Powers of persuasion
Hans Blix
March 5, 2007 9:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/hans_blix/2007/03/hans_blix.html
This is the foreword to Would Airstrikes Work? a report by the Oxford
Research Group.
The ultimate aim of the 1968 non-proliferation treaty was a nuclear-
weapon free world. All states without non-nuclear weapons were invited
to commit themselves to remain without these weapons and the five
states, which had tested such weapons, were invited to commit
themselves to nuclear disarmament.
Incentives to acquire nuclear weapons flow in most cases from
perceived security interests or from a wish for recognition and
status. Success in preventing a spread of the weapons and in
eliminating existing arsenals depends on states coming to the
conclusion that their security interests and status do not call for
nuclear weapons.
Long live satire
Sue Blackmore
March 5, 2007 8:17 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sue_blackmore/2007/03/offended_muslims_=
should_be_ash.html
A Cambridge student is in hiding because he dared to print one of
those infamous Danish cartoons and have a laugh at Islam's expense.
Yet if offended Muslims want people to stop laughing at them, this
latest incident will only have backfired.
I bet I'm not the only one whose reaction was to go straight to Google
Images and type in "Muhammad". And yes, you find lots of pictures of
him who must not be pictured - "about 88,400" to be precise. The top
20 includes some ancient depictions (and I've no idea whether these
offended anyone), a selection of Muhammad clipart, and several
cartoons. I especially like the first one that Google throws up -
Muhammad looking at himself in a mirror and exclaiming "Blasphemy". Ha
ha. Then there's one I regularly use in my lectures on memes. It shows
some suicide bombers arriving in heaven to be met by the man himself
shouting "Stop, stop, we've run out of virgins".
Waking up in Reno
Sasha Abramsky
March 4, 2007 2:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sasha_abramsky/2007/03/reno.html
It's hard to live in the United States without being continually
amazed at the country's contradictions. I've been here fourteen years
now, and it's still one of things that most fascinates me about this
vast place. You see the most gaudy, unpleasant side of life - the side
that's so often portrayed by critics as the only aspect of American
existence - but you also see the most soul-replenishing. You see
materialism run riot, but you also see intimate little corners
dedicated not to money but to simply enjoying life. Above all, you see
a refusal to accept limitations, whether they be associated with
consumerism or with age. The good, the bad, and the ugly come together
in America more than anywhere else I've been - and, I have to admit,
this suits my temperament just fine. It makes life continually
unpredictable and interesting.
In many ways, it is in the American west that these contradictory
traits play out most, in the towns and cities dotting the larger-than-
life deserts-and-mountains landscape of states like Nevada and New
Mexico.
The web works for the grassroots, but political power still lies with
the few
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2026488,00.html
Thousands have been mobilised for the 2008 US elections. But, more
than anything, the candidates want money
Gary Younge
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
Whatever happened to Tom Vilsack? Vilsack appeared on the presidential
scene without trace and faded with even less commotion. Since,
according to a recent survey, Americans have been paying more
attention to coverage of Anna Nicole Smith than the 2008 presidential
campaign, few have missed him. But on February 23 he bowed out of the
Democratic primaries almost a year before the first vote was to be
cast.
"I have the boldest plan to get us out of Iraq and a long-term policy
for energy security to keep us out of future oil wars," said Vilsack
in his concession speech. This is not true. Vilsack was a fairly
ordinary candidate with fairly ordinary policies. His plans were not
bold. In a free and fair contest of content, charisma and character
the voters would probably not go for him. The issue is that they will
never get the chance. Before he could get his name on a ballot, money
had the final say.
My unilateral conversion
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2026489,00.html
I believe we should ditch our nuclear deterrent for the same reasons I
once fought to save it
Roy Hattersley
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
The nuclear deterrent changed my life. In the early 60s - having been
rejected by a dozen safe Labour constituencies - I decided that London
and parliament were not for me. I would remain in the north,
administer my small part of the health service, and guide the housing
department of Sheffield city council. Then Hugh Gaitskill promised to
"fight and fight again to save the party we love". Suddenly, all I
wanted was to be a foot soldier in the battle against the forces of
unreason demanding unilateral nuclear disarmament. So I set off again
on the long and winding road that led to the Sparkbrook division of
Birmingham.
People like us
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2026492,00.html
History is not about a distant past. The world has changed, but
emotionally we are still the same
Peter Preston
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
The trouble with history, conventionally rendered, is also the trouble
with Life on Mars. We're supposed to see the 70s as some distant time
when big lapels, boy Bowie and dodgy coppers stalked the planet: but
satellite TV (from Top of the ancient Pops to The Sweeney) still
recycles yesterday as today on a daily basis. If history is images and
artefacts, then continuing life pulses around the red planet.
Why stop at 30 years back, though? The last time I saw Archie Rice -
from a distant seat in the gods - was 50 years ago, when The
Entertainer in question was Laurence Olivier. Now he's Robert Lindsay
(at the Old Vic) and maybe memories of Olivier charisma do him no
favours. Yet the almost forgotten play itself starts with a jolt of
recognition. "Bloody Poles and bloody Irish," says Archie's miserable
dad as the curtain rises. The awful Poles in the flat downstairs are a
running gag. And as for Nicky, the young squaddie lost in Suez action,
he might have just as easily gone missing on the Basra road.
Free doesn't mean unfair
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2026493,00.html
Some dissenters claim the fair trade movement is about do-gooders up
to no good. They are wrong
Julian Baggini
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
We may like to root for the underdog and champion the poor and
oppressed, but woe betide the little man who manages to stand tall and
not just walk, but run. The latest plucky outsider to get too big for
its boots is the Fairtrade Foundation, which certifies fair-trade
products. As it celebrates Fairtrade Fortnight, there are numerous
reasons for it to be pleased. There are now over 1,500 Fairtrade
products on sale in the UK, and sales are rising at about 40% a year.
Who cares who's posh?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2026490,00.html
Sadly, many former radicals are happy to have their names listed in
the elitists' bible
Bob Holman
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
Since accepting her Oscar with the words "I give you - the Queen!",
Helen Mirren has been criticised for her about-turn from the days when
she professed to loathe the monarchy and reportedly refused a CBE.
Perhaps, when offered a damehood, the temptation of a title was too
much. She is not alone. In my youth, I campaigned against poverty with
many former radicals who, it appears, are now only too pleased to join
the establishment by having their names published in the posh people's
bible, Who's Who.
Open door
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2026474,00.html
The readers' editor on ... the narrow gulf between offence and
sensitivity
Ian Mayes
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
A few days after I wrote about the Guardian's preference for "the
Gulf", as opposed to "the Persian Gulf" or "the Arabian Gulf" - in a
column on sensitive terminology - the Iranian ambassador in London
contributed to the Comment pages. Naturally enough, he referred to
"the Persian Gulf region". Well, of course he would, and why not? The
idea of imposing Guardian style on the Iranian ambassador was a
thought not long entertained.
Asian arms race fear as Beijing raises spending
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2026729,00.html
=C2=B7 China 18% rise in military outlay is largest since 1995
=C2=B7 World's largest army to undergo modernisation
Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
International concerns about China's growing military power and a
spiralling global arms race intensified yesterday when Beijing
announced its biggest defence budget increase for more than 10 years.
Weeks after China stunned the world by test-firing its first anti-
satellite missile, the government said it will increase spending by
17.8% this year.
The sharp rise - almost double the pace of economic growth - will be
used to modernise the People's Liberation Army. With 2.3 million
troops, the PLA has long been the world's biggest military force, but
it is only in recent years that it has started to acquire
sophisticated weaponry.
New bill finally puts private ownership on legal footing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2026534,00.html
Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
China is set to take another giant stride away from Maoism this week
with the passage of a controversial bill to protect private property.
The proposed law - the first of its type since the Communists seized
power and nationalised assets in 1949 - will be submitted to the
National People's Congress, which opens today, despite fierce
resistance from leftwing politicians and academics.
Old-style Marxists oppose the property rights bill, which they warned
would worsen inequalities in society and legitimise the theft of state
assets by corrupt officials.
Raid at Iraqi compound finds signs of torture
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2026784,00.html
=C2=B7 37 prisoners freed from intelligence agency centre
=C2=B7 British forces gave back-up in controversial operation
Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday March 5, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The Iraqi prime minister has called for an investigation into an
operation by Iraqi and British forces in Basra which found evidence of
torture when they raided an Iraqi intelligence agency detention centre
yesterday.
Officials at the detention centre, part of a police compound in the
city, told Reuters news agency that 37 prisoners were freed in the
raid. They showed journalists offices that had been searched, with
files thrown on the floor, desks overturned, and doors broken open in
the pre-dawn raid.
Clinton and Obama battle for black votes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections08/story/0,,2026700,00.html
=C2=B7 Both turn up in Selma for same civil rights event
=C2=B7 Former first lady's early lead cut by younger rival
Ed Pilkington in New York
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
The two titans of the race for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama
and Hillary Clinton visited the same town yesterday, at the
commemoration of a seminal moment in the civil rights movement.
The decision to visit Selma, Alabama, was being seen as an indication
of their determination to win over African-Americans who could form a
key group of voters within the contest. Mr Obama was the first to be
invited. A month later, Mrs Clinton decided to attend.
Cambodia welcomes its oil wealth, but will it do more harm than good?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,,2026497,00.html
Aid workers fear resource bonanza offers new potential for corruption
Ian MacKinnon in Sihanoukville
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
Behind the tall fences and taller cranes of Cambodia's sole deep-water
port lurks a compound filled with rusty pipes and drilling equipment.
Unlikely as it seems, this collection of shipping containers
represents the best hope in years for the impoverished country still
recovering from decades of war.
The base in sleepy Sihanoukville is US oil giant Chevron's springboard
for operations 100 miles off shore. It struck "significant" oil and
gas deposits, and is confirming the discovery's scale. The initial
find, estimated by the World Bank and United Nations' Development
Programme to be 400m to 500m barrels of oil, has already sparked
something of a "black gold" rush with Chinese, Japanese, French and
Korean companies battling for lucrative rights.
Attack on Iran would backfire, warns report
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2026550,00.html
=C2=B7 UK nuclear expert fears for region after air strikes
=C2=B7 Tragedy and turmoil would follow, says Blix
Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
Any military action against Iran's atomic programme is likely to
backfire and accelerate Tehran's development of a nuclear bomb, a
report today by a British former nuclear weapons scientist warns.
In his report, Frank Barnaby argues that air strikes, reportedly being
contemplated as an option by the White House, would strengthen the
hand of Iranian hardliners, unite the Iranian population behind a
bomb, and would almost certainly trigger an underground crash
programme to build a small number of warheads as quickly as possible.
Iran's rich architecture and rare treasures threatened by possible US
strikes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2026705,00.html
=C2=B7 Many ancient remains are close to nuclear plants
=C2=B7 Archaeologists anxious to avoid repeat of Iraq chaos
Maev Kennedy
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
In his quiet office at the British Museum, among the portraits of long-
dead explorers and copies of 3,000-year-old inscriptions, one of the
greatest experts on the archaeology of the Middle East has a series of
maps of Iranian nuclear installations spread out across his desk.
John Curtis's maps fill him with foreboding: because they show how
many of Iran's nuclear plants are perilously close to ancient cultural
sites.
Natanz, home to a uranium enrichment plant, is renowned for its
exquisite ceramics; Isfahan, home to a uranium conversion plant, is
also a Unesco world heritage site and was regarded in the 16th century
as the most beautiful city on earth.
SAS team on standby for Ethiopia rescue bid
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2026592,00.html
=C2=B7 Unverified sighting of Britons at army camp
=C2=B7 Identity of kidnappers still unknown, FO says
Richard Norton-Taylor, Xan Rice and Matthew Taylor
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
British special forces have flown to the remote area of Ethiopia where
five Britons were kidnapped, defence sources said yesterday. An SAS
troop trained in hostage rescue is on standby in Britain and two
soldiers from the elite unit, described as being in a "liaison" role,
are already on the ground. "They are looking at the ground in case
they are needed," a senior defence official said yesterday.
The two women and three men were kidnapped when a gang overpowered
their guards, torched the guesthouse in which they were staying and
set fire to their cars on Thursday. All five are members of staff from
the British embassy in Addis Ababa, relatives of diplomats or
officials from the Department for International Development (DFID).
Last night a spokesman for the Foreign Office said they were working
round the clock to secure the release of the hostages.
Japan rules out new apology to 'comfort women'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,,2026568,00.html
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, told parliament early this morning
that he would not apologise again for his country's second world war
military brothels, even if the US Congress passes a resolution
demanding it.
"I must say we will not apologise even if there's a [US] resolution,"
Mr Abe told MPs in a lengthy debate, during which he also said he
stood by Japan's landmark 1993 apology on the brothels.
Last week he said there was "no evidence" that Japan had coerced as
many as 200,000 mainly Chinese and Korean "comfort women" to work in
military brothels between the early 1930s and 1945. South Korea
accused him of attempting to "gloss over a historic truth".
It's only a wargame! Arabs reject US army bit-part
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2026512,00.html
Kate Connolly in Berlin
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
They came with dreams of working on a movie set, or at the very least
of earning some respectable cash as a walk-on extra, encouraged by a
mysterious advertisement printed recently in a Berlin tabloid.
But the reality was different for dozens of Arab-speaking applicants
at a supposed casting session, only to be told they were wanted to
play Iraqis and Afghans in a US wargame planned for later this month.
For between =C2=A361 and =C2=A388 a day, 600 German-based Arab speakers are
being offered work with the US military, pretending to be mayors,
shopkeepers, terrorists or even brothel owners. The Americans call
them COBs or Civilians on the Battlefield. The idea is to set them in
a landscape simulating Afghanistan or Iraq, in Bavaria.
Australian troops hunt East Timor rebel leader
http://www.guardian.co.uk/indonesia/Story/0,,2026567,00.html
Ian MacKinnon, South-East Asia correspondent
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian
Australian troops backed by helicopters and armoured vehicles mounted
a pre-dawn raid yesterday on a rebel stronghold in East Timor in an
effort to capture the group's ringleader. But as troops of the
peacekeeping International Security Force occupied the mountain town
of Same, south of the capital, Dili, the renegade former officer,
Alfredo Reinado, escaped in the chaos.
The fighting that left four rebels dead sparked unrest in Dili as
youths fought with police. A number of buildings were attacked and
cars torched, amid sporadic gunfire that crackled in the streets.
Protests after US troops kill 16 Afghans
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2328819.ece
By Kim Sengupta
Published: 05 March 2007
Thousands of angry demonstrators took to the streets in Afghanistan
yesterday after US forces were involved in a panicked shooting which
left 16 civilians dead and 23 injured.
Local people as well as a number of Afghan officials accused the
American marines of opening fire indiscriminately following a suicide
bomb attack on their convoy in Nangarhar province.
The colonel who came in from the cold: Libya opens its doors to the
West
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2328820.ece
Thirty years ago, Muammar Gaddafi's Green Book branded democracy a
'problem'. Now, not even pan-Africanism can save Libya's leader from
the forces of change. Peter Popham reports
Published: 05 March 2007
The Great Leader did not disappoint. We might have asked for more, of
course. He might have received us in his legendary tent, the one he
brought to Brussels and Belgrade, his flock of camels cropping the
grass outside. He would have done us all a favour if he had ridden
into the conference hall on a white stallion, his troop of cruelly
beautiful, Uzi-toting female commandos sprinting alongside. But
presiding over the 30th anniversary of his little Green Book, he was
the man we had come to see, imperious behind his big sunglasses, this
modern Ozymandias in a gleaming white dinner jacket with a cape around
his shoulders, his jet-black hair teased into the familiar modified
Afro, like a member of Mott the Hoople.
He published the Green Book on 2 March 1977, seven years after he
seized power, aged 29, in a coup against King Idris, the West's
stooge. Since then, millions of copies have been distributed. It is
Gaddafi's answer to the Little Red Book of Mao, encapsulating what the
colonel modestly calls the "Third Universal Theory" - following (and
hopefully supplanting) those of capitalism and Marxism. Its subtitle
is "The solution to the problem of Democracy", and the crux of
Gaddafi's insight into that problem is summed up in posters in the
desert town of Sebha during the celebration: "No representation
without participation."
Clinton looks on, as Obama gets the larger congregation
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2328816.ece
By David Usborne in Selma, Alabama
Published: 05 March 2007
The congregation at the First Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, was in
full voice yesterday morning when the smiling face of Senator Hillary
Clinton peered from a door behind the pulpit and saw she was already a
little late. "Have a little talk with Jesus," the hymn began. "Tell
him about your troubles." The particular trouble for Mrs Clinton
nowadays could be found just a few hundred yards away in another place
of worship on the same Martin Luther King Street, the Brown Chapel AME
Church. The senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, was there and he was
packing them to the rafters too.
This was the special day on Selma's calendar when most, but not all,
African Americans, commemorate the 1965 clash on the Edmund Pettus
Bridge over the Alabama River between state police and marchers for
voting rights for blacks, a key turning point in the struggle for
desegregation.
Howard's election opponent faces death threats
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/australasia/article2328817.ece
By Kathy Marks in Sydney
Published: 05 March 2007
Australian police are investigating death threats against a former
high-profile television journalist who is to challenge the Prime
Minister, John Howard, in his constituency at a general election later
this year.
Maxine McKew, the Labour Party's new star recruit, said yesterday that
she was "shaken" by the threats, and by two incidents last week, one
of which involved two men, spotted by a neighbour, underneath her car
with torches.
Robert Fisk on Bin Laden at 50
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2326225.ece
The most wanted man on the planet was 36 when our veteran
correspondent met him for the first time in the desert
By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent
Published: 04 March 2007
He was 36 when I first met him. Osama bin Laden's beard had no trace
of grey in 1993. He was a young man, building a new road for poor
villagers in Sudan, a trifle arrogant perhaps, very definitely wary of
the Western journalist - 10 years older than him - who had turned up
in the cold Sudanese desert one Sunday morning to talk to him about
his war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Was I going to ask him about "terror"? No, I wanted to know what it
was like to fight the Russians. A Soviet mortar shell had fallen
beside him, Bin Laden said. Nangahar province, maybe 1982. "I felt
Seqina as I waited for it to explode," he said. Seqina means an almost
religious calmness. The shell - and many must curse it for being a dud
- did not explode. Otherwise Osama bin Laden would have been dead at
25.
Bush tries to stem furore over soldiers' hospital
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2326220.ece
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 04 March 2007
President George Bush yesterday rushed to contain a new political
scandal sweeping his administration over dire conditions at the Walter
Reed Army Medical Center, the country's most prestigious military
hospital for wounded combat troops.
Soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered neglect,
bureaucratic intransigence and infestations of rats, cockroaches and
mould, it emerged. The scandal has already claimed President Bush's
secretary of the army, who was fired on Friday, as well as Walter
Reed's commander and the deputy who temporarily stepped in to replace
him.
Ruapehu: The mountain that will explode
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/australasia/article2326235.ece
By Christopher Zinn in Mount Ruapehu, New Zealand
Published: 04 March 2007
Any day now, a massive torrent of mud and rocks is going to roar down
the slopes of Mount Ruapehu, on New Zealand's North Island, engulfing
everything in its path.
It is one of nature's most awe-inspiring and dangerous threats, known
as a "lahar", and it can be far more lethal than lava flows. In
Colombia in 1985, 24,000 people were buried alive when a lahar
swallowed up the town of Armero, following an eruption by the Nevado
del Ruiz volcano. Another lahar in 1953 caused New Zealand's worst
rail disaster, killing 151 people.
Jade of India: How did nation react to charm offensive?
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2326230.ece
The 'Celebrity Big Brother' contestant tried to make amends after she
was accused of racism towards actress Shilpa Shetty by visiting Delhi
charities. Justin Huggler on the reception Ms Goody received
Published: 04 March 2007
Jade Goody. You may remember her. She is the woman who has made a
multi-million-pound living since appearing on Big Brother in 2002, and
then threatened to throw it away in January when she was accused of
racially abusing the Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty while back in the
Big Brother house.
At the height of the furore, the Indian tourism office came up with a
delightful wheeze. They paid tens of thousands of pounds to take full-
page advertisements in British newspapers with a direct address to the
one-time dental nurse from east London.
Slavery: Abolished 200 years ago? Tell that to the people in chains
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2326239.ece
Shackled men and women are walking from Hull to London to mark the
bicentenary - and to highlight the plight of modern slaves
By Cole Moreton
Published: 04 March 2007
The wind was fierce and freezing. The cars moved slowly on the Humber
Bridge, drivers concentrating hard. Few can have noticed the small
group of men, women and children on the walkway, high above the river.
Some were shuffling, not walking, because they were bound together by
the iron chain looped around their wrists. Three men wore a wooden
yoke on their necks that would snap vertebrae if they stumbled.
"So sorry," said the words on the black T-shirts worn over waterproofs
by these men, locked in a bondage not seen in Hull since the docks in
the distance dealt in human cargo. Slaves.
Tainted love: Are we wrong to treat incest as a taboo?
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2326110.ece
They met, fell in love and had four children. But their story has
horrified Germany. They are brother and sister, separated at birth and
reunited years later. And their story is astonishingly common. Ruth
Elkins reports
Published: 04 March 2007
It was love at first sight for Patrick Stuebing and Susan Karolewski.
At least that's the way they tell it. "We both stayed up late into the
night and talked to each other about our hopes and dreams," says
Patrick, recalling the first night the couple spent together. "Trust
grew into a different type of love," remembers Susan.
When they met that first time, Patrick was 23, Susan just 16. He was a
locksmith from Germany. Susan, a simple girl, was just out of a
school, yet to decide which path her life might take, apart from
perhaps, to meet a nice boy and settle down. Sceptics chalked their
relationship down to puppy love.
Teachers fail to understand black pupils, charity warns
http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article2326241.ece
By Ian Griggs
Published: 04 March 2007
A legal charity has called for teachers to receive better cultural
training to work with black pupils, following the publication of an
official report identifying the existence of "institutional racism" in
some schools.
First published in The Independent on Sunday in December, the report
found that black Caribbean boys were five times less likely than other
pupils to be identified as gifted and talented. The Children's Legal
Centre described the report, written for the Department for Education
and Skills, as a wake-up call for school staff. Its director, Carolyn
Hamilton, said: "There is a lack of cultural understanding among
teachers of black pupils, and that is a big problem. Teachers need
more training in how to approach young black men and should not
demonise them."
Jane Austen: Scenes from a provincial life
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article2326121.ece
Homebody, depressive, spinster - as a new film shows, there was no
happy ending for Jane
By Frances Wilson
Published: 04 March 2007
Jane Austen, handsome, clever, and posthumously rich, lived nearly 42
years in the world with, it seems, quite a bit to distress and vex
her. The myth that our favourite romantic novelist spent her days
contentedly at her desk, mob cap in place, clock ticking peacefully,
imagining a world of passion which, as Charlotte Bront=C3=AB put it, was
"perfectly unknown to her", is about to explode.
Becoming Jane, which opens on Friday, tells the story of Austen's
traumatic love affair, with a handsome Irish lawyer called Tom Lefroy.
The flirtation between the two has been written about before, but Jon
Spence, author of the book Becoming Jane Austen, on which the film is
based, goes further than any other biographer by arguing that what
happened between them was more significant than has been supposed and
that the failure of Lefroy to propose to Jane was a painful experience
which worked its way into her fiction.
Expert View: Here we go again: a carbon copy of dot-com fever
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/comment/article2326088.ece
A tidal wave of money is chasing low-carbon technologies
By Chris Goodall
Published: 04 March 2007
Ten years ago, the internet bubble was just beginning. Huge sums of
capital were about to be invested in companies with business plans
written on one side of A4. Hucksters in denim were set to make
fortunes.
It would all turn sour in 2001 but, for a few years, the internet
caused a fever that infected stock markets and venture capital funds
across the world.
Stephen King: How a small shock upset the apple cart
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/comment/article2328851.ece
Published: 05 March 2007
Ouch. Last week's carnage in financial markets provides a classic
example of the expected happening at an unexpected time. I speak to
quite a few financial investors and I think it's fair to say that many
of them thought a "correction" would happen at some point. Few,
though, would have managed to predict the events of the past few days.
Even if they'd guessed correctly which markets would suffer, not many
would have been lucky enough to get their timing right as well.
When stock markets fall, people look for explanations. Among the
favourites last week were rumours of more stringent controls on the
Shanghai stock exchange (the stock market falls began in China), a
deterioration in US economic data, and, to cap it all, masterful words
from the world's leading octogenarian economic sage. Alan Greenspan,
former chairman of the Federal Reserve, warned that the US might find
itself in recession by the end of the year.
Ali Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2327937.ece
We won the war, but lost the peace. In this exclusive extract from his
definitive history of the conflict in Iraq, Ali Allawi explains how
the conquering armies allowed victory to give way to anarchy
Published: 05 March 2007
The invasion of Iraq was launched on 19 March 2003 by American forces
led by the Third Infantry Division, with British support, from Kuwait
into Iraqi territory. The war was fought fitfully over a three-week
period. There was no doubt about the final outcome, even if at certain
points there appeared to be some resistance. But this was quickly
overcome.
In Basra, the British had effectively surrounded the city by the first
week, but did not establish control until the end of March. Meanwhile,
the Americans had met unexpected resistance in the city of Nasiriyah,
mainly from the Fedayeen Saddam, a militia loyal to Saddam and his
family. The march to Baghdad was halted by sandstorms in the central
Euphrates area, and also by running skirmishes and ambushes. But the
Iraqi army and the vaunted Republican Guard simply melted away. The
troops did not surrender en masse as had been expected - they simply
went home. Coalition intelligence had expected that entire units would
switch sides and form the core of a future loyal military force with
which they could cooperate.
A C Grayling: Good men in a mad, bad world
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2326109.ece
The Prince of Wales and Al Gore may not practise as they preach, but
they mean well, and that counts
Published: 04 March 2007
When well-known figures take a stand on global warming or the effect
of fast foods on childhood obesity, they invite the press to challenge
them on their personal credentials to speak out. There have been two
examples of this in recent days. After winning an Oscar for his film
on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore was met with
newspaper headlines claiming that his home in Nashville, Tennessee,
uses 20 times more energy than the average American household.
Likewise Prince Charles's critical reference to McDonald's, while
visiting a health centre in the Arabian Gulf, prompted newspapers to
reveal that his own Duchy Originals Cornish pasties contain more fat,
salt and calories than a Big Mac. The implication is that because Gore
and the prince do not do as they tell everyone else to do, at best
they undermine their own message and at worst deserve the name of
hypocrite.
Take note. The Lib Dems may hold the key to Number 10
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2026106,00.html
Sir Menzies's party has been consigned to the margins by the media,
but it could be absolutely pivotal at the next election
Andrew Rawnsley
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
The silliest criticism to throw at Sir Menzies Campbell is that he is
lethargic. He and his party have their problems, and I'll come to them
in a moment, but lazy is the one thing that the leader of the Liberal
Democrats is not.
Even when he was still recovering from cancer, he couldn't be kept off
the airwaves, broadcasting on any outlet that would have him, from
late-night TV to early morning radio. His wife Elspeth complains that
her husband is a nightmare on holiday. No sooner do they arrive at
their destination than he is already fidgeting to get back to work. At
nine o'clock every weekday morning, Sir Menzies chairs a meeting of
his key staff and colleagues to plan their media messages for the day
ahead - not something that happened with any regularity under the more
laissez-faire regime of Charles Kennedy.
Jade Goody versus Joan Bakewell? No contest
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2026119,00.html
Cristina Odone
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
Plato knew he was on to something. Boys and men in Athens - and
further afield - clustered round the Academy, eager to show off their
oratory, debating skills and general knowledge. Some had literary
pretensions, others academic ones; many simply wanted to learn.
Through the ages, that intellectual hunger became suspect; among
middle-class Britons, it was regarded a character flaw.
No more. Today, 'conversazioni' are held in schools and church halls
from Aberystwyth to Arbroath and debates take over theatre auditoriums
from Notting Hill to Nottingham. Learning is in - and intimate.
Through Intelligence=C2=B2, a debating society founded four years ago that
regularly attracts 800 ticket-buyers, and turns away 500 more, or
Miller's Academy of Arts and Sciences, which opened its doors last
December and draws a weekly audience of 50, the lawyer, the housewife
and the accountant can meet cerebral pin-ups over drinks or spar with
them in question-and-answer sessions. Richard Dawkins, Christopher
Hitchens, Joan Bakewell and Andrew Motion take part: here is a chance
to attack their arguments, defend their positions, fawn, up close and
personal.
A new Edwardian age is dawning
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2026109,00.html
As in the 1900s, London is making the error of breaking away from the
rest of Britain
Tristram Hunt
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
We are told that London is the clearing house of Europe, the Nineveh
and Babylon of modern times, the wealthiest city on record. We do not
ask: 'Is she beautiful? Is she healthy?'
It is a question as valid today as when first posed a century ago. For
despite last week's stock market 'correction', the Square Mile
continues to boom. London has become the number one financial centre
with the most foreign banks, 70 per cent of the world's secondary bond
market and half the derivatives market. The City's 325,000 employees
lapped up an estimated =C2=A39bn in New Year bonuses. And they're spending
it.
Why Channel 4 has got it wrong over climate change
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2026091,00.html
Our science editor condemns television's latest foray into the debate
on global warming
Robin McKie
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
We live in an era of conspiracies. Princess Diana was killed by Nazis;
9/11 was the work of the US government, while the manned lunar
landings were hoaxes filmed in TV studios. To this list of internet-
fuelled daftness, we can now add a new plot: that the world's
scientific community is not just wrong about global warming, but is
collectively lying when it says industrial carbon dioxide emissions
are heating up the planet.
Raiders make it impossible for companies to act
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2025839,00.html
Simon Caulkin, management editor
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
The company is a remarkable invention - in its public, limited-
liability form, it is capitalism's most influential social and
economic innovation, a crucial component of the modern economy. The
organisational revolution triggered by the joint stock company in the
mid-18th century was just as important for the take-off of British
living standards as the more familiar industrial one.
The historic genius of the 1862 Companies Act was to enshrine a
bargain in which shareholders won the controversial prize of a limit
to their liabilities if the company got into trouble, while the
company was granted a distinct legal personality. In return for a
lessening of their responsibilities, shareholders forfeited the claim
to outright company ownership; the company's overriding obligations
are to itself, including all its members.
Dell cocks a deaf ear to Linux at its online listening post
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2025848,00.html
John Naughton
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
The customer is always right. Except, of course, when he's wrong.
Ask Dell, the well-known computer manufacturer. For years, this Texan
company was a poster child for the brave new world of globalised
manufacturing. Its 'just-in-time' manufacturing system - in which your
computer began to be assembled only after you had pressed 'confirm' on
the company's website - was touted as The Way To Do Things. When the
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was planning The World Is
Flat, his latest book on globalisation, he based the first chapter
around an admiring account of how Dell built the laptop on which the
volume was composed.
BNP seeks anti-abortion Catholic votes
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2026252,00.html
Henry McDonald
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
The British National Party is building an alliance with radical anti-
abortion activists in an attempt to reach out to Catholics and secure
their votes in future elections.
Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, and one of his close deputies confirmed
yesterday that they held private talks last week with the UK co-
ordinator of Life League, an anti-abortion lobby group. Griffin and
Mark Collet spent two days with James Dowson, an Ulster-based
businessman and the main force behind Life League.
Sects slice up Iraq as US troops 'surge' misfires
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2026079,00.html
Peter Beaumont in Baghdad
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
Ahmad Hamad al-Tammimi used to live in the village of Quba. Before
Iraq descended into sectarian war it was home to around 700 families.
The vast majority were Sunnis. Tammimi, spiritual head of Diyala
province's Shias and a follower of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
Iraq's most important religious leader, was the imam at the local
mosque. He farmed groves of date palms and oranges close to the Diyala
river. That was then. He has not seen his house, his farm or old
mosque for close to two years.
Obama told of family's slave-owning history in deep South
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2026232,00.html
An amateur genealogist has revealed a surprise in the family tree of
the black contender in the race to be the Democrats' presidential
candidate
Paul Harris in New York
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
It is a question that few thought a man aiming to be America's first
black President would ever have to answer: did your family once own
slaves?
But that question is now likely to be asked of Senator Barack Obama,
who is bidding for the 2008 presidential nomination of the Democratic
Party, in part on the appeal of his bi-racial background.
As the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, Obama
has seemed to embody a harmonious vision of America's multiracial
society. However, recent revelations have thrown up an unexpected
twist in the tale.
Bush joins outcry in hospital scandal
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2026080,00.html
As the row over filthy conditions at a top US military ward cost two
army chiefs their jobs, the President vows to help veterans
Paul Harris in New York
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
President Bush was forced to pledge tough action yesterday to deal
with a growing scandal over the poor treatment of wounded Iraq war
veterans, which has led to a series of military resignations.
The furore has centred on conditions at the Walter Reed hospital in
Washington, DC, which is considered the best military facility of its
kind in America. However, revelations in the Washington Post last week
revealed dilapidated conditions at several buildings used to house
military outpatients.
Shadow of Darfur's killers follows refugees into wilderness of Chad
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2026066,00.html
Orla Guerin in Chad and Darfur
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
The terrain is some of the most unforgiving on Earth - endless sands,
scorching winds, no vegetation, no shade. This is eastern Chad, a
remote corner of an unstable country, locked in conflict with itself
and with neighbouring Sudan.
Even aid workers travel by armed convoy. 'It's the last place in the
world you'd want to put refugees,' one said. But this is where you'll
find the sprawling camp of Oure Cassoni - though few make the trip.
Travelling from the southern tip of Africa, it took three days, three
flights and a 12-hour drive to get here. Since 2005, this has been
home to 26,000 refugees from across the border in Darfur, among them
little boys like Hamdi Tahir, bombed by his own government and hounded
by its proxy Arab militia, the 'Janjaweed'.
'Oprah of the Middle East' flees over TV row
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2026051,00.html
Controversial Egyptian presenter holes up in London
Conal Urquhart in Cairo
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
The woman known as the Oprah Winfrey of the Middle East has fled to
London in fear for her safety amid a row over allegations that
actresses were paid to pretend they were prostitutes on her television
show.
Dr Hala Sarhan is believed to have left Egypt aboard the private jet
of Saudi billionaire Al-Waleed bin Talal when it became clear that the
government wanted her arrested. Speaking to The Observer yesterday,
Sarhan called her accusers 'bastards
Ross asks BBC: 'Where are all the black faces?'
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2026229,00.html
David Smith
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
Jonathan Ross sealed his reputation as a man willing to flirt with the
unsayable yesterday when live on BBC radio he criticised the
concentration of black people in low paid jobs. The target of his
wrath? The BBC itself.
Ross, renown as a 'motormouth' chat show host, did not let his
reported =C2=A36m annual pay stop him speaking his mind about his employer.
Presenting his BBC Radio 2 show, he described a visit to the Chris
Moyles show on Radio 1 where he met an employee with a small 'Afro'
hairstyle. Ross demanded: 'How many black people have they got working
on proper shows there? You know the BBC still haven't really come up
to speed. I mean they are trying, God bless them.
Abolition's forgotten heroes
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2026235,00.html
David Smith
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
Moira Stuart passes under a sign, 'The Door of No Return', and gazes
out at a sea, where millions of Africans were shipped to slavery. 'Oh
my God,' the broadcaster exclaims, turning to her guide, a Ghanaian
writer and academic. Stuart breaks down in tears, unable to speak. The
women embrace for several long seconds.
The scene is part of a television documentary in which Stuart, whose
ancestors included both a slave and slave owner, investigates whether
William Wilberforce really deserves his reputation as the man who
ended Britain's shameful trade 200 years ago this month.
How the East Wing is won
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2025888,00.html
It has been described as the most demanding job in America and,
increasingly, it's one of the most important. But the role of First
Lady varies hugely, from the assertive Hillary Clinton, to the loyal
Laura Bush to the glamorous Jackie Kennedy. Gaby Wood looks at the
current candidates (and Bill) to see who might have the winning hand
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
It is customary, in the lead-up to a presidential election, for a
tooth-and-nail battle to take place in kitchens all over America: the
First Lady Bake-Off. As their husbands debate the finer points of
public policy, the two contenders for the title of First Lady are
asked to submit a cookie recipe, which is published in Family Circle
magazine and judged by its readers.
So far, the man whose wife wins the bake-off has won the presidency
every time: Hillary Clinton's chocolate-chip cookies beat Barbara
Bush's, then made mincemeat out of Elizabeth Dole's pecan rolls.
Tipper Gore's ginger snaps lost to Laura Bush's 'cowboy cookies', and
last time round, Teresa Heinz Kerry's pumpkin spice cookies were
considered so revolting that they led to a public scandal. With a
combination of paranoia and housewifeliness that seemed to reflect the
entire spectrum of the McCarthy era, Heinz Kerry went so far as to
suggest, on National Public Radio, that the recipe had been submitted
by a campaign aide with the intention of doing her harm. What?, an
outraged nation cried, John Kerry's wife entered the bake-off with a
recipe that wasn't even hers? The episode was dubbed 'Cookiegate';
shortly afterwards, George Bush's second term was assured.
At Empire's end, a vile legacy
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2025866,00.html
Christopher Bayly's and Tim Harper's impressive history Forgotten Wars
draws our attention to the lingering effects of postwar fallout in
Asia
Peter Preston
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain's Asian Empire
by Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper
Allen Lane =C2=A330, pp674
Two years after Japan surrendered in 1945, there were still some
80,000 Japanese prisoners of war in the hands of British South East
Asia. General Douglas MacArthur wanted to repatriate them and dissolve
Japan's broken army, but Britain refused. It preferred cheap conscript
labour and seemed to enjoy humiliating these legions of the lost. They
existed on only half a normal PoW diet; men were routinely forced to
kneel and beg their captors for food. Nearly 9,000 of them died of
malnutrition or disease. The last remnants of 'Operation Nipoff', as
it was malignly known, didn't get home until as late as 1948.
Stick around and you might just learn something
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2025869,00.html
Peter Godwin's desire to chronicle the breakdown of Zimbabwe in When a
Crocodile Eats the Sun, suffers from his reluctance to spend time in
the country he calls home, says Jason Cowley
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir
by Peter Godwin
Picador =C2=A316.99, pp342
Peter Godwin mentions often in this memoir that Africa is his home,
that he is a white African, and that one day he will return to live in
Zimbabwe, the country where he was born in the days when it was called
Rhodesia and ruled by a repressive white minority. Should we believe
him when he says this, especially as affluent Manhattan is his home
and nowadays he is a habitu=C3=A9 of the club-class lounge and the luxury
hotel? Could he give this up to return to ruined Zimbabwe, one of the
most forlorn nations on earth?
Blood and glory
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2022565,00.html
For all its shambolic effervescence, the formation of the Anti Nazi
League was a critical moment in the battle against racism and the
National Front. Thirty years after the riots of Southall and Lewisham,
Ed Vulliamy looks back on the intoxicating mix of 'bravery, pride and
shame' which helped drive fascists from our streets
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer
Vote for Enoch Powell,' came the counsel from a stage in the West
Midlands. 'Stop Britain from becoming a black colony ... Get the
foreigners out ... I used to be into dope, now I'm into racism. It's
much heavier, man.' Not some ranting nutcase from the National Front,
but an inebriated Eric Clapton (now CBE), formerly of Cream and
latterly of Hello! magazine. Yes, Clapton - who played the blues, but
whose outburst in August 1976 came hot on the heels of another from
David Bowie, proclaiming Adolf Hitler to be 'the first rock star' and
urging that what Britain needed was a 'right-wing dictatorship'.
Jobs for the girls
http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8792052
Mar 3rd 2007
From Economist.com
Economic growth may be the best means to liberate women
MAN may labour from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done, says
the old proverb. To add insult to injury, she gets less out of her
labours than he does. In both rich and poor countries, poverty most
often has a feminine face. It is bad enough in America: according to
the Census Bureau 14.1% of women live in poverty, compared with 11.1%
of men. In the developing world, the situation is much worse. By some
estimates 70% of the world's poor are women and the depth of their
deprivation, which often involves subsisting on less than $2 a day,
makes American poverty look positively benign.
The World Bank would like this to change. Late in February, together
with the OECD and several European governments, it convened a
conference in Berlin on increasing the economic power of women. The
bank reckons that restricting women's participation in the economy is
not merely unfair, but bad economics. To put matters right it has
released a =E2=80=9CGender Action Plan=E2=80=9D, which calls for better dat=
a and a
harder push for World Bank schemes that seek to move women into the
economic mainstream.
Goodbye to the blues
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8729871
Mar 1st 2007
From The Economist print edition
The American South, once notorious for violence, poverty and racism,
is now pleasant and prosperous, says Robert Guest (interviewed here).
But it still has some catching up to do
IN 1943 Achie Matthews quit sharecropping and headed north to seek a
better life. He found it. His wages in a steel factory in Ohio were
fatter and more predictable than the pittance he had earned coaxing
cotton out of Mississippi's soil. And although race relations in Ohio
were hardly ideal, he was at least free of the daily indignities and
the pervasive threat of violence that made life so cruel for a black
man in the segregated South.
His story was typical. Seventy years ago the average income in
America's South was $314 a year. In current dollars that would be
about $4,400, meaning that southerners then were about as rich as the
people of Botswana are today. Half the workers in the South in the
1930s were farmers, and half of those did not own the land they
farmed. Some paid rent. Others, like Matthews, gave their landlord a
share of their crop. The average landless cotton farmer made $73 a
year ($1,023 today). Small wonder that by the late 1930s a quarter of
those born in the southern countryside=E2=80=94black and white=E2=80=94had =
emigrated
to the north or to southern cities.
The long journey of a young democracy
http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8776404
Mar 1st 2007 | JOHANNESBURG
From The Economist print edition
Africa's richest country, not yet free of demons, is facing a year of
decision
THE township of Soweto, Johannesburg's largest, was once a byword for
violence and black deprivation. Look at it now. In the Diepkloof
neighbourhood, shiny new cars are parked next to elegant houses
protected by security systems. Shopping malls are planned, banks have
opened and tourists are coming. New bars and restaurants stay open all
night, drawing in the rich blacks who now live, during the week, in
quiet suburbs of Johannesburg that used to be all-white.
Even the poorest corners of South Africa now look better. Roads are
being paved. People who were left in the dark and cold by the
apartheid regime, which ended in 1994, now have lights, a roof over
their heads and access to fresh water. Flush toilets are replacing
buckets. Black South Africans are pushing up property prices and
propelling the economy in general; black economic empowerment, brought
in to redress the injustices of apartheid, has spurred the creation of
a small but wealthy black business elite.
Is the surge beginning to work?
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8786328
Mar 1st 2007 | BAGHDAD
From The Economist print edition
Assessing a promised Iraqi-American crackdown in the capital
IT IS very early days, but American officials in Baghdad say that the
first signs of a joint American-Iraqi effort to stem the sectarian
mayhem in the Iraqi capital are hopeful. Only one of five planned
extra American brigades has yet been deployed. It will be several
months before the full reinforcement needed for President Bush's
vaunted =E2=80=9Csurge=E2=80=9D is complete. But the Americans claim to see=
an
improvement on the streets already.
The arrival of a new American commander in Baghdad, General David
Petraeus, is said to have =E2=80=9Cre-energised=E2=80=9D the Americans' hea=
dquarters
almost overnight. The appointment of a little-known but energetic
Iraqi general, Aboud Qanbar, to oversee the operation in Baghdad, a
compromise candidate between the first choices of the Iraqi government
and the Americans, has been a pleasant surprise, according to those
who have met him. More important, Iraq's government has kept its
promise to send in ten extra police and army brigades.
Eco-warriors at the gate
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8776388
Mar 1st 2007 | AUSTIN, LONDON AND NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
Does the record-breaking purchase of TXU signal a new strategy for
private equity?
ANOTHER week, another record-breaking private-equity deal. But the $45
billion purchase of TXU, a Texan energy utility, is fascinating not
just because of the high price agreed by a gang of private-equity
firms led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) and Texas Pacific Group.
The preparation of the deal was as much about politics as the number-
crunching and financial alchemy that are private equity's stock in
trade. In essence, the buyers are betting that the increasingly
sensitive question of how to produce energy in an environmentally
acceptable way is better handled by a privately owned firm than by one
exposed to the public markets.
In recent months TXU has become the bogeyman of green activists,
thanks to its plans to build 11 old-tech, =E2=80=9Cdirty coal=E2=80=9D powe=
r plants in
Texas=E2=80=94and possibly more in several other states. Such plants belch
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming,
and produce other noxious substances. Protesters demonstrated last
month outside the capitol building in Austin. The mayor of Dallas has
led a coalition of Texas cities opposed to the new coal plants. And
the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, was roundly criticised for trying
to speed through the construction of TXU's coal plants, before being
blocked by a state judge.
Hillary under pressure
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8779362
Mar 1st 2007 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
As the battle moves to the South, the Democratic primary is turning
into a real race
EARLIER THIS week Hillary Clinton changed her schedule to include a
visit to a church in Selma, Alabama this weekend. There were plenty of
reasons for the last-minute adjustment. Selma is marking the 42nd
anniversary of an historic civil-rights march across the Edmund Pettus
Bridge, a march that was broken up by club-wielding state troopers.
Leading Democrats, including Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader,
and Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, will be attending the event too.
Still, it is hard to believe that Mrs Clinton was not influenced by
the fact that Barack Obama is scheduled to make a speech at a black
church in Selma. On March 4th the two senators will now give
simultaneous speeches in churches that are no more than 300 yards
apart.
This set-piece battle for the black soul could hardly be for higher
stakes. The black vote is vital in the Democratic primaries=E2=80=94blacks
make up more than half the electorate in the key early primary state
of South Carolina, and dominate among party workers there. A month ago
it looked as if Mrs Clinton had the black vote sewn up, thanks largely
to residual affection for her husband. A Washington Post-ABC News poll
in January gave her a 60% to 20% lead over Mr Obama among blacks. Mr
Obama has failed to marshal support from traditional civil-rights
leaders such as Jesse Jackson: as the son of a Kenyan father and a
white American mother, he had no experience of the ghetto. He has
encountered persistent criticism that he is =E2=80=9Cnot black enough=E2=80=
=9D.
All shall have prizes
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D87=
79419
Mar 1st 2007 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
Will a boom in philanthropic prize-giving change the world?
TYCOONS gathering this weekend at Google's Silicon Valley headquarters
will be giving money away, not trying to make more. Larry Page, one of
the search firm's founders and, with a personal fortune estimated at
over $14 billion, one of the world's richest 33-year-olds, is holding
a fundraiser for one of his favourite charitable causes, the X Prize
Foundation. The foundation is a force behind one of the most
intriguing trends in philanthropy: promoting change by offering
prizes.
It has worked before. The chronometer was invented to win an 18th-
century British government prize. Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic
to win $25,000 offered by Raymond Orteig, a hotelier. That inspired
Peter Diamandis, the X Prize's creator, to offer $10m for the first
private space flight, won in 2004 by SpaceShipOne.
Spring break
http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8780222
Mar 1st 2007 | BUENOS AIRES, MEXICO CITY AND S=C3=83O PAULO
From The Economist print edition
Expectations are low as George Bush sets off to a region he has
neglected throughout much of his presidency
ON A hill at the edge of Mexico City's Chapultepec park, towering over
the posh district of Polanco, is a castle. Long the official residence
of Mexican presidents, it was made famous by six young soldiers called
the ni=C3=B1os h=C3=A9roes (boy heroes) who=E2=80=94according to legend=E2=
=80=94died defending
it from invading American forces in 1847. The last one jumped over the
parapets clutching the Mexican flag in an attempt to prevent its
capture by the enemy.
Relations between the United States and Mexico have changed markedly
since then. But it still rankles that the United States grabbed half
of Mexico's territory in the mid-19th century Mexican-American war.
Thereafter, overt yanqui meddling in the region was largely confined
to Central America and the Caribbean, interspersed with periods of pan-
American co-operation. But many Latin Americans have not forgotten
America's backing for the military dictatorships in the 1970s and
1980s.
America's friend
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8770016
Mar 1st 2007
From The Economist print edition
Is France ready for Nicolas Sarkozy?
WHAT to expect from a book, published in English, by a French
politician and Gaullist presidential candidate? Erudite allusions,
lyrical prose, philosophical musings about French gloire and patrie?
This is not that book. But, then again, Nicolas Sarkozy is no ordinary
French politician.
=E2=80=9CTestimony=E2=80=9D is more than just the English translation of =
=E2=80=9CT=C3=A9moignage=E2=80=9D,
the bestselling volume published last summer by France's interior
minister and leading candidate on the right for the presidential
elections on April 22nd and May 6th. It is a text remodelled to seduce
an American readership, which blends the bold policy ideas from the
French version with autobiographical detail from an earlier work,
=E2=80=9CLibre=E2=80=9D. The fondness for America that marks =E2=80=9CTesti=
mony=E2=80=9D is
unapologetic. In the opening paragraph Mr Sarkozy calls America =E2=80=9Cthe
greatest democracy in the world=E2=80=9D. He elaborates periodically: =E2=
=80=9CIf I
had to choose, I feel closer to American society than to a lot of
others around the world.=E2=80=9D
A shock to the system
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/marketview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=
=3D8796484
Mar 4th 2007
From Economist.com
It isn't only the economy, stupid
WILL the past week=E2=80=99s market sell-off prove to have been a seven-day
wonder? The investment community quickly split into two camps. One
group, which made frequent appearances on CNBC, a financial news
channel, argued that the fall in share prices was a freak event. It
maintained (unconsciously echoing President Herbert Hoover after the
1929 crash) that the =E2=80=9Cfundamentals of the economy are sound=E2=80=
=9D.
At India's fraying edge
http://www.economist.com/daily/diary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8797972
Mar 5th 2007
From Economist.com
Our South Asia correspondent goes up =E2=80=9Cthe chicken's neck=E2=80=9D
Monday
I HAVE come to Manipur, one of India=E2=80=99s most remote and unruly
quarters, mainly because I could. The government doesn=E2=80=99t like
outsiders nosing about its seven insurgency-strewn northeastern
states, sandwiched between Myanmar and Bangladesh, and linked to the
rest of India by a sinuous corridor rather unpleasantly known as the
=E2=80=9Cchicken=E2=80=99s neck=E2=80=9D.
Out of the dusty labs
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8769863
Mar 1st 2007 | BARCELONA, PALO ALTO AND ZURICH
From The Economist print edition
Technology firms have left the big corporate R&D laboratory behind,
shifting the emphasis from research to development. Does it matter?
IN THE waning days of the second world war, Vannevar Bush, science
adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt, penned a report that served
as the blueprint for what would become America's enormously successful
information-technology industry in the second half of the 20th
century. With the grandiose title =E2=80=9CScience, The Endless Frontier=E2=
=80=9D,
Bush (no relation to the current president) laid out a vision for
government-funded science and engineering that would unite academia,
industry and (this being wartime) the armed forces. This it achieved
by, in effect, keeping them apart.
Under Bush's plan, universities researched basic science and then
industry developed these findings to the point where they could get to
market. The idea of R&D as two distinct activities was born. Firms
soon organised themselves along similar lines, keeping white-coated
scientists safely apart from scruffy engineers.
A cool peace
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8775610
Mar 1st 2007
From The Economist print edition
The Baltic Sea region is feeling the pain from Europe's awkward
relationship with Russia
PEOPLE in Paris, London or Rome sometimes see Europe's north-eastern
corner as a bit of a backwater. The history of Europe, they think, was
not written there. Yet this is the bit of the continent that stares
Russia in the face over a shared land border. Russia is one of nine
countries that surround the Baltic Sea: the rest are now all members
of the European Union.
Because of this, the supposed (but actually fast-growing) =E2=80=9Cbackwate=
r=E2=80=9D
is unusually sensitive to the state of relations between the EU and
Russia. If the union were succeeding in its aim of binding Russia into
a peaceful network of mutual obligations, this would be the first
region to benefit. Equally, if the EU were united in opposition to
growing Russian assertiveness, the Baltic could be a theatre of co-
operation between eastern and western Europe.
Trouble in the family
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8776546
Mar 1st 2007
From The Economist print edition
Is James Dobson's legendary power starting to wane?
JAMES DOBSON is the Godzilla of the religious right. Other leaders
have blazed for a while and then guttered out=E2=80=94Jerry Falwell and Pat
Robertson because they were incapable of buttoning their lips, Ralph
Reed and Bill Bennett because, in different ways, they fell prey to
the temptations of casinos. But until now Mr Dobson has gone from
strength to strength.
Mr Dobson has long enjoyed unrivalled clout with Christian
conservatives. Who else could have derailed a bankruptcy bill that was
beloved by business (in 2002) or ejected Tom Daschle from his South
Dakota Senate seat (in 2004)? The Dobson-inspired House Values Action
Team includes some 70 Republican congressmen. Several leading
Republicans, including one former senator, Jim Talent, have Mr Dobson
to thank for their conversion to Christianity. Mr Talent, who was
raised in a Jewish household, pulled into the side of the road and
gave his life to Christ after listening to one of Mr Dobson's
broadcasts.
The Wi-Fi war-front II
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/techview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=
=3D8792673
Mar 2nd 2007
From Economist.com
More on securing your home network
LAST week's column (see article) looked at why two out of three home
Wi-Fi networks, used for swapping files wirelessly between computers
and connecting to the internet, are left wide open for intruders to
sneak in and cause mayhem.
The source of the problem is the wireless router=E2=80=94the gizmo that plu=
gs
into the broadband modem and beams a Wi-Fi connection to computers
around the home. To ensure that a router will work straight out of the
box, most manufacturers deliberately turn off all the device=E2=80=99s
security features. Unfortunately, switching them on can be a pain.
Most users are just grateful the thing actually works and leave it at
that.
Waiting for the plutocrats' friend
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8733787
Feb 22nd 2007
From The Economist print edition
Larry Devlin was America's man in Africa. Nearly half a century after
he arrived in Kinshasa, the fabled former Congo station chief tells
his side of the story
IF ONE man personified the cold war in Africa=E2=80=94that ruinous contest
between the greatest powers in the world's weakest states=E2=80=94it was La=
rry
Devlin. Smart, ambitious and hard as bullets, a second-world-war
veteran who equated communists with Nazis, he was one of the CIA's
first station chiefs in Congo, where he arrived just days after it was
made independent by Belgium in 1960=E2=80=94at two weeks' notice.
There was chaos there already. Soldiers lynched their Belgian officers
and hunted for white women to rape. The newly elected government, led
by Patrice Lumumba, a former postal worker and petty crook, was
paralysed and clueless. Because of mutineers at the airport Mr Devlin
reached Kinshasa, Congo's riverside capital, in a small boat from
nearby Congo-Brazzaville: a classic voyage of modern Africa, since
taken by countless spooks, fugitive politicians, rebel invaders,
diamond smugglers, mercenaries and journalists, during Congo's many
meltdowns.
The Shanghai Tell
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17436050/site/newsweek/
Last week's dip in China's markets has left Beijing more anxious about
its economic control.
By Sarah Schafer
Newsweek International
March 12, 2007 issue - Depending on whom you asked, it started with a
Chinese government order to local banks to stop lending to
speculators. Or with a rumored new capital-gains tax. Or with
inexperienced mutual-fund managers trying to undersell each other. But
if the cause of last Tuesday's precipitous plunge in China's stock
exchanges=E2=80=94Shanghai fell 8.8 percent, its biggest slump in a decade,
and the smaller Shenzen dropped 9.3 percent=E2=80=94was unclear, the fallout
was certain: a sudden jolt to markets from Tokyo to New York.
Help! Call 108!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17439310/site/newsweek/
By Clint Witchalls
Newsweek International
March 12, 2007 issue - Being able to dial a toll-free number in an
emergency is something most of the world takes for granted. The United
States has had 911 since 1968 and Britain has had 999 since 1937.
India, however, has had one number to dial for police, another for
fire and a different number for each hospital. Change, however, is
starting to come=E2=80=94from the private sector rather than the government.
Since August 2005, a nonprofit private company has begun rolling out
an emergency phone system in Andhra Pradesh. So far 25 million are
covered. The firm, Emergency Management Research Institute (EMRI), in
Hyderabad, plans to cover the entire state's population of 76 million
by May 2007. "We want to roll out EMRI to the rest of India," says
Venkat Changavalli, EMRI's CEO.
Hollow Tipped Threat
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17435871/site/newsweek/
Russia plays at being a great power. Lately it has been rattling its
saber=E2=80=94with more swagger than actual bite.
By Owen Matthews
Newsweek International
March 12, 2007 issue - Stolid, ramrod-stiff Sergei Ivanov is generally
not one to inspire rapturous applause. Yet that's just what Russia's
former Defense minister did last month when he appeared before
Parliament to announce a $189 billion program to rebuild Russian
military might. There would be "revolutionary" new intercontinental
ballistic missiles, submarines and aircraft carriers, an early-warning
radar system and a mysterious "fifth generation" fighter plane. Was it
any coincidence that, days later, the commander of Russia's Strategic
Missile Forces, Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, threatened that some of those
new missiles could be "retargeted" at Poland and the Czech Republic?
That would be the payback if they agree to host an antiballistic-
missile system that the United States aims to deploy in Europe.
The Lost Youth of Europe
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17435873/site/newsweek/
The continent's boomers are retiring, leaving a bitter legacy for the
generation that comes next, which increasingly feels locked out of the
European dream.
By William Underhill and Tracy McNicoll
Newsweek International
March 12, 2007 issue - It's election time in France, and the promises
are flowing fast. If you believe the candidates, young voters are in
line for a fat slice of state largesse, no matter who wins the vote.
On offer from Nicolas Sarkozy, the right's presidential candidate:
interest-free loans for young entrepreneurs and a =E2=82=AC300-a-month
allowance for training. Not to be outbid, his rival, meanwhile, the
Socialists' S=C3=A9gol=C3=A8ne Royal, has pledged more housing, =E2=82=AC10=
,000 loans
and guaranteed jobs or training after six months of unemployment. As
Royal told a party rally last week: "As a mother, I want for all
children born and raised in France what I wanted for my own children."
Bush Returns to Basics
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17427704/site/newsweek/
Eager for success somewhere, the U.S. president is going south of the
border. But is it too little, too late?
By Joseph Contreras
Newsweek International
March 12, 2007 issue - George W. Bush heads to Latin America this
week, on his longest-ever tour of the region as president, and it's
pretty clear what's on his agenda. In five countries, Bush will meet
leaders with something in common: they've either already had dust-ups
with Venezuelan President Hugo Ch=C3=A1vez, or they otherwise seem open to
deals that could help Bush counter the growing influence of his
nemesis.
The Sky Isn't Falling in China
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17438997/site/newsweek/
The day after the Shanghai stock market fell, we saw again all the
same warnings about the Chinese system and the odds of its collapse.
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek
March 12, 2007 issue - For some years economists and analysts have
been wondering what it would take to scare financial markets. Wars,
coups, soaring commodity prices, increased energy costs, unwinding
housing markets=E2=80=94nothing seemed to do it. Last week we got one answe=
r:
China. The sharp plunge in the Shanghai stock market caused jitters
around the world. But while the reaction pointed to the increased
importance of China in global economics, it also highlighted the
confusion and misunderstanding that surround the Middle Kingdom.
Goldilocks Has Real Legs
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17436057/site/newsweek/
Most analysts think there is something irrational about the way the
world is working now. It's as if they skipped the lessons of the
1960s.
By Ruchir Sharma
Newsweek International
March 12, 2007 issue - Financial markets and economic conditions
continue to defy conventional wisdom. The global economy refuses to
slow down, powered by the re-emergence of large developing nations and
a resilient U.S. economy. Inflation is well behaved despite rising
commodity prices. Real long-term interest rates seem firmly anchored
at about 2 percent. Credit spreads across the spectrum remain tight
despite calls for an imminent reversal. Investors flush with cash have
high-risk appetites.
Correspondent=E2=80=99s Picks
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17437557/site/newsweek/
Newsweek
March 12, 2007 issue - As a NEWSWEEK correspondent for 26 years, most
recently as Latin America Regional Editor, Joseph Contreras has
traveled frequently to Lima. Here are his favorite eateries in the
Peruvian capital=E2=80=99s Miraflores district, an upmarket neighborhood th=
at
blends seaside shopping boutiques and high-rise apartment buildings
with tree-shaded parks and bohemian bars.
.
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