Mandela, Madiba, father of a nation

By Bruce Haigh

Photo: Nelson Mandela was the biggest, warmest and most understanding person in politics. (Finbarr O'Reilly: Reuters)

Even when he was locked away in prison, Nelson Mandela was everywhere in South Africa as a symbol of hope, says Bruce Haigh, who writes here about his own experiences during apartheid as an Australian diplomat.

I cannot remember when I first became aware of Nelson Mandela or of the system of government he was trying to change. I was an 18-year-old jackaroo in the Kimberley of Western Australia when he was sentenced to life in prison on Friday June 12, 1964.

There was no connection between us when I was working with Indigenous Australians and they were being paid in tea, sugar and whatever else station owners felt appropriate or did not want.

An awareness must have occurred at the University of Western Australia, where there was a desultory anti-apartheid movement, competing with a slightly more active anti-Vietnam movement. I studied politics and history where I must have picked something up, but not enough to stop me watching the Springboks play rugby in Perth in 1971. The demonstrations did, however, make me ask questions and by the time I joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in January 1972, I knew about Mandela and apartheid.

I was posted as a diplomat to South Africa in 1976, arriving on July 1, just two weeks after the Soweto riots had broken out. At that time there was ambivalence on the part of Australian politicians and within the department as to how far Australia should go in opposing apartheid or whether it should be opposed at all.

My predecessor at the post, Di Johnstone, had made contact with black South African artists and trade unionists. We had a handover of a week and she introduced me to friends living in black townships close to Pretoria, which she fearlessly entered at the wheel of her own car.

Mandela was everywhere; a living presence; a constant in the conversations of black South Africans and white activists. He was a spiritual being, with mention of his name invoking hope; he epitomised what people were fighting for and against. His name was evoked, chanted and put into song outside the court houses where political trials of black activists took place.

Defined by his commitment to end the evil of apartheid, Nelson Mandela became a symbol of good. He was a leader, along with the Dalai Lama, for whom rightful adulation was his natural companion. Throughout the world many have been inspired by his single-minded quest for justice and decency.

The government and the majority of white South Africans never mentioned him. He was a terrorist, a communist and a threat to white supremacist politics.

Born on July 18, 1918, in the Transkei, Nelson Mandela led the idyllic life of a bush boy until at nine he was sent away to be educated. In 1939, he was accepted to study law at the University of Fort Hare. He completed two years before the call of Johannesburg took hold. Fortunately he found work as an articled clerk with a sympathetic Jewish lawyer. He completed his degree by correspondence. He joined the ANC in 1944 and was quickly recognised as a person of considerable intellect and talent.

Nelson Mandela helped draw up the Freedom Charter which was adopted in 1955. In 1956 he was charged with treason and acquitted. In 1960 the tragic Sharpeville Massacre occurred, which set the tone of the relationship between black and white South Africans for the next 30 years.

For most of the time he was in prison, the government and the majority of white South Africans never mentioned him. For them he was where he should be, locked in prison for life on Robben Island off Cape Town. He was a terrorist, a communist and a threat to white supremacist politics, otherwise known as apartheid, which was the complete separation of the races including housing, schooling, hospitals and marriage.

Blacks were not allowed to use the same public toilets or public benches as whites, or travel in the same buses. Blacks were paid a lot less than whites and were abused and humiliated on a daily basis. Blacks were in a majority of four to one.

Every day in the weeks and months after my arrival, the press was full of the riots. The Rand Daily Mail, The Star and The Pretoria News carried graphic pictures of black students challenging the police and stories of unrestrained police brutality. The ambassador announced that the riots were due to criminal elements, stirred up by communist agitators. He directed that I write a memo on the state of the South African economy.

The tension in the air was palpable. It felt as if the country was on the edge of a revolution - it was.

I was directed not to report the causes of the rioting and to keep coverage of black affairs to a minimum. This was no good. The shame of apartheid confronted me a week or so after my arrival. An old black woman was repeatedly bypassed for service in a shop in favour of younger white customers; a black man was beaten at a bus stop because he did not have a pass to be in a white area; and blacks would not look at me on the street - they walked with eyes averted and I sensed the hostility.

In fact, the tension in the air was palpable. It felt as if the country was on the edge of a revolution - it was. The police could not cope so they called in the army.

I had been watching, listening, looking from behind the walls of white privilege. Nearly three months had gone by; I felt ready to enter the fray. As I was forbidden from writing on black affairs I had to resort to what became a favourite tool, a record of conversation. It stood as a document of what had transpired between me and the person I had chosen to talk to or interview. This particular document could not be altered by anyone except the record taker.

Synonymous with the name Nelson Mandela amongst the black youngsters was a new name, that of Steve Biko, the charismatic young leader of the Black Consciousness Movement. He was banned to King Williams Town in the Eastern Cape, but his organisation had an office in Johannesburg. I had spoken to black youngsters in Mamelodi and Attridgeville, townships close to Pretoria; they urged me to speak to these BCM office holders in Johannesburg.

I went up flights of dingy stairs to a small office crowded with hostile black men who proceeded to abuse me as representative of everything they loathed and detested about whites. I stood my ground, offered cigarettes and we started talking. The most aggressive was Tom Manthata; later he apologised and we laughed about it. Later still he went to prison and I used to visit him as well as Steve Biko's sister, Bandi, who was locked up in a prison known as The Fort in Johannesburg.

A man of heroic compromise

Nelson Mandela's goodness was mixed with a steely determination, writes Marius Benson.

I had my record of conversation and a list of contacts inside Soweto. A recommendation went ahead of me to Steve Biko in King Williams Town. The most important black network then operating in South Africa was opening up to me.

Within the embassy a showdown was looming. The ambassador did not like my records of conversation and marked me well down on my annual assessment. When I suggested that he was out of touch, he demanded my recall to Australia. That did not happen when I pointed out that he had refused to make representations on instruction from the Australian Foreign Minister on behalf of three detained black members of the YWCA. Incredibly he sent this exchange back to Canberra and was himself recalled.

I began visiting Soweto, talking to a range of people including teachers and school kids, although the schools were closed. Through Donald Woods, the courageous and outspoken newspaper editor of the East London, Daily Dispatch, I was able to meet Steve Biko and obtain a really great record of conversation. He talked at length about forging an alliance between the BCM and the ANC and his admiration for Mandela. Biko never met Mandela but he was a tangible presence in all of our conversations. Biko and I got along. He was a natural leader, helped by being tall, smart and good looking.

I became good friends with Donald Woods and helped him leave the country with the manuscript of the book 'Biko' which he had just completed but couldn't publish in South Africa.

At the time, Donald was banned following the murder of Steve Biko by police in a prison cell in Port Elizabeth. All of the BCM leadership was banned or in jail. The murder of Biko was such a shame, it was such a waste, and it reduced me to tears.

The more it became known that I was willing to help, the more the requests came. No one at the embassy knew what I was doing. I was living a strange double life.

For some time ANC members came from underground and made themselves known to me, usually wanting help of one sort or another. BCM members did the same and also needed help. Some left the country to join the ANC and undertake military training; others wanted the protection my diplomatic status offered to visit friends or for me to take secure messages to colleagues banned to distant towns and locations. There was a Catholic Bishop in a nearby country that was also a senior figure in the ANC, and in the highly charged and uncertain times created by the banning and detention of so many activists, many wanted and needed to visit him and other leaders who had fled South Africa to nearby countries in order to get direction.

Others needed a safe haven from the police for a period of time, so they stayed in my house which offered them diplomatic protection, and others needed my intervention with the police so that they could return home without fear of harassment. Others needed to leave the country for good so I took them.

The spirit of Nelson Mandela was present at the funeral of Steve Biko, where his name and importance in the struggle was invoked as often as that of Steve Biko's. It was also present at the inquest into the death of Steve Biko in Pretoria, where the songs and chants underlined his importance in maintaining the fight against apartheid.

Winnie Mandela maintained a high profile during these years and helped keep Nelson before the white-owned-and-run media. For her trouble she was banned to the small rural town of Brandfort with her daughters only to come home one night to find her house, with many important papers, burnt down. It is my belief that the constant pressure from the security police eventually unbalanced Winnie.

Freedom song

A simple, powerful song in tribute to Nelson Mandela danced its way into history, writes Tracee Hutchison.

Life in South Africa in the late seventies was fraught. And the more it became known that I was willing to help, the more the requests came and the more I felt compelled to do. It was a strange situation because no one at the embassy knew what I was doing. I was living a strange double life and the two never came together.

A lot of black and white friends suffered while I was in South Africa and some died. I felt angry and impotent. I had shifted a long way, but I had not been able to take the Australian government with me. Just as today with the question of refugees, there were some truly awful defenders of apartheid, by commission and omission, including John Howard (who opposed sanctions).

On return, together with Di Johnstone, I quietly lobbied for change in South Africa. But I was not really up to it. I was quite worn out. Everything in my life was an effort, nothing was easy, and I was cross that no-one seemed to care about South Africa, about those tiny white coffins I saw every Monday, lined up against the wall of the clinic in the squatter settlement of Mabopane 40 minutes from central Pretoria, because the drinking water in wells was being mixed with sewerage in pits at the same depth.

I first met Nelson Mandela at a lunch held in Parliament House in Canberra on October 23, 1990, during his visit to Australia not long after he was released from prison. We talked, but not for long. Earlier that year had seen a visit to Australia by Donald Woods and his wife Wendy as special guests for Refugee Week. The next time I met Nelson Mandela was at the unveiling of a statue to Steve Biko in East London in September 1997. He was in good form and worked the crowd.

I was in South Africa in June 2010 at the time of the World Cup when Zenani, a great-grandchild of Nelson, was killed in a car accident; nonetheless, Nelson turned up and performed his public duties in relation to the World Cup despite his grief.

Whereas once white South Africans either refused to acknowledge Nelson Mandela or were spitefully cruel in their comments about him, today more than 95 per cent would see him as a great South African.

That time saw the launch of Ifa Lethu, an organisation I had helped establish with Di Johnstone to receive black works of art back into South Africa which had been taken to many countries during apartheid. It was chaired and guided through its early stages by a friend, Dr Mamphela Ramphele, a former director of the World Bank and close associate of Steve Biko. From an initial joint donation from Johnstone and myself of 70 works, the collection has now grown to over 500 works of returned art. Malcolm Fraser is the Australian patron.

Mamphela also greatly assisted me in running an education program for black South Africans in the early nineties.

Whereas once white South Africans either refused to acknowledge Nelson Mandela or were spitefully cruel in their comments about him, today more than 95 per cent would see him as a great South African, much of it stemming from his embrace of white South Africa, from his publicly acknowledged affection for his white prison guard on Robben Island to his embrace of the Springbok Rugby Team in 1994, portrayed in the 2009 film 'Invictus'.

Elections were held in 1994 and Nelson Mandela became president. The final statement is his. Addressing the court at the end of what was known as the Rivonia Treason Trial, Nelson Mandela said:

Above all, we want equal political rights ... It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination ... the ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs it will not change that policy. This then is what the ANC is fighting for ... It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and their own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live.

I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Nelson Mandela was the biggest, warmest and most understanding person in politics we have seen in modern times. He rose above mediocrity, the pedantic daily dealings and petty politics which remain our lot.

Visit News Online's special coverage website to read more reactions to the death of Nelson Mandela.

Bruce Haigh is a political commentator and retired diplomat, who served in South Africa from 1976-79 and initiated the Embassy's contact with the black South African resistance movement. Haigh's role in helping banned newspaper editor Donald Woods escape from South Africa was portrayed in the film Cry Freedom. View his full profile here.

Mandela, Madiba, father of a nation - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Nelson Mandela, former South African president, dies aged 95

David Smith in Johannesburg The Guardian, Friday 6 December 2013

South Africa's first black president died peacefully in company of his family at home in Johannesburg, Jacob Zuma announces

• All the latest reaction to Nelson Mandela's death

• GuardianWitness: what did Mandela mean to you?

Nelson Mandela's death was announced on South African TV by current president Jacob Zuma. Photograph: Getty Images

Nelson Mandela, the towering figure of Africa's struggle for freedom and a hero to millions around the world, has died at the age of 95.

South Africa's first black president died in the company of his family at home in Johannesburg after years of declining health that had caused him to withdraw from public life.

The news was announced to the country by the current president, Jacob Zuma, who in a sombre televised address said Mandela had "departed" around 8.50pm local time and was at peace.

"This is the moment of our deepest sorrow," Zuma said. "Our nation has lost its greatest son … What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.

"Fellow South Africans, Nelson Mandela brought us together and it is together that we will bid him farewell."

Zuma announced that Mandela would receive a state funeral and ordered that flags fly at half-mast.

Mandela's two youngest daughters were at the premiere of the biopic Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom in London last night. They received the news of their father's death during the screening in Leicester Square and immediately left the cinema.

Barack Obama led tributes from world leaders, referring to Mandela by his clan name – Madiba. The US president said: "Through his fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others, Madiba transformed South Africa – and moved all of us.

Link to video: Jacob Zuma: Nelson Mandela 'is now at peace'

"His journey from a prisoner to a president embodied the promise that human beings – and countries – can change for the better. His commitment to transfer power and reconcile with those who jailed him set an example that all humanity should aspire to, whether in the lives of nations or our own personal lives."

David Cameron said: "A great light has gone out in the world" and described Mandela as "a hero of our time".

FW de Klerk – the South African president who freed Mandela, shared the Nobel peace prize with him and paved the way for him to become South Africa's first post-apartheid head of state – said the news was deeply saddening for South Africa and the world.

"He lived reconciliation. He was a great unifier," De Klerk said.

Throughout Thursday night and into Friday morning people gathered in the streets of South Africa to celebrate Mandela's life.

In Soweto people gathered to sing and dance near the house where he once lived. They formed a circle in the middle of Vilakazi Street and sang songs from the anti-apartheid struggle. Some people were draped in South African flags and the green, yellow and black colours of Mandela's party, the African National Congress.

"We have not seen Mandela in the place where he is, in the place where he is kept," they sang, a lyric anti-apartheid protesters had sung during Mandela's long incarceration.

Several hundred people took part in lively commemorations outside Mandela's final home in the Houghton neighbourhood of Johannesburg. A man blew on a vuvuzela horn and people made impromptu shrines with national flags, candles, flowers and photographs.

Link to video: Street celebrations of Nelson Mandela's life break out in South Africa

Mandela was taken to hospital in June with a recurring lung infection and slipped into a critical condition, but returned home in September where his bedroom was converted into an intensive care unit.

His death sends South Africa deep into mourning and self-reflection, nearly 20 years after he led the country from racial apartheid to inclusive democracy.

But his passing will also be keenly felt by people around the world who revered Mandela as one of history's last great statesmen, and a moral paragon comparable with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

It was a transcendent act of forgiveness after spending 27 years in prison, 18 of them on Robben Island, that will assure his place in history. With South Africa facing possible civil war, Mandela sought reconciliation with the white minority to build a new democracy.

He led the African National Congress to victory in the country's first multiracial election in 1994. Unlike other African liberation leaders who cling to power, such as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, he then voluntarily stepped down after one term.

South Africans hold a candle outside the house of former South African president Nelson Mandela following his death in Johannesburg. Photograph: Alexander Joe/Afp/Getty Images

Mandela was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1993.

At his inauguration a year later, the new president said: "Never, never, and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another … the sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement. Let freedom reign. God bless Africa!"

Born Rolihlahla Dalibhunga in a small village in the Eastern Cape on 18 July 1918, Mandela was given his English name, Nelson, by a teacher at his school.

He joined the ANC in 1943 and became a co-founder of its youth league. In 1952, he started South Africa's first black law firm with his partner, Oliver Tambo.

Mandela was a charming, charismatic figure with a passion for boxing and an eye for women. He once said: "I can't help it if the ladies take note of me. I am not going to protest."

He married his first wife, Evelyn Mase, in 1944. They were divorced in 1957 after having three children. In 1958, he married Winnie Madikizela, who later campaigned to free her husband from jail and became a key figure in the struggle.

When the ANC was banned in 1960, Mandela went underground. After the Sharpeville massacre, in which 69 black protesters were shot dead by police, he took the difficult decision to launch an armed struggle. He was arrested and eventually charged with sabotage and attempting to overthrow the government.

Conducting his own defence in the Rivonia trial in 1964, he said: "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.

"It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

He escaped the death penalty but was sentenced to life in prison, a huge blow to the ANC that had to regroup to continue the struggle. But unrest grew in townships and international pressure on the apartheid regime slowly tightened.

Finally, in 1990, FW de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC and Mandela was released from prison amid scenes of jubilation witnessed around the world.

In 1992, Mandela divorced Winnie after she was convicted on charges of kidnapping and accessory to assault.

His presidency rode a wave of tremendous global goodwill but was not without its difficulties. After leaving frontline politics in 1999, he admitted he should have moved sooner against the spread of HIV/Aids in South Africa.

His son died from an Aids-related illness. On his 80th birthday, Mandela married Graça Machel, the widow of the former president of Mozambique. It was his third marriage. In total, he had six children, of whom three daughters survive: Pumla Makaziwe (Maki), Zenani and Zindziswa (Zindzi). He has 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who headed the truth and reconciliation committee after the fall of apartheid, said: "He transcended race and class in his personal actions, through his warmth and through his willingness to listen and to emphasise with others. And he restored others' faith in Africa and Africans."

Mandela was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2001 and retired from public life to be with his family and enjoy some "quiet reflection". But he remained a beloved and venerated figure, with countless buildings, streets and squares named after him. His every move was scrutinised and his health was a constant source of media speculation.

Mandela continued to make occasional appearances at ANC events and attended the inauguration of the current president, Jacob Zuma. His 91st birthday was marked by the first annual "Mandela Day" in his honour.

He was last seen in public at the final of the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg, a tournament he had helped bring to South Africa for the first time. Early in 2011, he was taken to hospital in a health scare but he recovered and was visited by Michelle Obama and her daughters a few months later.

In January 2012, he was notably missing from the ANC's centenary celebrations due to his frail condition. With other giants of the movement such as Tambo and Walter Sisulu having gone before Mandela, the defining chapter of Africa's oldest liberation movement is now closed.

Nelson Mandela, former South African president, dies aged 95 | World news | The Guardian

Dancing with Israel's elephant

By ABC's Marius Benson Posted Tue 3 Dec 2013

Photo: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said President Obama was wrong to declare Iran's move to be an important first step. (AFP: Ronen Zvulun/Pool)

As news of progress in the Iran nuclear talks was breaking, Marius Benson asked a long-serving Israeli spokesman what seems an obvious question, but one that is almost never asked.

A few years ago I was on holidays in Iran. A great country to travel in, by the way, brimming with attractions both cultural and natural.

We were sitting in the back seat of the car, while in the front sat the driver and with him the guide - both young, Western-oriented Iranians wildly critical of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Driving through desert landscape we noticed that large artillery guns, pointing skywards, were appearing with increasing frequency.

We were approaching the Natanz nuclear facility.

"I'll just take a few photos," I joked.

"No, no, no!" Our guide pivoted rapidly in his seat, waving his arm at me. His admirable sense of humour stopped short of possibly attracting the attention of Iran's security forces.

In the past couple of weeks the world has seen what looks like a definite change in Iran's position on its nuclear program, with Teheran offering a range of concessions in return for an easing of Western sanctions. That change under the new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been welcomed in Washington and more widely, but it has been met with dismissal and scepticism in Israel, as well as in some parts of the Arab world.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said President Obama was wrong to declare Iran's move to be an important first step. It was, he said, a mistake that would take the pressure off the Ayatollahs to abandon the nuclear program.

As the story was breaking I interviewed Mark Regev, Prime Minister Netanyahu's long-serving spokesman, a man who has been putting Israel's position to the world for many years. He re-stated the official position on Iran but then I put to him what seems an obvious question, but one that is almost never asked of Israel.

The elephant ignored in the room whenever Israel talks about Iran's potential to develop nuclear weapons is the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons and has had a nuclear arsenal for decades. Whenever an Israeli official is asked about them, which is almost never, they obfuscate. When I pressed a senior government official on the issue several years ago he finally declared that his government had a policy of "deliberate ambiguity" on the issue.

While Israel's nuclear arsenal is an official secret it is an open secret. Any number of analysts report on its likely extent and the location of nuclear facilities is known. One obvious indication of the existence of the weapons, and Israel's senstivity on the issue, was the jailing of Mordecai Vanunu, the former Israeli nuclear technician, who was imprisoned for nearly two decades, more than half of that in solitary, from the mid-1980s for revealing nuclear weapons secrets (and the secret was not that there were no nuclear weapons).

That Israel is reluctant to talk about the weapons is understandable; what is surprising is that the Israeli government is seldom asked about them. But that is what I did in the interview with Mark Regev - and this is how the interview went when I pointed to the thermo-nuclear elephant in the room:

MB: Mark Regev, can I ask you a question that some put in this context, which is, how can Israel demand that other countries, like Iran, in the Middle East, not have the prospect of any nuclear weapon when Israel itself has such a large nuclear arsenal?

MR: Well first of all there's been no change in the long-standing Israeli position not to be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the region.

MB: But you have nuclear weapons.

MR: No, we say specifically we will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the region. But more specifically I would say in answer to your question it is Iran which says Israel must be destroyed, not the other way around. It's Iran that calls Israel a cancer that must be removed. It's Iran which says Israel must be obliterated off the map.

MB: But back on the question of nuclear weapons, can I just clarify? When you say Israel's position is you won't be the first to introduce them, you have, what, 200-plus nuclear weapons now?

MR: No, no and I would say the following if you would allow me. The problem in the Middle East is not those countries that up till now have not joined the NPT, the Non Proliferation Treaty. The problem is exactly the opposite. It's those countries that have joined the NPT and have cheated and lied. And there's a whole group of them...

MB: Yeah, but...on the nuclear weapons issue, are you saying Israel doesn't have nuclear weapons?

MR: I'm answering your question, you're just not letting me finish the sentences.

MB: No, no, I like to directly get an answer to that - are you saying Israel does not have nuclear weapons?

MR: I'm saying Israel believes the 4 to1 talks about extending the NPT in the Middle East; one has to have an NPT that works. And you have in the Middle East four countries that signed the NPTand have cheated and the NPT has not been worth the paper it has been printed on.

MB: Sure but there's only one country in the Middle East which is generally known to have nuclear weapons. That's Israel.

MR: Israel has said - and I'll say it again - we will not be the first country in the Middle East to introduce nuclear weapons into the region. But if you'll allow me to complete the point. It's not just Gadaffi's Libya that cheated on the NPT, it's Assad’s Syria, it's Saddam Hussein's Iraq and now the Iranians. How can anyone come to Israel and say Israel should join the NPT when you have in the region the failure of this treaty. When you have consistent behaviour by Israel's enemies who've signed the NPT and then it's clear to everyone have broken it, have violated the agreement.

MB: Mark Regev thank you very much

MR: My pleasure sir.

Dancing with Israel's elephant - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Shock four-country poll reveals widening gulf between Britain and EU

 Toby Helm, political editor The Observer, Sunday 1 December 2013

Poll of France, Germany, Poland and the UK shows British hostile to EU, and other nations hostile to Britain

Sir Malcolm Rifkind wants a proper debate on EU membership. Photograph: AP

A powerful cross-party alliance including former Tory foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg is calling for an urgent fightback against spiralling anti-European sentiment as a new four-nation poll suggests the UK could be heading out of the EU.

The landmark survey of more than 5,000 voters in the UK, Germany, France and Poland finds British people far more hostile to the EU and its policies than those in the other EU states, and strikingly low support for British membership among people on the continent.

At the same time, the total numbers of people in Germany and France who support giving Britain a special deal on membership to satisfy British opinion are heavily outnumbered by those who oppose doing so, which suggests that David Cameron may struggle to achieve his hoped-for tailor-made arrangement for the UK.

Testing cultural opinions, the poll finds very few British people choose to describe themselves as European. In other EU nations, enthusiasm for the concept of Europeanism is far higher.

Opinium found that just 26% of British voters regard the EU as, overall, a "good thing" compared with 42% who say it is a "bad thing". In Poland 62% say it is a good thing and 13% bad; in Germany 55% good and 17% bad, and in France 36% good and 34% bad.

When asked about the UK's contribution to the EU, there is little enthusiasm among our partners, and little to suggest they will go out of their way to keep us in. Just 9% of Germans and 15% of French people think the UK is a positive influence on the EU, with more Poles, 33%, taking that view.

Only 16% of Germans and 26% of French people back the idea of a special deal being struck for the UK. Cameron has said he intends to renegotiate the UK terms of entry and hold an in/out referendum if he wins a majority at the next election, offering the new arrangement to the British people in a referendum.

The idea of Britain leaving the EU does not appear to worry our European partners unduly. Just 24% of French voters said a UK exit would have a negative effect, compared with 36% of Germans and 51% of Poles.

Rifkind said: "There needs to be a serious debate about the real benefits of – as well as the real problems about – British membership of the EU. Without it we could do serious damage to Britain's interests."

Clegg said next year's European elections represented a key test and attacked those intent on taking Britain out of the EU. He said: "Everybody knows the EU needs reform. But simply carping from the sidelines and flirting with exit undermines British leadership in the EU, fails to deliver reform and leaves Britain increasingly isolated. The debate about Europe is no longer about who is for or against reform – everybody agrees on that – it is between those who believe we can lead in the EU and those who want to head for the exit.

"That's why next year's elections will be so important: the Liberal Democrats will be the leading party of 'in'. It's time we challenged Ukip and large swaths of the Conservative party who want to betray Britain's vital national interest by pulling us out of the world's largest borderless single market, on which millions of jobs depend."

Labour MP and former Europe minister Peter Hain urged pro-Europeans to stand up and fight: "This is a wake-up call for British pro-Europeans that Britain – especially if the Tories win the next election – is heading for an exit from the EU which would be an utter disaster for British jobs, prosperity and influence in the world. But it is equally a wake-up call for the Brussels Bubble, which is totally out of touch with Europe's citizens."

The poll shows concern about immigration to be almost as high in France as in the UK. In Britain, 64% of voters think the EU's immigration policies have a negative effect; 59% say the same in France.

It also reveals that more UK voters feel an affinity with the US than with their European neighbours, whereas our EU partners tend to choose other EU nations. When asked who they would generally support on occasions when there was a disagreement between the US and EU countries, 37% of UK respondent said they would tend to support America; just 10% would generally side with Europe.

British people are not negative about everything the EU does: 54% think free movement rules are good for tourism against 6% who think the reverse. There is also strong endorsement for free-trade benefits. Nearly half of those polled say the absence of customs controls and tariffs on goods and services is an advantage. Only 10% see free trade as a disadvantage.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage said: "This is a fascinating and comprehensive study into the relative relationships between countries within and about the EU. We, on these islands feel, due to our history as a globally trading nation, much more at home with our cousins in the Anglosphere than we do with our friends on the continent."

Shock four-country poll reveals widening gulf between Britain and EU | Politics | The Observer

Italian Senate expels former PM Silvio Berlusconi from parliament for six years for fraud conviction

 

Video: Silvio Berlusconi expelled from parliament over fraud convictions (ABC News)

Map: Italy

Italian senators have expelled three-time former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from parliament, due to his criminal conviction for tax fraud.

The Senate speaker declared Mr Berlusconi ineligible for a seat in parliament after the house rejected a series of challenges by his supporters.

"The conclusions of the committee on elections have been approved, abolishing the election of senator Silvio Berlusconi," Senate speaker Pietro Grasso said.

In August, Berlusconi was sentenced to four years in prison, commuted to a year under house arrest or in community service, for masterminding an illegal scheme to reduce the tax bill of his media company Mediaset.

Under a law passed with Berlusconi's support last year, politicians convicted of serious criminal offences are ineligible for parliament, but his expulsion had to be confirmed by a full vote in the Senate.

The move also strips Berlusconi of his parliamentary immunity from arrest, leaving him vulnerable to prosecution in a series of other cases, where he is accused of offences including political bribery and paying for sex with a minor.

Berlusconi not 'retiring to some convent'

During the Senate vote Berlusconi addressed a rally of his supporters outside his Rome residence, promising to remain a thorn in the side of the current Prime Minister, Enrico Letta's, coalition government.

"I'm not going to be retiring to some convent," he told supporters. "We're staying here!"

Berlusconi, who has dominated politics in Italy for two decades, has already pulled his party out of Mr Letta's coalition after seven months in government, accusing leftwing opponents of mounting a "coup d'etat" to eliminate him.

The former prime minister, who owns Italy's biggest private broadcaster, has adopted an increasingly euro-sceptical tone, attacking Brussels, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr Letta's euro-friendly government. Such attacks are likely to increase in the run-up to the European parliamentary elections in May.

However he no longer commands enough support in parliament to bring down the Italian government, which easily won a confidence vote on the 2014 budget earlier this week.

Photo: Not going anywhere: A defiant Silvio Berlusconi addresses supporters as the Italian Senate votes to expel him. (AFP)

The battle over Berlusconi has already disrupted any serious  overhaul of the stagnant Italian economy, which is stuck in a  recession that has lasted more than two years, sending youth  unemployment over 40 percent.

The centre-right split may have removed the immediate threat  to Letta, who has won two confidence votes in parliament since  Berlusconi's conviction. But the risk of further judicial  conflict over any of the other criminal trials and  investigations hanging over Berlusconi could inflame his  supporters still further.

Wednesday's rally, which attracted several hundred  supporters, was smaller than many previous protests but  Berlusconi retains a solid core of backing.

"Not only is he being judged but it's a form of  humiliation," said Gianluca d'Avanzo, a 40-year-old office  worker from the southern region of Puglia who came to Rome for  the demonstration. "They are doing this to a man who has done so  much for Italy. We are a country of ungrateful people."

Berlusconi joined Letta's Democratic Party in an unlikely  coalition after an election in February but relations were rocky from the start, worsened by rows about tax policy and tensions  over Berlusconi's tax fraud conviction in August.

AFP/ Reuters

Italian Senate expels former PM Silvio Berlusconi from parliament for six years for fraud conviction - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Egypt asks Turkish ambassador to leave over support for Muslim Brotherhood

Staff and agencies theguardian.com, Saturday 23 November 2013

Military government accuses Turkey of seeking to create instability by backing party of ousted president Mohamed Morsi

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticised the trial of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi. Photograph: Itar-Tass/Barcroft Media

The Egyptian government has asked Turkey's ambassador to leave in protest for its support of the Muslim Brotherhood, the party of the deposed president Mohamed Morsi.

Egypt's military government accused Turkey of supporting organisations bent on spreading instability. Turkey has denounced removal of the elected Morsi as an "unacceptable coup".

Since the coup in July, thousands of the new government's opponents have been detained and hundreds killed by security forces.

Turkey was "attempting to influence public opinion against Egyptian interests, supported meetings of organisations that seek to create instability in the country," said a foreign ministry spokesman, Badr Abdelatty, on Saturday.

Turkey's ruling AK party has a similar background to the Muslim Brotherhood and both have endured a rivalry with their national armies.

Turkey and Egypt recalled their ambassadors in August after Turkey criticised Egypt's new leaders over the overthrow of Morsi. Turkey's ambassador returned weeks later, but Egypt had declined to return its envoy to Ankara.

Saturday's decision comes after the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, renewed his criticism of Egypt's new leaders. He dismissed the trial of Morsi on charges of inciting murder of his opponents while in office, which opened this month, and on Thursday described the situation in Egypt as a "humanitarian drama".

The Egyptian foreign ministry said Turkey "has persisted in its unacceptable and unjustified positions by trying to turn the international community against Egyptian interests and by supporting meetings for groups that seek to create instability in the country and by making statements that can only be described as an offense to the popular will".

Egyptian officials and media have repeatedly accused Muslim Brotherhood leaders of meeting in Turkey to plan protests and other ways to undermine the new government in Cairo.

In response to Egypt's decision, the Turkish president, Abdullah Gul, said: "I hope our relations will again get back to its track."

But a Turkish foreign ministry spokesman said Ankara was in touch with the ambassador "and we will respond with reciprocal steps in coming hours".

Egypt asks Turkish ambassador to leave over support for Muslim Brotherhood | World news | theguardian.com

Syria, Egypt Reveal Erdogan’s Hidden “Neo-Ottoman Agenda”

By Nicola Nasser Global Research, November 20, 2013

The eruption of the Syrian conflict early in 2011 heralded the demise of Turkey ’s officially pronounced strategy of “Zero Problems with Neighbors,” but more importantly, it revealed a “hidden agenda” in Turkish foreign policy under the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

What Sreeram Chaulia, the Dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs in India ’s Sonipat, described as a “creeping hidden agenda” (http://rt.com on Sept. 15, 2013) is covered up ideologically as “Islamist.”

But in a more in-depth insight it is unfolding as neo-Ottomanism that is pragmatically using “Islamization,” both of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s legacy internally and Turkey ’s foreign policy regionally, as a tool to revive the Ottoman Empire that once was.

Invoking his country’s former imperial grandeur, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davotoglu had written: “As in the sixteenth century … we will once again make the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, together with Turkey , the center of world politics in the future. That is the goal of Turkish foreign policy and we will achieve it.” (Emphasis added)

Quoted by Hillel Fradkin and Lewis Libby, writing in last March/April edition of www.worldaffairsjournal.org, the goal of Erdogan’s AKP ruling party for 2023, as proclaimed by its recent Fourth General Congress, is: “A great nation, a great power.” Erdogan urged the youth of Turkey to look not only to 2023, but to 2071 as well when Turkey “will reach the level of our Ottoman and Seljuk ancestors by the year 2071” as he said in December last year.

“2071 will mark one thousand years since the Battle of Manzikert,” when the Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantine Empire and heralded the advent of the Ottoman one, according to Fradkin and Libby.

Some six months ago, Davotoglu felt so confident and optimistic to assess that “it was now finally possible to revise the order imposed” by the British – French Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 to divide the Arab legacy of the Ottoman Empire between them.

Davotoglu knows very well that Pan-Arabs have been ever since struggling unsuccessfully so far to unite as a nation and discard the legacy of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, but not to recur to the Ottoman status quo ante, but he knows as well that Islamist political movements like the Muslim Brotherhood International (MBI) and the Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Party of Liberation) were originally founded in Egypt and Palestine respectively in response to the collapse of the Ottoman Islamic caliphate.

However, Erdogan’s Islamist credentials cannot be excluded as simply a sham; his background, his practices in office since 2002 as well as his regional policies since the eruption of the Syrian conflict less than three years ago all reveal that he does believe in his version of Islam per se as the right tool to pursue his Ottoman not so-“hidden agenda.”

Erdogan obviously is seeking to recruit Muslims as merely “soldiers” who will fight not for Islam per se, but for his neo-Ottomanism ambitions. Early enough in December 1997, he was given a 10-month prison sentence for voicing a poem that read: “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers;” the poem was considered a violation of Kemalism by the secular judiciary.

Deceiving ‘Window of Opportunity ’

However, Erdogan’s Machiavellianism finds no contradiction between his Islamist outreach and his promotion of the “Turkish model,” which sells what is termed as the “moderate” Sunni Islam within the context of Ataturk’s secular and liberal state as both an alternative to the conservative tribal-religious states in the Arabian Peninsula and to the sectarian rival of the conservative Shiite theocracy in Iran.

He perceived in the latest US withdrawal of focus from the Middle East towards the Pacific Ocean a resulting regional power vacuum providing him with an historic window of opportunity to fill the perceived vacuum.

“Weakening of Europe and the US’ waning influence in the Middle East” were seen by the leadership of Erdogan’s ruling party “as a new chance to establish Turkey as an influential player in the region,” Günter Seufert wrote in the German Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) on last October 14.

The US and Israel , in earnest to recruit Turkey against Iran , nurtured Erdogan’s illusion of regional leadership. He deluded himself with the unrealistic belief that Turkey could stand up to and sidestep the rising stars of the emerging Russian international polar, the emerging Iranian regional polar and the traditional regional players of Egypt and Saudi Arabia , let alone Iraq and Syria should they survive their current internal strife.

For sure, his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood International (MBI) and his thinly veiled Machiavellian logistical support of al-Qaeda – linked terrorist organizations are not and will not be a counter balance.

He first focused his Arab outreach on promoting the “Turkish model,” especially during the early months of the so-called “Arab Spring,” as the example he hoped will be followed by the revolting masses, which would have positioned him in the place of the regional mentor and leader.

But while the eruption of the Syrian conflict compelled him to reveal his Islamist “hidden agenda” and his alliance with the MBI, the removal of MBI last July from power in Egypt with all its geopolitical weight, supported by the other regional Arab heavy weight of Saudi Arabia, took him off guard and dispelled his ambitions for regional leadership, but more importantly revealed more his neo-Ottoman “hidden agenda” and pushed him to drop all the secular and liberal pretensions of his “Turkish model” rhetoric.

‘Arab Idol’ No More

Erdogan and his foreign policy engineer Davotoglu tried as well to exploit the Arab and Muslim adoption of the Palestine Question as the central item on their foreign policy agendas.

Since Erdogan’s encounter with the Israeli President Shimon Peres at the Economic Summit in Davos in January 2009, the Israeli attack on the Turkish humanitarian aid boat to Gaza, Mavi Marmara, the next year and Turkey’s courting of the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas,” the de facto rulers of the Israeli besieged Palestinian Gaza Strip, at the same time Gaza was targeted by the Israeli Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009 then targeted again in the Israeli Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, Turkey’s premier became the Arab idol who was invited to attend Arab Leage summit and ministerial meetings.

However, in interviews with ResearchTurkey, CNN Turk and other media outlets, Abdullatif Sener, a founder of Erdogan’s AKP party who served as deputy prime minister and minister of finance in successive AKP governments for about seven years before he broke out with Erdogan in 2008, highlighted Erdogan’s Machiavellianism and questioned the sincerity and credibility of his Islamic, Palestinian and Arab public posturing.

“Erdogan acts without considering religion even at some basic issues but he hands down sharp religious messages … I consider the AK Party not as an Islamic party but as a party which collect votes by using Islamic discourses,” Sener said, adding that, “the role in Middle East was assigned to him” and “the strongest logistic support” to Islamists who have “been carrying out terrorist activities” in Syria “is provided by Turkey” of Erdogan.

In an interview with CNN Turk, Sener dropped a bombshell when he pointed out that the AKP’s spat with Israel was “controlled.” During the diplomatic boycott of Israel many tenders were granted to Israeli companies and Turkey has agreed to grant partner status to Israel in NATO: “If the concern of the AKP is to confront Israel then why do they serve to the benefit of Israel ?” In another interview he said that the NATO radar systems installed in Malatya are there to protect Israel against Iran .

Sener argued that the biggest winner of the collapse of the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad would be Israel because it will weaken Lebanon ’s Hizbullah and Iran , yet Erdogan’s Turkey is the most ardent supporter of a regime change in Syria , he said.

Erdogan’s Syrian policy was the death knell to his strategy of “Zero Problems with Neighbors;” the bloody terrorist swamp of the Syrian conflict has drowned it in its quicksand.

Liz Sly’s story in the Washington Post on this November 17 highlighted how his Syrian policies “have gone awry” and counterproductive by “putting al-Qaeda on NATO’s (Turkish) borders for the first time.”

With his MBI alliance, he alienated Egypt , Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in addition to the other Arab heavy weights of Syria , Iraq and Algeria and was left with “zero friends” in the region.

According to Günter Seufert, Turkey ’s overall foreign policy, not only with regards to Syria , “has hit the brick wall” because the leadership of Erdogan’s ruling party “has viewed global political shifts through an ideologically (i.e. Islamist) tinted lens.”

Backpedaling too late

Now it seems Erdogan’s “ Turkey is already carefully backpedaling” on its foreign policy,” said Seufert. It “wants to reconnect” with Iran and “ Washington ’s request to end support for radical groups in Syria did not fall on deaf Turkish ears.”

“Reconnecting” with Iran and its Iraqi ruling sectarian brethren will alienate further the Saudis who could not tolerate similar reconnection by their historical and strategic US ally and who were already furious over Erdogan’s alliance with the Qatari financed and US sponsored Muslim Brotherhood and did not hesitate to publicly risk a rift with their US ally over the removal of the MBI from power in Egypt five months ago.

Within this context came Davotoglu’s recent visit to Baghdad , which “highlighted the need for great cooperation between Turkey and Iraq against the Sunni-Shiite conflict,” according to www.turkishweekly.net on this November 13. Moreover, he “personally” wanted “to spend the month of Muharram every year in (the Iraqi Shiite holy places of) Karbala and Najaf with our (Shiite) brothers there.”

Within the same “backpedaling” context came Erdogan’s playing the host last week to the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, not in Ankara , but in Diyarbakir , which Turkish Kurds cherish as their capital in the same way Iraqi Kurds cherish Kirkuk .

However, on the same day of Barzani’s visit Erdogan ruled out the possibility of granting Turkish Kurds their universal right of self-determination when he announced “Islamic brotherhood” as the solution for the Kurdish ethnic conflict in Turkey , while his deputy, Bulent Arinc, announced that “a general amnesty” for Kurdish detainees “is not on today’s agenda.” Three days earlier, on this November 15, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said, “Turkey cannot permit (the) fait accompli” of declaring a Kurdish provisional self-rule along its southern borders in Syria which his prime minister’s counterproductive policies created together with an al-Qaeda-dominated northeastern strip of Syrian land.

Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanism charged by his Islamist sectarian ideology as a tool has backfired to alienate both Sunni and Shiite regional environment, the Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian, Emirati, Saudi and Lebanese Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Israelis and Iranians as well as Turkish and regional liberals and secularists. His foreign policy is in shambles with a heavy economic price as shown by the recent 13.2% devaluation of the Turkish lira against the US dollar.

“Backpedaling” might be too late to get Erdogan and his party through the upcoming local elections next March and the presidential elections which will follow in August next year.

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com

Egypt: Fears Replace Christians' High Expectations

MAR GIRGIS MONASTERY, Egypt November 16, 2013 (AP)

By HAMZA HENDAWI Associated Press

There is no sign of the hundreds of thousands of Christian pilgrims who flock here every November. No tattoo artists inscribing crosses on the wrists of babies or images of saints on the arms of young men. No stalls selling crosses, icons or pillows embroidered with portraits of patriarchs.

Kidnappers are targeting Christians in a southern province in Egypt.

The only noise disturbing the quiet of the Monastery of Mar Girgis these days is the call for prayers blaring from the nearby mosque.

The week-long festival of Mar Girgis, or St. George, has been held here annually for more than a century, attracting as many as 2 million pilgrims from across Egypt to one of the biggest and most exuberant events of the year for Orthodox Coptic Christians.

This year, however, the government canceled the festival, fearing it would be a target for Islamic militants who have stepped up attacks since the July 3 ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

The cancellation — along with those of two similar festivals the past few months — has fed Christians' fears that they are not benefiting as they had hoped from publicly supporting the military's removal of Morsi. Their worst fear, some say, is the discrimination against them will endure.

Christian activists have been pushing for solid gains after the removal of Islamists from power. They want the revised constitution to clearly state that all Egyptians are equal and to remove draconian restrictions placed on the construction and restoration of churches. They also want an end to the illegal but routine practice of denying Christians top positions in the military, security services, academia and the judiciary. Many seek a set quota for Christians in parliament to ensure a proportionate representation for the community.

So far, however, they appear to have gotten no stronger language in the constitution protecting their rights, as the 50-member panel drawing up amendments to the mainly Islamist-drafted charter passed under Morsi begins to put together a final draft.

"The Copts have paid a high price since Jan. 25 and until now," said Maher Shoukri, a Christian activist, referring to the start of the 2011 uprising that ousted longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

"The Copts must reap the fruits of the revolution and feel the change," said Shoukri, from the Christian-led rights group, the Association of Maspero Youth.

Egypt's Christian minority, about 10 percent of the population of some 90 million, long has complained of discrimination.

The Coptic Orthodox Church, to which most of them belong, has done away with its customary caution about involvement in politics when Pope Tawadros II publicly supported Morsi's ouster. On July 3, the pope stood with Egypt's top Muslim cleric behind military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi when he announced Morsi's ouster.

Since then, Christians have been hit by a backlash from Islamists. Mobs torched, looted or destroyed at least 40 churches across Egypt. Tawadros has been vilified in graffiti painted over church walls and Christian homes and businesses.

Kidnapping Christians for ransom has seen a dramatic rise in areas south of Cairo, particularly Minya, home to the highest percentage of Christians in any of the nation's 27 provinces. Activists report a rise in Christians leaving the country, and even some churches have advertisements offering help in getting visas abroad.

Now some Christians feel their church was used to give the coup the appearance of inclusiveness. They complain that the new order in Egypt has failed in its first test — protecting Christians — underscored by the cancellation of the Mar Girgis festival.

"Christians are deluding themselves into believing that their safety lies with the military," said Nirvana Mamdouh, a Christian activist.

Another activist, Ebram Louis, noted how authorities quickly repaired Cairo's Rabaah al-Adawiya mosque, which was damaged when security forces violently broke up a pro-Morsi sit-in there in mid-August, killing hundreds of his supporters. In contrast, none of the churches damaged in attacks the same month have been repaired despite promises by the military, he said.

Safwat el-Bayadi, head of the Anglican church in Egypt and one of three Christians on the panel amending the constitution, said, "The only gains we are looking for is equality in the rights and duties for all."

"We do not accept the division of rights according to religious affiliation even if that works for our benefit," he told The Associated Press.

A senior church leader known to be close to Tawadros aired his fears over the future of Christians in post-Morsi Egypt in an interview with the AP. The cleric spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the internal and confidential discussions of the church's leadership.

He complained that nothing has been done to repair damaged churches or to stem rising kidnappings.

"It is time that the issues of the Christians are not diluted or cast aside," he said, adding that the constitution must enshrine a "civil and democratic state and a clear and straight line separating state from religion."

Church leaders say they observed the cancellation of the festival at Mar Girgis to help the military-backed government to restore security. But it fuels Christians' bitter perception that they are pushed to make concessions. For example, Tawadros canceled celebrations marking his enthronement a year ago. Churches across much of the country have canceled social activities for security reasons.

Father Arsenious, head of the Mar Girgis Monastery, said security officials told the church that even if they deployed a large number of police they could not guarantee the festival's safety. "It's better to cancel it this year, rather than allow a tragedy to take place," he said.

The annual pilgrimage to the walled monastery in the deserts of southern Egypt overlooking the Nile, 400 miles (660 kilometers) south of Cairo, is a festival of faith, a time to pay homage to the 3rd century saint who is one of their most revered figures. It is also an opportunity for Christians to celebrate their identity in an atmosphere free from discrimination.

"It is an occasion where Christians feel free and behave without inhibitions," the 64-year-old Arsenious said. "It is like they are exercising all their rituals and chanting their slogans without a worry about the consequences."

During last year's festival, men and women flaunted the cross tattoos on the inside of their wrists, which they normally keep discreet. Men showed off more elaborate tattoos of favorite saints on their arms. Tens of thousands lived in a tent city outside the monastery's walls as hymns blared out of speakers and special envoys from the pope headed ceremonies and Mass.

The monastery put up a notice saying it would be closed to visits during the time of the festival — which was to have begun on Monday — and word spread through churches and social media. Still, a handful of pilgrims showed up at the monastery's imposing iron gates demanding to come in to pray.

Despite the current atmosphere, Arsenious says he's optimistic things will change. He said he dreams of a return to the days of the 1970s, before the rise of Muslim conservatism and Islamic militancy.

"It is unrealistic to expect that people, like in the West, would never ask about one's religion," he said. "But I want to at least comfortably spend a whole day with a Muslim friend without fear that he could turn against me at any moment."

Egypt: Fears Replace Christians' High Expectations - ABC News

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood offers negotiations to end Morsi crisis

 

An Islamist coalition led by the Muslim Brotherhood has offered negotiations to end the deadly tumult since Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi was overthrown, without explicitly insisting on his reinstatement.

Photo: Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood shout slogans against the military and interior ministry at El-Thadiya presidential palace in Cairo. (Reuters: Amr Abdallah Dalsh)

Related Story: Ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi says he has been kidnapped

Related Story: Egypt to hold fresh elections in February or March

Related Story: Ousted Egyptian president defiant on opening day of trial

The coalition "calls on all revolutionary forces and political parties and patriotic figures to enter a deep dialogue on exiting the current crisis," it said in a statement on Saturday.

The proposal is the Islamists' most flexible yet made in public, and comes "with no conditions", a coalition official said.

The coalition, which has organised weekly protests despite a harsh police crackdown, insisted in its statement on keeping up "peaceful opposition", but said it wanted a "consensus for the public good of the country".

The proposal comes after more than 1,000 people, mostly Morsi supporters, have been killed in clashes with police and thousands more have been arrested.

Much of the Brotherhood's leadership has been put on trial, including Morsi himself.

"We have no conditions, and neither should they," said Imam Youssef, a leader of the Asala party, which is part of the Islamist coalition.

We want a democratic solution, and it does not necessarily mean we have to be in power

Leader of the Asala party, Imam Youssef

But he added that the talks must lead to a "democratic" solution, and the coalition wanted them to start within two weeks.

The coalition was prepared to discuss "all solutions that lead to stability".

The Islamists were prepared to respect the demands of the millions of protesters who took to the streets calling for Morsi's ouster, Mr Youssef said.

"We want a democratic solution, and it does not necessarily mean we have to be in power," he added.

Asked if the coalition would insist on Morsi's return to office, he replied: "We don't want to get ahead of ourselves."

Calls to release Islamists prisoners, reopen broadcasters

The Islamists proposed conditions for the dialogue, including the release of Islamist prisoners and the reopening of Islamist broadcasters shut down after Morsi's July 3 overthrow by the military.

They also insisted that the military, which has formally handed power to an interim civilian government, must "return to the barracks".

Unlike previous offers, which all hinged on Morsi's return to power before negotiations, the Islamists were pointedly vague on their end goals.

They demanded "a return to constitutional legitimacy and the democratic process with the participation of all political groups, without one group monopolising the process or excluding any group".

The vague formulation allows the Islamists room to manoeuvre.

Morsi's reinstatement is often included in what they describe as "legitimacy", in addition to that of the suspended constitution and senate.

But privately Brotherhood officials have said they might agree to a "constitutional" exit for the president, such as his nominal resignation.

The interim government has insisted that the Islamists unconditionally accept its authority and schedule for elections.

It says those who have not taken part in violence would be free to stand in the polls.

But a court has banned the Brotherhood, and on Saturday a panel of judges also recommended that its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) be dissolved.

Such recommendations are non-binding but often adopted in the final verdict.

Morsi himself insisted at the start of his trial on November 4 that he was still Egypt's legitimate president and could only be removed by a parliamentary vote.

Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood veteran who headed the FJP before his election, appeared in court to answer charges of involvement in the killings of opposition protesters.

The interim government will organise parliamentary elections in February or March, followed by presidential elections in the summer.

The Islamist-dominated parliament had already been suspended by a court before Morsi's election in June 2012, and the senate was dissolved on his overthrow.

AFP

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood offers negotiations to end Morsi crisis - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Italy's Silvio Berlusconi hits out at defectors after party split

 

Italy's Silvio Berlusconi has hit out at former loyalists in his centre-right party who have set up a "renewal" faction led by the media tycoon's ex-protege Angelino Alfano.

 Photo: Silvio Berlusconi says the split in his party was created by different personalities that created a "poisonous atmosphere". (AFP Photo: Tiziana Fabi)

Related Story: Berlusconi's legal woes: the trials and tribulations of the former Italian PM

Related Story: Silvio Berlusconi to stand trial for allegedly bribing a senator

Related Story: Silvio Berlusconi banned from Italian politics for two years

The billionaire former prime minister blamed the split, without ever naming Mr Alfano, on "differences not of policy or values but between personalities who have created a poisonous atmosphere".

Mr Alfano, who announced the "divorce" after late-night talks on Friday, stayed away along with some 50 other defectors from a meeting on Saturday of Mr Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party.

During a rambling speech lasting an hour and a half, the scandal-tainted Mr Berlusconi, 77, drew frequent applause.

Admitting to having had a sleepless night, once appearing on the verge of fainting before recovering himself, the media and construction baron expressed his "sadness" at the break-up.

In a conciliatory gesture, Mr Berlusconi added however that Mr Alfano's grouping would be a "necessary member" of the 200-strong centre-right voting bloc.

The PDL meeting was meant to be a happy event at which the party would be rebaptised Forza Italia (Go Italy), the sporty name Mr Berlusconi used when he first launched the party in 1994.

Mr Alfano, whose faction is to be called the New Centre Right, said his decision had been "very bitter, painful but fair".

The 43-year-old Sicilian lawyer told a news conference: "It was unthinkable for us to throw the country into a situation that would have further aggravated things for Italians."

He said on Friday he would not be part of the reborn Forza Italia because "these past few weeks have shown to what extent extreme forces have prevailed within our movement", referring to a belief by his supporters that Mr Berlusconi was pandering to hardliners.

Mr Berlusconi's party has been in turmoil since September when he tried to bring down Italy's uneasy left-right coalition government by withdrawing his ministers, but was forced into a humiliating climb-down when they refused to heed his orders.

The five ministers - all Alfano supporters - will stay on as members of the rump PDL, meaning that Forza Italia will not be represented in the government.

The daily La Stampa described the break-up as the "first post-Berlusconi act" with an immediate consequence: "The government is saved, with a new, smaller but also more united (parliamentary) majority."

Mr Berlusconi will face another humiliation on November 27, when the Senate votes whether to eject him from parliament's upper chamber under a law banning convicted criminals from the body.

Italy's supreme court on August 1 turned down Mr Berlusconi's final appeal in a tax fraud case, handing him his first-ever definitive conviction in a long history of legal woes.

AFP

Italy's Silvio Berlusconi hits out at defectors after party split - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Mohamed Morsi accuses army chief of treason

Patrick Kingsley in Cairo theguardian.com, Thursday 14 November 2013

Former Egyptian president's speech damns man who toppled him, General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, marking escalation in rhetoric

Link to video: Mohamed Morsi accuses Egypt's army of coup

Egypt's deposed president has accused the army chief who overthrew him of treason, in a speech made on his behalf by his legal team on Wednesday. In only his second public statement since being arrested and held incommunicado this July, Mohamed Morsi also repeated the accusation that his overthrow constituted a military coup.

"This is a crime and treason," read lawyer Mohamed al-Damaty on Morsi's behalf. "A crime because it has all the manifestations of a coup, and treason because it betrayed the oath that the defence minister swore to the armed forces and to the Egyptian people when he took his position."

The statement marked an escalation in rhetoric from his outbursts on the first day of his chaotic trial last Monday. While appearing in court on charges of incitement to murder, Morsi had stopped short of laying the blame for his overthrow on General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the army chief and defence minister who toppled Morsi following days of mass protests calling for military intervention.

The speech appeared to be an attempt to rally his Islamist support base, with little to mollify the millions who marched for his removal in July. It also appeared to ignore the realities of Egypt's new status quo, which sees Morsi's supporters firmly on the back foot against a resurgent security state. Thousands of his followers have been arrested since July, and around 1,000 killed at various protests since his overthrow.

"This coup will fall by the strength of the Egyptian people and their fight for rights and freedom," Morsi's statement said. It added: "What has happened won't convince me to give up what I promised you before my election – to uphold the interests of the people above all else."

Morsi's lawyers said the former president would continue to reject the authority of the court. He caused chaos at his trial last week by refusing to recognise the court or let his legal team formally represent him, and by frequently speaking out of turn. After meeting him in jail in Alexandria for the first time since he was arrested, his defence team said this strategy would continue.

Morsi later claimed that Egypt – rocked by protests and an insurgency in the Sinai peninsula since his removal – would not see stability unless he was reinstated. "Egypt won't heal unless we end all the aspects of this coup and bring to justice all those who shed blood in all the corners of the nation," Damaty said on his behalf.

Morsi's statement also seemed to suggest that he had been arrested a day before Sisi officially announced his removal. Sisi told Egyptians of Morsi's overthrow in a televised speech on the evening of 3 July. But Morsi's statement on Wednesday said he was arrested on 2 July, an odd claim given that he himself made a televised speech to the nation that night. One of Morsi's senior aides also met the Guardian on the morning of 3 July near where Morsi was staying, and said that even at that late stage the president's fate was not yet sealed.

Morsi is currently on trial for inciting the murder of protesters outside Cairo's presidential palace last December. His allies say the charges are political. But lawyers for the victims say that whatever the circumstances of his arrest, the accusations are valid and were laid long before any suggestion that Morsi would be overthrown.

Mohamed Morsi accuses army chief of treason | World news | theguardian.com

Sorry, Venezuela haters: this economy is not the Greece of Latin America

 

Mark Weisbrot The Guardian, Friday 8 November 2013

Predicting a Venezuelan apocalypse won't make it happen: in this oil-rich country the only thing imploding is poverty

Women queue to buy toilet paper at a supermarket in Caracas as a result of the shortage of basic goods. Photograph: Reuters/Jorge Silva

For more than a decade people opposed to the government of Venezuela have argued that its economy would implode. Like communists in the 1930s rooting for the final crisis of capitalism, they saw economic collapse just around the corner. How frustrating it has been for them to witness only two recessions: one directly caused by the opposition's oil strike (December 2002-May 2003) and one brought on by the world recession (2009 and the first half of 2010). However, the government got control of the national oil company in 2003, and the whole decade's economic performance turned out quite well, with average annual growth of real income per person of 2.7% and poverty reduced by over half, and large gains for the majority in employment, access to health care, pensions and education.

Now Venezuela is facing economic problems that are warming the cockles of the haters' hearts. We see the bad news every day: consumer prices up 49% over the last year; a black market where the dollar fetches seven times the official rate; shortages of consumer goods from milk to toilet paper; the economy slowing; central bank reserves falling. Will those who cried wolf for so long finally see their dreams come true?

Not likely. In the opposition's analysis Venezuela is caught in an inflation-devaluation spiral, where rising prices domestically undermine confidence in the economy and currency, causing capital flight and driving up the black market price of the dollar. This adds to inflation, as does – in their theory – money creation by the government. And its price controls, nationalisations and other interventions have caused more structural problems. Hyperinflation, rising foreign debt and a balance-of-payments crisis will mark the end of this economic experiment.

But how can a government with more than $90bn in oil revenue end up with a balance-of-payments crisis? Well, the answer is: it can't, and won't. In 2012 Venezuela had $93.6bn in oil revenues, and total imports in the economy were $59.3bn. The current account was in surplus to the tune of $11bn, or 2.9% of GDP. Interest payments on the public foreign debt, the most important measure of public indebtedness, were just $3.7bn. This government is not going to run out of dollars. The Bank of America's analysis of Venezuela last month recognised this, and decided as a result that Venezuelan government bonds were a good buy.

The central bank currently holds $21.7bn in reserves, and opposition economists estimate that there is another $15bn held by other government agencies, for a total of $36.7bn. Normally, reserves that can cover three months of imports are considered sufficient; Venezuela has enough to cover at least eight months, and possibly more. And it has the capacity to borrow more internationally.

One problem is that most of the central bank's reserves are in gold. But gold can be sold, even if it is much less liquid than assets such as US treasury securities. It seems far-fetched that the government would suffer through a balance-of-payments crisis rather than sell its gold.

Hyperinflation is also a very remote possibility. For the first two years of the economic recovery that began in June 2010, inflation was falling even as economic growth accelerated to 5.7% for 2012. In the first quarter of 2012, it reached a monthly low of just 2.9%. This shows that the Venezuelan economy – despite its problems – is very capable of providing healthy growth even while bringing down inflation.

What really drove inflation up, beginning a year ago, was a cut in the supply of dollars to the foreign exchange market. These were reduced by half in October of 2012 and practically eliminated in February. This meant more importers had to purchase increasingly expensive dollars on the black market. This is where the burst of inflation came from.

Inflation peaked at a monthly rate of 6.2% in May, then fell steadily to 3% in August as the government began to provide more dollars to the market. It jumped to 4.4% monthly in September, but the government has since increased its auctions of dollars and announced a planned increase of food and other imports, which is likely to put some downward pressure on prices.

Of course Venezuela is facing serious economic problems. But they are not the kind suffered by Greece or Spain, trapped in an arrangement in which macroeconomic policy is determined by people who have objectives that conflict with the country's economic recovery. Venezuela has sufficient reserves and foreign exchange earnings to do whatever it wants, including driving down the black market value of the dollar and eliminating most shortages. These are problems that can be resolved relatively quickly with policy changes. Venezuela – like most economies in the world – also has long-term structural problems such as overdependence on oil, inadequate infrastructure, and limited administrative capacity. But these are not the cause of its current predicament.

Meanwhile, the poverty rate dropped by 20% in Venezuela last year – almost certainly the largest decline in poverty in the Americas for 2012, and one of the largest – if not the largest – in the world. The numbers are available on the website of the World Bank, but almost no journalists have made the arduous journey through cyberspace to find and report them. Ask them why they missed it.

Sorry, Venezuela haters: this economy is not the Greece of Latin America | Mark Weisbrot | Comment is free | The Guardian

Conservative party deletes archive of speeches from internet (should they be allowed to do that?)

Randeep Ramesh and Alex Hern The Guardian, Thursday 14 November 2013

Decade's worth of records is erased, including PM's speech praising internet for making more information available

A speech in which David Cameron said the internet would help people hold politicians to account was among those deleted. Photograph: Barcroft Media

The Conservatives have removed a decade of speeches from their website and from the main internet library – including one in which David Cameron claimed that being able to search the web would democratise politics by making "more information available to more people".

The party has removed the archive from its public website, erasing records of speeches and press releases from 2000 until May 2010. The effect will be to remove any speeches and articles during the Tories' modernisation period, including its commitment to spend the same as a Labour government.

The Labour MP Sheila Gilmore accused the party of a cynical stunt, adding: "It will take more than David Cameron pressing delete to make people forget about his broken promises and failure to stand up for anyone beyond a privileged few."

In a remarkable step the party has also blocked access to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, a US-based library that captures webpages for future generations, using a software robot that directs search engines not to access the pages.

The Tory plan to conceal the shifting strands of policy by previous leaders may not work. The British Library points out it has been archiving the party's website since 2004. Under a change in the copyright law, the library also downloaded 4.8m domains earlier this year – in effect, anything on the web with a .co.uk address – and says although the Conservative pages use a .com suffix they will be added to the store "as it is firmly within scope of the material we have a duty to archive". But the British Library archive will only be accessible from terminals in its building, raising questions over the Tory commitment to transparency.

Computer Weekly, which broke the story, pointed out that among the speeches removed were several where senior party members promised, if elected, to use the internet to make politicians accountable.

"You have begun the process of democratising the world's information," Cameron told the Google Zeitgeist Europe conference in 2006. "By making more information available to more people, you are giving them more power." That speech has been removed from the Tory party website and the archive. But users can find it on the Guardian website.

"It's clear to me that political leaders will have to learn to let go," Cameron told Google a year later, in another removed speech. "Let go of the information that we have guarded so jealously."

"We need to harness the internet to help us become more accountable, more transparent and more accessible – and so bridge the gap between government and governed," said George Osborne in 2007, in a third removed speech.

Computer Weekly's Mark Ballard, who broke the story, told the Guardian that it "shows how fragile the historic record is on the internet".

A Conservative spokesman said the changes to the website would improve the experience for visitors. "We're making sure our website keeps the Conservative party at the forefront of political campaigning," he said. "These changes allow people to quickly and easily access the most important information we provide – how we are clearing up Labour's economic mess, taking the difficult decisions and standing up for hardworking people."

The Wayback Archive was used by the Guardian last year when it began to investigate the software company set up by the Tory party chair Grant Shapps, who used the name Michael Green in the business. Traces of his family firm, which marketed software that the police said if sold could constitute the offence of fraud, disappeared from the archive a few weeks after the newspaper printed stories about Shapps. A slew of websites disappeared, leaving no trace of Michael Green's offer to make $20,000 (£12,500) in 20 days "or your money back" or details of phone lines offering expert internet marketing advice for $297 an hour.

Using a file named "robots.txt", website owners can tell computers that automatically scan the internet (called "crawlers") which parts of their sites to access. At the same time as the speeches were removed from the Tory party site, the Conservatives' robots.txt file was updated to prevent crawlers visiting the pages the speeches had been stored on.

The Internet Archive, which maintains the world's largest archive of old and defunct webpages, deletes its records of any site blocked by robots.txt.

Google's copy of some of the removed pages is still available, allowing readers to verify that where the website once displayed, for example, Cameron's speech on the "big society" in March 2010, it now just shows a 404 "page not found" error.

Conservative party deletes archive of speeches from internet | Politics | The Guardian