|  |  |  | | | | | The Guardian World News | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The ailing Venezuelan leader still commands hysterical devotion from his supporters, but Henrique Capriles, his younger, healthier opponent in next Sunday's election, is snapping hard at his heels, writes Rory Carroll In some ways, it is just like old times. Huge crowds mob the presidential candidate as he swings through dusty villages and towns promising a new Venezuela. They surround his bus, chanting his name, and when he emerges they scream and surge forward, desperate to embrace him. Many clutch notes – handwritten pleas for a job, a house, an operation – and if they manage to slip them into his hands or pockets they near explode with joy. "He knows things can't go on like this. He knows we're ready for a change," Josmir Meza, 25, a student, shouted over cheers. The trouble for Hugo Chávez is that he is no longer that candidate. In 1998, he was an insurgent outsider, a young, athletic campaigner who promised to overthrow the established order and "refound" Venezuela. He was unstoppable and roared to victory. Fourteen years later, however, as he seeks a third term in next Sunday's election, it his youthful challenger, Henrique Capriles, 40, who electrifies the crowds. Chávez, 58, in contrast, is an ailing, elusive figure who now represents the establishment. He wishes not to storm the presidential palace, Miraflores, a pink, neocolonial spread in downtown Caracas, but to keep it. Having dominated Venezuela like a colossus, leading his socialist revolution to consecutive electoral landslides, he is facing the electoral fight of his life. With both sides depicting the vote as an existential test to vanquish or save the unique political and economic experiment known as chavismo, the stakes could scarcely be higher. If Chávez loses, his movement will almost certainly fracture, dismaying foreign supporters who hailed the "Bolivarian revolution" as a leftwing showcase. If he wins, critics at home and abroad will warn of a slide into autocracy and dysfunction. Either way, it will be another chapter in the great drama that is the life of Hugo Chávez. How a boy from a humble family in Sabaneta, a speck of a town on the vast grasslands known as los llanos rose to become not just president but a global figure simultaneously adored and reviled is a remarkable tale. Like the fireside legends of horsemen, demons and rebels that so enchanted the young Hugo – he memorised the poems, stories and songs – his rise is the stuff of myth. He was the second son of schoolteacher parents; if a girl, they planned to call him Eva (Venezuela's version of Eve), complementing the firstborn who was called Adan (Adam), but instead named him after his father. As more children arrived (six, all boys), the two eldest were sent to live with their grandmother, Rosa, a kind, industrious woman who doted on the boys. Hugo was by all accounts a happy, chatty boy who when not at school played baseball with a homemade bat and ball, painted, read books and supplemented household income selling his grandmother's "spiders", sugar-coated papaya strips. "I would go round shouting, 'Hot spiders, tasty spiders for pretty girls!'" he recalled recently. As a skinny teenager with big feet he was nicknamed Goofy. By the 1960s, Venezuela, once a sleepy corner of South America ruled by dictators, was a fledgling democracy with growing oil revenues and hunger for modernity. A new elite and middle class grew amid the skyscrapers but most rural migrants ended up in hillside shacks around cities. Hugo, a talented baseball player, dreamed not of politics but pitching for the major leagues. He became a military cadet hoping to vault from the academy to baseball clubs in Caracas. Instead, he fell in love with soldiering. "A uniform, a gun, an area, close-order formation, marches, morning runs, studies in military science – I was like a fish in water," he recalled later. As Chávez moved up the ranks, he studied the writings of Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century liberator who ousted the Spanish, as well as philosophers such as Nietzsche and Plekhanov. He also noted extreme poverty and inequality amid the oil boom. Inspired by revolutionary military leaders in Panama and Peru, and leftwing Venezuelan intellectuals, an idea began to form: revolt. Over a decade, he gathered fellow officers into a conspiracy to replace what they saw as a venal, sham democracy with a progressive, real democracy. The February 1992 coup was a military fiasco, letting the unpopular government survive, but Chávez turned his televised surrender address into a political triumph. Eloquent and dashing in his red beret, he introduced himself to a startled nation – "listen to comandante Chávez" – and said his objectives had not been met "por ahora", for now. He deserved 30 years in jail, went the joke: one for the coup, 29 for failing. Pardoned and released after two years, he was adopted as a figurehead by a coalition of grassroots movements and leftwing parties and stormed to victory in the 1998 election, cheered not only by the poor but a middle class fed up with ossified political parties. With a barrel of oil just $8, the petro-state was near broke. Few outside Venezuela, until then best known for beauty queens and oil, knew what to make of this mercurial arrival who praised Fidel Castro but said he was neither left nor right but seeker of a Blairesqe "third way". Within a few short years, Chávez became one of the world's most recognisable and polarising figures. Vehement rhetoric – he railed against the wealthy as "squealing pigs" and "vampires" who looted oil wealth – endeared him to the poor and alienated the middle class and traditional elites. They called him a monkey and worse. In April 2002, the elites briefly ousted him in a Bush administration-backed coup, tried again with an oil strike, then a recall referendum. Chávez survived and grew more radical, declaring himself a socialist and nationalising swaths of the economy. Soaring oil prices gushed billions into the treasury, which he used to fund Cuban-run health clinics and other social programmes, easing poverty. He created a state media empire that promoted a personality cult and tightened executive control over the armed forces, the judiciary and the legislature. He called George Bush a "donkey", "Mr Danger", "an asshole" and, during a memorable UN speech, "the devil". Supporters such as Ken Livingstone, Sean Penn, Danny Glover and Noam Chomsky paid homage in visits to Caracas. After winning a second term in 2006, Chávez won a referendum abolishing term limits and talked of ruling until 2021, then 2030. That looks fanciful now. Ahead in some polls, he trails in others. He remains revered in the barrios. "He is a gift, he means everything to us," said Aleira Quintero, 55, a red T-shirted canvasser in Petare. But even supporters are fed up with horrific crime rates, inflation, shortages and crumbling infrastructure. Bridges collapse, refineries blow up, blackouts shroud cities. Chávez has proved a shrewd political strategist and inspired communicator but disastrous manager, warping the economy with contradictory controls, creating and dissolving ministries by caprice, launching and abandoning initiatives, neglecting investment and maintenance. Despite record oil revenues, Venezuela is borrowing billions to try to plug the holes. Charisma, giveaways and institutional control, not least the ability to monopolise the airwaves, could yet clinch re-election but Chavez faces two formidable obstacles. Drained and bloated by cancer treatment, he sometimes has trouble walking. Instead of the barnstorming of old, his public appearances are few and often melancholic. "If it were up to me, you know I'd get down off this stage and I'd go walking, as in times past," he told a rally, tears in his eyes. Some supporters fear the cancer is terminal and that a vote for Chávez is a vote for uncertainty and power-grabs by unloved ministers and courtiers. The other obstacle is Capriles. Unlike previous inept, shrill opposition leaders, the state governor is a disciplined, energetic campaigner. A jogger and basketball player, his nickname is El Flaquito, the skinny one. He has seized the initiative by crisscrossing the country, visiting 274 towns, and casting himself as a centrist who will keep Chávez's social programmes while offering competent administration. To woo "soft chavistas" he does not call Chávez a dictator or even Chávez. Conscious of the name's power, Capriles calls him "the candidate of the (ruling party) PSUV". Whether the president wins or not – and given his electoral track record you would be foolish or brave to bet against him – his fame will live on. In or out of power, there will be no forgetting the name Hugo Chávez.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | With just one week to go before elections, Jonathan Watts and Virginia Lopez find the radical leader's backers anxious that support for his dynamic young opponent is growing Venezuela is gearing up for its closest presidential poll in more than a decade. The revolutionary incumbent, Hugo Chávez, is battling cancer and fighting for his political life. A telegenic young challenger from the right, Henrique Capriles, is gaining ground. With one week left, one voter – the hatmaker of Caracas – weighs up the options. For half a century Juan Torres has provided hats for Venezuela's heads of state. Earning little more than the minimum wage, he shaped the panama owned by the "father of democracy", Rómulo Betancourt, when he took power in 1958, the borsalino of the centrist leader Jóvito Villalba, and the stetson donned by Luis Herrera Campíns, who presided over an era of economic decline in the early 1980s. Now he is watching with a professional eye as a nation decides whether the revolutionary red beret that has been the trademark of Chávez, 58, during his 14 years in power will be replaced by the baseball cap of Capriles. With just a week until polling day, most forecasters predict a narrow victory of between three and five points for the incumbent. But the gap has been closing, with many voters undecided and the huge turnouts for opposition rallies providing more momentum for Capriles, who is 40, than many analysts would have believed possible. In this politically polarised nation, there is no doubt which side of the divide Torres is from. His neighbourhood is 23 de Enero, a bastion of Chávez supporters. In next week's poll, the president will cast his vote alongside local residents here in the Manuel Pelacios Fajardo school. Electoral banners and graffiti are everywhere – all in favour of the incumbent: the words "100% Chávez" are daubed on countless car windows. "Chávez: Heart of the Fatherland" read the posters that are fixed to every lamppost. Although this is one of the president's strongholds, there is ambivalence: a mix of appreciation, frustration and anxiety that reflects not only many of the reasons why Chávez has held on to power but also why the vote on 7 October is likely to be closer than any other since he first won in 1998. Torres and his son, Jonás, escort us through the neighbourhood, pointing out some of the benefits they say Chávez has brought to local people during that time: a clinic staffed by Cuban doctors, a public bus service and a new school where the walls have already been painted with a slogan, "Socialist Anti-Imperialist Commune". Local collectives have been given considerable power, including the authority to initiate projects and bid for central government funds. Memphis Paris, the representative of a group of 5,200 residents called Three Roots Collective, said his group had been given money to improve plumbing in the tower blocks and a playground with exercise machines overlooking the valley. At first glance the improvements look modest at best, particularly given that Venezuela is one of the world's three biggest oil producers and Chávez's presidency has been marked by a surge in the price of crude from $9 (£5.50) a barrel to more than $100 today. The country's state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), has generated revenues of more than $980bn. Critics say Chávez has squandered this income with programmes aimed at buying off the electorate, while supporters say the money has been used for a long-overdue redistribution of income. The government has spent almost $300bn on social programmes that aim to improve literacy, high school education, accommodation for the homeless, and to provide subsidies for groceries or affordable home appliances. Partly as a result, poverty levels have decreased. Unemployment has fallen from 13% in 1999 to just over 8%. Infant mortality has almost halved. Torres's shop is in a central district of Caracas that the government has made the flagship of efforts to revitalise the city. Public squares are being cleared for music concerts, dilapidated theatres and buildings are being renovated. The British architect Richard Rogers, who was introduced to Chávez officials by Ken Livingstone, has designed a new central bus terminal. But many voters complain that many ideas are never implemented because of corruption and inefficiency. Oil production has fallen due to poor maintenance and weak investment, the road system is dire, crime is rampant and social campaigns have petered out. Torres says the government earmarked funds to improve the facades on buildings in his neighbourhood, but the money never reached the local community. "I think Chávez has good ideas, but the people around him have failed to carry them out. I'm disappointed. They are serving their own interests, not the revolution," he says. Venezuela's economy has grown on average by 2.8% between 1999 and 2011. It's been outperformed by neighbouring Colombia, Brazil and Chile, none of which have enjoyed the windfall from oil. Inflation for 1999-2010 grew 961%, more than 10 times the average of the other seven larger economies in Latin America. An overdependence on oil exports and failed currency controls have created a huge black market for dollars. Torres stopped making hats himself a couple of years ago because it was cheaper to import and sell them. He earns the minimum wage, plus commission. "Business has been bad this year. I hope it settles after the election," he says. "What we need is economic change." The lack of dynamism is evident. Most of the buildings and vehicles in his neighbourhood look dilapidated. The national murder rate has more than doubled in the last 10 years, making Venezuela one of the three most dangerous countries in the world, with almost 20,000 people killed each year. Locals in the 23 de Enero district say that, on an average weekend, there are between five and 10 homicides. The police are not in control here. The revolution began in 23 de Enero long before the comandante came to power. In his youth, Torres was a member of the urban guerrilla movement. "Here's where we used to throw molotov cocktails," he says as we walk through his district. Today a red-starred flag on the lamppost in the main square of his neighbourhood proclaims this as the territory of the GHPP urban guerrilla group. One wall is daubed with a mural of the Virgin Mary holding an AK-47. Another has a portrait of Che Guevara and a declaration, "We will never go back to the past. Onward with the revolution." Torres's son, Jonás, is a passionate Chávez supporter. "Things have improved. I have read about how it was before and I have heard from my mother about the social injustice and indiscriminate violence by the police. Chávez is the best chance for change," he says. Nevertheless, for the first time in any presidential election since Chávez came to power, the outcome is in doubt. After a year of battling cancer, Chávez has been uncharacteristically subdued for much of the campaign, while Henrique Capriles has jetted back and forth across the country, drawing vast crowds wherever he goes. Capriles is the first opposition candidate to be selected in a primary vote and has benefited from youthful good looks and a reputation as a political winner. Although many of his supporters hail from the neoliberal right, he has successfully eaten into Chávez's traditional vote by promising to continue many of his social policies and implement them more effectively. The narrowing gap in the polls has prompted rumours of unrest in Chávez strongholds if the outcome is disputed. The president's aides insist they are ready to accept the choice of the electorate, but this has not ended suspicion on the streets. "The armed guerrillas have always existed. If it is a tight result and they feel cheated, they'll go out and fight for the comandante," says Torres. Torres predicts Chávez will win by a close margin, but is reluctant to say outright who he will vote for. "If the opposition get in, I don't know what will happen. But I'm not afraid of them. I'm not afraid of anyone."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, known to many as 'Punch', dies at home in Southampton, New York, after a long illness One of America's most famous newspaper publishers, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, whose family owns the New York Times, died on Saturday at the age of 86. Sulzberger was one of the "gray lady's" best known executives. His tenure in charge of America's best-known newspaper spanned a period of vast and dynamic changes in the media industry. His son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr, is the current publisher of the paper, overseeing the traumatic adjustment to a digital world that began at the end of his father's period of control. In a statement reported by the New York Times the Sulzberger family said that Sulzberger, who was known to many by his nickname of "Punch", had died at home in Southampton, New York, after struggling with a long illness. The Sulzberger family has run the New York Times since 1896: when Sulzberger took charge in 1963 the media world it dominated was one of hot metal, ink and newspapers delivered by hand. The Times was also a somewhat insular institution which was financially vulnerable. Sulzberger embarked on a rapid expansion, snapping up radio and television stations and expanding the newspaper from its New York homeland to become far more national in scope. He had turned the company into a multi-billion dollar enterprise by the time he turned it over to his son, in 1997. In an era of declining newspaper readership, weekday circulation had climbed from 714,000 when Sulzberger became publisher to 1.1 million in 1992. Over the same period, the annual revenues of the Times' corporate parent rose from $100m to $1.7bn. The commercial expansion of the newspaper was not the only dramatic change that was overseen by Sulzberger. Journalistically, perhaps his greatest triumph was the decision to publish the "Pentagon papers", a trove of military documents that revealed shocking truths about the Vietnam War. He also oversaw the growth of lifestyle and sports sections aimed at consumers. The development was dismissed as unserious by some critics, but it is now an entrenched part of journalism culture. Sulzberger's time in charge saw the Times win the Pulitzer Prize, the highest accolade in American journalism, 31 times. Sulzberger was born in New York City on 5 February 1926, the only son of Arthur Hays Sulzberger and Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger. One of his three sisters was named Judy, and from early on he was known as "Punch". Sulzberger was the only grandson of Adolph S Ochs, a son of Bavarian immigrants who took over the Times at the end of the 19th century. Sulzberger served with the Marine Corps in World War II and Korea before joining the newspaper as a reporter. In a statement, his son paid tribute to his legacy and achievements, especially in fighting for the truth. "Punch, the old Marine captain who never backed down from a fight, was an absolutely fierce defender of the freedom of the press," Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr said
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Syrian activists say residents are struggling to control blaze in labyrinthine markets which were once a tourist attraction A huge fire has destroyed parts of the medieval souks in Aleppo, Syria, following raging battles between rebels and government troops. The city is a Unesco world heritage site and the labyrinth of narrow alleys and shops was once a major tourist attraction and is one of Syria's largest commercial hubs. Over the past two months, the city, home to 2.5 million people, has become a focus of the insurgency against Bashar al-Assad's regime, with near daily fighting and shelling. Activists posted online videos which showed the fire around wooden doors and shops and a pall of smoke hanging over the city on Saturday. Ahmad al-Halabi, an activist based in Aleppo, said residents were struggling to control the blaze with a limited number of fire extinguishers and low water supply: "It's a disaster. The fire is threatening to spread to remaining shops," he said. "It is a very difficult and tragic situation there." The souks of Aleppo, a maze of vaulted passageways with shops that sell everything from foods to fabrics, perfumes, spices and artisan souvenirs, are a tactical prize for the combatants. They lie beneath the city's towering citadel where activists say regime troops and snipers have taken up positions. Many of the shops have wooden doors, and clothes, fabrics and leather wares inside helped spread the fire, activists said. Rebels and government troops have roughly controlled half of the city each since the offensive began in August. The British-based activist group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists across Syria, said Assad's forces and rebels were blaming each other for the blaze. The observatory estimates that 30,000 people have died across the country since fighting began. In awarding heritage status, Unesco said Aleppo's "13th-century citadel, 12th-century Great Mosque and various 17th-century madrasas, palaces, caravanserais and hammams all form part of the city's cohesive, unique urban fabric." Aleppo'a souks are not the only Syrian cultural treasures to have fallen victim to the violence following the country's uprising and the crackdown by the Assad regime. Some of the country's most significant sites, including centuries-old fortresses, have been caught in the crossfire in battles between regime forces and rebels. Others have been turned into military bases. In Homs, where up to 7,000 are estimated to have died, historic mosques and souk areas have also been smashed and artefacts stolen. Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory, said it was not clear how the fire at the Aleppo market was started but also said a large part of the souks had been destroyed.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Death of wheelchair-bound double amputee in care-home shooting intensifies protests and demands for police reform Brian Claunch lived and died in the Healing Hands home for people with mental-health problems, a drab little house in Houston's deprived East End. It stands on a tree-lined street that is quiet but for the baritone horns of passing freight trains with better places to be. At around 2am last Saturday Claunch, a wheelchair-bound double amputee, became unruly after demanding a fresh supply of cigarettes and soda from the home's caretaker, who dialled 911. According to police, Claunch grew violent and made threats when officers arrived and the 45-year-old "waved a shiny object in his hand in their direction". Fearing for the safety of his cornered fellow officer, Matthew Marin shot Claunch in the head. The object was a ballpoint pen. Claunch had lived at the home since last March. Healing Hands was one of 12 facilities in which he had spent time after becoming a ward of the Harris County Guardianship program in 2003. Judge Mark Kent Ellis came across Claunch in 2009, when he was charged with possession of cocaine. Ellis sent him to a Texas mental-health facility. Claunch, who had suffered brain-damage, was schizophrenic. Unfit to stand trial, he was placed into care in the community. "He was homeless, basically, before he was arrested in this case," Ellis said. "According to him he had brothers and sisters and had even been married in the past and had children but none of them had anything to do with him. He was a mess." Claunch kept vanishing. On one occasion he left a home because staff refused to let him watch television. "He'd leave many of the homes where he was placed and be gone for months at a time," said Estella Olguin, a spokesperson for the Harris County Guardianship program. "He was stable and stayed in this home, probably a pretty long time for Brian to stay put." Court records show that since the mid-1980s Claunch had spent time in prison for drug offenses and crimes such as trespass and auto theft. Over the last decade he had been regularly assessed by doctors, after being found mentally incompetent. He apparently had a sense of humor. One court document, from 2006, asked Claunch to note the age of his mother. He wrote: "Up there." The Associated Press reported that Claunch had told authorities he had lost an arm and a leg in 1990, after lying down on a railroad track because he wanted a train to dismember him and purge the devil from the left side of his body. Judge Ellis runs a successful special court program for defendants with mental-health problems. In three years more than 500 people have gone through the process and the recidivism rate is 11.7%, far below the norm. Claunch was too ill to be healed, but he could be managed. "He was a success, from our standpoint," Ellis said. "We feel like we'd placed him in a situation where he could function. Everyone who interviewed him said he was pleasant, cooperative, but when you got beyond the standard measures, the basics, his mind would wander, he could not do any high-level mental functioning. He could not make decisions. He would not have reacted to a high-stress situation like you or I." John Garcia, who runs the Healing Hands care home, told KHOU local news it was possible that static on the line during the 911 call could have meant the operator had not realized Claunch was mentally ill. "I'm not saying he would hurt the police, but Brian was very strong and he was very agile," Garcia said. "He was fast. He could spin that wheelchair around like kids on a bicycle." Claunch's death prompted fresh protests from Houston community groups who had previously accused the police of using excessive force. The groups want changes in how officers are trained and incidents are investigated. In 2011 Houston's mayor, Annise Parker, created a citizens review panel, the Independent Police Oversight Board. Its activities are not made public. "This man did not have to die. He was killed in cold blood. The training of the Houston police department's officers must change," said Quanell X, a community activist, at a vigil outside the Healing Hands home on Tuesday. "They called to get him assistance. They did not call to have him murdered." Last May, there were protests outside the Harris County Courthouse in downtown Houston after an all-white jury acquitted a former officer accused of involvement in the beating of a black burglary suspect, Chad Holley. Video footage of the incident, which occurred in March 2010, showed officers kicking and stomping on the teenager as he lay on the ground. Three officers are awaiting trial. Seven were dismissed by Charles McClelland, the chief of police, though two regained their jobs on appeal. On Monday, McClelland issued a statement saying that he had brought in the FBI to help with the investigation into Claunch's death and asking for public judgment to be reserved until all the evidence has been gathered. The Houston Chronicle reported that since taking charge almost three years ago, McClelland has fired 63 police officers and disciplined nearly 1,300 of the 5,200 members of the department. Another 983 were ordered to receive counseling. In 2008, the Houston police department pledged to revise its firearms training after a legal fight by the parents of Eli Escobar Jr, a 14-year-old killed five years earlier by a rookie policeman who was subsequently convicted of negligent homicide. But controversies have continued. John T Barnes Sr was shot dead in 2009 after an officer intervened in an argument between Barnes and his partner. It took more than five months for the city to release the autopsy report, which revealed that Barnes had been shot repeatedly in the back. Rufino Lara was killed by an officer last July. Police said he had turned around rapidly with a hand tucked under his shirt, but two witnesses said his hands had been in the air. Lara did have something concealed in his waistband: a beer can. The district attorney's annual report states that last year Harris County's police integrity division investigated 36 officer-involved shootings. Of those, 16 were fatal, up from 13 in 2010. The city of Chicago, which has a population roughly two-thirds the size of Harris County but more than twice as many officers, saw 60 police shootings last year and 23 fatalities. By comparison, all police in England and Wales discharged firearms on average 6.6 times per year between 2001 and 2009. A Houston police spokesperson said that because of the ongoing investigation he was unable to say why an officer from the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT), a unit specially trained to deal with people suffering mental-health problems, had not been sent to the Healing Hands home. Ellis said: "They are literally a model for the country. We could have had officers... who would have dealt with it in a much different way." Healthcare budget cuts mean that states increasingly rely on police as first responders in crisis situations involving people with mental-health problems. Police in San Francisco decided to form a CIT last year after a string of high-profile shootings. Earlier this month, the US Department of Justice announced that an investigation into policing in the city of Portland, Oregon, found that the Portland Police Bureau "has engaged in an unconstitutional pattern or practice of excessive force against people with mental illness" and that "gaps in the State's mental-health system [led] to an increase in police encounters with people with mental illness". Harris County, which covers about four million inhabitants of Houston and surrounding areas, spends $50m a year on incarcerating people with mental-health problems. Ellis said: "Our legislature has persistently cut mental-health funding. [Among the 50 states, Texas is] No50 in mental-health funding per capita. At any given time a quarter of our population in the county jail are on psychotropic medication." Brian Claunch will be buried on Monday. "For the first time in 30 years he was in a situation where he was safe, supervised, on his medication, functioning as well as he could function in our society at this point in time. That's the sad thing as much as anything," Ellis said. "We finally got him in a good place and he gets shot by a policeman."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Hole-by-hole report: The Ryder Cup continues after an exciting first day. Join Scott Murray for all the action
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Opposition leader beseeches country to vote out Viktor Yanukovych, who presides over a 'criminal state' Ukraine's jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko has made a video appeal urging voters toi help end the country's "criminal" rule. The video, which was filmed by Tymoshenko's lawyer on Friday, comes ahead of next month's parliamentary elections in which her one-time ally President Viktor Yanukovych is due to stand. Tymoshenko made her appeal on a mobile phone while in hospital, where she is being treated by German doctors for a herniated disc. In it, the opposition leader accuses Yanukovych of turning Ukraine into a police state and calls on Ukrainians to vote for her party. Wearing her trademark blonde braid, Tymoshenko said: "Today, unfortunately, the whole country lives under a criminal authority." Campaigners for Tymoshenko's release have accused prison staff of physically abusing the former prime minister, who shot to power after the country's Orange revolution. She was jailed after being found guilty of criminally abusing her office while in power over natural gas import negotiations with Russia in 2009. She denies all the charges and her supporters claim they are politically motivated. Her imprisonment means she will be unable to contest for the leadership in elections on 28 October. The next presidential election is in 2015. Concern over her treatment in prison has led to tensions in the EU. In May 2012 Ukraine had to cancel a meeting of regional leaders at Yalta when Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy and 10 other EU countries pulled out in protest. British, German, Austrian and Belgian ministers and officials also boycotted all Euro 2012 football matches held in the country in June. She has been held under tight security and in April went on a 20-day hunger strike in protest at being allegedly beaten by prison staff. Earlier this year, a video aired on Ukrainian TV of Tymoshenko bedridden in prison and protesting at being filmed went viral on the web.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Last western detainee held at Guantánamo pleaded guilty in 2010 to killing a US soldier in Afghanistan eight years earlier Canada's public safety minister says the last western detainee held at Guantánamo has returned to Canada. Vic Toews said on Saturday that 26-year-old Omar Khadr arrived at a military base on a US government plane early Saturday and has been transferred to Millhaven maximum security prison in Bath, Ontario. Khadr pleaded guilty in 2010 to killing a US soldier in Afghanistan and was eligible to return to Canada from Guantánamo Bay last October under terms of a plea deal. Khadr was 15 when he was captured in 2002 in Afghanistan, and has spent a decade at the US naval base in Cuba. He received an eight-year sentence in 2010. Khadr was convicted of throwing a grenade that killed army sergeant first class Christopher Speer during a 2002 firefight.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Last western detainee held at Guantánamo pleaded guilty in 2010 to killing a US soldier in Afghanistan eight years earlier The last western detainee held at the Guantánamo Bay US military prison has returned to Canada after a decade in custody and has been transferred to a maximum security prison in Canada where he awaits parole, Canada's public safety minister said Saturday. Vic Toews said that 26-year-old Omar Khadr arrived at a Canadian military base on a US government plane early Saturday and was transferred to the Millhaven maximum security prison in Bath, Ontario. Khadr pleaded guilty in 2010 to killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan and was eligible to return to Canada from Guantánamo last October under terms of a plea deal. Khadr was 15 when he was captured in 2002 in Afghanistan, and has spent a decade at the Guantánamo prison in Cuba – which was set up after 9/11 to hold suspected terrorists. Khadr received an eight-year sentence in 2010 after being convicted of throwing a grenade that killed army sargeant first class Christopher Speer during a 2002 firefight. Toews noted that the US government initiated the transfer and suggested that Canada had little choice but to accept him under Canadian law. "Omar Khadr is a known supporter of the al-Qaida terrorist network and a convicted terrorist," Toews said. "Omar Khadr was born in Canada and is a Canadian citizen. As a Canadian citizen, he has a right to enter Canada after the completion of his sentence." John Norris, Khadr's Canadian lawyer, has said Khadr would be eligible for parole as early as the spring of 2013. It will be up to Canada's national parole board to release him, Toews said. "I am satisfied the correctional service of Canada can administer Omar Khadr's sentence in a manner which recognizes the serious nature of the crimes that he has committed and ensure the safety of Canadians is protected during incarceration," Toews said. Toews said that Omar Khadr's mother and sister "have openly applauded" his father's "crimes and terrorist activities" and noted that Omar has had "little contact with Canadian society and will require substantial management in order to ensure safe integration in Canada." Khadr's family and lawyer did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment about his release. Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government had long refused to request the return of Khadr, the youngest detainee held at Guantánamo. The reluctance is partly due to suspicions about the Khadr family, which has been called "the first family of terrorism." Defense attorneys have said Khadr was pushed into fighting the Americans in Afghanistan by his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, an alleged al-Qaida financier whose family stayed with Osama bin Laden briefly when Omar Khadr was a boy. Ahmed Said Khadr was killed in 2003 when a Pakistani military helicopter shelled the house where he was staying with senior al-Qaida operatives. US defense secretary Leon Panetta signed off on Khadr's transfer in April. Panetta said in Ottawa earlier this year that sending Khadr back to Canada would be an important step because it would serve as an example to other detainees who are looking to return to their home countries or other places. Some Guantánamo detainees have been reluctant to agree to plea deals after noting that Khadr had remained in Guantánamo despite being eligible to leave since last October. The US defence department confirmed the transfer in a statement and said 166 detainees remain in detention at Guantánamo. Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, said the Guantánamo prison should finally be closed. She said Canada now has a chance to right what she called the many wrongs against Khadr and called for an investigation into Khadr's allegations of torture. "Given the Obama administration's glacial pace towards closing [Guantánamo], little and late though it is, today's news represents progress," Nossell said in a statement. "Khadr was imprisoned at the age of 15, subjected to ill-treatment and then prosecuted in a military commissions system that does not meet international fair trial standards. Growing up in Guantánamo and facing more prison time in Canada, his future remains uncertain."
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Iranian state TV claims Washington is using the group – which the US removed from its terrorism list – to work against Tehran Iran condemned on Saturday the Obama administration for taking an Iranian militant group formerly allied with Saddam Hussein off the US terrorism list, saying it shows Washington's "double standards." The People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), which began as a guerrilla movement fighting Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, helped overthrow Pahlavi in 1979 then quickly fell out with Iran's first leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. The MEK fought in the 1980s alongside Saddam's forces in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war but disarmed after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The state department de-listed the group on Friday, meaning that any assets the MEK has in the United States are unblocked and Americans can do business with the organization. Iranian state TV criticized the decision, saying that the US considered the MEK "good terrorists" and claims Washington is using the group to work against Tehran. State radio said the move highlights President Barack Obama's anti-Iranian sentiments. "There are numerous evidence of the group being involved in terrorist activities. De-listing them shows America's double standard policy on terrorism," state TV said. The US distinguishes between "good and bad terrorists" and the MEK are now "good terrorists because the US is using them against Iran," the report also said, adding that Washington and Israel use the group to spy on Iran's nuclear program. The US and its allies accuse Iran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has denied the claims, saying its nuclear program is peaceful and is intended for electricity generation and scientific research. The state department said the MEK hasn't committed terror for more than a decade. The group has also complied with demands that more than 3,000 of its once-armed members abandon their base in Iraq near the Iranian border for a camp outside Baghdad, an essential step to ending their decades-long presence in Iraq. The group claims it is seeking regime change in Iran through peaceful means with an aim to replace the clerical rule in Tehran with a secular government. However, a senior state department official suggested that removing MEK from the US terrorist list does not translate into a shared common front against Iran. The official said Washington does not view MEK as an opposition movement that can promote democratic values in Iran. The official on Friday briefed reporters on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Iran says MEK is responsible for the deaths of more than 12,000 Iranians over the past three decades, including senior government officials. The MEK spent huge sums of money over years lobbying for removal from the US terror list, holding rallies in European capitals and elsewhere that featured luminaries like former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge from the Bush administration. Former House speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was among those recently welcomed by the MEK to Paris. The group was protected in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, but its members are disliked by the new Iraqi government, dominated by Shia Muslims like those in Iran. The United States had insisted the MEK's members leave Camp Ashraf, their home in Iraq, as a condition for removal from the terrorist list. All but several hundred militants are now located in Camp Liberty, a former US base outside Baghdad, looking for placement in third countries. The MEK was removed from the European Union's terrorist list in 2009.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Controversial venue opens with Friday concert, attracting thousands of Jay-Z fans and a few diehard protesters New York is already known for mega-venues like Madison Square Garden and tiny cult spaces like Joe's Pub and the Blue Note, but now a new name has been added to the list: the Barclays Center. The controversial rust-coloured arena, which faced years of protest before it was built, opened in the heart of Brooklyn on Friday night as rapper Jay-Z held its inaugural concert. The vast space attracted thousands of fans – and a few diehard protesters – to its first event, crowding the tight network of residential streets around the huge building. "Tonight is a celebration of the borough where I'm from. Welcome to my house," Jay-Z, a Brooklyn native, told the crowd before he began his set. The sold-out gig was the first of many planned concerts at the Barclays Center, which promoters have hailed as a way of rehabilitating downtown Brooklyn and critics have said will destroy a vibrant local community. Other big names set to play there in coming months include Bob Dylan and Barbara Streisand. The arena will also be the new home of basketball team the Nets, bringing major American team sports to Brooklyn for the first time since baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers left for southern California in 1957. The first game in the billion dollar state-of-the-art complex, which can seat 18,200 people, will be on 1 November against rivals the New York Knicks. That game will end more than half a century of sporting drought for Brooklynites, who have seen other major franchises play in the Bronx, Manhattan and – horror! – even New Jersey instead of Brooklyn. However, the Barclays Center has opened in the face of determined protests. It is the first stage in the massive Atlantic Yards development, which is heavily subsidised with public money and represents the biggest development ever tried in Brooklyn. However, proposed housing towers on the site, complete with affordable units for local residents, have yet to materialise, raising concerns that the needs of major corporations and profits for developers have been put
far ahead of the interests of the local community.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Charles Monnett, who oversaw much of the government's work in the Arctic, was investigated over alleged use of false data The Obama administration has wound up its controversial investigation of a government polar bear researcher without finding any evidence of scientific wrongdoing, campaign groups said late Friday. However, the scientist, Charles Monnett, who was the first to draw attention to the dangers to polar bears in a warming Arctic, was reprimanded for forwarding official email to a local government official and a fellow researcher at the University of Alaska without prior authorisation. Campaign groups described the findings as a victory for Monnett, who until last year oversaw much of the government's scientific work in the Arctic. It was also an embarrassment for the Obama administration, whose two-and-a-half-year investigation uncovered no evidence of major wrongdoing. "This has been a vindication of Dr Monnett in that they found no scientific misconduct or anything related to his scientific work that merited any sort of discipline or personnel action," said Jeff Ruch, director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which had led the defence of Monnett. But he said the official reprimand, though minor in terms of disciplinary action, was sobering. "It reads as if it was motivated by attempts during the Obama years to clog leaks and root out environmental dissidents inside the department of interior having to do with Arctic drilling." Until mid-2011, Monnett oversaw much of the research on Arctic wildlife, managing $50m in scientific projects, for the government agency overseeing oil drilling in Alaska, the bureau of ocean energy management, or BOEM. Peer said Monnett was told informally on Thursday he could return to his scientific role. The reprimand will be expunged from his record in two years or less, the interior department said in a letter to Monnett. The wildlife biologist was suspended for six weeks last year and subsequently sidelined as the interior department's inspector general investigated charges of scientific misconduct and mismanagement of government contracts. The investigation was launched in March 2010 just as Obama announced he would open up the Arctic to offshore drilling and expand oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. The investigators began their inquiries by examining allegations that Monnett and another scientist had used false data in an article on drowned polar bears. The scientists wrote the article after a research flight in 2004 during which they observed four drowned polar bears. In the article for Polar Biology, Monnett concluded the bears, though usually strong swimmers, had become exhausted during the long distances between patches of solid sea ice. The research note was the first time scientists had drawn a link between melting Arctic sea ice and a threat to the bears' survival, and was immediately taken up by Al Gore and other environmental campaigners. In 2008 the polar bear was listed as an endangered species because of climate change and melting sea ice. The inspector general's report found flaws in the work, but no major issues of scientific integrity. The investigation then examined whether Monnett had improperly awarded research contracts. In the end, the department decided to take action only on Monnett's unauthorised release of government documents on five separate occasions in 2007 and 2008. "I consider your misconduct very serious, " the deputy director of BOEM, Walter Cruikshank, wrote in the letter to Monnett. Some of the material disclosed by Monnett was later used in court to force the interior department to revoke its approval of Shell's drilling plan, the letter said. Arctic researchers and environmental campaigns saw the investigation of Monnett as an attempt to discredit or sideline government scientists – and so clear the way for Shell and other oil companies seeking approval to begin drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Shell began drilling its first offshore well in the Chukchi this month but was forced to pull out because of a series of problems in its oil containment system. "It was a witch hunt. They were looking for anything they could find on Chuck (Monnett) to try to get rid of him or at least try to discredit him," said Richard Steiner, who was the receipient of four of the five unauthorised email releases. Rebecca Noblin, who heads the Arctic programme for the Centre for Biological Diversity agreed. "After years of dredging through Dr Monnett's files looking for damning evidence against the scientist, all the inspector general could come up with is that Dr Monnett disclosed documents that should have been public in the first place," she said in an email. "If there were more people like Dr Monnett in BOEM, maybe we'd see more drilling decisions based on science rather than politics."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Goals from Fernando Torres and Juan Mata kept Chelsea's unbeaten run going and ended Arsenal's Hello. Chelsea might have something that no other London club has, a captain found guilty of racial abuse a European Cup, but they still want more. A man like Roman Abramovich is never satisfied. Now he wants what Arsenal have: he wants Chelsea's football to win over the neutrals and there could be no better place than the Emirates for Roberto Di Matteo's new-look side to strut their stuff. For years, this has been a battle between beauty and brawn, Chelsea's powerhouses regularly outmuscling Arsenal's artisans, Didier Drogba battering them into submission. Yet Drogba has gone now and this is a Chelsea team built around the likes of Eden Hazard, Juan Mata and Oscar, players who would not look out of place in an Arsene Wenger side. It's not a fight, it's a beauty contest. The shift in focus could help an increasingly slick Arsenal, because it is not always advisable to engage them in a football match. Certainly not if they play as well as they did at Manchester City last Sunday, although it wasn't just the passing that impressed against the champions, it was the quality of their defending that caught the eye too, even without Wojiech Szczesny, Bacary Sagna and Thomas Vermaelen. How to explain the improvement in Arsenal's defence? Most have put two and two together and come up with the influence of Steve Bould. Indeed they've arguably been more impressive at the back than they have been in the final third so far this season, with Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud still finding their feet in English football. Boring, boring Arsenal. Kick-off: 12.45pm. Team news: John Terry starts for Chelsea and will silence the critics by scoring the winner. But Frank Lampard is on the bench, which will surely raise questions about whether Roberto Di Matteo, who has named an extremely bold side, has lost the dressing room. Arsenal make one change from the draw with City, Thomas Vermaelen replacing Per Mertesacker in the centre of defence. Arsenal: Mannone; Jenkinson, Koscielny, Vermaelen, Gibbs; Arteta, Diaby; Ramsey, Cazorla, Podolski; Gervinho. Subs: Mertesacker, Santos, Giroud, Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Djourou, Martinez. Chelsea: Cech; Ivanovic, Luiz, Terry, Cole; Ramires, Mikel; Mata, Oscar, Hazard; Torres. Subs: Turnbull, Romeu, Lampard, Moses, Cahill, Azpilicueta, Bertrand. Referee: Martin Atkinson. Jamie Redknapp is surprised that Frank Lampard is on the bench. I wonder why. An email. "Chelsea very much a work in progress as the cliche goes," says Martin Braonain. "Pre season they were not convincing at times but we did have a nice run of games against 'lesser' clubs and AMadrid rumbled us (well falcao did). Looking forward to how the back line and Mikel play. Still no fear at the Emirates." They weren't too convincing in the end against Juventus either. Whereas Arsenal have passed difficult tests against Liverpool and Manchester City. And Stoke. Here come the teams. In the tunnel, Santi Cazorla, Mikel Arteta and Juan Mata share some Spanish Banter. The El Bantico. Peep! We're off, Chelsea getting us underway and attacking from left to right. They keep the ball for all of eight seconds, a poor pass from Ramires immediately conceding a throw-in. There have been better starts. Loud boos predictably greet early touches from John Terry and Ashley Cole. 2 min: This fixture was a shocking goalless draw last season. None of that today, please! "5 Live just said that the Arsenal mascot snubbed John Terry," says Mark Coale. "I only wish they had meant Gunnersaurus and not the little kid." 3 min: An early chance for chance for Chelsea, Hazard brought down 35 yards from goal. David Luiz sizes it up and spanks an ambitious effort straight at Mannone, the young Italian dealing with an awkward bounce right in front of him. 4 min: This has been a strong start from Chelsea. Torres scampers down the right flank and flashes a fine cross across six-yard box. Mannone stays rooted to his line but it was too far ahead of Mata in the middle. Torres looks over with a rueful look on his face. He's never been on the winning side against Arsenal. 5 min: Now it's Arsenal's turn to threaten, Ramsey firing high and wide from 25 yards out. All the signs are this is going to be an entertaining end-to-end match. 7 min: After seven minutes of booing, it seems the Arsenal fans are already bored with taunting John Terry and Ashley Cole. And if a man is tired of that, he is tired of life. There have been more intimidating atmospheres. 9 min: Arsenal are yet to gain a foothold in this match, with a snappy Chelsea quick to shut them down in their own half. I still question whether this is necessarily Arsenal's best attacking combination, especially with Ramsey on the right. Ashley Cole has been all over him so far. 10 min: This time Ramsey drifts into the middle and finds Gervinho on the right. His first cross is blocked, not that there were too many red shirts in the area, but he gets another chance. He decides to lay it back to Cazorla, who slashes well over the top from the edge of the area. As well as Arsenal keep the ball, they're still not quite there in the final third yet. But you'd expect it to come in time. 12 min: The resurgent Diaby drops the shoulder to beat one man and then repeats the trick on a second Chelsea defender to earn space for the shot. His rasping drive from 25 yards out is straight at Cech though. There's been little in the way of clearcut opportunities yet, but there has been plenty to admire in the way both teams are playing. 14 min: No one is going to win more free-kicks this season than Eden Hazard. 15 min: "How does Wenger expect Giroud to grow in confidence and form if he just benches him regardless of promising performances?" asks Matthew Sharpe. Well this team played very well against City last week. Giroud will get his chance but there's value in bedding him in slowly. 17 min: Arsenal have been forced into an early change. Diaby, who has struggled so much for fitness, injured himself when he took that shot a few minutes ago and on comes Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. He will presumably move to the right, with Ramsey dropping inside. 19 min: Hazard plays a one-two with Torres but is sent flying by a late if innocuous challenge from Vermaelen, who gets a stern talking-to from Martin Atkinson. Chelsea have a free-kick on the right. GOAL! Arsenal 0-1 Chelsea (Torres, 20 min): This was absolutely woeful defending from Arsenal. Bould out! Mata curled the free-kick in from the right and any number of Chelsea players could have scored from it, with Luiz astonishingly left unmarked six yards from goal. He couldn't reach but on the left side of the six-yard box Torres beat Koscielny to the ball and hooked an outstanding improvised volley into the top-left corner. 23 min: Martin Atkinson has to wave away appeals for penalties at both ends. First Arsenal claimed that Mikel gave Cazorla a sly push in the back after a cross from the left. It would have been soft. Chelsea broke and Torres was suddenly clear on goal after making a Nemanja Vidic out of Laurent Koscielny. He tried to take the ball round Mannone but just as he drew his right foot back to shoot, he was clipped by Koscielny, causing him to go down. It should be a penalty to Chelsea but again Atkinson waves play on. 26 min: Arsenal really got away with one there. They're very lucky not to be two goals down. Koscielny probably wouldn't have been sent off though, because there were covering Arsenal defenders and it wasn't a goalscoring opportunity because it was Fernando Torres."Thank you Dan Smith of Sunderland," says Sasu Laaksonen, referring to Diaby's substitution. 28 min: A cross from the left finds Gervinho at the far post but his header back across goal is just chested back to Cech by Terry, as cool as you like. "Quick!" says Matt Dony. "Knee-jerk reaction! Zonal marking is the worst system in the world! The worst thing in the world! Even though a man was tight to Torres, it's the system to blame, not the individual. Foreign muck." 29 min: Torres has the ball in the net again but the goal is correctly disallowed for offside. He was played through by a really sharp first-time pass from Mata and then drove past Mannone - who didn't exactly cover himself in glory with a feeble attempt at a save - but he was a yard beyond the last defender. "I can't think of anything more psychologically damaging than getting benched in favour of Gervinho," says Ian Dickinson. 32 min: Vermaelen has a pop from 45 yards out. Oh dear. 34 min: Chelsea are caught out by a quick free-kick from Arsenal on the left but Ivanovic gets back to stop Gervinho at the expense of the corner. And then clears the corner. 35 min: Aaron Ramsey is booked after catching Oscar, who rolls about and should win an, etc etc. "Why was it a penalty Jacob?" says David Berkley. "Torres kicked Koscielny." I disagree. Torres was about to shoot and was stopped from doing so by Koscielny. 37 min: Oh my. Mata slips a pass to the onrushing Hazard on the right. He bursts into the area and as he reaches the byline he sends the sliding Gibbs skittering off into the distance by stopping and duping him with a beautiful turn, before coming up with a rabona cross just for good measure. Koscielny heads away. It wasn't as good as this, mind you. 39 min: Oscar is booked for one foul too many. Meanwhile Chelsea fans are riling the locals by pointing out that Ashley Cole has won a European Cup. 40 min: Jenkinson and Cazorla combine on the right to set up a shooting opportunity 12 yards from goal, but he takes to long and sees his effort blocked by Ramires. Arsenal have come up with very little in the final third. GOAL! Arsenal 1-1 Chelsea (Gervinho, 42 min): But now they've come up with something and it's a terrific finish from Gervinho, not usually noted for his ruthlessness in front of goal. Arteta found Oxlade-Chamberlain on the right and his low cross came to Gervinho eight yards out, Chelsea's centre-backs having dropped too deep. Gervinho had his back to goal and still had a lot to do however, but he quickly controlled the ball and then swivelled to crash a shot into the top-right corner in one movement. What a goal machine. 45 min: Suddenly Arsenal are rampant, with Chelsea under the cosh. Jenkinson fires another cross in from the right and Chelsea clear with some difficulty, before Podolski's charge into the area from the left is stopped by Luiz. There will be three minutes of stoppage time. 45 min+1: Chelsea remain a threat though. Oscar finds space on the edge of the area and his low drive flashes just past the left post, the officials failing to spot that it took a deflection off Vermaelen on its way wide and awarding Arsenal a goal-kick. 45 min+4: With the final kick of the half, Torres somehow wriggles out of an extremely tight spot on the right before dragging a low shot into the side-netting. Half time: Arsenal 1-1 Chelsea. Well that was fun. 46 min: Arsenal get us going again. There are a few red seats dotted around the stadium, supporters making the most of the half time refreshments on offer. Hic! 47 min: Gibbs pokes a pass through to Podolski, whose burst into the area is halted by Luiz. Chelsea break and somehow Torres wins a corner despite losing the ball on the halfway line. Not quite sure how that happened. 48 min: Sideshow Dave is booked for a risible dive in the Arsenal area. It wasn't quite up there with Morten Gamst Pedersen's award-winning effort here a few years ago but it had the lot, an anguished cry and a hilarious leap through the air after a fair challenge from Gervinho. Martin Atkinson was having none of it, despite Luiz's claims that he wasn't really looking for a penalty. 50 min: Great play from Podolski, who takes out two Chelsea defenders with a surging run into the area on the left. His low ball across goal is met with a poor clearance by Cole, the ball knocked straight back to Cazorla but he slices high and wide with his left foot. He probably had more time than he realised there. "Koscielny effectively stopped Torres shooting by getting between Torres and the ball," David Berkley. "That's allowed, surely." Don't you have to, y'know, touch the ball though? 52 min: Vermaelen is booked after buffeting Torres. His look says "Who? Me?" but he knows. Chelsea have a free-kick in a similar position from where their goal came. GOAL! Arsenal 1-2 Chelsea (Mata, 53 min): Arsenal concede another horribly soft goal from a set-piece, although it was a terrific delivery from Mata. He curled it deliciously into the corridor of uncertainty with his left and Koscielny, sliding in, only succeeded in confusing Mannone, who reacted too late as the ball bounced into the left corner. I blame Steve Bould. 55 min: "I remember the Pedersen dive – he even had the gall to look over his shoulder (to check the ref's line of sight) before he did it," says SB Tang. "Unbelievable." 57 min: Chelsea fans are crowing, Arsenal's are silent. "He stopped Torres shooting by, not so much getting between man and ball, as running behind man and catching his leg on the backswing," says Matt Dony. "Once he'd got into that position, it couldn't be helped, but he shouldn't have been there in the first place. Case closed, ithankyou." 59 min: What a save from Petr Cech to deny Podolski. This all came from Ivanovic and Luiz messing up a throw-in to hand possession back to Arsenal on the left. Gibbs dinked a cross into the middle and Podolski, in between Luiz and Terry, flicked a looping header towards the far corner, only for Cech to palm it away. Ramsey then spanked a drive well wide from the right. 62 min: Ramsey provokes the ire of the Arsenal crowd by giving the ball away with three sloppy passes in the space of a minute. Arsenal stay on the attack though and Jenkinson is fouled by Cole this far outside the area on the right. That was so close to being a penalty. Ivanovic heads the free-kick away. You wouldn't expect Chelsea to concede against Arsenal in that situation. 65 min: A lightning counter-attack from Chelsea ends with Oscar's feeble drive being collected by Mannone following a string of poor passes from Torres, Oscar and Ramires. Having broken with four or five attackers against an exposed Arsenal defence, that was such a waste. 66 min: Gibbs sends a cross into the area from the left and Luiz, facing his own goal, stretches out a leg to divert it inches past the left post. 67 min: Arsenal use up their final substitutions, Olivier Giroud and Theo Walcott replacing Aaron Ramsey and Lukas Podolski. "Looks like we've already got to that stage of the season where Ramsey is burnt out," says Sacha Brady. 69 min: Torres loses the ball with so frequently and often in such hapless fashion. I suspect this team won't be the finished article until they sign a new striker. He just seems to lack that crucial decisiveness at important moments. 71 min: For the last minute we've been able to hear the instructions of - I assume - Roberto Di Matteo on the touchline. "Move the ball! Move the ball!" he shouts as Chelsea stroke it about at the back. Then, as a high ball was sent towards Ivanovic: "Go on! You win it ... well done!" 73 min: How on earth did that stay out? Giroud's shot from the left took a deflection off Luiz but although Cech was going the wrong way, he managed to stick up a hand and push the ball agonisingly past the left post. It looked like it was going to drop in. Giroud's wait goes on. 74 min: Chelsea replace Oscar with Victor Moses, who had a wonderful game here when Wigan won here in April. 76 min: Chelsea have the ball right where they want it: in Arsenal's half. Arsenal are flat. "Well, there's no point Di Matteo shouting anything more tactically specific," honks Matt Dony. "That all comes from Terry." 78 min: Arsenal's frustration grows. They're being keep at arm's length by Chelsea who will be pleased to see this: Kieran Gibbs taking aim from 30 yards out sending his shot soaring into the stands. 79 min: Mata and Torres play a lovely one-two on the edge of the area and Mata is brought down by Gibbs inside the D. An excellent opportunity for Chelsea to put this match to bed. Mata will take it. 81 min: Mata's free-kick goes straight in the wall but it still had a devastating effect, Giroud and Koscielny clashing heads as they both attempted to block the shot. Gary Cahill comes on for the hobbling David Luiz. 83 min: Ramires brings down Arteta on the left. A free-kick to Arsenal in a promising position. Cazorla dinks it in, Cech gets nowhere near it and Koscielny's header clangs against the post. Although the flag is up for something or other, signalling a free-kick for Chelsea. 85 min: Chelsea are looking to shut this down now. The highly promising Ryan Bertrand replaces Juan Mata. Up the other end, Moses runs on to Torres's flick and loops a clever volley over the bar. 88 min: Arsenal are offering next to nothing now. They look beaten. To be honest, they've looked beaten since Mata's goal. 89 min: Gervinho darts in from the left and tees up Cazorla, who places his left-footed effort over the bar from the edge of the area. That was a really inviting chance. He's had a disappointing game this afternoon. 90 min: There will be four minutes of Arsene Time. 90 min+1: What a miss from Olivier Giroud! Oxlade-Chamberlain slipped him in behind the Arsenal defence with a glorious pass, he took it round Cech and then sliced his shot into the side-netting, the big galoot. That was awful. What a chance. That's not going to do Giroud's confidence any good at all. 90 min+2: Ramires is booked for doing something illegal. 90 min+4: Bertrand does brilliantly on the left, beating Jenkinson on the left before pulling the ball back to Hazard, who glides past one man and then sees his low shot deflected behind. The points are surely Chelsea's. Full time: Arsenal 1-2 Chelsea. The full-time whistle blows and a huge roar goes up from the Chelsea end. Their unbeaten run goes on and they are now four points clear at the top of the table, but Arsenal have suffered their first defeat of the season. They would have snatched a point but for a shocking late miss from Olivier Giroud but if he needs any inspiration that his luck will turn, he need only look at the identity of Chelsea's first scorer: Fernando Torres. Thanks for reading. Bye.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Rudolf Giuliani leads Republican attack as confusion grows over circumstances of Chris Stevens' death in Benghazi The killing of the US ambassador to Libya is rapidly becoming election fodder, as Republicans seize on confusion over the circumstances of Chris Stevens' death in Benghazi three weeks ago and accuse the Obama administration of covering up an al-Qaeda connection. US officials reiterated on on Friday that they regard the killing of Stevens and three other Americans working for the state department at the US consulate in Benghazi as an assault by terrorists who planned the attack. But a dearth of real information about the exact circumstances of the assault has left open the question of whether such planning was merely the work of a few hours, to take advantage of a spontaneous anti-US protest over a short internet video that prompted demonstrations across the Middle East by offended Muslims, or weeks and months, to mark the 11th anniversary of al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks on the US. Disagreement over that question is dividing along political lines. Earlier this week, Republican senators wrote to the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, demanding that she explain her statement, five days after the killings, that they were part of a spontaneous anti-US protest. Four senators signed the letter, including John McCain, which said Rice made "several troubling statements that are inconsistent with the facts and require explanation". The former New York mayor Rudolf Giuliani, who sought the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2008, went further, accusing the White House of a cover-up. Speaking to Fox News, Giuliani said: "This is a deliberate attempt to cover up the truth, from an administration that claimed it wanted to be the most transparent in history. And it's the worst kind of cover-up: the kind of cover-up that involves our national security. This is a cover-up that involves the slaughter of four Americans." Rice's explanation of a spontaneous assault by a well-armed Libyan militia was maintained by the administration until 10 days ago when Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Centre, called the killings a terrorist attack. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and the defence secretary, Leon Panetta, this week shifted away from the initial line. Clinton on Wednesday hinted that the al-Qaeda offshoot in North Africa may be tied up with the Benghazi assault. "Now with a larger safe haven and increased freedom to manoeuvre, terrorists are seeking to extend their reach and their networks in multiple directions," Clinton told a meeting of international leaders at the UN which discussed the crisis in North Africa, including the seizure of northern Mali by armed Islamist forces. "And they are working with other violent extremists to undermine the democratic transitions under way in North Africa, as we tragically saw in Benghazi." Administration officials were careful to say afterwards that Clinton was not claiming firm evidence of a link. Olsen was similarly cautious in speaking to senators this week. "The picture that is emerging is one where a number of different individuals were involved, so it's not necessarily an either/or proposition," he said. Officials say that while there is some evidence that individual members of the local militia responsible for the attack, Ansar al-Shariah, may have been in touch with extremist elements in other countries, no hard information has so far emerged of a direct foreign or al-Qaeda link to the attack in Benghazi. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Martin Dempsey, on Thursday said there "was a thread of intelligence reporting that groups in the environment in eastern Libya were seeking to coalesce but there wasn't anything specific". He added that there was no intelligence indicating a looming attack. Officials say US intelligence picked up a call by a member of al-Qaeda in North Africa celebrating the attack, but that is not hard evidence of a link. Panetta said on Thursday that there was some preplanning involved in the assault. "As we determined the details of what took place [in Benghazi], and how that attack took place it became clear that there were terrorists who had planned that attack," he said. But whether that was over the proceeding hours, when the militia realised it could take advantage of the existing protest outside the consulate, or over the previous days and weeks remains a question investigators are struggling to answer. At present, the Americans are unable even to establish how large the protest was and how long it went on. Administration officials continue to maintain that if there was preplanning, it was not long term. But some Republicans argue that there is already evidence, circumstantial and otherwise, of a plot. For a start, they say it is no coincidence that the assault on the Benghazi consulate was on 11 September. The discovery in the wrecked consulate, by CNN, of Stevens' diary has also fed claims that the White House is underplaying a broader terrorist connection. Stevens wrote that he feared he was an al-Qaeda hit list and was alarmed by his lack of security after earlier attacks on US and British targets in Benghazi and amid what he described as a growing al-Qaeda presence in Libya. The state department's furious reaction to CNN's reporting of Stevens' fears – calling the use of non-personal information from the diary without the family's approval "disgusting" – suggested alarm in the administration at the potential damage to its denials of a conspiracy and that it will be open to criticism that it did not provide sufficient protection to the Benghazi consulate. There are also questions about the circumstances of Stevens death and whether Libyan militias knew he was at the consulate. However, given the large footprint American diplomats make as they move around the Middle East, it would not have been difficult to discern that an important US official had arrived in Benghazi. Giuliani said the White House was reluctant to admit al-Qaeda involvement because it wants to dismiss that threat following last year's killing of Osama Bin Laden. "I think it's because they have this narrative that they defeated al-Qaeda," he said. "They never say the words 'Islamic fundamentalist terrorism'. They want to wish it away. The president was moving on to Asia – he was going to declare this a great victory for himself and unfortunately, this terrible act of terror intervened in their very convenient narrative." Libya's president, Mohamed Magariaf, has also made the link by blaming "al-Qaeda elements" hiding in his country for the death of Stevens and three other Americans working for the state department. "It was a preplanned act of terrorism directed against American citizens," Magariaf said this week. But claims of an al-Qaeda connection has been met with scepticism by others in Libya who say it is feasible for well armed militiamen to have taken advantage of the protests outside the US consulate to launch a substantial attack. The likelihood of a definitive explanation any time soon looks dim. The Obama administration has said an FBI investigation will establish the facts. But the New York Times on Friday reported that the FBI team remains in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, over 400 miles away, because of fears for its safety. Meanwhile the crime scene of the killings in Benghazi has been picked over by Libyans, who are assumed to have compromised what ever evidence there was that would have been of use to investigators. One US law enforcement official in Tripoli told the New York Times that they may never make it to Benghazi.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The Communist Party congress will see an organisation with 80m members decide the fate of the world's second largest economy To understand the long journey of the People's Republic of China and its rulers you might start at a modest two-storey grey brick building in Shanghai's former French Concession. It lies a short stroll from the Harry Winston store, with its blazing diamonds, past over-priced bars and glassy towers. It was in 1921 that 13 young Chinese men gathered in this newly built home, then located at the edge of the city, overlooking a vegetable field. Though most were lodging at a nearby girls' school as the Beijing University Summer Vacation Tourist Group, sightseeing was not on the agenda. In strictest secrecy, with the aid of two Comintern representatives, they were hammering out the programme for the newly formed Communist party of China. Threatened with discovery by the police, they fled to the nearby town of Jiaxing, where the Communist party's first national congress concluded on board a pleasure boat on South Lake. Six weeks from now, their descendants will gather in Beijing for the 18th congress and will hand over power to a new generation of leaders, with Xi Jinping at the helm. The Communist party is now the world's largest and most powerful political movement, with more than 80 million members; it controls a fifth of the globe's population and the second largest economy. The congress is expected to be its shot at returning to business as usual, after a tumultuous year culminating in Friday's announcement that the disgraced politician Bo Xilai, who was once tipped for promotion in this transition, faces criminal charges. He is accused of abusing power, corruption and sexual impropriety; he is said to bear responsibility for his wife's murder of the British businessman Neil Heywood. Though most of November's meeting will take place behind closed doors, the party no longer needs to cherish obscurity; these days the congress is a carefully mounted display of power and unity. More than 2,200 delegates will meet at Beijing's Great Hall of the People in considerable pomp and some splendour. Police will have silenced any hint of discord; activists and dissidents will be detained or put under surveillance. "The 18th party congress is coming, so we thought we should learn about the first one," said Wang Yao as he left the site of the first meeting, now a museum. "The first generation had such difficult conditions when they started, but now China is more and more prosperous, and it's getting better and better." Wang and his family are among the winners. He works in sales and marketing; his son Tommy has just graduated from Newcastle University. "The new government will lead China at a new speed, but with the same original spirit from here," he predicted. Others find it harder to see the continuity. "The internal procedures of the congress have not changed much over the decades since Stalin institutionalised the congress as a showpiece of party unity," said Jeremy Paltiel, an expert on the party at Carleton University in Canada. But the party itself is a long way from its roots, he noted: "Arguably it remained something of an organisation of revolutionaries until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Since then it has become a party of functionaries and officials. The party is a party of 'cadres' and so is the congress, with a few 'model workers' as window dressing." Over nine decades, the party has proved extraordinarily adaptable as well as relentless in its pursuit and preservation of power. It has endured violent suppression and war; the devastating purges, famine and political turmoil its own leader created; the alienation of its people through the bloody crackdown on the 1989 pro-democracy protests that began in Tiananmen Square. It has survived by jettisoning the ideology once at its core, in favour of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" – today's hybrid of rampant capitalism and the heavy hand of the state. Under its reign, life expectancy and literacy have soared; two years ago Shanghai topped the OECD's global rankings of schools. Women's rights have improved markedly. Hundreds of millions have climbed out of poverty – an achievement described by the World Bank as a miracle. Yet tens of millions died in the manmade disaster of the Great Famine and tens of millions were persecuted in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. In-equality is soaring. Human rights abuses and corruption are rife; the Bo scandal has highlighted the unbridled power of senior leaders and the often lavish lifestyles of their families. Still, facing it down may be the least of the new leadership's challenges; they face slowing growth in an imbalanced economy, environmental devastation, rising public expectations and an increasingly complicated foreign policy environment. To trace the "glorious course" of the national congresses, as Shanghai's museum does, is to trace the evolution of the party and the country. Guards say visitor numbers have climbed as the 18th congress approaches; around 1,000 arrive each day, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and earnestness. In an upper gallery, one man is schmoozing a business contact via his mobile as he glances at exhibits. At the souvenir counter, official histories of the party jostle for space with Mao watches, kitschy Red Army mobile phone accessories and a pencil case reading: Study hard, earn money. The group that gathered in July 1921, "unlike the party of a later time ... had a great deal of idealism but little organisational discipline", said Wen-hsin Yeh, an expert on the birth of Chinese communism at the University of California Berkeley. The early years were volatile; only two of the 13 remained in the party by the time it took power in 1949. Others had died, chosen to leave or were purged. Yet by 1927 it had 58,000 members and the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek was alarmed enough to launch a brutal suppression of the party; the following year it would meet in exile, in Moscow. The seventh congress would not take place until 1945, at the Communist rebel base in Yan'an, just before the end of the Japanese occupation and the resumption of war with Chiang's forces. "It confirmed Mao's absolute authority in the Communist party," said Gao Wenqian, previously a researcher at the Chinese Institute of Central Documents and now a senior policy adviser at New York-based Human Rights in China. Eleven years later, the eighth congress was a celebration of power; the party now ruled China. More than 1,000 delegates, representing 10 million members, gathered in Beijing. "Mao hoped to become the leader of the world revolution," said Gao. "Then he started the Great Leap Forward." The disastrous attempt to transform the economy and society overnight resulted in tens of millions of deaths in the Great Famine – and a new willingness to challenge the chairman. "Mao worried that his position was not stable, so the ninth national congress was not held until 1969," said Gao. That year a giant portrait of Chairman Mao hung above the meeting. He had already unleashed the Cultural Revolution to eliminate his rivals; Lin Biao – who would die in a mysterious plane crash two years later – was confirmed as his new successor. "The ideological, political and organisational guidelines of the ninth national congress were wrong," a caption at the museum states flatly. Eight years later, after Mao's death, the 11th congress saw the return of many of his victims; notably Deng Xiaoping, who would do more than anyone to turn China into today's global powerhouse. That year, 1977, saw the establishment of the pattern that still prevails, with a congress every five years. The party is an increasingly institutionalised body that has regulated the turnover of leaders, leaving behind the days when one man could control it. Many within its top ranks appear to have feared Bo, who sought to harness mass support in pursuit of his ambitions, as a destabilising figure. These days "the national congress is like a rubber stamp. Before the 18th, all the significant decisions have already been made, such as the personnel arrangements and the policy direction afterwards," said Gao. Gao, like others, believes three decades of economic reform without political change have led to contradictions and conflicts which are reaching a critical, explosive point. As growth slows, it can no longer disguise the problems. The Bo Xilai incident gave the party the opportunity to turn over a new leaf, said Gao. "In my opinion, they missed it. From the trial of Wang Lijun to dealing with the Bo case, it has all been black operations ... It has been about the political struggles, trading by different groups in the power transition. The Communist party is 92 years old. It is senile and lethargic. They only want to maintain the present situation, not to make any changes." Others hope a new generation of leaders could yet grasp the nettle. They are "collectively more diverse in terms of their professional and political backgrounds, more weathered and adaptable from their formative experiences during the Cultural Revolution and more cosmopolitan in their worldviews and policy choices than the preceding generations. They may contribute, in a profound way, to political institutionalisation and democratic governance of the country," argued analyst Cheng Li of the Brookings Institution in a recent paper on the handover. Yet, he noted, the increasing pluralism of Chinese society and diversity among political elites make reaching consensus far harder. "Ideological disputes within the leadership are real and they may become too divisive to reconcile," he warned. And while many in China still feel the party has brought stability and wealth, they are increasingly cynical about the motivation and pronouncements of its leaders; even about its founding myths. When one museum visitor said he had come to see China's past, his friend interjected mockingly: "Is it real history?" Early records are sparse because it was hazardous for party members to be caught with revolutionary materials. But the reconstruction of the first congress was a political, not just historical, act. In one room a tableau of waxwork figures shows Mao, clad in a flowing blue scholar's gown, holding forth to rapt delegates. But he was not then the party's pre-eminent figure, as Yeh pointed out; it was Chen Duxiu who was elected general secretary, albeit in his absence. Samuel Liang, an assistant professor at Utah Valley University and visiting research fellow at Shanghai Jiaotong University, has described the monument as "an empty shell that attempts to eternalise a reinvented past by terminating the place's living, natural history". Mao noted that a revolution is not a dinner party, Liang wrote. "Neither is revolution, I might add for Mao, a peaceful pilgrimage to a revolution museum." That the birthplace of Chinese communism now stands in one of Shanghai's ritzier shopping and entertainment areas, Xintiandi, makes an odd sort of sense. Superficially, the complex's developers preserved the traditional housing. In reality, they reconstituted facades and remade interiors. Residents made way for boutiques and restaurants. Both party and neighbourhood retain their shells, but the spirit that animated them has long since vanished. "The transformation of the area into what today is known as Xintiandi is indicative of how the party has changed from leading political – or ideological – driven governance to leading economic or developmental-driven governance," added Liang. How the Communist party will evolve next remains to be seen. When Hu Jintao took power a decade ago, many hoped it would bring significant change. "The major challenge for Xi Jinping is that he will have to confront things to convince the public that they are really serious in political and economic reform," said Zhang Jian, a political scientist at Peking University. "The steam of reform has been lost in the past 10 years and the deterioration of those economic and political conditions is making reform more and more urgent." Upstairs at the museum, there are no such doubts: the achievements of Hu's tenure fill two large walls detailing the 16th and 17th party congresses. No mention is made of this November's meeting. "The 18th congress? It hasn't even started yet!" exclaimed a receptionist, when asked how it might be recorded. It would take several years to add, she suggested. To include it, the party's historians must once again rearrange the past.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The 18th Communist party congress will see an organisation with 80m members decide the fate of the world's second largest economy To understand the long journey of the People's Republic of China and its rulers you might start at a modest two-storey grey brick building in Shanghai's former French Concession. It lies a short stroll from the Harry Winston store, with its blazing diamonds, past over-priced bars and glassy towers. It was in 1921 that 13 young Chinese men gathered in this newly built home, then located at the edge of the city, overlooking a vegetable field. Though most were lodging at a nearby girls' school as the Beijing University Summer Vacation Tourist Group, sightseeing was not on the agenda. In strictest secrecy, with the aid of two Comintern representatives, they were hammering out the programme for the newly formed Communist party of China. Threatened with discovery by the police, they fled to the nearby town of Jiaxing, where the Communist party's first national congress concluded on board a pleasure boat on South Lake. Six weeks from now, their descendants will gather in Beijing for the 18th congress and will hand over power to a new generation of leaders, with Xi Jinping at the helm. The Communist party is now the world's largest and most powerful political movement, with more than 80 million members; it controls a fifth of the globe's population and the second largest economy. The congress is expected to be its shot at returning to business as usual, after a tumultuous year culminating in Friday's announcement that the disgraced politician Bo Xilai, who was once tipped for promotion in this transition, faces criminal charges. He is accused of abusing power, corruption and sexual impropriety; he is said to bear responsibility for his wife's murder of the British businessman Neil Heywood. Though most of November's meeting will take place behind closed doors, the party no longer needs to cherish obscurity; these days the congress is a carefully mounted display of power and unity. More than 2,200 delegates will meet at Beijing's Great Hall of the People in considerable pomp and some splendour. Police will have silenced any hint of discord; activists and dissidents will be detained or put under surveillance. "The 18th party congress is coming, so we thought we should learn about the first one," said Wang Yao as he left the site of the first meeting, now a museum. "The first generation had such difficult conditions when they started, but now China is more and more prosperous, and it's getting better and better." Wang and his family are among the winners. He works in sales and marketing; his son Tommy has just graduated from Newcastle University. "The new government will lead China at a new speed, but with the same original spirit from here," he predicted. Others find it harder to see the continuity. "The internal procedures of the congress have not changed much over the decades since Stalin institutionalised the congress as a showpiece of party unity," said Jeremy Paltiel, an expert on the party at Carleton University in Canada. But the party itself is a long way from its roots, he noted: "Arguably it remained something of an organisation of revolutionaries until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Since then it has become a party of functionaries and officials. The party is a party of 'cadres' and so is the congress, with a few 'model workers' as window dressing." Over nine decades, the party has proved extraordinarily adaptable as well as relentless in its pursuit and preservation of power. It has endured violent suppression and war; the devastating purges, famine and political turmoil its own leader created; the alienation of its people through the bloody crackdown on the 1989 pro-democracy protests that began in Tiananmen Square. It has survived by jettisoning the ideology once at its core, in favour of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" – today's hybrid of rampant capitalism and the heavy hand of the state. Under its reign, life expectancy and literacy have soared; two years ago Shanghai topped the OECD's global rankings of schools. Women's rights have improved markedly. Hundreds of millions have climbed out of poverty – an achievement described by the World Bank as a miracle. Yet tens of millions died in the manmade disaster of the Great Famine and tens of millions were persecuted in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. In-equality is soaring. Human rights abuses and corruption are rife; the Bo scandal has highlighted the unbridled power of senior leaders and the often lavish lifestyles of their families. Still, facing it down may be the least of the new leadership's challenges; they face slowing growth in an imbalanced economy, environmental devastation, rising public expectations and an increasingly complicated foreign policy environment. To trace the "glorious course" of the national congresses, as Shanghai's museum does, is to trace the evolution of the party and the country. Guards say visitor numbers have climbed as the 18th congress approaches; around 1,000 arrive each day, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and earnestness. In an upper gallery, one man is schmoozing a business contact via his mobile as he glances at exhibits. At the souvenir counter, official histories of the party jostle for space with Mao watches, kitschy Red Army mobile phone accessories and a pencil case reading: Study hard, earn money. The group that gathered in July 1921, "unlike the party of a later time ... had a great deal of idealism but little organisational discipline", said Wen-hsin Yeh, an expert on the birth of Chinese communism at the University of California Berkeley. The early years were volatile; only two of the 13 remained in the party by the time it took power in 1949. Others had died, chosen to leave or were purged. Yet by 1927 it had 58,000 members and the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek was alarmed enough to launch a brutal suppression of the party; the following year it would meet in exile, in Moscow. The seventh congress would not take place until 1945, at the Communist rebel base in Yan'an, just before the end of the Japanese occupation and the resumption of war with Chiang's forces. "It confirmed Mao's absolute authority in the Communist party," said Gao Wenqian, previously a researcher at the Chinese Institute of Central Documents and now a senior policy adviser at New York-based Human Rights in China. Eleven years later, the eighth congress was a celebration of power; the party now ruled China. More than 1,000 delegates, representing 10 million members, gathered in Beijing. "Mao hoped to become the leader of the world revolution," said Gao. "Then he started the Great Leap Forward." The disastrous attempt to transform the economy and society overnight resulted in tens of millions of deaths in the Great Famine – and a new willingness to challenge the chairman. "Mao worried that his position was not stable, so the ninth national congress was not held until 1969," said Gao. That year a giant portrait of Chairman Mao hung above the meeting. He had already unleashed the Cultural Revolution to eliminate his rivals; Lin Biao – who would die in a mysterious plane crash two years later – was confirmed as his new successor. "The ideological, political and organisational guidelines of the ninth national congress were wrong," a caption at the museum states flatly. Eight years later, after Mao's death, the 11th congress saw the return of many of his victims; notably Deng Xiaoping, who would do more than anyone to turn China into today's global powerhouse. That year, 1977, saw the establishment of the pattern that still prevails, with a congress every five years. The party is an increasingly institutionalised body that has regulated the turnover of leaders, leaving behind the days when one man could control it. Many within its top ranks appear to have feared Bo, who sought to harness mass support in pursuit of his ambitions, as a destabilising figure. These days "the national congress is like a rubber stamp. Before the 18th, all the significant decisions have already been made, such as the personnel arrangements and the policy direction afterwards," said Gao. Gao, like others, believes three decades of economic reform without political change have led to contradictions and conflicts which are reaching a critical, explosive point. As growth slows, it can no longer disguise the problems. The Bo Xilai incident gave the party the opportunity to turn over a new leaf, said Gao. "In my opinion, they missed it. From the trial of Wang Lijun to dealing with the Bo case, it has all been black operations ... It has been about the political struggles, trading by different groups in the power transition. The Communist party is 92 years old. It is senile and lethargic. They only want to maintain the present situation, not to make any changes." Others hope a new generation of leaders could yet grasp the nettle. They are "collectively more diverse in terms of their professional and political backgrounds, more weathered and adaptable from their formative experiences during the Cultural Revolution and more cosmopolitan in their worldviews and policy choices than the preceding generations. They may contribute, in a profound way, to political institutionalisation and democratic governance of the country," argued analyst Cheng Li of the Brookings Institution in a recent paper on the handover. Yet, he noted, the increasing pluralism of Chinese society and diversity among political elites make reaching consensus far harder. "Ideological disputes within the leadership are real and they may become too divisive to reconcile," he warned. And while many in China still feel the party has brought stability and wealth, they are increasingly cynical about the motivation and pronouncements of its leaders; even about its founding myths. When one museum visitor said he had come to see China's past, his friend interjected mockingly: "Is it real history?" Early records are sparse because it was hazardous for party members to be caught with revolutionary materials. But the reconstruction of the first congress was a political, not just historical, act. In one room a tableau of waxwork figures shows Mao, clad in a flowing blue scholar's gown, holding forth to rapt delegates. But he was not then the party's pre-eminent figure, as Yeh pointed out; it was Chen Duxiu who was elected general secretary, albeit in his absence. Samuel Liang, an assistant professor at Utah Valley University and visiting research fellow at Shanghai Jiaotong University, has described the monument as "an empty shell that attempts to eternalise a reinvented past by terminating the place's living, natural history". Mao noted that a revolution is not a dinner party, Liang wrote. "Neither is revolution, I might add for Mao, a peaceful pilgrimage to a revolution museum." That the birthplace of Chinese communism now stands in one of Shanghai's ritzier shopping and entertainment areas, Xintiandi, makes an odd sort of sense. Superficially, the complex's developers preserved the traditional housing. In reality, they reconstituted facades and remade interiors. Residents made way for boutiques and restaurants. Both party and neighbourhood retain their shells, but the spirit that animated them has long since vanished. "The transformation of the area into what today is known as Xintiandi is indicative of how the party has changed from leading political – or ideological – driven governance to leading economic or developmental-driven governance," added Liang. How the Communist party will evolve next remains to be seen. When Hu Jintao took power a decade ago, many hoped it would bring significant change. "The major challenge for Xi Jinping is that he will have to confront things to convince the public that they are really serious in political and economic reform," said Zhang Jian, a political scientist at Peking University. "The steam of reform has been lost in the past 10 years and the deterioration of those economic and political conditions is making reform more and more urgent." Upstairs at the museum, there are no such doubts: the achievements of Hu's tenure fill two large walls detailing the 16th and 17th party congresses. No mention is made of this November's meeting. "The 18th congress? It hasn't even started yet!" exclaimed a receptionist, when asked how it might be recorded. It would take several years to add, she suggested. To include it, the party's historians must once again rearrange the past.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The 18th Communist party congress will see an organisation with 80 million members decide the fate of the world's second largest economy To understand the long journey of the People's Republic of China and its rulers you might start at a modest two-storey grey brick building in Shanghai's former French Concession. It lies a short stroll from the Harry Winston store, with its blazing diamonds, past over-priced bars and glassy towers. It was in 1921 that 13 young Chinese men gathered in this newly built home, then located at the edge of the city, overlooking a vegetable field. Though most were lodging at a nearby girls' school as the Beijing University Summer Vacation Tourist Group, sightseeing was not on the agenda. In strictest secrecy, with the aid of two Comintern representatives, they were hammering out the programme for the newly formed Communist party of China. Threatened with discovery by the police, they fled to the nearby town of Jiaxing, where the Communist party's first national congress concluded on board a pleasure boat on South Lake. Six weeks from now, their descendants will gather in Beijing for the 18th congress and will hand over power to a new generation of leaders, with Xi Jinping at the helm. The Communist party is now the world's largest and most powerful political movement, with more than 80 million members; it controls a fifth of the globe's population and the second largest economy. The congress is expected to be its shot at returning to business as usual, after a tumultuous year culminating in Friday's announcement that the disgraced politician Bo Xilai, who was once tipped for promotion in this transition, faces criminal charges. He is accused of abusing power, corruption and sexual impropriety; he is said to bear responsibility for his wife's murder of the British businessman Neil Heywood. Though most of November's meeting will take place behind closed doors, the party no longer needs to cherish obscurity; these days the congress is a carefully mounted display of power and unity. More than 2,200 delegates will meet at Beijing's Great Hall of the People in considerable pomp and some splendour. Police will have silenced any hint of discord; activists and dissidents will be detained or put under surveillance. "The 18th party congress is coming, so we thought we should learn about the first one," said Wang Yao as he left the site of the first meeting, now a museum. "The first generation had such difficult conditions when they started, but now China is more and more prosperous, and it's getting better and better." Wang and his family are among the winners. He works in sales and marketing; his son Tommy has just graduated from Newcastle University. "The new government will lead China at a new speed, but with the same original spirit from here," he predicted. Others find it harder to see the continuity. "The internal procedures of the congress have not changed much over the decades since Stalin institutionalised the congress as a showpiece of party unity," said Jeremy Paltiel, an expert on the party at Carleton University in Canada. But the party itself is a long way from its roots, he noted: "Arguably it remained something of an organisation of revolutionaries until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Since then it has become a party of functionaries and officials. The party is a party of 'cadres' and so is the congress, with a few 'model workers' as window dressing." Over nine decades, the party has proved extraordinarily adaptable as well as relentless in its pursuit and preservation of power. It has endured violent suppression and war; the devastating purges, famine and political turmoil its own leader created; the alienation of its people through the bloody crackdown on the 1989 pro-democracy protests that began in Tiananmen Square. It has survived by jettisoning the ideology once at its core, in favour of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" – today's hybrid of rampant capitalism and the heavy hand of the state. Under its reign, life expectancy and literacy have soared; two years ago Shanghai topped the OECD's global rankings of schools. Women's rights have improved markedly. Hundreds of millions have climbed out of poverty – an achievement described by the World Bank as a miracle. Yet tens of millions died in the manmade disaster of the Great Famine and tens of millions were persecuted in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. In-equality is soaring. Human rights abuses and corruption are rife; the Bo scandal has highlighted the unbridled power of senior leaders and the often lavish lifestyles of their families. Still, facing it down may be the least of the new leadership's challenges; they face slowing growth in an imbalanced economy, environmental devastation, rising public expectations and an increasingly complicated foreign policy environment. To trace the "glorious course" of the national congresses, as Shanghai's museum does, is to trace the evolution of the party and the country. Guards say visitor numbers have climbed as the 18th congress approaches; around 1,000 arrive each day, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and earnestness. In an upper gallery, one man is schmoozing a business contact via his mobile as he glances at exhibits. At the souvenir counter, official histories of the party jostle for space with Mao watches, kitschy Red Army mobile phone accessories and a pencil case reading: Study hard, earn money. The group that gathered in July 1921, "unlike the party of a later time ... had a great deal of idealism but little organisational discipline", said Wen-hsin Yeh, an expert on the birth of Chinese communism at the University of California Berkeley. The early years were volatile; only two of the 13 remained in the party by the time it took power in 1949. Others had died, chosen to leave or were purged. Yet by 1927 it had 58,000 members and the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek was alarmed enough to launch a brutal suppression of the party; the following year it would meet in exile, in Moscow. The seventh congress would not take place until 1945, at the Communist rebel base in Yan'an, just before the end of the Japanese occupation and the resumption of war with Chiang's forces. "It confirmed Mao's absolute authority in the Communist party," said Gao Wenqian, previously a researcher at the Chinese Institute of Central Documents and now a senior policy adviser at New York-based Human Rights in China. Eleven years later, the eighth congress was a celebration of power; the party now ruled China. More than 1,000 delegates, representing 10 million members, gathered in Beijing. "Mao hoped to become the leader of the world revolution," said Gao. "Then he started the Great Leap Forward." The disastrous attempt to transform the economy and society overnight resulted in tens of millions of deaths in the Great Famine – and a new willingness to challenge the chairman. "Mao worried that his position was not stable, so the ninth national congress was not held until 1969," said Gao. That year a giant portrait of Chairman Mao hung above the meeting. He had already unleashed the Cultural Revolution to eliminate his rivals; Lin Biao – who would die in a mysterious plane crash two years later – was confirmed as his new successor. "The ideological, political and organisational guidelines of the ninth national congress were wrong," a caption at the museum states flatly. Eight years later, after Mao's death, the 11th congress saw the return of many of his victims; notably Deng Xiaoping, who would do more than anyone to turn China into today's global powerhouse. That year, 1977, saw the establishment of the pattern that still prevails, with a congress every five years. The party is an increasingly institutionalised body that has regulated the turnover of leaders, leaving behind the days when one man could control it. Many within its top ranks appear to have feared Bo, who sought to harness mass support in pursuit of his ambitions, as a destabilising figure. These days "the national congress is like a rubber stamp. Before the 18th, all the significant decisions have already been made, such as the personnel arrangements and the policy direction afterwards," said Gao. Gao, like others, believes three decades of economic reform without political change have led to contradictions and conflicts which are reaching a critical, explosive point. As growth slows, it can no longer disguise the problems. The Bo Xilai incident gave the party the opportunity to turn over a new leaf, said Gao. "In my opinion, they missed it. From the trial of Wang Lijun to dealing with the Bo case, it has all been black operations ... It has been about the political struggles, trading by different groups in the power transition. The Communist party is 92 years old. It is senile and lethargic. They only want to maintain the present situation, not to make any changes." Others hope a new generation of leaders could yet grasp the nettle. They are "collectively more diverse in terms of their professional and political backgrounds, more weathered and adaptable from their formative experiences during the Cultural Revolution and more cosmopolitan in their worldviews and policy choices than the preceding generations. They may contribute, in a profound way, to political institutionalisation and democratic governance of the country," argued analyst Cheng Li of the Brookings Institution in a recent paper on the handover. Yet, he noted, the increasing pluralism of Chinese society and diversity among political elites make reaching consensus far harder. "Ideological disputes within the leadership are real and they may become too divisive to reconcile," he warned. And while many in China still feel the party has brought stability and wealth, they are increasingly cynical about the motivation and pronouncements of its leaders; even about its founding myths. When one museum visitor said he had come to see China's past, his friend interjected mockingly: "Is it real history?" Early records are sparse because it was hazardous for party members to be caught with revolutionary materials. But the reconstruction of the first congress was a political, not just historical, act. In one room a tableau of waxwork figures shows Mao, clad in a flowing blue scholar's gown, holding forth to rapt delegates. But he was not then the party's pre-eminent figure, as Yeh pointed out; it was Chen Duxiu who was elected general secretary, albeit in his absence. Samuel Liang, an assistant professor at Utah Valley University and visiting research fellow at Shanghai Jiaotong University, has described the monument as "an empty shell that attempts to eternalise a reinvented past by terminating the place's living, natural history". Mao noted that a revolution is not a dinner party, Liang wrote. "Neither is revolution, I might add for Mao, a peaceful pilgrimage to a revolution museum." That the birthplace of Chinese communism now stands in one of Shanghai's ritzier shopping and entertainment areas, Xintiandi, makes an odd sort of sense. Superficially, the complex's developers preserved the traditional housing. In reality, they reconstituted facades and remade interiors. Residents made way for boutiques and restaurants. Both party and neighbourhood retain their shells, but the spirit that animated them has long since vanished. "The transformation of the area into what today is known as Xintiandi is indicative of how the party has changed from leading political – or ideological – driven governance to leading economic or developmental-driven governance," added Liang. How the Communist party will evolve next remains to be seen. When Hu Jintao took power a decade ago, many hoped it would bring significant change. "The major challenge for Xi Jinping is that he will have to confront things to convince the public that they are really serious in political and economic reform," said Zhang Jian, a political scientist at Peking University. "The steam of reform has been lost in the past 10 years and the deterioration of those economic and political conditions is making reform more and more urgent." Upstairs at the museum, there are no such doubts: the achievements of Hu's tenure fill two large walls detailing the 16th and 17th party congresses. No mention is made of this November's meeting. "The 18th congress? It hasn't even started yet!" exclaimed a receptionist, when asked how it might be recorded. It would take several years to add, she suggested. To include it, the party's historians must once again rearrange the past.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | With Bill lauded even by his political opponents and Hillary enjoying success as secretary of state, there's a new groundswell among Democrats to secure the succession and back a Clinton run for the White House in 2016 The bitter and negative 2012 US presidential election has left few political reputations intact. Republican challenger Mitt Romney has run a staggering, gaffe-prone campaign, while President Barack Obama is battling a listless economy and a disenchanted Democratic base. But, through all the attacks ads, missteps and heated controversies, both Bill and Hillary Clinton have emerged with their reputations and status not only intact but greatly enhanced. In a remarkable development, and 12 years since they vacated the White House, the Clintons have rarely seemed more influential or more relevant. Rather than slipping away into obscurity, Bill Clinton is hitting the campaign trail hard for Obama after his stirring performance at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, overshadowed the president. Meanwhile, secretary of state Hillary Clinton is trotting the globe as America's top diplomat amid feverish speculation that, whichever of Obama or Romney wins on Tuesday 6 November, she will again run for the White House in 2016. That could make her the first female US president and conceivably extend Clintonian domination of US politics to 2024. "How many couples do we know of in American politics, or any politics, that are so manifestly talented, accomplished, persistent, persuasive and so evenly matched?" asked William Galston, a former top adviser to Bill Clinton and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "One has already been president and the other nearly was and may still be." Bill Clinton is an unexpectedly visible figure on the 2012 campaign trail, hitting key swing states such as New Hampshire. He holds pro-Obama rallies and puts his name to fundraising emails. His speech in Charlotte won plaudits from both sides of the political aisle. Indeed, when Romney later came to speak at an event in New York hosted by Clinton's charity, the Republican candidate joked about the former president's seemingly magic touch. "If there's one thing we've learned in this election season, by the way, it is that a few words from Bill Clinton can do a man a lot of good," he said. Experts believe much of the goodwill now exhibited towards Clinton reflects a perception that his 1990s presidency was largely free from the wars and economic crises that have gripped America over the past decade. "We think of it as a time of peace and prosperity. We don't think Obama measures up. We know Romney does not measure up. So we want what we don't now have," said Larry Haas, a political expert and former aide in the Clinton White House. There is also the fact that the former president remains one of the most gifted speakers in the world whose appetite for attention and publicity is entirely undiminished since his heyday and is in stark contrast to other former presidents, such as George W Bush. "He is the most persuasive man on the planet," said Galston. Or, to put it another way, "he just cannot help himself. He has never been shy of upstaging the person he is supposed to be supporting," commented Professor Andrew Smith, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire. Of course, when it comes to Bill Clinton the bad also comes along with the good. Amid all the plaudits have emerged reports that Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern whose tryst with Clinton became a decade-defining sex scandal, is planning to write a tell-all book. If it does emerge, it will no doubt see a rehash of all the seedy low points of Clinton's presidency. But few expect it to have any real impact. The Lewinsky affair is old news and – as he does not have an elected office – Clinton is immune to the effect of such scandals. So far the political career of his wife has been scandal-free. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton has carved out a reputation as a tough operator whose term of office has been a resounding success. Indeed, after being narrowly beaten by Obama for the 2008 nomination, many now see her as a natural runner for 2016. Clinton herself, who is standing down from her diplomatic job in 2013, has said she has no such plans. But the firm denials have done nothing to dampen down the speculation and most experts see a huge opportunity for her. "Clinton has done best by staying out of the way of the 2012 race. If you are not getting down in the mud with everyone else, then you stay clean," said Smith. Though Clinton would be 68 by 2016 few people see her age as a real block to her ambitions. Instead, they see a powerful candidate, hugely popular with the crucial demographic of women voters, who might be able to take advantage of a Democratic base suffering from "buyer's remorse" when it comes to the high initial hopes for the Obama presidency. Her campaign organisation from 2008 would also be relatively easy to revitalise, giving her a huge advantage in fund-raising and on-the-ground activists. "The folks I know who worked for her in New Hampshire have kept the organisation together. She could go pretty quickly and hit the ground running," said Smith. Of course, the key question is: does Clinton want to run again? No one knows the answer, including probably Clinton herself. "I bet she hasn't figured it out yet," said Haas. But what seems certain is that the moment for a decision will come some time in 2014. If she says yes, then not only will America be once again facing up to the idea of a historic Hillary Clinton presidency but Bill will be right there alongside her. For if the country has learned one thing about the Clintons, it is that – despite their many differences and difficulties – they seem to come as a pair. "The last chapter of this saga has not been written yet," said Galston.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Paolo Gabriele is accused of leaks to journalists after Vatican police found stolen letters in apartment Benedict XVI's former butler has gone on trial in the Vatican for stealing and leaking private documents while in the pope's employ. Paolo Gabriele, 46, who dressed the pope and travelled with him on public occasions, faces up to four years in jail after Vatican police discovered piles of stolen letters in his apartment, as well as gifts meant for Benedict, including a cheque for €100,000 (£80,000) and a gold nugget. Gabriele had leaked the choicest letters to an Italian journalist, lifting the lid on accusations of kickbacks paid to win Vatican contracts, infighting among cardinals and claims the pope's secretary of state started rumours of homosexuality against a hostile newspaper editor. Placed under custody in a secure room at the Vatican, the father of three confessed but claimed he was an agent of the Holy Spirit, seeking to expose and root out the "evil and corruption". An expert appointed by his lawyer suggested Gabriele was a victim of "restlessness, tension, rage and frustration". Gabriele's case is being heard by three lay judges within the Vatican's wood-panelled court and is likely to shed light on the secret world within the world's smallest state. It is being held on a Saturday, because it is when the judges, who work in Italy's court system, have a free day. Only eight journalists were allowed into the courtroom for the first session. Although present in court, Gabriele did not speak. He is due to answer questions at a second hearing on Tuesday. During the hearing, the judges ruled that the results of a separate investigation carried out by cardinals for the pope and requested by the defence could not be admitted as evidence in the trial. The Vatican's justice system tries about 30 cases a year, mainly pickpockets arrested in St Peter's Square. Vatican officials have hinted that Benedict, who nicknamed Gabriele "Paoletto" or little Paul, may use his papal prerogative to hand Gabriele a quick pardon, but warned that more staffers at the Holy See may yet be arrested as detectives hunt other moles they believe are still at large. Gabriele has claimed 20 people were involved in squirrelling embarrassing documents out of the Vatican and fresh clues may be provided by a separate investigation carried out by three senior cardinals who reported to the pope this summer. Claudio Sciarpelletti, a Vatican staffer who was allegedly handed documents to hand to Gabriele by two people, mysteriously referred to in the court documents as X and W, is also due to stand trial as an accessory. However, the court decided to separate his trial from that of Gabriele's. The court also decided Saturday during the first hearing of the case to separate the trial of the butler, Paolo Gabriele, and that of his co-defendant, a Vatican computer expert. Gabriele's arrest comes nearly five months after a string of documents and private letters found their way into the Italian media. One of the most notorious were letters written to the pope by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, currently the Vatican's ambassador to Washington, who was deputy governor of the Vatican City at the time. In one, Vigano complains that when he took office in 2009, he discovered corruption, nepotism and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts to outside companies at inflated prices. He later wrote to the pope about a smear campaign against him by other Vatican officials who were upset that he had taken drastic steps to clean up the purchasing procedures. If the pope decides not to pardon Gabriele, he is expected to serve time in an Italian jail. Giovanni Maisto, an Italian commentator, said he was hopeful that the trial could mark "a new dimension of openness and transparency" in the church's affairs.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Former UN secretary general says in memoirs he admired ex-British PM until he failed to stand up to US over invasion Tony Blair could have stopped the Iraq war had he decided to walk away from a partnership with the US, the former UN secretary general Kofi Annan has claimed. In an interview to launch his memoirs, Annan said he had reflected on what would have happened if, without a second UN resolution over Iraq, Blair had refused to go to war with Iraq in 2003. "I will forever wonder what would have happened if, without a second [UN] resolution ... Blair had said 'George [Bush], this is where we part company. You're on your own'," he told the Times. "I really think it could have stopped the war ... It would have given the Americans a pause. It would have given them a very serious pause to think it through ... All this would have raised a question: 'Do we go this alone?'" While Annan argued that neither his resignation as UN secretary general or that of then US secretary of state, Colin Powell, would have changed the course of military action, Blair could have made a difference had he spoken out. "Because of the special relationship and also the fact that ... when you think of the big countries, Britain was the only one that teamed up with [Bush]," Annan said. Annan said he had done everything in his power to stop the war, which was justified heavily on the case that Iraq's ruler Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. No evidence of these were later found and Blair came under fire for relying on a "sexed-up" dossier, which claimed that Hussein had the capacity to activate biological and chemical weapons in 45 minutes. The US-led invasion led to a war that lasted for eight years and is believed to have cost more than 100,000 lives. "Blair had the potential to be one of the most brilliant politicians of his time and really for a period was a star. And now you ask me the questions, 'What went wrong? What changed him?' It is very difficult to say," he said. Anann's disappointment in Blair is also reflected in his memoirs, Interventions – A Life in War and Peace, co-written with Nader Mousavizadeh, Annan's former special assistant at the UN. Annan recounts a meeting with Blair in 2006 over a bloody conflict between Israel and the Shia Islamic militant group Hezbollah, which he said the former British prime minister saw simplistically – like Iraq – "a meta-conflict between modernity and the medieval, between tolerant secularism and radical Islam". "This was not the Blair with whom I had agreed so passionately about the moral necessity of a humanitarian intervention to halt the Serbian attacks on the Kosovar Albanians in 1999 ... Something had changed in Blair, and with it, I felt, his ability to act as a credible mediator," he said. However, Annan said he did not agree with fellow Nobel peace prize laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, over his suggestion that Bush and Blair should face proceedings in the international criminal court. Annan said they were democratically elected leaders acting in what they believed were their national interests. Writing on Syria, and his recent experience as UN and Arab League envoy, he said the country's sectarian rifts were "as deep and bitter as those of Lebanon and on a scale that threatens a clash of sectarian animosities that could dwarf even those that shook Iraq after 2003" and estimated that thousands would die as a result of the conflict.
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