Now we know what we know, why is Blair still in office?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1928393,00.html
As more evidence of his role in the Iraq debacle emerges, it beggars
belief that the Prime Minister hasn't been impeached
Henry Porter
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer
Over the course of little more than a week, we have learned that
civilian casualties so far in the Iraq war may be more than 600,000;
that Britain's Chief of the General Staff believes the conflict could
break the army apart; that a federal solution to the growing chaos
involving the effective dismemberment of the country is being openly
discussed in America; that the US Iraq Study Group, headed by
Republican grandee James Baker, is recommending that the US military
withdraws to bases outside Iraq and seeks Iranian and Syrian help; and
that Britain is now the number one al-Qaeda target, partly, it seems
clear, as a consequence of events in Iraq.
It's my cross and I'm proud to bare it
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1928394,00.html
Cristina Odone
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer
I have worn a small gold cross almost every day of my life. It's
discreet enough not to catch a mugger's eye and light enough for me to
be unconscious of it most of the time.
I am very conscious of it these days, though: wearing a cross has
become as controversial as wearing a single earring or going bra-less
used to be. No one would seize upon gays or feminists for expressing
their allegiances today, yet in institutions as British as the BBC and
British Airways, wearing a cross is now tantamount to throwing down a
gauntlet. It says: 'Here I stand - against everything the rest of you
believe in.'
Is the veil debate doing more harm than good?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1928371,00.html
A Muslim teaching assistant who refused to remove her veil lost an
employment tribunal case last week
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer
Barbara Gunnell
No. Debate is always good and there are already too many restrictions
on free speech, both legally enforced and self-imposed. We shouldn't
offend people gratuitously; that's just good manners. But if there's a
conflict between religious views and democratically determined norms,
it has to be discussed without rancour. The Great Veil Debate may seem
comical in 30 years' time. By then, we'll all be fully covered against
the blistering heat or Arctic winter and wondering why every politician
and commentator was more exercised by a piece of cloth than impending
climate change disaster.
=B7 Barbara Gunnell is associate editor of the New Statesman
Billions flow down new trade routes
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1928138,00.html
Heather Stewart
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer
Developing Countries are bypassing the old economic powers and forging
powerful new financial links which are changing the face of global
trade.
Research by the United Nations' trade arm, UNCTAD, shows the rising
importance of so-called 'south-south' trade, with an increasing
proportion of foreign direct investment now happening between one
developing country and another.
Empire strikes back: India forges new steel alliance
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1928156,00.html
The newly confident nation is no longer afraid to let its homegrown
companies make acquisitions abroad. But in pursuit of Corus, Tata may
face stiff competition, writes Richard Wachman
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer
It is a dramatic illustration of the shift in the balance of power from
West to East: a =A35bn bid for Corus, formerly British Steel, by Tata,
an Indian industrial conglomerate that has aspirations to turn itself
into an Asian version of America's General Electric.
True, Indian tycoon Lakshmi Mittal demonstrated what could be done
earlier this year when his metals company acquired Europe's Arcelor in
a hotly contested =A318bn bid. But Mittal's firm was based in Luxembourg
and many of its operations were overseas.
The world's most modern plant - and it's in Siberia
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1928164,00.html
Simon Caulkin
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer
Siberia is huge, empty and inhospitable - a five-hour plane ride from
Moscow in a battered 1970s Tupolev gets you no further than the wild
central republic of Khakasia: population 600,000; average yearly
temperature, zero Celcius. It seems an unlikely hotbed of new
developments in a =A330bn world industry.
Yet nothing better illustrates the changing of the world's industrial
guard than the new Khakas aluminium smelter at Sayanogorsk, south of
capital Abakan. Khakas, the first smelter built in Russia since 1985
and claimed to be the most technologically advanced in the world, is
being built by Russians, using Russian technology, with Russian money.
The =A3375m investment is just a starter: even before this month's
merger announcement with smaller rival Sual, parent Rusal (for Russian
Aluminium) had began a =A38bn expansion and modernisation programme
aiming to almost double production to 5 million tonnes by 2013.
How Iraq came home to haunt America
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1928616,00.html
For months doubts over Iraq have risen along with the death toll. Last
week a tipping point was reached as political leaders in Washington and
London began openly to think the unthinkable: that the war was lost
Peter Beaumont, Edward Helmore and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer
Colonel Tom Vail is planning a road trip around the United States. It
is his last, sad duty before returning to his family from eastern
Baghdad. For when the commander of the 4th Brigade of the 101st
Airborne arrives back in the States, it will be with videos of the
memorial services held in Baghdad for each of his fallen soldiers to
give to the families of the dead men.
He knows that some of the families will not want to see him, and he
understands. Grief works in different ways, he says. For others,
however, it will be an opportunity to talk, to learn something, he
hopes, of the inexplicable nature of their children's deaths.
1956: The year that changed the world
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1928212,00.html
We had never had it so good - a post-war Britain was in full bloom.
Then, 50 years ago this week, it all changed. The Hungarian uprising
and the Suez crisis sparked the rise of the Soviets and the end of the
British empire. Dominic Sandbrook recalls how this newspaper reported
events, and played a crucial part in them
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer
October 1956 was a good time to be young. After years of gloomy
austerity, Britain was gradually awakening to the glorious
possibilities of postwar affluence, and it was as though a Technicolor
rainbow had suddenly lit up a slate-grey sky. If you had the money, you
might spend your evenings in one of the new 'expresso' bars in the
south of England, where duffel-coated students huddled around coffees
and cigarettes. You might be reading the latest novel by Kingsley Amis,
or perhaps Colin Wilson's existentialist tract The Outsider. You might
have just bought the latest single by that new American singer, Elvis
Presley, or you might be looking forward to that new film, Rock Around
the Clock.
You knew that things were changing: your parents had just bought a new
car, their first washing machine, their first television. Blackpool
this summer had been a lot of fun. The prospect of National Service was
a pain, but at least you knew there was a good job waiting for you when
you finished. All in all, life wasn't too bad - and then you turned on
the radio, and listened with horror to the news from Budapest and Suez.
The tale of two empires
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1928242,00.html
William Dalrymple's penchant for bashing the West mars an otherwise
impeccable biography of the last Mughal, says Rachel Aspden
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer
The Last Mughal
by William Dalrymple
Bloomsbury =A325, pp608
For the last 17 years, William Dalrymple's travel and history books
have celebrated syncretism. Nothing pleases him more than the
'fluidity' and 'tolerance' displayed by such champion integrators as
Sir David Ochterlony, who processed around 19th-century Delhi each
evening with his 13 Indian wives, each on the back of her own lavishly
caparisoned elephant. The roots of violently polarised religions and
cultures, Dalrymple is famous for arguing, are surprisingly entwined:
al-Qaeda and the evangelical neocons are branches of the same spreading
tree. But cheerleaders for pluralism have a thin time of it these days.
Dalrymple's works are elegies for tolerance: tales of things falling
apart, splintering communities and growing religious fundamentalism.
The Last Mughal, which traces the brutal destruction of Bahadur Shah
Zafar II's Delhi court in the Indian uprising of 1857-8, shows this
process - a falling-off from the late-18th century heyday of liberal
coexistence described in its predecessor, White Mughals - in
fast-forward.
Faith, hope and clarity
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1928244,00.html
Michael Burleigh's Sacred Causes is a formidable attack on secularism,
says Alex Butterworth
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer
Sacred Causes: Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to
al-Qaeda
by Michael Burleigh
HarperCollins =A325, pp576
In years to come, Michael Burleigh's two-volume study of secular hubris
since the French Revolution may well be judged to be the most
significant work of history published this decade. If so, it will be as
much for its prescience and steely moral certainty as its formidable
grasp of the fine grain of the past, since Burleigh clearly believes
that his moment as a polemicist has arrived.
Following his evisceration of 19th-century utopianism in Earthly
Powers, Sacred Causes sees him resume his task in the aftermath of the
Great War, with the same resolute partiality. While mystic charlatans
such as Ludwig Christian Haeusser, whose nationalist ranting provided
the context for Hitler's early career, are rightly dismissed
witheringly, the claims by the Catholic party of Weimar Germany that
its service in unpopular coalition governments was 'a form of sacrifice
for the fatherland' are accepted without the slightest scepticism. The
pattern persists, but soon enough, the vicious hypocrisies of the
totalitarian regimes overwhelm such petty issues of preference.
Top US diplomat: We have shown stupidity and arrogance in Iraq
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1919098.ece
By Marie Woolf, Political Editor and David Randall
Published: 22 October 2006
A senior US diplomat said yesterday that the United States had shown
"arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq, but warned that failure in the
violence-ridden Arab nation would be a disaster for the entire region.
In an interview with al-Jazeera, Alberto Fernandez, director of public
diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the US State
Department, also said the US was ready to talk with any Iraqi group -
excluding al- Qa'ida in Iraq - to reach national reconciliation in the
country, which is racked by widening sectarian strife as well as an
enduring insurgency.
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