OT: The authoritarian personality
maff
Naima Bouteldja
April 29, 2007 7:45 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/naima_bouteldja/2007/04/the_authoritarian_personality.html
July 25 2042, on the airwaves of le journal du Futur: "The President,
Nicolas Sarkozy is dead ... We now go live to our permanent
correspondent, Sonia, outside the American Hospital at Neuilly-sur-
Seine ... Sonia: 'It's official ... black smoke is coming from the
chimney. There's no doubt, aged 87, while entering his eighth term of
office, the father of [political] thinking has left us ... the
followers of Nicolas Sarkozy, may his soul rest in peace, are gathered
here ... The press is also in attendance represented by the presidents
of the boards of directors from Dassault, Lagardère, and Bouygues,
without forgetting the official paparazzi of Paris Match and VSD ...'
Studio: '... while we await the successor to the great leader, let's
go back over the exceptional career of Nicolas Sarkozy, may his memory
be glorified ..."
The spoof news bulletin produced by artists from the le Manifeste du
sous réalisme website last summer epitomises concerns over press
freedom in France if the UMP candidate wins the French Presidential
election next Sunday on May 6. These anxieties re-emerged as Sarkozy
was embroiled in a fresh political controversy last week over the
decision of broadcaster Canal+ to cancel a debate between Ségolène
Royal, Sarkozy's challenger in the presidential run-off, and François
Bayrou, whose 7m first-round presidential votes both UMP and
Socialists are wooing. In an unrestrained attack on Nicolas Sarkozy,
Bayrou accused Sarkozy's camp of intervening to pull the plug on the
debate, invoking "intimidations" and "threats".
Iraq's refugee crisis
Anna Husarska
April 29, 2007 5:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/anna_husarska/2007/04/iraqs_refugee_crisis.html
Among the many humanitarian disasters produced by the civil war now
raging in Iraq is one that is almost invisible. Only rarely do scenes
of massive displacement of the civilian population make it on to our
television screens, because, unlike bombs and suicide attacks,
displacement does not generate the blood, fire, or screams that
constitutes compelling footage. Yet the numbers are staggering: each
month, some 40,000 Iraqis flee their homes because of the war. Half of
them go to other parts of Iraq; the rest go abroad.
Iraq's population, frankly, is bleeding away. This devastation is even
more dramatic because, since the invasion four years ago, only 3,183
Iraqis have been resettled in third countries. According to the UN
High Commission for Refugees, all countries combined have offered a
chance to start a new life to approximately the same number of Iraqi
refugees as flee the country in just five days.
Divided we stand
Cameron Duodu
April 29, 2007 3:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/cameron_duodu/2007/04/divided_we_stand.html
Politicians from the developing countries have been talking about co-
operation between their nations for well over half a century. The
Bandung Conference of African and Asian nations, held in Indonesia in
April 1955 and attended by delegates from 29 countries, was the first
and most notable gathering of people who had all been either colonised
or dominated in some way by European powers or the United States.
Before that, there had been international conferences on colonialism,
but their concerns had been limited to Africa. One was held in London
in 1900 and another in Manchester in 1945.
Two years after Bandung, Ghana achieved its independence (1957) and
tried to regionalise the Bandung spirit by calling a "Conference of
Independent African States" in April 1958. This was followed, in
December 1958, by an "All-African People's Conference". By May 1963,
an "Organisation of African Unity" (OAU) had been formed with its
headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The OAU has now become the
African Union (AU). The Bandung Conference, too, has undergone a
transformation and is now called the "Non-Aligned Movement" (NAM).
Here comes the new cold war
Kate Hudson
April 29, 2007 1:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/kate_hudson/2007/04/the_us_administration_seems_to.html
The US administration seems to have an obsession with war. It's not so
many years since President Bush initiated the "war on terror". Last
year this morphed into the Long War - a war unlimited in time and
space, against global Islamist extremism: a war which may be fought in
dozens of countries simultaneously and for years to come.
But as if that's not enough, the US now looks set to initiate a new
cold war. Chugging alongside the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US
has been pursuing the National Missile Defence programme (NMD), which
is causing increasing disquiet on the global stage.
The EU must act in Darfur
Joschka Fischer
April 29, 2007 11:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/joschka_fischer/2007/04/the_eu_must_act_in_darfur.html
For four years, violence and terror have ruled in Darfur. After many
futile efforts, the EU must get tough with the perpetrators.
Darfur is a humanitarian catastrophe: more than 200,000 dead,
thousands raped and tortured, and 2.6 million people displaced, owing
to the Sudanese government's war against its own people. Originally an
anti-insurgency effort, the campaign quickly mutated into a killing
and expulsion operation. Sudan's government has been recruiting and
paying the local "Janjaweed" militiamen, who have attacked hundreds of
defenseless villages and towns, often in close co-ordination with the
Sudanese air force.
Long live lunacy
Seth Freedman
April 28, 2007 4:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/seth_freedman/2007/04/long_live_lunacy.html
Every piece I write results in me getting a verbal kicking in the
threads, but - at the risk of doing a Ratner - the quality of the
attacks generally remains too low to get worked up about. I'm stuck
between the devil and the deep blue sea - the veritable rainbow of
slurs ranges from "self-hating Jew" to "terrorist murderer" and back
again, with machine-gun rapidity.
However, the reason I couldn't care less about the inevitable deluge
of vitriol every time I post, is that the plusses easily outweigh the
minuses - as last night's drinking session bears testament to.
No sex, please, we're Time Lords
Dave Hill
April 28, 2007 3:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dave_hill/2007/04/no_sex_please_were_time_lords.html
Doctor Who once had a granddaughter called Susan: nice girl, very
bright, resembled a human teenager. The British public met her back in
1963 in the first ever episode of the timeless time travel drama. Her
precociousness in science so intrigued her teachers at Coal Hill
School in Shoreditch that they followed her one day to a junkyard
nearby and found her in a police box talking to an eccentric old man.
Soon he'd whisked everyone off to the Stone Age, there to be harassed
by a tribal leader called Za and the rest is TV history. And so is
Susan - the first and only descendant of the Doctor his viewers have
ever seen and therefore the only flesh-and-blood indication that the
last of the Time Lords has ever got it on.
We need to mind our language here. Children may be present and Susan's
biological link to the Doc alerts us to the fact that Time Lords
reproduce - or rather used to, now that only one remains. "Who
historians" have excavated little that is explicit on this subject
from the small screen adventures. Spin-off media have shown more
licence, notably the Dr Who novel, Lungbarrow, where I gather it is
written that Time Lords multiply by means of "genetic looms" from
which they emerge fully-grown rather than through heterosexual
coupling. The same book apparently hints that the doctor's genesis was
an exception to this rule, a possibility also raised in 1996 TV movie
where the Doctor - played by Paul McGann - declares he is "half-human
on my mother's side".
Seen but not heard
Polly Toynbee
April 28, 2007 1:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/polly_toynbee/2007/04/seen_but_not_heard.html
The first political speech I ever heard was one Mayday morning in
Battersea Park. Barbara Castle was standing on the back of a flatbed
truck, her red hair and a red silk scarf blowing in the wind. As a
child, I probably understood little of what she said, but it was a
mighty La Passionaria performance that had the crowds shouting and
clapping.
Speeches like that are rarely written down. Officially recorded
orations are made mostly by powerful men in the Commons or at
ceremonial occasions. That's why we found too few suitable speeches by
women for The Guardian's current series - so in the CD that comes out
on Saturday May 4, we only have one woman's voice.
Stock exchange
Jay Rayner
April 28, 2007 12:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jay_rayner/2007/04/stock_exchange.html
With his latest headline-grabbing claim, that the secret to a good
sauce is a Knorr stock cube, Marco Pierre White's transformation is
all but complete. He is like some Archbishop who's decided he can't be
doing with all this God business anymore, a nun who now thinks
chastity is over-rated.
Last year, in his ghost-written autobiography, White Slave, he
described how every morning at his restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental
Hotel by Hyde Park, he would get his brigade to roast a couple of
dozen chickens. He did not get them to do this for the meat. Nobody
ate these chickens. He got them to do it for the juices. The birds
would be roasted, rested, squeezed and then thrown away, simply to
make the best chicken jus possible.
Spirit of trust
Mike Ion
April 28, 2007 11:00 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mike_ion/2007/04/spirit_of_trust.html
It was once said that the Church of England could be likened to the
proverbial fish that understood how desperately it needed water only
when it landed in the bottom of a boat on the end of a hook. Many
faithful and sincere Anglicans (and Roman Catholics before them) have
only recently grasped just how much the Anglican community relies on
trust - now that they have so little of it.
What the latest church-related sexual abuse scandal has done is to
highlight an ongoing erosion of trust. Trust is a social practice.
Humans are social beings who swim in an ocean of trust. What happens
when this ocean begins to drain away - as is the case with many
Christian churches - is that we become sceptical, often cynical and
perhaps even a little paranoid. The case of the ex-choirmaster, Peter
Halliday (jailed on Thursday for 30 months after admitting sex
offences from the 1980s), yet again highlights the failure of church
leaders to act. Some of the more disturbing aspects of the Halliday
case were the attempts by the Anglican Church to control information,
prevent public disclosure and silence dissent, even in this case, the
anguished cries of abused children and their families. In fairness,
cultures of this sort are not unknown. Tendencies toward
centralisation of power and control of information exist in all
institutions. The fact is that well-governed institutions ensure full
disclosure of information, institutionalise checks and balances on the
exercise of power and establish independent boards to advise and
participate actively in choosing the chief executive officer. The
church is no ordinary institution. For believers the church is guided
by the Holy Spirit - a community in which God's saving work is
accomplished and God's kingdom proclaimed. But the church is also a
human institution, managed by humans with all their failings,
including susceptibility to the corruptions of power and mistaken
judgment.
Mismanaging missile defence
F Stephen Larrabee and Andrzej Karkosza
April 28, 2007 10:00 AM
Missile defence has suddenly emerged as a divisive issue in Europe.
Rather than enhancing European security, the Bush administration's
plan to deploy elements of a missile defence system in Poland and the
Czech Republic threatens to increase strains with Russia and deepen
divisions with America's European allies, particularly those in
eastern Europe, where support for US polices has been strongest.
The growing opposition to the US missile defence deployment is rooted
in the way in which America has managed - or rather mismanaged - the
presentation of its deployment plans.
The Iraq war is over. It is the moment for Democrats to show real
leadership
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2068322,00.html
If President Bush's veto is not challenged tomorrow, thousands of
Iraqis and hundreds of US troops are certain to perish
Gary Younge
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
There is no overestimating the popular reverence Americans have for
their men and women in uniform. A direct translation of "squaddie", a
term steeped in class contempt which betrays as much antipathy and
ambivalence as it does admiration in the UK, simply does not exist in
the US. Fighting for your country is generally regarded as the
ultimate form of public service.
Flight attendants will announce the presence of an active service man
or woman to cheers from the rest of the plane. At anti-war
demonstrations, protesters wave banners proclaiming "Support the
troops, oppose the war." The nation may be irrevocably split on the
moral value of any war, but when it comes to backing the people who
are executing it, they speak as one.
Our armed forces must now confront their greatest enemy: the MoD
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2068324,00.html
The hostage fiasco is indicative of just how poorly military top brass
understand the demands of national security
Max Hastings
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
General Sir Rob Fulton, the retired marine conducting the inquiry into
the capture of British sailors and marines in the Gulf, may prove
either a minor-key Hutton-Butler clone, or a shaker of empires. In the
wake of the fiasco, almost everyone who wears a uniform coloured other
than deep blue believes that at least one senior navy resignation is
indispensable. What happened represented a cultural and operational
failure, rather than a political one. But Lords Hutton and Butler,
amid the much graver catastrophe of Iraq-WMD, decided that their duty
to the nation was best fulfilled by reporting that nobody in office
need take the rap. Almost satirically, the prime minister made John
Scarlett, the intelligence officer most implicated, head of MI6.
The poverty of theory
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,2068330,00.html
Until the very material problems of ethnic minorities are tackled,
lofty attempts to engage communities on thorny questions of faith and
identity will not get very far
Leader
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
How can ethnic minorities play more of a part in British society? Jack
Straw thinks he has the answer. They "must subscribe to ... the core
democratic values of freedom, fairness, tolerance and plurality that
define what it means to be British", he writes today in an article for
the Chatham House thinktank. "It is the bargain and it is non-
negotiable." This is not the first time the leader of the House of
Commons and MP for racially mixed Blackburn has discussed the rights
and responsibilities of ethnic minorities. His latest salvo stacks the
responsibilities heavily on the side of immigrants and their
descendants. Mr Straw's string of abstract nouns are as distant from
life on the street as the fluffy white clouds up above, but still our
ethnic minorities must understand and accept them. Only then,
apparently, will they deserve the rights that come with being British.
Tension turns into crisis
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,2068329,00.html
Leader
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
Turkey's political future is hanging in the balance. The cause of the
crisis is the nomination of the foreign minister Abdullah Gul as the
country's next president. Mr Gul is a founder of the neo-Islamic AK
party, which has a large parliamentary majority and could normally
expect to get its nominee elected. On Friday, that prospect provoked
the Turkish army to say it viewed Mr Gul's election "with concern".
The threat that the Turkish military might remove the civilian
government, as it has done before, drew warnings from both the AK
party and the European Union. Yesterday, more than 300,000 rallied in
Istanbul - echoing an equally large protest in Ankara two weeks ago.
The Istanbul rally called for three things: no sharia law, no coup
d'etat and a fully democratic Turkey. Yet Turkey's ability to keep all
three is uncertain.
In praise of ... Robert Kennedy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,2068331,00.html
Leader
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
Last week saw a rare moment of consensus between David Cameron and
Gordon Brown as the two clamoured to pay homage to a long-dead foreign
politician who never led his country. It sounds an unlikely catalyst
for the convergence, until it is explained that the statesmen was one
Robert Kennedy. Right round the world, his name still has a rare
capacity to stir up dreams of what the world might have become.
Down on the pharm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2068358,00.html
A new breed of genetically modified crops could provide cheap drugs
and vaccines for the developing world. Only one problem: what if they
get into the food chain? Environment correspondent David Adam reports
on 'pharming', the new GM front line
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
In a windowless room on the roof of a hospital in south London, the
air is being slowly sucked away. It's not enough to notice, but it
keeps the sealed laboratory at a slightly lower pressure than the air
outside. It's a security measure. The contents of this laboratory are
highly controversial, and if anything escaped it would be a public
relations disaster for the scientists who work here. The lab holds
some of the most controversial plants in the UK, which nearby
residents would be less than happy to find drifting on the breeze
through their back gardens. Open the door, and air rushes in, not out.
GodTube - where the rightwing Christians surf
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2068355,00.html
Tim Dowling
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
Imagine for a moment a parallel universe where everything looks
familiar, but where everyone is a rightwing fundamentalist Christian
and Darwinism is widely seen as a crackpot fairytale. Well, now you
can visit such a world any time you want: GodTube, Christianity's
answer to the heathen YouTube, is a clearing house for Christian music
videos, user-generated sermons, evangelical short films and anti-
evolution cranks. One of the most popular videos is an excruciating
four-part parody of those Mac v PC adverts - Christ-follower v
Christian; another features a preacher with a microphone berating a
street performer dressed as Gene Simmons from Kiss. A clip titled They
Day They Kicked God Out of the Schools characterises the recent spate
of US campus killings as God's revenge for outlawing school prayer.
Elsewhere, an old man delivers a boring lecture about why the Earth
really isn't 4.5bn years old after all.
Inside the struggle for Iran
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2068648,00.html
Simon Tisdall in Tehran
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
A grand coalition of anti-government forces is planning a second
Iranian revolution via the ballot box to deny President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad another term in office and break the grip of what they
call the "militia state" on public life and personal freedom.
Encouraged by recent successes in local elections, opposition
factions, democracy activists, and pro-reform clerics say they will
bring together progressive parties loyal to former president Mohammad
Khatami with so-called pragmatic conservatives led by Ayatollah
Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Turks rally to stop Islamist president
http://www.guardian.co.uk/turkey/story/0,,2068467,00.html
Nicholas Birch in Istanbul
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
Turkey's constitutional stand-off over the election of a new president
deepened yesterday when hundreds of thousands of protesters flooded
central Istanbul to demand that the government withdraw a presidential
candidate because of his Islamist leanings.
"No imams in the presidential palace," chanted a crowd numbering some
700,000 - one of the largest rallies in Istanbul's history - just two
days after the ruling party's candidate, Abdullah Gul, came very close
to being elected by the parliament to the country's top post.
Israeli war inquiry 'rebukes Olmert over military errors'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2068417,00.html
· Report censures handling of conflict with Lebanon
· Opposition plans vote of no confidence in Knesset
Conal Urquhart in Tel Aviv
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and defence minister, Amir
Peretz, faced further calls for their resignation yesterday after
leaks of a report into their management of last summer's Lebanon war
which suggests they made a series of errors.
The Winograd report, to be published today, directs strong criticism
at the government's conduct in the first days of the war, according to
leaks in the Israeli media yesterday. In particular, Mr Olmert and Mr
Peretz are rebuked for not seeking proper consultation and for
accepting the army's recommendations without question. The
politicians' lack of experience in military matters, the report says,
meant they accepted the belief of Dan Halutz, the former chief of
staff, that the war could be won by air power alone.
Britain gives Sudan days to meet demands or face new sanctions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,,2068419,00.html
Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
Sudan has "days not weeks" to curb military operations in Darfur and
accept an international peacekeeping force or face tougher sanctions,
the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, has warned.
On a day of protests around the world to mark the fourth anniversary
of the conflict and to call for UN intervention, Mrs Beckett sought to
inject a sense of urgency into the diplomatic effort that has so far
failed to contain the crisis.
Mexico City girls get chance to shine
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2068384,00.html
Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
The Mexican capital's imposing Zócalo Plaza is often home to mass
political events: the corporatist parades of a one-party state, the
rallies of pro-democracy students who were later massacred, and the
triumphant entrance of the Zapatista rebel leader subcomandante
Marcos.
This weekend it was the turn of dancing girls in fairytale frocks.
Over 180 disadvantaged teenagers from across the capital swished
through the square in their crinolines, many of them borrowed for the
occasion, during a mass quinceañera, or coming-of-age, party.
Report finds 'economic apartheid'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/race/story/0,,2068553,00.html
Vikram Dodd
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
Ethnic minorities suffer from economic "apartheid" in Britain, race
watchdogs have claimed after a study found that two-thirds of
Pakistani and Bangladeshi children are living in poverty.
The study, by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, reveals that ethnic
minorities suffer twice the level of poverty of white Britons, as
discrimination and disadvantage blight their life chances.
Scientists hail the web, rockets and radio in list of innovations
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2068588,00.html
James Randerson, science correspondent
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
Rockets, the world wide web, a method for copying DNA and even the
humble wireless have been hailed as some of humanity's greatest
innovations in a list drawn up by scientists and opinion formers.
More than 100 contributors, including six Nobel laureates, were asked
to nominate the most important innovation in their field.
A beginner's guide to historical investigation
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/e-h/face.html
Nancy Duin
Once the study of history and delving into the archives was left to
academics. But no longer: today, hundreds of thousands of people in
the UK are investigating their family trees, their towns and villages,
their houses. Some are looking at an even wider canvas and are trying
to find clues to their origins through ancient place- and family names
and through bones, blood and DNA.
This website presents a wide range of sites that describe the various
forms of historical investigation plus, in many cases, give you
practical tips and hints on how to carry out research yourself.
The Bible Revolution
http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/revo.html
http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/index.html
This Channel 4 documentary, presented by Rod Liddle, explores the life
and times of the visionaries who fought a powerful and violent church
establishment to publish the Bible in English. Their vocation,
tenacity and sacrifice left a lasting impression on the language and
literature in the centuries that followed. Julia Bard reports.
Animal Farm
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/A/animal_farm/
Channel 4 Monday 19 March at 9pm
Down on Channel 4's Animal Farm, scientist Olivia Judson and food
critic Giles Coren take a journey of discovery through the strange new
world of GM and the tangle of ethical and moral issues that surrounds
it.
Will either of them change the way they feel about genetic engineering
after they investigate how it works and what it can offer us?
The Indian Miracle?
http://www.channel4.com/news/dispatches/society/india
Broadcast: Monday 30 April 2007 08:00 PM
India has the second fastest growing economy in the world and is fast
joining the elite group of global superpowers. But underneath the
glittering surface of India¿¿¿s economic boom lie the ugly realties of
modern day India: mass suicide by debt-ridden farmers, a rise in Hindu
nationalism, discrimination against Muslims and a caste system which
condemns millions to a life of servitude.
Darfur: War without end
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2496629.ece
As the world calls for action against Sudan, one man's story reveals
why the suffering in Darfur will continue
By Steve Bloomfield in Jebel Marra
Published: 30 April 2007
If Mohammed Izadein had met Elsadiq Elzein Rokero last year, he would
have tried to kill him. Today, he calls him "brother".
Sitting on a straw mat in a simple mud hut in the village of Sabun,
deep in the heart of the Jebel Marra, a fertile mountainous region in
the centre of Darfur, Mr Izadein recounts how the two men - one Arab,
one Fur - have become unlikely allies against the Sudanese government.
US-Iran relations warm as Rice says talks 'not ruled out'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2496685.ece
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 30 April 2007
The US and Iranian foreign ministers could hold rare high-level direct
talks next week, in a possible sign that both countries want to reduce
tensions over Iraq and Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons ambitions.
The meeting would take place at the regional conference on Iraq set to
begin in Egypt on Thursday, co-chaired by the United Nations Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon and Nouri al- Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister.
Malians vote in model election for Africa
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2496631.ece
By Simon Usborne
Published: 30 April 2007
It is one of the world's poorest countries and lies at the heart of a
region often marred by vote rigging and polling day violence, but as
Malians await the results of yesterday's election - their fourth free
ballot in 15 years - the former French colony is quickly emerging as a
democratic model for Africa.
A steady trickle of voters began lining up early yesterday morning at
polling stations in Bamako, the Mali capital, and throughout the vast
West African state, which stretches from the windswept dunes of the
Saharan north to the fertile cotton fields that lie beside the River
Niger in the south.
Rebels free Chinese oil workers in Ethiopia
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2496630.ece
By Anita Powell in Addis Ababa
Published: 30 April 2007
Seven Chinese oil workers and two Africans were released yesterday by
an Ethiopian rebel group that attacked a Chinese oil exploration
facility last week.
"They've been handed over to the International Committee of the Red
Cross," Patrick Megevand, a spokesman for the ICRC in Ethiopia, said.
The Red Cross was still in the process of transporting the men to a
safe location before handing them over to Ethiopian and Chinese
authorities, he added.
Historical fact and fiction: All gone to look for America
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2496632.ece
On Friday, the Queen will visit Jamestown where, 400 years ago, 100
English settlers founded the first British colony in the United
States. Rupert Cornwell looks at the expedition that became synonymous
with profiteering and exploitation of the native American people
Published: 30 April 2007
Early on a late April morning, when the vast waterway of the James
river vanishes into an endless misty horizon, you can imagine America
as they must have seen it for the first time. True, the odd speedboat
and the expensive homes scattered among the trees on the distant
shoreline intrude on the primeval fantasy. But when you gaze across
the reed banks and marshes, the woods glowing with the first green of
spring, the New World must be much as it was for those English
settlers when they first set eyes on "fair meddowes and goodly tall
trees", after they made landfall in this corner of southern Virginia
on 26 April 1607.
This year, Jamestown, the colony they founded, is marking its 400th
anniversary as the first permanent English outpost in what is now the
United States of America. On Friday, the Queen will visit the site, as
part of a state visit to the US. Indeed, longevity has turned the
monarch into a quasi-permanent feature of the festivities herself. In
the visitors' centre erected to mark the occasion, you can see a photo
of her doing the honours at the 350th anniversary in 1957, accompanied
by the then Vice-President, one Richard Nixon.
Blacks and Asians twice as likely to live in poverty
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2496683.ece
By Nigel Morris, Home Affairs Correspondent
Published: 30 April 2007
Four in 10 black and Asian people in Britain live in poverty, twice
the rate among white people, research has revealed.
Despite improving academic performance and qualifications, they still
face prejudice in job interviews and are paid lower wages than their
white counterparts.
Sarkozy: I am no fascist (even if I sound like one)
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2496641.ece
By John Lichfield in Paris
Published: 30 April 2007
After a week in which his opponents accused him of everything but
eating babies, Nicolas Sarkozy was bound to adopt a gentler tone for
his last big election rally in Paris.
Except that he didn't. The centre-right candidate gave a cheering
crowd of 20,000 people a piece of vintage "Sarko" - 80 minutes of
finger-jabbing indignation against the political system to which he
has belonged for 20 years.
Mark Tully: My unending journey through India
http://travel.independent.co.uk/asia/article2494624.ece
Travel about the subcontinent and you will find a land of opposites
constantly seeking a middle way. That's why visitors either love or
loathe the place, says the broadcaster and author Sir Mark Tully
Published: 29 April 2007
The World Economic Forum recently assessed the competitiveness of the
travel and tourism industries in different countries. India, in spite
of its unique attractions - the Himalayas, the Rajasthan desert,
studded with castles and palaces; the Taj and all the rest of them -
came just above the halfway mark. Heading the list were Switzerland,
Austria, Germany, Hong Kong and Singapore who all have one thing in
common: they are renowned for their efficiency. India, on the other
hand, is renowned for its inefficiency. Could that be the reason for
its failure to compete more successfully in the global tourism and
travel market?
Inefficiency can be irritating, inconvenient and sometimes
incapacitating. A friend of mine recently missed her flight to Delhi
because she didn't get her visa on time. But efficiency has its
disadvantages too: uniformity, rigorously enforced regulations and
regimentation, lack of adventure and, indeed, lack of freedom,
obsessions with cleanliness and punctuality too.
Big men, big fraud and big trouble
http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9070922
Apr 26th 2007 | ABUJA, CALABAR AND KANO
>From The Economist print edition
The deep rottenness of Nigeria's political system threatens all the
economic gains this giant country has made
EVER since Sani Abacha expired in the arms of two Indian prostitutes,
possibly from an overdose of Viagra, in 1998, Nigerians supposed that
their worst days were behind them. The "coup from heaven", as Abacha's
death was called, seemed to release the country from three decades of
increasingly ruinous military dictatorships that had brought Nigeria
diplomatic isolation and economic collapse. In 1999, the country made
a fresh start with a new elected civilian administration led by
Olusegun Obasanjo, the outgoing president. He has been lauded in the
West for his economic reforms and his drive against corruption.
But the organised vote-rigging and fraud that characterised the state
and local elections on April 14th, as well as the parliamentary and
presidential polls on April 21st, suggest that Nigeria may be sliding
backwards again. Nigeria's own independent observers' group has called
them a "sham". The European Union, normally a master of nuance in
these matters, baldly stated that the whole electoral process "cannot
be considered to have been credible", and remarked that its report was
the most damning it had ever issued anywhere in the world.
An American camping trip
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9097140
Apr 27th 2007 | TOKYO
>From Economist.com
Shinzo Abe catches up with George Bush, finally
TIME was when the first thing a newly appointed Japanese prime
minister did was shuffle straight off to Washington, DC, to pay
respects to its military protector, the senior partner of the United
States-Japan alliance. Personal relationships between the two
countries' leaders were admittedly not easily cordial-stiff prime
ministers would squirm in dumb embarrassment as the American president
joshed in first-name bonhomie. But things changed with George Bush and
the last prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, a maverick who retired in
September. The two appeared to get on famously. After all, Mr Koizumi
had instantly thrown Japanese moral and practical support behind
America after September 11th. He had sent refuelling ships to the
Indian Ocean to help in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and
then peacekeeping troops to Iraq. These were the first times pacifist
Japan had sent forces to combat zones since the second world war. As a
thank you, last summer Mr Bush took Mr Koizumi to Graceland, where
Japan's leader got behind Elvis Presley's sunglasses and played air
guitar.
Mr Abe is no Koizumi. Though at 52 he is Japan's youngest prime
minister since the second world war (and the first to have been born
after it), he has none of the maverick charm-to supply this, he is
bringing his more glamorous wife, Akie, who was once a DJ. It is hard
to imagine stiff Mr Abe having Mr Koizumi's easy rapport with the
president, though both men's grandfathers admittedly once had a round
of golf together. Commentators have noted that the prime minister has
taken seven months since his appointment to make it to the American
capital, while it took him less than two weeks to travel to Beijing
and Seoul.
War in the Horn
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9095242
Apr 26th 2007 | ADDIS ABABA
>From Economist.com
Islamist insurgents are not yet crushed
THE UN says that at least 340,000 Somalis have fled their capital,
Mogadishu, in the recent weeks of fighting there. Thousands more are
trapped along the frontlines inside the city, under fire, packed in
with rotting corpses, and unable to find a way out. At least 1,300
have been killed so far this month, most of them civilians. Ethiopian
artillery has demolished chunks of the already rubble-strewn city. On
Thursday April 26th, after the heaviest fighting yet, Somalia's prime
minister, Mohamed Ghedi, said that an Islamist-inspired insurgency is
almost squashed. The reality may be rather different.
The Somali transitional government, backed by Ethiopia, says it is in
a do-or-die struggle with al-Qaeda. A few more days of shelling, it
says, and it will have the upper hand. But the insurgents are getting
stronger, striking with machinegunners, snipers and suicide-bombers,
then melting back into their communities. A contingent of 1,000-plus
Ugandan peacekeepers under African Union command has remained
impotently confined to barracks.
A world of connections
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9032088
Apr 26th 2007
>From The Economist print edition
New wireless technologies will link not just people but lots of
objects too. That will be tremendously useful, says Kenneth Cukier
(interviewed here); but getting there will be tricky
THE radio is 110 years old this year and the microprocessor just under
50. As these two technologies move ever closer together, with wireless
capabilities now being put on computer chips, something exciting is
happening. All the benefits of the computing world-innovation, short
development cycles and low cost-are being extended to wireless
communications. As a result, a myriad of hitherto separate objects are
becoming connected to networks, from televisions and cars to
industrial machinery and farmland. Tiny devices are even being placed
into the human body to perform useful tasks. The new technology
enables control to be exercised from a distance and lets different
devices interconnect to do something new.
So far the mobile phone has been getting all the attention. Around 2.8
billion are already in use, with a further 1.6m being added every day.
The phones themselves are improving at a cracking pace. Yet this boom
is also spilling over into other areas of wireless communications,
used for linking machines, sensors and objects. "Everybody talks about
the emerging markets being the big opportunity for the cellular
industry in the next few years, but in the longer run there are going
to be a lot more devices talking to each other," says Paul Jacobs, the
boss of Qualcomm, which makes mobile-phone chips.
Here is thy sting
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9084818
Apr 27th 2007
>From The Economist print edition
More and more countries have doubts about the death penalty
HOURS after being sentenced to death by a sharia court in Somalia last
May, Omar Hussein was publicly executed. He was hooded, tied to a
stake and stabbed to death by the 16-year-old son of the man he had
admitted stabbing to death three months earlier.
In Kuwait, a Sri Lankan was executed last year by hanging, or so the
authorities thought. After the body was taken to the morgue, medical
staff saw he was still moving. He was finally pronounced dead only
five hours after the execution had begun. In Iran, a man and a woman
were stoned to death for extra-marital sex.
Still separate after all these years
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9079930
Apr 26th 2007 | LOUISVILLE AND RALEIGH
>From The Economist print edition
Five decades after the Supreme Court struck down school segregation,
black and white children continue to learn in different worlds. And it
could get worse
LARRY BISIG grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, where he went to Catholic
school and where he now runs a local marketing firm. He has seen his
local school district's history from several angles. In 1975, when a
court-ordered desegregation drive began, his public-school friends
started waking up at five o'clock to be bussed to new schools across
town. His Catholic school made reassuring intercom announcements,
saying that the public-school buses had arrived safely-despite the
violent protests and threats. And he remembers the sudden influx of
new students into his own school, as white Protestant families chose a
Catholic education for their children rather than sending them to
public school with blacks.
This land is anti-capitalist land
http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9079861
Apr 26th 2007 | ASSENTAMENTO MANOEL NETO AND BRASÍLIA
>From The Economist print edition
An erstwhile fight to end rural feudalism is becoming a political
campaign against agribusiness
EVERY year in April groups who organise Brazil's rural poor, headed by
the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (widely known as the MST),
sponsor a nationwide bout of land invasions, takeovers of buildings
and other protests. Part revolution and part ritual, "Red April"
commemorates the killing 11 years ago of 19 landless protestors by
police in the Amazonian state of Pará and promotes the martyrs' cause,
the redistribution of land.
But nowadays much of the activism seems to have little to do with land
reform. This year it included taking over highway toll booths in the
southern state of Paraná. Last year a rural women's group destroyed a
paper company's research laboratory. In the past the main targets were
local land barons. More and more they are big companies, be they
Brazilian or foreign, and the "development model" they represent.
The people's republic in the grip of popular capitalism
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9084756
Apr 26th 2007 | BEIJING
>From The Economist print edition
Tens of millions of Chinese are risking their shirts in a stockmarket
frenzy. If it goes wrong, things could get nasty
WOULD-BE share punters, keen for a piece of China's booming
stockmarket, are queuing to open accounts at a Beijing branch of China
Merchants Securities. A busy manager, handing out application forms,
says he is taking on 100 new clients a day, perhaps five times as many
as a year ago. Bunches of small investors, ranging from students to
pensioners, crowd around computer terminals to carry out their trades,
keeping an eye on the prices as they flicker across big electronic
screens. China's biggest-ever stockmarket boom may be turning into a
bubble-and the country's leaders are getting worried.
If the bubble were to pop, it could have a bigger impact on social
stability than any previous downturn in the stockmarket's 16-year
history. There are now more than 91m accounts held by individuals at
brokers or in mutual funds. Estimates for the number of investors vary
widely. At the height of the last market boom, in 2001, there were 60m
accounts but perhaps fewer than 10m investors. There are certainly
many millions more now. New accounts at brokers are being opened at a
rate of more than 200,000 a day, touching a high of more than 310,000
on April 24th. The total so far this year is more than 8m, which is
around ten times as many as in the whole of 2005, when the market
began to emerge from a four-year slump.
Buzz off
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9070846
Apr 26th 2007
>From The Economist print edition
Investigating colony collapse disorder
IT IS a mystery that would tax the minds of the world's greatest
detectives. Across America beekeepers are finding hives abandoned.
What appear to be normal, healthy adults suddenly disappear within two
days, leaving their queen, their food stores and the young. In the
past, a mass exodus would leave the hive to be ransacked by honeybees
from neighbouring colonies. This time, not only is the retreat more
common, but nearby bees seem strangely reluctant to enter the
abandoned hives. There are no dead bodies, but scientists who have
studied the corpses of the occasional remaining live adult report that
they are ravaged by disease.
What could be going on? The Department of Agriculture in America this
week convened a workshop of apiarists and federal and university
scientists to suggest some answers.
In praise of entrepreneurs
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9070610
Apr 26th 2007
>From The Economist print edition
The biography of a man who believed that uproar was the music of
capitalism
MUCH honoured as an economic prophet, Joseph Schumpeter has had to
wait half a century after his death for this splendid full-dress
biography covering his ideas, life and times. In 1983 Forbes
pronounced him a better guide to the tumultuous world economy than
John Maynard Keynes. In 1986 J.K. Galbraith described him as "the most
sophisticated conservative of this century". In 2000 Business Week ran
an article about him to which it gave the title "America's hottest
economist died fifty years ago". There are Schumpeter lectures,
Schumpeter societies and Schumpeter prizes.
Now he has received yet another accolade: a fat, learned biography by
Thomas McCraw, one of America's most respected business historians,
the author of a Pulitzer prize-winning history of the rise of
regulation. He has found the perfect subject in Schumpeter. He
succeeds in getting inside the economist's head, explaining not just
what he thought but why he thought it. Beyond this, he also succeeds
in painting a portrait of his times. Fin de siècle Vienna, Weimar
Germany, Harvard University (where he is seen in our photograph)
before and after the first world war: all come to life on these pages.
Turn up the volume
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/businessview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9064585
Apr 24th 2007
>From Economist.com
Quiet periods are bad for bosses and for markets
STEVE SCHWARZMAN, billionaire boss of Blackstone Group, was his usual
talkative self at the White House Correspondents' dinner on Saturday-
except when it came to discussing the state of his business. "We are
in a quiet period", he pointed out, alluding to the impending initial
public offering (IPO) of Blackstone shares.
It is not only Mr Schwarzman who is keeping his mouth shut. Kevin
Davis, chief executive of Man Financial, a brokerage firm which is
part of the Man Group, cancelled a recent lunch with The Economist
after his firm announced an IPO that may raise even more than the $4.5
billion for which Blackstone is hoping. Again, an apologetic public
relations man blamed the firm's sudden vow of silence on its quiet
period, insisting that "our lawyers will kill us if we talk to you".
Against anti-Europeanism
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9084422
Apr 26th 2007
>From The Economist print edition
Anti-Europeanism is a bad response to anti-Americanism
APRIL 26th found the Oxford Union debating the motion that "This House
regrets the founding of the United States of America". A silly motion
supported by unrepresentative people: the proponents were to include a
member of the Communist Party and a member of the Islamist group Hizb-
ut-Tahrir. But anti-Americans do not possess a monopoly on idiocy. You
don't have to spend much time with American conservatives to find them
discussing the coming collapse of Europe, sometimes with glee. One of
the opponents of the Oxford motion, Jonah Goldberg, did much to
popularise "The Simpsons'" labelling of the French as "cheese-eating
surrender-monkeys" in the run-up to the Iraq war.
America's anti-Europeans have three big complaints about the Old
Continent. The first is that Europe is committing demographic and
economic suicide: the European birth rate is well below replacement
level, and the economy is hog-tied by regulations and overburdened by
welfare commitments. The second is that, unlike America, Europe is a
post-Christian society. George Weigel, a Catholic conservative and
loving biographer of Pope John Paul II, deftly links Europe's
"demographic suicide" with its collapse of faith in his "The Cube and
the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics without God", a theo-
conservative bible on what has gone wrong with Europe.
Criminalising the consumer
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/techview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9096421
Apr 27th 2007
>From Economist.com
Where digital rights went wrong
IS IT legal to make a copy of that DVD you've just bought so the
family can watch it around the home or in the car? In one of the most
watched copyright cases in recent years, a judge in northern
California ruled last month that copying DVDs for personal use was
legal, given the terms of the industry's licence and the way the
copies were made.
Copy the lowly cockroach
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9033285
Apr 19th 2007
>From The Economist print edition
SPOOKED by the subprime-mortgage mess? Queasy about collateralised
debt obligations? Investors of a nervous disposition should steer
clear of Richard Bookstaber's "A Demon of Our Own Design". He
understands the inner workings of financial markets. And he doesn't
like what he sees.
An options-theory egghead who swapped maths for mammon, Mr Bookstaber
spent much of the 1980s and 1990s as a "quant" (designer of
mathematical models), and later as a senior risk manager, at Morgan
Stanley and Salomon Brothers. He was, as he sheepishly puts it, "in
the vicinity" when stockmarkets tumbled in 1987 and Long-Term Capital
Management (LTCM), a hedge fund, disappeared down the plughole a
decade later.
The black curse
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9033425
Apr 19th 2007
>From The Economist print edition
LIKE the cars that might one day make the Western world a bit less
reliant on crude oil, "Untapped" is a hybrid; part travelogue, part
analysis and part lament. It is also well timed. Energy security has
become an obsession for the rich world. And some, especially in
America, have argued that the supposedly limitless supply of African
crude is the key to reducing the West's over-dependence on politically
risky Middle Eastern supplies. This book examines the consequent boom
in oil production and exploration that is currently sweeping across
Africa, and the effects that this may have on the continent. None of
it makes for pretty reading.
The author begins his travels in Nigeria, where Royal Dutch Shell
started off Africa's relationship with the modern oil industry by
striking black gold in the Delta region in 1958. But for all the
billions of dollars that Nigeria's oil has fetched on the world
markets since then, the country itself has virtually collapsed. It may
be the seventh-largest producer of crude in the world, but Nigeria
remains one of the poorest as well-an original example of "resource
curse". Nearby Gabon followed soon after.