LAST WEEK was a pretty bad one for George W Bush and his neo-conservative administration-and not just because of events in London, Istanbul and Baghdad. Bush suffered a bad setback back home in Florida, the state where he secured his dubious victory in the 2000 presidential race.Miami last week hosted a ministerial meeting whose aim was to create the Free Trade Area of the Americas, better known in Latin America by its Spanish acronym ALCA.
NEW LABOUR ministers jumped to the defence of children's minister Margaret Hodge last week after her dismissal of a child abuse victim in an Islington care home as "extremely disturbed". The whole affair has typified the double standards that are a hallmark of New Labour.
If you study literature in school or university, you can easily get lulled into the notion that novels, poems, and plays live in a world of their own.
SEVENTY FIVE percent of people across Europe now believe the war against Iraq was wrong.
MOUNTJOY WOMEN'S prison in Dublin is a modern institution. Built three years ago to house 90 women prisoners, it is known as the Dochas Centre (Dochas is the Irish language word for hope).
ONE OF the most common questions that people ask me is, "Why did Tony Blair go so far in backing George W Bush's war on Iraq?" It's not hard to tell a story about US interests, but what's in it for Britain? An important part of the answer lies in the long term strategy that the British ruling class has pursued ever since the Second World War. By attaching itself closely to the mighty US, Britain could continue play a role as a global power.
LET'S FACE it. The English language is crazy. There is neither apple nor pine in pineapple, nor ham in hamburger. Sweetmeats are confectionery. Sweetbreads, which definitely aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its contradictions, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
WE ARE living in an era of intense political mobilisation. Over the past two years London has witnessed a succession of great mass demonstrations that belong to a far larger tapestry of global protest.
The dilemmas of Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, were beautifully summed up in an interview he gave last weekend. In an interview with John Humphrys on the Today programme, Williams came close to saying that the war against Iraq had been immoral. Then, terrified by the implication of this statement, Williams' officials demanded that this portion of the interview should not be broadcast – and the BBC agreed.
SIX MONTHS after the fall of Baghdad, the conquerors of Iraq are in trouble on both sides of the Atlantic. Tony Blair's difficulties are well known, but now it is the turn of George W Bush and his advisers to come under the spotlight.
THERE'S A scene in Shakespeare's Hamlet where Hamlet walks in on the man who has corrupted the state of Denmark, the king. The problem for Hamlet is that the king is praying.
