The Londoner

by  Nancy Franklin When it was announced, in the spring, that Sarah Palin would be making a reality show about Alaska, the state she grew up in and then, last year, blew off, by resigning the governorship, I’m sure I winced and groaned and rolled my eyes, before hanging my head, shaking it, and emitting a deep sigh, and then repeating the sequence several times. For one thing, the show was going to be on TLC, whose initials used to stand for The Learning Channel but which I like to call The Leering Channel. Among its recent and current shows are “Make Room for Multiples,” “The Little Couple,” “Strange Sex,” “Obese and Pregnant,” “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant,” “Mermaid Girl,” and “Paralyzed and Pregnant.” Then, there’s the supersized Duggar family, whose show was first called “17 Kids and Counting,” then “18 Kids and Counting,” and is now idling at “19 Kids and Counting.” (At some point it will probably be called “But Who’s Counting?”) The show that TLC is most famous for is “Jon &

Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been allowed to walk to freedom from house arrest today amid massive cheers from supporters, Amnesty International said A smiling Suu Kyi, wearing a traditional jacket, appeared at the gate of her compound as the crowd chanted, cheered and sang the national anthem. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate had been detained for 15 of the past 21 years, but her house arrest order ended today. Amnesty International Secretary General Salil Shetty said: "While Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's release is certainly welcome, it only marks the end of an unfair sentence that was illegally extended, and is by no means a concession on the part of the authorities. "The fact remains that authorities should never have arrested her or the many other prisoners of conscience in Burma in the first place, locking them out of the political process." Read the full story here .  Related Posts: 1.  When Kashmiris, Nagas and others sought justice 2. Is Democracy Really

By  Jon Bernstein   My cover story from last week's issue --  No loyalty, no citizenship  -- is now available online. It looks at politics, religion and identity in Israel using as a peg a proposed amendment to the country's Citizenship Act which would see newcomers required to swear allegiance to "a Jewish and democratic state". The man behind the proposal is Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party (translation = "Israel is our home"). The amendment has been described variously as "a declaration of purpose", "stupid and needless" and "racist". Opponents fear it will entrench the inequalities already felt by the Arab minority in Israel. Proponents say it merely echoes Israel's declaration of independence in 1948. Read the full article here .  Related Posts: 1.  Why Pakistan Should Accept The State Of Israel? 2. Doomed Israel Palestine Peace Process – There is Only One Possible Solution & That

Is China making an unprecedented leap to the top of the global economic hierarchy? Yes, Martin Jacques asserts confidently in his buzz-generating When China Rules the World. He sees the country, which recently passed Japan to become the world's No. 2 economy, rising smoothly to the top spot by continuing to follow a thoroughly distinctive, Confucian-tinged development path. No, say China skeptics like economist John Markin and hedge-fund honcho James Chanos, with equal self-assurance. They predict that bursting bubbles will lead to a Chinese equivalent to Japan's "lost decade" of the 1990s. To them, as George Friedman pithily puts it in his best-selling The Next 100 Years, which is sometimes displayed near Jacques' tome in airport bookstores these days, China is just "Japan on steroids." While we're too aware of how regularly — and speedily — bold forecasts about China are proved wrong to offer one of our own, our research into 19th century America a

Taliban Fighters There are at least 12 channels of contacts with insurgent leaders in Afghanistan , involving states, organisations and freelancers. They have one thing in common: none have got far. A diplomat in Afghanistan refers to them, somewhat dismissively, as the "peace industry" – toiling away mostly out of sight, producing little of substance. The hope is that when all sides consider the time ripe, the fragile strands will coalesce into something more durable. The painstaking work of forging contacts with a fierce insurgency has been going on for almost as long as the war. What has changed recently is these talks have been gaining press coverage. That does not mean they are making more progress. It is more likely that it is now in the interest of some of the parties to advertise them. In Washington, the December strategy review is coming up, and it suits the US military and the Kabul government to demonstrate a political dividend for the military and civil inves

Louis Berger, a major construction company headquartered in New Jersey, has  agreed to pay out a record $69.3m in fines (pdf) , the largest ever such penalty imposed on a contractor working in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. The company has been awarded  billions of dollars in contracts for the construction of roads, schools and electrical plants in Afghanistan . Harold Salomon, a former senior financial analyst at the company, discovered that company officials were sending bills  for items like the cost of the music system in its Washington, DC office to the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Salomon blew the whistle on estimated overcharging of up to $20m and took the company to court with the help of Phillips & Cohen, a trial law firm in Washington, DC. "Today I can affirm to those who told me the Louis Berger Group can get away with anything that they were wrong," Salomon said in a press statement, when the settlement was announced on 5 November.

Marco Rubio Mr Rubio, 39, a darling of the Tea Party and touted as a future presidential candidate , was born and raised a Catholic by his Cuban parents. However, for the past six years he and his wife have attended the Christ Fellowship , a Florida congregation which describes itself as “non-denominational” but is affiliated to the Southern Baptist Convention , whose theology is firmly anti-Catholic . According to the St Petersburg Times, Mr Rubio has donated much of the $66,000 he has given to charity since 2000 to the Christ Fellowship. Alex Burgos , a spokesman for Mr Rubio, told The Daily Telegraph on Friday: “[Marco] regularly attends Catholic Mass, and he was baptised, confirmed and married in the Roman Catholic Church . On the final Sunday of the campaign, for example, he attended Mass at Christ the King Catholic Church in Tampa ... He also attends services at a Christian church with his wife and children.” Asked why Mr Rubio attended a non-Catholic church