Obama vs McCain: Round 3
Political consultants warned that John Kerry, Al Gore and Michael Dukakis had all gone down because they had let their Republican opponents punch them and punch them again, writes Jonathan Freedland. Yet in this debate, Barack Obama plainly ignored that advice. McCain kept coming at him - attacking him for his relationship with an "old washed-up terrorist", accusing him of "class warfare", branding him an "extremist" on abortion - but Obama did not do what the conventional wisdom of campaigns past said he should. Sure, he politely tried to set the record straight, but only gently. And not once did he throw a punch back. When asked whether Sarah Palin was qualified to be president, he said it was up to the American people – and then praised her energy as a campaigner. Jonathan Freedland The Guardian
Full article: The end of attack politics 
Alexander Cockburn: Barack Obama has already surrendered his ability to bring about meaningful change
John McCain does look very old indeed, says Michael Tomasky. He sounds old, even more than he looks old. You can hear him wheezing. That whistle every time he makes an 'S' sound. That's an old American stock character in the movies and sitcoms of my youth. The man whose lawn has just been trampled by a young mischief-maker and who storms (such as a septuagenarian can storm) out of the house yelling, "I'll get you, sonny!" and the S in "sonny" sounds like the air shooting through the gaps in the teeth. So maybe he just comes across like that and there's nothing to be done about it. Michael Tomasky The Guardian
Full article: Obama vs McCain: Round three
Houses repossessed, soup kitchens, homeless shelters: America's Depression in pictures
Now stop wasting money
Just as bankers have splashed out on minks and Maseratis, Government has earmarked public funds on fripperies the public neither wants nor needs, writes Mary Riddell. The updated Trident missile system should be the first to go. Replacement and operating costs for a nuclear strike capacity we could never use may rise to £76bn. Even the more conservative £26bn budget would put £1,000 into every British classroom for the next 26 years as well as paying every nurse an extra £1,000 a year for the same time span. So junk the refit programme now. Then there's the £1.2bn earmarked for acquiring land and permits for three new Titan prisons (building them will be extra). Out, too, with ID cards, which will cost in excess of £6bn. Mary Riddell Daily Telegraph
Full article: Saving the world is one thing, but can Gordon Brown fix Britain?
India, still desperately poor
In recent years, the British view of India has shifted from nostalgia for the "Jewel in the Crown" of empire to focus almost exclusively on the high glamour of India's economic growth story, says Peter Foster. India is suddenly seen through the equally distorting lens of Bollywood glitz and Bangalore call centres; headline-grabbing corporate takeovers and endless seminars discussing when (not if) India will become the next global superpower. In the space of a decade, the poor of India - who today still account for as many as 800 million of the country's 1.1bn population - have been virtually erased from our perception of the world's largest democracy. In modern, nuclear-capable India, 63 infants die per 1,000 live births. In war-torn Eritrea the figure is 45. And despite a decade of economic expansion, a staggering 47 per cent of India's under-threes remain malnourished. Peter Foster Daily Telegraph
Man Booker Prize winner Aravind Adiga lays bare the truth of India's poverty
Sean Thomas spends 24 hours in Calcutta
Otters are worth more than Afghans
Dependence on air power is also a reflection of US imperial overstretch and the reluctance of Nato states to put more boots on the ground. But however much the nominal Afghan president Hamid Karzai rails against Nato's recklessness with Afghan blood, the indiscriminate air war carries on regardless. Given that the US government spent 10 times more on every sea otter affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill than it does in 'condolence payments' to Afghans for the killing of a family member, perhaps that shouldn't come as a surprise.
Seumas Milne The Guardian
Full article: Civilian dead are a trade-off in Nato's war of barbarity
In Brief
Was it a genocide?
In Switzerland, you get prosecuted for saying that the terrible thing that happened to the Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman empire was not a genocide. In Turkey, you get prosecuted for saying it was. What is state-ordained truth in the Alps is state-ordained falsehood in Anatolia. Timothy Garton Ash The Guardian
The freedom of historical debate is under attack by the memory police
Why now?
It is hard not to wince at the timing of today's procession in London. The fact that it comes as we teeter on the brink of recession is not really an objection – Londoners might well welcome a diversion. No; the fact that jars is that the floats will trundle through the capital's streets a full two months after the Olympic team returned from China. Why the delay? Leader The Independent
Full article: A late parade
Racism retreats
A Gallup poll in 1958 found that 58 per cent of whites would not vote for a black candidate; by 1989, that figure had dropped to 19 per cent; by 2007, only 5 per cent felt the same way. Even taking into account the taboo surrounding overt expressions of racism, that is a stunning change. Ben Macintyre The Times
Full article: The white lie that keeps Barack Obama awake at night
Exceptional powers
For many years, while in opposition, Labour voted against the Prevention of Terrorism Act in Northern Ireland. Whether it was right or wrong in that case, it was steadfastly opposed to the state assuming exceptional powers to deal with terrorism. All that is dead and buried. Stephen Glover Daily Mail
Full article: God help us. This will soon be a country more spied upon than Communist East Germany under the Stasi
Leave Mandy be
If Peter Mandelson is half as talented a pragmatist as his civil servants thought him during those sadly truncated stints at Trade and Industry and Northern Ireland – a post from which he was absurdly fired for no other reason than reputation – those still in work because of his efforts in a year's time may conclude that he is welcome to his EU pension and House of Lords allowance, and even the odd glass of vintage Bolly on an oligarchic superyacht. Matthew Norman The Independent
Full article: Welcome home Lord Mandy
Peter Mandelson in pictures
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