Comment is free | theguardian.com

Australia's Winter Olympics team are heroes – let's salute them

Bill O'Chee — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 03:42:46 GMT

Bill O'Chee: It takes guts to risk life and limb, miles from family and with little funding, for the sake of a dream – and I should know

Bill O'Chee

If Australia is plagued by violent machismo, it starts from the top | Jeff Sparrow

Jeff Sparrow — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 01:57:41 GMT

Jeff Sparrow: A moral panic over drunken violence is a convenient smokescreen for the real brutality taking place in Australia's name

Jeff Sparrow

Steve Bell on Boris Johnson's water cannon request for the Met police – cartoon

Steve Bell — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 23:34:00 GMT

Theresa May rejects request for funds, letter to London mayor reveals

Steve Bell

In praise of … the Académie Française | Editorial

Editorial — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 22:55:33 GMT

The latest Anglo-Saxon barbarism to incur the displeasure of the 40 lifetime members is the abbreviation ASAP

While the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary annually capitulate to, and even celebrate, the arrival on our shores of monstrosities such as "selfie", "binge-watch" and "twerk", across the Channel in Paris the guardians of French take a very different view. There, the 40 lifetime members of the Académie Française have been debating and defending the integrity of the language of Molière for almost five centuries, occasionally dressed in the natty combination of long black coat, cocked hat and sword that they wear on ceremonial occasions. The latest Anglo-Saxon barbarism to incur their displeasure is the abbreviation ASAP, which they have dismissed in a new ruling as "modern junk", advising instead the use of the elegant, and more importantly French, dès que possible. Who could fail to appreciate the Canute-like resolve of the self-styled immortels of the Académie to face down the tide of evolution? RSVP.

Editorial

Homophobia in football: kick it out | Editorial

Editorial — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 22:32:47 GMT

Fans know they watch gay men on the pitch, and understand there are various reasons why this is always kept quiet

A boneheaded 2% of football fans told YouGov in 2009 that the reason all of the 5,000 or so professional footballers in England were heterosexual was that "there are no gay players". Thomas Hitzlsperger's decision to reveal he "preferred living together with a man" may not disabuse them. He retired from the game last autumn, and so the Premier League is still without an active player who's officially anything other than straight.

Not long before, Robbie Rogers, who had played for Leeds, said it was time to "step away from football" as he came out, but a signing for LA Galaxy soon reversed this 25-year-old's retirement once he escaped English shores. With John Fashanu insisting that his late brother, Justin, who uniquely outed himself before he took his own life in the 1990s, was not really gay, a determined denier in 2013 could still maintain English football was uniquely free of a disposition that only ever sets in after players have walked away from the top flight.

Of course, Ockham's razor cuts such a wild theory, and so too – the same YouGov survey implies – do the other 98% of fans. They know perfectly well that they watch gay men on the pitch, and understand that there are various reasons why this is always kept quiet. It is an extraordinary state of affairs. England's wicket-keeping has already been entrusted to a gay man, and the country lives under a Conservative-led government that has legislated for same-sex marriage. There is a specific problem with the national game that simply does not apply across an increasingly tolerant country.

Part of the difficulty is the toleration of dressing-room "banter" that would be described as hate speech in other contexts. Mr Hitzlsperger puts it gently, and with remarkable humour, which only redoubles the power of his testimony about sitting round "a table with 20 young men and listen[ing] to jokes about gays". But personal as sexuality is, the bigger difficulty is still what gets chanted in public. Years after co-ordinated efforts began to address the routine racism that once disfigured the terraces, jeers about "rent boys" are often indulged. Could anything be more intimidating for a young man struggling to come to terms with private feelings than a crowd of tens of thousands yelling about these?

With the extension of Kick It Out's remit from racism to wider prejudice, the first steps have at last been taken, but there is still a way to go before referees and stewards react to taunts about "queers" and "faggots" just as fiercely as they do to 1970s poison about "monkey boys". But it is not just the authorities that have responsibility here: it is every last one of the 98% of fans who is not so stupid as to imagine that gay footballers do not exist.

Editorial

Mark Duggan inquest: a hard road ahead | Editorial

Editorial — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 22:09:11 GMT

It is not too late for this to become a defining moment in the history of policing and community relations

The law sometimes looks like an ass. After the jury in the inquest into the shooting of Mark Duggan concluded that although he was unarmed, he was nonetheless lawfully killed, it can feel dangerously idiotic too. It has taken two years and four months to get to a verdict on the lawfulness of Mr Duggan's death in August 2011, and it's been a wretched time. It began with riots that can be explained but not justified by the police failing even to inform Mr Duggan's family of his death, and has been marred by continued official obfuscation and prevarication.

There are many people in Tottenham, particularly on the Broadwater Farm estate where the Duggan family lived, who would claim that this behaviour has been their lifetime experience of the police. Yet the jury's conclusion, perplexing as it seems, precisely meets the guidelines set out by the coroner. The police are a long way from being exonerated, but on the absolutely central issue of whether the shooting was lawful – the one that many people see as letting them get away with murder – their account has been accepted. The jury was told that a conclusion of unlawful killing requires a higher level of certainty than an open conclusion or one of lawful killing. And jurors believed the officer who shot Mr Duggan when he told them he genuinely feared he was facing an armed man about to fire. That meant that even though they also decided that Mr Duggan had probably already thrown the gun over a fence, the shooting was lawful. The family is now likely to appeal.

Despite the care with which it has been conducted, this inquest turns out only to have caused more confusion. But it is not too late for this to become a defining moment in the history of policing and community relations. As Doreen Lawrence made clear with her customary calm eloquence in her maiden speech to the House of Lords, relations between the police and black Londoners remain crippled by police racism. That has been the pattern at Broadwater Farm for a generation or more. Within hours of the shooting becoming known, it had become common currency that Mr Duggan was the victim of a police conspiracy, a perception that the behaviour of the police in the days that followed did nothing to dispel. The Met will be heartily relieved by the jury's conclusion. Now they must recognise the part they have to play in the long process of starting to build the trust in the community on which good policing depends. That will include – as senior officers have already acknowledged – a thorough reappraisal of the way firearms incidents are handled.

It is rare for the police to be involved in shootings. There are fewer than one a year in London. Even so, there is too long a record of inappropriate force and mistaken identity. This shooting bore many of the hallmarks of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, particularly in the quite disproportionate number of armed police involved in an operation against a single individual. The jury found flaws in the intelligence and the procedure that led up to the shooting. Proper accountability, which the police have evaded for too long, is at the heart of improving the system. That should be exercised through the IPCC, but after its inability to get the officers involved in this shooting to answer questions, and on the heels of its failed Plebgate investigations, the moment has now surely passed where its reputation can be restored.

The Duggan family has every right to be enraged by the shooting and completely bewildered by the jury's conclusion. But the jury sat for three months listening to the evidence. They deliberated for seven days. They did what they believed to be the right thing and their conclusions should be respected. They did not deserve to hear shouts of "murderer" as they left the court. Nor, angry and confused as the Duggan family supporters are, did it help their cause to howl down the police response. There are many questions still to be answered. It will take all sides to help to create policing based on consent, trust and legitimacy.

Editorial

First world war: an imperial bloodbath that's a warning, not a noble cause

Seumas Milne — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 21:01:00 GMT

Tory claims that 1914 was a fight for freedom are absurd – but then history wars are about the future as much as the past

They were never going to be able to contain themselves. For all the promises of a dignified commemoration, the Tory right's standard bearers held back for less than 48 hours into the new year before launching a full-throated defence of the "war to end all wars". The killing fields of Gallipoli and the Somme had been drenched in blood for a "noble cause", declared Michael Gove. The slaughter unleashed in 1914 had been a "just war" for freedom.

Hostility to the war, the education secretary complained, had been fostered by leftwingers and comedians who denigrated patriotism and painted the conflict as a "misbegotten shambles". Gove was backed by the prime minister, as talk of international reconciliation was left to junior ministerial ranks.

Boris Johnson went further. The war was the fault of German expansionism and aggression, London's mayor pronounced, and called for Labour's shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt to be sacked forthwith if he doubted it. The Conservative grandees were backed up by a retinue of more-or-less loyal historians. Max Hastings reckoned it had been fought in defence of "international law" and small nations, while Antony Beevor took aim at "anti-militarists".

This is all preposterous nonsense. Unlike the second world war, the bloodbath of 1914-18 was not a just war. It was a savage industrial slaughter perpetrated by a gang of predatory imperial powers, locked in a deadly struggle to capture and carve up territories, markets and resources.

Germany was the rising industrial power and colonial Johnny-come-lately of the time, seeking its place in the sun from the British and French empires. The war erupted directly from the fight for imperial dominance in the Balkans, as Austria-Hungary and Russia scrapped for the pickings from the crumbling Ottoman empire. All the ruling elites of Europe, tied together in a deathly quadrille of unstable alliances, shared the blame for the murderous barbarism they oversaw. The idea that Britain and its allies were defending liberal democracy, let alone international law or the rights of small nations, is simply absurd.

It's not just that most men and all women in Britain were still denied the vote in 1914 – unlike Germany, which already had full male suffrage – or that the British empire was allied with the brutal autocracy of tsarist Russia.

Every single one of the main warring states was involved in the violent suppression of the rights of nations throughout the racist tyrannies that were their colonial empires. In the decades before 1914, about 30 million people died from famine as colonial officials enforced the export of food in British-ruled India, slaughtered resisters in their tens of thousands and set up concentration camps in South Africa.

Britain was supposed to have gone to war to defend the neutrality of "plucky little Belgium" – which had itself presided over the death of 10 million Congolese from forced labour and mass murder in the previous couple of decades. German colonialists had carried out systematic genocide in what is now Namibia in the same period.

As to international law, Britain's disdain for it was demonstrated when Germany had asked by what right it claimed territory in Africa a few years before. London refused to reply. The answer was obvious: brute force. This was the "liberal" global order for which, in the words of the war poet Wilfred Owen, the ruling classes "slew half the seed of Europe, one by one".

In reality, it wasn't just the seed of Europe they sacrificed, but hundreds of thousands of troops from their colonies as well. And in case there were any doubt that all the main combatants were in the land-grabbing expansion game, Britain and France then divvied up the defeated German and Ottoman empires between them, from Palestine to Cameroon, without a thought for small nations' rights, laying the ground for future disasters in the process.

Gove and his fellow war apologists worry that satirical shows such as Blackadder have sapped patriotism by portraying the war as "a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite". The incompetence and cynicism of generals and politicians certainly had horrific results. But it was the nature of the war itself that was most depraved.

Fortunately, the revisionists lost the argument among the public long ago – just as Gove has largely lost his battle to impose a tub-thumping imperial agenda on the school history curriculum. They will keep trying though, because history wars are about the future as much as the past – and so long as imperial conflict is discredited, future foreign military interventions and occupations will be difficult to sell.

For the rest of us, this year's anniversary should be a reminder that empire in all its forms, militarism and national chauvinism lead to bloodshed and disaster. It also contains a warning about the threat from the rise and fall of great powers. China is no imperial Germany, but the US – allied with Japan – is a declining global power in a region in which it is tightening its military grip. It's not 1914, but the dangers are clear.

Twitter: @seumasmilne

Seumas Milne

Modern Britain can survive – if we all have the will for it

Martin Kettle — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 20:34:30 GMT

We'll need something more than the Queen and bad weather to bind this nation in the year of the Scottish referendum

The current storms and floods offer a tantalising twist to the age-old infatuation between the British and their weather. Every night we watch spectacular news reports from places in these islands which in other circumstances rarely figure on the collective map. When, unless you live there, was the last time you heard anything about what life is like on the Somerset Levels, or in Aberystwyth, or on the Cumbrian or the Antrim coasts?

To many, these unusual storm and flood reports must feel as though they come from a faraway country of which they know little. In doing so they speak to one of Britain's less well-understood but important deep fractures. We mostly understand, even if governments struggle to do much about it, that Britain is a country of massive inequalities of wealth and power. But there is an inequality of awareness and sensibility as well. Both of them need redressing.

To me, as a native northerner, London and the south-east today feel less aware of the rest of the country than ever in my lifetime. In Scotland, nationalists can stir an audience against London, yet London barely gives a moment's thought to Scotland, even in the year of the independence vote. There is a similar disjunction between London and the north of England, and London and Wales. Much of this is caused, and maintained, by the centralised narrative from the London-based media. The indifference is unmissable.

This slow closure of the mind is at least as powerful in weakening the ties that bind the British nation as any of the more tangible imbalances in investment, wealth, house prices and industry. And unless all of them are addressed, both at the institutional level and by the conscious efforts of individuals, it is hard to see how things will not get worse and the ties loosen further.

I agree with the Canadian intellectual and politician Michael Ignatieff, who argues that a country is a sustained, everyday act of will, not a natural fact. In Britain, we are in danger of losing that will. We may even have lost it already.

None of us can be everywhere all the time. All of us have to live in one place and have an awareness of others. But modern Britain feels to me like a country with much less spatial awareness of itself than in the past, certainly than it possessed when I was a boy, and with far less curiosity about itself too.

This has happened before, of course, and social commentators have come forward to remedy the need. When Defoe wrote his Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain in the 1720s, it was less than a generation since the Acts of Union, and most inhabitants of Britain had little or no ability to travel or communicate over large distances anyway. Meanwhile, 80 years ago this year, JB Priestley produced the book, English Journey, which, alongside Defoe's, is still to my mind the most impassioned and clearly written attempt to reach across the mind-forged barriers to imagine what an England of the people – it's a pity he did not write it about Britain – could be.

Everyone should read Priestley – even today – and including the Scots, who imagine that a sense of being a community denied is distinctively Scottish. Much of what Priestley wrote still rings true, not least this peroration: "It was all very puzzling. Was Jarrow still in England or not? Had we exiled Lancashire and the north-east coast? Were we no longer on speaking terms with cotton weavers and miners and platers and riveters? Why had nothing been done about these decaying towns and their workless people? Was everybody waiting for a miracle to happen …

"Why has there been no plan for these areas, for these people? The dole is part of no plan; it is a mere declaration, of intellectual bankruptcy. You have only to spend a morning in the dole country to see that it is all wrong. Nobody is getting any substantial benefit, any reasonable satisfaction out of it. Nothing is encouraged except a shambling dull-eyed poor imitation of life."

The platers and the riveters may have quit the scene. But the intellectual bankruptcy and poor imitation of life is still there. Even today it feels as if parts of the country have been exiled from the national mind, and certainly the media mind. Someone with real talent and sympathy should make Priestley's 1934 journey afresh in 2014.

There are other things that can be done. Linda Colley, in her current radio series about the union, suggests some constitutional changes, including an English parliament based in the north of England. Earlier today the former Labour adviser Patrick Diamond was on a TV soapbox suggesting a few others. Move some of the great national institutions to the north, he said, as part of the BBC has done in moving to Salford, where more than 100 other media and digital companies have been attracted to grow in the shadow of MediaCityUK. Why not move the British Museum, or the House of Lords? Good government, local and national, can do much to redress the imbalances.

In the end, though, none of this will work without a strong sense of popular solidarity. In the globalised economy, such solidarity is particularly elusive, because it takes time and will to work out what we share and want to do together, especially when migration levels are high and economic prospects uncertain. The solidarity that binds a nation is a political act, and most of Britain's political traditions lack a sufficiently rich commitment to what ties us together in spite of and through our differences. The result is the rise of the SNP in Scotland and of Ukip in England. As Nigel Farage said this week, it's not just about money. Yet Farage misses the point that people also yearn for unity across difference and for the security it brings.

Modern Britain can survive. But it will do so best if we believe that we are or can be all in it together, that we have enough common experiences and needs to overcome the temptation of emphasising other differences. That means a Britain held together by something more than the Queen, nuclear weapons, Team GB and film of bad weather on TV. The essential spinal cord of any modern nation is not a balanced budget, though that is not irrelevant, but the welfare state. If we cannot provide effective welfare, pensions and healthcare for one another, we are not a community or a nation. We need to rediscover and articulate what Priestley felt. Have we got the will to revive our nation? This year is going to put that to the test as few years in our recent history have done.

Martin Kettle

Mark Duggan inquest: questions must be answered before police and community relations can heal

David Lammy — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 18:56:14 GMT

Public trust in the police is fragile. Amid the wider perception of a lack of justice, it is imperative that trust is rebuilt

The Duggan inquest, which culminated today in a verdict of lawful killing, will have been some solace to the Metropolitan police after a string of public scandals. Yet there are aspects of this verdict that are perplexing and seemingly contradictory to those of who us who have carefully followed the proceedings over recent months, and in many ways raise more questions than answers.

Serious concerns – many of them still unaddressed – were raised about the events leading up to those fateful few moments. Why, for instance, was the officer who fired the fatal shot the only witness who says he saw Mark Duggan holding a gun? What led the jury to conclude that the police could and should have gathered more intelligence before stopping the car Duggan was travelling in? Why was that car – a crucial piece of evidence – moved by police officers in the hours after the shooting? Why was there no officer in charge of the crime scene for more than 48 hours?

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) inquiry must now attempt to answer these fundamental questions. Until they are adequately answered, confusion, conjecture and suspicion will continue to surround the events of that August evening.

It remains to be seen whether the IPCC will be able to answer these questions. This process has revealed from start to finish a series of deep flaws in the efficiency and competency of the IPCC, and it is right that Theresa May has pledged to reform it. It is imperative that we have an independent regulatory body that is strong enough to sufficiently hold the police to account. Whether the IPCC is currently that organisation is questionable, at best.

In April 2005 I was stopped by the police. It was not the first time. As a young black man, being stopped on the street becomes part of everyday life, but this time was by far the most unnerving. I was on my way home from a constituency event with my older brother – a magistrate – in his Audi, when we suddenly noticed an ominous grey police van right on our tail. Seconds later, a marked police car forced its way alongside.

We pulled over and were immediately surrounded by heavily armed Operation Trident officers, shouting at us not to move and to raise our hands. Hearts pounding and minds racing, we did as we were told. I quickly managed to convince them that I was the local MP. Immediately their manner changed. They apologised, gave a mumbled explanation about mistaken identity, and promptly left. For them, I expect the incident was quickly forgotten and probably laughed off. But I was left with the nagging thought that it would only have taken one wrong movement – one inadvertent raise of the arm – and there is a chance I would not be here today.

This incident is symptomatic of the damage and distrust that can be caused in communities when a small minority – and it is a minority – of police officers are seen to have acted excessively, incorrectly or unfairly. Among ethnic minority communities, the continual suspicion and stopping and searching that they are frequently subjected to makes community policing very difficult. This problem has long been recognised.

But, more worryingly, these concerns are no longer limited to ethnic minority groups or inner-city communities. Three of the most recent high-profile victims of police injustice were white: Jean Charles de Menezes, Ian Tomlinson and, in very different circumstances, Andrew Mitchell. Concerns are no longer being raised just by community leaders and youth workers, but by senior Conservative MPs and celebrity phone-hacking victims. It is fast becoming clear that the distrust in the police that has long existed among urban ethnic minority communities is beginning to spread to other parts of society.

Whatever is said in the coming days, this process that led to this inquest conclusion should be respected. This was the finding of a full, 10-person jury, which listened to several months of evidence, testimonies and expert accounts, before spending nearly a week deliberating on its decision. The process was carried out in public and widely reported in the media, showing that – at the very least – police officers were under public scrutiny, as they should be when there are allegations of deep wrongdoing.

Policing in any democracy is most effective when it operates firmly on the basis of consent, legitimacy and trust. The Duggan family's sorrow and anger was palpable in court and those feelings will be reflected in the broader community. The frustration at what is perceived as a lack of justice will be shared by a close-knit local community that has previously endured suffering following the killings of Cynthia Jarrett, Roger Sylvester and Joy Gardner at the hands of the police. The tension in Tottenham that will follow this verdict must be considered in that context.

Further clarification of the events surrounding Mark Duggan's shooting is essential to enable the relationship between the community and the police to move forward. Public trust in the police has been shown to be fragile, and it will take time to rebuild following another setback. Yet it is imperative that it is rebuilt. That work starts anew today.

David Lammy

Twitter bullies must learn that with a voice comes responsibility

Claire Hardaker — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 18:42:54 GMT

The internet gives a priceless voice to the marginalised – but the Caroline Criado-Perez abuse case shows that freedom of expression does not mean freedom from consequences

For many, the internet embodies an idealised vision of democracy – a liberal, open-minded environment that promotes free speech and provides a platform for alternative views. Once, only the powerful and wealthy had a voice which largely operated as a monologue; the elite spoke, and the masses listened. In turn, the masses drowned out the voices of the powerless and poor. This hierarchy, established over centuries, has been short-circuited in mere decades by the internet, in the form of article comments, government e-petitions, and social media sites such as Twitter. Now, the words or deeds of the powerful can trigger a loud and sustained response that is hard to ignore. It's easy to see the benefits of this. Marginalised and wronged groups have been able to use online campaigns to usher us all forward into a more enlightened era in which we are more open-minded about the LGBQT community, disability, race, religion and so forth.

In the perfect sweep of democratic even-handedness that characterises the internet, however, a voice is given to all, including those who use it to be abusive and intimidating. A case in point is the banknote campaign by the feminist and journalist Caroline Criado-Perez. After successfully petitioning the Bank of England to include a woman on a banknote in July 2012, Criado-Perez was subjected to a torrent of rape, mutilation and death threats sent from more than 80 different Twitter accounts. The response from Twitter was painfully slow, and Criado-Perez has described her frustration with the police investigation. While other trials are ongoing, only two individuals have so far appeared in court in relation to the abusive tweets. This week, John Nimmo from South Shields and Isabella Sorley from Newcastle pleaded guilty to sending messages of a menacing nature.

Nimmo had created multiple accounts to send numerous threats to both Criado-Perez and MP Stella Creasy in a campaign that lasted several days. His solicitor presented him as a sad individual; a social recluse who had jumped on the "rape threat train" as a way of seeking attention, validation and popularity. Descriptions of how he had been severely bullied at school were used to explain how he had become a pitiable, alienated individual who barely left the house except to empty his bins, and whose only life was lived through the internet.

Meanwhile, Sorley claimed to be unable to remember sending the abuse, and described herself as "off [her] face on drink" at the time. Her defence likewise sought to show that the occurrence of the threats, on only one day, in the early hours of the morning, was indicative of a moment of poor judgment brought about by ongoing drink problems. A possibly contradictory element to this, however, was that like Nimmo, Sorley had created multiple different accounts to send the abuse – a step more consistent with someone covering their tracks. Indeed, whilst Nimmo was bailed until sentencing on 24 January, Sorley has been remanded in custody due to a range of prior public order offences, and in her case, a custodial sentence is inevitable.

While Nimmo's accounts have long since been shut down, Sorley's remain active. At 9.16am on the morning of her trial, Sorley tweeted a selfie from Buckingham Palace, with the words, "Just chilling at the queens #London". Meanwhile, on 15 December, she tweeted, "Pretty sure i was in the quiet coach on the way home yesterday. There was nothing quiet about my behaviour #sorrymam". weets like these, and others besides, suggest an emotionally immature young woman who simply doesn't understand – or perhaps doesn't want to understand – how her behaviour affects those around her. It reasonably follows that someone with a limited grasp of empathy offline has little chance of being empathetic online.

Overall, that idealised democracy that the internet offers is priceless beyond measure. For every negative Nimmo or Sorley story, there is a positive one – such as a campaign that has brought about real, meaningful change. In other words, while this case might seem to implicitly support the censorship of marginalised voices, what it in fact demonstrates is a need for a better understanding that freedom of expression does not mean freedom from consequences. The web really does give a voice to those previously silenced, but with that voice comes responsibility, and a moment on the fingertips could turn into a lifetime on the criminal record slip.

Dr Claire Hardaker is a lecturer in corpus linguistics at Lancaster University

Claire Hardaker

Forget funeral selfies. What are the ethics of tweeting a terminal illness? | Emma G Keller

Emma G Keller — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 18:40:03 GMT

Lisa Adams is dying of breast cancer. She has tweeted over 100,000 times about her journey. Is this educational or too much?

Lisa Bonchek Adams is dying. She has Stage IV breast cancer and now it's metastasized to her bones, joints, hips, spine, liver and lungs. She's in terrible pain. She knows there is no cure, and she wants you to know all about what she is going through. Adams is dying out loud. On her blog and, especially, on Twitter.

She has tweeted over 100,000 times about her health. Lately, she tweets dozens of times an hour. Her Twitter followers are a mixed bag. Some are also battling cancer or work in the medical field, others seem to follow Adams' life story like a Reality TV show. Here's a taste of what it's like:

Pain today is worst in days. Cannot get on top of it. I have 1)constant drip plus ability to do 2)on-demand drip, 3)emergency. All in use.
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

But it radiates out to side of back ("radicular pain") and has nerve component of pain. Mixes with the lung pain/same side
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

All morning docs and nurses go in and out so you may see answers to questions in spurts. I also sometimes nod off mid tweet...
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

She has been scrupulous about keeping track of her seven year decline. Her journey began with six month routine postpartum checkup after the birth of her third child. You can read all about the details of her disease and treatment on her blog right up until about this morning, which is when she posted her latest entry, only a few hours after the previous one.

She begins each day with the same tweet:

Find a bit of beauty in the world today. Share it. If you can't find it, create it. Some days this may be hard to do. Persevere.
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) December 27, 2013

Over the past few years she has tweeted more than 165,000 times (well over 200 tweets in the past 24 hours alone.) Her clear-eyed strategy of living with cancer for as long as she can has caught the attention of many women with breast cancer, several writers and thousands of fans from everyday lives all over the world. I heard about her in the process of organizing a Guardian US Living Hour chat on DNA and cancer tumors in early November. Before you knew it, she was in the chat having her tumor genome and her cancer trial discussed in detail. I never met her, but I swapped tweets and emails with her, and kept track of her health.

Which is why a few weeks ago I noticed she was tweeting a lot more and from a situation she described as agonizing. The clinical drug trial she was on wasn't working. Her disease seemed to be rampaging through her body. She could hardly breathe, her lungs were filled with copious amounts of fluid causing her to be bedridden over Christmas. As her condition declined, her tweets amped up both in frequency and intensity. I couldn't stop reading – I even set up a dedicated @adamslisa column in Tweetdeck – but I felt embarrassed at my voyeurism. Should there be boundaries in this kind of experience? Is there such a thing as TMI? Are her tweets a grim equivalent of deathbed selfies, one step further than funeral selfies? Why am I so obsessed?

Social media has definitely become a part of Adams' treatment (I wonder what her hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, thinks about that.) Tweeting makes her less lonely, it gives her a purpose, it distracts her from her pain, and the contact it brings clearly comforts her. Adams has managed to keep her dignity and her deft sense of humor intact as she has charted her decline.

As she tweeted a few hours ago:

"Why is she tweeting if it hurts so much?" I am sure people ask. It helps to distract me especially when I am alone (it's 6 AM here)
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

Adams is not alone in doing this. Journalist Xeni Jardin live tweeted her cancer diagnosis two years ago and the long treatment journey. Jardin told the Guardian last year that she wasn't sure if she would be quite as "sharey" if she could go back in time.

It's clear that tweeting as compulsively as Lisa Adams does is an attempt to exercise some kind of control over her experience. She doesn't deny that. She sees herself as an educator, giving voice to what so many people go through. And she is trying to create her own boundaries, flimsy as they might be. She'll tell you all about her pain, for example, but precious little about her children or husband and what they are going through. She describes a fantastic set up at Sloan-Kettering, where she can order what she wants to eat at any time of day or night and get as much pain medication as she needs from a dedicated and compassionate "team", but there is no mention of the cost. She was enraged a few days ago when a couple of people turned up to visit her unannounced. She's living out loud online, but she wants her privacy in real life.

In some ways she has invited us all in. She could argue that she is presenting a specific picture – the one she wants us to remember. "I do feel there will be lasting memories about me. That matters," she wrote to me in a direct message on Twitter.

The ethical questions abound. Make your own judgement.

Are those of us who've been drawn into her story going to remember a dying woman's courage, or are we hooked on a narrative where the stakes are the highest?

Will our memories be the ones she wants? What is the appeal of watching someone trying to stay alive? Is this the new way of death? You can put a "no visitors sign" on the door of your hospital room, but you welcome the world into your orbit and describe every last Fentanyl patch. Would we, the readers, be more dignified if we turned away? Or is this part of the human experience?

We've put together a condensed timeline of Lisa Adams' tweets. You can also read her entire feed.

Emma G Keller

Why you shouldn't force a child to kiss a grandparent

Annalisa Barbieri — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 17:11:45 GMT

Learning about consent is a vital part of sex education, and forcing a child into affection with a family member only confuses

This is what this article is NOT about: it's not about forbidding a willing child to sit on Granny's knee, or giving Grandpa a kiss, or cuddling Auntie Kate. It's not about being overly politically correct or trying to stop normal family life.

What it is about is this: children have powerful instincts, and sometimes adults override those instincts for social niceties that suit the adult, not the child. Sometimes children don't want to kiss a relative or family friend, for all sorts of reasons, and yet adults want them to because otherwise it doesn't look nice, or seem polite. In being coerced to kiss or cuddle someone they don't want to, that child is being told that how they feel, what they want to do with their own bodies, doesn't really matter. That an adult's wishes and sensibilities matter more.

And it's a more pernicious action than you might think. If a child gets used to being told their bodies aren't their own, or have no right of refusal, even in something as innocent as kissing grandma, when or if there is malintent from another adult they may not feel strong enough to say no. How are children magically supposed to learn that lesson? You cannot expect a child to acquiesce when you want them to, and then magically grow up to "know their own mind". Knowing their own mind starts with allowing them to speak it.

Lucy Emmerson, co-ordinator of the Sex Education Forum, recently echoed this, to much criticism. In the January of The Sex Education Supplement: the Consent Issue, Emmerson said that she was disappointed to learn that three out of 10 young people did not learn about consent at school; not about the age of consent being 16 – most knew that – but "about real-life situations and what you would do if 'something happens'".

Emmerson believes that learning about consent starts from age zero. "Much is learned by young children from everyday experiences about whether or not their opinion is valued, and if they have any control over physical contact with others."

Further along in the online magazine, which is aimed at teachers and professionals, there are lesson ideas. In those for key stage 1, ideas are given to prompt thoughts in children "about consent and physical touch … for example whether or not we want to kiss a friend or relative or hug someone". And it gives tips on how to answer questions such as "when is it OK to let someone touch me?" and "how can I say no if I don't want someone to touch me?" For those interested, it recommends a book called A Kiss Like This by Laurence and Catherine Anholt.

How anyone can disagree with this puzzles me. The criticism levied at Emmerson is that it's "political correctness gone mad". How? How is teaching a child that they have control over their bodies and who they have close physical contact with, a bad thing? Another criticism is that it erodes family life. Isn't a child a member of that family? Its most vulnerable member? No one is stopping a child jumping on anyone's knee and giving them a kiss if they want to. But if they don't? Isn't that OK too?

"Children," says Peter Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, "should never be forced to do anything which makes them uncomfortable around these issues. Children are instinctive and intuitive around people they are not comfortable with. And we need to respect that."

"There are certain things we make children do which is quite different," says Saunders. "We make them brush their teeth, for example. That is quite different to forcing them to kiss an uncle they don't want to. It's about boundaries. And this blurring of boundaries [by forcing them to kiss someone they don't want to] can indeed blur their understanding of what is right and wrong, about their body belonging to them."

Your child may not want to kiss Grandma/pa for no other reason than they don't feel like it that day. But one day, they may have a very real instinct about someone. You can't have it both ways. If an adult gets offended because a child doesn't kiss them or want to be near them, then really it's up to the adult to address these feelings of abandonment, not the child to make it better.

Annalisa Barbieri

The myth of an undivided Jerusalem is collapsing under its own weight | Daniel Seidemann

Daniel Seidemann — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 16:32:15 GMT

Binyamin Netanyahu is misguided to believe a two-state Israel-Palestine solution is possible while keeping a deeply divided city intact

As John Kerry's Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative moves into a decisive stage, two Jerusalem truths are becoming crystal clear. First, either the two-state solution will also take place within Jerusalem, or there will be no two-state solution at all. Second, any attempt to reach a permanent status agreement regarding Jerusalem that ignores the already existing, deeply rooted urban realities of this bi-national and divided city is doomed to failure.

These truths were on display on 22 October 2013, when Jerusalem held mayoral elections. The incumbent mayor, Nir Barkat, an up-and-coming political star in Israel's ideological right, was re-elected. His victory was convincing: Barkat received 51.9% of the vote, in comparison with the 44.6% received by his closest rival.

Barkat, along with the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is a vocal champion of "Jerusalem-the-eternal-capital-of-Israel-that-will-never-be-divided". Conceding that there have long been major inequities in the level of services between East and West Jerusalem, Barkat proudly claims to have made progress in narrowing the gaps, asserting that his efforts have met with satisfaction from Palestinian residents. Citing this accomplishment, Barkat claims to represent all residents of his city, both Israeli and Palestinian, and has said: "The vast majority of the Arabs in Jerusalem prefer to be on the Israeli side. They don't want the city divided."

At first glance, the 2013 municipal election results appear to support such claims. The number of votes Barkat received from the Palestinian sector in this election was 90% higher than what he received in 2008, winning him 46.9% of votes cast by Palestinians of East Jerusalem. Receiving a percentage of the vote slightly below that which he received from the Israeli sector, Barkat was well ahead of his closest rival, who received only 19.7% of the Palestinian vote.

A more careful look at the numbers, however, tells a very different story. There are approximately 157,382 eligible voters among the Palestinians of East Jerusalem. Of these, a total of 1,101 voted in the 2013 election – meaning a Palestinian voter turnout of only 0.7%. Barkat received 46.9% of these votes – a total of 516 votes, a mere 0.3% of the total vote of all eligible Palestinian voters. In short, Barkat's assertion that he "represents" all residents of Jerusalem is without basis in fact.

Some will argue that Palestinian residents of Jerusalem were intimidated into boycotting the election. This assertion is baseless. All organs of Palestinian authority and political organising in East Jerusalem have been crushed by the government of Israel. There is simply no Palestinian capacity in East Jerusalem to organise a campaign of intimidation, or of anything else of consequence. The Palestinians didn't vote in this election, just as they have refrained from voting in previous municipal elections, because they were making a statement about their own identities: "we are Palestinian, not Israeli".

The results in Israel's national elections for the Knesset, which took place on 22 January last year, are no less illuminating. In those elections, 28.4% of eligible Palestinian voters in East Jerusalem cast a ballot, a seemingly respectable number. A more careful look, once again, tells a different story – in this case a story of formal disenfranchisement.

Out of the approximate 157,382 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem of voting age, only 10,431 actually have the right to vote in Israel's national elections (a number that is artificially high, since it includes thousands of Israeli Arab citizens who moved to Jerusalem from areas in pre-1967 Israel, rather than native Palestinian East Jerusalemites). This means that the number of East Jerusalemite Palestinians entitled to vote in national elections hovers at around 5% of the voting-age Palestinian population of the city. Only 2,965 of the East Jerusalem Palestinians – 1.9% of the Palestinian population – voted in Israel's 2013 national elections, with another 95% denied the right to vote.

This bizarre situation exists because most Palestinians in "undivided Jerusalem" are legally classified as "permanent residents", rather than citizens of Israel. As such, they do not enjoy the right to vote in national elections. An estimated 13,000 Palestinians of all ages, out of a total Palestinian population of 293,000 (37% of Jerusalem's total population), have received Israeli citizenship.

By disenfranchising Palestinians of East Jerusalem from national elections, Israel has declared unequivocally that these residents of Israel's "undivided capital" are not, in fact, part of Israel's body politic. And by overwhelmingly refraining from voting in municipal elections, even when that right exists, Palestinians of East Jerusalem are emphatically agreeing.

The results of these two recent elections reveal the fundamental political truth of contemporary Jerusalem: the only place where Jerusalem is "the undivided capital of Israel" is in the fertile imaginations of ideologues such as Netanyahu and Barkat. Nowhere else in the world is there a prime minister so utterly detached from the daily realities of a city that he claims to be his nation's "exclusive" capital; and nowhere else is there a mayor so utterly disconnected from – and in denial about – the realities of the flesh-and-blood city over which he purports to preside.

Those engaged in the current negotiations can ignore these facts only at great peril. When Netanyahu says he supports the two-state outcome, but opposes anything less than an undivided Jerusalem under sole Israeli sovereignty, he is really saying: "I reject the two-state solution".

The myth of "undivided Jerusalem" is collapsing under the weight of its own fictions. Should the Kerry initiative – the last, best hope for the two-state solution – end in failure, Jerusalem will degenerate into the epicentre of a festering conflict, the arena of recurrent rounds of convulsive violence. But should, against all odds, these talks end in agreement, a new Jerusalem, rooted in its genuine political and urban realities, will emerge: a politically divided, bi-national city, the respective capitals of Israel and Palestine – which is the sine qua non of any permanent status agreement.

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Daniel Seidemann

Pope Francis preaches tolerance, yet gay teachers like Mark Zmuda get fired | Sadhbh Walshe

Sadhbh Walshe — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 16:28:00 GMT

Many objected when Zmuda was fired from a US Catholic school for being gay. The pope's words must be matched with action

Have you heard the one about the gay teacher who was being fired for marrying his male partner, then was told he could possibly stay on if he got a divorce? This may sound like a joke – in theory the church is equally opposed to both divorce and gay marriage – but it was an actual suggestion made to Mark Zmuda, a vice principal at the Eastside Catholic School in Seattle, Washington, who was being forced to resign from his job a few weeks ago when school administrators learned that he is both married and gay.

Zmuda didn't go for the divorce option and was terminated despite a barrage of protest led by the school's mostly Catholic student body. It's unlikely (since he has refused to stop being gay) that the teacher will be reinstated, but the incident has exposed, in a very public way, the church's willingness to be flexible on some of its principles (divorce sort of OK), while remaining totally rigid on others (gay marriage definitely not OK). More importantly, the ongoing protests surrounding Zmuda's dismissal should make it clear to the church that singling out gay people for special (mis)treatment is not something many Catholics are prepared to go on tolerating.

In fact, just yesterday Eastside Catholic School announced that freelance drama coach Stephanie Merrow, who is engaged to another woman, is "welcome" to continue working at the school. The school is now looking for ways to prevent the Zmuda controversy from happening again.

Zmuda married his long term partner last summer, just seven months after it became legal to do so in Washington state. He continued working without incident at the school until December, when some colleagues apparently alerted school administrators of his marriage. Almost immediately after this transgression was discovered (getting married to someone you love while gay counts as a pretty major transgression in Catholic land), Zmuda was out of a job. Legal experts say the school acted within their rights – as an administrator in the school, he was obliged to abide by Catholic teachings. But while his termination may satisfy doctrinal purists, it has caused distress and confusion to many Catholics (including Zmuda himself) who are unable to reconcile the so-called Christian ethos of the church with what they apparently see as a very un-Christian act.

Since the dismissal became public, students at the school – at least some of whom must be practicing Catholics – have been staging protest rallies, sit-ins and started an online campaign to have their teacher reinstated. Even many faculty members, including the school's president, Sister Mary Tracy, were ambivalent about the need to let go a competent and popular teacher. In a video interview with a former student, Zmuda spoke of how his colleagues stood by him the day they were told he would be leaving his job, and spent over an hour trying to come up with options that would prevent his departure. It was Sister Mary Tracy who brought up the possibility of his getting a divorce, a suggestion she later regretted but "owned". As she explained to Seattle King5 News:

I suggested to dissolve the marriage to save his job. I was trying to hang onto him.

Ultimately, it was the Archdiocese, not the school, who made the decision that Zmuda had to go, so her efforts were in vain.

Sister Mary Tracy, most of the faculty at the school, and most of the student body are not the only local Catholics who are uncomfortable with how Zmuda was treated for being gay. Seattle's newly elected mayor, Ed Murray, who also happens to be Catholic, gay and married, has spoken out at the protest rallies. Two other Seattle-based Catholics, Barbara Guzzo and Kirby Brown penned an op-ed for the Seattle Times calling for the teacher's immediate reinstatement. In it, they pointed out that if the church were to fire every employee who failed to abide by Catholic doctrine (the more than 90% of practicing Catholics who use contraceptives for starters), it would be a very short-staffed institution.

In the past two years, more than 12 gay employees of Catholic institutions have lost their jobs for getting married or supporting marriage equality. One of these employees, Carla Hale, a teacher for 19 years at Bishop Watterson High School in Columbus, Ohio, was sacked shortly after her mother's funeral, when parents of one of her students objected to seeing her female partner's name listed in the obituary notice. The particularly unkind way in which Hale was subsequently dismissed sparked a literal "halestorm" of protest similar to the one currently brewing for Zmuda. But the church still refused to reinstate her (Hale has since announced a settlement with the diocese).

The church will continue to ignore the protests of many in its flock surrounding terminations of employees like Hale and Zmuda, but it will do so at its peril. One of Zmuda's former students summed up the growing discomfort among some Catholics regarding the unequal treatment of gay people in a tweet to his holiness Pope Francis, or as he is better known on twitter, @Pontifex:

Hey big guy, we need you over here in Washington. A teacher is being fired for love.

So far, the pope, who was named Man of the Year by Advocate, a prominent gay news magazine, has not weighed in on this particular situation or on any of the firings. This is a bit disappointing in light of his comments to reporters last year that "if a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge"? Francis also stated recently that the church had "locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules", and needed to start treating gay people with compassion and respect.

But the pope ought to know that words are meaningless if not followed by meaningful action, and none has yet been taken. For now at least, it's people like Zmuda who are burning while Rome continues to fiddle. As more Catholics turn up the heat in protest, someday soon, the churches unkind and outdated policies are bound to backfire.

Sadhbh Walshe

Saturday Night Live adds Sasheer Zamata, but will things change? | Eris Zion Venia Dyson

Eris Zion Venia Dyson — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:50:55 GMT

Eris Zion Venia Dyson: Though Zamata's hiring is undeniably a step forward, culture must change behind the camera as much as it does on stage

Eris Zion Venia Dyson

This is the year of make or break for Europe | John Palmer

John Palmer — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:29:00 GMT

As Greece takes over the EU chair, a fresh eurozone crisis is inevitable unless Germany changes its tune

There is something poignantly symbolic about the fact that it is under a Greek presidency that the EU faces 2014 – a year which could determine whether or not the post-second world war process of closer European integration not just halts but goes into reverse. But while Greek mythology provided many of the cultural icons for European unity, the fate of the European project will not be shaped by Greece alone.

There is no reason to suppose that the coming six months with Athens in the EU chair will be any less effective or efficient than any other presidency. The more productive ones in the past have come from the smaller EU countries.

The biggest immediate challenge to the goal of an ever-closer EU comes from the unresolved eurozone crisis. European leaders must execute a policy U-turn and abandon the present austerity strategy if a renewed crisis is to be avoided later this year, given the feeble economic recovery.

This is not some idealistic Europhile judgment, but something also recognised in the more cynical world of international finance. But has the penny dropped in Berlin? Unless the new German coalition accepts that without a new strategy based on progressive debt cancellation and a concerted drive to boost investment in the economically exhausted southern "periphery", there may be no way to avoid a second, potentially deadly crisis.

There are three reasons for some heavily qualified optimism that this may yet come to pass. First, growing numbers of German economists, impressed by the virtual disappearance of inflation, have come to see the crisis in a new light. Second, the German Social Democrats – now part of the government – fear that without a change of policy, fresh eurozone political and social turmoil could undermine a key German objective of the past 70 years: a politically stable Europe.

A third and possibly decisive factor is the evidence that, within the next year, the Greek people could elect a leftwing government determined to lead a revolt against the mindless policy of mass impoverishment, millions of Europeans and their societies.

The Syriza party's growing popularity is matched by its determination to fight for a new Europe-wide economic and social strategy and to reject any facile, nationalist or populist move to quit either the EU or the euro. That would make a future Syriza-inspired demand for a radical change of European policy all the more difficult for current rightwing political EU leadership to resist.

Indeed, the prospect of such a revolt may lead some in Berlin and Brussels to begin making these concessions while they still have their increasingly desperate conservative allies in Athens clinging to government. The precarious signs of slight economic recovery are unlikely to be enough in themselves to avert a future eurozone breakup – something from which the German economy might well emerge as the biggest loser.

Of course the eurozone crisis is only one expression of a deeper political challenge to the European cause. The rise of far-right nationalisms presents a potentially deadly challenge to the goal of a democratic, peaceful and socially just Europe. Anyone who doubts this need only await the results of the forthcoming European parliament elections.

Success for the far right will not, of course, bring them to power anywhere. But big gains will lend credibility to their increasingly strident campaign to block and then fragment the EU, and their determination to give expression to the kind of blind nationalism which has so often led Europe to disaster in the past.

On the other hand, success for a Syriza-led campaign for a fundamental change of EU policy could demonstrate that there is a better alternative to mindless hate, fear and bigotry. It could yet breathe life into the cause of a Europe of peace, democracy and social justice.

John Palmer is a former Europe editor of the Guardian

John Palmer

Channel 4 has betrayed the residents of Benefits Street

Lynsey Hanley — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 14:45:00 GMT

The aim of this series about an impoverished part of Birmingham appears to be generating as many hateful tweets as possible

When Channel 4 makes a documentary series about one of the poorest streets in Britain, you're no longer expecting (as you might have done in, say, 1983) a reflective and contextualised look at how people make lives for themselves in adverse circumstances.

Benefits Street, which started on Monday, goes much further than that. I've never seen a programme so obviously edited in order to generate Twitter posts. You can call a series anything you like – and at least Benefits Street, though inflammatory, isn't as crassly judgmental as the BBC's equivalent, Saints and Scroungers – but Channel 4 knows what it's doing, and is quite happy to do the government's dirty work.

The series jettisons the long, commentary-free scenes of true observational filmmaking in favour of trailer-sized soundbites designed to circumvent real debate. The first episode introduces a number of residents of James Turner Street, a road of terraced houses within walking distance of Birmingham city centre. Dee, a likeable and level-headed mother, is pigeonholed from the moment she appears. She is not simply bringing up two children, the narrator tells us, but "bringing up two children on benefits". When Danny, a youngish recidivist, is talking about his litany of convictions, the Benefits Street hashtag flashes handily on screen. No opportunity to reflect; no chance to observe that Danny is perfectly aware of the petty stupidity of his life as it is now. Only instantaneous judgments are invited, in 140 characters or less.

A third of children in Birmingham live in poverty. As well as Winson Green, they live in places like Kingstanding, and Stechford, and Hockley – none of which the programme-makers are likely to have had heard of, given that they're poor without being edgy. In the words of geographer Danny Dorling, they're the kinds of places where, as streets and neighbourhoods become more polarised over time, "just to get by is extraordinary".

There's a wilful ignorance at play here: a casual blindness to the fact that the people living on James Turner Street lose any say they have in how they are portrayed as soon as the makers of the series enter the editing suite. Some residents are said to feel betrayed, yet the imbalance of power from the outset determined how their lives would be shown.

The sort of lives that make sense to TV producers – middle-class lives, the lives of people they know and associate with – are infinitely more likely to be shown in the whole and documented without judgment. The lives of people who rarely get to speak, in full, about their day-to-day experiences will be subject to a travesty of that whole. The blunt immediacy of TV only makes this more pronounced, with a disproportionate and detrimental impact on those without power.

Benefits Street is, in spirit, straight out of Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle: a sort of visual vomit-fest in which you can binge on things you purport to hate the sight of, and then purge yourself on Twitter, venting empty outrage then going back for more.

How I long for circumstances in which Channel 4, true to its original spirit, actually sets up home in Winson Green, asks people what they think a programme about their lives should show, and involves them in every aspect of its making. That would be difficult, wouldn't it? It would require communication, responsibility and an understanding that people who seem to be utterly unlike you are also human.

Lynsey Hanley is the author of Estates: an Intimate History

Lynsey Hanley

Al-Maliki's divisive leadership has opened a window for al-Qaida in Iraq | Fawaz Gerges

Fawaz Gerges — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 14:28:19 GMT

Discontent has been building steadily over the past two years among Sunni Arabs who feel excluded and voiceless. The solution is political, not military

After the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis), the group once commonly known as al-Qaida in Iraq, seized control of Falluja in Sunni-dominated Anbar province, the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, urged residents of the city to expel the "terrorists" from their midst. He warned that only this could save their neighbourhoods from all-out battles between militants and government forces. Al-Maliki's appeal seems not only to have fallen on deaf ears but some tribal militias reportedly defected and fought alongside Isis, thus frustrating the government's efforts to retake Falluja.

This failure is hardly surprising given that al-Maliki's authoritarian ways, heavy-handed tactics against the opposition and lack of foresight has alienated a significant segment of Sunni opinion. Twice last year, al-Maliki ordered his security forces to storm Sunni sit-in protests in Anbar, which caused the death of scores of activists and angered the local population.

The spark that ignited the current confrontation was the dismantling of a protest camp last week in Ramadi, Anbar's capital (which al-Maliki called the "headquarters for al-Qaida") and the arrest of a prominent Sunni member of parliament, which further exacerbated tensions between tribal leaders and his Shia-dominated government.

Al-Maliki's critics accuse him of monopolising power and using the al-Qaida label and anti-terrorism laws to crush his political opponents. They point to the government's arrest warrant for the Sunni vice-president, Tariq al-Hashimi, on terrorism charges as a case in point.

Instead of practicing inclusive and transparent governance, al-Maliki relies mainly on sectarian support and ignores calls by the Sunni community and socially disadvantaged groups for equitable political representation and power-sharing. Discontent has been building steadily over the past two years among Sunni Arabs who feel excluded and voiceless.

Al-Qaida, a social parasite that feeds on instability and polarisation, has recently found in Anbar what the al-Qaida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, calls hadenah shabiyaa, a refuge, complete with willing Sunni recruits. With its new label, Isis, and having learnt from its past blunders, al-Qaida has positioned itself as a vanguard defending the persecuted Sunni community against the Shia-led government in Baghdad.

When US military forces withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011, al-Qaida-linked militants numbered in the low hundreds. Now several thousand Sunnis fight under its banner. There is no mystery about the resurgence of al-Qaida in Iraq, an alarming development that stems from a severe and deepening political crisis, sectarian polarisation and geostrategic rivalries.

Years after they occupied Iraq and faced a mounting insurgency spearheaded by al-Qaida, the Americans learned the hard way that the most effective means of cutting their losses was to co-opt the local population, particularly the tribes, and to turn them against al-Qaida.

From 2007 to 2011 it was the so-called Sunni awakening councils or Sons of Iraq – not George W Bush's "surge" as the received wisdom in the US has it – that made Anbar relatively secure and forced al-Qaida insurgents out of their neighbourhoods.

This important lesson has been lost on al-Maliki, whose short-sighted policies have polarised the country further along sectarian, social and ideological lines, creating an opening, a small space, for al-Qaida. My conversations with Sunnis convince me that the community is not receptive to extremist ideas of the al-Qaida variety and looks towards Baghdad, the centre, for resources and leadership.

Iraq's crisis is essentially political – revolving around power and distribution of resources – and could be resolved if the ruling elite have the will and wisdom to compromise, both of which have been in short supply.

The war in Syria has poured gasoline on a raging fire in Iraq, and conflicts in both countries feed upon one another and further complicate an already complex struggle. Al-Qaida in Iraq founded both the al-Nusra Front and Isis in Syria. Hundreds of Shia Iraqis have travelled to Syria to fight on the side of the Assad regime. Now the reverberations of the Syrian war are being felt on Arab streets, particularly Iraq and Lebanon, and are aggravating Sunni-Shia tensions across the Arab Middle East.

Sectarianism is poisoning the veins of Arab and Muslim societies and threatening to tear apart their social fabric. It is no wonder then that al-Qaida-linked militants have recently gained strength in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.

However, the sectarian faultline masks a bigger geostrategic struggle between Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, a struggle that is playing out in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain and Lebanon. The two rival powers vie for mastery in the Gulf and the Levant.

Al-Maliki is said to be mobilising the army to retake Falluja, a battle that could have major regional consequences that transcend Iraq. The US fought two fierce and costly battles in Falluja in 2004 and lost almost 200 soldiers without pacifying the rebellious city. It was only when the Americans co-opted civil society and the tribes that al-Qaida's fortunes declined, a lesson that the Obama administration should impress on al-Maliki as the administration rushes Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, reconnaissance drones and other advanced arms to the Baghdad government.

Fawaz Gerges

Millionaire Steve Forbes has a cynical campaign to keep working people down | Richard L Trumka

Richard L Trumka — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 13:45:00 GMT

A minimum wage hike would improve the lives of 30 million working Americans. Forbes wants to falsely spin it as a job killer

What do you give to a man who has everything? A man like publisher Steve Forbes, worth a reported $430m. What do you give him if you're his beloved-but-on-the-ropes Republican Party?

How about a cynical campaign to defeat a US federal minimum wage increase?

That's what Forbes calls for in his column in the 18 November edition of Forbes magazine. To keep from getting "smacked around by President Obama and congressional Democrats", instead of "passively taking a hit", Republicans should gin up their spin machine to portray a minimum wage increase as a job-killer. Hold House hearings, he says, and parade out people who will say they were hurt by the last minimum wage increase.

Do they really think those House witch hunt hearings still have any credibility?

In case they do, here's a big red flag for Forbes and any Republicans who may be listening to his advice: the public doesn't buy your argument. A recent national survey conducted for the National Employment Law Project (Nelp) by Hart Research Associates finds just 25% buy the claim that raising America's wage floor so working people can live in decency costs jobs.

And the public would be right. Recent respected academic research has determined that raising the minimum wage does not result in job loss – even during bad economic times.

Forbes, a two-time unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate, is on the wrong side of the public in more ways than one. The Nelp-commissioned survey shows that 80% of the public – including 62% of those in Forbes' own party – supports raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and adjusting it for inflation in the future, as President Obama and congressional Democrats propose.

An increase in the minimum wage is overdue. If the minimum wage had just kept pace with inflation since 1969, it would be around $10.70 an hour today instead of $7.25 (or the scandalous $2.13 for tipped workers). If it had kept up with the growth of workers' productivity, it would be $18.72. Meanwhile, if it matched the wage growth of the wealthiest 1%, it would be $28.34.

The stagnation of the minimum wage is digging a deeper and deeper hole between the Steve Forbes's of this country and the rest of us. For the first time since the Great Depression, middle-class families have been losing ground for more than a decade. In fact, America's working families are earning less today than 15 years ago.

This loss hasn't been about productivity – no, America's workers are more productive than ever. And it's not about education – in fact, wages for college grads outside the top income brackets have stagnated or even declined.

What's happened is that the wealthiest people in America have sucked up all the pay raises. Since 1997, all income growth has gone to the wealthiest 10%. Most of those increases have gone to the richest 1%.

Raising the minimum wage is the right way to begin closing the economic chasm between America's wealthy and regular working people. Lifting the wage to $10.10 an hour would benefit 30 million workers, pump $32bn into the economy and add 140,000 new jobs – all without increasing the national deficit. It would have particular impact on the lives of women – who are two-thirds of minimum wage earners.

Not to mention that it's the right thing to do. Does anyone who works hard and plays by the rules in this wealthy nation deserve to live in poverty, forced to choose between paying for rent or food or the heating bill?

Most people in the country think not. But with his $430m, Steve Forbes is living a very comfortable life as he plots to deny others the basic decency of a hard-earned wage they can live on.

Richard L Trumka

President Johnson's war on poverty was about more than feeding and housing the poor | Ana Marie Cox

Ana Marie Cox — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 13:15:00 GMT

We've become so fixated on welfare that we're missing President Johnson's bigger message about what needs to be done

The 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's announcement of "The War on Poverty" has, of course, brought umpteen assessments of the war's success (and failure). Officially, we haven't moved the needle much. By the Census Department's accounting, the US poverty rate has gone down just four points, from 19 to 15%, and economic inequality has soared. Conservatives argue that the minimal changes in poverty levels just don't justify all the spending on anti-poverty programs. Progressives ask, isn't 46 million people living in poverty still too many? Shouldn't we do more?

In the year's since Johnson's idealistic declaration, our focus on spending, and on raw data, has obscured a more human and qualitative view of poverty.

Johnson knew that the politics of poverty could be divisive and that talk of handouts could rub the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" believers the wrong way. In 1964, he spoke as strongly as he could about the way that solutions to poverty could lift the whole nation. He still faced opposition. Perhaps that's why his 1965 address arguing for passage of the Voting Rights Act also contains an even more resonant argument for the government's role in lifting the horizons of the poor. He makes clear the intrinsic connection we've glossed over: ending poverty is part of the campaign for human rights, not the welfare system.

As Johnson noted:

But I would like to caution you and remind you that to exercise these privileges takes much more than just legal right. It requires a trained mind and a healthy body. It requires a decent home, and the chance to find a job, and the opportunity to escape from the clutches of poverty.

Today, politicians of all stripes affect the pose of a regretful accountant when discussing welfare programs: they say "I feel your pain" on the one hand, and then turn around and declare "but the numbers don't justify the spending" on welfare programs. It's a sign of that disturbing migration of the middle to the far right that some critics don't even bother to put a scrim of compassion over their green eyeshades. Fox News' "Entitlement Nation" segment has boldly scolded children who benefit from free lunch programs.

Proponents of anti-poverty program spending will always lose the debate on simple math alone. And conservatives have been incredibly effective at making that the debate. Americans believe that the most important element of "achieving the American dream" is money in your pocket: 28% say lowering taxes would help the most in achieving upward mobility. When asked why poverty persists in the US, the number one response (24% give it) is "too much government welfare that prevents initiative".

Both these answers illustrate a tragically simplistic understanding of the nature of poverty – and the role of the government. If we think about poverty as a function of income (an understandable assumption), then we look at the amount of money spent and wonder where it went. Critics of anti-poverty spending take great pleasure in advising the government to just "send a check" to each low-income family for the amount we've spent on their benefits. Representative Paul Ryan has claimed that would be about $22,000 – and it'd be more effective than the indirect assistance of the social safety net. No wonder an astounding 59% of the country says that there is "little chance" of most poor people escaping their circumstances.

But large-scale studies of class mobility show that the forces that move people out of poverty are more diffuse than can fit in any pocketbook. They have less to do with bank statements than conversations between two people and the distance between two points. In the largest study of its kind, Harvard researchers found that geography was the most important factor in determining whether a child living in poverty would rise to middle class in adulthood.

Living in mixed-income neighborhoods mattered more than tax credits or even access to higher education – or race. Living in areas that had the most established school systems and extensive public transit systems meant that children born to families making less than $25,000 who lived in Seattle had a 10% chance at ending up making over $107,000; a child raised in Atlanta had half as much a shot. And that's just the extreme end. That child in Seattle will most likely wind up making $34,000; the child in Atlanta can expect just $28,000. That is the difference between barely making it out of poverty and actually becoming middle class.

Given what we know about class mobility in general – the richer you are, the better chance you have at getting richer – the disparity in opportunity will just get more stark as the generations move forward.

Does this mean that direct spending on poverty is a bad idea, or ineffective? Does it mean we should just use those $22,000 per-family check to move them to Seattle? I don't believe so; it should just remind us that the broad vision Johnson sketched out was about so much more than feeding and housing the poor. The policies that emerged from that optimistic moment addressed nutrition, mass transit, wilderness conservation and the National Endowment for the Arts. The thinking wasn't "we're going to end poverty and better our country," it was "you can't do one without the other".

The recent push to raise the minimum wage may begin to inch us toward this more broad vision; it de-couples "ending poverty" and "giving money to poor people" in a healthy and enlightening way. It will also probably work. (A review found evidence in 48 out of 54 economic analyses that raising the minimum wage reduced overall poverty.)

The War on Poverty, for all the glory we still associate with military victory, actually diminishes what President Johnson was trying to accomplish. A better phrase might be "The Great Society". The luster of the term has dimmed with overuse, but it is a much more accurate description of not just what ending poverty will give us, but how we might accomplish it.

Ana Marie Cox

Don't know any of the BBC Sound of 2014 acts? Don't worry, just listen | Oscar Rickett

Oscar Rickett — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 13:05:47 GMT

It's easy to feel past it if you haven't heard of the next big thing in music. But that anxiety at least shows you're curious about pop culture

Last month, the BBC revealed its Sound of 2014 longlist. Compiled with the help of 170 tastemakers, the poll "showcases some of the brightest new acts for the year ahead". This week, the top five are being revealed, one day at a time, with the winner being anointed on Nick Grimshaw's Radio 1 show on Friday in what will hopefully be a frenzied, bacchic ritual presided over by a group of major label executives.

These mainstream polls that strive for credibility always attract the slings and arrows of weary old hands who feel they know better, or critics who see them, with some justification perhaps, as part of a malevolent music industry plot to make the artists with the most money behind them stars. But mostly, plenty of people will look at the poll and think, "I have never heard of anyone on this list".

It's an accepted truism in our culture that, after a particular age, most people lose touch with the latest fashions and become square dads, old aunts or past-it uncles. Once, you were cutting the sharpest shapes at the hippest discotheques. Now, you're using words such as "discotheque". The world rushes past you at an ever-increasing pace and when you do come across a new artist you can barely understand their name because it's some kind of acronym or a collection of odd symbols. The flipside of this is that there's a widespread suspicion of anyone over the age of 40 who listens to new music, because really you should stop being so bloody pretentious and start doing decent things like having children and doing the washing-up.

This is why feeling out of date can result in an anger aimed at those perceived to be in the know. That anger often lurks behind many of the tiresome jokes and rants about hipsters, which so often portray this poorly defined group of people as laughing smugly at the rest of society. I don't think anyone has actually ever been laughed at by a braying group of hipsters in real life but it's the kind of thing you can imagine happening if you feel as if you're standing on the outside. When you start to feel out of touch it can make you anxious, afraid even – of getting old and boring and beyond that, if you want to be really dramatic, of death itself. Better, then, to dismiss anyone you think is still up to date as an idiot or a hipster.

Though it's associated with getting older, you can begin to feel left out of popular culture at almost any age. We've come a long way since The Replacement's 1985 love letter to alternative radio, Left of the Dial, in which singer Paul Westerberg reads about the band of a girl he likes in a regional paper, before trying to find their music on a series of local stations. Today, staying hip is a question of sifting through a mass of material across the internet. You will never have heard of all the bands because there are so many. In this way, an awareness of what is out there can make you feel as though you are out of touch, and that's no bad thing. It just means you know that there's always more to listen to, more to read, more to see.

Whatever staying up to date actually means, I can say fairly confidently that it doesn't relate to knowing who BBC Sound of 2014 picks Luke Sital Singh or George Ezra are. Recently, I started worrying that I hadn't heard enough music, so I emailed some friends and asked them to share some of what they'd been listening to. I wasn't asking for an approved list of music, I was asking for something different, something that might surprise me. If you've stopped wanting to listen to music you haven't heard before, or you've stopped feeling curious about the world, then you should be worried, however old you are. But if you don't recognise any of the names on an industry poll, I wouldn't worry about it. Just have a listen to a couple of their songs. You never know, you might like them.

• This article was commissioned after a suggestion by Pairubu

Oscar Rickett

The alcohol pricing U-turn shows the power of the business lobby | Anne Perkins

Anne Perkins — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 12:22:49 GMT

It seems to be getting trickier and trickier to keep money and politics apart. But don't expect the recent lobbying bill to help

A minimum price for alcohol is one of those policies that looks so sensible – the only mystery is that it hasn't already been introduced. (I speak as one who surreptitiously visits alcohol concern websites to check where on the functioning alcoholic spectrum they fit.) There are different ways of doing it, but in 2012 there was general enthusiasm when the coalition confirmed it would fulfil its pledge to bring in minimum pricing by alcoholic unit. The only question was at what level.

It looked like a done deal. Yet within months there were signs that the policy was falling out of favour. In July it was announced – to some surprise – that the consultation had produced a clear majority against and the policy was abandoned.

The charity Alcohol Policy UK has already pointed out that while the consultation on the legislation had asked for views on the appropriate pricing level per unit of alcohol, the health secretary presented it as if all those who wanted a higher level than the 45p proposed were the same as those who didn't want any minimum at all. The "no" vote was added to the "not at this level" vote. Not so much massaging the figures as dislocating them.

The latest issue of the BMJ supplies a persuasive explanation for why the government killed off its own initiative, even though the Canadian experience is showing what experts call "dramatic" benefits to public health. Their investigators have established that there were 130 meetings between the drinks industry and coalition ministers, including two that took place after consultation on the proposed minimum pricing legislation had ended. Perhaps they were planning for the Tory party conference in October, where drinks giant Diageo was sponsoring a cocktail lounge.

Today, in an astonishingly temperate intervention, Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, the Royal College of Physicians' alcohol adviser, along with 21 other experts in public health and liver disease, have written a letter in the Daily Telegraph suggesting with masterly understatement that big business may be trumping public health concerns.

It seems to be getting trickier and trickier to keep money and politics apart. Here's a list of curious developments in the world where the two collide. Plain packaging for cigarettes, another example of David Cameron's worthy claim of being in politics to do the right thing, not the popular thing: it went into the great political ashtray last July too. There are suggestions it might come back after the election, depending on the evidence. Australians seem pretty convinced already. As their former prime minister, Julia Gillard, argued in a blog last month, this is a global campaign against one of the world's biggest industries, and they aren't going to give up easily. And, while Cameron insists it's quite irrelevant, it must be comforting for the industry that their man Lynton Crosby is one of the prime minister's closest advisers.

The evidence is that British politics and certainly the great majority of British politicians are decent and well-meaning. But the impression is that the hand of big business is found too close, too often, to big decisions. From finance to housing to healthcare, there are repeated signs of something more than the shared objectives that a rightwing government and private business could be presumed to enjoy. The stupendously misnamed transparency of lobbying bill, now nearly on the statute book, was trailed as the answer. Its weedy, misjudged restrictions on third-party action and its partisan attack on the unions will do precisely nothing to change that impression.

It's damagingly easy to spot conspiracy where it doesn't exist, all the more so where voters have become so sceptical about the political process. Putting it right is going to take a long time. But it would be a start if the political class would recognise just what they do to public trust each time they weasel out of doing something their backers don't like.

Anne Perkins

Ideas for 8-9 January

Bella Mackie — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 12:07:00 GMT

Post your suggestions for subjects you'd like us to cover on Comment is free

Welcome to You Tell Us, the thread on which you can share your ideas for topics we should be covering on Comment is free. Feel free to discuss the news of the day and add your suggestions in the thread below.

You can see the collection of articles commissioned via this thread by visiting the You Told Us page.

Bella Mackie

Yes, I sometimes Google my patients. Is this surprising? | Kate Adams

Kate Adams — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 11:20:54 GMT

As a GP, curiosity about my patients often gets the better of me, but it helps build a rapport. However, there are some potential pitfalls

Like Dr Haider Warraich, I have to admit to occasionally Googling patients I have seen. When I ask colleagues and GP friends whether they do the same, there's a resounding "yes".

Someone is famous or has claimed notoriety of some sort during a consultation – who wouldn't be curious and seek to find out more? Over the years I've Googled the odd rock star, film-maker, writer, actor and others. GPs are sociable beings and interested in people.

The social side of people, who they are and what they do, can be important and relevant to the problem they bring to the consultation. It is unusual for me not to know what someone does as they leave my consulting room. Curiosity often gets the better of me but I feel it helps me build a rapport and a better understanding of the person.

I'm not presented with fame very often. Hackney, in east London, with its high rates of deprivation, isn't quite Hollywood. I also work for the NHS. I think the real celebs mostly see doctors privately. Seeing someone famous, however, does create a bit of excitement in an otherwise routine day.

Having said that I don't believe doctors in the UK Google their patients routinely. If I am puzzled about someone I've seen – it may be their behaviour or a life history that doesn't seem to add up – it is not Google I turn to, but their medical records. In the NHS we have access to records for the majority of the population from when they were born, and sometimes these can be quite revealing. Doctors working in a hospital or in some other context may not have this wealth of information to hand, so may turn to Google instead.

Googling and gaining further information about patients has its pitfalls. If it is used for medical purposes, can the information be relied upon? Most celebrity gossip probably couldn't. But if people have uploaded photos and personal information to a public space, then this is what they have chosen to say about themselves. Would they want their doctor to see it, though? In a world increasingly dominated by social media, I'm surprised how freely people share personal information that could backfire if others go searching.

What do doctors do if they find out on the web that one of their patients has a drug habit? If there were child protection concerns we would have a professional duty to act upon this information. But what about an adult on a drug binge, with no responsibility for others? If this is clinically relevant, how might a doctor introduce information gleamed from the public domain into a conversation that hasn't been initiated by the patient?

Maintaining trust in the doctor–patient relationship is very important. Can a patient trust a doctor who presents information that has not been offered within the confines of the consultation? Likewise, GP colleagues have been unnerved by patients who have Googled them. It seems to encroach on the personal when the doctor wishes to be in professional mode, and again may affect mutual trust.

The importance of maintaining professional boundaries is engrained in us from day one of medical school. No patient has ever told me that I have been Googled. I don't think I would mind but I might wonder why and feel it was irrelevant to the relationship that I have with them as their doctor.

Maybe there are power issues at play here. One party to the consultation knows more than the other. For some people, Googling and trying to find out about your doctor could be an attempt to redress this imbalance. However, patients are unlikely to find anything salacious. Our regulatory and professional bodies, the General Medical Council and British Medical Association, are very clear on this, which is good general advice for everyone. Simply, don't put anything out there that could come back to haunt you.

Kate Adams

Should mediation be compulsory for separating couples?

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 10:48:00 GMT

The government plans to introduce mandatory mediation for couples who seek a court order about a child or financial issue. The move is an attempt to settle problems without having to go through the court system. Is this a good idea?