World

Chelsea Clinton ties the knot

Chelsea Clinton has married her longtime boyfriend at an exclusive estate along New York's Hudson River.
Read more [CBC World News]

Paris squatters' rough removal shown on video

A video has surfaced showing scenes of women and children being forcibly removed from a makeshift camp of immigrants in northeast Paris.
Read more [CBC World News]

Chelsea Clinton wedding in Rhinebeck, New York State

Chelsea Clinton wedding in Rhinebeck, New York State

Pakistan flooding deaths rise to 800

Floodwaters in northwest Pakistan are now blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people this week, a government official says.
Read more [CBC World News]

Why do we so wilfully cover up the failure of the war on drugs? | Angus Macqueen

The vulnerable are left unprotected by our attitudes to substance abuse, argues a leading documentary maker

Asuccess rate of 1%. In what area of public life would we accept that? Last year, Professor Neil McKeganey of the University of Glasgow, one of the most respected academics in Britain, established that the authorities seize just 1% of the heroin that enters Scotland in any one year. He sees no reason to think this would be any different for the nation as a whole.

Where were the headlines? Surely the press, obsessed by crime and drug-fuelled violence, would have it splashed across the front page. Not a peep. Why not?

If heroin gets in, we can only suppose cocaine and other drugs are smuggled in equally successfully. Gordon Meldrum, of the Scottish branch of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, tasked with coordinating our battle against drugs smuggling, shrugs: "1% or 10% – it is not good enough." He claims that a breakthrough in targeting top smugglers is around the corner, but when asked if there is any chance of achieving the 60-70% target the United Nations estimates would be required to change fundamentally the market in illegal drugs, he simply shakes his head.

I have been making a documentary series, Our Drugs War. They are not my first films on drugs. But even I was stunned by McKeganey's 1% figure – and the lack of response. I quoted it in interviews with senior police officers, drugs advisers and politicians; few expressed surprise, few felt that current policies were remotely adequate. Most questioned whether the Home Office was the best place to make drugs policy; surely it is an issue for health. But these public figures would only express their worries away from the camera.

I would ask why they were so concerned about opening up the debate. The response was almost comic in its predictability: "The Daily Mail." Anyone who steps out of line on policy gets shot down fast. Just ask Professor David Nutt, one of the world leaders on the effects of drugs on the brain and the now ex-chairman of the government's advisory committee on the misuse of drugs. The home secretary summarily sacked him for stepping out of line.

Drugs policies have little to do with science, health risk or harm. They have been hijacked by the emotive rhetoric of moralists.

This fear of the Daily Mail is a dishonest excuse – the truth is that there is a collective lack of will to address one of our major social problems. We bury our heads and pretend that banning drugs equals regulation. Quite the reverse; driving drugs underground leaves them unregulated and consumers unprotected. Just what is in the drugs they buy, what dose is safe, what are the side effects? And not just "old" drugs such as cocaine. There's the astonishing market in synthetic drugs which has grown up largely since the banning of ecstasy – operating in grey areas of legality and fuelling weekend parties up and down the country.

As Nutt's replacement as government advisor, Les Iversen, has found, ban one and another appears. Last year mephedrone was the craze, got banned and has been replaced by naphyrone. Ban… ban… ban… As John Arthur, head of the Edinburgh drugs charity Crew, says: "It seems to make sense to ban, but it does not work. It makes things worse. It criminalises everything."

This summer the nation's kids are out on the round of music festivals where alcohol is sold more cheaply than water and tobacco companies can be sponsors. Yet to get their fix they will either end up breaking the law, buying dodgy stuff from dealers in toilets, or they will swallow many pills before the festival to avoid security checks.

The only way to control and channel this demand is to tell the truth. If a drug really kills, tell us. If it is really dangerous, tell us. But equally, be honest when it is not. Regulate supply via prescription or chemists.

Look at the impact of tobacco education. In my lifetime we have moved away from a society where we smoked in trains, planes and pubs. We have easily accepted that we cannot smoke in any of them. We have been persuaded that tobacco really kills. Yet those who choose to go on smoking are free to do so. Because they want to.

Why should other drugs be so different? Some poor souls will end up as addicts – that is inevitable. But it should be treated as an illness, not a crime. Addictions of all types are usually a product of self-medication to avoid facing the world and we should do everything to help.

Treatment is much, much cheaper than putting people through the justice system and maybe locking them up in prison – where they will come across more drugs, of course. In this age of cuts, huge savings could be made at every stage of the drugs story.

Then there is the wider context and cost – be it in Latin America, Mexico or now Afghanistan. I went to Kabul, where the west finances both sides of the conflict. On one side, soldiers die and our tax money is spent to uphold a government riddled with drug-related corruption. On the other, the huge profits from an illegal heroin trade supply over 60% of the Taliban's finance.

Drugs money in one form or another makes up almost half of Afghanistan's GDP. These vast sums are generated solely because heroin is illegal.

On the frontline our policy has been equally confused. Some years British troops in Afghanistan are ordered to eliminate poppy production; other years eradication is deemed counterproductive because it will alienate the farmers we need on our side.

General Stanley McChrystal, before he was replaced, was for leaving most farmers in peace, while the Kabul government, presumably operating on last year's plans, sent teams down to Helmand on a determined drive to eradicate.

The counter-narcotics minister in Kabul shrewdly observes that if we ever stop it here, heroin will simply be grown somewhere else – the profits are too attractive.

Regulating drugs sensibly is not a magic solution. I make no bones about the dangers of drugs, be they heroin or the industrial cleaner, GBL [gamma butyrolactone]. People will continue to die each year.

I do not wish to undervalue the real emotion of each family, but we have to start being brave enough to acknowledge the level of failure of present strategies. Drugs are not a problem of morality and crime but of health.

One per cent. As a New York congressman said to me: "The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and get the same results. It's true for the addict, it's true for the addicted society, it's true for our using a criminal justice model to solve a medical problem."

Angus Macqueen is a film-maker. His three-part Our Drugs War starts tomorrow at 8pm on Channel 4

• Drugs
• Drugs policy
• Drugs trade

Female genital mutilation: This barbaric ritual can be given credence as 'cultural' | The Big Issue

It is shameful that this country has never prosecuted anyone for inflicting this dangerous and painful procedure on small girls

I am glad you covered the issue of female genital mutilation last week. It is shameful that this country has never prosecuted anyone responsible for inflicting this dangerous and excruciatingly painful procedure on small girls. Your articles have spurred me on: I have written to the home secretary and to the Lib Dem Home Office minister Lynne Featherstone. I am also going to write to every MP with a sizeable community from the Horn of Africa in their constituency. I urge other readers to do something along those lines.

The softly-softly approach hasn't worked. Enabling communities in this country to resist the pressure to mutilate their girls has achieved little. Over many years our impotent hand-wringing has condemned countless girls to a lifetime of pain and infection and possible infertility. Would we tolerate it if white women had to have their scar tissue cut open on their wedding night?

Vera Lustig

Walton-on-Thames

Surrey

While, according to the Oxford Dictionary, your use of the word "circumcision" is correct in contemporary usage, the term derives from the Latin "circumcise" (to "cut around"). For boys, this is the removal of a small section of prepuce, leaving intact the glans with its promise of a lifetime of erotic pleasure.

For girls, "female circumcision" is a violent amputation that removes the clitoris, the main, and for most women the most satisfying, physical source of pleasure. It is emphatically not circumcision, nor simply "genital mutilation", and the physical, sensual and emotional scars that remain are profoundly distinct from those of male circumcision.

It is deeply disturbing that the Observer does not name this horrific practice for what it is – clitoral amputation.

Professor Dr Suzanne Buchan

University for the Creative Arts, Farnham College

Surrey

In your editorial about female circumcision you refer to the "queasiness on the part of officials to intervene against a traditional practice". Does this include doctors? If evidence of gunshot or knife wounds can be passed on to the police then one assumes that child mutilation can be, given that they are all probably the result of illegal acts.

I hope your heartbreaking, but encouraging, article is just the start of a sustained campaign against this horrendous activity.

Andrew Dean

Exeter

I first encountered this practice as a medical student in obstetrics and then again when working as a doctor in reproductive and sexual health. As the feature rightly points out, it continues to be inflicted on British citizens despite its illegality. Worldwide there is no indication of any reduction in the number of young girls made to suffer this procedure in countries with a strong cultural tradition. The health risks, both physical and psychological, are evident and raising awareness and education are essential if this practice is ever to be ended. How this is to be achieved is problematical but your article is a step in the right direction.

Dr Christine Mustchin

Hove, East Sussex

Your reference to "this brutal cultural practice" perpetuates the tendency to devalue the term "cultural". It is regrettable that it is increasingly applied to all sorts of cruel, perverse and degrading deeds. My dictionary defines it as "cultivated: well educated: refined". Genital mutilation is none of these. It may be described as "practice" but one that is revolting and criminal. As your article rightly points it out: "It is condemned by many Islamic scholars and predates both the Qur'an and the Bible and possibly even Judaism, appearing in the 2nd century BC." It should have been repudiated long ago along with other barbaric rituals of the distant and murky past. Genital mutilation should never be given credence as something "cultural".

Professor PP Anthony

Exeter

• Child protection
• Doctors
• Islam
• Religion

Israelis and Palestinians unite for peace - and theatre | Combatants for Peace

Theatre troupe Combatants for Peace use their participatory theatre approach to find out what UK audiences would do in their shoes

Nour Shehadah and Chen Alon are both shaven-headed fathers in their forties. Shehadah is Palestinian and he spent five years in an Israeli prison for his activities as a leader of his local Fatah military. Alon is a former combat soldier and major in the Israeli army.

When they were combatants, both men would have considered the other with suspicion and fear. This week, however, Shehadah and Alon have been in Britain along with fourteen other Israelis and Palestinians for a series of events in Warrington, Coventry and in London aimed at helping end the Middle East conflict. The group are part of Combatants For Peace, an organisation that consists of former members of the Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups, who have all decided to renounce their weapons.

Combatants for Peace is not the only group working for peace in the Middle East, but they are the only organisation that use theatre to spread this message. They employ a technique known as forum theatre that was first developed by the Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal as part of the approach he named Theatre of the Oppressed. The group re-enact actual scenes from their own lives in front of an audience, who are then encouraged to stop being spectators and become 'spect-actors' - participating in the action.

"Theatre is an important tool for non-violent resistance", explains Shehadah. He admits he grew up hating Israelis, but after years of being involved in the military resistance .

"I participated in military activities to end the occupation" he says, "but I eventually changed my mind because after 45 years of fighting there had been no concrete results." When he was asked to head up a non-violent movement by a woman who had taught him at university he agreed, and began to study the works of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Combatants for Peace was formed five years ago after a group of 12 Israeli soldiers who refused to serve in the territories met with four former Palestinian gunmen. Since that first meeting the group has grown and now has more than 150 members, and it recently won the prestigious Anna Lindh Award for Dialogue Between Culture.

"We are the only joint bi-national group that uses this technique" says Ben Yeger, the UK representative of the organisation and himself a former Israeli soldier. "The benefit is that it bridges difference in a way that talking does not do on its own."

During their theatrical performances the Israelis in the group play the Palestinians and vice versa. "There was one scene where I had to act like I was a Palestinian woman trying to get through a checkpoint" says Ricky, an Israeli female member of the group, "and for me, suddenly being forced to confront what Palestinians deal with on a daily basis, it was the moment when I completely understood what was being done in my name."

Trying to inhabit the world of the other side is also difficult for the Palestinian members of the group. Among the sixteen is one Palestinian man who was in prison for three life sentences for killing Palestinians who had been collaborating with the Israelis. There are also former members of Hezbollah in the party. "These are people who were educated to hate Israelis", says Ben Yeger, "so for them to even be in the same room as Israelis is huge for them."

In coming to Britain the members of Combatants for Peace were not simply interested in sharing their own personal stories: they also wanted to challenge audiences to think about what they would do. Troupe member Chen Alon says "we don't want our audience to criticise or just observe - we want them to put themselves in our shoes."

During Tuesday's performance at the United Reform Church in Coventry the group re-enacted a checkpoint scenario. Not everyone was happy to participate - one woman walked out in disgust at what she saw as the anti-Jewish slant of the scene.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians in Combatants for Peace are hardened to criticism from their respective communities. That men like Alon and Shehadah are even sharing the stage is, for Ben Yeger, a tribute to the power of theatre and a reason for hope. "No change happens without changing ourselves' says the former soldier 'and if people like us can change then surely others can as well."

• Theatre
• Israel
• Palestinian territories

WikiLeaks founder accuses US army of failing to protect Afghan informers

Julian Assange defends the whistleblowers' website after its publication of 75,000 leaked files of US army secrets

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has hit out at the US military, saying that it bears the ultimate responsibility for any deaths of Afghan informers in the wake of the publication by his organisation of 75,000 leaked files of American army secrets.

Assange and WikiLeaks, the whistleblowers' website that publishes leaked documents from around the world, have come under increasing fire amid accusations that publishing the files put people's lives at risk. But in an interview with the Observer, Assange said the blame for any deaths lay squarely with US military authorities.

"We are appalled that the US military was so lackadaisical with its Afghan sources. Just appalled. We are a source protection organisation that specialises in protecting sources and have a perfect record from our activities," he said.

WikiLeaks has been accused of disclosing the names of Afghan collaborators who may now be subject to reprisals. Critics also say that the information it published is unchecked and some of it may be of dubious provenance. But Assange responded to those claims by saying: "This material was available to every soldier and contractor in Afghanistan… It's the US military that deserves the blame for not giving due diligence to its informers."

Assange insisted there was no evidence that anyone had been put at risk and that WikiLeaks had held sensitive information back and taken great care not to put people at risk. "Well, anything might happen, but nothing has happened. And we are not about to leave the field of doing good simply because harm might happen… In our four-year publishing history no one has ever come to physical harm that we are aware of or that anyone has alleged."

However, he did concede that, if it was proven someone had been killed or injured because of the leak, then WikiLeaks would consider changing the way it operates. "We will review our procedures," he said. But that is unlikely to defuse the growing international row. Last week the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, branded Assange "irresponsible". The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said he might have "blood on his hands".

At the same time US authorities are broadening their investigation into how the leak happened. The suspected leaker, Private Bradley Manning, is in custody. He has already been charged with passing on a video shot in Iraq of a US helicopter attack and 150,000 classified diplomatic cables. He is also the main suspect in the Afghan "war logs" leak. Now, according to a report in the New York Times, investigators are probing whether Manning acted alone or with others. The focus of the inquiry was on a group of people in Cambridge, near Boston in Massachusetts, who might prove to be the link between Manning and WikiLeaks.

Assange said he was undeterred by the attacks, and that traditional journalism had vacated a space into which WikiLeaks was stepping. "We are creating a space behind us that permits a form of journalism which lives up to the name that journalism has always tried to establish for itself," he said.

• WikiLeaks
• Julian Assange
• US military
• Afghanistan
• US foreign policy

Julian Assange, monk of the online age who thrives on intellectual battle

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been thrust into the public eye over one of the biggest intelligence leaks of all time

How many people had even heard of WikiLeaks a week ago? Or Julian Assange? And yet, seven days after the biggest intelligence leak of all time – the publication of over 75,000 files amounting to an entire history of the Afghanistan war – he is everywhere; in every newspaper, on every news broadcast, in what appears to be every country in the world. It's been an extraordinary week for WikiLeaks, which has seen the entrance on to the world stage of a remarkable new character: Assange, a man who, even friends and supporters admit, looks "a bit like a Bond villain".

Could it be the week that changed the war in Afghanistan? It's possible, if the revelations contained in the files swing popular and then political opinion. At the very least, they've triggered a whole new debate about the future course of the conflict. Because what the files revealed was the sheer scale and exhausting mundane detail of the everyday violence suffered by Afghan civilians, caused by coalition forces as well as the Taliban, as well as evidence of what may or not be double-dealing on the part of Pakistan government.

By last Wednesday, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan had branded Assange "irresponsible". And by Friday, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, had accused him of "having blood on his hands". Their charge was that WikiLeaks has disclosed the names of Afghan collaborators who may now be subject to reprisals; that the information is unchecked; that some of it may be of dubious provenance, and that Assange seems to be accountable to no one.

Perhaps the most surprising and confusing aspect of all this is that Assange didn't leak the material. He was not the source for these files, he merely published them. Where once, the focus was on the whistleblower, it's now on the technological conduit by which the whistleblower can reach the world.

By the time I come to talk to Assange, his very last interview of the week, the backlash is in full swing. "Have you seen this?" he says waving a copy of the Times at me. "Have you seen how much bullshit this is? Have you seen page 13? Do you think I should call [the libel law firm] Carter-Ruck?

"It would be a bit silly for me but I'm tempted to. Just look at the headlines and the photo. What's the imputation?"

There's a photo of Assange below a headline that reads "'Taliban hitlist' row: WikiLeaks founder says he did right thing". And next to the photo, another headline reading "Named man is already dead." The imputation is quite clearly that Assange's actions have resulted in the man's death, although in the story itself it makes it clear that he actually died two years ago.

"Is it clear?" says Assange. "Let's see how much we have to read before we reach that information. It's not in the first paragraph, second, third, fourth, it's not in the fifth. It's not until the sixth paragraph you learn that."

The Times had splashed on its front page the claims that there are named Afghan sources in the files whose lives are now in danger. It's pure "self-interest", he says, designed to undermine the Guardian, the Observer's sister paper and one of three publications to publish stories based on the files, the others being the New York Times and Der Spiegel. "You can see that this is coming down from editorial, not up from journalism."

Maybe. Although it doesn't mean that there aren't hard questions to answer. What about these named sources? Might he have endangered their lives?

"If there are innocent Afghans being revealed, which was our concern, which was why we kept back 15,000 files, then of course we take that seriously."

But what if it's too late?

"Well, we will review our procedures."

Too late for the individuals, I say. Dead.

"Well, anything might happen but nothing has happened. And we are not about to leave the field of doing good simply because harm might happen … In our four-year publishing history no one has ever come to physical harm that we are aware of or that anyone has alleged. On the other hand, we have changed governments and constitutions and had tremendous positive outcomes."

If Afghan informers are at risk, he says, the fault lies squarely with the US military. "We are appalled that the US military was so lackadaisical with its Afghan sources. Just appalled. We are a source protection organisation that specialises in protecting sources, and have a perfect record from our activities.

"This material was available to every soldier and contractor in Afghanistan …It's the US military that deserves the blame for not giving due diligence to its informers."

Not everyone agrees. There's a school of thought, to which a leading article in the Times gave voice, that he is playing a dangerous game. He says he hasn't read it, so I quote a chunk: "The sanctimonious piety of the man is sickening."

"Oh sure," he says. "Because it would be better to be a ruthless media mogul just in it for the money. That would be then be acceptable. We can't actually have people doing something for moral reasons. It's only acceptable if we do it just for the money."

It is possible that this is part of it. When Julian Assange burst on to the world stage last week, people grappled to make sense of him, of WikiLeaks, of the new hybrid formed by old media – the Guardian, the New York Times, Der Spiegel – co-operating with a radical, activist, very new media, what the New Yorker described as less an organisation, more "a media insurgency".

It is no coincidence that last week marked WikiLeaks' most successful operation to date, and also the implementation of what is quite clearly a new media strategy. Not just its new step of co-operating with three international news organisations but also the decision, made over the past few months, for Assange himself to come out of the shadows and take up a public role as the WikiLeaks' front man.

"We started off like the Economist," he told a packed audience at the Frontline Club on Tuesday, meaning they retained complete anonymity. "We wanted to make the news, not be the news. But that produced extraordinary curiosity as to who we were ... this attempt not to be the news, made us the news."

This new openness seems designed to counter one of the greatest criticisms of the organisation: its lack of accountability. Because what this week has made clear is that it is no longer governments who can choose what to keep secret, it is WikiLeaks.

It feels like there's been some sort of revolution, I say to him, but one which the world is still struggling to understand. In reply, he deploys one of his deadly monotones: "We are creating a space behind us that permits a form of journalism which lives up to the name that journalism has always tried to establish for itself. We are creating that space because we are taking on the criticism that comes from robust exposure of powerful groups."

It is interesting that he phrases it this way because, as well as being a new and radically different model of what is and isn't possible in the news future, Assange himself is a curious hybrid.

His skills as a cryptographer led him to becoming one of the architects of the WikiLeaks model, but as Gavin MacFadyen, the director of the Centre of Investigative Journalism and a friend of his, points out, there's something almost old-fashioned about his particular brand of committed idealism.

"We don't really see people like him any more. In the 60s and 70s, they were around. Those who are totally committed and passionate about what they're doing. But not after 20 years of Thatcherism."

There was a video of Assange on the centre's website, and "our server crashed", says MacFadyen. "There's no doubt he's an inspirational figure." He is also "probably the most intelligent person I've ever worked with" and has an "unusual amount of self-confidence".

When you interview Assange, this seems like an understatement. He is at least five steps ahead. Probably more. But then, as he told the New Yorker, what appealed to him about computers was their austerity: "It is like chess – chess is very austere, in that you don't have many rules, there is no randomness, and the problem is very hard."

David Leigh, the Guardian's investigations editor who oversaw publication of the files, says Assange has the mentality of a hacker, "a distinct psychological genre". At times, he can seem almost autistic, although "he doesn't lack charm".

That is perhaps the most surprising thing about Assange. The first time I meet him, a fortnight before publication of the files, he's tense and edgy. With good reason, it turns out. The second time, after a speaking engagement at the Frontline Club, the journalists' club in West London he made his base for the week, he's like a man transformed: relaxed and clearly enjoying himself. He makes jokes. He even smiles. The third time, he looks simply exhausted. And yet, he's also still quite clearly up for taking on all-comers.

Vaughan Smith, the director of the Frontline Club, tells me that he's more or less subsisted on "two hours' sleep and two sandwiches". But then, there's something about Assange that if not superhuman, is almost as if sleep and food are mere technicalities that might concern the rest of us, but that he has found a way of simply dispensing with. Combat, intellectual combat, seems to be his stimulant of choice. It just fuels him.

When I try to question him about the morality of what he's done, if he worries about unleashing something that he can't control, that no one can control, he tells me the story of the Kenyan 2007 elections when a WikiLeak document "swung the election".

The leak exposed massive corruption by Daniel Arap Moi, and the Kenyan people sat up and took notice. In the ensuing elections, in which corruption became a major issue, violence swept the country. "1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak," says Assange. It's a chilling statistic, but then he states: "On the other hand, the Kenyan people had a right to that information and 40,000 children a year die of malaria in Kenya. And many more die of money being pulled out of Kenya, and as a result of the Kenyan shilling being debased."

It's the kind of moral conundrum that would unnerve most people, that made some wonder last week what the potential ramifications of the latest leak might be, but it is a subject on which Assange himself is absolutely clear: "You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion."

The other key thing about WikiLeaks is that it's internationalist in the true sense. "We do not have national security concerns. We have concerns about human beings," says Assange. And, with its servers located in different countries, and its headquarters nowhere, it raises intriguing questions about the future of nation states. WikiLeaks seems to be beyond the power of any of them, although Assange jumps on me pretty fast when I suggest as much.

"Of course not. We have had over 100 legal attacks. We have been victorious in almost every single legal attack. As far as nation states are concerned, we operate within the rule of law."

But it is an organisation that has been brilliantly constructed to get around such assaults, and with each release of information, it seems to evolve and grow stronger.

Even if it's not yet known, can't be known, what the long-term impact of this particular leak will be.

David Leigh describes Assange as "a mendicant friar of the electronic age". Like his organisation, he is global and rootless. And when he does sleep, it's usually on somebody else's sofa.

But Leigh also says "it's actually fairly irrelevant to talk about whether what Julian is doing is a bad thing or a good thing, because if he wasn't doing it, somebody else would".

Assange might be an arresting figure and WikiLeaks an extraordinary organisation, but they are manifestations of a phenomenon, he says, not its root cause.

"He's a function of technological change. It's because the technology exists to create these enormous databases, and because it exists it can be leaked. And if it can be leaked, it will be leaked."

• WikiLeaks
• Julian Assange
• Afghanistan
• US military
• Internet
• Freedom of information

New wave of evictions threatens Gypsies

Families forced off their land and into illegal plots as minister drafts tougher trespass powers for police

Human rights campaigners have condemned a wave of evictions and court actions against Gypsies and Irish Travellers which they say are threatening to extinguish a whole way of life.

Dozens of families face the prospect of being pushed off plots of land they own and forced to move back into illegal "side-of-the road" and wasteland camping. Children will be unable to go to school and the elderly and infirm unable to access health services, say the campaigners.

Eric Pickles, the communities and local government minister, is drafting new laws to allow police more powers to evict and arrest people for trespass on public land. Planning laws are also being changed to stop applications for retrospective permission to put caravans on private land.

Pickles has already announced the reversal of previous efforts to provide "pitches" within all local authorities, abolishing the regional planning bodies which were to oversee provision of registered sites for travellers and ease the tensions caused by Gypsies being forced to camp illegally.

The grants that had been made available to councils to provide sites have also been slashed, although an estimated £18m a year is being spent on evictions.

"Gypsies are being squeezed on all sides in this wave of intolerance and racism which is unlike anything I've ever seen before," said Gratton Puxon, 69, a founder member of the Gypsy Council.

There are around 18,000 Gypsy and Traveller caravans in England, with 80% of them on authorised sites, land they own or rent. The numbers on illegal sites is so small, according to the government's own reports, that they could all be accommodated on one square mile.

The clampdown comes against a background of rising attacks against Roma people in Europe which has led to a demand for the EU to tackle what some are calling an attempted "ethnic cleansing" of travelling people. France has intensified its crackdown on Gypsies, announcing that 300 sites would be closed down in the next three months and any Gypsies found breaking the law would be deported. In 2008 the Italian government declared its Roma population was a national security risk, while in 2009 more than 100 Romanian Gypsies were attacked with bricks and bottles in Ireland and driven from their homes.

In Essex, where the statutory requirement for the provision of sites to accommodate 104 travelling people has now gone with the abolition of the regional planning assemblies, Basildon council issued an eviction notice last week on eight families living on their own land at one site. It is also embroiled in a court battle to evict a further 70 families from a site at Dale Farm, on the outskirts of the town. At the former scrapyard, bought by Irish Travellers 10 years ago and slowly transformed into a caravan park, families have been buying tents in preparation for their eviction. The camp's 50 or so children have no idea whether they will return to their primary school after the summer holidays.

"There is a very real sense of fear and people are very worried, especially the old people. There's people here ill and infirm who can't be going back on the road and there's nowhere to go," said Margaret McCarthy, 45, a mother of two who, like many others on the site, has vowed to fight the eviction, planning blockades and protests. "They're trying to destroy our pride and our dignity. The British government is trying to do away with Gypsies. It's scandalous, but nobody is watching, so nobody will help."

"It's seen as the last bastion of racism. It's not socially acceptable to express racism against ethnic minorities, but against Gypsies and travellers it's fine," said Emma Nuttall of the support group Friends, Families and Travellers.

"We are getting more and more calls from families who are in a panic about where they can and can't go, desperately trying to find bits of land they can buy and get planning permission for before the laws change, just so their kids can go to school."

Hostility from local communities is high. The Equality and Human Rights Commission Scotland is so concerned at the way many local newspapers are presenting issues with Gypsies, and the racist remarks left on their noticeboards, that it is contacting media outlets "to remind them that moderation of online comment boards is crucial in order to prevent the incitement of racial hatred".

At Dale Farm, Mary Ann McCarthy, 69, insists on an inspection of her immaculate static caravan and says the stereotype of "dirty gypsies" is not true.

"Travellers are very house proud; you always get a few people who leave a mess but so does any community." Born in a horse-drawn caravan, she is wistful of the days when her family would be welcomed by farmers who relied on Travellers to pick seasonal fruit and at the fairs where their horses were prized.

"We have never been treated really well, but it's never been as bad as now." Additional reporting by Oliver Morrison

• Social exclusion
• Race in education
• Roma

Greece will be a war zone, Sect of Revolutionaries warns tourists

Security forces fear wave of terror as austerity programme provokes strikes, protests, violence – and assassination

Greek security forces have warned of a wave of violence reminiscent of the terror that stalked Italy in the seventies after urban guerillas threatened last week to turn the country into a "war zone".

"Greece has entered a new phase of political violence by anarchist-oriented organisations that are more murderous, dangerous, capable and nihilistic than ever before," said Athanasios Drougos, a defence and counter-terrorism analyst in Athens.

"For the first time we are seeing a nexus of terrorist and criminal activity," he said. "These groups don't care about collateral damage, innocent bystanders being killed in the process. They are very extreme."

The threats came from a guerrilla group called the Sect of Revolutionaries, as it claimed credit for the murder of Sokratis Giolas, an investigative journalist. Giolas was shot dead outside his Athenian home on 19 July, in front of his pregant wife.

The gang promised to step up attacks on police, businessmen, prison guards and "corrupt" media – and, for the first time, threatened holidaymakers.

"Tourists should learn that Greece is no longer a safe haven of capitalism," its declaration said.

"We intend to turn it into a war zone of revolutionary activity with arson, sabotage, violent demonstrations, bombings and assassinations, and not a country that is a destination for holidays and pleasure."

In an accompanying picture, the group displayed an arsenal that included AK 47 assault rifles, semi-automatic pistols and brass knuckledusters.

"Our guns are full and they are ready to speak," it said. "We are at war with your democracy."

The terror threat comes as Greek authorities endure a summer of strikes and escalating upheaval. Military trucks and petrol company vehicles were employed yesterday to alleviate a fuel shortage as more 30,000 lorry and tanker truck operators ignored a government order to return to work on pain of prosecution. Shortages were reported on many holiday islands and destinations in northern Greece where thousands of tourists are stranded.

The far more serious scourge of domestic terrorism was thought to have been eradicated in 2004, with the disbandment of the 17 November group.

Born out of the turmoil that followed the collapse of US-backed military rule, 17 November murdered the CIA station chief, Richard Welch, in 1975.

For the following 27 years it targeted Turkish envoys, juntists, US military personnel, industrialists and western diplomats, including a British military attaché in Athens, Brigadier Stephen Saunders, who was murdered in 2000.

Unlike 17 November, Greece's new generation of urban guerrillas has not tried to garner popular support.

The Sect of Revolutionaries emerged from the rioting after a teenager, Alexis Grigoropoulos, was shot dead by a policeman in December 2008. The men and women thought to comprise its closely guarded ranks are in their late twenties and thirties and appear to espouse violence almost for the sake of it.

"We don't do politics, we do guerilla warfare," its members announced in the proclamation placed on the boy's grave within hours of their first attack, on a police station, in February 2009. Two weeks later they sprayed the offices of a private television station with bullets. Three months after that, they claimed their first victim, Nectarios Savvas, a police officer protecting a state witness. Six people have died in separate attacks this year.

Last month another group, yet to be named, sent a parcel bomb wrapped up as a gift to the office of Michalis Chrysohoidis, the minister in charge of public security. It killed his chief aide.

The surge in violence comes amid rising social tensions over the austerity measures enforced by the government in exchange for €110bn in emergency aid, the biggest bailout in history.

Mounting social unrest, waning support for political parties and record levels of unemployment among an increasingly radicalised youth are believed to have augmented the ranks of anti-establishment groups.

"The economic crisis has most definitely played a role in aggravating the violence," Chrysohoidis told the Observer. "And the violence we are seeing is worst than ever before because society as a whole is more violent than ever before."

To date Chrysohoidis, who oversaw the break-up of 17 November during a previous stint in the same post, has ordered police to tread a fine line.

But anger is growing. Security officials say it is only a matter of time before one of the three groups currently active in Greece strikes again.

More worrying, they say, are their connections to the Balkan criminal underworld that has made access to weapons dangerously easy.

"In other European countries, home-grown terrorism has been on the decrease for years," said Drougos. "But in Greece the situation is not unlike pre-Bolshevik revolutionary Russia or Italy at the start of the terror campaign by the Red Brigades… it's very unpredictable and tourists should be vigilant."

• Greece
• Global terrorism

Peru declares state of emergency amid plunging temperatures

Hundreds die from extreme cold in remote mountain villages also struggling with severe poverty

Peru has declared a state of emergency after hundreds of children died from freezing conditions that have seen temperatures across much of the South American country plummet to a 50-year low. In 16 of Peru's 25 regions, temperatures have fallen below -24C.

Reports from the country say 409 people, most of them children, have already died from the cold, with temperatures predicted to fall further in coming weeks.

Worst hit are Peru's poorest and most isolated communities, which are already living on the edge of survival in remote Andean mountain villages more than 3,000 metres above sea level.

Although those living at such high-altitude would expect temperatures to drop below zero at this time of year, NGOs and government officials say many are unable to withstand the extreme cold which they are now experiencing.

"Over the past three or four years we have seen temperatures during the winter months get lower, and people are unable to survive this," said Silvia Noble, from Plan Peru, an NGO. "This cold weather is now extending into areas that never saw these low temperatures before and children and elderly people are especially at risk as they are not physically strong enough to last month after month of sub-zero conditions."

Last December, Observer reporters visited farming communities living at more than 3,000 metres above sea level in Huancavelica – one of the areas worst hit by the current cold snap – to find families already struggling with rising child mortality fuelled by malnutrition, poverty and what they say are increasingly erratic and unreliable weather patterns.

Seven months on, local NGOs say these mountain villages are now racked with pneumonia, chronic respiratory illnesses and hunger.

The freeze is also killing hundreds of alpaca. Farmers are struggling to keep livestock alive due to frozen water points and a lack of food, which could have severe repercussions on the ability of families to see out the winter.

The declaration of a state of emergency means authorities in affected states can get emergency funds to provide medicine, blankets and shelter to those most at risk.

• Peru

Bollywood's spoof Osama bin Laden movie proves global hit

Budget movie is banned in Pakistan but will be released in the US

A small budget film about a fake Osama bin Laden video has become one of India's biggest box office hits of the year and is about to hit American cinema screens.

Tere Bin Laden (Without You Laden) has grossed more than $2m in India, despite having a first-time director and initially only being shown on 344 screens.

The film tells the story of a young journalist from Pakistan whose repeated attempts to obtain a visa to the US to pursue his media career are thwarted. Finally he resorts to unscrupulous means by making a bogus Bin Laden video to sell to the news channels with disastrous results.

The film's main character is played by one of Pakistan's biggest pop stars, Ali Zafar, the first time a Bollywood film has featured a Pakistani actor in a main role. Zafar said he hoped the film would challenge people's misconceptions about his country. "People in Pakistan, especially the educated youth, are by and large very liberal and desire progression and peace," he said. "People who have seen pirated copies of the film in Pakistan have loved it and are open to it."

The film, directed by Abhishek Sharma, has been banned in Pakistan, for fear of provoking attacks on cinemas by Bin Laden sympathisers. Zafar said: "I don't think the government is willing to take any risks because it's a very precarious situation. I do understand where they are coming from. If a single incident happens in Britain and the US, you see how perturbed people are and all the sadness that comes with it. In Pakistan, something like this happens almost every other day. Pakistan is a country in a lot of turmoil."

He denied claims that it made light of terrorism attacks, but insisted it focused on attitudes in the west towards Pakistanis. "As soon as Bin Laden's name is mentioned, there are issues and perceptions that come with it. But the point of the movie is to comment on that and how fear is generated. Through humour, some very serious issues can be commented upon."

The film recouped its budget in India alone and has made a further £200,000 in the UK, Middle East and Australia, despite limited releases. That figure is expected to double when the film is released in the US on Friday.

Production company Walkwater Media said the delay of the US opening was not due to the nature of the storyline, but to test the waters in smaller markets first. Aarti Shetty, producer, said: "We were always going to release the film in the US a little later. When it released in India and we looked at the media support and numbers, we thought we should make use of the buzz around the movie."

• India
• Osama bin Laden
• Bollywood
• Pakistan

Gavin Grant: the footballer who couldn't escape his murderous past in a London drug gang

Gavin Grant's five-year career with Millwall, Wycombe and Bradford ended when he was convicted of a 2004 shooting. The north London estate where he grew up is now transformed, but his Old Bailey trial shed light on its notorious history of gun crime

Gavin Renaldo Grant had potential. An aspiring professional footballer, he was never going to give Cristiano Ronaldo competition, but he possessed, in the words of one fan site, "lightning pace and tricky wing play".

A journeyman footballer who could play as a striker or winger, Grant started his career in 2005 with his local non-league club, Tooting and Mitcham in south London, scoring 10 goals in 16 matches – an impressive haul that attracted interest from clubs in higher divisions. Between 2005 and 2010, he had spells with Millwall, Wycombe Wanderers, Gillingham and, at the end of last season, was turning out for Bradford in League Two.

"He's got bags of potential and he's a good finisher," said Peter Taylor, who managed Grant at Wycombe and Bradford. "He's got an eye for goal, he's quick, he's an athlete and he will get better."

Taylor's words, spoken in 2008, sound hollow now. Grant's attempt to escape the drug-fuelled violence of the London estate where he grew up for the glamorous world of professional football ended last week when he was jailed at the Old Bailey for a minimum of 25 years, convicted with two others for the murder of his former friend, Leon "Playboy" Labastide, in May 2004.

The trial, the culmination of a six-year investigation by Operation Trident, the Metropolitan police unit that investigates black-on-black killings, heard how Grant, now 26, Gareth Downie, 25, and Damian Williams, 32, had orchestrated an execution-style killing, one of a series of tit-for-tat shootings in the Stonebridge Park estate in Brent, north-west London, in the 1990s.

Once an intimidating fortress of tower blocks, Stonebridge supplied the labour to a giant industrial estate, home to employers including Wall's, the ice-cream maker. But as the firms moved out, unemployment soared. Stonebridge became home to large migrant populations and assumed a reputation among Trident officers as a "hot spot".

Stonebridge looms large in the story of Grant's descent from promising athlete to killer. A lawless, no-go area of poorly lit alleyways and concrete walls, it was the perfect breeding ground for crime. The estate became enmeshed in a turf war fought between gangs battling to control the supply and distribution of crack cocaine. The violence was so bad that in 1995 John Major, then prime minister, cancelled a speech he was due to give there over fears of being shot.

"There were always problems between Stonebridge and the [nearby] Church End estate," said Detective Inspector Steve Horsley, who led the investigation into Labastide's murder. "You couldn't go from one estate to the other because different gangs ran it." Gangs from neighbouring Kensal Green and Wembley were also vying for control, while Jamaican Yardie gangsters overseeing the importation of the crack into the UK were never far away.

In August 2005, Rohan "Chunky" Chung, a Yardie drugs importer, tied up a stepfather and two sisters in their flat on the estate and shot them in the head. Chung was furious that the sisters' brother, one of his "mules", had disappeared with 4kg of his cocaine.

Today Stonebridge's towers are gone, replaced by award-winning low-rise housing, interspersed with communal areas, trees and street lights – a committed attempt to "design out" crime. A Stirling prize-nominated children's centre is a visual testimony to the area's £225m renaissance. Crime is down dramatically. Prostitutes, junkies and guns are no longer ubiquitous. Much is down to the success of Trident working in conjunction with local police and the community. When Grant and those involved in the revenge attacks were arrested, shootings on the estate plunged by 50%, according to some reports. These days Stonebridge is regularly held up around the world as a success story when it comes to transforming problem estates.

"The area is transformed beyond belief," said Chinyere Ugwu, who has lived on the estate for 13 years and is managing director of Hillside Housing Trust, which runs Stonebridge. "The residents are actively involved in the community and are running things for themselves."

But Grant's trial shone a light on the days when Stonebridge was notorious. As the prosecution suggested at the start of the trial, it was "more the law of the jungle than the law of civilised England". Grant, though, had a better chance than some of avoiding being sucked into its gang culture. An impressive athlete in his early teens, he signed schoolboy terms with Watford when he was 14. Money, fame and girls beckoned. He could earn more in a week than his friends could in a year if he made it big.

But, like thousands of other hopefuls, Grant was let go by his club at 16. With no qualifications, he took a job at Tesco. But, as his trial was told, Grant was impressionable and revelled in the kinship of gang culture. It was suggested that Williams's "larger personality" had been a huge influence on him. It was Williams, the Old Bailey jury heard, who convinced the other two that Labastide must have been involved in a burglary at the flat of his cousin, Romain Whyte, Grant's best friend and someone he looked up to.

Days before he was shot, Labastide, a member of a rival gang, had seen Whyte crash his motorcycle outside his house.Sensing an opportunity while Whyte was incapacitated, a gang, rumoured to be led by Labastide, raided his house and stole £20,000 of what the court heard was suspected drug money. As the gang piled into Whyte's flat, its three occupants – Whyte's girlfriend, Sabrina Edwards, his sister Melika, and a 16-year-old girl – jumped out of a first-floor window, fearing for their lives. Two of the women broke legs in the fall.

Williams was incensed. Grant, who was best friends with Whyte, was similarly furious. In the warped world of Stonebridge, they considered the fact the burglars had carried guns "disrespectful". Labastide had often eaten at Williams's mother's house. "How could he do that?" the three accomplices raged.

Urged on by Williams, Grant and Downie, armed and wearing motorcycle helmets, went looking for Labastide. They found him outside his mother's house talking on the phone to a friend and shot him six times. Grant was heard boasting about the shooting hours later.

The killing unleashed a wave of violence. Typewritten letters accused Whyte and others of killing Labastide. "YOU WILL NOT GET AWAY THE PAST WILL HAUNT YOU," they proclaimed.

Sean "Fusey" Cephinis, a friend of Labastide, was suspected of writing the letters. In a case of mistaken identity, gunmen looking to silence Cephinis killed Jahmall Moore in January 2005. Two years later Whyte and Grant were tried and acquitted of the shooting.

After the acquittal, Grant must have been hoping to turn his back on his murderous lifestyle. Stonebridge was being transformed and Grant had a fresh opportunity, too. By the time Moore died in a hail of bullets, ambushed by four gunmen while in his car, Grant had been signed by Gillingham. As the defence at last week's trial observed: "Whatever he did in the past, he had turned his life around by the time it [the murder case] was resurrected."

But the Trident officers had a theory. They had noticed the burglary at Whyte's flat and were aware that the day before it occurred Whyte had come off his motorbike in front of Labastide's house. Were the incidents connected? "We got an indication things were not quite right," Horsley recalled after questioning the three young women who had jumped from the window. He suspected they might be holding something back.

Then, in 2008, new intelligence prompted the Trident officers to reopen their files and track one of the women to the south-west of England where she admitted hearing the three men plot the murder. "She was almost relieved that someone wanted to ask her," Horsley said. "She had held it in since she was a girl of 16."

Appearing under a pseudonym, "Susan Norwich" supplied the testimony at a first trial and then a retrial in which Grant's conviction was secured. "She was a brave little girl to have done it twice," Horsley said. Her decision to testify was startling. Criminologists say it is rare for the police to receive such co-operation. Horsley agrees. "You can imagine you're a witness to a gun crime and the people who have done it are seriously bad guys. You have got to worry about your own safety, especially if you are from that community. We have to disclose names to defence and names will come out [in court], but we do our best to protect people."

Grant's conviction was a stunning success for Trident officers. In two earlier related trials they had relied on evidence from Britain's first black-on-black supergrass, Darren Mathurin, a drug dealer, whose testimonies failed to convince the juries.

As he was sent down last week Grant was seen to weep. Only months before he had been playing professional football, trying to resurrect a career that had stalled when he was 16.

"Because he hadn't made it with Watford he went back to Stonebridge and hung around with friends and family there and got into the wrong things," Horsley said. "Then after the shootings he tried to sort himself out."

But it was too late. Far too late.

• Gun crime
• Crime
• London
• Gangs

Mel Gibson, Lindsay Lohan... and you too. Why your reputation needs an online detox

A new breed of PR gurus is evolving to combat digital disaster areas

Haunted by a revealing photograph from your drink-mad office party posted on Facebook? Berated by an ex-lover on a blog posting? Or is your business being skewered online by a vindictive customer? Then Gary Powers is waiting to hear from you. He can help.

In the modern digital age where seemingly everything and everyone is online, a new industry is emerging to "manage" the internet footprint that people and businesses leave online. "Reputation managers" can clean up and shape a person's online history: burying the damaging stuff and promoting the good.

Given the numbers of famous people who arguably are in need of such a service, and the millions of others leaving an online footprint around the world every day, the potential market is dazzling.

Kate Moss is already rumoured to be using online brand reputation management to make sure Google searchers come to positive stories first. By contrast, due to recent online leakings of abusive rants about his ex-girlfriend, actor Mel Gibson's fourth result on a Google search is a negative gossip story.

The same goes for Paris Hilton, the socialite and heiress. The fifth result on a Google search for her brings up disputed claims that customs officers in Corsica had found marijuana in her purse and had briefly detained her. A good reputation manager might be able to push that story down Hilton's Google results chain. Lindsay Lohan, currently in jail, is famed for use of her Twitter account where she frequently sends out ill-advised updates. A reputation manager could help to suppress those Tweets or even try to get them deleted.

Powers, who works for a US company called Reputation Defender, is paid to help promote the positive, hide the negative and even have hostile internet postings removed altogether. Fees vary across the industry. For $15 (£9.50) a month, Reputation Defender will work with a client to clean up and monitor their internet reputation. They can also send you an alert whenever a new reference to your child is posted anywhere online. For $30, you can subscribe to a service that will try to destroy hostile internet content. In 2008 the firm raised $2.6m in investment funding.

"We get people from all walks of life," said Powers, the company's "head writer". People who come to the firm for assistance range from professionals, like lawyers or doctors, to those involved in the entertainment industry; anyone who is concerned that someone, somewhere, might search for them online.

Increasingly the results of a Google search can affect the most important elements of people's lives. A recent Microsoft study showed that 78% of job recruiters conducted internet searches on their clients in order to check out their backgrounds. Experts say that the huge growth of the internet has in effect created a "permanent memory" online that can be searched by anyone. Embarrassing statements, and photographs, or angry attacks by spiteful ex-friends once faded away. But no longer. Anyone can be judged forever on a moment of madness or bad luck.

There are now many firms offering help in keeping people's online history safe. They include companies and websites like Online Reputation Manager, Reputation Professor and Reputation Management Partners. It is an industry that has arisen almost overnight. Reputation Defender was founded in 2006 and now employs dozens of people from its base in Redwood City, California. David Thompson, chief privacy officer at Reputation Defender, sees the sector as involved in an "arms race" with web developments that erode people's privacy. "If they are building a better gun, we are building a better bullet-proof vest," he said.

Some developments can be potentially scary. Facial recognition software will allow the internet to recognise – and make potentially searchable – any photograph in which someone appears, even if only in the background (say at a riot, protest or orgy). Experts warn that everything we do on the internet can be collected and collated digitally. All that information is tracked, gathered and used by marketers who then build up a detailed profile of the consumer.

Professor Joseph Turow, of the University of Pennsylvania, believes this "unknown reputation" that everyone has will eventually lead to people having very different experiences online. "People will be defined by marketers in ways they know nothing about, and this is a process that is getting bigger and bigger," Turow said.

Turow spoke in front of the US Senate last week appealing for government regulation. "Most people do not have a clue this is going on. They don't even know they have a reputation online that is being used in this way," Turow said.

Eventually, experts predict, millions will employ someone to manage the traces they leave, perhaps even those who work in reputation management.

Does Powers employ someone to manage his own online history? Not yet. Instead he cuts the problem off at the source, trying not to leave a trace in the first place. "I have a very low profile. I kind of like that," he said.

• Internet
• Marketing & PR
• Google

High-speed rail line threatens quiet life of historic Ladbroke's villagers

Scenic Ladbroke is set to become a flashpoint over plans for HS2, the 200km high-speed link between London and the Midlands

For centuries Ladbroke, a picturesque Midlands village recorded in the Domesday Book, has been the sort of place where people aspire to live. With its coaching inn, 12th-century church, village green, Grade II-listed houses and active Women's Institute, it is the quintessential English idyll, a tranquil haven in the splendour of the Warwickshire countryside.

But not for much longer. The village, which has a population of 250, lies within metres of the proposed High Speed II (HS2) rail link between London and the Midlands that the government hopes will help to make domestic flights a thing of the past. Residents have expressed outrage at the plan, which has made their homes difficult to sell, while claims for compensation will take decades to be approved.

Now the village's plight has seen it pushed to the forefront of a vocal alliance of 40 groups stretching along the proposed 125-mile route that runs through areas of outstanding natural beauty such as the Chilterns and Warwickshire's Forest of Arden, creating a "noise corridor" up to four miles wide.

A flagship project of the previous government now under consideration by the new coalition, HS2 is set to provide the next key skirmish between conservationists and politicians after high-profile battles to expand Stansted Airport and build a third terminal at Heathrow.

Ladbroke, where the gunpowder plotter Robert Catesby had a manor which is thought to have been used later as a lookout point during the civil war, is likely to be one of the flashpoints. Its position on a flood plain means that the track would run past the village on a 40ft-high, three-mile viaduct visible for miles.

"Parts of the village will become uninhabitable," said Graham Long, chairman of the Ladbroke Action Group and a director of the HS2 Action Alliance. "We will end up with a kind of ghost village at one end, which will be completely unoccupiable, and a live village on the other."

Independent reports commissioned by opponents of the route suggest that the trains, which may run as frequently as once every two minutes at peak times, will generate noise levels of 74 decibels as far as 100 metres from the track – the equivalent of the sound of a pneumatic road drill. Government regulations stipulate that houses cannot be built close to infrastructure projects that generate noise levels above 66 decibels.

Apart from the noise, there are concerns about the rail link's visual impact on the English countryside. The Chiltern Society warns that the project "is a mass of iron and steel and concrete and noise that will leave an indelible, ugly scar across one of the most beautiful areas of England. It will cause an unforgivable blight".

But the government thinks there is a strong case for HS2, which would allow trains to travel at almost 250mph, cutting journey times from Birmingham to London to 49 minutes, compared with the current 84 minutes.

Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, said the £13bn project was one of several under consideration that "can justify themselves economically'' and "one of the best investments the taxpayer can make".

The first phase of the project would start in 2017, with an operational target date of 2026. An expansion of the route, linking up with Manchester and then Glasgow, would not be in place until the 2030s at the earliest.

Residents living near the proposed route – which skirts past Stoneleigh, near Coventry, up to Hampton in Arden – have expressed anger at how they were informed about it. "The first we knew of it was when we heard it on the local radio," said Steve Copley, a retired church warden who lives in Ladbroke. "Now the village is blighted and nobody will buy a house here."

Campaigners have attacked Hammond's claim that HS2 will see domestic flights become a thing of the past, pointing out that there are no commercial flights from Birmingham to London. But the plan has won unexpected backing from Coventry-born pop impresario and rail enthusiast Pete Waterman, who said the project would have economic benefits. "Bugger Coventry," Waterman said with characteristic frankness. "This will benefit the whole country."

The HS2 Action Alliance has also attacked the updated compensation arrangements quietly unveiled by the government last week. An interim emergency hardship fund has been established for people who urgently need to sell their homes, such as those facing repossession, but few property owners along the proposed line qualify. It has emerged that the government has only set aside £15m for the fund, which campaigners claim will be insufficient.

Properties directly on the proposed route will be issued with compulsory purchase orders, but the vast majority of those that will be affected by noise will not be able to claim until the project has been running for a year. The HS2 Action Alliance complains that this criterion was drawn up just after the second world war and fails to recognise the impact of modern infrastructure projects.

"We are sitting here in 2010; our property and our lives are blighted and many of us are not subject to compulsory purchase orders, but we will be within very close distance to this very fast line," Long said. "But we won't be in consideration for blight provisioning until one year after the line opens, which makes it 2027 until we can claim; it's hideous."

It has been claimed that residents living alongside High Speed I, the line that runs from London St Pancras through Kent to the Channel Tunnel, saw the value of their homes fall by 30% but received only between 5% and 10% in compensation.

More than 4,500 people responded to the consultation on the planned compensation package, most to express concerns that they will face hardship.

"While we recognise the climate of austerity, the government should appreciate that, if HS2 cannot pay for the damage it does, including the cost of fair compensation, then HS2 cannot be in the national interest," said Hilary Wharf, director of the HS2 Action Alliance.

An interim report on the future of High Speed II is due to be made to parliament in October, with a full consultation expected to take place early next year.

• Conservation
• Rail transport
• Transport policy
• Air transport

Insects could be the key to meeting food needs of growing global population

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation is taking seriously the farming of creepy-crawlies as nutritious food

Saving the planet one plateful at a time does not mean cutting back on meat, according to new research: the trick may be to switch our diet to insects and other creepy-crawlies.

The raising of livestock such as cows, pigs and sheep occupies two-thirds of the world's farmland and generates 20% of all the greenhouse gases driving global warming. As a result, the United Nations and senior figures want to reduce the amount of meat we eat and the search is on for alternatives.

A policy paper on the eating of insects is being formally considered by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The FAO held a meeting on the theme in Thailand in 2008 and there are plans for a world congress in 2013.

Professor Arnold van Huis, an entomologist at Wageningen University in Belgium and the author of the UN paper, says eating insects has advantages.

"There is a meat crisis," he said. "The world population will grow from six billion now to nine billion by 2050 and we know people are consuming more meat. Twenty years ago the average was 20kg, it is now 50kg, and will be 80kg in 20 years. If we continue like this we will need another Earth."

Van Huis is an enthusiast for eating insects but given his role as a consultant to the FAO, he can't be dismissed as a crank. "Most of the world already eats insects," he points out. "It is only in the western world that we don't. Psychologically we have a problem with it. I don't know why, as we eat shrimps, which are very comparable."

The advantages of this diet include insects' high levels of protein, vitamin and mineral content. Van Huis's latest research, conducted with colleague Dennis Oonincx, shows that farming insects produces far less greenhouse gas than livestock. Breeding commonly eaten insects such as locusts, crickets and meal worms, emits 10 times less methane than livestock. The insects also produce 300 times less nitrous oxide, also a warming gas, and much less ammonia, a pollutant produced by pig and poultry farming.

Being cold-blooded, insects convert plant matter into protein extremely efficiently, Van Huis says. In addition, he argues, the health risks are lower. He acknowledges that in the west eating insects is a hard sell: "It is very important how you prepare them, you have to do it very nicely, to overcome the yuk factor."

More than 1,000 insects are known to be eaten by choice around the world, in 80% of nations. They are most popular in the tropics, where they grow to large sizes and are easy to harvest.

The FAO's field officer Patrick Durst, based in Bangkok, Thailand, ran the 2008 conference.

Durst helped set up an insect farming project FAO project in Laos which began in April. This involves transferring the skills of the 15,000 household locust farmers in Thailand across the border. "There were some proponents of a bigger dairy industry in Laos to improve a calcium deficiency," says Durst, whose favourite is fried wasp - "very crispy and a nice light snack". "But this is crazy when most Asians are lactose intolerant." Locusts and crickets are calcium-rich and 90% of people in Laos have eaten insects at some point, he says.Durst says the FAO's priority will be to boost the eating of insects where this is already accepted but has been in decline due to western cultural influence.

He also thinks such a boost can provide livelihoods and protect forests where many wild insects are collected. "I can see a step-by-step process to wider implementation."

First, insects could be used to feed farmed animals such as chicken and fish which eat them naturally. Then, they could be used as ingredients.

Van Huis adds: "We're looking at ways of grinding the meat into some sort of patty, which would be more recognisable to western palates."

One of the few suppliers of insects for human consumption in the UK is Paul Cook, whose business Osgrow is based in Bristol. However, no matter how they are marketed or presented, Cook is not convinced they will ever become more than a novelty. "They are in the fun element ... But I can't see it ever catching on in the UK in a big way."

• Food
• Insects
• United Nations

John Naughton on WikiLeaks

Whistleblowers won't find a better place to spill the beans than WikiLeaks

In the annals of the net, one of the sacred texts is John Gilmore's aphorism that "the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it". Mr Gilmore is a celebrated engineer, entrepreneur and libertarian activist, who is regarded by the US Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency and men in suits everywhere as a pain in the ass. He was the fifth employee of Sun Microsystems, which meant that he made a lot of money early in life, and he has devoted the rest of his time to spending it on a variety of excellent causes. These include: creating the "alt" (for alternative) hierarchy in the Usenet discussion fora; open-source software; drugs law reform; philanthropy; and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (which last week won a notable concession from the Library of Congress to legalise the "jailbreaking" of one's iPhone – ie liberating it from Apple's technical shackles).

The Gilmore aphorism about censorship first saw the light of day in 1993 – in a Time article about the internet – and since then has taken on a life of its own as a consoling mantra about the libertarian potential of the network. "In its original form," Gilmore explains, "it meant that the Usenet software (which moves messages around in discussion newsgroups) was resistant to censorship because, if a node drops certain messages because it doesn't like their subject, the messages find their way past that node anyway by some other route." But, he continues, "The meaning of the phrase has grown through the years. Internet users have proven it time after time, by personally and publicly replicating information that is threatened with destruction or censorship."

The aphorism came up a lot last week following publication by the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel of extensive reports based on the stash of classified US military reports published on the WikiLeaks website. And of course in one sense this latest publishing coup does appear to confirm Gilmore's original insight. But at the same time it grossly underestimates the amount of determination and technical ingenuity needed to make sure that the aphorism continues to hold good.

The sad truth is that, in practice, it is now trivially easy to censor the web. In most jurisdictions all you need to do is pay a lawyer to send a threatening letter to the ISP that hosts an offending site. The letter can allege defamation, or copyright infringement or privacy violations or a host of other grounds. The details usually don't matter because, nine times out of 10, the ISP will immediately shut down the site, often without bothering to check whether your complaints have any validity. The reason: a legal precedent set by the so-called "demon internet" case, which established that an ISP may be held liable for damages if it fails to act on a complaint. Most companies won't want to take the risk, so they pull the plug. QED.

So if the WikiLeaks operation depended on simply putting stuff on a website, then the governments and corporations who feel threatened by its exposures would have easily wiped it out years ago. Its durability is a product not just of the commitment of the activists behind it, but also of a sophisticated technical infrastructure which uses cryptography to ensure that every node in its virtual pipeline except the final, public, site is virtually impossible to identify.

At the heart of this is Tor, an open-source implementation of a networking technology which uses cryptography to pass data from router (internet node) to router in such a way that the identity of each is hidden. (The technology is derived from an earlier, multi-layered approach known as "the onion router" – hence the acronym.) As luck would have it, Tor is also a technology routinely used by governments to pass secret information around, so there's a nicely ironic side to WikiLeaks' deployment of it.

Tor provides a way of publishing information so that it's extremely difficult to trace content to a particular internet address. This is good news for WikiLeaks geeks, but less so for the average whistleblower because it requires a level of technical expertise most people don't possess. Which is why most whistleblowers will have to rely on the old-fashioned approach of putting stuff on lots of websites and social networks in the hope that it will be widely replicated. This may ensure that John Gilmore's aphorism continues to hold. But it will also mean that the whistleblowers' identities will be exposed. So if you have anything to reveal, try sending it to WikiLeaks first.

• WikiLeaks
• Internet
• Open source
• Censorship

Confessions in new women's lit: Emily Gould, Meghan Daum and Sloane Crosley

Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City columns inspired some dire chick lit, but also a generation of more serious young writers

Emily Gould still finds it irritating when she gets stuck behind a group of women walking four abreast along a New York pavement, intent on imitating the infamous Sex and the City line-up. "Really, two of you should walk behind and allow other people to walk past," Gould says with a groan. "It's one of many things that upsets me about Candace Bushnell."

But for all that she might get annoyed by those high-heeled women on the sidewalk, without Sex and the City, there would arguably have been no Emily Gould. The 28-year-old has just published her first confessional memoir, And The Heart Says Whatever. In 11 pithily written essays, Gould, a former co-editor of the Gawker gossip website, charts her experiences as a young adult in New York, working in jobs she loathes, facing up to failed relationships and going to parties attended by people she dislikes. Her debut has already attracted praise from the likes of Jonathan Franzen, while Curtis Sittenfeld, the author of American Wife, has hailed it as a modern-day version of The Bell Jar. Gould is one of a new generation of female confessional writers who, according to Sittenfeld, "speak, in our often phoney and cheesy culture, to the truths of women's lives".

Before Candace Bushnell, books like Gould's that sought to capture the dilemmas and dichotomies of modern womanhood with a wry, humorous honesty, were almost unheard of. For decades, the experiences of ordinary women had been largely overlooked by the literary world: either it was recounted in fictional terms (as in Mary McCarthy's The Group) or it was relayed anonymously by feminist polemicists and social historians (Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique). Bushnell changed all that. When she started writing her first-person columns for the New York Observer in 1994, she won a considerable following for her acerbically witty portrayal of the Manhattan singles scene, with its Martini bars, non-committal men and cruel, almost Whartonesque mating rituals. The newspaper columns based on the sexual experiences and romantic intrigues of Bushnell and her three friends became a bestselling book, which in turn became a hit television show and then spawned a film franchise that has evolved into a multi-media juggernaut of product placement and tie-in beauty products.

For a while after Bushnell's extraordinary success, the publishing industry assiduously attempted to sniff out the next Sex and the City and a motley assortment of chick lit writers of varying talent found their books marketed with bright pink covers and an illustration of a pair of sparkly Manolo Blahniks. "Sometimes great parents have really terrible children and it's not really their fault," concedes Gould, who lives in Brooklyn. "I think that's what happened with Candace Bushnell. She paved the way for good and bad things. She opened things up for female writers but she also gave rise to this chick-litty stereotype of the single girl having a romantic storyline. That kind of stuff bores me, to be honest. There are only so many ways that that story works out."

But Bushnell was also at the vanguard of a different type of confessional writing, one that was both unsentimental, smart and unapologetically female; that did not shy away from uncomfortable truths or from tackling the subjects women previously only talked about behind closed doors. Now, 17 years after the first "Sex and the City" column was published, a new wave of confessional writers is picking up where Bushnell left off.

As well as Emily Gould, there is 40-year-old Meghan Daum, an acclaimed newspaper columnist whose third book, Life Would be Perfect if I Lived in That House chronicles her obsessive fascination with real estate and has just been published in America. Sloane Crosley, 31, whose first collection of essays, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, became a New York Times bestseller has also just written her second book, How Did You Get This Number, in which she tackles a dizzying array of subjects from living with an anorexic flatmate to buying stolen upholstery as a means of getting over a heartbreak. And the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's bestselling memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, in which she charts a year travelling around the world after the failure of her marriage, opens next month, starring Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem.

According to Neill Denny, the editor-in-chief of The Bookseller, the sudden rash of confessional memoirs is partly attributable to the rise in popularity of blogging and reality television. "It's the idea that everyone's got a story to tell and everyone is a star, a media brand in their own right," says Denny. "It's the Big Brother phenomenon, where we are led to believe that our own stories are valid and have resonance. The world of the web has definitely opened up the market in a way that wouldn't have been conceivable 15 or 20 years ago. The things people would have written in a diary for themselves, they are now writing in a diary in a book. That has combined with a big tectonic shift in our society talking openly about sex and I think it has been led from America."

In the UK, we are still slightly discomfited by the idea of baring all in a confessional essay, partly, one presumes, because we are restrained by a sort of cultural prudishness, but also because we do not wish to appear self-indulgent. "American writers of that type are prepared to lay more on the line," agrees Denny. "The British are good at producing plenty of gripping, hardcore misery memoirs or they tend to write confessionally about the past."

British writers who address the experiences of modern women tend to do so in a fictional format, following the example of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, which also started off as a newspaper column. In America, says Meghan Daum, there is more of a tradition for non-fiction examinations of what it is to be female, inspired not only by Bushnell but also by writers such as Joan Didion. "Joan Didion is incredibly veiled and meticulous," says Daum, a graduate of Vassar College who now lives in Los Angeles, where she writes a weekly column for the LA Times. "She keeps the reader at arm's length even though she gives the impression of being totally candid.

"To me the word 'confessional' is problematic because it connotes a kind of over-sharing or perhaps unconsidered sharing. I try to let the reader feel like they are learning everything about me, but actually my goal at the end of the piece is that they know everything about the narrator but nothing about the author."

According to Daum, one of the major problems with dubbing a piece of writing "confessional" is that it now immediately gets lumped in with the breathless prose of sub-standard chick lit. "I think in the realm of fiction women have painted themselves into a corner. Bridget Jones's Diary I consider to be a brilliant, hilarious, subversive book, but a lot of people knocked it off and reduced it and this chick lit genre emerges and there's no meat or nuance there at all."

In many ways, says Daum, women's confessional writing is a victim of Bushnell's success: "Publishers tend to be more willing to take personal work that is not as good because you know you have an in-built audience of female readers. Because something is relatable, there's not as much emphasis on craft, and publishers know that more women buy books than men."

In fact, the allegation most often levelled at a confessional essayist tends to be that they are writing in a trite and essentially superficial way about themselves: the literary equivalent of navel-gazing. In an article for the National Review last year, journalist Katherine Connell wrote that: "Excessive self-regard is the essence of this type of confessional writing, in which significant others figure only as supporting actors in the author's personal drama – as stepping stones on the road to their self-actualisation."

And when a woman does this kind of thing – particularly a young, attractive woman – there is often a critical presumption that they are nakedly selling themselves, rather than analysing anything more profound. "If a woman writes about herself, she's a narcissist," says Emily Gould. "If a man does the same, he's describing the human condition." Or, as Erica Jong, the author of seminal feminist novel Fear of Flying (published in 1973), once put it: "It's often called confessional writing by male reviewers, but I think the word confessional in this instance is a put-down. It implies that what these women are doing is just sort of spilling out whatever they have in their guts and that there's no craft involved in the writing."

When Gould wrote a lengthy article for the New York Times in 2008 about her compulsion to reveal details of her private life online – she coined the term "oversharing" – more than 1,200 irate comments were left on the Times website condemning her "self-exposure" and calling her everything from a "moronic juvenile" to an "unfeeling, self-absorbed unsavoury clod". It did not help that the article was illustrated with a cover photograph of Gould sprawled suggestively across a bed – a decision she now says she regrets – but, still, it was hard to imagine that a male writer would have attracted quite the same level of vitriol. "Yeah," agrees Gould. "And there was one review of the book that was headlined 'Emily Gould: all dressed up and nowhere to go'. I mean, dressed up in what? In words?"

Partly as a consequence of her New York Times experience, Gould decided "very consciously to let go of whether or not anyone likes me". In And the Heart Says Whatever, she deliberately resists the urge to mould each story along a neat, narrative arc with a cleverly packaged ending. "I don't tie everything into a little bow and say: 'That's what I've learned'," she explains. "I think a lot of women writers go around apologising, saying: 'Oh stupid me, oh the goofy things I did when I was young and didn't know any better' but I set out specifically not to do that… I think a lot of the stories I told were about having agency, about what you're going to do with it and maybe you're going to do something bad. That's not to say I'm prickly or hard to get along with, I just want it to be OK for women to be complete people, to have sides to themselves that aren't whitewashed or palatable."

So it is that Gould writes unabashedly in one chapter about having sex with a 14-year-old boy when she was 17. She is honest, too, about her own shortcomings: "I can look back and recognise the things I've done and said that were wrong: unethical, gratuitously hurtful, golden-rule-breaking et cetera," she writes in the introduction. "But I did these things because I felt the pull of a trajectory… I would be lying if I said I was a different person now. I am the same person. I would do it all again."

In the same vein, Meghan Daum sees her writing as a corrective to the tradition of women's magazines that talk about relationships, diet or body image in a redemptive fashion, plotting each minor self-improvement along a wider trajectory of personal growth. "I tend to be very honest and my goal is to identify something people think but are afraid to say," explains Daum. "That's not the general cultural expectation of women."

Sloane Crosley's books, although different in tone to those of Gould and Daum – she self-mockingly writes of her own comic misadventures in a manner heavily influenced by David Sedaris – share a similar aspiration. "I think different essays of mine have different points to them and are crafted in different ways, which is why I hate Jane Austen," says Crosley, who lives in New York and works as a publicist for Random House, where she represents authors including Dave Eggers, Toni Morrison and Jay McInerney. "Has anyone noticed that she's just changed the names in Emma and turned it into Sense and Sensibility? It's just the same story.

"You want to say something larger, to say something cohesive, to impart a truth in a way that is beautiful. It's like taking medicine with apple sauce. The label 'confessional' makes me alarmed because although my writing is confessional, I think you have to write something that's structured and is an attempt at art, even if it's not a successful attempt. It worries me if you just write a diary or a blog and then publish it. You can't just hand it over and reach literary absolution because you've confessed everything." Crosley's first piece of confessional writing sprang from an email she sent to a group of friends recounting an incident where she got locked out of the same apartment twice in the same day – the email found its way to an editor at the Village Voice who encouraged her to rework it as an article. After the publication of her first anthology in 2008, Crosley was touted as a 21st-century Dorothy Parker. "Those comparisons are flattering but not accurate," she says. "I know I'm not Dorothy Parker but I also know there's another layer to my writing and that it's not just about shoes."

For Daum, who spent much of her 20s in Manhattan before moving to Nebraska (the 1999 New Yorker essay she wrote about the move earned her comparisons with Didion), the framework of a confessional essay enables her "to use myself as a vehicle to get into the layers of a subject". But, she adds, the subject "has to be something universal"; it has to carry some kind of meaningful weight beyond how to make the perfect Cosmopolitan and it also has to be truthful to the extent of making the author look bad. In My Misspent Youth, Daum admits that her stories are "all about the way intense life experiences take on the qualities of scenes from movies. They are about remoteness. They are about missing the point."

By giving the impression of accessibility and writing about topics that can be easily related to by the average female reader, the new generation of confessional writers seeks to communicate different depths of experience that take the reader beyond the stereotypical tale of a single woman obsessively on the hunt for the ideal mate. For all that Candace Bushnell might have broken down barriers for female writers by writing with clear-eyed candour about previously taboo subjects, Sex and the City was, essentially, shaped by this same, age-old assumption that a woman's life could only ever be complete once she had settled down with the perfect man.

"I'm more interested in a narrative that doesn't put a man at its centre," explains Gould, who says she made a conscious decision to concentrate on "the characters on the sidelines" – the personal assistants who never get asked for their opinion or the glassy-eyed waitresses whose job it is to flirt for tips. "It's quite scary to men to know what that person is thinking. It's much more convenient to imagine that they aren't really people."

In the same way, one imagines it might be easier to dismiss the work of female confessional authors as being somehow facile and glib because, on the surface, they deal with the small moments of everyday experience rather than dealing with the grittiness of big ideas. But this would be to do them a disservice. By engaging with their readers and speaking to them on their own level with humour and candour, Gould, Daum and Crosley seek to illuminate broader truths. They might not always succeed but at least they aim for something bigger; for something that is hopefully a little more nuanced than the endless search for Mr Right and a world viewed through the bottom of a Martini glass.

After four outings, Bushnell's Sex and the City column, started in 1993 in the New York Observer, was bought as a book and in 1996 sold to HBO as a series. Charting the shopping and mating rituals of Manhattan's female socialites, it became not only a bestseller but an era-defining work responsible for introducing lingo such as "toxic bachelor" to women worldwide.

Extract "I like my money right where I can see it… hanging in my closet."

Elizabeth Gilbert Eat, Pray, Love (2006)

Aged 34, reeling from a disastrous divorce, journalist and author Gilbert set off on a year-long trip to Italy, India and Indonesia. Her engaging and brutally honest memoir charting her breakdown and recovery became a global phenomenon, endorsed by celebrities from Oprah Winfrey to Sophie Dahl to Julia Roberts (who stars in the forthcoming film version).

Extract "Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You need to be certain it's what you want before you commit."

Nora Ephron I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (2006)

Best known for depicting the trials and tribulations of women in screenplays such as When Harry Met Sally…, Ephron has also written several highly successful essay collections on womanhood. Her latest, a New York Times bestseller that began life as a Vogue piece, is a frank exploration of ageing in a society that prizes youth.

Extract "You can put make-up on your face... you can shoot collagen and Botox and Restylane into your wrinkles and creases, but short of surgery there's not a damn thing you can do about a neck."

Julie Powell Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (2005)

Bored of working in dead-end New York jobs, in 2002 Powell began a blog chronicling her attempt to cook all the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. As much a diary of her private life as a document of her struggle with lobsters and lard, the blog gained a huge following and became a hit book, then a film written/directed by Ephron, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.

Extract "It was not until the second harvesting (they actually call it 'harvesting'; fertility clinics, it turns out, use a lot of vaguely apocalyptic terms) that I realised I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, which sounds absolutely terrifying, but apparently just meant that I was going to get hairy and fat and I'd have to take all kinds of drugs to conceive."

Imogen Carter

• Women
• Feminism

Room by Emma Donoghue | Book review

Inspired by the Josef Fritzl case, Emma Donoghue's much-hyped seventh novel is a gem, says Nicola Barr

Much hyped on acquisition and by its publisher since (and longlisted for the Booker prize last week), Room is set to be one of the big literary hits of the year. Certainly it is Emma Donoghue's breakout novel, but, seemingly "inspired" by Josef Fritzl's incarceration of his daughter Elisabeth, and the cases of Natascha Kampusch and Sabine Dardenne, it's hard not to feel wary: what is such potentially lurid and voyeuristic material doing in the hands of a novelist known for quirky, stylish literary fiction?

It is a brave act for a writer, but happily one that Donoghue, still only 40 but on her seventh novel, has the talent to pull off. For Room is in many ways what its publisher claims it to be: a novel like no other. The first half takes place entirely within the 12-foot-square room in which a young woman has spent her last seven years since being abducted aged 19. Raped repeatedly, she now has a five-year-old boy, Jack, and it is with his voice that Donoghue tells their story.

And what a voice it is. "Ma" has clearly spent his five years devoting every scrap of mental energy to teaching, nurturing and entertaining her boy, preserving her own sanity in the process. To read this book is to stumble on a completely private world. Every family unit has its own language of codes and in-jokes, and Donoghue captures this exquisitely. Ma has created characters out of all aspects of their room – Wardrobe, Rug, Plant, Meltedy Spoon. They have a TV and Jack loves Dora the Explorer, but Ma limits the time they are allowed to watch it for fear of turning their brains to mush. They do "phys ed" every morning, keep to strict mealtimes, make up poems, sing Lady Gaga and Kylie, and most importantly, Ma has a seemingly endless supply of stories – from the Berlin Wall and Princess Di ("Should have worn her seatbelt," says Jack) to fairytales like Hansel and Gretel to hybrids in which Jack becomes Prince Jackerjack, Gullijack in Lilliput: his mother's own fairytale hero. And really, what is a story of a kidnapped girl locked in a shed with her long-haired innocently precocious boy if not the realisation of the most macabre fairytale?

Donoghue has not been so crass as to make light of their plight: at times it's almost impossible not to turn away in horror. When Ma's kidnapper comes to the room in the evening, she makes Jack hide in the wardrobe, where he listens as they get into bed: "I always have to count till he makes that gaspy sound and stops." Ma has days where she is "gone" to blank-eyed depression and Jack, left to his own devices, reveals: "Mostly I just sit." But the grotesque is consistently balanced with the uplifting and there is a moment, halfway through the novel, where you feel you would fight anyone who tried to wrestle it from your grasp with the same ferocity that Ma fights for Jack, such is the author's power to make out of the most vile circumstances something absorbing, truthful and beautiful.

Thereafter, the setting moved to "Outside", the relationship diluted by alternative voices, by the number of new things with which Jack has to deal, the novel loses some of its intensity and has the more familiar feel of the naive child narratives of Roddy Doyle and Mark Haddon. Jack's introduction to the confusing world of freedom is handled with incredible skill and delicacy – as is his first separation from Ma. But the novel, like Jack, now has to follow a more logical and straightforward path.

For me, the rhythm of Ma and Jack's speech bears traces of the author's native Irish brogue, though the second half reveals the setting to be America (Donoghue now lives in Canada). But this only adds to the strange, dislocating appeal of Room. In the hands of this audacious novelist, Jack's tale is more than a victim-and-survivor story: it works as a study of child development, shows the power of language and storytelling, and is a kind of sustained poem in praise of motherhood and parental love.

• Emma Donoghue
• Fiction
• Josef Fritzl

New to Nature No 16: Selenochlamys ysbryda

The ghost slug, discovered in south Wales, is named after its appearance and nocturnal habits

The ghost slug, Selenochlamys ysbryda, is a species new to science discovered in a garden in Glamorgan, south Wales. Like about one-third of British species of slugs, this one may have been accidentally introduced to the UK by human commerce. The residence where it was found sits on land that was once a horticultural nursery. Since its initial discovery, this species has been collected from a number of urban environments in south Wales and neighbouring England. The size of the slug, up to 110mm when fully extended, illustrates gaps in our knowledge of species, literally in our own gardens. The name is a Latinised form of the Welsh ysbryd (meaning ghost or spirit), referring to its appearance and nocturnal habits.

International Institute for Species Exploration, Arizona State University

• Zoology
• Animals
• Wildlife

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince poised for a multimedia return to Earth

The boy who lived on an asteroid whose tale was told in a classic French novella is being revived on TV, film and in print

The Little Prince's departure from Earth was as sad as it was mysterious: allowing himself to be bitten by a poisonous snake in an effort to leave the human world and return to the tiny asteroid-home from whence he came.

Beginning next year, however, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's blond hero, whose adventures have sold 80m copies since Le Petit Prince was first published in 1943, is set for a spectacular return to the planet that sometimes depressed him.

Up first will be an ambitious 52-part animated series following the new adventures of the Little Prince. A video game is also being developed, as is an exhibition associated with the book. In addition, the French publishing house Gallimard plans to publish 100 titles associated with Saint-Exupéry's book.

Finally, and most significantly, a major new animated 3D film is in production retelling the original story and produced by Aton Soumache and Dimitri Rassam.

Olivier d'Agay, president of the Succession Saint-Exupéry d'Agay estate, which looks after the author's intellectual rights, and who runs a youth foundation dedicated to his memory, has been instrumental in the reinvention of the Little Prince to make the character relevant to the 21st century.

Once again, the Little Prince sets off to visit neighbouring planets, but this time it is a more conventional adventure.

"He is back on asteroid B612, and the Little Prince is once again confronted by the snake, who has decided to put out, one after the other, the planets of the Milky Way," explains director Pierre-Alain Chartier, the series director.

D'Agay told the Observer: "We wanted to rededicate the Little Prince to the children of the 21st century. Originally Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote The Little Prince as an adult book. We wanted to touch children today with the Little Prince via new medias."

D'Agay, who has been advising the producers of the TV series, admits there was considerable trepidation when the project was mooted. "It was a headache. The most difficult thing was making up our minds how to adapt the character. "

The eventual decision was to confront the Little Prince with issues familiar to a young audience, including the protection of the planet and sustainability.

"He will help save the new planets that he visits. Not on his own. But he'll help fix the problems."

The original story of the Little Prince is about acquiring wisdom, as the boy leaves home and his friend, the rose, to visit other asteroids inhabited by a series of flawed figures before arriving on Earth. There, his assumptions are challenged before his pathos-filled decision to abandon his body and return home.

The Little Prince's lasting appeal has been guaranteed by its sometimes complex philosophical themes: about the nature of friendship, the search for knowledge, and social criticism which draws on some of Saint-Exupéry's own experiences – in the desert following a plane crash, and during childhood, when he lost a younger brother, François.

The popularity and singularity of the book, as well as transforming the character into a cultural icon, has led to many previous attempts to imagine what happened next to B612's most famous inhabitant. In the last decade and a half alone, three sequels have been written, including one by a niece of Saint-Exupéry's wife, Consuelo.

The author never had the opportunity to enjoy the original book's success. It was published while Saint-Exupéry was in the US after fleeing France following the 1940 armistice agreement with Germany, coming out barely a year before his disappearance in 1944 while flying a reconnaissance mission for the Free French Forces over the Mediterranean.

Before penning the poetic novella, which he also illustrated, the aristocratic Saint-Exupéry had been best known for his writing on aviation: Southern Mail, Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars – the latter describing how he survived a crash in the Libyan desert.

But interest in The Little Prince, far from diminishing over the years, has exploded. Some of it has been prompted by interest in Saint-Exupéry himself. Two years ago his crashed plane was discovered along with a bracelet belonging to the author. But the chief explanation is the enduring charm of the tale.

The book has also proved inspirational in other media. It was used as the basis for a Super Mario game as well as an episode of Lost. The Little Prince has also been used as a virtual ambassador for an anti-smoking campaign, by the energy services group Veolia, and by the computer group Toshiba as a symbol of environmental protection.

And while many admirers will be delighted, for some purists the television series to be screened next year may prove challenging.

The Little Prince in the television serial is encountered back on his asteroid with his rose and the wise fox who appeared later in the original work.

What would Saint-Exupéry have made of the latest sequel?

"It's going to be beautiful," says Olivier d'Agay. "He would have been delighted. He loved children."

• France
• Children and teenagers

Wary Rwandans choose strongman Paul Kagame – and peace – over democracy

Stability and an economic boom have made the president the overwhelming favourite to be re-elected next week, but the opposition has been brutally silenced

It's a hot afternoon in the southern rural district of Nyaruguru. On a dusty clearing overlooked by a hill already swarming with people, tens of thousands of supporters have been gathering since early morning to get a glimpse of their hero. Among them are peasants, pregnant women and toddlers, all wearing the red-white-and-blue T-shirts of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and dancing to the rhythm of a famous local singer, Masamba Intore. Suddenly a convoy of black cars appears in the distance. The crowd explodes in cheers of joy when a tall, slender figure slowly makes his way to the podium. Ready for another mass celebration of his uncontested rule of this small African country, the president of Rwanda and former liberation fighter, Paul Kagame, finally appears, greeting his supporters.

Triumphal rallies like this one are becoming a daily routine in the presidential campaign of the Rwandan strongman. On 9 August the RPF leader will seek another seven-year mandate in an election widely seen as a formality. With a huge budget advantage over his three opponents, Kagame is expected to win as smoothly as in 2003, when he gained more than 95% of the votes. The only female among the contestants, Alvera Mukabaramba, has already accepted the inevitable defeat. "Beating Kagame is almost impossible," she acknowledges. "He has done so well for this country, rebuilding it from scratch after putting an end to the bloodiest page in our history."

Sixteen years after the genocide, the fates of Rwanda and the RPF are still deeply connected. The party is credited with having stopped the 1994 massacres in which 800,000 Tutsi were killed by the paramilitary Hutu militias and the former Rwandan army. It has ruled the country since then, constantly strengthening its grip on the society thanks to a policy based on development, order and transparency. But a series of recent disturbing events have highlighted what the RPF might not yet be ready to promote: democracy.

In recent weeks human rights organisations have repeatedly accused the government of dirty tactics and attempts to silence the media and prevent political opponents from competing in the elections. Victoire Ingabire, a politician who recently asked for an acknowledgment of the Hutu sufferings during the genocide, is now under house arrest, charged with denialism, genocide ideology and links with the FDLR, a rebel group based in nearby Congo and made up of former génocidaire troops.

Umuseso and Umuvugizi, two of the main Rwandan tabloids, have been banned for six months for "inciting public disorder" which will prevent them from covering the elections.

At the end of June Umuvugizi's editor, Jean-Leonard Rugambage, was killed in front of his home in Kigali, the capital, by two gunmen. Rwandan general Kayumba Nyamwasa, who had fled the country after an alleged falling out with Kagame, almost succumbed to the same fate when he was shot and seriously wounded in Johannesburg.

"At the beginning we were willing to start a political process. But it seems we are now simply negotiating to save our lives," said Frank Habineza, a former member of the RPF and now the leader of the Democratic Green party of Rwanda. One of the opposition parties that have mushroomed in the past year, the Greens cannot participate properly in the August elections because of police bans on its meetings. On 14 July, the party's deputy president, André Kagwa Rwisereka, was found dead on a river bank close to the border with Burundi, his head almost completely removed from his body. According to Habineza, the two men arrested in connection with the killing were released after a few days in custody. "Kagame is a soldier who never finished the war and never gave up military methods," he says. "He sees criticism as an open threat to his rule".

While Rwandan authorities have denied any role in the killings, RPF insiders concede that the recent bans are suspicious. They might betray the worries of a party afraid to lose control of a society still deemed politically immature after the traumas of genocide. The RPF policy of cancelling Hutu and Tutsi identities and embracing everyone as a Rwandan is widely thought to be working, but will take time. "If allowed to act without restraint, people would still vote along ethnic lines and Hutus would regain power, something we are not ready to accept now," admits a local RPF member who wished to remain anonymous. "Rwandans are voting for Kagame because they don't want problems, but the society remains tense."

Loyal to its president's credo that democracy is an empty box if people are not provided with food and basic services, and conscious that a former Tutsi rebel group cannot yet have a lasting base in a country where 85% of the people are Hutu, the RPF are betting on improving the living conditions of the people, hoping that this will do enough to silence opposition inside the country.

Rwanda is certainly developing fast. "Today everyone here can enjoy free primary education and health insurance," explains Jean Paul Uwizihiwe, a GP in Kigali. "The government even subsidises free anti-retroviral medication for HIV-positive patients. This means that people who would die in almost any other African country can live a normal life."

Rwanda's economy has boomed thanks to foreign investors. Roads and new infrastructure have boosted exports and tourism, while poor rural areas have benefited from loans given to co-operatives and aid programmes including "one cow per family" .

"Efficiency and delivery" are the motto of a political party born and bred according to the military discipline of its leader. Corruption is rare and poorly performing officials are quickly removed from their offices. As a result, Rwanda is one of the few countries where the public sector is more efficient than private industry.

"As in China, democracy will come naturally with the economic empowerment of the people," explains John Rwangombwa, the minister of finance and economic planning. "Our society is still fragile. We can't allow a total freedom of expression when some politicians and part of the society are ready to use the racial card to achieve power."

According to a prominent member of the opposition who asked to remain anonymous, the RPF reasoning has a point. When asked about choosing between Kagame and Ingabire for president, he replies without hesitation. "I would choose Kagame. Ingabire is clean, but she is still supported by scary people linked to the previous regime. They have a bad agenda. They still have the old Rwandan flag in their office. I'm proud to wear the new one."

The shortcomings of the opposition are undeniable, but RPF critics still argue that the party's attitude is making things worse, preventing people from speaking about problems that are bound to resurface. For all the economic development guaranteed by the RPF, the unresolved questions of this country's troubled past still cast a shadow over the future of Rwandans. Many acknowledge that relations between Hutus and Tutsis are slowly improving but remain difficult. They can go out to drink beers and speak about women, cars and football, but some subjects remain taboo, genocide among them.

"Rwandans never tell you what is in the heart," explains Sylvestre Mupenzi, an artist. "We always say that everything is OK, but in reality we are scared and wary. We can't trust each other."

While Tutsis remain understandably bitter towards the perpetrators of genocide, Hutus think it is time to address the killings carried out against them during the civil war that followed the ethnic cleansing.

As a consequence of this endless cycle of guilt, fear and resentment, there remain two paramount needs: peace and security, things that the Kagame administration has provided. But when asked if this country may then need an "enlightened dictator" to solve its problems and continue on the road to recovery, Habineza rejects the option. "It has worked in the first years after the genocide," he admits. "But in the long run, development is not sustainable without democracy."

• Rwanda

Carla Bruni's no Greta Garbo, but she's an attention-grabber for director Woody Allen

France's first lady may not know how to handle a baguette when on camera, but she's added to Woody Allen's roster of beauties

It's always good to be the boss. No one knows that better than Woody Allen, the film director who once defined edgy, angsty, sexy humour and now seems to be keeping to a script firmly designed for his own fun and games.

After all, what was one to make of his latest act of casting French first lady Carla Bruni in his latest project. Bruni is more than capable of setting male hearts aflutter. Yet her acting chops seem a little less striking. During shooting for Allen's latest movie, Midnight in Paris, Bruni reportedly took 35 takes to nail a scene with a baguette.

It has been a long, long time since his movies have generated the critical acclaim of classics like Manhattan and Annie Hall. But he certainly has been having fun. Since 2005 Allen has been on a sort of European tour of movie-making, giving him the opportunity of working with some of the most beautiful women in the world in some of its most romantic locations.

There were his British films, like Scoop and Match Point, which both starred Scarlett Johansson, and Cassandra's Dream, with Hayley Atwell. Or You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, which featured Freida Pinto, Anna Friel and Naomi Watts. Then it was on to Spain with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, starring Johansson again, as well as Penélope Cruz and Rebecca Hall.

The quality has been mixed. But what's been consistent is Allen's knack for casting, directing and, sometimes, acting alongside incredibly beautiful women.

Sigh. It is like an old man's dream come true. Which is handy. Because that is exactly what it is.

• Woody Allen
• Carla Bruni-Sarkozy

WikiLeaks' Afghan story raises dilemma over safety of sources

The WikiLeaks log showed the failures of the Afghan war – but the media moved on, overwhelmed by the weight of material

Plaudits first. WikiLeaks, the stateless site of secret data, seems like an information source turned irresistible force. And the Guardian, New York Times and Spiegel did a brilliant editing job last week as they took nearly 92,000 classified documents from WikiLeaks.org and turned them into a compelling commentary on the failures of the Afghan war. This is what journalism – and data-handling in the 21st century – may turn out to be all about.

But now, as with anything new, for a couple of problems. First, the question of what happened next. We're talking impact, consequences, the difference that revelations can make. And scratching our heads.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' founder, was brooding in similar vein a few months ago to Computerworld magazine. "It's counter-intuitive", he said. "You'd think that the bigger and more important the document, the more likely it is to be reported on – but that's absolutely not true. It's about supply and demand. Zero supply equals high demand, because it has value. But as soon as we release the material, the supply goes to infinity – so the perceived value goes to zero."

Which, being interpreted, means: load 92,000 items onto a ubiquitously available website, and nothing much ensues. What every newspaper or broadcasting station has, nobody values for long. So Assange picked out three prime professional organisations and gave them a few weeks to sift, check and choose what to publish. Now, any impact assessment is bound to be subjective. You could hardly describe it as long-lasting, though. BBC News was more interested in police-force restructuring 12 hours later. Newsnight chose to lead on a tedious hike around broken coalition promises. The tabloids didn't clear the front page. And two American headlines on the second day spoke volumes. "WikiLeaks telling us the obvious ... disclosures unlikely to change course of Afghanistan war," said the Washington Post. "Document leak may hurt efforts to build war support," murmured a profoundly cautious New York Times. Enter Barack Obama himself, asserting how moth-eaten he found the entire package.

This wasn't – as initially claimed – the Pentagon Papers all over again. This was a sensation sinking below the horizon (save for David Cameron in India stirring up Pakistan).

Why? Because much of the torrid drift of the documents was known. Because Afghanistan is a war lost already, exit dates set. Because 92,000 bits of bad news equals a massive migraine. Because – unlike the Pentagon Papers, a top-down, not bottom-up series of revelations – no government moved to fight a court suppression battle, and thus to draw a censorship line that concentrated rather than diffused public concern.

But also because this is a fidgety, multimedia age. Websites bowed down by a sudden weight of traffic can't carry the load alone. Any huge story needs television for added oomph – but there's nothing very terse or visual about 92,000 documents on an overloaded site. TV moved right along its 24-hour path, attention-denuded span as usual. Beyond that, the story was simply too big (in an amorphous way).

Look back last year to the Telegraph and MPs' expenses, another massive collection of facts. The government, after suitable deletions, wanted to bung it all on a Commons website at the same time. The Telegraph, eschewing deletions, played it one moat, one duck house, at a time. On any single day, the tale was comprehensible, focused– and poised for fresh illustration. Momentum built. Anger mounted. Something had to be done.

But demand for the Afghan logs was just a "flash flood", said Slate, the online magazine. Could Assange have orchestrated more? Could he have released the truly shocking rise in civilian casualties one day, the killer units pursuing Taliban leaders the next, the evidence of Pakistani connivance the day after that? Of course. And the Guardian did some of that for itself. But day two saw the New York Times pretty well washed up and protesting its unimpeachable seriousness. The denials and the write-offs and the counterattacks had open season, which meant momentum faded – and, indeed, the course of the war seemed "unlikely to change".

The second problem follows naturally, then. The sharpest question about WikiLeaks' technique – asked by Obama, President Karzai, the Times of London and even the New York Times itself as days passed – was whether some Afghan Nato informants hadn't been unwittingly exposed in the process, whether Assange's inevitably scanty team of assessors hadn't put lives at risk by their mass data dump?

Assange called the New York Times "pusillanimous and unprofessional" for checking the documents it used with the White House before publication (on precisely these personal security grounds) and for not cross-referring its print stories to the whole WikiLeaks.org experience. But "we're not in any kind of partnership or collaboration with him," said Eric Schmitt, one of the New York Times reporters on the case. Bill Keller, Schmitt's top editor, soon weighed in, too.

"Assange released the information to three mainstream news organisations because we had the wherewithal to mine the data for news and analysis. I think the public interest was served by that. However, his decision to release the data to everyone had potential consequences that I think anyone, regardless of how he views the war, would find regrettable."

Data-processing, yes: data-dumping, no? Not with necks on some faraway front line? The matter of source versus partner clearly has some way to run as assorted WikiLeakers grapple with the one dilemma no true investigative journalists wants: is it the story you're breaking that matters – or are you stuck with being the story yourself?

• Newspapers & magazines
• Afghanistan
• WikiLeaks
• US national security
• United States

Saving with confidence: is your cash protected?

Compensation schemes can give you peace of mind - whether you save with new kid on the block Metro Bank or an overseas-based financial firm

One of the first questions most people ask when confronted by a new bank, or one they have never heard of before, is: can I trust them with my money?

It's perhaps no wonder, after the collapse of the Icelandic banks in 2008 – including Icesave, the UK savings arm of Landsbanki – that people want reassurance that their cash will be safe with a company they don't know.

Metro Bank's staff have presumably already become used to rattling off the relevant information to customers who ask: it is an "independent UK bank" (and plc); not affiliated with any other bank or organisation; authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority; and covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), the official safety net for customers of financial firms that have gone bust.

Under this scheme, the first £50,000 of an individual's total deposit is protected if a bank fails. The general advice for anyone looking to put more than that into savings is that they should spread it around a number of institutions.

Things get a little more complicated if the bank's parent company is based in Europe. Under an EU directive, all member states of the European Economic Area (EEA) must set up a deposit guarantee scheme which gives a minimum level of protection of €50,000 (about £42,000) per person. A bank based in an EEA state and also operating in the UK should be a member of that country's compensation scheme.

"Where the bank's home state scheme provides lower compensation than the FSCS, the bank may choose to join the FSCS to 'top up' the level of protection offered," states the UK scheme. So if one of these banks went under, there would be a two-step process, with the home state scheme taking responsibility for paying the first part of any compensation and the FSCS paying the rest.

Many of the Post Office's savings products are provided by the Bank of Ireland, and accounts including Instant Saver and Reward Saver are covered by the Irish Deposit Guarantee Scheme, which provides up to €100,000 of cover per person, though there is the additional benefit of an unlimited guarantee from the Irish government until 29 September. Depending on when they were taken out, some accounts - including the Growth Bond - are fully guaranteed either until that date or until they mature, according to the table. However, some Post Office savings products - including the investment Isa and child trust fund - are covered by the UK compensation scheme. All in all, it's quite a lot for people to get their head around.

Northern Rock used to have an unlimited 100% guarantee on savings, but the Treasury's pledge to underwrite all retail deposits at the bank came to an end in May. National Savings & Investments, however, is still able to boast that it is backed by the Treasury, so "you can rest assured that all your capital is 100% secure, however much you invest".

• Metro Bank
• Banks and building societies
• Savings
• Financial Services Authority (FSA)
• Banking
• Europe
• Iceland

Matteo Pericoli and his drawings of New York City | Art

Matteo Pericoli found fame with his 22ft fold-out drawing of Manhattan's skyline. His new book shows the city through the windows of New York's artists and writers, from Annie Leibovitz to Philip Glass, David Byrne to Nora Ephron, with their thoughts on what those views mean to them

The country singer Rosanne Cash glimpses two iconic New York landmarks through her apartment window: the Empire State building and the Chelsea hotel. She is lucky. From his window, the composer Philip Glass sees only "water tanks, air conditioning, exhaust pipes". But he loves his view all the same.

The screenwriter Nora Ephron looks out at the Chrysler building framed in a single pane: "the absolute epitome of every glittery dream I have ever had about New York". The satirist Stephen Colbert stares out at a towering "telecommunications skyscraper whose peak bristles with microwave transmitters" and thinks mostly about cancer. David Byrne, as if trapped in one of his elliptical songs, gazes out of his window at the windows of other people, some of whom he occasionally catches looking back at him. Peter Carey's novelistic imagination conjures up "dead people" walking past his window – "the famous showman, PT Barnum, passing along Broadway to arrange the wedding of Tom Thumb".

The view from one's window is, as the artist Matteo Pericoli puts it, "one of the least designable things about the buildings we call home, but the one that perhaps affects us most deeply every day". Pericoli, who is best known for his epic book, Manhattan Unfurled, a 22ft fold-out drawing of the New York skyline, has now turned his attention to a more intimate, but no less intriguing, subject: what New York's writers and artists see when they look out of their windows. It's a simple idea that yields surprising results – about the nature of urban living, about the creative imaginations of those who choose to live and work in a city and, perhaps most intriguingly, about Pericoli's own unique and slightly obsessive way of seeing.

"When you draw something, it often becomes more interesting somehow," he says, when I call him in Turin, where he now lives. "It is not just representation, it's more about telling a story. These drawings are not about how I see, but how I think. They are a kind of thinking process brought to life through lines."

Pericoli has found that the people who grant him access to the views from their windows are "constantly surprised by the results in a way that they would not be surprised by a photograph or even a painting". What he captures, he says, "is not a transient moment, but a presence of some kind".

Looking at Pericoli's line drawings in their beautiful simplicity, their wealth of detail and their mastery of line and perspective, you can see what he means. His drawing of the view from Glass's window is one of my favourites, a rendering of an often invisible or overlooked New York of water towers, warehouses and air conditioning machines, what Glass calls "the infrastructure of New York in plain view".

Sometimes, too, the window views seem to be accidental metaphors: the architect Daniel Libeskind looks out at towering stone buildings that seem to enclose his apartment; the skyline that the contemporary artist Nick Ghiz sees is interrupted by a bent steel pipe that is sculptural; the former mayor of New York, Ed Koch, has a window that, as he puts it, "allows the light to shine though unimpeded". Tom Wolfe says that he chose his apartment solely for the view – "To this day, I haven't really seen the apartment, only what's outside it." Ephron, paradoxically, chose her home in spite of the beauty of her vista: "When I write, I face away from it otherwise I would never get anything done."

Matteo Pericoli initially trained as an architect in Milan and it shows in every line, every shadow, every shape. He moved to New York in 1995 to work for Richard Meier & Partners, and ironically began working on a design for the Jubilee church in Rome. While cycling the seven kilometres to and from work every day, he began to think about drawing the Manhattan skyline in its entirety. The resulting book, Manhattan Unfurled, took just over two years to complete. The end result was two 37ft scrolls of the east and west side of Manhattan that were then condensed to what the publishers called "a 22ft-long accordion fold-out".

In early September 2001, Pericoli received the very first printed copies of Manhattan Unfurled. Two days later, the twin towers of the World Trade Centre disappeared from the skyline in the terrorist attacks of 11 September. "Suddenly, there was New York before 9/11 and New York after 9/11, and I had portrayed a New York skyline that was past tense. It was a very strange time for me because I had such a relationship with the place. You spend so much time looking at these buildings and then drawing them that the lines enter your brain and are embedded there."

The critical acclaim that greeted the publication of Manhattan Unfurled helped him gain access to the apartments and houses of the likes of Tom Wolfe, Graydon Carter (editor of Vanity Fair), Annie Leibovitz and Steve Martin. Leibovitz presented him with a series of photographs she had made of her window view, but he insisted on working in his own way, stamping his own presence on the subject. "I don't draw a fleeting moment, I try to capture a sense of wholeness, of permanence."

The actor Steve Martin's view across Central Park was "so iconic, so fairy tale" that Pericoli decided not to include it. "It was just what you would expect; there were no surprises." Others, whom he will not name, refused him access. "Many people wanted to guard their private view and I respect that. It also made me feel happy in the sense that what I was doing had some deeper meaning."

For Manhattan Unfurled, Pericoli began by journeying around New York on the Circle Line cruise boat, photographing the skyline. For his current project, London Unfurled, he walked the length of the Thames, from Hammersmith to the Isle of Dogs, and back again, photographing constantly. "I am gently obsessive," he says, understating the case somewhat. "I walk 10 metres, then stop and photograph. All along the north side of the river, then back along the south. It was two incredibly intense weeks in which I took 6,300 photographs and destroyed a pair of shoes."

Pericoli has worked out that 50 photographs add up to 20 centimetres of drawing. As before, he worked on a long roll of architectural drawing paper, "10 to 15 centimetres at a time, never looking back at what I have completed, never worrying about, or erasing small mistakes. It's all there, the cityscape and the voyage of discovery that I undertake when I put it on to the paper."

When I spoke to him this week, he had just completed an 11.5m section of drawing that takes in Hammersmith to the Isle of Dogs. He has, he says, another 8.1m to go before he gets to the Gherkin. "I try not to think about the Gherkin too much but I can tell you I drew 900 lines, maybe more."

Pericoli will not see the drawing of London in its entirety until he has finished it. "This is just how I work, but also, on a more practical level, my house is just not big enough for me to keep unfurling the drawing. This way, you must trust yourself and your instinct and your ability. And, of course, the drawing gets better as I do it. In a way, I am rolling back time when I finally look at the whole thing."

Since 2000, Pericoli has followed his obsession, giving up architecture altogether to concentrate on his epic and intimate drawings. He now lives in Turin and travels the world to work. His drawings have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, la Stampa and Vanity Fair. Jet-lagged American Airlines passengers can see his most epic works as they stagger into the arrivals hall at JFK airport in New York: a 397ft panoramic mural called Skyline of the World. Cityscapes, whether large and small, epic or intimate, seem to hold an inordinate fascination for him. What does he think underlies his obsession?

"Always, I am trying to understand what makes a city work," he says, without hesitation. "In New York, I am an outsider and I have found that New Yorkers are strangely incurious about their city. So few New Yorkers take the Circle Line to look at Manhattan. This is interesting to me. What they see mostly is a little piece of New York through their window. But, there are millions of windows, millions of views, millions of tiny New Yorks. In a way, I would like to draw them all but that, of course, is impossible. Instead, I try to somehow synthesise the city, get close to its essence. This is what drives me and what drives me a little mad. The more complex the view, the more I have to synthesise to tell the story. In the end, I guess I am more like a short story writer than an artist."

For more information on Matteo Pericoli visit his website www.matteopericoli.com or Facebook page www.facebook.com/pages/Matteo-Pericoli/39173777082

• Art
• Philip Glass
• David Byrne
• Tom Wolfe
• Peter Carey
• Steve Martin
• New York

Afghanistan: which way now?

As the British and US governments ponder their next move, the Observer's foreign affairs editor Peter Beaumont examines the four most likely scenarios

During the latter period of the British occupation of the Iraqi city of Basra, two questions emerged: whether the high profile of British troops actually provided a target and made the violence worse? And whether the escalating conflict in that area was a direct result of primarily military efforts to bring security to it?

Soldiers in Afghanistan have raised these questions too. They have noted that, the more they go out on operations, the more they are hit; and how, with each escalation on the side of the US and ISAF, far from dampening the conflict, it has been exacerbated.

So will a reduction, perhaps to the point of withdrawal, lead to less violence? Of all the ideas bubbling around potential alternative strategies for Afghanistan, this is the most radical – the antithesis of the present counter-insurgency strategy, designed by the new US commanding officer General David Petraeus with his predecessor, Stanley McChrystal. The latter strategy, criticised by some both inside and outside the military, has been based on increasing the number of soldiers on the ground in the short term to improve security in the hope that political benefits will follow.

What would it look like?

A reverse of the surge ordered by Barack Obama, it would see troops increasingly concentrated in large civilian centres and bases, a policy tried by the British, leading to a gradual withdrawal.

How would it work?

Its proponents, few as there are, have suggested that by putting the Afghan government and forces on the spot, it might create the opportunity for an Afghan solution to an Afghan problem, avoiding all the collateral political issues created by foreign forces supporting Hamid Karzai's government.

It argues, too, that it is the presence of foreign forces that is the catalyst both for a conflict that has succeeded in presenting itself, like the war against the Soviets, as an anti-occupation struggle, as well as standing in the way of inter-ethnic reconciliation.

What are the objections?

As a military strategy, it is based on something of a paradox. Conventional thinking focuses on the control of operational space. By withdrawing, it would potentially hand that space to the Taliban. Then there is the al-Qaida question. Conventional wisdom has it that such a strategy would allow al-Qaida to return and establish new bases, although some have argued that the Taliban of 2010 is not the Taliban of the late 90s and might not be inclined to replicate a relationship that led to its first downfall.

Equally problematic is precisely what Afghanistan's neighbours – Pakistan among them – might do, confronted with such a potential vacuum.

Several variations of this option have popped up in the past few weeks, chief among their proponents Jack Devine, former CIA deputy director of operations, who was also head of the covert Afghan Task Force during the Soviet occupation. Another supporter is David Rieff, an international affairs analyst, writer and member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Devine, pictured, agrees with some of the thinking behind the Basra option: that the "large and visible occupying army" in Afghanistan is the wrong force in the wrong place. "Our presence in Afghanistan," he argued recently, "is better left unseen. Most Afghans, even those willing to deal with us, would rather we get our military out of their country. A covert action program would address this concern. It would also cost less than a military effort in treasure and lives, and allow the US to continue to protect its interests and the interests of the Afghans."

Rieff echoes some of Devine's concerns, arguing – in an article for the New Republic – that he would rather see much less fighting in Afghanistan and more drone strikes in Pakistan, and intelligence missions on home soil against potential terrorist threats.

What would it look like?

In some respects, it would look like other theatres of what used to be known as the "war on terror", where drone and missile strikes have been used to target wanted suspects. Devine's model is the CIA's covert actions of the 80s and 2001, when its officials rebuilt their networks among tribal leaders to help topple the Taliban.

What are the objections?

Well, the CIA's covert interventions in the 80s hardly left a stable Afghanistan. And a strategy that concentrates on cross-border drone raids is deeply problematic, both because of the unpopularity of the attacks in Pakistan and because the intelligence has not prevented large numbers of civilian casualties.

A policy that could also be called "give the Taliban the south", it is pessimistic, arguing that on the ever-shortening political timeline for finding a successful outcome in Afghanistan, it will be impossible to sufficiently weaken the Taliban to get them to the negotiating table.

Another prominent champion of a similar-looking plan is the Pakistani author and journalist Ahmed Rashid, who has suggested reconfiguring the mission in Afghanistan to easier objectives: providing security for large numbers of Afghans in the province around Kabul, where the Taliban is weak and support for the government is strong.

How would it work?

This strategy would see coalition forces abandon the south to the Taliban to prevent the west and north of the country falling to them, too. It would require a long-term military commitment of perhaps tens of thousands of troops. Its aim would be to prevent the further spread of the Taliban while concentrating on the twin tasks of strengthening a weak central government and potentially laying down the ground for future negotiations with the Taliban which – as Rashid argues – would have the south as a future bargaining chip in any political settlement.

What are the objections?

It risks opening up not only the issue of partition but the even more dangerous question of whether there should be a Pashtun homeland – Pashtunistan. When it is discussed, the issue of the Pashtuns living on the other side of the border in Pakistan is invoked.

Given the inherent problems in the other strategies, you might think this was the least problematic. The recent revelations from the WikiLeaks document dump of the faltering progress of the war confirm the futility of just soldiering on.

The counter-insurgency strategy has become increasingly unpopular with soldiers on the ground and its lack of quick successes have led to criticism. Most problematic is that it now has a use-by date, when troops will begin, at least partially, to withdraw.

The relative failure of operations linked to the surge to improve security for more than short periods of time, and at high cost, suggests that a strategy that envisages a similar operation for the Taliban heartland of Kandahar may be fraught with difficulties.

What does it look like?

All too familiar, is the answer. Expect more large-scale operations. An increasing emphasis, too, will be put on training the Afghan security forces, in the hope that they'll take over in around four years' time.

What are the objections?

With June the worst month for coalition casualties since 2001, the evidence remains questionable that the Taliban is being substantially weakened or that ISAF operations have succeeded in improving security in the south and east.

The new emphasis on training – as a US report revealed last month – comes after billions of dollars have been spent. Nonetheless, little headway has been made in creating an army and police force capable of taking on the Taliban.

• Afghanistan
• Liberal-Conservative coalition
• US foreign policy

Göran Lindberg and Sweden's dark side | feature

The Sweden of Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson - all shadowy rightwing conspiracies and prostitution rings – might not be so far from the truth

If there was ever a real-life policeman who came close in progressive Swedish affections to Kurt Wallander, the bestselling creation of Henning Mankell, it would probably be Göran Lindberg, chief of police of Uppsala, the city north of Stockholm that is home to Sweden's most prestigious university. Although he lacked Wallander's humility and reticence, Lindberg was concerned, like Wallander, with the marginalised and neglected in Swedish society. He was the sponsor of a sanctuary for abused juveniles, for example, and was at the forefront of the campaign to institute a more sympathetic response to rape victims.

In particular Lindberg was a staunch enemy of sexism in the police force. He argued with colleagues, made speeches and built up a reputation as a tireless proponent of women's rights. So vocal was Lindberg that he ruffled the epaulettes of fellow policemen. "His colleagues," says PJ Anders Linder, political editor-in-chief of the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, "were obviously not quite as obsessed with the issue as he was. He seemed to be like a civil servant who had decided that this was how he was going to make his mark."

And he did. From early in his career, Lindberg was seen by the authorities as a policing role model and was duly made the national spokesperson on sex equality in the police force. Pretty soon he established a reputation as Sweden's leading progressive policeman. So renowned was Lindberg for his political correctness and sensitivity towards women's issues that he was nicknamed "Captain Skirt". In spite of the jokes, he was rapidly promoted, becoming the dean of the police training college and eventually the police chief of Uppsala.

In January this year, following a six-month investigation, Lindberg was arrested. At the time of his apprehension he was allegedly on his way to meet a 14-year-old girl in a hotel encounter that was also due to feature a number of other men. It was said that in his car was a bag containing leather whips, handcuffs and a blindfold.

What had originally alerted the police to Lindberg's predilections was an incident in July last year in which a multimillionaire 60-year-old man was found dead beneath a balcony in a salubrious Stockholm suburb. According to police, the man had been running an illicit sex network delivering women to groups of men. Apparently on the day of his death he had been expecting the arrival at his home of an 18-year-old girl. Instead a gang of men turned up and issued a vicious beating. Shortly afterwards the man either jumped, fell or was pushed from the balcony. On the dead man's desk, investigating police found the phone number of the police chief, Lindberg.

It all reads like a plotline from Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy or a Wallander novel, with the striking exception that in this case it was a Wallander-style policeman who was the architect and not the detective of the crime. "The villains in Mankell's stories are all of a piece," says Lars Linder, chief cultural critic on the daily paper Dagens Nyheter. "They are scoundrels and usually connected to very wealthy or fascist networks. Whereas the thing about Lindberg is that he's so absolutely politically correct on the outside and kinky on the inside."

Last week Lindberg was jailed for six and a half years on charges of rape, pimping and procuring. He accepted that he bought sex, which is illegal in Sweden, but had denied the other charges. After Lindberg's arrest, a woman, calling herself Linda, was quoted in Swedish newspapers. She claimed to have been sexually abused by several men. "The police chief called me 'Daddy's girl'," she said. "I was told that he was important and that he would frame me if I told anyone." Again, she sounds as if she emerged, fully formed, from the pages of Mankell's fiction.

Lindberg was found guilty of aggravated rape, rape, assault, 28 counts of purchasing sex, and one of being an accessory to procurement. He was cleared of the attempted rape of a minor. As well as jailing him, the Södertörn District Court ordered Lindberg to pay 300,000 kronor (about £26,000) in compensation to three victims.

The news of Lindberg's secret life rocked Sweden. While a certain scepticism about the police is common enough in intellectual circles, the notion that the foremost advocate of women's rights in the police was in reality a serial user, and abuser, of prostitutes was enough to stun even the most grizzled cynic.

Lindberg's colleagues, and particularly his female supporters, were dumbfounded. Beatrice Ask, the justice minister, spoke of the "devastating and distressing" effect of the news. While Cecilia Malmström, who is Sweden's EU commissioner and was a member of Uppsala police board when Lindberg was police chief, said: "I have no words. I am extremely shocked. This is a man who has dedicated his career to fight for women's rights. I feel physically sick when I think about this."

In late July Stockholm was a postcard of relaxed health and vigorous prosperity. Along the spotless avenues and in the city's many green spaces, the kind of people who look as if they have escaped from a yoghurt advert took the opportunity to laze in the sunshine. The southern archipelago lightly baked under cloudless skies. Surrounded by inlets of deep blue water, the Swedish capital seemed to sparkle with a crystalline sense of benevolent purpose.

Here is the image of Sweden with which we've grown familiar, an image of which the Swedes themselves are understandably proud. It's the utopian vision of the Folkhemmet or "people's home" that, in one way or another, the Swedes have been conscientiously cultivating and exporting for almost a century.

But in recent years a darker, more disturbing picture of a failed utopia has also made its way around the world. In the 1980s Sweden began to pull back from the enormous state intervention and social reform that had guided the country for the previous half-century. And early in that transformation, on 28 February 1986, the prime minister, Olof Palme was shot and killed in the street by an assassin who has never been found.

Ever since that period, talk of a sinister underbelly, the nasty truth lurking beneath Sweden's shiny surface, has afflicted the national conversation, particularly in the cultural realm. In the novels of writers such as Mankell and Larsson, as well as the films of Lukas Moodysson, corruption, vice and despair run rampant.

All three artists (Larsson died in 2004) are avowedly leftwing and in their different ways they tell the tale of a dream betrayed, and an outcome in which the most vulnerable citizens are abandoned to a ruthless system. It's also notable that all three employ the archetype of the abused prostitute as the prime symbol of capitalist exploitation.

Moodysson's Lilya 4-Ever, made in 2002, was an unremittingly bleak account, based on a true story, of a 16-year-old girl from a former Soviet republic who is tricked into travelling to Sweden, where she is raped, held against her will and prostituted, before she commits suicide. Similar helpless victims appear in the fiction of Mankell and Larsson, where they are explicitly shown to be at the mercy of hidden, well connected and malevolent forces within Swedish society itself.

Of course, Mankell and Larsson are thriller writers, with the necessary artistic licence the genre demands, but both have made it clear that their political motivations shape their creative intentions. Mankell has said he began writing his Wallander novels, in which a world-weary detective battles with entrenched powers, as a response to the "xenophobia and racism" he saw in Sweden in the late 1980s. "The issues," he's said, "were always more important than Wallander himself."

And one of those issues was sexism. In this regard, it's not as if Mankell was a lone voice, ploughing the remote field of fiction. Even without Mankell's huge domestic and international success, the debate on these issues would have dominated Swedish cultural politics during the 1990s. And consequently, in 2000, a commercial sex act was passed that was seen at the time as a victory for radical feminism. It was made legal to sell sex, but illegal to buy it. In other words, criminality shifted from the prostitute to the punter, which in most cases meant from the woman to the man.

At the time, it was heralded as a major defeat for street prostitution and sex trafficking, and many countries, including Britain, have looked at copying the new Swedish model. In the wake of the law, the police had to refocus their attentions and also re-examine many of their attitudes in relation not just to prostitutes but to women in general. The most active and outspoken policeman in the battle for a less patriarchal perspective was, of course, Lindberg.

Many Swedes I spoke to suggested that Lindberg embodied a widespread cultural disconnection between official rhetoric and individual behaviour. As one well-placed observer of the Stockholm scene put it to me: "Some of the most outspoken male politicians on gender equality are also renowned as the most active pursuers of women."

But Gunnar Pettersson, a Swedish writer and commentator who lives in London, had a different take on the problem Lindberg represents. "Sweden has two elites," he told me. "The political elite is internationalist and neutralist in outlook, whereas the other elite, the military-industrial, is essentially nationalist and west-supporting. The two have left each other alone very largely, especially throughout the 20th century when the Swedish model was built up. The thing about Lindberg is that he adopted the rhetoric of the political elite but he belonged by nature and biology to the military-industrial elite, where these things are just horseshit. You just say it to get on in your career."

Whether Lindberg is a split personality or simply a flagrant opportunist is perhaps a question for psychiatrists to settle. What's arguably more significant is the hole his case exposes in the logic of political correctness. The theory behind the PC view of the world is that if you change the language, you change what the language describes, because perception alters reality: non-sexist expressions, for example, help to foster non-sexist thoughts. But what if the prescribed opinion is a false consensus? What if language is a disguise, a means of conformity that serves to conceal the underlying and more disturbing truth?

That would involve a novel variation on the longstanding Swedish preoccupation with deep-lying corruption. But not one that you'll find in the novels of Mankell or Larsson. Subtlety has never been either writer's strong suit, and some Swedes find their Manichean vision of Sweden rather limiting.

"I have always been suspicious and critical about people like Mankell and Larsson," says Lars Linder, "because I'm not a fan of this conspiracy theory. I'm an old leftist too, but I don't like when they pick out the old social democratic Sweden as paradise, and now the bad guys have taken over with all their hidden connections. It's simplistic and nostalgic. The kind of power abuse you see with Lindberg is much more interesting."

Mankell insists that The Troubled Man, published in Swedish last year and due to be published in English next year, is definitely his last Wallander novel. The plot once again features rightwing extremists as the antagonists. Sweden is renowned for its comprehensive social welfare, progressive liberalism and egalitarian spirit, and it's also consistently ranked by Transparency International as among the least corrupt nations in the world. So it seems perverse that when the country holds a mirror up to itself it so often sees female abuse, rightwing conspiracies and systemic corruption. Yet they remain emotive issues in Swedish culture.

A few days after Lindberg appeared in court, the employment minister, Sven Otto Littorin, tendered his resignation when he learned that a newspaper was about to run a story claiming he paid for sex with a prostitute four years ago. His unnamed accuser said she was inspired by the Lindberg case to try to prevent the powerful from escaping the consequences of their actions. He denies ever having paid for sex and the paper, Aftonbladet, offered no evidence, other than that the woman had seen Littorin on television and recognised him. And subsequently several observers have cast doubt on the woman's account, which is said to be filled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies.

But nonetheless Littorin resigned, citing press intrusion into his personal life. For the first time in decades Sweden found itself with a political sex scandal, something which the Swedes believed was a strange preserve of the British. In fact many observers find the Littorin saga more representative than the Lindberg case of the social changes under way in Sweden. For Petra Ostergren it marks a pronounced shift in Swedish public morals and illustrates how a narrow consensus has been effectively imposed. A feminist who is an outspoken critic of the commercial sex laws, Ostergren has been ostracised by many of her onetime allies in the women's movement.

"Fifty years ago Littorin would have had to resign if he was gay. Now we have not only criminalised the buying of sex but we've also stigmatised it to such an extent, he has to resign just because of the mere suspicion. Just as the gay man has been normalised, so the heterosexual buyer has been pathologised. To satisfy society's need for normality, you need something that is not normal. Now that is the sex buyer."

Naturally, that is not how many other feminists would see the situation. For them it is a matter of inequality and coercion. The sex worker, according to conventional intellectual wisdom, is in a weak position, socially and financially, and lacks power in any transaction with the consumer. Therefore she can't be said to be acting of her own free will, particularly, of course, if she has been trafficked and effectively held prisoner.

Ostergren counters that the vast majority of sex workers don't correspond to that description, and in any case forced and elective prostitution are entirely separate propositions. "We can distinguish between consensual and non-consensual or forced marriages," she says. "Why can't we make that distinction with prostitution?"

In answer to her own question, Ostergren outlines the questionable morality that informs some strategic social and political initiatives in Sweden. Fundamentally, she believes, what many Swedes dislike about prostitution is its transgressive, unhygienic, uncontrolled nature. She cites the substantial sterilisation programme overseen by the Social Democrats right up until the 1970s as evidence of an impulse among progressives to clean up and forcefully remove undesirable aspects of society.

"It's all part of the long project towards perfection and being modern," she says. "There is no room for drug addicts, prostitution or men who buy sex. It's an undercurrent of wanting to be a superior nation. We enjoy exporting that image. We love being on moral high ground."

The keys to Sweden, Kjell Nordström told me, are equality, modernity and consensus. A tall, bald professor of economics, Nordström is a kind of business guru who runs a consultancy on "funky capitalism". I visited him at his large apartment, worthy of a Wallpaper* magazine spread, on the leafy island of Djurgården that sits in the middle of Stockholm. It's a magnificent location whose panoramic views, it must be said, do not include the dark underbelly of fictional repute.

Nordström is another critic of the commercial sex law, on the practical basis that it doesn't work. According to some statistics, prostitution is almost back up to the level it was at when the law was introduced. But Nordström was also interested in a practical means of Swedes finding agreement on the issue.

"Conflict," he noted amiably, "is just not possible here. We've had 202 years of peace, and peace makes you a little bit weird." The inequality of prostitution, and therefore its backwardness, was what offended Swedes, he explained. To reach agreement on the issue, therefore, "You need to treat commercial sex in a very gender-neutral way."

I tried to imagine what that might involve, but I was defeated by the old-fashioned gender division of male and female. So Nordström spelt it out: "You have to have a whore house with men and women working alongside one another. You have to show that you've changed the concept to gain acceptance. People are not against sex here. It's a society where you can really talk about sex, it's easy to have sex with people. But you can't have exploitative sex because by definition you have used your power to buy another person. You owe an explanation on how it's not exploitative."

Unlike many Swedes, especially among the intellectual elite, Nordström does not believe that the Swedish project is floundering. He ran through a potted history of the economic miracle that powered the progressive reforms of the 20th century. In the 19th century Sweden was very poor and one in three of the population was an alcoholic. "We were a mini-Russia." In the 1920s a cradle-to-grave idea of social democracy was born in which an alliance between industrialists, unions and the state would produce universal social welfare. This was when the idea of the "people's home", a social democracy in which industrial wealth was redistributed for the communal good, first began to gain currency.

After the war, in which Sweden remained neutral, unoccupied and unbombed, it was one of the few countries in Europe with its manufacturing industry in full working order. Exporting everything from ball bearings to telephone exchanges, it rapidly embarked on a prolonged rise to prosperity. By the 1970s it was ranked as one of the three wealthiest nations in the world. As the money poured in, it was directed to building perhaps the world's most ambitious welfare system, with generous childcare, healthcare and pensions. In 1973, coinciding with a period of prohibitively high taxation, the oil crisis hit the economy. Three decades of growth ground to a halt and by the 1980s the government began to loosen its tight control on markets.

Rejuvenated, the economy expanded again but a disenchantment had entered the Swedish psyche, especially among the utopian left. The disparate doubts and grievances seemed to cohere with the killing of Olof Palme, which remains the defining event of postwar Swedish history. Its impact was bigger, relatively speaking, than the Kennedy assassination. Mankell once wrote a Wallander short story, entitled "The Pyramid", which examined the anxieties unleashed by Palme's murder, and Palme also turns up in The Troubled Man. Later this year, Mankell is also staging in Stockholm a play he has written about Palme, entitled Politik.

Palme was a curious figure. Born into an upper-class family, he assumed the clothes of modesty and frugality, yet at the same time retained a patrician sense of entitlement – he famously demanded that a ferry should return to port when he missed the last one on a trip to his holiday home. He was an internationalist who was fierce in his defence of Sweden's interests, and a neutralist who wooed the Soviet Union while discreetly favouring the west. He stood at the intersection of two different, and often contrary, strands of liberalism – the dual thrusts towards benign state intervention and increased personal liberty.

Walking home one night with his wife along Sveavägen – Stockholm's equivalent of, say, Piccadilly – Palme was killed by a mysterious gunman who vanished into the night. In the absence of a suspect, and incubated by a disastrous police investigation, a mass of conspiracy theories was hatched – some encouraged by the police – which fingered everyone from Kurdish gangsters to Saddam Hussein and the CIA.

Matters were not helped by the fact that the main witness – Palme's widow, Lisbet – refused to co-operate fully with the court, for reasons she has never explained. Her testimony led to the conviction of a violent street thug and alcoholic called Christer Pettersson. Pettersson had a previous conviction for murder for which, in a typically liberal piece of Swedish criminal justice, he had been sentenced to just six months in prison. He was sentenced to life, but was soon released when the judgment was overturned by the court of appeal.

The failure to apprehend the real culprit meant that Sweden's wound, or "national trauma" as it's often called, remained open for many years afterwards. Even now the scar tissue – the stubborn conspiracist paranoia – continues to impinge on various bones of political contention.

The most symbolic of these is the ongoing controversy over submarine incursions into Swedish waters during the 1980s. The provenance of the submarines that were known to hide off the coast of Sweden has been a subject of lengthy dispute. Much of the media believed they were Soviet vessels, while others suspected they belonged to Nato. Once again the troubling image recurs of something untoward lying beneath the smooth surface. Mankell is not alone in his opinion that these incursions, to which he refers in both The Troubled Man and Politik, amounted to a major national scandal. But if so then it may be Palme, the great hero of the left, who was at the centre of the embarrassment. There is growing evidence that some, if not all, of the incursions were Nato submarines, and persistent rumours in diplomatic circles that Palme knew of and agreed to their presence, as a means of affording protection from the Soviet Union.

Certainly Palme was a flexible politician when he needed to be, not least in the realm of sexual politics. Back in the 1970s news leaked out that his minister of justice, Lennart Geijer, was a major user of prostitutes. Although the information was accurate, as Palme knew, the prime minister strenuously denied the facts and the paper that published the story was forced to print an apology. Significantly, one of the villains in Mankell's novel Sidetracked is a minister of justice from the 1970s who is part of a sex ring that sexually and physically abuses women – much like Lindberg is accused of being. The character, who bears a resemblance to Geijer, is blamed for killing the idealism in Swedish politics. It will be interesting, therefore, to see Mankell's judgment of Geijer's boss, Palme, in his new play.

Kjell Nordström maintains that the nostalgia for the Palme era is a yearning to return to a simpler Sweden of greater state control. "There are people who miss the good old times when you could have a meeting, negotiate and then implement the decision. But we're no longer a small homogeneous country. We had to find other ways."

He also suspects that this harking back to a mythical golden age of integrity is partly a function of a Swedish male identity crisis. "Men are losing their position. Women have taken massive steps forward in the last 40 years. There are a number of areas today where it's difficult to be a man, where once there was a male language and now there are strong, powerful women, backed by law."

Lindberg's boss was a woman, he points out, and he was surrounded by women at work. "But," says Nordström, pouring me another glass of chilled wine, "he was not trained by the police university to exist and manage under these conditions."

That, in a nutshell, is the Swedish analysis that ultimately wins out over the conspiracist angst and liberal hand-wringing: here is a problem, let's establish better training and solve it. In many, perhaps most, ways it's an admirable attitude. After all, it bespeaks a progressive belief in the improvement, if not the perfectibility, of humanity. But such a pragmatic approach to problem-solving can also focus on the solution without really addressing the nature of the problem.

In this respect the Swedes who worry about the subterranean darkness might actually be on to something. It's just that they're looking in the wrong place. It's not necessarily in the system, or the state, or the police, or under the sea. It may just be in themselves. Whatever the reason Chief Lindberg may have been driving along with whips and handcuffs on his way to meet a teenage girl, the one certainty is that it was not because he lacked the appropriate training.

• Sweden
• Henning Mankell
• Stieg Larsson

South of the Border | Film review

Though a lesser artist than the more politically astute and genuinely socialist John Sayles, Oliver Stone is one of the few committed men of the left working in mainstream American cinema. A couple of years back he gave the kid gloves treatment to Fidel Castro in a couple of documentaries, and in this far-too-short movie he travels around Latin America interviewing seven democratically elected leftwing leaders: Venezuela's Hugo Chávez (who gets the lion's share of the running time), Bolivia's Evo Morales, Argentina's Cristina Kirchner (along with her husband, former president Néstor Kirchner), Brazil's Lula da Silva, Cuba's Raúl Castro, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, and Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, a liberation theologian and former bishop.

Stone looks like a benign version of Conrad Black, and his superficial movie is a healthy corrective to the coverage of Latin America in most of the North American media, especially the toxic bile spewed out by Fox News. The interviewees come across as immensely likeable, which is the object of the exercise, and several speak of a return to the era of goodwill that Franklin Roosevelt tried to create. Over the final credits there's a performance of the 1940 hit song "South American Way", sung by Brazilian bombshell Carmen Miranda in Down Argentine Way, a Betty Grable vehicle made by 20th Century Fox to help further Roosevelt's "Good Neighbour" policy.

• Documentary
• Oliver Stone
• Hugo Chávez

Rwanda's presidential election

Stability and an economic boom have made the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, the overwhelming favourite to win elections on 9 August

Chelsea Clinton: wedding day stays under wraps

Locals and photographers on trail of celebrities as former president's daughter weds long-term boyfriend

Watched by her parents and VIPs from US politics and showbusiness, Chelsea Clinton married her long-term boyfriend, Marc Mezvinsky, after weeks of secrecy surrounding the build-up to the wedding in Rhinebeck, a village in New York State.

Crowds of local people and a large media pack desperate for a sight of the bride began forming from early morning in the hope of catching a glimpse of the couple at the exclusive estate on the Hudson River.

Former US president Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, the current secretary of state, emerged late on Friday night to greet the crowds as they arrived for a party. The reporters' hunt for celebrities yielded another result when acting couple Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen were spotted walking hand-in-hand through the village.

"I knew her since she was a baby so this is a big moment," said Steenburgen. "She's a lovely, lovely girl."

Up to 500 guests gathered for the ceremony, the details of which have been shrouded in secrecy, with shopkeepers, innkeepers, vendors and restaurateurs sworn to silence. Roads were blocked off, the skies were closed over the estate and inconvenienced neighbours were bought off with a complimentary bottle of wine.

The wedding took place at Astor Courts, a secluded estate built as a Beaux Arts-style playground for John Jacob Astor IV more than a century ago. The estate features the sort of commanding view that once inspired painters, as well as 50 acres of grounds to shield the party from prying eyes.

Speculation had reached fever pitch about the make-up of the guest list but Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and John Major were said not to be coming after all. Those who were spotted included former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and film producer Steve Bing, while there were also rumoured sightings of investor Warren Buffett and bastketball player Kobe Bryant.

Bill Clinton made an appearance alone on Friday, greeting people and answering their questions. Looking fit and relaxed in blue jeans and a black shirt, Clinton appeared to have made a good attempt at shedding the 15 pounds his daughter had requested before walking her up the aisle and passed on dessert during lunch at a local restaurant.

It was a less well-known Clinton, Bill's cousin Marie Clinton Bruno, who finally spoke to the media when she was spotted strolled past shops with her husband, Gio, on her way to get dressed for the wedding. She said she couldn't believe that the girl who was a 10-year-old bridesmaid at her own wedding was now getting married.

"She was just a wonderful bridesmaid," said Bruno. "She's just as wonderful today as she was back then."

Onlookers who spotted other guests said the majority appeared to be in their late 20s or 30s, reflecting the ages of the happy couple, who were friends as teenagers in Washington before they both went on to attend Stanford University.

They now live in New York, where Mezvinsky works at G3 Capital, a Manhattan hedge fund. Clinton completed her master's degree in public health earlier this year at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

Mezvinsky is a son of former US Democratic politicians Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky of Pennsylvania and Ed Mezvinsky of Iowa, long-time friends of the Clintons. His parents are divorced.

• United States
• Hillary Clinton
• Bill Clinton
• Celebrity

WikiLeaks suspect had help: informant

An army private charged with leaking classified material to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks had civilian help, a key figure in the case says.
Read more [CBC World News]

Love Parade disaster: Angela Merkel joins commemoration service

Mourners gather to pay their respects to the 21 people who lost their lives at Germany's Love Parade.
The victims were crushed to death in a stampede as they desperately tried to escape a narrow tunnel that served as the only entrance to the grounds hosting the techno music festival

Pakistan's prime minister condemns David Cameron's terror claims

Yousaf Raza Gilani's comments follow cancellation of trip to Britain by Pakistan's spy chief

Pakistan's prime minister hit back today at remarks by David Cameron linking the country to the export of terrorism.

Yousaf Raza Gilani, the normally conciliatory premier, used a speech to make the highest level response from Islamabad so far to Cameron's comments during his trip to India. Reports suggest that an official from the British high commission in Islamabad, possibly the deputy chief of mission, will be summoned tomorrow by Pakistan's ministry of foreign affairs for a formal dressing down.

Gilani's intervention follows the abrupt cancellation by Pakistan's spy chief, General Shuja Pasha, of a planned visit to the UK for talks with his British counter-terrorism counterparts.

Co-operation from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, headed by Pasha – which was accused of aiding the Taliban in the Afghan war logs published last week by WikiLeaks – had previously been presented as being crucial to stopping numerous terrorist plots aimed against Britain.

There are fears that a long-planned visit to the UK this week by Pakistan's president, Asif Zardari, could be overshadowed by growing anger at Cameron's remarks among the one million people of Pakistani origin living in Britain. Media outlets and opposition politicians in Pakistan are urging the president to cancel the trip, while demonstrators burnt an effigy of the prime minister on the streets of Karachi.

There is particular anger, shown by Pakistanis yesterday in burning an effigy of the prime minister, that Cameron made the comments on a trip to India.

Gilani focused on the issue in today's speech in Punjab province. "In India, he [Cameron] has given a statement that we in Pakistan promote terrorism," he said. "We want to say to him, we've had good relations with you for 60 years."

He contrasted the issue raised by Cameron with the situation in Kashmir, the Himalayan region mostly held by India, which has been in open rebellion for 20 years. "In India, you [Cameron] talk about terrorism but you don't say anything about Kashmir. You forgot about the human rights abuses going on there. You should have spoken about that too, so that we in Pakistan would have been satisfied."

While Pakistan has frequently been asked to do more in the battle against extremists, Cameron's remarks are seen in Pakistan as going further than any western leader in criticising the country's record and commitment.

An editorial in Dawn, Pakistan's leading English-language daily, said: "No one, with the exception perhaps of New Delhi and Kabul, had ever accused Pakistan of exporting terrorism. In doing so, was Mr Cameron attempting to bracket Pakistan with countries that have been or still are anathema to the west?"

An officer at the ISI said: "Do you make such remarks when visiting a third country, a country we consider an enemy? It was done to appease [India]. You can sit in England and say what you want, but sitting in India gives it a completely different connotation."

A senior Pakistani civilian official said: "Cameron's remarks show a political immaturity, lack of foreign policy experience – and talk about a choosing a bad venue to deliver the message. Being the youngest British prime minister in two centuries isn't necessarily an advantage."

The Cameron intervention came as Pakistan was reeling from the disclosures in the US intelligence documents made public by WikiLeaks. The apparent evidence of ISI collusion with the Taliban from the WikiLeaks material had already been seized on with glee by Indian officials, as confirmation of New Delhi's charge that the Pakistani state sponsors terrorism.

The shadow foreign secretary, David Miliband, said: "Diplomacy is about making friends and influencing them. Today's announcement by the ISI sadly proves that Cameron has failed to make friends and failed to influence them. We need to support Pakistan's intelligence services, not undermine them – their work protects the people of Britain as well as the people of Pakistan. We have a strong Pakistani community in Britain and we have troops in Afghanistan – the stakes are simply too high to go hunting headlines with thoughtless remarks.

"We need a prime minister that understands the complexity of diplomacy and so far Cameron has failed to prove himself as the standard-bearer we need around the world."

Travel expert Riaz Dooley, who has worked to encourage British Asians to take a greater interest in political life, warned that Cameron risked alienating British-Pakistanis. He said: "David Cameron is going to lose the Pakistani vote over this, because he has not apologised. It is not fair to say that Pakistan promotes the export of terrorism, he doesn't have any proof."

Labour MP Khalid Mahmood agreed that the Pakistani community in the UK was angry about Cameron's comments. He said the prime minister had failed to reflect how much the country had sacrificed in the war on terror. "They have taken a huge amount of casualties in the north-west province and there have been a huge number of bombings in Pakistan.

"They have suffered enormously in terms of their own people's lives and to suggest this counts for nothing is very, very insensitive."

• Pakistan
• WikiLeaks
• David Cameron
• Global terrorism
• Terrorism policy
• UK security and terrorism