The Guardian Reader

Islam is Peace; it's the West that needs a new Reformation

2005-09-12T09:26:00.000Z

Today Madeleine Bunting expresses her dismay that some liberals are unapologetically asserting that Western values are superior to those espoused by Islam's Death-to-Jews/Death-to-Gays brigade. She expresses the astonishing hope that the "insights" of Islam might prompt a renaissance in Western thought.

Yikes. Let me state for the record that I find 1960s-style, culturally relativist leftists such as Bunting far more absurd and offensive than 1930s-style, economically Marxish leftists like Polly Toynbee. I'll take a pinko over a postmodernist any day.

I read Bunting's article online; actually haven't seen today's new "Berliner" Guardian yet. Is the word "Berliner" a way for The Guardian to go to tabloid format while still allowing its readers to feel superior to the unwashed masses who read tabloids? Or is "Berliner" actually different from "tabloid"? I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts on the new format.

Yours in unwashed struggle,
The Guardian Reader

Comment Spam

2005-09-09T19:33:00.000Z

Ugh! The last two comments were my initiation into the horrors of "comment spam". I say that because I assume they were left by people who didn't actually visit the blog, but rather programmed scripts to leave messages on other people's blogs. Yucky! How do I make it go away? Anyone know? Tiferet, you still out there?

Spammed,
The Guardian Reader

Gary Younge, Kanye West, and my nausea problem

2005-09-09T17:53:00.000Z

Gary Younge: he’s maddening. Not as robustly absurd as George Monbiot, but also not as capable as Monbiot of producing the occasional sparkle of insight (and Monbiot can do that, as an earlier commenter pointed out). Younge is consistently derivitave, consistently boring, consistently predictable. He’s also a giggly and girlish admirer of Fidel Castro, while finding the U.S. to be abominable in very respect.

He’s currently on some sort of portentous journey around the U.S., and presumably hopes to produce a record of it that’ll be part de Tocqueville, and part Jacob Riis. In other words, I suspect he hopes to be seen as an angry and brilliantly incisive observer of today’s America, and of all that’s wrong with that infernal country. Spare me, Angry Man.

Reading his piece the other day (Left to sink or swim, about how America is racist, and its response to Katrina was racist), I couldn’t help but wonder how much a journalist can manipulate a quote before he officially becomes guilty of a misquote. In case you hadn’t head about this, American rapper Kanye West used his time on a televised Red Cross fundraiser for Katrina victims to lash out at the U.S. and George Bush in a rambling, semi-coherent diatribe. In his article, Younge plucks four sentences from different parts of West’s freak-out, rearranges them, and then presents them as a single quote. The effect is to make West seem infinitely more persuasive and sensible then he actually appeared in the footage.

Is this sort of thing allowed in British journalism? Just curious.

Anyway, on to Younge’s hero, West. I couldn’t help but notice that today he announced the launch of his own line of clothing! That’s fantastic! I can’t help but wonder, though, what with the liberal press now fawning all over him, whether West's on-air rant might not have been cooked up by the marketing hacks behind Kanyewear…or did they at least bring forward the announcement to capitalize on Kanye’s new “revolutionary chic”? The timing sure seems, uh, fortuitious. Meanwhile, several papers report that West’s record sales have spiked since the Red Cross telethon. His outburst of liberal boilerplate on NBC has proven nicely lucrative for ol’ Kanya.

You wouldn’t know it, though, from the way the liberal press is covering it. The Nation, for example, has run an article talking about West’s “bravery”, as has Counterpunch. I always find it nauseating when liberals congratulate one another on their bravery. It’s an omnipresent and incessant feature of liberal couture. But when the alleged “bravery” also happens to be serendipitously timed to make the liberal martyr a ton of money…well, it induces a vigorous wretching.

Yours in lucrative struggle,
The Guardian Reader

Wikipedia articles for this post: Kanye West, Gary Younge

Muhammad al-Durrah

2005-09-02T10:39:00.000Z

This could get ugly...the new issue of Commentary Magazine has a piece that essentially argues that the ostensible killing of Muhammad al-Durrah--the Palestinian boy whose apparent shooting by Israeli troops on September 30, 2000, was one of the emblematic images of the intifadah--was staged. Doubts about who actually killed al-Durrah--was it Israeli soldiers or Palestinian militiamen?--have circulated for a while. But for Commentary to go on record with the belief that it was staged...that'll cause a ruckus. Al-Durrah is still the heroic prototypical martyr for many Palestinians and other Arabs, and his killing seen as the epitome of the crude evil of the Israelis specifically, and the West more generally. Stay tuned.

Yours,
The Guardian Reader

Wikielaboration: Muhammad al-Durrah, Commentary Magazine

Katrina, the CIA-Backed Hurricane

2005-09-01T13:52:00.000Z

Well, why not? Those of us who, over the years, have followed the conspiratorial fantasies of the trendy left are accustomed to hearing every unpleasant coup, revolution, and thunderstorm around the world described as "CIA-backed". The sinister Yankee hand manipulates everything, at all times.

These days it's Georgeg Bush's hand, specifically. So it's no surprise that virtually every Hurricane Katrina-related article in The Guardian manages to find reason to lash out at Bush. One article's title promises the answer to "Why city's defences were down". In case you were expecting the Guardian to tell us that the city's "defences were down" due to an unfortunate confluence of multiple complicated variables, some amenable to advance planning, and some not...well, sorry, but no. The Guardian's keen and unexpected observation is that "Cuts in spending to raise levees blamed on cost of war in Iraq". Surprise!!!

Today The Guardian also published "I'm Just Glad I Saw It", by former New York Times editor Howell Raines. In what starts out as a lament for the destruction of the city of New Orleans, Raines manages to find his way to a final paragraph in which he compares Bush unfavorably to bygone Louisiana proto-fascist Huey Long, and then signs off with the assertion that the misery inflicted by Katrina is, essentially, all about oil. Bush's patronage to rich Saudis resulted in the flooding of New Orleans.

Yesterday's left adhered to a "materialist" view of history; that is, basically, the idea that people's desire to acquire things is the engine of history. This is a Marxian idea that many have thought simplistic. But apparently even the materialistic view of history is too nuanced for today's left, which has hit a new low in juvenile reductionism. Many of them seem to have opted for what's properly mocked as the "oleaginous" view of history: everything, absolutely everything, is about oil. Even the category four hurricane that has caused such a nightmare for the city of New Orleans, a world away in every sense from the silly preoccupations of the trendy Euroleft.

Yours in oleaginous struggle,
The Guardian Reader

Wikipedia entries for this post: Howell Raines, Huey Long, Hurricane Katrina

George Monbiot

2005-08-30T14:19:00.000Z

Today's column by George Monbiot, "How to stop civil war", confirms that Mr. Monbiot is the most nauseating, unctuous columnist at The Guardian. This is an astonishing accomplishment for Mr. Monbiot. Being the most nauseating columnist at the The Guardian surely establishes you as the sine qua non among the world's nausea-inducing columnists.

How this affectedly bohemian, black-turtleneck-wearing, slithering environazi can write in such an relentlessly authoritative tone about things he knows nothing about...well, I'm gobsmacked every time.

The idea of a bourgeois posturer like Monbiot advising the Iraqi government that they must follow the model of the Sandinistas if they want to avoid civil war...it's too preposterous to be real.

Soldier on, Guardianistas.

Yours in absurd, turtleneck-wearing struggle,
The Guardian Reader

Wikipedia links: George Monbiot, Sandinistas

While I'm Away

2005-08-21T09:29:00.000Z

Hope to resume posting soon, Dear Readers!

In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed yesterday's offering by Jonathan Steele regarding the Israeli evacuation of Gaza. Classic embittered Grauniad!

The Qur'an, The Passion, and Free Speech

2005-08-07T08:28:00.000Z

In response to my defense of the right of Hizb ut-Tahrir to prattle on about their masturbatory, theocratic fantasies of a global Dar al-Islam, commenter Eeore points out that it is just silly to suggest that Nick Griffin should be muzzled while the Hizbies are given freedom of the realm.

I assure you that I'm equally unhappy with efforts by the "how dare you defame Islam?!" brigades to ban criticisms (or even plain insults) from Team Griffin. A while back The Guardian ran an Op-Ed by Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain, who demanded protection for Muslims' "dearly cherished beliefs". It just about made me wretch up my Weetabix. Sorry, buddy, but it doesn't work like that in the West (or at least it shouldn't). Absurd and offensive beliefs will attract the vocal derision they deserve. But deporting people who visit verboten bookstores or view verboten websites is out of bounds, IMO.

Eeore also cites two inspiring and spiritual quotations from Islamic scripture, "kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have been turned you out," and "The Jews are a people of slander...a treacherous people... they fabricate lies and twist words from their right context." Those citations from the hadith (are they actually the Qur'an?) are pretty outrageous. If Hizb ut-Tahrir has been distributing that in the UK, and not just Denmark, then they've surely cooked their own goose.

It does present some interesting issues, though. What to be done when the scriptures of a faith incite violence? It reminds me of some of the debates over the Mel Gibson movie "The Passion", in which some people disliked the use of the "his blood be upon us and upon our children" line from Matthew, noting that the quote had historically been used to foment violence against Jews. In the case of The Passion people could at least plausibly claim that they were not against the quote, per se, but against the inappropriate, irresponsible decontextualization of the quote. But what happens when the context does nothing to mitigate the hateful and inflammatory nature of the quote itself (as may very well be the case with the "kill them wherever you find them" suggestion)? Can you actually attempt to essentially ban bits of scripture?

I don't have an answer to that. But these are the issues that the British are going to have to deal with as they try to undermine groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun.

Yours in prosperous, urban struggle
The Guardian Reader

Wikipedia links for this post: Muslim Council of Britain, Iqbal Sacranie, The Passion of the Christ, The Gospel of Matthew, Weetabix, Dar al-Islam

Guardian Readers' Thoughts on Death of Steven Vincent

2005-08-05T20:26:00.000Z

Have a look at this!!: On the Guardian Newsblog the comments for the article on the death of blogger Steven Vincent are running at least fifty percent "He had it comin'"! Wow!

Excerpts include:

* "Why go half way across the world and then comment on corruption in the Iraq police? Is there no corruption among US police forces? Learn to clean up your country first, before talking in a patronising way about other cuntries."
*"Most of his articles were highly critical of Iraq way of life. They are all sorts of armed groups out there. They read the blogs. The Iraqis are among the most educated Arabs. How much do you think they can tolerate?"
*"Journalists give to much space and credibility to other journalist. Why does the media worry about some journalists killed. Who asked them to go there?"
*"People who go the front line must expect this. he was a naive American. They are many around."

Amazing. And even The Guardian headlines are a bit nasty. Earlier it was "The Naive American", now it's "Reality Check". Either way they're covering the death of journalist with a swaggery "there goes another ill-informed Yank" vibe. Pretty distasteful.

Yours,
The Guardian reader

Islamofascism and starving Africans

2005-08-05T19:59:00.000Z

A point that I have not seen commented upon nearly enough: the broadest, most potent and successful anti-poverty campaign in human history was unceremoniously cockblocked and thrown from the headlines by the ridiculous, self-pitying Islamofascist brats who attacked London on the 7th of July. In other words, one of the most inspiring movements in human history, Make Poverty History, was trumped by one of the most braindead, Islamofascism.

It's nauseating enough that innocent Londers had to die for these Islamobrats' fantasies of martyrdom and pliant houris. But considering that the Islamobrat creed regards the umma as the perpetual innocent victim of aggression, how much more preposterous is it, how much more incoherent is it, that an unknown number of under-five-years-old African children will have to die for these Islamobrats' self-obsessive sense of victimhood because the MPH campaign may not have been as succesful as it otherwise would have been?

And yet the Guardian-reading groupies for Islamofascism still insist on recognizing these Mercedes-driving, university-educated Islamobrats as somehow "victims". Unreal.

Yours in indignant, cost-free, pseudorevolutionary struggle,
The Guardian Reader

Wikipedia links for this entry: Make Poverty History

George Bush, Africa, and The Guardian

2005-08-05T19:33:00.000Z

This one from The Guardian newsblog: More must be done to help Africa, by Jane Perrone

My various interests and preoccupations slowly reveal themselves to you, Dear Reader. Food security and under-five mortality rates in Africa are biggies...two of the great moral issues of our time, right up there with the struggle against the most intellectually impoverished mass movement in human history, Islamofascism. When it comes to the issue of food security and child mortality in Africa, I'm going to spank The Guardian but also give them a bit of credit.

The Guardian squad has been insatiable in their desire to misrepresent and obfuscate the historic efforts that George Bush has made to deal with humanitarian issues in Africa. In the long run-up to the Bush-Kerry election, amidst Operation Clark County and all the rest of its incessant coverage of the U.S. election, the Guardian ran precisely ONE article discussing what the election might mean for the most horribly disadvantaged people on the planet, the millions of dying children of sub-Saharan Africa. Why? Because George Bush has engineered a revolutionary break from the "talk lots, do nothing" approach of the Clinton administration.

Clinton, that silly pygmy, who, after he leaves office, complains that, "Gee wiz, it's so hard to do anything for Africa, Americans already think we do so much!" Forgive those of us who imagine that the PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES is a decent platform from which to challenge such erroneous preconceptions, rather than waiting out your eight years while doing NOTHING, and then complaining after the fact! Oh, that painfully silly lech!

So The Guardian performed a snowjob on George's magnificent works (PEPFAR, et cetera). Why? because there was no reason to suspect that Mr. Ride-My-Yacht/Fly-My-Gulfstream-Jet/Talk-Movingly-About-Equality-And-Wealth-Redistribution John Kerry would have been anything other than a retreat to Clintonian indifference and inaction when it came to Africa. And the principled politicos who write in The Guardian have more important moral issues to deal with than six million dead African children per year. More important, for instance, that they get someone into the White House who shares their own "Affluent and Urban" weltanschauung, and pronounces "nuclear" the same way they do. It was simply a matter of priorities. So we were treated to a moratorium on Bush-is-good-for-Africa commentary such as the kind delivered by Bob Geldof ("In terms of Africa, Bush is the most revolutionary president since Kennedy.")

So for all that vicious political partisanship, all that willingness to place their own aesthetic revulsion for George Bush ahead of the truly disadvantaged, The Guardian deserves a vigorous spanking.

On the other hand, I have to give them this: the sort of article I just linked on The Guardian newsblog is desperately needed in greater frequency in the mainstream media. The New York Times is getting much better (see Nicolas Kristof). But the Guardian has really emerged as the best of a pretty inadequate bunch on this issue. So one cheer for The Guardian, delivered along with their spanking.

Yours in bourgeois, aesthetically impeccable struggle,
The Guardian Reader

This post dedicated to Tiferet!

Wikipedia links for this entry: George Bush, PEPFAR, Nicolas Kristof

Splits in the Right

2005-08-05T18:15:00.000Z

Blair Announces Plan to Deport Extremists

I confess that my libertarian bent leaves me rather uncomfortable with this one. Deport foreign extremists--all well and good. But deport them based on the bookshops they've visited? Or the websites they've viewed? This is a step too far for me. And to ban al-Muhajiroun and Hizb ut-Tahrir without offering strong evidence that they've encouraged violence? Again, too much. If Hizb ut-Tahrir comprises a bunch of ridiculous medieval reactionaries who yearn for the creation of global caliphate, then by all means let's mock them, let's argue with them, let's denounce them. But ban them??? What can I say except that this is not the Yankee way. I suppose you can take the boy out of the realm of the first amendment, but you can't ever really take the first amendment out of the boy.

Libertarianly yours,
The Guardian Reader

Affluent and Urban

2005-08-05T14:48:00.000Z

Have a look here to see how The Guardian sells add space to its corporate customers.

A peek: "Affluent and Urban - The Guardian has the highest proportion of readers in the ACORN 'Urban Prosperity' category compared to all other quality daily national newspapers. Those in the 'Urban
Prosperity' category are typically young professionals living in major towns and cities, who are both affluent and well educated. Almost a half of Guardian readers live in Metropolitan areas. You can reach an affluent audience through the Guardian, as readers earn a household income 47% more than the national average."

I remember reading a transcription of an Isaiah Berlin talk in which he described arriving in Britain, and his fascination at how wealthy, overprivileged London liberals would sit in cafes and pretend to despise the economy and social order which made their lives possible. They were the extravagant beneficiaries of capitalism, and yet they played as though they desperately hoped to see that order overthrown. Had that conviction been authentic, Berlin supposed, these people might have acted first by refusing to continue partaking in the luxuries and leisure time that they so enjoyed thanks to their position toward the top (or as children of those toward the top) of the capitalist pyramid.

Are today's Guardian-reading Londoners any different from their cafe-going brethren of Berlin's youth? As the Guardian tells its corporate customers, the paper has a wonderfully affluent readership, with money they are happy to spend. And yet they so often desist from their luxuriating just long enough to harangue us with complaints about the alleged brutalities of our social and economic order, only then to return to their feasting on the benefits of that same order. Strange behavior, is it not?

Affluently, urbanely yours,
The Guardian Reader

Crap Postings

2005-08-05T14:35:00.000Z

A bit of meta-commentary for you here: looking over my previous post, "Death-by-Democracy", I can't help but notice that it is really quite crap. No discernible argument, just an inadequate recapitulation of a Guardian article and then a few half-hearted, non-argued assertions. What to do? Should I delete it? I don't think so. But if I'm going to blog I'm really going to have to learn how to maintain a higher standard than that. What should one strive for in a blog? Frequent updating, or more sparse, higher quality updates? A happy medium as always, I suppose.

I'll add that I never cease to be astonished at how measured critiques of individuals can result in accusations of racial hate-mongering. See today's post at The Daily Ablution for one instances of this.

Self-flaggelatingly yours,
The Guardian Reader

Death-by-Democracy

2005-08-04T15:34:00.000Z

Hello again, friends.

Today’s reading from The Guardian: “The responsibility we share for Islamist shock and awe: Citizens in democracies will be held to account for what is done in their name”, by Peter Wilby.

Mr. Wilby was, apparently, one of those intrepid souls who after 9/11 ventured that Americans had earned their own murder. Today he reformulates this line of thought in the wake of the London bombings. Does he agree with Omar Bakri Mohammed that Londoners earned the bombings by re-electing Blair? He tantalizes us with this question at the end of his cliffhanger first paragraph…

The answer (wait for it…wait for it…) is yes. How and why?

His answer can be boiled down to two lines of reasoning--both of them common leftoid tropes--encapsulated in the following excerpts.

“…[I]t is the price we pay for living in a democracy: theoretically, we are in charge so we are frontline targets. "Responsibility" is a better word than "blame".”

And

“How do you prosecute a war against the US and Britain? Muslims fight us on their own soil, but why should they not carry the fight to our homelands as we carry it to theirs? They do not possess the aircraft to fly over Washington and London and carry out "precision bombing". The security around US and British leaders is almost impenetrable, at least compared with that around buses and tubes.”

In other words, citizens of democracies are “responsible” for the rage of people who dislike the policies of democratic governments. And since, hey, the political leaders of democracies are protected by frightfully tight security, what choice does the average Islamofascist punter have but to blow up “soft targets” and murder civilians?

This article and this line of reasoning are transparent justifications for the bombings in London. Mr. Wilby does offer us the requisite disclaimer that he did not support the London bombings, but the entire thrust of his article is to rationalize and justify the Islamofascist desire to murder civilians.

Well, I suppose this gives the Islamofascist aversion to democracy a bit more appeal…as long as your people remain shackled by an antiquated, authoritarian form of government, soft-on-fascism groupies such as Peter Wilby will generously defend your right to lead a life unembarrassed by random acts of mass murder.

Yours in trendy, wealthy, struggle
The Guardian Reader

Wikipedia links for this entry: Omar Bakri Mohammed

The Meeting of the Minds

2005-08-04T15:11:00.000Z

Guardian update:Al-Qaida warns of more London destruction

Does anyone else find fascinating this slow conflation of Islamofascist and trendy lefty rhetoric? We've seen Osama bin Laden deride George Bush with a litany of complaints lifted directly out of Farenheit 9/11 (right down to "how dare he sit and read about a pet goat while his countrymen burned"!), and now a message from Ayman al-Zawahiri that he could probably get posted to Counterpunch. One thing I'll hand to the theocratic fascists of Dar Islam...they know how to cultivate allies. The loopier demands for the liberation of East Timor and al-Andalus and so on that we used to hear more frequently are now being vetted by the al-Qaeda Madison Avenue branch.

Yours in bohemian, pseudorevolutionary struggle,
The Guardian Reader

Some Wikipedia links in this entry: Ayman al-Zawahiri, Counterpunch, East Timor, al-Andalus

Wise words from Islamogroupie Ken

2005-08-04T11:10:00.000Z

Today’s offering in the Guardian from Islamogroupie Ken Livingstone, mayor of one of the world’s great cities and consistent apologist for suicide bombings.

Summary: Comrade Ken offers us his prescription for preventing further Islamofascist savagery in London. He posits as essential increased cooperation by the British Muslim community with the police. Very good. The bad news is what Ken suggests we do to assist members of the Muslim community in their agonized mental struggle over whether or not to report people who are plotting the explosive death of random groups of civilians. Ken offers two suggestions as to the role you and I can play in this matter.

Gentle reader, I hope you are not shocked to learn that one of the suggestions in Ken’s visionary prescription is our capitulation to Iraqi Ba’athists and al-Qaeda mujahideen. We must withdraw from Iraq, stat. Lovely. Leave the Iraqi people in the clutches of precisely the sort of people who incinerated users of London public transport. The Iraqi people will have a hell worthy of the Saddam era, and Comrade Ken will have a splendid political victory to savor as the people of Iraq inevitably pass from his attention.

The other prong in Ken’s clever plan is to “respect Muslims”. Lovely again. Respect is good. There are, though, those who argue that “respecting” a community means not holding it to abysmally low standards of morality. But Islamogroupie Ken thinks it dreadfully insensitive to suggest that we ought not to indulge those reactionary elements in the Muslim community who are of the “Death to gays”/“Death to Jews” persuasion.

And this is where Ken takes the opportunity to salivate some more over that superstar of “death to gays”/“death to Jews”, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi. While Ken doesn't personally agree with such notions, he hasn’t in the past been able to refrain from publicly embracing Qaradawi, or from offering him obsequious public praise. Because, as Ken attests in this article, Qaradawi is “eminent”, and we must “consider the consequences of a ban on Qaradawi for relations with the Muslim community.” Personally, I haven't much interest in truckling before violently racist, homophobic reactionaries in the hope of winning points with their equally reactionary followers (and there used to be leftists who felt similarly). And Ken's hypocrisy here is nicely spelled out elsewhere in the article: he offers Ariel Sharon as someone whose views are as offensive as Qaradawi's, but we've not yet seen Ken publicly embrace Sharon, and babble giddily about his eminence among right-wing Jews. One suspects such a thing is unlikely to occur. The reality, spelled out daily in the pages of The Guardian, The Independent, Counterpunch and so forth, is that soft-on-theocratic-fascism leftoids such as Ken find something titillating and erotic about the words and violence of men such as Qaradawi.

We've not come very far from the days when another leftoid groupie for Islamofascism, Michel Foucalt, sang the unhinged praises of another theocratic fascist, Ayatollah Khomeini. The same dance continues, writ larger.

Yours in overprivileged, bourgeois, pseudorevolutionary struggle,
The Guardian Reader

Wikipedia links for this entry: Ken Livingstone, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Michel Foucault.

Ibn Sassygate

2005-08-04T09:38:00.000Z

This blog, the material for which has been percolating in the author's head for the past couple years, was finally forced into existence by L'affaire Sassygate. The Guardian-reading (and writing) pseudo-progressive leftoids who find nihilistic, Islamofascist violence so irresistably erotic, have become too fascinating for me too ignore. It is true, of course, that The Guardian is hardly the most wacked out of leftoid watering holes: The Independent is at least as ridiculous, and Counterpunch far more so. But the gaggle of playtime revolutionaries at the Guardian have captured my heart in a way the others never have. When time permits, I intend to comment. My comments will be sparse for the next couple weeks. I hope they will then become more frequent.

Other things The Guardian Reader likes:
Wikipedia: one of the most smashing, counterintuitive successes in the history of the internet. "Sure, an encyclopedia where anyone can make changes to any article...that'll be great!" And yet it is. Wikipedia entry here.
Arts & Letters Daily: When it comes to websites operated by displaced Los Angelenos living in Christchurch, New Zealand, this one is surely best of breed. Brainfood AND braincandy simultaneously. Can't beat that. Wikipedia entry here.

Yours in trendy, affected, bourgeois, pseudorevolutionary struggle,
The Guardian Reader