The Afghan statement comes as NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was investigating an incident in Badghis province Friday in which more than 25 international and Afghan forces were wounded.
Five of the 25 wounded were US soldiers injured in what a Western military official, speaking anonymously, said was friendly fire. …
The incident is believed to have taken place during a clash involving ISAF and Afghan soldiers searching for two paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division who went missing Wednesday during a routine supply mission.
Local police said a party looking for the two missing soldiers clashed with Taliban and that alliance aircraft were called in to provide support.
The defence ministry made no reference to a clash between the joint forces and Taliban militants.
Police said the casualties occurred when the air strike mistakenly targeted international troops.
At least eight Afghans working with US forces have been killed in a Nato air strike in north-western Afghanistan, the defence ministry in Kabul says: here.
Returning veterans often have a hard time adjusting to civilian life and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) Foundation is helping them find an outlet to tell their stories: here.
Francisco Ayala García-Duarte (16 March 1906 – 3 November 2009) was a Spanish writer and teacher. Born in Granada, at the age of nineteen he published his first novel, Tragicomedia de un hombre sin espíritu.
At the start of the Spanish Civil War, Ayala was out of the country. He returned for a brief time, later serving as secretary of the Spanish Republic’s legation in Prague. After the war he moved to Argentina where he lived between 1939 and 1950. There he taught sociology while continuing to publish works of fiction, literary criticism and sociology, notably a three-volume Tratado de la sociología (1947.) …
Many of his writings deal with the topics of power and abuse of power. In general he has not directly written about the war in Spain, but examines it instead through other periods of history.
He was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the top literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world, in 1991 and seven years later the Prince of Asturias Prize for literature, the Spanish equivalent of the Nobel Prize. …
Ayala went into exile at the end of Spain’s 1936-39 civil war as right-wing General Francisco Franco consolidated power, and he only permanently returned to the country in 1980, five years after the dictator’s death.
It is about the romance between John Keats and Fanny Brawne, during the last three years of Keats’ life, until he died on 23 February 1821.
The film is based on a biography of Keats by Andrew Motion, the British Poet Laureate. The job of Poet Laureates is to write poems for the royal family. That sounds pro establishment rather than rebellious. It is true in Motion’s case. There is an idea that a Poet Laureate should not just be a faithful servant of the monarchy, but a good poet as well. So, the job was first offered to Benjamin Zephaniah. Zephaniah refused it, being an opponent of the British empire. Then, it was offered to Tony Harrison, who refused as well, being a republican. Finally, it went to the “safe” Andrew Motion.
Keats lived at a time when most people in Britain were poor, and when the ruling class and the Conservative government were doing their best to make them even poorer and keep them down. Keats, and his fellow poets like Shelley and Byron, were opponents of that government. That was why their poetry was so sharply attacked by pro government literary critics. Byron and Shelley left Britain as political exiles to Italy. Keats joined them there a few months before his death, as poverty had given him tuberculosis and a warmer climate was prescribed by a doctor.
How much of this social, economic, and political background of John Keats do we find in the movie? Some, but not enough. Keats’ personal poverty, which prevents him from marrying his love Fanny Brawne, is a theme in the film. In a short scene, we see something of the dire poverty in the slums of London. However, we never hear about the Peterloo Massacre which Shelley wrote about.
The movie does offer fine filming and acting. In the final scene, after she has learned of Keats’ death in Rome, Fanny Brawne walks to the Hampstead Heath, crying, and reciting Keats’ poem Bright Star.
Several poems are recited in the movie, including “The Eve of St. Agnes” and “Ode to a Nightingale“. Keats wrote the latter poem when a nightingale nested near his house. It is the last part of the film, recited as the list of actors and other workers of this movie scrolls down the screen.
We hear a nightingale sing during the film, but never see it. As usual with nightingales.
Another review of this film is here. Yet another one is here.
Three huge fighter planes
hurtle across the sky shattering the quietness
with their terrible cry
The trees shiver
in the rising wind —
now the air is silent again,
the fearful planes are gone.
Just past Dove Cottage
where green moss shrouds stone
I glimpse virginia creeper
lying scarlet, like flesh on bone.
Jane Fraser Esson has read at Birkbeck College. This poem was first published in her The Magenta Cafe but she sent it in recently saying: “it might bear another reading.”
Miep Gies (now 100 years of age) helped the Frank family to hide during the Second World War. After the inhabitants of the Secret Annexe had been arrested, she found the diary and hid it.
HAVANA — Cintio Vitier, the Cuban poet, essayist and novelist, who won the Juan Rulfo prize for literature in 2002 and was considered one of Cuba’s foremost intellectuals, has died aged 88.
Local television reported, without providing details, the death of Vitier, who also won Cuba’s National Literature Prize in 1988 and was awarded the title of Officer of Arts and Letters by France.
Born in Key West, Florida on 21 September, 1921, Vitier helped start the journal “Origins,” which brought together some of the island’s leading intellectuals.
His most famous works include “From Pena Pobre,” and volumes of poems including “Evenings” and “Testimonies.”
He was also awarded the Order of Jose Marti by then-Cuban President Fidel Castro for his studies on the Cuban independence figure.
According to the Daily Mail, the only known film footage of Anne Frank has been released for the first time to a worldwide audience. This is not entirely true. I watched this video a few years ago when it was included in a documentary about the tragic diarist. Nonetheless, it is touching.
Moore’s latest screen gem, “Capitalism: a Love Story,” may be the most he has moved away from support for capitalism and the closest he has come toward advocating socialist solutions. His final comment on the matter? “Democracy is the system” he likes best: here.
Having spent much of his adult life campaigning on issues including the arms trade, the illegality of the Iraq war and the misdeeds of Coca-Cola, comedian and activist Mark Thomas has now turned his attention to the ongoing financial crisis: here.
Britain: In a surprisingly bold move the TUC has invited Linton Kwesi Johnson to headline an event for its World Day for Decent Work. The day will focus on the impact of the international financial crisis on workers’ rights: here.
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