Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Immigration: Romanian or Bulgarian? You won't like it here

Rajeev Syal The Guardian, Sunday 27 January 2013 22.10 GMT

Ministers consider launching negative ad campaign in two countries to persuade potential immigrants to stay away from UK

Job centre

Ministers consider plan to discourage immigration that would focus on the downsides of British life – such as rain and a lack of jobs. Photograph: Rex Features

Please don't come to Britain – it rains and the jobs are scarce and low-paid. Ministers are considering launching a negative advertising campaign in Bulgaria and Romania to persuade potential immigrants to stay away from the UK.

The plan, which would focus on the downsides of British life, is one of a range of potential measures to stem immigration to Britain next year when curbs imposed on both country's citizens living and working in the UK will expire.

A report over the weekend quoted one minister saying that such a negative advert would "correct the impression that the streets here are paved with gold".

There was no word on how any advert might look or whether it would use the strategy of making Britain look as horrible as possible or try to encourage would-be migrants to wake up to the joys of their own countries whether Romania's Carpathian mountains or Bulgaria's Black Sea resorts. With governments around the world spending millions on hiring London-based consultants to undertake "reputation laundering" there would be a peculiar irony if Britain chose to trash its own image perhaps by highlighting winter flooding of homes or the carnage of a Saturday night A&E ward.

There are precedents. In 2007, Eurostar ran adverts in Belgium for its trains to London depicting a tattooed skinhead urinating into a china teacup. It remains unknown if any discussions have taken place over personalities who could carry off a similar exercise in anti-nation branding.

On Sunday a Downing Street source said: "It is true that options are being looked at but we are not commenting on the specific things mentioned ... as obviously it is an ongoing process and we will bring forward any proposals in due course."

The source also said that the government did not think the rule changes would necessarily bring a big influx of people, since Romanians have closer links to Germany and Italy rather than Britain.

Other reported options include making it tougher for EU migrants to access public services. Another is to deport those who move to Britain but do not find work within three months.

The Home Office has not produced an official estimate of how many of the 29 million Romanian and Bulgarian citizens will take advantage of their new freedoms when controls are lifted.

Campaign groups such as MigrationWatch have predicted that 250,000 will come from both countries over the next five years, although these figures are disputed. One Tory MP, Philip Hollobone, has claimed that Romanian and Bulgarian communities will treble to 425,000 within two years.

These figures have been questioned by experts, because they are based upon the numbers of Poles and Czechs who moved to Britain in in 2004. Then, only three countries opened their borders. This time, all of the 25 EU states will lift Labour market restrictions.

Buoyed by Cameron's offer of an in-out referendum, a growing number of Tory MPs now believe the UK should block the lifting of restrictions even if it were to prompt a row with the European commission.

The idea, however tentative, appears to clash with the billions of pounds Britain spent on the Olympics, partly to drive up the country's reputation. It also emerged as the Home Office launched a guide to Britishness for foreigners who would be citizens which opens with the words: "Britain is a fantastic place to live: a modern thriving society".

Immigration: Romanian or Bulgarian? You won't like it here | UK news | The Guardian

Monday, January 28, 2013

Foreign Office: Britons should leave Benghazi immediately

Ian Black, Middle East editor and Chris Stephen in Tripoli

The Guardian, Friday 25 January 2013

Statement strongly urges departure from Libyan city in response to a 'specific and imminent threat to westerners'

Hillary Clinton

The Foreign Office has urged British nationals to leave Benghazi immediately. Hillary Clinton recently said that the Libyans had the 'willingness but not [the] capacity' to provide security for diplomats in the city. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

British nationals have been urged by the Foreign Office to leave the Libyan city of Benghazi immediately in response to a "specific and imminent threat to westerners". Germany's government issued a similar warning to its citizens on Thursday.

No details were given by the UK of the nature of the threat, likely to have been issued in response to intelligence information about the security situation. But security sources in Libya said an attack was expected on an oil or gas facility.

The warnings follow last week's hostage crisis in Algeria as well as the French intervention in Mali and underlines continuing international concern about the ability of the government in Tripoli to maintain security in the aftermath of the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, which began in Benghazi nearly two years ago.

Tripoli was angered by the announcement. "Nothing justifies this reaction," protested Libya's deputy interior minister, Abdullah Massoud, who expressed "astonishment" at the UK statement.

But in a possible sign of impending trouble, the border crossing to Egypt was closed to all but Egyptians two days ago in an apparent attempt to keep westerners out of eastern Libya. US drones have been deployed amid speculation about a possible attack by jihadists or possible action against them.

Benghazi was the scene last September of an assault on the US consulate in which the US ambassador to Libya was killed along with three other Americans. Last summer the British ambassador escaped unharmed when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at his car.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, told a congressional hearing on Wednesday that the Libyans had the "willingness but not [the] capacity" to provide security for diplomats in Benghazi. The attack was blamed on a jihadi-type group called Ansar al-Sharia, which is thought to have links across the Maghreb region.

David Cameron's national security adviser, Kim Darroch, was in Tripoli on Wednesday for talks with the prime minister, Ali Zidan and two other ministers on UK-Libyan security collaboration.

Since last September the Foreign Office has advised against all travel to Benghazi and all areas of Libya with the exception of Tripoli, Zuwara, Az-Zawiya, Al Khums, Zlitan and Misrata, and the coastal towns from Ras Lanuf to the Egyptian border.

Thursday's statement said: "We are now aware of a specific and imminent threat to westerners in Benghazi, and urge any British nationals who remain there against our advice to leave immediately. We have updated our travel advice to reflect this."

It added: "Following French military intervention in Mali, there is a possibility of retaliatory attacks targeting western interests in the region. We advise vigilance." The Netherlands said that it has discouraged "all travel and stays" in the Benghazi region but has not told its citizens to leave the area. Tension has been high in Benghazi since December, when a Libyan government operation which received support from a US military aircraft arrested a number of men suspected of assassinating the city's police chief.

Gun battles and attacks on police stations have continued sporadically.

Zidan said last week that he was considering imposing a nighttime curfew on the city.

In response to the Algerian attack, Libya's army chief of staff, Youssef Mangoush, has taken personal charge of security at Libya's oil and gas installations.

Adel Mansouri, principal of the International School of Benghazi, told the Associated Press that British and other foreign nationals were warned two days ago about a possible threat to westerners.

He said the teachers were given the option of leaving but decided to stay. Saleh Gawdat, a Benghazi lawmaker, said French doctors who were working in the city's hospitals have left and that the French cultural centre has closed amid fears of potential retaliation over the French-led military intervention in Mali.

British Airways said it would continue operating its three weekly flights between London's Heathrow airport and Tripoli.

Foreign Office: Britons should leave Benghazi immediately | World news | The Guardian

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Europe may have no choice but to become more involved in the world’s hot spots as the United States withdraws.

By Anne Applebaum| Posted Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013, at 4:57 PM ET

They probably aren’t the best choice for the world’s policeman, but they may be the only one we’ve got

French and Malian soldiers interact

France is using air and ground power in a joint offensive with Malian soldiers launched on Jan. 11 against hardline Islamist groups controlling northern Mali /Photo by Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images.

“A decade of war is now ending,” President Obama declared on Monday. Maybe that's true in America, but it isn't true anywhere else. Extremists are still plotting acts of terror. Authoritarian and autocratic regimes are still using violence to preserve their power. The United States can step back from international conflicts, but that won't make them disappear.
Fortunately, there is another power that shares our economic and political values, that possesses sophisticated military technology, and is also very interested in stopping the progress of fanatical movements, especially in North Africa and the Middle East. That power is … Europe.
Don't laugh! I realize that even a year ago that statement would have seemed absurd. I certainly couldn’t have written it in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 Libya operation, during which France, Britain, and a dozen other states were barely able to sustain a brief war, involving no ground troops, against a poorly armed and unpopular regime. Unverified reports at the time alleged that the French ran out of bombs and were dropping lumps of concrete. Without the intelligence and coordination provided by American warships, airplanes, and the CIA, the French planes wouldn't even have known where to drop them.
Yet here we are in 2013, watching the French air force and troops come to the aid of the formerly democratic government of Mali, which is fighting for its life against a fanatical Islamist insurgency. Furthermore, this French intervention has (so far) broad national support. Although there have been public criticisms of the operation's logistics, preparation, and ultimate goals, almost no one in France questions the need for intervention. Hardly anyone is even asking "Why France?"     
The French have a special, post-colonial sentiment for Francophone Africa (and, according to a French friend, for Malian music) and have intervened there militarily more than 40 times since 1960. But the context of this intervention is different from many previous ones. The aim is not (or not entirely) to prop up a pro-French puppet regime but to block the progress of al-Qaida in the Maghreb, the brutal organization that fuels the Malian insurgency and took hostages at an Algerian gas complex last week.
In other words, the French are in Mali fighting an international terrorist organization with the potential to inflict damage across North Africa and perhaps beyond. Not long ago, this sort of international terrorist organization used to inspire emergency planning sessions at the Pentagon. Now the French have trouble getting Washington to pay attention at all. Some U.S. transport planes recently helped ferry French soldiers to the region but, according to Le Figaro, the Americans at first asked the French to pay for the service—“a demand without precedent”—before wearily agreeing to help.
But other Europeans are offering money and soldiers. The European Union has authorized funding to train African troops who will assist—and it does have more experience than you think. European Union forces, operating far beneath the publicity radar, attacked pirate bases on the Somali coast last spring—successfully. "They destroyed our equipment to ashes," a man described as a “pirate commander” told the Associated Press. All told, the European Union has intervened militarily in more than two dozen conflicts. Not quite as much as the French since 1960, but getting there.
A number of obstacles must be overcome before the EU could become the world's policeman. Although combined European military does make the EU the world’s second largest military power, it still isn’t enough for any kind of sustained conflict. Some Europeans, most notably the Germans, would have to overcome their post–Second World War abhorrence of soldiers. Other Europeans, most notably the British, would have to be made to believe, as others have concluded, that Americans just aren't that interested in NATO anymore. An added complication emerged this week when British Prime Minister David Cameron announced his intention to renegotiate his country's relationship with the European Union. However it unfolds, this process is unlikely to be conducive to the development of a common European foreign and defence policy.
These are big obstacles. But what's the alternative? If America is to enjoy "peace in our time"—an expression now deployed by both Barack Obama and Neville Chamberlain—while the rest of the world remains at war, then someone else will fill the vacuum. A glance at the other candidates—China, Russia, or perhaps Qatar or another Gulf state—ought to make us all stop giggling about cheese-eating surrender monkeys and start offering logistical and moral support. Europe may not be the best superpower. But it's the only one we've got.

Europe may have no choice but to become more involved in the world’s hot spots as the United States withdraws. - Slate Magazine

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

A Rhine romance: Germany and France celebrate five decades of marriage

Kate Connolly in Berlin The Guardian, Tuesday 22 January 2013 18.22 GMT

Hundreds of politicians and cultural leaders gather in Berlin to mark 50 years since signing the Elysée treaty of friendship

François Hollande and Angela Merkel

Merkel and Hollande spoke of the chemistry and electrical currents connecting them. Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters

In the end, it was a filmmaker rather than a politician who best summed up the alliance. "There is a certain indifference between them," said Wim Wenders. "But that doesn't surprise me, after 50 years of marriage."

The German Wings of Desire director was attending a reception for cultural figureheads gathered in Berlin on Tuesday as part of a marathon of events to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Elysée treaty, the pact that sealed Franco-German friendship after the second world war.

To mark the golden anniversary, stamps and coins were issued, French flags flew alongside German ones, and radio stations played chansons.

The lavish commemorations culminated in a joint session of parliament in the Reichstag, the seat of the lower house, to which the entire 577-strong French parliament was invited. There followed a concert of French and German music at the Berlin Philharmonic, and a banquet.

While Europe may have its problems, this was a day to stress the positives, so politicians on both sides spent the day lauding each other's countries. There was no mention of what a feat it had been, with freezing temperatures and thick snow, to get hundreds of French MPs by train and plane to Berlin on time and without any hitches. "Europe clearly is working," quipped one German government adviser.

In the end, the biggest hiccup was restricted to the military brass band, which was forced to cut short the musical programme of its welcoming ceremony for the French president, François Hollande, when some of the instruments of the brass section froze in the minus temperatures.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who gave her French counterpart the red carpet treatment, sought to dampen talk of tensions between the two 58-year-olds, telling a press conference that they were on informal tu and du terms.

"It may be our best kept secret, that the chemistry actually works," Merkel said. Hollande added: "The current between us flows without needing any electricity." It was "the differences that make German-French relations so stimulating", Merkel added.

Those differences have been clear to see during the eurozone crisis, with Hollande revolting against Germany's austerity drive, rows over retirement age, and Germany's questioning of France's commitment to structural reform. And then there were other disputes, such as Berlin's refusal to become involved in French military missions, first in Libya and now in Mali, and the recent failed fusion of the aerospace and defence firms EADS and BAE Systems.

The disagreements have only been exacerbated by the contrast between the relative fiscal health of Germany, and France's current economic woes. Neither did it help to smooth the relationship when Germany last week removed its gold reserves from the Banque de France, in a move some in Paris viewed as an affront.

A party celebrating the historic 1963 embrace between France's Charles de Gaulle and the West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer was never going to be easy at such a time, and prompted one commentator to use the word zwangsfeiern – "partying under duress".

But the will to make it work was surely there, in projects such as the joint newspaper, produced by the French and German dailies Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung, a joint Elysée treaty stamp, and an Elysée-Spezial €50 ticket offered by German and French railways for travel between the two countries.

Radio stations took the opportunity to dust off a track by the French chanteuse Barbara, which many say did as much to thaw postwar relations as the treaty. Called Göttingen, the French-Jewish singer's tribute to the central German city went: "Of course, we have la Seine … but God, the roses are beautiful in Göttingen". Recorded in French and German, it became a hit in both countries.

During the Bundestag session, some MPs reminisced about school exchanges they had undertaken as teenagers, talking of the big step it had been for French families who had been affected by the war to host young Germans. Germany's very private finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, revealed that one of his most painful experiences in France had been falling in love with a French girl. "I had love sickness because of her," he said. "But it's so long ago now she wouldn't recognise me any more."

But Hollande said that while the youth of today had the "great fortune" of not having experienced war, they now faced "an economic and social crisis of unprecedented duration". He stressed that both countries had a responsibility to create jobs.

A survey of French and Germans showed, however, that despite the many exchanges the two countries still viewed each other in terms of cliches. For Germans, asked for a spontaneous summary of the French, the words culture, fashion, luxury and savoir-vivre came to mind; the French, when thinking of the Germans, talked about beer, Berlin, cars, Nazis and war.

The former Germany foreign minister Joschka Fischer said that for him, as for other German youths, France had been a place of dreams, free from the shackles of German history.

"Eating lamb chops with green beans in a French bistro, it changed the way you felt about life," the 64-year-old told Der Spiegel.

But Jacques Delors, who oversaw the construction of the European economic and monetary union, warned against too much nostalgia, saying that France and Germany, on whose co-operation the foundations of the European project was built, had a responsibility to concentrate on the present, not the past.

"I would like to see this week's celebration not descend into sentimentality," said the 87-year-old French politician.

"Enough with the embraces, the sauerkraut and drinking beer together. I prefer to see Merkel and Hollande … point out how to do things better in the future."

A Rhine romance: Germany and France celebrate five decades of marriage | World news | The Guardian

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Binyamin Netanyahu rejects calls for Palestinian state within 1967 lines

Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem guardian.co.uk, Sunday 20 January 2013 16.50 GMT

Israeli prime minister says border would be impossible to defend and allow 'Hamas 400 metres from my home'

Binyamin Netanyahu posters

Election posters for Binyamin Netanyahu on the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. Photograph: Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images

Binyamin Netanyahu has vowed to rebuff international demands to allow a Palestinian state with a border based on the pre-1967 Green Line and its capital in East Jerusalem, as hardline pro-settler parties and factions are expected to make unprecedented gains in Tuesday's election.

"When they say, 'Go back to the 67 lines,' I stand against. When they say, 'Don't build in Jerusalem,' I stand against," the Israeli prime minister told Channel 2 in a television interview.

"It's very easy to capitulate. I could go back to the impossible-to-defend 67 lines, and divide Jerusalem, and we would get Hamas 400 metres from my home." He would not allow that to happen under his leadership, he said.

Likud supporters on Sunday draped the walls of Jerusalem's Old City with huge banners proclaiming "Only Netanyahu will protect Jerusalem" and "Warning: 67 border ahead".

Netanyahu's electoral alliance, Likud-Beiteinu, is on course to emerge from the election as the biggest party in the 120-seat parliament, with 32-35 seats. Negotiations to form the next coalition government will begin immediately after final results are announced.

Most analysts expect Netanyahu to invite the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party, led by Naftali Bennett, to become a coalition partner following a bruising election battle between the pair. "An hour after the elections, the fight between Netanyahu and Bennett will be over. They will sit down together to form a coalition government," wrote the respected columnist Nahum Barnea in Yedioth Ahronoth.

But, he added, they will then "discover that their real enemies are within their own homes". Both parties are fielding extremely hardline candidates, some of whom are expected to become members of the next Knesset, as the Israeli parliament is called.

The expected strengthening of the hard right in the next parliament may encourage Netanyahu to seek a broad base for his coalition.

"He will try for a large coalition in order to prevent the possibility of one party blackmailing him," said Efraim Inbar, of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies. "The more parties you have, the more they neutralise each other. He will want parties both to his right and to his left."

Labour, historically the party of the Israeli left, has moved towards the political centre. Its leader, former journalist Shelly Yachimovich, has all but refused to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian issue, which traditionally has been at the heart of Labour's policies, instead attempting to capitalise on huge socio-economic protests in Israel 18 months ago. Labour is expected to be the second largest party, with 16-17 seats – up from 13 in the current parliament – but Yachimovich has publicly rejected the possibility of joining a "radical right" coalition led by Netanyahu.

However, the leaders of two new centrist parties have indicated their willingness to discuss a partnership with the Likud-Beiteinu alliance, led by Netanyahu and the ultra-nationalist former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Yair Lapid, the leader of the secular Yesh Atid party, which is forecast to win 11-13 seats, would be a counterweight to the religious ultra-orthodox parties, which are also potential coalition partners. Lapid has also steered away from the Israeli-Palestinian issue, concentrating his campaign on social and economic issues.

The former foreign minister Tzipi Livni may be a more problematic partner for Netanyahu as the chief pitch of her party, Hatnua, has been the resumption of meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians on a two-state settlement to the conflict. "The radical right and [Naftali] Bennett will bring about the destruction of Israel," she warned at a campaign rally on Saturday.

But, said Inbar, "most of what Livni says about the peace process is just talk – no one thinks it's serious. She has gone down in the polls because that's all she talks about." Hatnua is predicted to win seven or eight seats, down from a high of 10 earlier in the campaign.

Netanyahu needs to assemble a coalition of more than 60 MPs in order to form the next government.

Binyamin Netanyahu rejects calls for Palestinian state within 1967 lines | World news | guardian.co.uk

Monday, January 21, 2013

The two-state solution: one nation decides

Alistair Dawber  Jerusalem Monday 21 January 2013

As right-wingers gain support, the Israeli election could end hopes for peace talks

Palestinians pray in front of a tent at their makeshift settlement in Beit Iksa/AFP

Israelis go to the polls tomorrow for an election that could deliver one of the most right-wing governments in the Jewish state's history and deal a heavy blow to moribund peace talks with the Palestinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's alliance between his Likud party and former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman's right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party is tipped to win. But, for the first time, the coalition government that emerges in the days and weeks after the vote is also likely to include parties openly hostile to the peace process, including the Jewish Home party, led by the hawkish Naftali Bennett.

He has campaigned as the only party leader who does not believe in the two-state solution. His view is today's "imperfect" situation is better than allowing a viable Palestinian state.

Relations between Israelis and Palestinians are at one of their lowest ebbs, with the key issue of Jewish settlements in the West Bank – regarded as occupied territory by the international community – one of the major sticking points. Although the Likud-Beiteinu alliance is expected to take the most seats in parliament, the Knesset, final opinion polls on Friday showed a drop in the number it is likely to win. Support has been sapped partly by Jewish Home, but about 15 per cent of voters say they remain undecided.

In an attempt to shore up support, Mr Netanyahu took up the nationalist pro-settler rhetoric, telling the Maariv newspaper: "The days when bulldozers uprooted Jews are behind us, not in front of us. We haven't uprooted any settlements, we have expanded them. Nobody has any lessons to give me about love for the Land of Israel or commitment to Zionism and the settlements." He also promised that the next Israeli government would not dismantle any existing settlements.

In response to the Palestinians winning a vote on statehood at the UN General Assembly in November, the Israeli government has said it will start the process of settlement building in E1, an area of the West Bank. In the past week, Palestinian activists have responded by establishing two tented camps in areas earmarked for construction, in the hope of establishing so-called "facts on the ground" – a term used to take account of realities such as settlements when negotiating potential land swaps in any final deal.

At one camp – Bab Al-Karama, or "Gate Of Dignity" – in the West Bank village of Beit Iksa, Mahmoud al-Aloul, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, and someone who is close to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, told The Independent: "Israel behaves as [Beit Iksa] is its land and we are the strangers here – we want to live in our own land. This is a new initiative that has been adopted as a strategy by the [Palestinian Authority] leadership. It is now part of the popular struggle to confront Israeli violations and settlements."

Saleem, a 20-year-old construction worker and volunteer at the camp, was building a small mosque from breeze blocks. He was adamant the protests would continue, saying: "Even if the Israelis come and destroy it, I'll come back and build it again."

His mettle may well be tested. According to reports, Israeli troops had arrived at the camp yesterday, told activists to knock the mosque down and were stopping supporters from crossing a nearby checkpoint.

It is not just on the ground the peace process appears stalled. There have been no direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials since 2010. The Palestinians refuse to negotiate while settlement-building continues, and Israelis insist that the PA must agree to a prerequisite that any future Palestinian state is demilitarised.

On an international level, too, there has been little progress. In his more than five years as Middle East peace envoy, Tony Blair has achieved little, and the main broker between the two sides, the United States, has become frustrated.

Despite the runes spelling a precarious period for the peace process, there are those that are hopeful for the future. "There is no distinction between the left and right blocs, there is a will for a two-state solution," says Sharon Savariego, a 26-year-old from Rishon Letzion, who works in Israel's booming tech industry.

The two-state solution: one nation decides - Middle East - World - The Independent

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Germany's ambitions aren't the problem: its love for austerity is

William Keegan

William Keegan The Observer, Sunday 13 January 2013

 

Berlin bends over backwards to reassure Europe that it has no desire for domination. But its championing of misguided fiscal orthodoxy is dragging the whole continent down

German chancellor Angela Merkel by an EU flag

Angela Merkel: latest in a long line of chancellors who want a European Germany, not a German Europe. Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/Reuters

The Conservative party is in such a state over Europe that the Obama administration has had to remind it in public that the much-treasured special relationship between Britain and the US depends these days on this nation's presence in the EU, rather than its defection.

Conservative sceptics who complain that this is not the kind of European Union that was envisaged when we entered need to go back in history. The idea that the wool has been pulled over the British public's eyes does not fit too easily with the public record of the late 60s and early 70s.

Indeed, in those days it was manifest that our fellow Europeans were aiming at monetary union by 1980. Older readers will remember the Werner Report, which set out the plans. Then came the breakup of the Bretton Woods fixed-but-adjustable exchange rate system, the first oil crisis, and the collapse of assorted stout parties.

Paradoxically, however, the disruption of earlier plans led, after a long time-lag, to the second attempt, as the European monetary system, inaugurated in 1978-79, prepared the way for the single currency of 1999 via the Single European Act of 1986, signed by that veritable mistress of detail, one Margaret Thatcher.

The EMS, better known for its principal component, the European exchange rate mechanism, was an attempt to create a "zone of monetary stability" in Europe in the face of Washington's benign neglect of relationships between countries' exchange rates. The dollar was no longer to be the linchpin of the system.

Many of us rather hoped that monetary union had been kicked into touch, but the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany in 1990 aroused fears on the part of both President Mitterrand of France and Chancellor Kohl of Germany that Germany might become too dominant. With the sacrifice of the deutschmark, Germany signed up to the single currency, the political aim being the achievement of a European Germany, rather than a German Europe.

Contrary to the views of many people in this country, modern Germany bends over backwards to deny any suggestion of plans to dominate Europe. It was amusing last week to hear a senior executive of BMW, which now owns Rolls-Royce, going out of his way to insist that Rolls-Royce was still "a British company".

Ironically, however, it is easy for Germany's good intentions to be misinterpreted, because the way that economic policy has evolved in Europe since the onset of the financial crisis has been led by Germany and is based on the same false premise as the economic policy pursued by a certain coalition closer to home.

The premise is that austerity, or planned penury, contains the seeds of economic revival. "Expansionary fiscal contraction" is the oxymoronic term for what is being practised in the UK and most of the euro zone.

I have many times tried to point out that what makes sense for the individual or household does not make sense for the entire economy. As the indefatigable Paul Krugman puts it: "A family can decide to spend less and try to earn more. But in the economy as a whole, spending and earning go together: my spending is your income; your spending is my income. If everyone tries to slash spending at the same time, incomes will fall – and unemployment will soar."

After a period of selective amnesia, economists at the International Monetary Fund and elsewhere have rediscovered the "multiplier" – the insight given to Keynes by his lesser-known colleague Richard Kahn. Traditionally this is discussed in terms of the way that extra public spending or lower taxes can have a "multiplier" effect in stimulating demand and activity in the economy as a whole.

Now, for reasons that ought to have been obvious, they are discovering that the multiplier effect can work the other way as well. Why, the impact of needless austerity on peripheral euro zone countries is now affecting the outlook in Germany itself, via lower demand for its exports.

This is not to say that the contraction induced by the current fashion for austerity and cuts is entirely responsible for our economic troubles. In recent years there has been the unfortunate concatenation of the banking crisis (still very much with us in Europe), the rise in the price of oil and food, and, in the UK's case, the added impact on import prices of the 2007-9 devaluation of the pound.

Yet devaluation, long delayed, was necessary because of the deterioration in our trading position associated with the neglect of manufacturing and the way policymakers relied too much on financial services. Even now, during a prolonged depression, Britain is not paying its way in the world, and is in a significant balance-of-payments deficit. As the economist John Mills points out, the real source of concern in this country is the trading position rather than the budgetary one.

The implication is disturbing, but it is a judgment that appears to be shared by the governor of the Bank of England: the exchange rate is still too high! If the markets were to take this view, then there would be a further squeeze on people's real incomes as import prices rose again.

All things considered, the last thing this country and this economy needs is the coalition's austerity programme, which depresses demand even further.

Germany's ambitions aren't the problem: its love for austerity is | Business | The Observer

Monday, January 7, 2013

The isle of long life

By Dan Beuttner 7:00AM GMT 05 Jan 2013

Told he was terminally ill, Stamatis Moraitis left America to end his days in his native Ikaria. Thirty-five years later he is thriving alongside his many friends in their 90s and older. How do the people of this Greek island live so long and so well?

The island of Ikaria

Ikaria, 99 square miles and with a population of about 10,000, lies some 30 miles off the western coast of Turkey. Photo: Andrea Frazzetta/LUZphoto/The New York Times Syndicate

In 1943 a Greek war veteran named Stamatis Moraitis arrived in the United States for treatment of a combat-mangled arm. He had survived a gunshot wound, escaped to Turkey and eventually talked his way on to the Queen Elizabeth, then serving as a troopship, to cross the Atlantic. Moraitis settled in Port Jefferson, New York, an enclave of countrymen from his native island, Ikaria. He quickly got a job doing manual labour. Later, he moved to Boynton Beach, Florida. Along the way, Moraitis married a Greek-American woman, had three children and bought a three-bedroom house and a 1951 Chevrolet.

One day in 1976 Moraitis felt short of breath. Climbing stairs was a chore; he had to stop working at midday. After X-rays his doctor concluded that Moraitis had lung cancer. As he recalls, nine other doctors confirmed the diagnosis. They gave him nine months to live. He was in his mid-60s.

Moraitis considered staying in America and seeking aggressive cancer treatment. That way, he could also be close to his adult children. But he decided instead to return to Ikaria, where he could be buried with his ancestors. Moraitis and his wife, Elpiniki, moved in with his elderly parents, into a tiny, whitewashed house on two acres of stepped vineyards near Evdilos, on the north side of Ikaria. At first he spent his days in bed, as his mother and wife tended to him. On Sunday mornings he hobbled up the hill to a tiny Greek Orthodox chapel where his grandfather had been a priest. When his childhood friends discovered that he had moved back, they started showing up every afternoon. They would talk for hours, an activity that invariably involved a bottle or two of locally produced wine. I might as well die happy, he thought. In the ensuing months, something strange happened. He started to feel stronger. One day, feeling ambitious, he planted some vegetables in the garden. He didn't expect to live to harvest them, but he enjoyed being in the sunshine, breathing the ocean air.

Six months came and went. Moraitis did not die. Instead, he reaped his garden and, feeling emboldened, cleaned up the family vineyards as well. Easing himself into the island routine, he woke up when he felt like it, worked in the vineyards until mid-afternoon, made himself lunch and then took a long nap. In the evenings he often walked to the local tavern, where he played dominoes until after midnight. The years passed. His health continued to improve. He added a couple of rooms to his parents' home so his children could visit. He built up the vineyard until it produced 1,800 litres of wine a year. Today, he is 97 years old – according to an official document he disputes; he says he is 102 – and cancer-free. He never went through chemotherapy, took drugs or sought therapy of any sort. All he did was move home to Ikaria.


Stamatis Moraitis tends his vines and olive trees on Ikaria

I met Moraitis on Ikaria in July during one of my visits to explore the extraordinary longevity of the island's residents. For a decade, with support from the National Geographic Society, I have been organising a study of the places where people live longest. The project grew out of studies by my partners, Dr Gianni Pes of the University of Sassari in Italy and Dr Michel Poulain, a Belgian demographer. In 2000 they identified a region of Sardinia's Nuoro province as the place with the highest concentration of male centenarians in the world. As they zeroed in on a cluster of villages, they drew a boundary in blue ink on a map and began referring to the area inside as the 'blue zone'. Starting in 2002 we identified three other populations around the world where people live measurably longer lives than everyone else: Okinawa, Japan; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and Loma Linda, California.

In 2003 I started a consulting firm to see if it was possible to take what we were learning in the field and apply it to American communities. We also continued to do research and look for other pockets of longevity, and in 2008, following a lead from a Greek researcher, we began investigating Ikaria. Poulain's plan was to track down survivors born between 1900 and 1920 and determine when and where individuals died. The data collection had to be rigorous. Earlier claims about long-lived people in such places as Ecuador's Vilcabamba Valley and the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia had been debunked after researchers discovered that many residents did not actually know their ages. For villagers born without birth certificates, it was easy to lose track. One year they were 80; a few months later they were 82. Pretty soon they claimed to be 100. And when a town discovers that a reputation for centenarians attracts tourists, who is going to question it? Stories like the one about Moraitis's miraculous recovery become instant folklore, told and retold and changed and misattributed.

The study would try to cut through the stories and establish the facts about Ikaria's record for longevity. Before including subjects Poulain cross-referenced birth records against baptism or military documentation. After gathering all the data, he and his colleagues at the University of Athens concluded that people on Ikaria were, in fact, reaching the age of 90 at two and a half times the rate Americans do. But more than that, they were also living about eight to 10 years longer before succumbing to cancers and cardiovascular disease, and they suffered less depression and about a quarter the rate of dementia. Almost half of Americans who are 85 and older show signs of Alzheimer's. On Ikaria, however, people have been managing to stay sharp to the end.

Ikaria, an island of 99 square miles and home to almost 10,000 Greek nationals, lies about 30 miles off the western coast of Turkey. Its reputation as a health destination goes back 25 centuries, when Greeks travelled to the island to soak in the hot springs near Therma.

Seeking to learn more about the island's reputation for long-lived residents, In 2009 I visited Dr Ilias Leriadis, one of Ikaria's few physicians. On an outdoor patio at his weekend house, he set a table with Kalamata olives, hummus, heavy Ikarian bread and wine. 'People stay up late here,' Leriadis said. 'We wake up late and always take naps. I don't even open my office until 11am because no one comes before then.' He took a sip of wine. 'Have you noticed that no one wears a watch here? No clock is working correctly. When you invite someone to lunch, they might come at 10am or 6pm. We simply don't care about the clock here.'

Pointing across the Aegean towards the neighbouring island of Samos, he said, 'Just 15 kilometres over there is a completely different world. There they are much more developed. There are high-rises and resorts and homes worth a million Euros. In Samos, they care about money. Here, we don't. For the many religious and cultural holidays, people pool their money and buy food and wine. If there is money left over, they give it to the poor. It's not a "me" place. It's an "us" place.'

Pes and Poulain set out to track down the island's 164 residents who were over 90 in 1999. They found that 75 nonagenarians were still alive. Then, along with additional researchers, they fanned out across the island and asked 35 elderly subjects a battery of lifestyle questions to assess physical and cognitive functioning. They were joined in the field by Dr Antonia Trichopoulou of the University of Athens, an expert on the Mediterranean diet. She noted that the Ikarians' diet, like that of others around the Mediterranean, was rich in olive oil and vegetables, low in dairy (except goat's milk) and meat products, and also included moderate amounts of alcohol. It emphasised home-grown potatoes, beans (garbanzo, black-eyed peas and lentils), wild greens and locally produced goat's milk and honey.

Every one of the Ikarians' dietary tendencies has been linked to increased life spans. Low intake of saturated fats from meat and dairy is associated with lower risk of heart disease; olive oil – especially unheated – reduces bad cholesterol and raises good cholesterol. Goat's milk contains serotonin-boosting tryptophan and is easily digestible for older people. Some wild greens have 10 times as many antioxidants as red wine. Wine – in moderation – has been shown to be good for you if consumed as part of a Mediterranean diet, because it prompts the body to absorb more flavonoids, a type of antioxidant. And coffee, once said to stunt growth, is now associated with lower rates of diabetes, heart disease and, for some, Parkinson's. Another health factor at work may be the unprocessed nature of the food they consume: as Trichopoulou observed, because islanders eat greens from their gardens and fields, they consume fewer pesticides and more nutrients. She estimated that the Ikarian diet, compared with the standard Western diet, might yield up to four additional years of life expectancy.

During our time on Ikaria, my colleagues and I stayed at Thea Parikos's guesthouse, the social hub of western Ikaria. Local women gathered in the dining-room at mid-morning to gossip over tea. Late at night, tables were pushed aside and the dining-room became a dance floor, with people locking arms and kick-dancing to Greek music. Parikos cooked the way her ancestors had for centuries, giving us a chance to consume the diet we were studying. For breakfast she served yogurt and honey from the 90-year-old beekeeper next door. For dinner she walked out into the fields and returned with handfuls of weedlike greens, combined them with pumpkin and baked them into savoury pies.

Despite her consummately Ikarian air, Parikos was actually born in Detroit to an American father and an Ikarian mother. She attended high school, worked as an estate agent and married in the United States. After she and her husband had their first child, she felt a 'genetic craving' for Ikaria. When she and her family moved to Ikaria and opened the guesthouse, everything changed. She stopped shopping for most food, instead planting a huge garden that provided most of their fruits and vegetables. She lost weight without trying to. I asked her if she thought her simple diet was going to make her family live longer. 'Yes,' she said. 'But we don't think about it that way. It's bigger than that.'

Although unemployment is high – perhaps as high as 40 per cent – nearly everyone has access to a family garden and livestock, Parikos told me. 'People are fine here because we are very self-sufficient,' she said. 'We may not have money for luxuries, but we will have food on the table and still have fun with family and friends. We may not be in a hurry to get work done during the day, so we work into the night. At the end of the day, we don't go home to sit on the couch.' Parikos was nursing a mug of coffee; the waves of the nearby Aegean could be barely heard over the din of breakfast. 'Do you know, there's no word in Greek for privacy?' she said. 'When everyone knows everyone else's business, you get a feeling of connection and security. The lack of privacy is actually good, because it puts a check on people who don't want to be caught or who do something to embarrass their family. If your kids misbehave, your neighbour has no problem disciplining them. There is less crime, not because of good policing, but because of the risk of shaming the family. You asked me about food, and yes, we do eat better here than in America. But it's more about how we eat. Even if it's your lunch break from work, you relax and enjoy your meal. You enjoy the company of whoever you are with. Food here is always enjoyed in combination with conversation.'

If you pay careful attention to the way Ikarians have lived their lives, it appears that a dozen subtly powerful, mutually enhancing and pervasive factors are at work. It is easy to get enough rest if no one else wakes up early and the village goes dead during afternoon nap time. It helps that the cheapest, most accessible foods are also the most healthful, and that your ancestors have spent centuries developing ways to make them taste good. It is hard to get through the day in Ikaria without walking up 20 hills. You are not likely ever to feel the existential pain of not belonging or even the simple stress of arriving late. Your community makes sure you will always have something to eat, but peer pressure will get you to contribute something too. You are less likely to be a victim of crime because everyone at once is a busybody and feels as if he is being watched. On Sunday you will attend church, and you will fast on certain Orthodox holy days. Even if you are anti-social, you will never be entirely alone. Your neighbours will cajole you out of your house for the village festival to eat your portion of goat's meat.

Every one of these factors can be tied to longevity. But it is difficult to change individual behaviours when community behaviours stay the same. In the West you cannot go to a film, walk through the airport or buy cough medicine without being confronted by a battery of chocolate bars, salty snacks and sugary drinks.

And despite Ikaria's relative isolation, its tortuous roads and the fierce independence of its inhabitants, modern food culture, among other forces, is beginning to take root there. Village markets are now selling crisps and fizzy drinks. As the island's ancient traditions give way before globalisation, the gap between Ikarian life spans and those of the rest of the world seems to be gradually disappearing, as the next generations of old people become less likely to live quite so long.

I called Moraitis a few weeks ago. Elpiniki died in the spring at the age of 85, and now he lives alone. He picked up the phone in the same whitewashed house that he had moved into 35 years ago. It was late afternoon in Ikaria. He had worked in his vineyard that morning and just woken up from a nap. We chatted for a few minutes, but then he warned me that some of his neighbours were coming over for a drink in a few minutes and he would have to go. I had one last question for him. How does he think he recovered from lung cancer?

'It just went away,' he said. 'I actually went back to America about 25 years after moving here to see if the doctors could explain it to me.'

I had heard this part of the story before. It had become a piece of the folklore of Ikaria, proof of its exceptional way of life. Still, I asked him, 'What happened?'

'My doctors were all dead.'

This is an edited version of an article first published in the New York Times

The isle of long life - Telegraph

Friday, January 4, 2013

China's Great Famine: the true story

 Tania Branigan

Tania Branigan The Guardian, Tuesday 1 January 2013 20.30 GMT

The famine that killed up to 45 million people remains a taboo subject in China 50 years on. Author Yang Jisheng is determined to change that with his book, Tombstone

Yang Jisheng

Yang Jisheng ... 'He comes across as a sweet old man, but he has a core of steel.' Photograph: Adam Dean/Panos

Small and stocky, neat in dress and mild of feature, Yang Jisheng is an unassuming figure as he bustles through the pleasantly shabby offices, an old-fashioned satchel thrown over one shoulder. Since his retirement from China's state news agency he has worked at the innocuously titled Annals of the Yellow Emperor journal, where stacks of documents cover chipped desks and a cockroach circles our paper cups of green tea.

Tombstone: The Untold Story of Mao's Great Famine

by Yang Jisheng

 

Yet the horror stories penned by the 72-year-old from this comforting, professorial warren in Beijing are so savage and excessive they could almost be taken as the blackest of comedies; the bleakest of farces; the most extreme of satires on fanaticism and tyranny.

A decade after the Communist party took power in 1949, promising to serve the people, the greatest manmade disaster in history stalks an already impoverished land. In an unremarkable city in central Henan province, more than a million people – one in eight – are wiped out by starvation and brutality over three short years. In one area, officials commandeer more grain than the farmers have actually grown. In barely nine months, more than 12,000 people – a third of the inhabitants – die in a single commune; a tenth of its households are wiped out. Thirteen children beg officials for food and are dragged deep into the mountains, where they die from exposure and starvation. A teenage orphan kills and eats her four-year-old brother. Forty-four of a village's 45 inhabitants die; the last remaining resident, a woman in her 60s, goes insane. Others are tortured, beaten or buried alive for declaring realistic harvests, refusing to hand over what little food they have, stealing scraps or simply angering officials.

When the head of a production brigade dares to state the obvious – that there is no food – a leader warns him: "That's right-deviationist thinking. You're viewing the problem in an overly simplistic matter."

Page after page – even in the drastically edited English translation, there are 500 of them – his book, Tombstone, piles improbability upon terrible improbability. But Yang did not imagine these scenes. Perhaps no one could. Instead, he devoted 15 years to painstakingly documenting the catastrophe that claimed at least 36 million lives across the country, including that of his father.

The Great Famine remains a taboo in China, where it is referred to euphemistically as the Three Years of Natural Disasters or the Three Years of Difficulties. Yang's monumental account, first published in Hong Kong, is banned in his homeland.

He had little idea of what he would find when he started work: "I didn't think it would be so serious and so brutal and so bloody. I didn't know that there were thousands of cases of cannibalism. I didn't know about farmers who were beaten to death.

"People died in the family and they didn't bury the person because they could still collect their food rations; they kept the bodies in bed and covered them up and the corpses were eaten by mice. People ate corpses and fought for the bodies. In Gansu they killed outsiders; people told me strangers passed through and they killed and ate them. And they ate their own children. Terrible. Too terrible."

For a moment he stops speaking.

"To start with, I felt terribly depressed when I was reading these documents," he adds. "But after a while I became numbed – because otherwise I couldn't carry on."

Whether it is due to this process, or more likely his years working within the system, Yang is absolutely self-possessed. His grandfatherly smile is intermittently clipped by caution as he answers a question. Though a sense of deep anger imbues his book, it is all the more powerful for its restraint.

"There's something about China that seems to require sharp-elbowed intellectuals," says Jo Lusby, head of China operations for Penguin, the publishers of Tombstone. "But the people with the loudest voices aren't necessarily the ones with the most interesting things to say. Yang Jisheng comes across as a sweet old man, but he has a core of steel. He has complete integrity."

He is, she points out, part of a generation of quietly committed scholars. Despite its apparently quaint title, Annals of the Yellow Emperor is a bold liberal journal that has repeatedly tackled sensitive issues. But writing Tombstone was also a personal mission. Yang was determined to "erect a tombstone for my father", the other victims and the system that killed them.

The book opens with Yang's return from school to find his father dying: "He tried to extend his hand to greet me but couldn't lift it … I was shocked with the realisation that 'skin and bones' referred to something so horrible and cruel," he writes.

His village had become a ghost town, with fields dug bare of shoots and trees stripped of bark. For all his remorse and grief, he regarded the death as an individual family's tragedy: "I was 18 at the time and I only knew what the Communist party told me. Everyone was fooled," he says. "I was very red. I was on a propaganda team and I believed my father's death was a personal misfortune. I never thought it was the government's problem."

famine - starving children in Shanghai A manmade disaster ... starving children in Shanghai. Photograph: TopFoto Photograph: Topography/ TopFoto

He joined state news agency Xinhua after his graduation, while the political madness of the Cultural Revolution was wreaking fresh havoc on the country: "When I look back on what I wrote [in that first decade], I should have burned all of it," he says. Even as he wrote his paeans to the party, his job began to offer glimpses of the truth behind the facade. One day, he was shocked to overhear a senior leader in Hubei province say that 300,000 people had died there – the first hint that his father's death was not an isolated incident. It was, he says, a gradual awakening. He continued to work for Xinhua, a task made easier by the country's reform and opening process and his own evolution; by the third decade of his career, he says, "I had my independent thinking and was telling the truth." That was when his work on Tombstone began: "I just had a very strong desire to find out the facts. I was cheated and I don't want to be cheated again."

Paradoxically, it was his work for Xinhua that enabled him to unearth the truth about the famine, as he toured archives on the pretext of a dull project on state agricultural policies, armed with official letters of introduction.

Numerous people helped him along the way; local officials and other Xinhua staff. Did they realise what he was working on? "Yes, they knew," he says.

Only once, at the archives of south-western Guizhou, was he almost rumbled. "The people who worked there said: 'We can't just let you in; you need permission from the director,'" Yang recalls. "The director said: 'I have to get permission from the provincial party vice–secretary.' So we drove to see the provincial party vice–secretary. He said: 'I have to ask the party secretary.' The party secretary said: 'I have to ask the central government.'"

He pauses. "If the central government had known, I would have been in a lot of trouble." Yang made his excuses and left.

Half a century on, the government still treats the famine as a natural disaster and denies the true death toll. "The root problem is the problem of the system. They don't dare to admit the system's problems … It might influence the legitimacy of the Communist party," Yang says.

The death toll is staggering. "The most officials have admitted is 20 million," he says, but he puts the total at 36 million. It is "equivalent to 450 times the number of people killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki … and greater than the number of people killed in the first world war," he writes. Many think even this is a conservative figure: in his acclaimed book Mao's Great Famine, Frank Dikotter estimates that the toll reached at least 45 million.

Tombstone meticulously demonstrates that the famine was not only vast, but manmade; and not only manmade but political, born of totalitarianism. Mao Zedong had vowed to build a communist paradise in China through sheer revolutionary zeal, collectivising farmland and creating massive communes at astonishing speed. In 1958 he sought to go further, launching the Great Leap Forward: a plan to modernise the entire Chinese economy so ambitious that it tipped over into insanity.

Many believe personal ambition played a crucial role. Not satisfied with being "the most powerful emperor who had ever ruled China", Mao strove to snatch leadership of the international communist movement. If the Soviet Union believed it could catch up with the US in 15 years, he vowed, China could overtake Britain in production. His vicious attacks on other leaders who dared to voice concern cowed opposition. But, as Yang notes: "It's a very complicated historical process, why China believed in Maoism and took this path. It wasn't one person's mistake but many people's. It was a process."

The plan proved a disaster from the first. Local officials, either from fanaticism or fear, sent grossly exaggerated reports of their success to the centre, proclaiming harvests three or four times their true size. Higher authorities claimed huge amounts of grain for the cities and even dispatched it overseas. Cadres harassed or killed those who sought to tell the truth and covered up deaths when reports of problems trickled to the centre.

Even so, work by Yang and others has proved that senior leaders in Beijing knew of the famine as early as 1958. "To distribute resources evenly will only ruin the Great Leap Forward," Mao warned colleagues a year later. "When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half the people die so that others can eat their fill."

Ruthlessness ran through the system. In Xinyang, the Henan city at the centre of the disaster, those who tried to escape the famine were rounded up; many died of starvation or from brutality in detention centres. Police hunted down those who wrote anonymous letters raising the alarm. Attempts to control the population tipped over into outright sadism, with cadres torturing victims in increasingly elaborate, ritualistic ways: "The textbooks don't mention this part of history at all," says Yang. "At every festival they have propaganda about the party's achievements and glory and greatness and correctness. People's ideology has been formed over many years. So right now it's very necessary to write this book; otherwise nobody has this history."

There are signs that at least some in China want to address it. Last year, the Southern People's Weekly dared to publish an issue with the words "Great Famine" emblazoned starkly across the cover. Inside, an article referred to the calamity as a manmade problem.

Yang is convinced that Tombstone will be published on the mainland, maybe within the decade. He adds with a smile that there are probably 100,000 copies already in circulation, including pirated versions and those smuggled from Hong Kong: "There are a lot of things people overseas know first and Chinese people learn from overseas," he points out.

But in other ways the shutters are coming down. Zhou Xun, whose new book, The Great Famine in China, collects original documents on the disaster for the first time, writes that much of that material has already been made inaccessible by archives.

"Researching it is going to become harder. They are not going to let people look at this stuff any more," warns Beijing author and photographer Du Bin, whose forthcoming book, No One In The World Can Defeat Me, juxtaposes accounts and images of the horror with the cheery propaganda of the time.

In China, history cannot be safely contained within a book; it always threatens to spill over: "Although many years have passed, the Communist party is still in charge of the country," says Yang. "They admit it, but they don't want to talk about it; it's still a tragedy under the Communist party's governance."

Some hope that the new generation of leaders taking power may be willing to revisit the country's history and acknowledge the mistakes that have been made. Others think it will be easy for them to continue smoothing over the past. "Because the party has been improving and society has improved and everything is better, it's hard for people to believe the brutality of that time," Yang notes.

He recalls meeting a worker from Xinyang who lost two family members to the famine. The man's teenage grandson simply could not believe his recollections, and the pair ended up rowing. Yet the power of the truth to reshape China is manifest in its effect on Yang himself: "I was a very conservative person growing up with a Communist education. My mind was very simple. Now, my mind is liberated. I believe China should move forward to democracy and market economy," he says.

He is, says Lusby, a true patriot; his diligent and risky work is not just for his father and himself, but for his country: "The Chinese people were cheated. They need real history."

China's Great Famine: the true story | World news | The Guardian

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Happy new year, Cairo?

 

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / December 31, 2012

Residents speak of a tough year, and worry about a tougher one ahead.

An Egyptian woman holds a poster with Arabic that reads, "my Christian siblings.. happy new year.." in front of the presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt, Dec. 31. Amr Nabil/AP

Cairo

I'm back in Cairo after well over a year away, and my first thought was that little has changed.

Getting out of Cairo airport is still a chaotic mess of taxi and hotel touts, though easy to navigate if you know the drill. Traffic was worse than I'd have expected for midday on Saturday, but Cairo zahma hardly has a predictable rhythm anyway. Parts of the city are always one flat tire away from being turned into a parking lot.

As I pulled into my old haunts, one thing that struck me was the apparent absence of the over-the-top commercialization of Christmas I was used to when I lived here years ago. Friends agreed, saying shops and hotels had reined in their use of the holiday, on the reasoning of "why take a chance?" Referring to bearded President Mohamed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood as "Morsi Claus" was apparently de rigeur, however, in certain activist and secular circles.

But enough with first impressions. Egypt had a tumultuous 2012 that was disillusioning, to put it mildly, for many of the young revolutionaries who supported the January 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak. While you can't see the economic pain of the past year by walking the streets of Cairo, just a few early conversations with friends and acquaintances make it clear that it's very real. In the fashionable districts of Cairo, shopkeepers say business is down. In more working class neighbourhoods, the guys selling vegetables or clothing say likewise. Men who paint houses or fix plumbing say work is less steady, with customers putting off non-essential work.

And while in my few brief conversations with Egyptian contacts the focus has been disappointment with the new Muslim Brotherhood-backed constitution, or anger at Morsi and the Brothers' apparent accommodations to a military hierarchy that has cast a shadow over Egyptian politics for a generation, it is economic conditions that will make or break the emerging new Egyptian political order in 2013.

The two, of course, are not mutually exclusive. While Morsi has spoken of a need to restore a battered Egyptian economy, neither he nor anyone else has been better able to provide stability or bread than the military was when it was running Egypt from February 2011 until June of this year.

On one level, they can be forgiven. The past year has seen certain post-Mubarak assumptions (or hopes) seriously ruptured. A popular Egyptian view of the military as protector of the nation was eroded. In February, more than 70 people died following a soccer match in Port Said at which security, the responsibility of the army, was conspicuous by its absence.

Happy new year, Cairo? - CSMonitor.com