We were standing in Hiroshima looking at a stone wall. All there was to see was a shadow of a man. It had been etched into the wall at the moment of his obliteration by the blinding light of the first atomic bomb. Olof Palme, prime minister of Sweden, stared hard at it. An hour later he had to give a speech as head of the Independent Commission on Disarmament of which I was a member. "My fear," he remarked, "is that mankind itself will end up as nothing more than a shadow on

The words still appear to ring in policy-makers’ ears from Harvard’s Professor Samuel Huntington's treatise, "The Clash of Civilizations", the book that in many ways triggered the paranoia that infects the politicians, the press and the public discourse. "The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, IT IS ISLAM", he wrote, (his capitals).   Too few in the Western leadership class seem to make the point that Al Qaeda is a deviant phenomenon within the Isl

Belem is the Brazilian city at the mouth of the Amazon. Unlike its slummy counterpart, Kinshasa, at the mouth of the Congo, it’s full of resplendent streets with beautiful nineteenth century houses. It has squares and market places full of cafes, fountains and life.   In November it is host to the UN’s Climate Change Conference. Unfortunately, according to the New York Times last week, the number of hotel beds is insufficient for the mass of delegates and their hangers on- a