Book Review: The Escapist (the letters of PG Wodehouse)

Wodehouse’s comic gift was built on his brilliant capacity for repressing unpleasantness.
P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters - By Sophie Ratcliffe (editor)

The situation in Germany had come up for discussion in the bar parlour of the Angler’s Rest, and it was generally agreed that Hitler was standing at the crossroads and would soon be compelled to do something definite. His present policy, said a Whisky and Splash, was mere shilly-shallying. “He’ll have to let it grow or shave it off,” said the Whisky and Splash. “He can’t go on sitting on the fence like this. Either a man has a moustache, or he has not. There can be no middle course.”



'A certain critic—for such men, I regret to say, do exist—made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained “all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.” He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.'

In the half decade between the fictional conversation at the Angler’s Rest and his light-as-a-feather account of his own experiences, Wodehouse had, as he noted, experienced the German invasion of France, the loss of his house in that country, the separation from his wife and beloved dogs, and internment in Belgium and Germany. What ensued was a sustained public campaign against his “traitorous” behavior in the English press and Parliament, and his decision, once the war culminated, to permanently relocate to the United States.

If this tumult left him slightly disjointed, he remained, as he might well have put it, essentially jointed. From a more “engaged” or serious person living in a time of war and atrocity, such imperturbability would perhaps have been commendable. In Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, an undoubtedly gentle soul, it was a sign that his habit of inventing Edenic universes was not limited to the printed page. Evelyn Waugh once wrote of Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves, that they inhabited “a world as timeless as that of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Alice in Wonderland.” Wodehouse, too, was timeless, but distinctly so: he could appear untouched by his era, untouched by his times.

This admittedly thumbnail sketch is delightfully complicated by Sophie Ratcliffe’s exemplary editing of a new collection of Wodehouse’s letters. The assembled trove does not demand a complete reconsideration of the sender, but it begs for an analysis that Jeeves might label as more suitably refined. Wodehouse’s critics have tended to condemn his guilelessness for landing him in the soup, while his admirers have celebrated or fallen back on this very innocence, often in the service of exculpating him for the broadcasts. But the letters—together with a close analysis of his fiction—reveal that Wodehouse not only was a canny appraiser of class distinctions and of the ironies underlying the Anglo-American relationship; he also detected that fascism signaled, in its absurdity, how sinister it actually was. His repression of this knowledge at the crucial moment of the century may make him a bloody fool; but a capacity for denial is not synonymous with being starry-eyed. Indeed, it is quite unlikely that the premier comic novelist of the past 100 years was really a complete naïf.

Wodehouse’s correspondence, which begins in 1899, before the death of Queen Victoria, and ends in 1975, just before his own death at age 93, conveys both the scope and the narrowness of his life. There need not be any contradiction here: Wodehouse wrote nearly 100 books over eight decades, while simultaneously engaging in one solid marriage, a limited number of friendships, and a private life consisting of reading, writing, and golf. (The Overlook Press is releasing all of Wodehouse’s books in handy, exceptionally handsome new hardback editions; this marks the first time that an American publishing house has released the entire oeuvre—surely what Bertie, via Jeeves, would admit is the mot juste.) Wodehouse spent considerable time in the United States writing movie scripts and musicals before the war, and he seemed to find in America an energy and verve that were lacking in Britain. After the war, he made his residence on Long Island his permanent home.

“Do you hate Dickens’s stuff?,” Wodehouse writes in a letter to Denis Mackail, a longtime friend. “I can’t read it.”..

The prime example of Wodehouse’s discernment is the absurd fascist Roderick Spode (described thusly: “as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment”). Based on Oswald Mosley, Spode traipses about in black shorts trying to rally Britons to the call of fascism. In an essay for this magazine several years ago, Christopher Hitchens wrote, “It’s quite impossible that the man who had invented Sir Roderick Spode in 1938 was prey to any covert sympathy for fascism.” Undeniably true; but Spode also proves that Wodehouse saw through the designs of an ideology that managed to capture the imagination of much of European civilization. This is a step beyond simply not being a sympathizer. Look again at Wodehouse’s quote on life as an internee; there is more there than meets the eye. (Spode, incidentally, is said to possess “the sort of eye that can open an oyster at twenty paces.”)

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/06/the-escapist/8989/

Some observations I made about PGW in response to a newspaper questionnaire in 2007: 

Q.1 What prompted the setting up of the Wodehouse Society in St Stephen's College?

A/ There was an irreverence in PGW's style that appealed to us as undergraduates. The content of his fiction was so far removed from our immediate environment that it appealed to our sense of the
nonsensical. Sheer absurdity became the meeting point between his world and ours. In a time of turmoil, PGW's gentle but intensely funny humour somehow brought us down to earth. He infused ordinary things with mischievous incongruity without being crude in any way - thus, Jeeves, the gentleman's personal gentleman who read Spinoza in his spare time; Aunt Agatha, who chewed broken glass and wore barbed wire next to skin; dogs with a secret sorrow; the American tycoon who
prided himself on being Third Vice President of the Amalgamated Nailcutter's and Eyebrow Tweezer's Corporation; or Mr Mulliner's pharmacist nephew with his famous invention, Mulliner's Buck-U-Uppo. And the very name of the minor aristocrat, Lemuel Gengulphus, Bart.

The Wodehouse Society was our boyish response to the intensity of our times - the late sixties. We produced a rag named Spice, full of nonsensical articles, held Professor Imitation Contests, and hosted debates and essay competitions. And we poked fun at everyone and anyone, including the authorities. PGW made life interesting and bearable, because he taught us never to take ourselves too seriously. After you read him you could never get rid of the sneaking suspicion that in all of us there was a particle of the well-meaning oaf Bertie Wooster, lurching his way from one disaster to the next, and whose greatest achievement was his imitation of a hen laying an egg. And Wodehouse could evoke tender human feelings too, quite effortlessly, as in that most famous of short stories, Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend.

Q.2. What first attracted you to Wodehouse's stories?

A./ First, a correction. PGW wrote collections of stories, but he was primarily a novelist. What attracted me? My father's collection! He used to buy them religiously, and after I'd gone through the lot, I began reading whatever appeared. There were over seventy titles, and by my late twenties, I think I had read most of them.

Q.3 What, according to you, are the reasons, Wodehouse is popular in India?

A./ Perhaps the familiarity of Indians with colonial English manners makes them receptive to PGW's love for puncturing pomposity. He was always ridiculing the English aristocracy. After all, we have our own stuffed-shirt social strata with their noses in the air. Humour is the most subversive thing there is. The best way of dealing with high and mighty oppressors is to laugh at them. Wodehouse takes the clothes off all emperors.

Q. 4. Do you think the Wodehouse brand of humour is still relevant?

A./ Relevant? PG Wodehouse is timeless.

Sudanese woman sentenced to stoning death

A young mother found guilty of adultery in Sudan has been sentenced to death by stoning. Intisar Sharif Abdallah was tried without access to a lawyer and is being detained with her four-month-old baby

Amnesty puts Abdallah's age at 20; Human Rights Watch says she may be under 18. Her family is appealing against the execution and it is unclear when it will be carried out. Abdallah admitted to the charges only after her brother reportedly beat her. The conviction was based solely rests on this testimony. The man held with her reportedly denied the charges and was released.

Abdallah is said to be shackled by the legs and in psychological distress, unable to understand the nature of her sentence. Her other children are being cared for by family, who are of filing an appeal in Ombada. Jean-Baptiste Gallopin of Amnesty's Sudan team said: "The case is emblematic of the failure of the Sudanese judicial system. Intisar Sharif Abdallah was tried without access to a lawyer or a translator, despite the fact that Arabic is not her native language. She was convicted solely based on a testimony she gave under duress. She's being detained with her four-month old son, in a state of deep psychological distress. We call on the Sudanese authorities to stop the execution, overturn her stoning sentence and release her immediately and unconditionally.

"Stoning is a method of execution designed to increase the suffering of the victim, which means it is an extreme and cruel form of torture. International human rights law specifically prohibits death sentences resulting from unfair trial, as well as the execution of new mothers. In addition, we urge the government to have the best interest of Intisar's child as their main consideration during the judicial process." Amnesty has urged its supporters to write to the Sudanese government and plead for the sentence to be quashed and for Abdallah to be set free.

The sentence was also criticised by Human Rights Watch. Daniel Bekele, its Africa director, said: "No one should be stoned to death and imposing this punishment on someone who may be a child is especially shocking. Sudan should immediately reform discriminatory laws and abolish the death penalty and all corporal punishments that violate the international treaty obligations it has promised to respect." Sudan is one of seven countries where death by stoning is a punishment. Judges in the country have imposed the sentence on several women in recent years, but courts have overturned them all on appeal. The vast majority of adultery cases and stoning sentences have been imposed on women. "Sudan should uphold international and African standards," Bekele said. "It should ban death by stoning and other corporal punishment, and revise laws that discriminate against women and girls."

The Sudanese embassy in the UK criticised Amnesty's attitude towards the country. Spokesman Khalid al-Mubarak said: "It is not interested in the welfare of our women because it never mentions the positive side. Our women have achieved equal pay for equal work. They occupy top jobs as ministers and members of the high court."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/31/sudanese-woman-stoning-death-adultery

Writer’s block in Nepal: Manjushree Thapa

What do you do if you’re the high-caste leader of a democratic party faced with a vote that will end your caste’s supremacy? You avoid voting at all costs. This is what the leaders of the Nepali Congress party and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) did in Kathmandu on May 27. Their refusal to compromise with the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and other parties led to the failure to pass a new Constitution and the dissolution of the country’s only democratically elected body, the 601-member Constituent Assembly.

This was an unforgivable betrayal of public trust: the citizenry had waited for four years for a new Constitution that would mark the birth of a “New Nepal”. It also plunged Nepal into a constitutional crisis: the country now has a caretaker President, a caretaker Prime Minister, and a caretaker Cabinet, but no representative body. The judiciary, the bureaucracy and the security forces remain, of course. But no one is sure what is legitimate and illegitimate now. The Prime Minister has called for elections for another Constituent Assembly in six months. The President is mulling over his options, which are few. With no clear way forward, Nepal is, for now, a constitutional Neverneverland. Was it worth it? To the leaders of the NC and CPN-UML, it obviously was.

They threw everything away over the issue of federalism. Nepal has over a hundred ethnic nationalities and nearly as many languages. But all government institutions, and most non-government ones as well, are monopolised by high-caste Hindus. Brahmins and Kshatriyas — called Bahuns and Chhetris in Nepal — occupy almost all national space. This is a glaring, undeniable fact and it holds true for all the political parties (including the Maoists), every media house, the entire private and NGO sectors, and the vast informal networks of power — including the well-heeled of Kathmandu who exert immense influence over confused donors and ambassadors.

During the 10-year-long “People’s War”, the Maoists promised the excluded (that is, the majority) autonomous federal states named after each area’s ethnic nationalities. This proved very popular. (Though the 2011 census data is not out yet, it’s safe to say that Nepal’s population comprises 15 per cent Chhetris and 12 per cent Bahun. The Madhesis, Janajatis and other excluded groups amount to over 60 per cent.) Once the peace process was underway, the issue of federalism got another boost from the newly formed parties of the Madhes, or the south-eastern plains. In 2007, they separated from the Maoists and other parties, demanding an autonomous Madhesi state.

In 2008, the Maoists won almost 39 per cent of the vote in the election for the Constituent Assembly, becoming Nepal’s largest party. The Constitution that resulted was bound to reflect their agenda. For the NC and CPN-UML, the challenge on the political front was to ensure that the future polity remained democratic. Their vision was firm: they wanted the Westminster model.

On the social front, they had no vision at all. Out of social conservatism or perhaps sheer apathy, they had over the past two decades resisted Nepal’s multiple civil rights movements, consistently delaying or opposing the rights of women, dalits and ethnic nationalities, though these are all important votebanks. Indeed, the women, dalit and ethnic members of the NC and CPN-UML have had to defy their party leaders several times to pass socially progressive legislation. Their leaders have in turn tried to rein them in by issuing whips.

For NC and CPN-UML Assembly members from various ethnic nationalities, federalism became a core part of the civil rights movement: only by decentralising power would they be able to end the monopoly of high-caste Hindus. After much debate, and a two-year delay, the Assembly finally proposed two alternatives on federalism: to create either 14 or 10 “ethnic states”. Flouting democratic procedure, the NC and CPN-UML leadership refused to entertain these proposals, by turns opposing federalism altogether, or proposing six or eight states named after geographic features.

As lines hardened along caste and ethnic lines, a bloc of over 320 Assembly members across party lines declared they would vote in favour of ethnic federalism. The NC and UML leadership began to threaten its defiant members with a whip and with expulsion...
http://www.asianage.com/columnists/writer-s-block-nepal-961

Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will

Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.

Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation. “He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations will go,” said Thomas E. Donilon, his national security adviser. “His view is that he’s responsible for the position of the United States in the world.” He added, “He’s determined to keep the tether pretty short.”

Nothing else in Mr. Obama’s first term has baffled liberal supporters and confounded conservative critics alike as his aggressive counterterrorism record. His actions have often remained inscrutable, obscured by awkward secrecy rules, polarized political commentary and the president’s own deep reserve. In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.

They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”..
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=all

Blind Activist Calls For End To 'Lawlessness' In China

How China Flouts Its Laws By CHEN GUANGCHENG
SINCE I arrived in the United States on May 19, people have asked me, “What do you want to do here?” I have come here to study temporarily, not to seek political asylum. And while I pursue my studies, I hope that the Chinese government and the Communist Party will conduct a thorough investigation of the lawless punishment inflicted on me and my family over the past seven years.

I asked for such an investigation while I was hospitalized in Beijing, after I had left the refuge of the United States Embassy and American officials negotiated my reunification with my family. High officials from the Chinese government assured me that a thorough and public investigation would take place and that they would inform me of the results. I hope that this promise will be honored. But the government has often failed to fulfill similar commitments. I urge the government and people of the United States and other democratic countries to insist that the Chinese government make timely progress in this matter.

The central government and the authorities in Shandong Province, Linyi City and Yinan County have many questions to answer. Why, beginning in 2005, did they illegally confine my family and me to our house in Dongshigu Village, cutting us off from all contact with other villagers and the world? Why, in 2006, did they falsely accuse me of damaging property and gathering a crowd to interfere with traffic and then, after farcical trials that excluded my witnesses and defense counsel, send me to prison for 51 months? On what legal basis, following my release from prison in 2010, did they turn our home into another, equally harsh, prison?

The fundamental question the Chinese government must face is lawlessness. China does not lack laws, but the rule of law. As a result, those who handled my case were able to openly flout the nation’s laws in many ways for many years. Although China’s criminal laws, like those of every country, are in need of constant improvement, if faithfully implemented they could yet offer its citizens significant protection against arbitrary detention, arrest and prosecution. Countless legal officials, lawyers and law professors have labored for decades to produce constitutional and legislative rules intended to prevent a recurrence of the nightmarish anti-rightist campaign and other “mass movements” of the 1950s and the later abominations of the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76.

But those protections have been frequently ignored in practice, as they were in my case and in the case of my nephew, Chen Kegui. After the local police discovered my escape from my village in April, a furious pack of thugs — not one in uniform, bearing no search or arrest warrants and refusing to identify themselves — scaled the wall of my brother Guangfu’s farmhouse in the dead of night, smashed through the doors and brutally assaulted my brother.

After detaining him, the gang returned twice more, severely beating my sister-in-law and nephew with pickax handles. At that point, Kegui tried to fend them off by seizing a kitchen knife and stabbing, but not killing, three of the attackers. Kegui, who is 32 years old, was then detained in Yinan County and, absurdly, charged with attempted homicide. No one has been able to reach him, and he has most likely been tortured even more severely than his father was. Although China signed the United Nations convention against torture in 1988 and has enacted domestic laws to implement it, torture to extract confessions is still prevalent...

Although China has yet to enact any remedy similar to habeas corpus, which allows people to challenge a detention before the courts, its current justice system is based on the assumption that prosecutors have the independence to correct the misconduct of the police and the extralegal thugs they often employ. Judges, in turn, are supposed to independently correct misconduct by prosecutors and the police when cases reach the courts. In real life, however, cases of any significance are controlled at every level of the judicial system by a Communist Party political-legal committee, rather than by legal officials. From the Yinan County Basic Court to the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing, it is this committee that directs the actions of the police, prosecutors and judges, transforming these ostensibly independent actors into a single, unchallengeable weapon. These political-legal committees have eroded decades of progress in implementing the rule of law.

While my wife and I now have the opportunity to study the law and meet freely with a broad range of American officials, law professors and legal reformers, the independent defense lawyers who tried to help me and now my nephew face daily danger and unfair treatment. Any serious investigation of the injustices that we and hundreds of thousands of others have suffered must determine who is beating, kidnapping, disbarring and prosecuting these lawyers and threatening their families, and why defendants are compelled to accept the nominal legal assistance of government-employed lawyers instead of counsel of their choosing.

China’s government must confront these crucial differences between the law on the books and the law in practice. This issue of lawlessness may be the greatest challenge facing the new leaders who will be installed this autumn by the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. Indeed, China’s political stability may depend on its ability to develop the rule of law in a system where it barely exists. China stands at a critical juncture. I hope its new leaders will use this opportunity wisely. As an ancient Chinese proverb says, “If one is not righteous oneself, how can one rectify others?” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/opinion/how-china-flouts-its-laws.html?_r=1

Disgusted and scared to live in Kerala, land of killers: Mohanlal

Malayalam superstar and national award winning actor Mohanlal has expressed deep anguish and disgust over the murder of TP Chandrasekharan, the CPM-dissident, who was hacked to death at Kozhikkode in north Kerala on May 5th. I don’t want to talk about the politics behind this murder. I don’t know. But, I do want to say that I feel thoroughly disgruntled to live in a state where there are people who kill and make others kill. I feel scared and disgusted. Is Kerala turning into a mad house?

“I feel disgruntled to live in a place where people kill and make others kill,” he said. “I feel disgusted and scared.”Writing a solemn note on his blog to express his deep pain on his 52nd birthday, he said an otherwise joyous day has been shrouded by the sadness of Chandrasekharan’s murder. He said he can very closely personalise the intense sorrow of the slain leader’s mother.

Mohanlal is one of the very few cultural icons in the state who have spoken out against the murder. A few days ago, the chief minister Oomen Chandy expressed surprise that the cultural leaders of the state, who otherwise speak on literally everything, were conspicuously silent on Chandrasekharan’s murder. Balachandran Chullikkad, a celebrated poet, had said that the cultural leaders were silent because they were scared of bodily harm. In a state where armed criminals can be hired for pittance, one is scared for one’s life and limbs, he had said.

Noted writer Paul Zacharia denounced the silence of writers and artists. Mohanlal’s creative response is significant in this context. No other political murder has stirred the state’s conscience this much. Read below a translation of the post by Mohanlal. The original Malayalam post can be read at www.thecompleteactor.com : "Two mothers in my thoughts: 21 May is my birthday. I have completed 52 years in the journey of my life. It’s certainly an occasion to be happy; but this year, the day is shrouded by the dark clouds of sadness. On this overcast day, the thoughts of two mothers are brimming solemnly in my heart. One is my mother who has been lying unconscious for three months following a brain-attack and the other, the mother of TP Chandrasekharan, who was killed with more than 50 hacks to his face.

"I don’t know him personally; but from whatever little I know, he would have been roughly my age, and his mother, probably as old as my mother is. So many times, I have seen my mother’s mind writhing in pain when she sensed a flicker of pain in me. Therefore I can so closely feel the “sea of sorrow” in his mother, thinking about a son who has been butchered into so many pieces. The joy of my birthday drowns deep in the ocean of her tears...
http://www.firstpost.com/india/actor-mohan-lal-says-he-is-disgusted-to-live-in-kerala-316595.html

Also see: T P Chandrasekharan, Revolutionary Marxist Party leader dead
T P Chandrasekharan, Revolutionary Marxist Party leader in Kerala was hacked to death by unidentified assailants in a dreadful incident which happened at Vallikkad in Kozhikode district of Kerala on Friday night. Chandrasekharan(52) was attacked by a bunch of hooligans travelling in an innova car throw bombs and later attacked him as he fell from the bike. The incident happened on 4th May night at around 10.15 PM. Chandrashekaran who had been brutally murdered was left on the road for half an hour unidentified before he was taken to the Vadakara Govt hospital. On view of the brutal murder of T P Chandrashekaran, UDF had declared a 12 hours of hartal in the state. T P Chadrasekharan who was expelled from CPI (M) few years back, was the leader of Revolutionary Marxist Party in Kerala. T P Chadrasekharan started his political career as an activist of SFI (Students Federation of India) the student's wing of CPI (M) and later gave up his whole life to work for the party. He served as the district secretary of SFI, State Joint Secretary and later a representative in the national level.

We have plotted and killed people, admits CPM leader
The outspoken claim of a CPM leader in Kerala that the party has indeed plotted and killed its opponents landed the Marxists in an absolute mess.The star of the foolish street-corner spectacle that plunged the CPM into a fresh crisis is MM Mani, secretary of the party in Idukki, an eastern district adjoining Ernakulam and Kottyam. Ironically, the meeting where he blurted out was convened to tell the party workers that the CPM was not involved in the murder of Chandrasekharan. Unfortunately for him and the CPM, the shocking footage of his speech found its way to the state’s TV channels.

His speech was surprisingly vivid... the party had made a list of 13 people and killed four of them – all Congress functionaries. “One, two, three, four…” he said narrating the sequence of murders.“The first one was shot dead, the second was beaten to death and the third was stabbed to death,” he said with absolute derision, citing their names and other details. The murders he narrated were in fact among the most sensational in the district – three of them in the early 1980s and the fourth in 2004. In the first three, nobody had been convicted for lack of evidence. Mani’s admission to the party’s involvement has provided fresh evidence for the police to reopen the cases.

And: Dead TP Chandrasekharan more lethal to CPM
Whoever the killer, T.P.Chandrasekharan (TPC) dead is much lethal to CPM than TPC living. In the party belts of Malabar, the CPM is realising the TPC effect, as its organisations had to suspend many public programmes due to the lackadaisical attitude of party workers. CPM fears that the TPC effect will spill over to the Kariyad, Kidanhi, Chokli and Panur regions in Kannur district where there were many dormant followers for TPC. The region is adjacent to Azhiyur and Eramala panchayats, RMP strongholds...  it is the first time that dissidents of the CPM received a martyr of their own, who fought against the party in the name of Communist ideologies. Most second-rung leaders of the CPM in Kannur, Kozhikode, Malappuram and Wayanad were close allies of TPC while he was in the party. Most including legislative members, former legislative members and a few who play a key role in the CPM at the national level are in constant touch with Rema, wife of TPC, who has been drafted for RMP work now. Meanwhile, a meeting of CPM members who left the party on TPC murder issue and those who plan to leave the party, have convened a commemoration programme in Kozhikode on Tuesday. Many district-level leaders of the CPM and the DYFI are expected to participate in the programme.

Flame computer virus can spy on every action of user

Iran and other Middle East countries have been hit with a cunning computer virus that can eavesdrop on computer users and their co-workers and filch information from nearby cellphones, cybersecurity experts said Tuesday. And suspicion immediately fell on Israel as the culprit. The Russian Internet security firm Kaspersky Lab ZAO said the “Flame” virus is unprecedented in size and complexity, with researcher Roel Schouwenberg marveling at its versatility. “It can be used to spy on everything that a user is doing,” he said. Computers in Iran appear to have been particularly affected, and Kaspersky’s conclusion that the virus was crafted at the behest of a national government fueled speculation it could be part of an Israeli-backed campaign of electronic sabotage against the Jewish state’s archenemy.

The virus can activate a computer’s audio systems to listen in on Skype calls or office chatter. It can also take screenshots, log keystrokes and — in one of its more novel functions— steal data from Bluetooth-enabled cellphones. Schouwenberg said there is evidence to suggest that the people behind Flame also helped craft Stuxnet, a virus that is believed to have attacked nuclear centrifuges in Iran in 2010. Many suspect Stuxnet was the work of Israeli intelligence.Tehran has not said whether it lost any data to Flame, but a unit of the Iranian communications and information technology ministry said it has produced an anti-virus capable of identifying and removing Flame from its computers.


Israel’s vice premier did little to deflect suspicion about the country’s possible involvement in the cyberattack. “Whoever sees the Iranian threat as a significant threat is likely to take various steps, including these, to hobble it,” Moshe Yaalon told Army Radio when asked about Flame. “Israel is blessed with high technology, and we boast tools that open all sorts of opportunities for us.”

Researchers not involved in Flame’s discovery were more skeptical of its sophistication than Kaspersky, with Richard Bejtlich of Virginia-based Mandiant saying the virus appeared similar to spyware used by the German government to monitor criminal suspects. “There have been tools like this employed by high-end teams for many years,” he said. Colorado-based Webroot said the virus wasn’t as complex or as stealthy as Stuxnet and was “a relatively easy threat to identify.”

Flame is unusually large. Malicious programs collected by the British security firm Sophos averaged about 340 kilobytes in 2010, the same year that Kaspersky believes Flame first started spreading. Flame is 20 megabytes — nearly 60 times that figure. Alan Woodward, a professor of computing at the University of Surrey in England, said functions can be added or subtracted to the virus depending on what kind of espionage is desired, not unlike the way apps can be downloaded to a smartphone. He was particularly struck by Flame’s ability to turn an infected computer into a kind of “industrial vacuum cleaner,” copying data from vulnerable cellphones or other Bluetooth wireless devices left near it. “I don’t believe I’ve seen it before,” he said.

Udi Mokady, chief executive of Cyber-Ark, an Israeli developer of information security, said he believes four countries, in no particular order, have the know-how to develop so sophisticated a weapon: Israel, the U.S., China and Russia. “It was 20 times more sophisticated than Stuxnet,” with thousands of lines of code that took a large team, ample funding and months, if not years, to develop, he said. “It’s a live program that communicates back to its master. It asks, ‘Where should I go? What should I do now?’ It’s really almost like a science fiction movie.”

It’s not clear exactly what the virus was targeting...
http://www.firstpost.com/tech/flame-computer-virus-can-spy-on-every-action-of-a-user-325413.html

Syrian massacre child-survivor tells how his family were slaughtered

An 11-year old boy has described how he smeared himself in the blood of his slain brother and played dead as loyalist gunmen burst into his home and killed six members of his family during the start of a massacre in Houla, central Syria. The young survivor's chilling account emerged as Russia continued to blame both Syrian troops and opposition militias for the weekend rampage in the town that left at least 116 people dead and prompted fresh outrage against the regime's crackdown.

It comes on the eve of Kofi Annan's scheduled meeting on Tuesday in Damascus with Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, which is seen as the last hope of salvaging the UN special envoy's failed peace plan. Speaking to the Guardian, the young survivor said government troops arrived in his district at around 3am on Saturday, several hours after shells started falling on Houla. "They came in armoured vehicles and there were some tanks," said the boy. "They shot five bullets through the door of our house. They said they wanted Aref and Shawki, my father and my brother. They then asked about my uncle, Abu Haidar. They also knew his name."

Shivering with fear, the boy stood towards the back of the entrance to his family home as gunmen then shot dead every family member in front of him. "My mum yelled at them," said the boy. "She asked: 'What do you want from my husband and son?' A bald man with a beard shot her with a machine gun from the neck down. Then they killed my sister, Rasha, with the same gun. She was five years old. Then they shot my brother Nader in the head and in the back. I saw his soul leave his body in front of me.

"They shot at me, but the bullet passed me and I wasn't hit. I was shaking so much I thought they would notice me. I put blood on my face to make them think I'm dead." Apparently convinced their work was finished, the gunmen moved on to other areas of the house, from which they proceeded to loot the family's possessions, the boy said. "They stole three televisions and a computer," he said. "And then they got ready to leave." On the way out of the house, the boy said the gunmen found the three men they had been looking for. They killed them all. "They shot my father and uncle. And then they found Aref, my oldest brother, near the door. They shot him dead too."..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/28/houla-massacre-survivor-boy-syria

The butler did it

One of the Vatican's biggest scandals in decades has widened, with the pope's butler agreeing to co-operate with investigators over confidential documents allegedly found at his home


Gabriele, the pope's personal butler since 2006, was arrested last Wednesday after documents he had no business having in his possession were found inside his Vatican City apartment. In custody in a Vatican detention facility, accused of theft, he has been allowed to see his wife and his lawyers. Gabriele's lawyer Carlo Fusco said his client would "respond to all the questions and will collaborate with investigators to ascertain the truth".

The 46-year-old Gabriele was always considered extremely loyal to Benedict and to his predecessor, John Paul II, for whom he briefly served. Vatican insiders said they were baffled by his alleged involvement in the scandal. Fusco reported on Monday that Gabriele was "very serene and calm". So far, he remains the only person who has been arrested, but Lombardi stressed that the investigation was continuing.

The scandal broke in January when the Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi broadcast letters from the former number-two Vatican administrator, Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò, to the pope. In the letters, Viganò begged not to be transferred for having exposed alleged corruption, which cost the Holy See millions of euros in higher contract prices. The prelate is now the Vatican's US ambassador. The scandal widened over the following months, with documents leaked to Italian journalists that laid bare clear power struggles inside the Vatican over its efforts to show greater financial transparency.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/28/vatileaks-scandal-pope-butler-gabriele

Afghan grandmother is a crimebuster on wheels

It's unusual for a woman to be a leader in Afghanistan but Zarifa Qazizadah has become the country's only female village chief through force of personality and determination to get things done - even if that means cross-dressing, wearing a false moustache and driving around on a motorbike at night. "I tell the men of the village, all I want is your prayers," she says. "When you have a problem, I'll speak to the government on your behalf and whenever there is any disturbance at night-time, I'll pick up my gun and come to your house to see what's going on."



When the mother of 15 first sought political office, and told local men she wanted to connect the village to the electricity grid, they laughed. That was in 2004. She lost the election, but she got the electricity all the same, and two years later the men asked her to apply for the post of head of the village - Naw Abad in the country's northern Balkh province. Now she guards the electricity supply with a vengeance, and if anyone wires their home up and starts stealing it, they have to watch out.

"I can't let that happen because we have to respect the law," she says. "When something happens in the village at night and I have to react quickly, I'll put on men's clothes and ride my motorbike." Women in rural Afghanistan are rarely seen riding motorbikes alone and Qazizadah disguises herself, with the clothes and a fake moustache, to avoid attracting too much attention. She has also been known to come to the rescue of her villagers by wrestling Jeeps out of ditches with a tractor. "She does the type of work that even men are not capable of doing," says Molavi Seyyed Mohammad, one of her local supporters. Qazizadah does not take "No" for an answer...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18145805