zeinali has
sum” on the recent sale of his computer mouse in the world,” tried. The former Iranian marine
Hollywood Hills house, says Ruth says Chris Davies in SlashGear. is selling his uniform on eBay for
Ryon in the Los Angeles Times. Fernandez. Covering almost 5,000 com. Made with 18-carat white a whopping US$1.5 million. The
Maguire bought the property for square feet, it includes a gym, spa, gold and set with 59 diamonds costume dates from immediately
US$3.7 million as a first-time buyer infinity pool, courtyard entry, in a floral pattern, the limited prior to the Iranian revolution which
in 2002 and has almost tripled his chef’s kitchen and maid’s quarters. edition mouse comes complete overturned the Shah and swept
with trackball for page navigation Ayatollah Khomeini to power in
price with a sale for US$11.5 mil- Will & Grace’s Megan Mullally lives and an optical sensor. And if you 1979. Zeinali claims the uniform
lion. The one-story Mediterranean- next door, and Keanu Reaves lives don’t like the flower thing, the is one of only three in existence,
style house was built in 1962, and three doors down. Swiss manufacturers will custom since all uniforms worn during
was recently refurbished by Cuban- make a design to your choosing. Shah’s time was ordered to be
born interior designer Waldo www.bergproperties.com Personally, I think it “looks a bit destroyed.
rubbish,” but if you’re the kind of www.ebay.com [Search for Parviz
person “who squeals over white Zeinali]
Just what you’ve always wanted gold encrusted with diamonds”
A musical condom then perhaps you’ll think the
A Ukrainian scientist has created a musical condom that plays music during exorbitant price tag of US$25,000
sex, says Korrespondent magazine. Different sex positions determine what is worth every cent.
tune is played by the condom, which has tiny sensors connected to a mini- www.pat-says-now.com
electronic device that produces the sounds. As the sex gets more passionate,
the condom — which also works like a normal contraceptive — registers
the increased speed of the movements and plays the
melody faster and louder. Dr. Grigoriy Chausovskiy, who
invented the device as an aid for more pleasurable
love-making, reassures “there is no danger of being
electrocuted.”

www.nvrmagazine.com
3
38
Penultimately

Hong Kong’s last governor...

July 6, 2007

ten years on
Chris Patten was the last pampered and plumed Governor of Hong Kong. On the 10th anniver-
sary of the handover, he talks to Elizabeth Grice about the lasting impact of the experience.

People still come up to Chris Patten and say:

“I remember the day you left Hong Kong.” Of
course they do. That night of bucketing rain
and high emotion on the waterfront when the
last Governor handed over the former British
colony to the Chinese. His three famously
lovely daughters in tears. ‘Nimrod’ playing as
the Union flag was lowered. The Prince of
Wales, soaked to the skin, water gushing off his
naval cap, doggedly peeling off the notes of his
sodden speech.
Next morning, Britannia sailed through the
Fleet for the last time, leading a diamond forma-
tion of 17 naval vessels as she ploughed through
the waves flanked by dolphins and flying fish.
Behind the clamor and the flypast, you felt the
quiet slide into history.
How can it be 10 years ago? The stiff dignity
of imperialism’s last gasp is still sharp. Lord
Patten says he hadn’t watched the film until the
other day and he was surprised how emotional
it made him. The “king over the water” and his
family had five glorious years in Hong Kong.
They’d made friends, worn down many — if
not all — enemies and lived high on the hog.
His daughters had done a lot of their growing up
there and sobbed when they had to leave. He’d
All back to Blighty: the Pattens say farewell
secured a dignified and successful transition that
was by no means inevitable. “You must try not dressing room to find suits, ties, pants, socks, left and he subsides gratefully into a red velvet
to be regretful,” he says, “but when you’ve done all laid out for him. This was a man who’d been chair, placing his mug of tea on a book called The
a job like that in your early fifties you know you used to polishing his family’s shoes every Sunday Mind of God by Peter Davies. Lavender would
may not have anything as interesting again. I try morning, as his own father had done. “I said to not like to find ring-marks on the table.
not to dwell on it too much.” my very nice steward, ‘Look, I’ve been dressing The convalescent quiet is due mainly to the ab-
It amuses him that on the stroke of midnight, myself for 40 years. I think I can manage.’” sence of his two irritable, ankle-hungry Norfolk
June 30, 1997, all glory vanished. Until 11.59 Ten years on, he’s back to the old habit of pol- terriers, Whisky and Soda, whose delinquent
p.m., the program notes respectfully referred ishing the shoes, only now there aren’t so many. behavior made their mark in Hong Kong before
to him as HE Governor — as the Queen’s His once-so-nubile daughters, Kate, Laura and Patten made his. Soda was the flirt with a pen-
representative, His Excellency theoretically took Alice, have flown the nest. His wife, Lavender, chant for custard tarts. He wrote her obituary
precedence over the Prince of Wales. But at is away in Italy, helping Kate after the birth of in Country Life. Whisky, who passed away last
midnight, he became plain “Mr. Patten.” When her second child, a son, their third grandchild. year, was the smaller and more crotchety. When
they reached the Philippines, there was a 21-gun Patten pads about their bow-fronted house on he came out of prison for biting a workman,
salute, but at Heathrow, servantless, chauffeur- the edge of Barnes Common looking more Patten likened it to the release of Ronnie Biggs.
less and cold, they were disgorged straight into baggy-eyed than usual and a bit forlorn. He Five television cameras and 30 journalists were
the taxi queue. “We came down to earth pretty has a small paunch, a slight stoop and a voice there to meet him.
rapidly,” he says, liking the poetic irony. of mellifluous melancholy. As usual, he is do- That is rather how it is these days when Patten
Patten only briefly wore the Governor’s ri- ing too much — writing, speaking, travelling, returns to Hong Kong, which — in keeping
diculous uniform and plumes. He didn’t think attending the Lords, obligingly saying yes when with his policy of looking forward rather than
he had the necessary height or elegance, and it he should be saying no. back — he says he tries not to do too often. At
wasn’t his style anyway, so he asked the Queen’s A Chinese film crew, one of many wanting his book signings, Fat Pang — a man the Chinese
permission to stick to a suit. On his first mor- reflections on the 10th anniversary of the return once called a whore, a tango-dancer and “a vil-
ning in Government House, he walked into his of the former colony to the mainland, has just lain for a thousand years” — is now a sort of

www.nvrmagazine.com
July 6, 2007
cult hero. His visits have been likened to the
return of an aging rock star.
The Chinese, he says, treat him with exquisite
politeness and respect. Chinese holidaymakers
come up to him for his autograph at airports.
The Chinese government in Beijing allows him
to promote his richly political and philosophical
books — East and West (1998) and Not Quite
the Diplomat (2005) — and people queue for
hours to shake his hand at signings. On a visit
in November, he had meetings with the foreign
minister and his deputy. The Chinese govern-
ment, he says, was “much too sophisticated” to
allow past differences and arguments affect the
way they did business when he was European
commissioner for external relations from 1999
to 2004. In fact, when he was two years into
that job, the then foreign minister publicly
pronounced Patten “a force for concord rather
than discord.”
He imagines all this tolerance is because the
government in Beijing, expecting the worst,
found that the British had left Hong Kong in
extremely good shape. “We hadn’t made off
with all the treasure, and we hadn’t deliberately
sown the seeds of turbulence.”
Patten ridicules the rumor that he is “absolute-
ly spitting” not to have been invited to the 10th
anniversary celebrations on July 1 in Beijing.
“Nothing is farther from the truth. I wouldn’t
have expected to be there. Indeed, it would
have been curious to have been asked. Nor do
I think the U.K. expected to be there. For the
past 18 months I have been planning my own
party for about 140 people in Oxford.”
In a sense, Patten’s journey to Hong Kong
began the night of April 9, 1992, when he won
a fourth election victory for the Conservatives
(he masterminded their campaign) but lost his
own seat. It knocked the stuffing out of him.
Hand it over: the British left Hong Kong in "extremely good shape"
www.nvrmagazine.com
Visibly shaken, he says he could feel the ground
slipping from under his feet and, at the time,
thought it was the worst thing that could have
happened to him. But three months after losing
Bath, he was on his way to Hong Kong. “Out
of the wreckage came what were to be the most
wonderful five years of my life,” he wrote.
Looking back, Lord Patten of Barnes marvels
at just what an Andy Warholish moment it was.
A less honest man might have downplayed
the glamour, or pretended to be unimpressed,
but Patten accepted the trappings of high of-
fice with obvious gusto: the fleet of cars, the
yacht fully staffed with waiters in white jackets
and plimsolls, the helicopter and the scores
of staff. He loved the Chinese cuisine and
asked for more of it at Government House,
which endeared him to the cooks. “The snake
soup was terrific but I’m not sure I could eat
cockerels’ testicles every day of my life.” The
effects of good living were worked off daily on
the tennis court.
Patten is lyrical about the vitality and excite-
ment of the port city — “the clutter, the sea,
the backstreets, the Chinese traders, the hawk-
ers, the rush, the noise, those elegant, elderly
Chinese gentlemen with a cigarette at the very
end of their fingers... all the rumbustiousness
of urban life.”
He won’t hear a bad word against Prince
Charles, whose private journal of the official
visit to Hong Kong, in which he caricatured
Chinese diplomats as “appalling old waxworks,”
was leaked to the press. All his scorn is reserved
for the “friend” who circulated extracts. “The
Prince of Wales is an interesting, intelligent
man, with enthusiasm for what matters — and
he behaved heroically on that day.”
The former Governor’s fondness for things
Chinese, and the Chinese he knew, is every-
39
Penultimately
3
where. In Hong Kong, he indulged his pas-
sion for antiquities — figurines of court ladies,
Neolithic pots, horses from long-gone dynasties.
He’s been banned from buying any more pic-
tures, but managed to commission portraits of
his loyal staff before the edict took effect. On
his mantelpiece there’s a little carved table loaded
with food, the kind of thing the Chinese don’t
buy because of its burial associations but which
possibly appeals to him for that very reason.
A sense of mortality didn’t just arrive with the
passing years. For him, it’s part of what it means
to be a Christian, a Roman Catholic. (A former
altar boy, he can still remember most of the
responses to the Latin Mass.) He doesn’t want
to be frightened of dying, so he confronts it.
“I don’t know any way of doing that except by
thinking about it. I don’t think I’m catatonically
gloomy and I don’t want to give the impression
that I’m obsessed with cemeteries — I whistle
past cemeteries — it’s just that, when you reach
a certain age [he’s 63] you can’t help but notice
the age of the people in obituary columns. It’s
part of preparing yourself for the inevitable.”
He had angioplasty in 1993 but his cardiologist
told him that stress was quite good for him, so
he cheerfully went on as normal, leaving his wife
to do the worrying. He says he shares with “Mr.
Blair” an irregular heartbeat, implying that’s all
they share. The former prime minister’s long
farewell didn’t chime with Patten’s idea of dig-
nity at all. “It’s hubris,” he says. “It makes you
want a banana skin. It’s pretty tacky and it’s
turning politics into showbiz. I think Mr. Blair
has become a tacky politician. He has confused
politics and policy. The question people will ask
is why, given such majorities, he accomplished
so little.”
Patten now so obviously inhabits the world
of ideas that he seems far removed from the
politics of pragmatism. He joins debates in the
House of Lords, he lectures and travels, and
he’s an energetic Chancellor of the University
of Oxford, with a flat in the city that gives him
the excuse to sneak off and buy a few more
pictures. But there’s another book taking shape
in his crabbed, indecipherable longhand on A4
ruled pads. “Don’t accuse me of vainglory,” he
says, “but it’s called How the World Works.”
The book is about the disconnection between
economic globalization and politics, a rallying
cry for international co-operation on issues that
nation states can no longer tackle alone: terror-
ism, climate change, organized crime, drugs,
people-trafficking.
In July and August, while on holiday at his
farmhouse in southern France with the family,
including his three small grandchildren, he has
to write 50,000 words. So his beloved vegetable
garden will have to run riot and there will be no
afternoon sleeps in the deckchair.
“I have a very happy life,” he says. “I just
work too hard.”
This article originally appeared in The Daily Telegraph
(London). Used with permission.
4
40Sudoku
1 5
2 1 9
R E 　
V 　
I E W S
July 6, 2007

Sudoku Challenge No.29

47
4 7
4 5 2
87 54
3 7 8
9 1
20
3 8 7
63 5 2
ly
Ju

Sudoku Challenge Solution to Sudoku Challenge No.28

Think Sudoku is easy? Then try NVR's Sudoku

Challenge. One rule only — each row, column and
3x3 box must contain the digits 1 to 9. The sender
of the first correct solution will receive two movie
tickets from Paradise Warner Cinema City (Value:
RMB 160). E-mail to info@nvrmagazine.com or
mail to: NVR Sudoku Challenge, No.51, Lane 749,
Yuyuan Lu, Shanghai 200050, China.

Air quality watch

City Fortnightly API* average Fortnightly % change

Beijing 105 - 79
Shanghai 64 + 63
Guangzhou 45 - 22
*Air Pollution Index

API Grade Pollution level

0-50 Ⅰ Good
51-100 Ⅱ Acceptable
101-200 Ⅲ Slight pollution
201-300 Ⅳ Medium pollution
>300 Ⅴ Heavy pollution

Source: State Environmental Protection Administration of China

Sources
Asia Times Online www.atimes.com; The Asian Review of Books www.asianreviewofbooks.com; Associated Press www.
ap.org; The Atlantic Monthly www.theatlantic.com; BBC News news.bbc.co.uk; The Boston Globe www.boston.com;
Chicago Sun-Times www.suntimes.com; The Christian Science Monitor www.csmonitor.com; Daily Mail www.dailymail.
co.uk; The Daily Telegraph www.telegraph.co.uk; Der Spiegel www.spiegel.de; Digital-Spy.co.uk www.digitalspy.co.uk; The
Economist www.economist.com; Edinburgh Evening News edinburgh-news.scotsman.com; Empire www.empireonline.
com; Entertainment Weekly www.ew.com; Financial Times www.ft.com; Foreign Policy www.foreignpolicy.com; The Globe
and Mail www.theglobeandmail.com; Guardian www.guardian.co.uk; Hello! www.hellomagazine.com; HecklerSpray.com
www.hecklerspray.com; Houston Chroni-cle houstonchronicle.com; The Huffington Post www.huffingtonpost.com; The
Independent www.independent.co.uk; International Herald Tribune www.iht.com; The Jakarta Post www.thejakartapost.
com; Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger www.ksta.de; Korrespondent www.korrespondent.net; Los Angeles Times www.latimes.com;
MSNBC.com www.msnbc.msn.com; National Geographic www.nationalgeographic.com; Nature www.nature.com;
New York Daily News www.nydailynews.com; The New York Observer www.observer.com; New York Post www.nypost.
com; The New York Times www.nytimes.com; The New Yorker www.newyorker.com; Newsweek www.msnbc.msn.com;
NME www.nme.com; The Observer observer.guardian.co.uk; Oddee.com www.oddee.com; RealMovieNews.com www.
realMovieNews.com; Reason www.reason.com; Reuters uk.reuters.com; Rolling Stone www.rollingstone.com; The Salt
Lake Tribune www.sltrib.com; San Francisco Chronicle www.sfgate.com/chronicle; Seattle Post Intelligencer seattlepi.
nwsource.com; SlashGear.com slashgear.com; Slate.com www.slate.com; South China Morning Post www.scmp.com;
The Straits Times straitstimes.com; The Sunday Telegraph www.telegraph.co.uk; The Sunday Times www.timesonline.
co.uk; The Sydney Morning Herald www.smh.com.au; Time www.time.com; The Times www.timesonline.co.uk; USA
Today www.usatoday.com; Vanity Fair www.vanityfair.com; Variety www.variety.com; The Wall Street Journal wsj.com; The
Washington Post www.washingtonpost.com
Photos: Amazon; The Barbican Center; China Foto Press; HBO; Imagine China; Lions Gate Films; Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer (MGM) Studios; Panorama; stock.xchng; Universal Pictures; Warner Bros. Pictures

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