replacing old ellipsis point spaces

regexConsp/art-04.xml

@@ -1,53 +1,53 @@
-<xml><p>Volume : SIRS 1991 History, Article 56      
+<xml><p>Volume : SIRS 1991 History, Article 56    
 Subject: Keyword(s) : KENNEDY and ASSASSINATION
 Title  : Do Assassinations Alter the Course of History?    
-Author : Simon Freeman and Ronald Payne        
-Source : European          
+Author : Simon Freeman and Ronald Payne      
+Source : European      
 Publication Date : May 24-26, 1991   
 Page Number(s) : 9  
 
-EUROPEAN                     
-(London, England)                  
-May 24-26, 1991, p. 9                  
-"Reprinted courtesy of THE EUROPEAN."                
-            
+EUROPEAN             
+(London, England)            
+May 24-26, 1991, p. 9            
+"Reprinted courtesy of THE EUROPEAN."          
+        
    DO ASSASSINATIONS ALTER THE COURSE OF HISTORY?    
     by Simon Freeman and Ronald Payne    
-           
+       
 India faces collapse with the violent death of Rajiv Gandhi--or  
 does it? Simon Freeman and Ronald Payne analyse the importance of  
-individuals in the march of events       
-           
+individuals in the march of events     
+       
    They have paid their tributes, expressed their horror and   
 pledged, as they always do when one of their number is murdered, 
 that democracy will triumph in the face of terrorism. Now, in  
 their weekend retreats, with their foreign affairs advisers and  
 their top secret intelligence reports, world leaders will have to  
 judge the true impact on India of the assassination of Rajiv 
-Gandhi.          
-           
+Gandhi.      
+       
    They will conclude, perhaps a little unhappily for them but 
 fortunately for the rest of us, that Gandhi's death is unlikely  
 to be more than a footnote, if a substantial one, in the history 
 of his country. India will not disintegrate. There will be no  
 civil war. The Indian military will not stage a coup. Pakistan   
 will not launch the oft-predicted strike which would set the 
-region ablaze.         
-           
+region ablaze.       
+       
    Some Indians, perhaps many, may die over the next month in  
 the kind of primitive ethnic and religious feuding which has 
 always threatened to destroy the country. But, unless history is 
 truly mischievous, India will muddle through and get on with the 
-business of trying to survive.       
-           
+business of trying to survive.     
+       
    It is rarely the personal stature of a statesman which  
 decides how pivotal his contribution to history will be. History 
 usually depends less on the drama of an assassination or the 
 status of the victim than on more profound political, economic or  
 demographic forces. In retrospect, it often appears that assassin  
 and victim were inexorably drawn together to become the catalyst 
-for inevitable change.       
-           
+for inevitable change.     
+       
    The most spectacular assassination in modern European   
 history--the shooting of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife 
 at Sarajevo in 1914 by a Serbian student, Gavrilo Princip--was   
@@ -55,29 +55,29 @@ undoubtedly the immediate cause of the First World War. But few
 serious historians today subscribe to the theory that, had   
 Princip not pressed the trigger that late June day in the cause  
 of Serbian nationalism, the 19th-century order would have  
-survived.          
-           
+survived.      
+       
    Dr Christopher Andrew, of Cambridge University, believes  
 that the assassination merely set the timetable for war. He said:  
 "Even if the Archduke had not been killed then there might have  
 been a great war anyway." Other experts now talk not of Princip  
 but of an explosive cocktail of nationalism straining within 
 decrepit empires and of fatally dangerous alliances built by 
-leaders from an earlier world.       
-           
+leaders from an earlier world.     
+       
    It is possible to see Sarajevo as the climax to a period in 
 which political murders became almost routine. The reference 
 books on late 19th-century Europe are peppered with the names of 
 hapless, long-forgotten politicians who were shot, bombed or 
 stabbed because, so it was thought by the many bands of    
 extremists, that was the only way to force change.   
-           
+       
    While there are no precise ways to assess the real    
 importance of an assassination, historians like Andrew reckon  
 that there are some general guidelines. In the stable, advanced  
 democracies of today the murder of a top politician is unlikely  
-to cause more than outrage and pain.     
-           
+to cause more than outrage and pain.   
+       
    When the Irish Republican Army blew up the Grand Hotel in   
 Brighton in 1984 in an attempt to kill Prime Minister Margaret   
 Thatcher and most of her Cabinet, they hoped that there would be 
@@ -85,8 +85,8 @@ such disgust at the murders that the British public would force
 their leaders to pull out of Northern Ireland. But, even if  
 Thatcher had died this would not have happened. Her death would  
 probably have strengthened her successor's resolve not to bow to 
-terrorism.         
-           
+terrorism.       
+       
    The IRA should have known this from the reaction to the 
 killing five years earlier of Lord Louis Mountbatten,  
 distinguished soldier, public servant and pillar of the British  
@@ -101,7 +101,7 @@ Prime Minister Olof Palme accomplish anything. The murder--still
 unsolved--drew the usual, but clearly genuine, shocked response  
 from world leaders. But even at the time they were hardpressed to  
 pretend that Palme's murder would fundamentally matter to Sweden.  
-           
+       
    The Third World, on the other hand, is more volatile.   
 Sometimes, as in India, countries are an uneasy blend of   
 feudalism and capitalism, dynastic authoritarianism and    
@@ -111,14 +111,14 @@ signal major upheaval. General Zia ul-Haque, who had ruled
 Pakistan since 1977, was blown up in his plane in the summer of  
 1988. But, though he had long seemed crucial to the continuing   
 stability of the country, his death seemed to be the fated climax  
-to the era of military rule.       
-           
+to the era of military rule.     
+       
    The murder of Egypt's President Sadat in October 1981 seemed  
 then to herald some new dark age of internal repression and  
 aggression towards Israel. But his successor, Hosni Mubarak, 
 merely edged closer to the Arab world without returning to the   
-pre-Sadat hostility towards Israel.      
-           
+pre-Sadat hostility towards Israel.    
+       
    The killers of kings and dictators in other Arab countries  
 have also discovered that they have murdered in vain. Iraq has   
 endured a succession of brutal military dictators who have died  
@@ -126,8 +126,8 @@ as violently as they lived. The fact that Iraq has never
 experienced democracy is the result of economic and historical   
 realities, not assassins' bullets. Saudi Arabia has also seen its  
 share of high level killings yet, today, the House of Saud   
-remains immovably in power.        
-           
+remains immovably in power.      
+       
    But in the United States, where the idea of righteous   
 violence is deeply embedded in the national consciousness, the   
 grand assassination has been part of the political process for   
@@ -138,26 +138,26 @@ Kennedy in 1963; his brother, Robert, heir apparent, shot in
 1968; Martin Luther King, civil rights campaigner and Nobel Peace  
 Prize winner, gunned down the same year. Ronald Reagan could 
 easily have followed in 1981 when he was shot and badly wounded. 
-           
+       
    John Kennedy's death now appears important for different  
 reasons from those one might have expected at the time. It did   
 not derail any of his vaunted civil rights or welfare programmes;  
 rather his death guaranteed that his successor, Lyndon Johnson,  
 would be able to push the Kennedy blueprint for a New America  
 through Congress. Nor did it end the creeping US involvement in  
-Vietnam.         
-           
+Vietnam.       
+       
    But Kennedy has been immortalised by his assassin and the   
 mythology of his unfulfilled promise will endure long after his  
-real accomplishments are forgotten.      
-           
+real accomplishments are forgotten.    
+       
    In a curious, perverse, sense he and his fellow-martyrs 
 might live on as far more potent symbols of change than if they  
 had survived into gentle retirement with their fudges revealed   
-and their frailties exposed.       
-           
+and their frailties exposed.     
+       
    Why good leaders die and bad ones survive   
-           
+       
    Few names of hated tyrants appear on the roll-call of world 
 leaders who fall to the assassin's bomb, knife or bullet, writes 
 Ronald Payne. One of the curiosities of the trade in political   
@@ -165,49 +165,49 @@ murder is that those the world generally recognises as bad guys
 often live to a ripe old age or die quietly in their beds. Few   
 who mourn the passing of Rajiv Gandhi would have shed so many  
 tears had President Saddam Hussein been blown to pieces in Iraq. 
-           
+       
    There was a time only a few years ago when Americans and  
 Europeans would have celebrated the violent demise of President  
 Muammar Gaddafi. Both the Libyan leader and Hussein live on, as  
 do Idi Amin of Uganda, or Fidel Castro, whom the American Central  
 Intelligence Agency plotted so imaginatively and ineffectually to  
-remove.          
-           
+remove.      
+       
    When academics play the game of what might have been, the   
 consequences of assassinating such monstres sacres as Stalin and 
-Hitler arise.          
-           
+Hitler arise.      
+       
    When the Russian dictator died suddenly of natural causes,  
 the whole Soviet Union was paralysed because no leader dared 
 claim the right to succeed him. That in itself suggests what 
 might have happened had Stalin been shot unexpectedly at a more  
-critical moment.         
-           
+critical moment.       
+       
    The timing of a political murder is crucial. Had Adolf  
 Hitler been assassinated before he achieved full power or before 
 his invasion of the Soviet Union, the history of Germany, and  
 indeed of Europe, would have been very different.    
-           
+       
    Fascinating though such intellectual exercises are, it seems  
 that as a rule it is the decent, the innocent and the relatively 
-harmless who perish as assassins' victims.     
-           
+harmless who perish as assassins' victims.   
+       
    The reason may not be far to seek. Tyrants watch their backs  
 pretty carefully. The secret police are ever active. It is easier  
 to kill statesmen in democracies where the rule of law prevails  
 and the sad truth is that leaders in those countries which   
 exercise authority through voting rather than shooting are more  
-at risk than Middle East tyrants.      
-           
+at risk than Middle East tyrants.    
+       
    A further reason for the survival of the hated monster  
 figure might be that Western intelligence services have been 
 forbidden to go in for execution. The CIA and the British secret 
 intelligence service are now out of the killing business. Even   
 the KGB's assassination specialists seem to have been stood down.  
-           
+       
    In any case the Kremlin was hardly keen on the murder of  
 ruling statesmen even in the bad old days. Soviet leaders  
 understood the realities of power well enough to know that such  
-acts were unlikely to further their cause.     
-           
+acts were unlikely to further their cause.   
+       
 </p></xml>