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A scene fom Taxi to the Dark Side |
Torture victim’s calmness is a Begg deal
SMALL, bespectacled and very articulate, it’s hard to think of torture and Moazzam Begg in the same breath, certainly for a simple soul like me.
Begg was tortured for three years – that’s the only word to describe how he was manacled, hooded, deprived of sleep, snarled at by fierce dogs, interrogated, first at the notorious jail at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and then Guantanamo Bay.
It all seemed a bit unreal listening to his smooth delivery – made without notes – to a packed audience at a meeting at Conway Hall, Holborn, on Monday.
What next after Obama? Will peace come to Iraq and Afghanistan? Those were the questions posed by the organisers, the Anti-War Coalition.
Columnist Jonathan Steele and Tony Benn spoke, but memories of Begg’s calmness were the ones that remained with me as I left.
He engaged the audience by asking how many had seen a new documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, about the hell in Afghanistan.
“I’m in it,” he quipped, “but that’s not why I’m mentioning it. It tells so much about things that are so little known.”
He described how two torturers he had known in the US army had now renounced their past. One will go on a tour of the UK early next year with him exposing the vileness of sanctioned torture. Another – dubbed by US soldiers as the “King of Torture” – whom he had experienced first hand, had sent a letter to him recently, expressing his contrition and shame. Begg deservedly received thunderous applause.
Obama Barrack lifts Helena Kennedy's hope after wreckage left by Tony Blair
HELENA Kennedy QC, a great supporter of America’s first black president, Barack Obama, found Tuesday night an evening to remember.
Yesterday morning (Wednesday) she replied quickly when I texted her about her reaction to Obama’s victory.
“A great day, I feel so uplifted,” she replied.
I guessed that’s how she would feel. I had heard some months ago that early on in Obama’s campaign she quickly put up an Obama poster on a front window of her Belsize Park home.
It’s all a bit of a far cry from that Thursday night in 1997 when Tony Blair heralded a new dawn. Dame Helena was ecstatic and held one of the biggest parties in Hampstead. Then came a hangover as the wreckage of her hopes piled up – the Iraq war, the incursion of the liberty of citizens.
However much Obama may fail to deliver, his victory has already achieved one thing – it has raised the self-worth of millions of African-Americans, and that,
historically, is no mean achievement.
Among the hundreds of overjoyed Americans in the borough were Margo Miller, spokeswoman for Democrats Abroad in the UK.
“We were cheering and laughing and crying – it was an incredible night to remember,” she told me.
At her home in South End Green, Hampstead, Margo remained overwhelmed but exhausted after months of hard work campaigning for Obama in Hampstead.
“We were at the American Embassy party until 2.30am and then went on to a private party where half the people were from Hampstead. That’s where we heard that Barack had won Ohio – and we knew we had the next president.”
Margo, 41, who comes from Poughkeepsie, in upstate New York, worked for the US Justice Department in Washington during President Clinton’s reign. She came to live in Hampstead nine years ago, after meeting her British lawyer husband, Andrew, in Israel. They now have two daughters, Chelsea and Eliza, aged four and six.
“The voting from Americans here in Hampstead was very high indeed,” she said. “It shows the incredible progress that has been made by Americans everywhere in such a short time.”
Also whooping it up to celebrate Obama’s success was Janine Griffis, the Minnesota-born secretary of the Heath and Hampstead Society.
“We can hardly believe what’s happening,” she told me. “Everyone is totally galvanised by events. People are having parties all over the place.”
Janine was back in America last month – she left 27 years ago but remains a citizen and voted, via email, in her home state – and found the atmosphere there electric. “I didn’t to get to talk to anyone who said they were voting for McCain,” she insisted. “The support for Barack Obama was overwhelming.”
Squirrels are the dish of the day
A NEW craze for eating the grey squirrel is – extraordinarily enough – picking up momentum, I hear.
They are being increasingly thrown into the frying pan under the edict: “Eat a Grey, Save a Red”. Red squirrels are considered to be less destructive.
Oliver Cox, a retired captain in the Indian Army – in the Bengali Lancers no less – espoused the virtues of the meat to me the other day. Grey squirrels are “something like lamb, but very tender”, he told me from his West Hampstead home.
Captain Cox, now in his 80s, who was “a crack shot with a pistol,” used to cook them in a casserole when he was living off the land in Cheshire. They were eating his lettuces.
He also remembered enjoying them in woods near Paris where he lived at one time.
Celebrity chefs Marco Pierre White and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall both endorse the charms of the humble squirrel and this week the New Journal’s cooking columnist, Clare Latimer, offers several tasty ways with squirrels (see Review).
She said: “We are often over-emotional with animals. It’s a psychological thing that we can eat chicken but not squirrel. If there’s too many of them then they have to be culled. If you’ve got to kill animals then it’s a shame to throw them in the bin. As long as they are killed humanely and in moderation.”
Ms Latimer added she would like to see more magpies on the menu.
Camden’s butchers, however, are proving a little slow to catch on.
A few said they would consider stocking them if there was demand but Manou Jackson, of Jackson Brothers butchers in Kentish Town, summed up their general response: “We won’t be selling them here. I’m a butcher, but I’ve got principles.”
On the guestlist!
OBAMA fever came to the Camden Centre last night (Wednesday) where I met the Prime Minister of Barbados, David Thompson, celebrating the island’s 42nd year of independence.
Mr Thompson was a special guest at the Denver convention where Obama was chosen as the Democrat candidate. “All things being equal I’ll get invited to Washington for the big event in January,” he said.
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