DOLORES HIDALGO, Mexico — Perhaps hoping to avoid conflict and a political storm at the Sept. 15 independence celebrations in Mexico City’s Zocalo (main square) — the usual site of such festivities — President Vicente Fox bolted for Dolores Hidalgo in his home state of Guanajuato to deliver the annual grito, a reenactment of parish priest Miguel Hidalgo’s call for independence from Spanish rule. Stormy conditions, though, followed the president. The skies opened less than an hour before the 11 p.m. ceremony began, soaking the revelers gathered in the town center. Later, lightning crashed while Fox delivered the grito from [...]
SEVILLE, Spain — “Ridiculous! Nobody takes that seriously,” laughs Santiago, the young Spanish tourism executive, when asked to comment on Osama bin Laden´s references to reclaiming Spain´s once Moorish province of Andalusia. “The city of Seville expelled the Muslims in 1248, even before they were driven out of the rest of Andalusia. The threat is not worth discussing.” Bin Laden has in the past called for an Islamist takeover of what he calls “al-Andaluz” as the center of a restored Caliphate, a single Islamic state, one nation under Allah stretching from Indonesia to southern Spain that would contain 1.5 billion [...]
Given the way events have been unfolding around Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, one could understand why he might have simply wanted to go home. On Sept. 9, Chen went to his hometown in Taiwan’s Tainan County, a Democratic People’s Party (DPP) stronghold, to meet with a group of faithful supporters. The storm, meanwhile, was in the capital Taipei, more than 350 kilometers away, where tens of thousands of angry demonstrators, many dressed in red to reflect their outrage, gave Chen the thumbs-down during a sit-in outside the presidential palace. In Tainan County, Chen encountered a sit-in as well, but this [...]
