The Exodus: 1.6m Iraqis have fled their country since the war
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1919327.ece
By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 23 October 2006
Iraq is in flight. Everywhere inside and outside the country, Iraqis
who once lived in their own houses cower for safety six or seven to a
room in hovels.
Many go after they have been threatened. Often they leave after
receiving an envelope with a bullet inside and a scrawled note telling
them to get out immediately. Others flee after a relative has been
killed, believing they will be next.
What to do about Russia?
Charles Grant
October 22, 2006 10:01 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/charles_grant/2006/10/needed_a_new_eu_p=
olicy_on_russ.html
Perhaps the most important challenge for EU foreign policy is to
develop a more unified approach to Russia. The EU member-states have
very similar interests in Russia. We all want Russia to develop a
strong and successful economy that welcomes foreign investment. We want
Russia to be a reliable supplier of energy. We want the slide towards
authoritarianism to be reversed. We want Russia to be an ally in the
fight against terrorism and in opposing the proliferation of dangerous
weapons. And we want Russia to respect the sovereignty and independence
of the countries that are in our common neighbourhood.
At President Vladimir Putin's dinner with EU leaders in Finland
yesterday, the latter will have made an effort to appear united in
their view of Russia. Yet the reality is that there is no effective
common policy. Britain, France, Germany and Italy have run separate
policies, each at various times seeking a special relationship with
President Vladimir Putin. These bilateral relationships have been
competitive - and Putin has played the member-states off against each
other skilfully.
A triumph of democracy
James Harkin
October 21, 2006 08:30 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/james_harkin/2006/10/post_532.html
The other day a colleague at work started calling me Seamus. I am
Irish, and so is she, and her transformation of my name into the Irish
language equivalent was her way of poking fun in my direction. All the
same, I'm beginning to think seriously about the suggestion. It could
make a good career move.
If I'm thinking of turning a little more exotic, the citizens of Dingle
want to go in the opposite direction. Dingle, for those of you who
haven't been, is a remote but justly admired fishing port in Ireland.
In a referendum held earlier today, its residents voted overwhelming to
readopt its English name and save it from the imposition of the Irish
placename, An Daingean. In the ballot, 1,005 people voted for Dingle
and a mere 70 against. In an era in which democracy has lost much of
its lustre, the ballot drew a massive response of 89.6%.
China's interests go well beyond the nuclear issue
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1929054,00.html
The potential of growing cross-border trade with North Korea will make
it hard for Hu Jintao to back effective sanctions
Christopher Hughes
Monday October 23, 2006
The Guardian
During Condoleezza Rice's recent tour of north-east Asia to drum up
support for the raft of sanctions that the UN security council has
imposed on North Korea, China appeared to be both the weakest link but
also the country with most leverage over Pyongyang. Yet relatively
little is known about its approach to the nuclear crisis, other than
that it has spent several years resisting Washington's calls for
stronger actions. Beneath this reluctance, however, lies a long-term
strategy of integration across the China-North Korea border that is
designed to replicate China's own transformation into a more open and
stable society and serve its own interests by promoting economic
regeneration of the north-eastern provinces.
While Beijing shares Washington's goal of denuclearising North Korea,
historical links and geographical proximity mean its interests go well
beyond the nuclear issue. This is most obvious for the region of China
that borders North Korea. Under the planned economy this was a centre
of heavy industry, but it experienced dramatic decline after Deng
Xiaoping began the process of economic reform in the late 1970s. While
coastal areas in the south boomed, frequent strikes and demonstrations
by workers made this region a political flashpoint for a regime that
still claims to protect the interests of the working class.
Going back to my roots
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1928887,00.html
A growing number of Pakistani women brought up in the UK are leaving to
live in their mother country - despite its oppressive image. Sara Wajid
reports
Monday October 23, 2006
The Guardian
'The way my father sees it, women are like little pearls in an oyster;
they should be sheltered from bad things," Tahmina Rana tells me as we
chat in her father's vast lounge in Lahore. Eighteen-year-old Tahmina
and her little sister, Misbah are great company: charming, funny,
intelligent and just a little cocky. In fact, their shared demeanour
reveals nothing about the international custody battle that's been
raging around them.
Misbah Rana is, of course, the 12-year-old formerly known as Molly
Campbell. She sparked a huge furore in September by running away from
her Scottish mother's custody in the Hebrides to her Pakistani father's
home in Lahore. Seeing footage of her a few days after her flight, I
realised that, apart from Jemima Khan, it was the first time I'd seen a
press image of a British-born person in Pakistan smiling. But despite
Misbah's protests that she had travelled to Pakistan willingly,
suspicions persisted in Britain that she couldn't actually be happy,
that she must have been taken them under duress, possibly for a forced
marriage.
Israel admits it used phosphorus weapons
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1929007,00.html
=B7 Minister says shells hit Hizbullah targets
=B7 MP shocked by deployment in war
Conal Urquhart in Tel Aviv
Monday October 23, 2006
The Guardian
The Israeli government has admitted that it used controversial
phosphorus weapons in its attacks against targets during its month long
war in Lebanon this summer.
The chemical can be used in shells, missiles and grenades and causes
horrific burning when it comes into contact with human flesh.
Paraguay in a spin about Bush's alleged 100,000 acre hideaway
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1928928,00.html
Tom Phillips in Cuiab
Monday October 23, 2006
The Guardian
Meeting the new couple next door can be an anxious business for even
the most relaxed home owner. Will they be international drug
traffickers? Have they got noisy kids with a penchant for electronic
music? As worries go, however, having the US president move in next
door must come fairly low on the list.
Unless of course you are a resident of northern Paraguay and believe
reports in the South American press that he has bought up a 100,000
acre (40,500 hectare) ranch in your neck of the woods.
Ch=E1vez's revolutionary intent stalls amid bumbling bureaucracy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,,1929122,00.html
Billed as justice for landless peasants, policy is yet to be put into
practice
Rory Carroll in San Felipe
Monday October 23, 2006
The Guardian
To reach the heart of Venezuela's agrarian revolution you drive west of
Caracas towards the Andes, deep into tropical countryside where it is
always hot, and stop at the end of a dirt track where a sign says Mixta
Aracal.
As far as the eye can see rolls a patchwork of fields, maize, bananas,
black beans, tomatoes, dotted with some stooping figure in red
T-shirts, and some tractors from China and Iran.
Muslim veil debate could start riots, warns Phillips
http://www.guardian.co.uk/race/story/0,,1928875,00.html
Jeevan Vasagar
Monday October 23, 2006
The Guardian
The "polarised" debate over Muslim women covering their faces could
trigger riots, the head of Britain's race relations watchdog warned
yesterday.
Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, said
divisions created by the row risked becoming "the trigger for the grim
spiral that produced riots in the north of England five years ago". He
warned: "Only this time the conflict could be much worse."
Barack Obama: 'I may run for President'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1919288.ece
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 23 October 2006
Barack Obama, the first-term US senator whose pleas for a more civil,
more inspirational political discourse have propelled him at warp speed
from obscurity to superstardom, has indicated he is considering making
a run for the presidency in 2008.
The Illinois Democrat, whose compelling life story and gentle
intelligence make him one of the rare politicians who appeals to
Americans of all ideological persuasions, told a television interviewer
he was no longer "unequivocally" opposed to a White House run as he has
been.
From Hawaii to Harvard: the reality of the American Dream
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1919289.ece
By Andrew Gumbel
Published: 23 October 2006
Americans love politicians with a compelling life-story, and nobody has
a better one than Barack Obama. For all his relative youth and
inexperience, the first-term Illinois senator has singularly powerful
political attributes.
He embodies the American Dream of overcoming adversity to rise to the
top. Like Colin Powell, or Michael Jordan, or Tiger Woods, he is that
rare black man about whom Americans do not feel compelled to have a
guilty conscience, because he is the product of a marriage between a
Kenyan father and a white American mother.
The lone star: How Kinky Friedman shook up Texas
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1919275.ece
When a Jewish country music singer and political virgin entered the
race to become Governor of Texas with the slogan 'How Hard Can It Be?',
people thought he was joking. Eighteen months (and a slew of
high-profile political scandals) later, Kinky Friedman has become a
genuine contender in an election battle that has excited and delighted
voters across America. Has he got what it takes? Andrew Gumbel joins
the Kinkster on the campaign trail to find out
Published: 23 October 2006
Strange things start happening when a 61-year-old Jewish cowboy with a
wicked sense of humour decides to run for governor of Texas. Ever since
Kinky Friedman, hitherto best known as a tongue-in-cheek country singer
and semi-autobiographical mystery novelist, threw his hat in the ring
18 months ago and declared his ruggedly independent candidacy, politics
in the Lone Star State have undergone a remarkable transformation.
Mostly, they've got a lot more fun. Friedman has stayed true to the
opening battle cry of his campaign - "Why the hell not?" - giving the
whole system a jolt of reckless possibility. The joke is on everyone:
career politicians, corporate lobbyists, Christian fundamentalists,
liberals, moralists and the numerous friends and foes of George Bush.
Friedman, with his dry, gravelly voice and impeccable timing born of
years on the stand-up comedy circuit, unfailingly skewers them all. His
one-liner about the President is that he is "a good man trapped in a
Republican's body"; politics in general, he says, is the only
profession where the more experience you have, the worse you get.
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