Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.
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Question: It used to be rude not to answer the phone. Now you're rude if you do. Michael Gove is a difficult man to feel sorry for . It seems even his friends can't always manage it . David Cameron, for example - I think he's his friend . He'd definitely say he was Michael Gove's friend but then , politicians being what they are, the fact that he'd say it doesn't enormously increase the statistical chances of its being true . Anyway , they're certainly political allies - or at least were, before Gove made his ill-judged remark about the "preposterous" number of the prime minister's coterie who went to Eton , which ironically led Cameron to lose faith in about the only one who didn't, Gove himself . "That's what you get," the PM must have muttered to himself,"for trusting oiks." Since then Gove's slide down the greasy pole could hardly have been less dignified if he'd been wearing nipple tassels . Which, for all we know, he was . Like a former deputy headmaster who's been busted down to head prefect , Gove not only has to remain loyal to a government that has scorned him but, as chief whip, he must also enforce loyalty in others . But I didn't feel sorry for him until last week when I read that his mobile phone had gone off during a cabinet meeting . This is obviously bad form : for security reasons, you're not even supposed to bring phones into those gatherings . To make matters worse his ringtone is, according to someone who was there:"Jazz FM-style comedown music after a heavy night out" . I'm not entirely sure what that means , but it's clearly some sort of tune . I'm going to imagine it as the theme from Bod . So in the middle of some serious conversation about the Charlie Hebdo shootings or the economy or the NHS, while Vince Cable is expressing some "serious concerns" and everyone else is trying to make drooping eyelids look like they're concentrating hard , suddenly it's "Diddle-it-deduh-dede-duh-duh!" and Gove is jumping and wriggling like George Osborne's Tasered him again . Gove's seated twist having gone on "for quite a while", the PM intervened with what one witness described as "a public bollocking" . Even if Cameron could summon no compassion for his friend , I can . I sympathise with Michael Gove here, as a point of principle . I also sympathise with those people in West End theatres who are hit by a volley of rage and sarcasm from some knight of the stage when Nokia Tune has crashed in on his soliloquy . I sympathise whenever it happens at meetings, weddings, carol services or when someone's tearfully coming out . I sympathise because one day it will happen to me . However careful I am with my phone- and, as a slightly obsessive person, I'm pretty careful- there are times when I take it out, utterly convinced that it's been switched off for hours, and find five bars beaming back from my hand, as incriminating as a gory dagger . Most of the time, I check it every 30 seconds . But sometimes I just don't . My fastidious self-image deceives me into carelessness . At some point, I'm going to come a cropper . And when that shaming moment comes , as I fumble in my trousers by the heat of a hundred stares , I want to be surrounded by people who accept that this could happen to anyone, and might believe that this is an issue about which I'm at least averagely diligent . That's not how it'll be, though . Our attitudes to accidental phone rings are stuck in the 80s . Even though the mobile has long since ceased to be a cutting-edge gadget possessed only by the high-earning early-adopting few , when one goes off inappropriately, we still visualise a shameless yuppie in red braces, Aston Martin double-parked outside, closing deals - an offensive symbol of profligate and faddish modernity . This is hopelessly out of step with what these machines now mean to us . Research just published by a team at the University of Missouri shows that, when a sample of 40 people were temporarily deprived of their iPhones, their heart rate and blood pressure rose, and their ability to perform tasks suffered . Our mobiles, the paper suggests, are now "an extension of our physical selves, an umbilical cord, anchoring the information society's digital infrastructure to our very bodies" . We hate to be parted from them and we don't much like turning them off . Many will lament this , but it's not altogether bad . Our phones reassure us because they make us feel connected  - because if your mobile is turned on, in range and not ringing , it probably means that no work crisis has developed and no disaster has befallen a close friend or loved one . It's a constant everyone-in-your-life-is-more-or-less-OK monitor . Maybe we should learn to live without such reassurance , but it doesn't reflect entirely badly on us that we're comforted by it . People often criticise one another for talking or texting on their phones in preference to live interaction . "We met for a coffee but she spent the whole time on the phone!" "We were having lunch and his mobile rang- and he actually answered it!" Such critics forget that, in the heyday of the landline, a ringing telephone - the phone in the hall - was always answered . The notion of call screening is entirely modern . It never used to be rude to answer - it was rude not to . The onus of politeness, in those days, was on the caller . Except in an emergency, you didn't telephone someone at a mealtime, during their favourite television programme or after 10 o'clock . When you thought someone might not want to be disturbed, you didn't disturb them unless you had to . It's the passing of that etiquette, rather than the prevalence of mobile phones, that I think is a shame . Of course ,  in the age of the mobile, it's impossible to know whether the person you're calling will find it convenient to chat . You can't know if they're eating or in the cinema or reading the traffic news . So how about this : only call a mobile if you really need to . If you just want a chat, call a landline , and not during meals . So that , if "I Will Survive" starts blaring from your Android during an aunt's funeral , it's not you who's been rude . And the person who has isn't there . David Mitchell's new book, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse, is published by Guardian Faber (? 18.99) . To order a copy for ? 11.99 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846 .

Answer: It's the passing of that etiquette, rather than the prevalence of mobile phones, that I think is a shame Our attitudes to accidental phone rings are stuck in the 80s


Question: The Paris unity march shows we must protect freedom of expression, not curtail it further. I was just one Australian face in a human sea of more than one and half million Parisians yesterday . I was trying to comprehend what I was a part of when the placard thrust in front of my eyes made it clear : "La liberte d'expression n'a pas de religion"- freedom of expression has no religion . This was a rally to defend the essential global human right to free expression . A right that should not be bound by religious, cultural or political strictures . We were marching to remember the victims of the Charlie Hebdo newsroom massacre and the Kosher grocery store siege . We were marching in sympathy with those in mourning who joined us . We were marching in defiance, determined to rise above the fear and chaos the terrorists inflicted on our city . But ,  overwhelmingly, we marched to defend our right to freely express our views . The main march stretched three kilometres between Place de la Republique and Place de la Nation, tracking down Boulevard Voltaire . When I cried "Je suis Charlie, nous somme Charlie!", it was in the spirit of the French philosopher Voltaire's revolutionary words:"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." The props of the rally - giant pencils supporting the French flag, a flood of demonstrators holding pens aloft and bibs emblazoned with the faces of the massacred Charlie Hebdo staff - told the story . Paris has been my home for a year . I am a research fellow with the World Editors Forum and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers which is based in the city . It's a long way from the University of Wollongong in Australia , where I am on staff as a journalism academic . But the principle of freedom of expression we were marching to defend binds journalists, writers and artists, and by extension all citizens, globally . It transcends national borders, distance, culture, language, class and religion . That's why, as we marched, we saw Paris residents hanging models of pencils and banners carrying free speech slogans from their balconies . And it's why we paused to listen while a little African girl bellowed "Je suis Charlie!" from a third story window at her mother's side . We were a calm sea of over 1.5 million people pouring through the grand boulevards of central Paris . Led by the families of those killed and over 40 world leaders who walked with linked arms, it was a significant moment in history, a moment triggered by outrage at the act of terrorists who massacred journalists and cartoonists in the middle of a weekly editorial meeting and ordinary citizens doing their shopping . It was also a moment fuelled by a collective determination to display unity and defiance in the face of terror and fear . The attack on Charlie Hebdo and the climate of fear and anxiety it created are, sadly, regular occurrences in countries such as Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Mexico, where journalists are frequent targets . The western media too often turns a blind eye to the murder of journalists elsewhere . The Paris unity march represents a watershed moment in the struggle to protect journalists and defend freedom of expression globally . Kalashnikov-wielding terrorists took the fight into the heart of a newsroom in one of western Europe's biggest cities . If that doesn't wake up complacent democracies to the need to vigorously defend the right to report , nothing will . Once the news cycle moves on from Paris and the cries of "Je suis Charlie" fade, we must harness the levels of public support and political will to enact significant and lasting change globally . We must be on guard against the already audible attempts to justify a further curtailment of media and internet freedoms in the interests of national security in the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks . The threats posed to investigative journalism by mass surveillance, data retention and the criminalisation of reporting certain information under anti-terrorism legislation are already significant . Especially in Australia . It would be an enormous tragedy if the lasting legacy of the Charlie Hebdo massacre was ultimately a further undermining of privacy and freedom of expression rights . Let us honour the victims and survivors of the Paris terrorist attacks by finding a sustainable balance between the need for anti- terrorism measures against our collective human right to freely express our views . As the murdered editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, Stephane Charbonnier, told Le Monde in 2011:"I'd rather die standing than live on my knees."

Answer: A right that should not be bound by religious, cultural or political strictures


Question: Why Vladimir Putin should be at the Auschwitz memorial ceremony. On 27 January 1945 a reconnaissance patrol from the Soviet 107th Rifle Division emerged from the snow-laden forest 70km west of Krakow . The soldiers were mounted on shaggy ponies, their submachine guns slung across their backs . In front of them stood Auschwitz-Birkenau, the grimmest symbol of modern history . Officers gazed around in disbelief, then called in medical teams to care for the 3,000 sick prisoners left behind . It is a great shame that Vladimir Putin, having not been invited, won't be present at a memorial ceremony next week to mark the 70th anniversary - at the very least, it would have reminded the world that the advance of Stalin's Red Army forced the SS to abandon the extermination camps in the east . And yet the muted row over the Russian president's absence is a reminder that this particular chapter in Russia's second world war history was, and remains, full of contradictions . . The first death camp to be liberated by the Red Army was Majdanek just outside Lublin, in July 1944 . The novelist and war correspondent Vasily Grossman was on the spot with the 8th Guards Army , which had defended Stalingrad , but an order came down that he was not to cover the story . The job was given instead to Konstantin Simonov, a favourite of the regime , who managed to avoid mentioning that any of the victims in Majdanek were Jewish . Grossman, despite warnings from his friend Ilya Ehrenburg, had been slow to believe that antisemitism could exist within the Soviet hierarchy during the death struggle with Nazism . But in 1943 he had noticed that any reference to Jewish suffering was being cut from his articles . He wrote to complain to Aleksandr Shcherbakov, the chief of the Red Army political department . Shcherbakov replied:"The soldiers want to hear about [Russian military hero of the Napoleonic era] Suvorov, but you quote[German 19th-century poet] Heine" . Grossman joined Ehrenburg on the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee to chronicle Nazi crimes, unaware of how dangerous this might prove to be . Several of their colleagues were murdered by the secret police . Certain truths about the Shoah could never be published . When Grossman wrote about the extermination camp of Treblinka , he could not reveal that the auxiliary guards were mostly Ukrainian . Collaboration with the enemy was a taboo subject since it undermined the rhetoric of the Great Patriotic War . As the end of the war approached, controls became even stricter . Auschwitz may have been liberated at the end of January 1945 , but no details were released until the final victory in May . The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee soon found that its work was in direct opposition to the party instruction : "Do not divide the dead!" Jews were not to be seen as a special category of suffering . They were to be described only as citizens of the USSR and Poland . Thus in a way Stalin was the first Holocaust denier , even if his antisemitism was not quite the same as that of the Nazis . It was probably based more on a xenophobic suspicion of international connections than on racial hatred . Soviet propaganda, while designating those killed at Auschwitz in collectively anonymous terms as "victims of fascism", also portrayed the extermination camp as the ultimate capitalist factory, where the workers were murdered when no longer useful . And there was a further twist away from the truth . The Stalinists emphasised how many Poles had died there to distract attention from their own crimes against the Polish people, both following the Red Army's unprovoked invasion in 1939 under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and its brutal occupation from 1944 . They portrayed Auschwitz as the place of martyrdom for the Polish nation . By talking only of the Polish Catholics who had died there, they hoped that the Poles might focus any anger at their bitter fate entirely against Germany and not against the Soviet Union . Few Poles were taken in during those postwar years of Soviet oppression . And now Putin's ill-disguised attempts to reassert Russian control over Ukraine have of course reminded the Polish people all too clearly of what Soviet "liberation" meant for them in 1945 . It is not therefore surprising that we should be seeing a certain amount of diplomatic shadow-boxing in the background , while both sides insist everything is normal . The Kremlin is pretending not to have been snubbed by the fact that President Putin has not been asked to the commemoration event ; meanwhile, the Polish government insists it was not issuing formal invitations . The Auschwitz international committee, which includes a Russian representative, was simply asking each government who would be representing them . Putin made a speech at Auschwitz 10 years ago on the 60th anniversary , and no doubt he will again proclaim in Moscow on 9 May- Russia's Victory Day - that the Red Army's defeat of "the fascist beast" saved Europe from Nazi slavery . But those countries, especially Poland and the Baltic states, that experienced the ensuing 40 years of Communist dictatorship glance nervously east once more . Russia, obsessed for centuries by a fear of encirclement and surprise attack, has always felt justified in dominating its "near abroad" . It was Stalin's shock at Hitler's invasion in 1941, and his consequent determination to create a defensive cordon, that led to the cold war . Putin, fortunately, is a very pale imitation of his hero . o Antony Beevor's next book, Ardennes - 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble, is out in May .

Answer:
It is a great shame that Vladimir Putin, having not been invited, won't be present at a memorial ceremony next week to mark the 70th anniversary at the very least, it would have reminded the world that the advance of Stalin's Red Army forced the SS to abandon the extermination camps in the east