Nicholas Guyatt predicted the attack The American military has overwhelmed its opponents abroad and an increasing reliance on air power and guided missiles has mini-mised disruption or even awareness of these conflicts at home. Given the increasing pace of technological change, however, it is hard to believe that the United States will continue to go […]

comment Seumas Milne Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington, it has become clear that most Americans simply don’t get it. From the president to passers-by on the streets, the message seems to be the same: this is an inexplicable assault on freedom and democracy that […]

Despite a $5-million reward for information leading to his capture and high-tech tracking, Osama bin Laden has proved elusive Rory McCarthy and Ewen MacAskill The United States has spy satellites over the Indian Ocean capable of providing pictures from Afghanistan so detailed that they can identify cigarette butts. But, for all its technology, the US […]

Barry Streek meets the man in charge of changing the face of the fishing industry Horst Kleinschmidt, the head of South Africa’s Marine Coastal Management, faces a difficult challenge: he has the final say over which of the 6 000 to 9 000 applicants will be awarded the 1 200 valuable fishing quotas. Kleinschmidt is […]

SOCCER Ntuthuko Maphumulo Africa’s contingent for next year’s World Cup in Korea and Japan has already been decided with South Africa, Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon and Tunisia to represent the continent but most other regions are still fighting it out to decide who will attend the showpiece. Europe and South America, the only two continents to […]

comment Hugo Young At its founding the United States never wanted to run the world. George Washington decreed that commerce not politics was what mattered, and Thomas Jefferson warned against the danger of “entangling alliances”. The treachery and slaughter endemic to the great powers, France and Britain, in their seven years’ war for European and […]

channel vision Robert Kirby Unwittingly, last week’s Special Assignment produced a true classic: a documentary about the mysterious deaths, some months ago, of jackass penguins and a brace of pelicans at the East London aquarium. Headlined The Penguin Murders, I thought I’d strayed into some absurdist private-eye series. How do you even start to take […]

The former judge blunders on as he always has Comment Richard Calland Pricking the political mythology of contemporary South Africa is a precarious but nonetheless necessary pursuit. Take former Judge Willem Heath. Having conducted a persistent though ultimately self-corroding campaign to depict himself as the corruption-busting saviour of the new South Africa in the public […]

Mail & Guardian reporters New York City had received more than 11 000 body bags by Thursday, although the number of dead from the terror attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon remains uncertain. The body bags were sent to hospitals in the city. They were carried by a convoy of tractor trailers […]

CRICKET Peter Robinson The point about arrogance is that it usually helps to have something to be arrogant about. Shaun Pollock’s South Africans were accused of arrogance on the grounds that they spurned the opportunity to warm up in Harare, arriving in Zimbabwe just two days before the first Test, but it took them less […]