Come back General, all is forgiven!

For a while back then, they saw him as part of the problem. That period may have just been declared over. It8217;s back to being in love with the general.

Just look at him, the TIME story all but gushed. So 8216;relaxed8217; and 8216;voluble8217;, so 8216;hospitable8217; and 8216;humourous8217;, as he fights a 8216;maelstrom of conflicting forces8217;. He is up against 8216;8216;pressure from the US, Indian saber rattling that could lead to war, embittered fundamentalists and extremists scattered throughout his own land, and now the demands and intrigue of Pakistani politics.8217;8217;

In the accompanying photographs, Pakistan8217;s dictator posed like a pro 8212; grave and alone in a dark suit and disarmingly casual in a white T-shirt, adoring wife by his side. Mother also put in an appearance in the story. She checks if her son looks overly stressed over breakfast, the magazine informed readers, misty-eyed.

8216;8216;I never feel scared8217;8217;, declared the dictator. Breathed TIME: 8216;8216;As military dictators go, Musharraf is exactly the type for these liberal times8217;8217;.

Stiffer and stiffer

AFTER British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, it will be America8217;s Secretary of State Colin Powell8217;s turn to nudge India and Pakistan towards peace talks, to be followed next month by a visit by US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. But the Indian mood, remarked the ECONOMIST, has stiffened since the American-British diplomatic caravan last trundled through the region.

It said that India8217;s reactions in the coming weeks may be conditioned by a re-emergence of its diplomats8217; 8216;decades-old prickliness8217; about how the country is treated by the US. It pointed to remarks made by new foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal as proof.

It is not yet clear whether this marks a change in the foreign ministry8217;s approach to relations with the US, said the magazine. But if it does, it was certain to be offset by the 8216;8216;more corroborative approach8217;8217; by Brajesh Mishra, the prime minister8217;s national security adviser.

Beneath the veil, burning

MEDIA reports say it happened like this: A teenager at Girls8217; Intermediate School No 31 in Mecca was smoking a cigarette on the sly and the butt she tossed away started a fire. Within seconds, panic spread and about 750 girls aged 13 to 17 had streamed into a narrow stairwell.

But the door at the bottom was locked and the guard had left on a menial errand. Firefighters and ambulances arrived, probably before anyone died.

But a member of the muttawa 8212; zealous vigilantes who belong to the officially sanctioned Society for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice 8212; fought with the Civil Defense units that wanted to enter the building. Because the fleeing girls had left their scarves behind and their would-be rescuers would be men. By the time the school door was finally opened, 15 girls were dead or dying, more than 40 were injured.

The atrocity at Girls8217; School No 31 was first reported by the Mecca based newspaper Al-Nadwa. 8216;8216;I thought we were the only newspaper that would dare to do it8217;8217;, Al Nadwa8217;s editor Abdul Rahman Saad Alorabi later told the NEWSWEEK magazine. 8216;8216;But the next day all the newspapers in the kingdom were publishing it.8217;8217; Saudi Arabia is talking to itself and its religious establishment is on the defensive. With gathering force, questions are being asked about the implications of religious intolerance and gender apartheid.

Greenback slime

FOR Corporate America, it8217;s been a summer of scandal. Sleaze has been exposed at some of America8217;s most high-flying firms8212;Enron, Xerox, Tyco, Global Crossing, WorldCom. Is this about a few bad apples? Or does the 8216;bad apples8217; theory paper over a crisis of capitalism?

The American media is keeping a close watch on its first president with an MBA and a cabinet stuffed with chief executives. Every word is furiously decoded. 8216;8216;In the corporate world8217;8217;, President George W Bush declared, when pressed about how Harken Energy had hidden losses while he was still on its board, 8216;8216;sometimes things aren8217;t exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures8217;8217;.

TIME noted the irony of a president, whose war time rhetoric runs to all or nothing, making a case for relativism.

Amid the general handwringing, the ECONOMIST sounded alarmed for quite another reason. It said the anguish over the supposedly rotten core of the system revealed by the spate of corporate scandals is exaggerated and phoney. Don8217;t fix what is not broken, it cautioned.