Condoleezza's memoirs

Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State and National Security Adviser under George W Bush, has released her memoirs. Not yet of the years under Bush, that is due in 2012, but of her childhood and career up to 2000. She grew up in segregated Alabama as an only child of a teacher and preacher and showed enormous talent early on in a wide range of areas from music to academia to ice skating. In 'Extraordinary, Ordinary People' she tells of living with segregation and emerging victorious as well as her parents' experience of the politics and violence that made Alabama the focus of the civil rights battle in the 1960s. It sounds a good read, if criticised for being 'aloof' by the New York Times. Here is an interview with CBS News where she talks about the book.

9/11

Channel 4's programme 9/11: State of Emergency was an appropriate reminder of just how devastating the attacks were on 9/11 to the USA's feeling of security at the top level and the personal tragedies and survival for those ordinary people caught up in what was the USA's worst terrorist attack. Watch it on Channel 4 OD. Particularly revealing are Condoleezza Rice's comments. As National Security Adviser she was crucial to the response and her interview is fascinating for the processes put into action (Cold War links here abound) and the chaos that was unleashed at the heart of the world's most powerful government. If you watch it, please add your own comments.

PS: Here is the angry analysis of the consequences of 9/11 by the Independent's Robert Fisk. This extract from his conclusion shows his point of view pretty clearly:
"Anniversaries are newspaper and television events. And they can have an eerie habit of coalescing together to create an unhappy memorial framework. Thus do we commemorate the Battle of Britain – a chivalric episode in our history – and the Blitz, a progenitor of mass murder, to be sure, but a symbol of innocent courage – as we remember the start of a war that has torn our morality apart, turned our politicians into war criminals, our soldiers into killers and our ruthless enemies into heroes of the anti-Western cause."