Cooler days, the complexity of radical Islam & what's up between OBJ and Ngozi?

It looks like the really hot days are gone now- apparently July was the hottest summer in the UK since records started being kept. It's been fun, but it's also good to be able to open the blinds in the office now and not worry about having hot, sticky, stinky feet by the time the work day draws to a close.....

I'm reading Jason Burke's book On the Road to Kandahar:Travels Through Conflict in The Islamic World. He's The Guardian's Chief Correspondent and the book is basically about his travels in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan over the last 15 or so years. It's not terribly easy to read, there seems to be something missing, something too dispassionate and structured about it. It doesn't work as a particularly engaging narrative and if its primary point is analysis, then why all the personal vignettes many of which really add little to the whole argument? Or to put it another way it simply smacks vaguely of a cut and paste job- putting together what I suspect are various articles that have appeared in print elsewhere- into a book. What it does offer are interesting insights into how the image of a monolithic, terrorist, radical Islam that is sweeping the world is false and belies the myriad subtle differences and complexities that make up the Islamic world in 2006. It's a theme picked up in this week's Europe edition of Time magazine which I've enjoyed tremendously- it has a very good analysis of why it's wrong for the US to lump Hamas and Hizbollah, who have very specific, fairly local agendas in the same broad terrorist bag with Osama and others who have more grandiose global agendas. And there's a section on the meeting of East and West, retracing the footsteps of Marco Polo, in beautifully written prose, including a bit on Sri Lanka by one of my all-time favourite writers- Pico Iyer. The East West theme is a recurrent one these days but what the TIME stories offer are beautiful insights and images of what it is like in the new boom cities of China.

So, Obasanjo fires Ngozi Okonjo Iweala as head of the economic team, while she is in London negotiating further debt relief, coming only weeks after she was removed from Finance to Foreign Affairs. There's obviously something deeper going on than we ordinary people are privy to- I wonder if my initial synthesis of all the rumours is true- ie Obasanjo holding something over the Amazon which is allowing him to act this way- It'll be interesting to see what the international reaction will be, especially in the light of madam Ngozi's credibility in Western financial circles...... At times like this, I wish I was still in Abuja where the rumour mills worked 24/7 in situations like this, but where often through the chaff you could sift out the fine kernels of truth.....

Still no takers on the immigration campaign, I see..... Or perhaps on the scale of the problems facing Nigerian women, people think the ability to get a passport is quite minor. Fair enough, I know the women in my village aren't clamouring to be given passports but I personally believe that symbols are also important and powerful.....