The association with Mr Bush is an electoral liability Mr Blair could well have done without.Nor is there any sign as yet that Mr Bush is prepared to reward Mr Blair for his loyalty over Iraq. In his statement congratulating Mr Bush on his re-election, Mr Blair described the Middle East as the most “pressing challenge” of today. There has been speculation that Mr Bush will chair a new conference in London in an effort to relaunch the peace process. Mr Arafat’s likely departure from the scene may remove one obstacle to progress, while creating another – uncertainty about who leads the Palestinians. Yesterday, though, even as Mr Arafat’s death was erroneously announced, Mr Bush spoke of the Middle East as but one of his foreign policy priorities. This does not bode well for any serious US engagement.Mr Bush’s re-election will also place Mr Blair once again on the spot over Europe. Under a Kerry administration there was at least the prospect of US overtures towards the European opponents of the Iraq war.

The need for Europe and the US to “build anew” their alliance featured almost as prominently in Mr Blair’s post-election statement as the Middle East. If there are to be overtures now, however, the likelihood is that they will have to come from the Europeans – and there is no guarantee whatsoever that they will. Indeed, far from fostering a renewal of transatlantic ties, the prospect of another four years of George Bush could well convince France, Germany and Spain, at least, that Europe should dare to consider a future beyond the Atlantic alliance. Once again, there would be no third way: Mr Blair would have to choose. His hopes of strengthening Britain’s role as the bridge between America and Europe would lie in tatters, like those of so many British prime ministers before him..

Survival International is here to help tribal peoples defend their lives, protect their lands and determine their own futures We work on dozens of places throughout the world. We are supporting the Gana and Gwi Bushmen of the central Kalahari, who have been evicted by the Botswanan government and want to return to their land. The name doesn’t really mean anything, it’s like saying North American Indian or Australian Aborigine There is no one Bushmen tribe, there were hundreds of them. Then a powerful cattle-herding people came down from the north, Bantus. Different Bantu-speaking peoples and white settlers came up from the south over the last couple of hundred years and the result was a genocide of the Bushmen, equivalent to what happened in Australia with the Aborigines or in the Americas.The survivors were reduced to working as cheap or unpaid labour on cattle ranches or worse About 100,000 survive today. They’re spread over most of the countries of southern Africa, with about half the population remaining in Botswana.The case of the Bushmen is particularly important for two reasons. It calls into question the idea that development can trample on peoples’ rights.

Peoples’ rights are fundamental to development.It also calls into question the idea of whether the indigenous peoples in Africa (in this case southern Africa) are going to get the special treatment that indigenous peoples throughout the rest of the world have – an acknowledgement that their lands have been stolen from them. There needs to be some attempt to stop that process happening and to hand them back their rights.. One of the ugliest elections in American presidential history is over but the deep divide in the country is anything but. Where voters stood on abortion, gay rights, gun control, stem-cell research and religious faith was apparently more important than other public policies.Conservative states – red on the map – seem to have ignored Bush’s generally poor record in both domestic and foreign affairs to keep someone in the White House who reflected their outlook on American values and their seeming indifference to world opinion. The more progressive blue states cast their ballots less for Kerry and more against Bush. His ultra-conservatism – which they saw reflected in his tax cuts, faith-based initiative, appointment of John Ashcroft as Attorney General, judicial selections, stingy backing of stem-cell studies, abuse of civil liberties, support of a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage, and a distinctly limited coalition fighting a questionable war in Iraq – deeply offended them.The anger toward the President and closely divided popular and electoral votes can be seen as “an alarm bell in the night”, to quote what Thomas Jefferson said in 1820 about the dangers to the Union from the growing national divide over slavery.The current cultural split in the United States is reminiscent of the bitter conflict in the 1920s between urban modernists and rural fundamentalists.