13 November 2008
By Paul McNally
Sami Al Haj, the Al Jazeera cameraman detained for six years without trial at Guantanamo Bay, has been recognised with a special award from the Association of International Broadcasting.
The group, which promotes excellence in the international media, said the award was both in recognition of his ordeal in the US-run prison camp in Cuba and to celebrate his return to work at the Arabic broadcaster.
Al Haj, who was described by his lawyer in Press Gazette last year as "no more a terrorist than my granny", was the only journalist detained in Guantanamo and was freed in May.
He has now returned to Al Jazeera to head up a new team that will report on - and build up a database of - human rights breaches around the world.
Al Haj had hoped to pick up the award in person at last night's event, but had to pull out at the last minute.
An Al Jazeera colleague stepped in to accept the prize – which is jointly offered with the International News Safety Institute.
Security forces at the Afghan-Pakistan border arrested Al Haj in December 2001 while he was on assignment to cover the war against the Taliban. He was handed over to the US army one month later, who accused him of being an al-Qaida operative.
His case was seen by some Middle East commentators as punishment by the US against Al Jazeera for its broadcasts. Al Haj began a hunger strike in January 2007 in protest against his detention.
Other winners at last night's awards including the BBC World Service, which won two prizes - one for a The World Today report on China and the second for its cross-platform Bangladesh boat project.
French rolling news TV network France 24, which celebrates its second birthday next month, won the award for best TV coverage of a news event for its reports from Burma.
It went on to win a second prize - the AIB Editors' Award - and was praised for "pushing boundaries [and maturing] into a strong, reliable and inventive international news channel for the 21st century".
BBC Northern Ireland won the award for best investigative TV documentary for a 17-month undercover look at one of the biggest dog fighting gangs in Europe.
AIB chief executive Simon Spanswick said the group had received a record number of entries for this year's awards, which are now in their 40th year and are open to broadcasters from around the world.
Another celebration of the work of international journalists takes place this evening when the winners of the Rory Peck Awards are announced at a ceremony in London.
According to press freedom campaign group Reporters Without Borders, 36 journalists and media assistants have been killed doing their job so far this year, and a further 136 imprisoned.
Friday, 14 November 2008
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Brown versus Iceland
Gordon Brown last night branded Iceland's failure to guarantee British savings in its failed banks as "totally unacceptable and illegal", amid warnings that more than 100 local councils, police authorities and fire services have up to £1bn lost in its bankrupted system.
Charities, including children's hospices, warned they were at risk of losing £25m.
In unusually aggressive terms, the prime minister said he was willing to use anti-terrorism legislation to freeze the assets of other Icelandic companies operating in Britain in an effort to recoup the lost money. The extent of the potential difficulties for councils and other bodies began to emerge yesterday as more and more said they had invested money in Iceland's high-yielding savers' accounts.
By yesterday evening, the Local Government Association (LGA) had accumulated reports showing that 108 councils in England, Scotland and Wales had deposited £798.95m in Icelandic banks.
Alan Wardle of the LGA on council savings in Iceland Link to this audio With no sign of Iceland being able to repay the money and councils lobbying ministers for reassurance that the cash would be recovered, Britain went on the offensive. "What happened in Iceland is completely unacceptable," said Brown. "I've spoken to the Icelandic prime minister, I have told him this is effectively an illegal action that they have taken. We are freezing the assets of Icelandic companies in the UK where we can. We will take further action against the Icelandic authorities where necessary to recover the money.
"The responsibility for this lies fairly and squarely with the Icelandic authorities, and they cannot simply default. The Icelandic authorities are responsible for this, and we are demanding the money is paid back to the local authorities, and we are prepared to consider all forms of action, including, as we did, attempting to freeze assets."
Geir Haarde, Iceland's prime minister, said he was surprised by Brown's remarks, and urged him to consider resolving the issue in the courts. The Treasury said it had no imminent plan for a wider move against Icelandic companies operating in the UK saying the only action taken so far was the freezing of the Landsbanki's estimated £7bn of UK assets.
The British government invoked the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 to freeze the British assets of Landsbanki, something for which Brown refused to apologise, saying he had a responsibility to recover the assets in the most effective way possible.
Referring to the move, Haarde said: "I told the chancellor that we consider this to be a completely unfriendly act."
Asked if the financial crisis engulfing Iceland had become a diplomatic crisis with Britain, Haarde added: "I thought so for a few minutes this morning when I realised that a terrorist law was being applied against us. That was not very pleasant. I'm afraid not many governments would have taken that very kindly, to be put into that category."
Haarde said Iceland had not decided on whether to seek help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and negotiations to secure a €4bn (£3.2bn) loan from Russia would not begin until Tuesday.
Under Iceland's financial regulations, the government is supposed to pay up to £16,000 compensation per frozen account at a total cost of £2.2bn.
Britain is angry since it has received no assurances from the Icelandic government that they would meet this commitment. It is estimated that British investors have a total of £8bn deposited in the Icelandic banks, including £4.6bn in the Icesaver internet bank.
The Treasury said it was sending a team to Iceland today after failing to get satisfactory answers from the authorities there for at least three days.
In an effort to work out the scale of the potential exposure of public bodies to the Icelandic banking collapse, leaders of local councils met with John Healey, the local government minister, yesterday.
At the meeting in London yesterday afternoon the councils tried to persuade the government to guarantee their savings, in the same way that ministers had guaranteed the savings for individual investors in Landsbanki. But Healey refused to give any such commitment after the meeting. Instead he said the government "will not leave councils under pressure on their own". He conceded that the councils had not acted recklessly, and had been following Whitehall advice sent out in 2004 to spread their investments across a wide range of banks.
Local councils pointed out that they had been given legal advice that the Icelandic banks had three star credit ratings, and there was no way of predicting this collapse was imminent. "The local councils are well informed investors. This is not money that is lost, it may be money that is at risk," a statement said.
After the meeting , the LGA said "a small number" of authorities faced specific short term problems.
In a joint statement, the LGA and the government said: "For those local authorities who are facing severe short-term difficulties government and the LGA will agree an appropriate set of ways to assist. We will judge what's appropriate on a case by case basis." Authorities with big investments include Kent county council with £50m; Nottingham city council, £42m; Norfolk county council, £32.5m; Dorset county council, and Hertfordshire county council, both £28m.
Fifteen police forces also have investments in Iceland, as does Transport for London which revealed it had a £40m deposit with Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander, a UK subsidiary of the bankrupt Kaupthing bank.
TfL, which runs the London's bus and tube services, said it did not know if it would get the money back. But a spokesman said TfL's £7bn budget was big enough to absorb the loss.
Stephen Bubb, chief executive of Acevo, the representative body for charity chief executives, urged the chancellor to guarantee the bank deposits of UK charities. He said the collapse of Icelandic banks had hit charities hard with some losing up to one fifth of their reserves, in sums ranging up to £12m. The total losses reported to Acevo added up to more than £25m. It also emerged yesterday that the 300,000 UK personal savers who had accounts with Icesave would be lucky to get their money back by Christmas.
Charities, including children's hospices, warned they were at risk of losing £25m.
In unusually aggressive terms, the prime minister said he was willing to use anti-terrorism legislation to freeze the assets of other Icelandic companies operating in Britain in an effort to recoup the lost money. The extent of the potential difficulties for councils and other bodies began to emerge yesterday as more and more said they had invested money in Iceland's high-yielding savers' accounts.
By yesterday evening, the Local Government Association (LGA) had accumulated reports showing that 108 councils in England, Scotland and Wales had deposited £798.95m in Icelandic banks.
Alan Wardle of the LGA on council savings in Iceland Link to this audio With no sign of Iceland being able to repay the money and councils lobbying ministers for reassurance that the cash would be recovered, Britain went on the offensive. "What happened in Iceland is completely unacceptable," said Brown. "I've spoken to the Icelandic prime minister, I have told him this is effectively an illegal action that they have taken. We are freezing the assets of Icelandic companies in the UK where we can. We will take further action against the Icelandic authorities where necessary to recover the money.
"The responsibility for this lies fairly and squarely with the Icelandic authorities, and they cannot simply default. The Icelandic authorities are responsible for this, and we are demanding the money is paid back to the local authorities, and we are prepared to consider all forms of action, including, as we did, attempting to freeze assets."
Geir Haarde, Iceland's prime minister, said he was surprised by Brown's remarks, and urged him to consider resolving the issue in the courts. The Treasury said it had no imminent plan for a wider move against Icelandic companies operating in the UK saying the only action taken so far was the freezing of the Landsbanki's estimated £7bn of UK assets.
The British government invoked the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 to freeze the British assets of Landsbanki, something for which Brown refused to apologise, saying he had a responsibility to recover the assets in the most effective way possible.
Referring to the move, Haarde said: "I told the chancellor that we consider this to be a completely unfriendly act."
Asked if the financial crisis engulfing Iceland had become a diplomatic crisis with Britain, Haarde added: "I thought so for a few minutes this morning when I realised that a terrorist law was being applied against us. That was not very pleasant. I'm afraid not many governments would have taken that very kindly, to be put into that category."
Haarde said Iceland had not decided on whether to seek help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and negotiations to secure a €4bn (£3.2bn) loan from Russia would not begin until Tuesday.
Under Iceland's financial regulations, the government is supposed to pay up to £16,000 compensation per frozen account at a total cost of £2.2bn.
Britain is angry since it has received no assurances from the Icelandic government that they would meet this commitment. It is estimated that British investors have a total of £8bn deposited in the Icelandic banks, including £4.6bn in the Icesaver internet bank.
The Treasury said it was sending a team to Iceland today after failing to get satisfactory answers from the authorities there for at least three days.
In an effort to work out the scale of the potential exposure of public bodies to the Icelandic banking collapse, leaders of local councils met with John Healey, the local government minister, yesterday.
At the meeting in London yesterday afternoon the councils tried to persuade the government to guarantee their savings, in the same way that ministers had guaranteed the savings for individual investors in Landsbanki. But Healey refused to give any such commitment after the meeting. Instead he said the government "will not leave councils under pressure on their own". He conceded that the councils had not acted recklessly, and had been following Whitehall advice sent out in 2004 to spread their investments across a wide range of banks.
Local councils pointed out that they had been given legal advice that the Icelandic banks had three star credit ratings, and there was no way of predicting this collapse was imminent. "The local councils are well informed investors. This is not money that is lost, it may be money that is at risk," a statement said.
After the meeting , the LGA said "a small number" of authorities faced specific short term problems.
In a joint statement, the LGA and the government said: "For those local authorities who are facing severe short-term difficulties government and the LGA will agree an appropriate set of ways to assist. We will judge what's appropriate on a case by case basis." Authorities with big investments include Kent county council with £50m; Nottingham city council, £42m; Norfolk county council, £32.5m; Dorset county council, and Hertfordshire county council, both £28m.
Fifteen police forces also have investments in Iceland, as does Transport for London which revealed it had a £40m deposit with Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander, a UK subsidiary of the bankrupt Kaupthing bank.
TfL, which runs the London's bus and tube services, said it did not know if it would get the money back. But a spokesman said TfL's £7bn budget was big enough to absorb the loss.
Stephen Bubb, chief executive of Acevo, the representative body for charity chief executives, urged the chancellor to guarantee the bank deposits of UK charities. He said the collapse of Icelandic banks had hit charities hard with some losing up to one fifth of their reserves, in sums ranging up to £12m. The total losses reported to Acevo added up to more than £25m. It also emerged yesterday that the 300,000 UK personal savers who had accounts with Icesave would be lucky to get their money back by Christmas.
showgirl turned minister sues comedian in Italy
Tom Kington
The war of words between Italy's most controversial female comedian and a topless model-turned minister for equal opportunities in Silvio Berlusconi's government looked set to become a courtroom battle yesterday, with €1m in damages at stake.
Sabina Guzzanti revealed that she is being sued by Mara Carfagna, the former model and TV showgirl, after joking that Carfagna, 32, got her job as minister by indulging in an explicit sexual act with Berlusconi.
Rumour has been rife in the Italian press about Carfagna's relationship with Berlusconi after the prime minister quipped in 2007: "If I was not already married I would have married her immediately."
The quip prompted Berlusconi's wife, Veronica, to demand an apology in a letter to an Italian newspaper, an apology her husband duly gave.
Rumours have suggested that wire-taps allegedly conducted in a separate inquiry by an Italian magistrate pointed to a relationship between Berlusconi and Carfagna. The Italian prime minister has denied the claims.
Guzzanti, 45, has long been a thorn in the prime minister's side, earning an unofficial boycott by Italian state television for her pains. She took aim at Carfagna during a leftwing rally in July, as well as criticising Pope Benedict, claiming: "In 20 years [the former Cardinal Joseph] Ratzinger will be dead and will end up in hell, tormented by queer demons - not passive ones, but very active ones."
Plans by magistrates to prosecute her for attacking the Pope were dropped, but Carfagna has been less forgiving, the comedian revealed on her blog yesterday.
However, the comic remained defiant, writing that Carfagna's scantily clad appearance in photographic calenders was enough to make her unsuitable for her new ministerial role.
"By putting Carfagna at the ministry for equal opportunities, Berlusconi has offended every Italian woman yet again, and in conclusive fashion."
Appearing on Italian television on Wednesday, the minister said the rumour-mongering about her and Berlusconi proved she was the victim of a sexist campaign. "If a woman builds a career she is suspected of having sought shortcuts and received favours while people believe that men who go far deserve it," she said.
She then hit back at Guzzanti, accusing her of being "mentally fragile".
Guzzanti said yesterday she would now consider counter-suing Carfagna for the statement.
The war of words between Italy's most controversial female comedian and a topless model-turned minister for equal opportunities in Silvio Berlusconi's government looked set to become a courtroom battle yesterday, with €1m in damages at stake.
Sabina Guzzanti revealed that she is being sued by Mara Carfagna, the former model and TV showgirl, after joking that Carfagna, 32, got her job as minister by indulging in an explicit sexual act with Berlusconi.
Rumour has been rife in the Italian press about Carfagna's relationship with Berlusconi after the prime minister quipped in 2007: "If I was not already married I would have married her immediately."
The quip prompted Berlusconi's wife, Veronica, to demand an apology in a letter to an Italian newspaper, an apology her husband duly gave.
Rumours have suggested that wire-taps allegedly conducted in a separate inquiry by an Italian magistrate pointed to a relationship between Berlusconi and Carfagna. The Italian prime minister has denied the claims.
Guzzanti, 45, has long been a thorn in the prime minister's side, earning an unofficial boycott by Italian state television for her pains. She took aim at Carfagna during a leftwing rally in July, as well as criticising Pope Benedict, claiming: "In 20 years [the former Cardinal Joseph] Ratzinger will be dead and will end up in hell, tormented by queer demons - not passive ones, but very active ones."
Plans by magistrates to prosecute her for attacking the Pope were dropped, but Carfagna has been less forgiving, the comedian revealed on her blog yesterday.
However, the comic remained defiant, writing that Carfagna's scantily clad appearance in photographic calenders was enough to make her unsuitable for her new ministerial role.
"By putting Carfagna at the ministry for equal opportunities, Berlusconi has offended every Italian woman yet again, and in conclusive fashion."
Appearing on Italian television on Wednesday, the minister said the rumour-mongering about her and Berlusconi proved she was the victim of a sexist campaign. "If a woman builds a career she is suspected of having sought shortcuts and received favours while people believe that men who go far deserve it," she said.
She then hit back at Guzzanti, accusing her of being "mentally fragile".
Guzzanti said yesterday she would now consider counter-suing Carfagna for the statement.
US FACES DOWNWARD SPIRAL IN aFGHAN WAR, SAYS LEAKED INTELLIGENCE REPORT
• White House forced to reconsider strategy
• Washington wants Nato to confront drug lords
Julian Borger
US intelligence agencies believe the war in Afghanistan is in "a downward spiral", sparking an urgent strategy rethink by the Bush administration as it enters its last three months in office, it was reported yesterday.
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan, a joint report by America's 16 spy agencies, is not due to be published until after next month's presidential election, but a draft version was leaked to US newspapers calling into question the coherence of US and Nato policy.
The document also places considerable blame on Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, for failing to control corruption in his government. It also points to the destabilising impact of the booming opium trade, which now accounts for at least half the national economy.
The White House has ordered a review of its policy and sent a team to Kabul led by Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, the president's military adviser on Afghanistan, to assess the situation.
"We have had a tough summer. There is no doubt about it," a Nato source told the Guardian. "There are concerns, and we would share concerns the NIE has identified for better Afghan governance. We have said for some time the solution is political and not military."
The Afghan government has been reported to be holding talks with the Taliban, hosted by Saudi Arabia, but it is unclear whether those contacts would lead to comprehensive peace talks.
Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, has argued that Nato troops must confront Afghanistan's drug traffickers directly. The job has been left to Afghanistan's poorly trained and under-equipped police force. "Part of the problem that we face is that the Taliban make somewhere between $60m and $80m or more a year from the drug trafficking," Gates said at a Nato meeting in Budapest yesterday.
"... if we have the opportunity to go after drug lords and drug laboratories and try to interrupt this flow of cash to the Taliban, that seems to me like a legitimate security endeavour."
A proposed counter-narcotics mandate for Nato in Afghanistan divides opinion in Whitehall, putting the Foreign Office at odds with the Ministry of Defence.
The Foreign Office welcomed the move yesterday, saying Britain had been requesting it for years, in the face of resistance from some European allies. But British military officials were more sceptical, saying such operations would require the deployment of more forces.
"You can put your troops into counter-insurgency or you can go after the [drug trafficking] middleman but you can't do both," said a defence source.
British officers see the benefits of targeting drug laboratories and trafficking kingpins. But they argue that such operations should be undertaken primarily by Afghan forces, with Nato providing support. British diplomats are keen to emphasise that counter-narcotics efforts to date have brought results. They point to UN figures showing a 19% reduction in land under poppy cultivation last year, and a 6% fall in opium production. (The discrepancy between the two figures is explained by higher yields per hectare).
The NIE on Afghanistan appears destined to become an election issue in the final weeks of the contest between Barack Obama and John McCain.
The Pentagon plans to send another three brigades, up to 14,000 troops, to bolster the 33,000-strong US force there now, but in Budapest yesterday, US officials were urging their allies not to pull out when the American reinforcements arrive.
Meanwhile the United Arab Emirates has quietly become the 41st country contributing to the coalition effort in Afghanistan, although it is not clear what resources it intends to contribute.
The draft NIE on Afghanistan illustrates a darkening mood in western capitals. It follows a leaked French diplomatic dispatch quoting the British ambassador to Kabul, Sherard Cowper-Coles, as saying US strategy there had failed. The foreign secretary, David Miliband, said the report had "garbled" the British position.
• Washington wants Nato to confront drug lords
Julian Borger
US intelligence agencies believe the war in Afghanistan is in "a downward spiral", sparking an urgent strategy rethink by the Bush administration as it enters its last three months in office, it was reported yesterday.
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan, a joint report by America's 16 spy agencies, is not due to be published until after next month's presidential election, but a draft version was leaked to US newspapers calling into question the coherence of US and Nato policy.
The document also places considerable blame on Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, for failing to control corruption in his government. It also points to the destabilising impact of the booming opium trade, which now accounts for at least half the national economy.
The White House has ordered a review of its policy and sent a team to Kabul led by Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, the president's military adviser on Afghanistan, to assess the situation.
"We have had a tough summer. There is no doubt about it," a Nato source told the Guardian. "There are concerns, and we would share concerns the NIE has identified for better Afghan governance. We have said for some time the solution is political and not military."
The Afghan government has been reported to be holding talks with the Taliban, hosted by Saudi Arabia, but it is unclear whether those contacts would lead to comprehensive peace talks.
Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, has argued that Nato troops must confront Afghanistan's drug traffickers directly. The job has been left to Afghanistan's poorly trained and under-equipped police force. "Part of the problem that we face is that the Taliban make somewhere between $60m and $80m or more a year from the drug trafficking," Gates said at a Nato meeting in Budapest yesterday.
"... if we have the opportunity to go after drug lords and drug laboratories and try to interrupt this flow of cash to the Taliban, that seems to me like a legitimate security endeavour."
A proposed counter-narcotics mandate for Nato in Afghanistan divides opinion in Whitehall, putting the Foreign Office at odds with the Ministry of Defence.
The Foreign Office welcomed the move yesterday, saying Britain had been requesting it for years, in the face of resistance from some European allies. But British military officials were more sceptical, saying such operations would require the deployment of more forces.
"You can put your troops into counter-insurgency or you can go after the [drug trafficking] middleman but you can't do both," said a defence source.
British officers see the benefits of targeting drug laboratories and trafficking kingpins. But they argue that such operations should be undertaken primarily by Afghan forces, with Nato providing support. British diplomats are keen to emphasise that counter-narcotics efforts to date have brought results. They point to UN figures showing a 19% reduction in land under poppy cultivation last year, and a 6% fall in opium production. (The discrepancy between the two figures is explained by higher yields per hectare).
The NIE on Afghanistan appears destined to become an election issue in the final weeks of the contest between Barack Obama and John McCain.
The Pentagon plans to send another three brigades, up to 14,000 troops, to bolster the 33,000-strong US force there now, but in Budapest yesterday, US officials were urging their allies not to pull out when the American reinforcements arrive.
Meanwhile the United Arab Emirates has quietly become the 41st country contributing to the coalition effort in Afghanistan, although it is not clear what resources it intends to contribute.
The draft NIE on Afghanistan illustrates a darkening mood in western capitals. It follows a leaked French diplomatic dispatch quoting the British ambassador to Kabul, Sherard Cowper-Coles, as saying US strategy there had failed. The foreign secretary, David Miliband, said the report had "garbled" the British position.
nobel prize restores french literary
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris guardian.co.uk, Friday October 10 2008 00.01 BST The Guardian, Friday October 10 2008 Article history
The cult French writer JMG Le Clézio yesterday won the Nobel prize for literature, lifting Paris out of its depression over the nation's cultural decline.
Le Clézio, known as France's "nomad novelist", lives mainly in New Mexico in the US, in near seclusion, and is the opposite of Paris's current trend for writers' navel-gazing accounts of their sex lives.
The Swedish jury hailed his scathing critiques of urban western civilisation and the "poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy" of his stories of native populations in Africa and Latin America. His novels, whose settings range from the Sahara to Mauritius, are expected to see a massive sales boost in Britain, where he is currently out of print and barely known.
Le Clézio, 68, last year signed an open letter with other writers appealing for French literature to be more open to the wider world. Last night he batted off talk of French cultural stagnation. "I deny it," he said. "It's a very rich, very diversified culture. There's no risk of decline."
In Paris Le Clézio is seen as one of France's greatest living writers. He says his work is defined by his mixed roots. He was born in Nice but most identifies with the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, where his Breton ancestors fled in the 18th century and lived for generations before returning to France.
He has joint Mauritian citizenship and calls the island his "little fatherland", describing himself an "exile" who grew up steeped in its mixed culture and traditions. His father, a Mauritian doctor with British citizenship, moved the family to Nigeria when Le Clézio was a child, before returning to Nice. Le Clézio studied in Britain, taught at universities in the US, Mexico and Thailand and travelled extensively with his Moroccan wife, writing about mixed relationships, and postcolonial and indigenous cultures.
Le Clézio, who publishes books at a rate of around one a year, shot to fame in France as a 23-year-old with his first novel, Le Proces-Verbal (The Interrogation), a portrait of a young man's mental illness. It won critical acclaim and a major literary prize, and his looks saw him dubbed French literature's Steve McQueen. Yesterday French media still referred to him as a blue-eyed "elegant cowboy".
Le Clézio became popular in France in the 1970s and 80s with novels set across the world. His big breakthrough came in 1980 with Desert, an award-winning novel of French colonialism seen through the eyes of a Tuareg woman in the Sahara. Since 2000 he has focused on stories of childhood and post-colonialism, drawing on his own family stories.
The Nobel jury said Le Clézio "stood out as an ecologically engaged author", citing his novels Terra Amata, The Book of Flights, War and The Giants. They called him an "explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilisation".
His acceptance speech at the ceremony in December is likely to have a political slant. A defender of Creole writers who face problems getting published, he said yesterday he would use the speech to campaign for the promotion of young writers outside the metropolitan elite. He is also vocal about war, women's rights and child prostitution in the developing world.
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said: "Jean-Marie Le Clézio is a citizen of the world, son of all continents and cultures. A great traveller, he embodies the influence of France, its culture and its values in a globalised world."
Apart from the 2000 win by the Chinese-born Gao Xingjian, who has French nationality, France has not won a Nobel literature prize for over 20 years and has been desperate for a return to the golden era of winners such as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Andre Gide.
Nobel award restores French literary pride• Winning author denies France has stagnated
• Country dreams of a return to days of Sartre
'A beautiful portrait'
"This [the portrayal of the protagonist, Ethel] is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful portraits Le Clézio has ever written, flickering, fragile, never closed in on itself, never frozen in marble or gripped in the vice of oppressive psychological certitudes.
"Its autobiographical role has been reduced to the simplest of expressions. So no confusion or confession, just a simple gesture of intimacy... [Le Clézio] does not give any moral lesson. Subtle and generous, but at the same time highly skilful ... his art is all about compassion and empathy - and also rebellion. It is rare to enter with such emotion into the feelings of fictional characters."
• Extract from Le Monde review of Le Clézio's latest novel, Ritournelle de la faim (Chorus of Hunger)
The cult French writer JMG Le Clézio yesterday won the Nobel prize for literature, lifting Paris out of its depression over the nation's cultural decline.
Le Clézio, known as France's "nomad novelist", lives mainly in New Mexico in the US, in near seclusion, and is the opposite of Paris's current trend for writers' navel-gazing accounts of their sex lives.
The Swedish jury hailed his scathing critiques of urban western civilisation and the "poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy" of his stories of native populations in Africa and Latin America. His novels, whose settings range from the Sahara to Mauritius, are expected to see a massive sales boost in Britain, where he is currently out of print and barely known.
Le Clézio, 68, last year signed an open letter with other writers appealing for French literature to be more open to the wider world. Last night he batted off talk of French cultural stagnation. "I deny it," he said. "It's a very rich, very diversified culture. There's no risk of decline."
In Paris Le Clézio is seen as one of France's greatest living writers. He says his work is defined by his mixed roots. He was born in Nice but most identifies with the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, where his Breton ancestors fled in the 18th century and lived for generations before returning to France.
He has joint Mauritian citizenship and calls the island his "little fatherland", describing himself an "exile" who grew up steeped in its mixed culture and traditions. His father, a Mauritian doctor with British citizenship, moved the family to Nigeria when Le Clézio was a child, before returning to Nice. Le Clézio studied in Britain, taught at universities in the US, Mexico and Thailand and travelled extensively with his Moroccan wife, writing about mixed relationships, and postcolonial and indigenous cultures.
Le Clézio, who publishes books at a rate of around one a year, shot to fame in France as a 23-year-old with his first novel, Le Proces-Verbal (The Interrogation), a portrait of a young man's mental illness. It won critical acclaim and a major literary prize, and his looks saw him dubbed French literature's Steve McQueen. Yesterday French media still referred to him as a blue-eyed "elegant cowboy".
Le Clézio became popular in France in the 1970s and 80s with novels set across the world. His big breakthrough came in 1980 with Desert, an award-winning novel of French colonialism seen through the eyes of a Tuareg woman in the Sahara. Since 2000 he has focused on stories of childhood and post-colonialism, drawing on his own family stories.
The Nobel jury said Le Clézio "stood out as an ecologically engaged author", citing his novels Terra Amata, The Book of Flights, War and The Giants. They called him an "explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilisation".
His acceptance speech at the ceremony in December is likely to have a political slant. A defender of Creole writers who face problems getting published, he said yesterday he would use the speech to campaign for the promotion of young writers outside the metropolitan elite. He is also vocal about war, women's rights and child prostitution in the developing world.
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said: "Jean-Marie Le Clézio is a citizen of the world, son of all continents and cultures. A great traveller, he embodies the influence of France, its culture and its values in a globalised world."
Apart from the 2000 win by the Chinese-born Gao Xingjian, who has French nationality, France has not won a Nobel literature prize for over 20 years and has been desperate for a return to the golden era of winners such as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Andre Gide.
Nobel award restores French literary pride• Winning author denies France has stagnated
• Country dreams of a return to days of Sartre
'A beautiful portrait'
"This [the portrayal of the protagonist, Ethel] is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful portraits Le Clézio has ever written, flickering, fragile, never closed in on itself, never frozen in marble or gripped in the vice of oppressive psychological certitudes.
"Its autobiographical role has been reduced to the simplest of expressions. So no confusion or confession, just a simple gesture of intimacy... [Le Clézio] does not give any moral lesson. Subtle and generous, but at the same time highly skilful ... his art is all about compassion and empathy - and also rebellion. It is rare to enter with such emotion into the feelings of fictional characters."
• Extract from Le Monde review of Le Clézio's latest novel, Ritournelle de la faim (Chorus of Hunger)
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
Obama got Gustav wrong The Democrat gave his rival the chance to score points as the hurricane approached New Orleans
In the combination of New Orleans and hurricanes, we have the most powerful argument possible for the necessity of "change". It's all there: gaping inequality, deep racism, crumbling public infrastructure, global warming, rampant corruption, the Blackwater-isation of the public sector. And none of it is in the past tense. In New Orleans whole neighbourhoods have gone to seed, Charity hospital remains shuttered, public housing has been deliberately destroyed - and the levee system is still far from repaired.
Gustav should have been political rat poison for the Republicans, no matter how well it was managed. Yet, as Peter Baker noted in the New York Times, "rather than run away from the hurricane and its political risks, Mr McCain ran toward it". If this strategy worked, it was at least partly because Barack Obama has been running away from New Orleans for his entire campaign.
Unlike John Edwards, who started and ended his nomination bid surrounded by the decay of New Orleans's Ninth Ward, Obama has shied away from the powerful symbolism the city offers. He waited almost a year after Hurricane Katrina to visit New Orleans and spent just half a day there ahead of the Louisiana primary. During the Democratic convention, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden made no mention of New Orleans in their keynotes. Bill Clinton spared just a few words: "Katrina and cronyism."
In his Denver speech, Obama did invoke a government "that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes". But that only scratches the surface of what happened to New Orleans's poorest residents, who were first forcibly relocated and then forced to watch from afar as their homes, schools and hospitals were stolen. As Obama spoke in Denver, families in New Orleans were already packing their bags in anticipation of Gustav, steeling themselves for yet another evacuation. They heard not even a perfunctory "our thoughts and prayers are with you" from the Democratic candidate for president.
There are plenty of political reasons for this, of course. Obama's campaign is pitching itself to the middle class, not the class of discarded people New Orleans represents. The problem is that by remaining virtually silent about the most dramatic domestic outrage in modern US history, Obama created a political vacuum. When Gustav hit, all McCain needed to do to fill it was show up. Sure, it was cynical for McCain to claim the hurricane zone as a campaign backdrop; but it was Obama who left that potent terrain vacant.
Until now, Obama's supporters have largely accepted the campaign's assessment of the compromises necessary to win, offering only gentle prodding. The fact that the Republicans have turned New Orleans to their advantage should put an end to this blind obedience.
Republicans have a better attitude towards their candidate. When they don't like McCain's positions, they change them. Take the hottest-button issue of the campaign: offshore oil drilling. Just four months ago, it was not even on the radar. During the Republican primary, the issue barely came up, and when it did, McCain did not support it. None of this bothered former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his newly minted American Solutions for Winning the Future. Gingrich waited patiently for what his party loves most: a crisis. It arrived in May, when oil approached $130 a barrel. First came a petition to lower petrol prices by opening up domestic drilling (nonsense). Next was a poll, packed with laughably leading questions: "Some people have suggested that, to combat the rising cost of energy and reduce dependence on foreign energy sources, the United States should use more of its own domestic energy reserves, including the oil and coal it already has here in the US. Do you support or oppose this idea?" You can guess what people said. Two weeks later, McCain flipped on offshore oil drilling.
There was always a risk attached to making offshore drilling the centrepiece of the McCain campaign, since it is not nearly as safe as its advocates claim. Environmentalists have been trying to point this out, but nothing makes the case quite as forcefully as a category five hurricane rocking oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, forcing evacuations and raising the spectre of a serious spill.
Gustav was one of those rare moments when political arguments are made by reality, not rhetoric. It was the time to simply point and say: "This is why we oppose more drilling." It was also the time to recall that during hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the official Minerals Management Service report found more than 100 accidents leading to a total of 743,400 gallons of oil spilled throughout the region. To put that in perspective, 100,000 gallons is classified as a "major spill". If one is feeling particularly bold, a category five hurricane is also an opportune time to mention that scientists see a link between heavier storms and warming ocean temperatures - warmed in part by the fossil fuels being extracted from those fallible platforms.
Obama was not able to make these kinds of arguments when Gustav hit. That's because his campaign had made another "strategic" decision: to compromise on offshore oil drilling. Again a vacuum that had been opened up was rapidly filled by the Republicans, who instantly (and absurdly) linked the hurricane to the need for "energy security". The morning after Gustav made landfall, Bush called for more drilling. Earlier, McCain had visited the hurricane zone with his new running mate, Sarah Palin, whose sole prior claim to national fame was telling cable shows that "we need to drill, drill, drill".
In moments of crisis, it is possible to speak hard truths with great force and clarity. But when the truth has gone silent, lies, boldly told, will work almost as well.
· This column was first published in The Nation
· naomiklein.org
Gustav should have been political rat poison for the Republicans, no matter how well it was managed. Yet, as Peter Baker noted in the New York Times, "rather than run away from the hurricane and its political risks, Mr McCain ran toward it". If this strategy worked, it was at least partly because Barack Obama has been running away from New Orleans for his entire campaign.
Unlike John Edwards, who started and ended his nomination bid surrounded by the decay of New Orleans's Ninth Ward, Obama has shied away from the powerful symbolism the city offers. He waited almost a year after Hurricane Katrina to visit New Orleans and spent just half a day there ahead of the Louisiana primary. During the Democratic convention, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden made no mention of New Orleans in their keynotes. Bill Clinton spared just a few words: "Katrina and cronyism."
In his Denver speech, Obama did invoke a government "that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes". But that only scratches the surface of what happened to New Orleans's poorest residents, who were first forcibly relocated and then forced to watch from afar as their homes, schools and hospitals were stolen. As Obama spoke in Denver, families in New Orleans were already packing their bags in anticipation of Gustav, steeling themselves for yet another evacuation. They heard not even a perfunctory "our thoughts and prayers are with you" from the Democratic candidate for president.
There are plenty of political reasons for this, of course. Obama's campaign is pitching itself to the middle class, not the class of discarded people New Orleans represents. The problem is that by remaining virtually silent about the most dramatic domestic outrage in modern US history, Obama created a political vacuum. When Gustav hit, all McCain needed to do to fill it was show up. Sure, it was cynical for McCain to claim the hurricane zone as a campaign backdrop; but it was Obama who left that potent terrain vacant.
Until now, Obama's supporters have largely accepted the campaign's assessment of the compromises necessary to win, offering only gentle prodding. The fact that the Republicans have turned New Orleans to their advantage should put an end to this blind obedience.
Republicans have a better attitude towards their candidate. When they don't like McCain's positions, they change them. Take the hottest-button issue of the campaign: offshore oil drilling. Just four months ago, it was not even on the radar. During the Republican primary, the issue barely came up, and when it did, McCain did not support it. None of this bothered former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his newly minted American Solutions for Winning the Future. Gingrich waited patiently for what his party loves most: a crisis. It arrived in May, when oil approached $130 a barrel. First came a petition to lower petrol prices by opening up domestic drilling (nonsense). Next was a poll, packed with laughably leading questions: "Some people have suggested that, to combat the rising cost of energy and reduce dependence on foreign energy sources, the United States should use more of its own domestic energy reserves, including the oil and coal it already has here in the US. Do you support or oppose this idea?" You can guess what people said. Two weeks later, McCain flipped on offshore oil drilling.
There was always a risk attached to making offshore drilling the centrepiece of the McCain campaign, since it is not nearly as safe as its advocates claim. Environmentalists have been trying to point this out, but nothing makes the case quite as forcefully as a category five hurricane rocking oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, forcing evacuations and raising the spectre of a serious spill.
Gustav was one of those rare moments when political arguments are made by reality, not rhetoric. It was the time to simply point and say: "This is why we oppose more drilling." It was also the time to recall that during hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the official Minerals Management Service report found more than 100 accidents leading to a total of 743,400 gallons of oil spilled throughout the region. To put that in perspective, 100,000 gallons is classified as a "major spill". If one is feeling particularly bold, a category five hurricane is also an opportune time to mention that scientists see a link between heavier storms and warming ocean temperatures - warmed in part by the fossil fuels being extracted from those fallible platforms.
Obama was not able to make these kinds of arguments when Gustav hit. That's because his campaign had made another "strategic" decision: to compromise on offshore oil drilling. Again a vacuum that had been opened up was rapidly filled by the Republicans, who instantly (and absurdly) linked the hurricane to the need for "energy security". The morning after Gustav made landfall, Bush called for more drilling. Earlier, McCain had visited the hurricane zone with his new running mate, Sarah Palin, whose sole prior claim to national fame was telling cable shows that "we need to drill, drill, drill".
In moments of crisis, it is possible to speak hard truths with great force and clarity. But when the truth has gone silent, lies, boldly told, will work almost as well.
· This column was first published in The Nation
· naomiklein.org
Anyone can be governor general in Australia- unless you're an Aborigine: Germaine Greer, The Guardian.
Six months ago Michael Jeffery, the then governor general of Australia, stuck for something to say about his female replacement, declared: "Anybody can be the governor general in [Australia] and that's what makes it such a great place" - as if the other 14 Commonwealth realms that pick a stand-in for the Queen were somehow less democratic than Australia.
When it comes to choosing a head of state Australia is the least adventurous of the dominions. The 25 incumbents include one prince, two earls, two viscounts, seven barons and nine knights, plus an archbishop, a politician and a major-general. Hitherto, all have been men; none has been from an ethnic minority. Canada appointed its first woman, a member of the French-speaking minority, a quarter of a century ago: the second, Adrienne Clarkson, was born in China; and the present incumbent, who is female and black, was born in Haiti.
The governor general's job is to represent the Queen. What the Queen would not do, the governor general, whether male or female, must not do either. The governor general needs to know how to talk to visiting monarchs, ambassadors, sportsmen and hoi polloi without actually saying anything, while showing interest in everything and concern about nothing. The governor general has to deliver the speech at the opening of parliament utterly deadpan, without so much as raising an eyebrow. Governors general, like British queens, have to do as prime ministers tell them. The poorest Australian has more rights than the governor general, who may not demonstrate, may not carry a placard, may not write so much as a letter for publication.
The outgoing governor general managed to keep his mouth shut and nose clean until this, his very last week, when he suddenly uttered an opinion. Referring to the Aboriginal population, or as he put it the 520,000 "people with indigenous blood", he said: "I suspect that about ... 400,000 of those are already integrated satisfactorily ... to such an extent that you don't hear about them. They're doing what we would look upon as living normal Australian lives." According to him it was only the 100,000 or so in the remote areas who had been "doing it hard for many years".
All the people struggling in urban areas to reverse the devastation of poverty, displacement, imprisonment, drugs and alcohol were flabbergasted, but the governor general was groping towards a very blunt and rather wobbly point. Many people with "indigenous blood" have never lived as Aborigines. For them indigenous blood can be a passport to all kinds of benefits, including cushy sinecures in the establishment. Time was when these people would have passed for white; these days they tend to pass for black. Where once the black ancestors were hidden, it is now the white ancestors who are never mentioned.
Australia appears to have adopted the invidious one-drop policy that so vitiated assistance given to Canada's First Nations. What is even more confusing is that Torres Strait Islanders, who came to Australia as indentured labour, were lumped in with indigenous hunter-gatherer peoples, though they at no time claimed sovereignty over any part of the continent. If Jeffery had grasped the real stinging nettle, and voiced a suspicion about just how diluted "indigenous blood" has been, the outcry would have been even shriller.
Pat Dodson, descendant of the Yawuru nation, ordained Catholic priest and former chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, thundered from Alice Springs: "We're not living normal lives. We're totally over-represented in the political indicators. We're dying a lot younger. We don't have the educational opportunities." Of non-indigenous Australians, 49% will complete year 12 of their schooling; only 14% of indigenous children in remote areas will get that far, and in the cities the proportion rises only to a third.
What was worse than the governor general's touching innocence about the realities of urban Aboriginal life was his bland assumption that total assimilation was the only satisfactory goal. In Dodson's words, Jeffery's statement "really denies the uniqueness of who the indigenous people are and what their contribution to this country can be in their own right, as if they have nothing to contribute except the absorption of the culture the west has offered us. It's a pretty damnable statement if that's the case." Marcia Langton, professor of indigenous studies at the University of Melbourne and descendant of the Yiman nation, refused to comment as to do so would be "too dangerous".
Among the people tipped to take over Jeffery's $365,000-a-year job was Lowitja O'Donohue, descendant of the Yankunytjatjara people and founder chairman of the now disbanded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. It was not to be. The choice of the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, alighted on a fellow Queenslander, Quentin Bryce - a woman who already had the job of state governor. Australian media are now congratulating the country on having matured enough to be ready for a woman governor general. Belize was mature enough in 1981, when Dame Minita Gordon took office. New Zealand, always more mature than Australia, has had two Dames do the job, Catherine Tizard and Sylvia Cartwright. Barbados has had Dame Nita Barrow, and the Bahamas Dame Ivy Dumont. St Lucia currently has Dame Pearlette Louisy as head of state, Antigua and Barbuda Dame Louise Lake-Tack. Only Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, St Kitts and Nevis, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu have yet to choose a woman for governor general.
Bryce - who was sworn in yesterday - is now commander-in-chief of Australia's armed forces. The queen wouldn't dream of issuing orders to the troops, so neither does the governor general. The only governor general to have taken the role of commander-in-chief at all seriously was Adrienne Clarkson, who visited Canadian troops in Kosovo and the Gulf. She came to the job after years as a talkshow host and TV presenter, so was used to offering style in lieu of substance; but even so she blundered into one footling controversy after another. On one mortifying occasion she took precedence over the Queen, apparently because some bewildered underling had not grasped that Clarkson was head of state only when the Queen wasn't there.
Bryce is reported to have said under media bombardment that Australia will become a republic when the people decide, so there is a glimmer of hope that the first woman to take this most nugatory of jobs could also be the first republican. If so, she'd better learn pretty quickly to keep it to herself.
· Germaine Greer is professor emeritus of English literature and comparative studies at Warwick University
Saturday, 8 November 2008
All the cliches about colour obscure the real challenges awaiting Obama The world must get over its hysteria. The next US leader has Russia to deal wi
Simon Jenkins guardian.co.uk, Friday November 7 2008
The world wept with joy on Tuesday night. Probably more such tears were shed than in all history. The reason was not that a Democrat had beaten a Republican, or that the new man is young and has a gift for turning banality into rhetoric. The emotion was because Barack Obama is black.
I too wept, but I did so because the massive hope loaded on to Obama seems so naive and cannot be justified. The election of this man, mesmeric since I first heard of him in Illinois four years ago and read his memoir, may symbolise the advance of a once-oppressed group of Americans, and by proxy of non-whites the world over. But embracing someone for where he comes from rather than for what he may do has been the hubris of politics throughout history. No service is done to Obama by overstating his revolution as a second coming.
The most overheard media cliche is that "America will never be the same again". Yes it will, as it was when it last elected a Democratic president. Only if we break from the crypto-racist mindset that sees Obama as a black man first and all else far behind can the odds on a successful presidency be assessed.
The election result reflected a normal pendulum swing to a conventional Democrat, as is likely in time of unpopular war and economic distress. Nothing in George Bush's wretched term of office became him like the leaving of it: he made Obama's succession inevitable. The heroes of the campaign were the primary voters, who had put up Obama rather than Hillary Clinton to win the proffered palm.
Obama's 52% of the vote was not a landslide. It was the distortions of an electoral college system that served (as in the House of Commons) to turn an unexceptional four-point swing into an apparently overwhelming victory.
The race spin being put on the result is quite wrong. The percentage of black people among those voting on Tuesday was up just two points, from 11 to 13%. Within the white electorate, Obama actually increased the Democratic share. The reported prominence of "the economy" in the minds of voters, against "security" in 2004, gave a natural boost to the Democratic vote. Add the unpopularity of the Iraq war, McCain's reckless choice of running mate, and Obama's brilliant campaign technique to get out his vote, and there is reason enough for the winning Democrat margin.
Nor is Obama the salvationist figure assumed by many abroad. Tuesday was no black insurgency. The victory speech contained not one reference to his racial background. That ageing American icon, Jesse Jackson, hated Obama until Tuesday night. He was no son of slavery. Indeed the fascination of his memoir lies in the search by a member of an all-white family for an explanation of the colour of his skin.
The new president is better seen as a classic American mix of freebooting immigrant and poor but educated mother, committed to a college education for her son. His story could be that of any president of Scots/Irish descent, rising through law school to emerge as the smoothly intellectual liberal derided by the Clintons during the campaign. Constant references to his colour obscure his real strengths and possible weaknesses.
The one gain to Obama from the hysteria that has greeted his election will come if he can convert it into something politically bankable. He will - such is politics - soon be campaigning for re-election. The Republicans may go through contortions of self-examination, but their party is hardly finished. Evangelical conservatism - political and economic as well as religious - is not dead. Opponents will be prowling Congress and the airwaves, waiting to pounce on each Obama setback.
Obama's popularity must be deployed early to give the conservative Washington machine, awash in interests and lobbies, the momentum it needs to "effect change". Bush's adoption of Keynesian remedialism was welcome, but was not enough to save the economy (and himself) from recession. Obama must no longer pander to an army of grimly implacable unions, farmers, cartels, businesses and traders demanding satisfaction.
Americans have elected a leader not just for themselves but for a wide swath of peoples around the world. They cried out for Obama and America granted them their wish. But the greater the expectation of this man, the more furious will be the backlash if he proves a disappointment.
There is a global detritus of American ineptitude and unpopularity to be cleared. The blundering mammoth that is America's global military projection must be curbed. Intelligence must return to foreign relations. Obama could indicate a start by closing Guantánamo Bay on day one. Will he?
Dare he stop torture, accept the Geneva conventions, get tough with Israel, change policy on Russia, make peace with Iran? He has promised to get out of Iraq and fast. But he must also unleash a ferocious pragmatism as "war creep" envelopes Afghanistan, and stop making puerile pledges to invade Pakistan and bomb border villages.
Pakistan was visited this week by a man poised to hold the leading role in the Obama presidency, General David Petraeus. It has taken Washington seven years to realise that the keys to the gates of Kabul lie in Islamabad. But that merely indicates how catastrophic it would be for Obama to continue the belligerent campaign line towards that theatre. The region cries out for the quality most lacking in Republican diplomacy, subtlety.
Afghanistan could yet be to Obama what Vietnam was to the last great civil rights champion in the White House, Lyndon Johnson. All Democratic presidents eager for re-election find it easiest to buy popularity and a macho image by acting belligerently abroad. Obama has yet to indicate that he is an exception to the rule.
An early test will be his response to the extraordinary sabre-rattling by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev. Medvedev's proposal to station missiles in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad between Poland and Lithuania is a crude reaction to George Bush's location of defence installations in a number of former Warsaw pact countries. It is so clearly a challenge to Obama's resolve that it demands an immediate reply. The opportunity is for a classic show of firmness combined with an openness to negotiate. Kaliningrad could yet be Obama's Cuban missile crisis - the geographical parallel is eerily similar - before he has even taken office.
The exhilaration of the past week has been palpable. I have lost count of the Americans who have said with relief: "I am tired with being hated everywhere I go. Suddenly I am loved." The moment is Rooseveltian. At a time of seeming ubiquitous misery, America not for the first time has pulled an iron from the fire. It has found a messiah.
But I still prefer to see Obama not as a black man but as a talented leader of evident competence and sagacity who could use his charisma to bind people together, and his intelligence to chart a way forward. These are the specific qualities the world needs now. We should place our faith in them and not in race or colour.
The world wept with joy on Tuesday night. Probably more such tears were shed than in all history. The reason was not that a Democrat had beaten a Republican, or that the new man is young and has a gift for turning banality into rhetoric. The emotion was because Barack Obama is black.
I too wept, but I did so because the massive hope loaded on to Obama seems so naive and cannot be justified. The election of this man, mesmeric since I first heard of him in Illinois four years ago and read his memoir, may symbolise the advance of a once-oppressed group of Americans, and by proxy of non-whites the world over. But embracing someone for where he comes from rather than for what he may do has been the hubris of politics throughout history. No service is done to Obama by overstating his revolution as a second coming.
The most overheard media cliche is that "America will never be the same again". Yes it will, as it was when it last elected a Democratic president. Only if we break from the crypto-racist mindset that sees Obama as a black man first and all else far behind can the odds on a successful presidency be assessed.
The election result reflected a normal pendulum swing to a conventional Democrat, as is likely in time of unpopular war and economic distress. Nothing in George Bush's wretched term of office became him like the leaving of it: he made Obama's succession inevitable. The heroes of the campaign were the primary voters, who had put up Obama rather than Hillary Clinton to win the proffered palm.
Obama's 52% of the vote was not a landslide. It was the distortions of an electoral college system that served (as in the House of Commons) to turn an unexceptional four-point swing into an apparently overwhelming victory.
The race spin being put on the result is quite wrong. The percentage of black people among those voting on Tuesday was up just two points, from 11 to 13%. Within the white electorate, Obama actually increased the Democratic share. The reported prominence of "the economy" in the minds of voters, against "security" in 2004, gave a natural boost to the Democratic vote. Add the unpopularity of the Iraq war, McCain's reckless choice of running mate, and Obama's brilliant campaign technique to get out his vote, and there is reason enough for the winning Democrat margin.
Nor is Obama the salvationist figure assumed by many abroad. Tuesday was no black insurgency. The victory speech contained not one reference to his racial background. That ageing American icon, Jesse Jackson, hated Obama until Tuesday night. He was no son of slavery. Indeed the fascination of his memoir lies in the search by a member of an all-white family for an explanation of the colour of his skin.
The new president is better seen as a classic American mix of freebooting immigrant and poor but educated mother, committed to a college education for her son. His story could be that of any president of Scots/Irish descent, rising through law school to emerge as the smoothly intellectual liberal derided by the Clintons during the campaign. Constant references to his colour obscure his real strengths and possible weaknesses.
The one gain to Obama from the hysteria that has greeted his election will come if he can convert it into something politically bankable. He will - such is politics - soon be campaigning for re-election. The Republicans may go through contortions of self-examination, but their party is hardly finished. Evangelical conservatism - political and economic as well as religious - is not dead. Opponents will be prowling Congress and the airwaves, waiting to pounce on each Obama setback.
Obama's popularity must be deployed early to give the conservative Washington machine, awash in interests and lobbies, the momentum it needs to "effect change". Bush's adoption of Keynesian remedialism was welcome, but was not enough to save the economy (and himself) from recession. Obama must no longer pander to an army of grimly implacable unions, farmers, cartels, businesses and traders demanding satisfaction.
Americans have elected a leader not just for themselves but for a wide swath of peoples around the world. They cried out for Obama and America granted them their wish. But the greater the expectation of this man, the more furious will be the backlash if he proves a disappointment.
There is a global detritus of American ineptitude and unpopularity to be cleared. The blundering mammoth that is America's global military projection must be curbed. Intelligence must return to foreign relations. Obama could indicate a start by closing Guantánamo Bay on day one. Will he?
Dare he stop torture, accept the Geneva conventions, get tough with Israel, change policy on Russia, make peace with Iran? He has promised to get out of Iraq and fast. But he must also unleash a ferocious pragmatism as "war creep" envelopes Afghanistan, and stop making puerile pledges to invade Pakistan and bomb border villages.
Pakistan was visited this week by a man poised to hold the leading role in the Obama presidency, General David Petraeus. It has taken Washington seven years to realise that the keys to the gates of Kabul lie in Islamabad. But that merely indicates how catastrophic it would be for Obama to continue the belligerent campaign line towards that theatre. The region cries out for the quality most lacking in Republican diplomacy, subtlety.
Afghanistan could yet be to Obama what Vietnam was to the last great civil rights champion in the White House, Lyndon Johnson. All Democratic presidents eager for re-election find it easiest to buy popularity and a macho image by acting belligerently abroad. Obama has yet to indicate that he is an exception to the rule.
An early test will be his response to the extraordinary sabre-rattling by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev. Medvedev's proposal to station missiles in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad between Poland and Lithuania is a crude reaction to George Bush's location of defence installations in a number of former Warsaw pact countries. It is so clearly a challenge to Obama's resolve that it demands an immediate reply. The opportunity is for a classic show of firmness combined with an openness to negotiate. Kaliningrad could yet be Obama's Cuban missile crisis - the geographical parallel is eerily similar - before he has even taken office.
The exhilaration of the past week has been palpable. I have lost count of the Americans who have said with relief: "I am tired with being hated everywhere I go. Suddenly I am loved." The moment is Rooseveltian. At a time of seeming ubiquitous misery, America not for the first time has pulled an iron from the fire. It has found a messiah.
But I still prefer to see Obama not as a black man but as a talented leader of evident competence and sagacity who could use his charisma to bind people together, and his intelligence to chart a way forward. These are the specific qualities the world needs now. We should place our faith in them and not in race or colour.
Fatah and Hamas in unity government talks
• Egypt sponsors meeting between factions
• Negotiators want end to Gaza economic blockade
* Rory McCarthy in Gaza city guardian.co.uk, Friday November 7 2008
The rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah will meet in Cairo on Sunday for the first time in more than a year in an Egyptian-led effort to agree a unified government and end their divisions.
Egyptian officials have prepared an outline deal that would include a "national reconciliation government", but it is short on details and could take weeks of negotiation. The last effort at a unity government, arranged by the Saudis in February 2007, collapsed and the factions reverted to a near civil war until Hamas seized full control of Gaza months later.
"This will probably be the last opportunity for Fatah and Hamas to put aside their differences and put an end to division and launch a comprehensive national dialogue," said Mkhaimar Abu Sada, a political scientist at Gaza's
al-Azhar University.
The talks will centre on establishing a government with the goal of ending the economic siege of Gaza, reforming the security forces under a national leadership and preparing for fresh presidential and parliamentary elections.
A united government would present a challenge and perhaps an opportunity for fresh policymaking for the US and Europe, which refused to talk to Hamas and isolated the movement soon after it won Palestinian elections in 2006. Since then Hamas-run Gaza has been under economic blockade. Israel limits most imports and has banned all exports. Egypt has also kept its one crossing mostly closed.
Israel is not likely to deal with any government with a Hamas component unless it offers recognition of Israel, a halt to violence and acceptance of past peace deals - something Hamas has consistently refused. Fatah also wants to secure an endorsement for Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader and Palestinian president, to continue in office for another year after his term formally ends on January 8. If Hamas refuses it will probably challenge Abbas's legitimacy and may appoint its own president in Gaza.
Hamas wants an end to Gaza's blockade and is demanding entry into and reform of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the umbrella group regarded as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people". All peace talks with Israel are carried out by Abbas as PLO leader and it was the PLO which in 1993 formally recognised Israel's right to exist as part of the Oslo process. Hamas's entry into the PLO has been discussed but never agreed. It is on the agenda in Cairo but the Islamist movement is pushing hard for a deal.
"The PLO is representing the Palestinian people and its political programme should be discussed among all the political factions and represent all the authorities," said Taher al-Nunu, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza.
Many Palestinians believe there was pressure from the US on Abbas not to deal with Hamas but after the election that may now be waning. Yet Abbas's failure in the past year to secure a peace agreement has weakened his position. "Many people didn't think Hamas was going to last as long as it did," said Abu Sada. "But ... instead of being squeezed it has got much stronger and imposed order in Gaza."
"People are fed up with both of them," said Ali Jarbawi, professor of political science at Birzeit University in Ramallah. "They are fighting over power in an authority still under occupation."
• Negotiators want end to Gaza economic blockade
* Rory McCarthy in Gaza city guardian.co.uk, Friday November 7 2008
The rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah will meet in Cairo on Sunday for the first time in more than a year in an Egyptian-led effort to agree a unified government and end their divisions.
Egyptian officials have prepared an outline deal that would include a "national reconciliation government", but it is short on details and could take weeks of negotiation. The last effort at a unity government, arranged by the Saudis in February 2007, collapsed and the factions reverted to a near civil war until Hamas seized full control of Gaza months later.
"This will probably be the last opportunity for Fatah and Hamas to put aside their differences and put an end to division and launch a comprehensive national dialogue," said Mkhaimar Abu Sada, a political scientist at Gaza's
al-Azhar University.
The talks will centre on establishing a government with the goal of ending the economic siege of Gaza, reforming the security forces under a national leadership and preparing for fresh presidential and parliamentary elections.
A united government would present a challenge and perhaps an opportunity for fresh policymaking for the US and Europe, which refused to talk to Hamas and isolated the movement soon after it won Palestinian elections in 2006. Since then Hamas-run Gaza has been under economic blockade. Israel limits most imports and has banned all exports. Egypt has also kept its one crossing mostly closed.
Israel is not likely to deal with any government with a Hamas component unless it offers recognition of Israel, a halt to violence and acceptance of past peace deals - something Hamas has consistently refused. Fatah also wants to secure an endorsement for Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader and Palestinian president, to continue in office for another year after his term formally ends on January 8. If Hamas refuses it will probably challenge Abbas's legitimacy and may appoint its own president in Gaza.
Hamas wants an end to Gaza's blockade and is demanding entry into and reform of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the umbrella group regarded as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people". All peace talks with Israel are carried out by Abbas as PLO leader and it was the PLO which in 1993 formally recognised Israel's right to exist as part of the Oslo process. Hamas's entry into the PLO has been discussed but never agreed. It is on the agenda in Cairo but the Islamist movement is pushing hard for a deal.
"The PLO is representing the Palestinian people and its political programme should be discussed among all the political factions and represent all the authorities," said Taher al-Nunu, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza.
Many Palestinians believe there was pressure from the US on Abbas not to deal with Hamas but after the election that may now be waning. Yet Abbas's failure in the past year to secure a peace agreement has weakened his position. "Many people didn't think Hamas was going to last as long as it did," said Abu Sada. "But ... instead of being squeezed it has got much stronger and imposed order in Gaza."
"People are fed up with both of them," said Ali Jarbawi, professor of political science at Birzeit University in Ramallah. "They are fighting over power in an authority still under occupation."
Tutsi rebels in Congo accused of murdering civilians
• Bodies litter streets of former Hutu stronghold
• UN moves in armour and forces to halt killings
Chris McGreal in Rutshur guardian.co.uk, Friday November 7 2008
Tutsi rebels in eastern Congo have been accused of summarily killing civilians as they seized a town that had been the stronghold of Hutu militias, and forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes. After two days of fighting, scores of bodies lay in the streets and homes of Kiwanja, a town adjacent to Rutshuru, which was seized by the Tutsi renegade general Laurent Nkunda last week. Residents claimed his forces shot unarmed civilians after accusing them of supporting Hutu militias.
As calm returned to Kiwanja yesterday, Nkunda's forces seized at least two other villages in the area, Nyanzale and Kikuku. The UN said it was moving armoured vehicles and its forces into the area in an attempt to protect civilians and prevent further advances by the Tutsi rebels.
Most of Kiwanja's 35,000 residents were driven out of the town and into Rutshuru, where they were left to fend for themselves during the night in driving rain. Women and children, dragging goats and bundles of clothing, straggled in a line that stretched for miles. Many camped out at the town's stadium, without food or water.
"The Tutsis came and ordered us to leave," said Jean Bakenda. "They shot people who refused to go or who they said were against them. They shot one man right in front of me and told me they would shoot me if I didn't run to Rutshuru straight away. I only had time to grab my wife and children and nothing else."
One house in Kiwanja contained the bodies of five men.
Another resident, Simo Bramporiki, said his wife and child were shot dead. "They knocked on the doors. When the people opened, they killed them with their guns," he said.
Nkunda denied that his National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) forces had killed civilians, saying the dead were Hutu fighters in civilian clothes.
The UN peacekeeping mission, which did not intervene from its nearby base despite its mandate to protect civilians, said it was investigating the killings.
The fighting in Kiwanja appears to have been provoked by an assault by a regional traditional militia, the Mai Mai, and Rwandan Hutu extremists, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) who fled their own country after carrying out the 1994 genocide. The Congolese government's army has often fought in league with the Hutu extremists.
Kiwanja was a stronghold of Hutu support after thousands moved there in recent years to escape fighting and armed gangs in rural areas. Many were reluctant to settle in Rutshuru, which is regarded locally as part of the ancient Tutsi kingdom and is therefore a target for Nkunda.
A ceasefire continued to hold around the region's main town, Goma. The UN has described the defence of Goma as a "red line" and yesterday reiterated that it would use all the force at its disposal, including helicopter gunships and armoured vehicles, to protect the town. UN peacekeepers were digging in to the north of Goma, just short of Nkunda's lines.
Nkunda yesterday renewed a threat to attack Goma if the government kept up what he said were attacks on his troops in order to provoke conflict and western intervention against him. "My soldiers are only defending themselves from attacks," he said. "This is a treasonous government and if it does not negotiate with us then we will force it to negotiate."
Adolphe Muzito, Congo's prime minister, said his government was now ready to talk directly to Nkunda's rebels, despite refusing to earlier in the week. "The government is ready to listen to all the armed groups. I am ready to listen, to receive the grievances of other groups ... including those of the CNDP," Muzito said.
It was unclear, however, if that was a serious offer of talks, or political positioning ahead of a summit of regional leaders in Nairobi today that will focus on the conflict. Congo's president, Joseph Kabila, and the Rwandan leader, Paul Kagame, are expected to attend, along with the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. But Nkunda and the FDLR will not be there.
Rwanda is demanding that Congo and the UN fulfil a commitment to disarm the Hutu extremists on its border who control about 40% of territory in the two Congolese provinces neighbouring Rwanda, North and South Kivu. The FDLR is committed to overthrowing the present Rwandan government and is raising a new generation of fighters imbued with the same hatred of Tutsis.
• UN moves in armour and forces to halt killings
Chris McGreal in Rutshur guardian.co.uk, Friday November 7 2008
Tutsi rebels in eastern Congo have been accused of summarily killing civilians as they seized a town that had been the stronghold of Hutu militias, and forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes. After two days of fighting, scores of bodies lay in the streets and homes of Kiwanja, a town adjacent to Rutshuru, which was seized by the Tutsi renegade general Laurent Nkunda last week. Residents claimed his forces shot unarmed civilians after accusing them of supporting Hutu militias.
As calm returned to Kiwanja yesterday, Nkunda's forces seized at least two other villages in the area, Nyanzale and Kikuku. The UN said it was moving armoured vehicles and its forces into the area in an attempt to protect civilians and prevent further advances by the Tutsi rebels.
Most of Kiwanja's 35,000 residents were driven out of the town and into Rutshuru, where they were left to fend for themselves during the night in driving rain. Women and children, dragging goats and bundles of clothing, straggled in a line that stretched for miles. Many camped out at the town's stadium, without food or water.
"The Tutsis came and ordered us to leave," said Jean Bakenda. "They shot people who refused to go or who they said were against them. They shot one man right in front of me and told me they would shoot me if I didn't run to Rutshuru straight away. I only had time to grab my wife and children and nothing else."
One house in Kiwanja contained the bodies of five men.
Another resident, Simo Bramporiki, said his wife and child were shot dead. "They knocked on the doors. When the people opened, they killed them with their guns," he said.
Nkunda denied that his National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) forces had killed civilians, saying the dead were Hutu fighters in civilian clothes.
The UN peacekeeping mission, which did not intervene from its nearby base despite its mandate to protect civilians, said it was investigating the killings.
The fighting in Kiwanja appears to have been provoked by an assault by a regional traditional militia, the Mai Mai, and Rwandan Hutu extremists, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) who fled their own country after carrying out the 1994 genocide. The Congolese government's army has often fought in league with the Hutu extremists.
Kiwanja was a stronghold of Hutu support after thousands moved there in recent years to escape fighting and armed gangs in rural areas. Many were reluctant to settle in Rutshuru, which is regarded locally as part of the ancient Tutsi kingdom and is therefore a target for Nkunda.
A ceasefire continued to hold around the region's main town, Goma. The UN has described the defence of Goma as a "red line" and yesterday reiterated that it would use all the force at its disposal, including helicopter gunships and armoured vehicles, to protect the town. UN peacekeepers were digging in to the north of Goma, just short of Nkunda's lines.
Nkunda yesterday renewed a threat to attack Goma if the government kept up what he said were attacks on his troops in order to provoke conflict and western intervention against him. "My soldiers are only defending themselves from attacks," he said. "This is a treasonous government and if it does not negotiate with us then we will force it to negotiate."
Adolphe Muzito, Congo's prime minister, said his government was now ready to talk directly to Nkunda's rebels, despite refusing to earlier in the week. "The government is ready to listen to all the armed groups. I am ready to listen, to receive the grievances of other groups ... including those of the CNDP," Muzito said.
It was unclear, however, if that was a serious offer of talks, or political positioning ahead of a summit of regional leaders in Nairobi today that will focus on the conflict. Congo's president, Joseph Kabila, and the Rwandan leader, Paul Kagame, are expected to attend, along with the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. But Nkunda and the FDLR will not be there.
Rwanda is demanding that Congo and the UN fulfil a commitment to disarm the Hutu extremists on its border who control about 40% of territory in the two Congolese provinces neighbouring Rwanda, North and South Kivu. The FDLR is committed to overthrowing the present Rwandan government and is raising a new generation of fighters imbued with the same hatred of Tutsis.
First punch is thrown as novices square up
Simon Tisdall guardian.co.uk, Friday November 7 2008 00.01 GMT
Dmitry Medvedev, 43, and Barack Obama, 47, share a couple of things in common. Both are exceptionally young, inexperienced and almost wholly untried in their respective roles as president and president-elect of the world's two great nuclear powers. Both have a lot to prove to their fellow citizens, to the world and to themselves.
In this context, the Russian leader's highly aggressive "state of the nation" speech, timed for delivery as Obama raised his fist in victory after Tuesday's American election, can be seen as a first exploratory punch in a boxing match between rank novices.
This contest is likely to run for many rounds. It will certainly be rough and clumsy. It could turn very nasty indeed.
Medvedev's decision to deploy short-range Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, up against the borders of Nato and the EU, looks like a rather obvious attempt to test the mettle of the American greenhorn. Although Obama does not take office until January 20, how to respond and, more broadly, how to
handle rock-bottom bilateral relations with Russia's resurgent nationalists, are questions he cannot put off for long.
Getting Obama's attention also appears to be part of Medvedev's gameplan. Moscow has been complaining for years that the west, and the US in particular, ignores its concerns.
Medvedev said it again on Wednesday. Then he reeled off a litany of grievances including claims that Washington deliberately provoked last summer's Georgian conflict, that Nato is intent on encircling his country with bases, and that planned American missile defence facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic are targeted at Russia. Hence, in his view, the need for the Kaliningrad build-up.
"The missile deployment is all of a piece with Russia planting its flag in the Arctic and [former president Vladimir] Putin going hunting bare-chested in Siberia, to, at the other end of the spectrum, active military operations in the Caucasus," said David Clark, chairman of the Russia Foundation thinktank.
"They are saying: 'Russia is back. We're powerful again. We're tough. You can't ignore us.' "
Clark said he believed the Kaliningrad deployment was largely a gesture. Eastern Europeans had no more reason to fear an attack than Russia had to fear the two US bases. But in bearding Obama, and pointedly withholding public congratulations on his election triumph, Medvedev may have made a serious miscalculation.
"For economic and strategic reasons Obama may decide to scrap the missile defence plans. But Medvedev just made it harder for him to do that. Perhaps he's trying to box him [Obama] into a corner. That would make a decision not to go ahead look like a victory for Russia," Clark said.
The possibility that Obama might cancel the interceptor programme, which the Bush administration says is solely intended to protect against strikes by "rogue" states such as Iran, alarms the Czechs and Poles.
Such a decision would inevitably be interpreted as a lessening of the US
commitment to eastern Europe and the Baltic and Black Sea regions at a time when the Georgia crisis and disputes with Russia over ethnic minorities, energy, Nato's enlargement, and political meddling are rekindling cold war memories.
Radek Sikorski, Poland's foreign minister, said recently that Obama had told him he was concerned about the interceptor system's effectiveness and whether it was indeed aimed at Russia. "If he is assured that it is not directed against Russia, then he would ... honour the agreements of his predecessors," Sikorski said. All the same, doubts persist, fanned by Democrats in the US Congress who want to cut funding for the project.
Edward Lucas, author of the recently republished book The New Cold War, said Medvedev had made an interesting opening move and there was much more to come.
"It's the first time since the cold war that Russia has taken physical steps to back up its threats over missile defence. Medvedev's testing Obama. And he'll do so on other fronts too. Georgia could bubble up again. He wants to see how close Obama stands to his European allies, how he handles bilateral issues, how he plays the Iran card as the US tries to leave Iraq."
Obama's instinct for dialogue and consensus may be tempered by the EU's recent experience. Europe has been bending over backwards trying to be nice, but has made little impression on Russia's leadership, Lucas said. If EU foreign ministers agree next week to resume strategic partnership talks with Moscow, broken off during the Georgia crisis, Russia is likely to read the move as a further sign of weakness.
Obama and Medvedev have never met. That could change next week when the Russian president travels to Washington for the G20 summit on the global economic crisis. It's possible Obama will also attend. If so, he had better keep his guard up.
Dmitry Medvedev, 43, and Barack Obama, 47, share a couple of things in common. Both are exceptionally young, inexperienced and almost wholly untried in their respective roles as president and president-elect of the world's two great nuclear powers. Both have a lot to prove to their fellow citizens, to the world and to themselves.
In this context, the Russian leader's highly aggressive "state of the nation" speech, timed for delivery as Obama raised his fist in victory after Tuesday's American election, can be seen as a first exploratory punch in a boxing match between rank novices.
This contest is likely to run for many rounds. It will certainly be rough and clumsy. It could turn very nasty indeed.
Medvedev's decision to deploy short-range Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, up against the borders of Nato and the EU, looks like a rather obvious attempt to test the mettle of the American greenhorn. Although Obama does not take office until January 20, how to respond and, more broadly, how to
handle rock-bottom bilateral relations with Russia's resurgent nationalists, are questions he cannot put off for long.
Getting Obama's attention also appears to be part of Medvedev's gameplan. Moscow has been complaining for years that the west, and the US in particular, ignores its concerns.
Medvedev said it again on Wednesday. Then he reeled off a litany of grievances including claims that Washington deliberately provoked last summer's Georgian conflict, that Nato is intent on encircling his country with bases, and that planned American missile defence facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic are targeted at Russia. Hence, in his view, the need for the Kaliningrad build-up.
"The missile deployment is all of a piece with Russia planting its flag in the Arctic and [former president Vladimir] Putin going hunting bare-chested in Siberia, to, at the other end of the spectrum, active military operations in the Caucasus," said David Clark, chairman of the Russia Foundation thinktank.
"They are saying: 'Russia is back. We're powerful again. We're tough. You can't ignore us.' "
Clark said he believed the Kaliningrad deployment was largely a gesture. Eastern Europeans had no more reason to fear an attack than Russia had to fear the two US bases. But in bearding Obama, and pointedly withholding public congratulations on his election triumph, Medvedev may have made a serious miscalculation.
"For economic and strategic reasons Obama may decide to scrap the missile defence plans. But Medvedev just made it harder for him to do that. Perhaps he's trying to box him [Obama] into a corner. That would make a decision not to go ahead look like a victory for Russia," Clark said.
The possibility that Obama might cancel the interceptor programme, which the Bush administration says is solely intended to protect against strikes by "rogue" states such as Iran, alarms the Czechs and Poles.
Such a decision would inevitably be interpreted as a lessening of the US
commitment to eastern Europe and the Baltic and Black Sea regions at a time when the Georgia crisis and disputes with Russia over ethnic minorities, energy, Nato's enlargement, and political meddling are rekindling cold war memories.
Radek Sikorski, Poland's foreign minister, said recently that Obama had told him he was concerned about the interceptor system's effectiveness and whether it was indeed aimed at Russia. "If he is assured that it is not directed against Russia, then he would ... honour the agreements of his predecessors," Sikorski said. All the same, doubts persist, fanned by Democrats in the US Congress who want to cut funding for the project.
Edward Lucas, author of the recently republished book The New Cold War, said Medvedev had made an interesting opening move and there was much more to come.
"It's the first time since the cold war that Russia has taken physical steps to back up its threats over missile defence. Medvedev's testing Obama. And he'll do so on other fronts too. Georgia could bubble up again. He wants to see how close Obama stands to his European allies, how he handles bilateral issues, how he plays the Iran card as the US tries to leave Iraq."
Obama's instinct for dialogue and consensus may be tempered by the EU's recent experience. Europe has been bending over backwards trying to be nice, but has made little impression on Russia's leadership, Lucas said. If EU foreign ministers agree next week to resume strategic partnership talks with Moscow, broken off during the Georgia crisis, Russia is likely to read the move as a further sign of weakness.
Obama and Medvedev have never met. That could change next week when the Russian president travels to Washington for the G20 summit on the global economic crisis. It's possible Obama will also attend. If so, he had better keep his guard up.
Russia fires warning shot over US missile plan
• Medvedev to site rockets in Kaliningrad enclave
• Speech was delayed to coincide with poll result
* Ian Traynor, Europe editor
* guardian.co.uk, Friday November 7 2008
An honour guard stands to attention as missile carriers rumble through Red Square, Moscow, in a return of the Victory Day parade
An honour guard stands to attention as missile carriers rumble through Red Square, Moscow, in a return of the Victory Day parade. Photograph: Yuri Kochetkov/EPA
Dmitri Medvedev is to go to Washington next week for the first time as Russian president, with the chances of a meeting with president-elect Barack Obama clouded by his decision to station missiles in the heart of Europe.
Medvedev's military announcement, in a speech delayed by a month in order to coincide with the election of the new White House occupant, sent a hostile message towards an Obama administration, aimed to sow friction between European capitals and a new-look Washington, and sought to intimidate the Poles and the Czechs, who are to host the bases for the Pentagon's missile defence project.
Iskander-M short-range missiles will be deployed in Kaliningrad, Russia's westernmost garrison, an isolated enclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.
The Russian announcement was the sole menacing message amid a wave of global optimism that accompanied the Democratic triumph in the US. Just as western diplomats and analysts were suggesting relations between Russia and the west, at their worst since the end of the cold war, could improve, the Russian leader's salvo was seen as an unnecessary challenge to Obama, who will be wary of appearing weak on national security.
"It's pretty amazing stuff," said a European diplomat. "The timing is gobsmacking. It will impact on the debate [on relations with Russia]."
Russian president: 'A bellicose and increasingly angry Kremlin'
Link to this audio
In Washington, Sean McCormack, a state department spokesman for the Bush administration, said: "The steps that the Russian government announced today are disappointing. But again [the missile defence project] is not directed at them. Hopefully one day they'll realise that."
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister and a candidate for chancellor next year, said the Medvedev message was badly timed, while Lithuania's president, Valdas Adamkus, described it as "beyond comprehension".
Lithuania is leading a losing battle within the EU to keep negotiations with Moscow frozen, and is furious at what it sees as a British U-turn in favour of resuming talks on a new strategic pact between the EU and Russia. British officials confirmed yesterday that the government favoured resuming talks with Moscow, which were suspended in September after the UK strongly criticised Russia over the Georgia crisis. "The UK view is that we want to get back to a position to pursue these negotiations," said a diplomat.
Medvedev, below, is also to travel to Nice next week, where President Nicolas Sarkozy of France will host an EU-Russia summit which is expected to restart the stalled negotiations on the Russia-Europe pact. The UK diplomat added that the Medvedev statement could strengthen support for Lithuania's anti-Russian line at an EU summit today and at a meeting of foreign ministers on Monday in Brussels.
The Czechs, Poles and others will be more inclined to oppose talks with Russia, while the French, Germans, and Italians are keen to restore relations with the Russians without conditions.
Coming on top of last August's invasion and partition of Georgia by Russia, and Medvedev's statement that he was not afraid of a new cold war, his state-of-the-nation speech in the Kremlin appeared calculated to inflame tensions with America at a time when much of the rest of the world is relieved at the demise of the neoconservatives in Washington and anticipating a more benign US administration.
The speech was intended to scare Europeans into opposing the US missile defence bases in Europe - silos for 10 ballistic missile interceptor rockets in northern Poland, and a radar base south of Prague in the Czech Republic.
The Russian tactic looks unlikely to impress the Americans nor intimidate the Poles, who have bargained hard for security guarantees from the Americans.
But Steinmeier indirectly criticised the US project, warning against a new arms race in Europe, and the Czechs are in a much more precarious position.
The Czech government is keen to host the missile base. But two thirds of Czechs are against it and the government has just been trounced in local elections that have shifted the balance of power in the Czech upper house. The scheme is strongly opposed by the social democratic opposition and may not survive the necessary parliamentary ratification process, which has been indefinitely shelved.
Washington's worries about the fate of the radar base were evident this week when General Henry Obering, the outgoing chief of the Pentagon's missile defence agency, made a farewell visit to Prague and told Czech journalists that the US had a plan B for locating the base outside the republic, but was reluctant to turn to another country.
The optimistic view among diplomats is that Medvedev delivered his threat to clear the air while the Bush administration is still in office, and that he is keen to pursue more ambitious nuclear arms cuts with the incoming Obama team. Yesterday, after his speech, the Kremlin announced that Medvedev had congratulated Obama for winning the US presidency, saying by telegram he was "counting on a constructive dialogue with you on the basis of trust and taking each other's interests into account".
Medvedev is to make his first presidential trip to Washington next week to take part in the G20 summit on the global economic crisis. The Russian foreign ministry said he could meet Obama on the margins of the summit.
Rocket men
March 1983 The American president, Ronald Reagan, launches the Strategic Defence Initiative. Dubbed Star Wars, the SDI was to develop a missile shield that would shelter the US from attack by intercontinental nuclear ballistic missiles.
1991 End of the cold war leaves the initiative redundant.
1990s The SDI is superseded by the National Missile Defence system, with silos and facilities eventually sited in Alaska and California and aimed across the Pacific Ocean, specifically to protect against a potential attack by North Korea.
2002 The Pentagon explores support in Poland and Czech Republic for first missile defence sites outside the US - a radar tracking station south of Prague and the stationing of 10 interceptor rockets in Poland, said to counter possible ballistic missile attack by Iran.
July 2008 US and Czech governments sign agreement on radar station.
August 2008 US and Polish governments sign pact on interceptor rockets.
• Speech was delayed to coincide with poll result
* Ian Traynor, Europe editor
* guardian.co.uk, Friday November 7 2008
An honour guard stands to attention as missile carriers rumble through Red Square, Moscow, in a return of the Victory Day parade
An honour guard stands to attention as missile carriers rumble through Red Square, Moscow, in a return of the Victory Day parade. Photograph: Yuri Kochetkov/EPA
Dmitri Medvedev is to go to Washington next week for the first time as Russian president, with the chances of a meeting with president-elect Barack Obama clouded by his decision to station missiles in the heart of Europe.
Medvedev's military announcement, in a speech delayed by a month in order to coincide with the election of the new White House occupant, sent a hostile message towards an Obama administration, aimed to sow friction between European capitals and a new-look Washington, and sought to intimidate the Poles and the Czechs, who are to host the bases for the Pentagon's missile defence project.
Iskander-M short-range missiles will be deployed in Kaliningrad, Russia's westernmost garrison, an isolated enclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.
The Russian announcement was the sole menacing message amid a wave of global optimism that accompanied the Democratic triumph in the US. Just as western diplomats and analysts were suggesting relations between Russia and the west, at their worst since the end of the cold war, could improve, the Russian leader's salvo was seen as an unnecessary challenge to Obama, who will be wary of appearing weak on national security.
"It's pretty amazing stuff," said a European diplomat. "The timing is gobsmacking. It will impact on the debate [on relations with Russia]."
Russian president: 'A bellicose and increasingly angry Kremlin'
Link to this audio
In Washington, Sean McCormack, a state department spokesman for the Bush administration, said: "The steps that the Russian government announced today are disappointing. But again [the missile defence project] is not directed at them. Hopefully one day they'll realise that."
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister and a candidate for chancellor next year, said the Medvedev message was badly timed, while Lithuania's president, Valdas Adamkus, described it as "beyond comprehension".
Lithuania is leading a losing battle within the EU to keep negotiations with Moscow frozen, and is furious at what it sees as a British U-turn in favour of resuming talks on a new strategic pact between the EU and Russia. British officials confirmed yesterday that the government favoured resuming talks with Moscow, which were suspended in September after the UK strongly criticised Russia over the Georgia crisis. "The UK view is that we want to get back to a position to pursue these negotiations," said a diplomat.
Medvedev, below, is also to travel to Nice next week, where President Nicolas Sarkozy of France will host an EU-Russia summit which is expected to restart the stalled negotiations on the Russia-Europe pact. The UK diplomat added that the Medvedev statement could strengthen support for Lithuania's anti-Russian line at an EU summit today and at a meeting of foreign ministers on Monday in Brussels.
The Czechs, Poles and others will be more inclined to oppose talks with Russia, while the French, Germans, and Italians are keen to restore relations with the Russians without conditions.
Coming on top of last August's invasion and partition of Georgia by Russia, and Medvedev's statement that he was not afraid of a new cold war, his state-of-the-nation speech in the Kremlin appeared calculated to inflame tensions with America at a time when much of the rest of the world is relieved at the demise of the neoconservatives in Washington and anticipating a more benign US administration.
The speech was intended to scare Europeans into opposing the US missile defence bases in Europe - silos for 10 ballistic missile interceptor rockets in northern Poland, and a radar base south of Prague in the Czech Republic.
The Russian tactic looks unlikely to impress the Americans nor intimidate the Poles, who have bargained hard for security guarantees from the Americans.
But Steinmeier indirectly criticised the US project, warning against a new arms race in Europe, and the Czechs are in a much more precarious position.
The Czech government is keen to host the missile base. But two thirds of Czechs are against it and the government has just been trounced in local elections that have shifted the balance of power in the Czech upper house. The scheme is strongly opposed by the social democratic opposition and may not survive the necessary parliamentary ratification process, which has been indefinitely shelved.
Washington's worries about the fate of the radar base were evident this week when General Henry Obering, the outgoing chief of the Pentagon's missile defence agency, made a farewell visit to Prague and told Czech journalists that the US had a plan B for locating the base outside the republic, but was reluctant to turn to another country.
The optimistic view among diplomats is that Medvedev delivered his threat to clear the air while the Bush administration is still in office, and that he is keen to pursue more ambitious nuclear arms cuts with the incoming Obama team. Yesterday, after his speech, the Kremlin announced that Medvedev had congratulated Obama for winning the US presidency, saying by telegram he was "counting on a constructive dialogue with you on the basis of trust and taking each other's interests into account".
Medvedev is to make his first presidential trip to Washington next week to take part in the G20 summit on the global economic crisis. The Russian foreign ministry said he could meet Obama on the margins of the summit.
Rocket men
March 1983 The American president, Ronald Reagan, launches the Strategic Defence Initiative. Dubbed Star Wars, the SDI was to develop a missile shield that would shelter the US from attack by intercontinental nuclear ballistic missiles.
1991 End of the cold war leaves the initiative redundant.
1990s The SDI is superseded by the National Missile Defence system, with silos and facilities eventually sited in Alaska and California and aimed across the Pacific Ocean, specifically to protect against a potential attack by North Korea.
2002 The Pentagon explores support in Poland and Czech Republic for first missile defence sites outside the US - a radar tracking station south of Prague and the stationing of 10 interceptor rockets in Poland, said to counter possible ballistic missile attack by Iran.
July 2008 US and Czech governments sign agreement on radar station.
August 2008 US and Polish governments sign pact on interceptor rockets.
Record opium harvest in Afghanistan threatens new heroin crisis in Britain
• EU agency fears glut and reversal of deaths decline
• UK tops cocaine abuse table for fifth year in row
* Alan Travis in Brussels, The Guardian, Friday November 7 2008
Afghan farmers in a poppy fi eld: Helmand province, centre of British military operations, accounts for over half of the opium crop. Photograph: Ahmad Masood/Reuters.
A glut of opium on the world market, fuelled by a record Afghan harvest, threatens a new heroin crisis in Britain, the European Union's drug agency warned yesterday. The agency's annual report also confirms that the UK remains at the top of the European league table of 27 countries for cocaine abuse for the fifth year in a row. The UK accounts for 820,000 of the 4 million Europeans who have "recently used" cocaine.
But the agency also reports that there are "stronger signals" of the declining popularity of cannabis across Europe, especially among British school students.
Nevertheless the drug experts say that a quarter of all Europeans - 71 million people - have tried cannabis at some time in their lives.
The heroin warning from the European monitoring centre for drugs and drug abuse follows two record opium harvests in Afghanistan of 8,200 tonnes in 2007 and 7,700 tonnes this year. The harvests represent 90% of the world's illicit opium production with Helmand province, the centre of British military operations, accounting for over half of the crop.
"While favourable weather conditions have boosted harvests, the recurrent conflicts, because of the destruction, poverty and general insecurity that they entail, are likely to be an important factor in explaining the increases in opium production," says an agency study monitoring the supply of heroin into Europe.
The EU agency says that "alternative development" measures to persuade farmers to switch to other crops are having a very limited impact. It says that in eastern Afghanistan insecurity, lack of water, poor roads and increases in fuel costs have combined with declining prices for legal crops such as onions, which may make it difficult to sustain reductions in poppy cultivation in the future.
In Helmand, where opium poppy continues to grow in abundance, the security situation including the threat of roadside robbery and the proliferation of insurgent checkpoints make it sometimes impossible to get legal crops to urban markets.
"The latest data, while showing an overall reduction in production, point to increasing production in southern Afghanistan, in particular in Helmand province, where around 70% was produced in 2008," the study concludes.
The EU is worried that these record harvests threaten to end the "slowly improving" heroin situation in Britain and across Europe and reverse the decline seen in heroin-related deaths.
Seizures have doubled in Turkey, an important transit country, and are 20% up in Britain. The EU drug experts fear that the recent decline in heroin-related deaths in Britain - down from 2,171 in 2001 to 1,979 in 2005 - will be halted and even reversed as a result of a glut of much cheaper and possibly more potent heroin entering Britain. "Current evidence does not point to an epidemic growth in heroin problems as experienced by most of Europe in the 1990s," said the EU drugs agency director, Wolfgang Gotz. "Nonetheless, we cannot ignore the threat posed by the glut of heroin now available on the world market, the concerns raised by indicators of heroin use, or signs that synthetic heroin may be a growing problem. Vigilance is clearly required."
Britain's continuing position at the top of the league table of 27 EU countries for cocaine abuse is based on the fact that 12.7% of young adults aged 15 to 34 have used the drug.
Typical cocaine users in Britain are now just as likely to be poor working class young men as wealthy City traders.
The latest school surveys show that 5% of 15- and 16-year-olds have tried it. Cocaine use in Europe is highest in Britain and Spain. It has stabilised in both countries in recent years but at a level that is approaching American consumption. The increasing number of Europeans using the drug - 4 million last year, the EU estimates - reflects its recent growth in Italy, Denmark and Ireland.
The growing popularity of cocaine has been matched by declining use of amphetamines.
There is encouraging news about cannabis consumption in Britain. While the UK consistently had the highest levels of cannabis use among schoolchildren in the early and mid-1990s in this European survey, it has seen the sharpest decline in its popularity of any EU country.
Britain is now fourth in the Euro-league cannabis table amongst 15- to 24-year-olds, with 39.5% saying they have tried it at some time, and 12% saying they have used it in the last month.
• UK tops cocaine abuse table for fifth year in row
* Alan Travis in Brussels, The Guardian, Friday November 7 2008
Afghan farmers in a poppy fi eld: Helmand province, centre of British military operations, accounts for over half of the opium crop. Photograph: Ahmad Masood/Reuters.
A glut of opium on the world market, fuelled by a record Afghan harvest, threatens a new heroin crisis in Britain, the European Union's drug agency warned yesterday. The agency's annual report also confirms that the UK remains at the top of the European league table of 27 countries for cocaine abuse for the fifth year in a row. The UK accounts for 820,000 of the 4 million Europeans who have "recently used" cocaine.
But the agency also reports that there are "stronger signals" of the declining popularity of cannabis across Europe, especially among British school students.
Nevertheless the drug experts say that a quarter of all Europeans - 71 million people - have tried cannabis at some time in their lives.
The heroin warning from the European monitoring centre for drugs and drug abuse follows two record opium harvests in Afghanistan of 8,200 tonnes in 2007 and 7,700 tonnes this year. The harvests represent 90% of the world's illicit opium production with Helmand province, the centre of British military operations, accounting for over half of the crop.
"While favourable weather conditions have boosted harvests, the recurrent conflicts, because of the destruction, poverty and general insecurity that they entail, are likely to be an important factor in explaining the increases in opium production," says an agency study monitoring the supply of heroin into Europe.
The EU agency says that "alternative development" measures to persuade farmers to switch to other crops are having a very limited impact. It says that in eastern Afghanistan insecurity, lack of water, poor roads and increases in fuel costs have combined with declining prices for legal crops such as onions, which may make it difficult to sustain reductions in poppy cultivation in the future.
In Helmand, where opium poppy continues to grow in abundance, the security situation including the threat of roadside robbery and the proliferation of insurgent checkpoints make it sometimes impossible to get legal crops to urban markets.
"The latest data, while showing an overall reduction in production, point to increasing production in southern Afghanistan, in particular in Helmand province, where around 70% was produced in 2008," the study concludes.
The EU is worried that these record harvests threaten to end the "slowly improving" heroin situation in Britain and across Europe and reverse the decline seen in heroin-related deaths.
Seizures have doubled in Turkey, an important transit country, and are 20% up in Britain. The EU drug experts fear that the recent decline in heroin-related deaths in Britain - down from 2,171 in 2001 to 1,979 in 2005 - will be halted and even reversed as a result of a glut of much cheaper and possibly more potent heroin entering Britain. "Current evidence does not point to an epidemic growth in heroin problems as experienced by most of Europe in the 1990s," said the EU drugs agency director, Wolfgang Gotz. "Nonetheless, we cannot ignore the threat posed by the glut of heroin now available on the world market, the concerns raised by indicators of heroin use, or signs that synthetic heroin may be a growing problem. Vigilance is clearly required."
Britain's continuing position at the top of the league table of 27 EU countries for cocaine abuse is based on the fact that 12.7% of young adults aged 15 to 34 have used the drug.
Typical cocaine users in Britain are now just as likely to be poor working class young men as wealthy City traders.
The latest school surveys show that 5% of 15- and 16-year-olds have tried it. Cocaine use in Europe is highest in Britain and Spain. It has stabilised in both countries in recent years but at a level that is approaching American consumption. The increasing number of Europeans using the drug - 4 million last year, the EU estimates - reflects its recent growth in Italy, Denmark and Ireland.
The growing popularity of cocaine has been matched by declining use of amphetamines.
There is encouraging news about cannabis consumption in Britain. While the UK consistently had the highest levels of cannabis use among schoolchildren in the early and mid-1990s in this European survey, it has seen the sharpest decline in its popularity of any EU country.
Britain is now fourth in the Euro-league cannabis table amongst 15- to 24-year-olds, with 39.5% saying they have tried it at some time, and 12% saying they have used it in the last month.
£6m house, 30 rooms, one careful anarchist collective: inside Britain's poshest squat Group plan art installation after taking over Mayfair property
Helen Pidd The Guardian, Friday November 7 2008
It is one of London's most exclusive addresses. Michelin-starred restaurants are just a block away, the US embassy is around the corner and Hyde Park is at the end of the road. To share the same postcode ought to cost millions.
But the new residents of 18 Upper Grosvenor Street, a raggle-taggle of teenagers and artists called the Da! collective, haven't paid a penny for their £6.25m, six-storey townhouse in Mayfair.
The black anarchist flag flapping from the first-floor balcony gives a clue what they are up to: since finding a window open on the first floor on October 10, the group has been squatting in the house, and only plan to leave when evicted. This might take some time: after almost a month, the deed owner — a company called Deltaland Resources Ltd, according to the Land Registry — doesn't appear to have noticed that the once-opulent building has been taken over.
The 30-plus rooms of the grade II-listed residence are now scattered with sleeping bags, mattresses, rucksacks spilling over with clothes and endless half-finished art installations. One room is full of tree branches while another hosts a pink baby bath above which dangle test tubes filled with capers.
They had been watching the building for "at least six months" before they decided to try moving in , said one member, Stephanie Smith, 21. "We had put tape on the keyhole and kept looking through the letter box to see if anyone had been there." Then, one October night, five of them decided to go in. Some wore high-visibility jackets to look like builders; Smith had a clipboard and fur coat. They propped their rented ladder up against the front of the building, and one man climbed on to the balcony.
"I went across to the window and I couldn't believe it when it was unlocked," said the squatter, who declined to give his name. " It was a really exciting moment."
Almost a month since the occupation began, no one from Deltaland Resources Ltd, which is registered in the British Virgin Islands, has been in touch. Meanwhile the locks have been changed. The Da! group has reconnected the utilities and says the bills will be paid.
Smith insists they have done nothing wrong. "Squatting is not a criminal offence, it's a civil matter," she said. "If the owners want to kick us out they will have to apply for an eviction notice. If anything, we are improving the building by mending leaks and things like that."
The group has had a mixed reception from the other residents of Upper Grosvenor Street. "Our next-door neighbours have been really nice; they've even let us use their wireless internet," said Smith. Another neighbour, a man called Alexander, has offered the services of a cook. But not everyone is happy. Jacques Dejardin, manager of a restaurant run by Michelin-starred chef Richard Corrigan, which was due to open last night, was horrified to discover this week it was directly opposite a squat.
" It's rather bewildering. When you move into an address like this you don't expect to have squatters as neighbours," Dejardin said. He needn't worry about the squatters popping in for dinner, though: they are firm devotees of freecycling and collect all their food from supermarket skips.
• This article was amended on Friday November 7 2008. It was replaced by the version that appeared in later editions.
Squatters' sites
• In 2001, a £1.5m London house owned by former BBC chairman Gavyn Davies was taken over by squatters for 10 days. The uninvited guests annoyed neighbours with incessant bongo-playing.
• In 1993, 10 squatters moved into a house in west London belonging to the Sultan of Brunei. Though there were photographs in the property of the sultan with the Queen, the squatters said they did not knowwho owned the house until efforts to evict them were taken on behalf of "the government of His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah, Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam".
• Last year Harry Hallowes, then 70, drew international attention after he became legal owner of a piece of Hampstead Heath, north London, where he had lived rough for more than 20 years. He was handed the deeds, worth £2m, after developers threatened to evict him.
It is one of London's most exclusive addresses. Michelin-starred restaurants are just a block away, the US embassy is around the corner and Hyde Park is at the end of the road. To share the same postcode ought to cost millions.
But the new residents of 18 Upper Grosvenor Street, a raggle-taggle of teenagers and artists called the Da! collective, haven't paid a penny for their £6.25m, six-storey townhouse in Mayfair.
The black anarchist flag flapping from the first-floor balcony gives a clue what they are up to: since finding a window open on the first floor on October 10, the group has been squatting in the house, and only plan to leave when evicted. This might take some time: after almost a month, the deed owner — a company called Deltaland Resources Ltd, according to the Land Registry — doesn't appear to have noticed that the once-opulent building has been taken over.
The 30-plus rooms of the grade II-listed residence are now scattered with sleeping bags, mattresses, rucksacks spilling over with clothes and endless half-finished art installations. One room is full of tree branches while another hosts a pink baby bath above which dangle test tubes filled with capers.
They had been watching the building for "at least six months" before they decided to try moving in , said one member, Stephanie Smith, 21. "We had put tape on the keyhole and kept looking through the letter box to see if anyone had been there." Then, one October night, five of them decided to go in. Some wore high-visibility jackets to look like builders; Smith had a clipboard and fur coat. They propped their rented ladder up against the front of the building, and one man climbed on to the balcony.
"I went across to the window and I couldn't believe it when it was unlocked," said the squatter, who declined to give his name. " It was a really exciting moment."
Almost a month since the occupation began, no one from Deltaland Resources Ltd, which is registered in the British Virgin Islands, has been in touch. Meanwhile the locks have been changed. The Da! group has reconnected the utilities and says the bills will be paid.
Smith insists they have done nothing wrong. "Squatting is not a criminal offence, it's a civil matter," she said. "If the owners want to kick us out they will have to apply for an eviction notice. If anything, we are improving the building by mending leaks and things like that."
The group has had a mixed reception from the other residents of Upper Grosvenor Street. "Our next-door neighbours have been really nice; they've even let us use their wireless internet," said Smith. Another neighbour, a man called Alexander, has offered the services of a cook. But not everyone is happy. Jacques Dejardin, manager of a restaurant run by Michelin-starred chef Richard Corrigan, which was due to open last night, was horrified to discover this week it was directly opposite a squat.
" It's rather bewildering. When you move into an address like this you don't expect to have squatters as neighbours," Dejardin said. He needn't worry about the squatters popping in for dinner, though: they are firm devotees of freecycling and collect all their food from supermarket skips.
• This article was amended on Friday November 7 2008. It was replaced by the version that appeared in later editions.
Squatters' sites
• In 2001, a £1.5m London house owned by former BBC chairman Gavyn Davies was taken over by squatters for 10 days. The uninvited guests annoyed neighbours with incessant bongo-playing.
• In 1993, 10 squatters moved into a house in west London belonging to the Sultan of Brunei. Though there were photographs in the property of the sultan with the Queen, the squatters said they did not knowwho owned the house until efforts to evict them were taken on behalf of "the government of His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah, Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam".
• Last year Harry Hallowes, then 70, drew international attention after he became legal owner of a piece of Hampstead Heath, north London, where he had lived rough for more than 20 years. He was handed the deeds, worth £2m, after developers threatened to evict him.
Saville delays Bloody Sunday report for a year
• Confidence in tribunal eroding in Derry
• Last witness was heard in January 2005
* Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent
* The Guardian, Friday November 7 2008
The official report into Bloody Sunday has been delayed for at least another year, it emerged yesterday, prompting sharp criticism from victims' families.
Lord Saville, whose inquiry cost £181m and stopped taking evidence in 2005, was supposed to complete his report this autumn. But his findings will not now be made public until the autumn of 2009 at the earliest.
The latest delay prompted campaigners in Derry to warn that confidence in the tribunal was being eroded and victims' families were suffering further anguish. Jean Hegarty, whose brother Kevin McElhinney was one of the 13 unarmed civilians killed in Derry 36 years ago, said this latest delay was a huge disappointment.
"It's beginning to raise questions in my mind," she said. "I don't really want to say what they are just yet, but your mind begins to turn around."
An apologetic Saville said: "We have always found it difficult, given the scale and complexity of the material with which we are dealing, to predict accurately how long it will take us to complete our task."
The longest and most expensive inquiry in British legal history is investigating events surrounding the shootings at a civil rights demonstration in February 1972 by the Parachute Regiment. The first witness was heard in November 2000 and the last in January 2005.
Mark Durkan, the SDLP leader and MP for Foyle, said he shared the family's frustrations over the latest delay. "Obviously Lord Saville has to give the weight and scale of the evidence involved diligent consideration.
"And the families and others who participated in the inquiry have confidence in him in that regard. However, the report taking so long and the fears that it may be delayed further is a source of some anxiety and apprehension."
Eamonn McCann, the chairman of the Bloody Sunday Trust and civil rights veteran in Derry, said the families' confidence in the inquiry was being eroded.
"This is an enormous task and it's understandable it should take some time, but this amount of time? The publication date has been pushed back repeatedly, and I think that some people are beginning to ask themselves, what's going on?"
The Northern Ireland secretary, Shaun Woodward, said he was surprised and disappointed by the delay.
"The completion of the report is a matter for the independent inquiry but the Northern Ireland Office will be taking up their offer to discuss the implications of this announcement as a matter of urgency," he said.
Yet another delay to the Saville report and the spiralling cost of the inquiry has led to calls, mainly from unionist politicians in Northern Ireland, for no more similar inquiries. They have described the Bloody Sunday tribunal as a colossal waste of money.
• Last witness was heard in January 2005
* Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent
* The Guardian, Friday November 7 2008
The official report into Bloody Sunday has been delayed for at least another year, it emerged yesterday, prompting sharp criticism from victims' families.
Lord Saville, whose inquiry cost £181m and stopped taking evidence in 2005, was supposed to complete his report this autumn. But his findings will not now be made public until the autumn of 2009 at the earliest.
The latest delay prompted campaigners in Derry to warn that confidence in the tribunal was being eroded and victims' families were suffering further anguish. Jean Hegarty, whose brother Kevin McElhinney was one of the 13 unarmed civilians killed in Derry 36 years ago, said this latest delay was a huge disappointment.
"It's beginning to raise questions in my mind," she said. "I don't really want to say what they are just yet, but your mind begins to turn around."
An apologetic Saville said: "We have always found it difficult, given the scale and complexity of the material with which we are dealing, to predict accurately how long it will take us to complete our task."
The longest and most expensive inquiry in British legal history is investigating events surrounding the shootings at a civil rights demonstration in February 1972 by the Parachute Regiment. The first witness was heard in November 2000 and the last in January 2005.
Mark Durkan, the SDLP leader and MP for Foyle, said he shared the family's frustrations over the latest delay. "Obviously Lord Saville has to give the weight and scale of the evidence involved diligent consideration.
"And the families and others who participated in the inquiry have confidence in him in that regard. However, the report taking so long and the fears that it may be delayed further is a source of some anxiety and apprehension."
Eamonn McCann, the chairman of the Bloody Sunday Trust and civil rights veteran in Derry, said the families' confidence in the inquiry was being eroded.
"This is an enormous task and it's understandable it should take some time, but this amount of time? The publication date has been pushed back repeatedly, and I think that some people are beginning to ask themselves, what's going on?"
The Northern Ireland secretary, Shaun Woodward, said he was surprised and disappointed by the delay.
"The completion of the report is a matter for the independent inquiry but the Northern Ireland Office will be taking up their offer to discuss the implications of this announcement as a matter of urgency," he said.
Yet another delay to the Saville report and the spiralling cost of the inquiry has led to calls, mainly from unionist politicians in Northern Ireland, for no more similar inquiries. They have described the Bloody Sunday tribunal as a colossal waste of money.
Monday, 3 November 2008
Those left behind
Stories of loss and love from families of army's fallen
The number of British soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan reached 297 this month. Behind each returning coffin are ordinary families destroyed by grief – mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters and children mourning their loved ones. Over the past month Dan McDougall has interviewed many of the relatives of the 'Fallen' to coincide with a BBC documentary chronicling the suffering of the families. This is their story
'I think about the families, and a life torn apart'
The locals line up pints of bitter at the Kings Head bar in Droylsden, Greater Manchester. Behind the till Ronnie Downes, 60, reads his son's last letter home. Outside the pub hangs a huge picture of Tony and the words: 'Tony: Our son, Everyone's Hero'.
Guardsman Neil 'Tony' Downes, aged 20, was travelling with the Afghan National Army close to the town of Sangin in Helmand province when their vehicle was hit by an explosion.
Before going out to Afghanistan, Tony wrote his family a letter to be opened in the event of his death. Standing in their pub, Ronnie recites passages: 'I love you all from the bottom of my heart. Please don't be mad at what has happened. I did what I had to do, and serving the British army was it. Don't be sad - celebrate my life, because I love you and I will see you all again.' As he finishes, Ronnie falters and breaks down in tears.
'What amazed me most was that my mum and dad were really strong. That really brought us together as a family,' says Ronnie's eldest daughter, Katie, 21. 'My mum campaigned for the soldiers, for the job they were and are doing out there in Afghanistan and Iraq, and inspired us all. Everyone expected her to be the other way. She urged the government not to bring troops home - because it would mean Tony died in vain.
'Tony loved serving with the 1st Battalion of the Grenadier Guards. He died doing something he loved. It doesn't stop our pain, but it comforts us to know how fulfilled he was in his career and life as a soldier. My brother had only been in Afghanistan for 12 weeks and was due to return home on 28 June 2007. That date became the date of his funeral.'
Katie says the hardest thing was listening to her brother's letter: 'I think about what must have gone through his head when he was writing that, knowing that he could die.
'Before he left for good, and I remember this vividly, he was packing up one of his huge rucksacks and out popped two letters, from the top of his bag. They both said: "Not to be opened unless deceased." I remember catching my breath as I saw the writing on the envelope.
'My brother was the 60th member of the armed forces to die in Afghanistan since the start of operations in November, 2001, and for the first time it really made me think about what all those other families have gone through and all the families since - each death of a child, a brother, a husband, a boyfriend or a father, a life torn apart.'
The soldier's younger sister, Jodie, 17, describes how she now visits her brother's grave more than ever. 'I talk to him in the cemetery. Sometimes I stand, other times I kneel down and talk to him like he is there,' she says. 'Some days I cry; other days I just pass the time of day. I feel silly and self-conscious speaking to a grave, but whenever I look around, nobody is paying the slightest bit of attention. There are other people there at the gravesides, crying and mourning in their own way, talking to their loved ones and praying. It is definitely therapeutic.'
She adds: 'What has helped me above everything is knowing he is in a better place, a happy place, in heaven. It may sound daft, but I believe angels are looking after him up there, and he is looking down on me and probably laughing at me crying. If he could speak he would probably just laugh and tell me not to be so daft.
'Losing my big brother has definitely brought me closer to all my siblings and to mum and dad. In some ways it makes you special having a brother as a war hero; people look at you and feel sorry for you, but also admire what you have gone through.
'I am only young, but what I do know is I never want to feel pain like this again. I have cried enough now.'
'I couldn't bear to see his coffin in the flag'
Ruth Rayment lost her brother Christopher when she was 16. Photograph: Robin Hammond St George flags hang limp in the suburban gardens of Eltham in south-east London. Inside her family home, Ruth Rayment, left, sits in front of an electric fire, her knees scrunched up around her neck. She is surrounded by army memorabilia that belonged to her brother, Christopher.
'I was 16 when he died,' says the nursing student, now 20. 'When the men in uniform came knocking on my door, we knew what it was straight away. I remember my mother screaming and collapsing in the front room, I will never forget the wailing.'
Christopher Rayment, a private with the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, died aged 22 when a security barrier fell on him while he was manning a checkpoint. He had been in Iraq for more than five months and died just 10 days before he was due to return home to his parents, Pamela and Gordon. Four years on his room remains virtually untouched.
'Everyone expected it to hit me hardest, but I didn't mourn for a year,' says Ruth. 'I started crying on the anniversary of Chris's death - that's when the trauma hit me. It came like a black cloud; it consumed me, and I realised I was depressed. I kept hearing my brother's voice. His presence wasn't frightening, just permanent.'
Ruth thinks her decision not to go to Brize Norton to watch her brother's body arrive back in the UK contributed to what she calls 'suspended reality'.
'For me he was still out there, in Afghanistan, patrolling as a soldier,' she says. 'That's what I convinced myself of, anyway, that he wasn't coming back because he was still out there.
'I think this feeling was because I couldn't bear to see him come back, to see his coffin in the flag. When the realisation he was gone finally hit me, a year later, it felt like I'd been hit by a huge black wave, like a tsunami, and the water was pouring into my ears and nose, suffocating me. It was the most terrifying experience of my life.'
Ruth's sister, Mandy, 29, says her experience of Chris's death was different. She went to Brize Norton to see his body arrive. 'I can honestly say it was the proudest, and in a strange way the happiest, moment of my life,' she says. 'I sent Chris a little charm to take to Afghanistan, a little St Christopher, and it was returned with his body. I keep it with me at all times now.'
Both sisters share a strong sense of spirituality and, like many relatives of the 'Fallen', Mandy has started seeing a clairvoyant. The medium, she claims, brings her closer to her brother's spirit. That is why she finds it hard to visit his grave; she thinks his soul is elsewhere: 'Since Chris died I've been going to church, and last week I was finally baptised. People might think I could be angry with God for what has happened to my family, but my belief in God helps me to come to terms with what has happened. It is his plan and my brother, in the middle of all of this, is in a happier place and is smiling down on us.'
'Daddy is happy in heaven eating crispy duck'
Seven-year-old Courtney Ellis at home in Manchester. Photograph: Robin Hammond In her small room in the family semi in Wythenshawe, Manchester, seven-year-old Courtney Ellis, above, strums her guitar, singing a song she has written about her father, Private Lee Ellis. To the tune of 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star', she sings 'I love daddy in the sky'.
Later she flicks through the album of photographs she keeps under her bed, images of her last holiday with her 23-year-old dad. Her favourite picture shows her father looking on as she opened her presents on Christmas Day.
A Para from 2nd Battalion, Ellis died on attachment to the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards in Al Amarah, Maysaan province, when he was killed by a roadside bomb on 28 February 2006.
'This is a picture of our last holiday together,' says Courtney. 'Daddy is in heaven now, and although he is dead, he is happy. When someone dies and they are naughty, they go to hell. My mum says that my daddy is eating a lot of crispy duck in heaven. It was his favourite food, and he wouldn't share it, even though he is in heaven.'
'He brought us here. And now we are alone'
Camari Babakobau with a picture of her husband, Ratu. Photograph: Robin Hammond Saturday night television blares in the background as a crescendo of game show applause drowns out Camari Babakobau's faint voice. In mid-sentence she breaks down in tears and walks, head bowed, towards the front windows of her cramped barracks home. At her feet, her two young sons fight over the remote control, increasing the volume further as they clamour for her attention.
Outside, the rain is pounding the glass. 'The weather is the hardest thing about living in England,' says Camari. 'He brought us here from the islands - my man - to give us a future, and now he has left us. We are alone. This is an army house. We will lose it in two years and have to go elsewhere.'
On the wall of her lounge is an oversized portrait of her dead husband, Trooper Ratu Sakeasi Babakobau, in his Household Cavalry uniform. In the hallway, next to a calendar of the Pacific islands, is another photograph of the guardsman in desert fatigues; behind him, the scrubland of Afghanistan's Shomali Plain. It is the last picture taken of him before he died.
Next Sunday, Camari, 28, who lives on a bleak housing estate on the outskirts of Windsor, will be one of thousands laying wreaths at memorials around the country. Her husband was killed on 2 May 2008 in the Nowzad area of northern Helmand, the victim of a Taliban landmine.
Ratu's journey began in an MoD recruiting interview in Suva, Fiji's port capital. He was one of a growing foreign legion fighting for someone else's queen and country. He arrived in the UK in May 2004, and his first deployment overseas came four years later. But within a month of arriving in Afghanistan, the 29-year-old Fijian was dead. On the other side of the world, uniformed officers and a Household Cavalry chaplain were dispatched to Windsor to knock on Camari's door.
'Other wives and mothers tell me they knew when they opened the door and saw the uniformed officers standing on the doorstep,' she says. 'I didn't know. I didn't expect it, because I probably didn't understand how dangerous my husband's job was. I thought they had come to see me about my son's British citizenship. I couldn't stop crying.
'He returned six days later in a coffin with a foreign flag over his body,' says Camari. 'All I could think about was that my boys would never know their father; they would never play rugby with him, or be scolded for not doing their homework. To them, their father would be a photograph - not even a memory.
'The band played at Brize Norton and I stood there weeping, clutching my children's hands. The aircraft looked terrifying as it came in to land. I kept thinking, "Why is he in there, not breathing, his useless body coming back to me - for what?"
'Young Fijians join the British army for financial reasons, for citizenship, for an escape from poverty and island life. My husband made this choice. For what? We Fijians don't understand anything about foreign affairs. Sure, the money is good for us, but you only have one life. My children will be told their father was a hero, but maybe he was foolish. Maybe others who follow him from Fiji are foolish.'
• The Fallen is a three-hour film in which families and friends of the soldiers who have died talk about their feelings and grief. It will be broadcast at 8pm on Saturday 15 November on BBC2.1
The number of British soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan reached 297 this month. Behind each returning coffin are ordinary families destroyed by grief – mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters and children mourning their loved ones. Over the past month Dan McDougall has interviewed many of the relatives of the 'Fallen' to coincide with a BBC documentary chronicling the suffering of the families. This is their story
'I think about the families, and a life torn apart'
The locals line up pints of bitter at the Kings Head bar in Droylsden, Greater Manchester. Behind the till Ronnie Downes, 60, reads his son's last letter home. Outside the pub hangs a huge picture of Tony and the words: 'Tony: Our son, Everyone's Hero'.
Guardsman Neil 'Tony' Downes, aged 20, was travelling with the Afghan National Army close to the town of Sangin in Helmand province when their vehicle was hit by an explosion.
Before going out to Afghanistan, Tony wrote his family a letter to be opened in the event of his death. Standing in their pub, Ronnie recites passages: 'I love you all from the bottom of my heart. Please don't be mad at what has happened. I did what I had to do, and serving the British army was it. Don't be sad - celebrate my life, because I love you and I will see you all again.' As he finishes, Ronnie falters and breaks down in tears.
'What amazed me most was that my mum and dad were really strong. That really brought us together as a family,' says Ronnie's eldest daughter, Katie, 21. 'My mum campaigned for the soldiers, for the job they were and are doing out there in Afghanistan and Iraq, and inspired us all. Everyone expected her to be the other way. She urged the government not to bring troops home - because it would mean Tony died in vain.
'Tony loved serving with the 1st Battalion of the Grenadier Guards. He died doing something he loved. It doesn't stop our pain, but it comforts us to know how fulfilled he was in his career and life as a soldier. My brother had only been in Afghanistan for 12 weeks and was due to return home on 28 June 2007. That date became the date of his funeral.'
Katie says the hardest thing was listening to her brother's letter: 'I think about what must have gone through his head when he was writing that, knowing that he could die.
'Before he left for good, and I remember this vividly, he was packing up one of his huge rucksacks and out popped two letters, from the top of his bag. They both said: "Not to be opened unless deceased." I remember catching my breath as I saw the writing on the envelope.
'My brother was the 60th member of the armed forces to die in Afghanistan since the start of operations in November, 2001, and for the first time it really made me think about what all those other families have gone through and all the families since - each death of a child, a brother, a husband, a boyfriend or a father, a life torn apart.'
The soldier's younger sister, Jodie, 17, describes how she now visits her brother's grave more than ever. 'I talk to him in the cemetery. Sometimes I stand, other times I kneel down and talk to him like he is there,' she says. 'Some days I cry; other days I just pass the time of day. I feel silly and self-conscious speaking to a grave, but whenever I look around, nobody is paying the slightest bit of attention. There are other people there at the gravesides, crying and mourning in their own way, talking to their loved ones and praying. It is definitely therapeutic.'
She adds: 'What has helped me above everything is knowing he is in a better place, a happy place, in heaven. It may sound daft, but I believe angels are looking after him up there, and he is looking down on me and probably laughing at me crying. If he could speak he would probably just laugh and tell me not to be so daft.
'Losing my big brother has definitely brought me closer to all my siblings and to mum and dad. In some ways it makes you special having a brother as a war hero; people look at you and feel sorry for you, but also admire what you have gone through.
'I am only young, but what I do know is I never want to feel pain like this again. I have cried enough now.'
'I couldn't bear to see his coffin in the flag'
Ruth Rayment lost her brother Christopher when she was 16. Photograph: Robin Hammond St George flags hang limp in the suburban gardens of Eltham in south-east London. Inside her family home, Ruth Rayment, left, sits in front of an electric fire, her knees scrunched up around her neck. She is surrounded by army memorabilia that belonged to her brother, Christopher.
'I was 16 when he died,' says the nursing student, now 20. 'When the men in uniform came knocking on my door, we knew what it was straight away. I remember my mother screaming and collapsing in the front room, I will never forget the wailing.'
Christopher Rayment, a private with the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, died aged 22 when a security barrier fell on him while he was manning a checkpoint. He had been in Iraq for more than five months and died just 10 days before he was due to return home to his parents, Pamela and Gordon. Four years on his room remains virtually untouched.
'Everyone expected it to hit me hardest, but I didn't mourn for a year,' says Ruth. 'I started crying on the anniversary of Chris's death - that's when the trauma hit me. It came like a black cloud; it consumed me, and I realised I was depressed. I kept hearing my brother's voice. His presence wasn't frightening, just permanent.'
Ruth thinks her decision not to go to Brize Norton to watch her brother's body arrive back in the UK contributed to what she calls 'suspended reality'.
'For me he was still out there, in Afghanistan, patrolling as a soldier,' she says. 'That's what I convinced myself of, anyway, that he wasn't coming back because he was still out there.
'I think this feeling was because I couldn't bear to see him come back, to see his coffin in the flag. When the realisation he was gone finally hit me, a year later, it felt like I'd been hit by a huge black wave, like a tsunami, and the water was pouring into my ears and nose, suffocating me. It was the most terrifying experience of my life.'
Ruth's sister, Mandy, 29, says her experience of Chris's death was different. She went to Brize Norton to see his body arrive. 'I can honestly say it was the proudest, and in a strange way the happiest, moment of my life,' she says. 'I sent Chris a little charm to take to Afghanistan, a little St Christopher, and it was returned with his body. I keep it with me at all times now.'
Both sisters share a strong sense of spirituality and, like many relatives of the 'Fallen', Mandy has started seeing a clairvoyant. The medium, she claims, brings her closer to her brother's spirit. That is why she finds it hard to visit his grave; she thinks his soul is elsewhere: 'Since Chris died I've been going to church, and last week I was finally baptised. People might think I could be angry with God for what has happened to my family, but my belief in God helps me to come to terms with what has happened. It is his plan and my brother, in the middle of all of this, is in a happier place and is smiling down on us.'
'Daddy is happy in heaven eating crispy duck'
Seven-year-old Courtney Ellis at home in Manchester. Photograph: Robin Hammond In her small room in the family semi in Wythenshawe, Manchester, seven-year-old Courtney Ellis, above, strums her guitar, singing a song she has written about her father, Private Lee Ellis. To the tune of 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star', she sings 'I love daddy in the sky'.
Later she flicks through the album of photographs she keeps under her bed, images of her last holiday with her 23-year-old dad. Her favourite picture shows her father looking on as she opened her presents on Christmas Day.
A Para from 2nd Battalion, Ellis died on attachment to the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards in Al Amarah, Maysaan province, when he was killed by a roadside bomb on 28 February 2006.
'This is a picture of our last holiday together,' says Courtney. 'Daddy is in heaven now, and although he is dead, he is happy. When someone dies and they are naughty, they go to hell. My mum says that my daddy is eating a lot of crispy duck in heaven. It was his favourite food, and he wouldn't share it, even though he is in heaven.'
'He brought us here. And now we are alone'
Camari Babakobau with a picture of her husband, Ratu. Photograph: Robin Hammond Saturday night television blares in the background as a crescendo of game show applause drowns out Camari Babakobau's faint voice. In mid-sentence she breaks down in tears and walks, head bowed, towards the front windows of her cramped barracks home. At her feet, her two young sons fight over the remote control, increasing the volume further as they clamour for her attention.
Outside, the rain is pounding the glass. 'The weather is the hardest thing about living in England,' says Camari. 'He brought us here from the islands - my man - to give us a future, and now he has left us. We are alone. This is an army house. We will lose it in two years and have to go elsewhere.'
On the wall of her lounge is an oversized portrait of her dead husband, Trooper Ratu Sakeasi Babakobau, in his Household Cavalry uniform. In the hallway, next to a calendar of the Pacific islands, is another photograph of the guardsman in desert fatigues; behind him, the scrubland of Afghanistan's Shomali Plain. It is the last picture taken of him before he died.
Next Sunday, Camari, 28, who lives on a bleak housing estate on the outskirts of Windsor, will be one of thousands laying wreaths at memorials around the country. Her husband was killed on 2 May 2008 in the Nowzad area of northern Helmand, the victim of a Taliban landmine.
Ratu's journey began in an MoD recruiting interview in Suva, Fiji's port capital. He was one of a growing foreign legion fighting for someone else's queen and country. He arrived in the UK in May 2004, and his first deployment overseas came four years later. But within a month of arriving in Afghanistan, the 29-year-old Fijian was dead. On the other side of the world, uniformed officers and a Household Cavalry chaplain were dispatched to Windsor to knock on Camari's door.
'Other wives and mothers tell me they knew when they opened the door and saw the uniformed officers standing on the doorstep,' she says. 'I didn't know. I didn't expect it, because I probably didn't understand how dangerous my husband's job was. I thought they had come to see me about my son's British citizenship. I couldn't stop crying.
'He returned six days later in a coffin with a foreign flag over his body,' says Camari. 'All I could think about was that my boys would never know their father; they would never play rugby with him, or be scolded for not doing their homework. To them, their father would be a photograph - not even a memory.
'The band played at Brize Norton and I stood there weeping, clutching my children's hands. The aircraft looked terrifying as it came in to land. I kept thinking, "Why is he in there, not breathing, his useless body coming back to me - for what?"
'Young Fijians join the British army for financial reasons, for citizenship, for an escape from poverty and island life. My husband made this choice. For what? We Fijians don't understand anything about foreign affairs. Sure, the money is good for us, but you only have one life. My children will be told their father was a hero, but maybe he was foolish. Maybe others who follow him from Fiji are foolish.'
• The Fallen is a three-hour film in which families and friends of the soldiers who have died talk about their feelings and grief. It will be broadcast at 8pm on Saturday 15 November on BBC2.1
Sunday, 2 November 2008
Total film/little white lies
Alternative Genre Movies:
Press Movies (Little White Lies/ Total Film)
The depiction of the press across all platforms is a noteworthy subgenre in the entire existence of celluloid, and why shouldn’t it be? Journalism and movies share an important criteria in that they both set out to tell a story (whether truthful or otherwise) and we as consumers love to lap it up. Films have been made from newspaper articles; for example an article in Life magazine called “the boys from the bank” was a source of inspiration for the film Dog Day Afternoon, whilst the movie On the Waterfront was based on a 24 page part series of articles in the New York Sun to create a story of Union corruption and crime in the New Jersey Docks starring Marlon Brando.
Of course there are also a number of great directors who have originated from the field of journalism. Stanley Kubrick’s path to one of the greatest ever auteur began as a photo journalist for Look magazine, then transcended to documentary maker, before he took on the reigns of “Fear and Desire” and went on to make such films as “Dr Strangeglove” and “2001: a Space Odyssey”. Samuel Fuller began his career as first as a copy boy aged 12, and then he moved on to crime reporting for the New York Evening Graphic. He produced a love letter to the print press with the film Park Row, and its romantic ideals of what the press stood for. Nora Ephron started her career as a reporter for the New York Post, then went on to directed and wrote such films as Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle. In the sixties the French New Wave emerged, which produced directors such as Trauffaut, Luc-Goddard and Chabrol and went on to revolutionise films that have been made ever since. Their careers originated as film critics for the magazine Cashiers du Cinema, where they decided that they could make better films than the ones they were writing about.
The representation of the pres in the movies should be a familiar one. From the spinning newspaper headlines, to the harassment from the press by a suspected criminal or celebrity protagonist, the press are often presented as piranhas. The movies with Michael Corleone finds out about his father’s attempted assassination while glancing at in the Godfather
Films have been made from newspaper articles
Press Movies (Little White Lies/ Total Film)
The depiction of the press across all platforms is a noteworthy subgenre in the entire existence of celluloid, and why shouldn’t it be? Journalism and movies share an important criteria in that they both set out to tell a story (whether truthful or otherwise) and we as consumers love to lap it up. Films have been made from newspaper articles; for example an article in Life magazine called “the boys from the bank” was a source of inspiration for the film Dog Day Afternoon, whilst the movie On the Waterfront was based on a 24 page part series of articles in the New York Sun to create a story of Union corruption and crime in the New Jersey Docks starring Marlon Brando.
Of course there are also a number of great directors who have originated from the field of journalism. Stanley Kubrick’s path to one of the greatest ever auteur began as a photo journalist for Look magazine, then transcended to documentary maker, before he took on the reigns of “Fear and Desire” and went on to make such films as “Dr Strangeglove” and “2001: a Space Odyssey”. Samuel Fuller began his career as first as a copy boy aged 12, and then he moved on to crime reporting for the New York Evening Graphic. He produced a love letter to the print press with the film Park Row, and its romantic ideals of what the press stood for. Nora Ephron started her career as a reporter for the New York Post, then went on to directed and wrote such films as Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle. In the sixties the French New Wave emerged, which produced directors such as Trauffaut, Luc-Goddard and Chabrol and went on to revolutionise films that have been made ever since. Their careers originated as film critics for the magazine Cashiers du Cinema, where they decided that they could make better films than the ones they were writing about.
The representation of the pres in the movies should be a familiar one. From the spinning newspaper headlines, to the harassment from the press by a suspected criminal or celebrity protagonist, the press are often presented as piranhas. The movies with Michael Corleone finds out about his father’s attempted assassination while glancing at in the Godfather
Films have been made from newspaper articles
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