The anti-globalisation movement argued that neoliberal capitalism was unjust, unstable and destructive to human and environmental wellbeing, says Madeleine Bunting. Sounds sensible now, but at the time it mysteriously got smeared by association with anarchists with a penchant for smashing Starbucks' windows. The broad network of social grassroots movements - US unions, Mexican peasants, Indian farmers - were misnamed, misunderstood, ridiculed and ignored. There is no alternative, the politicians intoned mantra-like. Then 9/11 and for the next seven years a sideshow was offered as a distraction with caricature villains and thriller drama. While eyes were on the absurd charade of the "threat of Islamist terrorism to Western civilisation", the real doomsday scenario that poses a far greater threat to Western civilisation (whatever that is) was gathering pace right next to Ground Zero, in Wall Street. Madeleine Bunting The Guardian
Full article: Faith. Belief. Trust. This economic orthodoxy was built on superstition
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Sir Ian Blair never fully combated such covert and costly corruption as the overmanning of big-overtime events and the aversion to street patrols, writes Simon Jenkins. The one international rating on which London's police outscore all others is on VIP protection, which is no surprise to observers of the modern capital. The West End and housing estates are almost unpoliced or left to community wardens and private security firms while Whitehall and parliament crawl with chatting officers. The Met remains dogged by Home Office bureaucracy, meetings, form-filling and a fixation with careering round the streets in screaming cars. London is dreadfully policed, largely because its officers prefer to be in the most comfortable places at the most comfortable times. Any visitor to the precinct-based New York force notices an instant difference. Simon Jenkins Sunday Times
Full article: Boris has wielded a cosh for real policing

When an entire ethnic or religious group is driven out, they abandon their houses – and aren't there to switch on the lights, writes Johann Hari. Their areas become much more dark. If satellite images show night-light remains the same in the areas dominated by one ethnic group but significantly falls in mixed areas, you know ethnic cleansing is happening. That’s what has taken place in Iraq. In May 2006, four gunmen turned up at the house of Leila Mohammed, a pregnant mother of three children in north-east of Baghdad. "Be gone by evening prayers or we will kill you," they said. She was a Shia in a Sunni neighbourhood, so she had to run, or die. Now imagine millions of Leilas, and you have much of Iraq today. Johann Hari The Independent
Full article: McCain is deluding himself over the 'surge'