It is of little surprise South Africa's economically disenfranchised ethnic majority are talking of nationalisation and land reform Sixteen years after the end of apartheid, a white minority comprising approximately 10% of the total population controls 80% of South Africa's economic wealth. South Africa's white citizens are what Amy Chua has called "market dominant minorities". Market-dominant minorities are small ethnic minority groups that dominate national economies. Whites in Namibia and Zimbabwe, Chinese in Indonesia, Indians in Kenya, Lebanese in Sierra Leone, Spanish descendants in Bolivia and Chinese in Papua New Guinea are examples of other market-dominant minorities. The end of the cold war in 1989 produced a triumphalist consensus that free markets and democracy, working in unison, would cause global moderation, peace, democracy and prosperity, thereby reducing conflict, ethnic hatred, religious zealotry and backwardness. This triumphalism was embodied in Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis. For Fukuyama, the collapse of communism in 1989 signalled liberal democracy's final triumph over its ideological competitors. Liberal democracy had outlasted communism, authoritarianism, monarchy and fascism, and hence mankind's ideological evolution towards the best system of governance was at an end. The end was liberal democracy and the free-market economy. Fukuyama argued that the world would converge on these two forms of political and economic organisation, producing unprecedented prosperity, peace and stability. But as the likes of Chua have made clear, illegal expropriations of private property, genocide in Rwanda in 1994, intensifying nationalism and ethnic conflict in the Balkans, and the rise of fundamentalism have shown how mistaken thinkers such as Fukuyama were about the outcomes of the spread of markets and democracy. Markets and democracy are not reciprocally reinforcing in the developing world. They are especially at odds when a small ethnic minority group controls most of the national economy at the expense of an economically disenfranchised ethnic majority. Markets increase the wealth of market-dominant minorities, while democracy bequeaths political power to the economically disenfranchised majority. This is the situation South Africa is in today. Enter Julius Malema, the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League leader, with his talk of nationalising South Africa's mines and speeding up the pace of land reform in order to economically emancipate poor black South Africans:

"The ANC Youth League has always been a body of ideas. In the ANC, it is the first to break new ground on any topic. That's why we say things [nationalisation of mines] that other people are scared to say. That's our responsibility: to become the voice of the voiceless. Me, I am a youth. I act like a youth. [And] it's not just me. Those who came before did the same thing."

Hague says Kabul should be able to take the lead 'by 2014' after Labour accuses Tories of confusion William Hague was forced to clarify the government's thinking on Afghanistan today when he declared that he would be "very surprised" if Kabul's military was unable to take the lead by 2014. The foreign secretary spoke out as Labour accused the government of a confused approach. Twenty four hours earlier Liam Fox, the defence secretary, had warned an early withdrawal of forces would act as "a shot in the arm to jihadists" across the world. Hague, who outlined the government's approach to foreign policy, endorsed David Cameron's declaration that British troops would return home by the time of the next election, due to take place in 2015. "We are committed to the Afghans being able to conduct their military operations and security and that takes time," Hague told BBC Radio 4's Today programme before his speech at the Foreign Office. "But I would be very surprised if that took longer than 2014." He clarified the government's thinking after Fox waded into a row in Washington over the withdrawal of Nato forces. In a speech to the rightwing Heritage Foundation he said an early withdrawal would risk a return to civil war and betray the sacrifices of soldiers who gave their lives. An early draft of his speech made no mention of Cameron's declaration last week. In the final version of his text Fox endorsed Cameron's view, though he later told the BBC that British troops would be among the last to leave Afghanistan. Some ministers believe the defence secretary, who is close to rightwing Republicans, was aligning himself with hawks in Washington who are sceptical of President Barack Obama's plan to start drawing down troops next year. General David Petraeus, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, told his Senate confirmation hearings on Tuesday that the 2011 withdrawal date had not been recommended by the military. Bob Ainsworth, the shadow defence secretary, said the British government was confused. "It is vitally important that the government speaks with one voice when it comes to Afghanistan but this week all we have seen is confusion," he said. The contrasting signals from ministers overshadowed Hague's speech in which he outlined the government's "agile and energetic" foreign policy. He warned that Britain's influence across the world would decline unless links with emerging countries were boosted and a "generation gap" overcome by ensuring more British officials take on senior roles in the EU. "The world has changed, and if we do not change with it Britain's role is set to decline with all that means for our influence in world affairs, our national security and our economy," he said. As a first priority, Britain should bolster links with emerging economies such as Brazil, India and China and "increasingly significant economies" such as Turkey and Indonesia. Emerging economies would be up to 50% larger than those of the current G7 by 2050. "Yet we export more to Ireland than we do to India, China and Russia put together," he said. Hague pledged to play an active role in the EU, though the government would make more of an effort to reach out to the 10 eastern European countries that have joined since 2004. He also criticised the last government for failing to ensure that British officials were well represented in EU institutions. Britain represents 12% of the EU population but accounts for just 1.8% of staff at entry-level policy grades in the European commission.

Foreign secretary wants to boost number of British nationals working in corridors of power at Brussels Britain's influence across the world will decline unless links with emerging countries are boosted and a "generation gap" is overcome by ensuring more British officials take on senior roles in the EU, William Hague said today. In his most important speech since being appointed as foreign secretary last month, Hague pledged to deliver an "agile and energetic" foreign policy and accused the Labour government of failing to promote Britain's wider strategic interests after neglecting key regions. Hague said his five years as shadow foreign secretary had taught him that the last government lost its way on foreign policy. "During that time in opposition, it became increasingly apparent to me the previous government had neglected to lift its eyes to the wider strategic needs of this country, to take stock of British interests, and to determine in a systematic fashion what we must do as a nation if we are to secure our international influence and earn our living in a world that is rapidly changing," he said. He warned a major reappraisal was needed to ensure Britain did not lose influence on the world stage. "Put simply, the world has changed, and if we do not change with it Britain's role is set to decline with all that means for our influence in world affairs, our national security and our economy," he said. As a first priority, Britain should bolster its links with emerging economies such as Brazil, India and China and "increasingly significant economies" such as Turkey and Indonesia, he said. Hague added that Britain had to catch up because emerging economies would be up to 50% larger than those of the current G7 by 2050. "Yet the latest figures show we export more to Ireland than we do to India, China and Russia put together," he said. Hague accused the previous government of having a "patchy" approach to building relations with emerging countries. "In recent years, Britain's approach to building relationships with new and emerging powers has been ad hoc and patchy, giving rise to the frequent complaint from such governments that British ministers only get in touch when a crisis arises or a crucial vote is needed," he said. "This weakens our ability to forge agreement on difficult issues affecting the lives of millions around the world and overlooks the importance of consistency and personal relationships in the conduct of foreign policy." Britain needed to understand that a "networked world" was emerging, he said. The world had become more multilateral, working through institutions such as the UN and EU. But bilateral relations between individual countries, such as Britain's "unbreakable alliance" with the US, were also becoming more important, he said. Hague added: "Other bilateral ties matter too, whether they are long-standing ties which have been allowed to wither or stagnate or the new relations that we believe we must seek to forge for the 21st century. "Regional groups are certainly strengthening across the world, but these groups are not rigid or immutable. Nor have they diminished the role of individual states, as some predicted." The foreign secretary said traditional forms of communications with his counterparts, such as formal notes, are important. But new forms of communications are playing an ever greater role. "Quite a lot of us communicate by text message or, in the case of the foreign minister of Bahrain and I, follow each other avidly on Twitter." Hague did not say whether he followed any of his 26 EU counterparts on Twitter, but he said Britain would be an active and enthusiastic member of the EU. However, he added that the new government would look to build up relations with the 10 eastern European countries that had joined since 2004 rather than focusing on the traditional Franco-German relationship. "For the UK to exert influence and generate creative new approaches to foreign policy challenges, we need to look further and wider," he said. "We are already seeking to work with many of the smaller member states in new and more flexible ways, recognising where individual countries or groupings within the EU add particular value." Hague was also critical of the last government for failing to ensure that British officials were well represented in EU institutions. Britain represents 12% of the EU population but accounts for just 1.8% of staff at entry-level policy grades in the European commission. "It is mystifying to us that the previous government failed to give due weight to the exercise of British influence in the EU," he said. "So the idea that the last government was serious about advancing Britain's influence in Europe turns out to be an unsustainable fiction." Before he delivered his speech, Hague clarified British thinking on Afghanistan after Liam Fox, the defence secretary, indicated that troops were unlikely to be withdrawn for some time. David Cameron said last week he wanted all British troops back home by the time of the next election, due to take place in 2015. "We are committed to the Afghans being able to conduct their military operations and security and that takes time," Hague told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "But I would be very surprised if that took longer than 2014." David Miliband, the shadow foreign secretary, said: "William Hague needs to stop playing politics and start getting on with his job. The idea of him lecturing the Labour party about joined-up government, when the defence secretary and prime minister can't go more than two days without disagreeing about our most important foreign policy objective, is risible."

A scholar and charity head appointed to President Obama's White House Fellowships Commission served as a point man in granting $49.2 million in startup capital to an education-reform project founded by Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and chaired by Obama.

An alternative annual report for the oil company Chevron looks at the deep costs paid for the world's oil addiction In the month since BP's oil rig exploded in the US Gulf Coast, what has struck me the most is not, unfortunately, the magnitude of the spill, the damage caused that is likely to continue for decades, the inability of BP or federal agencies to clean up – much less stop – the spill, or the revelations of BP's pre-explosion lobbying, which likely contributed greatly to the disaster taking place. I have instead been most moved by the rapid, overwhelming and broad-based demand from people all across the US and the world for a fundamental rethinking of just how far they are willing to let Big Oil go in pursuit of the world's remaining oil. As I prepare for the annual general meeting of the fourth largest global oil company – Chevron (BP is the third largest) – I am confronted daily by people who are looking around their own communities and out across the world with new-found attention to the deep costs paid every day for our oil addiction. A new alternative annual report for Chevron, The True Cost of Chevron, of which I am an author and the editor, will be released at a press conference on 25 May in Houston, Texas – just a few hundred miles from the sites where oil is washing up on shore following the explosion on BP's rig. Written by dozens of authors from 16 countries and 10 states from across the US who either live in, or advocate on behalf of, communities where Chevron operates, the report criticises Chevron's record on human rights, the environment, the climate, public health, worker safety and treatment of indigenous populations. From Chevron's coalfields in Alabama to its oil wells in Indonesia, the report examines operations mired in accusations of human rights abuse (Angola, Burma, Indonesia, Chad and Nigeria); mass environmental and human health devastation (including Ecuador, Kazakhstan and Canada); toxic abuse of its neighbours (including Alabama, California, Mississippi, Texas, Thailand and the Philippines); abuse of its workers (including Utah); threats to endangered species (including Australia and the US Gulf Coast); and, in Iraq, intensifying the violent insurgency and putting the lives of US and Iraqi service members at greater risk. There is also a powerful silver lining. All of these authors are part of a global resistance movement bringing its message to Houston where Chevron is hosting its AGM. It has likely been 40 years since the American public in particular, was so ready to hear and embrace this message. In 1969, a Unocal (now Chevron) oil platform off the coast of California experienced a massive blowout and the issue forced its way to the nation's attention. Activists organised against offshore drilling in their community, ultimately enlisting millions of supporters and advocates, spawning a massive environmental movement which, within just a few years, achieved the establishment of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the US Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. The communities most directly harmed by oil's abuse are organised, networked and ready. The public is roused, angered and ready to act. The oil corporations are on notice: the true cost of their operations is simply too great to bear. For as long as we continue to use oil, the operations of its providers will be restricted, reined in, regulated and, ultimately, retired.

When Bankok has a peace deal with the redshirts the taboo of monarchy must be tested, without the risk of lèse majesté charges Every Sunday afternoon hundreds of Thais flock to Lumpini park in central Bangkok for an hour or more of synchronised gymnastics to the rhythm of thumping speakers. At a minute before 6pm, the sweating bodies come to a halt. Elsewhere in the park courting couples rise from the grass and soccer-playing families call their kids to order. In a moment the national anthem will ring out, casting immobility and an enforced silence on everyone. I've witnessed the scene more than once, and it never ceases to be amazing, a small-scale symbol of a society which, for all its commercial glitz and appearance of modernity, desperately needs reform. The anthem brought no crowds to their feet last Sunday or the one before that, since Lumpini park was nearly deserted. It is close to the eye of the street confrontation between the Thai government and army and the anti-establishment redshirts that has left scores of people dead. Thailand's current crisis is many things. In part it is a class war involving improverished farmers of the north and east who fear the loss of their land to corporate logging and other forms of agribusiness. In part it is a struggle between two types of politics: on one hand the old inward-looking army-based and royalist elite and its padded bureaucracy which faced no challenges for decades; on the other the globalising capitalism of a tycoon like Thaksin Shinawatra who used control of the television stations he owned to take advantage of universal suffrage to mobilise a mass following. Thailand is not a country of ostentatious inequalities with urban slums on the scale of Indonesia or India – though under the concrete network of Bangkok's myriad flyovers there are plenty of wretched shacks. The wealth gap is largely hidden because it is geographically determined. In spite of some emigration, more than two thirds of Thais still live in the countryside, and close to half are classified as poor. In the cities the new middle class has not proved to be the great driver of democracy that many pundits predicted. Most of its members tend to support the government's efforts to quell reform, including the latest street protests. The first requirement now is for the government to accept the redshirts' call for talks. It is true that its tentative agreement to hold early elections in November broke down because hotheads in the protest movement refused to withdraw their barricades. But Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva should not then have rescinded his concession and sent in the army. Once again, his behaviour suggests the army is still the dominant ruling power. He has already failed to fulfil earlier promises to rein in security force abuses in the largely Muslim south, where a separate insurgency shows no sign of abating. Behind the army is the royal palace. While his courtiers have cultivated an image of him as a man above the political battle, the king has endorsed every military coup throughout his 60-year reign. Yet few Thais dare say this because of the ferocious laws on lèse majesté that have seen hundreds of blog sites closed and other naysayers arrested. The time has surely come when Thailand needs to change its constitution, andbecome a modern parliamentary democracy. The King has been in hospital since September. His absence creates a vacuum which should be filled by a caretaker government of national unity to prepare for an autumn election and launch a commission on reducing the powers of the monarchy. Kasit Piromya, the foreign minister, has been busy over the last week telling foreign diplomats not to interfere in the crisis but, paradoxically, it was he who recently articulated what many Thais have been saying privately for months. In a speech at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in April, he said: "The positive sign of Thai political development is the ordinary people ... participating in the political process as opposed to Thailand 15 years or 20 years ago, where political actors were confined to the bureaucrats, to some of the business people, to some of the professional politicians, to some of the military officers." He went on: "Hopefully, with the traumatic violent experiences that we will come through, we can have a democracy that combines representative democracy with a direct democratic participation. More to the tune of Lichtenstein or to the Swiss model combined with the UK parliamentary system." Then came the bombshell: "I think we should be brave enough to go through all of this and to talk about even the taboo subject of the institution of the monarchy ... Let's have a discussion: what type of democratic society would we like to be?" Well said, Kasit Piromya. First, avert any more bloodshed on Bangkok's streets. Then let Thailand's national immobility and enforced silence, symbolised by Sundays in Lumpini Park, at last come to an end.

Christopher Hitchens is fascinated buy the mix of luck and judgment that made Barack Obama Bill Clinton promised a bridge to the 21st century; Sarah Palin railed against an Alaskan "bridge to nowhere"; Simon and Garfunkel crooned of a bridge over troubled water, and Ian Paisley, asked about intercommunal bridge-building, once said that bridges were like traitors because "they go over to the other side". There may be no social or political metaphor that is more over-worked and yet, if you travel south of the Mason-Dixon line and ask black people of a certain generation about "the bridge", they will very likely know what you are on about. It was on 7 March 1965 that a few hundred disciplined civil rights marchers attempted to march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery. Their way lay across the Edmund Pettus bridge, a span named for the last Confederate army general to hold a seat in the Senate. They never got to the other bank of the river. A mob of policemen and vigilantes rode into them on horseback, spraying gas and wielding clubs and whips. Dozens of people were seriously hurt in the retreat. But, a hundred years after the end of the civil war, this really was the last stand of the old south. So great was the national outrage at the televised pictures that within a few days President Lyndon Johnson had appeared before Congress and proposed a Voting Rights Act, in a tremendous speech that culminated in his Texan twang uttering the words: "And we shall overcome." Ever since then, the symbolic crossing of the Edmund Pettus bridge has been an annual ritual of pride for the survivors. In 2007, a young black Senator from Illinois was invited to be one of the speakers at the event. It is David Remnick's contention that this moment was the true launch of his campaign, and that the success of that campaign represents the final and complete traversal of that bridge. In the iconography of the movement, there is the "Moses" generation, of men and women who fought for a liberty that they might never live to see, and then there is the "Joshua" generation, of those who grew up in the new dispensation. Perhaps the great Mosaic survivor was the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham, Alabama, whose church was blown up with (Remnick doesn't mention it) several of Condoleezza Rice's little schoolfriends inside. On the day that Barack Obama made his speech in Selma, laying claim to the title of Joshua, he moved from the pulpit to the river and found the old veteran stricken by a brain tumour and confined to a chair. "On the bridge, he chatted awhile with Obama. And then Obama, who had read so much about the movement, who had dreamed about it, took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, popped a piece of Nicorette gum in his mouth, and helped push the wheelchair of Fred Shuttlesworth, a leader of the Moses generation, across the bridge and over to the other side." I should probably say here that I know Remnick to be a very nice guy and a very sweet writer, and that his own popping of the Nicorette gum into that otherwise pious paragraph rather raised my expectations. Is there anything apart from global warming that American liberals despise more than a smoker? (We know from the recent report of his physicians that the president continues to puff to this day.) Yet, with few exceptions, this narrative stays with the well-worn imagery of Exodus and the Jordan, and concurs with the idea that Obama's inauguration rounds off a historical cycle. It was the Clintons who first banned smoking in the White House and it was also the Clintons who arrogantly believed that they somehow "owned" the black vote. It was on that same day in Selma in 2007 that they began to fear a challenge to their presumptive monopoly. Still they trusted, along with many others, that not enough white voters would be attracted to a man – "Barack Hussein Obama", as one of their aides used to hiss it for effect – whose last two names were reminiscent of America's most feared and hated Middle Eastern enemies. The Bridge is the story of how Obama managed to seduce the black vote while simultaneously attracting a strategic proportion of voters from all other communities as well. One of the clues to this lies in the fact that Obama really is an "African American". Not always taking his hero at face value, Remnick shows us the ways in which Obama "improved" his life story. He publicly described his truant father, for example, as a victim of British colonialism in Kenya who had been treated as a mere servitor. This turns out not to be true at all: Obama senior was a member of an educated elite and enjoyed positions of trust and responsibility in America as well as back home, until the bottle got to him. He may have been a victim of racism, but it would be more exact to say that he was a victim of tribalism. Older readers of this newspaper will well remember the attractive figure of Tom Mboya, great hope of Kenya at independence but murdered by vicious local infighting. The Obamas come from the same minority Luo people as Mboya did and, if you want to visualise a useful background for a successful multiracial American politician, you could do worse than imagine the lessons learned by a young man who saw what ethnic fratricide had done to his father, and his fatherland. Next, after an upbringing in Muslim Indonesia and rainbow-hued Hawaii, it might be useful to study under Edward Said at Columbia University. Remnick is tantalisingly brief about this period but tells us that Obama thought of the anti-Eurocentric Palestinian professor as a "flake", and took the view that it was better to read Shakespeare in the original than to be reading the criticism. Then on to Harvard and to the chairmanship of the college's Law Review, where he excelled at publishing all opinions but his own and calming many editorial teapot-tempests. (When things became emotional he would counsel his team: "Remember: nobody reads it.") That last point illustrates Obama's other great strengths: the ability to be amusing at his own expense, and the seemingly complete absence of any resentment. A winning way with discrepant constituencies, and a genius for horse-trading and compromise, are very necessary attributes for a Chicago politician, which is what Obama then decided to become. Here I prefer his autobiography to Remnick's account, purely and simply because of its self-deprecating charm. Everything broke Obama's way: he was faced at election times either by extreme black nutcases of left and right, or by white Republicans who were effectively caught selling their wives on eBay. It's one thing to be lucky: it's another thing to admit that luck has been yours. Obama has never been hubristic on that score. The closest he came to a flameout was by way of his hitherto-fortunate association with the black pulpit, this time in the form of the big-mouth and phoney the Rev Jeremiah Wright, preacher of paranoia and conspiracy. Yet it was the manner in which he dug himself out of that hole, with his Philadelphia speech on the race question, that convinced a cadre of experienced Chicago Democrats such as David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel that Obama was the one. From then on, the Clintons and the Republicans guaranteed the continuance of the charmed life: the former by pandering to racism in a fashion that still hasn't been sufficiently condemned and the latter by – well, take your pick. This is a thick book about a still rather slim curriculum vitae. Remnick makes it worthwhile by building in some enlightening passages about the history of Kenya, Hawaii and the long battle for black emancipation. He doesn't say enough about a question that fascinates me and enrages the American right: the possibility that the president of the United States is not a Muslim but, worse, an unbeliever. He succeeds in showing that Senator Obama was never as anti-war as all that. He tells us (this is a relief) that the candidate thought the famous slogan "Yes we can" to be rather vapid. It's all in the details, as we glance back over the bridge across which it's impossible to imagine ever returning. Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.

Christopher Hitchens is fascinated buy the mix of luck and judgment that made Barack Obama Bill Clinton promised a bridge to the 21st century; Sarah Palin railed against an Alaskan "bridge to nowhere"; Simon and Garfunkel crooned of a bridge over troubled water, and Ian Paisley, asked about intercommunal bridge-building, once said that bridges were like traitors because "they go over to the other side". There may be no social or political metaphor that is more over-worked and yet, if you travel south of the Mason-Dixon line and ask black people of a certain generation about "the bridge", they will very likely know what you are on about. It was on 7 March 1965 that a few hundred disciplined civil rights marchers attempted to march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery. Their way lay across the Edmund Pettus bridge, a span named for the last Confederate army general to hold a seat in the Senate. They never got to the other bank of the river. A mob of policemen and vigilantes rode into them on horseback, spraying gas and wielding clubs and whips. Dozens of people were seriously hurt in the retreat. But, a hundred years after the end of the civil war, this really was the last stand of the old south. So great was the national outrage at the televised pictures that within a few days President Lyndon Johnson had appeared before Congress and proposed a Voting Rights Act, in a tremendous speech that culminated in his Texan twang uttering the words: "And we shall overcome." Ever since then, the symbolic crossing of the Edmund Pettus bridge has been an annual ritual of pride for the survivors. In 2007, a young black Senator from Illinois was invited to be one of the speakers at the event. It is David Remnick's contention that this moment was the true launch of his campaign, and that the success of that campaign represents the final and complete traversal of that bridge. In the iconography of the movement, there is the "Moses" generation, of men and women who fought for a liberty that they might never live to see, and then there is the "Joshua" generation, of those who grew up in the new dispensation. Perhaps the great Mosaic survivor was the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham, Alabama, whose church was blown up with (Remnick doesn't mention it) several of Condoleezza Rice's little schoolfriends inside. On the day that Barack Obama made his speech in Selma, laying claim to the title of Joshua, he moved from the pulpit to the river and found the old veteran stricken by a brain tumour and confined to a chair. "On the bridge, he chatted awhile with Obama. And then Obama, who had read so much about the movement, who had dreamed about it, took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, popped a piece of Nicorette gum in his mouth, and helped push the wheelchair of Fred Shuttlesworth, a leader of the Moses generation, across the bridge and over to the other side." I should probably say here that I know Remnick to be a very nice guy and a very sweet writer, and that his own popping of the Nicorette gum into that otherwise pious paragraph rather raised my expectations. Is there anything apart from global warming that American liberals despise more than a smoker? (We know from the recent report of his physicians that the president continues to puff to this day.) Yet, with few exceptions, this narrative stays with the well-worn imagery of Exodus and the Jordan, and concurs with the idea that Obama's inauguration rounds off a historical cycle. It was the Clintons who first banned smoking in the White House and it was also the Clintons who arrogantly believed that they somehow "owned" the black vote. It was on that same day in Selma in 2007 that they began to fear a challenge to their presumptive monopoly. Still they trusted, along with many others, that not enough white voters would be attracted to a man – "Barack Hussein Obama", as one of their aides used to hiss it for effect – whose last two names were reminiscent of America's most feared and hated Middle Eastern enemies. The Bridge is the story of how Obama managed to seduce the black vote while simultaneously attracting a strategic proportion of voters from all other communities as well. One of the clues to this lies in the fact that Obama really is an "African American". Not always taking his hero at face value, Remnick shows us the ways in which Obama "improved" his life story. He publicly described his truant father, for example, as a victim of British colonialism in Kenya who had been treated as a mere servitor. This turns out not to be true at all: Obama senior was a member of an educated elite and enjoyed positions of trust and responsibility in America as well as back home, until the bottle got to him. He may have been a victim of racism, but it would be more exact to say that he was a victim of tribalism. Older readers of this newspaper will well remember the attractive figure of Tom Mboya, great hope of Kenya at independence but murdered by vicious local infighting. The Obamas come from the same minority Luo people as Mboya did and, if you want to visualise a useful background for a successful multiracial American politician, you could do worse than imagine the lessons learned by a young man who saw what ethnic fratricide had done to his father, and his fatherland. Next, after an upbringing in Muslim Indonesia and rainbow-hued Hawaii, it might be useful to study under Edward Said at Columbia University. Remnick is tantalisingly brief about this period but tells us that Obama thought of the anti-Eurocentric Palestinian professor as a "flake", and took the view that it was better to read Shakespeare in the original than to be reading the criticism. Then on to Harvard and to the chairmanship of the college's Law Review, where he excelled at publishing all opinions but his own and calming many editorial teapot-tempests. (When things became emotional he would counsel his team: "Remember: nobody reads it.") That last point illustrates Obama's other great strengths: the ability to be amusing at his own expense, and the seemingly complete absence of any resentment. A winning way with discrepant constituencies, and a genius for horse-trading and compromise, are very necessary attributes for a Chicago politician, which is what Obama then decided to become. Here I prefer his autobiography to Remnick's account, purely and simply because of its self-deprecating charm. Everything broke Obama's way: he was faced at election times either by extreme black nutcases of left and right, or by white Republicans who were effectively caught selling their wives on eBay. It's one thing to be lucky: it's another thing to admit that luck has been yours. Obama has never been hubristic on that score. The closest he came to a flameout was by way of his hitherto-fortunate association with the black pulpit, this time in the form of the big-mouth and phoney the Rev Jeremiah Wright, preacher of paranoia and conspiracy. Yet it was the manner in which he dug himself out of that hole, with his Philadelphia speech on the race question, that convinced a cadre of experienced Chicago Democrats such as David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel that Obama was the one. From then on, the Clintons and the Republicans guaranteed the continuance of the charmed life: the former by pandering to racism in a fashion that still hasn't been sufficiently condemned and the latter by – well, take your pick. This is a thick book about a still rather slim curriculum vitae. Remnick makes it worthwhile by building in some enlightening passages about the history of Kenya, Hawaii and the long battle for black emancipation. He doesn't say enough about a question that fascinates me and enrages the American right: the possibility that the president of the United States is not a Muslim but, worse, an unbeliever. He succeeds in showing that Senator Obama was never as anti-war as all that. He tells us (this is a relief) that the candidate thought the famous slogan "Yes we can" to be rather vapid. It's all in the details, as we glance back over the bridge across which it's impossible to imagine ever returning. Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.