Perhaps if we stop cleaving to hope and choose our dissatisfaction; realise the awful truth that the only saviour is individual and collective agency, then a different outcome can be achieved
Large corporates whose business has thrived because of inequalities, could be hijacking the anti-racist movement by offering money and not tangible changes
Suu Kyi was once the darling of the foreign media, but her silence over the persecuted Rohingya minority has drawn widespread condemnation
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/ 20 January 2009
Jonathan Freedland reports on the intensifying excitement as strait-laced Washington DC awaits Obama’s transformation into head of state.
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/ 19 January 2009
On the eve of his historic inauguration, Barack Obama joined on Monday in honouring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
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/ 16 September 2008
Lev David on alleged rugby sex tape: There have been a great many adulterers through history who had other things to recommend them.
Charlton Heston, the chisel-jawed Hollywood icon best remembered for his Oscar-winning performance in the 1959 epic <i>Ben Hur</i>, died on April 5 at his home, his family said. He was 84. Heston’s family said in a statement that the actor died with his wife of 64 years, Lydia, by his side.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democrat Hillary Clinton sought to shore up support among black voters on Friday in the city where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jnr was slain 40 years ago. Democrat Barack Obama honoured King’s legacy with a speech in Indiana, while his rivals attended activities in Memphis.
The National Civil Rights Museum sits in what was the Lorraine Motel, just beyond the shadows of Memphis’s skyscrapers and the garish neon glow of Beale Street — the main drag made famous by the likes of BB King and James Baldwin. The first words of the first exhibit state: ”Protest against injustice is deeply rooted in the African-American experience.”
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/ 19 February 2008
Billionaire philanthropist George Soros made his fortune on the markets and is giving a lot of it to Africa. Last week he hosted an Africa Forum in Dakar on whether the continent is moving closer to his open society ideal. Ferial Haffajee asked him about the global economy, African governance and the role of China in Africa.
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/ 15 February 2008
Another week, another chance to gauge how our fine governing bodies are combating racism, with everyone’s favourite test case still England’s 2004 friendly against Spain in Madrid. Yet what’s often overlooked is that it was world soccer governing body Fifa that imposed the paltry £44 750 fine on the Spanish FA for the racist chanting.
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/ 5 February 2008
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton slugged out a neck-and-neck Democratic feud and John McCain sought a chokehold on the Republican race on Super Tuesday, a coast-to-coast White House nominating clash unique in United States history. Super Tuesday embraces millions of voters from across racial, religious, social and income barriers.
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/ 26 January 2008
Sixteen years ago, South Carolina and the United States were wowed by a new candidate who seemed less politician than force of nature. He packed halls and school gyms till they were bursting, promising that a new day was coming. Aged just 46, his arrival seemed to presage a generational shift.
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/ 24 January 2008
At first sight, Salon Fabulous doesn’t quite live up to its name. A trailer in a car park in a neighbourhood of dilapidated houses and rusting cars on the outskirts of Columbia, the state capital of South Carolina, it doesn’t hold out much promise of transformation.
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/ 22 January 2008
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on Tuesday heightened the rancour of their Monday debate by attacking each other’s record and style, bringing what has become a mean-spirited and negative campaign to a new low. At a hastily arranged press conference in Washington, Clinton accused Obama of desperation.
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/ 22 January 2008
Wall Street was expected to plunge at the opening of trading on Tuesday, extending its huge losses from last week and taking more cues from heavy selling that has spread throughout the world. Indicators showed the Dow Jones industrial average was set to fall by about 500 points when trading begins.
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/ 22 January 2008
Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama engaged in a bitter crossfire on Monday as their United States presidential campaign took an ugly personal turn on the Martin Luther King holiday. Obama’s complaints about former President Bill Clinton’s attacks on him on behalf of his wife’s campaign boiled over at a rancorous debate.
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/ 22 January 2008
Stocks plummeted across the world on Monday amid fears of a global recession, with markets in Europe suffering their biggest one-day losses since the September 11 attacks on the United States. Dealers said a major new plan by President George Bush to prevent a United States recession was not enough to offset the stream of bad news from banks.
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/ 21 January 2008
Barack Obama lashed out at rival Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill, on Monday, calling the former president’s role in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination ”pretty troubling”. ”You know, the former president … has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling,” Obama said.
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/ 19 January 2008
Voters in the American west and south will get their first chance on Saturday to have a say in the tightest and most chaotic race for the White House in decades. According to polls, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are in a virtual dead heat in Nevada, which holds its caucuses on Saturday for Democrats and Republicans.
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/ 15 January 2008
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama come face to face on Tuesday night for the first time since their two camps embarked on the dangerous strategy of trying to extract political gain from the race issue. After Obama’s victory in Iowa and Clinton’s in New Hampshire, the two candidates are looking to break the tie in Nevada.
New Hampshire goes to the polls on Tuesday for the second key clash of White House hopefuls, with surging Democrat Barack Obama likely to deal a second defeat to former first lady Hillary Clinton. Just five days after his Iowa triumph spun momentum into his White House quest, Obama enjoyed a solid lead in New Hampshire.
”They said this day would never come,” said United States Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama at the outset of his barnstorming victory speech on Thursday night. But as he arrived in New Hampshire early on Friday, Americans woke up to the historic possibility that the day when they might have a black president was closer than they thought.
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/ 30 December 2007
Clad in an orange and grey hunting jacket and an orange cap, Mike Huckabee raised his 12-gauge shotgun, took aim and fired, bagging a pheasant for the benefit of watching reporters. As another shot flew over their heads, it became too much for one journalist who cried: ”Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Don’t shoot. This is traumatising.”
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/ 22 September 2007
Though they came from far-flung places, the thousands of protesters who assembled in Jena, Louisiana, on Friday had this in common: they all wore black, and most were black. They had descended on this tiny Southern town to show their anger for the injustice they believed had taken place here.
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/ 21 September 2007
Take one historic event, add a famous political activist and make it on to the Booker Prize shortlist. Mohsin Hamid speaks to Decca Aitkenhead about his second novel.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Shaun de Waal reviews The Simpsons Movie, which packs in a great deal of inventive incident and humour.