Snowmail: Al-Bashir indictment
Updated on 14 July 2008
On the show tonight...
It's official. The president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, has been indicted at The Hague, charged with war crimes and genocide. It's pretty rare and one of the biggest decisions the International Criminal Court has yet achieved.
Al-Bashir will surely be infuriated by it and the pariah status it clearly confers upon him. But as a result, it may make him even more difficult to negotiate with. Jonathan Miller is at The Hague and we shall be debating whether the moral value of apportioning responsibility to individuals like al-Bashir outweighs the additional difficulties such a move throws up when it comes to negotiating peace.
Cast an eye too at Kylie Morris's More4 menu for tonight (see below) as it features an interview with a former commander of the Janjaweed militia who executed much of the violence in Darfur.
Read Jonathan Miller's blog on al-Bashir's indictment
U-TURN ON KNIFE CRIME
I went down to Downing Street this morning to endure the prime minister's news conference. It was a competent, assured performance but was dominated question after question by the same mantra on knife crime, tough on knife crime, tough on the causes of knife crime.
You don't sense that anybody anywhere has any particular answers to the urban manifestation of knife inflicted death and injury. The government has retreated from the idea of carting knife-wielding criminals into A&E wards to talk to their victims, but today talked of targeting tens of thousands of families from which potential knife-wielding youngsters might emerge.
Anger over school knife sentences
Read Sunday's crime action planM
FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC FLAP
Actually I think knives are a painful if convenient diversion from what I suspect is the biggest story of the day and maybe of the decade - certainly when it comes to the economy. And that is the trouble, that the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage systems are in, in the United States The very idea that the land of the free should be thinking in terms of nationalising the providers of half the nation's mortgages beggars belief.
Lindsey Hilsum's blog: Beijing - a tale of two cities
We are watching for the largest economy on earth imploding from within and the consequences for the rest of us 12 months down the line (if that) are almost impossible to predict. Suffice it to say that this is very bad news indeed. Our man Faisal Islam has been brought in on a day off to address the matter. He'll also be dealing with the small matter of the takeover of Alliance & Leicester by the world's fifth largest bank, Santander.
CANOEIST'S WIFE IN THE DOCK
The canoeists go on trial today. Or more specifically the wife goes on trial because the husband has already confessed to deception. This is the case of the extraordinary disappearance from the northeast coast of a canoeist who eventually surfaced in Panama City. His wife denies the charges. It's going to be a fascinating case and Darshna Soni's there.
CASH CURB FOR DISABLED BOY
We have the worrying case tonight of the severely disabled boy whose local authority was funding his accommodation and education in a highly specialised school in another local authority. The authority will stop funding a place, which costs around £0.25m a year, this coming Friday. The alternative on offer, say his parents, means they're being forced to consider putting their son into care to get him an education. Sarah Spiller reports for us.
Read about the canoeist's court appearance in March
IS OBAMA SATIRE POOR TASTE?
There is a bizarre cover to this week's New Yorker magazine which depicts Barack Obama in a Muslim hat and his wife in an Afro touting a machine gun, with a picture of Osama bin Laden on the wall and the US flag bundled up in the fireplace. Is it bad taste, brilliant satire or just thoroughgoing misjudgement? Lucy Manning will be reporting from the US at seven.
Finally, do look out for the fattest, heaviest sheep you've ever seen. It weighs in at 22 stone and can still stand up.
It leaves me feeling sylph-like. I shall be on parade many stones lighter at seven (not stones but o'clock) on 4.
Image of the Day: Dwain Chambers:
http://tinyurl.com/5u7d4n
AND ON MORE4 NEWS WITH KYLIE MORRIS
Our programme at eight is largely given over to Darfur and an exclusive interview with a former Sudanese commander who admits to arming and directing the Janjaweed militia at the behest of the government in Khartoum. Our reporter Phil Cox was among the first to report from Darfur on the violence.
Now he has spoken to a man who admits to directing attacks on the very same villages whose destruction he witnessed. A man who admits to commanding Janjaweed forces that raped, looted, burned villages and killed men, women and children. He is the highest level whistleblower to have turned on the Sudanese government and testimony like his may be vital to the case against President al-Bashir.
Kylie
